What you’re talking about is the difference between knowing something is going to happen and actually experiencing it. Christ knew his ordeal with be awful – so much so, that struggling with the anticipation of it caused him to sweat blood in the garden of Gesthemane. The reality of the torture of crucifixion, combined with His separateness from God, was still more awful than He could have anticipated.

Consider that after His resurrection, Jesus didn’t not go on to say something different about God, or reveal a new understanding. In contrast, all of the patriarchs other people have mentioned did have a new message to share out of their experiences.

Before slamming the gavel on Jonah, remember that it was he who either wrote or relayed the book of Jonah for others to learn from. No one else was there under the vine. Haven’t you ever made a mistake and then relayed it in the process of teaching others?

It actually seems to show Jonah’s humility to tell a story that immortalizes his own shortcoming just so that others would learn more about the nature of God.

Nowadays preachers would follow 4:11 with something about how wise they are now and how they can impart their wisdom to us, but Jonah was happy just to say, “look how wrong I was.”

We have no other record of his life “to the end” but it would be a good bet that Jonah’s life message from then on was about coming to grips with the immensity of God’s mercy and love.

I understand the need to express the deep changes that occur when we are suddenly faced with new insights into God’s character, but there is only One God who has revealed himself in many ways (Hebrews 1:1). The God of my youth is the same God who has brought me through valleys of death to see him more clearly.

In all of our discoveries, it is the scriptures that keep us in balance. Jenn has an extremely good point that will protect us from greivious error. What we believe in our hearts will come out our mouths and affect all who know us.

My daughter put it the best I have heard. After our discussions of this “New” God that I had found and especially after reading Wayne Jacobsens’ book, He Loves Me, she came to me and said, “I want to divorce my old god and marry this new One.”

We have all gone though a Jonah 4 club initiation this year. I’m so glad we are here.

Some have commented already on this, for example Peter being told “slay and eat.” I think one good example would be the audience for whom the book of Hebrews was intended. The author (possibly Paul) goes through one detail after another about the traditions and practices of Judaism, and shows how it was all fulfilled in Christ. The offerings, the tabernacle, the priesthood, etc. For an observant Jew to receive this would require a radical departure from his former understanding of God, and God’s relationship with His people.

Jonah was unrepentant to the end

He is defiant and shakes his fist at God

9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”

10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

Just where is Jonah changing his mind?

The book of Jonah is all about the sovriegnity of God. God choses. God decides. You will do God’s will if God so choses.

But Jonah – terrible life example, all the way to the end

What I find even more interesting about this is that Paul, later in his dealings with Gentiles, removes the “no food sacrificed to idols” rule, making it more a matter of consideration for others, rather than an outright sin.

There is a lot of revising going on in these early leaders and followers of Jesus.

All this from people who heard Jesus say that not one part of the Law would pass away. Obviously some exegesis has to be done concerning all that, but there definitely seems to be an understanding that knowing and serving God is not an easy 3-step program to paradise.