Jonah is furious with God’s grace on the Ninevites, so God has to teach Jonah about the kind of God he is...the kind of God we need.

Jonah 3 begins Jonah’s “do over.” He warns to repent or die, and for some reason, they repent. The story shows God’s grace for even the worst of the worst.

It took the belly of a whale to break Jonah’s blindness to God’s grace. It takes a recognition of our sin, a recognition of our inability to fix ourselves, and a sense of what our salvation cost God to give us a sense of how amazing grace is!

The coronavirus is a big deal in the world right now. Here’s our response to the fear of a global pandemic.

In these verses we see three patterns of love: the quite inadequate love of Jonah, the stronger love of the sailors, and the perfect love of our wild and uncivilized God. Don’t miss the Jonah story as a love story!

Jonah’s antipathy towards both the Ninevites and the sailors can be traced to an identity based on his race, rather than his God. What comes first in our lives is our “god.” Anything we put in that first place other than God will skew both our view of our selves, and others.

The sailors on Jonah’s boat showed way more virtue than Jonah, the prophet of God. We will talk about Common Grace, and God’s desire we be committed to the Common Good – towards all who bear the image of God.

Not every storm is a result of sin, but every sin brings a storm. But God is neither inattentive, or passive. See how God works in the storms.

Although we come up with so many excuses, at heart sin is a refusal to trust God. Sin really starts with an assassination of God’s character. Will you trust him?

Jonah is way more than a “fish story.” It’s a story about a very flawed man, a very bad people, an extraordinarily good and gracious God and it’s a story about you and me.