To listen to unabridged message click here: Grace at the Bottom
God’s covenantal love is ever present even in our self-made pits
There was a great theologian by the name of Karl Barth.
He wrote this huge theological treatise called Church Dogmatics. I do not know how many volumes it is, but it is a lot of pages. Barth was a heavyweight in theological circles. He trained a number of theologians coming out of the twentieth century, and he is kind of a big deal in Reformed circles.
You would think a man like that would have quite the answer to this question: “Dr. Barth, when were you saved?”
You would expect something deep, theologically rich, and historically rooted. And his answer was this:
“Approximately A.D. 33.”
Think about that for a minute. Because that is a theologically rich and historically rooted answer to the question, “Dr. Barth, when were you saved?”
Approximately A.D. 33.
Which is remarkable, because he was born some 1,900 years after that. I was born some 1,943 years after that. And many of you were born after that too. Actually, I am going to go with all of you were born after that, regardless of how your backs or knees or hips feel these days.
But this truly is a remarkable thing if we let our minds dwell on it for just a little bit.
When were you saved?
A.D. 33.
I was saved the moment the Lord Jesus Christ said, “It is finished.”
That is when we were saved.
That is amazing grace.
And here is what is wild about that reality: you and I had yet to ever sin. And yet he had already forgiven us. He had already died on a cross to win our salvation, to redeem us, to reconcile us, to restore us back into right relationship with God. Before we ever did a thing.
Then we get born, and we start walking this earth. And I do not know about you, but we start sinning left and right. We start doing all kinds of things that are not so great. Some big things. Some little things. But nonetheless, we put ourselves in a position where we absolutely, without doubt, without question, need to be reconciled, restored, and redeemed by the one who said, “It is finished,” in A.D. 33.
We do not deserve it.
This is the amazing picture of grace: before we even recognize our need to be saved, God has already done the work. He has already saved us.
Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
Be perfect
That brought me to the passage we are using to connect Jonah with the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:43-48:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
It is that last line that has been rattling around in my head as I have been thinking about Jonah chapter 2, and about this idea of enemy love, and Jonah going to Nineveh, and all that stuff we talked about last week.
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This is a command. And I do not know about you, but I am anything but perfect. I am so far from perfect. So far from perfect.
So I am left, first, in a state of gratitude for the amazing grace of Christ. But then I am also wrestling with this: how do I begin to walk down this road of being perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect?
And then what I see here in Jonah chapter 2 is God’s covenantal love that is ever present even in our own self-made pits.
I see a covenantal love that is ever present even in our own self-made pits.
If you remember where we left off last week, there was a big storm. Jonah got called to go to Nineveh to preach to them, and Jonah said, “No. I’m out. Not doing it.”
Why? Because Jonah knew God. “God, I know that you will forgive these people, because you are slow to anger and abounding in love. So I know you will not do it. I know you will relent.”
He had already seen it in Israel. Jonah was the prophet to a king who had done evil in the eyes of God. He was a prophet to King Jeroboam II, a bad dude. And what did he see as he prophesied to Israel? He saw Israel’s borders expand. He saw good things happen to a king and a people who did not deserve it. They were committing idolatry. And what did he see?
He saw grace. He saw God’s grace being poured out on people who did not deserve it.
So when God calls him to Nineveh, he knows exactly what is going to happen. He knows God is going to end up forgiving these people, because that is who his God is. And Jonah has had it.
So he gets on a boat going the opposite way from Nineveh. And God sends a big storm and freaks everybody out, while Jonah is down in the belly of the ship sleeping, taking a nap. He has told everybody he is running away from God. The storm is raging. The captain comes down and says, “Hey dummy, get up. There’s a storm. Need your help. By the way, why aren’t you calling on your God?”
They get up there. The sailors cast lots. They figure out it is Jonah’s fault. They say, “What should we do? It is your God that’s ticked off. What should we do?”
Jonah says, “Throw me overboard.”
Here is the thing: Jonah would rather die than become obedient to the call of God in his life in this moment. He would rather die.
The sailors are like, “Nah man, we’re not doing that.” They try to row back to shore. It does not work. God makes the storm worse. They are like, “Okay, hey God, don’t hold us accountable for killing this dude.” So they throw him overboard.
And that is where we left off last week.
So we pick it up here in Jonah, technically in chapter 1, verse 17:
Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said:“In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
“The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.
“When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. 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.’”
And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. (Jonah 1:17-2:10)
Covenantal love displayed in grace
So here we are in the belly of a great fish.
Now, you will oftentimes hear people say, “Jonah in the whale.” It does not say whale. It just says great fish. The reason I think we think whale is because whales are the biggest things out there, and we figure that must be what caught him. Except that whales are not fish. Whales are mammals.
Some people say, “Well, if it is a fish and it swallowed him, it must have been a great white shark or something along those lines.” If you want to go digging deep and diving into the debate about what would have been the thing that swallowed Jonah, you go for it. That is not the point of the story.
The point of the story is this: here is Jonah, who would rather die than become obedient to God. And so what does God do?
God saves him.
God saves him before he asks.
And then Jonah prays.
I want you to think about that for a moment. Yes, yuck, right? That is nasty. But here is the crazy thing: what has Jonah done to deserve God saving him?
There is a sense here that this fish was ready to go. It is like Jonah says, “Toss me overboard,” and this fish is just kind of sitting there right under the water, mouth open, ready for him. God had already provided for the salvation of Jonah before Jonah was ever tossed overboard, before Jonah ever recognized his need to indeed be saved. It is just, boom, the fish is there. Got him.
God’s grace is so overwhelming.
In these first verses, through verse 2, we see God’s covenantal love displayed in grace. Jonah is already in the belly of the fish when he starts praying this prayer, when he starts saying these things. And yet God has already saved him.
That is a remarkable thing. This is what God’s covenantal love looks like. His covenantal love is demonstrated in grace. Because God never gives up on his people. He just keeps on saving us.
Which is remarkable. Because I do not know about you, but I look in the mirror and think, “I am so unworthy of God’s love and grace.” Because I am a mess.
Now, compared to Jonah, most of us are pretty dang good. All right? But we are all a mess.
Which is why most of us struggle with this idea: does God really love me? Does God really love me?
I can understand why God loves some of these other people that I know, because my goodness, they are saints. My goodness, they love well. They are so sacrificial. They serve so well. We can look at other people, we can see the good, and we think, “Yeah, I can see why God saved them.”
And then we look in the mirror and go, “I do not know why God would save me. I do not know why God would save me.”
But here is the thing: God loves us. His covenantal love is never failing. He is slow to anger. He is abounding in love. And he will save us, and he will keep on saving us.
Our salvation is from him, and not from us.
That is a remarkable thing.
Covenantal love displayed in consequences
But the story keeps going. And we get here in verses 3 through 6, kind of the first half of verse 6, where we see God’s covenantal love displayed in consequences.
Jonah says, “You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight.’”
Things are not great. He recognizes the consequences of his actions.
Notice he does not say the sailors threw me in. Notice he does not say, “I jumped in.” He puts all of the onus of what has happened to him on God. “You hurled me into the ocean.”
Because here is the thing: Jonah is facing up to the consequences of his actions.
If Jonah had gone to Nineveh, would he be in the belly of a fish? No. If Jonah had gone to Nineveh, would he have been in the middle of a massive storm? No.
He is facing the consequences of his actions. And it is in the facing of the consequences that we see the love of God, the covenantal love of God, displayed. Because even here, he is being saved.
It is a remarkable thing.
And what is fascinating about this section, to me, is what is missing.
Do you ever see Jonah say anything close to, “God, you were right. I was wrong. I should have obeyed. I should have gone to Nineveh. Lord, I’m sorry. Please forgive me”?
We see none of that.
What we see is attitude.
Did you catch it? He says, “Even though you threw me into the ocean, I will look towards your temple. I will remember your temple. I will remember who you are.”
It is this woe is me, self-centered baloney. The word “I” is the most repeated word in Jonah’s prayer. This is an absolutely self-centered prayer. In no way, shape, or form does he ever acknowledge his sin. He does not acknowledge his responsibility in any of this.
And in the midst of facing the consequences of his actions, which is to go down into the belly of the sea, he gives this whole “woe is me” thing. “Even though you have done these bad things to me, God, I will remember you.”
He is a putz. That is the theological term.
And you know what? Do we not do that?
When we are going through a really hard time, do we not sometimes fall into that same trap? “I don’t know, God. I don’t know why you’re letting this happen to me, but I will stay faithful. I will pray to you, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna work.” Right?
We can fall into this kind of self-loathing, self-centered thing.
This is a glimpse of who Jonah is. He does not ask forgiveness. And yet, and yet, God is still at work saving him.
So in the midst of our consequences, God’s covenantal love is displayed.
Covenantal love displayed in grace, again
And then we move into the second part of verse 6.
He says, “But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. 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.’”
And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
We see a bookend. It starts with God’s covenantal love displayed in grace by providing the fish. We see covenantal love displayed in consequences. Now here at the end of this chapter, we see God’s covenantal love once again displayed in grace.
The fish does not digest him. The fish spits him out. And in spitting him out, what does the fish do? He obeys God’s command.
Is that not a fascinating thing? Because here is this Jonah who is actively disobeying God, who is actively not listening to what God wants him to do. And the fish that swallows him, God says, “Hey, vomit him on the land.” And what does the fish do? Spits him out on the land. He obeys.
The fish is the obedient one.
That is some funny stuff. It is crazy. Jonah is not.
And even in the midst of this, Jonah still never once owns what he has done. But what he does do is acknowledge God’s gracious salvation. He almost has this expectation about it, right? Because here he is, still in the belly of this fish, and he says, “But hey, you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, you took care of me.”
This is grace.
Jonah does not deserve it. Jonah is a putz. He does not deserve it. Jonah is leaning into this remarkable grace of God.
As I was thinking about Jonah, and thinking about how amazing this grace is, there was this opening section from The Ragamuffin Gospel, in chapter 7. The titles in this book are great. Chapter 7 is titled “Paste Jewelry and Sawdust Hot Dogs.” He is talking about counterfeit grace.
Brennan Manning writes:
“Counterfeit grace is as commonplace as fake furs, phony antiques, paste jewelry, and sawdust hot dogs. The temptation of the age is to look good without being good. If white lies were criminal offenses, we would all be in jail by nightfall.
“It took a lot of cooperation to create the atmosphere wherein the Charlotte and Baton Rouge televangelist scandals finally blossomed. The dichotomy between what we say and what we do is so pervasive in the church and in society that we actually come to believe our illusions and rationalizations and clutch them to our hearts like favorite teddy bears.”
The dichotomy between what we say and what we do is so pervasive in the church and society that we actually come to believe our illusions.
This is Jonah in a nutshell. He was just so caught up in his illusion of himself. What he said and what he did did not match. And yet here he is, just expecting and calling on God to save him.
And what does God do? God does indeed save him.
What is remarkable is what we are going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks. Because this last line that Jonah states, where he says, “I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD,’” is a line he is going to choke on. It is gonna come back, and it is going to bite him so, so hard.
Lead with grace
But to bring it all the way back around, here is my challenge for you.
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:48. How can we possibly do that?
We are going to fail.
But what we can do is begin the practice of loving our enemies the way that God loves his enemies.
Because when were we saved? A.D. 33.
That salvation did not go away when we started sinning. That salvation did not go away when we put ourselves into the position of being enemies with God. Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 that while we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.
That is remarkable. That is something we cannot even really begin to wrap our minds around.
And so then we read in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” right after Jesus says, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”
And then we read the story of Jonah. And we look at the grace that is poured out on Jonah: the fish ready to save him before he is even overboard, already there to catch him. This Jonah who never actually repents. And God extends him grace.
Because we start thinking, “Well, I can extend grace to my enemies, to those who hate me and persecute me. I can extend grace to them if they say they’re sorry. If they own their stuff.” We put all these conditions on it.
And yet God, in relation to us, when we were in the position of being an enemy of his, puts no condition. It is just grace.
So how can we begin to live lives that are perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect?
We begin to practice loving our enemies and extending them grace just because they are created in the image of God. We begin to extend them this grace. And we begin to try to practice the kind of covenantal love that we see displayed here, because God’s covenantal love is ever present even in our self-made pits.
All of Jonah’s problems were self-made. All of them were of his own creation.
Most of the reason why we have enemies, well, people we do not like, the people we kind of decide are enemies, we would look at them and say, “They’re over there because of their own decisions, their own choices that they have made. They have put themselves in the place of being my enemy.”
We put ourselves in that same situation with God, and yet his grace, his love, is unchained. It just keeps coming to us.
And so how do we be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect?
We begin to try to love this way. We begin to try to practice a Matthew 5:43 kind of love.
And that is hard. That is really hard.
So as you move out this week, as you begin to live your life this week, especially in light of the reality of there being another election, and people are going to be up in arms on your Facebook or wherever, people are going to be all worked up. There is going to be a lot of us versus them. There is going to be a lot of good guys and bad guys, trying to slot people in: “These are my enemies. These are my friends.”
We are to be the people who take this covenantal love that is displayed in grace, that is displayed even in our own self-made pits. We are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
So we are to take this kind of love even to those whom we might consider to be enemies.
I challenge you this week: when you start to feel that us versus them thing rise up in you, when you begin to hear yourself think something along the lines of, “You know, they did this to themselves,” that you would be the one who leads with grace. That you would be the one who leads with love.
This is the step that we can take towards being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect: that we would be the ones who lead with grace, that we would be the ones who lead with an unconditional love.
Would you pray with me?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for his grace. We thank you that we were indeed saved many years ago, before we were ever born, before we were ever thought of, and yet your grace came to us.
Jesus said, “It is finished,” before we ever put ourselves in a position to be at enmity with you. Your grace overwhelmed. Your grace was like a flood.
Lord, I pray that we would be perfect like our heavenly Father is perfect, that we would lead with grace, and that we would be a people who lead with love.
It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.