Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.… God sees the end from the beginning. He means it from the beginning. He is moving towards it from the beginning. There are no isolated events. Each is connected with a series leading up to it. The series is so long that we cannot see its earlier steps, much less observe their direction. But nothing is surer than that from the first they have a trend toward that one which is their ultimate effect. In proof of this we have only to select a series on which we have the light of Scripture, such as that leading up to the work of Christ. There are many such series. One leads up to his birth, another to his education, another to his sufferings, another to his death; and so on. And these series lead up to it in various ways. There is a prophetic series, and a typical series, and a contributory series, and a causal series. And there are events which lead up to it in two or three of these capacities at once. Such an event is the one recorded here, as the New Testament Scriptures repeatedly affirm. Consider this event - I. AS A MIRACLE. It was clearly outside the natural order. The shark or other sea monster was "prepared" by God. It swallowed Jonah, contrary to its habit, without crushing him between its teeth. He remained alive in its stomach for days, contrary to all known physical laws. He was cast out safely on land, contrary to all natural probabilities. Seeing, as he could not but see, God's hand in the whole thing, Jonah would learn from it: 1. The Divine resistless purpose. Throwing off allegiance, he fled from duty like a man resolved on any terms to get away. But God went after him in a way that showed he meant to have his work done. The fugitive was stopped by wind and wave and conspiring circumstances as by an adamantine wall, impossible to break through. He knew now that God was a God who cannot be baulked, and who will have his way. The same lesson we all need to learn. Much rebellion arises out of a half conscious expectation that God at last will give way, and our disobedience be all condoned. And half the afflictions we suffer are to cure us of our wilfulness and conceit of irresponsibility. They teach us that God's arm, not ours, is strongest - that his will, not ours, must rule. When we have appropriated and endorsed the sentiment, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt," our life sky will clear, and the thunderclouds that. threatened a deluge will discharge themselves in fertilizing showers. 2. The Divine consistent character. Severity was conspicuous up to the point of the prophet's immersion. After that everything spoke of goodness. There are qualities in God fitted each in its own way to move men to his service (2 Corinthians 5:11; Romans 12:1). They moved Jonah. His humble, believing, thankful prayer in the monster's maw is a revelation, of their effect on his moral nature. And godly lives the world over and all history through are effects due to the same cause (Psalm 7:17; Romans 2:4). Severity and goodness are just Divine moral excellence facing two different ways (Romans 11:22). Both have the same infinitely glorious perfection behind them, and are forceful with its inherent essential energy. 3. The Divine effective way. God had not interfered in the matter of Jonah's disobedient flight until things had gone a certain length. He allowed him to reach Joppa, and get on board a ship, and start for Tarshish. The sinful act was completed before the punishment began. But the moment it was morally complete the stern "Thus far and no further" was spoken. And how masterly the strategy, and resourceful the strength of God appeared! The elements, the lower animals, and man alike become his ministers, and stop the runaway before and on either side. And then the measures as a whole are so exactly yet variously apposite to the purpose of checking insubordination, and compelling execution of the original command! Jonah would know more about the God with whom he had to do, and the considerations moving to implicit obedience, than he ever knew before. It is not in the Divine dealings as an exhibition of mere force, but of force directed unalterably to ends of justice and mercy, that their chief disciplinary value lies (Romans 2:2; Romans 3:3-6; Romans 11:22). Men are moved by them in proportion as God's perfections come out in them and shine. II. AS A TYPE. On this point we have for an interpreter Christ himself (Matthew 12:40). "Jonah was in the fish's belly, so was Christ in the grave; Jonah came forth from thence, so did Christ rise again; his (Christ's) rising doth bring our rising, his resurrection ours, because he was the firstfruits of all those that do sleep (1 Corinthians 15:20)" (Abbot). The analogy between Jonah's sojourn in the deep and Christ's in the grave is such as to fit one to be a type of the other. The analogy holds: 1. In the time of the sojourn. It was three days in each ease. In the case of Christ we know that two of these days were incomplete. He was buried in the evening of the first day, and rose on the morning of the third day. Rhetorical speech is necessarily in round numbers, and our Lord states the truth broadly without attempting to elaborate details. Why three days was the period fixed on either in type or antitype we cannot tell. It is pertinent to notice, however, that three and four are mystic numbers, and together make up seven, the number of perfection. Then three days were sufficient, and no more, to establish the fact of death in the case of Christ, and the reality of the miracle of preservation in the case of Jonah. Details of Scripture are important because they record details of a Divine procedure which are purposeful through and through. 2. In the capacity in which each sojourned. Jonah was in the fish's belly as Christ was in the grave, in payment of the penalty of sin. Moreover, each by accomplishing this eared men from death. "Each of the processes is an atonement, an expiation, a sacrifice, pacifying the Divine Judge, satisfying Divine justice, abolishing guilt, restoring peace, effecting reconciliation" (Martin). But here the analogy ends. The type suffered for sins of his own, the blessed Antitype for sins of others. The type saved men from death of the body, the Antitype saved them from death eternal. Well might he say, on a memorable occasion, "a greater than Jonah is here"! 3. In the analogous experience of the two. The experiences were not identical. Christ literally "died and rose again according to the Scriptures." Jonah did not actually die and rise. But he did virtually. His natural life was forfeit, and was only saved by a miracle equal to that of resurrection. His life in the deep was a supernatural life, and, therefore, practically a new one. Indeed, he applies the words "hell" (Sheol) and "corruption" (shachath) to his condition, the same words which Scripture applies to Christ's sojourn in a state of death (Jonah 2:2-6; Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31). He uses them doubtless in a figurative sense, but by using them at all he treats himself as virtually a dead man. Like those of Hezekiah and Lazarus and the widow's son (Isaiah 38:5; John 11:44; Luke 7:15), the life of Jonah from that hour was God given and new. So may be your life or mine. If God has saved you alive when men despaired of your recovery, or when but for some interposition which we call an accident it was forfeit by natural laws, then you are even as Jonah, and your remaining life, like his, is in a special sense and measure consecrate (Romans 12:1). 4. That with each it was the gate to a new life. The life of Jonah after his virtual resurrection was a new one, and greatly higher than the old. He emerges from the sea a new man, in a new relation to God, with a new purpose of heart, and a new life career opening out. "His old life is cancelled; all its guilt obliterated; all its evils interruptive of Divine fellowship and blessing abolished - left behind in the depths of the sea. He is dead to the past; and it has no more hold on him, no more evidence against him, no more wrath in store for him" (Martin). A prominent element in this new life was the preaching to Gentile Nineveh. But for it that heathen city would have perished for lack of knowledge, So also the resurrection-life of Christ is new (Romans 6:10). Living always to God, he lives to him now in a new sense. "He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father." And as he rose no bond of law kept hold on him any more; no condemnation laid its taint upon him any more; the glory of his Father's unmingled and eternal favour shone upon him now forevermore; and in his Father's favour he had life, his risen and eternal life" (Martin). In short, the risen Saviour's life is life in a new sphere, and a new relation and to new purpose. By that life, moreover, he enters the door which by his death he opened (Ephesians 2:11-17) - the door of access to the Gentile world (Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:5-8). The risen Saviour gives the Scriptures to be preached to the ends of the earth, and the apostles and teachers to preach them, and the Spirit to apply them, and the Church to embody them in her Christ-like life. And thus is negotiated a wider repentance than of Nineveh, and with greater results. "God hath also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." III. AS A SIGN. A sign is a miracle viewed from the evidential standpoint, a Divine work regarded as authenticating a Divine truth. Jonah's entombment served this purpose (Matthew 12:39). 1. It was a sign to the Ninevites. (Luke 11:30.) Jonah in Nineveh would be full of his unparalleled adventure. He would tell the people of his virtual death and rising again by the hand of God. And would not the amazing story credential the prophet as beyond dispute the messenger of God? He would declare to them how the miracle of judgment which had consigned him to the deep had been, if possible, outdone by the miracle of mercy which had saved him "from the belly of hell." And would he not be thus a sign at once of God's resistless vengeance on sin, and his unspeakable mercy to the penitent? From such a God the Ninevites would know what they had to expect in the one character and in the other. 2. It was the archetype of the sign of the resurrection. (Matthew 12:40.) The miracles of Christ were all signs The effect of them was to certify his Divine mission, and bring men to faith in his Name (Matthew 27:54; John 11:45). On many, however, they were practically thrown away. The Jews clamoured for a sign, while signs were being wrought before their very eyes. To this blind demand of insuperable unbelief there would be one further concession. The sign of the Prophet Jonah would be repeated in the Person of Christ by the resurrection on the third day. This was an unchallengable sign of the Divine mission of our Lord (Romans 1:4). If the dead One rose, then undoubtedly that dead One must have been the Son of God (1 Corinthians 15:14). The resurrection of Christ was the Father's sign manual to the Son's claim to a Divine character and an accepted work. It was a sign, too, of the Divine attitude toward sin. Taken in connection, as it must be, with the death and burial, the whole was, like Jonah's miraculous experience, a graphic 'attestation' of wrath against sin, removed as soon as satisfied, but inappeasable till then. If God "spared not his own Son, whom will he spare? If the sin laid on Christ is punished to the full, how much more the sin that remains on the sinner! And then, if Christ rises into a new life the moment his assumed connection with sin ends by death, shall not we, dead to our sin by the body of Christ, be raised together with him to "walk in newness of life"? The sign of the Prophet Jonah is everything to us. It means Christ credentialled, salvation finished and attested, and a sure hope springing of the resurrection unto life. 1. See how far God's judgments may follow deserters. Generally they include misfortune, often sickness, and sometimes death. The principle is that they must be efficacious, and so they go on till they reach their object, The distance you have gone away from God is the measure of the length to which his judgments will follow you (Colossians 3:25). 2. See how easily God can turn the destroyer into a preserver. Instead of killing Jonah, the fish saves his life. The Divine afflictive agencies operate in like manner. They wound only to heal; destroy the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of Jesus Christ." Your judgments are your mercies. Let the Divine mercy they reveal be your call to the duty you owe, your recall to the service you forsake (Psalm 89:30-33; Revelation 3:19). 3. Realize the high things to which this sign of the Prophet Jonas calls you. The death of Christ was for the death of your sin, his life from the dead for the life of your soul (Romans 6:4; Ephesians 5:14). - J.E.H. Parallel Verses KJV: Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. |
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