Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Jonah 1:17–3:2, NASB
- Series: Jesus in the Old Testament (2024), no. 8
- Date: Sunday, December 1, 2024 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Three Days and the Work of God
When I started this series of messages a couple of months ago on pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament, one of the things that I mentioned to you is that God seems to be really fond of the idea of three days. As a matter of fact, you can search online, you can search if you’ve got Bible software. It’s a little more challenging with a paper Bible, but you can look up the times that God mentions three days or the third day, and there are numerous instances of it. God is very fond of doing things in three days. For us, depending on what side of the equation you are on, three days can either feel like forever or it can feel like where did the time go. If you are waiting for Christmas and you are a child, three days feels like eternity. If you are an adult and you are waiting on Amazon Prime that’s supposed to be here in two days, three days feels like an eternity, right? This time of year, it turns into six-day Prime shipping. You’d think they’d figure it out. Christmas comes every year, but I digress. It can feel like a long time. Other times it can feel like the blink of an eye. Our offices were closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So I have been out of the office Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Leaving here Wednesday, I thought I have got all these plans for the Thanksgiving holiday, all these things I’d like to do around the house, all these things I’d like to do with the kids. Do you think any of them got done? No. Maybe one or two of them got done. But I look back on it, I walked back into the office this morning and thought, I was just here. That three days went by so fast. Three days, a lot of times, is not, we overestimate what we can accomplish in three days. There have been times I have taken three days of vacation to try to clean out my workshop, thinking I could get it all done and it looks worse than when I started, because three days is not enough time. So many of the things that we think we could accomplish, three days is not enough time, but three days is just the right amount of time for God. And something we could never accomplish in three days, God does. There is this recurring theme of three days. One of the most prominent places we see this recurring three-day theme is in the story of Jonah. It is such a prominent story because it’s one of those that is so fantastic that it gets retold. It’s one of those Old Testament stories that people know, they know about, even if they’ve not grown up in church, they may not know all the details. Their ideas may be rife with misconceptions, but they know about the story. But it’s also so prominent because Jesus talked about it and compared himself to the story. So this morning, we are going to look at the story of Jonah. I am not going to go through all four chapters, but we are going to start at the very end of chapter 1. We’re going to read Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 and then see what comes on the other side of it in chapter 3. That sounds like a lot of text this morning. It is, if I remember my count correctly, it’s 13 verses. So it’s not really more than what we normally go over on Sunday morning. I didn’t want you to think, well, we better move the lunch plans back because we are doing three chapters. So Jonah chapter 1, we are going to start in verse 17. Here’s what it says in
Jonah in the Depths
Jonah chapter 1, starting in verse 17 and then going through the beginning of chapter 3. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice, for you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All your breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, I have been expelled from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you and to your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord. Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.
God’s Power and Faithfulness
As we read Jonah’s story, it demonstrates God’s power and his faithfulness to fulfill his redemptive plans. God had a plan for Jonah. God had a plan for the people of Nineveh. God’s plan for Jonah was to bring him back into the fold of walking with him. Jonah was a very strong-willed, self-interested, almost prideful man. He liked the idea of being a prophet of God more than he liked the actual following through on being obedient to what God told him to do. So he was determined to go a different way. He was determined that he knew better than God what he ought to do. And God’s plan for Jonah was to bring him back into fellowship with God himself. God’s plan for Nineveh was to bring the people of Nineveh, that wicked city, that pagan city, with all their false gods and with all their violent behavior, God’s plan was to bring them to a place of repentance where their hearts would be softened toward God and his truth. God had these plans. And you look at the beginning of the story, and what God intends to do, just on paper, seems to be impossible. Jonah has dug in, this is what I am doing, I am going the opposite direction. God said, “Go to Nineveh.” Jonah said, “I am going to Tarshish”, which if we are correct in what we believe Tarshish was, it’s on the coast of modern day Spain. It was as far away as you could get in the known world. Beyond that, boats really didn’t go. So he ran as far as he could the opposite direction. Jonah’s dug in on his position. The Ninevites, that was the capital city of Assyria. they were the superpower of their time. They were strong. They were in command. Why would they listen to this prophet who came from Israel, one of the countries they push around? Why would they bend to this God over their gods? On paper, all of this seemed to be impossible. But look at the things that God can do in three days. And this story shows us that God is powerful enough to fulfill his redemptive plans, and he’s faithful to follow through in doing it. So most of the people in this room are familiar with the story of Jonah, but just in case you are not, that’s what, most of what we focus on comes in chapter 1, and that’s the story of Jonah being called by God. God said, go preach to the Ninevites, go and tell them that in 40 days I am going to overthrow the city. And Jonah says, I do not think I am going to do that. That sounds like a bad idea. These people were known for their violence. It’s like God telling him to walk into a biker bar and start trash-talking people. I have never done that, but I do not have to have done that to know it’s a bad idea. So, Jonah says, I do not think that’s what I am going to be doing. He runs away from what God calls him to do. He gets on this boat, and suddenly, I guess what? He thought God could not find him on the boat, but God found him. Guess what? There is this enormous storm, and the people on the boat are trying to do everything they can to lighten the load so they do not sink. They’re stuff overboard. They’re crying out to every God they know to pray to. And finally, they wake up Jonah and have him pray to his God. And Jonah recognizes, guys, you can keep praying to all these people. You can keep asking for protection. You can keep trying to lighten the load of the boat. You can do all of these things, but it’s not going to work because this storm is here for me. It’s my disobedience. And Jonah, to his credit, recognizes this and owns up to it. And rather than put everybody else in peril, Jonah sacrifices himself and says, throw me into the water. So, they throw him into the water and the storm goes away. A lot of times we skip over chapter 2. Chapter two doesn’t have the exciting narrative story parts. Chapter one ends with him getting swallowed by the fish. The very end of chapter 2 tells us that he got thrown up by the fish, and chapter 3 tells us he goes to Nineveh. Chapter four tells us how he still got into an argument with God. We overlook chapter 2 a lot because it’s his prayer. But chapter 2 is the heart of the story. This is what God was doing in Jonah’s heart while Jonah was in the belly of the fish. And by the way, skeptics like to poke holes in this story and say, this is impossible. They talk about the unlikelihood. Is that the word? They talk about how problematic it would be for a grown man to get stuck, get through the throat area of a whale. But the Bible doesn’t say it was a whale. Some English translations do say whale, and they’re not wrong. It’s just, it’s a word that we really do not have a good translation for in English from Hebrew. Some translations, like the one I read out of today, say great fish. And it’s the same way in the New Testament and the Old Testament talking about this story. It’s some sea creature. We do not know what it was. Was it a whale? Was it a shark? Was it something God created out of the blue that we have never seen? I do not know. We just know it was something that lived in the water that was big enough to swallow Jonah, and I hope I never meet one, right? God put it there specifically. Jonah even recognizes in the midst of this prayer that it was God’s grace, it was God’s provision for him that he would be swallowed by that sea creature. Otherwise, he would not have survived. And while he is in the belly of this sea creature for three days, his heart was softened. You know, when we are disciplined, it’ll either harden our hearts or soften our hearts. And the goal is for it to be softened. And that’s what happened with Jonah. And he repented. That’s why we have this prayer recorded in chapter 2. He’s telling God, you were right, I was wrong. As wrong as I was, you still rescued me. And because Jonah repented, then God turned Jonah loose, but he turned him loose basically with the understanding, now go do what I told you to do. It didn’t get him out of what he had run away from doing. God said, go do what I told you to do. So in chapter 2 here, how was God at work in Jonah’s life? Well, this was probably, we do not know a whole lot about Jonah’s life, but I would imagine this was pretty much the lowest point of his whole life in chapter 2. But he says that God was still at work. In verse 2, he tells us that I called out of my distress to the Lord and He helped me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. Sheol is the grave. And you heard my voice. God was still hearing him. God was still at work. He found himself in this hopeless situation. In verse 3, he said, you had cast me into the sea. Now, recognizing this wasn’t on God. Jonah is the one who disobeyed. He earned this consequence. This wasn’t a consequence God just gave him. He earned this. He had been thrown into the depth of the sea. He was in a hopeless situation. He could not save himself. He was drowning as the seas shook back and forth. He talks about the current engulfing him. If you’ve ever been caught in a rip current, you know how powerful those things can be. So he says this current had engulfed him. And he’s powerless here. All your breakers and billows passed me over. And he felt abandoned by God. As we come to verse 4, he says, I have been expelled from your sight. Now, you read the prayer in its fullness. Jonah knew he hadn’t been abandoned by God. That’s the whole point. God, you still heard me. God, you still took care of me. But in that moment, he felt abandoned by God. And sometimes we get to low points in life. And although we know that God has not abandoned us, sometimes we feel like God has abandoned us. And that’s where Jonah was. He felt abandoned. But even at that, he recognized that God still had plans for him. That’s why he says, right after I have been expelled from your sight, nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. The only way he can do that is if he’s back in Jerusalem someday. So even as he’s drowning, he recognizes, I feel like God’s abandoned me, but I still believe God’s going to do something here. And if we skip ahead to verse 7, we see that God heard his prayers even from the depths of the sea. While I was fainting away, he was about to drown. I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. He says God heard him. From God’s presence in the temple there in Jerusalem, God’s presence enthroned with splendor, that far away, God heard his prayer from the depths of the sea. And God answered him, and God graciously rescued Jonah.
Salvation Is from the Lord
If we go back to verses 5 and 6, he talks about how deep he was. He had the seaweed, the plants wrapped around his head. He descended to the roots of the mountains. I think that means he’s at the bottom of the sea. Now, we are not necessarily talking out in the middle of the Atlantic where, down by the wreck of the Titanic, you could not survive that deep. This is in the Mediterranean, maybe not too far from shore. He’s too deep to rescue himself, but he can touch the bottom. He’s in an incredible predicament that God made a way of escape. Now, God’s way of escape here, though, was pretty unconventional and unexpected. You know, we would expect, I do not know what they would expect in their day, we would expect God to send a submarine or somebody throwing some life lying down to us, God said, here, I am going to have you swallowed by a sea creature. So it scooped him up. And Jonah recognized that that was God’s provision. I have always, from the time I was a kid, heard the story taught as though being swallowed by the fish was the discipline. Now, the discipline was being thrown out of the boat into the storm. God’s grace was that fish swallowing him up so he didn’t have to drown. So Jonah recognized God’s faithfulness. He recognized how foolish it would be to worship anything other than God. To worship the things that the Ninevites were worshiping would be foolish. To worship the things the other guys on the boat were worshiping would be foolish. Even to worship his own will and his own preferences would be foolish. Anything that distracts us from worshiping the one true God would be foolish. And that’s what Jonah talks about in verse 8. And because of that, he committed in verse 9 to serve God faithfully from here on out when he says, I will sacrifice to you and what I have vowed I will pay, he’s saying, I am going to obey you. Because of who you are and because of what you’ve done, I am going to obey you and I am going to serve you. So he went out from there with that message that salvation is from the Lord. Now, the reason I bring up this story in a series of messages about Jesus in the Old Testament is because Jesus brought up this story in talking about himself. Because there are some parallels between this story and what happened with Jesus, that Jesus used to illustrate for those who were watching and paying attention in his day, what was about to happen with the resurrection. In that case too, three days was all it took for God to accomplish something that we could never accomplish in thousands of years. But we need to be careful as we draw analogies here. Jonah is not a Christ figure. All right, Jonah did way too many things wrong in this story for us to say this is an analogy, Jesus and Jonah. Now, sometimes that works. Joseph, we know Joseph was a sinner because he was human, but the Bible doesn’t really record anything he did wrong. Jonah, it does. So, we need to be very careful here that we are not trying to draw too many parallels between Jesus and Jonah. The parallel is not between the person of Jesus and the person of Jonah. It’s between what God did in Jesus’s story and what God did in Jonah’s story. The parallel here is about the events, and the issue is how God worked in each of the stories.
The Sign Jesus Gave
Just like Jonah’s story demonstrated God’s power and his faithfulness to fulfill his redemptive plans, Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate demonstration of God’s power and faithfulness. We see other demonstrations of how powerful God is to fulfill how faithful he is to follow through. We see demonstrations like that all throughout the scriptures, including the story of Jonah. But if you are looking for the one that is the best example, the ultimate example, that there can never be an example that tops this example, it would be the resurrection of Jesus.
No Sign but Jonah
Matthew chapter 12 is where Jesus talks about the parallels between his story and Jonah’s. In Matthew 12, 38, it says, then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of the prophet, the sign of Jonah the prophet. Now, if we just read that out of context, it seems very harsh of Jesus. These people come to him asking, Hey, we want a sign to make sure you really are who you say you are. And the scriptures teach us to use discernment. What could be wrong about trying to make sure we have got this right. As if you back up to what happened right before that, Jesus was performing miracles. He was teaching with authority. He was doing all these things that marked him out as the Son of God, and it was the Spirit of God empowering those things. And these Pharisees and teachers looked at that and said, no, no, you are doing that by the power of Satan. That’s when they have the conversation about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That if you are looking at the work that God is doing and it is self-evident and you are saying, no, no, that’s Satan right there, then you have hardened your heart to such a point that you are not willing to look at the evidence for the truth. You do not want to see a sign. You’re just wanting Jesus to jump through hoops at this point. So when they turn around, He’s done all these signs, He’s done all these miracles, He’s taught like nobody’s ever taught before. He does all these things and they attribute it to Satan and He says, basically, you’ve just gone past the point of no return. You’ve hardened your heart to such a point you are not going to turn and repent ever. You’re not interested in the truth. Then they say, we want to see a sign to know who you really are. Like he hadn’t been doing that all along. And Jesus calls them out for their wickedness. He calls them an evil and adulterous generation. Adulterous seems like an odd adjective there, but they were being unfaithful to God. So he’s telling them their hearts were wicked, their hearts were not right, even in asking. He said, no sign will be given to you. I am not jumping through any hoops for you people because you are not interested in it. The only sign you are going to get is the sign of the prophet Jonah. And if we wonder what is the sign of the prophet Jonah, he goes on and tells him, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus said, I am about to give you the ultimate sign, and it’s going to be a lot like what happened to Jonah. Well, how is it like what happened to Jonah? That’s what I want to spend the next couple of minutes. I am not saying in closing yet, but we are getting close. Getting close to the end of my notes here. Over the next couple minutes, I want us to talk about how this is like what happened to Jonah.
Three Days and Redemption
First of all, both of them were sent with a message. What was God doing in each of these stories? In the Old Testament, He sent His messenger, the prophet Jonah, to go to the Ninevites and demand their repentance. And the Ninevites were hostile to that message. In the New Testament, God sent His messenger, His Son, who happened to be God in human flesh, with a message calling for repentance. And by the way, Israel was pretty hostile to that message. Both of them, in the course of their stories, they experienced a moment of separation from the Father, or at least a moment of felt separation from the Father. When Jonah is thrown into the depths of the sea, He felt like he had been expelled from God’s sight. And Jesus, when he took responsibility for our sins on himself when he was at the cross, cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Both of them experienced separation from the Father. Both were condemned to death. Jonah was condemned to death. And I will say this, it was a sacrificial death on both of their parts. Jonah was condemned to death to be thrown overboard from the ship so that the others on the ship didn’t die. Jesus was condemned to die on a Roman cross so that sinners would not have to bear the fate we deserved. And both spent three days in the depths. For Jonah, it was in the belly of this sea creature. Spent three days down there with nothing to do but call out to God. Can you imagine how bored you would get three days in there? Well, and how awful that experience would be. But you know what? It gave him a lot of opportunity to think about what was important. Jesus was in the grave for three days. I believe one of the New Testament accounts where he’s talking about the sign of Jonah even talks about him being in the belly of the earth. I think this one says that I read in Matthew says in the heart of the earth. But both of these messengers from God were in the depths for three days and three nights. And both of them experienced what we would call a resurrection. Now in Jesus’s case, it was a literal resurrection. And by the way, that’s a hill I will fight and die on. Not like I literally want to fight somebody, but that’s a non-negotiable, and it should be for all of us, that Jesus’ resurrection was literal. It wasn’t a vision. It’s not that He just lives in our hearts. Jesus was dead and then came back to life in the same body. He literally resurrected from the dead. Jonah, it’s not quite the same thing, but he was as good as dead. As far as anybody knew, he was dead. And where Jesus walked out of the grave after three days, in the Old Testament, after three days, this fish bellies up to land and Jonah comes walking out. Both of those are incredible signs. Both of them, then after that resurrection, went forward proclaiming God’s message that they were sent to proclaim. And both of them led the Gentiles to be reconciled to God as a result. The Ninevites repented and turned to God, and when Israel rejected Jesus, the gospel went out to the Gentiles, and you and I are here as a result of that today. So what’s the point of the parallels?
The Message Still Confronts Us
The point of the parallels is that everybody in Jesus’ day was familiar with the story of Jonah, and Jesus was letting them know, hey, what happened to Jonah? Something like that’s going to happen again, only it’s going to be bigger. You want a sign to know that I am all the things I claim to be? You want a sign to know that I can do all the things that I have said I will do? Look for the sign of Jonah. Look for me to be condemned. Look for me to be dead for three days. Look for me to come out of the grave, come out of the depths after three days. Look for me to take that message to the Gentiles. Look for those things. When you see me doing the things that Jonah did in a different context, when you see God at work in my life the same way that you saw God at work in Jonah’s life, then you’ll know exactly who I am. Jesus pointed to the story of Jonah because it gave them something they could understand. So the resurrection didn’t just happen. I have heard people today say, oh, if Jesus rose from the dead, what does that actually prove? Well, I guess it depends on your definition of proof. But if a guy promised and predicted and accomplished his own resurrection, I am going to listen to what that guy says. I think that guy knows what he’s talking about. So Jesus pointed to the sign of Jonah to validate everything that he’d said up to this point. There is a common thread, a common theme in both of their messages, that we need to repent and we need to be reconciled to God. It’s what Jonah preached. He didn’t want the Ninevites to actually do it, but that’s what Jonah preached. That’s what God sent Jonah to preach. And that’s the message that Jesus brought, that we need to repent and be reconciled to God. God’s message of repentance and His offer of redemption, they still confront us today. You and I still have a choice to make. Just like the people who heard Jonah’s message, just like the people who were confronted with the news of the resurrected Jesus, we have a decision to make. Do we continue to serve idols? And I presume nobody in this room is probably bowing down to statues, but we have idols in our culture nonetheless. Sometimes that idol is just the big eye. It’s just me. Are we going to continue to worship idols or are we going to repent and serve the one true God? And in Jesus’ case, in Jesus’ case, he took our guilt for all the idols we have served, for all the sin we have committed. He took our guilt. He took responsibility for that and he was nailed to the cross in our place. And he shed his blood and he died so that our slate could be wiped clean. And the reason why we know he was able to wipe that slate clean is because of the sign of Jonah. when Jesus died and was buried and came out of that grave three days later, he proved that he was exactly who he claimed to be and that he could forgive sins just like he promised. And this morning, if you need to be reconciled to God, you need to be right with God, then it’s as simple as recognizing that Jesus died to pay for your sin. All those things that separate you from the holy God. Jesus died to pay for them, and He paid for them in full. And for your slate to be clean, the only thing you have to do is believe that He is who He says He is, believe that He died in your place and rose again, and then ask for that forgiveness, and you’ll have it.