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The characters and stories of the Old Testament form a rich tapestry, revealing both the best and worst of the human condition—and, most importantly, how God relates to us.
Based on the Living Covenant book series, this podcast explores the sometimes messy lives of those who lived under God’s first covenant, asking what these blessedly unsanitised saints can teach us about living out our faith in relationship with a God who promises never to leave us or forsake us.
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Welcome to the Living Covenant Podcast, where we journey through the messy human stories of the Old Testament explore what it means to live in covenant with a promise keeping God. I'm your host, Zanita. Let's dive in.
Today I'm joined by Quintin Betteridge, the pastor of Kingscliff Church. But that doesn't tell us too much about you, so do you wanna give us a one minute snapshot, Quentin, into who you are and what your life looks like outside of being a pastor?
Hey, Zanita. Thanks so much. Yeah, my name's Quintin.
I am a South African living in Australia with my wife and daughter, and my wife is actually, a few hours, maybe a day or two away from giving birth, so that's exciting. So at the moment we, we are in Toddville going back into Ville. Uh, so that keeps me very busy. I'm also, yeah, keen to do exercise outside.
I like triathlons and. Yeah, moving my body. So I like swimming and cycling and I don't like running, but I kind of still do it. So I like being active, I love the beach. Love being out outdoors when I'm not working. And then I do like studying and reading on culture and mission and stuff like that. So all of those things keep me pretty busy.
Yeah, it's a blessing to have so many passions, but also a curse.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That it probably sums up my life pretty well. Like I've got too much stuff I'm interested in. Um, so yeah, it. Preoccupied
Can relate. Well, you mentioned that you are from South Africa and you wrote about this in your article.
Not just that, but you actually grew up in, as you said, the twilight of institutional apartheid. Paint a picture as to what that season of your life was like.
Yeah, it was a good time. Like it's one of those things, you know, as a kid you look back, you don't really understand or know much what's going on, but you do realize, and even reflecting back, you're like, oh man, that was a pretty significant period in earth history, especially South African history, but world history as well.
And, I grew up in Johannesburg, so that, that's where a lot of the conflict happened. I wasn't in the central, like Johannesburg itself. We lived in a town that's part of the bigger metropolitan of Johannesburg, but more on the outskirts. But there was still stuff that happened there.
So I was born 1985, so was still pretty strong. And it fell, you know, 1991. First election was not long after that. So I saw the, what they would want it to be called as this rainbow nation. All of these, people coming together. 'cause in South Africa it is a very interesting country to live in.
There's a lot of obviously white people. So afri, which are. Afrikaans speaking come from Dutch heritage, French heritage. But then there's also English. And the English and the Afrikaans have a lot of issues with each other. 'cause there was a lot of, wars going on the first bur war and all of those things in the left. A lot of remnants of hatred and frustration with each other. And then there's all these different black tribes. And then we have a very unique group in South Africa. That are called colored. They are like mixed race. And they're not black, they're not white, and they are kind of in the middle.
And then we have a lot of Indians as well. At one point, I don't know if it's still like that, but at one point we had the biggest group of Indians outside of India that lived anywhere in the world was in South Africa. So you have all of these different groups of people and the idea was, Hey, we're gonna come back together.
Apartheid systemic racism is now gone. How are we gonna work towards that? And as a child, this was quite confusing 'cause you're hearing the kind of voices of people and you can hear the fears, oh, you know what's gonna happen? Is there gonna be retribution for what the whites have done? And all of these things.
There was a lot of people that left South Africa as well. But then also a lot of joy and a lot of freedom. I remember the first world rugby cup that South Africa played in. It was such a joyous time because all of the nation came together and supported supported the spring bucks, and then they won.
And it was just amazing to see. And that was kind of that honeymoon phase where they're like, oh, it seems that we can work this out together. But then now, you know, 20, 30 years later, we see, while we still haven't achieved that utopia that was promised, or that they wanted, yeah.
Yeah. I know you mentioned that you thought was the last place on earth, still dealing with the racism, um, until, yeah, life went on and you realized that's not the case at all.
Yeah. And that is very true to how I felt until actually until my twenties really, because when we were younger, it did seem like everybody had it together. That was kind of the narrative that was painted to us, you know, world War ii, what happened in apartheid was seen as a kind of an echo of, Nazi Germany and this kind of hatred.
But that was in the forties, we were living in the 1990s and, there obviously was news and stuff, but uh, you know, the stuff that happened in Rwanda and all of those things, but those were specifically local tribes. It seemed like South Africa was very slow to catch on onto this utopia.
And I think at the same time, reflecting back you know, I was a child, so I didn't know much about the world, but there was a lot of narrative of secularization and, humanity progressing. And we are getting better at everything in the world and won't be long before we do reach this utopia where, everything will be better.
And that's what I think was just given to us narrative that we are moving towards utopia. And yeah, it just seemed like South Africa was always behind the curve. Hmm.
You mentioned a phrase that was thrown around back then, which is a tu
yeah. So Ubuntu is a word that was suddenly thrown around everywhere.
Everywhere you went, we were like, are we? No, Ubuntu. Ubuntu means like I am because you are. It's a communal collectivist ideology versus an individualistic paradigm. So it's this idea that you don't exist for you, you exist for us. I'll give you a really. Interesting example of this. When I was at university, I studied at Halberg College, which is a university in Somerset West, close to Cape Town.
And there's obviously a plethora of different cultures that come there, but ma majority is African cultures. And I remember a friend of mine, a white, Portuguese guy, he had just bought a new car. He had just been recently married. He stayed on campus. I stayed off campus, but he stayed on campus in the marriage section where all the married couples stayed that studied theology and he had just bought a new car.
And suddenly all these as African students were coming up to me and they were giving him money and said, Hey, congratulations on your new car. You, you. And he was like, I don't need petrol money. And they're like, no, no, no, no. Please, please, please. And he thought they were just being nice. And then one day another student came to him and he said, you know what they mean by that?
And he is like, yeah, they just saying congratulations. They're like, no, no, no, no. You, you, you misunderstand. They're giving you petrol money. So in their mind you have a car, but it's not your car, it's our car. So when I need to go to the doctor. I have a car. Your car. 'cause. 'cause they have this collectivist idea that what's yours is mine and what's mine is yours.
Right. And so the ideal that was set up from the beginning is like, okay, now we're moving to this rainbow nation, this apartheid, this separation, this distinction. It's now removed and now we all one. And we had this rainbow nation, but we're one rainbow. There's different colors in the rainbow, but it's one rainbow.
And so,
yeah,
And we can be this rainbow nation by being all of us together. I think it's a very beautiful philosophy. I think it's a very biblical philosophy. But the problem is, is that, as human beings, without Jesus, we cannot ever attain that kind of idea.
Yeah. And is that thought kind of what led you into the story of Jonah?
Yeah, so, I actually just thought of that story 'cause I was studying the book of Jonah and what came out of it was the idea that we are all one and we are all, you know, because essentially Ubuntu under that, the assumption of Ubuntu is that we respect each other and see each other as a human being and we love each other and we want this kind of collection of human beings to work together and you cannot have Ubuntu without love, and you cannot have ubuntu without respect for the other and care for the other. And basically, God's moral law is love God, love the neighbor.
And even God's love is demonstrated in that Jesus became human and then showed the love for his neighbor by dying for them, right? Jesus as a human, dies for us by displaying love for the other and also love for God. He displays both of those things. And so he's essentially showing this kind of ubuntu philosophy of, you can be because of who I am, you know, this kind of synthesis. But when I was reading the story of Jonah, Jonah is the anti prophet in a sense. He's this guy that stands in the place of a true prophet. A prophet is a mediator between God and the people.
And so he's, to bring people together as ubuntu is to bring people together. And, in this collection, Jonah does the opposite of that. He runs away from God. And this is what I saw in church essentially, is there were very many sad things that I saw growing up. And like I said, it's only when I went to university, when I was more exposed to these things.
There were various lecturers at my university that gave us certain readings specifically when we started doing ethics and all of these things that I started to think about my own worldview because I realized, oh, I grew up pretty racist. I grew up in a mm, in a family, in a church that was pretty racist, but they didn't even know that how racist they were. You know, there were certain things that we just did, and this is the way that, so apartheid had gone so deep into, into so many structures and even into the church. And then as I was going through this kind of reawakening of my childhood and apartheid and what had happened and what should have happened and thinking about church.
And seeing how the, Christian Church doesn't really matter which denomination, 'cause all of them had massive failings, but essentially apartheid was driven. The, one of the main vehicles of the separation and oppression was the Dutch Reform Church. And, my own church, my seventh Adventist church, they really didn't do much at that time. You know, in 2007, 2008 when I was studying theology, there was still separation between certain churches and some of it was based on kind of just language, which is understandable. Some speak different languages and people don't understand it. But I sat several boards actually, of some churches, some big churches in South Africa that, um, they were individuals that said, no, no, no, let's keep it this way so that we don't get other people of other skin colors into our church because they'll take over.
Yeah. And I was like, what? What do you mean? Like that is so, so just this idea of we are the people of God that's supposed to work towards. Maybe not Ubuntu, 'cause that's not a biblical word, but it's a biblical ideal of, Hey, let's bring people together. Let's bring, let's be unified. Jesus, pray for unity.
But then there are people that are calling themselves Christians, calling themselves disciples, but they're actively working against the grace of God, actively working against God's calling to redeem people and to bring people in and to unify. And so when I read this, I was like, man, Jonah is oftentimes like us that wanna separate and segregate, and if they're not like us, then they must be against us. You know what I mean? Um, so that, that got, yeah, that's that thing that got me thinking on that.
Yeah, it's really interesting and we'll definitely probably come back to this idea. 'cause I feel like as Christians we spend our whole lives learning about love and grace, but then underneath mm-hmm.
There's a lot of anti profits, like you say, people who are just living against, against that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I guess going back to the story of Jonah, obviously we all know the classic story book image of Jonah being in the belly of a fish. But talk us through some of the other elements of your story. Like, can you take us back to the beginning before that happened?
Yeah. This is such an, like, this is a story that we generally tell kids. Yeah. And we only talk about Jonah went into a belly of a fish, and that's the story. We don't even talk about chapter four when we talk it to tell it to kids.
But Jonah is such an interesting, it's, it's sometimes referred to as meta prophetic, meaning? Meta meaning if you have a meta story, it's a story about the story.
It's the kind of zooming out. So meta prophetic means that it's a story about the prophet, not about the preaching. So like Ezekiel or Jeremiah, it's about the message of the prophets, right? Daniel is not just about his story, but also the message he has. The message of Jonah. What he preaches is five words in the Hebrew, but the rest of the story is all about Jonah, really.
Right. And that's kind of the interesting thing is that the book of Jonah is actually, an acted parable. It's a God showing us, Hey, this is how my nation is acted, really how my people at sometimes. Which is quite profound. So the story starts off and even, there's so many, so many ironic, paradoxical, satirical elements to the story, just, which is, the more I read it, the more I think about it, the more funny it gets.
There's a lot of people who think that this is not a real true story, that it's more a parable, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So most of the scholarship actually don't think that it's a real story. And there's lots of people that do think it's a real story. I think that debate, whether it's true or not true, kind of, you know, uh, a lot of it hinges on the fish. So some people are like, well, if it's not true, that the phish actually happen is the historical reliability of the story.
And so then it's like, well, if it's not true, then can we even trust the Bible? I think you can still trust the Bible. I think that there's a lot of historical stuff. I think when you study the Bible, just kind of on as a side, when you study the Bible, it's almost like a triangle that you always have to think about.
The first thing is that the Bible, is a historical document, meaning there is actual history in scripture. But it isn't just a historical document, it's also a theological document, meaning that there's theological stuff in it. That doesn't always correlate 100% with history. A really good example of that is the book of Matthew.
Like go to Matthew chapter one. In Matthew chapter one. He says that the generations of Jesus, the genealogical list of Jesus, the forefathers of Jesus From Abraham to David.
From David to the exile And from the exile to Jesus. Right. So these three blocks, and then he says 14 generations. 14 generations. 14 generations. So Matthew. Is saying that within those kind of geological lists, these 14 generations of people, then 14 generations of people, then 14 generations of people. So if you only take Matthew one as purely historic, we have to be honest with ourselves and say that Matthew is not telling the truth.
Because if you read Chronicles, Chronicles actually says to us there's more than 14 generations. So what he's doing there is that he's building around this idea of kingship and David, who is the ultimate king for the Jews. His name in the Hebrew there's a thing that they use called the ga trea.
And if you count the letters, not the vows, but the letters, DWDD, valve D it comes to 14. So when a Jew is reading the generational genealogical list in matthew one, they would say, Hey, this is talking about the king. So Matthew is using actual history. It's not mythology, it's not like made up stories, it's actual history, but he's purposefully leaves out names.
One to get to 14 and also to insert names, ladies names, because he has a theological point. So the theological point trumps the historical point. Yeah. The third thing that we need to look at is history theology, is the third point that we need to look at is literary style, the grammatical way of the story. So we need to understand genres. We need to understand how it is written, so we look at the literary aspect of it. So all three of those elements are important. When we look at a story, when we look at Jonah, the literary story is just so phenomenal that a lot of people are saying the book of Jonah has so many different things in it that we don't know if it could be real because there's constant hyper bowl in it.
You know, he goes to, Nineveh talks five words and the whole city, even the animals fast and confess their sins. Like where, have you ever seen an animal fast? You know, and confess this sense, right? Even the first line, this is funny, he says. And Jonah one verse one, he says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah.
The word Jonah means dove. Right? So you get the sense of pureness, of peace. You know, he's anything but a peaceful person, right? He's full of hatred. He's rejecting God. So the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amai. Amai means truthfulness or faithfulness.
Hmm.
So here the story starts and starts with any historical, any prophetic book starts this is the Lord. Whether the Lord came to Jonah, the son of truthfulness. So here comes a man of peace, a man of grace. And he's the son of truthfulness, but he acts completely opposite. Yeah. To all of those things.
So those are the kind of interesting things littered, throughout the book. So he comes to the word of the Lord comes to Jonah, and then he says, go to the great city of Nineveh. This is another thing that is there constantly. It's called the late motif. And it's this idea of a key word there.
So the key word, great city. The word great comes up all the time. He's called to go to a great city, Nineveh. Then the Lord later on will send a great wind that brings up out a storm. Then they are greatly afraid the, guys on the boat. Then there's a great storm that comes. Then he is called again to go to the great city of Nineveh in chapter three.
Then Jonah realizes that something great has gone wrong in chapter four. Then he is very unhappy, which is he's. Unhappiness is great. So there's this constant hyperbolic, like everything is massive. Everything is huge. Everything is beyond, just normal response to something. So it needs to go to the great city of Nineveh.
So Nineveh is a place, that was the main city of a Syria. Syria was then the USA of the day, the China of the day. USA would probably be better. It's like the main superpower of the world. Militarily. They're the best financially, they're the best. This. They're the superpower of the world, right? The biggest nation of the world.
They're very brutal. They would skin people alive. They were horrific in the way that they treated their captive, right? And they had treated, Israel very poorly. Think of the worst enemy that you could have. And God says to Jonah, go to the worst of the worst, go to Nineveh, right? This is not an easy assignment. Think of like the people that have butchered your people raped, your people pillaged, your villages, have just constantly been this, abrasive, oppressive power. Now God says, I have grace towards these people.
I have compassion, love towards these peaceful people. Go, go and preach. Right? And then it says, and preach against it because the wickedness is great before me. It has come up before me, right? And so Nineveh, is this place that God sends into. So Jonah goes, the opposite direction. So they, if you know the geography of it, he should have gone east and he goes west as far as he can to tahi. So that's the understandably point that you can go. Yeah, a hundred percent. Right. Now this raises a question, right? Jonah's a prophet of God, but one he's rebellious goes the opposite direction. And secondly, what is his conception about God? Does he think that he can run away from God
clearly? Yeah. 'cause somehow.
Somehow in his mind, even though he's a prophet of God, he still doesn't know everything about God. He thinks, oh, I can run away from this. I can run away from this calling that God has on me.
And he finds ship going to chopper and, jumps on board, pays the fair, goes down, and then the Lord sends judgment essentially. And this is one of the key things of scripture that I find interesting. We are very afraid of judgment, but judgment is sometimes God's way of putting us back on the right path.
Not to destroy us, but maybe to kind of bring us back on the right path, right? So he goes to Japa, he jumps on a ship, and suddenly there's a storm that comes. But one of the other late motifs, so I mentioned the first one there, this idea that kind of key words is great. Another one that is there is down, he uses this word quite often. In the Hebrew, it's the word. It means to go down. To go down. So yet we see God calls him to go east. He decides to go west. If you have a Bible. It's in Jonah one, verse three, it says Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to TAs.
He went down to Japer, right? And then in verse, five at the end there, it says, and Jonah had gone below the deck where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep. So he is just going down, down, down, down. So as you move away from God, you're moving morally down. You're becoming numb to God as well. And this is something that we actually see in the Book of Romans, in the book of Romans one verse one.
I know this is a story about Jonah, but I think that this passage actually describes really well what's going on here? It's one of the most fascinating sections in the Bible for me. Romans one verse one. 'cause, it speaks about judgment here, right?
It says, for the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. This is verse 18 of Romans one, verse one. The wrath of God has revealed from heaven against all on godliness and the wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. This is exactly what Jonah is doing.
He's suppressing the truth of God by his own wickedness. And it says, since what may be known about God has plain to them because God has made it plain to them for since the creation of the world, God is invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen so. Not only can he see it through the Book of Nature, he's a prophet of God.
So he's had revelation from God. He's supposed to also know through divine revelation, and he doesn't understand it. Right? Hmm.
You wrote in your article or something I think kind of captures this. You said Jonah could not stomach the thought of mercy reaching these people.
So it's like that that theory hasn't translated to his mind.
Yeah. And, and I think that's how we are as Christians sometimes are like, we want God's grace for us. Right. We wanna be saved. We wanna experience the love, but we don't really like it when it's for somebody that we don't like.
We've build God into our image. So he likes what I like. He hates what I hate. You know? My enemies is his enemies. My friends are his friends. And so when we come to political opponents or theological opponents or whatever, and they don't agree 100% with us, then we think, yeah, God must be against them.
It's like the true testing of true forgiveness or it's a good measure of your heart. 'cause I think we've gotten quite good at forgiving people, but it's very hard to like, want the best for people who have wronged us, but also people who we disagree with.
We kind of want color or just justice to play out in their lives.
Yeah, that's a very good point. And I think that even that we've, we've missed what the scripture says. The prayer that Jesus tells us to pray.
The disciples pray, always says, you know, that we should forgive as we are forgiven. And that's what you're saying. Say we, we forgive people. But Jesus also says in Corinthians or Paul says in Corinthians, that we have been giving the ministry of reconciliation. So there's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.
If you do something to me that upsets me or hurts me. I don't need you to say sorry to me to forgive you. I can forgive you, right? Forgiveness is a one person thing. I can forgive. I can let go. Forgiveness literally means to just let go, right? But to reconcile needs two people. So then I can, I need to go to you and be like, Hey, how do we reconcile?
That's Matthew 18 to reconcile. Now we can all forgive. We. Can't always reconcile because you need two, two groups to do that, right? You need both parties to come to the table and say, how do we actually reconcile? I, I say, sorry, you say sorry. You work to it together. But we have not been, just been given the gift of forgiveness.
We've also been given the gift of reconciliation. And, yeah, it seems like he doesn't wanna forgive or reconcile. He just wants God to punish them and smack them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Get them out of there. Yeah. So he goes down, down, down, down, down. And one of the ironies of of Jonah, one is that these pagan sailors, they act more pious than Jonah does.
Mm. Because when there's a massive storm, he's sleeping. Meaning, you know, I dunno how you sleep in it, but somehow he sleeps in it. But they are more pious than him because they, they cry out to God, they worship God and he's still running. Right? And at the end of that he's chucked into the water and God's sends a huge fish to swallow him.
He goes into the belly and then starts to pray. And even when you look at that prayer in Jonah, chapter two, I dunno if you've ever looked at it, but it's a funny prayer because it seems very pious, seems very Christian, you know? It seems very spiritual. It seems like he's repented. He's learned about his follies.
He's learned what he, you know, he says, in my distress, I called to the Lord. I don't know if he called in his distress to the Lord. He was sleeping and then he was chucked into the water, you know? And he answered me. From the deep in the realm of the dead. I called for my help and you listen to my Christ.
So he knows of God's compassion. Not only as a prophet knowing the theology, but experientially. Now he's experienced god. This is a rebellious person that is going the opposite direction and God is compassionate. You would imagine it'd be like, man. This is how God feels about the Ninevites. This is how God feels about these rebellious people.
Right. You hold me to the depths of the, into the depths, into the very heart of the sea. Once again, that idea of going down, down, down, and still he doesn't get it.
Mm. Yeah. You mentioned it's not really a prayer of confession or Thanksgiving. He's not really admitting his sin. He's kind of like playing the victim in it a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like he, he tries to manipulate God with his pious words. You know?
Mm.
And. We have to ask ourselves as Christians, do we do the same thing sometimes, you know, pray these pious prayers, but our hearts are not in alignment with God's will or word.
Yeah.
I wonder if Jonah was aware of his heart or if he's just genuinely like feeling really thrown from himself and doesn't have that kind of like self-awareness. How do we recognize when our own faith has kind of become like that Jonah where it's more of trying to fool God or trying to give off this expression to God when our hearts are actually really wrong.
Yeah, that's a good question. That's the kind of awareness, isn't it? Um, that is there. I have a thing here in my book where I wrote that one of the, one of the biggest things of not obeying God. This kind of spiritual apathy, or this contrast between spiritual sleepness, and wakefulness is this idea that he was disobedient and constantly.
It's not just one act of disobedience, it's a constant act of disobedience. Every step going westward towards taris is a act of defiance and disobedience. Every step going down, down, down. Numbs him. Sin is not just doing something wrong. Sin as a perverse, effect on us that it actually decrees us and numbs us.
You right? There's a saying that people use often in terms of God's grace. You know, as god's, grace or truth shines on us. It's like the sun shining. And the same sun that melts butter hardens clay. Right. So sometimes God reveals truth to us, but how we respond to that can either harden us or it can soften us.
And yet we see he hardens himself all the way. And I think that that hardening of your heart is a sort of almost blissful ignorance. We are happy in us and we are happy in our ignorance 'cause we dunno any better. Right? Now, I must also say that Jonah was a bit of questionable figure before this because he's, this is not the first time in the Bible that he's actually mentioned.
He's mentioned in two Kings. 1425 where he actually sides with a pagan king, with a bad king, an evil king, and prophesies, you know, prosperity basically on him. So he's not a good prophet. And this to me creates a bit of a cognitive dissonance because it seems that God still uses him.
He's a prophet that keeps on rebelling, but God still chooses him and still uses him. You know what I mean? Oftentimes in my life, I think, well, if you're not for God, you know, we've been, you know, we are like this instrument that God uses. And if, if God can't use you, throws you away. But it seems like, yeah, God is like this guy keeps on messing up, but I still want to use him 'cause through this work mm-hmm.
They will be kind of a, a, a repentant thing that comes out of that. Right.
So he praise this prayer. And you see this kind of, as I said, this late motif, this leading a words this down, down, down, down.
So he says, you hold me to the depths of the sea, into the very heart of this. Seas, very deep down engulfing waters threaten me. The deep around me, the roots of the mountains, I sat san down. But then there's this move upwards. And so you see this movement of him physically going down, down, down, down.
But it also echoes the spiritual downward trend. But then you see, and that's what Romans 12, one talks about this as we pursue our sin, God gives us over to our sins, and that leads us to become more numb and kind of move away. And we become more perverse, we become more, twisted.
We become, you know, darkened in our minds as Roman says. But then, yeah. It's interesting enough, in Jonah and in Romans, it gives the same idea because here in Jonah it says, but you, oh Lord, my God brought my life up from the pit mo there's a movement upwards, right? So he chooses down, down, down by.
By God's grace, he's moved out of the pit.
In
Romans, we see the same thing . God gives us over to us, sins over to us, sins over to us sins. Three times in the passage in Romans one, it is the idea that God gives us over. We choose sin and God says, if this is what you choose, I will give this to you.
I'll give you over because of freedom of choice, you will have it. And that perverts us and makes us darker. In Romans eight it says that Jesus was given up for us.
And
so once again, as a way of getting out there and then, you know, he's vomited out. So this is like an upward trend, a very disgusting one.
But he's moved up, out onto dry land. And now we see, okay, this is now maybe the turn of the tide, you know, he is turn of the story.
This is one of the things that I love about Jonah because later on, he actually quotes God, from the Penta. He quotes a passage that God says, this is who I am.
I'm compassionate and slow to anger, and all of these things. He actually uses that as an accusation against God. But God uses that in saying, no, no, no, I was gonna overthrow them. The word overthrow can also mean to overturn or to turn around. So in chapter three, he actually goes, a second time Lord comes to him again and says, go to that great city of Nineveh.
He goes there. Now, here it says of chapter three, Jonah obeyed the word. He's a reluctant obedience. It's not like a willful Lord, you've just saved me. I love you so much. I'm gonna give my whole life to you. He's still very reluctant, which shows you the hardness of heart, but God's kind of persistence and love and grace, right?
So he goes to another, a very large city. Once again, speaking about that Latif of huge. It took it three days to go throughout. Now, once again, a lot of people are saying, well, I don't think it was three days because three days to walk, three days through a city. I can't remember the measurements now, but it would've been so massive to walk for three days through a city.
There was no city in the known world at that time that was that big. He's using hyperbolic language to show how big this city is, how big their sin is, how you know, it's this massive, massive thing. And then it says, Jonah began going to a day's journey into the city. So he is not even going through the whole city, right?
If it takes three days, he's doing like a third of it and he preaches. In the Hebrew, it's five words, 40 more days and the never will be overthrown. Which is a crazy, as a preacher myself, I wish I had the success that he had like five minutes, five word sermons and the whole place gets converted. Right?
He doesn't mention mercy, he doesn't mention sin, he doesn't mention repentance. It just says none will be the over destroyed in 40 days. And then he, that's done. No,
that compelling. Hey,
he doesn't have a hook, he doesn't have a, you know, powerful body. He doesn't have a call to action.
He has none of those things.
Yeah.
But yet they believed. So here's the irony again, chapter one, the pagan sailors are more pious than Jonah is in chapter three, the worst like human beings on the face of the planet for these Israelites, whether the Assyrians and they are more pious to listen to a prophet, a rebellious prophet who preaches the worst sermon.
They are more pious to listen to God's spirit in that moment than even the Israeli have been in their history. Right? Yeah, because once again, he goes to this extent where he says, the king comes down, rises from his throne, puts on his takes off his royal robes, covers himself, sackcloth and ashes.
Proclaims an issue to Nineveh by decree of the king and his nobles. Do not let people or animals or hers or flocks, taste anything. I don't even know how you do that. How do you get animals too fast? But he gets them too fast. Right?
You mentioned that the phrase 40 days in Ville, we overturned that that word overturned can have multiple meanings.
Yeah. Yeah. So overturned. Yeah, it can mean destroyed. Yeah. Or can mean to turn around like repentance almost like they, they repent. So Jonah's thinking 40 days and they will be destroyed. They are such a hindrance, such a, like evil people. He cannot see past this sin. Mm-hmm. When he sees overturned, he means destroyed. When God sees overturned, he means redeemed.
Yeah. Crazy,
like turning it around. And that's what they do. They do overturn their city what they used to do. Now they have this massive turning around overturning the pagan, sinful ways to following Jesus.
That's kind of the powerful thing, of the story. And if, if that's where the story ended, it would've been a good story. We've like, man, praise the Lord. Right?
But how does Jenna respond? He's not ecstatic about this, is he?
No chapter four, verse one, he says, but Jonah, this seemed so, let, let's end the story in chapter three.
It says, when God saw what they did and how they turned from the evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction that he had threatened, right? And then Jonah's not happy. So he says in verse one, he but to Jonah, this seemed very wrong. Like God's grace is very wrong. You know, I repented or I preached, I repented, and God didn't do what he was said he was gonna do.
This is wrong for him. This is at the core of what's going on with him. He doesn't understand God's grace, right? He only understands god's vengeful judgment, or what he thinks is God's eventual judgment. And so he became very angry. He prayed to the Lord. Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home.
This is what I try to forestall by fleeing to Ashish. I knew it. Now he's quoting God. He's actually using the words of God in Exodus, in quoting it back to God, he says, I knew that you were gracious and compassionate. God, slow to anger the word, slow to anger is an interesting one for me.
Slow to anger is the word in the Hebrew is, uh, of a long nose. So the idea is like God can take a long breath. He doesn't react very quickly, right? He, huh. He can take a long breath in. He's very slow to just react. He doesn't react. He acts but doesn't react in anger. Right. And the word compassion there is the word of like it's, it's something that is visceral, like this deep compassion that he has.
It's a covenantal compassion that God has with these people and with humanity. And he says in abounding, in love a God who relents from sending calamity, he's basically saying. The God that everybody worships is not the God that is at play yet. The God that everybody worships is a God that reacts very quickly.
That needs to be appeased. You know, he wants to destroy if they've upset him, but this God is looking for every reason to. To be graceful and bring them in to save them. Right? And he's upset about that, essentially. Yeah. We have a prophet of Yahweh that doesn't want to be, that doesn't wanna worship Yahweh, he wants to worship another God he wants to, or not worship another God, but in his mind, Yahweh is like every other God, right?
Mm-hmm. Um,
which again, you know, it's just thinking back on like, how do we apply this to our lives as Christians today? Do we image our God according to the cultural images that they have of God, or do we let scripture define to us what is God? Hmm. You know, we started this, analogy or this conversation with the story of apartheid and I mentioned the Dutch Reform Church was a vehicle of apartheid depression.
When I was growing up, the state church was the Dutch Reform Church. So if you were apartheid era regime, the National Party, that was the party, the vehicle that they filtered through a lot of the thinking was actually through the Dutch Reform Church and the theology went like this, God.
And this is going back to the beginning of South African history actually, and specifically the Afrikaans white, people and the story in a very brief nutshell was essentially guarded. They had fled Catholic persecution from Europe. And so they'd gotten to South Africa and they, now believe that God had given them this land as their promised land.
So the story of Israel was their story. My forefathers thought that South Africa was their promised land, and so they had this thing called Falcon father lump for the nation and for the land that the father had given us. And so for them, the theology was, Hey, this is our land.
This is what God had given us. And so anybody that is not us, this is not their land. Right? And so this kind of nationalistic, ideology was filtered through their theology. We see very similar things happening today in America. This nationalism filtered through, evangelical Christianity.
And so now there's this us versus then this. This fragmentation of, you know, and once again, we must ask ourselves in apartheid South Africa, in, certain areas in the world today, is the God that they are saying that the Christians are worshiping? Is that the biblical God? Is that the God of the Bible?
Right? And that's what Jonah's coming up against. His idea of God was not the biblical idea of God. In one sense he was like, I kind of knew he was gonna do this, but I was hoping he wasn't going to. You know what I mean? Which is, which is quite, quite ironic.
You end by saying that only grace can heal the fractures of this us versus them world, the kind of world that you described growing up in South Africa that obviously we still see play out today, everywhere.
And as we go on, we won't go too much into the very last part, but we do see Jonah for once in this story happy. And it's when he gets a little bit of shade, it's not when the people are kicking him. Grace, but what does it look like in our world to kind of live out that grace? Is that kind of a thing that we just ask God for and we receive or is it like a learning self-awareness? Gaining self-awareness? Practically speaking, how do we become people like that?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. When you look at the story of Jonah, I think that firstly being in scripture, right? So the story of Jonah isn't written for Jonah, it's written for us, right?
But the story ends off, like you say, he gets a bit of Gracie, the little plant comes, gives in shade, and God sends a worm and now he's upset with this. He. You know, why did God do this? And he's saying, you are more upset with this little plant that died than a whole nation of, 120,000 people, that are being going to be destroyed.
Like your priorities are outta whack. What you feel important, what you and the story is essentially written so that we would reflect on and be like, wow, what do I think is important? Do I love enough? Do I care enough? Or am I just so self-centered that I only care about my stuff? Right? So I think the first thing is one, we need to realize that the only way that we can reach that level of awareness.
Because that's what it is, is awareness is through God's spirit, right? And God's spirit reveals that through us, firstly through scripture. Secondly, through his voice that speaks to us. And we can measure whether that voice is truly the voice by measuring it to scripture. So he'll speak to us, to our mind, to our hearts, and then we measure that.
Is that the message of scripture? And then I think the thing is through being communion with God, like we are only transformed and changed when we are in the presence of him. And he changes our hearts and our minds, right? Then if we experience that grace for ourselves, because don't experience that grace, the grace that saved him out of the fish is the same grace that saved the Ninevites.
And so we need to experience that grace first and then let that grace flow through us. In the New Testament. In First John chapter four, it describes who God is. It says God is love. And it says that we have experienced God's love. And then it says that God's love is complete in us when we love other people.
That word complete in one chapter four is the word te us, which means goal. And so what John is trying to say is that the goal of God's love, the goal of God's grace, the goal of. All the blessings that God gives to us is not merely so that we can bask in it, but so that we can flow through us for the blessings of the nations.
That is essentially what God told Abraham. The nation of Israel is the nation that God had promised Abraham and God says to Abraham, I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to the nations. And so the whole point is. Be a blessing as you are blessed. And so how do we get that awareness?
How do we get that grace? I think it is by firstly, communing with God, abiding in God, being in prayer, being in scripture, but not just being into the theology, but also then living that out. How has God shown me grace? And how can I show grace to other people? How has God shown me forgiveness? How has God shown me reconciliation?
So that reflection. Is quite important. And then actually practically living it out to other people, not just sitting in pews and being like, man, God's grace is so good, but then we don't like other people. Right? Or we don't love other people. We don't have to like everybody necessarily to love them. You know, there's some people that I don't like, you know, but God gives you supernatural power to love them. And by loving them, you start appreciating them. You know, it's kind of a transformative thing that happens.
Hmm. Yeah. I love that. Be a blessing as you're blessed. Um, I know, after you wrote this article, you said to me, Jonah has become one of my favorite stories in the Bible, but what did you learn about it or what did you learn about God that you hadn't previously known?
Yeah, that's a good question.
The one thing is it's probably God's sense of humor. It's not sad to think that, you know, people might die. And I don't think God is being tri full here when he is saying, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna kill these people.
And then I think this is serious business. But somehow, you know, the way that he even inspired this story with the humor and the satire and the irony, I think shows like, man, God, God has a bit of a sense of humor and at the same time can also be serious. And, and, and so you see that tension of God also see God's grace and God's compassion goes far beyond what I even sometimes think, right? We all have individuals or situations where we're like, ah, I don't know about this. Like, people on a different theological spectrum, people on a different political spectrum, people that are just so different.
So other than you that I sometimes think, yeah, I don't know, man, they're just wrong. You know? Often we get into these theological conversations about stuff, or we get into political conversations and there's certain people that. They're so dead wrong that it's not just my opinion that they're wrong. Like I can actually prove from the Bible where they are morally going against God's word. And then I think sometimes, oh, that gives me license to be like, God is not worth it. But, you know, but it's like, man, God's love for them is as much as God's love is towards me. He died for them as much as he died for everybody.
And it seems a bit cliche sometimes to say, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know this. But somehow God is not only saying, this is the kind of love that I have towards them. This is the kind of love that I want you to have towards them. And, that is something that I think that God shown me is that God wants to cultivate that kind of love in me for people that I don't like or for people that I disagree with or for people that believe and think and act in ways that just baffles my mind that I just, I cannot see why they do that. But still, there's something, we have confused with love with, like, we have confused love with feeling, and he's saying love is way beyond that. Um,
and
then another thing that I think that I've learned is the idea that God sometimes uses people, that we would not use.
God uses a prophet here, and I don't think any person in their right mind would be like, who's, who would be the best prophet to send Yeah. To We like, yeah, Jonna seems like a good guy. We're like, no, this guy's, this guy's a terrible guy to send. He's already shown that he is not for Israel, right? He is not a good prophet, but God somehow chooses him.
And so God chooses who he chooses and he, he loves who he loves and his grace and compassion extends far beyond what I sometimes extended to.
Awesome. Well, thank you, Quentin, for your well-written words and your insightful thoughts. I've certainly learned a lot about Jonah through Yeah.
Your story. For anyone who wants to read the article, you can find it on the record website or in the Living Covenant book. It is called Jonah The Prophet who Hated God's Mercy. So thanks again, Quentin. It's great to have you on.
Thank you. Thank you very much.