Jonah conclusion

Okay, Jonah, and I'm here, you know, by the muddy car, the muddiest car you've ever seen in the parking lot. I'm in person. Yes, that's good. We're finishing up Jonah today, and Jonah contrasted with Christ, right, Roger? Um, and then so we'll be done with Jonah. So Jonah, um called by God to preach the gospel. He's God said go to Nineveh and preach to Nineveh.

They'll be destroyed in 40 days. He disobeys that command that that mission and he gets on a boat to Tarshish pays the fare and when he gets on the boat and they go out to sea The sea starts raging. That was caused by God, a very great storm. He's down below, Dex asleep, and they rouse him awake. And they say, why don't you call out to your God? And Jonah says, We don't know if he does that, but he says, I know what's happening. It's I fled God and God of the Hebrews, God of the Jews, who made heaven and earth, and he's very angry with me.

So the way to do this is to throw me overboard. So they throw him overboard. That's where we pick up here. in jonah 1 15 through 17 so they pick up jonah throw him into the sea and the sea stopped its raging then the men feared the lord greatly and they offered a sacrifice to the lord and made vows And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights, or as J. Vernon McGee says, he was in the tummy of the fish, as he called it, the tummy.

J. Vernon McGee. And then, so he prays a prayer in chapter two. Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the stomach of the fish.

And he said, I called out in 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. Nonetheless, 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 me up, my life, from the pit, oh Lord, my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving, to 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. I saw a video on you, a short little video on YouTube this guy caught a northern pike. So he caught a northern pike and there's something wrong with his stomach.

So he could feel this disc in his stomach. And so he said, oh, I think he swallowed a Frisbee or a little Frisbee. And he thought it was a turtle. So he cut it open and he squeezed out of the incision from the stomach. And a little sunfish came, this pretty big sunfish.

So you know how they're flat, sunfish? So flat, that's what he's feeling. It was like this in his stomach. and then started to flop around. So we have proof that, right? And northern pike is a fish. So there's proof right there that that can happen. You just gale it up, right? Well, actually, there's stories of people surviving and selling men. There are a few out there. Whalers and things. It's happened.

I don't know. I didn't do them all. Did the science approve this? I always like to ask the science, you know, because it's interesting to know. It's like, how did he get oxygen? Yeah. Well, and the fish could have been created for this very specific subject, right? So he could have been oxygenated there. I don't think he was comfortable. No, I don't think so. He got sick at the end. But it's interesting, this point of death, the beat part here, you know, he's, the great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.

Have you ever heard of Davy Jones' Locker? with pirates that's the euphemism for the drowning and spending uh they're going down to davy jones's locker and i think jones is a it comes from jonah right so it's that's death and so he went down to davy jonah's uh Davy Jones's locker here, just like pirates of the Caribbean.

So that's where we're at. And today we're going to look at Jonah's death, burial, resurrection in quotations, contrasted to first Christ's work. Christ was crucified. Jonah was thrown overboard. So I'm putting the summary of the lesson up front here. This is kind of the lesson. Very easy. We'll be done after this slide. Then Christ was buried. Jonah was buried in the belly of the fish, right? Christ was raised from the dead. Jonah was regurgitated by the fish back onto the beach.

So that's our parallelism and our type there. Let's look at another type in the book of Jonah. Jonah as Israel is very interesting. So Israel was chosen and set apart by God and made a covenant people by God. And then they were commissioned to bring salvation to the world and represent his glory on earth. right, in their land. Jonah was appointed by God to bring salvation to the Gentile nation of the Ninevites. Both failed in their mission, right? Israel, you know, they were sent away. They were put into captivity, things like that. They worshiped other gods, et cetera.

So just as Jonah was preserved in the belly of a fish, and he should have died, So as Israel, they were preserved through the Red Sea when they escaped the death at the Red Sea. And then they were preserved for 3,000 years plus of exile, subversion, and attempts to annihilate their entire race. You think of World War II. So just as Jonah feared that he was at the end of his physical life, so Israel has been brought from despair, from despair of a national, wiping them out nationally again and again.

So in 1948 they were you know, five Arab nations wanted to wipe them out, 1956, 1967, 1973, the Yom Kippur War, Yom Kippur War, 1982, 2006, 2023, just two months ago. So there's all the wars that they've endured in parentheses there. Plus you have these intifadas, right, which are not wars, but when the Arabs just go in and kill them. Kill students is what intifada kind of means. So both are preserved through these trials even though they are chastened.

So Jonah is contrasted to Israel here and that's Feinberg brings that out in his book on the minor prophets. So we come to the Matthew passage and this is basically the point of today's lesson and the the comparison between the Jonah and Christ, specifically stated by Christ.

So in Matthew 12, 38 through 41, It says, some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered to them, an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. 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. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they have repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here."

So that's our Matthew passage. And this is in Matthew 12, he starts out Boy, first he heals a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees don't like that. And they call him, oh, no, first the chapter begins with they're going through the fields and they're taking grain and gleaning. They don't like that either. They don't like that because they're doing that on the Sabbath.

So the Pharisees, are just hitting him on every point in matthew chapter twelve so finally he and he cast out this demon from a deaf and dumb man and they don't like that and they really don't like that and they say that's from deals about our deals with and uh... and then christus little worked up at this point but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but No, you don't get a sign.

I'll give you a sign that you'll be a sign of judgment, right? So they're going to face judgment in the future at the great white throne judgment. They're going to see the men of Nineveh who repented at the preaching of Jonah. But you Pharisees are not doing anything. You know, you're still in your sins. So yeah, grumpy bunch.

And it's a very testy exchange in Matthew chapter 12. So that's our main scriptural focus for this morning. That's the comparison. So another comparison, you know, we looked at Jonah and Christ the fact that Jonah was thrown into sea and then was in the belly of fish and then he was regurgitated or vomited back, which is a picture of the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, which is kind of the work of Christ, right? So now let's look at the two men or the two missions that they have. So Jonah's mission, And I thought of this, I added this slide this morning, but I thought of it like at 3 a.m., and I couldn't sleep. But I thought it was a, I thought, oh, this is, I think there's some more comparisons here.

So see what you think, though. So Jonah was ordained as a prophet. maybe at a young age, like Samuel was. And Samuel, you remember, he was just a little kid. And the Lord called out to him, and he thought it was Eli, the rabbi there. So Jonah was ordained. He was commissioned by God to preach to Nineveh. God says, go to Nineveh.

He's tried. The mariners try him. because they find out he's on the ship and he's found guilty and he has to be thrown overboard. He is thrown overboard. So that's kind of death, again, in air quotations. He's imprisoned in the belly of the fish. He is expunged, I'm trying to think of all these euphemisms for vomiting, but expunged back onto the dry land. Back onto the dry land, he's placed violently back onto the dry land from the fish's belly. That's his, what we'd say, resurrected.

So he preaches the bad news to the world, to Nineveh, right? And his second time, his redo, is extremely successful because if 120,000 children were spared in livestock, that means that they have people, like 650 adults to a million adults or so. That's how you get to 120,000 children. Someone said, I think it was Feinberg, that this was the most successful evangelistic thing in history. I mean, if you think about that, the whole city. And none of them knew that something was happening, right? And they had an enemy up north in the mountains that they knew were wanting to come down and invade them. So they were kind of on edge. They knew something was coming.

So the Lord Jesus Christ, he's commissioned. I have it as the eternal covenant was his commission to, I should, as savior, right? That's when the salvation was sort of mapped out and commissioned in Hebrews 13 20. He was ordained by God, right? The dove comes down, descends. And these are the same things, but in different orders, right? So, different orders because Jonah sort of messed things up. But Christ preaches the good news to Israel and the world, just like Jonah did to Nineveh.

Christ was tried by Pontius Pilate, but he was found innocent by Pontius Pilate. He said, why am I? There's no reason to keep this man. Christ dies on the cross, he's buried in a tomb, he's risen again from the tomb, and that that is parallel to Jonah's experience, or Jonah's experience is parallel to this experience, that Christ suffers.

And then his preaching is monumentally successful, right? The gospel, here we are today, and many, many generations know Christ, 2,000 years worth of people. So that's because I wanted to fulfill the title of the lesson as best I could. So I think that's a good lesson. But see what you think.

I have no commentators to compare that to. here's a comparison of christ and jonah as far as signs go you know the matthew 12 passage and luke the same passage of jonah being three nights and three days in the belly of the fish that christ talks about is also stated in luke chapter 11 and um Miles mentioned this last week, and I hadn't heard that before or thought about it, but Christ says that Jonah is assigned to Nineveh. And so Nineveh somehow knew that something was coming because after he was thrown up by the fish. So could it be that some heralds went ahead of jonah and and they said to men of a in a matter of days you're gonna see this you're gonna see this he grew he grew profit proclaiming destruction uh... your destruction in the streets take heed because this is a sign you'll be destroyed and then they see isn't even profit walking their streets at saying the same thing and they all the whole city repents, even before the king. Yeah, the king repents later, right? He hears about it, and he doesn't even give an edict to the people. They do it without being told to the king to repent.

So the Ninevites were somehow primed and ready to receive the sign of Jonah walking the streets. proclaiming judgment, which prior to this, like last week, I didn't really think about that or know that until Miles brought that up, but it makes a lot of sense.

The Assyrians worshipped Dagon, the fish god, and his name is Oannes, O-A-N-N-E-S, but if you put an I before that name, it spells Jonah in the New Testament. So, imagine the Ninevites, there's this prophet, and his name is Jonah, and it's very similar, except for a letter away from their fish god, and they might have heard about the fish, right? Possibly from these mariners on that boat to Tarsha, maybe some of them went back to Nineveh, Maybe they were from there. So that's an interesting point that Feinberg brings up. So could it be that the Ninevites heard about Jonah being in the belly of the fish and then brought back to life as such before he got there and preached that they should repent?

It's interesting to think about, huh? Oh, I want to, in kind of summarizing this, because we covered that, the comparisons, and I want to finish up with this. I want to go back to Bob's question when he taught of, you know, did Jonah die physically or not?

And Miles, he did an excellent job of saying, no, he did not die. He was alive. And it's very obvious. And we see in the text itself that he was brought to the point of death, and it doesn't say that he died. But I listened to J. Vernon McGee, and it's very compelling. He has a compelling argument. I didn't think it would be, but maybe the way he just talks. It's compelling because of the language of the prayer, you know, it's the same language of death. There's where you can listen to the, there's a link on the web to it.

But I want to go over this in kind of wrapping this up, this middle ground between these two views, okay, from J.B. Stoney and see if It's not a middle view, it's a... Kind of half-dead, is that what happens? Yeah, it sounds like that, doesn't it? Not a zombie view. So maybe I say that. I don't say that correctly, but you'll see it. So when you see it, I'll read through it, because I have a lot of text that I'm going to read through quickly, because JB Stoney writes so beautifully that I don't want to ruin what he says by breaking it up.

But when you see it, just call it out, OK? So here it is. So Jonah was a servant who will not do the Lord's will. Well, says the Lord, I will bring him down to death. I will bring him down to where he cannot do one single thing, nothing but death before him, and death too with a bad conscience. Then Jonah prays to God and says, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look upon thy holy temple. And now Jonah comes up again, having learned death upon himself. Jonah comes up, but he's not soft. But many a devoted man is like Jonah when he comes up. He is full of God's work, but he is not soft. He must be softened. God will soften me here. I have a double death to learn.

Now Jonah rests under the gourd, you know, the plant. finds consolation in that. He really likes that plant, right? Yes, and his affections are drawn out towards it, and God says, I have drawn out your affections, now I will take it all away. Jonah's a plain and honest man, and he says, I do well to be angry. He's very angry about plants, and it says that. It's like an episode of the Felix and Oscar, the odd couple, right? Yeah, one of them kills the plant while he's others away, the other one's mad. That reminds me of that, this plant issue in the book of Jonah. And thus, and it is ever thus, it is a double death, double suffering, one connected with circumstances, the plant, and the other with the person, that's Jonah. overboard.

When you are in suffering from sickness, it has a different effect upon you from what it has when you are suffering in your surroundings. It's like getting fleece. at one time death only on the individual, at another, death all around us. It is a terrible thing to have to learn that we can survive the death of everything here, but then death has come in, not to bring us out, but that it might cast you upon God. This is the virtue of it, and death has come in that it may bring it out.

We often find that many who have really turned to the Lord and who believe in Jesus are not happy. They are not in the enjoyment of their salvation, and it is important to see what is the cause of this. The reason of it is that though they are truly converted, as we say, Yet they have never learned what it is between God and the sinner, the sinner and God. That is where the great lack of the soul is. Here's Jonah, he's a prophet, and yet he has to learn in a very painful way the nature of the distance between God and himself, a sinner.

It was will. He would not do what the Lord had told him to do. God told him to go to Nineveh, but he preferred his own will to God's will. He did not do anything very wrong in the human way, in a moral point of view, but he did not obey the instructions which the Lord gave him. And what was at the bottom of that? His own will.

Will is the real cause of the restlessness and the absence of full joy in souls. They do not really see that their whole nature is contrary to God and had to be removed in the cross. Jonah has to be cast out of the ship into the sea to learn what his will would bring him to.

I suppose everyone here knows the story. Read chapter two and see what he went through in learning that solemn lesson. Figuratively, he passed through death, for death is the only way to get clear of the will. Does anyone know what he's getting at here? Yeah?

He entered in the reality of death, And thus we get him in the whale's belly, alive without a will. If you want a striking illustration of a man alive without a will, you get it in Jonah, in the whale's belly. He is alive, but wholly at the will and control of another. Whose will and control is he at the mercy of?

God. A fish, right? Fish is, it's the fish's will that's taking him all around the Mediterranean Sea. But God, yeah, God, I love that. But yeah, but the fish. So that is the only true place of happiness for a believer, to be without a will of his own. Jonah was moved at the will of another, the fish. So, that one more thing is, right, our death, burial, and resurrection with Him, and it's basically a Roman six, which I was like, wow, that's, so not a middle ground, but a And not a physical death, but spiritual death.

And just to get rid of his will, he had this will. Same thing, she wanted to know more. The serpent said, hey, I'll give you some more information that you'll be interested to learn. So her will made her eat the fruit. So it was her will. And so if at the bottom of your sin nature is the will, it's a tough thing to crack. So I like how Stoney describes that you have to separate yourself from your own will. That gets in your way. I thought that was really good. And sorry for having to read, but you can see how he writes so clearly and wonderfully. And it just makes a lot of sense. So that's good. Okay. We'll close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father.

I've just been reading in four translations, and I read Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown, and Ryrie's commentaries, and they say 120,000 children. But in the ESB and NASB, it says peoples. And in the Holy Christian Center Bible, it says 120,000 people. And even in the King James, it says 120,000 persons. Persons, OK. I'm surprised that the Holy Bible doesn't have it. So which one says children? Nobody says children. ESB is 120,000 persons. Who has a New American Standard? New American Standard is 120,000 persons. That's for the 11th award. It's right at the last four elections.

How did they get children out of that? I think, you know, probably if we look at the Hebrew, but I think actually what most people do, it's the last part of that verse that everybody kind of hangs their hat on. Yeah, right. They don't know their left hand from their right hand. Right. But there's even controversy on that, because it probably takes a totally different direction. Oh, right.

But most people, including myself, I think that means most kids until a certain age don't know their right hand from their left hand. So I think that's what defines what person means. In the new American Standard, Jim, there's 120,000 persons who don't know their right hand from their left hand. Not by a reason. Probably really little children, actually. Yeah. And so that must be a Jewish phrase, too. Yeah. I bet it is. I think that children don't know their left hand from their right hand. And they're being trained up. They're not trained yet. And it makes sense, because he talks about these.

Because Nineveh, who watched that Yeah, that was great. And that you can see it right in the aerial of it. How big it was. Those walls were 100 feet high. I know. And 50 feet wide. And you can see the footprint of it in Mosul, Iraq is where it is. So that would be, that should be more than 120,000 people that could live there. Right. Yeah, exactly. 650,000 to a million people. Yeah.

I may have missed this last week, Miles, but can you give me a chapter and verse that people... This is Andrew. I mean, Andrew. No, I said I missed it from Miles last week. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. It's this idea that they never knew that somebody would be coming. Well, where's that in Scripture? Oh, yeah, that's... Yeah, that pre... Well, that they had some... They knew... Because... Christ says Jonah was a sign, so you think of Jonah being a sign, when they see Jonah there, that's a sign, but they knew a sign was coming. How did they know that?

Is that implied? But I don't remember that textually described. Right. it's not it's not implicitly yeah i guess i stated no but a lot of commentators say because the if you if you think about that conversion is so quick right um so fast that all the people do it and then the king does it and that they must they must it's like um and a sign is a It's hard to explain, but when you see the sign, you'll know that this is coming.

So Jonah was the sign, Christ says that, but I think that's where they're getting that. It's just not Jonah arriving and preaching because they say that the languages might have even been different. So, you know, does that make sense? But no, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not in there. Yeah, Jordan just showed up. Nobody knew who Jonah was you bright and if a stranger just comes into town and starts preaching He's going to get laughed at right. Yeah, it's kind of implied that they knew what God had a cocktail And so they kind of feared what was going on.

Because think of it, he tells Jonah 40 days, they're going to be destroyed. Then he goes into the belly of the fish for three days. So he loses three days there. And this 40 day, and then he has to travel 500 miles. So I don't, and if you make the clock go from when he gets spit out of the fish, has to go 500 miles, he gets there and he preaches. That's a long way. It takes I mean, how long does it take to walk? 12 miles a day. Yeah, but maybe somehow it gets there faster by force. I don't know.

So that's what they think. But they're inferring it. I think they're inferring it from the fact that Joan is a sign. Sign is something that's the word I wanted. Yeah, send me on in this week. Yeah, it's something that Anyway, but it's an inferred view. I mean, there's not a direct statement It's right Jesus in the sign of his ultimate crucifix burial right and you know the idea of general whether he's dead or not probably is irrelevant, but You know, if he were dead, he's being restored, and it's a Lazarus kind of thing.

Right, right. Not a resurrection. Exactly. Right. It's his body. Christ is the first fruit. Right. Fruits of the resurrection. He's the first one to be resurrected and will be the, well, if we're alive during the rapture, which is coming very soon. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

So, so, you know, the dead in Christ will be the second. kind of tranche in the parade right so yeah he was would have been restored but it doesn't see it doesn't say anything uh explicitly about that too so exactly you know He's got an interesting view. Yeah. I like how he says, I like how he brings it to, you read chapter 6 and it's doctrine, and people, it's hard to apply, right? Because it's just stated doctrine.

But he always sees prefigurements in the... He's thinking of Stoney now, right? Stoney, yeah. J.B. Stoney. And then when you hear in the life of jonah And hear how what he went he went through a spiritual death then it makes a lot of sense and you think um because it puts uh Shoelace. What's that phrase? Yeah, whatever. Yeah, right. Right. So, yeah. But I like that.

So, yeah, that's cool. great yeah okay so so folks yeah actually we'll no class the next two weeks but we're going to start bob's going to start with uh introduction to uh philippians okay let's uh close and correct our heavenly father Thank you for this study in Jonah. And we will see this physically someday. We'll see Jonah, and we'll know all these sort of answers and inferences that we're grasping at today as well. And we'll know that real true story, and we look forward to that. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.