Something Greater Than Jonah Is Here (Jonah 1:17; Matthew 12:38-41)

Would you please remain standing for the reading of God's Word?

Today's a special day in the life of our church.

We gave Bibles to all of our second graders celebrating the

gift of grace that God's Word is for us.

So I want to invite Sammy and Lucy up to read our Scripture

this morning. Jonah 117 And the Lord appointed

a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of

the fish 3 days and three nights.

Matthew 1238 through 41 Then some of the scribes and

Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign

from you, but he answered them. And evil and adulterous

generation seek for a sign, but no son will be given to it,

except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For just as Jonah was 3 days and three nights in the belly of the

great fish, so will the Son of Man be 3 days and three nights

in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up

at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for

they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, Sammy.

Lucy, thank you. You'll may be seated.

I guess I should move this over to the side, right?

I don't think I need that. This past February, a man named

Adrian Simoncos was kayaking off the coast of Chile when he was

swallowed alive by a humpback whale.

I only spent few seconds in its mouth before the whale spit him

out. But it was an amazing story.

And even more amazing that this wasn't the first time in recent

years that a man has been swallowed by a humpback whale.

Back in 2021, a lobster diver named Matt Michael Packard was

swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Massachusetts.

Nobody could actually believe it happened.

So afterwards, just giving an interview and this is what he

said. He said I was completely inside.

He's completely black. I thought to myself, there's no

way I'm getting out of here. I'm done, I'm dead.

And all I could think of was my boys.

They're 12 and 15 years old. Packard estimated that he must

have been in the mouth of this humpback whale for 30 to 40

seconds, for the whale went back up to the surface and spit him

out. For centuries, we've been

fascinated by stories like this, going all the way back to the

story of Jonah. When most people think of the

story of Jonah, they immediately think of the great fish that

swallowed him. Ask questions like, what was it

like for Jonah to be swallowed alive?

How did he survive not just for 30 or 40 seconds, but for three

whole days and three whole nights, the belly of a fish?

If the great fish was actually a large baleen whale, would it

then be scientifically possible? Did any of this actually happen?

Maybe some of you are wondering, does any of this even matter?

This week, we confront the part of Jonah's story that often gets

the most attention, but for all of the wrong reasons.

And in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus not only points the story

of Jonah and the big fish not only as an actual event,

something that really happened, but Jesus says it's a sign.

And Jesus tells us, but there is something greater than Jonah

here this morning. I want us to look at that in

three ways. First is this.

The story of Jonah teaches us that there is something greater

than the fish. So if you have a Bible, I want

you to turn to the book of Jonah.

If you don't have a Bible, you can take the Blue Pew Bible in

front of you. That's our gift to you.

You'll find the book of Jonah at the end of the Old Testament.

It's one of the 12 minor prophets, the last 12 books of

the Old Testament. Before we turn the page to the

New Testament, what makes Jonah unique among the minor prophets

is that what we read in the book of Jonah is not prophecy, but

it's a story, a narrative about Jonah's life.

And I want us to pick up with that story where we left off

last week. Before we get to Jonah one verse

17, I want to look at Jonah one verse 4.

Look with me. But the Lord hurled a great wind

upon the sea, and there was a mighty Tempest on the sea, so

that the ship threatened to break up.

Then the Mariners were afraid and each cried out to his God,

and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to

lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down in the

inner part of the ship and had laid down, was fast asleep.

So the captain came and said him, What do you mean, you

sleeper? Arise, call out to your God.

Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not

perish. As we saw last week, God sent a

storm after Jonah because Jonah was running away from him.

God had called Jonah to go and proclaim repentance and

judgement to Nineveh, and Jonah wanted nothing of it, not

because he misunderstood God, but because he understood him

very clearly and he did not want to show the grace of God to his

enemies. And so Jonah fled away from God,

a far away from Nineveh as he could.

And here we find him on a ship bound for Tarshish.

So God sends a great storm, and while Jonah attempts to sleep

down in the bottom of this boat, these Mariners are all crying

out to their gods. Pagan, pluralistic sailors

calling out to their false gods. It's a picture of our own

idolatry. Every false God that you and I

worship really is just a cry for help.

And so we turn now to verse 11. And we're told that the sailors

said to Jonah, What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet

down for us? For the sea grew more and more

tempestuous. Jonah said to them, Pick me up

and hurl me into the sea, and then the sea will get quiet down

for you. For I know it is because of me

that this great Tempest has come upon you.

There's so much here that I wish we had time to unpack.

But for now, just let me mention a few things.

Once you look again at verse 12, Jonah says to the sailors, pick

me up, hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for

you. For I know it is because of me

that this great Tempest has come upon you.

Not only does Jonah know the sovereign God behind the storm,

but he knows that God sent the storm because of him, because of

his disobedience, because of his rebellion.

But I want you to notice who is actually being faithful here.

I'll give you a hint, it isn't Jonah.

Look at verse 13. Nevertheless, the men rode hard

to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew

more and more tempestuous against them.

Therefore they called out to the Lord.

O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on

us innocent blood. But you, O Lord, have done as it

pleased you. They picked up Jonah and hurled

him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly.

They offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Did you hear what just happened? These pluralistic Pagan sailors

just cried out to the one true God.

These Pagan sailors called out to the Lord.

They plead with the Lord to spare Jonah's life.

They fear the Lord. We're told they offered a

sacrifice to the Lord. They even made vows to the Lord

and Jonah didn't even OfferUp a prayer.

What is so amazing about this? Even though Jonah has to be the

worst, most reluctant and most rebellious prophet in the Bible,

God still uses his disobedience to reveal himself to a bunch of

Pagan sailors. And this is what we see the very

earliest chapters of the Bible, that God is always at work using

even rebellious people to bring redemption to the ends of the

earth. And all of this leads to the

verse that we're looking at this morning, Jonah one verse 17.

In many ways, it's the most famous verse in the book of

Jonah. You might even say it's one of

the most famous verses in the Bible.

Jonah 117 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up

Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of

the fish 3 days and three nights for centuries.

Commentators, theologians, and Bible scholars have debated this

one verse. Many have been so obsessed with

the great fish and whether any of this is actually possible

that they completely missed the point.

As I told you several weeks ago, many have even suggested that

because this one verse is so unbelievable, then the rest of

Jonah must not be actually historically true.

It has to be a fable or a parable or some kind of

allegory. For Jonah to be swallowed by a

fish is impossible. All of this Scottish theologian

George Adam Smith wrote, and this is the tragedy of the book

of Jonah, that a book which is made the means of one of the

most sublime revelations of truth and the Old Testament

should be known to most only for its connections to a whale.

So I wonder, does that describe you this morning?

If you have your own doubts about the story of Jonah and the

whale, you might be tempted just to focus on this great fish and

I could spend the rest of the morning telling you all about

the fin whale. The second largest whale on the

planet, second only to the blue whale, commonly lives in the

Mediterranean Sea, the very sea that Jonah was thrown into.

The fin whale is over 70 feet long and can take in as much as

80 cubic meters of water in one gulp.

That is a very big fish. Or I could tell you about a man

named Harrison. O King was locked in a tiny

bathroom when his boat tragically sank.

He was the only survivor of the shipwreck, living at the bottom

of the sea in a tiny room off a very small pocket of air for

nearly three days. But none of that is why I

believe in the story of Jonah and the whale.

Now. I believe in the story of Jonah

and the whale because Jesus did. I want you to turn to the Gospel

of Matthew chapter 12. The Gospel of Matthew chapter

Matthew 12 · chapter mention Matthew 12:38

12, verse 38. We're told that some scribes and

Pharisees come to Jesus and they answer him.

Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you, but Jesus answered

them. An evil and adulterous

generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given it except

the sign of the prophet Jonah. Now Jesus is speaking to the

scribes and Pharisees. And given all that we've been

talking about, all of our doubts.

With a story like Jonah and the Great Fish, it shouldn't

surprise us that the main problem of the scribes and

Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12 is unbelief.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

At this point in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has just

miraculously healed a man with a withered hand.

He's also healed a man who was oppressed by demons.

It was those blind and mute. And after these scribes and

Pharisees witness all of this, they come to Jesus and they say

we want to see more. It's not enough because they

doubted his identity as the Son of God and Messiah.

They demanded to see a sign from him.

And what's amazing is that Jesus replies and he says no sign is

going to be given to you except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

What we believe about Jonah and the great fish, according to

Jesus, is somehow connected to him and his identity as the Son

of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

So the second thing we see in the story of Jonah that there is

something greater than Jonah himself.

Look with me, Jesus continues Matthew 12 verse 40.

Matthew 12:40

For just as Jonah was in three days and three nights in the

belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be 3 days and

three nights in the heart of the earth.

This isn't the only place where Jesus mentions Jonah in the

Gospels. He will go on just 4 chapters

later in Matthew 16 to mention Jonah again, and the Gospel of

Luke tells a very similar account of the same story of

Jesus confronting the unbelief of the scribes and Pharisees and

pointing to the sign of the prophet Jonah.

I think this is incredible. One of my most favorite parts of

the Bible, and in fact what I believe is one of its most

compelling features, is that though the Bible contains 66

different books and has 40 different authors in two

different testaments, it tells one story, 1 intricately woven

story from Genesis to Revelation, one story of

redemption that is centered on one story about Jesus Christ.

From the very beginning, we see the Bible is all about Jesus.

When we look back on the Old Testament, not only we see that

it's relevant, but we see Jesus on every page.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a theologian, BB Warfield, to our

men on our Tuesday morning men's Bible study.

I want you to listen to what he had to say about this.

He said the Old Testament may be likened to a chamber, richly

furnished but dimly lighted. The introduction of light brings

into nothing which was not in it before, but it brings out into

Clearview much of what was already in it, but is only dimly

or even not at all perceived before.

What is he saying? He's saying the Old Testament is

like a living room. The early morning hours, the

lights turned off, it's dark. You might stumble your way

through, maybe even bump into a piece of furniture.

It's not that a dark living room isn't filled with furniture,

it's that you can't see it unless the light turns on.

What he's saying is that Jesus is that light.

And when you read the Old Testament, through the light of

Jesus Christ, we see what had always been there.

We didn't have eyes to see that all along.

There was the promise of a snake crusher would come and redeem

his people and give them salvation.

And so we see Apostle Paul in First Corinthians say that Jesus

is the true and greater Adam. We see the preacher in the book

of Hebrews say that Jesus is the true and greater Moses.

But of all of the figures and forefathers in the Old Testament

that Jesus himself could have picked from to compare himself

to, who does he choose? He doesn't choose Adam, He

doesn't choose Moses. He doesn't choose Abraham.

He chooses Jonah, a deadbeat, disobedient prophet refused to

show the grace of God to his enemies.

Why? Why Jonah?

Because of what happened to Jonah in the belly of the great

fish and because of what happened to Nineveh after Jonah

came out alive. Jesus says for just as Jonah was

3 days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the

Son of Man will be 3 days in the three nights in the heart of the

earth. Do you hear what Jesus is doing?

He's comparing Jonah spending three days in the belly of a

fish to his own death and his burial, 3 days in a tomb and the

promise of his resurrection. It's just almost as if Jesus is

saying to all of these unbelieving scribes and

Pharisees, look, if you had a hard time believing in the story

of Jonah and the whale, you hadn't seen anything yet.

Things are about to get a lot more unbelievable.

I want you to know that This is why the story of Jonah and the

Whale matters. It forces us to confront what we

really believe. We really believe about the

Bible or believe about the God of the Scriptures, who is

sovereign over all things, and what we believe about God's Son,

Jesus Christ. There is a literary device and

fictional storytelling called the suspension of Disbelief.

The since suspension of disbelief happens anytime we're

reading a book or watching a movie that is absolutely

unbelievable in its premise. But what we'll do is we'll

suspend our disbelief on all we would ordinarily hold to be true

about the world in order to follow the story.

So for example, for reading The Lord of the Rings, you will

suspend your disbelief in order to accept the world of Middle

Earth, but there is such thing as orcs and goblins and elves

and dwarves and hobbits in order to follow Frodo to Mordor.

Or if you're watching Star Wars, you'll suspend your disbelief

and be willing to accept that there's such thing as aliens and

droids and the Force in order to follow Luke Skywalker to the

dust door. The challenge for storytellers

is they can't push an audience too far because if they do, the

suspension of disbelief is broken.

So for any of you watching Episode 4 of Star Wars and

you've made it all the way through to the end of the movie,

I hope I'm not giving it away. And Luke Skywalker turns off his

computer and makes that one shot that destroys the Death Star.

He said, oh, come on. I would say really, that was the

thing that got you. After this entire crazy movie

about talking robots and the force, that was the thing.

You see, this is what I think sometimes the story of Jonah can

be for us. It causes us to confront what we

actually believe. I'm amazed that of all the

things in the Bible, it's the story of Jonah and the big fish

that gives people pause when all along we're told that Jesus

Christ was born of a virgin, fully God and fully man.

That Jesus Christ died on the cross and he rose from the dead

after three days buried in the tomb.

You hear all of that and your problems with Jonah and the

whale. See, I think like me, you've

grown up a culturally Christian place like Dallas, TX.

So much of our Christianity looks more like the suspension

of disbelief than it looks like faith.

We've been so inundated the story of the Bible that we've

just kind of gone along with it. Yeah, I get it.

Jesus was born of a virgin. That's Christmas.

And he wrote from the dead. That's Easter.

But we never stopped long enough to really consider what that

actually means. And so this morning, if you have

a problem with Jonah and the whale, maybe the real reason is

because you haven't been taking the resurrection of Jesus

seriously enough. Because there's something

greater than Jonah here, something greater that demands

much more than we suspend our disbelief, something greater

that demands our faith. That's the third and final thing

that we see here in the story of Jonah and the whale.

There is something here that's greater than our rebellion.

One of the things that Jonah teaches us about what true faith

looks like is that we tend to think of faith in a binary way.

What I mean by that is we often say, look, do you believe in

Jesus? Check the box, yes or no.

But if you're honest about life and honest about doubt, faith

never actually looks that way. It's filled with moments of

difficulty and doubt and questions that plague our hearts

and minds and calls us to question is God who he really

says he is? Clearly Jonah believed in God.

He heard his voice. Now, Jonah's problem is, though

he believed in God, he didn't trust him.

But you see, true faith always leads to faithfulness.

It's the kind of faith that doesn't just believe in Jesus.

It follows Jesus and hears Jesus's words and obeys them.

It doesn't just simply believe that Jesus existed, as James

tells us, even the demons believe in Shudder.

No, it's the kind of faith that leads to repentance.

And it's this kind of faith that Jesus is confronting the

Pharisees and the scribes with. It's the kind of faith that he's

confronting us with today. The Gospel of Matthew verse 41,

Jesus says the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement

with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the

preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is

here. Now I want you to imagine what

it must have been like for these scribes and Pharisees to hear

these words of Jesus as he is confronting their unbelief.

The example that he uses to describe faithfulness isn't

Israel, it's Nineveh. He's choosing a bunch of former

pagans who are the enemies of Israel to be the exemplar of

faith. What do you think that did for

these Pharisees? Now I want you to imagine what

it would have been like for Jonah if he could have been

alive to hear Jesus say this, especially at this point in

Jonah's story where he is running as far away from Nineveh

and as far away from God as possible.

We're in a moment of resignation, not faithfulness.

He tells the sailors and the ship to throw him overboard.

If you forget that, we know the end of the story.

But at this point, Jonah doesn't.

He doesn't know that God's going to send a big fish.

Now, you see, I believe that when Jonah told the sailors to

throw him overboard, he thought he was going to die.

He thought he was going to die running away from God.

And there is no worse death than that.

But you see, God didn't just send a storm, He sent a fish.

And this is what we see in the book of Jonah, just how great

and glorious and sovereign our God is, that though as hard as

we might try to run away from Him, he will never let us go,

and he will use any means necessary to bring us back to

Himself. And so we see once again in

Jonah one verse 17, the Lord appointed a great fish to

swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish 3 days

and three nights. Notice what it says, the Lord

appointed a great fish. That word appointed appears four

times in the short book of Jonah.

It's one of the great themes that we see in this tiny book,

that God is always there and He's always at work.

And though Jonah abandoned God, God did not abandon Jonah, you

see, because there really is something greater than Jonah

here, something greater than Jonah's rebellion, something

greater than Jonah's hatred, something greater than Jonah's

sin, something greater than all of our sin.

It's the greatness, the sovereign grace of God who will

stop at nothing to bring his people back to Himself.

Apostle Paul puts it this way in the book of Romans, Romans 828.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work

together for good for those who are called according to His

purpose. This is one of those Christian

T-shirt verses. You know what I mean?

You can find it on coffee mugs or embroidered into Bible

covers. Do we really know what it means

when Paul says God works all things together for good?

He really means all things. And I think this is what Jonah

teaches us. He will even use storm.

He'll even use a fish. He will even use a disobedient

and rebellious prophet to bring salvation to the ends of the

earth. So let me ask you, what would

have happened if Jonah had never rebelled against God?

Well, God would have never sent a storm.

He would have never sent a fish, and Jonah would have never spent

three days in its belly, and we would have never been given a

sign of the death and resurrection of Jesus to come.

So let me ask you another question.

What if the Romans had never invented crucifixion?

What if there was no one such as Caiaphas?

No such person as Pontius Pilate.

What if Judas had never existed? You see, God works all things

together for the good of those who love Him.

All things. So if you ever asked a question

what sent Jesus to the cross, there are many ways to answer

that question. You could say what was Judas's

betrayal? It was Caiaphas's witch hunt.

It was Pilate and his lack of true power.

You could say it was unbelieving Israel that rejected him as the

Messiah. You could say it was all of us

and our sin. But don't ever leave out God.

We see it was God who sent Jesus to the cross, working all things

together for good. Apostle Peter puts it this way

in the book of Acts and Acts 2. Peter says men of Israel hear

these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man

attested to you by God, with mighty works and wonders and

signs that God did through him in your midst.

As you yourselves know this Jesus listen, delivered up

according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you

crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

God even uses rebellious people to bring redemption to the

world. And so listen, there will always

be storms in this life. Always.

In the past few weeks, we have witnessed great evil in our

country. In the past few months, we have

experienced great grief and unimaginable heartache.

And in every one of our lives there is uncertainty and fear,

there is sorrow and anger, there is suffering and sin.

And so, just like the scribes and the Pharisees, we want Jesus

to give us a sign. Just show us something true,

some kind of proof that Jesus really is who he says he is.

That in the midst of so much evil in this world and so much

pain and suffering and striving, that Jesus really is on the

throne, that he is the King, that he is good and that he wins

in the end. What Jonah shows us is that he

has already given us a sign. He's already shown us who he is.

Something greater than Jonah is here, Something greater than

evil, greater than storms, something greater than

suffering, something greater than our sin.

You see, Jesus is the true and greater Jonah.

And like Jonah, Jesus was called by God to go to his enemies, but

he was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And there on that cross, Jesus was crucified in our place for

our sin. And greater than spending three

days in the belly of a fish, Jesus died and was buried for

three days in the tomb. And on the third day, Jesus rose

again to conquer sin and death, to give salvation to all who

trust in his name. Something greater than Jonah is

here. So what do you truly believe?

The kind of faith that leads you to follow Jesus in every

circumstance and every joy and sorrow.

Jesus Christ shows us that is the true and greater Jonah.

He truly is working all things together for good for those He

is called according to His purpose.

Let's pray, Father in Heaven, we asked, You would now give us a

greater vision of the sign of Jonah.

You would help us to trust in Christ alone as our trailblazer,

the one who has gone before us into the suffering of the cross,

and the one who goes before us in the resurrection.

But we found our life in him, our faith, and in our hope in

Him, and may we follow him until he comes again.

We pray this the name of Jesus, our Savior, our King, Amen.

Let's stand in the scene.