The Sign of Jonah Part One

 

Jonah Sermon 3: The Sign of Jonah Part One

You can watch the video of this sermon here.

Introduction

So, two weeks ago we began a mini-series on the book of Jonah. Jonah is a powerful little book, and we noted last week just how famous this passage is, it is so famous even many non-believers will be familiar with it. But the main thing we focused on last week, was just how terrible it would have been for Jonah to be in the belly of the fish for 3 days and 3 nights. He compared it to hell, which is an apt description. Think about it, hell is defined in the scripture as a place of utter darkness, that is far from the presence of the Lord, and Jonah felt like he was cast out of the sight and presence of the Lord in the belly of that fish. Of course, God was there with him as he eventually realized, and because of this he did not give up hope. But still this is a terrible thing to happen.  

Before we move any further through the book of Jonah though we are going to focus for one more week on Jonah’s time in the bowels of hell. Because this passage points to a us forward to our Lord Jesus Christ.  

One of the problems with how a lot of Christians today think about the Bible is that they believe they can just write off the Old Testament. Some preachers will even say you can ignore the Old Testament and just read the New Testament. Considering how hard it is to get people to read the Bible, I understand why they say this. But it is terrible advice if that is what you are seeking to achieve. Most of the best stories are in the Old Testament. The New Testament is great and filled with wonderful events of course. But reading the Old Testament is like having a window into an ancient world so alien to our own modern times, but also so relatable in so many ways.

Tales of wars, and conquests, defeats and victories, love and betrayal, slaying of dragons and the shaking of nations, scorned lovers and licentious affairs, faithfully devoted wives and honourable husbands, the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties, heroes and villains, heroes turned villains and villains turned heroes. The Old Testament is far more interesting than most people realize and it presents its message in a way that at times causes some Christians to blush. If the Old Testament was a T.V. show most Christians wouldn’t watch it, because it would be too edgy, far too violent and far too real, but almost everyone else would, because it would be the most interesting show on T.V.. Rejecting the Old Testament is like cutting the handle off the sword of the God. Ridiculous foolishness. 

But these stories are not just there to entertain us, though they are thoroughly entertaining. They are there to serve as examples for us to learn from, but also for more than that, they also exist to point us to Jesus. Jesus is all through the Old Testament. So today, I want us to examine how all the prophets point us to Jesus, so that we can better understand how the word of God itself works, beginning with our teacher, Jonah. Let’s see just how alive and active the sword of the Lord is, and how this can encourage us and challenge us today and point us to Jesus.  

The Sign of Jonah (1:17) – Over the last couple of weeks we have looked in some detail at Jonah’s experience in the belly of the fish. We concluded a couple of weeks ago, that it is silly to try and explain this event naturally, because this was a special fish prepared by God for Jonah. It was still a big fish, but what kind, we won’t know till heaven. We saw last week just how horrific this experience was. In no way did Jonah think he was on a vacation while in that fish, as we have said, he was in the bowels of hell, almost literally. Yet he did not give up hope. So, we have looked in detail about why God put Jonah in the fish, and also how he felt about being in that fish, but there is one other big and important theme we have not covered: the fact that Jonah is a type of Christ, or at least Jonah points to Christ. Let’s see how. We read in Jonah 1:17 – “17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” How does this point us to Christ? 

Three days and three nights – Well the answer is obvious, Jonah was in the bowels of the “grave” for three days and nights. As many of us know, Jesus actually makes this connection himself. Matthew 12:38-41 –

“38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

Jesus is very clear that Jonah’s experience points to the Messiah’s experience. In some sense he is a type of the Messiah.

The Grave – But what specifically is this referring to? Well, both Jonah and our Lord Jesus will be in the bowels of hades for three days and three nights. Some people struggle with the concept of Jesus descending to hell, or hades, but it is one of the oldest beliefs in Christianity, as is shown by it being reflected in the Apostle’s Creed:

“I believe in God,

the Father almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth,

and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died and was buried;

he descended into hell;

on the third day he rose again from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;

from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.”[i]

Some people seek to change the word “hell” here to “the dead”, or “the grave”, or “hades”, but these all meant the same basic thing in the ancient world. Think about it like this, if you died and are descending where are you going? You don’t descend to heaven. You descend to descend to Sheol.   

Of course, the Apostle’s creed, for us Baptists, is not authoritative. It is just a good guide. So, let’s see if Scripture backs this tradition up. Paul tells us this, Ephesians 4:9-10, “9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) (KJV). “the lower parts of the earth” is another way of speaking about Sheol, hades or the grave. All of the people of the ancient world conceived of hell being in the bowels of the earth.  

So, Paul affirms that Jesus descended into the bowels of Sheol, or hell, just like Jonah did. Of course, he did not stay there, “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” But the question is what was Jesus doing in hell, in the grave, while he was there? He suffered on the cross for our sins, no passage says he suffered in hell. So why was here there?

Peter answers that for us, 1 Peter 3:18-20,

“18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”

Where did Jesus go? “To the spirits in prison”. Where is the one place that Spirits are in prison? Luigi’s haunted mansion? The Egyptian book of the damned? Arkham Asylum? No, only one place, hades, which is the current hell.

Why was Jesus there? To preach, to “make proclamation”. He was not there to give them a second chance, because it is appointed to a man once to die and then to face judgement. No, it was too late for these spirits. He was there to vindicate the prophet Noah’s message that they should have trusted the word of God. Which is every prophet’s message. Noah told people to repent. Jonah told people to repent. All prophets tell people to repent and trust in God. Jesus vindicated their faithfulness.

What is remarkable is that although Jonah suffered in the bowels of the fish, he still proclaimed the victory and righteousness of God, just as Jesus did in hades, “8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2:8-9).  

So, just as Jonah descended to Sheol, so too did our Lord. Their experiences were a little different. But we can clearly see that Jonah points to our Lord being in the belly of the earth for three days and nights, which leads to our next discussion, is there a contradiction here?

The apparent contradiction (vv. 1:17) – If Jesus and Jonah were in the bowels of hades for the same amount of time, doesn’t this leave us with an exegetical issue? Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so by our reckoning, if he went into the fish on a Friday afternoon, then he would have been spat out some time on Monday, correct? That is how we would read this.

This is why this creates for us an apparent problem. Because Jesus says this very clearly: “40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” So, if Jesus was 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the earth, and he was taken down before sundown on Friday, so as to not desecrate the Sabbath, shouldn’t Jesus, therefore, have risen on Monday morning then, not Sunday morning? Should Monday be our Sunday? Should it be Easter Monday, not Easter Sunday?

We seem to have a bit of a problem here, don’t we. Because we know that Jesus was crucified before the Sabbath and died on a Friday afternoon. We know that the Pharisees did not enter the governor’s home, because they did not want to be disqualified from eating the Passover, the hypocrites (John 18:28). And we know that Jesus rose on the Sunday morning, three days later, but not three nights later. Because straight away Sunday became the new Sabbath for early Christians, the day of fellowship.

So, do we have a contradiction here? It appears that way.  

Some people have tried to solve this by arguing that Jesus ate with the disciples on the Wednesday, and died on Thursday afternoon. But this does not fit with what we read in the gospels and creates more problems than it solves.

There is a much simpler explanation, but I think some of you are not going to like it. The truth is we are simply interpreting the numbers wrong. The saying three days and three nights, was simply a Jewish idiom for saying 3 days, it did not mean literally three days and nights needed to pass. Which is obvious, because Jesus died in an afternoon and rose on a Sunday morning. He was not being mathematically precise.

The ancient Israelites were not always as precise with numbers, as we would like today. Which makes sense, because they had not invented maths, or literalism, and they did not think forensically, like modern people do. Large numbers just represented large amounts, or a lot of time. This means you have to be careful with numbers in the scriptures, sometimes they are literal, sometimes they are not. I told you, you would not like this answer, because most of us are literal minded people.  

We know from other sources, that the ancient Israelites just accounted any part of the day, as the whole day. We actually do something similar to this ourselves. If you asked me, what did you do on your day off, I might say I went to a theme park. But what I literally did is that I woke up, drank some water, got on the treadmill, then did weights, then had a coffee and read my bible, then a book, then I went for a drive to the coast, and then I went to a theme park. Did I lie by only saying I went to Dreamworld. No, I just condensed.

So, it is not hard to understand that the ancient Jewish people might have their own ways of summarizing periods of time, and other numbers. What supports this is Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:4 that he was raised on the third day, showing he understood this to mean precisely that.

So, there is no problem here when we understand the way they talked about these things in their own culture. But now that we have dealt with this issue, I want to show you one other way this week that this experience of Jonah points to Jesus, and next week we will look at another way.

Jonah’s Prayer Points To Christ – Jonah’s own prayer, his Psalm, also points to Christ in other ways. Look at this Psalm and structure, Jonah 2:2-9,

“…2 saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. 7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Many of the Psalm’s point to Jesus, some more clearly than others, but this Psalm points to Jesus in a remarkable way. Look at this:

-        Just as Jonah cried out in distress, so did Jesus when he was suffering on the cross (Matt. 25:50).

-        Just as Jonah was given to the Sheol, so was Jesus, who was buried in the earth for three days.

-        Just as Jonah was surrounded by Chaos and darkness (represented by being in the deep sea), so was Jesus. Remember while Jesus was on the cross, the land went dark from about midday to 3pm in the afternoon (Matt. 26:45).

-        Just as Jonah felt like he was driven from the sight of God, so did Jesus feel the same way, which is why he cried out, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me." (Matt. 25:46).

-        Just as Jonah’s life was given to the pit, so was the life of Jesus. Though Jonah did not actually die, Jesus did, he was dead three days in the Tomb.

-        Just as Jonah felt that he had come into the temple of the Lord in his prayer, so too did Jesus, who actually ascended to be with God the father.

-        Just as Jonah glorifies God, saying salvation belongs to the Lord, so too did Jesus glorify his father, who was raised by God the father from the grave. John 17:1,  “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,” The same God that rose Jonah from the pit, rose his Son, Jesus, from the grave.

God put Jonah in the fish for the good of the Jonah, the Ninevehites, and for us, so that we might see that he is the kind of God that raises his people from the pit and saves the sinner. God put his son in the pit, so that we might see that he is the kind of God that raises his people from the pit and saves the sinner. Jonah is not the Messiah, but he sure does point to him.

All The Prophets (Luke 24:25-27) – So, we can now see how powerfully the book of Jonah points us to Jesus, but this is something every prophet does in their own ways,

“25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

The message of Jesus is all through the Old Testament, we just need the Holy Spirit and the Apostles to open our eyes to it. The Hebrew scriptures are in actual fact the Scriptures of our Lord Jesus Christ, his father and the Holy Spirit. So how can we cut them from our walk with him? We can’t.

Application - No Vain Idol (Jonah 2:8-9) – To apply this today I want to come back to Jonah’s Psalm and focus on his last two verses, “8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Seeing what God did in and through Jonah, raising him up from the pit, and using him to point to Jesus, and seeing what God did in and through Jesus, raising him up from the grave, so that he could secure for us eternal life, you can only come to one conclusion: our God is no vain idol.

Most people in this world trust in vain idols, whether of stone, or wood, or silver or gold, today, just as in Jonah’s day, the vast majority of people trust in vain idols.

Work idols. Money idols. Physical idols. Sporting idols. Music idols. Religious idols. Wherever you are, in all these aspects of life, idols will rise up to try and deceive you. The human heart is a factory of idols, as John Calvin said.

If you trust in these idols, they will disappoint you. As John C. Wright notes,

“The Stoic in this atmosphere maintains himself by pride and iron willpower; and when they fail, he is left with nothing. The Hedonist in this atmosphere maintains himself by distraction, by diversion, by the constant clamor of the stimulation of the senses, by wine and women and song, by sex and drugs and rock and roll; and when they fail, he is left with nothing.”[ii]

Whatever your idol, it will fail you. Because they can only offer vanity. God can offer you resurrection.

You’re only hope is to trust in the Lord, because “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” You’re only hope is to trust in the God who raised Jonah out of the ocean. You’re only hope is to trust in the Lord, who raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. You’re only hope is to turn from your sins and trust in him, because there is no salvation apart from God. So, I implore you today, believe. Trust in him and turn to him.

Conclusion - The book of Jonah teaches us that no matter who you are, a pagan false god worshipping mariner, a man of God’s people, or of the wicked nation, the Assyrians, no matter who you are, you need God to save you from the bowels of hell, and he CAN save you from the bowels of hell, and he is the only one who can save you from the bowels of hell. Salvation belongs to the Lord and is extended to all people. Which everyone, from pagans to prophets of God, need to be reminded of from time to time. Turn to him and trust him. Let’s pray.

References.

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[i] https://www.usccb.org/prayers/apostles-creed

[ii] Wright, John C.. Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth (p. 450). Still Waters Books. Kindle Edition.