Jonah

Hey everybody,
thanks for joining us for our next episode of the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are overjoyed to have you with us again for another conversation.
Not gonna lie,
we have gone back and forth a little bit on who we would come
to next and so our character for today is going to be Jonah.
Jonah is a really
interesting character.
I’m excited to have this conversation and to be able to
dig into his story a little bit but it’s also a little bit of a diversion
in the sense that we’ve now really moved beyond some of those key linchpins in
Israel’s story as it’s told historically as the way that the kingdom grows and
the way that that socio-political leadership and all of that is framed in
the larger arc.
That’s not to say that Jonah doesn’t fit in a time but it’s to
say that we’re now looking at someone who begins to occupy what we might call
a more prophetic role in the people of Israel and their own story.
So I’m looking forward to that slight shift and we’re gonna see in it some things that are highly relatable.
Yeah, thanks for joining us everybody.
Michael, I think I would say that Jonah is an important book but Jonah’s not an important
character and what I mean by that is Jonah’s not connected to the monarchy of
Israel.
Jonah’s not connected to other stories.
Really,
one possible reference outside of this book and probably not.
So this this book is almost entirely self-contained.
It’s just four chapters and yet he is an important character because he’s fascinating.
His story is so interesting and in many ways so unlike
everything else in the scripture,
Jonah is a unique character particularly in
regard to the group of men we call prophets in the Bible.
Yeah, I think Clint, what is interesting about Jonah is that if you read the historical
commentators, those Christians who take the Old Testament very seriously and do
a lot of scholarly study,
some of them are going to tell you that Jonah didn’t
historically exist, that you wouldn’t find a person in time.
Other commentators will say that you will but I think what makes Jonah so powerful as a book is it
really honestly doesn’t matter to you sitting down to read this book today
whether Jonah was or wasn’t a physical prophet that walked the earth.
You can find humanity deeply embedded in here.
Anyone can find a way that they are
related to or that they could empathize with Jonah and his thinking and his
struggle and his journey because he’s dealing with deep issues of what it
means to be human,
of reconciling with your enemy,
of trusting God even when God
calls you to do something that you would rather not do,
watching God be gracious
to others and grieving.
All of this is something that we can relate to and
something that we find explored in this book.
Yeah and of course Michael,
biblical scholars have to find things to argue about and to question and there is some look,
there’s some literary considerations,
there’s some thematic considerations.
The question that has hung over Jonah really for a long time,
this isn’t a modern question,
was was Jonah read as history by the people who
first read it or was it a lesson,
was it a sermon,
was it a fable of some kind.
And for the modern reader there’s probably a theological significance in
that whether you lean as a more conservative interpreter of the Bible or whether you don’t.
But from a functional standpoint in terms of what we learn
from the book I would say that it doesn’t really matter.
If you want to
dig into those questions you certainly can,
they’re interesting, they teach you a
lot about the book and the way it’s written and the language.
But in terms of
what it says to us,
I don’t think,
the nice thing about Jonah is you don’t have
to engage it at that level to listen to it and be convicted by it and I think
that’s really a strength of the book.
Absolutely,
well and maybe the best way
to dig into some of these themes is to just start right here with the book.
It opens with Jonah and as you might know from even your Sunday school days
Jonah gets met by God and God says I want you to go to the the city where you
are going to go proclaim God’s judgment,
coming judgment, and these being Jonah’s
enemies he refuses to do so.
Yeah so let’s talk a little background.
Jonah is set in the time of the Assyrians and the Assyrians are the growing world power.
They will end up conquering Israel and there is deep,
deep animosity, hatred really,
between the Israelites and the Assyrians and probably when this is written, Michael,
that is at its height and so Assyria has the capital city
Nineveh and the word of the Lord and that’s important the word of the Lord
comes to Jonah and says I want you to go there I want you to go preach against
Nineveh and there’s this little qualifier in there that great city and
Jonah has to be thinking why are you calling it a great city?
No it’s not a
great city at all that’s where the worst people in the world live and I’m not going there
and so what’s fascinating about this introduction is that we’re
not two or three verses in and God does what God often does.
He pinpoints the thing Jonah is least willing to give and asks him for that and asks of him
the very thing that will be hardest for Jonah to do and and therein I think is
the is the great challenge and wisdom of the beginning of this story is it
already invites us to begin thinking about what would be the thing I would
want God to ask of me the least.
It is only three verses and the scripture is
able to move us from the setup of who this person is of what God wants and and
his unwillingness to do it.
The economy of scripture is remarkable and its
ability to immediately pinpoint the point that the story is making and I
think that fundamentally the scripture wastes no time in making the case that
God wants a clear and relatively simple action from Jonah an action which Jonah
is constitutionally unwilling if not unable to do and that is the setup to
the story and what I think makes Jonah interesting is it’s a theme that’s
going to run throughout the story and have some really interesting twists and turns.
Yeah and so just so you know Jonah here goes the exact opposite
direction Tarshish is on the map of the ancient world essentially the farthest
you can get from Nineveh so he goes entirely the other direction and there’s
some beautiful language here God says to Jonah in our verse 2 it says go at once
it literally says get up or arise and go to Nineveh and then later it says
but Jonah went down to Joppa to find a ship going to Tarshish so even the even
the language is is conflicted God says go up and Jonah goes down instead and
there’s some of that through this book but someone spent a lot of time
thinking over how they were going to paint this picture so you know the story
from here he gets on the ship the Lord is very active in this story nearly
everything that happens is it comes about because God does it and the Lord
sends a storm the the sailors have not seen anything like this they’re
terrified they’re trying to fight against this and Michael they go look
for Jonah and they find him sleeping.
Right which is interesting because while
these sailors are up in arms they’re terrified they’re screaming they’re
praying to their gods the the scripture actually tells us Jonah is doing none of
those things he’s not calling to his God he’s sleeping he’s not up on the deck
Jonah is just visibly physically separate from the struggle of that
moment and it’s fascinating that these supposed heathen men they’re they’re
worshiping other gods are the one who’s interceding and imploring Jonah to pray
to the one true God ironically and so it’s it’s another layer in which Jonah
is refusing to submit to the will of God yeah and you could ask yourself how
could you possibly sleep through this well I don’t I think the answer is Jonah
doesn’t care what happens yeah Jonah is at peace may not be the right phrase
but Jonah is disconnected from God and therefore he has no interest if if this
is his death it it doesn’t he’s numb he did this is what happens when we run
from God we we sacrifice a sense of being alive a sense of that kind of
awareness and connection to the world around us and he’s isolated he’s by
himself and he’s asleep and that’s a physical metaphor in this story for a
spiritual condition yeah and in fact the text makes that explicit the sailors are
begging him what shall we do to you that the sea will be quiet for us and then he
says right here in verse 12 of chapter 1 pick me up and throw me into the sea
then the sea will quiet down for you for I know it is because of me that this
great storm has come upon you it there is zero well wait let’s think this
through hold on I need to pray and make sure that the text just makes it
abundantly clear this is not between what Jonah is discerning what the right
action should be this is Jonah knowing it and refusing to do it yeah and the
the men here are shown as having some integrity unwilling to do that they fight
against the storm the best they can and when they find out they just absolutely
aren’t going to be able to save the ship then they pray and and this is
significant Michael they pray to the Lord and when you see Lord in the Old
Testament in all capital letters many of you may already know this that’s the
literal name of God Yahweh the sacred name of the Israelites for God and so
they pray not to the little G gods that they called on earlier but now they turn
to the God of Jonah the one true God and they pray don’t let us perish on account
of this man’s life and don’t make us guilty for what we do and so then he
says they picked him up they threw him into the sea and instantly the sea
ceased from raging and then it says the men feared the Lord even more and they
offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows so interestingly enough in a
very tangential way we have a conversion story here as the men have seen the
power of God they have become adherents or they have at least become those who
would turn to God and offer thanks and praise it is the first instance of Jonah
being a reluctant evangelist or maybe a refusing evangelist that Jonah is
dead set on not doing the thing that God calls and yet somehow people have real
encounters with the living God even in spite of how resistant Jonah is to
following God’s will yeah and so then the next part of the story is the part
that everybody knows the great fish the whale what you can argue about the words
if you want great fish it says in Hebrew and it swallows Jonah and three
days three nights which is possibly a literal reference but three days and
three nights is a period of hardship it’s a period of reflection the number
three has some significance in the Old Testament New Testament as well and in
in that situation in that great fish Jonah prays and in that prayer takes
up all of chapter 2 it is beautifully written it is poetic it is some of the
most vibrant and creative and nuanced Hebrew that you can find in the prophets
and that’s saying a lot as the prophets are filled with some very incredible
verses but this is astoundingly well written according to biblical scholars
and has a lot of depth in it yeah and if you read this you’re going to be
moved by its beauty I think and I wonder if when you read it you might also be
moved to Jonah’s side if you might have a moment about three cores all the way
through when you say okay yeah Jonah ran the other way God saves him from death
through this miraculous means I think that Jonah’s coming on the right side
now it sounds like it feels like Jonah’s having his own conversion moment
here right in the text and I think it’s intended to open that feeling to us yeah
it sounds like a guy who gets it it sounds like a guy who’s seen the error
of his ways and now he’s committing himself to a better path and he ends that
prayer with deliverance belongs to the Lord and the Lord spoke to the fish and
it spewed Jonah out on dry land and the word spewed here is in Hebrew is is
vomited he threw him up he he spit him out onto the shore and then we have a
restatement of how we started this book the word of the Lord came to Jonah a
second time saying get up go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim the message
that I will tell you and so this time Jonah goes and he ends up in Nineveh as
he was originally supposed to and we’re told that Nineveh is an exceedingly
large city a three-day walk across and then we’re told Jonah begins to go into
the city and went a day’s walk and he cried out 40 days more and Nineveh shall
be overthrown and if I remember right Michael it’s been a while since I did the
work on this I think that’s four I think that may be five words in Hebrew so it
it’s either a four or five word sermon not even halfway through the city he
doesn’t even make it to the center of town he gets a third of the way through
and he mumbles this very anemic kind of sermon and I think feels like he’s done
his job yeah this is one of the great abilities of the scriptural writers is
to tell us a lot about what a person is thinking and feeling and intending
without ever saying that explicitly the inclusion of these details client might
be easy to miss if you’re just reading right the idea of the fact that the
city’s three days walk across he only goes one day but that’s the scriptural
writers way of letting you into what’s intended the fact that the scripture is
just literally a few words or the proclamation is just a few words this is
this the scriptures way of telling us this is a guy who is doing the least
that he possibly has to in response to the word of the Lord that came to him
he’s doing it I mean he got spewed out of the fish he’s alive but he’s not happy
about it yeah this is those of you who have children and you ask your kids to
put their shoes away or whatever and it takes them 10 minutes of sighing and
dragging them across the floor and it’s like good night would you just do it
right just and that’s Jonah here he just I think the implication is he puts zero
effort into this zero passion zero care zero concern and yet as sermons sometimes do
for reasons beyond the preacher they land and this one lands the people of Nineveh
believe god they proclaim a fast and everyone great and small put on sackcloth and when the
king is reached the king there’s this almost comical scene that happens the the king
took off his robe he covers himself in sackcloth he sits in the ashes all signs of repentance
and then he makes this proclamation no human being or animal or herd or flock will taste anything
they won’t feed or drink water human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth
and they will cry mightily to god and again the word god here is not yahweh but it is a specific
word for israel’s god in this context now you’d read past that and maybe miss the joke but the
idea that you would dress up your animals in the cloth of repentance that you would get sackcloth
on all of your your herds is i think the bible’s view of as hilarious yeah and jonah to his credit
has god pegged i mean that’s actually the point because after all of this happens god sees this
and the text literally says god changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring
about them upon them and he didn’t do it jonah literally called up from the beginning and to
jonah’s credit he actually says it because he prays and he says to god that’s why i fled to
tarsus at the beginning for i knew you’re a gracious god and merciful slow the anger abounding
in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing i can’t tell you the number of sermons
clinton in my own short lifetime i’ve heard preached on this text this this verse because
it’s beautiful right that god is slow the anger god is gracious and merciful steadfast love this
is beautiful and jonah finishes this with and now lord take my life from me for it’s better for me
to die than to live and and here it is jonah he he tries to run away god doesn’t let him he does
the least that he can possibly do it affects change in the city god is moved by that change
and jonah says game up i knew this was going to happen i’m out yeah so we open chapter four with
that great verse it was displeasing to jonah and he became angry and the fourth chapter anger plays
a significant role and a lot of people i think may know the verse that you’re referring to michael
god is gracious and merciful slow to anger abounding in steadfast love and ready to
relent from punishing i think though that what many people who have heard those words don’t realize
is it’s a complaint yeah exactly jonah is saying i i knew it i knew you would find a way
to save these people i knew if i came here you would find a way to let all these people off the
hook i i knew it i knew you’re gracious i knew you abounded in steadfast love i know that you
were lempt from punishing it and dang it i’m i’m not happy about it yeah i’m i’m angry now i just
want to be done i’d rather die than live and then the lord responds is it right for you to be angry
and fascinating jonah doesn’t answer he stomps off he’s he’s the pouting child he went out of
the city and he sat down east of the city and made a booth a dwelling for himself and sat in the shade
waiting to see what would become of the city so he the the implication i think michael is that he’s
sitting there hoping it’s a small god will change his mind again and go back to the original plan
and that jonah will have a front row seat to watch this city get wiped out no absolutely i he’s had
this conversation with god he’s expressed displeasure and he’s still able as humans seem
so constitutionally able to do he still holds on to some hope that there might be destruction for
the bad guys i hope that maybe they go back on it maybe their um sackcloth and ashes will end too
soon maybe god will change his mind i want to at least be there to see if it happens and it’s in
that spirit that god out of that same grace and abounding love makes this plant to grow above him
it’s hot sitting out on the edge here and as he’s watching for this city’s destruction and jonah’s
shaded by it and it’s great and he likes that until the plant dies and jonah is moved with
just absolute um disgust and anger about the death of this plant yeah so he was very happy
about the plant and then he was made faint and he was bitter and he said it is better for me to
die than live and here we have kind of the final conclusion jonah has i i think one of the most
fascinating endings in the scripture god said to jonah is it right for you to be angry about the bush
and jonah said yes angry enough to die so jonah even in even in the face of god is holding on
to his anger and the lord said look you’re concerned about the bush you didn’t do anything
to earn the bush you didn’t have anything to do with it it came into being in a night and
perished in a night and then he says you care about the bush should i not be concerned about
nenova the great city in which there are more than 120 000 persons who do not know their right
hand from their left and also many animals in other words okay jonah you’re angry that the bush died
and you don’t care what happens to 120 000 human beings and fascinating that’s where it ends
we never get to hear jonah’s response which is an incredible ending it’s a remarkable ending
it’s remarkable for the story itself the fact that it leaves open what jonah’s response is
going to be and it allows us to insert ourselves to ask the same question you know how might we
respond if we were honest enough to put ourselves in the same circumstance but i think clint this
also points us to the nation of israel as a whole and it is remarkable and i think we need
to just pause for a moment and recognize that it’s not as if jonah’s perspective towards
a syria was unique in other words any israelite would have at least been able to relate if they
would not have agreed completely with what jonah wished upon their enemies that’s that’s native to
the human condition that we wish ill on those who we consider to be our enemy and yet to to the
people of israel’s credit and i think one of the reasons why jonah is a prophet is because he speaks
against that in an incredibly compelling way the nenovites are cast in this story as people
waiting to hear god’s word proclaimed to them and they are ready and willing to respond to it when
they hear it and that is a it’s a conception of your world and a conception of god’s work in that
world which is large and full of humility and i think it’s beautiful yeah i would i think i would
say michael that it’s really a tribute to this book to the beauty of this book that it stays
in the scripture yeah because jonah is essentially disobedient at least he’s very reluctantly
obedient secondly there’s a word of grace here for the enemy and if you read so much of the old
testament the division between israel and the enemy is concrete and unassailable and here it’s
somewhat fluid the there’s not a lot in the old testament of god being gracious
to those who stand against god’s chosen people and and here we see that very clearly
and i i think it’s remarkable that this book has found its place in the canon and remained there
and what the lesson is that we take from it i i really think as you said very well the ending
asks us essentially invites us to sit there on the hillside imagining what we do what what is
our response to the other what is our response to the knowledge that god loves and cares about those
that we struggle to love and often don’t care about and how often we get concerned over the
conveniences and ups and downs of our own small life simultaneously unconcerned about the bigger
picture of the world around us it’s fascinating fascinating book and an incredible way to bring
that challenge to us at the end of it yeah i think there’s a few other themes interwoven but we
shouldn’t rush beyond like you’re saying clint just the sheer factual reality that here we have
someone who is confronted by a god whose grace is beyond their ability to imagine and and not just
that but who is disgusted by god’s grace for another even so far as to think god is wrong
absolutely i mean to stand up to god and and to say that in in direct conversation i think
this is really honestly a timely story in this moment in a world which is beset by polarization
that people standing on opposite sides with very differing perspectives and who are oftentimes very
tempted to make an enemy of the other and we can make enemies as humans i mean this is a scriptural
tenant we can make enemies of anything and so fundamentally this is a hard challenge to all of
us who might be quick to wherever we are engaging with those enemies on our televisions or phones
or screens or whatever fundamentally are we willing to wish god’s grace and love upon another
or do we wish them destruction and that is an unbelievably challenging but yet helpful word
yeah it’s such a humbling reminder to hear again that god loves the people that we don’t
and wants for them the best as he wants for us and we don’t you know
we sort of acknowledge that in general but when it comes to the specifics of those people who
have wounded us or offended us most deeply that is difficult ground to walk and i i think again
the wisdom of a book like this is that it gives a voice to that that lives in so many of our hearts
or it lives in our hearts at so many different moments and to call that out the way this book
does in a very large and and strangely detailed story about fish that swallow people and weak
sermons and storms that come and bushes and worms it it has a remarkable way of kind of
singing us along and then saying okay now who is god sending you to and what will you do with it
i think a theme that you see within the first few verses of this book is the the gap between
knowing what we’re called to do and who we’re called to be and our desire to respond to it and
that’s a theme that we’ve seen through a number of these people of faith right is that god calls
them to enact abram gets called by god go to this land that i’m going to send you a land that you’ve
never seen and abram responds in faith and you see that over and over in these characters of faith
how god calls and how most of the time that call is unbelievably clear and i will say this
for myself personally there have been many moments in my life where i have yearned for god’s call
and looking back on those moments if i’m going to be honest god’s call was pretty clear in all of
them i was just fighting because i wanted to find the gray because i didn’t particularly want to do
it now i don’t think that’s always true and i don’t want to put that on anyone else but i do
think the book of jonah makes it pretty clear that the human temptation is to avoid the clear
will of god for what we would rather do sure and i suspect both of us have counseled people my
corner i think i certainly have said this in my own life maybe you have too you hear somebody who
says i just wish god would tell me what to do if if god would just let me know what he wants
i will do it and i always think to myself jonah and be very careful because
scripturally speaking god will always be most interested in what you least want to give
god will always be most directive in the direction you least want to go and i think there is uh
the reason for that i think the lesson in that is god never seeks partial obedience
god never seeks partial conversion god is interested in the whole the whole of the city of
ninnova the whole of jonah’s obedience god offers jonah opportunity after opportunity to see his
grace and even in the moment where he saves him in the fish and jonah has this heartfelt moment of
prayer god again and again and again says jonah i want you to come in and learn grace and love
and compassion and jonah won’t do it jonah is the best worst prophet in the history of the faith
everybody this guy interacts with in the entire book turns to god yeah and jonah turns away from
him it’s a fascinating story michael it’s just it’s incredibly well well done you know clint a
thing about jonah that always makes me chuckle and maybe sometimes frustrates me is how popular
of a story this is in sunday school because the the the great fish that the the whale however you
want to read that is a great coloring page right i mean that’s just awesome you give that to kids
and they get to color the sea and the fish and the big fish and there’s a guy in the water but
if if that’s where you get your focus in this story you’re missing the point that you’re you’re
being distracted by the fantastical and you’re missing the absolute core human relatable aspect
to this story and by the way this is applicable to kids as well the thing that you know you should do
that you’re unwilling to do and that it takes practicing humility it takes practicing a kind of
self-giving for you to be able to live into what’s god’s will for all humanity and i think it’s
striking the two natural actors or characters if you let me say that in this story both come in
god’s gracious response to jonah right the first is he’s thrown into the sea and god raises up this
fish that saves jonah’s life the second time jonah’s up on the mountain it is hot and god causes this
plant to grow above and both of the natural things and in both cases they’re symbols of god’s
gracious and abounding love for the guy who’s trying to keep that very same grace and abounding
love to reach out to other people god is gracious to everyone in this story whether you’re a pagan
sailor you’re the king of a reprehensible people group or you’re a prophet who refuses to follow
the leading of the god god is abounding and loving grace and to everyone in the story and that is
if you’re a human both good news and maddening yeah there’s a sense in which this story is far darker
than we let it be in the church michael what what i mean by that is
from the beginning of the story jonah knows who god is jonah’s decisions are not made in ignorance
they’re made in um they’re made in an unwillingness to let god be god in other words jonah knows that
god is loving this isn’t a misunderstanding right jonah sees what god may do and wants no part of it
and then from the ship jonah is willing to die jonah would rather lose his own life
than participate in god’s possible mercy to his enemies and then he makes this half-hearted
attempt and then at the end of the book he sits there camped over the city willfully hoping
against hope that he will get to see the destruction of a hundred plus thousand people
and and see god punish them because jonah hates them and that sort of
that sort of darkness in him is i think frightening especially when we understand that
we all resonate with it in some place in our life at at one moment or another and you know jonah’s
he’s not caught up in this story he’s not he doesn’t misunderstand he’s not like some of the
other characters of the scripture he he’s a hate-filled man who who wants to put a roadblock up to
the possibility that god may intervene on behalf of those he hates yeah clint jonah
is someone who is relatable to the person who’s been a christian for a really long time right i
mean fundamentally on its surface the the story of jonah is good news for those who don’t know god
for those who are waiting to hear the gospel proclaimed because god is gracious and god is
going to move the the good news to them by whatever means god needs to do it but this story is
incredibly challenging to the christian who may be able to resonate with the story of someone
who knows what god wants done knows the character of god and says but they don’t deserve it in other
words the person who would much prefer to be the judge than the witness and anyone who’s lived the
faith for some time knows that that’s a challenging line to walk that that we can sometimes find
ourselves heart and soul in a position where we don’t see any other road open to us but judgment
of the other because it appears clear to us and god’s grace appears unfair and you know it really
reminds me of jesus’s parable of the vineyard and the workers who come in and some come in early
some come in late but they all get paid the same wage and jesus says that those who worked longer
complained and asked you know how is it fair that you pay us the same as them and jesus says well
didn’t isn’t that what we agreed to well yeah then isn’t it my prerogative to give to them
however much i want that that story i think is in many ways a cousin to this story that we would
much prefer for god to follow our plan than for us to respond to god’s call to us and i think
that that has to start with us confessing that that’s a temptation that comes within all of us
yeah and i think there’s an another undercurrent to that michael which is that jonah
doesn’t connect receiving grace with giving it and the danger in being the ones who are thankful
when god acts on our behalf but resentful when god acts on the behalf of others so we’re happy
to see good things happen to us because we somehow convince ourselves that we deserve it
but when it happens to those that we consider undeserving we we get angry we it displeases us
jonah has no reason that god should send the fish he he’s disobeyed he’s been he’s been willful
he’s gone the wrong way and and yet god saves him and it seems to truly matter to jonah that
he’s been saved until he’s back on dry land and then it doesn’t change him it it doesn’t impact
and influence his attitude toward those that he doesn’t want saved and i i think there’s a great
lesson in that that when we forget we have received grace it becomes nearly impossible
to be gracious to others especially those that we struggle to love in the first place
i think if you’re going to boil this down clint wouldn’t you have to say
that jonah is the tour de force example of what happens when we make ourselves the primary
determiner of what’s good when we make it about us right fundamentally when we believe that our
way of thinking that our way of being is right and we’re unwilling to submit to god who’s by
definition bigger but the god who created everything loves everything that god created
and whenever we allow our thinking to be small and we let it our world begin to revolve around
our own small circles we fail to recognize god’s plan which is bigger than us which is better than
ours and an invitation that each of us have to participate in something more real and true than
the stuff that we take for granted yeah of all the people that you think in the entire world
who deserve it the least god wants for them a fullness and a joy and a beauty of their life
the same as he does for the rest of us and that is humbling it is amazing it is hopefully the
kind of thing that we can orient our life by and we it’s interesting everything we learn from jonah
we learn in the negative we we see in this book time after time from this man what we ought not
do and that makes it a very interesting story and i think the challenge coming out of a story like
that is ironically enough not to live it most of the biblical stories we’re called to live into
this one we’re called to live away from yeah and that i think brings us back full circle right
regardless of those places where we began and scholars talking about history jonah is a real
person of faith that we can see in this story what it means to be human and god’s invitation to us
to live into god’s story which is by definition bigger than what we have been led to believe and
that is what it means to be a real person of faith is someone who lives into god’s way another own
smaller way yeah and michael you’ve said this consistently through the podcast that when we
look at these stories what we really see behind them is the story of god and the story of god
here in jonah is a god who pursues a man who runs a god who tries to teach a man who is hard-hearted
a god who provides even in the midst of his ugliness and a god even to the end of the story
who is trying to show jonah a better way the way of his own heart and jonah seems unwilling
to listen you know the story is left open-ended maybe our hope is that jonah somehow got it
seems a stretch but i think it’s a fascinating portrait of the god
who not only won’t give up on the ninnovites but won’t give up on this single prophet as well
of course our abiding hope is that god gives up on no one and none of us and so we hope that you
continue to find these stories of god’s people encouraging as you seek to live as a disciple
yourself we would love for you to share these conversations however you would like if you
think someone might enjoy being able to tune in and being reminded of god’s grace and love for us
we’d love for you to share that wherever you’re at we’re grateful that you continue to join us
for the conversations we’ve had a great group of people continue to tune in weekly and that is
both humbling and great filled with joy so thanks for doing that we look forward to seeing you next
week yeah as always questions thoughts comments email them or post them we’ll see them and we’ll
do our best to speak to them but we appreciate you listening we hope all is well and thank you for joining us