What an outrageous story. And perhaps tonight’s message could have the title ‘That’s outrageous!’ as I hope you will see by the end of this talk, so let me begin by asking you a question: Have you ever been angry with God? It’s a legitimate question to ask because in our reading tonight, we see Jonah getting really, really angry with God all because there’s been a change of plans, and this change really got up Jonah’s nose. So what was the change of plans that upset Jonah big time? [God didn’t destroy Nineveh] Jonah here is taking issue not with what God has done, but with what he hasn’t done. And what has God shown(?) but his outrageous grace, and there’s no other way to describe it – and this is my first point – God is a God of outrageous grace.

Jonah knew what God was like – he tells us in v2 ‘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 Message puts it like this ‘I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness.’

This is the God we know and serve – He is a God of outrageous grace, yet His outrageous grace is too much for Jonah and he cries out to God ‘I can’t handle it – you’ve made me look stupid – if you won’t kill them, then kill me because it would be better if I were dead.’ Now ask the person sitting beside you - what kind of attitude is that?[…] There are many ways one could describe this attitude – one that stands out is just how selfish Jonah’s attitude is because Jonah wanted God to be God on his terms, and his terms only. He wanted God to do things the way he wanted, and in this case, he wanted God to punish those he thought deserved it - In other words, Jonah wanted to be able to control God’s grace.

But before we start pointing the finger at Jonah or anyone else, let me ask you how do you respond when things don’t go according to the way you want them to go? Because it is true to say that it is often those already in the church - those who have sought to live within God’s rules - those who have been ‘in the church’ for as long as anyone can remember’ – it is often these people that struggle most with God’s outrageous grace when it is practised by God.

Yes, they believe in and talk and sing about God’s grace – this is easy to do, but when it comes to its practice – when God freely gives his grace to those they think don’t deserve it, they struggle with it – it makes them feel uncomfortable, because in their minds Christianity is about people conforming to a set of unwritten rules – dress like this, walk like this, talk like that – and anyone who doesn’t fit this picture – well you can’t possible be a true Christian.
Ask yourselves for a minute: do you unconsciously attach conditions to God’s outrageous grace that people have to fulfil before they can receive God’s grace? To do so is to misunderstand the whole nature of God’s outrageous grace because we have no control over who God extends his grace to. In that sense, it is outrageous, but that’s not the only thing that’s outrageous in this story, because God shows himself to be a God of outrageous provision and this is my second point – God is a God of outrageous provision.

How many of you believe that God provides us with all that we need? How many of you, when you’ve asked God for something have experienced God giving you exactly what you’ve asked for? How many of you when you’ve asked God for something have experienced God giving you something different to that which you’ve asked for? Yes, it is true that sometimes in life, God’s provision is not what we think it should be and this is Jonah’s experience!

In verse 5 of our reading after Jonah has voiced his anger to God, Jonah goes outside the city, sits down and waits to see what is going to happen to the city. Hang on a minute, didn’t God say at the end of chapter 3 that because of their repentance, they weren’t going to be destroyed? Yes he did, but Jonah here hasn’t accepted this – he hasn’t accepted that God wants to provide for the Ninevites, now that they’ve had a change of heart.

You would think that if Jonah could just stop for a moment and examine his own track record, he might just see God’s outrageous provision in his own life, before complaining to God about others. After all, God had provided a fish to preserve his life when he had attempted to run away from God. But Jonah, like all of us can be rather narrow-minded and navel gazing – in other words, we can be totally and utterly consumed with our own little worlds we live in! So God tries and teaches Jonah about his outrageous provision in another way using a vine, a worm and a hot scorching wind.

Now to understand why God uses these, we need to know two details: one, Nineveh was located in what is modern day Iraq; two, the temperature in this region of the world gets very, very hot, so hot in fact, that one known effective method of torture was to leave victims chained out in the hot sun – it soon made them talk or it killed them.

So, here we have Jonah sitting outside the city – and God provides a vine to give shade and relief from the sun. Verse 6 tells us that Jonah (for once) was very happy – quite a change to the miserable, complaining person we have known to date! Yet God sends along a surprise!

How many of you like surprises? The story is told of a taxi passenger who tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him something. The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the pavement, and stopped centimetres from a shop window. For a second everything went quiet in the cab, then the driver said, “Look here, don’t ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!” The passenger apologized and said he didn’t realize that a little tap could scare him so much. The driver replied “Sorry, it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a taxi driver. I’ve been driving hearses for the last 25 years!”

How many of you prefer nice surprises to horrible surprises? What was the surprise in Jonah’s case? [a worm[ What kind of surprise was it? [horrible!] What did the surprise do? [ate Jonah’s vine] What was it’s result? [killed the vine] But God isn’t finished because he sends along yet another surprise – what was that? [verse 8 – a scorching east wind]

In NZ, my home city Christchurch is built on a plain – and every year from October to December, you get what are known as Nor-westers – that is hot, dry winds that come belting across the Canterbury Plains and hit Christchurch with full force – they are very unpleasant and sap all your energy and leave you feeling exhausted. The timing of them usually coincides with school and university examinations, and doesn’t do much to encourage revision (as I well remember!!) When they’re really, really hot, they occasionally still melt the road tar…!

In Jonah’s case, this scorching wind is enough to set Jonah off wishing he was dead – again (v8&9)! You’d think by now, he’d learned to be thankful for life, but he hasn’t, because he still hasn’t understood what God is teaching him, and that is God’s provision is not about giving Jonah what Jonah thinks he needs, but it’s giving him what God knows he needs.

In this chapter God gave Jonah a vine, then he takes it away from him to demonstrate his provision. In the same way, God knew how much Nineveh needed to repent and they did in response to God’s message that Jonah’s preached. God provided Nineveh with that which they needed to do an about turn in their lives. The reality was Jonah had more sympathy for the vine than he did for the thousands of lives that God had saved.

And we can be like that too. So often, we are more concerned with what matters for us, than with God’s concern. And what is God’s concern? – God’s concern is that people should know him and his outrageous grace, and his outrageous provision. Ask yourselves ‘what are you concerned with? People’s lives or the way we do things? Jonah chapter 4 presents us with this challenge.

Are your concerns those of God’s or are your concerns governed by what you want? This week, let’s try and ask God to make us concerned about what matters to him so that we would see people experience God’s outrageous grace and outrageous provision in their lives.