God's Offensive Grace

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 93
• Hymn — God the Lord, a King Remaineth
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin
• Assurance of Pardon — Romans 5:8-9
• Confession of Faith (Apostles' Creed)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn — Amazing Grace
• Sermon
• Lord's Supper — Institution from Luke 22:14-21
• Hymn — Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face
• Benediction
• Doxology

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Sermon Title: God's Offensive Grace

Scripture: Jonah 4

I. The Problem of God's Offensive Grace

A. Jonah's anger at God's relenting from judgment upon Nineveh (Jonah 4:1)

1. God's relenting was described as a "great evil" to Jonah — he was exceedingly displeased
2. The question central to the whole book: Why is Jonah angry?

B. What Jonah knows — he knows his God rightly by his Word (Jonah 4:2)

1. Jonah prays to a personal God who hears prayer — even bringing his anger to God is commendable
2. He confesses the great Old Testament refrain of God's character — gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love — echoing God's self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 34:6
3. He prays God's own character back to him — a model for our own prayers
4. Jonah is no unbeliever; he has personally experienced God's patient grace through the fish in chapter 2

C. What Jonah neglects — he fails to submit his own wisdom to God's

1. His heart is full of thoughts about his country, Israel — he cannot set aside his concern for his own people
2. Jonah reasons by his own wisdom that sparing Nineveh would not serve Israel's best interests
   • Nineveh (capital of Assyria) was a likely instrument of future judgment upon Israel — fulfilled roughly 30 years later
   • Nineveh's repentance would further highlight Israel's continued refusal to repent
   • Jesus alludes to this in Matthew 12:41
3. Sin distorts Jonah's grasp of and rest in his gracious God — blurring vision, jumbling affections
4. Jonah had himself been a beneficiary of God's grace (chapter 2: "Salvation belongs to the Lord") yet now despairs of life because of that same grace extended to others
5. Hugh Martin: Jonah sins by not submitting his own wisdom to the divine purposes of God

D. God graciously confronts Jonah's sinful anger (Jonah 4:4)

1. "Do you do well to be angry?" — God draws Jonah toward repentance, as he did with Adam and with Cain
2. God wants Jonah to humble himself and restore his trust in God's saving purposes

E. Application: submitting our wisdom to God's in suffering

1. Paul in Romans 9:3 was willing to be cut off from Christ if only his Jewish kinsmen might be saved — a parallel holy longing for one's own people
2. Suffering and trials can be the very means of God's grace in our lives and in our children's lives
3. Paul in Romans 5:3-5 — suffering produces endurance, character, and hope
4. Our better Jonah, Jesus, shows the perfect submission: "Not my will, but yours be done" — trusting the Father's wise grace even through suffering and death

II. The Program of God's Offensive Grace

A. God's grace toward Jonah in the sign of the plant (Jonah 4:6-8)

1. Jonah silently marches outside the city to watch what will become of it
2. God graciously appoints a plant to shade Jonah and relieve his discomfort — even as Jonah refuses to repent
3. Jonah is exceedingly glad for the plant — but with no gratitude toward God; his affections become entangled with the comfort of the gift itself
4. God then appoints a worm to destroy the plant and a scorching east wind, leaving Jonah faint and again wishing to die
5. The plant is a living illustration — God is giving Jonah a refresher course in the wisdom of his grace

B. Jonah doubles down in his anger (Jonah 4:9)

1. "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die"
2. His affections are too easily attached to here-today, gone-tomorrow good gifts
3. His mind remains set on earthly comforts and self-serving wisdom

C. God is free in his gracious program (Jonah 4:10-11)

1. Jonah pitied the plant for which he labored nothing — yet God may pity the 120,000 people of Nineveh whom he made
2. God is free to extend his mercy to whomever he will — Jonah has put God in a box of his own making
3. Romans 9:14-16 — "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy… it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy"
4. We fall into Jonah's error whenever we conclude that any person — friend, family member, or ourselves — is beyond hope of saving

D. God is extravagant in his gracious program

1. More than 120,000 persons in Nineveh — all benefited from God's relenting grace
2. "And also much cattle" — a strange ending pointing to the vastness of God's common grace and his freedom to preserve any life he chooses; not suggesting salvation for cattle, but illustrating the boundlessness of God's care for his creation
3. God's special saving grace is vast — for any who truly repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
4. Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18-19 that believers would comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge