What does First B Jackson teach about jonah?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on Jonah keeps returning to one uncomfortable truth: we are more like Jonah than we want to admit. When Van Jones preached through the book in August 2025, he traced six things God called Jonah to do, every one of them hard, and he was honest that the call made a certain kind of sense to resist. Nineveh was Israel's brutal enemy, the kind of place that paraded severed heads on sticks. The reluctance was understandable, even if the disobedience was not. Van opened from his own life, sharing that a decade earlier he sat in this congregation wanting enemies destroyed, and that years of overseas ministry and his wife's influence had pressed him toward the same question Jonah could not escape: what do you do with people you would rather see judged than saved?
The thread Van pulled hardest was Jonah's partial repentance. Inside the fish, Jonah prays the right things and even critiques idol worshippers, but he never names his own idol. Van said that idol was Jonah's patriotism, his love of his people placed above his obedience to God. The repentance was real enough for God to act on, and Jonah did go to Nineveh and preach, but the rest of the book proves the heart had not fully turned. The entire city repented in sackcloth and ashes, from the least to the king, and Jonah was furious. He quoted God's own character back to Him as an accusation, knowing all along that God is gracious and merciful. Van brought in Exodus 34 to show that Jonah was quoting accurately but selectively, leaving out the part about God by no means clearing the guilty. The cross, Van said, is where mercy and judgment finally meet and are both satisfied.
Ron Turpin's 2011 message on Jonah pressed the same pattern from a different angle, noting the repeated downward movement in the text, down to Joppa, down into the ship, down to sleep, as a picture of the direction disobedience always takes a person. Ron also held on to the silence: the Bible does not record Jonah's prayer until day three, and he invited the congregation to recognize that in their own lives, knowing what God is asking and holding out until there is nowhere left to turn. Ron then moved to Matthew 12, where Jesus calls the story of Jonah a sign. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. The grace God showed Nineveh, and the greater sign Jesus points to, is the same grace every person in the room depends on.
Taught from Jonah 1:1-3 · Jonah 4:2 · Exodus 34:6-7 · Jonah 3:1-2 · Matthew 12:38-41
The passage taught · Exodus 34:6-7
6 Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
7 keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 17, 2025 The Book of Jonah - Guest Speaker Van Jones Jonah ran from God's call to love his enemies. A sermon from First Baptist Jackson on obedience, repentance, and the mercy we resist giving others.
- August 17, 2025 God Calls Jonah to Do Hard Things Van Jones walks through the entire book of Jonah, showing how God pursues stubborn people through hard things and calls us to obey, repent, and love our enemies.
- November 20, 2011 The Sign of Jonah Ron Turpin walks through the book of Jonah to show how God pursues the disobedient, waits patiently for repentance, and points every detail toward the death and resurrection of Jesus.