1. Old Testament Sunday SchoolThis WeekLesson 33:Sharing the Gospel with the WorldNext Week: Old TestamentLesson 34:I Will Betroth Thee unto Me in RighteousnessDaniel Burgessdaniel.burgess@gmail.com408-813-5671 voice/text 2. God orders: "Go east," Jonah goes due west, asfar as he can.God orders: "Go east," Jonah goes duewest, as far as he can. 3. "mighty tempest in the sea, so that the shipwas like to be broken" [1:4]; Jonah, unfazedas a five-year-old, remains "fast asleep." 4. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that thesea may be calm for us?"--for the sea was growing moretempestuous. And he said to them, "Pick me up andthrow me into the sea; then the sea will become calmfor you. For I know that this great tempest is because ofme." 5. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to return to land, butthey could not, for the sea continued to grow moretempestuous against them. Therefore they cried out tothe Lord and said,"We pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for thisman's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood;for You, O Lord, have done as it pleased You." So theypicked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and thesea ceased fromits raging. 6. God gets into a water fight with Jonah justso He can rescue him.And the means of that rescue?Angelic life preserver?Submarine? Trained porpoise? 7. Nope: thedistressinglyuncomfortable anddisgustingly smelly"belly of the fish"[1:17]. 8. The smiling God of Jonah is closer to us than we'dthought. Divine and human meet in scripture in humor.Being "vomited out" by a great fish [2:10] is for Jonahtrauma tinged with insult -"here's another fine messyou've gotten me into." But for God the vomiting is, likeall of His acts in the book, an act of compassion. 9. For the whale it's gotta be a relief -Jonah may have been"the worst case of indigestion he ever had" (Miller 1)For us, standing precariously between divine love andmortal limitation, that juxtaposition of sublimepossibilities with ridiculous actualities puts us in theplace of lifelike humor.