When you just read “Jonah”, you
immediately thought of the huge fish, didn’t you. But today I do not want to
concentrate on that great supernatural miracle of God (creating such a big fish
for him – Jonah 1:17 “Now the
LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah,”).
Let us first quickly get the
theory that Jonah is only mythology and not a real event, out of the way. Because this is the modern tendency, isn’t
it, to call the historical events recorded in the Bible into disrepute.
Firstly, the style of the book,
the wording and the grammar, are identical to the Old Testament books 1 and 2
Kings. So if you dispute the
authenticity of the story of Jonah, you also have to disregard 1 & 2 Kings,
for which ample historical proof exists.
Secondly, real people and real
places are mentioned in Jonah, which are also mentioned elsewhere in the
Bible. For example: Jonah himself is
also mentioned in II Kings 14.
And thirdly, Jesus treated Jonah
as a real person in Matt 12:40-41. Let’s read verse 40: “For even 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”. Please note that Jesus did not say: For even as the STORY of Jonah says that….He
spoke of a real person. You see, Jonah
was born in Nazareth, and must have been one of the local heroes to Jesus when
He was growing up! If you start
disputing the very words of Jesus Himself, you are in essence then declaring
that you believe nothing written in the Bible - we cannot decide which sections
we will believe, and which not. It is
all, or nothing.
What I really want to get to, is
the fact that Jonah’s story is a foreshadow of Jesus’ resurrection. Because Jonah was actually dead in the belly
of that fish.
What! I hear you say. But this is not what we were taught in Sunday
School? Let’s investigate:
Jonah 2:3 – For you cast me
into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me, all
Your waves and Your billows passed over me. – No doubt that he was cast into the deepest waters of the Mediterranean
Sea.
Verse 5-6
– The waters compassed me about, even to the extinction of life, the abyss
surrounded me, the seaweed was wrapped around my head. I went down to the bottoms and the very roots
of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. – It takes only about one and a half mins to drown, and many more
minutes to reach the bottom of the sea and lie there with seaweed wrapped
around your head.
Jonah2:2: “ 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.”-
Jonah’s prayer came out of the belly of
Sheol. Now Sheol was the abode of
the dead.
Verse 7 – When my soul fainted
upon me – This is his last moments of consciousness – I remembered my
Lord.
You see, when that fish spewed
Jonah out, God had also resurrected him, and this is why Jesus could say: LIKE Jonah, the Son of Man….and He meant: Will be enclosed for three days and three
nights AND will also be resurrected from the dead.
So this is a key element from the
story of Jonah: RESURRECTION!
What does Jesus have to say about
the resurrection of the dead?
Read sections of John 6 with me:
Verse 39: …but that I should give new life and raise
them all up at the last day.
Verse 40:…and I will raise him up
from the dead at the last day.
Verse 44: …and them I will raise
up from the dead at the last day.
Verse 54:…and I will raise him up
from the dead on the last day.
I think Jesus meant what He
said: He WILL raise us up from the dead on
the last day. How it happens is described in 1 Cor 15 (where Paul explains that
the rapture will happen first, but this is a topic for another day). The
question of course is: what happens
next? Why would He raise us up after we
had already died, assuming that this has happened before His
rapture-appearance?
Because He wants to reward His
children! Read Rev 11:18 – And the
heathen raged, but Your wrath came, the time when the dead will be judged and
Your servants the prophets and saints (that’s us!) rewarded. Halleluja! We serve a God Who has compassion. We sometimes forget how patient God is, and
how full of mercy, and how many chances He wants to give people to choose life,
to turn away from our wickedness and choose Him. Look at Jonah!
©2020Copyright All rights reserved P. Koegelenberg
