Jonah and Jesus- Part 1 3.19.26

What if the Old Testament is less a rulebook and more an invitation to encounter Jesus? In this series, we open the book of Jonah through the lens of Luke 24, where the risen Jesus himself teaches his disciples how to read Scripture — and everything changes. 

Together we'll slow down, meditate, and discover deeper layers of grace, repentance, and mission hidden in a story you thought you already knew. Join us as we read not just for information, but for transformation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Now the same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. And as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, What are you discussing together as you walk along? They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them named Cleopus asked him, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who doesn't know the things that have happened here in these days? What things? he asked. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning, but they didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they didn't see Jesus. He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. One of my Bible professors said that we must interact with the scriptures in a way that helps us know God, not simply know about God. Any second generation Christians in the room? I got a couple of you. Anybody back, like third or fourth generation? Okay, it goes back in the okay, nice. Part of my upbringing uh was to experience something every week called a wana. And for those of you who don't know what a wana is, it's not some street term for a drug. It's a uh it is uh a program that happens all around the country, even around the world. Um, and it's kind of this mix between a Bible trivia night and then kind of scouting in a way. But then there's also this Christian Hunger Games version of stuff going on too. We highly are highly competitive again. Uh back to game night, real quick. It is this Saturday, it's not next week. So bring your competition this weekend. Uh 6:30, uh, Linda reminded me. So uh, but I wana was this thing, we would memorize Bible verses often. Each week we'd memorize enough just so that we could get this little jewel on our on our um on our vest. We'd wear vests uh even each week. But then there was this epic thing called the Iwana Olympics. And it was this strength and speed kind of competition around this circle uh that we'd go to every night. And then once a year we would go to an this Iwana Olympics where we would compete against the other churches, the other kids, and this is where if you had a rivalry with other churches, this is where it could just be played out. And uh and so every year we would go out and compete. And we also did these things called Bible drills, or we called them sword drills. And so, do you remember those? Okay. So the Christian Christian culture is a little peculiar uh sometimes. We we weren't giving our kids swords, they were actually like a path, like it was the term used in Ephesians for the uh word of God. And so if you remember, you would have you'd take your Bible and you had to hold it like this. Uh you couldn't hold it like this, you were a cheater. Um, and you would hold it like this, and you'd have to find a passage. We should do that sometime just for fun, just to be, you know, kind of nerd out on that a bit. But, anyways, you we would have these sword drills and we'd compete that way. Uh, I'm really grateful for my upbringing in Scripture. There was this other thing called um Good News Club. And we would go to someone's house and we'd learn a little bit. I remember first grade, maybe kindergarten, and we sang a song called that went the B-I-B-L-E. Oh man, yes, I I'm in good company. We'd also sing uh the order of the books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Maybe you did it in a different tune. We'd do all of these things, and we'd get gold stars for memorizing scripture. Anybody remember this artist? Does this look at all familiar to you? So this was the highly coveted Christians illustrated Bible that I got in third grade. Uh, and I wanted it so badly because you had pictures finally in this book. Uh and so that was a big deal. Gold stars for memorizing scripture in Sunday school and BBS. I went to Christian high school, and so we also also had memorizing scripture as part of our study. Uh, any Christian school students in here who went to okay, where you had to memorize Bible verses as part of uh some of your daily activities. Then there was this large family Bible that sat on the coffee table. Did you have that? And when you opened it up, it it contained all of the birth dates and the anniversaries, and then it had pictures in the middle that you got to look at. You remember those? Um, some of you might still have them. The scriptures were a significant part of my upbringing. As followers of Jesus, how are we supposed to engage with the written word of God? Should we only read the New Testament or should we also read the Old Testament? What are we supposed to do when things feel like, do I take this literally, or is this only a figurative thing? Is it metaphor? What applies to us in 2026, or what only applied to those people at that time or in that place? How are we to read the scriptures? And I think answering that question, how we read the scriptures, how are we to read the scriptures is a really important thing. I mean, if we consider how we read the beginning of Genesis, Genesis 1 and 2, our approach may cause us as we read it to miss some of the most important parts of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Sometimes, and this is a bigger conversation, but sometimes we get so caught up in the how how God created the things, but but what's really important is who created and why it was created. Those are the two really important questions. Or when you read the book of Jonah, we'll get caught up in this big fish, and can a fish really swallow a man and spit him up on the land a couple days later? We get so caught up in that when what's really important is how does God deal with justice and mercy and how do people respond to his invitations? When we read in the Gospels, sometimes we can get caught up in uh how does a two, you know, a few loaves and a few fish feed thousands when really what we should be focusing on is who is this man that did that? And is he really a creator God? And so I believe how we read scripture is important. How we read anything is important. A relative of ours had this shirt and uh had these words on it, and I think it's a it's a great uh uh metaphor. Let's eat grandma. How we read that is really important. I think it's a matter of life or death how we read that. Punctuations, the shirt said, saves lives. So having the right comma there, let's eat grandma, uh, saves grandma. Um how we read, I believe in a literal sense, it does save lives. Do you believe that some reading of scripture can lead to abuse? Do you believe that some reading of scripture can lead to manipulation?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Do you believe it can lead to some wicked actions even?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Have you ever seen people or institutions use scripture to justify decisions that don't actually reflect the heart of God? Historically, we don't have to go very far back, but historically, throughout history, scripture has been used to justify wars, it's been used to justify oppression and slavery, it's been used to justify evil. Even the devil uses scripture to try to tempt Jesus to do something that he shouldn't do. So, why should we even read scripture? If it is so dangerous, why should we even read it? I think uh a real important point is Jesus read scripture. And we see examples of how he reads scripture. So if we are to become like Jesus for the sake of our neighbor, then we should look at how Jesus engages Scripture and consider that's how we should read it. So look at the back at Luke 24. You had him walking on the road with these people, they didn't recognize him, and this is what he says. He says to them in verse 25, How foolish you are. I think he's doing that in a pretty kind way, it doesn't feel like it, but how foolish you are, and how slow to believe all the prophets, all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? If you'll read the yellow with me. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Jesus goes back to the Old Testament and uses all of the Old Test the book of Moses and or the books of Moses and all of the prophets, and he says, This is what those words have been saying all along, and some have missed it, that I would be the Messiah, and this is how it would play out. So at that time, the the Bible wasn't put in this kind of uh um beautiful, leather-bound kind of uh setting. It wasn't put all together. If you wanted to access any of the Old Testament, you would generally go to a synagogue and they were all each individual, except for some of the minor prophets, there were individual scrolls and they would pull them out and they would read them in a context like this with a large group of people. And so that's what it would take to study the scriptures. And the part that Jesus is referring to as the books of Moses are those first five that we find in this Bible that we have today. And then he also references the prophets that you'll see right before the New Testament. So Jesus shows these disciples, this is how we read scriptures. We read it to learn how to abide with Jesus, like the uh practicing the way would say, reading it with Jesus looking over your shoulder, right? While while I read, Jesus is with me. And so here's what I want to do for the next few weeks. I want to take a short book of the Old Testament and learn how do we read and study and meditate upon it with Jesus in mind. Where Jesus is the central figure, even though we don't see the name Jesus in those texts. So maybe you've read scripture all your life, or maybe you've never sat down and read very much of it at all. Maybe you've read it at some point, but right now the season just is so busy and you rarely pick it up, except when we're here on Sunday mornings. And so what I want to do is I want to re-engage with scripture in a way that actually brings delight.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

How many of you enjoy reading in here?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

How many of you prefer not to? Yes, I I hear you. Reading is the it's difficult. It's a hard discipline. Especially if you used to like to read and then you don't read, it's hard to pick it back up again. I don't know, especially in our culture where we try to scroll things, we rarely read. We're pretty much scanners. We look and see what's most important. Have you noticed what's starting to happen is how these along with the title, it will also say, this is how long it will take you to read it. Have you seen that? Because then you'll decide, okay, can I read it or not? And so so how we read, especially if we had a bad time reading in in school, we as adults will have an aversion to it to read today. Thank God for Audible, right? Can I hear an amen? Yes, yeah, right up there. I so uh and and uh in high school we were assigned to read these books that maybe didn't even interest us. Tell your neighbor right now, lean over and tell the neighbor, what book were you assigned in high school to read?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Can you do it?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

It causes some of you to sweat a little bit on those, like that deadline to come up and read, and we had cliff notes. Uh remember doing book reports, remember doing dioramas. Uh and so we we feel kind of you can kind of feel some of the things you felt in high school or middle school. And sometimes some of us struggle with dyslexia or or other intellectual obstacles that we're trying to work through to read. Scripture is being is meant to be read differently. It's meant it's not meant to be read in like a competitive nature to prove that I know something more than you or we know the same thing, in a sense, it wasn't meant to be read so that I could pass a test. It actually wasn't meant to be read just to collect a bunch of facts. Scripture was meant to be read a little bit differently. It's it's more sophisticated. Most of what is written was you could not find similar kind of texts throughout that area of the world. Like this is read and written and read differently. John Mark Comer says reading scripture as apprentices of Jesus requires us to read formationally, not just informationally. There was this young man about 1700 years ago, before he was known as a saint, Augustine. He was deeply like just conflicted in his young life. And he was what he was conflicted about, he ended up writing in a book called Confessions. And he was conflicted about desiring virtue, but kept on going back to these old desires, like these things that just kept tripping him up, and he wanted virtuous things. And so there's this moment where he falls down, and he's in Milan and he's in this garden, and he falls down under this fig tree, and he's weeping, and then he hears this faint childlike voice in the distance, maybe coming from up the neighborhood, that says, Toye leg. I'm not great with Latin, but toie leg, which means take up and read. It means to take up and read, and he kept hearing that. And so he just felt like that was God calling him to grab, and he grabbed the scriptures and he began to read, and it changed him.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

What kind of reading turns the reader into clay to be molded and shaped?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

What kind of reading forms the reader?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

I believe a reading that is slow and unhurried.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Kind of like what we've been practicing the last couple years, uh last year and a half or so. Let's read one chapter every day for a full week. But I also think formational reading also includes meditation and study. What do you think of when you hear meditation?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Quiet, okay. What else? When you hear the word meditation, what comes to mind? What's that?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Praying, okay. Does any Middle Eastern, like a new age kind of thought come to mind when you hear the word meditation? So, in a more of a new age approach to meditation, it would be to empty your mind. But when we hear it in scripture, it's to fill your mind, to fill it with the words of God. And so we would meditate and it would have be a quiet moment, and we would consider even uh like in a in a short, like slower form of reading. Meditation. John Jansen, uh Jan Johnson, sorry, describes meditation as taking time to read passages slowly and bringing all of your mind to that passage in quiet alertness. Meditation retrains our mind to have the mind of Christ. So let's look at the two passages that were read earlier. Psalm 1. Blessed is the one who does not walk and step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. And then out of Joshua, keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night. Don't do anything else. This if you know the book of Joshua, there's a lot of battles that happen, and here is the way it starts out meditate on it day and night. That was the command.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

What exactly is meditating on scripture?

SPEAKER_01 18:11

So we have two dogs. Um pongo and scout. And uh any dog lovers in here? Okay. All right. Any cat lovers in here? Okay, I won't say much. Um so dog lovers. If you haven't been around dogs, one of their habits is to take a toy or a bone, uh, scout the little one. She'll grab this the biggest stick in the yard. It's always bigger than she is, and she drags it, and she just chews and chews and chews on it. And I'm trying to read in a room, and that will be the time when somebody, one of the dogs comes in and they just chew and chew and chew on just incessantly on something. Eugene Peterson would say, meditation is like what that dog is doing. He says to read deeply, like to read a good meditative reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, they're taken into the soul, they're eaten and chewed and gnawed on, received in unhurried delight. I love that last unhurried delight. There's a Hebrew word for meditation. There it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is to ponder, to meditate, or study. And it's found in Isaiah 31, 4. Let me read this, and you you try to decide which word represents the Hebrew word haggah. As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey. Which of those English words represent Hagah?

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Almost, not yet. Go back one more. Uh thank you, Julie.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Which of those words represent hagah? Growls. Like this pondering, about to take over this line, you know, this prey, thinking about it. That's the word that is used in Joshua and used in Psalms for meditate, to really consider it like you want it badly, and when you get it, you're gonna chew on it for a long period of time. That is what meditation is. So Ezekiel chapter 3, there are a few prophets who are told, eat this scroll, and this is one of them. Then he said to me, Son of man, eat this scroll I'm giving you, and fill your stomach with it. So I ate it and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

What is it that you chew on day and night? What what fills your mind when you lay your head down?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Some of us fall right asleep when we lay our head down, others of us we we think a lot. When was the last time you chewed on scripture? I mean, that you would consider it whether it agrees or disagrees with the way that you actually are living. When have you allowed it to form your thoughts? And instead, instead of that fast food news commentary or social media that keeps trying to form, it's amazing what's happening today is a lot of, it seems like a lot of news anchors and politicians are the molders and we are the clay. Like those are who we allow to set us up on these pedestals and begin to mold and shape the way we think. And yet the scriptures say the one who is supposed to be molding us is who? The one that created us is supposed to be our molder and our shaper and our creator. And part of meditating on his words is the act of being molded or shaped. The psalmist tells us taste and see, the Lord is good. So the second part that we're going to work on in the next couple of weeks is to study. So we've been practicing reading over the last year and a half. We're going to practice meditation and study over the next few weeks. A practice to study is to be done with others, and it's a slow process over an entire lifetime. So, as I mentioned, that that these scrolls were all separate. It was almost like walking into a library, and you see, you know, over here are a group of scrolls, and over here a group of scrolls, and they're all a lot of them are written by different writers. But what's amazing about this collection of scrolls is that there's one great story that just weaves its way all throughout all of these stories throughout several hundreds of years. And it brings us all the way to the point of Jesus. And how we are supposed to read it is we're supposed to read it with the lens of Jesus, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection. That's how we read scripture. So when we see something like Matthew 12, we see Jesus do this. Look at Matthew 12, verses 38 through 41. Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to Jesus, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. And he answered, A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but none will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. So Jesus often took the Old Testament and he would reveal who he is with it, just like he just did with Jonah. So as we read this, we're going to begin to see as we go through Jonah how what does where does Jesus start to pop up? How would Jesus use the story of Jonah to show who he is and what he would do? And so here's one practice I want you to consider doing as you read this week and in the coming weeks. If you would just take a just a small uh note card, and I want you to have that note card with you as you read any parts of Scripture. And this is what I'd like you to consider writing on that note card. Jesus, as I read, will you teach me?

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Will you teach me to love you and to love others?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Jesus said at one point, the greatest commandment is to love God and to love our neighbor.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

And if that is the greatest commandment, then when we read, that should be on our thoughts as we read. To close, we'll go back to that road where the two disciples are walking. And they're walking with Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

They end up getting to the house and they encourage him. It's funny, Jesus is like, he's gonna he's acting, they get to the house and Jesus kind of acts like he's keep he's gonna keep walking. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, no, stay with us, come and eat. And so they eat, they sit down and eat with him. When he was at the table with them, he took bread and he gave thanks and he broke it and began to give it to them. And at that moment they finally realized it's Jesus with them, and then he disappears from their sight. And then they asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us. My desire for myself and for you is as I read with Jesus, my heart burns within me.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

That I would just begin to continue to be shaped in the form of the Father's heart.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

That I allow the Spirit of God to shape me, that I would be a disciple sitting at Jesus' feet as I read the scriptures. I just want to close with one more concern about reading scripture. The concern that Jesus brings up. I started off like, hey, scripture can be destructive. And we see that, we see that as he engages with the very ones who've spent their whole life studying scripture, the religious people, he engages with them, and we see how destructive the actual scriptures were in their lives. And Jesus says to them at one point in uh in John chapter 5, and I'm reading out of the New Living Translation on this one. Jesus says to the religious leaders, you search the scriptures because you think you're gonna get eternal life out of them.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yes. Who said that? Yeah. Thank you, Joshua. But the scriptures point to who? Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah, you refuse to come to me to receive this life. It's interesting he's saying there we can end up worshiping that Bible there more than we worship Jesus. We could end up knowing that scripture so much, but even if Jesus is standing before me, I couldn't recognize him. Like there's a danger in that. And that danger is not just for those people 2,000 years ago. That's for us in this room, that's for me. That I could end up being so right about all of these words and yet miss Jesus over and over again. I could be so right and be able to tell you all the right things, yet I could miss loving you as Jesus has called me to. And so what we're gonna do as we go through Jonah is see what that means in the book of Jonah over the next few weeks.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Would you pray with me? Open our eyes, Father, that we may know you.