The Grace We Didn't Ask For

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Direct us now, O gracious Lord, to hear aright your Holy Word.

Assist your minister to preach, and let the Holy Spirit teach.

Let eternal life be found by all who hear the Gospel sound. Amen.

There were two brothers, Sam and Ed. And if there are two brothers here, Sam and Ed, I'm not talking about you. It's spelled differently. Two brothers, Sam and Ed, and Ed was the brother where money just seemed to slip through his fingers. And he'd always be going to Sam, asking for money, $5 here, $50 there, $100 here, $1,000 there. And Sam, his brother, would always give him that money. Never even asking to be thanked, he just did it because he loved his brother.

One day, Sam found out that Ed had accrued a massive debt. And someone else had paid the debt completely. Now you would think Sam would be happy. Someone else was sharing the burden of his brother, Ed. But instead, how did he feel? What do you think? How did Sam feel? He was angry. He was angry because Ed, somewhere along the line, his relationship with Ed wasn't one of one brother helping out his other brother, but now he wants Ed to learn a lesson, to be humbled a little bit, to know that Sam was the one that was always bailing him out. And now someone else comes along, takes care of his debt, and Sam’s angry.

Have you ever felt that way? Has that situation ever happened to you? Maybe it's not about a literal debt, but maybe that particular flavor of anger. Anger not at injustice, anger not at someone that's harming you or someone you love, but anger at God's mercy, anger that somebody else gets off easy, that the apology wasn't groveling enough, that the consequence wasn't severe enough. That grace came too fast and it cost the guilty party too little. It's a strange kind of anger, don't you think of it? It’s a very strange kind of anger; anger at things being made right, anger that mercy won.

Now we're about to meet someone that is very familiar with this kind of anger. Probably he is the archetype for this kind of anger, and that is Jonah. When we get to Jonah in Chapter 3, he's already been called by God to go to the great city of Nineveh to preach there, and Jonah instead goes to Joppa and goes on a ship to Tarshish, goes the opposite direction, and there's the big storm, the non-believing sailors who have more respect for God than Jonah does. Jonah gets thrown over the side of the ship. The great fish swallows him up. Jonah is in the great fish for three days and then the great fish spits him out on dry land and God gives him a call again, "Go to Nineveh." And Nineveh is that great city that Jonah is called to go. Jonah goes, and the Bible tells us Nineveh is a huge city.

Nineveh was, in the ancient world, like the byword for cruelty. They did some very cruel things. They were not nice people. And Jonah goes into the city (a city which Jonah tells us takes three days to get around) and in one day he preaches five words in Hebrew, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” Not a single joke. No humor. No children's devotion. No object lesson. Five words, “Forty more days, Nineveh destroyed.” And it works. People repent. The king himself, the great king of this powerful nation, tears his robe and orders everyone to put on sackcloth and ashes because he hopes, he hopes maybe, maybe, maybe God will relent. So that's what the city does.

And that's where our text begins today, when God saw that what they did and that they had turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened. Five words, greatest turnaround in recorded Scripture. A whole pagan city, king included, turning to God in a matter of days.

Now, if you were writing a story, what would happen next? If you were writing a Sunday school curriculum, would this be where the story ends? God's Word is powerful. It can accomplish what God wants to accomplish. It can turn even evil people's hearts away from their sin and turn back to God. That's where it would end, wouldn't it? But that's not where Jonah ends.

Chapter 4, Verse 1, "But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.” Jonah is not displeased. He is not confused. He is exceedingly displeased. It is very intense. This is a great evil. The very same word used to describe Nineveh is used to describe Jonah describing God's mercy. This is very evil! The city that Jonah was sent to save just got saved, and to Jonah that's the worst thing that ever happened to him. Jonah tells us exactly why. Why does he have this great anger? He says in Verse 2, "I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." You see, Jonah is not confused about who God is. He's not surprised by God's mercy. He knew this would happen. This is why he ran in the first place.

Before the storm, before the fish, before any of it, Jonah did not run from a hard assignment. He didn't run from Nineveh because it was hard. He ran from Nineveh because he knew he had a merciful God. He knew exactly what would happen when God's mercy reached Nineveh. And notice what he's quoting. He says, "You are gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love." These are not Jonah's own words. These are not a new revelation that has never before been written down in the pages of Scripture. In fact, what Jonah is spitting back at God is what God proclaimed to Moses back in Exodus 35 after the golden calf, and Moses comes to God and says, "God show me your glory. I want to see who you really are in all of your glory and majesty." And God says, "You can't because that will kill you. But I will put you in the cleft of a rock. And I will walk by, and you can see my backside, and I will proclaim my name.” And that's exactly the words God proclaims when He shows off His glory to Moses, enough so that Moses doesn't die, but Moses gets a glimpse of it and hears His wonderful words. God was slow to anger, abounding in love, gracious and merciful.

This is the God that's not just there in Exodus. He's there in Genesis. He is not just there in Genesis. He is there in Revelation. He is not just there in the pages of Scripture. He is here right now, 2026. This is our God who is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, gracious and merciful. Jonah is spitting these words back at God, not as praise, but as an accusation. “This, who you're all about God, that's the problem.” That should really stop us cold.

Jonah's not a man who doesn't know grace. He knows grace very well. He knows grace, every word of it, and Jonah can't stand to have God's grace land on the wrong people. That stops us cold, but really, should it? We know the confession. “I believe in the forgiveness of sin.” We say that in the Creed every Sunday. We've sung it. We've prayed it. We've taught it to our children. “I forgive you. I'm sorry, and I forgive you,” we're taught. We know grace. We know mercy. And still, we also have the problem when God’s grace and mercy fall on the wrong people. Someone who has wronged us, we find out, “Oh, they found forgiveness and peace.” And we're mad. We hear about someone, a public figure, who says the right words, says they're sorry and that they sinned against God and it falls on us and we say, “Well that was too easy. They just knew the words to say.” You and I want the debt paid. We don't want it paid so cheaply and we certainly don't want their debt to be free.

You see, Jonah is someone who knows the doctrine but has problems with the practice. And Jonah is us on our more honest basis. God does not strike him down for this. And that's worth spending some time thinking about. God doesn't abandon Jonah. God asks Jonah a question. “Is it right for you to be angry?” Is it right for you to be angry? Jonah storms out of the city, builds himself a shelter, and his sister has this silent witness of maybe he's just waiting for the city just to like, "Oh yeah, they put that sackcloth and the ashes on, but they're just going to move on to something else and then God's going to change His mind and He's going to destroy the city anyway.” He's building the city as a silent witness that these people don't deserve the mercy and grace that they have been shown. “Maybe Nineveh will burn after all.”

But God is patient with this furious, sulking prophet in a way that should honestly startle us. He appoints a plant to grow up overnight and shade him from the sun. And Jonah, for the first time in the entire book, is glad. He's happy. He's got a plant. He's got shade. And then, of course, God appoints a worm the plant withered. The sun beats down, scorching east wind blows, and Jonah is right back where he started again. Curious, wishing he were dead, this time over a plant. And God asked him again, "Is it right for you to be angry over a plant?" And Jonah said, "Yes, angry enough to die over it."

And then at the very end of our text are the very last words of the book of Jonah. God puts it all together and says, "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. And should I not 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. You grieve the plant that you didn't plant and you didn't cause to grow. It's gone in a single night. Should I not grieve? Should I not spare more than 120,000 people, who can't tell their right hand from their left? People so spiritually and morally bankrupt, they can't even know their left and their right spiritually and morally. And their animals besides, who didn't ask for any of this.” That's how the book ends. “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?”

There's no recorded answer from Jonah, no repentance, no rebuttal, no reconciliation, just thoughts, questions hanging in the air unanswered. And you and I, the reader, left standing there, staring at that same choice. "Should I not have concern?”

The grace shown to the people of Nineveh was nothing anybody in the story earned. The king did not earn the grace and mercy that was shown him. The people did not earn the grace and mercy that was shown them. Jonah did not deserve the grace and mercy that was shown him. And that's the pattern of grace, all through Scripture, all through history. It's the pattern at the center of our faith.

God's grace doesn't arrive because you deserve it. It arrives because God says it's here. He says it in His Word that He is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Jonah recited that back as a complaint. We are encouraged to soak those words in, in every aspect of our lives.

Every one of us has stood under the same sentence as the people of Nineveh, with no leverage, no bargaining chip, nothing to offer to God except maybe turning back from what we are doing and hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping, like a king on an ash heap of ashes, that maybe God will relent. And God does relent. Not because of our words, but because He sent His only Son. His Son, who, unlike Jonah, did not shirk back from the task that was in front of Him, did not go the other way when God said, "Go here." He is a Son who preached the Word of God faithfully, a Son who died for the sins of the world, for the sins of the great city of Nineveh, for our great sins, a Son who spent three days not in the belly of a great fish, but in the tomb so that the mercy which Jonah could not stomach, and sometimes you and I can't stomach, could be poured out fully and finally on people like us, on people like Jonah, on people like the city of Nineveh. That's the grace.

That's the grace we don't ask for and if we're honest, it's sometimes grace we don't even want. Not for ourselves most of the time, but we don't want this grace on people that we've quietly decided that they don't deserve. That prodigal son who comes home too early, that rival that gets forgiven too fast, that person in our own life whose apology seems so thin and whose second chance feels so unearned.

God's question to Jonah is whether Jonah could stand to live in a world where God's grace does not consult him first. And that's the same question that God asks us too. Can we live in a world where God's grace doesn't consult us first, where it is not ours to ration out, but ours to receive and ours to impose, that we show grace and mercy and forgiveness on people who don't deserve it.

The book of Jonah ends without telling us what Jonah decided. I wonder if that's intentional. God doesn't leave that question open for us to dwell on. For God asked the question, “Should I not have concern? Should I not have concern? Should I not have compassion?” And God, in His Word, is calling you out and saying, “Should you not also have compassion?” Should you not also be concerned about people who don't spiritually know their right hand from their left? That is not something we have by nature. By nature, we want God's mercy for us, but not for them. We want them to pay and us to be forgiven. We want them to learn their lesson. We want us to be shown a ton of grace and mercy. But God says “That's not how I work. I see all of humanity as people who cannot tell their spiritually right hand from their left hand. I see all of humanity, including you, and I have served you because that's who I am. Should I not have this?” And He does, for you and for me, and by God’s Spirit, He moves in us to be more and more like Him. That we would also see our neighbor as saying, “They need God's mercy too. Should I not be concerned about them? Should I not want to show them mercy? Should I not want to show them forgiveness? Should I not want to be more like God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love?” Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7) Amen.

Philippians 4:7