The Sign of Jonah Ps 88:1-18; Joel 2:18-32; Acts 2:22-32; Matt 12:38-42
Introduction https://youtu.be/mVpfoNOJwsw
This is the third in our series of signs of the End. In our first teaching, I argued that the “signs of the times” Jesus spoke of in his debate with the Pharisees (Matt 16:3) was his glorious presence in the Church throughout the ages. Our witness to Christ is the final evidence provided by God that this present evil age (Gal 1:4) is coming to an end. Two weeks ago, I expounded from scripture that the indispensable sign that the ages-long conflict between good and evil (Col 1:13; Luke 22:53; Eph 6:12 will conclude with the final victory of the kingdom of God and Christ (Rev 12:10) is the persecution of the Church. This, uncomfortable message is consistent with the long history of the persecution of the prophets (Matt 23:29-36; Rev 17:6; 18:24)[1] and the suffering of the people of God up until today[2]. The New Testament considers suffering for Jesus both inevitable in this wicked world (2 Tim 3:12) and indispensable to our spiritual maturity (Luke 24:26; 1 Pet 4:14). Today’s passage from Matthew underlines that the world’s Creator has always provide people with enough evidence to produce faith (Acts 14:17; 17:27; Rom 1:19-20). Even if this evidence may be strange to a natural way of thinking. This is the case with what Jesus calls[3] “the sign of Jonah”, the only reference to his death and resurrection that Jesus made in the hearing of hostile Jewish leaders[4].
The Sign of Jonah[5]
“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[6], 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.” (Matt 12:39-41)
The only sign given to those who insincerely seek signs[7] is the strange sign God supplied to the pagan Ninevites, a sign powerful enough to lead these cruel idol worshippers to humble repentance. The sign of Jonah was Jonah himself in his own saving-history on behalf of the lost men of Nineveh. We shouldn’t think the Lord who called Jonah to preach to these hated foreigners was surprised when he tried to run away and had to be put in the belly of a great fish. Neither was the Lord surprised when in total darkness wallowing in the slime pit of the digestive juices of the fish on the point of death (v.7) the wayward prophet called for mercy and forgiveness (Jonah 2:1-9). Of course, the merciful God heard and delivered him. If there is no evidence the people of Nineveh ever knew anything about Jonah’s submarine journey
But only heard him preach, ““Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”” (Jonah 3:4), what mighty authority did Jonah carry that launched a national revival of epic proportions that included all ages, and even the animals, tuning to God[8]. The entire city called out mightily to God to relent of his judgement (Jonah 3:8-10), even though the prophet had not even mentioned the possibility of atonement. At the human level the people of Nineveh would never know what Jonah had been through, but God knew, and God was moved to bring them salvation because in the death-and-resurrection-like journey of Jonah the Father saw what was coming in its fulness in his Son! Jesus’ hearers knew all about the Jonah story but in their self-righteousness[9] his prophecy that such vile sinners would rise up at the Last Judgement to condemn them (Matt 12:41) would have horrified his hearers. The sign of Jonah is extremely scandalous because its power derives from the cross.
Jesus fulfils All Jonah Typifies
Jesus brings to fullness everything that God began in Jonah so that through this final sign[10] his own Great Commission may be accomplished. As Jonah was in the belly of the great fish, Jesus’ time[11] in “the heart of the earth” is his time in death[12]. What Jesus and Jonah shared was agony in the course of fulfilling God’s great saving mission.
The story of Jonah points to the story of Jesus but the differences are greater than the similarities[13]. In his rebellion Jonah was thrown into a physical storm of wind and waves, but in his willingness to suffer, Jesus handed himself over[14] to the ultimate storm of God’s judgement against our sin on the cross. Unlike Jonah, Jesus sank in that black tempest to death and burial. “He sank in that storm of terror so I would not fear any other storm in my life” (Tim Keller). Jonah reluctantly became the instrument through which a “great city” (Jon 1:2; 3:2,3,4:11) turned powerfully back to God, but Jesus prayed compassionately for us all from the cross words from the heart of the Father[15], “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). We all know they we have usually not know what we have been doing but thank God Christ’s words have prevailed for us all.
The “evil and adulterous generation” of Jesus’ time only witnessed his suffering, but we are privileged to understand that the sign of Jonah is far bigger than that. It begins in Jesus’ psychological descent to the realm of the dead in Gethsemane, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” (Matt 26:38), then it passes into his death and his bodily waiting in the tomb until his resurrection glory (Luke 24:26; Acts 2:24; Phil 3:10; Heb 2:9). By embracing a tortuous painful trial before final divine deliverance[16], the sign of Jonah includes us all.
Christians and The Sign of Jonah
Suffering within the plan of God for the salvation of the lost is the sign of Jonah, a sign whose power, a power greater than death[17], continues through the ages.
The famous preacher Charles Spurgeon suffered from dreadful gout in both legs[18]; he recounts in his own words a Jonah-like encounter. “When I was racked…with pain, to an extreme degree, so that I could no longer bear it without crying out, I asked all to go from the room, and leave me alone; and then I had nothing I could say to God but this, ‘Thou art my Father, and I am thy child; and thou, as a Father, art tender and full of mercy. I could not bear to see my child suffer as thou makest me suffer[19], and if I saw him tormented as I am now, I would do what I could to help him, and put my arms under him to sustain him. Wilt thou hide thy face from me, my Father? Wilt thou still lay on a heavy hand, and not give me a smile from thy countenance?’ . . . so I pleaded, and I ventured to say, when I was quiet, and they came back who watched me: ‘I shall never have such pain again from this moment, for God has heard my prayer.’ I bless God that ease came and the racking pain never returned.”[20] I suspect few of us would have the holy courage to pray so boldly to our Father in the midst of our anguishes.
In preparing this sermon I was reminded of a very frightening experience I once had. One morning, years ago, I woke up and suddenly realised I could not move head off the pillow. I had been under such sustained pressure through interpersonal conflict in the local parish the muscles in my neck were so tight with tension they were paralysed. I recall crying out to Donna for help. I praise God for that time in my life from which he delivered me, and he will deliver me still (cf. 2 Cor 1:10). I needed to go through that “time in the belly of the fish” to learn what Jonah experienced and Jesus typified, God never abandons his children. Pain is an essential dimension of life in a fallen world for everyone, but the BIG question is, what do we make of our pain? Trusting in God in the midst of pain[21] points and releases our suffering in a direction beyond our own miseries[22].
You and Jonah
The sign of Jonah is a revelation that our Creator considers ignorant and foolish humanity[23] to be valuable to himself measured by the sacrifice of his Son. Jonah never understood God’s merciful nature, but Jesus is that nature! The power of Christ’s testimony to break the strongholds of sin, Satan and death over the lives of lost people can be released through us (2 Cor 10:1-6). Released as we submit our sufferings and struggles to the Lord, not first and foremost for our own relief[24], but for his saving purposes in the lives of others. A love that will suffer anything for others[25], no matter how blind and deaf to the things of God they might be[26], is a love greater than the power of sin and death (1 Cor 15:56-57).
Conclusion
Looked at superficially the sign of Jonah is plain weird[27], a bloke stupid enough to think he could run from God wallowing inside a fish! This is the nature of the sign of his own suffering which Jesus promised to those who refused to believe in him, a sign that would confirm their unbelief. At this point we are at the cross, for apart from a very few touched specially by the Lord[28], those who saw him die mocked him[29]. The sort of suffering Jesus calls us to can never make sense to the natural human conscience, but holy suffering in the power of the Spirit of God[30] is super-natural and miraculous. As pagan Ninevites turned in radical repentance to God, Jesus suffered in faith because he believed that he would see the day when by grace the nations of the world would call out to his Father for mercy. This is the power of the sign of Jonah in which we are called to share. There is a call of God on us to willingly share in this strange sign. Can we do this…?[31] The good news is that we have plenty of painful maladies we are already enduring, not only physical maladies but relational pains that have come upon us over the years. By faith we can grasp that every anguish handed over in trust to the Lord for his holy purposes will become something through which he will turn lost hearts back to himself. This is the strange miracle of the sign of Jonah.
[1] The whole Church now being prophetic (Rev 19:10).
[2] During the week I received an email from the Open Doors organisation containing their World Watch list for 2022. https://opendoors.org.au/world-watch-list/ The 50 most dangerous places to be a Christian.
[3] In the New Testament, the cross is typically a stumbling block to the Jews (Rom 9:23; 1 Cor 1:23; 1 Pet 2:8).
[4] The classic prophecies of Jesus impending death, and resurrection, are shared with the 12 disciples (Mark 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34 and parallels).
[5] For more on Jonah and Jesus see, http://cross-connect.net.au/jonah-and-jesus/
[6] Scripture never teaches that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
[7] Not only here, but when Paul remarks critically, “Jews demand signs” (1 Cor 1:22).
[8] Even the animals were prohibited from eating and drinking (Jonah 3:7-8)!
[9] E.g. “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”” (Luke 15:1-2).
[10] That is, all the signs that the New Testament speaks of after Jesus’ death and resurrection, whether the miracles mentioned in Acts (2:19, 43; :12; 6:8 etc) or elsewhere (Rom 1:19; 2 Cor 12:12; Heb 2:4), draw there reality from these principal saving events in the life of Christ.
[11] Christ was in the tomb for only one full day and two nights, but the language of “three days and three nights” needs to be understood as it would have been by his first century audience. There was a Jewish idiom for expressing a period of time that included three days– and therefore only two nights. 1 Samuel 30:12, the same phrase is used (in Hebrew) to express a period of time that began two days earlier, i.e. the day before yesterday. Similarly, in Esther 4:16 Mordecai asks the Jews to fast for “three days, night or day.” The period ends two days later (5:1 “On the third day”). In both cases, the phrase is used for the same length of time Jesus was in the tomb. Jesus’ hearers would have understood “three days and three nights” to refer to a period of time that was technically only about 36 hours. He wasn’t mistaken about the amount of time he would spend in the tomb; he was just speaking the language of a first-century Galilean.
[12] For Jonah, the belly of the fish is “the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2:2), the place of the dead away from the living presence of the Lord. This is old covenant pre-resurrection promise thinking.
[13] Language used about God is always “analogical”, “God is love”, for example, doesn’t limit the divine love to the boundaries of human love, even if there are likenesses. Not to attend to the dissimilarities always ends in idolatry (Rom 1:22-23).
[14] Rom 4:25
[15] As reflected in the conclusion of the book of Jonah, “And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”” (Jonah 4:11).
[16] Before or after death.
[17] This is the theme, for example, of Paul’s life (2 Cor 1:6; Eph 3:12; Phil 3:10; Col 1:24 etc.)
[18] For more on Spurgeon’s suffering see https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/anguish-and-agonies-of-charles-spurgeon
[19] Here, Spurgeon is mirroring the thinking of the psalmist in Psalm 6.
[20] Spurgeon’s prayer, like his preaching, is riddled with biblical allusions. E.g. “Thou art our Father” (Isa 63:1; 64:8); “tender and full of mercy” (Hos 11:18; James 3:17); “put my arms under him to sustain him” (Deut 33:27); “Wilt thou hide thy face from me” (Deut 31:17; Ps 13:1 etc.); “lay on a heavy hand” (1 Sam :, 11; Ps 32:4); “smile from thy countenance” (Num 6:26).
[21] And not solely that it be relieved.
[22] That is, such faith has the creative power of testimony within it. Ultimately, this is the testimony of the cross released in the resurrection.
[23] Like the idolaters of Nineveh and secular Australians (Rom 1:21-23).
[24] Though that is more likely to come if our frame of mind is bigger than ourselves!
[25] This love of Christ is prophetically spoken of in the Song of Songs, “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death; ardent love is as unrelenting as Sheol. Love’s flames are fiery flames— the fiercest of all.” (8:6).
[26] Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord (Isaiah (42:1-4 [9]; 49:1-6 [13]; 50:4-9 [11]; and 52:13-53:12) portray a messenger sent by God to save Israel. In the extreme, he is not only “wounded for our transgressions” (53:4-5 etc) but becomes “blind” and “deaf” in the service of the Lord. This is the mystery of substitutionary atonement, the state which Jesus entered into (Mark 15:34; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24) on our behalf.
[27] In more sophisticated language, it is paradoxical and enigmatic.
[28] Like the Roman centurion and his extraordinary confession of faith, “And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son9of God!”” (Mark 15:39).
[29] “So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.” (Matt 27:41-42).
[30] Who by his nature enters into the intercession of Christ, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26)
[31] “But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);” (Rom 10:6-8)