Jesus and Jonah, Partners in Reaching the Lost

Some people are really hard to reach. Perhaps you were one of them! Did Jesus ever work with people who were hard to reach? You bet he did. And it led him to a strange comparison…

In the school of Old Testament prophets, Jonah would be voted “least likely to succeed,” but on three separate occasions Jesus compared himself to Jonah. All three occasions take place later in his ministry, when the crowds were larger and the conflict was on the increase. Here’s a summary of each one…

• Matthew 12:39-41 – Here we find Jesus in the northern region of Galilee when a group of Scribes and Pharisees demand that he give them a sign to prove his Messianic credentials. Jesus responds by saying that the only sign that will be provided to them will be the sign of Jonah. Those who refuse to believe this sign will be condemned of greater sin by the Ninevites whom Jonah reached, and by the Queen of the South who came from far away to hear Solomon’s wisdom.

• Matthew 16:1-4 – Still in the northern region of the country, here Jesus is surrounded by a group of Pharisees and Sadducees. Together, they request a miracle from Jesus that would prove his authority to their liking. In response, Jesus cynically points out how people tend to be good at predicting the weather but bad at discerning the significance of his presence and work. He goes on to say that the only sign of significance that will be provided to them will be the similarity of his work to that of Jonah. This encounter seems to have troubled Jesus so deeply that he proceeded to warn his disciples of the danger of the unbelief of these leaders in the passage that immediately follows this encounter in the Gospel of Matthew.

• Luke 11:29-32 – About a year after the encounter in Matthew 12, Jesus and his disciples are in the southern region of the country. Here he’s surrounded by crowds of people who are unimpressed with his ability to cast out demons. In an ironic twist, they begin to “cast” doubt on his identity. Jesus warns them of the danger of their disbelief with a parable very similar to the one he used with the unbelieving Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 16. As the crowds continue to grow, Jesus complains of the wickedness inherent in those who come to Jesus demanding the performance of sign that will make it obvious that he is the Messiah they are expecting. In response, he states that the only sign that will be available to them will be the sign of Jonah.

Just what did Jesus mean by his repeated use of Jonah as a template for his own work? There’s more to this than I can communicate in this post, but here’s a chart comparing some of the similarities with Jonah that Jesus hinted at:

Jonah	Jesus
Descended to the depths…	Descended from the Father…
Tossed into the sea	Nailed to a cross
Carried by a great fish for three days	Laid in the earth for three days
Tossed out upon a beach	Raised to life and exited the tomb
Sent to tell God’s enemies about his mercy	Sent to tell God’s enemies about his mercy

It’s the last one that provides the key for our application.

If we (or those we walk alongside of) are going to “get” Jesus right, we need to start from a posture of great need. Like the Ninevites, we emerge from a “wicked and adulterous” generation. Without Jesus, we are deeply inclined toward evil. We are God’s enemies. The inertia of our lives cause us to disregard anything that would try to slow us, stop us, and reverse our course. We are disconnected from our true love, miserable, yet ashamed to return. Sin has us stuck. Hope hardly remains. Yet, it’s into this mess that the message of Jesus comes and rescues. 

Unless we refuse to believe. The problem encountered by the Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, and the crowd is that they also came from a wicked and adulterous generation, but refused to believe that they, too, were God’s enemies. Their willful roadblock was masquerading as and intellectual one. They thought they had it all figured out, and their plans didn’t include Jesus. They sought sensational proof as a way to put him off, not out of a posture of faith seeking understanding. But Jesus gave up sensationalism early in his career (Matthew 4:5-7). 

And our belief can only be placed in the one true sign, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. This act proves that the claims about his identity are true, God is really speaking to us through his Son! Rescue is not just a real possibility… it’s a done deal. And we can get in on it.

(Shout out to Mikel for sharing some of his thoughts with me!)