We Must Learn to Live as Instruments of God's Grace

WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE AS INSTRUMENTS OF GOD’S GRACE

An Exposition of Jonah 4:1-11

By Pastor Brian Wilbur 

Date: May 4, 2025

Series: Pursuing Relational Health on Communion Sundays

Note: Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

PRAYER

Good morning. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Jonah. Let's go ahead and ask for the Lord's blessing upon our time together in the Word this morning:

Father, we thank you for your holy words that give us life, that direct our hearts and minds and steps, that facilitate our fellowship with you and with one another and enable us to walk with you and bear fruit in this world. And Father, I pray that you would work through your words this morning in order to do those very things. Draw us near to you. Give us life in your ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.

INTRODUCTION

Well, as we are now in the habit of doing on the first Sunday of the month, this particular message is devoted to the theme of relationships. And on these first Sunday of the month sermons, we are considering the idea that our relationship with the Lord and our relationships with one another are very interrelated. And this morning, I actually want to expand the concept a little bit. Whereas most of these sermons have focused – in terms of our relationships with other people – have focused on our relationships with each other inside the church family, and while that will be included today, I'm really expanding the scope to your neighbor in general, whether inside or outside the church. Your relationship with the Lord and your relationship with your neighbors, whoever they are and wherever they are, are very interrelated. And our walk with the Lord must shape the way that we relate to other people.

THE FIRST CONSIDERATION: THE LORD WANTS US TO BE INSTRUMENTS OF HIS GRACE TO OTHERS

So we'll get to Jonah momentarily, but I just want to start off by putting this concept out there for you: the Lord's will is for you to be a compassionate instrument of his grace to other people who are in need of his grace, to other sinners who are in need of his grace.

Now, who is in need of his grace? Everyone, right? So the Lord might pinpoint for you certain people this morning that you need to be cultivating a compassionate outlook toward. It could be people inside this sanctuary that you don't know very well, or maybe you don't even like them – it's entirely possible in a gathering of this size. It could be an extended family member, or it could be an immediate family member. It could be a friend, a co-worker. It could be someone that you barely know. It could be a neighbor across the street. And the Lord wants you to be a compassionate instrument of his grace to the people around you, to other people, to other sinners who are also in need of his grace. We need to learn to be willing instruments of the grace of God. And it can indeed be a learning process.

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2) So the Lord commissions Jonah at the beginning of the book of Jonah. I'm going to focus on chapter four today, but I want to get there by giving an overview of the first few chapters.

Now, when we read that commission from the Lord in Jonah 1:2, we might think that the Lord is commissioning Jonah to be an instrument of his judgment to the great city of Nineveh. But the author – ultimately the Holy Spirit, and whatever human author is involved here, maybe Jonah, maybe somebody else – the author kind of holds off on important information until we get to chapter four. But the Lord commissions Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, which was several hundred miles away to the east. And Jonah, of course, didn't want to go.

So Jonah rose up and he fled from the presence of the Lord. And he bought a ticket on a ship and sailed in the exact opposite direction. Of course, the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to flee from the presence of the Lord. It's impossible, in fact. And so, the Lord brought a great storm upon the Mediterranean Sea which threw the ship into great turmoil. The ship was in danger of breaking up. And the other sailors who were on the ship with Jonah were terrified and they're crying out to their gods and they're hoping for some rescue from this very difficult, life-threatening situation.

And to make a long story short, eventually the other men figure out that it's Jonah's fault. The reason why this great storm has descended upon them and is throwing them into great tumult is because of Jonah – because Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, is fleeing from the presence of the Lord. And obviously the Lord isn't happy about what his prophet is doing. And so eventually the other sailors pick up Jonah and throw him overboard into the sea. And immediately the seawaters calm.

Meanwhile, the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And for the next three days and three nights, Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of a great fish, surrounded by all those wonderful gastric juices that are churning around inside of a fish.

Now it was in the belly of the fish that Jonah came to his senses. This is often how it works, right? The prodigal son – in the parable of the prodigal son – came to his senses when he was in the pigsty. The very wicked King Manasseh of Judah only came to his senses when he was bound a prisoner and transported over to Babylon – then he turned to the Lord. Well, Jonah came to his senses while he was in the belly of the fish. His prayer is recounted in chapter two. And he turns back to the Lord, and he's ready to walk in obedience to the Lord.

And so at the end of chapter two, it says: “And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.” (Jonah 2:10) And in chapter three, the commission is restated in verse two: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” (Jonah 3:2)

And this time Jonah goes. Jonah walks in obedience to the Lord, and he gets into the city of Nineveh and he begins to preach the message that the Lord had given to him. It was a very simple message which is given to us in chapter three, verse four: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4) “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

And a remarkable thing happened, as you can see, in chapter three, verse five: “And the people of Nineveh believed God.” (Jonah 3:5) They knew that Jonah was heralding the words of God. This wasn't some crazy, lunatic, prophetic figure who was speaking out of his own mind. These were the words of God. This was the warning of God. And the people of Nineveh believed it. And they repented in sackcloth. The king issued a proclamation to the entire city that they should turn from their evil ways, that they should turn from their violence, and that they should call out to the Lord for mercy. And at the end of chapter three, look at verse ten: “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.” (Jonan 3:10) God bestowed mercy and grace on the people of Nineveh. And he worked through the preaching of Jonah to do it. But how did Jonah respond to this great revival that had broken out through his brief ministry in the city of Nineveh? Well, he didn't respond well.

THE SECOND CONSIDERATION: THE LORD WANTS US TO KNOW HIS GRACIOUS HEART AND CONVEY IT TO OTHERS

Let's look at chapter four. I'm going to read verses one to four.

“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 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. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”” (Jonan 4:1-4)

And the question just kind of hangs in the air: “Do you do well to be angry?”

Well see, now we know that when the Lord commissioned Jonah to go to Nineveh (in Assyria), that Jonah at the very least had a strong suspicion that he was being sent there as an instrument of grace. And an instrument of grace he did not want to be to the people of Nineveh. Why is that? Well, it's hard to say. Sometimes people read later historical events back into this situation with Jonah and make it seem like Assyria was a great enemy of Israel. But Assyria really wasn't a great enemy of Israel during Jonah's lifetime. Jonah was a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II (see 2 Kings 14:23-29). And Assyria was kind of on the ascendancy, Israel's Middle Eastern neighbor, four or five hundred miles to the east. They were known to be a cruel and violent people, but they hadn't really set themselves up as an enemy against Israel yet. They would shortly after Jonah's lifetime. But the bottom line is that while Jonah was happy to have grace and mercy bestowed upon himself and his people, Israel, God's covenant people, God's special people – yeah, happy ‘for me and my people’ to be recipients of God's grace and mercy, but Jonah did not want grace and mercy to be extended to those people over there.

By the way, everybody in this picture is a sinner. Israel was constantly sinning against God. Jeroboam II, who was the king when Jonah was the prophet – Jeroboam’s reign was summarized as: “he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.” (2 Kings 14:24) So Israel is in sin, and Assyria is in sin. Who has the moral high ground? But Jonah did not want God's steadfast love to be extended to the outsider. However, he did want God's steadfast love to be extended to himself. And I want you to see this tension that there is in chapters two and three.[1]

Here's the thing I want you to be thinking about. God wants us to know his heart, his gracious heart. God wants us to know his gracious heart so that we can be conveying and communicating his gracious heart to others. Now, some people don't know God's gracious heart. And what they don't know, they can't communicate and convey to others. But what's really interesting about Jonah is that Jonah did know the gracious heart of God. Jonah knew that the Lord was merciful and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and one who would relent concerning disaster. Jonah knew God's gracious heart, but he had limits on where that grace and mercy should land. And he was very happy to have it land on himself.

Look at his prayer in chapter two. I'll just start in verse one. It says,

“Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”” (Jonah 2:1-2)

Yeah, Jonah was in distress on account of his own disobedience. He was in distress. He was facing the displeasure of the Lord. He was in the belly of the fish. Life was not great for Jonah at this moment. And he prayed to the Lord. He called out to the Lord, and the Lord heard and answered his prayer.

Now, what did the people of Nineveh do in chapter three? Well, I'm assuming that they did what the king instructed them to do. If you look at chapter three, verse eight:

“but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (Jonah 3:8)

So Jonah, in his distress, calls out to the Lord, and the Lord heard his prayer. The people of Nineveh are in distress on account of their disobedience, and now they're calling out mightily to the Lord and they're seeking the mercy of God. And Jonah's mindset is, ‘I don't want the Lord to hear and answer their prayer. I don't want the Lord to hear and answer the prayer of those people. I don't want the Lord to hear and answer the prayer of that man or of that woman or of that people group.’

Jonah was happy to be a recipient of steadfast love. It says in chapter two, verse eight – this is part of his prayer, and Jonah says: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” (Jonah 2:8) Well, Jonah, if you read through his prayer here, Jonah is being renewed in faith, and he is regaining his confidence in the Lord's steadfast love for him. He knows that God is characterized by “steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2), but he doesn't want steadfast love and mercy and grace to be bestowed upon the people of Nineveh.

Jonah is so upset that he says in chapter four, verse three: “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” His honesty is to be commended, but it is a very sad reality that is taking place inside of his heart. Jonah is basically saying: ‘It is better for me to die than to live and see these people get grace. It is better for me to die than for me to live and see these people not perish under the judgment of God.’

“Do you do well to be angry?” The Lord's going to ask him that question again.

THE THIRD CONSIDERATION: WE MUST LEARN TO DEEPLY VALUE THE SPIRITUAL COMFORT OF OTHERS

But let's move to verses 5 to 11. It says:

“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. 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. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and 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.” 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.” 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. 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?”” (Jonah 4:5-11)

I began this message by saying that the Lord wants you to be a compassionate instrument of his grace to other people who are in need of his grace. And then I said that the Lord wants us to know his gracious heart so that we can convey and communicate his heart to others. And now in light of verses 5 to 11, I want us to see that we must learn to value the spiritual comfort and well-being of others more than we value our own personal physical comfort.

I mean, it's painfully obvious that Jonah's priorities are spectacularly out of whack. He's exceedingly displeased that an entire city turns to the Lord (v. 1), but he’s exceedingly glad for a plant, a large plant, to grow up over him and give him shade from the sun (v. 6). Those words “to save him from his discomfort” (v. 6) are, in a sense, kind of humorous, aren't they? Jonah wants to be saved from his own personal physical discomfort. But he does not care about the spiritual and the eternal comfort of these 120,000 persons in the city of Nineveh. Jonah's priorities are completely out of whack.

Throughout the course of this sermon series – this first Sunday of the month sermon series – I've made the point that God treats us the way that we treat others. And we see that here in the book of Jonah. For those of you who haven't been here for earlier sermons, when you hear me say that God treats us the way that we treat others, you might think, is that really true? Well, let me give you a couple verses from Luke 6. Jesus says,

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:37-38)

And so, it is often the case that God gives us a taste of our own medicine. Now, the Lord does this, in a sense, very gently with Jonah, but still, the Lord treats Jonah the way that Jonah wants the Lord to treat Nineveh, right? Jonah wants Nineveh to be thrown into great distress and perish. So the Lord puts Jonah into a great storm and then into the belly of a fish – Jonah is on the cusp of perishing. And then in chapter four, in terms of this object lesson, what does Jonah want? He wants the shade of God's grace to be removed from Nineveh. He wants the scorching east wind, the scorching judgment of God, to come upon the city of Nineveh. And so the Lord is giving Jonah an object lesson: the Lord is letting Jonah see (and feel!) how Jonah actually wants the Lord to treat Nineveh.

And notice what the Lord says in verse 10: “You pity the plant”. “You pity the plant”. Now, it's not that Jonah really has this great overwhelming compassion for the plant. This is all very self-referential: Jonah loves the plant because the plant gives him comfort. Jonah is alive to his own comfort. And so he loves the plant. He loves the shade. He loves the air conditioning. He loves the ice water or the ice lemonade. He loves the ice cream. He loves [fill in the blank]: he’s alive to his own comfort. And he craves that which will make him comfortable. And when does Jonah get upset? When the instruments of his creature comforts are taken away. That's when Jonah gets upset. He does not want to be inconvenienced. He doesn't want to suffer any discomfort. Certainly Jonah doesn’t want to suffer any discomfort in order to bring comforting grace to others outside of Israel – that's not something that Jonah wants to do.

SOME QUESTIONS TO HELP US APPLY THE TRUTH TO OURSELVES

So I wonder, first of all, do we have within our hearts a strong desire for God to bestow his mercy and grace upon other people, other sinners, other wicked and violent human beings? Do we want them to be the recipients of God's grace? Are we willing to endure discomfort? Are we willing to endure inconvenience in order to be a messenger of God's grace to other people?

And then, notice how this begins to relate to our relationships with each other as fellow believers. Once you get into chapter four, now Jonah is relating to people who have already received God's grace. You see, before Jonah showed up in Nineveh, the people of Nineveh represented those who had not yet received God's grace. But by the time you get to the end of chapter three and into the beginning of chapter four, now they are beneficiaries of God's grace. And Jonah still doesn't like them, still doesn’t love them, still doesn’t desire their well-being. Do you desire and delight in the well-being of other human beings who have received the grace of God? Are there people who have received the grace of God who get a cold shoulder from you?

LET’S FIX OUR EYES ON JESUS

“Jonah… was from Gath-hepher” (2 Kings 14:25). We're told that information over in Second Kings. It's interesting: Gath-hepher was less than 10 miles from Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. Jesus grew up not far from where the prophet Jonah was from. And I want you to think about how different Jesus is from the prophet Jonah.

The Father essentially said to His beloved Son, ‘Arise, go to earth, that great world that I made, for their evil has come up before me. And I am sending you to be their Savior.’ And Jesus went, not begrudgingly, but willingly. He came, born of a virgin. “[The] Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” the Son of the Father, “full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) Jesus embodied in his own life the very character qualities that Jonah highlights: “you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2). Jesus embodied that ministry in his life, in his words, in his deeds, and in the grace that he extended to sinners, the grace that he extended to outsiders, the grace that he extended to those who were unclean, the grace that he extended to those who didn't have the right resume.

You see, Jonah cared about all these props that made him comfortable. Jesus cared about the people who were made in the image of God. And that's what the Lord is highlighting at the end of Jonah chapter 4: “And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons…?” (Jonah 4:11) These are the people that the Lord made. He gave them life, he sustained their life, he wanted to show them his mercy and grace. And Jesus embodied that for us perfectly.

It's very interesting – in Jonah chapter one, you have Jonah in this boat, on this storm-tossed sea with these pagan sailors. And the reason why they're in a life-threatening situation is because of Jonah. It's Jonah's fault. Just keep that picture in mind. Jesus came into this world and all sinners were in a life-threatening situation. And it was their fault: their sin, their rebellion, their stubbornness, their disobedience, their cruelty, their failure to trust God. It was their fault. They were rightly under the righteous judgment of God. But Jesus didn't set up a comfortable little booth outside the city of Jerusalem, to see what would become of it while hoping beyond hope that fire would fall from heaven and consume the people. No. He took the sins of the people upon his own shoulders. He carried our iniquities and our transgressions to the cross. He was thrown overboard, as it were. He took the fall. He was nailed to the cross, bearing in his own body the righteous judgment that we deserved. And when he suffered and bled and died “for Adam's helpless race”[2], there was a great calm that came in terms of the judgment of God. The waters of judgment were stilled at the cross.

And everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and entrusts himself or herself to the mercy of God in Christ, enters into that peace, enjoys that salvation.

But we dare not have the mentality that it's only for us or it's only for me. We want more and more people who have not yet tasted and seen that the Lord is good – we want more and more people to enter into that relationship of peace and grace with our Lord.

Let's pray: 

Father, I pray that you would take this message, that you would stir our hearts with this reminder of your grace, that you would pinpoint in our own hearts and minds people, other people, that we need to go to and speak graciously to and show kindness to and pray for – not because they deserve it, but because we want more and more people to know Jesus Christ. And we want fellow believers who have already tasted the Lord's grace – we want to have a great bond of loving fellowship and peaceful fellowship with them. Father, I pray that you would break down barriers within this church family, where people don’t know each other, where people are suspicious of each other, where people keep their distance from each other, where people gravitate to their own little clique. I pray that you would break down those barriers and that we would delight in every recipient of your grace who stands before us in this place, and that we would be glad that your grace is generous and encompasses the most unlikely candidates, including ourselves. Have mercy on us, O God, in Jesus’ name, amen.

ENDNOTES

[1] The tension to which I am referring is the tension in Jonah himself: he is very willing to have God’s grace for himself (Jonah 2), but he is very unwilling to have God’s grace bestowed upon the outsiders in Nineveh (Jonan 3-4). God’s grace will go wherever God decides to bestow it! Jonah is the one who must change.

[2] The phrase “And bled for Adam’s helpless race” is found in the well-known hymn “And Can It Be?” written by Charles Wesley.