Relentless | Part 4: The God Who Won’t Give Up On People | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

RELENTLESS
Part 4 | The God Who Won’t Give Up On People
Senior Pastor Keith Stewart 
August 09, 2026

Have you ever been offended by God's grace? Not because He showed it to you, but because He showed it to someone else. The book of Jonah doesn't end with a whale. It ends with a question. A question about God's heart. A question about our enemies. A question about whether we've become more interested in justice than mercy.
 
This Sunday we conclude RELENTLESS: The God Who Won't Give Up on People with a message entitled: WHEN GOD'S GRACE OFFENDS YOU
 
It may be the most uncomfortable—and most important—chapter in the entire book. Come discover why Jonah ends without a happy ending... and why that may be exactly the point.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

1. The book of Jonah ends without telling us whether Jonah ever changed. Why do you think God inspired the book to end that way? What effect does that unfinished ending have on you personally?
 
2. Jonah wasn't angry because God was unjust—he was angry because God was exactly Who He said He was: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love. Why do you think God's mercy can sometimes be difficult for religious people to accept?

3. Read Exodus 34:6–7 and Jonah 4:2. Jonah quotes God's own self-description as an accusation rather than an act of worship. What does that reveal about Jonah's heart? Have you ever struggled with one of God's attributes because of how it affected someone else?
 
4. The message described anger as a "warning light on the dashboard" that often reveals something deeper beneath the surface. What tends to lie underneath your own anger—fear, disappointment, hurt, pride, frustration, or something else?
 
5. Discuss the illustration of the three circles: I – You – They. Who is easiest for you to understand? Who is easiest to stereotype or judge? Why do you think that happens?
 
6. The statement was made, "The book of Jonah is God's attempt to redraw those circles." What would it look like for God to redraw those circles in your own life?
 
7. Peter eventually learned that "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34). What prejudices, assumptions, or categories might God still be challenging His Church to abandon today?
 
8. Jonah cared more about the plant than the people because the plant served his own comfort. Where are we tempted to value our comfort more than God's mission?
 

9. Throughout the book, God patiently pursued: the sailors, Jonah, Nineveh, and even Jonah again. What does that repeated pursuit teach us about God's character? Which example in the book speaks most powerfully to you?
 
10. The series concluded by saying:

God refuses to abandon pagans.
God refuses to abandon prophets.
God refuses to abandon cities.
God refuses to abandon bitter people.
God refuses to abandon us.

Which of those statements do you most need to hear today? Why?
 
Closing Challenge
 
This week, ask God to reveal one person you've quietly placed in the "they" category. Pray each day that God would help you see that person through His eyes rather than your own. Then look for one practical way to move them closer—from they, to you, through an intentional act of kindness, conversation, or prayer.
 
Where does the spirit of Jonah still live in me—and what would it look like for the relentless grace of God to change my heart?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, we're wrapping up our series from the book of Jonah today, the series we're calling Relentless. I did want to kind of gauge interest about something. The more I've been digging into this series and been getting a lot of really good feedback from you, it made me aware it's been some time since I've done a Bible study class. In particular, I'd like to do a four-week class about how to understand narrative literature, poetry, uh, end times literature, and then teaching what we call didactic literature because those are the four main types of literature in the Bible. If you'd be interested, and so it'd be like a midweek class, maybe your Tuesday or Wednesday night, and if you couldn't be here, we'd record it so you can watch it later. If you'd be interested in taking a class like that, just vlog, okay. Okay. Both services really seem to be very open to that idea, and several people after the service said, if you'll if you'll teach it, we'll be there. And so I I'll put that in the works and maybe we can start uh this fall and do a class like that. I I've taught I've taught pastors around the world actually, Bible study classes. I've done it in Africa many times. I've done 10-week classes here throughout the history of the church, but I just think it's time for a refresher, especially while we're doing this uh series about narrative. And I ask and I do have another series planned around the life of David, which will also be a narrative-based series. So it'd be good for you to have those tools so that when you read the Bible, you get as much out of it as I get out of it. Well, today's message is called When Grace, When God's Grace Offends You. It's all about the life of Jonah, this last chapter in his book. Let's begin with prayer. Father, we thank you for who you are. You are holy. Your name is precious to us beyond measure. And Lord, I know you're you're here. You say you inhabit the praise of your people, so your presence is already felt among us. I know you're working ministering from heart to heart and life to life, that you're speaking into our life the things that we need to hear today. In the same way, God, we will now continue to worship you around your word as you speak to the need of the moment that happens to be in our life. So, God, just do what you do so well. We praise you and we thank you for all this in Jesus' name. Amen. So think about this. If Jonah's story were a movie, last week would have been the climactic scene. The single greatest mass conversion in the history of the world happened in Nineveh. An entire city of hundreds of thousands got right with God, making Jonah the most successful evangelist in the history of the world. It's like a Billy Graham crusade on steroids. I mean, Billy Graham never saw anything even remotely like this. And if the if the movie ended there, everyone would leave the theater with tears and smiles and lots of warm fuzzies. But the movie doesn't end there. And the way it ends is the worst part of the story because there's no feel-good ending to Jonah's movie. If the movie ended the way this book is written, people would walk out of the theater. They'd demand their money back. So as we get started, I've got a question for you. I want to show you some movies. I'm going to ask you the question: what do all these movies have in common? Okay, just so look at these titles. Uh Rambo, Gone Girl, The Little Mermaid. See that one threw you no matter where you're going in your mind. Little Mermaid and the Planet of the Apes, Fight Club, Jurassic Park, Blade Runner, and The Shining. What do those movies have in common? And what all those movies have in common is the movie version of the story ended very differently from either the book and how it was written, the original book, or the original uh screenplay that it was based on. So it shouldn't surprise you that Hollywood often changes the way a story ends from the way it was originally written. Maybe a book ends in a frustrating way. Maybe the bad guy wins. Maybe somebody gets away with murder. And Hollywood doesn't like unhappy endings. Did you know this? Did you know that the original story, The Little Red Riding Hood, The Kid Gets Eaten by a Wolf? Hollywood's not making that movie. And you're probably not going to read that bedtime story to your kids either. Pretty Woman wasn't shot the way it was written either. The original script ended with Edward dumping Vivian in the middle of the street, and the final scene was supposed to be Vivian and her prostitute friend riding off to Disneyland. But test audiences hated that ending, so they didn't go with that ending. George Lucas once told Steven Spielberg, if the man and woman walk off into the sunset hand in hand in the last reel, it adds $10 million to the box office. So, in light of our love affair with happy endings, it's doubtful that Hollywood would ever make a movie about the life of Jonah, at least not the way it's written. Focus Group would say that this story ends badly. Nothing's resolved, and the audience is left wondering whatever happened to Jonah. So in this final chapter, we first begin with Jonah's anger over who God is. So get this. Even after this amazing spiritual awakening, this revival that happens in Nineveh, with hundreds of thousands coming to know God, Jonah leaves the city, goes out on a hillside to sulk. So I want you to hear the first four verses of chapter four. But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshius. I knew that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. But the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry? Jonah is angry because he hates what God loves. So what he does is indict the character of God. Now, where do you think Jonah got this description of God? Because he described God in a specific way. He said, You're gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Where he got that is from Moses 700 years prior. 700 years prior, Moses made a request of God and he asked this show me your glory. More than anything, Moses wanted to be more intimately connected to God, to know him more personally. So he asked for a full disclosure of the glory of God. But that's not possible. Human beings cannot look on the fullness of God and live. So what God decides to do is he's going to give him a partial glimpse into the hinder parts of his glory. That's the way the Bible describes it. He's going to give him a glimpse. In addition to that partial reveal, God is going to fully reveal his name. Now think about this. A name is not just the syllables or letters that make up what you're called. Your name is who you are. Because in the Bible, names represent something. And God's name is the same way. God's name is about his character, who he is. So God's going to reveal his name. Now you might remember this incident. Moses is told to hide in the cleft of the rock. We even have old spiritual songs about hiding in the cleft of the rock. God tells Moses, hide in the cleft of the rock, and he's going to cover him and pass by. So in the Middle East, there's a mountain that the locals call Jebel Musa. In Arabic, it means the mountain to Moses. We call it Mount Sinai. Just beneath the very summit of Mount Sinai, there's a small cave just big enough for one person. Most people who've studied the geography of Mount Sinai think that this is the place where God kind of tucked Moses into that little cave and allowed him to pass by in his glory. So as he's passing by, the Bible describes what happened next, like this. And the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who gives loving kindness for thousands, who gives forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Now, what's significant about this verse? This is Scripture's fullest self-description of God's character in God's own words. So God is describing this is who I am, and this is coming from his mouth. This is not Moses describing God, this is God describing himself. And what does God say? What reflects his glory more than anything else? He says, I'm compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Now get this. These words are so important that they're quoted verbatim in other places in the Old Testament. So you can see it in Numbers 14, Nehemiah 9, Psalm 103, and Psalm 145, Jeremiah 32, Joel 2, and Jonah 4:2. You can also hear echoes of it in other places like Deuteronomy 5, 1 Kings 3, Lamentations 3, Daniel 9, and Nahum 1. Now hear what I'm saying. This is a foundational statement about who God is, about his character. It's one of the most important and most neglected theological texts in all the Bible. You know, I went to Bible college and seminary. So graduate school, undergraduate school, and graduate school, and I never had a theology professor talk about how important these verses are. These verses are essential to understanding God because this is God saying, if you want to know who I am, this is who I am. This is my name. This is me revealing myself to you. So let me break it down for you. God's self-description. Number one, he's compassionate. Now the Hebrew word for compassion is Raham. The root of that word is the same root as the word womb. So what God is saying is, I love people like a mother who bears a child in her womb. That's the way God loves us. So God's love is compassionate. It's Raham. Second, it's gracious. This is the Hebrew word chanan. Chanan means to bend or to be inclined. And what it describes is God bending toward us in our weakness. That God is inclined to help us. God doesn't have to be forced to do this. He does this because he genuinely wants to. Then third, God describes himself as slow to anger. In other words, he's patient. It takes a long time for God to heat up. Takes a long time for him to get angry. Aren't you glad of that? I am. Takes a long time to get angry. He's no hurry to judge sinners. Final characteristic: loving kindness. This is the Hebrew word chesed. Some people pronounce it hesed. It's the same as the New Testament word grace. That God has grace. God abounds in grace. There's no deficiency of it in him. He never runs out of it. He never runs low. So guess what? Guess get what's happening here? Jonah is not questioning whether God exists. He's not questioning God's power. He's not even questioning God's holiness. Jonah is angry because God is exactly who he says he is. What he does is he takes the most amazing theological text in the Old Testament. He takes the words out of God's own mouth, not to praise him, but to indict him. He speaks of God's compassion, grace, patience, and loving kindness as though they were defects. He uses God's character as an excuse for his disobedience. So this is not a good thing that Jonah's doing. And that leads to the question: what is the Jonah syndrome? So Jonah 4:1 tells us that Jonah is furious. And this doesn't mean a little upset. He's really hacked off. Now you need to know anger is a great diagnostic tool. It's a signal that something's wrong. It's a light on the dashboard of life. Because as I've told you many times in the past, anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is never the first thing you feel. We bolt over to anger because we feel powerful in anger, but it's never the first thing I feel. I'm either hurt, afraid, or frustrated. That's what anger comes from. So between what happens to me in my anger, I typically have an interpretation of that event. And that interpretation of the event is what makes me angry. Anger is mentioned six times in this short chapter because it's consuming Jonah. The Ninevites, they're fine. It's Jonah who needs a lot of work. Now, to me, this proof, this story, is proof of the old anger, the old adage, we're angriest when we're most wrong. Isn't that the truth? Now, don't say this to your husband or wife when you're having an argument, okay? But it's true. Keep it in the back of your mind, okay? We're angriest when we're most wrong. So when we're angry, we often do one of two things. First, we misdirect our anger. As we'll see in a minute, Jonah gets all bent out of shape over a plant that dies. It's a perfect example of misdirected anger. The more anger we carry inside of us, the more we end up taking it out on those who have nothing to do with it. We can't help it. Because the anger reservoir of our life is so full that all it takes is the slightest jolt or provocation and it spills out on people that have nothing to do with it. I mean, how many of us here have lashed out at someone even though they weren't the reason for our anger? All of us have done that at some point. How many of us have taken a nickel event and turned it into a $50 event simply because we were already in a bad mood and we took out our anger on that person? Happens all the time. Jonah is mad because he can't manipulate God into doing his will. He can't get God to change his mind and destroy the Ninevites. Jonah is upset that God is forgiving. And since he's so filled with rage, everything and anything in his path is going to get a taste of it. A second thing that happens when we get angry is we become judgmental. Now listen to this. Judgmental people will always do one or both of these things. One, they'll demonstrate an unchrist-like spirit, which is typically bitterness, or two, move toward an unchrist-like solution, which is condemnation. When we're quick to judge, we identify more with feelings of condemnation than we do compassion. And friends, that's backwards. There's nothing more unattractive than a Christian who has a bitter condemning spirit. If we're ever going to come to grip with our fears and our prejudices toward others, if we're ever going to get beyond the things that hurt us, who that maybe hurts that have been deposited into our life by other people, then we're going to have to learn more about the compassion and forgiveness of God. The truth is, we don't like to acknowledge this or admit this, but we're harsh with others while being easy on ourselves. So let me show you this because it has a lot to do with the story of Jonah. Think of it like this. I want you to imagine three concentric circles. The outermost circle is the impersonal they. These are the people that we don't have real contact with or relationship with. It's easiest to make harsh judgments about they, those people out there. The middle circle is you. Now, these are people we tend to have some level of a relationship with, even if it's just a working relationship, so it's a little bit tougher to be judgmental with this group. The innermost circle is I. When it comes to the things that I personally do, I can be easiest on myself. So for many of us, I, that's the person whose motives I understand and whose failures I excuse. You are the people I know a little bit more about and I'm less critical. They are often the people that become categories rather than human beings. Which means this: the farther people are from us relationally, the easier it is to simplify them, stereotype them, and judge them. Isn't that the truth? The farther people are away, the less we know them, we're not in a relationship with them. It's easy to stereotype, it's easy to judge they. So think of it like this I, my motives are understandable. You, your actions are debatable. They, their character is obvious. So this is how it plays out in real life. They are deceitful liars. You don't tell the truth. I exaggerate sometimes. Okay, that's the way it plays out. Or they are lazy. You are undisciplined. I'm just super busy. That's it. They are immoral sexual deviance. You lust. I just struggle with temptation. They have no commitment. You are irresponsible. I forget sometimes, don't we all? So we tend to give nuance to ourselves, partial understanding to people who are like us, and we stereotype the people who are not like us. So the farther I move away from the center of my life, me, the flatter people become. You see, I know my own story, I know something of your story, but they they I reduce to a label. Illegal alien, liberal, conservative, Muslim, elite, homeless, rich, poor, Assyrian. I no longer see a person, I just see a category. So Jonah has no trouble extending grace to himself, I. And he and he gives grace to his own people, you. But when it comes to the Ninevehites, they, they're beyond the reach of compassion. So, in light of that, let me remind you what the book of Jonah is about. The book of Jonah is God's attempt to redraw those circles. Pure and simple. We naturally divide the world into I, you, and they, but God refuses to let they become a they because he's always pulling people closer and closer into the circle of belonging. So this is where and how Jonah gets stuck. And in this chapter, Jonah is tapping into a truth that's returned to many times in the New Testament. And I'd like to share with you one of the most notable occurrences. I call this dealing with otherness is the heart of our faith. So one of the things that's always struck me about the story of Jonah is how it's repeated in the New Testament. But you may not have recognized it when it was repeated. So let me explain. This happens in Acts chapters 9 and 10. God takes Peter through a series of personal challenges to his belief system. You see, Peter has been a devout practicing Jew all of his life. And if you know anything about the Jewish religion, you know that a big part of their faith practice was observing the purity code. The purity code was largely about what things were considered clean and what things were considered unclean. What sort of practices made you clean or unclean? What sort of animal and people were considered unclean? Much of their faith surrounded and focused around observing the purity code. So in Acts chapter 9, Peter raises Tabitha from the dead. But to do so, he has to have contact with a dead body. A definite violation of the Purity Code. Then he immediately goes from that event and stays with a man named Simon the Tanner. So a tanner is a person who works, makes their livelihood around dead animals, the skin of dead animals. So he's having to live around death. He's having to be surrounded by dead animal carcasses. Again, major violation of the purity code. So Peter touches death, he voluntarily lives among death. Then in chapter 10, God gives Peter a vision of unclean animals. You remember the story? He's on a rooftop, he sees this great sheet of animals let down from heaven, and they're all unclean animals, the kind of animals that as a Jewish person he's forbidden to eat. So Peter's never had a good taste in BLT. I mean, that's not on no McRibs, nothing like that for Peter, because those are unclean animals. But when that vision of these unclean animals comes down before Peter, God says, Arise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter argues with God. Never a good idea. But he says, he says, No, Lord, for I've never eaten anything common or unclean. Remember this story? He refuses to do what God told him to do. And God says, What I have declared clean, don't you call common or unclean? And so God's message in that is not just about animals that were possible to eat, it's about human beings. It's about the reality that there is no human being that we consider unclean. And so after all three of these episodes, touching the dead, living among the dead, having to eat these unclean animals, then God sends Peter to Cornelius' house, a Gentile who's considered unclean. And he's got to go into the house of a man who's considered unclean. So Luke is building this story step by step, moving Peter further and further away from his old belief system to show him how God in Christ has declared all things clean. Going way beyond animals, he's declaring no human being is unclean, there are no untouchables, there's no human beings beyond the reach of God. It leads Peter to this stunning realization. He says, I now realize how true it is that God doesn't show favoritism. Aren't you glad? No favoritism with God, no people who are just in and some people who are out. Everyone's the same. So when the book of Acts began, Peter was held captive by his own prejudice and exclusivity. He was held captive by years of tradition teaching him distorted ideas about what purity was all about. And now God is stripping it all away. And the moment he walks through the home through the door of Cornelius' house, a Gentile Roman officer, he finally fully embraces the challenge God's laid before his life. Now the church is really on the move because Peter has finally understood grace trumps race. So what's this got to do with Jonah? Well, you know where this occurs? It occurs at this tiny seaport town called Joppa. Have you heard that story? This is about another Jewish prophet, Peter, being sent with a message to the Gentiles. It's a Jonah story on repeat, but this time the Holy Spirit's involved. So think about this. Here are two great stories. Both take place in Joppa, both involve the call of God, both prophets are told to rise up, both are told to go to the Gentiles, and not just any Gentile, but enemy nations. Jonah to the Assyrians and Peter to the Romans. Both involve supernatural animals, both show us a receptive audience with the Gentiles, but only one of the prophets, Peter. Peter gets it and the other doesn't. So Peter willingly went to the Gentiles with the message of hope and redemption. And because he said yes to God, we're all sitting here today. We're sitting here today. Because Peter understood the message of God's love is too big to confine to the Jewish people. It's for all people everywhere. So he continues that calling in every generation. Rise up. Go to your Nineveh. Go share my message of hope, but especially with the hard-to-reach ones, the people that are in the they category that were most tempted to judge, to flatten, and stereotype. So let's get back to our story God's grief over Jonah's heart. So Jonah walked out of Nineveh after this huge revival, and he finds a tree and he sits down under it to sulk. He kind of made a makeshift shelter of leafy branches. He sits there in the shade of that, hoping as he looks over Nineveh, that God's going to change his mind and go ahead and destroy it all. But he's displeased until the shade, and the shade makes him happy. Things are looking up. Then God sent a worm and it destroys the plant, and the next day the worm's bored into the shade tree, it's withered away. The sun came up, it's hot and blistering on Jonah's head. The sun's beating down on his head. He says, I'm ready to faint. In fact, he says, I'm ready to die, God. So let's hear the rest of the story. Then God said to Jonah, What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree? Jonah said, Plenty of right. It makes me angry enough to die. God said, What's this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So why can't I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure? This big city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand childlike people who don't yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals. So get what's happening here. First, God offers an object lesson. So in the heat of the day, God offers Jonah shelter, some shade. Most scholars believe this was a castor oil plant. Castor oil plants grow from about 10 to 15 feet. They grow very rapidly, but they tend to die quickly because they have a very shallow root system. It gives shade for Jonah's hot head. This makes him very happy and relieved. By the way, this is the only place in the book of Jonah where we see Jonah is happy. Now you can learn a lot by people by noticing what makes them happy, can't you? Jonah's happiness is tied to his own personal comfort. When God appoints the worm to burrow into the plant and kill it, Jonah has no more shade. He's once again mad and miserable. So God says to him, Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? And he says, For sure I do. I have good reason to be angry. It's then that God begins to draw some lessons for Jonah. He explains to Jonah while he felt sorry for the plant, Jonah had no personal investment in that. But God had compassion on people from whom he had invested everything. In addition, Jonah's compassion and caring was not really about the plant itself, was it? It was about what the plant did for him. The plant made him happy. Jonah's compassion was very self-centered and very self-serving. He cared about his own needs. He didn't care about the needs of others. But God cared for people not because they were useful to him, not because of what they did for him, but because he made them and he loved them. Aren't you glad that God's love for you and me is not utilitarian? God doesn't love you because he thinks he can get all this work out of you or get this value out of your life. He loves you because you're valuable to him, because he made you. So every person reflects this image of God in them. And that's what God is saying to Jonah. God's been trying to get this message to Jonah's heart throughout the entire book. The first time it happens with Jonah and the sailors, they have this amazing and gracious compassion toward Jonah. They even become believers in Yahweh. Then the lesson came through the great fish. God saved Jonah from certain death and gave him another chance. All of this was followed by one of the single greatest miracles in all of Scripture, the national repentance of the city of Nineveh, where hundreds of thousands surrendered their lives to God, grace upon grace on top of more grace. So now God is trying one more time to get through to Jonah, giving him an object lesson to explain why he cares so much for people that he created. It's also worth noting, God doesn't respond to anger with anger. Even now, God is treating Jonah with grace. Throughout this entire exchange, God asks questions instead of indicting Jonah. Jonah explodes in anger. God doesn't explode in anger. Why? Because he's compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness. The very things that Jonah has complained about are the very things he needs right now, even though he's in full rebellion. Jonah says he hates, he hates that God is this way. Yet if God wasn't this way, Jonah wouldn't have a hope. God could have blasted Jonah, but instead he treats Jonah the same way he treats Nineveh. He treats him with grace. What Jonah complained about, you're compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, he's absolutely dependent on all those qualities right now in this moment as he's throwing his tantrum. So there's no thundering rebuke of Jonah here. Just gentle, thoughtful questioning. He caused Jonah to look at his own heart. He says, God could have said you're wrong to be angry, but instead he asked questions so that Jonah can get to the source of his anger. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a story left unfinished. So get this. The big question asked is, is this a prayer answered or unanswered? In case you haven't picked up on this yet, Jonah chapter 4 is a prayer. We had another chapter, Jonah chapter 2, that's a prayer. So half of this book is prayer. This is a dialogue between God and Jonah and Jonah and God. Jonah is expressing his heart to God. God's expressing his heart back to Jonah. Prayer is the way God changes us. In prayer, we speak our truth to God, but in prayer, God speaks his truth to us. God can and will soften our heart toward people we thought we couldn't love. We might even find ourselves surprisingly praying, God, help me to see people the way you see them so that I can love them the way you love them. The question becomes: will this exchange, will this time of prayer be the means by which God changes Jonah's heart? We don't know the answer. Here's another question: a bigger story than we imagine. Now, I told you last week that Jesus brought up the story of Jonah to the people of his day. They were asking for a sign, and he said, No more signs for you. Just one more sign, the sign of Jonah, and that's it. In fact, here's the verse. This is from the book of Matthew 12, 39. He answered, A wicked and adulterous generation asked for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. So what is the sign of Jonah? Now it's easy to say the death, burial, and resurrection, which is true, and I mean that's it in a big way, no doubt. But I wonder if there's more to it than that. So let me explain. This book, the book of Jonah, is so important that Jewish people read it in its entirety every year on the highest holy day in the Jewish calendar, which is Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. They read the entire book of Jonah. If you were to ask rabbis, why Jonah? What does Jonah have to do with the Day of Atonement? Rabbis would say it's because it's about repentance. But as we've already learned as we study this book, it's not Jonah that repents. Jonah never says, I was wrong, I repent, God forgive me. Never ask for any of that. There's no repentance from Jonah. The repentance we see, the sailors repented, the Ninevites, we see Gentile repentance on display, but not Jewish repentance. So why, of all Jewish holidays, on the high holy day of Yom Kippur, is the book of Jonah read? Now I want to remind you of something else I said when we started the series. In Hebrew, the story begins with the word and. Weird way to start a book, right? Because and's a conjunction, it joins two ideas. If you start with and, you have to say, well, what am I joining this to? What came before? Well, there is no Jonah 1 and Jonah 2. And some people thought, well, maybe we just lost part of the book, but that's not it. The reason it starts with the word and is because you and I are supposed to ask the question, what else do we know about Jonah? Because you see, Jonah's story doesn't begin in Jonah chapter 1, verse 1. It actually begins in the Old Testament book of 2 Kings chapter 14. And what that passage tells us is that early in his ministry, Jonah was called to deliver a message to Israel during a time of great spiritual resistance and rebellion. He was from a little town called Gath Hefer. It's a small village close to another town you're familiar with, Nazareth. So Jonah's first message was aimed at his own people, Israel. So now, based on everything I've told you in the series, I want to tell you the story of Jonah one more time, but this time I want to leave out his name. And as I tell you this story, I want you to ask yourself: is there anything peculiar about what I'm saying? Here's how it goes The prophet came from a little town in the northern part of Israel in the region the New Testament calls Galilee. He was raised not far from a village called Nazareth, likely growing up very poor. He's sent by God to his own people at a time when the kingdom was weak and in rebellion. He had a message first to the Jewish people, then later to the Gentiles. Throughout his story, we see all kinds of evidence of the surprising spiritual receptivity of Gentiles. The prophet is handed over to his death by others. He's buried in the sea, swallowed by death, and resurrected on the third day. After his resurrection, he turns to the Gentiles, and they are overwhelmingly responsive to his message. They believe when the people of God won't. Their response to the message is nothing short of miraculous. Does that story sound familiar? Of course. It's a Jesus story, right? But you see, here's the deal. If you don't tell this story the way it's written, you don't see any of that. You pass over it. If you flatten this story into a runaway prophet and a whale, you've missed the heart of this message. The heart of this message is about God's relentless pursuit. And here's the thing. Why have the Jewish people every year on Yom Kippur read this story? I believe it's in hopes that one day God knows that his people will read this story and hear the story beneath the story. That one day they'll really hear the message of Jesus because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. Amen? He's the one who came to pay the penalty. But if you read the story right, you tell the story right, you see Jesus in the story of Jonah and not just in the burial at sea and the resurrection. It's in every detail of his life. So I hear people all the time say stuff like, you know, they disparage the Bible. Oh, how can you believe the Bible? Just full of contradictions and stuff like that. And I honestly want to ask, what book are you reading? Because you know, this book that I read amazes me every time I sit down to read it. This book that I read is a book that is integrated from cover to cover. This book that I'm reading is telling a story about an Old Testament prophet, and then I see it played out again in the life of Peter, but I realize when I tell this story right, I see Jesus in every detail, and I think only God could do something like that. It is, even if you didn't believe in inspiration, you'd have to admit it's a literary masterpiece that over hundreds of years in different writers, that these elements combine and move in such fluid beauty to one another. I love scripture. I love the way it presents a story. I'm fascinated every time I read it because I get to sit down with the living author who wrote it, and he helps to guide my heart. So the final question this unfinished story is a prophet changed, or are we? So the book of Jonah doesn't begin with Once Upon a Time and it doesn't end with Happily Ever After. Bottom line, Jonah's story ends in a stalemate with God's final words hanging mid-air, and Jonah's still angry with God. That's it. No resolution. The Grinch Stole Christmas has a better ending than this. I mean, this is the way the book ends. The question we're left with is did Jonah finally get it or not? Now let me caution you about something. You have to be beware of making excuses for Jonah. The book is written in such a way to make you feel empathy for the sinners and the pagan sailors and the Ninevites, but not for the prodigal prophet. A lot of preachers feel the temptation to rescue Jonah's reputation. But when you do that, you're doing something that the book did not do. Jonah was written to leave you, not with warm fuzzies, but to make you uncomfortable and to leave you with tough questions. Did God get through to Jonah? I mean, let's face it, we want Jonah to see the light. We want him to remember what God has done for him, we want Jonah to repent and have faith and fall into the arms of God. But we're never told in this story whether Jonah did that. So the question we ask ourselves: who besides God knew all the details of this story? Who knew what Jonah prayed in the belly of the great fish? And who knew what Jonah prayed when he sat out on the hillside over the city of Nineveh and sulking and said and prayed things he did to God? Only Jonah knew that. Only Jonah knew those things. So only Jonah could tell this story the way it's told to us. And if Jonah is the one writing the story, then I think that means he willingly wrote it in such a way as to make himself look bad. In other words, he did this on purpose. And I think that means this is his way of confessing. I get I got it wrong. I'm just telling you the way it happened. Because you see, all of us are Jonah. To leave the story unfinished, to me, is the genius part of the book of Jonah. It's as if Jonah is saying, you know, the ending's really up to you and me now. Because the verdict's still out on us. We can follow Jonah down the path of hating our enemies, or will we finally and fully begin to love who God loves? Jimmy Drapery was the head of uh Life Weight Christian Resources. He said, Our concern should not be whether a man can live inside a fish, but whether the spirit of Jonah lives inside of us. This book makes you look at yourself. The challenges we run away from, our openness to seeing God at work in people that we judge as being far from God. The ultimate question the book is asking is, Do you love your enemies? So who is Nineveh today? Is it your next door neighbor? Your coworker? Your boss? Is it the Muslim, the Hindu, or the atheistic family that lives down the street from you? Who's hard to love? Who are they? You know, the ones we flatten into a stereotype because it makes it easier to say mean and nasty things about them, to judge them, to not love them. So this final chapter isn't about God giving up on Jonah. It's about God refusing to give up on Jonah. Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad that God has, He refuses to give up even on stubborn prophets? Aren't you glad that God has refused to give up on you and me, even when there's so much left in our life that needs changing? God continues to relentlessly pursue us. When I began this series, I called it relentless for a reason because I knew in your mind, and in most people's mind, we think God is relentlessly pursuing those pagans and those Ninevehites. No, the book is about God relentlessly pursuing his prophet. That God's not going to write him off even when he gets it wrong. That God continues to try to open his heart and open his mind with grace. He pours abundant grace into the life of Jonah. Here's what I know: God refuses to abandon pagans. God refuses to abandon prophets. God refuses to abandon cities. God refuses to abandon bitter people. God refuses to abandon us. He refused to abandon me. To leave me in my own prejudice, in my own ignorance, in my own judgment, a they out there. God said, I want your heart to look like my heart. Because you see, there's a lot of they out there who don't know that they're loved by God. There really is. There's a lot of people. And I just wonder sometimes if the church just lived out its creed, if we just loved the people that God loved, if we wouldn't see such a revival, not just in this church, but in this nation, unlike we've ever seen before. You know, there are groups that we we may like to hate on, but I think, what if they really saw a true Christian witness of love and grace? What if they saw the church be in the church? What if they saw people instead of coming up and telling them everything they disagree with? What if they found people who said, hey, you know, I know this God who never gives up on people? He didn't give up on me, and I'm sure he won't give up on you either. Just come and follow him like I'm trying to follow him. And if we invited people into that life, wouldn't we see not just our city, but our culture, our nation change? Wouldn't we see the world change? Isn't this the call? And this is the call of the book of Jonah. God says, go out there. Go to those people that you so easily judge and love them the way I want them to be loved. Let's pray. Father, I just want to thank you. The more I lean into this book, the more fascinated I am. What an incredible story. What a genius way of telling it. How we see it repeated in the New Testament in Peter, how we see it overlaid on the life of Christ. God, only a God like you could inspire that kind of literary genius. But even more than that, as we dig into this book, we arrive again and again at the same conclusion. Jonah is the one that's messed up. The Gentiles, no problem, easily turn. The sailors on the ship easily become worshipers of Yahweh. The people of Nineveh asked for a lousy five-word message, become followers of Yahweh. It's amazing how easily some people turn that we categorize as they. But Lord, it's Jonah's heart, and it's our heart that needs the work. So, God, I would ask, number one, if anybody is here, and for whatever reason they have felt judged and maligned and stereotyped by people who call themselves the people of God, that they would understand your heart in this book. That God, there are no unclean people anymore. God, you show no favoritism. That God, you love all of us equally because we're all made in your image. You love us not because of what we can do for you. You don't love us in a utilitarian way. You love us simply because we deserve to be loved. And I thank you for that. I thank you for that abundant grace. I thank you for what Christ did on the cross to make my forgiveness and reconciliation possible. If someone like that would like to begin this journey today, that they would pray in their heart, Jesus, I want you in my life. I don't understand it all, but I do know enough to know that you must love me pretty incredibly to do all this for me. So come into my life, change me from the inside out. I acknowledge I'm a sinner, which means I do things my own way instead of your way. God, I want to do things your way from now on. And for every child of God in this room, I pray that we take this message of Jonah to heart, that we would think about our own propensity to judge the people farthest away from us, to put them in the category of they, to be most understanding with ourselves and with our friends, but the people far away from us, we often stereotype and judge and say awful, hateful things about them. God, we want our heart to look more like yours. And we believe, God, if we follow you and follow your creed and follow your example, that God not only will all our lives be changed, but this world will be changed. I thank you for all that in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all.