No and Lord

In one paragraph

Van Jones, who is visiting First B Jackson as the church considers him for the associate pastor role, preached through the entire book of Jonah. His central idea was that God calls his people to do hard things, and that only grace received through repentance makes those hard things possible. He drew repeated parallels between Jonah and Jesus, the greater Jonah who succeeded where Jonah kept...

Read together

1. Jonah 1:1-3 God commands Jonah to go to Nineveh; Jonah flees to Tarshish
2. Jonah 1:4-5 God hurls a great wind; mariners afraid; Jonah asleep below
3. Jonah 1:11-12 mariners ask what to do; Jonah tells them to hurl him into the sea
4. Jonah 2:5-7 Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish describing sinking into the deep
5. Jonah 2:8-9 those who regard vain idols forsake steadfast love; salvation belongs to the Lord
6. Jonah 3:1-3 God calls Jonah a second time; Jonah obeys and goes to Nineveh
7. Jonah 3:4 Jonah delivers his five-word message: yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown
8. Jonah 3:5-9 Nineveh believes God, fasts, wears sackcloth; king repents and calls the city to turn from evil
9. Jonah 3:10 God sees Nineveh's repentance and relents from the disaster
10. Jonah 4:2 Jonah angry, declares he knew God was gracious and merciful and would relent
11. Jonah 4:5 Jonah sits east of the city in a booth waiting to see what becomes of Nineveh
12. Jonah 4:6-9 God appoints a plant, then a worm, then a scorching wind; Jonah again wishes to die
13. Jonah 4:10-11 God asks why Jonah pities the plant but not Nineveh with its 120,000 people
14. Matthew 12 Jesus references the sign of Jonah, pointing to Jesus as the greater Jonah
15. Exodus 34 God proclaims his character to Moses as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, yet not clearing the guilty

Talk about it

1. Van said that ten years ago he wanted to fight America's enemies overseas, convinced they were God's enemies too, but the Lord redirected him to go to the Middle East with 'a different weapon.' Has there ever been a time when you were certain God agreed with your anger toward someone, and how did that play out?
2. Van pointed out that Jonah's repentance from inside the fish was only partial. He was praying, but he still wasn't owning his pride, his nationalism, or his hatred of Nineveh. What does genuine repentance look like compared to just crying out to God when you hit rock bottom?
3. Jonah delivered what amounted to five Hebrew words, with no love for the people he was preaching to, and yet the entire city of Nineveh repented. What does that tell us about whose job it actually is to change a person's heart?
4. Van described a tension running through the whole Old Testament between God's mercy and God's judgment, and said that tension is satisfied on the cross. How does understanding the cross change the way you think about people you feel don't deserve forgiveness?
5. Lauren's Elizabeth Elliot devotional offered a simple exercise: write 'No' and 'Lord' on a piece of paper, then cross out one. Van said he has thought about it every day since, for big decisions and small ones alike. Where in your own life right now do those two words feel like they are in conflict?