Exploring My Strange Bible - Asleep at the Wheel (Remastered)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

The Amazing Jonah E2 — Jonah is portrayed as God’s prophet, but ironically, he is the only person in the book who refuses to listen to God. How can this story invite us to consider our own lack of perception and awareness of God’s voice in our lives? In this message, Tim explores Jonah chapter 1, looking at the many ways that the prophet seems unable to hear God directly or through anything else that God sends his way. This message was given on August 11, 2013, at Door of Hope Church in Portland, Oregon.OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESA Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. PetersonCheck out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“Nob Hill Instrumental” by DrexlerSHOW CREDITSProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Aaron Olsen edited and remastered today's episode. JB Witty does our show notes. Powered and distributed by Simplecast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackey, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can all be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called the Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, we are continuing in this series we're exploring the book of the ancient prophet Jonah. Again, this was a teaching series I did at Door of Hope Church back in 2013. And in the second message, we're exploring the main part of chapter one, which is all about how Jonah, this set up as God's own prophet, but is the only person in the book who refuses to really listen to God. but everything else in creation, both humans and non-humans, are very aware and listening to God in this story. The second message explores how Jonah is a figure who is asleep at the wheel, namely he is deaf to God and every means that God is using to communicate to him.

And I think the story invites us in to thinking about our own lack of perception and awareness of ways that God must. might be trying to get through to us. It's a very challenging story. I was really challenged, both preparing and realizing what was going on in the story and then giving this message. So I hope it can open up the story of Jonah for you. So let's dive in and explore. We're continuing this series in The Book of Jonah. And you remember I kind of pitched this whole thing as like a rescue effort. We were battling against what I call the Veggie Tales factor. with this book. And so the veggie tales factor is the strange thing that children's media have done to the Bible in our culture, where they've made the stories very familiar to us, but they have

at the same time watered them all down and turn them into bland moral lessons about how to be a nice person, something like that. And so this is a rescue effort. We're clearing the vegetation away. This covered over the book in our culture, and we're discovering what really a very disturbing and challenging book this is. And so, kind of to recap last week, kind of helped us see that this story is quite surprising in how it's told and that it's even in the Bible. It's the only book in the Bible that is a story about a prophet. It's not a book of the prophet's words. It's a story about a really horrible person, actually. And that story has a profound message to offer to God's people. And it's a unique kind of story that I characterize

as comic or comic satire. So it's an ancient comic book. Saturday Night Lives get bundled up into one. And Jonah, he has this representative character. He represents the covenant people of God, and he's a horrible, horrible, hypocritical, hateful person. That's what Jonah is. The storyteller just rakes him over the coal in front of our eyes. And especially chapter one, I mean, we're going to get a kick out of it. I mean, it's really quite funny, how ridiculous he is. And everything's upside down in this book, and everything's crazy and extreme. The bad guys are actually the good guys, and the good guy is actually the bad guy. No one behaves according to their stereotype. And all of it is aimed at critiquing the worst tendencies that form in the hearts and minds

of God's people, of judgmentalism or pride, or is we're going to see this week's spiritual apathy, spiritual slumber. This chapter is all about either being asleep or being awake, essentially. So remember I said, surgeon, John was warning, punch in the gut. Number two, this book packs a wall up. So get ready for the pain. To kind of orient us into Chapter 1, part of it is these stories, for some of us, become so familiar. It's difficult to read the story like it's for the first time and to see it with new eyes or from a different perspective. So let me kind of give us an entry point with the story, and then I'll help us frame what we're going to focus on in Chapter 1. Let me show you a picture, Google Maps, and this has nothing to do with Jonah, but everything to do with Jonah at the same time.

So what this is, you can see B, maybe over here on the left, a little green dot. that is where you're sitting right now. This is southeast Portland. So we're at B, and A is where I live. And in between the blue line there is my daily bike commute. And so one of my kind of dreams, one of things I wanted to do in moving back here to Portland, when we came to be a part of Doer of Hope about a year and a half ago, was I wanted to enter the culture of bike commuting because I just love it. I don't know. I love, and I love that Portland celebrates bike commuting. I think it's wonderful. Sometimes I cross the Hawthorne Bridge on Wednesdays to go meet someone every Wednesday, and like 8.45, and I'm like the 1,500th bicycler across the bridge at 845,

and I'm like, I love the city. This is the best city on the planet. Anyway, so this is part of living the dream, so to speak. And so I live up of 51st and division, and so there it goes, my daily spike commute. And I make this at least once a day, there and back again. It's 2.3 miles, as you can see here, in 12 minutes, is pretty accurate. So the longest stretch, you can see the longest stretch right there kind of at the beginning, is along the Lincoln Street It's one of these bike highways. Do you guys know about the bike highways in Portland? Wonderful.

They're so great. So what the city's done is, actually, it's great. So these bike highways is multiple. They do them parallel between main arteries through the city, but it's off the main drag, so it's more safe for bikes. So they put in the speed bumps that drivers hate, so my cars don't really like to go there. And they put huge pictures to paint with big bicycles on the street,

so you can't mistake where you are. You're on a bike highway. And they've rigged all the stop signs. so that it faces all the side streets, so you can just cruise. I mean, you can just go and never have to stop, except when you come to the main arteries

like 39 Cesar Chavez or something else. And so it's great. These are totally wonderful. What's also interesting, though, is so basically, you know, once I hit Lincoln, like, that's it. Like, I have to make one stop and it's kind of a long stretch

and then I zigzagged in cross, pothor, and over. Now, why am I showing this to you? Because something strange has started to happen. So I've been doing this back and forth once a day. sometimes twice a day, if we have evening, something going on here. And something has started to happen.

I thought I'd share it because I'm pretty sure this is a very common experience. So maybe I might cross 30 nights, or I start zigzagging over towards Hawthorne. And somewhere along the way, I might kind of come to, I have to cross Hawthorne, so there's often traffic in the mornings or something, so I have to be aware. It's like I come to, somewhere around 30th or something,

and I'm just like, I have no memory of the last five minutes. What did just happen? I passed Dumptown already. I guess I did. I don't remember that, but I guess, you guys know what I'm talking about? Have you ever done this? So maybe for you, this might be driving,

and you're driving to your daily community, your daily routine, your route, and you're just like, I have no memory of the last three minutes. It's like, what just have I just row five miles, and I don't even know what happened, you know? And so it's this weird experience. This human body and psyche is so amazing because we can do really sophisticated,

physical operations, but could be completely mentally checked out. I think it's really amazing. It's also scary at the same time because you're operating a motor vehicle, for goodness sake. And I'm riding a bike. This is the most dangerous thing I do in a day. And you too, and we're checked out for half of the drive.

And so, of course, if a squirrel came or were a cat or a person, you know, you would stop and be alert, I would hope. But it's bizarre. You're awake, but you're not awake. Because how many you know exactly what I'm talking about here? This happens to us, especially in parts of our lives that become routine. and they become kind of dull or uninteresting to us.

And so we just, for all intensive purposes, we just kind of check out. And it's not just when operating vehicles of any kind. It happens around the house too. This has also happened, but it's kind of a shameful story to tell. But I'm trying to work on it. So laundry is a very big part of my life right now, two tiny little boys, cloth diapers,

a lot of diapers to wash, you know. And so our laundry unit is actually out the back of our apartment, and they have to go to separate entrance to a little storage area down below. And so make that trip a lot, just a lot. And sometimes I will, like, come back and, like, coming in the back door, and I'll come, once again, you come to, you're like, what just happened? Like, did I turn the machine? Do I'm a washing machine on? Did I put the clothes in?

Did I just go down there? I think I did. I think I just went down there. And so I'll go down. And, like, the soap dispenser will be open, and I didn't put any soap in, but I put the clothes in and turned it on or something. So this is, it's not funny to my wife at all. But it's funny to me because it'll be like, hey, what's up with the laundry? And I'll go down an hour later and no progress or whatever.

So they've been wet, but there's no soap on them. So this happens to us. You guys know what I'm talking? I'm not alone here. I'm not alone. Okay. So this is not just how some of us live or drive or whatever. This goes much deeper.

And it's precisely the kind of dynamic, I think, that Jonah chapter one is exposing for us. Some of us live perpetually in the state of disengagement, right? It is like 80% of your life, you know, and you're like, where did the last three months go? I don't know, whatever, and you keep on going. And that's how some of us feel about our lives. That's how many of us are in our spiritual lives as well. And so maybe you've been a Christian for a while, and, you know, maybe at one point you had kind of a sense of alertness, a wakefulness to your life and your connection with Jesus. And, you know, you felt like the scripture spoke to you or prayer was a meaningful practice for you.

but at some point that just kind of fizzled, whatever, and you're just kind of cruising and totally, I'm totally saying I'm a Christian, but the love's gone or whatever, it's fizzled. And you're like, why did it happen? I don't know why that happened. There's lots of reasons for it. Sometimes it's seasons of life. You know, Eugene Peterson is this great line where he talks about

the journey of following Jesus is like a long obedience in the same direction. There are a couple book clubs around here reading that book this summer. And that's exactly what it's like. And so not all of life is thrilling and exciting. And yes, of course, we get that. But there is something real that's been lost when I don't sense any kind of vitality in my connection with Jesus.

And maybe some of you have never had that experience before. And so we might get there through seasons of life. We might also end up in that place because of decisions that we've made. There may be small decisions. Maybe they're bad, unwise decisions. Maybe they're bad moral decisions. We know there compromises, but, you know, how we justify these kinds of things, and then we find ourselves three months later down this road of decisions, and we're like, how did I get here? What happened to the last three months? I'm like, how am I doing this? How did this happen? And it's not rocket science. There's a slow process of decisions that landed you at a place of spiritual apathy, of being asleep at the wheel, and all of a sudden things that you never thought you would be, or thinking, or doing, all of a sudden, this is part of your life now.

How'd I get here? You're asleep at the wheel. This is an experience we all have. And Jonah Chapter 1, really, it's like a portrait of spiritual apathy. It's a portrait exploring why and how and what's happening to us when we're asleep at the wheels spiritually. And the tragedy that that really is. It's not uplifting necessarily, but it's good for us to hear.

It's like eating your vegetables. So it's Jonah Chapter 1. You guys with me with this image here? It's a big image in Jonah Chapter 1. Let's dive in. We'll watch Jonah fall asleep at the wheel here. So back of the first sentence, we'll kind of cruise our way through it. So the word of the Lord that came to Jonah, son of Amitai, two things. Remember when you see Lord in all capital letters in the Old Testament, that's the English

translators reminding you that in Hebrew what's there is not just the generic word God, but the divine name, personal name, Yahweh, covenant God of Israel. And it's going to be important as the story goes on. So the word of Yahweh that came to Jonah, son of Amatai. Jonah means dove, son of faithfulness. You're supposed to laugh because he's not an innocent dove and he's the least faithful character in this entire story.

The word of Yahweh came to dove, son, of faithfulness. Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. So God is surveying his world. He sees these horrible acts of oppression and justice and violence arising out of the capital city, a Syrian empire,

and we'll explore more of that in a couple weeks here when he actually goes to Nineveh in Chapter 3. God wants to send his messenger to confront and name the injustice that's happening, and what does God's messenger do? What does the innocent dove do? He runs away from Yahweh,

headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa. He found a ship bound for that port after paying the fair. He went aboard, and he sailed for Tarshish, hopefully from Yahweh. board this last week. Now, just to kind of put a map up here, just to remind you of what's happening here, as he flees at Tarshish, so he's supposed to go east to Nineveh. Instead, he goes as far west

as was humanly possible in the angel world, right? So Tarsas was on the edge of the known world there before you get to the Atlantic. So he's supposed to chuckle. He's going as far as you could possibly go from Nineveh at that time. Her step he has to go to, too, is to go south. Israel's in the northern hill country there of Israel. He has to go south to Joppa. That's a little detail that's important. We'll see it in a second. So we go south to Joppa, hops on a boat to flee. Verse four, let's pick it up. So then Yahweh, he sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. This is another little comic image here. The word threatened, or some of you have, the ship was about to break up. In Hebrew, the ship is animated,

It's like a character in the story. So literally it's, and the ship pondered breaking up into pieces. Like the ship is actually thinking, should I stay together? Should I stay apart? I don't know. The storm's pretty intense. That's the idea. You're supposed to chuck out.

English translations kind of covered up a little bit, but the ship actually has a brain in this line. So the ship was pondering, breaking into pieces. And all the sailors, they were afraid, and each cried out to his own God. They even threw the cargo into the sea so they could lighten the shit. So Yahweh pursues his man with the severe mercy.

So we might think, oh, here's the Old Testament God and throwing lightning bolts at people or whatever. So no, remember the bigger picture. God wants to send Jonah to speak to the Nineveites so that he can bring them to repentance so they can find forgiveness and life. It's God's mission to reach people and rescue them

that's pursuing Jonah. This is a severe love. This is like the love of a parent chasing after. their child who's going to bring their own ruin if someone doesn't intervene, that's the image here. This is not the volatile, that's a different God. It's not the God of the Bible, the volatile perpetually ticked off God who's just waiting to squash you. It's a different God. It's not the God of the Scriptures. And so this is the God of a fierce love who pursues his disobedient prophet. And so the sailors, look what the sailors are doing. I mean, are the sailors asleep?

No, oh, they're wide awake, right? So they're yelling, right? You can just imagine their throwing their own livelihood over the side. They're throwing the cargo. It's a lost mission now. They've lost all their money because this is what they were carrying. And notice they're awake and alert to what's happening here. What are they doing? They're afraid. They're throwing cargo, but what else are they doing? They're praying, aren't they? To whom are they praying? All kinds of different gods, each to his own God. So first of all, they are alert enough to recognize this isn't a normal storm, and there are divine powers at work here. Now, within this, their worldview, which is a polytheistic worldview, they believed in the existence of hundreds,

thousands of gods over all the different realms of life. And so they do the shotgun approach to prayer, which is what you do if you're a polytheist. You shout out prayers to as many gods as you can. You know, you take that one, you take that one. Okay, Jimmy, that one, Johnny, that one, and hopefully we'll hit the right one, right? Because we don't know which one is angry with us. And that is the perpetual stay you live in in a polytheistic worldview is you could offend any of the gods at any moment and you don't know. They might throw a lightning bolt at you. That's very much a part of a polytheist worldview. And so they're like, well, okay, let's just call on all the gods and just see what happens then? But what's Jonah doing? So all this frenetic activity calling, praying,

cargo overboard, all frayed, yelling and so on. And they contrast the prophet, man of God, what's he doing? He's asleep. Jonah had gone below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. Now, there's a wordplay that's kind of a little red thread through this first part of the chapter here. It's all about this language of Jonah going down, down, that where did he go to get to Joppa? What did it say? He went down, he went south here. And actually, you can just trace the language here. In verse 3, he went down to Joppa. And then some of our translations have he went aboard the ship. Literally in Hebrew it says he went down to Joppa, he went down into the ship. Verse five, he went below the deck into the depths of the ship, and there he went

down, laid down into deep. So here's this image here of the prophet man of God. The pagan sailors, they are very alert to that there's a divine, mysterious power at work. And where is the religious man of God? He's slowly descending into a state of literal and spiritual slumber. And this is a very powerful portrait that the author develops here with this repetition of down, down, down. He's depicting Jonas, he's depicting Jonah's sin here as something that has led him to this kind of numb, deadened, unaware state. The sleep at the wheel, right? And so remember this kind of last week, remember, what's Jonah's basic failure here? with his sin. The sin is that God has given him a call to go participate in God's story

of his grace reaching more and more kinds of people, confronting humans in their oppression and injustice and wickedness and offering mercy and grace. And Jonah ran from that. And why did he run? Remember, he's not afraid. He hates Ninevites. That's why. And he knows that somehow Yahweh is going to find a way to bring them to repentance so that they will be forgiven. And Jonah thinks, the world is a much better place with the ninovites who are not forgiven and who get annihilated. And so Jonah thinks he knows better than God. And he acts accordingly. So that's his failure, his sin. What this choice does is all of a sudden it begins to make him descend into this stupor. It's like his sin becomes like a sleep drug. It makes him less. It's growing separation between

him and God. And all of a sudden, he's in this scenario where there's like, havoc and threats of danger and death or whatever, and he's just blissfully unaware of what's going on in his own life. This is a huge image here. It's ridiculous to us. We're like, who would fall asleep in the ship at sea and so on? And so all I can think of, like we have a month and a half old son, and when he does sleep, he really crashes. I mean, you could put a jackhammer next to his head, and he is out, you know. And so, yes, I suppose, you know, Jonah could fall asleep and it's stormy and see,

but there's much more going on. This is an image of his sin and what's happening to him on the inside, spiritually. And so, who suffers as a result of Jonah's spiritual apathy? How's Jonah doing? He's great. He's sleeping like a baby, you know what I mean?

Who's suffering as a result of his bad decisions? Everyone around him, the sailors are far. This is very insightful, I say. In other words, his sin, his selfishness, he knows better than God and everyone else, and he acts accordingly.

This has led him into the state where he is just totally unaware of the people around him, even though he's bringing ruin on them. Jonah has become this relational wrecking ball in the people's lives around him, and he's so unaware and doled by his apathy, he's totally unself-aware. that this is what's taking place.

This is such a profound image, I think, of the nature of sin and its consequences in our lives. This is only one story, one passage among many in the scriptures that highlight this. And we hear this as Westerners and we're like, it's kind of weird.

And it's because our view of morality is very individual-centered. And so, you know, we're raised in this culture that essentially says, your moral decisions and your moral compass, it's kind of a choose-your-own adventure, But as long as you don't hurt anybody and everybody's consenting, then whatever. It's morally permissible.

And Jiminy Cricket, let your conscience be your guide. That's kind of the way our culture operates here. And so what happens in Las Vegas? It stays there. What do you made? It's just your private decision. You know, it doesn't involve anybody else. No one else can say that's wrong for you, you know, because it's what you want to do.

Nobody's hurt and so on. And so we have this very privatized, individualized moral worldview. where if it's right for you, it's right for you, and so on. And what the scriptures do, and you don't even have to be religious to agree with this, what the scriptures do is they said, and John 1, it just exposes that, is just utterly naive and simplistic. The Bible's account of human decisions and our moral decisions and how they affect other people is very profound and sophisticated.

And so you have to respond to our Western culture, and you have to say, you're telling me that every moral decision that I make, Like every moral decision Jonah's making in this story, it's a little brick, one little brick and a huge wall. And that wall is forming who you are as a person and your character. And you're telling me that a thousand little moral decisions isn't eventually going to form you into the kind of person who, if you're making a thousand bad moral decisions,

small moral compromises, eventually you will reach the thousand first decision that will spill over the banks of your own life and ruin somebody else's. Are you with me? Like, it's just utterly naive to think that my own moral decisions just affect me.

That's so ridiculous. Our lives are so much more interconnected than that. And you can just see this, I think, the humor and the irony of when sex scandals break the news. So, of course, you know, Portland government, we just had another one, break the news. You guys follow this over the last few weeks.

And American culture is so silly about this because we're bathed in sexual imagery and media more than any culture on the face of the planet but we're also really prudish at the same time because when our leaders

have these affairs or sex scandals we're like, oh, I can't believe or they would behave that way and they get totally lampooned in the public media and so on. Are you actually surprised that someone makes these kinds of choices? Are we really surprised?

Are you kidding? How is everyone not making these decisions based on how we all grow up? You know what I'm saying? And so what Jonah won is trying to tell us is that Jonah's decisions are not just his own decision. And how does a person get to become a wrecking ball

in the lives of other people? It's a thousand small compromises. And what was at the first just a private decision between Jonah and his God, all of a sudden wreaks havoc in the lives of other people. And he's so checked out, he's so self-absorbed, he's not even aware that he's a force of ruin in other people's stories.

Now, it's the tragedy. of falling asleep at the wheel, spiritually and morally. It only gets more intense. Look at verse 6. So who has to go wake him up? The captain of this ship, this is a great moment in the story. So the captain went to him and said, how can you sleep?

Get up. Call on your God. I mean, maybe your God will take notice of us so that we will not perish. Maybe Jonah's God will notice them. do you get it does jonas god notice them very much so in fact the whole reason they're in this mess is because jonas god already notices them right and and who this is ironic in so many ways because he's a prophet he has received and spoken the very word of yahweh before and yet he has to be

reminded to do something as simple as pray by whom by this like pagan polytheistic say You know, who doesn't know Yahweh from anybody else? He was like, we'll call in your God. We didn't shotgun yours, so let's try your God, you know? And so that's the sailors kind of rebuke to the prophet man of God. Let's keep going. Verse 7. So then the sailors said to each other, okay, prayer's not working, lighting the cargo's not working.

This guy's sleeping, and that didn't work. So they said to each other, let's cast lots to find out who's responsible for this calamity. So casting, it's like ancient dice rolling. And in many cultures, and still today, even in ancient Israelite culture, it was the way of discerning the will of the gods. And so they're like, we prayed, through the cargo overboard, what do we do? Just roll the dice, right? Maybe there's an unknown God, and he'll reveal his ways to us.

And ironically, it works, doesn't it? Because they cast the lots, and who wins the lottery? Wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you know it? It fell on Jonah. You won the lottery or lost it. It depends on your point of view. So they asked him.

They said, okay, well, tell us, tell us, who's really? Who's responsible for making all this trouble for us? I mean, what kind of work do you do? Which has always struck me as funny that they ask him, how work he does. Like, what does I have to do with anything? What can do for a living? They're so worked up here.

Again, this contrast, you could almost picture him as like yawning, like sleepy, like, what, sorry, what's that, what? They're so aware and alert what's happening. Who's responsible for this? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? Where's your country? From what people are you?

And he gives a dry, one-line answer. He says, I'm a Hebrew. So he gives his ethnic identity. He answers one of their questions. And he says next, I'm Hebrew, and I worship Yahweh, you know, the God of heaven. He's the one who made the sea and the dry land. I worship Yahweh, the God of heaven. He's the God who has power over the sea and who I'm running from on a boat.

come on come on it's a good one it's a good one isn't it that's pretty good so and there's a few other things some of your english translations don't have i worship yahweh they what do they read i fear yahweh and so this is the hebrew turn of phrase um it's familiar from the book of proverbs or wisdom literature the fear of yahweh so it's about this deep reverence and awe but also like a really healthy fear of someone that you're accountable to. Not because you think they're a jerk, but because you really, really respect them. My dad was a graphic designer and kind of car painter here in Southeast, and he had a huge cabinet of Krylon spray paint all my years growing up. And I had a very healthy fear, especially when I was 14 skateboarding, graffiti art, that whole thing,

is very popular, but I knew that my dad counted as Krylon Kant. And I had a very healthy fear, even though there was a whole world of graffiti art to be had from all of that. No, it didn't touch it because I had a fear. Not because I thought he was a jerk because I knew that he loved me and that he was very aware of my behavior and I was accountable to him. So get this. Jonas says, I'm a Hebrew, you know, one of the covenant people of God. And I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, the one who made the sea and the dry land.

And you, the reader, are thinking, no, you don't. You don't fear Yahweh? What is this? This religious babble bullshine. That's what this is. Really? This is the height of religious hypocrisy. I think we're supposed to be, I think we're supposed to be scandalized.

That he would even say something like this. What are you talking about? You don't fear Yahweh at all. And we can just see it right here. We can see that his words and his religious confession of faith are in deep contradiction to the choices that he's been making. And the author just leaves us with this.

It's rich, isn't it? And the whole story after this point, and the storyteller is just feeding us this horribly hateful, hypocritical man, you know? And we're just taking it in. We're like, this is great. What a great story. I can't believe this guy.

I can't believe anybody would actually behave this way. I'm sure I wouldn't. Oh, oh, dang it. right and there you go you fell into the trap the very fact that you start to feel a little superior to jana you're falling right into his trap because what he's doing with the story is just holding a mirror right up to your face and you say oh really yeah you've never had a contradiction between what you say you believe and how you actually live really really you're really superior to jana congratulations you must be asleep at the wheel if you really believe that about

yourself. And the sailors can see the contradiction. Holy cow, look at verse 10. It gets even better. So this is funny. So he says, I'm a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh. And we're like, no, you don't. And what's the sailor's response when he says, I fear Yahweh? They were terrified. They're deeply afraid. And they asked, what have you done? And then the storyteller whispers in our ears here. He says, they knew he was running away from Yahweh because he had already told them that. What? What does that even mean? He's transporting us back, it's the little Wayne's World.

He's transporting him back to the port when he got onto the ship in the first place. And this is really sophisticated what he's getting at here. So there's a little scene on the port, and you can just imagine if you've been through customs, immigration, that kind of thing, like reasons for travel, where you headed to Tarshish, you know, where you've gone, business or place?

pleasure. Well, neither really. You know, I guess I'm running from Yahweh, my God. And whatever, you know, sanctified imagination, you know, so I never heard that one, but welcome aboard. All right, you paid your fare, so come on, come on aboard. They're polytheists. They're like Yahweh, I guess is his personal god or something. I don't know. She's got an issue with his God. Whatever, he paid the fare, so get him aboard. But now they realize, wait, you told us you're running from your God, and Yahweh is the God who has power over the sea, and you're running from him on our boat. What do you think you're doing? What do you think you're doing? You guys, this is one of the most tragic ironies at this part of the story. This happens multiple times in the Bible, is that it's

often people who are completely outside the people of God, who can see on full display the deep contradiction between what God's people say they believe and how they actually behave. And so here's what's actually even more fascinating, course, is as you're going to see throughout the story, is Jonah an imperfect witness to the God he says he believes in? Is he imperfect? Very imperfect. He does a very bad job of pointing to his God. Is God limited to how successful Jonah is as a perfect witness to God? is God limited to using this Jonah in bringing people to himself? Just tuck that away back there.

So he goes on, what do you think that you're doing? So the sea gets rougher and rougher, verse 11. And they asked him, well, what should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? I'd pick me up and throw me into the sea, you replied. It will become calm. I know that it's my fault that this great storm has come upon you. This is brilliant.

there's two ways you could take his words and no one saw this coming so what should we do kill me throw me over kill me well okay that's interesting response so how are we supposed to take that well it could be that he's had a real change of heart this is the first kind of awareness of others i'm like oh my gosh what have i done to other people oh no oh no like what okay i made my choice. I got to get what's coming to me. Pay the time to pay the piper. That could be what he means by that. And if you read commentaries, people are back and forth on this, he could also have actually be running even further from God right now. What would be the surest way that he could escape from having to go to Nineveh? Die. And this would not be out of character because he's going to request

to die again in chapter four because he'd rather die than live with and obey a God like Yahweh? Could it be that he's actually further even hardening his heart? He would rather die than obey God and acknowledge what's really going on here. The storyteller doesn't make it clear. He just kind of leaves it

there. And I think that's actually intentional on the storyteller's part because what it gets to you to really look deep into human motives and why we do the things that we do and even when we confess and are aware of the wrong that we've done are really fully

aware of like how screwed up we are and like i don't even understand the motives of my own heart sometimes much less somebody else's so he's bringing us into this here we know what the sailors think about they think this is a horrible idea look at verse 13 the men like no way so they did their best to row back to land but they couldn't because the sea grew even more wild than before there's my opinion if jonah really was having a change of heart here why'd they just say okay i give up God, I'll just go back to Nineveh now. He just tossed me over. And they're like, bad idea.

No, that's bad. But they can't go back. So something's happening with Jonah that's making it impossible for them to go back. Verse 14. Then the sailors cried out to him. Verse 5, when the storm first hit, who are they crying out to? All the different gods. Now they've had this experience, and they have come to a place as we're going to see

where they recognize that there is only one God's. who has power over sea and land, the most powerful God. Who's the only God who can rescue us now? It's Yahweh. Something has changed inside of these sailors. Now, they are recognizing Yahweh, and this is ironic. This is the first prayer offered to Yahweh in the chapter. And who does it not come from?

Jodah, who does it come from? These pagan sailors, whatever, and they're cluing in to what's going on. So they cried out to Yahweh, please, Yahweh, don't let us die for taking this man's life. We don't want to. his idea. Don't hold us accountable for killing this innocent man. He hasn't done anything wrong against us. You, Lord, you've done as you pleased. I mean, you can just see it. They're just like, we don't know. Yahweh, you're powerful, and you can save us. So I guess we're going to do this, even though we don't want to. They took Jonah through him overboard. And the raging sea grew calm.

At this, the man greatly feared him. Who only says he fears Yahweh? Jonah, who actually fears Yahweh, the pagan sailors, right? And they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows to him. This is astounding, because if you're burning up like two whole goats or a cow, this requires a very large fire, yes? So you need a big altar and a big, huge fire. Are you going to make a fire that size on the deck of your wooden ship? No, so implied here, they get back to land, they find a Yahweh temple,

and everything's dedicated to Yahweh here, they offer sacrifices, they make vows to him. They become dedicated followers of Yahweh from here on out. And so something has happened inside these sailors despite the very imperfect hypocritical behavior

of God's people in the story, God is still capable of bringing people to himself. But is that license for us to go behave like Jonah? That would be the most idiotic thing you could get from the story. So because not only will it go

badly it's going to go badly for you like it's just not going to go well for you much less for other people as you become a wrecking ball in their lives because you're so tuned out and so here's the greatest tragedy i think of jonas chapter one is that you have god's own prophet his own covenant man and he's so tuned out and apathetic and asleep because of his sin he's not even aware to the fact that all these other people around him are totally alert and alive and god's doing amazing things right around him he can't even see it. He's so turned in on himself in his own little deal.

And so he misses being a part of this conversion of the sailors around him because all he's thinking about is himself, totally turned out. I can't think of a more accurate depiction of what spiritual apathy and spiritual slumber looks like for us.

It's the basic idea. Somehow, American Christianity has fostered this system where, you know, you've got the grace card and so you're covered there for the thing that happens after you die, so that's done, cool. And so whatever, kind of grin and bear it, try and keep your nose clean, but you can always play the grace card and so on, have a good weekend,

and then come back to church again, or so, you know, like that, it's fostered this kind of thing. And so what you end up with is a whole culture full of people like Jonah. And they can tell you all kinds of theology, all I fear of Yahweh. Do you know he made the land in the sea? Do you know he's the God of Heaven? Oh, yes, absolutely. But, yeah, there's this deep contradiction between what he says

and what he actually lives and the choices he makes and everybody can see it but him and so it's this tragedy because not only does he miss out on how god wants to use him in the lives of these other people he's like withering as a human being totally drawn in on himself and so it begs the question where's the resolution here is Jonah going to wake up look at the next line now the lord provided a huge fish to swallow up Jonah if Jonah was a one chapter book and it ended right there is this a happy ending? Now this would be a tragedy, wouldn't it? This would be a like Greek tragedy play or something. You have the protagonist and he's a horrible, like goes down in flames, dies, tragedy, and maybe some other people have goodness happen in their lives or whatever. Other tragedy.

You're not supposed to read this line, the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah and go, hooray. Like, it's not a good thing would you get swallowed by a huge fish. You die. That's what happened. And so we think, Jonah in the belly of the fish, three days, three nights, slow digestion. just like the Sarlac pit in Return of the Jedi. Low digestion over thousands of years, right? That's good. That's a good geekline for you. But that's the idea.

We're supposed to go like, no, no, no, no. But then all of a sudden, the surprise, what? From inside of the fish, we'll get to next week. Jonah all of a sudden is very awake and very alive and alert to Yahweh after this experience. You're like, what? He's composing intricate Hebrew poetry from the oxygenless environment of a fish's stomach. We'll talk about that next week. But I want you to just see the image.

here. Jonah, he can't go any further to the bottom, literally. And it depict himself as going to the roots of the mountains in the sea. And a huge fish gobbles them up. And you think it's over, wiped off the face of the earth. And that may be true if we were dealing with any other God but Yahweh, the maker of the sea and the dry land. And so in this story, and just think about the arc of the story right now, Jonah is just blind, asleep, wrecking ball, can't even own up to it. all the way to the very end, he hits bottom, and Yahweh provides this instrument of what seems like death to swallow him up. But right there, in this moment of just hands up, can't go any deeper,

like he's utterly powerless, that moment of death becomes the moment of his nubber. And the moment where God actually strangely uses this instrument of death as this now bizarre vehicle of grace, and to give him life and a second chance. Do you smell the gospel here? You smell it. Can you see now why Jesus appealed to just this moment in the story to describe himself?

In Matthew chapter 12, the Jewish leaders come up to him like, who do you think you are? You think you're the Messiah. Give us a sign. And Jesus says, I'm not going to give you any sign except the sign of Jonah. And you're like, what? It's so weird.

Why does he say that? And then he says, just like Jonah was swallowed up by the fish, you know, three days, three nights. So I will be in the grave three days, D'Ey nights. I'm going to die. What? It's weird. So Jesus sees this moment of God enveloping his covenant people in death

because of their sin and rebellion, the moment they can't go any further into rebellion. And he meets them right there in their brokenness, and as we're going to see next week, repentance. And all of a sudden, this moment of death is turned in, to new life, a chance of new life. And Jesus says, yeah, that's like what I'm going to do. So Jesus lives as like the anti-type. He is the very opposite of Jonah. He is utterly and completely other-centered, self-giving, and aware of other people in their well-being perpetually.

24-7, he's just on. He's God become human to be the kind of human that you and I can only dream of becoming. And what do we do with him? We murder him, collectively. As a human race, we are all responsible for why this world is the way that it is, and Jesus died for this world because it is the way that it is. And so Jesus absorbs into himself all of our sin and our apathy and the ruin that it causes in our world, and he actually takes the hit for us. But somehow, strangely, the death of Jesus becomes something gets turned upside down

into this vehicle of life and in his love God conquers our sin he conquers death itself and in Jesus' resurrection from the grave as we grab onto him in faith we actually can experience a second chance of being human beings a new and different kind of life

and the life that's given to Jonah after this experience he's on borrowed life now it's not his life to live anymore he's living on pure grace from this point out. Like, how do you wake up spiritually? I don't know. Like, I could write a book,

three steps to wake up spiritually, you know, and I could have got on Oprah or something like that. You know, my time's past, no, whatever. But there's a hundred of those books out there, and some of you bought those books, and they don't work. And they don't work because what do you have to do to wake yourself up spiritually? Like, slap yourself away.

Something, how do you do that? What does Jonah do to wake up spiritually? You see, that's the wrong question. Dona doesn't do anything. Something is done to him. All he does is sit at the bottom of his character, the thousand decisions that have made him this hypocritical, hateful man, and he just throws up his hands and is like, you know, uncle, I give up. And right at this moment where he feels like he's meeting his own death, that becomes the place where God meets him with his grace and gives him a second chance of life. This is good news for people like us, amen. And so Jonah doesn't do anything

to wake up. God's grace happens to him. And he becomes awake to it for the very first time. And so I don't, I'm not in the business of trying to like get you to be good religious people or something. I would have a much nicer suit and much taller hair if I was trying to do that, right? I mean, that's not what this is about. We're a community of people. I don't know. I don't even feel like authorized to give this message because i mean i was deeply convicted studying jona one this week i'm i'm total hypocrite like i don't have any right to give this message to anybody else but here's the thing neither do you and so like what are we going to do somebody's got to read jonah one a lot so yeah and so whatever like we we are a community of people they're trying to wake up

to the fact that god has done something for us i don't know how to wake you up i don't know how to wake myself up, except to wake up to the fact that I'm helpless. That's all I have to do. And that, we can work with that. That's precisely where Jonah lands. He just throws his hands up. And so, man, I don't know where you're at tonight. You know, I imagine many of us were seeing ourselves in different moments of the story, the contradiction between what we say and what we actually do, the way that we may be aware of it or not aware of it, that we are the wrecking balls. in the lives of other people around us, and we may be totally ignorant of that fact.

I bet your best friends aren't ignorant of that fact, but you might be. And so this is what it means, is just coming to Jesus and saying, I'm asleep, I'm drowsy, I don't know what to do, but I know I'm screwed up, and we can work with that.

Jesus can work with that. Hey, thanks for listening to exploring my Strange Bible podcast. If you like this podcast, you could really help me out by going to the iTunes page or whatever service you're using and submit a review and just tell other people what you think

and that may be something really nice that you say. It might be some disagreement that you have. Whatever. I would like to hear from you and it would also help in letting other people know about it as well. So again, thanks for listening

and we'll have the next episode up very soon exploring the strange poem that Jonah utters from the... of this fish. See you next time.