Jonah Part 6

Jonah Chapter 4 | Mercy, Anger, Breath & the Unfinished Prophet

The Myrrhologist Podcast | Marissa Saint Luc

Welcome to The Myrrhologist Podcast. I’m your host, Marissa Saint Luc.

In this episode, we step into Jonah Chapter 4—the chapter most people rush past, but heaven refuses to ignore. After the greatest recorded revival in Scripture, Jonah isn’t rejoicing. He’s angry. He’s sulking. And he’s asking God to let him die.

This chapter exposes something far deeper than disobedience. It reveals the anatomy of the human heart when God’s mercy collides with our sense of justice.

While God is reaching for compassion, Jonah is signing a spiritual DNR.

Through the plant, the worm, the scorching east wind, and God’s repeated question—“Do you do well to be angry?”—we are invited into a holy examination of our own posture:

Can we love what God loves… even when it offends us?

This teaching unpacks:

• Why Jonah was saved in the belly of the fish but suffocated on dry land
• How anger in Scripture is tied to breath, survival, and the nervous system
• Why God describes Himself as “slow to anger” — long of breath
• The prophetic mystery of the scarlet worm and its fulfillment in Christ
• How Jesus finishes Jonah’s unfinished dialogue when He calls Peter Simon Bar-Jonah
• Why “Feed My sheep” is about hearing before it’s about doing
• How mercy completes what apathy abandons

Jonah’s story doesn’t end on the hill outside Nineveh.

It ends on another hill—Calvary—where Jesus becomes the final sign of Jonah and releases mercy through blood, breath, and resurrection.

This episode is an invitation to move out of survival, out of offense, and into the long breath of heaven—where the Spirit and the Bride learn to breathe together again.

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• 🐑 Sheep — if you’re choosing to hear and follow the Shepherd

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When Jesus hung on that tree, he became the scrolling. He is the crimson code of redemption. He bled to birth out sons and daughters who would never again have to hide beneath false coverings. No more pretending, no more borrowed peace, he said, I will consume every false comfort until only covenant truth remains. Welcome to the Moralogist Podcast. I'm your host, Marissa St. Luke. Thank you for joining me again. In our last episode, we walked through Jonah chapter 3, the eight words that overturned an empire. Jonah preached and said, Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overturned, and an entire nation fell on its face. The king stripped his robe, the nation fasted, and even the animals groaned. But now the story takes a turn. Not only was Jonah not celebrating revival, but he was furious about it. Jonah chapter 4 shows us something: a man whose heart is at war. It exposes the heart of humanity. It's as if God is pulling back the curtain on our own hearts to be the great physician. While God was busy reaching for the defibulator, Jonah was signing the spiritual DNR, do not resuscitate. God is trying to restart compassion and Jonah saying, Let me die already. This is the same heart that was saved in the belly of the whale and is now suffocating on dry land. Every line exposes something in us, how we react when God's compassion lands on people that we don't think deserves it. So let's read Jonah chapter 4 in the ESV version, and then we'll unpack it together. Verse 1 says, But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh God, is not this what I said when I was still yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshus, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? And Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint, and he asked that he might die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the Lord said, You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left hand, and also much cattle. So for forty days Jonah was outside the city sulking. He set up a nice little spot for Netflix and chill. He had his popcorn in one hand and his eyes fixed on Nineveh, just waiting for the sky to explode like Sodom and Gomorrah. But no fire fell and no sulfur rained down. Instead, Nineveh entered a womb. The king stripped his robe, the people clothed themselves in sackcloth. The Spirit of God led Nineveh into forty days of womb time, hidden and stripped like Israel after the Red Sea. So while Jonah wanted a grave, God gave them an incubation. Jonah couldn't wait to see Sodom smoke, and God gave them Sinai's mercy. And this is where we can see the unfolding of the Father's heart stepping into this chapter. If you've been watching my channels, you could remember from my past teaching on the fivefold ministry that the shepherd's sense is the sense of smell. It's the ability to discern what the Lord is doing in the air before it ever manifests on the ground. This is where heaven is just leaning in and is asking, can you love what I love? Can I lead you into territories that you swore you would never walk into? Will you follow me while I spare what you wanted me to judge? Will you let me become the shepherd over your life, guiding your steps and shaping your heart, teaching you my mercy, while you disavow your perceived justice? The more and more that I see through scripture, I realize that, man, we would be lost without Jesus. He had to come. Jesus had to come because we were always one step away. Every prophet carried a message, but he carried the heart. Jonah ran from the city and Jesus is just walking straight into it. While Jonah is waiting for fire, Jesus became it. He filled every gap that the prophets missed. He took on the scorching east wind of wrath so that we could inhale the mercy of God without burning. And through his pure side, through the rib, he released that breath that birthed the bride. He is now testing our hearts in the same way. We sit outside on a hill in judgment, or will we step inside with mercy? Jonah could carry the word, but he could not carry the weight of compassion. And I feel this so heavy in my spirit that I'm telling you by the Spirit of God that every one of us is walking out of this thing with a limp like Jacob, repositioned, renamed, and reduced to pure dependence before we're ever pressed into the final pages of Revelation. This is the hour of the unveiling, the unfolding of his bride. So don't mistake this holy invitation for an interrogation. God is not condemning you, he's calling you deeper. He's probing the pulses of our veins, he's testing which hearts still beat at a rhythm with heaven. He's tapping on your left arm, your right arm, he's searching for the one that will yield, the one where his spirit can flow freely again. You know, when I was reading this chapter, I noticed that God asks Jonah two questions. Do you do well to be angry? And do you do well to be angry for the plant? In seeking the Lord to do this episode, I said, Oh, how am I gonna end this on a good note? But God showed me an incredible prophetic parallel. Generations later, Jesus looks at another man and he calls him by a name that he never used before or after. Simon Baugh Jonah, which means Simon, the son of Jonah. But he was not the son of Jonah. So why did Jesus refer to him like that? Because Jesus was picking up Jonah's unfinished dialogue. He proceeds to ask Peter three times, do you love me? And Peter replying, Yes, Lord, I love you. Three responses of love to finish the conversation that Jonah walked away from. And in doing so, the Son of Man does something that only he could do. He restored Jonah's apathy. He was able to step in with a scalpel and cut open his heart to remove the wound of the past. And together we get three breaths of restoration pumped into the lungs of the Ecclesia. Jesus continues and instructs Peter, saying, If you love me, then feed my sheep. He wasn't only talking about bread, he was talking about the breath of God. As Simon Barjonh means hearing of the dove. He was saying, These are mine who receive revelation from the winds of the Holy Spirit, and this will become the food for my sheep. Jesus was saying, If you love me, feed them what you hear, nourish them with the breath that restores. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And that's why the gates of hell will never prevail against a flock of sheep who know and follow his voice. So essentially, the authority in the church is in its hearing, the hearing of a mighty rushing wind that started it all. And I pray that as you're listening right now, that you are raptured into this understanding and caught up into this revelation. Because that's what Jesus was revealing when he looked at Peter. But my Father who is in heaven, Jesus was crowning that witness in Peter by saying, You've crossed the line that Jonah couldn't. You've moved from short nostrils to long breath, which I'll get to in a minute. You have moved from anger to anointing, from nationalism to nations. He was naming the foundation of the church. He was identifying the seed from the Father, the conception of Israel's incubation until the Pentecost baby was birthed out. And he was saying, upon this rock, upon the revelation that comes by the hearing of the dove, that I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I know that there's a lot of commentary that says Peter means Petra, and that's the rock. But I'm telling you that the true foundation of the church is not the rock of Peter. It's built upon ears that are tuned into the cadence of heaven. And right now we are at the end of the age. And it feels like the waves of the Red Sea are just folding towards us and collapsing upon each other. Everywhere you look, currents are colliding and winds are shifting, systems are shaking. But in the midst of all of that chaos, the Spirit of God is opening up a corridor for the bride. And he's calling us to stand in that corridor to catch his wind words in the midst of the noise. There is an overwhelming amount of pollution that is saturating our airways. Think about this. We got forecasts, broadcasts, we got the intermingled nets of opinions and interpretations, we got earbuds and headphones feeding noise into our souls. And all of it has been sent by hell, specifically designed to drown out his breath. There are masses of people who call themselves Christians, who were meant to hear his voice, but they're caught up in a system of listening here and believing there. But the Spirit of God is calling us out of that system. Most of us concede due to fatigue. We slip into habits that numb us, and suddenly we're scrolling past our feed while we're supposed to be feeding on the scroll. We're swiping through distraction when manna is falling but sadly evaporating without a place to land. And guys, this is it. The nostrils of the great shepherd are opened right now, and he is opening the windows of heaven on his word. I'm gonna pause right here because I want to know if you could feel the weight of the waves of the Red Sea. I want you to drop a wave emoji in the comments if you're feeling that the waters are getting really close to folding behind you. Because we're either gonna be sealed in a deliverance or swallowed by consequence. And maybe that's why Jesus asked, When the Son of Man returns, will faith still be found on the earth? Because faith is not a concept, it's an ecosystem. The scent of the shepherd is rising through it. It's an aroma of mercy ascending towards God's nostrils. And when heaven inhales that fragrance, he recognizes his own breath returning. It's as if the lungs of God and the rib of the bride are moving into a shared rhythm. Inhale and exhale, mercy and truth, breath and word, the spirit and the bride. Every act of forgiveness, every whispered prayer of intercession, every release of compassion is expanding that ecosystem until the whole atmosphere carries his heartbeat. This is the divine respiration of redemption. It's forming one heartbeat between heaven and earth. And when the rhythm is complete, that's when it happens. The Spirit and the bride say come. It's perfect alignment, the inhale of God meeting the exhale of his bride and mercy filling the air one final time. We all know that the ultimate sign of Jonah is Jesus being resurrected. However, could there be other signs that we are missing to look out for? As I have dissected this book, I believe that it is the coming together of the shepherd's heart, the restoration of compassion that Jesus sowed in the earth. And this could be our last invitation to reject apathy. As you're listening, I want you to ask yourself if you would be angry if your worst enemy had an X2 revival. The abuser, the betrayer, the one who wounded you and devastated your family, not only got saved, but had a radical encounter with God. That was Jonah's dilemma. The text says that Jonah was burning angry. And in Hebrew, the word there is af. It's a picture of flaring nostrils. It means hot nosed, a bad temper, rapid breath, and racing heart. It's a body that's stuck in survival. Jonah's brain quite literally interpreted mercy as a threat. But here's what the Holy Spirit has shown me. Forgiveness is way more than just a moral act. It's an actual psychological miracle. It's for giving over what you were never meant to carry. When you hand whatever it is to God, your body follows your spirit. Your nervous system is able to exhale. Your heart rate slows. Your breath is shifting from cortisol to peace. Your whole being just realigns with heaven's rhythm. And this is where we can see the genius of God. He wired our biology to mirror his mercy. The first time that God describes himself in full is not after a miracle, it's not after obedience, it's actually after a betrayal. The golden calf just came out the oven. The sound of dancing still echoed in the camp. Israel had just broken covenant before the tablets even landed in their hands. But instead of lashing out, God does something that nobody expected. He passes before Moses and he reveals his name by saying that he is Yahweh, compassionate and gracious. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. When it says slow to anger, that word there is Eric Apayam, and it means long of nostrils. It means long breath. So right there in the shadow of the idol, God chose respiration over retribution. He responds to their rebellion with a revelation of who he is. He didn't just forgive, he revealed his nature. A God who inhales patience and exhales mercy. On a scientific note, long breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and restore mode. It slows the heart, it calms the amygdala, it lowers the stress hormones, and that's where patience and compassion begin to flow. And that word para-sympathy literally carries heaven's blueprint. Para means for, and sympathy means to feel with. So your para-sympathetic system is your forefeling system. It's the one that slows you down and lengthens your breath. But if we never forgive, then we can't move towards compassion. If we hold on to offense, then we stay trapped in that fight or flight mode, that tense, guarded, reactive mode. It's so grieving to read this chapter and see that Jonah never took the chance to exhale. We don't ever hear about Jonah again in the Bible. He stayed hot nosed while God was long nosed. He stayed in the wrath while God was breathing mercy. The Greek word for Holy Spirit is paracletis. Again, para means for. Cletus means called to help. He's the one beside you and for you to help you. When the dove rested on Jesus' shoulder after his baptism, I believe that it was a demonstration showing us that the paracletus, the dove that remains, is the regulator beside the lungs of the bride. And only then we could be brought out of survival and back into surrender. And when Jonah couldn't make that turn, God flipped the script and met him through creation. This chapter says that God prepared a plant to shade Jonah's head. And finally, we see Jonah's happy for the first time in this whole book. But not over Nineveh's repentance, but over his own comfort. And then we see that God prepares a scarlet worm. The Hebrew word there is Tolaath. The dramatria of Tolaath is Tav, which is 400, Vav, which is the number six, Lamed, which is 30, Ain, which is 70, and Tav again is 400. This gives us a total of 906. This tiny little creature is one of the most prophetic beings in creation. When it's time to give birth, this little worm climbs up on an oak tree, fastens herself there, and bleeds crimson as she gives life to her young. For three days, the red stains the bark, and then her body turns white and flakes off like snow. So even creation is preaching the resurrection story, life through blood, transformation after three days, crimson turned to white. These are the whispers of Jesus that were spoken of in Isaiah through this mystery. Though your sins be as scarlet, they may be white as snow. Back in the day, Israelites, Phoenicians, Egyptians, they would harvest this worm to make the scarlet dye that was used for priestly garments, the tabernacle veils that cover the ark. Exodus 26 calls the Talaoth shani, which is the scarlet thread that was woven into the veil that concealed the glory, the ephod of the high priest, and the crimson cord that Rahab hung from her window for salvation. And in the Hebrew alphanumeric language, this worm's Bible code is 906. This prophetic value is tied to inheritance and completion. For centuries, rabbis have agreed that when the Messiah comes, he will be like Moses, like Elijah, and the scapegoat all at once. The deliverer, the resurrected and the sinbearer. We get the number 906 by multiplying three times 302. Three is the number of resurrection and divine witness. Three is the rhythm of death, witness, and new life. It's the signature of the Tala Othshani, the scarlet worm. It's the ultimate sign of humiliation that's transformed into inheritance. And if we look deeper, this pattern just fits perfectly. Moses died and was buried by God. Elijah was taken up alive in a whirlwind, and the scapegoat carried sin into the wilderness to release mercy. And only one man fulfills all three. Jesus. He died like Moses, he ascended like Elijah, and he bore sin just like the scapegoat. Jesus is the scarlet thread that has been woven through every covenant. So when God appointed that worm to tear down Jonah's plant, he wasn't punishing Jonah. He was unveiling a mystery. He was saying, Jonah, that shade that you made that you're sitting under, that system, that comfort, that religion, it's only for a short season. It's a glimpse of Calvary, where the true shade would bleed to cover us forever. When Jesus hung on that tree, he became the scarlet worm. He is the crimson code of redemption. He bled to birth out sons and daughters who would never again have to hide beneath false coverings. No more pretending, no more borrowed peace. He said, I will consume every false comfort until only covenant truth remains. So when I read this last chapter of Jonah, I used to feel irritated because it doesn't have the ending that I wanted. Jonah's still aggravated, he's restless, it feels very open-ended and unresolved. Like the story just stops mid-sentence. But the truth is, it didn't end on that hill. It ended on another one. It ended on a hill called Calvary. Jesus hung on a cross outside Jerusalem, releasing mercy from every ounce of blood. That's the real ending. All of these foreshadows, all of these types of deliverers and prophets who brought temporary redemption, none of them could secure eternity until the Son of Man's blood touched down on the earth. When Jesus lifted up his voice and cried, It is finished, he didn't just pay out with debt, he paid the price for Jonah's unfinished story. Jesus' sacrifice reverse-engineered history. And the sound of that redemption is still echoing through our time. We see that God sent Jonah a wind from the east. That's the same wind that Hosea described rising from the wilderness, sweeping through their hearts to cleanse, awaken, and realign. And that breath of his spirit is moving again. It's calling creation back into order before the return of the king through the eastern gate. This wind is heaven's realignment. It's a holy reordering of positions. It's as if God is reaching across the chessboard of time and placing his final move and declaring, checkmate with the king peace. And God is turning the table in this last hour. And when Nineveh turned, it began with a king who carried the heart of a father. He stepped down from his throne, he laid aside his robe, and he clothed himself in repentance. And now that same wind is rising again. It's an east wind of awakening that is moving across the wilderness, breathing on these fragmented dust of dry bones, piercing the hearts and minds of the fathers one last time, calling them to stand, to cover, to lead, as the Spirit prepares the bride for the coming king. And before we close the curtain on Jonah's story, God leaves us with one final number. He says that there's 120,000 people who could not discern between their right hand and their left hand. All of these numbers mean something. God wasn't just trying to give us a census, a population data. In Hebrew math, 120,000 is built like a prophetic equation. Twelve means divine government and order, and ten means completion of testing. A thousand means glory multiplied through generations. And when you combine them, twelve government, times ten, completion, times a thousand, glory across generations, you get a mathematical image of heaven's perfect governance that endures through time. It's an order not built on law alone, but on mercy that keeps breathing life into every generation. And even when you don't do the numbers and you do the letters, it tells the same story. Pattern mirrors three Hebrew letters, Kaf and Aleph. Those are the values of a hundred, twenty, and one thousand. Each letter represents a motion of God's nature. Kulf means holiness bending low, like light reaching into darkness. Kaf means the palm of your hand, like an open hand of God that covers, blesses, and restores. And then Aleph with an E means a thousand or multiplied breath. And when you put that together, you get a sentence that says, the Holy One bends down, stretches out his hand, and releases breath that multiplies mercy across the earth. It even gives us the root of a hundred and twenty of the disciples that were in the upper room where God released the first Pentecost wind. For as it was in Nineveh, it is again today in these end times. And the Father is looking upon his people who cannot discern from their right or from their left. And I believe that he's asking a question over this generation. Should I not save them? Even the ones who never labored for salvation, the ones who never prayed a day in their life, who mocked you, who misunderstood you, called you delusional or deceived, accused you of being in a cult, laughed at you when you burned with conviction and they called it obsession. They labeled your surrender as instability and your devotion as mental illness. They were born into deception. They never carried a cross. They never carried the cost. They didn't have to wrestle through fire or walk through the fear and trembling. And God is asking, should I not save them? It's so crazy to me how many people take the credit for preaching a good message or for their life witnessing to somebody else. Don't we know that we could never do anything to save people? Our witness can't convince them. Only the sound of the voice of God could touch them. Only the coup of the dove. These are those who heard the word of the Lord all on their own. And the word of the Lord for this video is: I am in the by any means necessary business. I will find them in a pit. I will find them in the algorithm. I will interrupt their scrolling. I will invade their dreams. I will speak to them in ways that you thought I never could. Because even if there's just one heart left that hasn't crossed the threshold of the door, grace will keep knocking until they answer. It's that bridegroom love that will keep trying to find a way in, even when reason has boarded up every window. And this is why I'm doing what I'm doing on this podcast, because as I follow the voice of the Holy Spirit, I have come to understand that I am carrying the sound of the wilderness. It's an echo of Joel's prophecy. It's a people that's marked by the consumption of locusts and honey, those who have tasted in both sweetness and judgment. And my heart is to awaken everybody under the sound of my voice for this end-time awakening. So let's pray. Father, we just thank you for today. God, and I just ask, Lord, that you will breathe over every dry place, awaken every heart that has grown numb in the noise. I ask you, Lord, to loose every tongue and open up their hearing. We call forth the shepherds and the prophets, the intercessors, and those hidden in wilderness seasons, those who have been chewing on bitterness and sweetness at the same time. Lord, we just ask for you to turn that locust into nourishment and the wilderness into a sanctuary. We surrender our apathy for your fire, and we trade our fear for your breath. Cover us in compassion and mark us with mercy. And let every listener today become a voice, a witness in their own wilderness preparing the way of the Lord. And let the sound of your wind fill this generation. Let every breath become an echo of heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. If you felt the weight of his presence while listening, I want to invite you to drop a breath emoji if you feel yourself caught up in the rapture of his rhythm. And drop a heart emoji if you felt the tug of God pulling you out of the depths of apathy and into covenant love. And drop a sheep emoji if you have made the choice to push past all the noise to hear the shepherd's voice and follow the sound. You've been listening to the Mirologist Podcast, and I believe that we are standing at the threshold of a witness, a bride rising in this final hour. If this episode has blessed you, I ask that you would prayerfully consider sowing into this ministry. The information will be posted below, and your seed will help us pour out the oil and awaken the remnant across the nations. You can always learn more at marissaintluke.com. And until next time, keep your lamp burning.