Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Who is God, and what makes God’s grace so amazing?

At first glance, that seems like an easy enough question to answer.

Well, God is God.

And his grace is so amazing because he saves us from our sins.

Yes and Amen! 100%

But what does that really mean?

You see sometimes we can treat theology the same way we treat history or math.

We can look at God like he’s barely more than dates in a textbook or 2+2=4.

We can turn theology into just a formula.

God is holy.

We are sinners.

Jesus died.

We are saved.

Theology like that might be true, but its missing something.

Its missing glory!

Its missing the majesty and wonder of God and what it means that he gives grace to sinners.

Its not enough for us as a church to know about God and about God’s grace.

That might make us doctrinally sound but it doesn’t make us worshipers.

Who is God, and what makes his grace so amazing?

The book of Jonah is a not a book about a man who was swallowed by a fish.

Its about a God who loves sinners who only deserve his judgment and saves them solely by his grace.

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.