Exploring My Strange Bible - The Amazing Jonah Part 1: Running From Your Life

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

In this episode I’m laying the groundwork for exploring the story of Jonah with new eyes: Who is Jonah? Why did he flee and get on a boat to Tarshish? And why is his story in the Bible? We also ponder the question of why Jonah ran from God. He thought he was saving his own life, but in reality, he was running from real life. Followers of Jesus face the same choice today, whether or not we will let go of our own vision of the “good life” and instead take up Jesus’ vision for our lives.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. We decided to launch this podcast with a five-part teaching series that I did back in 2013 in the Sunday gatherings at Door of Hope Church, where I was a pastor for many years.

And in this series, we explore the book of Jonah, which is one of the most fascinating, fascinating books of the Old Testament. I've had going on a two-decade kind of obsession with understanding the brilliance of this book. I was first introduced to the book of Jonah as a new Christian in my early 20s. I had this class on reading biblical literature with an amazingly brilliant professor of Hebrew Bible named Ray Lubeck, and he blew my mind teaching me to read the Bible as Hebrew literature. So what this first message five is going to do is actually just go through the first couple verses of the book of Jonah, but then set up what kind of book is before us and how if you've only been introduced to it through children's literature or media,

how unfortunate that is, because this is definitely not a children's story. It's very complex and subversive and challenging. So this first message then is just setting you up for reading a book that's as sophisticated as the book of Jonah. But I learned a ton in the process of preparing for it, and I hope that it's helpful for you. How many of you are familiar with the story of Jonah? Show of hands here, I think it's important. How many are familiar? So the vast majority of us are familiar with the story of Jonah. And this is a problem, I think. This is actually a huge problem, and one that we're

going to have to overcome here in the next five weeks. And it's a problem because if I would have asked the question, how many of you have thoughtfully read through the book of Jonah in its entirety, maybe even more than once, maybe even like read a study Bible or something like that, comments on it, and learned about the book of Jonah, and I did, I'm not going to ask that question. It's okay. Don't worry. But if I did ask that question, far, far fewer hands would have raised. So I'm guessing actually many of us have probably never actually thoroughly or thoughtfully read through the book, but you know about it because of what? Yeah, exactly right. So I call this the veggie tales factor, right? You know what I'm saying?

The veggie tales factor. And so honestly, when I said the book of Jonah, what came into many of your minds was the talking cucumber, you know what I mean? The talking tomato or whatever. And this is a challenge and a problem, I think, just in general, with, especially in the Old Testament, the stories of the Bible. Because most of us, if we have encountered the stories of the Old Testament at all, it has not been through thoughtful reading of them. They've been mediated to us through children's media. And what happens in children's media is that most of these stories, they get watered down, or they're simplified, and somehow they all of a sudden teach a bland moral truth, like be nice or something, be a nice person. Suddenly

every story in the Bible is about that. And especially Jonah. Holy cow. For Jonah, it's a no-brainer. There is one element of this story that every children's book fixates on, and what element is that? It's Jonah and the? Come on, the fish. Come on, you know this. So just random sampling of book covers, right, from Amazon.com. And so whether it's the 3D version, right, with the little glasses over here, whether it's the sticker book version right here, I mean, just look at it.

There you go. What's the book of Jonah about? It's about a just look at it. There you go. What's the book of Jonah about? It's about a guy and a fish. There you go. That's the VeggieTales factor that we have at work with us. And so, you guys, the fish appears in two sentences in this entire story. The fish is not the thing. The fish is not the thing. To make the fish the focus or the main theme is to actually miss what this story is really about. So the book of Jonah is a part of the sacred scriptures. And the purpose of the scriptures is not to entertain children. The purpose of the scriptures is not to teach us about fish. The scriptures purpose is to reveal the character of God.

The scripture's purpose is to reveal the character of God. It's to reveal Jesus to us and his character and his purposes and what he's up to in the world. That's what every book of the Bible is for, to reveal God and reveal Jesus and his character and his purposes to us. And so whatever the book of Jonah is about, it's doing that. And whatever I think the book of Jonah is about that distracts from that, I'm probably like way on the wrong track and need to get back. It's the VeggieTales factor. And so the fact is, the book of Jonah especially is, I mean, it's great children's story, but to actually get what's going on in this book, you have to be an adult. Absolutely. The book of Jonah is one of the most brilliantly told stories

in the entire Bible. It's full of wit and irony and humor. There is humor in the Bible. It really is. And sarcasm. And what this book was really doing, Jonah, as we're going to see, he's a representative character in the story. He represents the covenant people of God, through whom God wants to do his work in the world. And what this book does is that by exposing, Jonah's a horrible man, by the way. Do you know this? He's a horrible person. Every chapter of the book just exposes what a horrible, flawed person he is. And by holding him up for ridicule, for shame, for critique, By holding him up for ridicule, for shame, for critique, what the storyteller is really doing,

many of you have seen this kind of a stock scene in many spy action movies, where there's a dark alley or a warehouse, the good guy is chasing the bad guy, and then all of a sudden the good guy sees the red laser beam sight on his chest. You know what I'm saying? You know that scene? You could name 10 movies that have that scene in it right now. So that's the book of Jonah. Because you're reading

the story and you're like, whoa, this is crazy in the sky. He's crazy in the fish and whoa, this. And then all of a sudden, if you're paying attention, you realize like, yeah, this is about me. Like this whole story is aimed at punching me in the gut right now. This story is aimed at exposing the worst tendencies that tend to form inside of God's covenant people, which is pride, hard-heartedness, judgmentalism, tribalism, small-mindedness, and an inability to grow and change and let God's grace actually surprise me and explode the boundaries of what I thought was possible in the world. That's what

this story is about. And so it's one of those things where, you know, you think you're just reading this kind of harmless tale or something, and then you realize someone's socking you in the gut. That's the book of Jonah. And so Surgeon General's warning, you know, this is probably going to hurt five Sundays in a row. It's going to hurt, but you're kind of used to that around Door of Hope. I think that's kind of why a lot of you are here is because you like the pain. You like the pain. I don't know how else to say it. So think of these five weeks as kind of like a rescue mission. We're going to rescue the book of Jonah from all of the layers of vegetation that have grown over it. We're going to pull it out and try and understand what the story is really saying. It's profound revelation of the character and purposes

of God. You guys with me? All right. So you're already open here. And specifically today, so reading any book of the Bible, but especially the book of Jonah, it's kind of like watching afternoon soap operas when you have not been watching beforehand, and you're like, who are these people, and why do I care about this? And there's clearly all these stories that have already been going. You know what I'm saying here? Some of you are ashamed to even admit that you would watch soap operas. So anyway, but that's kind of what's going on as we dive into Jonah. There's all these backstories that you're just supposed to know that inform and help you grasp what the author's trying to do to you.

He's trying to mess with you here, but you need to grasp the backstories. And so we're camping out in the first three verses this week to set the playing field, and so we can pick up and just run in the Sundays that follow. So verse 1, let's go for it. Lightning speed. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Okay, let's stop.

Stop right here. There are two things we've got to pay attention to here. First of all, the author just landed a big ball, an easy ball, slow ball, soft ball, softball, underhand, I don't know. I'm trying to say he's like throwing us a bone. Different metaphor altogether. Throwing you a bone. With these first sentences here, with this first sentence, what kind of book am I reading? We just opened up the book of Jonah. What kind of book are we reading? It's the first clue right there. So the word of the Lord comes to what kinds of people in the Bible, especially in Israel?

It comes to prophets. It's prophets. So apparently this is a book of, and in the Bible prophets doesn't mean fortune teller or something like that. The prophets sometimes look into the future and discern what God will be doing in line with his character and so on. But for the most part, the most basic definition and role of prophets in the Bible is to speak on God's behalf. They're just messengers. To speak on God's behalf, give God's perspective on something.

And that's what a prophet is in the Bible. And so the word of the Lord comes to prophets. So kind of turn the page to the next book of the Bible. It'll just be one page for most of you. This is another book of the prophets, Micah. And how does it begin? It begins the exact same way. There you go. The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of all these kings, Yotham, Ahaz, Hiskiahu, kings of Judah. The vision he saw concerning Samaria and Judah. Now here's what's interesting. Here's what follows. What follows in Micah is seven chapters that are a collection of Micah's words, of his poetry, his poetic prophecy to Israel. And this is how all the books of the prophets began. You read Isaiah or Obadiah or Ezekiel or Zechariah, and they all began with the words of this prophet, where the word of the Lord came to, or the vision that came from God that so Isaiah saw.

This is how all the books of the prophets begin. And so we turn back to the book of Jonah, and we read the first sentence, and we say, oh, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Oh, I know what kind of book I'm about to start reading. It's a book of prophecy. And am I right? I'm wrong.

I'm wrong. The first sentence throws you off. Everything is wonky in this book, and that's precisely the point. The first sentence throws you off because you think you're about ready to read a collection of Jonah's poetic prophecy, like every other book of the prophets, but that's not what you get. What you get is a story about this prophet. And I just want you to stop and think about that.

God's word takes many different forms in the scriptures. Sometimes God's word to his people is speaking directly through the prophet and through his words. That's God's words to his people through Micah. The book of Jonah is God's word to his people through a story about a prophet. And so if you want to hear God's word, you have to read and reread and meditate and think

about the message of this story. Not about a fish, about the message of the whole story, right? Including the chapter. I have a children's book that I read to my son with grimace, clenched teeth or something. It's the story of Jonah, and it completely leaves out chapter four. It doesn't even mention the story that he gets angry at God in chapter four. It's because, well, that's kind of a little inappropriate for kids to get angry at God. I think so. No, you got to read the whole thing. And what is the message of this whole book?

So what that raises is, okay, this is a story about a prophet. What kind of story is this? And so the Bible is like a small library. And there are many different books. There are many different kinds of literature in these very different books. There's different kinds of stories, different kinds of narratives. There's different kinds of poetry. There's erotic love poetry, the Song of Songs, but then there's also prophetic poetry, which is a different character. You can read someone else's mail in the Bible, the letters of the New Testament, and there's lots of narrative. One third of the

Bible is narrative, another third of it is poetry. And you should not read all of those things the same way. Whenever you open up the Bible, the first question you should ask is, what kind of literature am I reading right now? And then how should that shape what I expect to get out of this? And so that's a question we should ask is, okay, this is a story about a prophet, but what kind of story is the author telling me? Like, how can I honor God's word and, like, let it dictate what kind of story this is to me? And so, there's essentially, I have to go very quick here because I don't just want to give a lecture about the book of Jonah, but I think it's helpful because it's teaching us how to think and how to read the Bible more intentionally. There's two basic views on what kind of story the book of Jonah is. There's nothing else like Jonah in the

Bible. There's no other book about a prophet. And not only that, there's no other book that has this unique kind of storytelling style to it. And so, you know, you read kind of teachers or commentators and this kind of thing across the whole spectrum, but even among kind of Orthodox Christian scholars, the Bible is God's word, Jesus, God, and human, that whole deal, right? So Orthodox Christian scholars, there's two views. You can just come across them in all of the commentaries. One is that the author has received a historical tradition

about this guy named Jonah, son of Amittai. He's a real historical figure, and he's passing on to us this story as a historical account of things that happened in the life of Jonah, a brief revival in the city of Nineveh, and so on. So that's one view, and it's a very common view. I think probably most people haven't really even thought about it, and they might assume that. The second view, again also held by Orthodox Christian scholars, is that there's something that more than meets the eye to this book. It's that Jonah is a form of narrative

parable, and that this is a parable based off of a historical real figure, as we're going to see here, Jonah was a real figure based in history, but that the author does not intend us to take the story as historical narrative, but rather as parable. Similarly to the parable that Jesus told in Luke chapter 16, where he used a named character, the rich man and Lazarus in that parable. It's very clear it's a parable. It's a collection of parables and so on. It has all the features of Jesus' parables.

But Jesus used a named figure, most likely a figure that would have been familiar to his hearers or so on, a beggar named Lazarus, but then puts that real character into a parable, a parable-type setting. So those are the two main views. So here's the problem. Here's the problem here, and let's be very honest. What has happened for the most part in the last couple hundred years, especially in many church circles, is because the fish is the main thing, the choice between the two views all of a sudden becomes a litmus test

on whether or not you really believe in miracles, or whether or not you even believe a man could survive in a fish's stomach for three days. And if you take the view that the book's a parable, then you don't believe in the possibility of miracles, you're sliding towards theological liberalism, and you're denying the truthfulness of the Bible. Okay, let's just stop. Stop that. Stop.

This is the wrong starting point altogether. The fish is not the thing. What I want to do is humble myself before God's word, not tell it what I think it ought to be, but let the author tell me what kind of story he's writing. And so then this is where the bait comes in, because Jonah is a historical figure. There's no doubt about that. Jesus mentions Jonah, and some people say, well, because Jesus mentioned Jonah and the people of Nineveh, that's a claim that the book is historical. If you go read those comments of Jesus

in context, though, he's not talking about what kind of book is, or he's not appealing to the historicity of the book of Jonah. He's doing what he always does with the Old Testament, says that these are stories and figures that point forward to me. He says that the book Jonah in the whale is a symbol or a type of his coming death and burial. So Jesus' words don't resolve the issue for us. You have to go to the book of Jonah itself. And so here's what's interesting. No matter what view you hold, the book of Jonah is unique in how it tells its story.

It doesn't give any dates. Other than Jonah, it doesn't give you any names. It names one of the most important figures in the ancient world, who's the king of Nineveh. He's like the king of, he's the equivalent of the U.S. president in the world today. He was the ruler of the biggest, baddest empire the ancient world has ever known. And he has no name in the story, which is very curious. Usually when biblical authors, like telling the stories of David or Solomon, or like the four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament, they make the historical claim just

out there. They're telling you names and dates and other events going on in history and look, everything, everything is keyed in to make that claim. And the book of Jonah is just different. It just, it has a different kind of style. And what both camps agree on, whatever view you hold, what both camps agree on is that the book of Jonah is a beautiful piece of literary storytelling. And so my lecture is kind of over now. This is where I think you'll really be interested here, is that no matter what view you hold, everybody agrees that the book of Jonah is a story that reads like two forms of literature we have in our culture. And those two forms of literature, one is Saturday Night Live and the other one is comic books. So the storytelling style of this

book is a form of satire. Are you guys familiar with that term? I don't know. Some of you might be. So just think Saturday Night Live. So satire stories are where you take very known figures, popular figures, who are kind of stock generic characters. So in Saturday Night Live, you take political figures or celebrities, this kind of thing, and you place them in extreme ridiculous stories that just highlight how flawed and screwed up these people are, right? And they're just the butt of every joke. And you just watch it and you go, oh, ridiculous. These people are so ridiculous.

And satires are always aimed not simply at telling you about some event that took place, they're aimed at critiquing you, the reader, but getting you to laugh while they're making fun of you. You know what I'm saying? Let's start it tonight live. They're making fun of American culture, which is you, but you're laughing while they're making fun of you. You know what I'm saying? Let's start a day night live. They're making fun of American culture, which is you, but you're laughing while they're doing it and holding up these characters for ridicule.

And so that's exactly the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah is all about stock, generic characters. So you have the prophet, the man of God, right? The religious prophet. And he is the one who immediately runs away from God. He's actually the most hard-hearted, hateful person in this entire story, right? God has to physically, like, take him on the mission that he's going and

vomit him out of the fish, you know, to get him to do anything. And then all Jonah does is he preaches a five-word, in Hebrew, a five-word sermon in Nineveh. And it was very successful. His sermon is very successful. And he's so angry he wants to die. And the book ends with him chewing God out for being too merciful, and he would rather die than live with his God. That's the man of God in the story, right? And then you have the bad guys, right? The heathen pagan sailors in chapter one,

and the big bad Ninevites, and they're the most murderous, oppressive people the planet has ever known, and they have paper-thin consciences, and they respond to God and repent immediately and turn their hearts towards him. Even the cows repent in Nineveh in chapter three. So it's just, everything is just kind of extreme and crazy, and you're just like, whoa, this is the book of Jonah. So that's Saturday Night Live. It is the generic kind of nobody behaves according to their stereotype. The other feature,

and this is great, and I'll point this out as we go along, is that the book is just full of what you could call comic book style. Everything's over the top. The word great or huge in Hebrew is gadol, and it occurs 15 times in these short two pages. Everything's huge in the book of Jonah. The storm is huge. The ship is huge in the book of Jonah. The storm is huge. The ship is huge. The fish is huge. The city is huge. The city is so huge, it says it takes three days to walk through it, which any ancient reader would be like, oh, that's a good one. That's a good one, right? Because it's like a 45-mile-wide city. There was no city in the ancient world that was 45 miles wide. Nineveh was seven miles around, and that was gigantic for its day. But it's blowing everything out of proportion, because it was the most

significant city on the planet at that time. Jonah is hugely happy. He's hugely afraid. He's like a manic depressive or something. He's just a crazy person who needs to see his ancient therapist. So do you guys get the feel here? Just everything's crazy and extreme. And this is exactly what the author is trying to do. He's telling us a tale and wrapping us in, and we go, oh, this is so, what a great, what an incredible story this is. So, look at that guy. He's so stupid. And then you finish the story, and you're like, oh, that's me. Dang it. You know, do you want to run away or something like that? That's the power of the book of Jonah. So, that's me. Dang it. You know, do you like want to run away or something like that? That's the power of the book of Jonah. So it's the ancient, it's the biblical Saturday Night Live comic book. So that's all just kind of orient us. And I think part of it too is we just don't

expect this kind of thing in the Bible. Therefore, we never find it. It's kind of like to a person with a hammer in their hand, everything looks like a nail. So just reverse that. To a person who doesn't have a hammer in their hand, they never see any nails. That doesn't... I just did that on the spot. That didn't really work. But you kind of get my point, right?

If you don't think there's satire and humor and irony in the Bible, of course you're never going to see it. But once you do, all of a sudden you realize, dude, this, Jonah, is a piece of dynamite that is just being lobbed at God's people in love and compassion to help wake us up to the worst tendencies that have always tended to be going on in the community of God's people. That's the book of Jonah. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Now you're supposed to laugh right there. That's the laugh track. So Jonah's name means dove.

Jonah means dove. Son of Amittai means son of faithfulness. So doves, you know, images in the Bible of innocence, purity, and so on. The pure, innocent one, the son of faithfulness. That's rich. That's rich, right? Because he's the most faithless character in the entire story. The word of the Lord says, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because

its wickedness has come up before me. So again, there's a whole backstory here. You're just supposed to know about Nineveh. You're supposed to know about Jonah because he appears one other time in the Old Testament. And then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, oh, this is rich. This is so great. This is so great for a number of different reasons. Jonah, he's the perfect person to be the main character in this story. I mean, it's absolutely brilliant that he's the main character here for a few different reasons. Here's the one other time that Jonah is mentioned in the Bible, in the Old Testament here. It's in 2 Kings 14. And just to kind of give you a sweep of the story

of Israel there, Jonah comes kind of midway through the kingdom period, after David, before the last book of the Old Testament. He's right in there. And here's the story here. It's about Jeroboam II. Now, Jeroboam II, he was the son of Jehoash, and he began to rule over Israel in the 15th year of King Amaziah's reign in Judah. Now, Jeroboam reigned in Samaria 41 years.

That's a long term in office. Yep, 41 years. And he did what was evil in Yahweh's sight. He refused to turn from the sins that Jeroboam, son of Nebat, had led Israel to commit. He also recovered the territories of Israel between Levoh Hamath and the Dead Sea, just as Yahweh, the God of Israel, had promised through Jonah, son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hefer.

Now, I'm guessing that most of us, if we came across this paragraph in Kings, you'd be like, okay, a guy with a funny name, bad guy, won a battle, now I'm moving on. You know, oh, Jonah, that's interesting. Okay, now I'm moving on, right? I think that's what most of us would probably do. So really think about what's going on here. Jeroboam II, good guy or bad guy? He's a really bad guy, right? He's named after Jeroboam I, who was the king who led the northern tribes to secede. He essentially started

a civil war, a civil split between the tribes of Judah. And Jeroboam actually built two alternate temples as a rival to the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and he put golden calves in them. That's what Jeroboam did. And this guy's named after him. And apparently he didn't, not only did he just like keep it up, he made it even worse. He's a bad guy. In the biblical imagination, he's a bad, bad king, bad as they ever came. Jonah prophesied favorably, favor and victory for this apostate, faithless king. Now granted, we're told that it was a prophecy through Yahweh, that Jeroboam was able to gain for this apostate, faithless king. Hmm, hmm. Now granted, we're told that it was a prophecy through Yahweh that Jeroboam was able to gain through a battle

all of these different territories up in the northern area. But in the later imagination, later biblical readers that would be reading this would be like Jonah. Yeah, he's that guy who prophesied favor over that really horrible king. And not only that, in the book of Amos, chapter 7, Amos actually reverses this. He says, the people of Israel have gotten so bad that Yahweh is going to let Assyria come and wipe out all of those same territories.

Again, he's going to go back because Israel was disobedient. And so readers of the Bible would view, again, if you know this backstory here, when you hear Jonah, son of Amittai, dove, son of faithfulness, you're like, hmm, yeah, I don't know about this guy. I don't know about this guy. He prophesied that Israel would increase its national territory.

That's what he's known for. And now he's being asked to go preach a message to Israel's most hated enemies. And we'll see why, why he runs in just a minute. Now Nineveh, good guys, bad guys. I don't need to do too much work here. So Nineveh was the capital city of the ancient Assyrians. And Assyria was the empire that came and wiped out 10 of the

tribes of Israel, wiped them right off the map. They don't exist anymore because of Assyria. They were the most brutal, oppressive, and violent of the ancient empires. Their general practice was to plunder a city and skin alive all of the leaders of the city in front of everybody before they deported them back to Assyria. It's horrible. It's horrible. And so God's depicted as this great king, and he's surveying his realm, so to speak, and the oppression and the injustice of Nineveh rises up before him, and he's like, done.

Like, that's not going to continue. And so he sends a messenger. Dove, son of faithfulness. How's the story going to go? But Jonah ran away from the Lord, and he headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa. He found a ship bound for that port,

that is for Tarshish. And after paying the fare, he's an honest man, I suppose, after all, he went aboard, although in the children's book, for that I read to my son, he's hiding in a little basket, so it makes it look like he snuck on the ship. Anyway, so it says here he paid the fare. He paid the fare, and he went aboard the ship, and he sailed for Tarshish to do what? It says twice in verse 3. What's Jonah's ultimate aim here? To flee from the right at the beginning and right at the end. This is his goal. Now again, another chuckle,

oh, that's rich. That's a good one. That's a really good one. I'm fully geeking out here tonight. So let me show you a map. So you can see the Assyrian empire here, and you can see Nineveh is what direction from Israel? East. Where does Jonah go? West. Now, not just west. Tarshish is the equivalent in the Bible of, like, English, we say Timbuktu. No, literally, because it's the last port before you go through,

what's that, the Straits of Gibraltar? Is that what that is there? Yeah, the Straits of Gibraltar and out to the vast ocean. That was the edge of the known world. Jonah doesn't just flee, he actually flees as far as you can in the opposite direction as was humanly possible. That's the idea here. This guy, he's booking it to Tarshish. He's trying to get, not just like, he doesn't just go down to Egypt. That would be fine. He actually goes as far in the opposite direction as you could possibly can. And we're supposed to be like, that's crazy.

This guy's crazy. What do you think he's doing? And he's a prophet, for goodness sakes. Surely he's read Psalm 139 that Josh preached from last week, right? Can you do this? Can you flee from the Lord? Of course you can't. I mean, he's a part of the Bible itself, clearly. He should have known Psalm 139. There's something going on inside his heart and

inside his mind that has just scrambled his view of reality. And that's what we're going to camp out on in just a second here. So everything is rich. Everything is crazy and upside down in this story. And what it raises is the question, why? Jonah's the only prophet in the Bible who runs away from God. He's this upstanding religious man of God, so we think, but yet he's actually running furthest from God than any other character in the story. Why? Why does he do this? Why? And why do you think? I mean, Nineveh is in the habit of skinning people alive when it conquers a city. And you're being asked to go march into the capital city of that empire

and preach against it. This would be like parachuting into Berlin or Munich during World War II or something like that. And carry up a sign and say, Down with the Third Reich. You know, you just don't do that, right? So we think he's scared. He's scared, right? God's asked him to do something, he's scared. He doesn't want to do it. But that's not why. That's not why he runs. Look at chapter 4. This is, again, part of the brilliant storytelling of the book of Jonah. Chapter 4, verse 1.

In chapter 3, he preached his five-word sermon, the city, the king, and the cows repent. But to Jonah, the fact that the Ninevites should find forgiveness and mercy, this all seemed very, very wrong. He's angry at the success of his own preaching. He became angry. He prayed to the Lord. You can imagine through gritted teeth here. Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still back at home? This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God.

You're slow to anger. You're abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life. It'd be better for me to die than live. Dove, son of faithfulness. So what? Okay, so clearly he needs to see an ancient therapist. That's clear after reading these three verses here.

But he tells you exactly why he ran right here. He was not afraid. Why did he run? He knew that somehow Yahweh would find a way to bring his grace and his mercy to these people through their repentance. He just knew that somehow this was going to have a happy ending and he does not want a happy ending, and he does not want a happy ending for his enemies. And so here, this is really what's going on here, is that Jonah

has, he has a plan. He has a wonderful plan for his life. That's what he has, right? He has a vision of how his prophetic career is going to work out, and it doesn't include this mission, right? So he, And it doesn't include this mission. So he, especially as a prophet up in the northern kingdom, to be the prophet that brings forgiveness and life and repentance to the most hated enemies of your people, that's not going to go over great. It's not a way to win friends and be popular at parties. So that's just not.

It's going to make him suspect among his own people. Of course, he doesn't want this to work out. And so this is at the base of what this is really happening here inside of Jonah's heart. He knows perfectly well that Yahweh loves to show mercy. He knows somehow the Ninevites are going to find mercy. That just does not fit into my vision of what my life is about. No thanks. And so he books it to Tarshish. And so really how the book of Jonah begins is with a really profound just exploration

of the nature and the psychology of disobedience. It's really what this is about. And I don't know what you, you know, if I say the word obey, obey, or obedience, I'm guessing that most of us don't have like really flowery positive associations, you know, coming to the top of our minds, right? But essentially, like, obedience isn't a positive idea in our culture. And that's because for the most part, I mean, we read this, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, go to the great city, and we go, oh, here's God commanding people again. He sure loves to do that in the Bible, doesn't he? So that's how many of us our vision of God is. He's the power trip, whatever kind of volatile deity, and just loves to kind of flick people around, tell people what to do,

better submit, right? That's the vision that many of us have of God, our default mode. And many of you have that for lots of different reasons, primarily because many of you had moms and dads that were like that. And those might be the same moms and dads that taught you about God. And so, of course, you're going to project that back up onto the sky. But the biblical vision of God is very different. And think about this command. God is commanding Jonah to go preach to the city of Nineveh. There's so many ways this story could have gone, you guys. God could do like what he did at Mount Sinai. He could move in in a big dark cloud and lightning

and yell down from a bullhorn. And I'm sure that would have been very effective over Nineveh. Turn from your ways and you're doing wrong, it's horrible, stop it. And I'm sure that would have been effective. But God almost never does that kind of thing in the Bible. What happened there at Mount Sinai was very unique. The way that God works through almost all events throughout the story of the Bible is what he called his people into being for in the first place.

He chooses to work called his people into being for in the first place. He chooses to work through his people. It's the primary vehicle that God chooses to work through, is through people, his covenant people. And so what's actually happening here is Jonah is being invited to step into a story that is much broader, that's more risky. It's way bigger than anything he ever signed up for. That's basically what's happening here, right? Jonah has a vision. Here's what my life is about. Here's what my prophetic career is about. Yeah, there's that whole God thing clearly calling me in that direction. I'm just not interested. And so at its root, what this comes down to, a way to kind of rethink what obedience means in the Bible, is that God has and we have competing visions of what life is about, of what the good life is,

of what actually constitutes true life as a human being. And you and I operate according to that vision. It's just default. It's in there. And we behave in ways that make the most sense to us, given our circumstances. That's just what we do. That's how we operate. And so Jesus comes into the picture,

and he's like, follow me. And there's a whole bunch of things that you're doing that you think is life, but actually it is not life at all. That's what's happening right here. It's competing visions of life. And when God calls his people, the first thing that we're confronted with

is am I going to settle for the path of life that I'm on and what I call life or am I going to entertain this new invitation to life? And so you have this sad irony here. Right at the book of Jonah, it's the first expose of this brokenness in God's people, is that it's very easy to train ourselves through just being in a church community or something

that we're doing pretty good and we're involved or whatever, doing whatever. And so we're like, yeah, okay, just making progress here or something. But then there's just this clear, glaring area of our lives where we know we're being called to grow. We're being called to change. And somehow we just end up, especially religious people, we're able to compartmentalize that off and be like, yeah, not really, not so much there, Jesus, but I'll go to a Sunday

gathering, done, and won't you be happy with me then? I mean, that's totally how we operate. And so here's this very religious man who when it comes to it, here's a core issue where his vision of his life is being challenged and he's booking it to Tarshish. And the sad irony is that he thinks he's running for his life.

He thinks God's ruining his party. And the tragedy is that he's actually running from life. I mean, look what he has a chance to participate in. A movement of God's grace that is on a greater scope than anybody had ever known. And he totally misses out on being a part of it and enjoying it.

Because he won't give up his little vision of the good life. What an ancient irrelevant story. I have two sons. One of them is named Roman. He's two and he's awesome. And the other one is August, who you've been hearing some about, and he's now a little over a month old. And so right now what we're working on is this very basic thing, which is please stop and come here now, Roman. That's, if we could just make progress there, I'd be very happy. Very happy. Because, you know, so we were walking around the neighborhood, and I could tell the story 25 different times. We're cruising on the sidewalk, going for a walk, and he really doesn't know how to walk. He just runs.

He just runs everywhere. And so he'll, like, see a dog or, dog or a dump truck or a bike or something. He's long ways off, and he's just on it. And so I turn my head five seconds, and then he's halfway down the block, that kind of thing. And so I was talking with somebody about this. Being a parent of toddlers is essentially, you feel like a rescue person every day. Because you're saving them from mortal danger like 10 times every single day. It's really kind of funny. And so he's cruising. And obviously there's like busy streets.

Division's a busy street for traffic and bike traffic and so on. And so we've gotten to the point where we're making progress because I'll say, Roman, Roman, buddy, stop. Stop and come back here. And we've gotten to the point where he will slow down. He'll slow down, and he'll look at me. And he knows. I mean, it's all right there. He knows exactly what's going on.

And so here's what's so hard, you guys, and it's so crazy. I have only goodwill for my son. I love him more than anything. I want him to go see that dog so badly. All right? But all he gets in that moment is, dude, dad, you are crashing my party right now. You know what I'm saying? Like his view of the world, he has a vision of his life and where things need to go and how it's going to work out. And I'm ruining that, clearly. Clearly ruining that. And so in his mind, he's running for his life, for betterment, you know, for the good life, because he wants to go see the dog. What he

cannot see is that he's actually running from his life. If he runs across that street and there's a car, done, you know. I'm very aware of that. And this is precisely the image of what's happening here in Jonah. It's exactly the image of what's happening here in Jonah. It's exactly the image of what's happening. God wants Jonah to participate in this amazing, amazing event of his grace and mercy, coming to these people that you would never expect it. And he's so fixated on his little deal, he can't see that. He's blind to it. And so he thinks he's running for his life. The sad reality is he's running from his life. And it seems to me this is the situation every single one of us finds ourselves in

every single day when we face the decision of whether or not I'm going to follow Jesus. And in a way, you know, this whole vision of obedience and what's happening here, I mean, this is all summed up at the cross. Because when Jesus calls us to follow him, he's calling us to see that he

was the human being, he was the faithful human being, the faithful covenant partner of God, human being that none of us ever was or ever fully will be, the side of his return. or ever fully will be, the side of his return. And he lived for us in a way that I could never live. And he died to absorb the cumulative weight of just the horrible, stupid decisions that we make when we run from life, when we run according to our vision of the good life. And in his mercy and in his love,

he conquered it by raising from the dead so that he can offer us life and grace and forgiveness. And so like what we did at baptism last week at the park, when I come to Jesus, there's a death that takes place. And it's a death to your vision of the good life, your vision of what your life is about, you've got to let it die. And you've got to let it die in faith that what Jesus is asking you to and inviting you into is so much richer form of life than you could ever imagine, which may not involve whatever, like big house and nice cars or something. No, that's different. That's a different gospel. So what we're talking about is what Jesus called abundant life, life that's so rooted in his love for me

that I see he only has goodwill for me. And that when he tells me to stop and turn around and come his way, he only has my best in mind. And so this is a big room. And there might be some of us here, you know, we're on the investigative side. We wouldn't self-identify as Christians. Or maybe you would. You're kind of seeking or whatever, trying to figure this whole thing out. And so, you know, for those of you, first of all, we're just stoked that you're here. Thank you for being here. And, you know, just to

put it straight to you, that's really what's involved here. Becoming a Christian involves letting my vision of what my life's about to let it die. And it may be that I'll take a whole bunch of that up again on the other side, but with a whole different perspective now, because it's not my little story that's at the center. It's the fact that I am now a bit player in the story of Jesus, who's at work in the world and inviting me to become a part of it. And so could it be that your vision of what your life is all about is just too small? And Jesus is inviting you to something different.

And for those of us who are here, the majority of us, we'd self-identify as Christians. I mean, this is every day. And so for some of us, we might have patterns, patterns of behavior that we need to stop, patterns of thinking, of ways of acting, and they don't lead to life, and we know it, and we're scared to let go of that because that's what

we know. That's the only life we know. And following Jesus is going to involve letting that die, and who knows what your life is going to look like on the other side of it. It's the choice you have. It's the choice you have. For some of us, it might not be stopping behaviors. It might be starting new behaviors that will invite us into life. And so the reason why we did the prayer series over the summer was to invite the whole church into a new phase of growth through learning the language of prayer and so on. That's the path to life. And some of us, whatever, we run, we're lazy, we don't want to do the work that's involved with carving out times

for solitude or quiet. And so, it's not a part of our vision of the good life, and so we're never going to get there. And that's to our loss. And so whatever form, it's forgiveness of someone who's wronged you. It's finally like spending less money on yourself and giving more of it away. I don't

know. Whatever that step is for you, it's a competition of views of life. And so as we go into our time of worship, as we come towards the bread and the cup, I would just encourage you to just hear this first of five punches in the gut from the book of Jonah. For those of us who can be honest and self-aware enough to know that we're running, there's some areas of your life you may be doing good. I guarantee for all of us,

there's some part of our life where you're booking it to Tarshish. And Jesus is not welcome there. And if you want to experience life, we have to let it, have to let him go there. We have to stop running. And tonight, some of us need to make a decision to do that. And so as we come to the bread and the cup, as always in our time of worship, you know, for some of us, I would just encourage you, make this a moment where you get that issue, that person, that thing

in your mind and as you take the bread and the cup which symbolizes his death, his broken body, his shed blood on the cross for you just ask Jesus to let that part, let that issue for you, whatever it is to let it die with him at the cross

and allow him to speak his life to you tonight in his grace. And that's, if there's anything about the character of God revealed in this story, it's one of extravagant mercy and grace. Amen? Amen.

Hey, thanks for listening to this maiden voyage of exploring my strange Bible. We'll have the next episode up very soon, exploring more of the book of Jonah, and we're looking forward to that. So join us again next time.