Jonah | Swallowing The Story | Jonah 4:6-11 | Week 6

We're jumping into Jonah 4, if you have your Bible, you can flip there, swipe there, click there, however you want to get there this morning. It's the final message in the series of Jonah as we continue to journey towards the cross and the resurrection. We've been utilizing this book of Jonah to lead us to Easter. We've been saying, throughout this series, that part of our goal has been to rescue Jonah from Veggie Tales and the flannel board. We often view this as a kids' story. If you've been coming over the last few weeks, I hope you realize, by this point, this is certainly applicable to kids, but it's no kids' story, is it? There's a lot of depth, and a lot of beauty, and a lot of subtlety and nuance, and sort of hints and winks and nods in the book of Jonah. It's intended for adults.

The story of Jonah is the story of a resentful prophet who encounters a relentless God. In week one, we said Jonah could be split in half. The first half of Jonah gives us one message and the second half of Jonah builds on that and gives us another message. In the first half of Jonah, Jonah shows us what it's like to run from God through outright, willful disobedience, doesn't he? Jonah is a prophet of God and gets a call from God. He's told to go and preach against Nineveh, that their wickedness has risen up before God. God's calling him to go to Nineveh, which is about 500 plus miles east of where he was. Jonah hops on a ship and heads to Tarshish. Jonah is outright disobedient and saying to God, "God, I know what you've asked me to do, but thanks but no thanks." You'll remember that we were wondering throughout the entire first few chapters of Jonah, why is Jonah running, and the narrator strings us along and doesn't give us the answer until we get to chapter 4. Jonah said to God, "I knew it! I knew you were slow to anger. I knew you're merciful and abounding in steadfast love. I knew it! My worst nightmare's come true. That's what you're like." In his disobedience, we see that God pursued Jonah through a storm, through a fish that vomited him out onto dry ground...