Click below to download the Cornerstone Connections leader’s guide and student lesson. This week’s resources also include two lesson plans and a discussion starter video which offer different ways of looking at the topic. Each lesson plan includes opening activities, scripture passages, discussion questions, and real-life applications.
Chapter 22, Royalty and Ruin (Prophets and Kings)
In the midst of terror on the high seas and a prophecy of doom and destruction, Jonah experienced the graciousness and compassion of the God he was trying to run from.
Jonah 1:1-4:11
Psalm 100:1-5
Psalm 109:1-26
Psalm 12: 1-8
Psalm 73:1-28
Romans 8:26-30
What comes to mind when you hear the name Jonah? For most people it’s the incredible story of a runaway prophet in the Bible who got swallowed by a whale and stayed inside for three dark days. We may not recall the rest of the story, which includes preaching in Nineveh, the people’s repentance, and the tale of a gourd. But the memorable element for most people is the fish story.
Few people consider the book of Jonah as a prayer manual. But it can be! In fact, each of the four short chapters contains prayers. And each of them is quite different from the others!
Before we delve into the prayers found in Jonah, let’s consider some of the prayers that are common to us. Here are four typical occasions when many followers of God pray:
Note to the teacher: Ask for examples of the kinds of things that are said at these occasions. If you have four people in your Youth Sabbath School, have each person choose one and give an example of what is usually prayed in that situation. You can do this individually or the group can work together. If you have fewer than four in your Youth Sabbath School, ask each person to give one example of each type of prayer. If you have more than four in your group, divide into four groups and have each group come up with an example of one of these four prayers.
All of this can help you understand the book of Jonah as a prayer manual. We’ll take a quick overview of the four chapters of Jonah, and then assign one of the four chapters to the same groupings we formed in the opening activity.
Here’s an overview of prayers in the four chapters of Jonah.
Let’s look at Jonah 1:1-17.
Jonah Flees From the Lord
1The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah doesn’t pray until the second chapter. Let’s look at Jonah 2:1-10.
1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. 2 He said:
“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.
4 I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.
7 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. 8 “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. 9 But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’ ” 10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
(1: “You threw me into the ocean depths”—Actually, Jonah asked the sailors to do that. 2: “Oh LORD, you have driven me from your presence”—Wasn’t it Jonah who tried to run away from God? And wasn’t it God who saved Jonah once Jonah was thrown into the sea? 3: “Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies”—That certainly wasn’t true for the sailors who had prayed to their false gods in chapter 1, and it won’t be true of the pagans in Nineveh in chapter 3.)
Praying the “right words” apparently isn’t nearly as important as praying to a God one knows personally.
Let’s look at Jonah 3:1-10.
1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Let’s look at Jonah 4:1-11.
1 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
A CLOSER LOOK
Note to the teacher: Assign one of the four chapters to each of four different groups. (If your class is small, you will have to double up or overlap.) Your role as teacher is to facilitate the students’ looking more deeply into each of the chapters for keys for prayer in their own lives. Distribute the downloadable handout for use with each chapter. Coach them without taking over. Let this prepare the way for discussion after their Bible search. There is also a teacher’s version of each handout with some answers to the six questions for each chapter in Jonah.
Have your students look at each of the chapters again from a reporter’s perspective. Reporters are supposed to ask the following six questions:
Distribute the appropriate handout to each of the four groups.
You might not have thought about the book of Jonah as a prayer manual, but it provides a rich variety of prayers in radically different settings, by people you wouldn’t normally group together. They say what’s on their mind, and do so in their own way. And God responds.
As you considered each prayer in these four short chapters by asking “Who, what, when, where, why, and how?” you probably noticed the most important point. It’s really the WHO that is the most important. If we wanted to be grammatically correct, we’d say, “whom.” The most important element of prayer is TO WHOM you pray.
To WHOM do you pray? The answer must be God/Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land. Everything else (what you say, when you pray, where you say your prayer, why you pray, and even how you pray) doesn’t matter anywhere near as much. What counts is God—that you pray to Him. God will take it from there!
Most people say they pray, but few people volunteer to pray out loud or in public. This might be due to the personal nature of prayer. Or maybe it has something to do with possibly not knowing the right things to say, especially compared to others who pray either predictably boring prayers or deeply intimate prayers that seem way beyond your capability.
Apply the prayer principles from the book of Jonah to your own life this week. Here are four ideas that could help you do so. Use these or adapt them to your specific situation. Or let them inspire other applications in your life.
Jonah 1:1-4:11
Psalm 23
Psalm 88
Psalm 120:1
Psalm 18:1-6
Bible trivia games ask for specific details such as, “Was Jonah swallowed by a whale or a fish?” Don’t make this the focus for your study with teens. Trivia might be of greater interest to juniors or earliteens, but youth should be moving beyond trivia* to deeper things.
Following is a Relational Bible Study (RBS). Unlike Bible trivia games or Jeopardy-style questions that ask people to fill in the blanks, these questions probe possibilities and depend on the Holy Spirit to communicate to those who engage in the passage from Scripture. The students can do this by themselves or in a small group. Use the opening question to break the ice, and then pray for God’s Spirit to be present. Have them read the book of Jonah out loud—it only takes 5-10 minutes. Note details that people might have missed or forgotten from this familiar story. Then take 3-5 more minutes for each person to respond to the questions on their own. That can prepare the way for small group discussion.
For teens, the more important questions have to do with identifying with the people in the story. Notice that the pagan sailors made vows to Jonah’s God after they extracted the testimony from the sleeping, runaway prophet. One good question to the students would be, “Where is a good place to hide from God?”
Think about what was going through Jonah’s mind as he reeled from one extreme to another in this roller coaster of a story. Ask yourself if this is the way God usually interacts with people on a daily basis, or if this is the exception rather than the norm. What did Jonah do before this story began, or after it ended?
Preachers would love to know what made Jonah’s proclamation so powerful that it led the pagan king and the entire city of the most powerful nation at that time to repent. Was it Jonah’s testimony from his personal experience, or the dire warning of imminent annihilation? Did Jonah still smell (and look) like he had been in the belly of the great fish for three days?
*TRIVIA
For those who get caught up in the trivia, here’s an interesting fact: Jonah 1:17 and 2:1 use the word fish [Hebrew dahg] while Jesus, in Matthew 12:40 KJV, referenced Jonah as being in the belly of the whale [Greek ketos]. Both the Hebrew and the Greek could be translated as “large fish” or “whale,” or even a “leviathan”—a sea monster. Jesus, the Creator, wasn’t confused about what He created nor about what He sent to save and redirect Jonah. Nor did Jesus limit himself to our classification of mammals versus fish as we do, in which the large fish in the ocean don’t have fins or scales so we’re stuck calling them mammals. Both dahg and ketos mean “a large sea creature.” What would you call that in your language today?)
This week’s lesson includes an entire book of the Bible—Jonah. It is only four chapters and takes just two or three pages in most Bibles. It’s not a long passage, but it is a story most young people first heard when you were children.
As you read the book of Jonah, think about what words you would use to describe the God of the Old Testament. He seems to be pronouncing judgment, and then He stops the deserved punishment. Does God change His mind? If so, why is that? Is God merciful? If so, when is that a problem? When does Jonah align with God in this story, and when is he at odds with God?
Riding the Roller Coaster
Describe a good roller coaster experience you’ve had. How about a bad one?
Read Jonah 1:1-4:11.
1. When have you run from God?
2. What would you include in your prayer if you were in the fish’s belly?
3. Which of the following is most like Jonah’s message to the people of Nineveh?
4. When have you prayed a prayer of desperation to God?
5. Why does God change His mind?
6. What was the message of the plant in this story?
7. What does God want you to do that you might not want to do?
8. For whom in your world today do you feel sorry? For whom in your world today do you not feel sorry?
The story of Jonah tells us much about God. This book has some of the most twists and turns of any story in the Bible. It’s an epic roller coaster experience. It includes 72 hours in the belly of a giant fish! It also includes a city known for soldiers beheading people and walking around holding the severed heads by their hair. And Jonah did street preaching there! And the entire city repented! It includes an amazing preacher turning angry and suicidal. We see God warning of judgment and then granting forgiveness. Which do you want for yourself? Which do you want for others? Many memorable experiences occur in these four short chapters. God is a prime mover in all things.
This story may seem too extreme for us to relate to in a concrete way. You might not hop on board a ship to run away from God, but you can run away from God’s call in your life. You might not be thrown into a raging sea, but you could end up in a situation where it seems as if all is lost. You might not preach to an entire city of unbelievers, but you can share your testimony with someone you think might be less than excited to hear it. A gourd may not miraculously provide you with shade while you hope others will be obliterated, but you could hold a grudge against somebody or wish them harm.
Here are four different applications to help you live out the story of Jonah in your own life this week. Be sure to adapt these to your specific situation. These application ideas might spark your own ideas. The important thing is that you be sensitive to God’s impressions, and that you act on them.
By Steve Case
Want some small group discussion starters? Use these prompts to get your group going.
Steve Case draws on his love for Scripture, personal experiences, and training by taking a passage of Scripture and offering questions that draw out the meanings that lead to personal applications of the Bible.
You won’t find pat answers or cookie-cutter spirituality. Instead, you’ll discover new possibilities to engage with familiar and not-so-familiar portions of God’s Word, interact with God and others, and wrestle with how to live as a follower of Jesus Christ here and now.
Each of the 52 Bible studies starts with an ice-breaker question that “levels the playing field” so everyone in your group has equal access to God and vice versa. Multiple-choice options will stretch you to think in new ways, sometimes bringing a smile to your face or a surprise to your mind and heart. Deeper questions conclude each study and move participants from talk into action.
Small group leaders will appreciate the content and flexibility of these Bible studies. Use this resource to make copies for others in your group or provide a copy for each person. Tap into the portion that includes keys for leading small groups and prayer possibilities.
If you want to talk about Jesus, here’s a great way to begin the conversation.
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