Saving Grace | Jonah 3
There’s a saying that goes like this… “whatever goes around comes around.”
It’s the idea that whatever you do, good…or bad… that thing will eventually come back on you… In Eastern religion, it’s known as Karma… an impersonal law of the universe that says you ultimately get whatever you deserve…
Now, if Karma is true, the book of Jonah would have ended in chapter 1, with Jonah’s corpse rotting on the ocean floor, being picked apart by predators… he would have gotten what he deserved…
Because Jonah had failed miserably. The Lord gave him a mission…to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s impending judgment because of their evil…
But Jonah hates these people…he wants nothing to do with them… and so he bails on God… In his arrogant defiance, he heads off by boat in the exact opposite direction.
And in response, God pursues Jonah with a terrifying storm, and Jonah finds himself hurled overboard into the sea… and as he’s sinking into the depths…that seems to be Karma…what goes around comes around…
But as he’s drowning… he calls for help, and God rescues him….a great fish swallows Jonah and his life is spared… and after three days and nights in the belly of the fish Jonah is coughed up onto dry land….that’s not Karma….that’s grace…
And that’s where we left Jonah last week…sputtering on the beach, disoriented, disheveled…. reeking of fish vomit… and the big question is “where do we go from here?” “What does God do with his failed servant?”
Maybe you feel like a failure… you’ve failed God…you’ve failed other people… you’re acutely aware that you fall dreadfully short of what you should be… and if that’s you…I’m really glad you’re here… because God has a hopeful and powerful word of grace for you in Jonah chapter 3…
Where we’ll consider three manifestations of God’s amazing grace…
The first thing we see is
God’s grace to a failed prophet
In the wake of his failure, Jonah recommits himself to prophetic ministry and fulfilling the mission that God gave to him…he says to God in chapter 2
…I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay.
(Jonah 2:9)
Now, God could have easily said, “It’s too late for that…you’ve had your chance… be glad that I rescued you… But don’t ever expect to be used by me again …Good luck with the rest of your life, Jonah…I’m done.”
But he doesn’t say that… instead, chapter 3 begins with some of the most beautiful words in the book…
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time…
(Jonah 3:1)
I’m so glad that’s in the Bible… that’s grace….aren’t you glad that God is a God of second chances? That God doesn’t write his servants off when they fail him?
That’s how we treat people. Somebody fails us…lets us down… we’re done with them, and we move on…we write them off…. because often we aren’t people of grace… but a people of Karma… you do that to me… serves you right to get everything that’s coming to you… have a nice life…I’m done with you…
But that isn’t how God treats Jonah…instead, God accepts Jonah’s recommitment and restores him to ministry… verse 2… God says,
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
(Jonah 3:1–2)
Now…how God treats Jonah reveals a very important principle of God’s grace… namely… that the purpose of grace is to release us not FROM service to God… but TO service… TO obedience…
God rescued Jonah NOT so Jonah could wander off into retirement and do his own thing… instead, God, in His grace, rescues Jonah for His redemptive purposes in the world.
And that’s true for every Christian in this room…you didn’t get saved to serve yourself…God saved you to serve others…
And that’s a powerful word of hope to everyone in this room who has disobeyed God…which is everyone in this room…
And one thing you can count on is that whenever we fail… whenever we fall… beware of the schemes of the devil… who loves to come and whisper in your ear and tell you that you are done…and that God is done with you…
I mean, do you really think, after what you did? Will you ever be of use to God or to anyone else again? You have sinned again…You’re a failure… God knows what you did… other people know what you did… you’re discredited… you’ve blown it one too many times… your personal ministry is through! It’s over…
How many of you have ever felt that way before? You feel you have sinned so much and so greatly that you don’t believe there is ANY way you can EVER find your way back to a place of useful service and ministry to God… You look in the mirror, and it’s like the word failure is tattooed on your forehead, and that failure defines you.
Now, if the universe were governed by an impersonal law of Karma, you would be right to sink into despair and hopelessness… but friends, the universe isn’t governed by an impersonal law of Karma but by a personal God of grace…
Now, I want to be transparent with you… I’ve been a preacher of God’s grace for over 30 years… and I still struggle to fully grasp this. I say I believe in God’s grace, but sometimes I’m tempted to think I’m the exception to the rule…God treats everyone else with grace, but I’ve messed up so many times that God’s had it with me…
AND… it gets worse… sometimes I even have this impulse to do more good things to get on God’s good side… to earn my way back to His favor. And you’re thinking, “Demer, that’s horrible…that’s anti-gospel!” I know! But sometimes that impulse is there, and I struggle sometimes in the aftermath of failure to really rest in His grace….
And what we all need to remember is that if we are in Christ… there is never a time when we are NOT on God’s good side… when we DON’T enjoy His favor. Even when He disciplines us (as He did Jonah), it comes from a divine, loving, fatherly heart that is FOR us, NOT against us. And so….
If we are Christians… we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by our failures… we must instead be defined by the truth of Scripture: when we look in the mirror, we don’t see “failure” written on our foreheads… we see “grace…” And once you see reality through the lens of grace… everything changes…
Friend, the Bible is full of fellow failures that God showed grace to and still used in mighty ways… one of my favorite examples is Peter, who denied the Lord Jesus. And yet later, Jesus restores Peter to ministry, and Peter, through the power and grace of God, is used in the establishment of the early church.
But let me be clear… my point is not merely that God is a God of second chances…if it were, that wouldn’t be hopeful to anyone… how many of you have failed God only once?
Truth be told… Jonah…being a sinner like us… disobeyed God many times long before Jonah chapter 1… and he’ll sin again in the NEXT chapter… and Peter himself sinned before, and after his tragic denial of Christ… and friends, this only underscores the measure and magnitude of grace we need from God… It’s not just for one or two failures… we need a constant, moment-by-moment outpouring of grace… indeed, a lifetime of grace, because we constantly fall short of being all that we should be…
And so our hope is not on how “successful” we feel in our lives and personal ministry... instead, our hope is built only on God’s unfailing grace…
So if you’re a Christian, know that God does not treat you according to what you deserve…but according to His grace…
And there’s no Christian in this room who God is done using… the moment God is done using you on this earth is the moment you’re with him in heaven…
But until such time… God is determined to use you… It may not be like Jonah, where you’ll be given the exact same assignment… sometimes when we fail, God gives us a different role…
But no matter how you have failed, it doesn't mean there isn’t a ministry for you…When you return to God, you will find that He has work for you to do for His kingdom… because 2 Cor 5:15 is always true, which tells us that.
He died…, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
(2 Cor 5:15)
That’s grace.
So we see God’s grace to a failed prophet.
Who shows God’s grace to a doomed city?
Verse 3…
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.
(Jonah 3:2-3)
Nineveh is great in size… great in political power and influence…
And it was great in evil…the worship of false gods abounded… the barbaric cruelty of the Assyrian empire is well documented… they terrorized their neighbors… they would invade a region and obliterate everyone…they actually delighted in bloodshed…
Nineveh was a great city in many ways… but in the original Hebrew, there’s something else about Nineveh that doesn’t come through in your English translations… literally, it says that Nineveh was exceedingly great… To God!
In other words, Nineveh is important to God… the people matter to God…He cares about them and loves them… and He has special plans for them…
And I wonder if it shocks you that God has a saving purpose for people who are so evil and depraved and twisted?
I wonder how we view certain neighbors, coworkers, family members… or people involved in particular kinds of sins. Are there kinds of people that we see as so bad…as so far gone…that they are a hopeless case?
Do we have a tendency to view unbelievers as merely enemies, as Jonah did? Or are they merely projects that we need to fix? Do we depersonalize our neighbors instead of seeing them as people precious in God’s sight? As potential recipients of grace?
The book of Jonah challenges our self-righteous prejudices that say we’re good enough to be saved, but certain people aren’t… that some types of people should be loved but others shouldn’t…
In verse 4, we see the first step in extending God’s grace to Nineveh…
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
(Jonah 3:4)
That’s a pretty short sermon… my preaching professor in Bible College would have given me an F for that… it’s an eight word sermon… 5 words in the Hebrew…
Now it may be Jonah said more than that…but this was the heart of the message… and it seems to be all bad news…
And you may ask, what is that grace? Forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown! That language is reminiscent of Genesis 19… where it says the Lord rained fire down upon the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and overthrew them in judgment… so how is this a message of grace?
It’s grace because embedded in the warning is the implication that mercy is available… that’s why Jonah turned down the job in the first place… he didn’t want them to hear about the judgment, because he didn’t want them to experience mercy…
Jonah says,
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown…
Many scholars detect a double meaning in Jonah’s message… while the Hebrew word translated as "overthrown" can be used in the sense of "destruction"… it’s also used in the sense of something being turned around… being reversed… overturned…
You have turned my mourning into dancing;
(Psalm 30:11)
That’s the same Hebrew word in Jonah chapter 3… The idea is that I was in mourning, and you, God, have turned that sadness around, and now I have joy…
…the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you…
(Deuteronomy 23:5)
Something that was a curse has been turned around and upside down, and now it’s something good…
And so embedded in Jonah’s message of judgment… is the promise of hope…Hope that Nineveh may be turned upside down, not in destruction… but turned around in its direction…changed… flipped about so that good is brought forth from something that was once evil…this isn’t a warning of Karma…but an offer of grace.
And friends, that's exactly the kind of message that you and I are to bring to the world today… Like Nineveh, this world is full of evil..and violence..and corruption.. and idolatry… and defiant rebellion against God… and we are to declare both the reality of God’s judgment and the reality of God’s grace…
And Jonah’s life was a testimony to both… In Luke 11, Jesus says Jonah didn't demonstrate a sign, but that Jonah himself, through his experience in the belly of the fish, became a sign to Nineveh…
Now the only way that could happen is that if the people of Nineveh were made aware of Jonah’s experience… and the most likely way they found out about that was through Jonah himself… Jonah likely shared his personal testimony and experience of God’s grace and mercy with everyone…
Can you imagine Jonah showing up in Nineveh? Disheveled… disoriented….. seaweed in his hair…. Covered in fish juice? Talk about a great evangelism conversation starter! Well, who are you, and what in the world happened to you? You look half dead, man! I know I’m using a little sanctified imagination here, but it may have gone down something like that…
And I can only imagine the shock of the people when they heard Jonah’s story… remember, these people worshipped Dagon….the fish god! But now Jonah testifies about the true God of the fish… and the sea…and the dry land…and the heavens…
And Jonah could speak to them as one who knew firsthand what it was like to be in rebellion against God… to experience God’s anger towards sin and the horror of feeling separated from God and cast away from his presence as Jonah is overwhelmed by the waters of God’s judgment and the terror of death itself… Jonah, better than most, understood the biblical principle that the wage of sin is death…
But Jonah also knew firsthand of the amazing saving sovereign grace of God… where Jonah, in his most helpless state… deserving nothing but death… was suddenly rescued from death and preserved through the flood of God’s judgment… emerging on dry land after three days and nights…
Jonah could tell the people, I know what I’m talking about… I know firsthand that God is a fearsome and terrible judge…and I know that He is merciful and mighty to save…
Friends, as we share the word of God with people… we, with Jonah, can say, "I know about these things…." I rebelled against God… I was lost…under the threat of God’s wrath…. but now I’m found…I was blind…but now I see… and what happened to me can happen to you!
Our experience of God’s grace should fuel evangelism! This was David’s experience in Psalm 51…as he anticipates receiving God’s forgiving grace, he says,
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
(Psalm 51:13)
And so God in His grace even uses our failures in such a way that when we receive God’s mercy, we become even more equipped and qualified to tell other people about it because we’ve actually tasted it ourselves.
Verse 5…
And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
(Jonah 3:5)
Revival is breaking out in the city…. They believe God… and this should encourage us… the people were not saved because of Jonah’s eloquence… the core of his message was only 5 words…
Neither were the people saved because Jonah was a perfect servant… he had just come off the heels of disastrous failure…
Instead, the Ninevites are saved the same way anyone is saved…
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
(Romans 10:17)
All Jonah did was preach the word… all the Ninevites did was hear that word…and that word awakened faith in their hearts…that’s the power of God’s word…
You don’t need to be eloquent with your lost friends and neighbors… You don’t have to be super smart… or “have all the answers…”… or have this charismatic personality or be super extroverted… and you certainly don’t have to be perfect.
All you have to do is go into the world and share God’s word with the world… because the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and it is God’s Word, not your eloquence or awesomeness that saves people and changes hearts…
The same word that created the heavens and the earth is the word that recreates sinful, hard, rebellious hearts into tender, soft, loving, obedient hearts towards God. That is the power behind the revival at Nineveh and the reason why anyone today is transformed…faith comes by hearing…and hearing by the word of Christ.
Now… It’s important to note that the actual transformation happens in Nineveh… because there are lots of people who claim to believe God… to be Christians… and yet there’s zero change in their lives… that’s impossible, friends…
Because God’s grace is not impotent… it actually does something… we don’t see Nineveh just saying “yay we believe God and we’re saved…ok… now what village are we going to destroy next?” No. When God’s grace falls upon a people… it always brings about some sort of change…
verse 6…
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
(Jonah 3:6)
That’s amazing… this was the most wicked and brutal tyrant in the world… and suddenly…shockingly… he’s demonstrating humble penitence… he strips himself of his glory and dresses like a poor man in the ashes… this is humility… the king recognizes his own spiritual bankruptness and need…
And this is always the first step on the path to spiritual restoration… the Bible says God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble…but not only is the king engaging in personal penitence… he’s becoming an evangelist himself…
Verse 7…
And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.
Now it’s interesting… the king is calling for city-wide prayer and fasting, and seeking after God… he even gets the animals involved in fasting… not that the animals have done anything wrong… instead, this is a way of expressing comprehensive community-wide mourning and penitence…
And look at what he says next…
Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.
The Ninevites understood Jonah’s message to be one of faith AND repentance…and that’s important…
Gospel preaching isn’t a call to believe in God in a generic sense… It’s a call to trust God not only for mercy but to trust God so much that we will turn from doing life our way and seek to go God’s way… that’s what repentance is. And it’s a demonstration of genuine saving faith…
And so biblical evangelism isn’t merely “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, so believe it and do whatever you want…”. It’s instead… you’ve sinned, judgment is coming…but God loves sinners so trust Him for mercy… and if you really trust Him, you’ll seek to change the whole trajectory of your life to bend in His direction… Jonah’s message implied repentance…
Indeed, the whole Bible emphasizes this…
Matthew 4 summarizes Jesus’ message as simply saying “repent…for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
In Acts chapter 2, Peter is preaching the gospel, and the people cry out, “What shall we do?” And the very first thing Peter says is Repent!
Now…make no mistake…. we are saved through faith and not through our works…not through how good you are…how religious you are… how successful you are at repenting…that doesn’t actually earn you favor with God…that would be similar to Karma…. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone…not by works…and I will plant my flag and die on that hill forever…
But on the other hand, works of repentance are a manifestation…an evidence…of genuine faith… as James writes, … as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
And these Ninevites… they really believe God… they have humble and repentant spirits…and they’re turning from their sin… but notice that the king realizes something very important… That their ultimate hope doesn’t rest in how fervently they repent and how sincerely they believe…. Their hope is solely in the sovereign grace and mercy of God… verse 9…
Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
(Jonah 3:9)
Notice the king isn’t talking like they’re entitled to God’s rescue as if God owes them something. ” Instead, he banks all hope in God’s grace…
And grace comes in verse 10…
God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
(Jonah 3:10)
Nineveh deserves nothing but destruction… but here we see the heart of God who loves to show mercy and delights to save all who call on his name.
So we see God’s grace to a failed prophet who shows God’s grace to a doomed city.
which points to God’s grace for the whole world
In the NT there’s a moment where Jesus is surrounded by wicked, evil people… unlike the Ninevites they weren’t plundering villages and torturing anyone… they had more in common with many church going folks in America… they took pride in how good they were and looked down on others who weren’t like them… they thought they deserved God’s favor and blessing…
And despite all that Jesus did, they ask him for yet another sign to prove Himself… and Jesus says an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign…
Now…the accusation of spiritual adultery goes back to the OT and was used of Israel when they were going after false gods… now… first-century Jewish folks weren’t bowing down to wooden images like their ancestors…or the Ninevites… but they nevertheless had idolatrous hearts…
They recreated God not physically but in their own minds…
Much like Americans today…they had a God who owed them favor and blessing because they kept all the right rules and did all the right things… a God who was obligated to serve them… friends, that’s an idolatry no better than the Ninevites worshipping a fish god…
And they ask Jesus for a sign… and Jesus says I’ll give you a sign. But it’s not the sign you want….I will give you the sign of Jonah…
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
(Matthew 12:40)
Jesus says that what happened to Jonah is really about me… Jonah went underneath the flood waters of God’s judgment… down into Sheol.. the place of the dead…as Jonah describes it in chapter 2…
And I’m going to give you the same sign… like Jonah I will be the prophet of God… plunged underneath the flood of God’s terrible judgment… but I will not wind up in the belly of a fish… but in the heart of the earth…in the tomb… because the wages of sin are death…
And here’s the rub… if Karma is true… if what goes around comes around…if you only get what you deserve… then the gospel is not true, and there’s no hope for any of us because we have all sinned… and deserve death and Hell…
The gospel and karma cannot exist in the same universe because while Jonah deserved to drown, but didn’t…Jesus did not deserve to die but did… while Jonah felt the heavy hand of God’s judgment because of his own sins… Jesus, as our substitute, was crushed by God’s judgment because of our sins…He did not deserve that… but Isaiah says, nevertheless,
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
[5] But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
(Isaiah 53:4–5)
If Karma is true, that couldn’t be possible. But instead, Jesus gets what we deserve… and when we place our trust in Jesus, turning to Him in repentance and faith, His death and punishment count for us… that’s not fair… but it IS grace…
Karma means you get what you deserve… Grace means Jesus got what you deserve…
But it also means that you get what Jesus deserves…
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
(2 Corinthians 8:9)
While he got our sin, our punishment, our curse… we get his riches that are found in being counted as adopted children of God…sons of the kingdom… we receive God’s favor… and a glorious inheritance at the end of the age where we will rule and reign with Him over the Cosmos.
However, even while Karma is not true… that does not mean that there is no justice.
Because all who refuse God’s offer of grace…and refuse Christ as the all-sufficient payment for their sins will find themselves paying for their sins in the coming judgment… yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown? Yet 40 years…or 60 years… or however long you may live… and then you too will face judgment for your sins… because God is just…
But because God is just… Jesus did not stay dead…because He did nothing worthy of death…And so He was not ultimately overwhelmed by the judgment of God but was instead preserved through that, and three days later came out safely on the other side …
Jonah was like a resurrected prophet who became a sign to Nineveh…but Jesus IS the resurrected prophet who becomes a sign to the nations…
If you’re an unbeliever… Jesus will give you no greater sign. Ignore it at your own peril…
As Jesus said to his contemporaries who ignored the sign...
The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
(Matthew 12:41)
If you reject Christ, you will find the accusing finger of ex-fish-worshipping…ex terrorist Ninevites pointing right at you… because as twisted and depraved as they were… they humbled themselves and turned to God for His grace at the preaching of a sinful, half-digested Jonah…
But now… to have the perfect, glorious Christ… after being nailed to a cross… risen from the dead…making his appeal to you right now to receive Him… to reject THAT…is the height of depravity and arrogance… and it’s to say I don’t want to stand on grace… I’d rather take my chances and live a Karma-like life… getting what I deserve in the end… don’t make that mistake…
And if you’re here as a believer… in despair over your failures and sins… wondering if God still loves and accepts you…wondering if He may still use you for ministry in the world…. the sign of Jonah should remind you that He never deals with you according to what you deserve… He deals with you according to His amazing, spectacular grace…
I want to invite the band to come forward and begin to play quietly as I encourage you to prayerfully consider what you’ve heard today and how it applies to where you live right now… here are a couple of questions you can ask your own heart and discuss with the Lord over the next couple of minutes….
Questions for reflection, prayer & application
1. Do my sins and failures before God tempt me to despair? How specifically does God’s grace reshape the narrative of my life?
2. Is my hope resting in God’s grace or in my performance? How does the book of Jonah speak a better word to me?
Maybe there are other ways the Holy Spirit is encouraging or challenging you through the book of Jonah… let’s take the next few minutes to engage with God over those things before we move into our next song.
