00:00:00 :21 – 00:00:25 :28
Clint Loveall
Today. kind of just a final some final thoughts on Jonah, less probably in terms of the text or the meaning and maybe more. Just the question, how do we read a book like Jonah? Jonah’s such an interesting book in that it’s a narrative. It’s very much a story. It’s it’s not a typical book that you would call a prophetic book.

00:00:25 :28 – 00:00:50 :08
Clint Loveall
One of the other prophets, if you read Micah or Amos or one of those other books that are in close proximity to Jonah, they will sound nothing like this. There will be some narrative in it, but this is a careful, fully crafted, well put together story, and it stands out as unlike the other books that we call prophets.

00:00:50 :13 – 00:01:00 :36
Clint Loveall
generally named for the main character and what I think makes that a challenge, Michael is.

00:01:00 :41 – 00:01:40 :00
Clint Loveall
That that temptation to get distracted by the details and many of the conversations that I’ve listened to and been a part of about Jonah through the years have specifically to do with, could it be true? In other words, could a person live in a fish? Could a whale carry someone? Could they, you know, could it happen? And, for people who who want to defend the idea that this is a factual story.

00:01:40 :04 – 00:02:12 :43
Clint Loveall
I mean, certainly the supernatural is a part of the Scripture. You can you can do that. But I’ve always suspected that when we get drawn into those debates, there’s a good chance we’re missing the bigger and and more important points. And this book, maybe let me think about that for a second, maybe as much as any other book I can think of.

00:02:12 :48 – 00:02:28 :25
Clint Loveall
raises that question. And, and I think this book is far more than many others leads to distraction of things that don’t really change the meaning, but sort of take over the spotlight often.

00:02:28 :30 – 00:02:52 :58
Michael Gewecke
I think one of the, temptations of a book like Jonah, to your point, Clint, is that we are tempted to enter into the text and then to fixate on the how to’s of it, rather than the substantial data underneath it. And I think that today’s conversation, we’re going to try to tease out a little bit as readers, how do we navigate those currents of the text?

00:02:53 :01 – 00:03:14 :27
Michael Gewecke
How do you look at what is here, and you see some of the original intent and ask yourself what what lesson or purpose did this solve in its original context? Why is this put where it is in the context of Scripture and Clinton? I think a detail that’s worth noting is that Jonah is referenced many times outside of the book of Jonah.

00:03:14 :27 – 00:03:45 :05
Michael Gewecke
In fact, Jesus himself quotes Jonah as an idea, talking about the three days that Jonah was in the belly of the fish, gone down the Sheol, as we have in the text itself in chapter two. And then Jesus talks about in the same way that I will be buried for three days. And in both of those cases, this connection made to the idea that even at the edge of experience, the furthest away from God in those places, God chose faithfulness to bring out.

00:03:45 :05 – 00:04:18 :29
Michael Gewecke
On the other hand, we both know that that did happen for Jonah. When this whale miraculously both carries him to the place he needs to be, but then also spews him out onto the land. Also, God delivers Jesus from death itself. God delivers Jesus to the other side of death into life. And so I think it’s worth noting that when you when you see a book like Jonah in other places of the Scripture be quoted and referenced using that kind of imagery, it should grab our interest and attention.

00:04:18 :29 – 00:04:29 :22
Michael Gewecke
That should make us wonder, what if Jesus is reading the book that way? Then there must be a sense in which we should take it seriously in those farther depths as well.

00:04:29 :27 – 00:05:02 :58
Clint Loveall
I think it’s easy to read the book of Jonah and think this is a story about a guy who got swallowed by a fish, a whale, right? And there are even arguments. Believe it or not, there are arguments over whether it was a fish or whale, as if that somehow changes the meaning of the text. I think what’s harder is to remember that, yes, this story involves a man who gets swallowed by a fish, but this is a story about a God who demands holiness and responds to people who repent.

00:05:03 :03 – 00:05:32 :06
Clint Loveall
This is a story about a God who invites a man to be a part of redeeming those who are lost, and a man who doesn’t want to. But behind the story of Jonah is the story of a God who loves the people that we struggle to love, and the interaction between God’s grace and Jonah’s hard heartedness, God’s deliverance and Jonah’s judgment.

00:05:32 :11 – 00:06:12 :49
Clint Loveall
That’s where the lessons, that’s where the power of this book is. And if we’re arguing about whether a person can live inside a whale, I think we’re likely to miss the question of what hard heartedness, what judgment lives inside of us, what is it we carry that is opposed or in opposition to what God wants? What is God inviting us to that we don’t want to participate?

00:06:12 :54 – 00:06:42 :16
Clint Loveall
And how is God’s grace and God’s patience and God’s redemption? Sometimes even scandalous and offensive to those who think it went to the wrong people, that God has been good to the people that God shouldn’t have graced with his presence. And I just think when you make this about, could it happen or not? You rob the story of its power.

00:06:42 :16 – 00:07:04 :19
Clint Loveall
And I know if you happen to live on the side of the fence that that thinks literalism is important. In other words, if the Bible said that it must have happened that way, that’s okay. You can. Certainly there’s no reason you can’t think that about the book of Jonah. Just don’t stop there. Because I don’t think ultimately that’s the the mountaintop.

00:07:04 :19 – 00:07:19 :26
Clint Loveall
I think that can be a step along the way. That’s fine. But the peak is not what this says about people living in fish, but what it says about the biases that live in each of us. And I think ultimately that’s the lesson we should struggle with.

00:07:19 :30 – 00:07:36 :39
Michael Gewecke
I think, to raise that point even more clearly. Clint, let’s very quickly look at Matthew chapter 12 here. I think it makes this point really clearly. Jesus. This is from red letters. Jonah was three days, three nights in the belly of the sea monster. So for three days and three nights, the summer man will be in the heart of the earth.

00:07:36 :39 – 00:08:05 :40
Michael Gewecke
Just mention that. But then you’re looking. Verse 41, the people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they, being the Ninevites, repented at the proclamation of Jonah and see something greater than Jonah is here. And I think that this serves your point. Just to say that Jesus, when referencing this story, uses that as a slight against the religious leaders who see the Son of Man.

00:08:05 :40 – 00:08:36 :50
Michael Gewecke
In other words, not just Jonah the the unwilling prophet sent out, but actually God’s Son who arrives and proclaims the kingdom of God that they do not respond with repentance, with sackcloth, with ashes, with fasting, no, with Jesus, they are ul