Yes, He Saves Even You :: Jonah 4

See, I told you so! I just knew you’d do it! 

How could you! How dare you! It’s not fair!

How can I bear to watch this injustice any longer!

Just put me out of my misery now! 

To say that Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet of the Lord, is angry ... like our English Standard Version suggests ... is an understated understatement. Jonah isn’t just angry at what God has done today in Nineveh. Jonah is seething. Jonah is enraged. Jonah thinks that what has just transpired is evil ... a great evil, in fact. That is the language behind the Hebrew in our Old Testament reading. 

And what is this evil, this great evil?

God saved them all ... all 120,000 people ... and their cows! 

That’s right, Jonah complains that God saved them all.

How could you! How dare you! It’s not fair! How can I forget their evil, their immorality, their idolatry? How can I forget their hatred, adultery, greed? How can I forget their impatience, their gossip, their arrogance? How can I? 

I DEMAND JUSTICE!

This is Jonah’s complaint. God had relented from punishing the people of Nineveh for causing an evil stench. God had literally repented. He turned away his wrath, thus proving he is who he has said he is all along ... the God of steadfast love and mercy, the God full of compassion, the God who longs for all men to come to the knowledge of the truth, the God who loves his creation ... 

YES, HE IS THE GOD WHO SAVES EVEN YOU!

Jonah knew that when the Word of the Lord first came to him (1:1). And he didn’t like it one bit. First, he ran away (1:3). Then he tried to die (1:12). He longed for man’s justice. After God saved him again and brought him to his knees (2), Jonah did no more and no less than he was required (3:4), speaking only the five Hebrew words ... eight if you want them in English ... God gave him to speak. Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!

The result was miraculous and wonderful. God saved them all.

This is why I fled toward Tarshish ... I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and compassionate (vv. 2-3) I just knew you would save them all!

To be sure, it was a bad choice to run. Jonah, the son of faithfulness ... because that is what son of Amittai means ... should NOT have run. But God sometimes uses us in ways we never understand. In Jonah’s case, God raised a storm, saved the sailors on Jonah’s boat, and prompted Jonah to be baptized ... that is, He caused Jonah to go to Sheol (2:2) and rise from the dead (2:10; Rom 6:3-4). He then enlivened Jonah to proclaim the Word of the Lord again so that God could save them all.

Should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city, our Lord asks (4:11).

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is marvelous news for you and me. God uses people like Jonah to love the loveless. The Holy Spirit sets the word of the Lord on our lips. When it happened to Jonah, 120,000 people plus their cows were saved by faith in The God of heaven and earth. They were cut to the heart by their own sin. They realized they had faith in the God Jonah proclaimed, and because of it, God saved them all. 

Yes, even you!

But it’s not fair, we cry! We are the chosen! Let everyone else live their lives the way they want. Make them earn their own salvation. That’s the underlying message here in Jonah chapter 4. 

Have you seen the way they act? Have you seen the way they dress? Have you smelled the smell they smell? They aren’t like us Lutherans here at the corner of First and Locust. They won’t listen to us. They don’t like God’s divine service. They like to do their own thing, their own way. Let them have the church they think works for them ... nevermind the truth (Gal 1:6-7).

This is one of the underlying complaints of Jonah, after he finished preaching the five Hebrew words the Lord told him to say in the heart of the city (3:4). This is the underlying complaint of us all. We are scared to speak the truth in love. We are scared to call our brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives, our children and parents, our friends and our neighbors to repentance. We are scared to show them that God is the one who comes to us and saves us ... not because of anything we do ... but precisely because of what he does.

Then Jonah went east out of the city, and sat down. There, he pitched a tent for shade ... took up a post ... and waited. I can hardly wait to watch the fall of Nineveh, he undoubtedly said to himself. 

But it didn’t happen. God saved them all.

And Jonah seethed. 

Is this actually a picture of me as I pitch my tent here in Appleton City? Am I really so spiteful, too? Am I exalting myself like Jonah, climbing up my own mountain of pride, looking down on people? Would I really run to the ends of the earth to flee speaking even one word of the Lord that would allow me to repent of the same evil? Would I rather die than confess my faith in Christ? 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the greatest evil in the book (of Jonah) is not Nineveh. The greatest evil in the book of Jonah is ... Jonah! In the same way, the greatest threat to the Christian church today is not the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh ... It is people just like Jonah. 

Are you like Jonah?

Four weeks ago, we heard how Jonah fled the word of the Lord. Have you?

Three weeks ago, we heard how Jonah tried to die? Have you?

Two weeks ago, we heard how Jonah found himself lower than you can possibly go ... at the base of the mountain under the sea ... as good as dead. He was lost, but God found him. He was dead, but was made alive. God drowns the rebel in all of us, and he raises us all from the dead and renews our faith. 

So does it really do you any good to be enraged that God would save ... yes, even you (vv. 4, 9)? I know I don’t need to answer that for you or Jonah.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God’s kingdom is coming to us again tonight even without our prayer. It’s coming because our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe his holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity to save ... yes, even you.

As Jonah stewed and grumbled and moaned and groaned that God was saving Nineveh, he saved Jonah again, this time, appointing a plant to grow overnight to give Jonah shade (v. 6). That puny shelter we try to build for ourselves isn’t enough (v. 5). Our works-righteousness will never save us from the heat we face by ourselves. When Jonah refused to repent of his own evil by doing nothing but sitting in divine worship, God appointed a tiny worm to kill the plant and allow Jonah to face more heat (v. 7).

Why do we do this to ourselves? 

In the name of Jesus, repent. Recognize the “Jonah” that lurks within every Christian heart that wants to deny the sacraments while whimpering the message of smug prejudice, empty creedalism, exclusive solidarity. 

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? (vv. 10-11)

Thank God he does. 

Thank God he pities even you. 

This verb we translate as pity implies that the object itself has no merit or worthiness. When we recognize this pity, we see the seeds of faith. We see that we don’t have any merit or worthiness in and of ourselves, that we can’t earn forgiveness, mercy, or exemption from judgment, that we can’t appeal to justice or the law. 

But the Lord can and does. He loves you that much. 

God so loved us that he sent the Word made Flesh into the world not to condemn the world but to save it. Jesus, the sinless one who humbled himself to become like us, didn’t flee from our sin. He took our sin from us and drowned it in the sea. The sinless son of God willingly went to the cross for you and paid the price of your sin, being beaten for you and crucified for you. He bled for you and bore the wrath of God for you. 

He died for you. 

Thank God that the author of life didn’t stop there. He gives us new life in the resurrection ... and faith, hope, and love in his gospel.

Yes, thank God, he saves even you. 

To be sure, we shouldn’t grumble and complain like Jonah. 

Instead let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame. 

Let us always rejoice in the God of steadfast love and mercy, that he really is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, that he really is always with us, that we really do have faith in him that ... Yes, he saves even you ... not because of what you’ve done, but precisely by grace through faith, just like the people of Nineveh. 

Let us always rejoice that he guards this word of promise within you, that his baptism now saves you (1 Pet 3:21) and nourishes your faith (Titus 3:4-5). 

It’s to His glory and the good of all of us who don’t know their right hand from their left (v. 11). In Jesus’ name.