The story of Jonah and the whale is one of the most famous in the Bible: but its message is perhaps one of the most ignored.
It’s a story about storms and sailors, rebellion, and rescue, preaching and protest. And it’s a story about one reluctant evangelist’s experience of speaking to people who knew nothing about God. So its message has great relevance today for God’s people, living in an increasingly non-Christian culture.
Jonah’s story will encourage believers who find themselves ill-equipped to share God’s message with colleagues, friends and family: and it deeply challenges our priorities in life.
But most of all this is a story about God. The book of Jonah reveals to us the depths of God’s grace, both to “outsiders” and to “insiders”. It shows us God’s compassion for the lost and His patience with His wayward people.
Use this guide to uncover the wonderful message of Jonah, and to come face to face with the greatest evangelist of all—the Lord our God Himself.Table of Contents:
Introduction
Why Study Jonah?
Timeline
1. Running away - Jonah 1 v 1-3
2. Judgment and mercy - Jonah 1 v 4-16
3. Jonah's fishy faith - Jonah 1 v 17 - 2 v 10
4. Repent, relent, rage - Jonah 3 v 1 - 4 v 4
5. Lesson learned? - Jonah 4 v 5-11
6. Jonah and Jesus - Matthew 12 v 38 - 42
Leader's Guide
)On account of his humanity, Christ’s Ancestorship is linked with Adam. This fact renders Christ a member of our race and gives his Ancestorship a transcendental connotation in virtue of which it transcends all family, clanic [sic], tribal or racial limitations. (in Nyamiti, Christ as Our Ancestor, 27)
argues that the Christian Africa of more than a thousand years ago gave to world Christianity its intellectual formation in at least 7 ways:In the period of its greatest vitality, the first half of the first millennium, the African intellect blossomed so much that it was sought out and widely emulated by Christians of the northern and eastern Mediteranean shores. Origen, an African, was actively sought by the teachers of Caesarea Palestina. Lactantius was invited by Emperor Diocletian (245-313) to be a teacher of literature in his Asian palace in Bythinia. Augustine was invited to teach in Milan. There are dozens of similar cases of intellectual movement from Africa to Europe - Plotinus, Valentinus, Tertullian, Marius Victorinus, and Pachomius among them...The Christians to the south of the Mediteranean were teaching the Christians to the north. Africans were informing and instructing and educating the very best of Syriac, Cappadocian, and Greco-Roman teachers. (p. 28)
which ranks number 4 in this list of the 100 best books of the 20th century.Though ostensibly a children's book, The Little Prince makes several profound and idealistic observations about life and human nature. For example, Saint-Exupéry tells of a fox meeting the young prince as he exits the Sahara desert. The story's essence is contained in the lines uttered by the fox to the little prince: "On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." ("One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.") Other key thematic messages are articulated by the fox, such as: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have lost for your rose that makes your rose so important."
. One paragraph stuck out to us yesterday, a paragraph about honor and a literary piece as iconic for French speakers as Shakespeare's pieces for English speakers:French people are concerned about personal honor, the honor of France, and the honor of their family and friends, and of their long-term customers. School children are taught all of these different, separate, vital kinds of honor in the Chanson de Roland, an epic poem about Roland, one of Charlemagne's heroic soldiers. It was written down in the 12th century about a battle in the 9th century. Yes. We're talking about a 1,000-year tradition of honneur.The poem itself is long, but we have begun reading it (an English translation for now)! The style of writing has similarities to Milton's Paradise Lost!
The study found that reading speeds declined by 6.2 percent on the iPad and 10.7 percent on the Kindle compared to print...[Also,] users rated their satisfaction with each device; the iPad, Kindle and printed book scored 5.8, 5.7 and 5.6, on a scale of 7, respectively, while the PC received an average score of 3.6 -- due, in part, because reading on a PC reminded readers of work.
entered our discussion. Elizabeth and I read some of this thought-provoking book a couple years ago. Here are some examples of the chapter titles:
. Have any of you read that? What did you think?
I will raise up your offspring to succeed you...I will be his father and he shall be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him...Your house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me. (2 Samuel 7:12-16)Vaughan Roberts comments:
One promise does not seem to fit with the others: 'When he does wrong, I will punish him.' That suggests a normal human being, whereas the others suggest someone much greater. How can we hold these two sides together? The answer is that, like many Old Testament prophecies, this prophecy is fulfilled at more than one level...[1] It is partially fulfilled by the great king Solomon, who was to build the temple. But [2] it is finally fulfilled only by the Lord Jesus, 'great David's greater son', the one whose reign puts Solomon's into the shadows (see Luke 11:31).
