Jonah and Jesus- Part 3 (Victoria Nay) 5.3.26

God hurls a great wind. The sailors cry out. Jonah sleeps. 

In this episode we slow down in Jonah 1:4–17 learning how to ask qood questions as we meditate and study on scripture. The questions will lead us to a powerful conversation Jesus has with a Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

This is a reading from the book of Hosea six one through three and six. Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us. He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us. On the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord, let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as a sun rises, he will appear. He will come to us like the wind and winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, an acknowledgement of God, rather than burnt offerings.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Reading from the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, verses 6 through 12. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it today. Then he did or this he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rest from their works, just as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. The Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

If you don't have a Bible, it will be on the screen, or it will be in the black book in front of you. We're going to Jonah chapter one. We'll begin in verse four. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own God, and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish. Then the sailors said to each other, Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity. They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. So 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? From what people are you? He answered, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. This terrified them, and they asked, What have you done? They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so. The sea was getting rougher and rougher, so they asked him, What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Instead, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they 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, have done as you pleased. Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Will you pray with me before we dive in? Thank you. Thank you for your laughs. Oh Lord, we praise you. We thank you for your words of life that we read in your word, in your scriptures. We thank you for Jesus, who is the word, who offers us full and flourishing life. Will you open our ears to hear today what you have to say? In Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, let me come over here to the chalkboard. We are going through this series called Jonah and Jesus. And before I talk about Jonah or Jesus, I just want you to know that I love a superhero story where the superhero has to wrestle between good and evil. A lot of our superhero stories, if you read comics, I don't know if there are any comic fans in the room, but if you read comics, most of the time you have a superhero who knows that they're a superhero and they know what the right thing is to do. Superman doesn't question if he should save the world. He just does it. But but I really love the story. Oh, maybe you saw you saw a sneak peek of it. I love Batman. I love that Batman wrestles between the choice of good and evil, right and wrong. And Batman has some really compelling villains. Villains like the Joker, the penguin, or the Riddler. Uh now, if you if if this man approached you in public, uh, I would I would tell you to stay away from him, but maybe mainly because of the green tights. I think that's just maybe maybe that does feel a little villainous, but his evil power was asking questions. That was his way of trying to stump and get the better of Batman. So in an episode in 1966, uh there there are a number of riddles that the riddler throws at Batman. And I'm going to I'm going to throw them at you. The first one is why is an orange like a bell? Yes, because they both need to be peeled. Thank you, Donna. What is always on its way here, but never arrives? The future tomorrow. Nice, good job. And what won't run long without winding? A river, and not this message, I promise. You know, the Riddler's riddles lead Batman and Robin to an old water processing plant. The Riddler ensnares his two opponents with a sticky web. Batman and Robin are tied to these enormous wheels, and the wheels are set to spin at a deadly rate. Can you imagine the dramatic music begins to play? And then this appears on your screen. And you realize the episode is a two-parter. Things certainly are turning the wrong way. Is this really the end? Unbelievable. Stay tuned until next week to find out what happens. I grew up at the tail end of the cliffhanger era. So before streaming services released an entire season for us to watch in one day, there was a certain amount of patience that you needed to wait week after week for the next episode. And sometimes the series would leave you hanging. If you noticed in our reading, today we will be left at somewhat of a cliffhanger in Jonah, the hero who has no desire to be a hero. All goes well for our side characters, the sailors, but Jonah will find himself ensnared, and we will be asking, is this really the end? Unbelievable. We are using the book of Jonah as we learn how to read our Bibles, which is why I'm emphasizing the use if you have a physical Bible with you, that you use it, or if you have it on your phone, uh, that you're making an effort to use your Bible because we're trying to read it with Jesus in mind. We're using our imaginations and we're trying to read our Bibles, every part of it with Jesus in mind. Jonah was a prophet whom we know very little about. He only shows up in one other place in the Hebrew Bible, but Jesus spoke about him in a positive way. We see that, we saw that last week in Matthew 12 and Luke 11, that Jonah was a sign of God, and Jesus said that a sign even greater than Joseph, or Jonah, is now here, which must mean that the sign of Jonah was pretty great. Also, last week, uh Pastor Mike instructed us to pay attention and notice words that connect us to other passages of Scripture, whether other passages within Jonah or throughout the greater narrative. We considered who this prophet Jonah might be, what the Ninevites were known for, and why Jesus would link himself to this fleeing messenger. In the reading that I just read, verses four through 17, there are eight questions, at least eight questions, that are being asked strictly by the sailors. And a couple of these questions, they feel really out of place for the middle of a storm. Can you close your eyes with me? I want you to picture being on a boat in the middle of a storm, and water is crashing over the sides. What little cargo you have left is shifting, and and then your sailor mate, uh Josh, what would they be called? A shipmate, thank you. Your shipmate says, so what line of work are you in, Jonah? I think that would make for that would make for good television. I want us to keep asking questions this morning. I'm usually with our children in the back, uh, with our FBC kids, and our teachers who are still in the room can attest that we do not have to invite questions from children. They usually come midway through our sentences, through our teaching. They may not always be on topic, and sometimes the questions will receive a little bit of a side eye. But sometimes the questions are ones that we have not considered in a long time. What about the people who are really nice but don't believe in God? What happens to them? Does my pet get to be in heaven with me when they die? Did Jesus really rise from the dead or is he just a ghost? These are all questions that our kids have asked. And sometimes it's off topic, but I want to make space for those questions for our kids and for us. So here's what I'd love for us to do for the rest of our time together. We're going to go over verses four through 17. I'm going to interrupt with my own questions that surfaced during my reading. And we're not hurrying to the plot point that we know is coming. That Jonah gets swallowed by a great fish. That is important. But without the sailors and the storm, it can feel a little out of place and uh unbelievable. And if you have a pen or a pencil, there might be one in front of you, or if your neighbor has an extra one, I would encourage you, as I'm sharing the questions that I have, that you would use your bulletin and you would jot down any questions that come to mind. So we're we're staying active, we're staying engaged, write down your questions. I'm going to ask you to share them in just a few minutes. Okay, we're going back to verse four. Yahweh, that's what that capital L-O-R-D in verse 4, the Lord uh hurls a mighty wind. So it's not just that he sent a wind, he hurls it like a spear. It's a mighty wind which stirs up a great tempest, a great storm. We have all of these greats. We have the great city of Nineveh earlier, just in the first couple of verses, and then this mighty wind, great tempest, and the ship threatens to break. Actually, the ship is being personified here as having its own character, its own personality, and that it's having a nervous breakdown. So there's a commentator who says, uh, the ship said to herself, This is pretty bad. I think I may be in trouble, which is an understatement. So the ship realizes that something's going wrong. The sailors realize that something has gone terribly wrong. But this is not a normal storm. And notice in in verse 5, they begin crying out to each of their own gods, to the gods of themselves. They've thrown their cargo overboard. They don't care about the reason that they're on this journey. And they are crying out to whoever will hear them, each to their own God. So this is a culture, this wouldn't have been a secular culture. This would have been a culture that's filled with faith, but it's a misdirected and a misguided faith. It's a pluralistic culture, a multi-religion culture. They don't know Yahweh. The ship is breaking, realizes something is wrong. The soldiers are breaking down, they're realizing something is wrong. What is Jonah doing? Jonah is below deck, he's sleeping. And here's my first question that I wrote down. Did Jonah go below deck before the storm began? Or did the storm start and he thought, I better just go to sleep and avoid the trouble? I'm curious about that. Did he go below deck before the storm or during the storm? Well, the captain follows Jonah. He goes down below deck and he's trying to figure out what is going on. He wakes him up. He uses the same phrase that the word of the Lord says to Jonah. Get up, arise. And he says, wake up and call on your God. We need to figure out what is going on. This captain is directing this prophet of Yahweh to begin praying. And so they go, they go back above deck, and the sailors cast lots and they fall on Jonah. What are lots? Lots would have, I imagine lots are sort of like our soup, uh, what is it, magic eight ball, um, which has a bunch of maybe uh pre-programmed answers that somehow fit the scenario that you're asking about. So uh the lots, they they cast these dye or they or they cast these sticks, and they all point to Jonah, which should induce a uh a wah wah, like a sound effect of oh, nothing is going right for Jonah. The sailors urgently question Jonah. Uh they say, what kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? And I ask, why why are they asking so many questions in the middle of the storm? Jonah tells the sailors that his God is Yahweh. Again, that's what that capital L-O-R-D that you see in your Bibles, it's it's a replacement for the holy and sacred name of God, Yahweh. Jonah says, I am a Hebrew, my God is Yahweh, he is the God of the land, the dry land, and the sea, which is where they are in this exact moment. The sailors, of course, are terrified. And I want to know, is Jonah afraid at all? Because we're told that the sailors are, but we're not certain how Jonah is feeling. So Jonah, uh, that they ask him, What would you have us do? What should we do to figure this situation out? And Jonah says, cast me overboard. Does that match the character of Yahweh? That that God would want a human sacrifice? That's another question I have. Well, the the sailors refuse. They don't want innocent blood on their hands. And and so they try rowing back to shore, but but they just they can't make it. So finally they say, All right, Lord, please, please don't let this innocent uh blood be on our hands. Uh we're we're just trying to do what what's best in this situation. They cast him overboard and the sea stopped raging. Everything grew calm. So I don't know if you've ever had a prayer answered immediately, but my inclination is that I would start to sing and I rejoice. I might sing the doxology uh because I'm just I'm overwhelmed. I'm grateful that God heard my prayer and he answered it. And the sailors do that, and actually they do more than that. They they perform a sacrifice on a on a boat. I don't know how that works. Um, that is a question. And they make a vow to follow Yahweh and Jonah is swallowed by a great fish.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

All right, did any other questions surface for you? Were there any questions that I didn't ask? I asked a lot of questions.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

You know, some of these questions mean that we are looking really closely at the text. I envision that my nose is just an inch away from the pages of my Bible. That a lot of these questions are when we're immersed in the story. What's going on? What's happening next? And then there are the questions that might make me want to close my Bible and pull it away from my face and say, I don't I don't know how I feel about that. It's that cliffhanger question at the end of the Batman episode. Is this really the end? Which we could interpret as, oh no, is this the end of Batman? Or, oh my word, is this really the way that the episode is ending? Why would the writers end it in this way? Why is the story ending here? Again, those questions that are pulling us out or away from the story and having us thinking about our own context. Again. Is the book of Jonah really a comedy? Because I'm struggling to laugh at it at points, or I start to laugh and then I think, oh, oh, is it a warning? Does God really use painful situations to get our attention? Why does judgment sometimes affect innocent people, people who didn't have anything to do with a situation? Could someone survive being swallowed by a fish? We're not answering that question this week. I'm passing that along to my father. Did you write any of those questions down? Some of those bigger questions. Now remember, we are reading a book that was not written to us, it was written for us. We can't ask Jonah why he fell asleep, but we can wonder if the God we're meeting in Jonah aligns with the Jesus we meet in the New Testament. Are they one and the same? Or is there really an Old Testament God versus a New Testament God? Are they the same? So here's what I would suggest as we continue reading, not just this morning, but here's your practical approach over this next week, uh, the next months. Keep scratch paper in or near your Bible and jot down the questions that you're having as you're reading. Let it be interactive. Engage with your Bibles. If it's in your budget, uh, I have a Bible that has these really wide margins on the sides, and it allows me to write down questions inside, and then I put a little date next to it, and I'll go back and I'll say, Oh, did this question get answered? We read in community, which is what we're doing this morning. Uh, I'm not just reading this by myself, I'm I'm reading this with you. And we have that opportunity on Tuesday mornings at our morning Bible study, we have that on Wednesday evenings. Reading together sometimes uh shows us that we're not the only ones asking certain questions. We're not alone in our questions about who Jesus is and about the biblical narrative. Read with children, read with young people, because sometimes they're asking the questions faster than you can. And sometimes they will interrupt, and it's it's a holy interruption. It's a good question that you should consider in that moment. And and the last point would be that you pray your questions that you don't just keep them to yourself, but you take them to the Lord, especially the questions that make you feel quite fragile, depending on how it's answered. Like the question, does God use painful situations to grab our attention? We see it, we see it in the Old Testament and the New Testament, this human habit of determining or trying to figure out who is responsible in a disaster or a tragedy. Job's friends try to tell him why he loses his family, his possessions, and his good health. In the New Testament, people wonder if a blind man is blind because of his family's sin or his own sin. Or they wonder if this great tower that collapsed and killed 18 people, did it collapse because those 18 people were terrible sinners? Now, sometimes we are told that yes, there was an action and there was a consequence. There was an action and a punishment as a result of that sin. But more often than not, we are not given that information. And we're left to our own conclusions or we're left to ask questions. Is God punishing Jonah with a storm? So of course the sailors would be asking all of their questions to figure out what's going on. They ask that series of questions that I went through. Uh, what what work are you? Where are you from? What country are you from? What work do you do? And they seem out of the blue, but those questions they lead to the sailors' salvation. And they help to set apart these characters. They are not necessarily the questions that we would ask in the middle of a crisis, but they are important because they they help to wake Jonah up further. Jonah's answer in verse 9, it says, uh, he answered, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. When my brother and I were in high school here in Stanton, it was fun to answer the question, where do you come from? Because our answer was Las Vegas. And I would be reminded of how strange of a place that was to call my hometown, to say I'm from Las Vegas, based on the reaction of my peers and my teachers. Well, this is the sailors' reaction when they hear that Jonah is a Hebrew and he worships the creator of the sea, and he's traveling on the sea. It it doesn't make sense to them. They think it's insane. Now, there's a significant shift that happens as a result of Jonah's answer. Look back at uh verse six in your Bibles. The captain goes to Jonah and he says, get up and call on your God. Uh now I said earlier, that's that same verb, that get up, that arise, that the word of the Lord communicates to Jonah in verse one, now being spoken by this captain. After the sailors learn about Jonah's God, look down at verse 14. Do you notice the name change? They call him Yahweh, they call him Lord, they acknowledge the great power of God. And then after the storm stops and they see his great power, the sailors offered a sacrifice to the Lord and they made vows to him. What's insane to me is that Jonah is fleeing from the Gentiles in Nineveh. He is going the opposite direction. He's trying to get away from them. And he runs into more Gentiles who are coming out of Joppa on their way to Tarshish, and he is stuck on a ship with them, and he cannot help but to worship and serve Yahweh, even if he is not doing the best job of reflecting who God is. These sailors repent, they make vows to Yahweh to follow him. They recognize the greatness and goodness of Yahweh and they respond. There's one more passage that I'd like us to look at. It's going to take us out of Jonah, out of the Old Testament, and over to the New Testament. Um, we're going to the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 15. I would say this is another passage where I'm holding my Bible here, and then I pull it pretty far away because I'm trying to figure out what is happening here. What is going on? I won't read all of the verses, but we're looking at Matthew 15, verses 21 through 28. Here we have Jesus and his followers traveling through a region of Tyre and Sidon, which is on the Mediterranean coast. And it says in verse 22 a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly. What is going on here? Jesus calls this woman a dog, and then the woman is arguing with Jesus, and then Jesus commends the woman's faith and heals her daughter. It doesn't make sense. I don't understand it. What's happening here? Which is a good question, and why you need time to wrestle with some of these passages. But I want you to notice what is it that the woman calls Jesus? Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. This is a holy name. This isn't a nickname. Jesus' dad is not named David. Son of David is referring to the kingly Messiah figure that the people of God were looking forward to. And this Gentile woman recognizes who Jesus is. She's of a different ethnic and cultural background than the Jewish people, which there were times where Gentiles would assimilate or become part of the people of God, the covenantal people of God. But the greater issue here is that she is a Canaanite. They were like the Ninevites in that they were another enemy of the people of God. But Jesus commends her faith and he heals her daughter. Okay, here's my connection to Jonah. That port city, Joppa, the port where Jonah took off with the sailors, that is located in the land of Tyre and Sidon. Let me read what this commentator on Jonah makes of this connection between the Canaanite woman and these Gentile sailors. At any rate, these are the kind of people that Jonah finds as companions on the boat into which he descends, the kind of Gentiles who seem to have a proclivity for believing the prophets of Israel and being healed by them. And what we know is that Jesus is a much better and greater prophet than Jonah was. We know that Jesus is Lord Son of David. They are not contained to one specific type of people. Even as we look through the Old Testament, it's not just when you get to the New Testament that God begins to welcome in outsiders. He has always been welcoming in outsiders, calling them to repentance. That's what the whole story, the narrative of Jonah is about. That's what we'll get to with with Nineveh. And the goodness of Jesus cannot be limited by our human hands. Jesus will commend the faith of the Canaanite woman. Jesus will commend the faith of a Roman centurion. All right, my final questions as I'm holding up this mirror. Would these sailors have worshipped Yahweh if Jonah hadn't run away? Would they have been introduced to Yahweh? Do I try to protect and prevent God's mercy from reaching certain people? Should I learn from Jonah that ultimately and thankfully I will be unsuccessful? Who gets to be the final sheep to enter into the pen of the Good Shepherd? How long will God extend his today as we heard in the Hebrews passage? Who gets to be welcomed into God's family when they repent and turn their attention to Yahweh?

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Will you pray with me and then we will we will go into our time of communion? Good shepherd.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Thank you for welcoming me into your fold. Thank you for the forgiveness and the invitation that you have offered each of us to be a part of your kingdom, of your family. Lord, will you help us not to be gatekeepers of your mercy? But that we would be cups um spilling over with your kindness, that people would see our good works and they would glorify you. They would know you. And even in our poor works, that they would recognize that is not the way of Jesus, that they would see you even in spite and despite uh our own actions. We praise you in your name.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

Amen.