Welcome to Tandem Spirituality and our second episode. of Jonah. The book of Jonah.
Yeah. And this is Yeah, you're right. But this is struggling. Well,
part of tandem serial.
There you go. Well, that's why I'm not a professional. But speaking of not being professional, let me tell you a little bit about our studio. As a matter of fact, recently somebody asked us where we recorded our podcast and we Jimmy said, "Well, it's pretty intense." We are at our kitchen table. So, periodically you'll hear the heat come on. You'll hear the dog breathe. He's a heavy breather. you'll hear all sorts of stuff because we've got two mics. we've got our dear friend Tim who's helping us with the production of this and that's about as exciting as it gets.
It really is. But we are going to turn our thoughts to Jonah again. We started last week on the podcast talking about Jonah because he's just like so many of the servants that God used. Jonah's confusing to me. He just isn't he isn't what you think of when you think of a prophet who speaks for God. But then again, if we're honest, I don't know that I'm what I think of when I think of a servant of God. God uses men and women who are just real people but have flaws.
You said in the first episode that he had had a successful ministry. Can you address that a little?
Right. So, he's ministering in the northern kingdom of Israel under a king, Jeroboam II, who's just an evil man. He didn't do things the way God wanted them done. And yet somehow in the midst of that evil kingdom, God expands the borders and restores land back to Israel. And it's Jonah's word that brings the reality of that prophecy to happen. And so he would have been in Israel, I would believe, enjoying popularity because look what he did. He prophesied that this was going to happen and boy, it came to happen and God restored the land to Israel. and so that's kind of where he's at. when we pick up the story, story of Jonah from the book of Jonah. And what's fascinating to me about the prophet Jonah is his story isn't really about what he says.
There's only one thing he says in the four chapters of the book of Jonah that would be speaking for the Lord. He says you had 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. That's it. This book is really more about the life of the prophet, a rebellious prophet. And here's the reality. He hates God for loving his enemy. enemies and
have you ever experienced that?
Well, I think I have. I mean, the reluctance to take the gospel to somebody and I think this is the question that Jonah raises or is raised in the book of Jonah that's for us today. Are we okay? Am I okay? Are you okay with God loving your enemies?
I would say that majority of people would say no.
Yeah. I mean, it's a hard thing for us to love our enemies and yet this is about God and are we okay that God would love our enemies? it brings out the this the wideness and the depth of the love of God and it's for all people.
And the funny thing about that is I certainly want God to love me and I want him to pour grace and mercy on me. But if it's in regard to someone who has either hurt me, hurt us or is doing something flatout evil, it's hard to think of them made in the image of God and then wanting them to hear the gospel because then they would be forgiven.
Yeah. So I you just said something I think is important. If we think about the Bible and we think about it as God's story to us, his love story to us, the first two chapters in Genesis are important chapters because they're about creation. If I believe he's the creator God,
then all of us are imagebearers.
Yeah.
And that means that everyone whether it's as it was for Jonah, the Ninevites, part of the Assyrian nation that was going to eventually overthrow Israel, that those people were image bearsers. And so God wants his message to go. And the book is really interesting in my mind. chapters 1 and three, it's only four chapters, but chapters 1 and three are pictures of Jonah and his relationship with non-Israelites, if I would put a different word to it, non-believers. and how he interact acts with them. First in chapter 1 with the sailors who are heading to Tarsus and then in chapter 3 actually with Nineveh. And what happens in those two chapters is we see Jonah's selfishness and we see the pagans repentance.
Oh, that's interesting. If we go to the passage itself, it says in chapter 1, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of somebody, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. But big transition word, but Jonah, so he hears this from the Lord. He rose to flee to Tarsus from the presence of the Lord. So he gets on the ship and it says that he gets on board because he wants to go away from the presence of the Lord. Repeated twice in three verses.
Yeah. And so I think the presence of God is something that's both comforting and it can be disturbing. when I know and I believe that God will never leave me. He'll never forsake me, that means I have him with me every day of my life. But when I'm doing things that are contrary to what his design or contrary to what his desires are for me, his presence is not necessarily comforting at that point. It's something that I would love to get away from. And that's exactly what Jonah does here. He somehow in his own mind thinks I can get away from God.
Have you guys ever read anything in scripture and then kind of in your heart or in your mind you thought, "No, that doesn't apply to me. I don't like that." And culturally right now, that's happening in spades.
Yeah. Well, he's in this ship with seasoned sailors and a great storm comes up. And it's interesting to me, the sailors are scared. They think they're going to die. So, they start throwing anything they can overboard and then they kind of cast lots to decide, well, who's the source of all this? And it all falls on Jonah. And where's Jonah?
He's asleep in the bottom of the boat.
Sound asleep.
And I love it when the captain comes and says to him, "What do you mean you sleeper?" Like, "Dude, you are sleeping. There's this massive storm. Something is wrong." Because in their culture, they believed that the gods, maybe the god of the sea, Zeus, I don't know who, would be angry at them, and so they needed to appease him. And this guy's down there sleeping.
Yeah. And that's again, it's a story for a different podcast, but that's that whole way of thinking that bad things equal bad things happening to me. Doing bad things equal bad things happening to me. And that's what these guys certainly thought. What's interesting when Jonah finally wakes up, he makes this statement, I'm a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God who made heaven and earth and the sea in the dry land. And I'm like, no, I'm not sure you really fear him. I'm not sure you love him. I
I think it's funny, too, that the men on the on board say him, "What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?" Why those questions?
I don't know. Other than they're just trying to figure out who is this guy that they let come on board their ship and then all this is happening. And so end of the day, Jonah says, "Throw me overboard. throw me overboard because then I'll die." And Jonah Jonah's reason for not wanting to go to Nineveh is because he knows who God is and he knows what God will do and he'll show compassion because he's a compassionate God. Jonah doesn't want compassion shown on Nineveh.
And so his first choice was to run away. That wasn't working. His second choice is just kill me because I don't believe that Jonah thought if you throw me into the sea, I'm going to live. I think he believed if you throw me into the sea, I'll die and I'll thwart God's desire to show compassion on the Nvites.
Well, isn't it interesting though that the sailors, they had more compassion than Jonah did cuz it says when he goes, you know, throw me in the sea. Verse 13 says, "Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not for the sea grew more and more tempetu," that word tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called out to the Lord. So, they had compassion on Jonah. And then You know what's the next part there?
Well, and then you what you find is this is you've got Jonah who is selfishly going to deny doing what God called him to do. And you've got these non-Israelites, these pa p pagan sailors who repent and turn their hearts towards the Lord.
In the last verse of the verse 16, then the men feared the Lord exceedingly offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. So what a contrast. Here's this man who's a spokesperson for God, who's trying to get away from God, who's going to thwart God's desire by saying, "Throw me into the sea. I'll die.", and yet these pagan sailors see somehow in all of it, the majesty and the greatness of God, and they repent and they turn their lives around and Jonah is in the sea.
This is quite a story, babe.
Yeah, we'll watch. it and we'll listen to it and watch what unfolds. because we're going to jump next time to the third chapter. I do know numbers go 1 2 3, but we're going to jump to three because it's his second encounter with pagan people and this time it's in Nineveh. Hope you'll join us.