This is Part 8 in a series on Jonah entitled “Surprised by Grace.”

In this sermon—“God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels"—we see the counterintuitive nature of God’s grace on full display.

Some have argued that the reason God gives Jonah another shot is because Jonah repented and humbled himself in the belly of the fish. They say God is blessing Jonah with another chance as a way of rewarding Jonah’s obedience. But there is plenty of evidence here that Jonah HASN’T repented and that his “obedience” is only skin deep anyway—it is external compliance at best. But even if Jonah had truly repented, making God’s blessing dependent on Jonah’s goodness rather than on God’s goodness diminishes grace into something we deserve, something we can earn with our obedience.

What we see here instead is that God doesn’t come back to Jonah because Jonah deserved it; God came back to Jonah because Jonah didn’t deserve it.

The message of this passage is that God loves us and keeps his promises to us, not because we are good, but because he is good.