Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, March 16, 2025

Jonah and The Worm

Today, Pastor Michael is back in Jonah and NOT talking about Jonah and the whale.  Today’s story is the highly anticipated, the much heralded, the AMAZING story of Jonah and the WORM!

We pick up the story at Nineveh, where Jonah has warned them to turn from their evil ways.  Which they did! And God spared them for doing so!

But, Jonah isn’t happy about that, one bit!  In essence, Jonah is angry because God was being Himself, behaving consistently.  Jonah was angry because God didn’t do things Jonah’s way.  At this point, Jonah is literally ready to die. 

So, in His infinite compassion, the Lord even made a plant to cover Jonah’s head to shield him from the sun.  Even then Jonah was still angry so the Lord had a worm eat the plant, and Jonah was even madder.  The Lord at this point, told Jonah, (CSB) “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. 11 So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals? ”

God wasn’t looking for a way to destroy Nineveh, he was looking for a way to SAVE it!

The heart of our message is “God is God and I am NOT!”

(CSB Bible Notes) 4:1-2 The unexpected and overwhelming success of Jonah’s preaching resulted in Nineveh’s escape from calamity. However, this brought emotional calamity to the angry and self-pitying prophet, who wished he were dead. Jonah had initially fled from preaching to Nineveh because he feared that God, being excessively gracious and compassionate (see Ex 34:6-7), would find some lame excuse to forgive these pagan, warlike Gentiles. Now his fears had come true.

Today’s verses can be found in Jonah 4: 1-11.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.