Jonah 4 The Gracious God

In the last chapter of Jonah, God invites us to worship, celebrate, and magnify Him by showing us who he really is, and why his grace is so much more amazing than we could ever imagine.

Let’s finish this incredible book about God with point number 1...

I. God is a Gracious God

Jonah 4:1-4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

So right away we need to back up just a second. What made Jonah so mad? Why was he angry?

It was God’s grace. It was the fact that God did not destroy and overthrow the Ninevites like Jonah wanted, but instead gave them grace.

Jonah 3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Nineveh was a wicked nation, and Jonah wanted to see God’s justice poured out on them.

But God did the opposite. He gave them grace and Nineveh repented of their sins.

And this is what displeased Jonah exceedingly. Literally in Hebrew it says It was evil to Jonah, a great evil.

So here’s what interesting, the word translated evil has come up over and over again in this book.

And throughout Jonah it’s translated one of two ways because the word has a double meaning. It can mean either evil and wickedness, or it can mean trouble or disaster.

But whether its translated as evil or disaster it is one Hebrew Word: Ra-ah. And I want you to remember that because it is going to come up again and again in this passage.

But right now, what that tells us is this: For Jonah, what God had done was an absolute disaster. Jonah literally hated God giving grace to the Ninevites.

So what does Jonah do? Jonah prays.

2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. [There’s our word Ra-ah again] “3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

To understand what God is saying in this passage we need to remember Jonah’s only other prayer from this book, and we need to see the irony between that prayer, and Jonah’s prayer here.

In chapter 2, Jonah prayed to God and thanked him for his grace for saving Jonah from drowning in the sea.

Jonah had deserved to die. Jonah had rebelled against God and rejected his call to prophesy. But God didn’t kill him. Instead, God sent a fish to save him.

And so in chapter 2 Jonah gives this amazing Psalm praising God for the greatness of his salvation, punctuating the song proclaiming “Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

But Jonah’s prayer in chapter 4 is the exact opposite. Where Jonah praised God’s grace in the belly of the fish, here Jonah laments God’s grace for saving Nineveh.

He basically says, “This is why I didn’t want to come here! This is why I didn’t want to do this! This is why I ran as fast as I could to Tarshish. I knew you would save them. I knew that you would forgive them and they of all people don’t deserve it!”

How did Jonah know what God would do? In chapter 3, when God recommissioned Jonah all God told him was “Call out against Nineveh the message that I tell you.”

And as far as we know, all that message said was Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!

It was a proclamation of Judgment.

So how did Jonah know God would give them grace?

Because Jonah knew God’s character Because Jonah knew who God was.

He said, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

Jonah is summarizing Exodus 34:6-7 The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.

Now this is one of the most significant passages in all of Scripture. Because in this passage God himself tells us first hand who he is.

Let me give you the context. Moses is speaking with God. In Exodus 33:11 the Bible says the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

And one day, Moses pleaded with the LORD Exodus 33:18 Please show me your glory. He begged God, Please show me who you are!

And God responded, Exodus 33:19 I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD.”

God’s response makes it clear that God sees his glory as all his goodness. In other words, God is glorious because he is so good.

And when God said I will proclaim before you my name, God is saying to Moses I will tell you who I really am.

You want to see my glory? You need to see all my goodness. And to see all my goodness, you need to know my name. You need to know me.

Which brings us to Exodus 34:6-7.

Exodus 34:6-7 The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.

This is who God is. He is a God of grace and justice. He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger and patient.

He abounds in steadfast love which is the Hebrew word for God’s covenantal love. It is a word that is so much richer and deeper than one English word can communicate.

It carries the idea of kindness, loyalty, unfailing never ending love towards his people. And God says he abounds in that kind of love. He is overflowing with that kind of love.

And this love drives God to forgive iniquity, and transgression, and sin.

The way Jonah says it is that he relents from disaster. He does not give us the judgment we deserve.

But how can that be, because God himself says he is a God of justice who will by no means clear the guilty. How does God forgive sin without clearing the guilty person?

How does God forgive sinners without being unjust?

The answer is through the perfect sinless sacrifice of Christ. God is just in relenting from the disaster we deserve by laying that disaster on Christ in our place.

Look 1 John 4:8-10.

1 John 4:8-10 God is love.

Most Christians don’t even know what that means. There is so much confusion these 3 little words, that people justify all kinds of sin and wickedness with this verse believing that God is love means God does not condemn. that God will not judge sin.

But I think this is John’s one word summary of Exodus 34:6-7. What does it mean that God is love? That he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

When we say God is love, we are saying that God is the One who forgives our sin out of his unending love for us by nailing it to the cross in Jesus Christ.

Because look at what John says right after saying God is love...

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

A propitiation is a sacrifice that satisfies God’s wrath against our sin. God does not clear the guilty when he forgives us because he poured out his wrath on his own Son as our substitute.

And through his sacrifice, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God is merciful and gracious forgiving all of our iniquity, transgression and sin.

Or the way Jonah says it God is love. He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

This is who God is and this is why God is worthy of all of our worship and praise.

But Jonah doesn’t worship. He doesn’t praise God for forgiving Nineveh. Instead he begs for God to kill him.

Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

Again, we see the irony of Jonah’s prayer. In chapter 2, Jonah said his life was ebbing away, and he praised God for saving him and delivering him from death. He worshiped God for his grace.

But now, when God is gracious towards Nineveh, Jonah says I’d rather be dead.

Now let’s zoom out a second.

For you to see, the full impact of what God is doing here in the book of Jonah, you need to ask, what is God, the Master Author, trying to say through the life of Jonah and the story of this book.

All of these events really happened, and God ordained them to show us who He is. So the main thing God is doing in the book of Jonah is not just telling us a funny story about a man that got swallowed by a fish.

He is showing us his gracious heart towards sinners. He is showing us that who God is is love.

He is a gracious God who pours out his grace on sinners who absolutely, unequivocally do not deserve it.

Remember, Nineveh is the epitome of evil. They of all people in Jonah’s day deserved God’s judgment.

So when you see Jonah do everything he can to stop Nineveh from being saved, from running away to praying that he would rather die than see them saved, you need to see Jonah as the opposite of who God really is.

Jonah is the personification of who we would expect a Holy and Just God to be. We would expect God to judge sinners. To bring disaster to them.

We would expect him to want nothing to do with grace or salvation.

Jonah is absolutely opposed in every way to God giving grace to sinners. And that is who we would expect God to be.

But God uses Jonah to say See this? This is the opposite of who I am. I do not delight in the death of the wicked! I want to give grace. I want to save sinners, even sinners as wicked and vile as the Ninevites.

That is who I am, and that is my heart. I am a God of steadfast love.

Perhaps nowhere else is the contrast between Jonah’s heart and God’s heart so clear than when Jonah says it is better for me to die than to live.

What Jonah is basically saying is Over. My. Dead. Body. Over my dead body do I want to see these people be saved!

And the glory of the crucifixion is that God says Me too.

I want to save them by dying for them. I want to forgive all their sin. I want to show them my steadfast, unending, covenantal love by sending my Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer and die on their behalf.

God is love. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

And even though Jonah said he knew this was who God is; he didn’t really.

So to show Jonah, and to show us, just how gracious, just how loving, just how forgiving God really is, God asks Jonah a question.

4 And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

Is it right for you to be angry that I forgive sin? That I give grace and relent of disaster? That I am the LORD of Salvation like you said in the belly of the fish?

And Jonah doesn’t give him an answer. So God shows Jonah first hand why he loves sinners they way he does.

And that takes us to point number two...

II. God’s Grace Delivers Us from a Fate Worse than Death

Jonah 4:5-6 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

After Jonah preaches, and after the people of Nineveh repent, he leaves the city to see if their repentance will hold up.

Maybe there’s a chance they will go back to their old ways and God will overthrow them like Sodom and Gomorrah.

So Jonah goes out looking back every so often to see if this is going to be a safe enough distance when all the fire and sulfur starts coming down, and once he thinks he’s out of harms way, he builds a booth.

Think of a lean-to or a small shelter made of sticks and leaves where Jonah could sit in the shade instead of baking in the 110 degree desert sun.

But Jonah is apparently not very good at building booths and the sun bakes on him anyway.

Then it says the LORD God appointed a plant. This is the same word used for God appointing the fish, so this plant was sent by God for a specific purpose.

And just like the storm from chapter 1, that purpose was to give Jonah a picture of God’s judgment and grace.

Jonah says that God made the plant come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head. And here was the purpose. That it might save him from his discomfort.

Now this is why I wanted you to remember that Hebrew word Ra-ah. The word translated discomfort is actually that Hebrew word which means evil and wickedness, or trouble and disaster.

So literally in Hebrew this verse says God appointed the plant to save, rescue, deliver Jonah from his evil or disaster.

And This is intentional. We first saw the word Ra-ah at the very beginning of the book where God said Nineveh’s evil had come up before him.

Meaning their evil and wickedness had come up before the Lord and their sin had put them in the crosshairs of the trouble and disaster of God’s judgment.

Its the same word from verse 2 that says God abounds in steadfast love and relents from disaster, explicitly identifying Ra-ah with God’s judgment.

Its the same thing Chapter 3 verse 10 that says When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster [the Ra-ah] that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

What was that disaster? What was that Ra-ah? It can only be Jonah chapter 3 verse 4. Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

So clearly the word Ra-ah in Jonah describes the disaster we find ourselves in because of our sin. We are under God’s judgement for our evil and wickedness.

And when it says that God appointed the plant to save Jonah from his Ra-ah, literally to rescue or deliver him from his disaster, what we are meant to see is that God is giving Jonah an object lesson of his judgment and grace.

In verse 1, it displeased Jonah exceedingly that God gave grace to Nineveh. That God relented from the disaster he said he would do to them when delivered them from their sins.

But in verse 4, it says Jonah was exceedingly glad when God gave him the grace of the plant.

Literally, it says he rejoiced with great joy. Do you see the contrast from verse 1 where it displeased Jonah exceedingly that God gave grace to Nineveh.

So God appointed the plant to show Jonah a small glimpse of his amazing grace.

But then in verse 7, God removes that grace so that Jonah can get a picture of God’s terrible judgment.

Jonah 4:7-8 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind,

Just like God appointed the plant, God appoints a worm and the scorching east wind.

The worm attacked the plant so that it withered and died, taking a way Jonah’s shade.

Then, after the sun rose and started baking the desert sand, God appointed a scorching east wind.

The East wind is significant because throughout the Old Testament the east wind is a metaphor for God’s judgment.

In Job 27, Job talks about what wicked men can expect from God and here’s what he says.

Job 27:13; 20-22 This is the portion of a wicked man with God...Terrors overtake him like a flood; in the night a whirlwind carries him off. 21 The east wind lifts him up and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place. 22 It hurls at him without pity; he flees from its power in headlong flight.

The east wind is clearly a metaphor for God’s judgment against the wicked.

So when we go back to Jonah and see how God appoints a worm to kill the plant so that Jonah has no shade, and how God appoints a scorching east wind to make the heat of the desert sun even more unbearable, its clear that God is giving Jonah a small picture of experiencing the disaster of God’s judgment.

The same judgment the Ninevites were under before God delivered them by his grace.

So in another moment of great irony, God does to Jonah, in a small way, what Jonah wanted God to do to Nineveh.

He sent the plant to show Jonah the blessing of God’s grace, and Jonah was exceedingly glad. But then God removed that grace and let Jonah experience and let Jonah experience the disaster of his judgment.

And it says, the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

Yet again, God gives us some great irony because the Hebrew word for angry can also be translated as “to be hot.”

So its like God is saying to Jonah, “Jonah, do you want to be angry? Do you want to be hot? I’ll make you hot.”

And by bringing Ra-ah, by bringing discomfort and disaster to Jonah, God makes Jonah so hot the Bible says he was faint. He was about ready to pass out.

And Jonah was so miserable experiencing just a glimpse of the judgment he wanted God to pour out on Nineveh that Jonah begged a second time that he might die.

The first time he wanted to die because God gave grace.

Now he wanted to die because he was experiencing God’s judgment.

And God’s judgment, God’s Ra-ah was so terrible that Jonah said it would be better for him to die than to live.

The judgment God has against sin is so terrible, that Jonah says it is a fate worse than death.

If God had poured out his judgment on Nineveh, it would have been complete and utter destruction.

When Jonah called out “Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That was a warning that God was going to destroy Nineveh like he did Sodom and Gomorra. On those cities he reigned down fire and sulfur and all that was left was smoke and ash.

That is exactly what Nineveh was afraid of. The King of Nineveh said Let everyone repent. God may turn and relent so that we may not perish.

Perish means to be lost. Broken. Utterly destroyed. Undone or ruined. To suffer destruction with no way or hope of escape.

And for Jonah to say its better to die when suffering just a small fraction of God’s judgment he has the authority to make such a profound statement because he knew first hand just how terrible death was.

He had almost died when the sailors threw him overboard. Here’s how he described it...

Jonah 2:5-6 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.

And Jonah says just a fraction of God’s judgment is worse than that.

It is worse than sinking to the bottom of the city with the water pressure squeezing the breath out of your lungs, while claw for air with only water surrounding you.

And that is a just metaphor for hell. Because in the second death people won’t drown in a sea of water. They will drown in a lake of fire where the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night (Revelation 14:11).

But by God’s grace in Christ, he saves us. He delivers us from the disaster our sin and wickedness deserves.

And notice the contrast between Jonah under the scorching east wind, and Jonah under the shade of the plant.

The judgment of God is a fate worse than death. But the grace of God leads to a rejoicing with great joy.

And God’s grace is available to anyone who comes to Christ in faith.

He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Believe in him. Put your faith in him. Follow him, and you will be saved.

So far in chapter 4 we’ve seen that God is a gracious God, and his grace delivers us from a fate worse than death.

Number three...

III. God’s Amazing Grace Reveals God’s Amazing Love

Jonah 4:9-11 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”

God asked Jonah the same exact question he asked in verse 4, but this time instead of asking "Are you right to be angry about my grace?” God asks Jonah “Are you right to be angry about my judgment? Are you right to be angry that I withheld my grace from you?”

Its like God is asking Jonah, Do you want me to be gracious or not?

And instead of seeing the hypocrisy of his anger, Jonah doubles down and says, Yes I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

Jonah still doesn’t see the irony. And as the personification of the opposite heart of God towards sinners, he shouldn’t.

Jonah is obstinate in his refusal to give grace to Nineveh. And that is exactly what we would expect God to be like.

We would expect a holy and righteous God to be obstinate in his wrath. Unwavering in his judgment. To refuse to budge even one single inch to save sinners.

But like he’s been doing throughout the whole book, God uses Jonah and all his failings to show us who God himself really is.

Verse 10...

10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

This is the most important verse in the entire book. This is what the book of Jonah is all about.

And God shifts the object lesson just a little bit. God says you pity a plant that I overthrew. That I destroyed.

You pity a plant, that you did nothing for. You didn’t plant the seeds. You didn’t water it. You didn’t make it grow. It grew up in a night and it died the next day.

You pitied the plant when it perished.

And You didn’t deserve the shade. You didn’t deserve the plant! Just like Nineveh didn’t deserve my grace.

When he confronted Jonah, God was careful to say the plant perished.

That should have triggered Jonah to lament what would have happened happened to the Ninevites were it not for God’s grace.

God is showing us, Jonah’s heart is not his heart.

Jonah cared more about his own comfort and his own life, then he did the spiritual well-being of the Ninevites.

But God is just the opposite.

Christ laid down his life, and his comfort. Christ suffered and died. He endured an excruciating death on a cross to give his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus died so that we would not perish. That is God’s heart.

God himself says it. Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

This is an amazing statement.

Should I not pity sinners under my judgment. Should I not pity all those people who are so spiritually ignorant that they don’t even know their right hand from their left?

Should I not pity sinners who are lost, blind, and dead in their sins with no hope of life?

That word pity is such a rich word to describe the depth of God’s love and concern for us.

Literally it means to be troubled. So God is troubled by our sorry estate. We might say it eats him up inside, and that moves him to compassion.

That’s another way this word can be translated. God has compassion on us. He is pained and moved to action on our behalf to spare us from the judgment we deserve.

That’s the last way this word can be translated. God loves us enough to spare us the due punishment of our sins, and give us grace none of us deserve.

God asks this question to show Jonah just how out of alignment he is from God’s own heart.

Jonah pitied some nothing plant, more than he pitied 120,000 Ninevites who were under God’s judgment.

Even their cattle should have brought more compassion from Jonah than a plant that was there one day and gone the next.

Think of God’s question like this. Jonah, you only tasted a drop disaster, a drop of my judgment and you said it was worse than death.

Should I not pity sinners who will suffer the fullness of my wrath unless they repent?

That is God’s heart.

Psalm 75:8 For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

That was the fate of Nineveh deserved. And that is the fate of every one of us deserved before Christ.

Just like the Ninevites, we were all evil and wicked, and on a highway heading straight for the disaster of God’s judgment.

But God pitied us. In his great love and mercy, he had compassion on us, and spared us from his wrath in Christ.

You and I did nothing to deserve God’s grace. God did not save us because he owed us. God owed us nothing but wrath.

But God gave us grace because God is love.

We are wicked sinners who don’t know our right hand from our left.

Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

All week I was trying to think about how do I explain God’s pity to you.

How do I tell you how it displays the majesty of his grace, love, and mercy.

How do I get you to see the glory of God’s grace?

And all week I prayed to the Lord and I said, “God I can’t! I can’t make them see how amazing, glorious, incomprehensible the height and depth, the length and breadth of your love for us!”

There’s no way I can get you to understand the profound majesty of God’s grace because all my words will fall short.

So let me show you just a small picture of God’s great pity, mercy, grace, and love that he has for sinners like you and me.

Mephibosheth

David’s ascension to the throne of Israel did not go like anyone would have expected.

When David was anointed King by the prophet Samuel, there was another king already on the throne.

His name was Saul. And the LORD had rejected Saul as king, because Saul rejected God and did not obey his commands.

And Saul loved the throne, so he grew jealous of David and sought to kill him so that his sons would be the kings of Israel.

One of these sons was Jonathan. Jonathan was the heir to the throne and next in line to be king.

But Jonathan didn’t care about any of that. He loved David. They were best friends.

The Bible even says that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul (1 Samuel 18:1).

And because of their friendship Jonathan and David made a covenant with each other.

And one day when Saul was plotting to kill David, Jonathan honored that covenant by helping David escape Saul’s grasp.

So David fled, and God’s chosen King was hunted like a wild dog in his own kingdom by God’s rejected king.

Saul pursued David again and again. Every time he heard a rumor where David was he would muster his men and went on the hunt.

But eventually Saul was killed in a war with the Philistines along with his three sons, including Jonathan.

And after Saul’s death, the people of Judah, David’s tribe, took David and made him king.

But one of Saul’s generals named Abner, took Saul’s son Ish-bosheth and made him king over Israel. And they made war against David in an attempt to usurp him from the throne so that Saul’s line would rein.

But Abner died, and after his death two of Ish-bosheth’s captains saw the tide had turned against Saul’s son, and in an effort to gain David’s favor, they murdered Ish-bosheth by stabbing him in the stomach while he slept.

When David learned of their treachery, he executed them, and the people of Israel took David and made him their king as well.

For the first time in David’s reign, the people of God were united under one king.

And one day, David said, “Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul?”

And one of Saul’s servants named Ziba, came to David and said, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in his feet.” (2 Samuel 9:3).

And David said Where is he?

Years earlier, when news that Saul and Jonathan had been killed reached back home, a nurse grabbed Jonathan’s 5 year old son, Mephibosheth and fled with him to protect him from being murdered.

Surely the new king would not want a rival to the throne.

But in her haste, she fell down. And she fell on top of Mephibosheth.

This five year old little boy had his feet broken and he became lame.

Now, years later, King David sent for him and Mephibosheth was brought before the throne.

When he saw David, he fell on his face and paid homage, saying “Behold, I am your servant.” (1 Samuel 9:6).

Surely he was terrified. He was a potential rival to the throne.

His grandfather had hunted David in the hills and caves all over Israel.

And his uncle had even led an insurrection against the throne.

Was this not the same man who prayed after God delivered him from all his enemies including Saul Psalm 18:40-42 You made my enemies turn their backs to me, and those who hated me I destroyed. 41 They cried for help, but there was none to save; they cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them. 42 I beat them fine as dust before the wind; I cast them out like the mire of the streets.

Mephibosheth must have thought, this is it. I’m going to die. He is going to kill me. He is going to secure his hold on the throne.

But David had made a covenant, rooted in love, with Jonathan. So David said, “Do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan, and I will restore to you all the land of Saul your father, and you shall eat at my table always.” 2 Samuel 9:7

Out of love, David had compassion on Mephibosheth. Someone who did not deserve any grace or any pity.

He was lame in both his feet,. Crippled.

His family had hunted David and even led a rebellion against him.

But David said, Do not be afraid.

Mephibosheth was stunned. He asked David “What is your servant, that you should show regard for a dead dog such as I?”

Mephibosheth didn’t deserve it, but David gave him grace.

And the Bible tells us that Mephibosheth didn’t even go to live in his father’s house, but he stayed in Jerusalem and always ate at the king’s table.

David didn’t just show him incredible grace. He made him a part of his family.

And that is the kind of love God has for us. When we were crippled, lame, helpless enemies of God, Jesus, the King of kings, Son of David, died for us.

He rose again, forgave all our sins, and brought us into his family.

And one day, at the marriage supper of the Lamb, we will all eat at his table for all eternity celebrating God’s amazing love and grace.

Conclusion

The book of Jonah is all about God’s heart to save sinners.

Nineveh was wicked, violent, full of lies and corruption and instead of overthrowing them in judgment, God gave them grace.

Jonah couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t believe it.

How could God do this?!? How could he forgive such wicked sinners?

But if Jonah had known God, who God really was, Jonah would have realized, how could God not?

God pitied Nineveh. He had compassion on them because of their sorry estate and he spared them by his grace.

He chose to not pour out his judgment. He chose to not make them suffer a fate worse than death, and instead, He forgave their sins.

We started this sermon by asking Who is God, and what makes God’s grace so amazing?

And Jonah has shown us that...

God is a gracious God who loves sinners and delivers them from his terrible judgment.

God’s grace is so amazing because it shows us just how much God loves.

He sent his Son to die in our place for our sins so that we could be forgiven and have eternal life.

God is love. That is who God is.

Let’s Pray

Scripture Reading

Ephesians 2:1-9

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Related Media

Related Sermons