[Frank Dunkle] So, I wanted to talk a little bit about stories. Stories are something that are entertaining. They can also be very educational. Along with studying theology when I was at Ambassador College, I minored in media history and continued that when I did my doctoral work. So, I want to draw on the past. 

If you consider several decades ago, when TV was brand new – movies hadn’t been around so long – those who were making shows for the screen weren’t certain how well audiences would perceive the subtleties of the characters in their stories. So what they did in those early days is, many of the characters would be very simple and basic – two dimensional, you could say. As an example, think of the old black and white westerns. It’s hard to find those nowadays, but in those westerns there were good guys and there were bad guys – not much in between and, if you weren’t certain, the good guys always wore white hats, the bad guys wore the black hats.  As I said, there wasn’t much of the subtlety that could be found in literature, and had been for centuries, in novels and short stories. But that’s changed as producers learned how to portray that subtlety. And then they realized that they could do it quite well onscreen. Now movies and TV shows include many characters that are just as complex as you can find in works of literature.

As a matter of fact, modern screen writers have developed a love for what’s called the anti-hero.  Now when I say anti-hero, that’s not somebody that’s working against the hero, but somebody who’s against the stereotype of a hero – that is, someone who is the protagonist – the lead character – but who isn’t necessarily morally good or all good. And of course, in these stories, they like to portray the antagonist as not always completely bad. And a really good story will lead some of these characters through what’s called a character arc, where they change and develop and grow.

Now, I could consider some examples from great works of literature – Dostoyevsky or Melville or someone like that – but I like the easier route of using pop-culture for examples. So take, for example, Batman.  Okay?  He’s a good guy. He’s not always a paragon of virtue, though. He’s willing to skirt the law to accomplish his goods – trample on some people’s rights for his greater goal. And then, if you see the comparison of someone who is the good guy, compare him to Superman. He stands for truth, justice and the American way. You know, he wouldn’t violate the speed limit if he were driving his car. When he flies, of course, that’s a different matter. He wouldn’t neglect to pay his dog’s county license fee, let alone beat up an informant to get some information. So, that’s the contrast between hero and anti-hero.

What I’ve noticed in recent years, in movies and TV – now these aren’t shows I’ve gone out of my way to see – actually most of them I haven’t – but comedy has developed the practice of wanting to take a position that’s normally very good and put a bad person in there, like Bad Teacher was a movie a few years ago – Bad Judge, even Bad Santa, for those who celebrate Christmas. Literature professors love to look at stories like that, especially if the character goes from being good to bad and changing. You know it might be what we call a cautionary tale. There would be many points in the class where you’d want to lead a discussion with the students and say, “Why did this character do certain things? What was his motivation, what resulted, how could it have been different? What did the characters learn? What do the readers learn? Are those two the same?” And the question that might be in many of your minds is, “Why is he going on and on about this in the sermon on the Sabbath? When are we going to get to the Bible?” 

Well, I’m going there right now, of course, because the Bible is a great work of literature and has a lot of interesting stories. Now it’s not fiction. Of course, God is the ultimate author who worked through a number of different men to write these lessons. There are legal treatises. There are stories. And the Bible stories have many valuable lessons. Does the Bible have any anti-heroes? Does it have cautionary tales? Well, whether we consider them that way or not might depend on how we interpret some of the characters in the stories. In that case, there’s a principle I learned in studying history that applies equally to literature. It is that, “What you learn will largely depend on what questions you ask.”  If you ask the right questions, you can get some good information.

Let’s consider one of the simpler cases to start off with as an example. Rather than a bad teacher, or a bad Santa, what about a bad prophet? Would we have any of those? You know, these are people who are supposed to be good messengers of God. But what if they turn out to be not so good or they dramatically turn? I want to consider starting off with the story of Balaam.

Balaam had an intriguing story, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time there, because we tend to look at that one a lot. But it’s intriguing to think about who he was, where he was, what he could have been – perhaps what he should have been. The story is in Numbers, chapter 22.  We’ll hit the highlights here, but we’ll begin with…of course, this is as the children of Israel are about to enter the Promise Land. God has been working through Moses for forty years to lead them through the wilderness – prepare them. The older generation had died off. The younger ones are getting ready to come in. And the nations that were already dwelling in or near the Promise Land got a little nervous when this huge, powerful nation starts moving in. So, beginning in verse 8, we’ll see the king of Moab sends a message. Oh, actually I want to begin in verse 5 – sorry, in verse 5 – the king of Moab sends a messenger to a person that he considers a prophet.

Numbers 22:5-6 – Then he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the river – that’s the Euphrates – in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying – and the message was – “Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me! Therefore, please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” This indicates that Balaam had some connections. People perceived him as having some power.

Now, we know the story went on – and I’m not going to go through all the story – but Balaam wanted to get the money that was being offered, and pronounce curses. But God said, “No, you have to say this,” and he ended up pronouncing blessings. Then later, because he still wanted the money, later chapters show that he would sell advice to the kings of Moab and Midian – to send their women in to seduce the Israelite men – and so that God Himself would punish them. But there are a couple of things that we can see here that intrigue me. Let’s read in verse 8:
V-8 – …He – that is, Balaam – said to the messengers, “Lodge here tonight.  I’ll bring back word to you as the Lord” – or as we often say, the Eternal – “speaks to me.” So, the princes of Moab stayed with Balaam, and when God came to Balaam, He said, “Who are these men with you?” And of course, He goes on from there giving him instruction. 

But have you ever wondered...? Balaam here refers to God by name, and in most translations that we use, it’s the capital LORD, from the YHWH – the Eternal One. Some people say, “Yahweh.”  How did he know that name? God had to specifically reveal it to Moses. And we wouldn’t think that it was well known, or maybe even at all known, outside of Israel. Is it possible that Balaam had some sort of relationship with God that was aside from Him working through the nation of Israel? Don’t know for sure. It’s an interesting question to ponder. Whatever way it was that Balaam knew God, what a disappointment – to have been any type of prophet – to know God – and then turn away from Him as completely as Balaam did! It’s just sad. There’s where I say, “If they made a movie about Balaam, calling it Bad Prophet might not be a bad one.”

But let’s turn our questions another direction. What if there’s a chance that Balaam really didn’t have any relationship with God? But, perhaps, he had relationships with the spirit world in another way. In other words, what if he was playing for the other team? In that capacity, he would have heard about this powerful Creator God – the YHWH – who was supreme. Now he got to work with that God directly. I think that would be sort of like, if you were a semi-pro baseball player suddenly getting a call from the Reds, saying, “We want to come up and pitch for us in the playoffs.” (Now, it might be a big stretch to consider the Reds would be in the playoffs…that’s another story.) But think of it. If this was Balaam’s first contact with God and with the nation of Israel, we know that the story says that they went up on these mountaintops – one after another – and said, “Slay seven bulls and build seven altars,” and then he went off to get the message from God, and he started saying these great blessings on the children of Israel. Do you think he ever looked down and listened to the words coming out of his mouth, and then thought, “Maybe I should go down and join them!” And if he didn’t think that, why not? Was he so attached to being a big fish in a small pond that he never gave thought to going to the only pond that really mattered? (I know I’m mixing my metaphors a little here, but, if I’m dealing with literature, maybe I can get away with it.)

We just don’t know what he thought. We don’t know if he learned anything. But we can consider what we learn from his story. What do we learn? As I said, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time with this story, because I’m far from the first minister to turn to this passage in a sermon, and I imagine we’ve learned a lot of things over the years from it. I think of the answers to just two questions that we might easily ask and answer. Is there a better way to have a good life than by following God’s commands? No, not from the story of Balaam and, of course, a lot of other stories. Is there any other worthwhile competing source of power, of prestige, of wealth? No, of course not. We could think of a lot of other questions that we might ponder with Balaam, but I wanted to set that as an example in order to get us into this mode of thinking.

I want to turn to another interesting story that we don’t look to quite as often. It’s found in 1 Kings, chapter 13. 1 Kings 13 tells the story of a young man, who later is referred to as a prophet. He’s rather naïve, and he’ll meet up with an older, more experienced prophet. Well, he called himself a prophet. If he was, it turns out that he, also, was a bad prophet. 1 Kings, chapter 13 – we’re dealing with the time after King David’s grandson, Rehoboam, had refused to lower the taxes and be somewhat conciliatory toward the nation of Israel, and so the ten northern tribes split. They formed their own kingdom. Of course, all this fit with God’s plan. And Rehoboam would continue to rule the kingdom of Judah. But the northern tribes set up a man named Jeroboam as their king. He was concerned that, if the people went down to Jerusalem to worship, they’d fall back into following David, so he set up a competing religion. And, of course, they set up altars, golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and proclaimed a great feast in the eighth month. And, as God sometimes does, He sent a prophet to denounce this practice – to make His views known.

So let’s pick up the story in 1 Kings, chapter 13, and verse 1.

1 Kings 13:1-3 – Behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD. And Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he – the man of God that was sent – he cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, “Oh altar, altar, thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David, and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you. Men’s bones will be burned on you.’” He was saying, “This altar is going to be desecrated and utterly polluted.” And he gave a sign that day, saying, “This is the sign….” Well, I’m not going to read through all this, but he said, “God’s going to work a miracle and break the altar and the ashes will spill out.” And God showed that this was His message. That miracle happened.

And then when Jeroboam was a little put out by this happening, he pointed out with hand and said, “Arrest that man!” and his hand and arm turned leprous. He couldn’t even pull it back. By that time, Jeroboam realized he was dealing with, truly, a man of God. So he said, “Please pray that I’ll be healed.” And God worked another miracle and healed Jeroboam’s arm.

Now I’m running past this, because I want to get to what happens afterwards – that’s the focus of my story. In verse 9, after God had worked this miracle, and Jeroboam now has significant respect for this young man…actually, I wanted to back up to verse 7:

V-7 – And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward” – invites him home to have dinner and “I’ll give you something.” But the man of God said to the king, “If you were to give me half your house, I wouldn’t go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the same way you came.’” And so he went another way, and did return by the way he came to Bethel.

Now that alone would make it kind of an interesting story. You don’t see this kind of thing happening very often. But now it’s going to get, I think, even more interesting, because the story is not finished. He’s about to meet the bad prophet. In verse 11:

V-11 – Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. And they told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. And so he’s interested. I think, if you read the story through, he asks them to saddle the donkey. The words, saddle the donkey, come up half a dozen times. (I was going to skip it, but now I’ve talked about it longer than it takes to read.) But he does, and they saddle the donkey, and they go to find this young man. And he finds him resting under a tree, which makes sense. You know how you feel when you’re fasting. How would you like to have God say, “I want you to be fasting and travel about 20 miles to give this message and come back.” So it’s not surprising, he finds him resting. And the old prophet invites him to come back – “Come back to my place and I’ll give you some food and water.” And the man tells him the same thing that he told King Jeroboam – “No, I’m not allowed to eat or drink while I’m here. And I can’t even go back the same way.”

And now, let’s see what the bad prophet tells him – in verse 18:

V-18 – He said to him, “I, too, am a prophet . Look at that! I’m a prophet, too, just as you are. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” He was lying to him.

That’s always intrigued me in this verse. He says all this and he’s lying! And I say, “What?” The Bible says he’s a prophet. Prophets aren’t supposed to lie to people. Well, then again, I think also, Prophets aren’t supposed to believe just anybody that comes along and tells them something that contradicts God had told him.” But this young prophet had to learn that lesson the hard way. He went back with him. And I’m sure he had some motivation, as I said. Imagine you’ve been fasting for maybe even longer than a day, and you’ve covered many miles, and someone says, “God tells you to come and have something to eat!” I’d be eager to do that. And when he does, it turns out that God hadn’t given that message as we already know now. In verse 20:

V-20 – Now it happened, as they sat at the table, that the word of the LORD came to the prophet who brought him back. This is the bad prophet. Now he cries out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the LORD and not kept the commandment which the LORD your God commanded you, but you came back, ate bread, and drank water in the place which the LORD said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your corpse will not come to the tomb of your fathers.’” And it says from there, he would go ahead and leave. And I’ve always wondered, “Wouldn’t you think there would be pretty awkward silence after that?” They’re kind of looking at each other, and, “What do I do now?” Well, he decided to go on his way.

Now, it’s interesting. When you read this, the punishment is that he wouldn’t be buried in the tomb of his fathers. That’s no indication of when that punishment would happen. It occurs to me, he could have been thinking, “Well, that’s going to happen years from now.” The punishment could come even after he’d lived a full life and died of old age. You could speculate that, but as it turns out, a lion met him that very afternoon and killed him. So the punishment wouldn’t be delayed. He would be killed, and for reason, apparently, God worked with the lion, and he just stood there. He didn’t tear up the corpse. He didn’t attack the donkey. And word gets back to the bad prophet. He learns of his fate, and tells his sons, “Saddle up the donkey,” and we see in verse 29:

V-29 – The prophet took up the corpse of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back. So the old prophet came to the city to mourn and to bury him. And he laid his corpse in his own tomb, and he mourned over him, saying, “Alas! My brother!” And so it was that after they had buried him that he spoke to his sons, saying, “When I’m dead, then bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones, for the saying which he cried by the Word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel, and against all the shrines of the high places in the cities of Samaria, will come to pass.”

And we know, if we look ahead, they did hundreds of years later. It would be a long time before that did occur, but the prophecy was fulfilled. Later on, after the northern kingdom had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians, when Josiah came to throne and began reformations in Judah, he came to that area and did desecrate that altar, and dug up bones, and burned them on there – but not the bones of these two prophets, because that story had been around all that time. It’s interesting. As soon as he sees this – “What’s this?” – somebody tells him the story. It was passed on from generation to generation, and they all knew it. And you wonder, “Could that have been the prophet’s reason for lying?” Boy, that would be pretty…makes you wonder, “I’ll lie to this guy, so he’ll be killed and buried here, and then I can be buried with him, and not have my bones desecrated.” That seems a stretch…I’m asking questions that I don’t necessarily know the answers to.

Why did he change from bad to good? Did this bad prophet learn his lesson? He lamented, “Oh, my brother!” Was he truly sorry? What did he learn? We might not be able to answer, but there’s another question we can. But, before I go on to that, what about the young man? What did he learn? As I said, perhaps an awkward silence after the prophet told him, “Oh, you’re going to be punished for this.” What was going on in his mind from the time he heard that until he saw the lion? We can’t really answer those questions. (And I’m bad at doing this. Sometimes I ask these questions, and you go, “Why did you ask me in the first place?!”) Why is this story in the Bible? Well, I can answer that question with the other question? What did you learn? When we study this, we can ponder these questions about it, and we might not know for sure what they learned, but we can learn valuable lessons. We, living right now, today, in this era, can learn great things from studying these stories.

One lesson stands out to me right off the top of my head. And I think back to what happened in the church in the 1990s, and it’s a lesson that everyone should have read this story and learned. It’s summed up very well in Galatians, chapter 1 – Galatians 1, beginning in verse 8. In my mind, I’ve got this verse connected with the story of the lying prophet. Paul writes:

Galatians 1:8 – Even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As I’ve said before, so I say again, “If anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you’ve received, let him be accursed.”

For that young man, God might have added, “Even if a prophet tells you something different than what you’ve been instructed, don’t believe him! Even if the leader of the church should stand up behind the lectern and say, ‘Playing golf on Saturdays is fine,’ ‘Ordering pepperoni on your pizza is okay,’ don’t believe him! Believe what’s in the Bible! Don’t be led astray by liars!”

And that’s just one lesson that we can learn from the bad prophet. I’m sure there are many others. But as I said, I’d like to move to some prophets that aren’t necessarily bad, or always bad, but there are some of these cautionary tales of people who vacillate. And they might go back and forth as to what they learn or what they did. As I said, we could find many characters like that in the Bible. Obviously, Paul had formerly been Saul and persecuting the church. John Mark had been the fellow who ran away naked from the Garden of Eden, and then didn’t continue with Paul and Barnabas on the missionary trip. And then later, he turned out to be very valuable. But I want to stick with prophets for the course of this sermon, since we’ve been focusing on them, and it fits with the…well, it doesn’t fit with my title, actually. I thought about calling this Bad Prophet. And then I thought, “Well, if people see that on the Website, I wonder what they’re going to think about the United Church of God?” So I thought calling it What Do We Learn? might be a little better. But, if we look at prophets who have had their ups and downs and changes, one that gets my attention is Jeremiah.

Now I’ve spoken on Jeremiah more than the others, and he’s been a favorite subject of mine, partly because more than most prophets, Jeremiah shares his thoughts and feelings. He wrote about his own life far more than most of the other prophets. Most of them get a message from God, put it down – put it down on paper, speak it aloud…. You don’t look in Ezekiel…well, in Ezekiel you do learn a little bit about what he did, but that’s because God asked Ezekiel to do a lot of weird things, and so he had to write about that. But let’s turn to the book of Jeremiah and see some of what Jeremiah experienced. And we can keep in mind, what can we learn?

Jeremiah, chapter 1 – actually, we’ll start out at the beginning, in verse 5 – Jeremiah 1, and verse 5 – God is speaking to Jeremiah (I wonder if it surprised him one day):

Jeremiah 1:5 – The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you to be a prophet to the nations.” And he said, “LORD God, I can’t speak. I’m just a kid!” It says, “I’m but a youth,” but I think in the vernacular…. So I can just imagine…we’ve just heard that the church is hiring younger men to train for the ministry. Probably some of them thought, “I can’t do that! I’m just a youth!” And God answers, “Don’t you say, “I am but a youth,’ for you shall go to all whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you’ll speak.” I don’t know if He was harsh in that – probably more comforting. “I know how old you are, Jeremiah. I formed you in the womb. I want you to do this job.” But it’s not hard to imagine that a prophet who was called when he was very young – and some people speculate he might have been a teenager! Can you imagine back to when you were sixteen years old, having God call you up on the phone one day, and say, “Hello, I’ve got a message for you. I want you to go out and deliver it to the children of Israel” – or Judah, as the case may be.

Jeremiah probably had the kind of mood swings that all of us, as teenagers and young adults, do – had some difficult times. And so it’s not surprising – if we turn to chapter 9 – at this point, he’s upset. He said:

 Jeremiah 9:1 – Oh that my head were waters, oh that my eyes were a fountain of tears, so that I could weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. So, he had the mood swings – up and down. And at times, he felt pretty sorry for himself.

Moving ahead, to chapter 15 – Jeremiah 15, and verse 10 – it says:

Jeremiah 15:10 – Woe is me, my mother…. I don’t know if teenagers say, “Woe is me,” much anymore, but maybe they should. It has a certain ring to it. Woe is me that you’ve born me! I wish I’d never been born! …I am a man of strife, of contention to the whole earth! Even though I haven’t lent money for interest, or people lent to me for interest, every one of them curses me. I haven’t been borrowing money from people, but they all hate me!

This reminds me of a scene from a movie – to get back to some of those pop culture references. In many stories, the protagonist has this time of doubt. And that’s something that’s different with the anti-heroes, because in those old westerns, the cowboy with the white hat on, he never doubted what was right. He never hesitated to do it. But Jeremiah is a hero with feet of clay. And that’s mixing metaphors again. What’s interesting is, when I say that in church, all of us think of that statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream that had feet of iron mixed with miry clay. But those who aren’t Bible scholars just think of it as an analogy. It’s a metaphor for a hero who has faults.

(I know I’m giving away some of my roots, but I’ll be honest. I grew up reading a lot of comic books.) If you’ve heard the name, Stan Lee, he invented a lot of the modern marvel comic heroes.  And he made a point, that when he started in the sixties, he wanted to make his heroes different than the old ones of the fifties, who were like the cowboys with white hats. So he said they would have, in their costume booties, feet of clay. And a lot of their stories focus on these challenges – not necessarily whether they have the power to do what they need to do, but do they have the confidence? Can they overcome their inner-personal relationships? And a lot of times, in a story like this, the climax comes not with a great battle, but with the hero having this self-doubt and this need to overcome. And the climax of the story is when often someone he trusts comes to him, and they talk it out, and he realizes what he can do. So this internal conflict, that’s what makes him the anti-hero – because he’s not wearing a white hat. And once it’s resolved, then he might still go on and fight a battle, and hopefully, it’s entertaining.

I’ve been talking about comic books, but when I first brought his up, the example that stood out to me the most is one of the Rocky movies. I hope I’m not dating myself. We were talking about students at ABC…do they understand your references? The first Rocky movie I saw was Rocky III. I was young enough that the other two had been out and I wasn’t paying attention. But in that one, early in the movie, Rocky’s the champ and then Mr. T comes along. If you haven’t heard of Mr. T, he’s this really buff, strong black guy with the Mohawk, and he beats Rocky up in the ring, and Rocky is devastated. But they want a rematch. And the whole movie – well, not the whole movie – but much of the movie focuses on Rocky dealing with this struggle. And it turns out the climax of the movie is he’s alone and his wife, Adrian, comes to him, and he has to admit that he’s afraid. “I’m afraid! I’m afraid I’ll lose. We’ll lose everything we have.” And she has to explain things to encourage him. “I’ll always be with you. And this physical stuff, we don’t need.” And he gets encouraged by this. He realizes he needs to face his fear and overcome. And of course, in the movie, the music starts playing, and we see the training montage. (Da, da, da-da-daunt) And he’s running on the beach with Apollo Creed, and he’s lifting weights, and swimming in the pool. And that’s already past the climax. When Rocky comes into the ring with Mr. T, of course he knocks him out, because we’ve already past the crucial thing. (Crucial thing – that’s not a good vocabulary term.)

Anyways, let’s go back to the story of Jeremiah. At the beginning of chapter 15, “Woe is me! I wish I’d never been born!” He doesn’t have Adrian to come to him. As a matter of fact, he’s not allowed to get married. In this story, God Himself comes to Jeremiah. In verse 19 – I sort of think he’s off on his own….

Jeremiah 15:19 – Thus says the LORD, “If you return” – that is, “If you return to Me – come back – I’ll bring you back. Jeremiah, you’ll stand before Me. If you take the precious from the vile – in other words, “Get this bad attitude out of you, and you’ll come work with Me. You’ll be My mouth. Let them return to you. Let those people that are against you come back, but you won’t return to them. I’ll make you like a fortified bronze wall. They’ll fight against you, but they shall prevail, for I am with you to save you and I will deliver you,” says the LORD. “And I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked. I’ll redeem you from the grip of the terrible.”

And that’s what it took. Jeremiah goes on. He gets past this crisis and carries on. Now, you could say, “Is this the climax of the whole book?” Well, Jeremiah’s story isn’t a two-hour movie. It’s a fifty-two chapter book! So it goes on and he’ll have other crises and he’ll question again. We know Jeremiah did learn valuable lessons. That’s one of the neat things about the book. We see him go from being a young man – perhaps a teenager – to a relatively old man, going down to Egypt and watching over those kings’ daughters.

He learned a lot of lessons – developed character. Do we, also? What do we learn from reading the story? I hope a lot. I think we can…as I said, I’m mixing some of these pop-culture references, but as I said, what you learn can depend on what questions you ask. And since we have studied that a lot – at least, I’ve spoken on him a lot – I want to turn to another prophet. And I’ll confess, this is the one that started me thinking along this line of reasoning. And it’s the story of Jonah.

Almost everybody knows the story of Jonah – or, most people like to say, “Jonah and the whale” – but if you’re like me, you remember, in the church, being told, “It doesn’t say a whale. It says a great fish.” As a matter of fact, I was intrigued, looking at the Hebrew, which is better translated, Jonah and the sea monster. Well, whatever it was…. But do you ever wonder why there are so many children’s stories? Many of these children’s Bible story books have stories about Jonah. None of them have stories about Joel, or Amos, or Haggai, or Zephaniah. One of the reasons is that Jonah’s story is so different. The Bible doesn’t tell us much about the lives of those other prophets. And, of course, most of those other prophets devote their writing to telling the message that God gave them.

Jonah stands out. The book of Jonah has about one sentence of prophecy. That’s intriguing. It’s in there in the middle of the Minor Prophets, and the only prophecy is, “In three days, God’s going to overthrow Assyria.” And then God changes His mind about that.

Well, then the story that it tells must be important. So, if you haven’t already gone there, let’s go to Jonah. Now, of course, because we know the story so well, I’m not going to read all four chapters. We can pick up some of the highlights. (That’s assuming that I can find it in my Bible…there it is.) In Jonah, chapter 1:

Jonah 1:1 – The word of the LORD came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come to Me.” Now, it’s worth noting, that alone is pretty unusual. God sent prophets to Israel to prophesy against them.

Now, Jonah’s reaction isn’t that of a role model, but there were some precedents. I look back, you know, Moses tried to make as many excuses as possible to not go to Pharaoh. Jeremiah – we just read – said, “I’m too young! I’m just a kid!” Jonah didn’t make excuses. He just got up and ran! As we see in verse 3:

V-3 – Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish – which, by the way, is as far away as you can get from going to Assyria, He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

Now I’m going to stop reading there, because, as I said, we know the story. God didn’t restrain Jonah right then, but He didn’t just let him go away. But I find it interesting…He also didn’t talk to him. He caused this great storm to blow up – waves crashing. It was so bad a storm that the sailors believed they were going to die. And so they tried everything they knew – throwing cargo overboard to lighten the ship. They prayed to every god they could think of, and when they ran out, they woke Jonah up so he could pray to whatever gods he could think of. Then they got the idea that this unusual storm must have come on them because somebody did something bad. In verse 7, it says:

V-7 – They said to one another, “Let’s cast lots, so we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us.” Now we can question, “What made them think that?” I wonder. But the lot fell on Jonah. And rather than make them wonder, he confessed. He said, “Yeah, this storm is my fault. I worship the God who made the sea, and the sky, and the land, and everything. And I ran from His presence.” So now they’re getting really afraid.

Let’s go down to verse 15 – because he tells them, “What you need to do, if you want to be saved, is throw me out of the boat.”

V-15 – So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea. And the sea ceased it raging.
It wasn’t until I saw…well, I’ve seen a couple different versions of this…I always thought, of course, of it gradually calming down the way storms do, but there are some versions where they throw him in and pshewww…it stops. You wonder about the sailors. Did they look at each other and say, “Well, shall we pull him back in?” Well, they didn’t have the option, because in verse 16:

V-16 – The men feared exceedingly – at first they were very, very impressed, but in verse 17…

V-17 – The LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now we might wonder, “Is that the reason this story is in the Bible?” The fact that he was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights isn’t necessarily a prophecy. Now, Jesus Christ cited it as a sign – the sign of the prophet Jonah – and He said that, likewise, He would be in the grave three days and three nights. So it is important. But, if we ask, “Is that the reason the book of Jonah is in the Bible?” wouldn’t it have been a shorter book? We got here in one chapter.

Now, we’ve got a second chapter of Jonah’s repentance. And it describes his prayer from inside the fish – which it’s entertaining to think of this. A lot of stories portray it as this big cavernous area. It’s probably not. He was in there cramped. But we learn a little bit about how well Jonah did know God’s word, because, if you read the prayer, most of it is citing from the Psalms. He knew God’s word and so he was reciting – I’m guessing from memory – he probably didn’t have a pocket Bible with him – but he knows God’s word and he makes this great repentance. And of course, God tells the fish, “Okay, spit him up!” And still, if that’s the reason the story is in the book, two chapters would have been enough. But we carry on.

In chapter 3, God is going to talk to Jonah again.

Jonah 3:1 – The word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it the message that I tell you. So, go, and this time, do what you’re told!” And that time, the people of Nineveh – those rotten, violent, wicked, according to some people, fish-slapping, sinful people – they repent. They repent with fasting, sack cloth, ashes! The story even says, “They made the animals wear sackcloth. That’s, to me, one of the most entertaining parts of the book – maybe because of my weird imagination. I picture the cows, the sheep wearing sackcloth.

What a great day for Jonah, right? What prophet wouldn’t be thrilled to be that effective in his preaching and have people listen? I imagine Mr. Myers would love to get up here and give a sermon on some particular subject and have everybody respond, and say, “Yeah, we’re going to do that!” I know I’d love to have that happen. Well, who wouldn’t be thrilled at this kind of thing? Well, Jonah, so it turns out. In chapter 4, it says:

Jonah 4:1 – It displeased Jonah exceedingly and he became angry. So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “LORD, was this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish.” I always like to ask the question, “Why did flee?” Here he tells us why – because God is merciful. “I knew that You are a gracious and merciful God, and slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm. Now, therefore, please take my life.” Jonah is so upset he wishes he could die. As a matter of fact, I’m going to introduce a movie version I’ve of this, where it shows Jonah crying, and he says, “Oh how I wish I were back inside that whale!” – which is interesting to consider.

Jonah is not in a good attitude, but here, interestingly, God doesn’t rebuke him. Instead in verse 4:

V-4 – The LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” As I said, what you learn often depends on what questions you ask. I find it interesting that in this latter part of the book, God ask questions. It could have been interpreted – going from the Hebrew – you could say that it is, “Why are you angry?” Or, another way of saying it is, “How is this hurting you, Jonah? I’m not killing them. Is that making you any worse off?”

Well, if Jonah answered, we don’t have his reply. It wasn’t preserved. But we know he went outside the city, and decided he was going to sit and watch. “Maybe God will change His mind again and smite those people! And I want to see it!” Well, as Jonah waited in the notoriously hot and arid climate, God gave him a benefit – caused this plant to grow up quickly – gave him some shade, cooled the breeze coming through. Jonah was glad for that, it says. And it’s the only place in the whole Bible where Jonah is in a good attitude. But then, right away, God prepared a worm to attack and eat the plant, and it died very quickly. So Jonah, once again, lies down, feeling sorry for himself, and wishes he could die.

Now here’s where I do want to introduce…as I said, part of what inspired me on this…I brought a copy of…I’m guessing we’ve got a lot of young parents that are familiar with Veggie Tales. I’ve had the tune going through my head. Maybe grandparents are familiar. And, if you’re in between, you might be saying, “What in the world?” This is the Veggie Tale Jonah movie. And, as I said, I’m not suggesting that you put away your Bibles and just watch Veggie Tales. Now, they can be entertaining and useful, but they’re not always the same as the scripture. But this one brings out some interesting things about the story of Jonah.

And in this, they have to set the stage, so what I found intriguing is, there’s a family that’s going somewhere and they have a flat tire. And there’s a restaurant where they can go in and make a phone call, have a tow truck come. And while they’re waiting…and of course, the family’s had some disagreements and been arguing, and they meet this group of particular people. If you know Veggie Tales, it’s the pirates, who don’t do anything. If you don’t know Veggie Tales, you don’t need to worry about that. But they start telling this story, because it turns out there was this one time when they did do something with that one guy. The one guy’s name in Jonah. And so they’re telling the story to the family, and they get to the end…and of course, at the end, that’s where they portray Jonah saying, “I wish I was back inside that whale!” He’s all alone, and he’s crying and feeling sorry for himself, and they’re telling the story, and the say, “The end!” (turns his back on the audience). And they family goes (holds his hands facing upward, shaking his head), “What happened next? What did Jonah learn?” And one of them says, “The question, my friend, is not, ‘What did Jonah learn?’ What did you learn?” (I’m not doing the accent very well, but considering it was a pea that said it….)

That’s an important question. As I said, that’s one of the things that led me to this sermon. What did you learn? That a question we could ask about almost every story in the Bible. It stands out here, because many Bible narratives tell us what hero learned or didn’t learn. And they tell us what we should learn. But the book of Jonah is similar to the Veggie Tales movie in that it also ends with a question. God asked Jonah this in verse 10 of chapter 4:

V-10 – The LORD said, “You had pity on the plant, for which you have not labored nor made it grow, and it came up in a night and perished in a night. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are one hundred and twenty thousand people, and they can’t tell their right hand from their left with much livestock?

We don’t know if Jonah ever understood this lesson or not, because God asked him the rhetorical – we could call it a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is, “Well, yes! If they’re willing to repent, we should have pity!” I personally like to think that Jonah did learn the lesson – partly because I’m one of those that side with the belief that he wrote the book. Some people disagree. There are lots of different scholarly opinions. But I say, if he did write the book, why didn’t he say, “I learned my lesson and I went back home.” If he’s the one that wrote it and said that, I think it’s because he might have had the same question in mind as the Veggie Tales. He might be leaving it for the reader, saying what did you learn. What can I learn from this?

Now we could ask a lot of questions. We could go from the sailors assuming that someone in the boat must be guilty, since they’re suffering. We could ask questions: Why did Jonah say, “Throw me overboard?” Was he trying to save them or trying to get out of going back to Assyria – going to Nineveh – figuring “I’ll drown and then I won’t have to go?” What led him to repent now that he was inside the fish?

There are a lot of possible lessons we could learn from this. A couple come to mind. One, of course, is, you can’t run from God. Jonah illustrates that incredibly well. Another is, God can hear your prayer from anywhere – even inside a fish under the ocean! So you’re never too far to call out to God and have Him hear.

One of the biggest lessons, though…I appreciated the way the Veggie Tales movie brought it out, and I’d have to explain a little bit, because they didn’t want to have somebody have to play act and speak as God. And I like that about Veggie Tales. That’s one thing that I’ve seen. So what they did is have the worm talk. You might think it’s still a stretch to have a worm speak, but if you see the movie, it fits. He’s there for a while, and he ate the plant, and says, “Well, I was hungry with all this waiting.” But when he’s talking to Jonah, who’s feeling sorry for himself, and the worm says, “Remember when you were back inside that whale? God had mercy on you. He heard you, because God is merciful and kind and He loves you!” And Jonah’s going, “Yeah, yeah.” And the worm says, “Well, did it ever occur to you that God loves everybody – not just you?” And in the movie, Jonah is like, “Huh?” It’s like he never gets it. But I can take that to heart. When I read the story of Jonah, it’s like, “Yeah, God does love everybody. I believe He loves me, but He loves everybody else just as much. As a matter of fact, I’ve given Him reason to love other people a lot more.” But probably a lot of us would say that. But, as I say, if Jonah did learn his lesson, and wrote it this way, it was a stroke of genius – if for no other reason, it gave me a good start to a sermon, but for a lot of other reasons, too. He leaves us with questions to ponder and discuss. It gives us opportunity to ask, “What do we learn?”

Now as I move toward wrapping up, I want to caution: It’s possible to take this idea too far. The Bible is a great work of literature, and you can study the stories with those techniques, but, at the same time, it’s the word of God! It should be respected as such. I don’t want anybody to think that I don’t agree that there are places where God tells us clearly what His word means. We won’t benefit from questioning it. And we want to remember that principle: Let the Bible interpret the Bible. So I’m not suggesting in any way that we’re moving away from that. God does provide interpretation. I’m just saying, sometimes you can learn more by asking the right questions. And I hope we’ve seen today, God purposefully, used a lot of variety in what He put in His word. He presents us with many interesting stories that include a lot of interesting characters. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10 that they are recorded for our benefit. So, whether we focus on the good guys or the bad guys, as protagonists, and not to mention the many flawed would-be heroes, we should not only read God’s Word to discover what they learned, but always stop and ask, “What did I learn?”