The Bible Study Podcast, episode 315. Today, the Bible Study podcast starts a study of the book of Jonah.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. You may have been surprised that we weren't still doing a study on marriage. I kind of ran out of things to say. There's plenty of to say on marriage, but I wanted to do it from a Bible study perspective, and that was what I had. So we'll go on. I was thinking I would do a study on money and found out we'd already done that. So on to the book of Jonah.

The one thing I like about doing a book study is I know when I'm done.

We're starting in Jonah, chapter one.

Jonah flees from the Lord.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amatai,

go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me.

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to 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.

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 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. 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 we will not perish.

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. 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? He answered, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven,

who made the sea and the dry land. 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. The sea was getting rougher and rougher, so they asked him, what should we do to make

the sea calm down for us? 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. Instead, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew

even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, please, Lord, do not let us die for taking

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