...probably like the Ninevites in the Jonah story, we were discriminating about which prophet to listen to. So, if somebody, say, Jonah, comes in straight from the San Francisco Bay, he has seaweed hanging from his hair, he has sand stuck to his skin, and he smells a little bit like whale spit, we usually didn't listen to him.
But the Ninevites listened to Jonah. And they all dressed in sackcloth as repentance for their wickedness. They dressed their cows and chickens, they dressed the doctors and cooks and teachers and children, and yes, even the politicians in sackcloth. So what's the story of Jonah really about? A lot of people think it's about a prophet who disobeys God.
You can't disobey God without suffering severe consequences, like Jonah did with his whale and being humiliated in front of the Ninevites and, and the comeuppance. But that's not the point. We all disobey God at some point, and we don't get swallowed by a whale and spit up in North Korea. So, the point is that Jonah was wrong.
That's the point. Jonah thought he was supposed to preach doom to a bad city, but that's not true. He was there to preach the opposite to bring God to a hurting city.