March 4, 2025 • 34 mins
This series of significance continues with the book of Jonah asking the big question of why are you angry?
Is alright to be angry, especially today with our very angry society.
Why is it so hard to receive grace and extend grace in this day of anger?
Hear Bill's explanation of Jonah, the prophet, going to Ninevah. He decided not to and a story came up and Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish. Then Jonah went into Ninevah and told them that God would punish them if they didn't obey Him.
Learn ways that Jonah's story challenges traditional views of obedience and faithfulness.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Is alright to be angry, especially today with our very angry society.
Why is it so hard to receive grace and extend grace in this day of anger?
Hear Bill's explanation of Jonah, the prophet, going to Ninevah. He decided not to and a story came up and Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish. Then Jonah went into Ninevah and told them that God would punish them if they didn't obey Him.
Learn ways that Jonah's story challenges traditional views of obedience and faithfulness.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome back to Success to Significance. I'm Rick Tokenney.
This is our continuing series with doctor Bill Sappenfield, and
this is the day before lent begins in that forty
day stretch. Doctor, We're so glad to have you on.
And just as a reminder, folks, Bill and I were
(00:29):
classmates at Pine Or Junior High Sherman High School. He
went to college at Austin College there in Sherman, earned
his masters at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and got his doctor
and ministry from Graduate Theological Foundation. Bill, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Thanks very much, Rick, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So this is our third program together. We've been asking
these questions. Today we're going to be talking about why
are you am? What initially drew you to study the
Book of Jonah, and how did you come up with
focus on this particular question.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, I was looking for questions once I got the
idea for the series, and I originally did the series
for a Lenten series. Lots of churches have Wednesday evening
Lent services, and so what I did was say, Okay,
(01:31):
we've got a lot of questions here in the Bible
and what we're doing here in chronological order. Are God's
question of where are you, which he asked in the
Garden of Eden, which is a great one to start
off ling for self examination, where are you? And then
there was the question which is the name mana? Of
(01:54):
what is it? And this one is is it right
for you to be angry? From the Book of Jonah.
And Jonah is a lovely little story. It's it's a
very colorful story. It's only four chapters long. I recommend
everybody read it this afternoon, and it's uh. If you
(02:19):
ask a little child what's your favorite Bible story, they're
almost certainly going to tell you something out of the
Old Testament. The Old Testament just has good stories. So
they're going to tell you about David and Goliath or
the Arnoah's Arc. And one of the big ones, of
(02:39):
course is Jonah. Because Jonah was swallowed by a great
fish and stayed there for three days, and that's uh,
that's just a memorable thing to have happen. And the
really important part of the story happens after that, and
that's the part where the question is it right for
(03:02):
you to be angry? That's asking a particular way because
it carries with it it's not just oh, are you angry?
Is it right for you to be angry? We all
get angry about stuff? Is this really something to be
angry about? And so I found that an intriguing question
(03:25):
that is still with us today. For Heaven's sakes, we've
got an angry society out there, and people are not
only looking to God for a way to overcome their anger,
they're kind of proud of it and they like it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Indeed, indeed, one of the big four questions we're going
to start with. And then I've got a kind of
a topper for you. I'm gonna and I'm gonna plant
this topper with a with the audience right now. And
so you can think about this as Bill's answering these
other ones. The last question I asked Bill today is
(04:03):
why is it so hard for us to receive grace
and extend grace in this angry culture of ours? So
we're going to jump into do you see Jonah's anger
as justified or is it just an example of misplaced
expectations of God which seemed to be pretty common today.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I think that's exactly right. We want, we want God
to back us up. We don't ask God what he
wants us to do. We tell God what we think
is right, and we offer to hold his coat for
him while he goes out and beats up the people
we don't like. So the story is, and I like
(04:45):
to set the context. Jonah was a prophet. We'd heard
of him before in the Bible, and I don't know
what they were doing over in Ninevah, but it was
bad enough to get God's attention. And so the story
starts off with God telling Jonah, you go over to
(05:06):
Ninevah and tell them to stop doing whatever they're doing
and to act right. And Jonah didn't want to. He
didn't like Ninevah, and so he went on his way
in the other direction and said he was going to
set sail for Tarshis. God does not have a record
for patience with people who don't like his ideas, so
(05:28):
he caused a storm to grow up, and the people said, well,
what's this storm coming for, and Jonah said, well, it's me.
God doesn't like me trying to run off to Tarshish.
So they threw Jonah overboard and a fish swallowed him,
and he stayed in the fish for three days, and
then he finally prayed and said okay, I'll go to Nineveh,
(05:52):
and the fish threw him up. And that's the first
two chapters. Then the second two chapters is really the
important part. That's where we talk about our relationship with
God and what strengthens it is doing what God says.
So Jonah was angry. He went into Tarsius and told
(06:13):
those people. I'm sorry. I went into Ninevah and told
those people that God was going to punish them. And
they said, oh, no, we don't like that. We're going
to do what God tells us. And they all repented.
Oh that really did make Jonah angry. I told you
that God was going to punish you, and now God says, hey,
(06:36):
that's great Ninevah. You repented, and now I'm not going
to punish you anymore, and i will bless your city.
Jonah was furious, and he stomped out of the city
and went up on a hill and set in the
sun and stared down at Nineveh and waited for God
to punish them. And God didn't, and Jonah was very angry.
(07:01):
Then he set up a little visual lesson for Jonah.
He he caused a bush to grow up above Jonah
and said, oh, great, now Uh, now I can sit
here in the in the shade, and what's God destroying?
And God then says, God appointed a worm. A lovely
(07:23):
Bible verse suitable for bumper stickers on your on your car.
God appointed a worm and it ate the root of
the bush, and the bush died. And so now the
sun was beating on Tuna again, and Jonah was fit
to be tied. And God said, is it right for
you to be angry? Yes, angry enough to die? Uh
(07:48):
So you're think it's good enough to be angry enough
to die because of this bush that you have no
investment in and has only been around for a day.
And yet and I spare this entire city of Nineveh.
You think that's wrong. And that's the end of the story.
(08:08):
This is the only book of the Bible that ends
with a question. So that's the context for this question.
And it is important to us today because we are
such an angry group of people. If you think about it,
most of the things that we're angry about are not
(08:31):
that significant. We can get very angry about how other
people dress, what their notions of style are, what they
call some geological landmark. People feel slighted when they're not
being slighted. People feel angry by the least change in
(08:56):
what folks do and what our habits are. But people
are very anxious to be angry about things, and God
just kind of points is it right for you to
be angry? I do not doubt that there are many
(09:17):
things to be angry about. I would include world hunger,
economic inequality. There are all sorts of things to be
very unhappy about. That's not usually where we place our anger.
We're angry about matters of taste, about where people live,
(09:38):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
That's right, the insignificant. Just kind of following up on that,
What does or just at least clarify Jonah's reaction to
nine of U's repentance and what exactly how might that
be elevated to human nature today?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
There are all sorts of people who we really don't
want to get along with. We've made it part of
our identity that we don't like certain groups of people,
we don't like certain behavior. You know, It's very much
like an athletic game. There are teams who I like
(10:25):
and other teams that I dislike because they beat the
team that I like. And that's all well, and good,
and that's kind of how sports is supposed to work.
But we take that same attitude towards issues that are
really very profound. So if you tell me what political
(10:46):
party you vote for, I'm not going to ask you
what you're basing that on or how you will make
society better. I'll just say, oh, no, you're not one
of us. You're I never vote for that party, or
I never liked those folks. Or you tell me your
(11:10):
religion and I'll ask you why you find that is
a way to get closer to God. Or I may
just say, Nope, that's the wrong religion. I don't like it.
You better not do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You know, every time I talk to you, this little
child of God is learning more things, and I always
I'm writing in my margins.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Here.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Make sure that doctor Bill tells everybody where Nineveh is.
And I found out this morning it's the capital of Assyria.
But give us a little geography lesson so everybody can
understand where that where Assyria is.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, it was in Assyria. Uh, it's now in Iraq.
The area it's called Mosel. It's on the Tigris River,
on the east bank of the Tigris river, and it
was for a long time the largest city in the world.
(12:17):
It's a real big place. We don't hear very much
about it in the book of Jonah. That's not the
point that this is trying to make. It's just saying, Okay,
there's this huge city. It's not even important enough to
tell us what it was bad that they were doing.
In Ninevah. It just said God told them to go
(12:40):
cut it out, and so no, I'm not going to
I'm going to Tarshis instead, and and that that has
an awful lot to do about the fellowship of humanity
as well. You know, it's just God wants you to
go take God's word to Nineveh, and now they're not
(13:03):
going to listen to it anyway. As a matter of fact,
at one point when they did repent at all the
things that Jonah is pouting about and angry about it, see,
I told you, I knew you were going to forgive them.
And that's the most gathing insult he can hurl at
(13:24):
God is I told you you were a forgiving God,
and you were slow to anger when I was still
back home, and now you made us do all this.
And so he's shaking his finger at God with that
I told you so thing, and God saying to you is
(13:46):
I think it's kind of nice that they repented and
we're not going to punish them, and everybody's going to
live in the grace of God. Is it right for
you to be angry? So maybe we should ask ourselves
that pretty regularly. Is it right for you to be angry?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
That's right? And here we are built it's fat Tuesday,
and millions of people, billions of people around the world
are going to look at the next forty days and
some faiths will be asking you to give up something
as a sacrifice. And what about anger, or at least
(14:32):
pumping the brakes in your anger? Or how about road
rage in Austin.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well so that's certainly an example of anger. There are
lots of them, but I think it affects even people
who don't drive. But that that's a good one. How
faster you're you're not angry about worldwide racism, but you
are angry at how long the red light takes to change.
(15:02):
It's uh, the the the angry thing, the things that
we're angry about. But giving up anger for lent, now
there's a bit of self improvement that I think we
could all use.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's a giant leap for many people.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, And it's a a problem because we have talked
ourselves into the idea that being angry about something means
you're taking it seriously. Ah, so that the more angry
you are about something, the more you're you should be
(15:43):
listened to. So rather than uh thoughtful research, Uh, it's oh,
you can tell he's really taking this seriously because he's
very angry. And that's uh not not. I don't trust
anger very much. People don't think is rationally when they're angry.
(16:10):
Anger is a good way to get people all together.
If I said, let's see if we can spread the
grace of God, people will say that's very nice, and
we'll lump that over here with some things that will
make people feel better and good advice. But oh goodness,
(16:32):
marketing executives, political parties, Professor Harold Hill, they all know
if you're angry about something, and if you really want
to get people all together and working in the same direction,
then you can motivate the complacent by getting them angry.
(16:56):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You remind me of that. And the American President with
Michael Douglas, where he goes every four years. We just
kind of whip everybody into anger. The old people come
fearing something, and those politicians running for president, they really
just don't know how to solve the problems, but they
know how to strike fear in the heartst.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yes, that's exactly what's going on. So when somebody wants
to do something, it's so easy to point out what
you're angry about. But that's that's it, that's what can
you do about that. Recently, had a conversation with someone
(17:38):
who knew I was a pastor sister, don't you think
that we ought to just post the Ten Commandments in
public schools? Okay, great, what are they? I want you
to tell me if you have memorized the Ten Commandments,
so that would be a good place to start. Don't
(18:00):
go around trying to stir people up to post attend
Commandments in the school buildings. Learn them yourself, and then
maybe you can move on to the next step. But
there are always good things that you can do, positive
things to address the issues that you're worried about. Family values.
(18:30):
All of the things that people talk about are usually
talked about in terms of what makes you angry and
how you don't see them anymore. There ways to support
other folks.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Sure, Extending a little kindness and grace is part of it.
That's how we're going to wrap up today's show. But
for now, as we take this quick break, we are
inserting a new special section to the Doctor Bill Sappenfield
series in its Bible trivia time. So take it away, Doctor.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Okay, I think what we were going to talk about
this time, ge wiz did I thought I had written
things down?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh, well, Bill is looking I'm gonna I'll take a
little eat a little bit of this airtime to say
that Carla and I are engaged right now in a
program called re Engage and it's for a couples that
are seeking God in their life. And this is like
(19:42):
a I think a twelve week series at Gateway South.
And part of what we're learning is fueling this curiosity
with Doctor Sappenfield. So we we come into every podcast
with the these questions for Bill, but there's also we're
(20:03):
kind of building additive ones every single week from this
Sunday experience. And I think what we've learned is we
don't really know a lots. That was the start. We
don't care if you've been married forty six years, because
that may not apply to our lives anymore, because we're
(20:23):
tired and exhausted and we need help. Okay, we'll come
back next Sunday and we'll try to fill up your
gas tank. So now back still and Bible trivia.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
What we were going to talk about this time was
the very basic question about the Bible, which is who
wrote it? And that's now in the first place. I'm
gonna say as much as I can, but this is
something that many very very smart people have spent their
(20:55):
entire lives on and it's going to be so adequate
oversimplified as to be worthless. But here here are some
facts about who wrote the Bible. Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The Bible and Genesis.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, Jenesis. We're just going to do one book at
a time and click through Genesis, Obadiah, get in that. Uh.
The Bible. Uh. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew
and the New Testament is written in Greek. And the
biggest difference between the two of them is the length
(21:36):
of which over which they were they were written. The
Old Testament was collected over about the one thousand and
five hundred years uh, and it started off for many
many many years, just as an oral tradition. They weren't
writing anything down. You're sitting around the campfire out watching
(21:57):
the sheep, and I said, hey, Rick, tell us at
the time that Abraham took Sarah down to Egypt, and
you tell that story. And that's how it's preserved for
a very long time, so that if you will look
at the Book of Genesis, most of these stories, self
(22:18):
contained stories are about a chapter long until you get
to the Joseph narrative, which is the first time you
get to a point of this happened, and therefore next
chapter and therefore next chapter. It was about that way
until the people of Israel got to the Promised Land
(22:44):
around one thousand BC, and then they were taken into
captivity and carried off to Babylon for about fifty years
from five eighty seven to five thirty eight. And that
was a big significant can issue in the life of
(23:05):
the Bible being written, because until then the people knew
God because he was at the temple, and they went
to the temple and they were in the presence of God.
But now they're separated off in Babylon from their own language,
and we lost a lot of the language if you'll
(23:26):
look in your Old Testament down at the bottom, a
lot of times there's just a little note there that
says Hebrew uncertain. Well, that scared everybody. We need to
know what the Bible says. And we've all seen just
in our own families. If your grandparents are great grandparents
(23:48):
have come from another country, it doesn't take very long
to lose your own language. There are second generation Spanish
speakers who don't know Spanish though well anymore. So they
really started emphasizing after the Babylonian captivity. They emphasized writing
(24:10):
it down. Then they got to come back down to
Jerusalem and started talking about writing it down. And there
was a king name told me, the Second of Egypt,
and he gave a big stride in all of that.
About two hundred and fifty years before Jesus was born,
(24:33):
he commissioned that the Bible, and it was what we
would now call the Hebrew Scripture. He wanted a copy
of that, and so he had it written in Greek,
because everybody was speaking Greek by then, and that's called
the Septuagint, and the Septuagint is the Hebrew scriptures that
(24:57):
are translated into Greek now as opposed to that, the
New Testament was written over about sixty five years, and
first it was the letters of Paul. This is kind
of an interesting thing. The events that we find in
(25:21):
the Gospel of what Jesus said and did weren't written
down right away. What the apostles were doing is saying, look,
here's Jesus. He's the son of God. You need to
follow him. And so they talked about the event of Jesus,
but didn't really try to record what he said because
everybody already knew that they were there when it happened.
(25:45):
So that stayed in the oral tradition. That was things
that people talked about. But then they, after the writings
of Paul, then wrote what we now call the Gospels.
And Luke, in addition to the Gospels, also wrote the
(26:07):
Acts of the Apostles, because after what Jesus did, then
how did the apostles act? I know, I'll write a
book called the Acts of the Apostles, because apparently Luke
wasn't that imaginative, and he none of the Gospels. There
are traditional names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and
(26:31):
those are assigned to those books. Nowhere in those books,
does the author name himself? Know, Hi, my name is
Mark and I'm writing this book. Paul does that a
couple of times, but we don't have any names naming themselves.
(26:53):
So they started keeping these books. Anytime perceived threat came,
then leaders in the church needed to start pointing and saying, Okay,
this is a good book. That's not because you had
all sorts of people writing things that they thought were important.
(27:14):
So you had Martian, who was a great leader, but
he was saying things that were not they were heresies,
that they were not really the way that the body
of the Christians thoughts should be. So when you would
have a threat where someone would come in and write
(27:36):
things that were not to be taken seriously, then you'd
have an argument say, okay, who who's uh? Which history
is correct? Which understanding is right about grace? So you
have UH and they're still available. You can get the
(27:56):
Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary and things
that were written, but they just weren't very good and
they weren't considered to be authentic. Finally, at one of
the councils that they were having all of the time,
Bishop Athanasius meeting in Alexandria, which was a very important place.
(28:24):
So if you're the bishop of Alexandria, you were an
important guy. And he had the Council of Alexandria and
they wrote, now, these twenty seven books should be considered
authentic books of the Bible, and that was pretty much
(28:50):
the list that Protestants in North America used today, and
so that was decided upon one. They're not everybody agrees
all around the world. There are different churches who have
different books, but that was the way it rocked along
until the Reformation in the sixteenth century. And so some
(29:17):
of the things some of the arguments between Martin Luther
and the established Church in Rome at the time were
arguing about, and Luther said, Okay, I don't accept the
following books as authentic because they don't really back up
what I'm saying, and so we're going to call those
(29:38):
hidden or apocryphal, and so well, we're going to say
that they are hidden or that they are canonical. And
so for the first time they found it necessary to
actually come together and have a vote, and so they
had what was called the Council of Trent, and that
was the first time this would have been in the
(30:00):
sixteenth century that they actually voted and said, this is
the real cannon of the of the New Testament.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Wow, thank you for that doctor's Happenville. That was fact
kind of a whirlwind there, Yes, sir, Yes, sir. Hey,
it's a nice bridge into this our wrap up question,
which is something for all listeners to consider going into
(30:35):
lent and going into I would say, any season of
their life. And this we've got about five minutes left.
So tell us, inspire us about how we can extend grace.
Give us a couple of tips on that. We don't
need to talk about how hard it is. Just give
(30:56):
us some proactive tips on extending grace and kindness.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wilston, Listen to a person regardless of what they have
to say. Let them know that as a child of God,
they are profound and they are important, so that you
can listen to them rather than straighten them out trying
(31:24):
to control others. Well, first place, it doesn't work, but
it's really not as helpful as as you might think.
I remember in one particular counseling class back in Seminary,
wonderful teacher said, if you think that the caring that
(31:47):
the helping professions actually help you're a candidate for burnout.
You know. Just listen to people, don't fix them. And
so that's the best way I know to value another person.
If what they're doing, you can see that it's important
(32:12):
as they see that it is. And that's why when
people talk about the things that are most important to them,
those will usually be their families, things that they really
care about. And by listening to them, you're inviting them
into caring about caring about other people as well. I
(32:36):
think that you and I and everybody else are going
to be much closer if we agree on the importance
of us showing God's love in the world. Rather than saying,
let's go straighten other people out, let's see how we
can promote the kind of justice the sorts of that
(33:00):
you're talking about, the communities that you and Carla have.
Let's get together and see what we can do on
this particular community project. You're going to find a real
closeness in that and those shared values and the directions
that you could have for making the world a better place. Plus,
(33:27):
we'll trust you more when you're trying to make the
world a better place than when you are very obviously
trying to show them what you're mad about, and who
you're going to straighten out and the things that make
you angry.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
What a beautiful message as we start this season. For
many of you, you consider this to be your own
holy season. Bill and I started this series though, with
the thought that while this is pointed to lent, that
you could you could pick it up anytime in your life,
and that sure the older that we get, maybe you're
(34:10):
your holy season is just in front of you. Maybe
you just need to burn the underbrush. Bill. Thank you
so much. Look forward to talking to you again next week.
And until then, folks, we were praying for you, We're
praying for our listeners out there. If any of the
words that Bill shared today touch your heart, just let
(34:31):
him wash over you and may Grace be with you
and we pray for you on your walk of significance.
Have a good week.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Thanks very much for Ruth
Hey, welcome back to Success to Significance. I'm Rick Tokenney.
This is our continuing series with doctor Bill Sappenfield, and
this is the day before lent begins in that forty
day stretch. Doctor, We're so glad to have you on.
And just as a reminder, folks, Bill and I were
(00:29):
classmates at Pine Or Junior High Sherman High School. He
went to college at Austin College there in Sherman, earned
his masters at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and got his doctor
and ministry from Graduate Theological Foundation. Bill, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Thanks very much, Rick, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So this is our third program together. We've been asking
these questions. Today we're going to be talking about why
are you am? What initially drew you to study the
Book of Jonah, and how did you come up with
focus on this particular question.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, I was looking for questions once I got the
idea for the series, and I originally did the series
for a Lenten series. Lots of churches have Wednesday evening
Lent services, and so what I did was say, Okay,
(01:31):
we've got a lot of questions here in the Bible
and what we're doing here in chronological order. Are God's
question of where are you, which he asked in the
Garden of Eden, which is a great one to start
off ling for self examination, where are you? And then
there was the question which is the name mana? Of
(01:54):
what is it? And this one is is it right
for you to be angry? From the Book of Jonah.
And Jonah is a lovely little story. It's it's a
very colorful story. It's only four chapters long. I recommend
everybody read it this afternoon, and it's uh. If you
(02:19):
ask a little child what's your favorite Bible story, they're
almost certainly going to tell you something out of the
Old Testament. The Old Testament just has good stories. So
they're going to tell you about David and Goliath or
the Arnoah's Arc. And one of the big ones, of
(02:39):
course is Jonah. Because Jonah was swallowed by a great
fish and stayed there for three days, and that's uh,
that's just a memorable thing to have happen. And the
really important part of the story happens after that, and
that's the part where the question is it right for
(03:02):
you to be angry? That's asking a particular way because
it carries with it it's not just oh, are you angry?
Is it right for you to be angry? We all
get angry about stuff? Is this really something to be
angry about? And so I found that an intriguing question
(03:25):
that is still with us today. For Heaven's sakes, we've
got an angry society out there, and people are not
only looking to God for a way to overcome their anger,
they're kind of proud of it and they like it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Indeed, indeed, one of the big four questions we're going
to start with. And then I've got a kind of
a topper for you. I'm gonna and I'm gonna plant
this topper with a with the audience right now. And
so you can think about this as Bill's answering these
other ones. The last question I asked Bill today is
(04:03):
why is it so hard for us to receive grace
and extend grace in this angry culture of ours? So
we're going to jump into do you see Jonah's anger
as justified or is it just an example of misplaced
expectations of God which seemed to be pretty common today.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I think that's exactly right. We want, we want God
to back us up. We don't ask God what he
wants us to do. We tell God what we think
is right, and we offer to hold his coat for
him while he goes out and beats up the people
we don't like. So the story is, and I like
(04:45):
to set the context. Jonah was a prophet. We'd heard
of him before in the Bible, and I don't know
what they were doing over in Ninevah, but it was
bad enough to get God's attention. And so the story
starts off with God telling Jonah, you go over to
(05:06):
Ninevah and tell them to stop doing whatever they're doing
and to act right. And Jonah didn't want to. He
didn't like Ninevah, and so he went on his way
in the other direction and said he was going to
set sail for Tarshis. God does not have a record
for patience with people who don't like his ideas, so
(05:28):
he caused a storm to grow up, and the people said, well,
what's this storm coming for, and Jonah said, well, it's me.
God doesn't like me trying to run off to Tarshish.
So they threw Jonah overboard and a fish swallowed him,
and he stayed in the fish for three days, and
then he finally prayed and said okay, I'll go to Nineveh,
(05:52):
and the fish threw him up. And that's the first
two chapters. Then the second two chapters is really the
important part. That's where we talk about our relationship with
God and what strengthens it is doing what God says.
So Jonah was angry. He went into Tarsius and told
(06:13):
those people. I'm sorry. I went into Ninevah and told
those people that God was going to punish them. And
they said, oh, no, we don't like that. We're going
to do what God tells us. And they all repented.
Oh that really did make Jonah angry. I told you
that God was going to punish you, and now God says, hey,
(06:36):
that's great Ninevah. You repented, and now I'm not going
to punish you anymore, and i will bless your city.
Jonah was furious, and he stomped out of the city
and went up on a hill and set in the
sun and stared down at Nineveh and waited for God
to punish them. And God didn't, and Jonah was very angry.
(07:01):
Then he set up a little visual lesson for Jonah.
He he caused a bush to grow up above Jonah
and said, oh, great, now Uh, now I can sit
here in the in the shade, and what's God destroying?
And God then says, God appointed a worm. A lovely
(07:23):
Bible verse suitable for bumper stickers on your on your car.
God appointed a worm and it ate the root of
the bush, and the bush died. And so now the
sun was beating on Tuna again, and Jonah was fit
to be tied. And God said, is it right for
you to be angry? Yes, angry enough to die? Uh
(07:48):
So you're think it's good enough to be angry enough
to die because of this bush that you have no
investment in and has only been around for a day.
And yet and I spare this entire city of Nineveh.
You think that's wrong. And that's the end of the story.
(08:08):
This is the only book of the Bible that ends
with a question. So that's the context for this question.
And it is important to us today because we are
such an angry group of people. If you think about it,
most of the things that we're angry about are not
(08:31):
that significant. We can get very angry about how other
people dress, what their notions of style are, what they
call some geological landmark. People feel slighted when they're not
being slighted. People feel angry by the least change in
(08:56):
what folks do and what our habits are. But people
are very anxious to be angry about things, and God
just kind of points is it right for you to
be angry? I do not doubt that there are many
(09:17):
things to be angry about. I would include world hunger,
economic inequality. There are all sorts of things to be
very unhappy about. That's not usually where we place our anger.
We're angry about matters of taste, about where people live,
(09:38):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
That's right, the insignificant. Just kind of following up on that,
What does or just at least clarify Jonah's reaction to
nine of U's repentance and what exactly how might that
be elevated to human nature today?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
There are all sorts of people who we really don't
want to get along with. We've made it part of
our identity that we don't like certain groups of people,
we don't like certain behavior. You know, It's very much
like an athletic game. There are teams who I like
(10:25):
and other teams that I dislike because they beat the
team that I like. And that's all well, and good,
and that's kind of how sports is supposed to work.
But we take that same attitude towards issues that are
really very profound. So if you tell me what political
(10:46):
party you vote for, I'm not going to ask you
what you're basing that on or how you will make
society better. I'll just say, oh, no, you're not one
of us. You're I never vote for that party, or
I never liked those folks. Or you tell me your
(11:10):
religion and I'll ask you why you find that is
a way to get closer to God. Or I may
just say, Nope, that's the wrong religion. I don't like it.
You better not do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You know, every time I talk to you, this little
child of God is learning more things, and I always
I'm writing in my margins.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Here.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Make sure that doctor Bill tells everybody where Nineveh is.
And I found out this morning it's the capital of Assyria.
But give us a little geography lesson so everybody can
understand where that where Assyria is.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, it was in Assyria. Uh, it's now in Iraq.
The area it's called Mosel. It's on the Tigris River,
on the east bank of the Tigris river, and it
was for a long time the largest city in the world.
(12:17):
It's a real big place. We don't hear very much
about it in the book of Jonah. That's not the
point that this is trying to make. It's just saying, Okay,
there's this huge city. It's not even important enough to
tell us what it was bad that they were doing.
In Ninevah. It just said God told them to go
(12:40):
cut it out, and so no, I'm not going to
I'm going to Tarshis instead, and and that that has
an awful lot to do about the fellowship of humanity
as well. You know, it's just God wants you to
go take God's word to Nineveh, and now they're not
(13:03):
going to listen to it anyway. As a matter of fact,
at one point when they did repent at all the
things that Jonah is pouting about and angry about it, see,
I told you, I knew you were going to forgive them.
And that's the most gathing insult he can hurl at
(13:24):
God is I told you you were a forgiving God,
and you were slow to anger when I was still
back home, and now you made us do all this.
And so he's shaking his finger at God with that
I told you so thing, and God saying to you is
(13:46):
I think it's kind of nice that they repented and
we're not going to punish them, and everybody's going to
live in the grace of God. Is it right for
you to be angry? So maybe we should ask ourselves
that pretty regularly. Is it right for you to be angry?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
That's right? And here we are built it's fat Tuesday,
and millions of people, billions of people around the world
are going to look at the next forty days and
some faiths will be asking you to give up something
as a sacrifice. And what about anger, or at least
(14:32):
pumping the brakes in your anger? Or how about road
rage in Austin.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well so that's certainly an example of anger. There are
lots of them, but I think it affects even people
who don't drive. But that that's a good one. How
faster you're you're not angry about worldwide racism, but you
are angry at how long the red light takes to change.
(15:02):
It's uh, the the the angry thing, the things that
we're angry about. But giving up anger for lent, now
there's a bit of self improvement that I think we
could all use.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's a giant leap for many people.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, And it's a a problem because we have talked
ourselves into the idea that being angry about something means
you're taking it seriously. Ah, so that the more angry
you are about something, the more you're you should be
(15:43):
listened to. So rather than uh thoughtful research, Uh, it's oh,
you can tell he's really taking this seriously because he's
very angry. And that's uh not not. I don't trust
anger very much. People don't think is rationally when they're angry.
(16:10):
Anger is a good way to get people all together.
If I said, let's see if we can spread the
grace of God, people will say that's very nice, and
we'll lump that over here with some things that will
make people feel better and good advice. But oh goodness,
(16:32):
marketing executives, political parties, Professor Harold Hill, they all know
if you're angry about something, and if you really want
to get people all together and working in the same direction,
then you can motivate the complacent by getting them angry.
(16:56):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You remind me of that. And the American President with
Michael Douglas, where he goes every four years. We just
kind of whip everybody into anger. The old people come
fearing something, and those politicians running for president, they really
just don't know how to solve the problems, but they
know how to strike fear in the heartst.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yes, that's exactly what's going on. So when somebody wants
to do something, it's so easy to point out what
you're angry about. But that's that's it, that's what can
you do about that. Recently, had a conversation with someone
(17:38):
who knew I was a pastor sister, don't you think
that we ought to just post the Ten Commandments in
public schools? Okay, great, what are they? I want you
to tell me if you have memorized the Ten Commandments,
so that would be a good place to start. Don't
(18:00):
go around trying to stir people up to post attend
Commandments in the school buildings. Learn them yourself, and then
maybe you can move on to the next step. But
there are always good things that you can do, positive
things to address the issues that you're worried about. Family values.
(18:30):
All of the things that people talk about are usually
talked about in terms of what makes you angry and
how you don't see them anymore. There ways to support
other folks.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Sure, Extending a little kindness and grace is part of it.
That's how we're going to wrap up today's show. But
for now, as we take this quick break, we are
inserting a new special section to the Doctor Bill Sappenfield
series in its Bible trivia time. So take it away, Doctor.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Okay, I think what we were going to talk about
this time, ge wiz did I thought I had written
things down?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh, well, Bill is looking I'm gonna I'll take a
little eat a little bit of this airtime to say
that Carla and I are engaged right now in a
program called re Engage and it's for a couples that
are seeking God in their life. And this is like
(19:42):
a I think a twelve week series at Gateway South.
And part of what we're learning is fueling this curiosity
with Doctor Sappenfield. So we we come into every podcast
with the these questions for Bill, but there's also we're
(20:03):
kind of building additive ones every single week from this
Sunday experience. And I think what we've learned is we
don't really know a lots. That was the start. We
don't care if you've been married forty six years, because
that may not apply to our lives anymore, because we're
(20:23):
tired and exhausted and we need help. Okay, we'll come
back next Sunday and we'll try to fill up your
gas tank. So now back still and Bible trivia.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
What we were going to talk about this time was
the very basic question about the Bible, which is who
wrote it? And that's now in the first place. I'm
gonna say as much as I can, but this is
something that many very very smart people have spent their
(20:55):
entire lives on and it's going to be so adequate
oversimplified as to be worthless. But here here are some
facts about who wrote the Bible. Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The Bible and Genesis.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, Jenesis. We're just going to do one book at
a time and click through Genesis, Obadiah, get in that. Uh.
The Bible. Uh. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew
and the New Testament is written in Greek. And the
biggest difference between the two of them is the length
(21:36):
of which over which they were they were written. The
Old Testament was collected over about the one thousand and
five hundred years uh, and it started off for many
many many years, just as an oral tradition. They weren't
writing anything down. You're sitting around the campfire out watching
(21:57):
the sheep, and I said, hey, Rick, tell us at
the time that Abraham took Sarah down to Egypt, and
you tell that story. And that's how it's preserved for
a very long time, so that if you will look
at the Book of Genesis, most of these stories, self
(22:18):
contained stories are about a chapter long until you get
to the Joseph narrative, which is the first time you
get to a point of this happened, and therefore next
chapter and therefore next chapter. It was about that way
until the people of Israel got to the Promised Land
(22:44):
around one thousand BC, and then they were taken into
captivity and carried off to Babylon for about fifty years
from five eighty seven to five thirty eight. And that
was a big significant can issue in the life of
(23:05):
the Bible being written, because until then the people knew
God because he was at the temple, and they went
to the temple and they were in the presence of God.
But now they're separated off in Babylon from their own language,
and we lost a lot of the language if you'll
(23:26):
look in your Old Testament down at the bottom, a
lot of times there's just a little note there that
says Hebrew uncertain. Well, that scared everybody. We need to
know what the Bible says. And we've all seen just
in our own families. If your grandparents are great grandparents
(23:48):
have come from another country, it doesn't take very long
to lose your own language. There are second generation Spanish
speakers who don't know Spanish though well anymore. So they
really started emphasizing after the Babylonian captivity. They emphasized writing
(24:10):
it down. Then they got to come back down to
Jerusalem and started talking about writing it down. And there
was a king name told me, the Second of Egypt,
and he gave a big stride in all of that.
About two hundred and fifty years before Jesus was born,
(24:33):
he commissioned that the Bible, and it was what we
would now call the Hebrew Scripture. He wanted a copy
of that, and so he had it written in Greek,
because everybody was speaking Greek by then, and that's called
the Septuagint, and the Septuagint is the Hebrew scriptures that
(24:57):
are translated into Greek now as opposed to that, the
New Testament was written over about sixty five years, and
first it was the letters of Paul. This is kind
of an interesting thing. The events that we find in
(25:21):
the Gospel of what Jesus said and did weren't written
down right away. What the apostles were doing is saying, look,
here's Jesus. He's the son of God. You need to
follow him. And so they talked about the event of Jesus,
but didn't really try to record what he said because
everybody already knew that they were there when it happened.
(25:45):
So that stayed in the oral tradition. That was things
that people talked about. But then they, after the writings
of Paul, then wrote what we now call the Gospels.
And Luke, in addition to the Gospels, also wrote the
(26:07):
Acts of the Apostles, because after what Jesus did, then
how did the apostles act? I know, I'll write a
book called the Acts of the Apostles, because apparently Luke
wasn't that imaginative, and he none of the Gospels. There
are traditional names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and
(26:31):
those are assigned to those books. Nowhere in those books,
does the author name himself? Know, Hi, my name is
Mark and I'm writing this book. Paul does that a
couple of times, but we don't have any names naming themselves.
(26:53):
So they started keeping these books. Anytime perceived threat came,
then leaders in the church needed to start pointing and saying, Okay,
this is a good book. That's not because you had
all sorts of people writing things that they thought were important.
(27:14):
So you had Martian, who was a great leader, but
he was saying things that were not they were heresies,
that they were not really the way that the body
of the Christians thoughts should be. So when you would
have a threat where someone would come in and write
(27:36):
things that were not to be taken seriously, then you'd
have an argument say, okay, who who's uh? Which history
is correct? Which understanding is right about grace? So you
have UH and they're still available. You can get the
(27:56):
Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary and things
that were written, but they just weren't very good and
they weren't considered to be authentic. Finally, at one of
the councils that they were having all of the time,
Bishop Athanasius meeting in Alexandria, which was a very important place.
(28:24):
So if you're the bishop of Alexandria, you were an
important guy. And he had the Council of Alexandria and
they wrote, now, these twenty seven books should be considered
authentic books of the Bible, and that was pretty much
(28:50):
the list that Protestants in North America used today, and
so that was decided upon one. They're not everybody agrees
all around the world. There are different churches who have
different books, but that was the way it rocked along
until the Reformation in the sixteenth century. And so some
(29:17):
of the things some of the arguments between Martin Luther
and the established Church in Rome at the time were
arguing about, and Luther said, Okay, I don't accept the
following books as authentic because they don't really back up
what I'm saying, and so we're going to call those
(29:38):
hidden or apocryphal, and so well, we're going to say
that they are hidden or that they are canonical. And
so for the first time they found it necessary to
actually come together and have a vote, and so they
had what was called the Council of Trent, and that
was the first time this would have been in the
(30:00):
sixteenth century that they actually voted and said, this is
the real cannon of the of the New Testament.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Wow, thank you for that doctor's Happenville. That was fact
kind of a whirlwind there, Yes, sir, Yes, sir. Hey,
it's a nice bridge into this our wrap up question,
which is something for all listeners to consider going into
(30:35):
lent and going into I would say, any season of
their life. And this we've got about five minutes left.
So tell us, inspire us about how we can extend grace.
Give us a couple of tips on that. We don't
need to talk about how hard it is. Just give
(30:56):
us some proactive tips on extending grace and kindness.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wilston, Listen to a person regardless of what they have
to say. Let them know that as a child of God,
they are profound and they are important, so that you
can listen to them rather than straighten them out trying
(31:24):
to control others. Well, first place, it doesn't work, but
it's really not as helpful as as you might think.
I remember in one particular counseling class back in Seminary,
wonderful teacher said, if you think that the caring that
(31:47):
the helping professions actually help you're a candidate for burnout.
You know. Just listen to people, don't fix them. And
so that's the best way I know to value another person.
If what they're doing, you can see that it's important
(32:12):
as they see that it is. And that's why when
people talk about the things that are most important to them,
those will usually be their families, things that they really
care about. And by listening to them, you're inviting them
into caring about caring about other people as well. I
(32:36):
think that you and I and everybody else are going
to be much closer if we agree on the importance
of us showing God's love in the world. Rather than saying,
let's go straighten other people out, let's see how we
can promote the kind of justice the sorts of that
(33:00):
you're talking about, the communities that you and Carla have.
Let's get together and see what we can do on
this particular community project. You're going to find a real
closeness in that and those shared values and the directions
that you could have for making the world a better place. Plus,
(33:27):
we'll trust you more when you're trying to make the
world a better place than when you are very obviously
trying to show them what you're mad about, and who
you're going to straighten out and the things that make
you angry.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
What a beautiful message as we start this season. For
many of you, you consider this to be your own
holy season. Bill and I started this series though, with
the thought that while this is pointed to lent, that
you could you could pick it up anytime in your life,
and that sure the older that we get, maybe you're
(34:10):
your holy season is just in front of you. Maybe
you just need to burn the underbrush. Bill. Thank you
so much. Look forward to talking to you again next week.
And until then, folks, we were praying for you, We're
praying for our listeners out there. If any of the
words that Bill shared today touch your heart, just let
(34:31):
him wash over you and may Grace be with you
and we pray for you on your walk of significance.
Have a good week.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Thanks very much for Ruth
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