July 5th, 2026 - When Grace Offends You

And I hope you do. I'd like you to open to the book of Jonah, the book of Jonah. This is the last week that we're going to be in Jonah. That we've been talking about Jonah, and he's kind of a reluctant missionary as what Jonah is. He's kind of an unsettled, reluctant missionary. And today we're going to see the kind of the final chapter, if you will, of the story of Jonah. But then, actually, I think we'll realize that there's another chapter that we're in. There's another chapter that's for us. And so if you have a Bible, I'd like you to open to the book of Jonah, chapter 3, verse 10, we'll start there because it'll help chapter 4, verse 1, to make more sense. Chapter 3, verse 10, the words will be on the screen as well. If you want to follow along and you don't have a Bible. When God saw what they did, and what they did was they had all the people that turned their hearts to God. They all surrendered to God. They all had repented. They'd all turned from their ways. When God saw what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways, God relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong. Let me just pause there for a minute. I'm going to talk way more about this in a second, but we're one verse in. And something really, really, really good happened. And then Jonah's not happy about it. How many of you know that sometimes when a good thing happens, there's other people that are like, no, this is a bad thing too. How many of you know that there's things that's like, hey, we ought to celebrate this. And somebody's like, no, I think this is a horrible thing. I think this is a wretched thing. This isn't a right thing at all. Well, here's Jonah. And this thing seemed very, very wrong. And he became angry. We're going to talk more about that word in a minute. But when you read how angry Jonah was, I want you to get in your mind. This is not angry like, oh, like the Sunday dinners burned angry. This is like what one person described as red hot Cheetos angry. Like this is anger at a high level. Jonah is hot. He is furious. He became angry. And in his anger, he prayed to the Lord, which I think is a good thing. And he said, isn't this what I said, Lord, imagine this prayer? Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That's what I tried to forstall. That's what I tried to slow down. That's what I tried to kind of stop from happening by fleeing to Tarsish. And I knew that you're a gracious and compassionate God. Jonah knew. He knew this is who God is. God is gracious and God is compassionate. Slow to anger, abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Jonah just got an A on theology about God. But listen to what he says next. Now, Lord, take away my life for it's better for me to dive into live. Happy days, Jonah. But the Lord replied, is it right for you to be angry? Furious, livid, ticked off? Red hot Cheetos mad? Jonah had gone out. The Lord replies this. And while the Lord is saying this, Jonah goes outside of the town. He sits down at a place east of the city. There's a whole line of thought that when the further east you go, you're an exile. You're headed. This is the place of exile. This is a place of being on the outside. And there, Jonah made himself a shelter. He went survivor man on this thing. And he sat in the shade and he waited to see what would happen to the city. So he's sitting in a shelter and he's looking over his shoulder at the city, waiting to see if God might burn the thing to the ground. But verse 6, the same God that provided a whale and the same God that provided a storm, created a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. I'm picturing Jonah as a bold man. That's just me sitting in his heads all red. And Jonah is very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided the same God who provided a whale and the same God who provided a plant and the same God who provided a storm, God provided a warm too. And the warm chewed the plant and it withered. And when the sun rose, God provided a scorched, scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head and he grew faint. He wanted to die. It would be better for me to die than to live. Picture Jonah sitting in a heap outside of a sitting in a heap complaining to God. It's just better for me to not even be here. But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?" I'm curious question. And Jonah says, "Absolutely it is." I am so angry, I wish I was dead. But the Lord said, "You've been concerned about this plant. Though you did not tend it, you did not make it grow. It's spring up overnight and it died overnight." This is the million dollar question of the story of Jonah. Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and also many animals. And the story ends and this is the word of the Lord. We'll call him Henry. We'll protect the innocent or the guilty as the case may be. Henry attended a church that I used to pastor. Don't try to figure out who Henry is. Don't try to be like, "I wonder if there's a code. I'm going to find Henry. Don't do that." We'll call him Henry. I don't generally like to make a story out of people and churches I used to pastor. But for today I am. For today I am. What we'll call him Henry. Henry volunteered at church almost every Sunday. He was there with great regularity. I could tell you where Henry sat in church. I could tell you what a conversation Henry would go like. I don't know if you ever had certain conversations so many times. You talk about the same things over and over and over again. Henry and I would have that same conversation every single Sunday. Henry rarely missed church. Henry was an advocate that the church ought to be open. If anything, the church ought to be open. Henry was a regular at the men's group. And by outward measures people would say, "Well, Henry's he's active and he's engaged." But here's the thing about Henry. Henry was very seldom happy. Let me think of another way to say that. Henry was almost always grouchy about something. When a new family arrived at the church and the church didn't have kids and the new family arrived at the church and the family in the service, the kids would squeal and squawk and act like kids would act. Henry would come up to me afterwards and I would say, "Wasn't it great that we had a new family in church this morning?" And Henry would say, "Yeah, they really need to get those kids under control." Well, I could come on, Henry. Or the man who struggled with alcoholism. This really happened. The man who struggled with alcoholism. And he walked through the door and he was fresh out of a brief stay in the county jail. Henry didn't celebrate this man coming to church. He muttered, "This guy needs to get his act together." Only he said it a lot more strongly than that. Henry was active in the church. Henry did the work of the church. But Henry did the work of the church and the work of God with a closed fist rather than an open heart and an open hand. Henry served. Henry gave of himself. Henry showed up. But there was something in Henry's heart that was never really there. And I thought about Henry when I read Jonah chapter 4 because Jonah, that's his real name, and Henry, not his real name, have a lot in common. Jonah obeyed completely. As mission succeeded, a pagan nation turned to God. By all accounts, this is the most successful evangelistic campaign in human history to date. Every person, every household, even the animals went into a place of repentance. The king takes off his crown, puts on sackcloth, sits in ashes, and repents before God. And God sees this repentance and says, "I relent. I relent from what I was going to do." If this was a movie, the credits would roll, the music would play. But in this and the hero would walk off into the sunset and they all lived happily ever after. But instead, instead the camera keeps rolling. And what we see is a man, the hero of the story, Jonah, sitting outside the city, east of the city, in the blazing hot sun, and he's pounding. His arms are crossed, his jaw is tight, his teeth are clenched, and he's looking over his shoulder, and he's waiting to see if possibly God might somehow change his mind and burn none of it at the ground. This is Jonah chapter 4. This is Jonah sitting outside the city, saying, "Those people, they need to get their kids under control. Those people, they need to get their act together." This is Jonah chapter 4, and I don't know about you, but Jonah chapter 4 makes me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable because Jonah was a faithful prophet. Jonah had served God for years. He knew his theology. We already read it earlier about what he thought about God. He knew about God. He could answer all the right answers on the test. And yet in Jonah chapter 4, Jonah is furious that God would show mercy to people that he had written off. Not God, but that God would show mercy to people that Jonah had written off. I love this, though, about this story. You could just preach about this. God doesn't argue with Jonah. God doesn't lecture Jonah. God is present in his anger, and he just interacts with him in his anger. He uses a plant and a worm and a scorching wind. All of these things just demonstrate to Jonah. God, the God is still pursuing Jonah. God is still after Jonah. I read this this week. Ken Witten, he's a Baptist pastor. He says this. It'll be on the screen. It is possible to do the will of God without the heart of God. That's the story of Jonah. If you want to know what Jonah is telling us here in Jonah chapter 4, that's it in a sentence. It is possible to do the will of God, and it is possible to do the work of God, and it is possible to do that without the heart of God. Here in Jonah's life we see righteous rage. That's the first thing we see. He's doing the will of God, but he has a whole lot of rage. And in Jonah chapter 4 verses verse 1, he finds himself full of righteous rage. He would call it. The word here was almost violent for how angry he is. He says that it was evil to Jonah what was happening. It was evil to Jonah what was happening. And there was one translation says it was a great evil. And it says he burned against Nineveh. He has rage. This is Jonah full of rage. Now this is interesting to me. I'm not a scholar. I'm not a Hebrew scholar, Greek scholar, any of that. I'm a kid who barely passed preaching class, but I can tell you this. The word for evil in chapter 4 is the same as the word for evil in chapter 1. So when we were talking about the evil of Nineveh, the evil of that was happening among the people, how evil these people are. The word for evil there is the same word for the evil that Jonah said God was demonstrating toward causing peace to come in Nineveh. It's the same word that describes Jonah's reaction and God's mercy. The city's evil made God act and God's mercy on that evil made Jonah burned. He burned in anger. Jonah doesn't suppress his anger. And God doesn't try to suppress his anger. He doesn't dismiss it. God doesn't push it aside. He simply says to Jonah, like, "Jona, I'm here." Jonah prays to the Lord. "Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?" This is what I wanted to slow down happening by fleeing. I knew, I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God. I knew that you were slow to anger. I knew that you were bounding in love. Jonah is not confused about who God is. Jonah is not confused. He could have passed an exam or at least a quiz on the character of God. He just hates what God is doing in this moment. Now, this is where this God really real for me this week. This is where Jonah felt like a mirror that you hold up in your own life. There are people in our world, people in our world, good people, faithful people, people who have been in church their whole lives. People like me, people like you, people like all of us, people who would say, "Well, I'm a follower of Jesus, but if we drill down long enough, if we linger long enough, you would discover that somewhere in our pocket, we have a list of people that we have decided are beyond the redemption of God or at least beyond our concern." We have said, "These are the people." Yeah, God, you can help those people and God, you can work through those people, but don't ask me to do it. Don't ask me to cross. That's a bridge too far. It might be a category of someone who sends differently than you do. It might be an entire political party. I don't want to linger long there, but it might be an entire political party, the radical left, the conservative right. It might be a specific person who's done harm to someone you love. It might be an entire demographic. For Jonah, his list, the list that he was carrying around in his pocket were the Assyrian people, the Assyrians. And the Assyrians were people that had terrorized his people. Nineveh had terrorized his nation. Nineveh had built their nation on the bones of his nation. And so Jonah hated them. Jonah hated them because they were a threat to the past of his people. And Jonah hated them. Some writers say because they were a threat to the future of Jonah's people. And Jonah is hot. Picture it again. We talked about this before. God telling Jonah to go to Nineveh is like telling a concentration camp survivor to preach mercy to the Nazis. It's like telling a black man in the 1950s south to minister to the KKK. His anger wasn't irrational. If you look at it, you'd say, "I kind of make sense that he's angry." But God says, "Is it right for you to be angry?" Is it right for you to be angry? God doesn't dismiss Jonah's emotion. He examines it. He's full of righteous rage. Here's the second thing. He's also full of misplaced pity. Misplaced pity. Jonah sits outside the city. He builds himself a little shelter. He hopes that God would change his mind. A plant comes along. The plant grows. God provides the plant. The same word that's used for God providing a fish and the same word that's used for God providing all these other things. And Jonah, God provides the plant. This is not some random thing. The same hand that rescues Jonah in chapter 1. So I'm going to provide a plant for you in Jonah chapter 4. And the plant springs up overnight. In verse 6, Jonah was very happy about the plant. Now, here's what's interesting to me. If you read Jonah chapter 4 slowly this afternoon, the only time he's happy in Jonah chapter 4, the only time that Jonah is happy is when the plant grows. Maybe I'm the only one that's impressed by that. The only time that he gets happy is when God provides shade for the mess he's in. He doesn't get happy when the people repent. He doesn't get happy when the king surrenders and falls on his face before God. He doesn't happy. Get happy when the king says, you know what, let's fast all the way down to the animals. We're going to make it how clear. He doesn't get happy then. He doesn't get happy when God relented and God relented. No, he didn't get happy. He got mad. Jonah was very happy about the plant. He wasn't happy about the salvation of tens of thousands of people. He was happy about a plant that kept him cool on a hot day. He was happy about a plant. And God sees that and God's like, Jonah, I'm going to teach you a lesson. The very next morning God points a worm. I wonder about that worm. I wonder how big the worm was. And the worm does what worms do. The worm comes and the worm eats the whole bloom and plant. And then God provides this wind. And the wind blows off. You can picture the wind blowing in Jonah's face. His face is red. His sunburned through and through. He's got blisters through and through. And Jonah says it would be better for me to die than it would be for me to live. There's a little bit of me when I read this story of Jonah that wants to say, "Jona, pull it together, man." There's a little bit of me that wants to say, "Jona, do you see what's happening right around you? You're so consumed with your own shade. Your code's so consumed." with your own agenda that you don't even see what God is doing around you. One writer says it this way. Jonah was more concerned about the plant than he was the people, which brings us the writer says to the moment that the whole book has been building toward, not the fish, not the storm, not the revival. It is God and a sulking prophet. And the question that has been hanging in the air for centuries is still waiting to be answered. It is the question that God asks. It is God's question in all of this. He says, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And then he says, shouldn't I even have concern for the great city of Nineveh? God is like, you are all mad about this. You are all upset about this. You are wanting to end your life over this. But should not I have concern for these people? For people who don't know their right hand from their left hand, for people like that, for people who one day were savages and next day have humbled themselves before me. Shouldn't I have concern? Shouldn't I look with pity on them? Shouldn't I have eyes that are pained by what they see when I look on these people? God is saying, look, you are upset about a plant that you didn't even plant. You are upset about the water. You are upset about all these things. But God is saying, I am concerned about people, people. God holds up this plant. It is like, I can picture Jonah holding this dead plant in his hands. And I can almost imagine God speaking to Jonah and saying, listen, Jonah, you had feelings for this plant. And then God points over Jonah's shoulder and says, what about those people? And I have concern for those people in the great city of Nineveh. Shouldn't I have concern about those people too? It's almost like you can hear God saying, look, man, you can do my will all day long. You can do my work all day long. You can do the will of God without the heart of God. Jonah is proof. So here's how I want to land this today. When I read the story of Jonah, Jonah chapter 4, I landed and I spent a lot of time. I literally just sat and I was like, God, what are the two little windows you want us to look through for this? And here's what I came up with. I think that God wants us to look at the comforts that we guard. The comfort that we guard. Let me think if I can, I hope I can say this in a way that makes sense. Have you ever noticed that we love God's grace for us when we screw up? We love grace in our own lives. And we blow it royally. We love God's grace in our lives when things go horrible in our lives. Like when we do something wrong, we say something we shouldn't say. And we love God's grace in our lives. But, but, but. We prefer judgment for the people who hurt us. When someone else does it, often we prefer judgment. We guard our comfort. We build a beautiful plant. We build something to provide comfort in our lives, programs, preferences, budgets, traditions, the way things have always been done. And we find rest under that plant. And then God sends a worm. And the plant goes away. And we get angry and we say, well, this isn't what our church is supposed to look like. This isn't what it's supposed to be like. Meanwhile, outside the city, there are people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. And I think God says, shouldn't I be concerned about them too? Shouldn't I be concerned about the people that you that you've, that you've so freely thought that they don't deserve my grace? Shouldn't I be concerned just not just to provide comfort for you, but should not be concerned about them. And the people we've written off, I said it before, the fact is most of us have a category of people that we pray for in theory. But we just don't know what to do with in practice. Addicts, the formerly incarcerated or the incarcerated, people whose politics make your blood boil. People that you'd say, well, I don't know if they're really church people. I don't know if they're really church people. People who you look at and you say they send in such a way that I can't even go there. And God says, shouldn't I have concern for them too? I provided a vine for you and a whale for you and a mission for you and a task for you. I pursued you, Jonah, all the days of your life. Shouldn't I have concern for them too? Max O'Kato tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer. He tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer. That was a rapid transition. He tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer and it's in his book called In the Grip of Grace. And in the book in his book, I'll summarize the story. Max O'Kato says, there's something that causes me to be deeply unsettled when I read the story of Jeffrey Dahmer. He said, it's not all of the horror of his crimes and I'm not even going to tell you the horror of his crimes. Those things will give you nightmares at night. He said, it is not the horror of his crimes. It is the discomfort of his conversion that troubles me. He said, reportedly, months before another inmate murdered Jeffrey Dahmer in prison, Jeffrey Dahmer became a Christian. He said, he repented like Liketo says. He was baptized in a prison chapel. He started reading Christian books. He started attending chapel and Liketo writes that it's this that troubles him. How is it that God can have grace for Dahmer and the same heaven that I get to go to one day is the same heaven that Dahmer goes to one day? Liketo says, how is it that the same grace would save Jeffrey Dahmer is the only grace that saves any of us? God would say, shouldn't I have concern for him too? Should I have concern for them too? I remember one day I was in the jail, not because I had done something wrong. I was in the jail because I was leading a Bible study in the jail. As I was leaving that day from leading the Bible study at the jail, the chaplain said, hey, there's a guy who's here and he was just brought in and he's in solitary confinement and he's asked to talk to a pastor and you happen to be here, are you willing to talk to him? I said, yeah, I said, who is he? I said, what did he do? He told me who he was and he told me what he did. He told me what he did. I had read about it in the newspaper. I had seen it on the evening news in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was violent and ugly and vile and wrong and disgusting. It was enough to make anybody angry. It was enough to make anybody say, what's this guy thinking? I said, I'll see him. I'll go in and talk to him. I walked into the room that day and I sat down and I said, my name's Chad and he said, I understand you're a pastor. I said, that's right, I'm a pastor. I said, I understand you wanted to talk to me about something. You wanted to talk to a pastor about something and he said, yeah, that's right. Then he just sat there and total silence. Didn't say anything. I was like, this is the most awkward first date I've ever been on in my entire life. I'm feeling more than a little threatened. It's like me and this guy in solitary confinement and it's just us. I'm all the eyeball and I said, is there anything you want to talk about? Total silence. Finally, he looked up the whole time he's looking down. He looked up and he looked right at me and he said, can God forgive me for what I've done? Can God forgive me for what I've done? And I had a little Jonah in me that day. And I said to him, I said, there's not a doubt in my mind that God can forgive you for what you've done. Now, there are earthly penalties for what you've done as well. That I don't speak to, don't really get involved in those things, not really my lane in this world. But I can tell you there's not a doubt in my mind that God can forgive you for what you've done. And all the while that I'm saying this out loud, I'm thinking, but God don't really say, not this guy. There was part of me that felt that. He literally looked at me and he said, that's all I needed to know. I said, you don't want to talk about anything else? Nope. You don't want to just shoot the breeze for a while, talk about the weather? Nope. You can go now. And I left. That was it. I can picture God saying, shouldn't I have concern for that guy too? Shouldn't I have concern for that guy too? And a whole lot of people, just like him and a whole lot of people, just like him. I'd like us to quiet ourselves together. And we're going to come to the table today. And Jonah chapter four is kind of the prelude, if you will, for receiving these elements today. The scriptures tell us that we shouldn't receive communion unadvisably, that we should do it reverently and in the fear of God, that we should do it with a heart that's repentant, the heart that's you. yielded to God. A heart where we say, "God, I want my heart to look like your heart. I want your concerns, God. I want my concerns to look like your concerns. I want my desires to look like your desires." And so today when we come to this table, we come not because we deserve this. We come because of grace. The same grace that would pursue Jonah is the same grace that pursues you. The same grace that gave Jonah a second chance is the same grace that gave you a second chance. The same grace that pursued a prophet running the wrong direction is the same grace that pursued you when you were running the wrong direction. And the same grace that saves us is the grace that God has for this great city. When we gather, we remember the body of Christ, but broken, the blood of Christ shed, and we remember that it was not just reserved for people just like us who think like us, who act like us, but it was reserved for everyone. It was poured out for the whole city. It was poured out for Jeffrey Dahmer and Chad McCollum and everyone else too. And so we examine our hearts. We examine our hearts today and we ask, are there ways that our hearts are not in line with God? Are we angry about things that God is not angry about? Are we upset with things that God has set into motion? Are there things in our lives where comfort has settled in and we fall in love with the vine rather than the one who sent the vine? Maybe we have anger toward a group of people or a person towards something that happened in our lives and you just say, they don't deserve mercy. Maybe today's the day to say, God, I want to humble myself even in receiving these elements. We're going to come forward in just a few moments as we do as a church, just row by row. And as you come forward, I'd like you to come forward with a little different posture today. I'd like you to come forward, not just thinking, oh, I'm walking forward, but I'd like you to come forward with your hands kind of like this in front of you if you would, just open in front of you. And I'd like you to come forward asking God, God, what am I carrying today? God, what is it within me? Like examining your own heart. Think of it as a way of just examining your own heart. And when you've received the bread and the cup, just take a seat back at your seat and we'll share it together in the communion time together. We'll be reminded of blood that was shed and body that was broken. But as we come, we want to examine our own hearts and ask God, just the question, God asked, shouldn't I have concern for the great city? And so let's be people who come before God with examine hearts today. Jesus now as we come to the table, I pray that you administer to us here and I pray that you would show yourself to be strong in Christ's name. Amen. As we sing, you come.