What kind of sign are you following?
Text: Matthew 16:1-4 & Jonah
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2024 CrossTalk Global
Brian: Signs are everywhere. The average American Encounters an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 signs, ads, and other marketing messages daily. This figure includes everything from street signs, billboards, and storefronts to digital ads on social media, websites, apps, and email. Signs give us traffic instructions and directions. They also try to tell us what to buy or how to spend our money. But all signs try to point us to something. In last week's Natural Unit, Jesus talked about the sign of Jonah. What is it? And more importantly, what's it point to? How does it direct our lives? Join Dr. Kent Edwards and Nathan Norman as they discuss this sign and the Book of Jonah. Welcome to crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards and Nathan Norman add to last week's discussion of the Gospel of Matthew. If you have a Bible handy, turn to the Book of Jonah as we join their discussion.
Nathan: Okay, so, Kent, this is kind of a bonus episode. It's related to episode 221 where we were talking about the signs and wonders, the gifts that Jesus was giving in Matthew 15:21 through 16:12. But in there, he mentions the sign of Jonah, which good listeners would realize last week. Like, oh, he didn't even talk about what this is.
Kent: I know, I know. And I realized that. I just. We didn't have the time in that episode.
Nathan: Why didn't we have the time?
Kent: Well, the Pharisees came to Jesus, we saw in 16 1, and tested him by asking him to show him a sign from heaven. And in verse four, he says, a wicked and adulterous generation looks for miraculous sign, but none will be given except the sign of Jonah. So I have to explain the Book of Jonah in order to understand Jesus reference. Jesus knew it, and obviously he knew that the Pharisees and Sadducees understood that, but we have not often understood it, I think, as the author intended. So maybe we can take a few minutes and just run through the book quickly.
Nathan: Sounds good. Yeah. The whole book.
Kent: The whole book.
Nathan: Because it is one unified text.
Kent: It's one unified story. I'm sorry, I know. Everyone preaches it in four different sermons, but the problem is the fourth one doesn't really work because, yeah, Jonas has to die all day.
Nathan: Actually, that's important. Since this is a bonus episode, let's take a little bit of a rabbit trail here and talk about natural units We've used that term a little bit on the podcast before, and I want to. My goal is to get that term into the public mindset of a natural unit. And what do we mean by natural units?
Kent: Well, it means if it's a movie, you got to watch the whole movie. It means if it's a book, you got to get to the last chapter, and you have to start at the beginning. So you can't just take chapter three and assume that you understand everything that Shakespeare intended to communicate. That's just not true. So in any book, there is a development of thought from beginning to the end. And the goal of the honest interpreter is to determine what is the first main idea that is being communicated, and then based on that, there may be a second idea that follows. And what is that? And how are those two related? Each of those two then become natural units. So they could be part of a much larger natural unit, but they are individual units that together kind of like a Lego puzzle. You go to build something, it has individual pieces, but it also is part of much larger one.
Nathan: Yeah, it's a good metaphor. And the different genres of Scripture will dictate different natural units. Right. So the epistles can be much smaller, and the narratives are oftentimes very big, because if the tension of the story hasn't been resolved one way or the other, whether it's tragic or a good ending, a comedy, then you don't have a complete story. You can't fully understand what the author was talking about. Right. And a proverb is going to typically be shorter. A psalm. Right. That's my favorite thing to map out is the psalms, because I'm pretty sure.
Kent: The natural unit of Psalm 1.
Nathan: Right. The Psalm is a psalm.
Kent: Right.
Nathan: The natural unit of a psalm is one psalm. We're good to go. It's very easy to figure out those narrative tends to be harder because, I don't know, Westerners, Americans, we tend to try and look at the minutia. We don't understand story as well as we should. And it's sometimes hard to figure out where does a story begin and end. Not so with Jonah. We're given a whole, you know, we're given a short book. Right. And so that's the natural unit.
Kent: Yeah. And the trick is to determine who is the protagonist, who is the main character, whose decisions are driving the action of the story, and what's the tension. So there's always a problem. And as stories develop, any movie, any novel, it spends a long time making the problem worse and worse and worse. Until you get to the climax where it's either then a tragedy or ends in disaster, or it's a comedy where suddenly the good guy wins.
Nathan: And if it's a tragedy, we should do the opposite of what happened there.
Kent: Yeah, that'd be a good idea.
Nathan: And if it's a comedy, we should follow what happened. Typically.
Kent: Typically, yeah. Typically, yeah. So if you're Samson and you die in the rubble after you have pushed down the pillars of the building, after you have failed to obey the commandments God gave you, yet better. I don't want to be like Samson. That way I can learn from him, but I'll learn what not to do. But Jonah is kind of fascinating as I look at this. I like to say that really the only two verses, the only verses I understand in this whole book are chapter one, one and two.
Nathan: Okay.
Kent: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me. I got that. Nineveh, it was a wicked city, right?
Nathan: Right. The capital of Assyria.
Kent: If it wasn't the capital, it was at least the major city, kind of like New York City and Washington or something. But it was dominant city.
Nathan: Listen, Monty Python and the Holy Grail said, nineveh is the capital of Assyria. So I'm going with that.
Kent: Well, then I submit to that good exegesis right there. Yeah.
Nathan: It was a major city in Assyria.
Kent: And the Assyrian Empire was evil. They were a superpower. So one of the things about superpowers is that they find that all through history, pretty easy to defeat another nation. The problem is that how do you keep them under control after you've conquered them? So the Romans, for example, they would leave portions of their army behind every time they conquered a nation. But the problem with that solution is what?
Nathan: Oh, you have rebels and revolutions.
Kent: Yeah. And you lose your army.
Nathan: Uprising. Yeah. You got to recruit more army men.
Kent: Right. You keep believing them scattered all over the place. So the Assyrians decided, we're not going to do that. Instead, we are going to put the fear of Assyria into their minds. If anyone rebels, we will destroy them. So they did. If someone decided they didn't want to pay taxes to Assyria, they brought in their army and they brutalized people. They literally skinned people alive and made them live for days in agony. They would take people and bury them in sand and have chariot races, and they would get points for how many skulls they crushed as they went around. They would If a poet made a song or a poem that was critical of Assyria, they would come and cut out the tongues of everyone in that city. They would burn cities to the ground and place skulls in a pyramid where the gates had been. Everyone was terrified of his. They were bad people. So I got that. And God says he's going to send Jonah, son of Amittai, to preach to them because they're wicked. Well, that's what you do. You send a prophet to go tell people they're wicked, they better repent. Right, right. And Jonah's son of amittai. He, in 2 Kings, chapter 14, he was a priest in the Northern Kingdom, so he knew what he or prophet in the Northern Kingdom. So he was the right guy to send for the right task to address this evil nation. Got it. That makes sense. It's just the rest of the book that I don't understand, because verse three, he did what.
Nathan: One, three, it says, but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
Kent: Okay, so God told him to go east to Assyria, to Nineveh. And he got on a boat where?
Nathan: Good idea, Lord. We're going west.
Kent: We're going west as far as you can go. And it wasn't just a spur of the moment thing. He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port, which means he's walking up and down the docks trying to find the ship that would go the furthest away. This isn't like he clicked on the wrong website by accident. This is intentional. And he paid the fare.
Nathan: Where did he get his money from being a prophet?
Kent: Ah, so he used God's money to buy the ticket to go do the opposite and not just go in the opposite direction. But it says that a number of times to flee from the Lord. He ran away from God. You can't be a more disobedient prophet. Well, actually you can be.
Nathan: Well, that's the thing too, right? To be a prophet, you literally audibly hear the voice of God. No, still small voice stuff here. He audibly hears the voice of God and he goes, no, I've never heard the audible voice of God, but I would hope to imagine that whatever God tells me to do, I would say, yes, right, of course, Lord.
Kent: Well, he was a faithful prophet in the Northern Kingdom. I mean, he was The Billy Graham of his day. He was a good guy speaking God's word, and now look at his actions. But, you know, cheer up. It gets even worse. The Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose. The ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and cried out to his own God. They threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone down below where he fell into a deep sleep. So they get into this storm, you know, it was bad because in those days, the sailors were financially responsible for the cargo as it went between ports. So for them to throw it overboard means they were throwing their own money into the ocean.
Nathan: Right.
Kent: So they were scared, and each cried out to his own God. By the way, who's not praying?
Nathan: Jonah.
Kent: Ah, but the pagans are. So somehow the pagans seem a little bit more.
Nathan: It's always rough when the pagans are more spiritual than the true believers.
Kent: Yeah, that's. That's kind of embarrassing. And Jonah, of course, is asleep down below. You ever had people say, my conscience is clear?
Nathan: Right. Oh, I always have a good night's.
Kent: Rest, even in the midst of sin. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It just means your conscience is seared.
Nathan: Right.
Kent: He's deliberately doing the opposite of what God's called him to do. And he's sleeping. And the captain went down. How can you sleep, get up and call on your God? Maybe he'll take notice of it and we will not perish. The captain's asking the prophet to start praying like that. The irony here is this is the world's worst prophet, like he. The pagans are more righteous than he is. The sailors said, come, let's cast lots to see who is responsible for this calamity. And they cast lots and fell on Jonah. Tell us who's responsible for making all this trouble for us. What did you do? Where do you come from? What is your country from? What people are you? Wow. Can you just imagine? They're down in the bowels of this boat. The water is up to their knees. The boat is being thrown violently back and forth. There's one oil lamp that's burning a little bit, so you can see outlines of faces. And they're all standing around. Jonah, who are you? What did you do? He's the bad guy here. And he answers, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land. And they were terrified. Why were they so terrified?
Nathan: Well, because they had lesser gods that they were praying to. Right. No. He's the one who made everything here. And he continues to work within that world. He's the one who sent this storm which they're powerless against, which is amazing. In 21st century America, as powerful and as amazing as we are, as in control we feel about things, we can't control the weather. No, we can't control the weather.
Kent: And the sailors, I think, assumed because they had gone a long way from Jonah's home port, that they probably had. In America, we'd say cross state lines. You know, the old movies, right? If you're trying to get away from the police, if you can only make it to the state line, then you'll be free.
Nathan: They don't have jurisdiction there. Yeah, right.
Kent: But this God, his God has jurisdiction everywhere.
Nathan: Everywhere. Right.
Kent: And now they're scared because you can't outrun. You can't get away from the God of Jonah. And they saw the sea was getting rougher and rougher, they asked, what should we do to make the sea calm down? Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm. I know that it's my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Can you imagine that? What is he saying here?
Nathan: Kill me.
Kent: Yeah. I would rather die than do what God told me to do. This is the world's worst prophet. I will do nothing that God wants me to do. I would rather give up my life than to do that.
Nathan: But not only that, I would rather make. He's so cowardly, he's going to make them culpable for his death.
Kent: Right.
Nathan: So I'm not even going to throw myself in. Right. I'm going to make you do it instead.
Kent: The men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew wilder. They valued his life more than he did. I mean, who's more righteous here? The pagans. World's worst prophet. And then they cried to the Lord, who's doing the praying?
Nathan: The pagans, they're calling to Yahweh, the one true God, the God of Israel.
Kent: Do not let us die for taking this man's life. He's making us murder him. Do not hold us accountable for killing innocent man. For you, O Lord, have done as you pleased. And then they took Jonah and hurled.
Nathan: Him into the sea.
Kent: And the raging sea grew calm. So what was the reaction of the sailors when that happened?
Nathan: Well, they instantly converted. The men feared Yahweh exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
Kent: Now, that's Surprising. What is even more surprising is Jonah didn't die. Now, I've done extensive research and I've discovered that no one in ancient Israel took swimming lessons. I also know that they did not have life jackets on the boat. They didn't have flares. Jonah knew he was going to die. He knew. Except a great fish came, by the way. What kind of fish was it?
Nathan: Well, it doesn't say exactly here. Jesus refers to it as a whale in the New Testament. But it has got to be a whale, right? Because it swallows him. There is air that he can breathe. Whale is a mammal, and so they have to have fresh air. We know that Jonah doesn't freeze to death. So again, it had to be a warm blooded mammal, not a fish, like a shark or something like that, right? Could have been a divinely created biological submarine creature that God used, of course, but we don't know. The text says fish, which again, if modernized, say, well, a whale is a mammal, not a fish. Okay? Their taxonomy was different than our taxonomy. They're like, hey, it's in the water. Fish.
Kent: But either way, Jonah did not find himself inside Marriott Hotel, did he?
Nathan: I sure didn't, no.
Kent: There's no light.
Nathan: No.
Kent: It may not have been ice, but it was cold. There'd be nothing to eat. It would stink. If it was a whale, it had to be some kind of fish that would have had to eat something. You know, whales tend to go and get plankton and stuff and they get this huge rush of water that would come in and he'd be tumbling all around trying to. Well, almost drowning regularly.
Nathan: Probably in pain because there's probably some stomach acid that he's, of course, he's dealing with.
Kent: And what's fascinating is that, you know, years ago, my oldest son and I got certified as scuba divers at the lowest level. At the lowest level, the lowest level.
Nathan: The least of all scuba divers.
Kent: I don't want to mislead anyone. I'm not exactly expert in this, but one of the things they're very clear about is if you go down deep, like we were certified, 60ft under the water. Every time. When you go up, you have to keep having stops, safety stops. You go up 15ft, wait three minutes, go up 15ft, wait another three minutes. If you don't, then you'll have nitrogen pressed into your blood, and that is excruciating. It's called the bends. Even now, if someone comes up and avoids that, they'll be in such pain, they will take them to the hospital and put them in a Hyper barrack chamber to try and get. Put them as if they were underwater so that the nitrogen can get out of their bloodstream. It's agonizing. How many times do you think that whale. How deep do you think that whale went?
Nathan: I don't know. They go like, what, 200ft?
Kent: How many stops did he take on the way up?
Nathan: They got a surface, what, every 20 minutes or something like that? I don't know. They got a surface frequently.
Kent: Yeah.
Nathan: But then they have to go back down to eat. So up and down, up and down, up and down.
Kent: So not only is Jonah being waterboarded every time the fish eat something, but he's also suffering from the bands. The most excruciating experience you can imagine. Over and over again. How long would it take you to repent if you found yourself in that situation?
Nathan: Three minutes? No, 30 seconds. The second that happens, I just. You know, I'm quick to repent, though, right? When things are, you know, and even if I don't have something, clearly if I'm suffering, I'm like, okay, Lord, if there's anything, let me know.
Kent: But he stayed there three days and three nights. He was so intent on disobeying God, refusing to do what God had said that he would put up with all that torture for three days and three nights.
Nathan: No way.
Kent: This is the world's worst prophet. What I don't understand is why God didn't fire him. I think it'd be better off to pick one of the sailors. Sure. They repented their offering, making vows to the Lord. This guy's doing exactly the opposite. Why does God want to use Jonah? I mean, of all the people, why Jonah? This is the world's worst prophet.
Nathan: Right. If I had somebody like this working for me, trying to run away, I'd fire him pretty quickly. I would have fired him the moment he got on the boat and hired somebody else. Right, of course.
Kent: Absolutely.
Nathan: It's not like God's like, man, there's absolutely nobody else who I could talk to here. There's a few other options.
Kent: Many people take Chapter two as a prayer of repentance. Yeah. Not sure it's super repentant.
Nathan: Well, our Catholic friends, right? There's. What is it? Contrition and attrition. Right. And contrition is the better of repentance, where you feel bad because what you did was bad, and you're convicted is bad. Attrition is. I feel bad because I got caught and I don't like the consequences. And so I'm going to apologize to avoid the consequences.
Kent: Good. Well, let's take that one, because that's what I see here. He says in verse two, from the depths of the grave, I called for help. You hurled me into the deep, into the heart. What? I don't think God did the hurling this was. I said, oh, you heard me. In the deep. And the current swirled about me, and all your waves and breakers swept over me. Yeah, yeah, you got wet. I said, I have been banished from your sight. Did God banish him?
Nathan: No, no, he ran away.
Kent: He banished himself.
Nathan: Right.
Kent: Like it just, you know. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. Yeah, that's kind of what happens when my life was ebbing away. Verse 7. I remembered you, Lord. Okay, so when I figured, I'm going to die, okay? And what I have vowed I'll make good. Salvation comes to the Lord. Please. Okay, I give up. Uncle. Uncle. I surrender. And the Lord commanded the fish. And it vomited Jonah on dry land. There's two ways to get out of a fish.
Nathan: The front entrance or the rear entrance.
Kent: The front entrance.
Nathan: The rear exit. Yeah. Yep.
Kent: That's only two. And he gets vomited. Have you ever vomited?
Nathan: Yes. It's gross.
Kent: Why?
Nathan: Do we not.
Kent: No, no.
Nathan: The better question is, has any of your kids ever vomited in the middle of the night? Waking you up from asleep and having to take care of what's going on.
Kent: That sounds a little personal, but that's okay.
Nathan: Might have happened before.
Kent: Might have happened. So why do people vomit? It's a physiological reaction. To what?
Nathan: Right? Either they've eaten something bad, they've eaten too much, or there is a stomach flu or bug or bacterium that their body saying, I gotta get rid of this now.
Kent: Right? So imagine the gross things that this fish, whale must have eaten in his life. But having Jonah inside was so vile, it vomited him out. This is not a graceful exit. Just right. Just telling you. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. I'm like, okay. He had to be told again. Just saying there, if I was him, I would have been running to get to Nineveh, right? God says, remember? Jonah says, okay, I got it. I don't want to go through that again. Jonah, in chapter three, verse three, obeyed. That's a new word we haven't seen. Finally, he went there. And Nineveh was an important city, required three days. On the first day Jonah started into the city, he proclaimed, 40 more days and Nineveh will be overturned. You're A preacher. What grade would you give Jonah's sermon?
Nathan: Let's say Jonah, great eye contact in your message. Great eye contact. No. Is it true? Yes, but I don't know, 40 days, you're dead. I guess it's true. Maybe a C, right? Because it's true. But there's no application, there's no nuance, there's no images, there's no. No metaphors, no introduction, no conclusion. Doesn't try and draw them in. He's just like, fine.
Kent: I mean, he could put this next to Paul's sermon in Athens, right? I mean, come on, Paul was giving it a shot. He's using cultural metaphors, he's using their quotes, right? This guy walks in and says, 40 days, you're dead.
Nathan: And okay, I've never preached a message post seminary this bad. I've preached, you know, my messages, they oscillate, but I have not ever preached one this bad. Even if this is just representative of his message. I mean, this is the best we got, right? 40 days of Nineveh is overturned. I've never preached this short or this poorly.
Kent: Billy Graham did way better.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah. In fact, I'll say this. I have heard non blasphemous sermons. I don't think I've heard one this lame. I've heard some pretty lame sermons over the years, but I don't think I've heard one this lame.
Kent: What I don't understand again, I don't even understand the first two verses of chapter one. So you gotta keep helping me here because he preaches. Arguably, it didn't have a big idea, but it had no nuance. I mean, it's one of the worst sermons I've ever seen. And the Ninevites believed God and they declared a fast, and all of them, for greatest and least, put on sackcloth. So why did this bad message have such enormous impact?
Nathan: It's infuriating. It's infuriating. I've preached really good messages. You got the congregation, you give an altar call, nobody responds.
Kent: He comes and says, 40 days, you're dead. And the whole place prepares. It's even better than that because the King of Nineveh apparently read the newspaper and read about what went on. The news reached him and he rose from his throne, took off all his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in the dust. He is the President repented, the one who is authorized the most vile, awful attacks and treatment of others, sinful to the core. He genuinely repents and gives a decree that everyone should repent. And who knows? God may yet relent with compassion, turn from his fierce anger so we will not perish. Look, Jonah didn't give any application.
Nathan: He didn't tell him turn or burn the king.
Kent: The pagan king reads about it. The king reads about the newspaper, and he gets the right application that Jonah never gave. And when God saw what they did and how they turned from their ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. This is the most strangest, most amazing preaching events in the Bible. I don't understand it. Communication. No matter how hard you and I work on a sermon, what we have in our mind is never perfectly communicated to our audience. There's always some deterioration, there's some misunderstanding. We can't do it perfectly here. He takes a bad message and it gets better.
Nathan: That's the true miracle. It's a Christmas miracle.
Kent: Okay, so back up. So he's a prophet called by God, is disobedient until he's forced under literal pain of death to go preaches a bad sermon, and the people are transformed.
Nathan: Just for our listeners at home, that bonking sound that I can't edit out of this is Kent slamming his hands against the desk. So just picture what's happening here.
Kent: It's fresh, frustrating story. If you are a. If you're an American football player, what would be the ultimate accomplishment you would want to achieve?
Nathan: Win the Super Bowl.
Kent: Absolutely.
Nathan: More than Tom Brady.
Kent: Good luck with that. If you're a soccer player, football player in an international sense, you want to win a World cup, right?
Nathan: Right. Absolutely.
Kent: And when you accomplish those kind of things, everyone cheers and is happy. And this is a preacher, a prophet whose job is to confront sin and get people to repent, who just has the biggest revival in history. And is he happy about it? Does he cheer?
Nathan: He is not.
Kent: Chapter four. He was greatly displeased and became angry. Oh, for crying out loud.
Nathan: Right. I would hope to preach a message. Well, so you realize Nineveh at this time was like a quarter million people, right? I've never preached a message that has positively impacted a quarter or even negatively impacted, for that matter, a quarter million people.
Kent: I mean, Peter did a good job at Pentecost. He only got 3,000.
Nathan: Right. I would be over the moon, ecstatic, excited, for crying out loud. I do an altar call, two people come down. I'm like, wow, Praise the Lord.
Kent: Right? Absolutely. Over here.
Nathan: Look at this.
Kent: So why is a prophet angry? Because he was successful. Okay. And finally, Jonah prays. That's good. He prayed to the Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who relents from sending calamity. So you're mad at God because that's who he is. If you're Jonah, aren't you kind of glad that he is? That or you'd be fried. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it's better for me to die than to live. Okay, let's just. How many times has he wanted to die so far in this book? This is now number two, right? Minimum, throw me in the water. And now he says, I want to die. This guy's got some mental problems. The Lord said, do you have any right to be angry? And Jonah went out and sat in a place east of the city and made himself a shelter and sat in his shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. He's on strike. I want them dead. And I'm going to sit here until that happens. Then the Lord provided a vine and made a grow up over Jonah to give him shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy. What makes Jonah happy? Not the salvation of Nineveh.
Nathan: No. That he's under the shade. He's comfortable. Right. Which, you know, I understand. When I lived in Southern California, it took me forever to realize this. I'd be talking to people outside and they would move, like, if it was a long conversation, they'd move a little bit. And it took me probably two years to figure out they were moving with the shade to stay in the shade. And they weren't even consciously doing it, right? Because it's so blazing hot there all the time that they just, you know, subtly, over the course of years, just learn to move with the shade and weren't even conscious that it was happening. And a New Yorker like me was like, what are you moving around like a crab for what's happening here? Right? So Jonah's like, yeah, you know, he's out in an area that's arid and he's getting the shade. Wow, okay. This is great. I love it.
Kent: Yeah, but he values a vine over the people. Ooh, that's sad. At dawn the next day, God provided a worm and chewed the vine and it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on his head and he grew fade. And he wanted to die. Ah, here we are. At number three yet again and said, it'd be better for me to die than to live. Really? You've had the most successful ministry in history, and you're a prophet and you want to die. But God said, you have any angry. Do you have any right to be angry about the vine? I do. He said, I'm angry enough to die. And it's interesting, in the Hebrew, this is written with a force of an expletive. You're damn right I have this right. I've had it. I want. I'd rather die.
Nathan: Wow.
Kent: Note to self, don't swear God. There's never a good. Good luck. And now it's like four times. You wanted to die. And the Lord said, come on, you've been concerned about the vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow, sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city? And Jonah said, yeah. He said nothing. The book just ends. So why did God insist on using Jonah? And why in chapter four, if not in chapter one, did he have a complete emotional breakdown? I mean, this guy has fallen to pieces. He's a psychological mess, suicidal. Why did God insist on using Jonah to preach to Nineveh? And even when he preached a bad message, was it so powerful and effective, so transformative? It was. Well, the reason is because Jonah in 2 Kings 17 is specifically identified, as I mentioned earlier, of being a prophet to the Northern Kingdom. He gave at his best. He was a good prophet. He preached against the sin of the Northern Kingdom. He begged them to turn to God. He was like their pastor, a faithful pastor. Did they listen? Did they respond?
Nathan: They did not. No. He warned them and warned them, and God warned them and warned them, and they refused to repent of their sins. And God said, I will bring justice through the Assyrians.
Kent: And one day, Jonah looked up and he saw the legions of soldiers coming from Nineveh. And he saw them destroy their fields, salt the fields, burn the villages, rape the women, cut babies out of their wombs, hack people to death. The abuse, the torture, he saw that happen. Those were his church members. I think that scarred him. That hurt him. It had to. It had to. And when God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, that's why he ran. That's why he ran. He didn't want them to be forgiven. He wanted them to face the torture, the agony that he saw his people face. He didn't want them to be saved. He wanted God not to be gracious and long suffering. He wanted them to give him hell. I understand that from human perspective. But God wanted Jonah and no one else to go to Nineveh and preach to them. Why? Because they knew who he was. They knew he was a priest of God. And they knew that when he said, In 40 days you'll be dead, that was an implicit message of grace. And Jonah, even though he preached a bad sermon, he embodied the message of.
Nathan: Grace and salvation, his physical presence. Because they knew who he was, they knew what they'd done. And he chose to show up.
Kent: And for him, who they had hurt so badly, to come and give them the opportunity for grace. That was something they had never seen in their culture. That was. He incarnated the message of grace and forgiveness. That's what he did. You know, I think sometimes we have. We find ourselves, like Jonah maybe hating someone. Maybe it was a business partner that robbed us of our money, got us to sign forms that we didn't realize were treacherous. We lost the business that we made, and now our kids can't go to college, and now we can't retire. And you hate that person. Maybe it was a relative or a family friend that came into your spouse's room in the night and abused them physically. They've been permanently altered because of that. Could God call you to go to that person? The business partner who betrayed you? The person who sexually molested you or your spouse? Could you go to them and share the gospel? I wouldn't ask that of anyone. It's too hard. But God might. He might ask you, because you are the best person who can embody the grace of the gospel to them. And no one else can have the impact you could have. If that ever happens, I promise you two things. It'll be the hardest ministry, the hardest preaching gospel presentation you'll ever give in your life. And it probably won't be all that good because your emotions will be so strong, but because it's you, your person, because you're incarnating the gospel, it could be the most effective ministry you ever had. It was for Jonah. And that's really what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 16. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign. But none will be given to you except the sign of Jonah. I am the sign of Jonah. I am the God who you have insulted. I am the God who you have betrayed. And I have come in person to you, speaking the gospel, and yet you reject me. Yet you come to test me and see if you can injure my ministry. There is no greater grace than to have the injured party come in person and offer forgiveness. That is all that Jesus would offer these scribes and Pharisees. That's all you need. You don't need signs and wonders. You need to recognize that the God of the universe is standing in front of you. We saw the Canaanite woman earlier in chapter 15. She recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The people that came and were healed and Jesus fed. They recognized who he was, but the Pharisees and Sadducees did not. No miraculous sign will be given to them. All they will have is a sign of Jonah, the injured party, coming in person to offer them grace and forgiveness.
Brian: What will happen if we minister to the people who have hurt us the most? It will be the most powerful ministry we can ever be called to. It is the type of ministry Jesus carried out. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers. Together, let's bring God's Word to life to our lives. This week, the crosstalk podcast is a production of crosstalk Global Equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more or to support the work of this ministry, please visit www. We had a great week in Moldova. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by sharing it on social media and telling your friends. Tune in next Friday as we continue our discussion through the Gospel of Matthew. Be sure to join us.
Kent: That's good.
Nathan: It's a long one.
Kent: Yeah. I don't know how long it was, but it was long.