His Gracious Concern!

“Take some cake over to the table outside at the far end of the yard.”

With hands full of the homemade, from scratch, fresh ingredients, mixed with love, baked but still moist, stacked with many layers and decorated as if for a display case cake, she headed through the living room door opposite the door to the backyard. In the living room, she was met by a storm of Schnauzer’s who knocked the cake to the floor and licked up every piece. After a few minutes getting cleaned up in the bathroom, the young party goer returned to the kitchen where the same instructions were given to bring some cake to the table outside at the far end of the yard.

We may not like everyone our parents invite to our birthday party. Growing up, you may have been told that your entire class was being invited to your birthday party, to which you may have replied with an eyeroll, audible growl and list of unacceptable classmates. To the immature in age and in showing love to others, dividing people into categories of deserving and undeserving seems right, but with a heart of love, all are welcome.

Nineveh in all its wickedness did not need division from the land of the living, but a spiritual rebirth. With a population of perhaps four times that of Rockwall County, Texas according to the 2025 census, the wicked people of Nineveh were in danger of being destroyed by God. But before carrying out his justice against them, God called a man named Jonah who was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century B.C. to go show them their wickedness with the goal of bringing them to repentance and sparing them from destruction. In response, we get no record of words, only actions, as Jonah went in the opposite direction to board a ship to cross the Mediterranean Sea to be as far away from Nineveh as he could. God responded similarly without words, but actions in sending a violent storm so fierce that all aboard the ship feared for their lives. When the cause of the storm was revealed to be Jonah, he told the sailors in Jonah 1,

12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

Shocked at his solution, the sailors tried to avoid throwing him overboard but could not escape it. Miraculously, God spared Jonah keeping him safe in the belly of a fish for three days until he was vomited onto dry ground. Aware that his life was completely in the hands of God, Jonah had prayed from the belly of the fish with hope in the LORD as we read in Jonah 2,

8 “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. 9 But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD.’”

After his life was miraculously spared by the LORD’s gracious power, the LORD called Jonah to the same mission as before as we read in Jonah 3,

1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

The LORD wanted Nineveh to hear his message, and Jonah would be the one to deliver it. Nineveh needed a spiritual rebirth that only the LORD could accomplish, and he did. When the LORD’s message was shared, the people along with the King showed their repentance by declaring a fast, putting on sackcloth and calling out to the LORD with hope in his grace. And his response is recorded in our Old Testament reading from Jonah 3,

10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

So, the LORD graciously gave life to a wicked city dead in sin.

The LORD’s grace was not for everyone according to Jonah. When a viral video of a dog being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building plays, we cheer and applaud. When a viral video of a toddler being scooped up by a random hero before being struck by a car plays, tears of joy fill our eyes and our hands fold in prayers of thanksgiving to God. When a city of hundreds of thousands of people turns from their wickedness to the LORD, the prophet Jonah gets angry and sits by himself outside the city. Jonah is not called wicked, horrible, racist, entitled or deserter, but based on his actions those words find their way attached to him. When the LORD called Jonah to go to Nineveh, they are described as a wicked people who are about to be destroyed by God. We can relate with Jonah when it comes to running away from what even by God’s description seemed to be a lost cause, but the lost state of the Ninevites did not cause God to abandon them. Like Jonah, we have lists of people who we run from that need Jesus, and this truth exposes two problems. One, there are people lost in their sin headed for destruction who need to hear about Jesus. Two, we are making lists of people who we do not want to share Jesus with. We jump in the ship with Jonah when in our hearts we think we are right and someone else is wrong. Thoughts that spiritually separate people into those who are worth saving and those who are not are wicked. Attitudes of entitlement to God’s grace in our hearts leave us judgmental rather than evangelical. God sees those moments when we act like the child who withholds a birthday invitation from a classmate or turns a classmate away at the door from entering the party. When confronted by our self-righteousness we are swallowed by fear realizing there is no place to turn, escape or hide the hatred in our hearts from God.

God was angry with Nineveh and Jonah and us, but he had two options. He could either carry out justice and destroy us for our wickedness or show us grace. Wickedness, hatred and sin did not cause God to run the other way, but to come to us. God chose to show us grace because of who he is, was and will always be. Jonah knew what God would do for Nineveh as we read in Jonah 4,

1 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

The LORD saved Nineveh because the LORD is gracious. God’s pattern is grace, compassion and mercy. In our New Testament reading from Romans 9, two references are made to people Jonah would have been very familiar with as they were foundational families for the nation of Israel who were not dealt with according to what they wanted or deserved, but according to God’s mercy. First, God established Israel through Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac born to them miraculously in their old age. Two, God carried the line of the Savior and nation of Israel through Isaac and Rebekah’s younger son, Jacob, not the older, Esau. The reason for all of this is then given in Romans 9,

16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

Nineveh was saved by God’s grace, Jonah was kept alive by God’s grace, and we have been saved by Jesus by God’s grace. God divided us from our sins by counting them against Jesus who was judged with the wicked, condemned to death on the cross, buried for three days and was brought back to life. Our hope for escaping destruction and having eternal life is the “gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.”

God is gracious to the undeserving. God’s gracious concern for Jonah remained constant as he fumed over God relenting from destroying Nineveh as we see God’s response in Jonah 4,

3 “Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Rather than reprimand, the LORD patiently questions Jonah. This question was meant for Jonah’s good so that he was not driven away from God but brought closer in humility that God would still forgive him. To further show his grace, God made a plant grow up to give shade to Jonah as he sat alone outside the city brooding still hoping fire and brimstone might fall from heaven upon it. Jonah was grateful for the plant, but then God sent a worm to eat it. With the plant withered, we read in Jonah 4,

8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

God’s grace toward Jonah was not overcome by his anger and repeated wish to die like the frozen continent of Antarctica cannot be melted by lighting one little wooden match and tossing it onto the ice. In our Gospel reading from Matthew 20, Jesus taught the extent of God’s grace with a parable about a landowner who called people to work his vineyard throughout the day, then paid the all the same wage at the end of the day, and to those who complained about what they perceived as unfair, the landowner said,

15 ‘Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

God has generously given us the hope of eternal life, forgiveness of our sins and escape from destruction in hell. He has also given us the question Jonah had to struggle with to keep us from dividing between who deserves God’s grace and who does not,

10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

“Take some cake over to the table outside at the far end of the yard.” She did not want to give some of her birthday guests cake, but eventually she served them. We may not like everyone our parents invite to our birthday party. Worse, we may not like that God is gracious to all people. We do not deserve God’s grace as much as anyone, but he showed it to all people through Jesus’ innocent sacrifice on the cross for our sins, three days in the grave and resurrection. God has saved even a wretch like me, how sweet the sound of his amazingly gracious concern. Amen.