Resurrection - The Sign that Demands a Response

“The Sign”

(Jonah 2, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 12, 2009)

Luke 11:29-30 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, "This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. ³⁰ For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.

Jonah 2 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 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!" ¹⁰ And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

QUESTION: Why did Jesus call His resurrection the sign of Jonah?

Jesus demonstrated thousands of signs of His divine power and authority during His days on this earth. Nonetheless, there were those around Him who were not entirely satisfied with these, and they demanded what they called “a sign from heaven.” In denying their request, Christ made a curious statement that we now know was meant to refer to His ultimate sign, His own resurrection from the dead. He said, “No sign will be given, except the sign of Jonah.” What did Jesus mean when He called His resurrection “the sign of Jonah?”

The reluctant prophet – from the belly of Sheol (Jonah 2:1-3)

Jonah was an Old Testament prophet, and a reluctant one at that. God told Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, and Jonah refused. That’s not like Jesus! God met Jonah in His refusal. He brought about a storm that threatened to take the prophet’s life and the others who were sailing with him. At the end of Jonah 1, Jonah had not only been thrown overboard by his shipmates, he had been rescued from the seas through the agency of a great fish. We are told that he was kept in that fish for three days and three nights. This period of being entombed in that sea creature is compared by Christ to His time in an earthly tomb prior to His resurrection. This is the most obvious link between Jonah and Jesus. They both faced death. Although Jonah did not actual die, he did spend three days in something like a tomb, and his release from that strange prison was something like a resurrection.

Beyond the duration of their trials, Jesus’ resurrection is rightly associated with Jonah because the two men turned their hearts in the same direction. Jonah recounts in verse two that He called out to the Lord out of His distress. This is precisely where Christ turned both in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then from the cross, when He spoke the words of Psalm 22:1, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Jonah cried out to God out of the belly of Sheol. This word “Sheol” was the Old Testament word for the grave, or the place of the body after death. The raging seas would have soon been Jonah’s Sheol. Jesus cried out to the Father for deliverance. His body was in the grave itself, and not a mere picture of Sheol. Our great Messiah, the sinless Son of God, was willing to do this for us, to suffer and to die, and He knew and trusted that he would not remain in that belly of death forever.

You brought my life up (Jonah 2:4-10)

When Jonah was in the fish, which is where he uttered the praise and promise to God recorded in our text, he had already been rescued by God, though not entirely. His destiny was not to remain in the grave. Here there is a parallel again with our Lord. Though His body was resting in a borrowed tomb, He was already delivered in this way: His Spirit had been commended into the hands of His father, and He would enjoy a real existence in a place He called “paradise.” Remember He said as much before His death, when He told the repentant thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” He was already delivered, yet not entirely, not until the tomb would be empty again after the passage of something like the three days that Jonah’s body was inside the belly of a fish.

During that time, Christ returned home to heaven. He went back to that dwelling place above, the holy temple of the Almighty God. This is the temple that Jonah was expecting to see again when he was near death in the seas. Whatever else was happening to him by God’s discipline, he did expect that he would look upon the Lord’s holy temple again. While this could be a reference to the earthly temple in Jerusalem that was only a picture of the heavenly original, this seems very unlikely, since Jonah indicates in verses five and six that he was dying. In the midst of his watery grave, he was yet expecting that his God would bring him home above. To go to heaven now is a deliverance in its own right, but God had more in mind for Jonah. The Lord brought up his life from the pit, and gave him more time on earth and more work to do on earth.

Both Jonah and Jesus not only cried out in the direction of the God who hears the cries of His people, they were both heard. When Jonah’s cry was heard, that meant that a fish would deposit him on the beach so that he could go on to Nineveh, and preach the message that God gave to him. When Jesus was heard, it meant something that was a little bit like what happened to Jonah, but only a very little bit. Jesus was raised again to immortal life and walked the earth with a resurrection body. Jonah was aware that his rescue was a salvation that belonged entirely to the Lord. Jesus is our salvation.

Jonah would do what he promised the Lord that he would do, that he would pay his vow to God by praising him, by sacrificing to him, by fulfilling the ministry that was his to do. Jesus also would pay His vow. He would build up the kingdom of God and offer it up to the Father, a kingdom of those from ages gone by, and from generations yet to come, a kingdom of those who would praise the Lord forever, a resurrection kingdom that is even now stored in the heavens for the final day. This is something that no false god could do. Talk is cheap. Resurrection is expensive and impressive. The God who brings us resurrection is the real God, a God who is the ultimate in steadfast love. He heard the cries of His Son, He gave Him resurrection, and when Jesus receives resurrection, our resurrection is also assured, for we are in Him not only in His cross, but in His resurrection salvation.

The Sign of Jonah (Luke 11:29-30)

We have seen that Jesus and Jonah had a death of shorts that had a shared duration – three days. We have seen that when they looked for help they both looked in the same direction – up to heaven, and to heaven’s God. But there is one other way in which the resurrection of Jesus was especially the sign of Jonah, and it is this one thing that Jesus mentions in Luke 11:29-30. The two men’s lives after their deliverance shared something of the same divine design, that the enemies of God would repent.

Jonah was a living sign to the people of Nineveh. This capital city of the Assyrian Empire was a notoriously wicked place. That’s why Jonah did not even want to go there to preach, because he was afraid that the message that he brought them just might be listened to, they might humble themselves, turn from their sins, and that God might forgive them, rather than destroy them, and this is what he wanted to avoid more than anything else. He wanted the Assyrians to be destroyed. His greatest fears were realized when an eye-popping response to his preaching did come. They listened, everyone high and low, they repented, and God withhold His judgment, at least against that generation. This was not Jonah’s design. He wanted to see Nineveh destroyed. He did not want His resurrection from the depths of the seas to bring life to these mortal enemies of Israel. But this is what God wanted, and this is what happened.

The story of Jonah – The repentance of Nineveh in the face of impending destruction

God had a similar though much bigger design of repentance unto life that would come through the resurrection of Jesus. In every age, there is much about our way of thinking and living that begs for God’s judgment. God brought His Son back from the dead as a sign to an evil generation. There is a way of life through this one Man. When He proclaims the fact that a judgment is coming in the midst of an evil world, it is no time to ignore Him. The people of Nineveh saw the danger that was coming against them. They saw Jonah as a sign from God. They believed His message of a coming judgment, and they repented. How can we do less than this as a response to the resurrected Son of God?

In every way, the risen son of God is superior to the prophet Jonah, even after Jonah’s reeducation camp inside the belly of a fish. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, as well as being a true Son of Man. Jonah was not divine. Jesus was so utterly committed to obeying the commandments of His Father that He said it was His food, and He went to the cross willingly for the good pleasure of God. Jonah had to be hauled back to his divinely given mission and message, and even then he was not happy about it. Jesus came to die so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Jonah’s ministry forestalled the inevitable. Nineveh’s destruction would come in a later generation. Jesus’ saving work for us was so perfect and permanent, that no one can separate us from the Love of God in Him.

There are some very obvious ways in which the sign of Jonah was a good code phrase for our Lord. He used it to speak somewhat secretly, even in the hearing of his enemies and pretended friends, about what would soon happen to Him in His death and resurrection. The detail of three days in a place of death and the new life of the prophet that was like a resurrection is well matched in what happened to Jesus. Jonah made a vow to the Lord in His distress and He was heard. Christ made His vow on the cross and He was also heard. These are interesting facts, but we are not here today for interesting facts. The preaching of the resurrection calls everyone everywhere to acknowledge the truth that God has visited us in person. Once we acknowledge the fact that Jesus did what He told His disciples He would do, we must further admit that, like Jonah, He has preached a message that demands a response.

The people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah. They acknowledged their sinful ways before God, they mourned over their sins, they considered what had been announced to them by Jonah, that the end of their lives and their city was imminent, and that they were in trouble with God. And then they did something. They turned away from their sins. Jesus preached repentance to his own generation, and in this message, the Son of God is saying something to you. If Jonah was not to be ignored by the people of Nineveh, why would anyone think that it would be safe to ignore the Son of God who accomplished the sign of all signs when He rose from the dead? It is unreasonable for you to have no opinion in your mind about the resurrection. It is unfeeling for you to have no emotion in your heart concerning the resurrection. It is unwise for you to have no action in your life flowing from the resurrection. Believe in Jesus and the resurrection. Love Him with your heart. Follow Him with your life.