Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 24, 2022 | RETOLD - Jonah and the Whale

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July 24, 2022 | RETOLD - Jonah and the Whale · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to see you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new with us this morning, we want to welcome you.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're continuing our series titled Retold, where we've been looking at stories in the Bible, uh, whether they were ones that you grew up with or in your picture Bibles or maybe in a children's ministry.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you had the sort of uh felt map here, uh, felt board, and got to see all of these things.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we're looking at these stories not because they're wrong in the sense of the way that we learned them as kids, but rather there's a deeper way that we can understand them, a greater context that we can bring out so that we sort of bring them from our childhood into our lives today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, before we get going, though, I think it's important to see that we always have to go back to the original before we can understand uh what the lesson actually is.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't, if we fail to do that, then sometimes we can go a long way without realizing our mistake.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is uh this is the book Dracula.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was written in 1897 by a guy named Brahm Stoker, and uh it's never been out of print since it was first written in 1897 and published.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been translated into a bunch of different languages.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is that in some of these languages, particularly as they found out in 2010 and the Icelandic translation of Dracula, for over a hundred years people had been reading the wrong book.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't actually Dracula.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: They had translated into Icelandic, and it was a completely different story, character, and plot.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I grant that the Icelandic Dracula fans are particularly small niche of the literary environment, but still, it's important that we go back and check the original.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere, we might get a misunderstanding of the text.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning we're going to be looking back at a story that many of you are familiar with, but maybe for the wrong reasons.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, most notably, it involves a very large fish, perhaps a whale, um, but it also involves two main characters, their struggle with each other, a divine worm and a divine plant.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, with that, you've probably guessed, we're going to be talking about Jonah and the whale.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we discuss Jonah and the whale, right, like a lot of the stories we grew up with, you're probably thinking, like, let's recall the events that we know, he gets swallowed by a whale, right?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty much, that's pretty much what we know about the story.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that he went uh to a city called Nineveh to preach there, to let them know about um God's coming judgment and his mercy.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But most of us don't remember actually what happens in the story.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: See, Jonah is four chapters long.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: After we're done this morning, I'd really encourage you to go back and read it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have time to go through all of the story this morning, but it doesn't take long.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll see that in this story that God is bringing out a greater narrative.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it shows the battle between Jonah and the Lord, between Jonah's will and God's will.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna sort of track that conflict throughout this morning as we look at the story.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that I want to discuss before we get into the narrative itself is that there's a little criticism that has been levied against the book of Jonah.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: See, the book of Jonah does have some interesting elements in it, namely, as we've talked about, him being swallowed by a fish.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last hundred years, these individuals, well, it's been more than a hundred years, but in fairly modern times, people have begun to criticize parts of the Bible, saying that there's no way it could ever be true if it has some kind of fantastical element in it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Seeming to forget that our entire faith hinges upon this idea that our Savior rose from the dead, which is a miraculous claim in and of itself.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: But they look back at these stories and they say, well, Jonah, that was a parable, that was an allegory, there was a moral lesson they were trying to include, there was something about it that was just, it was wisdom for the time.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way it could be literal.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning I have a very small set of reasons, uh, small but important, why I think we should take Jonah as a literal story in the Bible, and uh why you should too.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, is Jonah a parable?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's four reasons here that we'll get over briefly.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that Jonah is a historical figure, he's what's known as a minor prophet.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And by being a minor prophet, it doesn't mean that he was tiny.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It also doesn't mean that he wasn't important, but it is in reference to the amount of uh basically written work that is included in the Bible.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So a major prophet would be somebody like Isaiah or Ezekiel, one of these guys who has, you know, lots and lots of chapters.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: The minor prophets are kind of tiny.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are 12 of them in total.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the others would be like Obadiah, Hosea, Nahum, Habakkuk.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of those are the names of uh chap of books in your Bible.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I promise, you can check.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there are 12 of them.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we also see that Jonah is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as being a prophet.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: In 2 Kings chapter 14, Jeroboam did what was evil in the Lord's sight.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: He did not turn away from all the sins Jeroboam, another Jeroboam, son of Nabat, had caused Israel to commit.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: He restored Israel's border from Lebo Hamath as far as the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through his servant, the prophet Jonah, son of Amitai, from Gath Hepher.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we see that Jonah, working as a prophet within the northern kingdom of Israel during this time, that, and his contemporaries would have been like Amos and Hosea, that in particular, one of Jonah's prophecies was that this northern kingdom that had kind of been ravaged by wars and little skirmishes, that their borders were going to be restored.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so when Jeroboam does that, when he restores Israel's border, they're like, hey, that was what Jonah was talking about.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not much, but there isn't else, there are other examples in the Bible of Jonah speaking outside of our story.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that we should look at is the context of the minor prophets, which is simply saying that the other 12, well, the other 11 minor prophetic books, all of them are supposed to be taken literally.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of them are stories or prophecies of individuals who God has raised up, he has called them to deliver his message to the people.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it would be very, very odd if Jonah were the only one without any reason why, that should be interpreted as some kind of parable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: None of the others do that.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The third is that, well, if we think that Jonah being swallowed by a whale is too much of a big deal for God to handle, we have got some rethinking to do.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's really not that extravagant of a claim.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, last year this guy named uh Michael, he's a lobster fisherman near Cape Cod, got swallowed by a humpback whale, lived, and then made it on Kimmel, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not actually that rare.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there are other instances of people, surprisingly, getting swallowed by whales.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, granted, we don't need this kind of thing to sort of prove our narrative, but to say that Jonah is some kind of parable simply because he got swallowed by a big fish, I think that's a pretty weak claim.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: God can do many amazing things, and uh he doesn't have to go on Kimmel to prove it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the fourth and final, and one that I think is maybe the most interesting, is that Jesus refers to Jonah later on in Matthew and Luke.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so when he's referencing Jonah here, we're gonna see it's kind of a long passage, but there's a couple things happening.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, said to Jesus, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: He answered them: An evil and adulterous generation demands a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah's preaching.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And look, something greater than Jonah is here.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, for context, basically what's happening is the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the scribes, they're going up to Jesus, they're calling him teacher or rabbi, and they're basically, in their effort to continuously and unendingly test him to see if he is who he says he is, they are asking for miracles.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has performed many miracles, not just to prove that he is who he says he is, but oftentimes for the benefit or always for the benefit of others.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And now they just continue to ask for these signs, and so he rebuffs them.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's frustrated because they aren't recognizing the true reason that he's there.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: They just keep wanting him to heal people or do amazing things.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, You will not receive a sign except for the one that the prophet Jonah brought about.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And here Jonah is inserted as something that we would call a type of Christ.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's typology is basically this study where things, particularly in the Old Testament, David would be another good example, where they went through things that foreshadowed in a very specific way something that Jesus was going to do later on.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this instance, Jonah being in the belly of a whale is foreshadowing and referencing what is to come in the future, where Jesus is going to be in the tomb for three days and three nights before he is resurrected.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see that Jonah here is obviously referred to as a real event, just as the resurrection was.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, this is interesting, Nineveh, which is the city where Jonah goes, they are the ones who need the, they are the ones who receive the preaching of Jonah, that they are to repent.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they are, much to the chagrin of the Pharisees who would hear this, they are a Gentile nation.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: When Jonah goes to preach to them in the book of Jonah, it's the first time and on a large scale that somebody outside or a group of people outside the nation of Israel have received the word of the Lord.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is saying that it is more, it is a testament against those he is currently talking to, that people long ago who did not know God, who did not see Jesus, accepted the word of the Lord, and yet they require miracles in order to trust in him.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, the men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment in the future to condemn you.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, because of all of these things, I think it is very clear that this book should be taken literally.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should too.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, let's talk about then, if it is a literal book, what does it mean that God is doing all of these amazing things to Jonah?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: How does it affect this battle that they are sort of locked in?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jonah thinks he's locked in, as if he is able to actually rebel against God and succeed.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, to our regularly scheduled programming.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: In Jonah 1, verses 1 through 3, this is where we'll begin.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it, because their evil has come up before me.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord's presence.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord's presence.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: On the count of three, we're all going to say Tarshish together.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, Tarshish.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can have a game when you're leaving church today, trying to see how many times you can say that without messing up in a row.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So God's word goes to Jonah.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And because of some of the things we've already looked at, Jonah's not some random guy.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is a prophet of the Lord who is faithful and dedicated to him and is giving this message of prophecy to the nation of Israel.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jonah isn't some scrub, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is a prophet of the Lord.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so God says, get up, go to this great city.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonah says, No, I'm not going to do that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're coming from Jonah's perspective, there might be a couple reasons why you wouldn't be inclined to do it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, it's really far away.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's about, oh, 500 some miles.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of depends where you're measuring from, but it's really far away.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a long walk.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, and far more important than just the inconvenience, is that, like I mentioned, Nineveh represents the first sort of pagan nation that is going to be receiving the word of the Lord.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: That Jonah as a prophet is going to be the first one to enter essentially hostile territory.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so when Jonah goes to the people who, you know, decorate their castles with scenes of torture and hate people like Jonah and try and kill people like Jonah and ultimately conquer Israel, you can understand why there might be a bit of hesitation on his part.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The problem, though, is that Jonah acts on the word's command, just not in the way that God would want him to.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: We actually find out later on in chapter 4 more of his motivation for why he wouldn't want to go to Nineveh.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: In chapter 4, verse 2, he says, That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Jonah's like, God, you are so amazing and loving and wonderful and compassionate, and I don't want Nineveh to know about that.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want Nineveh to know how great you are.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so he ends up fleeing.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, this is a really rough judgment of kind of where he's going, but Jonah picks a boat in Joppa and heads west.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know exactly where Tarshish is at.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this, the most likely location, is sort of on the Atlantic side of Spain here.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, he doesn't just say no to God, he runs away.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as he's running away, we see in this is all in chapter one, there's some really interesting details that we can pick up about his fleeing.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The first of which is that he doesn't tell a single person who he is, what he's doing, why he's going to Nineveh, or why he's going to Tarshish, rather, and, you know, maybe his in his heritage later on, when a storm comes that the Lord sends, we realize that the sailors who are around him don't know a single thing about Jonah except for what he did tell them, which is that he is trying to run away from the Lord's presence.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is the only piece of information he gave them.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said he was trying to run away from God.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we keep going this morning, uh, there's gonna be a couple of things, though, that we're gonna talk about when it comes to Jonah and his battle with God.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna tell you that the greatest takeaway that you're going to be able to receive from this story is if you are able to identify with Jonah and his rebellion.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know that um, well, as far as I'm aware, none of you have ever received a word from the Lord and then hopped in a boat in the Mediterranean and gone the other direction, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fairly rare circumstance.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But who of us has not run away from the Lord at some point?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who of us has not tried to flee his presence?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who of us has not tried to escape the command of God upon our life?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: The note, good thing that he is calling Jonah to and saying, that's not gonna work for me, Lord.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go this other direction.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as we see that and can identify with that, or well, at least I can identify with Jonah, we notice though that his fleeing looks a lot like ours too.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to do it in secret.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want anybody to know about it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's trying to escape the Lord's presence, as if that's something that is possible.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonah, thinking that he can travel by boat so far that God can't reach him, eventually understands what everybody does, which is that in their sin that they continue to pursue, in the lives that they are trying to lead away from God's presence, not only will it affect them, but it begins affecting other people around them too.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah is falling asleep on the boat and a massive storm comes up.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, Jonah recognizes that it is from the Lord after all of the pagan sailors do the exact same thing.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, it really seems like the reason this storm is happening is because of you.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, You're right.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been able to escape the Lord's presence.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: God has come after me.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of turning around and returning back to the Lord, instead of humbling himself, Jonah decides that it is better for him to die than be a part of God's plan.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it sounds kind of dramatic, but that's exactly what he says.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: When he's thrown into the water, he says, Let me die.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: That will save everyone here.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not God's plan.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as we see the whale come up in the story, by the way, the whale is pretty small.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He only gets three verses.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a she.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: He or she, the whale, gets three verses.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: That he swallows Jonah.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's the location of Jonah's prayer in chapter 2, and then it vomits Jonah up out on the sandy beaches of Israel.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: This whale, though, was God's way of bringing Jonah back.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And much like later on in the story that we'll see, we have to look at this both from Jonah's perspective and the Lord's.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: From Jonah's perspective, he is now in the stinking belly, dark belly, of a whale for three days and three nights.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: God is bringing him back by force so that he can carry out his will.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: From Jonah's perspective, this is probably the last thing he wants.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably the worst idea possible.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said he would have rather died than go and be a part of God's plan for Nineveh.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, God is now bringing him back, basically kicking and screaming, and is going to unceremoniously vomit him out on the shore.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, from God's perspective, let's look at somebody who is running away from the good thing that he has planned for them.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Running away from something that is going to save, as we'll see, about a hundred thousand people.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Running away from something that is ultimately better than where Jonah is going.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And God says that there's no distance that could possibly be traveled where somebody goes far enough away from him that he can't bring them back.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not always the, you know, windfall lottery and night in shining armor that brings people back.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the brutal stinking truth of a whale's mouth that it takes for somebody to come back to where they should have been all along.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: There were easier answers for Jonah, and he just chose to not take any of them.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as God brings him back, we can also find ourselves, some of you have experienced this, where coming back into the Lord's presence is sometimes by force.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: By somebody who, maybe like an addict who gets an intervention, and the last thing they want is to go to rehab.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But people say, we've got a car waiting for you outside, and there's no way that, nowhere that you're going except in that car.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah is going back into the Lord's presence here.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we pick up our story in Jonah chapter 3, we see that he's given another chance.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is only the second time the Lord speaks to Jonah.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: God is going to have a few more talking parts as the book goes on because uh Jonah doesn't get much better.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to his message, Jonah has done one of two things right.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, he is going to follow the Lord's will.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, he is going to get up and go to Nineveh, a long journey, and he is going to preach the message that the Lord has given to him.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: But as we see in the story, Jonah fails the second area.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: His heart isn't in it at all.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: He is, like I said, technically following what God has commanded him, but there's no part of him that sees the goodness in it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: In chapter 3, verses 4 through 5, Jonah makes it to Nineveh, sets out on the first day of his walk in the city, and proclaims, In 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Probably something he really enjoyed saying.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then, much to Jonah's surprise, probably to the surprise of the Ninevites, but not a surprise to God, the people in Nineveh believed him.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, a sign of mourning, from the greatest of them to the least.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: We see later on in chapter three that even the king of Nineveh says that, hey, we're we're so repentant of what we've done.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have so entrusted in the message that Jonah has brought, even the cows are going to like wear sackcloth.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: The entire nation or the entire city repents.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: They respond to God's goodness, to his Mercy, to his compassion, something that the Lord knew was going to happen.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted Jonah to bring the message.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonah is livid that this happened.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: He prayed to the Lord, please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: He just keeps going deeper, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Know a part of this, know, like, oh wow, Lord, the thing that you said was going to happen happens.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that the message that I preached from your word that it has brought a city to repentance.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah's like, I want to die because I'm so angry with you.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we've been there too, right?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've been there where we're so frustrated or we're so deep in our sin that it makes more sense for us to dig in our heels than it does for us to turn and walk back to God.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: To say, Lord, I was wrong.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I repent.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I made a mistake.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You were right.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Locking horns with you normally doesn't work out for my advantage.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, Jonah wasn't able to make that decision.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: He is furious.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: The literal translation of this first sentence is that it was evil what the Lord had done.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah felt evil.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Up to this point in the story, the only time the word evil had been used was to describe the Assyrian Ninevites.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now it is Jonah's heart that is evil.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Unable to understand the God of grace and compassion, unable to appreciate how he is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love, and desiring instead justice and destruction for people.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah's heart was broken.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes out, and the Lord asks him, Is it right for you to be angry?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it right for you to be frustrated here?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah doesn't answer him.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least not that it's recorded.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah gets angry.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can kind of picture him huffing as he leaves the town, so frustrated that everybody is worshiping the Lord.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he heads out to a hill outside of Nineveh to watch what's going to happen.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Still hoping that the Lord is going to destroy the city, still hoping that something, anything, besides their repentance, took place.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's watching.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah left the city and found a place east of it.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: The only divine worm in the entire Bible.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can't find another one in the whole Bible.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: No more worms.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only one.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Might as well call it Jonah and the worm, or Jonah and the plant.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: But God, picture this.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because see, Nineveh exits our story.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Ninevehes are really a foil for Jonah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's important what happened there, but at the same time, there's no more story about the Ninevites.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: End of chapter three, all of chapter four, this is about Noah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because pretty much for the first time, God's mercy was presented, and the one who presented it needed a follow-up, as opposed to the people who heard the message.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah is the one who now receives the Lord's attention.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jonah experiences the I mean, he's in the Middle East.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: The heat of the day is bearing down on him, and God raises up this plant, sort of this miraculous growth that it's going to cover Jonah's head.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he's pleased by that.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is wonderful.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer hot.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can watch you apparently destroy the city.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then during the night, this worm comes and destroys the plant.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonah, this is kind of it, this is the tipping points, the straw that breaks the camel's back, he unloads on God.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's so angry that the Lord would have taken away this plant that sprung up in the middle of the night and died by the dawn.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah is furious.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then God asks Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's right.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: He replied, I'm angry enough to die.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah here we see in his last words that are recorded in the story, Jonah gives this emphatic statement to the Lord.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I probably could try and spin this and make this kind of funny and talk about how absurd Jonah is being in his response to the Lord.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I think a better way to look at it is understanding really how far Jonah has come, and not in a good way.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah is now incensed, and he has moved on from not wanting to take part in the Lord's will.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Throw me overboard, I'd rather die.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was, well, Nineveh repented, and I hate seeing that.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather die.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now we get the third and final protestation, and Jonah's saying, a plant has died that brought me shade.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather die.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's so bitter about where he's at.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's unable to sort of turn the corner and understand what God is trying to do.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we see as we finish out Jonah chapter 4 in the book of Jonah, that God was using the plant to teach Jonah a lesson.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whether he understood that lesson after this is up for debate because one of the confusing aspects or interesting parts about the book of Jonah is that it ends on a cliffhanger.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: God says to him, You cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: I did, Jonah.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: It appeared in a night and perished in a night.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a euphemism for basically that they are ignorant people, Jonah.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know me.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now they do, because you came and fulfilled my will, technically.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: But Jonah, am I not supposed to care for these people?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, you could probably make a sub point about how God also includes animals as the ones who are going to suffer for the sins of the Ninevites if they did not repent.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: That God cares about the animals too.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, is it not okay for me to want to bring compassion on people and mercy?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, why are you so angry about this plant?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, I made the plant.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I took down the plant.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plant, Jonah.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And yet you don't care about these people.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We see, unfortunately, how far Jonah has come.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also where we kind of can begin to wrap up our story because this is the end of the book of Jonah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: God asks a question, and then the story ends.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, there are only two books of the Bible that end with questions.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them have to do with the city of Nineveh.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: This one has to do with the basically the mercy of Nineveh.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one, I believe it's Hosea.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: I could look in my notes, but I forgot.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's another minor prophet who is asking a question.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: God asked them a question about Nineveh.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in both cases, Nineveh is sort of the vehicle that this lesson has been delivered on.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about Nineveh.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Nineveh is an example of what it looks like when we rebel against the Lord's will and how bitter we can become and how far down that path we can go than when it is secret and hidden, and we are ashamed and we don't want to return to the Lord.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper until God says, What are you doing?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you so mad?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you so angry?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't done anything to you that deserves your wrath.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are two main lessons that I think that God gave Jonah here.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Two main things that we can take away from this book.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them have to do with small statements that the Lord gave to Jonah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is when he says, Jonah, go.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Twice he says it at the beginning of chapter one, the beginning of chapter three.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, go.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do this good thing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: This good thing is hard.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: This good thing will require sacrifice.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is inconvenient, and you're not excited about it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: But Jonah, go.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: My people are people who will become my people, they need to hear this message, Jonah.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: My mercy needs to be given to more.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: They can't just stay with you.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, go.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that in the first instance, Jonah didn't obey God at all.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: He ran the other direction, tried to escape the Lord.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Something many of us have experienced.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, we're still in that space.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're running.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're asleep on the boat, thinking we're fine.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've been thrown overboard.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're in the belly of a whale, waiting to be brought back.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've been vomited out on shore.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Feel like we've been kind of in the rough and tumble of God's will.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: But that's from Jonah's perspective.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: From God's perspective, he was bringing him back into what was best for Jonah.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And praise be to God that he didn't let Jonah just keep sailing to Tarshish because there wasn't anything awaiting him there.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Jonah comes back, and then we see that he technically walks with the Lord.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: He technically goes to Nineveh, but his heart isn't in the right space.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, even though the message was given to Nineveh, Jonah, the rest of the book, is about how he doesn't understand or appreciate or want the Lord's compassion.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: At least for other people.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: He certainly wants it for himself.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: He really liked the shady plant.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when the Lord saved 120,000 people, he wasn't about that.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: It can really reveal the selfishness within us.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think for a moment, like Jonah did.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who comes to your mind when you think of your least favorite people?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, everybody has them.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean we're right in having them, but everybody has least favorite people or a person.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Ninevehites to Jonah, and to you, those are the people who need to hear the gospel.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a single person that is outside of the need for the gospel, and there's not a single person that does not need to hear it and have the opportunity to respond to it, no matter how much you dislike them, no matter how much they frustrate you and make you angry and become inconvenient to you.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: The message of the gospel is one that should be going to every single person.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And far too many of us technically walk that walk, but our heart is not in it, and we become much more like Jonah, where we get angry about a plant and not angry about the world that doesn't know Jesus.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: So in this first scene, we see that following God's will is important, that it is important for us because it is good and right and perfect for us to do it, as it is his will and not our own.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes we lock horns with the Lord.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to do his will.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we grow bitter and angry.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so the second and final thing is I think we should ask ourselves this question.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are we right to be angry?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are we right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know many of you are angry at the Lord, or were, and have walked out of that.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are going to be angry at the Lord in the future.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because in a month you're going to realize you have a disease, or a family member dies that you don't think should have died, and you're going to begin shaking your fist at the Lord.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are two things I have to say, and I say them with the greatest amount of empathy I possibly can.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that for those who are angry with God, some of you need to realize that you're acting like Jonah.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to look at your situation from above and not from the point of view of where you're at.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah wasn't right to be angry, but goodness, he was angry.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: He felt angry and he felt like he was justified.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: But for some of us, we are angry about things like the plant that God brought it and took it away.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've misunderstood the hierarchy of needs in his kingdom.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we have focused so much on things of convenience and comfort and desirability, our wants instead of our needs, that we get angry at God over things that our life are like a plant.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not right.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the second thing, though, is that there are some of you who have a righteous anger.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're experiencing the effects of this world because it is filled with sin and death and destruction.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so perhaps you have been sinned against, your sins have affected you, your life, other people.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are just angry because you are struggling with something right now that you don't feel like anybody should have to struggle with.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to this point, I say that for some of you, it is a righteous anger to be upset about the fact that this world is filled with sin and rebellion against God and it's experiencing all of these things.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: That should make all of us angry.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you shouldn't be angry at God.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: God is not the one who deserves your frustration.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: God is not the one who deserves your anger and your vitriol because of these things.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: God is the one saving people.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: God is the one rescuing them from this world.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so just like Jonah, he says and admits, he's like, Lord, I'm angry at you.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're compassionate and you're good and you're loving and you're merciful and you're saving cities, Lord.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so angry.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Jonah, why are you angry?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing something good.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to be a part of it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I know life might not be going the way that you think it should be going.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that you're experiencing hard things.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: But Jonah, do you have any right to be angry with me?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: For I've only done good to you.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's important for us today.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't many passages in the Bible that allow us to really dig in deep to what it means when we both love God and are really mad at him.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of them.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where we can see the futility of Jonah's battle with God's will, but also the sadness as he continued to dig deeper into his bitterness and anger.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, if he had accepted God's will on the first hand, but if he had just recognized the mistake that he was making, life would have been much smoother for him.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: He would have been able to see and experience that goodness of God that he was rejecting.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: God, I am thankful for your goodness.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am thankful for your mercy.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful for your love and your compassion, your grace.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, your providence and your sovereignty.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we worship you because you deserve it and you treat us well far better than we deserve.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so, God, in the first instance, I pray that we would carry out your will to the best of our abilities.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Father, that we would both follow it with our feet and our heart.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: That we would not try to find out what it looks like to go against your will, to go against your purposes, to go against the good that you have called us to.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we wouldn't figure those things out.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: That we would just heed your word as it comes to us.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a simpler life and a better life.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: But Father, I pray for those who are fleeing from you right now or feel like they are distant, maybe feel like they have escaped your presence.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, I pray that you would bring them back to you.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not they might realize it right now, Father, that you would bring them back into your presence, that they would see the goodness of your kingdom, and that they would accept it.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I also pray for those of us who are really angry right now.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Angry it might feel like at you, angry at the world, angry at ourselves or other people.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, you would help us to, by the power of your spirit, ask if we are right to be angry.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ask if we are right to be frustrated.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps, Lord, it is a plant and not something of significance.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that we might have a heart for the things that you care about.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that our hearts would break for those who don't know the gospel.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that we would yearn for that.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, finally, that for those of us who do have a righteous anger, as we are experiencing death and disease and destruction in this world, Father, we would realize you are not the focus of our anger.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you do not deserve it.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is not warranted.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you have saved us by the power of Christ.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one walking with us through these valleys.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, it is the enemy we should be angry with, not you.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to see this, God, and to walk more closely with you in the future.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you and we thank you.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks everybody for being with us this morning, for enduring the fans.