Grace Transforms

Series: Jonah: The Grace of God on Full Display  |  Passage: Jonah 4:1-11  |  Preacher: Dr. Shaun Miles

Jonah preached, and a city of 120,000 people turned to God. By any measure the mission had succeeded. The book could have closed right there at the end of chapter 3, with the prophet vindicated and the story tidy.

Instead there is a chapter 4. Jonah walks out of the city, sits down on the east side, and asks God to take his life. He is not grieving. He is angry, and he is angry about the mercy.

Grace changed his conduct. God was after his character

Through the first three chapters, God deals with what Jonah does. In chapter 1 his conduct was wrong, and he arose and fled. In chapter 2 his conduct was confronted, and God brought him to the end of himself. In chapter 3 his conduct changed, and he arose and went.

Chapter 4 is different. Here his character is exposed. His heart, his nature, his motives, the why underneath the obedience. Jonah obeyed God’s command without ever sharing God’s compassion. He did the right thing while wanting the wrong outcome.

God is not only after your steps. He is after who you are, so that what you do finally matches who you have become. That is a longer work, and a kinder one.

Character is exposed by what makes us angry

The Hebrew behind “it greatly displeased Jonah” is stronger than the English carries. It reads as though God’s mercy struck Jonah as a great evil. God saw Nineveh’s evil and showed mercy. Jonah saw God’s mercy and called it evil.

Notice what God does with that. He does not leave His prophet sulking outside the city. He comes to him and asks a question: do you have good reason to be angry? The Holy Spirit never leaves us where we are. He does not leave us in our pity party or in our feelings. He approaches us, because He loves you far too much to leave you the way you are.

Jonah’s problem was not bad theology. His theology was excellent. He recites it himself in verse 2: gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness. He knew exactly who God is. He was simply furious that God would be that way toward people he did not think deserved it.

Years ago in Vietnam, after giving away most of the back pay he had finally received, Shaun spent a day hauling rocks and screwing sheet metal in the heat. That night the only bed broke for good, so he slept on the living room floor with two master’s degrees to his name. Lying there, the Lord asked him a single question about the pastor asleep in the next room. “Shaun, are you better than him?” And then, “The Son of Man did not even have a place to lay His head. Are you better than Me?”

Proverbs 16:2 says that all the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the LORD weighs the motives. Not some of our ways. All of them. He looks at what we bring Him and He weighs it carefully, because He is constantly evaluating why we do what we do.

Character is exposed by what makes us happy

God appoints a plant to grow up over Jonah’s head, and the text says Jonah became exceedingly happy. The same man who was exceedingly displeased by mercy toward a city is exceedingly delighted by a little shade for himself.

Our reactions reveal our affections. What makes us furious and what makes us glad will tell us, without fail, who or what is sitting on the throne of our heart. Jonah wanted a monopoly on the goodness of God. It was fine for the Lord to be the Lord to him. It was intolerable for the Lord to be the Lord to them.

Churches can drift into the same posture, becoming clubs that receive everything and pass on nothing, like the Dead Sea, where water flows in and never flows out, so nothing lives.

Appointed: the plant, the worm, the wind

Four times in this book God appoints something. The fish was appointed to capture Jonah’s life. The plant, the worm, and the scorching east wind were appointed to capture his heart.

The plant was grace, given to a man in the middle of a sulk. The worm destroyed it. The wind beat down on him until what was inside came out. None of it was punishment. All of it was God refusing to leave His prophet the way He found him.

So what has God appointed in your life to reveal what is in your heart? A broken bed. A full house. A season with no comfort left in it. He loves you too much to let you keep doing the duties with your heart far from His.

Character is exposed by what we care about

God’s last word to Jonah is a question about compassion. Jonah cared about a plant he did not grow. God cared about a city of people who could not tell their right hand from their left.

There are 1.6 million people in the greater Jacksonville area. The Lord should not have to send a missionary here. A foreigner should never carry a heavier burden for a people than the people who live among them.

One woman at our outreach struggles to walk and had already been driven into her car by the heat. She came back out anyway, crossed the lot to the one person nobody else would approach, prayed with her, and then walked her over and sat her down to listen. That woman wept through the whole message.

What is your excuse? What is mine?

The older brother

This is the parable of the prodigal son told again. The son who ran away is Jonah 1 and 2. The angry son who stayed home is Jonah 3 and 4. He hears music and dancing, learns that grace has been extended to someone he judged unworthy of it, and refuses to go in.

And the father comes out to him. That is the mercy hiding in this whole book. Even in our stubbornness and our sulking, He does not leave us outside. He comes out, and He asks what we are doing, and He says: what is mine is yours, you have always been with me. Am I not enough?

God did not expose Jonah’s character to condemn him. He exposed it to change him. Spiritual maturity is not merely doing what God commands. It is becoming the kind of person who cares about what God cares about.

Crossing the Bridge