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September 30, 2026 | This episode explores the story of Jonah to address the question of loving 'unlovable' neighbors, emphasizing God's grace, mercy, and love that extends even to the wicked city of Nineveh. It challenges listeners to reflect on their response to God's call and to emulate His compassion for others despite personal reluctance or bitterness.
Bellevue Baptist Church Middle School Ministry
Amen. Man, the bridge in that song, I'm lifting both of my hands because you gave me chance after chance. Isn't that beautiful that the Lord gives us so much grace and so much mercy? Tonight, we're gonna be looking at a little bit of that. We're gonna look at the love and the grace and the mercy of God. And so over the last few weeks, we have been taking a look at what it means to be a good neighbor, what it means to love our neighbor the way that Jesus would have us to love our neighbor, not really what we feel about it or what we think about it, but what the Bible has to say about what it means to be a good neighbor. And so tonight, we are actually gonna be taking a look at the story of Jonah. So if you have a Bible, hold it up, let me see them. Come on, I love it. You had it up before I even said it. That's awesome. Now, put it back in your lap and open up to the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah is in the Old Testament right after Obadiah. Jonah was a prophet. And I'm sure most of us know a little bit of the story of Jonah because there's not a whole lot of other people that we know that have been swallowed by a fish and lived there for three days. But tonight we're gonna be taking a look at the story of Jonah. And when we talk about the story of Jonah in the church, usually what we talk about and what we focus on is the disobedience of Jonah, right? God calls him to go to the city of Nineveh and he says, that's cool, I'm not doing that. And he runs away. And so we talk about, don't run away from the call of God. Don't run away from the presence of the Lord. And those things are true about the book of Jonah. But I want you to notice something about Jonah's story tonight that maybe you haven't noticed before. I want you to notice the motivation behind why Jonah chooses to run away from the presence of the Lord. And so tonight we're gonna be taking a look at the question, what if my neighbor is unlovable? What if I believe that my neighbor is unlovable? What if I believe they're too far gone? What if I believe they're too mean, they're too bad, they're too evil, nobody could love them, God could not. There's no way. What do we do if that is how we feel about our neighbor? And so we're gonna start in chapter one, verse one, we're gonna work through the whole book tonight and we're gonna start in verse one. Verse one says, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and call out against it for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah, that's not a good thing. When the Lord says to do something, it says, but that's not good. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. And so when the word of the Lord came to Jonah, God came to him and said, go to Nineveh and tell them to turn from their wicked ways. The wicked things that these people have been doing have come up before me. And it says that Nineveh is a great city. That is referring to that it is a big city. Let me tell you, Nineveh was not the kind of city that you would want to go to normally, right? If there was a top 10 list of like the most wicked cities in the world in Jonah's time, Nineveh would be right up at the top. Nineveh was large, but it was known for the wicked things, the evil, terrible things, the sinful things that the people there did. They were violent and they were cruel. They were not nice to people who came in from outside. It was a very wicked place and God saw their wickedness and he was asking Jonah to go and to speak against the way that they were living. And so Jonah, instead of getting up and obeying the Lord, he turns and goes the other direction. It says that he flees from the presence of God, which is so sad. He flees from the presence of God and he goes down to a city called Joppa and he pays for a ticket and he hops on this boat that's headed for Tarshish. And geographically at the time, Tarshish was just about as far away from Nineveh as you could go. You know, it'd be like God telling me that I needed to go to New York City, so I bought a plane ticket to LA. That is what Jonah is doing. He is trying to go as far away from Nineveh as possible because he doesn't want to go through with what God has asked him to do. So Jonah went his own way, he runs away from God's plan, he runs away from Nineveh and he pays these sailors and he steps down into the boat bound for Tarshish. And so God in his great love and his incredible grace doesn't let Jonah run for long. You know, a good dad isn't gonna let his son or daughter just go and live in disobedience. He's gonna discipline them. He's gonna tell them, hey, you are not doing the right thing. A coach who loves his player isn't gonna let him play the game wrong, right? And so God doesn't let Jonah stay in his disobedience and he very quickly puts an obstacle in his way. And so God calls on the wind and there's a big storm that brews up and it's beating against the ship and it's tossing and turning. The word that it uses here is it's a tempest. It's a big storm. And the sailors, it says that they were afraid that the ship was gonna break apart. So the storm that God has sent because of Jonah's disobedience is so violent that these sailors are worried that the ship's gonna fall apart. And so they're starting to weigh their options. They're like, we gotta do something. So they go and they start throwing the cargo over the side of the ship. That's their livelihood, but they're like, we either get paid or we don't make it out of this storm. So they throw the cargo over the side and unfortunately, even that is not enough. So they go looking for Jonah. And guess where Jonah is. He is in the bottom of the boat, fast asleep. He's in the bottom of the boat, fast asleep. He's running from God. He knows he's disobedient. This storm blows up and he is in the boat asleep. And so the captain of the ship, he goes down to him and he says, dude, we are gonna sink. I need you to wake up and I need you to call out to your God because if we don't, I don't know what's gonna happen. Now, this captain, he didn't believe in the God that Jonah believed in. He might've believed in multiple gods. He believed that they had done some kind of evil. Somebody on board had done something to anger the gods and he was asking Jonah to just call out to his because he didn't know what else to do. And so they come up on deck and they decide that they're gonna cast a lot to see who's guilty, right? Would y'all ever do that? It's kind of a crazy way to decide who's guilty. But they go up on deck and they cast lots to see whose fault it is that the gods are angry at them, right? And so they cast a lot and guess who it falls to? Jonah. So Jonah, they know that Jonah is the one who's brought this on them. And Jonah already knows what he's done. Jonah knows that this is God angry at him for disobeying him, for running. And so they ask him, where are you from? Why is this happening right now? And he tells them that he is a Hebrew who fears God, the creator of the sea and land, and that he's running from what God had told him to do. And so these sailors, they're like, dude, what are you doing? You're telling me that you love and you serve the God who made the sea and you're on a boat and you made him mad. What are you doing? They don't even believe in God and they are like, Jonah, what are you doing, man? You've done something, you've really messed up this time. And so they asked Jonah, they're like, what do we do then? How do we fix this? What do we have to do to get the storm to calm down? And Jonah tells them, he said, I know this is my fault. God is angry with me. He said, throw me overboard. Throw me overboard and everything will be fine. And the sailors, they're not really fond of that idea. They're like, we don't typically throw our passengers overboard. So we're gonna try and just row back to land instead. So they try and they try and they try to row back to land and they realize it's hopeless, that there's nothing that they can do. The storm just gets even more, the word that it uses is tempestuous. It gets even more wild and the wind blows even harder. The waves are even bigger and they cannot row back to land. And so they go to what they see as their last resort. And so these sailors who did.
not believe in God, they begin to call out to the Lord. They call out to God and they ask for mercy. They ask that God would spare them from the storm. And finally, they throw Jonah overboard. And you'll never guess what happens right when he gets thrown overboard. Yeah, just like Jonah said, as soon as he is thrown over the edge of the boat into the ocean, it all calms down and it's completely quiet. Can you imagine being these sailors? Like you don't even believe in the God that this man claims to follow. And he says, hey, if you throw me overboard, if you give me over to the punishment that I deserve, then the storm will calm down and they throw him overboard and the storm immediately stops. Can you imagine being there? And so after they see Jonah leave the boat, he's down in the water, after the storm calms down, they see this incredible miracle that the storm immediately stopped and they put their faith in God. They fear the Lord, it says, and they offer sacrifices to him and they worship him. And these pagan sailors turn from their original beliefs, from their gods, and they believe in the one true God. While Jonah, who is the prophet of God, the one who is called to serve him, he continues in disobedience. So after being thrown into the sea, the Lord, excuse me, puts Jonah in a little bit of a timeout. And y'all know, a huge fish comes and swallows Jonah. And there he stays for three days and three nights. And so while Jonah is in the belly of the fish, he finally, at his darkest moment, at the moment when he is facing the consequences for his sin and for his actions, he finally calls out to God for the first time since he started running away. And so chapter two, verse one says this, "'Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, "'from the belly of the fish, saying, "'I called out to the Lord out of my distress, "'and he answered me. "'Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, "'and you heard my voice, "'for you cast me into the deep, "'into the heart of the seas, "'and the flood surrounded me. "'All your waves and your billows passed over me. "'Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, "'yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. "'The waters closed in over me to take my life. "'The deep surrounded me. "'Weeds were wrapped about my head "'at the roots of the mountains. "'I went down to the land "'whose bars closed upon me forever. "'Yet you brought up my life from the pit, "'O Lord, my God. "'When my life was fainting away, "'I remembered the Lord, "'and my prayer came to you, "'into your holy temple. "'Those who pay regard to vain idols "'forsake their hope of steadfast love. "'But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, "'will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. "'Salvation belongs to the Lord.' "'And the Lord spoke to the fish, "'and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.'" And so the words that Jonah uses in this prayer, you see that he is distraught. He is broken. He is in pain over what he has done. He's, I mean, I don't know how I would feel if I was in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean. I'd imagine it's not very good. He talks about the water coming over him. He talks about it being dark. He talks about there being weeds around his head, probably seaweed wrapped around his head in the belly of a fish. It probably smelled bad. And so he calls out to God in the midst of such a dark moment. And the thing that he says is, you heard me. This isn't in my notes, but I wanna tell you, if you are in a dark moment, whatever it is, even in the midst of disobedience and in the midst of being far from God, he will hear your prayers if you call out to him. Jonah was at the worst part of his career. He was so disobedient. He was so far from God. And he calls out to the Lord and he hears him. And so after his time in time out, it seems like he's been humbled. It seems like his heart has changed a little bit and it looks like he's ready to obey God. And so God speaks to the fish and the fish obeys God for a second time. And he vomits Jonah out onto the dry land. And so now God comes to Jonah again. And it says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. And he tells him the same thing. He says, arise and go to Nineveh to deliver the message that God wants him to deliver. And so up to this point in the story, I just wanna point this out cause I think it's so interesting. Up to this point in the story, the wind has obeyed God. The waves have obeyed God. Pagan sailors have turned from their wicked ways and they have obeyed God. A fish has obeyed God twice, but Jonah has walked in nothing but disobedience. And so now that he is out on the dry land, he has been broken and he's been in the belly of a fish for days. Jonah is now at the spot where he is ready to obey God. And so the word of the Lord comes to him. God says, arise, go to Nineveh. And Jonah goes finally to the city. And so Jonah walks through the city and he tells people, tells the people of Nineveh what God had sent him to say. And so in chapter three, verse four, this is what it says. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So he went and he did what God told him to do. He went to Nineveh and he told them that there was going to be destruction if they didn't change their ways. And what's interesting about this is that we find out in this verse and the verse before it, that even though Jonah finally obeyed God, he still did it with a little bit of reluctance. So look at this. In verse three, it tells us that Nineveh was a really big city and that it was a three days journey in breadth. So what that means is from one side of the city to the other side of the city, it would take three days to go all the way across. Now in verse four, do y'all remember how far Jonah went? He went one day's journey. Is that even halfway into the city? No. He only went a day's journey into the city, going and telling people about what God had told him to say. And so he didn't even make it to the center of the city. He did go to Nineveh. He did tell them of the disaster that was coming because of their wickedness, but he still did it with a little bit of reluctance. And so I want you to think about when your parents tell you to put your clean clothes away. You guys do it with a super cheery attitude every time. Hey, hey, thank you for being honest. I know when I was little and my mom told me to put my clothes away, I would do a couple of these things. I would get my clean clothes and instead of like folding my T-shirts up real nice, I would just kind of like grab them out of the basket, throw them in the drawer and slam it shut. T-shirt sticking out a little bit. I wouldn't even match my socks. I would just kind of throw them in the bucket, not caring. You know, with pants that need to be hung up, I would just kind of take them out, chuck them into the closet, close the door. If my mom asked me to put my clean clothes away, am I doing that well? No, I'm not. Folding my T-shirts nicely, putting my clothes away in the closet hung up, matching all my socks. That is true obedience. And that's obedience without any reluctance. Jonah technically obeyed God. He did go and do what he said, but he did it with a bad attitude. And he did it reluctantly. And so despite Jonah's reluctance, despite him being so opposed to obedience to God and obedience to being the mouthpiece of God to the people of Nineveh, they hear his words. They hear the warning from God and they turn and they believe in God. The King of Nineveh hears word that Jonah has been going around and telling people that the city is gonna be overthrown if they don't turn from their wickedness. And this is what he says. He gives a decree to all of Nineveh. And this is what it says. Chapter three, verse seven. And he, the King, issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh. By the decree of the King and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. And who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. And when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way,
God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them and he did not do it. God had mercy on the people of Nineveh because they turned from their sin and they turned towards God. And now when I hear that, I'm drawn just to the incredible grace and mercy of God. Like I said, the people of Nineveh, they were far from God. They were known to be evil, wicked, angry, violent people. But when they heard that if they would turn from their wicked ways and they would turn to God that they would be forgiven, they did it so willingly and so quickly. God showed his grace and mercy towards them and I am just, I'm so blown away by that and it fills me with joy that the people of Nineveh turned from their sin, they turned to God and they experienced his love. But Jonah was not happy about this. Jonah was not happy that God relented from destroying Nineveh and he explains right here why he ran from God in the first place. Let's look at chapter four, starting in verse one. Now, as a believer in Jesus, is that not such a crazy thing to be mad about? I mean, he gives such an incredible description of who God is. He says God is gracious and merciful. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Is that not an incredible thing? Are those not great things? Is that not great news to hear about God? But that is the reason that he's angry. He says that that is the reason that I fled from your presence in the first place because I knew that you were gracious and merciful, that you were slow to anger, that you were abounding in steadfast love and that you would relent from disaster. Jonah did not want God to forgive the people of Nineveh. He says, that is why I ran. He said, I ran because I knew that God would forgive the people of Nineveh if they repented and turned from their sin. He knew that God would not destroy them if they turned from their wickedness and turned to God. Jonah believed that the people of Nineveh did not deserve the grace and mercy of God. God was calling Jonah to love his neighbor and Jonah believed that his neighbor was unlovable. He did not believe that the people of Nineveh should be allowed to experience the goodness and the grace and the mercy and the love of God. And so Jonah, in his anger, is shaking his fist at God. He ran from the presence of the Lord in the first place because he did not want the people of Nineveh to experience his love. And so for the rest of this chapter, Jonah is just angry at God. He's just arms crossed, pouting, angry at God. And so he knows that God is no longer going to destroy the city of Nineveh. But here's what he does. He goes out to the edge of the city and he sets up a booth. He sets up a spot for him to sit and he sits and he looks out at the city waiting for God to destroy the city. He's so mad and he's excuse me, he's so frustrated with the fact that God is showing grace and mercy to them that he's still convinced that God is going to destroy the city because he believes that's the right thing to do. And so he goes and he sits in the scorching sun waiting for the destruction of Nineveh. And even in the midst of his anger and in the midst of his frustration and in the midst of him shaking his fist at God, God still shows Jonah grace and mercy. So verse six in chapter four says this, now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head, catch this, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Even in Jonah's unjustified anger, God shows great compassion for Jonah. God shows him compassion by giving him comfort and shade from the scorching heat that he was sitting under. But the thing is, God wants to teach Jonah a lesson. It's like I said before, God is a loving father. He's a good coach who's not going to let him play the game wrong. And so he wants to teach him about the love and the mercy of God that God is showing to the people of Nineveh. He wants to show Jonah really what's wrong with his heart. And so he sends a little worm and a little worm goes and eats the bottom of the plant and it kills the plant. And then God sends a wind to dry up the plant and Jonah no longer has shade. And it says that that infuriated Jonah. He was so mad that he's now back in the scorching heat and he no longer has a plant to cover him and to give him the shade. And so did Jonah deserve to be comforted by the shade in the first place? No. Did he do any work to bring the plant up to grow it? No. God did that. God showed compassion on Jonah. God grew the plant. God gave him shade and he was angry that it was gone. God was caring for Jonah and he wanted to save him from his own self-inflicted discomfort. And so once again, Jonah cries out to God in his anger. In verse nine, God gives him a response. But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? Is it right for you to be mad about it? Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And Jonah replies to him and he said, yes, I do do well to be angry, angry enough to die. That's crazy. He's saying he is so angry. I'm so angry I could die. And the Lord said to him, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle. Jonah did not deserve the grace and the mercy of God any more than the people of Nineveh did. He was angry. He was disobedient. He was running away from the Lord. He had the same sickness of sin that the people of Nineveh did. And God was showing him that if it was right for God to show mercy and grace and love to Jonah, it was right for him to show grace and mercy to the people of Nineveh. Jonah had no right to be mad about the plant. And God had mercy on the people of Nineveh. He had compassion for them. And so as I was at the beach this last week studying for this, studying this passage, I was reminded of just the vastness of God's love. I looked out at the ocean and I was reminded that the ocean is so deep that you can't see the bottom. It's so wide that you can't see the other side. But we get to walk along the shore and have the waves wash across our feet. And that's really how God's love is. It's so deep that we cannot see the bottom. It is so wide that we can't see the other side. We can't even really appreciate it for its full scope at one time. You can only see a little part of the ocean at a time. God's love is so great. It is so wide that we can't even understand it fully, but we get to experience a small part of his love. In salvation, we get to see his love for the people of Nineveh. We get to see a small part of his love for how he shows compassion on Jonah, even though he's angry. Like the waves washing over our feet, we get to experience small pieces of the incredible vastness of God's love. Psalm 103, 11 through 17 says this, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. With a love that deep and a love that wide, there is no one beyond the reach of his love.
And so when we ask the question, what if my neighbor is unlovable? What if I believe my neighbor is unlovable? The truth is there is no neighbor that is unlovable by God. There is no one beyond the reach of God's love. There's no one too far gone. There's nobody too wicked. There's nobody too angry. There's nobody too sinful to experience the opportunity to experience God's love. Romans 5, 8 says, "'But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.'" It is in the middle of our most sinful that Christ died for us. It is at our worst that Jesus gave his life so that we could be forgiven of our sins and so that we could be in relationship with God and we could experience his love. There's no one too far. There is no one that cannot turn to God. There is, even when we think somebody is unlovable, they are not beyond the reach of the love of God. Even if you think that you are unlovable, I pray that there's nobody in here that believes they're unlovable. Even if you believe that you are unlovable, God loves you and wants you to turn to him. There is always an opportunity for forgiveness and for grace if we are willing to turn to him. The God who showed grace and mercy to the people of Nineveh is the same God that we worship tonight. He's the same God who asked us to love our neighbor. And so if God shows grace and mercy and love to even the worst of people, we as believers in Christ should live a life that reflects that. I wasn't sure if I was gonna share this or not, but I'll try to go quick. When I was in middle school, I went through a really hard time. I went to a new school. I was going into the seventh grade and there were probably four or five guys that were in my class and they were very unkind to me. They called me names and they made fun of me. Anytime they had an opportunity to put me down, they did. And in the middle of all that, I got to a really bad spot where I was very bitter against them. And I was very frustrated with them. Understandably so, they did some really bad things. But what God taught me in the middle of that is even though they weren't my friends, they weren't people who I was just gonna be buddy-buddy with I still had to love them with the love that God had shown me. God showed me that I had to forgive them. God showed me that I had to let go of the things that they had done to me. I had to be okay with the fact that God loved them too. And God was showing them grace and mercy in the same way that he was showing me grace and mercy. The same sickness of sin that they had, I had. And so I was never good friends with them after that, but I did forgive them. I did forgive them, not because of my strength, but because of what the Lord showed me. And so for you, I don't know what the application is for you tonight. I don't know what your response is. Last week, Morgan said that every time we hear or read God's word, there is some kind of response for each of us. And so I don't know what that is for you. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna spend about two minutes just quietly at your seat. I want you to think and I want you to pray and I want you to ask God what the response is for you tonight. Maybe the response is just to praise him for how great his love is, to give him glory, to thank him for who he is. Thank him for the love that he has shown you. Maybe it's to confess that like me in middle school, you were bitter against somebody in your life. Doesn't mean that they're gonna be your best friend, but you're bitter and you need to show that person the forgiveness that you have been shown by God. Maybe the response is that you kind of relate to the people of Nineveh that you feel like, man, I've been walking far from God. And maybe tonight you need to confess your sins for the first time and you need to turn to God. You need to believe in Jesus. I admit your response may be none of those things, but I wanna give you a minute. I wanna give you about two minutes to sit and to pray and to ask God what your response should be tonight. And in a couple minutes at the end of that time, I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna worship together. So take just about a couple minutes and pray and ask the Lord what you should do with hearing his word tonight. You do that.