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Please, LORD, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own

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country?

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Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are

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a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving

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kindness, and you relent of doing

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Most of us know this story, don't we?

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A man, a storm, a fish.

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But the book of Jonah is built far more carefully than most of

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us were ever shown.

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And the most surprising thing in it?

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It isn't the fish.

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Hi, and welcome to First Light Bible Study.

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Grab your Bible, and a cup of coffee if you like.

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On Sunday we heard all of Jonah, word for word.

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Tonight we're going to look a little underneath it: six things

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most of us were never shown in Sunday school, and then what they

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mean for us.

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So first, who was Jonah?

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Well, he isn't only in this book.

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Second Kings mentions him by name.

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He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to

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the sea of the Arabah, according to the LORD, the God of Israel’s

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word, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai,

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the prophet, who was from Gath Hepher.

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That's King Jeroboam the Second, back in the seven hundreds BC.

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And here's the part people usually skip.

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The verse before says Jeroboam did evil in the LORD's sight, and

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the verses after say God saved Israel anyway.

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So Jonah had already watched God be generous to people who didn't

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deserve it.

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His own people.

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Now, Nineveh.

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It was a great royal city of Assyria, the superpower of that world,

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and Assyria was feared for good reason.

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Its kings boasted in their own inscriptions about the cruelty

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they showed to cities that resisted them.

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The prophet Nahum would later call Nineveh, quote, the bloody

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city.

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So just imagine being sent to preach to the capital of the people

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who terrorized your grandparents.

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Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey

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across.

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By about 700 BC its walls ran some seven and a half

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miles around.

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And the Hebrew here says, literally, a great city to God.

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Hold on to that phrase; we'll come back to it.

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As for three days' journey, honestly, scholars aren't sure.

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It may mean the whole district.

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Or, as the Assyriologist Donald Wiseman suggested, the customary

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three-day visit of an envoy: a day to arrive, a day for business,

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a day to leave.

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Here's the first thing.

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If you lay chapters one and two beside chapters three and four,

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they line up like a mirror.

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Both halves open the same way: the word of the LORD comes to Jonah.

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Then Jonah responds.

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First he runs, then he goes.

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Then outsiders face disaster and turn toward God, each with a

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hopeful maybe.

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The ship master says, maybe your God will notice us.

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The king says, who knows whether God will turn and relent.

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Then God spares them.

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And then Jonah prays.

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Once from inside the fish, grateful.

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And once on a hillside, furious.

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Scholars like Phyllis Trible and Jonathan Magonet have traced

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these patterns line by line.

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When a story repeats itself this carefully, the writer wants us

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to compare.

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And, you know, the comparison isn't flattering.

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The man who thanked God for rescuing him is angry when God rescues

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somebody else.

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The second thing is in the words themselves.

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Hebrew storytellers love to repeat a word until you notice it.

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And Jonah has five of them.

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The first is yarad.

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It simply means, to go down.

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Jonah goes down to Joppa.

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He goes down into the ship.

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He goes down into the innermost part of the ship, and falls into

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a deep sleep.

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And in his prayer he says, I went down to the bottoms of the mountains.

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Running from God, in this book, is always a road downhill.

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The second is gadol.

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It means great, and it shows up about fourteen times.

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A great city.

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A great wind.

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A great storm.

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Great fear.

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A great fish.

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Everything in this book is big.

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Then in chapter four the word lands on Jonah himself.

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When God spares the city, the Hebrew says, it was evil to Jonah,

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a great evil.

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The third is manah.

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It means to appoint.

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Our translation says, prepared.

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God appoints a great fish, and by the way, the Bible never actually

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says whale.

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He appoints a vine, a worm, and a hot east wind.

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The fish rescues Jonah, and the worm teaches him.

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Both are mercy, in different packaging.

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The fourth is ra'ah.

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It's a wide word: evil, trouble, disaster, even displeasure.

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It's Nineveh's wickedness, and the evil way they turn from.

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And when God relents of the disaster he had planned, that's the

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same word.

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They turn from their ra'ah, and God turns from his.

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And right then, the word lands on Jonah.

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It was ra'ah to him.

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Now, the fifth word is hafak.

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It's from Jonah's one-line sermon: in forty days, Nineveh will

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be overthrown.

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Hafak is the word for how God overthrew Sodom.

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But, you know, it also means to turn.

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Like in the Psalm: you have turned my mourning into dancing.

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Jewish and Christian readers have noticed this for a long time.

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In forty days, Nineveh was overturned.

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Not its walls.

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Its heart.

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Third.

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Look at who actually behaves like a believer in this book.

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It isn't the prophet.

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The pagan sailors pray while Jonah sleeps.

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Their captain wakes him with God's own words: arise, call.

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They row hard to spare his life.

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They pray to the LORD by name.

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And by the end of chapter one,

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the men feared the LORD exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice

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to the LORD and made vows.

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A chapter later, inside the fish, Jonah promises to sacrifice

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and pay his vows.

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The sailors had already done it, while he was still sinking.

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Then the Ninevites.

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They believed God, the same Hebrew verb Genesis uses for Abraham.

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And the king's words, who knows whether God will turn and relent,

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are almost word for word what the prophet Joel would tell Israel.

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Who knows?

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He may turn and relent,

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Every outsider in this book does what Jonah should have done.

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That's not an accident.

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It's the point.

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Fourth.

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Jonah's prayer in chapter two is stitched together from the Psalms.

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Just listen.

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All your waves and your billows passed over me.

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That's Psalm forty-two.

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All your waves and your billows have swept over me.

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His line about those who regard vain idols comes from Psalm thirty-one.

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And his last line, salvation belongs to the LORD, is the last

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verse of Psalm three.

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In the dark, the Psalms came back to him.

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That's a gift for us too.

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The Scripture you've memorized will be there when you're at the

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bottom.

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Notice what the prayer doesn't say.

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Jonah never says he's sorry, and he never mentions Nineveh.

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Some readers hear deep faith here.

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Others hear a man grateful for his own rescue who still hasn't

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changed his mind.

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Chapter four tells us more.

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Fifth, and this really is the heart of it.

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In chapter four Jonah finally tells God why he ran.

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He knew God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant

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in loving kindness.

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Those words were Israel's creed, what God proclaimed about himself

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to Moses on Mount Sinai.

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The LORD!

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The LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant

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in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands,

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forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by

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no means clear the guilty,

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Jonah quotes the first half and stops.

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He leaves off the judgment, and adds, and you relent of doing

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harm, the same line Joel uses.

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Jonah isn't confused about who God is.

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He just can't bear for it to apply to Nineveh.

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Now, here's something most people have never been told.

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Over a century later, another prophet quotes the other half of

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that creed, about Nineveh.

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The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no

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means leave the guilty unpunished.

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That's the book of Nahum, a kind of sequel to Jonah.

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Nineveh's turning didn't last, and in 612 BC the city fell.

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Jonah shows us God's patience.

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Nahum shows us that patience isn't indifference.

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Both are in the same creed.

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And Jonah is one of only a few books in the Bible that ends with

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a question.

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God gives Jonah a vine, takes it away, and asks him this.

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You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored,

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neither made it grow; which came up in a night and perished in

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a night.

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Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which

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are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern

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between their right hand and their left hand, and also many animals?

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There's that phrase again: that great city.

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And we never hear Jonah's answer.

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Nahum ends with a question too, about Nineveh's cruelty.

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Two books, one city, two question marks.

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Jonah's question is left open because it's really for us.

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Last, Jesus.

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When people asked him for a miraculous sign, he said,

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no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.

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For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the

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huge fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights

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in the heart of the earth.

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In Matthew, the sign points to his death and resurrection.

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In Luke, Jonah himself is the sign to the Ninevites: a man brought

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back from the deep, calling a city to turn.

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And Jesus adds, someone greater than Jonah is here.

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Mark even tells a story that echoes Jonah.

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A storm.

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A man asleep in the boat.

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Frightened sailors wake him.

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The sea goes calm, and, like Jonah's sailors, they're greatly

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afraid.

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But Jesus doesn't run from his calling.

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Jonah was thrown overboard to save one boat.

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Jesus gave his life for the world, Nineveh included.

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So what do we do with all this?

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First, we can know every true thing about God's mercy, and still

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resent where it goes.

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Jonah did.

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Second, the people we've written off may be closer to God than

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we think.

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And third, the question at the end is ours to answer.

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you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant

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in loving kindness,

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Here's a question to sit with this week.

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Who is my Nineveh?

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And if God showed them mercy, would I be glad?

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Take a moment with that.

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You can pause the video if you like.

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If you'd like, tell us in the comments which of these six things

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was new to you.

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We read every one.

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Let's pray.

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Gracious God, you are slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness.

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When we run, you come after us.

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When we go down, you bring us up.

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Forgive us for wanting your mercy for ourselves and not for others.

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Give us your heart for the great cities, and the people next door,

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that you love.

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In Jesus' name, amen.

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If you haven't seen it yet, watch the whole story of Jonah.

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It's linked right here.

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New First Light Bible Stories premiere every Sunday at eight PM

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Eastern, with a Bible study like this one every Wednesday.

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This Sunday: the story of Ruth.

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