Jonah

In this podcast we unpack the book of Jonah. Is the book of Jonah myth or reality? Can we apply an allegorical interepetation that leaves the truth of what God is teaching intact? Or is this book an historical narrative that illustrates the nature of God? In this podcast we discuss these things, highlighting that the book of Jonah presents various facets of Gods character, as well as providing practical applications for God's church today.

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The Wildfire podcast is an extension of Wildfire Ministries, an organization that has a focus of igniting men and women of God into a deeper discipleship with Christ, instilling them with a passion to radically and relentlessly pursue Christ wherever that leads, that God's truth will spread like a wildfire.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Wildfire podcast.

I'm joined by Luke Taylor.

And apologies for last week, Luke spoke for the guts of an hour.

Well, Jake spoke for a bit, you spoke a lot.

And by the end of it, I had, or by maybe 10 minutes, and I just adopted the approach of every time I heard your voice, skipping 30 seconds, you know, the button you have.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Until I got to the good bit, which was Jake.

So well done, Jake, I really enjoyed it.

And if you haven't listened to it, skipped about 30 minutes and then listened to Jake.

Yeah, yeah.

You can just ignore Luke.

Keep going, love it.

Yeah, anymore that you want to get out.

Honestly, I, now that you've said that, no, that makes complete sense.

But I just want to say thanks to you.

I mean, the last video that we got without Peter, it got 100% likes, which is first time.

And it's been our most liked video.

And is that how it likes to measure it in percentage?

Increased.

And yeah, it's just a lot of great feedback.

And yeah, so instead of addressing everyone's e-mails separately, I know Peter will be staying on.

We can't remove him just yet.

Well, maybe we could switch you for Jake.

I think me and Jake could be there.

Okay, that's enough of this, okay?

We love each other, really.

Yes, of course.

I love you, but you...

Yes, well, we'll move on to Jonah.

We'll move on to Jonah, sure.

So we're talking about the book of Jonah today.

And I think he's most known amongst all the minor prophets, such as Habakkuk and Nahum and all those other ones no one's ever heard of, because his story is actually written in narrative and not in poetry like the rest.

And his book is actually unique for two reasons.

First of all, it was written primarily to the Gentiles.

Some of the other minor prophets had messages for the Gentiles that were included in their books, but Jonah was primarily sent to the Gentiles and as recorded in his book anyway.

And it's also different because Jonah isn't actually the one speaking.

He only orders a few sentences of dialogue in the book, but it's actually a story about him and not really what he says.

So first of all, we're going to have a discussion about whether Jonah was a real story or a parable.

So both Luke and I came across this whenever we were studying this book.

There are some theologians, I think actually the Bible project might be of this.

I think they are.

Timothy Mackey.

Yeah, Tim Mackey.

So there would be some quite prominent theologians who would say that the story of Jonah is most likely a parable or allegorical.

Yes.

So Peter, what do you think?

What I think?

Yeah.

What do we think collectively?

We are one here, so.

Well, I'll give my opinion that you can give yours.

I think Jonah is a real story.

Okay.

Would you agree?

Yeah, I would concur.

Yes.

However, we'll say there is a bit leeway in this.

Like those who are more liberal, like point of view, they are completely entitled to their opinions.

And I think, what did you say about, that someone had told you, it doesn't actually change the meaning of the story?

Yes.

So hypothetically, if you were to conclude that this story was allegorical, was a metaphor as opposed to a literal story, the truth of what God is trying to teach remains unchanged.

It is still applicable then and it is still applicable now, with regards to how you would actually exude it or teach it to somebody, the principles of God's sovereignty and etc.

None of that changes if it was fictional or not.

Okay.

Well, that's an important point.

So there's definitely leeway in this point.

However, we were both holding the position that it's a true story.

So to address that and to actually defend our position, we've taken a few arguments that are used by the more liberal scholars, three to be precise.

We're going to talk about these arguments and just provide some counterpoints that are maybe worth talking about.

So the first point given by scholars who would take Jonah to have more parabolic meaning.

That might not be the right word.

Meaning it's more like a parable.

Oh, parabolic.

I think that's the wrong word, though.

Okay.

You go for that.

Yeah.

I'm going to search it up.

Okay.

Sounds good.

But parable meaning it's just like like Jesus used his parables.

They're just stories that again meant to illustrate a point, but they didn't actually happen.

So the first point is that there's no historical context given.

The Book of Jonah, unlike other books, certainly many of the minor prophets and other books of the Bible don't actually start with in the reign of such and such a king.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah.

That's how many of these other books of the prophets start.

That doesn't happen with Jonah.

There's no historical context given as explicitly as that.

Is it the right word?

It is.

Oh, there you are.

You are correct.

I just, I'm going to use that a lot.

Parabolic.

Parabolic.

I like that word.

The second point is that from what we do in history, there's actually very little evidence to suggest lasting repentance from the Assyrians as they continued to salvage and build their empire, so much so that God had used the Medes and the Babylonians to judge them for their wickedness in 612 BC.

And yeah, just again, more of a simple point.

That's who Jonah was sent to.

He was sent to the city of Nineveh, which is the capital of Assyria.

And then the final point, which is probably more so in very liberal circles, because I think most Christians who hold the inerrancy of Scripture and the authority of God, I'm already getting into the rebuttal of this one, because you can tell I don't like it, is that Jonah could not be swallowed by a fish and survive for three days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would say it's the weakest of the arguments, but it's still an argument nonetheless by certain scholars.

So the first point is, or the answer to the first point, which was that there's no historical context given.

Well, just because there's no given doesn't mean we can't find any.

So where we have to look is in where else Jonah is mentioned in the Bible.

So internally?

Internally, yeah.

So we're still using the Bible.

Internal context.

Yes, internal context.

We're still using where Jonah was found.

So if you look at 2 Kings 23 and 25, could you read that for me?

Look.

I can, indeed, sir.

In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Juash, king of Judah, Jerobim, the son of Juash, is that correct?

King of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years.

And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

He did not depart from all the sins of Jerobim, the son of Nabat, which he made Israel to sin.

He restored the border of Israel from Laboth-Hammath, as far as the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet, who was from Gath-Hafar.

Grant, thanks for getting me to read that.

You're welcome.

So, this is the exact same Jonah that's mentioned in the book of Jonah.

We know that he was talking to Jeroboam II, and Jeroboam II, without getting too specific because there's a wee bit of disagreement around this, but we can say Jeroboam II ruled between 795 and 745 BC.

But even as a more general point to look at some external context, we know Jonah was sent to the Assyrian Empire, which again limits us to a much larger time frame of between 1000 BC and 612 BC, when none of it was destroyed.

So it had to be within that wider context.

And if we want to look more specifically when Jonah was actually in his ministry, it would be between 795 BC and 745 BC.

And this is before the Northern Kingdom was taken away in exile, and before the Southern Kingdom, Jonah was taken away in exile.

So before both of those things.

So just to give us some context there.

The second point was that there's little historical evidence to suggest that the Ninevites actually repented.

Which is up for discussion, because assuming the above dates are correct, we've been looking at the king such as Salmaneser IV, who ruled from 782 to 773 BC, to be the Assyrian king in charge when Jonah rocks up.

And this is quite an interesting observation, because, and by the way, I didn't actually look any of this up, this is all from scholars and stuff, so you're not trusting my history here.

You're trusting some of the people here, who are much smarter than me.

Because Salmaneser IV and the next two kings after him, Asher Dayan II and Asher Narai, who finished up reigning at 745 BC, they're written about quite unfavourably by Assyrian standards, which actually means by Assyrian standards, they didn't do much conquering or very much been a thing, for example.

Contemporary historians also admit that there's little of note that actually happens in this 40 year time period, from Salmaneser IV to the last guy with a weird name.

So these three kings, there's very little conquering or anything of really note in terms of the things Assyrians are interested in, destruction and gaining land, those kind of things.

And even contemporary historians also admit there's little note of this.

And what does 40 years, so 40 years is the time period from Salmaneser IV to the end of the third king.

What does 40 years symbolize in the Bible?

A generation.

So this is, I think this is a good example.

Again, it's hard to be certain, because we're not sure about all the historical context, but I think it's a good example of what could be a generation that repented of their evil.

And whilst it's not certain, it's at least some evidence that can help us.

So it's not that they didn't repent at all, it's rather they did repent, but then there was a relapse.

Yes, after a generation.

And this is not how we work as humans anyway.

How long does repentance truly last?

Even if it is genuine, people still fall back into sin.

It also fits the sinful narrative of humanity.

And even look at this country 40 years ago, or any Western country 40 years ago, and look what's happening now.

We'll not give any examples, but some of the stuff that's happening now wouldn't even have been laughed at 40 years ago.

So that just shows what can happen in 40 years.

Right.

So the third one, third objection about it being possible for Jonah to survive in a wheel for three days.

So my grandmother told me a story.

There was this old woman at a church, and her son came to her and said, I can't believe you believe that old book, the Bible.

It says that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

And she says, I'll tell you what, son, if it says Jonah swallowed the whale, I would still believe it.

So our fact isn't in what the Bible actually says about events.

It's about the God who created such events to happen.

Because if you say God isn't big enough to have a whale swallow Jonah, then your faith isn't...

You're basically believing in too small a God.

You're not believing in the God of the Bible.

Yeah.

So my comment on that is it's called eisegesis.

So you're bringing in your own presuppositions.

That is what you believe and putting it on the text.

So you're coming in with this idea of a naturalistic worldview of that, which you know to be true from your perception of reality, what you have interacted with.

So this idea of humans not being able to survive in wheels from our perspective, experientially is true, but you can't then take that and put it on to the text.

Okay.

Because you need to, your starting point is that God is omnipotent.

That is, he can do all things because he is the one who sets the standard of naturalism.

He's the one who puts everything into place so he can change anything that he wants at any given time.

So if he wants to take a creature that he made and take another creature and put that creature inside another creature and allow that creature, he's in the creature to survive, then he could do so.

Sort of like pregnancy.

How can a human survive in another human?

Because God has set the standard for that to be naturalistic.

That's the God of the Bible.

But if you believe that God can do this, then you're believing in the wrong God.

That's the problem.

Yeah, it's the distortion.

Yes, distortion.

It's not what the Bible is teaching.

And I said, Jesus, as you said.

And then two just general answers for this whole approach of taking the Bible to be more parabolic than literal.

Two just general approaches would be that Jesus refers to the story of Jonah using Jonah's name.

And Jesus never uses any names of people in his parables.

So therefore, based on his other parables, we can assume Jesus saw this as a true story that actually took place.

And also, this isn't an argument in this case, but it is a caution that whenever you have a tendency to take certain passages of the Bible to be parabolic, you can end up taking things too far and everything becomes too symbolic and nothing actually really means anything at all.

True.

Yes.

To what standard?

What's your principle?

When do you stop?

Yes.

Where do you draw the line?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, if there's not legitimate grounds to make something allegorical and don't simply simply take it as Peter Nettie killed his mic there.

Take the text as face value, come with a reverence and a fear.

And also like I study history, so I lean on the side of things being literal and historical until proved otherwise.

And I don't think there's enough evidence to put it as allegorical.

Good.

Do you want to give us a summary of what happens in chapter one?

Yes.

Yes I do.

Sorry.

Have you read the passage?

Sorry.

I don't know if you want to say something specific there.

Yes, okay.

So you got Jonah, he's prophet, and God comes to Jonah, and God says to Jonah, go to Nineveh and preach this idea of repentance, so that they might turn from their evil ways, basically because their evil had reached God.

And Jonah says no, and flees to Tarshish.

Tarshish.

Tarshish.

Tarshish.

And then it basically just documents how he's then on the boat, and then there's a big storm, and then it's the whole dialogue between the sailors and Jonah, as to what they can do to calm the storm.

Good.

Yeah, thank you.

Do you want to add?

No, no.

Do you think it's good?

No, it sounds good.

It's okay.

And I know you're a specialist history, but what about the geography of these two places, Tarshish and Nineveh?

What do you think of note?

No, no place.

You do that.

All right.

I thought you knew that.

Oh, I generally don't.

All right.

So basically, Tarshish is due west of Israel and Nineveh is due east.

So they're basically exact opposites.

So it just shows Jonah wasn't taking any chances of being like heading somewhere and accidentally getting brought to Nineveh.

He was going the exact opposite way.

Makes me feel rather good about myself that you thought I might know that.

Every single sermon I've heard about Jonah that's been brought up.

So maybe you just don't temple in the church as much as I thought you have.

Or maybe I just didn't listen.

Expose.

Perhaps.

Keep going.

Yes.

I mean, you had mentioned earlier, when we were discussing this, about the use of lots.

Yeah, lots.

What were your observations there?

People listen to this.

Like whenever you read it, it's maybe overlooked in the story of a man being swallowed by a whale.

But this idea of the sailors casting lots to determine whose fault the storm was.

And this sort of mind boggled me.

So what does it mean about casting lots?

Well, it appears 88 times in the Old Testament and 7 times in the New Testament.

So lots were a common practice.

You've got Saul, he used it.

Then you've got here, the sailors are using it.

You've got a proverb that talks about it, which you've highlighted.

And then you've also got Jesus, whenever his garments were being divided, lots were used.

The disciples prior to the Pentecost, they also used lots to decide who would replace Judas.

So they used lots to make a decision.

Our equivalents today would probably be a coin toss for a football match.

Yeah.

So what's that all about, Peter?

Like should we do that today briefly?

Briefly.

Well, in the Old Testament, there was definitely precedent for it.

There's actually a God has said about things called the Irimim and the Thumman, which allowed Israel to ask God a question.

He would give his answer through the casting of lots.

And there are two Proverbs, Proverbs 16, 33, which says the lot is cast onto the lap, but every decision is from the Lord.

So the idea is that even if a member casting lots, God was still giving them the decisions through these lots.

And also Proverbs 18, 18, the lot puts down the quarrels and decides between powerful contenders.

So the lot was a way of basically settling disputes.

So in the Old Testament, there's definitely precedent to use lots as the sailors are doing here.

But rightfully so, you mentioned that in the New Testament, any uses we have of lots by Christians or the disciples was prior to the Pentecost, whenever Christians received the Holy Spirit.

So now that we have the Spirit abiding in us, we don't need to resort to practice of such casting lots because we can at any given guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, so we have God's Word, we have the Holy Spirit living within us, and we also have Jesus, the Advocate, who sits on the right hand of the Father, advocating for us.

So we have much better options than to cast lots.

Exactly.

Boom, okay.

Next.

So the next thing I thought was important from Chapter 1, well, it will be my last observation from Chapter 1 because again, we do it all the time in the world, unlike what looks sometimes as soon as we have.

Yeah, let's go an hour.

I hope this goes an hour and then we can, yeah.

I don't have an hour, so don't worry, everyone, we'll be going an hour.

So I thought it was ironic that the pagan sailors knew and feared God more than God's own prophet.

And it reminded me of a quote from a pastor in America, Doug Wilson, who said, why don't unbelievers believe the Bible?

Because Christians don't believe it either.

So his point from that was that if Christians started living as the Bible says, instead of apologizing for what it actually says and making all these excuses, which apparently is like all these excuses about what it says, because these are unacceptable in today's world, then unbelievers might start believing it too.

The clue is in their name.

They're not going to believe because they're unbelievers.

And if they see believers not believing, why would they want to believe?

So we as believers, that's our call to actually follow what the Bible says and not apologize for what it says, which is might be unacceptable, but to own it and to do what it says.

And then I just have two quick observations I want to make on this chapter is in verse five, whenever the sailors, whenever the storm came and raged and they were in that dire circumstance, they turned to their gods.

And what I thought of is, who do we turn to when things go wrong?

So an important phrase is, we should not act on consequence.

So we see that Jonah's obedience to go and preach of God's deliverance in Nineveh was after he had run away, and after he had gone through the storm and had been swallowed up by a wheel.

So there was these consequences that then made Jonah realize that he needed to be obedient.

And often we can eliminate a lot of the consequences, a lot of the negatives in our lives, if we're simply obedient first.

Because if we're disobedient, then we're in sin and with sin comes death.

And so death, all the consequences that comes with it.

So if you want to remove a lot of the dire consequences in your life, an important thing to do is actually self-reflect in your own life.

Are there any areas of your life where you're not submitting to Christ and you're not being obedient?

Or are you acting out of consequence?

Yeah, I would completely agree.

But on your point about whenever you're in crisis, what do you turn to?

I would say whenever everyone's in crisis, they turn to their God.

Because it's not...

I forget what the term for it is.

Yeah, it's the myth of neutrality.

It's the idea it's not whether you turn to God, it's which God you turn to.

So whatever you turn to in your time of crisis, that's what you view as the highest power of authority in your life.

I think that can help you most.

Whether that's your internal compass, yourself.

So hopefully as Christians that we view Christ as God, we're turning to him in our times of crisis and not anything else.

Yeah.

And in verse 16, it talks about how the sailors repented and sacrificed to the Lord, to Yahweh.

And I think it's important that we overlook that in the story.

In these stories, we focus on the protagonists such as Jonah.

We look at other stories, Moses, David.

But it is important to understand that God has this care for every individual.

You, I, every person in the world, God desires that they would come to know who God is.

And we see God and his sovereignty and his love was actually using Jonah to help these sailors come to know him as well as the Ninevites.

So it's important that whenever we're looking at these stories, that we see the care and concern that God chooses, that God exercises a microscopic care that is so exact that it's just beautiful.

Yeah, exactly.

Chapter two can be quite simply summarized as Jonah's prayer in the belly of the whale after he's been swallowed.

And the best way, the only thing I thought that we should talk about now is just how Jonah is a type of Christ through his quote unquote death, three days in the quote unquote grave, and then his quote unquote resurrection.

So Christ himself made this observation.

In Luke 11, 29 to 32, and Matthew 12, 38 to 41, we won't read these for time, but the main difference between the two is that Jesus was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, while Jonah was disobedient.

In fact, it's the thing he's most known for.

But Christ said, no sign will be given to you except that of Jonah.

So Christ was buried in the grave for three days, as Jonah was in the whale for three days.

Yeah.

Anything else to add about chapter two?

No, not that I...

No, actually no.

Just no.

Good.

Thank goodness for that.

Chapter three is Jonah's message, and Nineveh repents.

So Jonah comes, I think it says he walked through the sea for three days.

He preached one message, which was five words in Hebrew.

And actually, look, could you look up the message?

Yeah.

Just for us.

And it was five, so five words in Hebrew, so possibly the shortest gospel sermon ever preached, which might be a note to some preachers of the gospel that I've heard throughout the years, who dragged on for a long time.

I felt like a dig.

It was a dig.

Glad you recognized that.

And at the end of the day, it was nothing to do with the preacher at all.

Jonah obviously didn't care, and because he didn't want the people to repent, we can see that from chapter four.

And the reason he fled to Nineveh was not because he was scared of the Ninevites, but because he was scared they were going to repent and God was going to show them mercy.

So he did not want these guys to repent because he hated them.

They were enemies of Israel.

They were going to destroy Israel.

And he obviously didn't care.

And yet God led possibly the biggest revival in history.

They were pretty sure he didn't care and gave a five word message.

So this just shows us that we can be confident whenever we're telling people the gospel because at the end of the day, it's nothing to do with us, it's to do with God and the message that we preach as long as it's the true gospel and God's at work, great things will happen.

Speaking of the message, I have it.

Great.

What do you want?

Just read out his whatever quotes him as saying in his message.

Oh, his message?

Yeah, like just what he says to the people.

Wait there.

I can't find it.

Great.

You can go on.

We'll come back to you.

This is our fearless leader, ladies and gentlemen, that wildfire.

Okay.

So the message is basically, repent or in 30 days, God will destroy.

I got it.

Okay.

Right.

Go.

In 40 days, Nineveh will be smashed.

There we go.

In 40 days, Nineveh will be overthrown.

To be fair, that's hard to find.

So many as a few words.

Yeah.

There you go.

Well, thank you.

This reaffirms your point.

Yes.

A very short message.

But it's also I've heard quite a few Christians recently saying that that the whole threatening people with hell is not a good idea.

And whilst there is, I see where they're coming from.

And we should threaten people with hell.

And there's the term Turner burn preaching.

But I think this passage shows there's still a place for it.

Yeah.

Because you need to show people what the alternative is.

Yeah, of course.

You have to preach the gospel in its entirety.

You can't omit anything.

So you can't remove God's love, and you can't remove God's anger and his justice.

You can't remove hell.

You can't remove heaven.

They have to take it all.

It's full package.

It would be a distortion of the gospel if we removed any aspect of it.

Yeah.

And Jonah's quote unquote Turner burn message or preaching was so effective that even the animals were showing signs of repentance.

Yeah, of course.

So it still has its place, I think, in today's world as well.

And Jesus as well.

Oh, it's endless.

Yes.

Any more things to note in chapter three, Luke?

No, I'm doing quite well.

I think two chapters I've done.

Yeah.

You must have been, everyone must have been praying for you this week.

So the final chapter is chapter four.

So it's basically about God, Jonah, a worm and a plant.

So I've heard quite a few Bible teachers say that Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh because he was scared of the Ninevites.

Unrightfully so, because they're evil.

I'll give you a list of their evil things.

They beheaded people, which is pretty standard for ancient empires.

They impaled people, flailing, which is when they take the victim's skin and hang it over the city wall.

They grinded their bones to, in their minds, erase the acknowledgement of their ancestors.

I don't really know what their thinking was there.

And they also amputated limbs.

They blinded people, castrated them and burned them alive.

And they also piled up the victim's heads at the gate of a city to show how many people they killed.

So I can see why a lot of preachers think that Jonah was scared to go there.

But in fact, he was scared of God.

He was scared of God's mercy because he hated them about so much for all these reasons.

But he knew that God would be so merciful that if they did repent, he would forgive them.

And he did not want these people to repent because he didn't want them to be forgiven because he hated them.

Yeah.

That's why he didn't want to go.

So the verse, And I prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that your gracious God and merciful stood anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Sort of summarizes humanity whenever, God, why are you not more just?

Why are you not more angry with these people?

And then it's straight after we're like, God, why are you not merciful and loving?

And I feel like here Jonah, like the Pharisees in Jesus' time, lost sight because if Jonah got what he wanted for God to not be merciful and God not to be loving to the Ninevites, then by that same measure, God would have to not be loving and merciful to Jonah, which he had just been in the preceding chapters after Jonah's disobedience.

That is to say, we're all sinful, we're all in the same boat and all of us needs God's grace and we should all be filled and infused with gratitude at the character of God and what he does for us.

Yeah.

And in fact, Jonah fears that the Assyrians, he hated the Assyrians because of what they're going to do to Israel and what they did to Israel.

And whilst they did repent, it only lasted a short time because the Assyrians did come back in 722 BC.

So about 60 years later, if all the dates above are correct, and they took away the northern kingdom of Israel where Jonah was from in the captivity in Nineveh, and they never returned.

They're called the lost tribes of Israel because they never came back to the land, unlike the tribe of Judah came back after the Babylonian exile.

So Jonah's fears were realized, but he also saw great repentance of...

I've heard it estimated in around 300,000 people repented in the city of Nineveh.

That's what some scholars think in that time would have been a population of the city of Nineveh.

So he saw this great repentance, but Israel still needed to be judged, and God used the Syria to do it six years later.

So you can kind of get Jonah's side of the argument anyway.

You can see why he didn't want God to be merciful.

Yes.

Yeah, but God did anyway because he can do what he wants and he's merciful.

So we're not going to fold him for that.

He can do what he wants.

And that verse, look right out from chapter four, I've been told it's the most repeated verse in the Old Testament about God's character.

Interesting.

So it's obviously of note.

And do you want to start, look, before I just bring us to close chapter four?

Thank goodness.

You've done so well.

Wow.

27 minutes.

Great.

I'm ready for my bit now, for the next 30 minutes, I'll...

So that means everyone you can turn off after I finish talking to you, just in case.

So similar to the Book of Job, the Book of Jonah ends with a question.

So the question Job was, are you willing to let God decide what's best for your life in the midst of suffering?

Because Jonah never actually finds the answer for his suffering.

God just says, trust me, and ask him if he's willing to trust him.

So it's the same thing in the Book of Job.

The question this time is, would you be content with God forgiving your enemies?

And it literally ends with a question.

We don't know what Jonah's response is.

We don't know if God has a further dialogue with him.

It just ends on a question.

So I would just like to address the question to you, the audience of this book of us right now.

Think of the person you hate most in the world.

Would you be happy with God forgiving them?

For them becoming a Christian and asking God to forgive their sins.

Because we are all enemies of God, so we are all united under that banner.

But at the end of the day, we have to be content with God accepting everyone, or else, like Luke said, why should the standard be applied to them and not to us?

We all need to repent and we all need forgiveness from God and his mercy.

So anything else, Luke, before we just summarize?

Nothing.

Great.

So the book of Jonah, quite a small one.

A lot of people like it, so if you do want to read it, I would highly encourage that.

It's only four chapters.

The chapters are very short.

And instead of summarizing the story, just read it yourself.

It will take you two minutes.

And the main points we had was just, don't be a hypocrite, do what God says, because at the end of the day, if he wants you to do something, you'll end up doing it anyway.

So you might as well spare yourself from suffering along the way.

And finally, would you be content with God forgiving your enemies?

What were your takeaways, Luke?

Anything else?

Everything you said, Peter.

Great.

So there we go.

That's us finished.

That's it.

We did well.

Record time there in contrast to last week.

So that's it, guys, and we will see you on the next podcast.