Fellowship Around the Table
Great conversations about life, faith, and the Bible from Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (www.fbctulsa.org).
Fellowship Around the Table
The Reluctant Prophet: Jonah w/ Scott L. Johnson (Part 1 of 2)
Have you ever faced a decision that seemed to pit your faith against your instincts? This week on Fellowship Around the Table, my friend Scott L. Johnson joins me to draw out the profound teachings from the Book of Jonah, weaving them with a modern-day ethical predicament that challenges us to reconsider what we often take for granted
. Together, we peel back the layers, probing the sailors’ gritty reality at sea and the lessons it holds for those of us navigating the sometimes stormy waters of life.
The tale of Jonah isn’t just a story of a man and a fish; it’s a tale riddled with complexity and the omnipresent hand of God. As Scott and I sift through Jonah’s encounters and conversations, we lay bare the paradox of a prophet choosing death over his divine duty. By examining Jonah's heartfelt prayers and his ultimate act of sacrifice, we reveal the resonance this story has with our own struggles to embrace our responsibilities and the inescapable nature of our callings. Join us as we reflect on the timeless truths hidden within Jonah's reluctance and redemption, discovering how they illuminate our paths today.
You are listening to Fellowship Around the Table. Welcome back to another week of Fellowship Around the Table. This week I'm excited we're going to dive in to the book of Jonah.
Speaker 2:Nice, I see what you did there. That was good. Dive in.
Speaker 1:That's my good friend Scott L.
Speaker 2:Johnson, hey there.
Speaker 1:Hey Scott.
Speaker 2:Good morning again. Good morning, that's right, jonah.
Speaker 1:I love this book.
Speaker 2:Jonah, my friend Jonah.
Speaker 1:The most famous minor prophet.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:Well, what do you got for us today?
Speaker 2:I want to start by I don't even want to talk about Jonah. First I want to tell you about a story, about a friend of mine. Okay, have you ever been Heath asked in business or in your job to do something that you thought was unethical and you just couldn't do it? Yes, and so this friend of mine was asked by his boss to do something unethical and he didn't feel he could do it. Now, he had a fantastic job, he had a great boss. Do it. Now. He had a fantastic job, he had a great boss, but the boss was very demanding and he really didn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 2:So the boss asked this guy to do something that was unethical To him. It was immoral. He wasn't willing to do it, but he knew he couldn't tell the boss no. In fact, he couldn't even tell the boss no and I quit. The boss was that powerful, so he just took off. He resigned and didn't say anything to the boss no and I quit. The boss was that powerful, so he just took off. He resigned and didn't say anything to the boss, he just left. Now, the boss was the kind of boss that has eyes and ears everywhere.
Speaker 1:Is this the CIA? Even more, even more.
Speaker 2:He's even more secret than that, even more powerful than that. So the boss knew immediately, or very, very quickly, that this guy had sort of just taken off. So the boss sent his forces and cornered this guy. And the guy was shocked that he was cornered and he thought he was going to die. But all the boss did was he made him do the assignment. That's all he did. What kind of boss is this what kind of boss is that? Any idea who I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:I think we might be talking about Jonah we might be.
Speaker 2:I just told you the story of Jonah in a very, very short, more contemporary framed nutshell.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:But that's what happened to Jonah. Okay, so I want to start by asking you a question, heath. When you think of God's provision, what kind of things come to your mind?
Speaker 1:Oh wow. I mean the fact that I've never gone without food, shelter, clothing. Yes, at just a basic level Right. Even in my adult life and having a family me married and kids it just seems like, oh, how are we going to do that? And you're just able to do that next thing. Whatever that is it just seems like the resources show up.
Speaker 2:That's right Now. I've been to Africa before. You don't drink the tap water there.
Speaker 2:And so the fact that in this country, the United States, we can turn the tap water on and drink the water. It's clean, we can wash our hands with it, we have roofs over our head to keep water away from where we don't want it to be, which is really important. It's warm in our homes in the winter and it's cool in our homes in the summer. We have easy ways to get from point A to point B, and even in history, although we didn't have all those things we think of provision as being like food, shelter, safety, family, friends, health, things like that, those things are all what. If you could summarize them with one adjective, what would your adjective be? I'll give you the right answer here, thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I got to guess, you got to guess this is how we get all of our bloopers at the end of the show.
Speaker 1:as Heath is doing this, I'll fill it in for you.
Speaker 2:Okay, I can see the pain on your face. It's good.
Speaker 1:Okay, they're all good things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, god's provision.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean we think of all kinds of things that are good things, so we're going to park that for just a moment.
Speaker 1:I was over here doing calculus and the answer was two plus two plus four. Exactly, exactly, okay, exactly. So we're just going to be real basic.
Speaker 2:Okay, they're good things. Then I want to ask you this question when you think of sailors 2,700 years ago, what kind of men come to your mind?
Speaker 1:What do they look like Rough?
Speaker 2:Rough. What else? What are some other descriptors?
Speaker 1:Colorful language? Probably they're tough, tough.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I mean these. I'm thinking these are men's men. Yes, these are the guys battling the wind, the waves, the sun, maybe pirates from time to time I mean easy condition.
Speaker 2:They're really the guys doing it. Yeah, these are the guys. If you're in a fight you don't want, you want them on your side, them on your side Absolutely, or you want to be on their side. You're going to jump to their side, probably, right? I think in their day and time they were the men's men.
Speaker 2:And then another question for you sailors of cargo ships. What were they paid to do? Deliver goods, deliver goods. I want to really focus on that point. Okay, they were not paid to sail the ship. No, they were paid because all the stuff that people gave them to get from point A to point B was delivered. That's how they got paid. So they weren't paid to sail, even though they were sailors. They were paid fundamentally to get goods from point A to point B. So I want to park those thoughts for us for a moment. We don't know who the author of Jonah was I'll make a comment about that at the end of the book and he's the only Old Testament prophet who ran away from God, which we're going to see immediately, and who prophesied to Gentiles.
Speaker 2:So he has an interesting distinction from that standpoint. We're just going to start with Jonah, chapter 1, verse 1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. I can only imagine what God's voice would sound like. Don't you ever wonder that when you teach the minor prophets?
Speaker 1:and lots of other stuff. I've wondered that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wouldn't it be cool to hear that. So Jonah heard it and the voice said Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me Now. I think a really important initial point here is, when we think Nineveh, it sounds to us like go to Dallas, okay. Go to Houston. Go to London, go to Paris. That's not what Jonah heard. A big city in our day, Go to a big city, okay, okay. This is not what Jonah heard.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So in us, for our contemporary culture, it would be like God saying to you, heath, go to ISIS. Go to ISIS because their wickedness has come up before me, and preach against it. Okay, this is more what Jonah heard. Nineveh was a wicked, perverse, drunken, violent place. It wasn't a place any decent person wanted to go to, much less a Hebrew Right. So Jonah is told by God to kind of go into the thick of it and he says right there, its wickedness has come up before me. So Jonah hears all that and what does he do?
Speaker 1:He runs the other direction.
Speaker 2:Right, he doesn't want to do it, he takes off. So on our map it says he went to Joppa, which was a port, and he got on a boat and he headed for Tarshish. Now, from Joppa to Nineveh Nineveh would be northeast of Joppa, about 550 miles away, but Nineveh, nineveh, would be northeast of Joppa about 550 miles away, but Tarshish is almost due west, a little north of west, 2,500 miles away, sailing on a ship. So he's going to go about as far away as he can imagine.
Speaker 1:The other side of the world in his day.
Speaker 2:Then the complete other direction. That's exactly right. He's going to be out on the open ocean. I can't help but speculate. This is pure speculation on my part that he thought God's not going to worry about me. I'm just a dinky guy. I don't want to do this assignment. I'm not okay with the assignment. I'm just going to take off and go. God will get someone else to do it. So he takes off, he gets aboard the ship and he pays the fare. He and he pays the fare. He finds his sleeping quarters wherever they might be and he goes to sleep. And we don't know how many days in it was, but by chapter 1, verse 4, it says the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose the ship threatened to break up. We're only four verses in and the ship is creaking and splintering and sounding like it is going to come apart. Four verses into the book, now verse five. All the sailors were afraid. What kind of guys were these again, I mean the manly men.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what they were. These were the manly men. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own God and you're looking at the text there with me. What do you notice about that word? God, lowercase, lowercase. They each cried out and they each cried out to their own little G God. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. What did they just throw overboard? Their paycheck, their paycheck. That's exactly what they threw overboard. We're five verses in Heath. We're only five verses into this book, like the Bible just doesn't waste any time. We're five verses in.
Speaker 2:These guys are so afraid, the manly men, the men's men, that they've thrown their paychecks overboard to save their own lives. Wow, to lighten the ship. It says Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. Does that remind you of anybody? Jesus? There's not very much comparison between Jonah and Jesus in terms of their personality or how they prioritize things and people.
Speaker 1:Three days, the three days. Jesus is going to refer to that, but I don't think Jonah gets credit for that in the personality department either.
Speaker 2:But nonetheless he's asleep and he's really out. I suspect he was exhausted. I think running from God would take it out of you when God is your boss and he's been your boss and you know his voice and you're running from him. I think you are drained.
Speaker 1:Running from God, does take it out of you.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Like Jesus said, you know, my burden is light and my yoke is easy. It's a lot of work, I think, to run from.
Speaker 1:God yeah, and it's quite the illusion too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So I love this. The captain goes to him and he sort of jostles him and he wakes him up and he says how can you sleep? Get up and call on your little g god. He's like all of us have one. Obviously you've got one. Call on your little g god.
Speaker 1:I always picture everybody's clearly In a panic, in a sense of knowing that their life is at risk.
Speaker 2:That's right, the context gives us that kind of detail, the chances are not good.
Speaker 1:I wonder the look on the captain's face when he goes downstairs and he's asleep.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think he's probably incredulous.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, yeah Like what on earth? How is that possible?
Speaker 2:Maybe we could call that a WTH moment right there.
Speaker 1:What the heck? How is?
Speaker 2:that possible. So he says call on your little G-God. I love this next sentence Maybe he will take notice of us so that we won't perish. What is he really saying when he says that Maybe your little G-God will take notice of us? I don't know what's he saying about all the other little G-Gods. Oh they're not getting it done.
Speaker 2:They're not paying any attention. Right, they're not getting it done. They're not paying attention. Maybe they're asleep, who knows. But he says maybe your little G-god will take notice. In essence, none of the other gods are taking notice of our plight. We need your help. What on earth are you doing, asleep over there? So at this point, the captain's request of Jonah is to wake up and pray to his little G-god. So, at this point, the captain's request of Jonah is to wake up and pray to his little G-God.
Speaker 2:And he hasn't made the connection at all that Jonah is the cause of this problem. He's just asking him to wake up and pray to his little G-God. So chapter 1, verse 7, the sailor said let us cast lots to find out who's responsible for this calamity. And it says the lot fell on Jonah. We don't know exactly what the process was. We talked about this a little bit with the book of Esther. It probably wasn't dice like we think of dice, but it's probably stones. Maybe there was one that was a different color black or white, Could have been sticks of different colors or lengths or something like that. But somehow they narrow it down and Jonah is singled out yet again by the pagan process of casting lots. We see God using this, and so I love this part.
Speaker 2:Heath, the guys ask him five questions. They asked him tell us who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from, what is your country and from what people are you? They ask him five questions, Five questions, Five questions. Wow, Ironically, he gives them five answers. Oh my, Although he doesn't exactly answer each question. Okay, but he gives them five answers.
Speaker 2:I want you to listen to his answers. He answered I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord. This is the capital L-O-R-D. Lord. I worship the Lord. This is the capital L-O-R-D. Lord. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Five answers I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Now let me ask you this question You're a manly man who is terrified, crying out to your little G God who's not paying attention, and you've thrown your paycheck overboard, Okay. And this guy says to you I worship the Lord who made the sea and the dry land. Yeah, Does he have your attention? Yeah, Because where are you right now? I'm on the sea. You're on the sea, and where would you like to be right now?
Speaker 1:You'd like to be on the dry land.
Speaker 2:That's right, I think he has their attention 100% yeah.
Speaker 1:It's interesting too, jonah. He is running away. He doesn't want to do the mission he was called to do. He does not, but he is not. It's not low that he had rejected God in that sense Correct, rejected the call that he was, but he still knew who God was.
Speaker 2:That's such a great point and we're going to see that in no uncertain terms through the rest of this book. He does not reject that God is there.
Speaker 1:I haven't ever felt a call like this, but I have, I think, rejected some things I was supposed to do, and it doesn't mean I forgot who God was.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, on a much smaller scale, but I see this a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah. I think this resonates with all of us at some point in our lives. I think that's exactly right, okay. So he gives them these five answers, including my God, my capital, g God. The Lord made the sea and the dry land. I think he has their attention. And it says this terrified them and they asked what have you done? Now this is interesting, this little parenthetical here. It says they knew he was running away from the Lord because he'd already told them so. So I think he said, hey, I'm running from God, but they probably heard little g God until now. Now they're really in the thick of it. They figured out it really is Jonah's fault because they cast the lots and now he's confessed right, it's me and this is who I worship. So chapter one, verse 11, I want you to remember, the ship has already been splintering and snapping and threatening to break up. They've already thrown their paychecks overboard. And chapter one, verse 11, says the sea was getting rougher and rougher. Like how much rougher can it get?
Speaker 2:So we have another layer of roughness in the sea, it says. They asked him what should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? Look what Jonah says here Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm. I know that it's my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Now what does Jonah think will happen to him when they throw him into the water?
Speaker 1:I assume he thinks he'll perish.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any other reasonable answer. I don't think there's any other reasonable answer to that question, Jonah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to use the word knows. He knows he'll drown. There's nothing else, there's no other reasonable possible thing you could imagine would happen as a result of that. So he's going to drown. But I think in his mind he knows not only is he going to drown, he won't have to go to Nineveh. Right. So far that's not looking too good because God's found him where he was and he'll save these men. And it's his fault, he knows it's his fault. So he says throw me into the water, because I know this is my fault.
Speaker 1:And he's kind of sacrificing himself. In some sense that's right.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, okay. So when he says, throw me overboard, he knows, quote, unquote, he's going to die, he's going to drown, what is it he won't have to do?
Speaker 1:He won't have to go to Nineveh.
Speaker 2:He won't have to go to Nineveh. He won't have to go to Nineveh. Is it okay with him that he dies here?
Speaker 1:It sure seems that way. I think so, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think so Cause he says, throw me in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We don't know how he said it.
Speaker 1:He even seems calm that once you throw me in he's going to calm.
Speaker 2:Like. He seems like this is, this is what's going to happen. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And he says I know it's my fault, I know it's my fault that this great storm has come upon you. So by having himself thrown in, he will not have to go to Nineveh and he'll save these guys and all that's good. Okay, now I want you to think about something else. That's so cool here.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:God corners Jonah where there is no corner. Okay, jonah is in this boat in the middle of the open sea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nothing in sight, any direction. And God, I would say he finds him, but he always knew where he was. He's already found him. He already has had him the whole time, knew where he was, he's already found him, he already has had him the whole time. And he sends a storm to hem him in where there's no way out, where there's no corner, there's no corner to back him into. Yet he's cornered in the middle of the open water. I love how God does that. They're in the middle of nowhere and there's nowhere to go. They are about to be history, unless they can figure out what the right thing is to do, which is going to be to throw Jonah overboard. So I love how God does that.
Speaker 2:So instead it says in chapter 1, verse 13, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder. I mean, this is the third time. At the beginning it says the sea was so rough they threw everything overboard. Then in verse 11, the sea was getting rougher and rougher, and here in verse 13, the sea grew even wilder, like it just keeps on getting worse and worse. So the men cried out to the Lord Please, lord, do not let us die For taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable For killing an innocent man. For you, lord, do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man. For you, lord, capital L, lord have done as you pleased. So they cry out and pray to the one true God, jonah's God. At this point, they cry out to him and say, please don't hold us accountable for this. Now I've read a couple different theories, by the way, on why they didn't throw him in right away.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. He said, throw me in and this will all stop, it says. Instead they tried harder to row even more, and it's the sea grew even worse. One is that maybe they were afraid that, since his God had already sent the storm, he would be really ticked with them, if they threw a man and be even worse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the other one is that they have a moral compass and I think, if you think about these guys, rough though they might be they do have a moral compass yeah and they have a job to do and they know they've got to get this cargo from point a to point b and there's a whole system and a structure to their existence and their work and how they deal with people getting the cargo to ship and getting it offloaded. I mean, these guys have some sort of morals and some sort of ethics and they just don't want to throw them in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:It's interesting.
Speaker 2:I think that's pretty cool yeah. Verse 15,. They took Jonah and threw him overboard and the raging sea grew calm. Wow, of course, at this the men greatly feared the Lord, capital L Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. Then it says in 117, the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah. By the way, that's often cast pictorially as a whale, but the text really is fish.
Speaker 1:It is?
Speaker 2:It's not a mammal, it's not a whale, it's a fish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is our modern imagery because we know it's big. It's not a whale, it's a fish. Yeah, I think that is our modern imagery because we know it's big.
Speaker 2:It's big. That's exactly.
Speaker 1:It's a big swimming thing. It's as simple as that. That's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. So the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Speaker 1:Now when I teach, this can't show these, but I found several images online of what it might've looked like. Yeah, In one. Well, I found an image last night. What did it look like? I'm joking, but uh, local news had reports that uh, a man had caught an 80 pound blue.
Speaker 2:Yes catfish out of Oolagal Lake I saw that fish and I'm like oh, I've been in that lake.
Speaker 1:There's some monsters down there. You almost lost a foot in that fish, didn't you? Well, a catfish wouldn't be able to do much, but they're big, yeah, anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is an enormous fish. So some of the images I find like there's one where Jonah's sitting on a turtle a large turtle and there's a couple of fish kind of looking up at him with sympathetic looks on their faces and the whole thing that he's in has this backbone. So clearly it's a whale, not a fish, but somehow there's a little bit of a light source in there because he's kind of looking around, but it's also upright because he's sitting there, it looks sort of comfortable under the circumstances.
Speaker 2:So then there's several others that are pretty interesting. I found one that showed a Jonah inside the fish with a fire cooking like a pot of soup and, among other things, he has a ski cap on. I thought that was pretty amusing. There was one that's sort of a stained glass version of it, and there's one where the fish has got his mouth open and a man in a suit carrying a briefcase is waving goodbye and looks like he's going to go get on the subway and head off to work. So there's all kinds of images of what this thing might have looked like.
Speaker 2:The best ones, I think. Show a fish that's not too happy to have Jonah in its belly which.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it wasn't, and a Jonah that's happy to be out, which is what we're about to get to. And if you think about what it would have been like in there, I think it was cramped, it was sticky, it was slimy, it stunk. I don't think there was hardly any air. There was clearly enough air and somehow God worked it out where the fish must have been gulping in enough air for Jonah to survive. I'm positive there was no light. I think he was not able to see anything in there. Yeah, and on top of that, I don't think the fish was just floating upright the whole time, right, I think this fish is thrashing around every which direction and jonah's being jostled every which way inside the belly of this fish I guess I don't know about a fish compared to human, but I would just imagine it's acidic as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's a good. We're going to use that to jump to the end of chapter two. Now chapter two. Most of the chapter is a truly beautiful prayer. As a matter of fact you could take. If you had the whole thing in word, you could cut chapter two out and paste it in the Psalms and it would fit right in.
Speaker 1:There's so many references to the Psalms.
Speaker 2:There are. There are. So we're going to come back to chapter two, but for right now, let's just jump right to the end of chapter two, because it says in verse 10, the Lord commanded the fish. This is after three days and three nights and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. So what do you think Jonah looked like? What was his condition at that point?
Speaker 1:I mean almost disfigured, like maybe unrecognizable.
Speaker 2:I think that's spot on. I mean so, first of all, he surely had at least first degree burns. I mean, surely his skin was all red, and it must've been more red in some areas than others, so it's got to be red and splotchy. What did he smell like? Awful, you know what he smelled like Heath, okay, fish barf. Yeah, you know why he smelled like fish barf.
Speaker 1:He was. He was fish barf, he's the definition of fish barf.
Speaker 2:He was in the fish's stomach and now he's out. That's the definition of fish barf, right there.
Speaker 1:He smells terrible.
Speaker 2:I could only imagine his hair like his hair had to be matted down and just stuck to his head.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:His clothes must have been in tatters right Must have just been eaten through by the acid. So this guy is a figurative train wreck, even though trains hadn't been invented yet. He looks terrible, he smells terrible and he is quite the sight to see. I think, I think and I'm just going to read the first two verses of chapter three, and maybe that's a good spot for us to end this episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. Now we have an expression where we say you don't have to ask me twice. Well, guess what? God had to ask Jonah twice, but he would not have to ask him a third time. So Jonah absconded, took off the first time, but the second time he is going to go to Nineveh, like he's told.
Speaker 1:Great, I can't wait to hear as we walk through the rest of it.
Speaker 2:Yep, there's lots more interesting stuff coming.
Speaker 1:All right, listeners, stick around for next week. We will continue on Enjoy. We'll see you next week. Thanks for joining fellowship around the table. To check out more, visit FBC Tulsaorg.
