Jonah 4

Introduction

Scripture reading —

Lectio divina-ish (read with, listen once, listen again)

Responsive reading — What stood out to you?

Explanation

4:1-3 — There’s a huge difference between knowing God’s love in theory and knowing it in reality.

4:4 — Jonah doesn’t answer God

4:5 — He’s sitting outside the city waiting for 37 days to see if they’ll continue repenting or, but hoping their destruction will ensue.

4:6-9 — He’s irrational but also been living in the wilderness for over a month and has grown faint.

4:10-11 — Jonah ends with a question, and your life is intended to provide an answer.

God is presenting a metaphor — If Jonah is concerned about the death of a plant he didn’t create, why shouldn’t God care about this city full of people he did create?

You, Jonah poem

Matthew 12:38-41 — If you want to answer the question of Jonah, you have to look to the sign of Jonah.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees told Jesus, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”But he replied to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign. Yet no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, because just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea creature for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment and condemn the people living today, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. But look—something greater than Jonah is here!”

The miracle is not that a fish swallowed a man, but that the sea didn’t swallow him. He was supposed to die, but God rescued his life.

Jesus — “thrown overboard” for our sins, not his; not abandoned to the grave

Communion