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Good morning everybody!
For these next four weeks, we are going on an adventure together. This past fall, my Small Group stumbled onto the book of Jonah and what we found there was so good, I wanted to walk you through our discoveries as well. So…
Find a Bible and turn to the book of Jonah. Jonah is the section of the Bible called, “The Minor Prophets.” You can find it on p. 916. Or, if you’re a little more adventurous, you can thumb through the Minor Prophets and find it by memorizing their order. The order of the Minor Prophets goes, “Hojo A Ojo Mina HaZe HaZe Ma.”
Say that with me, and everybody will think we’re speaking a foreign language: Hojo A Ojo, Mina, HaZe, Haze Ma. We get that from putting together the first syllables of each of the minor prophets: “Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.” - Israel’s twelve minor prophets, all with major messages.
If you want to just memorize how to get to Jonah, just memorize this part:
“Hojo A Ojo,” Jonah is the fifth minor prophet: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah: Hojo A Ojo.
He’s the only rebellious prophet in the bunch, and the most succinct preacher to ever live. With a scant eight-word prophecy in English (five words in the original Hebrew), Jonah sparked what is arguably the most fruitful revival in all of history as the entire metropolitan area of ancient Nineveh repented. Jonah’s entire sermon to these people is Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed. – Jonah 3:4.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so look at the text. What we’re about to read is one of the most famous stories in all of history. Not just Bible history. Stop anyone in a Wal-Mart parking lot and ask if they’ve ever heard of the story of Jonah and the Whale, and what do you think they’ll say? – “Yes.”
The irony is, the book of Jonah isn’t about a whale. I’ll show you that a little later. And it’s not actually about Jonah. I’ll explain that in a minute.
For now, follow along as I read you the story of Jonah and the Great Fish. (read Jonah 1:1-17).
Are you ready to do some learning with me today?
My plan is to give you information on the weekends that you won’t be getting from the book, so if you picked up an advanced copy this week, you’ll still want to take notes today.
The Backstory
Were it not for 2 Kings 14:25, we would have no background on Jonah. It is the only O.T. verse outside of his own book that mentions him. 1. Jonah was from Gath Hepher. Gath Hepher means “the winepress of the well,” so apparently there was a winepress near a well in Jonah’s hometown, which is located just five miles southwest of Jesus’ home town of Nazareth. You can visit his shrine there today.
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