TR Hartley

If you’ve ever read the book of Jonah, you’ll have noticed it’s… strange.

You’ve got a terrible prophet who keeps doing the wrong thing, you’ve got the most evil empire in the Biblical mind up to that point repenting, you’ve got a big fish. The story ends abruptly, with God explaining to a pouting Jonah that He’s right to care about the Ninevites, and also their cows.

Huh. What do we do with that?

Personally, I just didn’t pay much attention to the book of Jonah for years. However, during Covid I listened to a 5-part sermon series on Jonah by Tim Mackie, founder of the Bible Project.

These 5 episodes were originally released on Mackie’s “Exploring My Strange Bible” podcast, and are now released as remasters through the Bible Project.

Tim Mackie preached these sermons in 2013 at Door of Hope Church in Portland, Oregon, where he used to work as a teaching pastor.

The first episode is primarily about how to read Jonah as a book, and the rest of the episodes go through the 4 chapters of Jonah.

Historic or Symbolic

Mackie, early in the first sermon, notes that genuinely Christian scholarship has two different primary ways of understanding Jonah. The first view says that the narrative in Jonah is historic; the events that happened in the book of Jonah are real historic events.

The second view sees Jonah as something of a satire, or parable. It mentions a historic figure, the prophet Jonah from 2 Kings 14:25-27, and then proceeds to tell a story filled with wordplay, exaggerated language and details, and a conflict between God and Jonah.

Mackie argues that the second view is a better way to understand the text, and gives a lot of rationale for that position. For a deeper look at this topic, you can see this article.

Gospel Focus

Regardless of your personal understanding of Jonah, I think the different aspects of the text that Mackie keys in on are really helpful. Mackie emphasizes how the narrative as a whole, plus many of the details within the narrative, all point to Jesus.

The prophet is a wicked man, who is angry at the grace of God. He runs from obeying God, hurting everyone around him in the process. It takes multiple miracles before he is willing to obey. Still, when Jonah finally gets to Nineveh and preaches a tiny little sermon, and pouts as the whole city of Nineveh repents.

Mackie emphasizes, throughout the series, that this is so like us. We’re supposed to read the book of Jonah, think judgmental thoughts about Jonah, and then soberly realize that he represents us. Even the people of God are slow to obey God, and often recoil at the grace that God has for the people who’ve wronged us. (In a way, the prophet Jonah in this book has a lot in common with the elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.)

Mackie points out that we all want God to show grace to us but not to them, not to the people that hurt us. And, that’s just human nature. When bad comes to us from someone, we want to see bad come to them. But that just leads to an endless cycle of retaliation. The only real solution to that cycle of endless vengeance is the Cross of Christ. Where the One who did no wrong to anyone, suffered wrong on behalf of everyone, so that grace could be offered to all.

All that to say, I think most Christians would be edified and benefitted to hear the Gospel implications that Mackie teases out of the book of Jonah.

Overall Recommendation

I really enjoyed listening to this sermon series. I learned a lot from Mackie’s scholarship, and his preaching was also edifying.

I’d recommend this sermon series to anyone. (Including you!) Click that link above and check it out!