The Sign of Jonah (The Greater Jonah, Lent 5)

In this Lenten series, The Greater Jonah, we trace the familiar story of the reluctant prophet and discover how it ultimately points beyond itself to Christ. We’ll explore themes of running, mercy, judgment, repentance, death, and resurrection—seeing how the sign of Jonah finds its completion in the crucified and risen Savior. This is not just a story about a prophet and a fish. It is about the God who pursues the runaway, enters the storm, descends into the depths for us, and brings life where there was only death.

To follow along each day with the companion devotional, you can purchase it here:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GLJ635Z3?&linkCode=sl2&tag=jessicatschne-20&linkId=5f6b03b3594566f49a84144c1e011020&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Join us as we journey into the depths—and discover the mercy that meets us there.

Transcript

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In Matthew 28, Jesus said, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. He calls you to be that disciple, to hear his word, to receive his promises, to repent, to believe. That Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And that by believing you have life in his name. Now here are the good news of Jesus for you. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. People always want proof. If someone makes a claim about something outrageous, we want evidence. If someone promises something extraordinary, we want confirmation. Give us something. Give us a sign. That's what happens in our gospel reading. The scribes and Pharisees come to Jesus and say, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. And on the surface, it sounds reasonable because we want signs as well. We want God to make his will obvious, clear, direct, impossible for us to miss it. We want a sign when we're making a big decision. God, just show me what you want me to do here. We want to sign when we're struggling. God, if you are really here right now, help me to see it. Show me something. We want to sign when life feels like it's uncertain to us. Give me something that I can see and touch and taste. Something that I can actually hold on to because right now everything else feels like I can't. Sometimes we even set those terms ourselves. If this happens, that's when I'll know. That's when I'll know that it's God's will. We want clarity and certainty. We want something visible. And if we're honest, it doesn't just stop with wanting the sign. When you go looking for a sign, you tend to find one. Because once you've decided what it is that you want, almost anything, anything can look like confirmation of that. That conversation, it lines up just right with that person. And that must mean that it's from God. Or the door opens. And that must mean it has to be the Lord's will. Or if something turns out and it happens easily, then that must be a clear sign that this is the right path that I'm supposed to take. And then the opposite is true: that if something is difficult, then we assume that this must not be what God wants. I mean, isn't that why people stop their exercise routine so easily? We start to connect the dots. We read into the circumstances and the conversations and we interpret all of the events going on in our lives through this lens. And before long, we're no longer receiving a sign from God, but what we're doing is we're assigning meaning and value in whatever we hope is true. And that's the danger. Because what we call a sign often ends up being a reflection of our own desires and our own will instead of a revelation from God and his will. And that's exactly what the Pharisees are asking for. Except the request goes even deeper. They say, we want to see a sign. And when they say that, they're not just asking for any sign. They were asking for a sign from God that would be undeniable, spectacular, something that forces them to believe. And so in their minds, a true sign like that would look something like fire coming down from heaven, like the prophet Elijah. Or the sun standing still for an entire day, like during the time of Joshua. Or how about this? A cosmic display of power and waters being parted one side to the other, like in the Red Sea. Something that would prove once and for all that Jesus is the Messiah and that he is who he says he is. But here's the problem. It was never about the evidence for them. I mean, think about it. They had already seen so much. The blind receiving their sight, the lame walking, the demon-possessed being set free. It wasn't a lack of signs. That wasn't the problem. The problem was their refusal. Their refusal to believe the signs that God had already given to them. Because underneath that was something even worse. Because they wanted something that they approved of. A sign that they approved of. They wanted all these things on their terms. And it's for that reason that Jesus says, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after these things. They seek after signs like this. They're looking for signs like this. Because again, when you go looking for signs, here's the thing: you will find them. When you go looking for signs, you will find a sign that works for you. And so that raises a question. Why Jonah? If you've been following along during Lent with us, you know that Jonah is not exactly a model prophet. He runs from God, he resists his calling. He would rather die than preach repentance and see an entire city repent and be saved. And in fact, when God does show mercy, what does Jonah do? He gets furious. He's angry. Again, this is not a heroic story. And yet Jesus speaks of Jonah in a positive way. Even more than that, Jesus chooses Jonah as his example. Which is strange because Jesus doesn't often name specific prophets during his ministry. He doesn't name Elijah or Elisha. He doesn't choose Isaiah as an example or Daniel or Hosea or Job. He chooses Jonah. And so why? Why Jonah? Think back to chapter 1. Jonah runs from the Lord. He boards a ship going in the wrong direction. And then the Lord sends a great storm that comes up, and the waves rise, and the sailors panic. And where's Jonah? He's asleep. Down in the bottom of the boat. Now think about another story. The disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee, a violent storm rises, and where's Jesus? He's asleep. And we might think of that as a coincidence, but it's not. Because Jesus himself connects himself to the story. And both stories are moving in the same direction. If you hear it, if you start looking for it, you hear it all throughout the book of Jonah. It's this word down. Jonah goes down throughout his story. That's the pattern. He goes down to Joppa, he goes down into the ship, he goes down into the upper part of the vessel, he goes down to sleep, and then he goes down into the sea, and eventually goes down into the belly of the fish, down into darkness, down into what he calls the belly of Sheol. Down, down, down, down. And what is his message when he does finally return and preach to Nineveh? It's repentance. But we know what it feels like to go down into guilt. That moment when you replace something you said, and you kind of put it on replay over and over and over again, and you wish you could take it back, but you can't. We know what it feels like to go down into regret. You made a decision, and maybe you made the decision thinking, oh, this is going to be God's will. Because you saw a sign. You chose a path. And then looking back, reflecting on it, you think, boy, I wish I would have chosen something different. We know what it's like to go down into sin, and sin that clings and holds on to us, the same patterns and the same temptations, the same struggles that come up over and over again, and you tell yourself, this is gonna be the last time. But it's not. We know what it's like to go down into fear. Fear about the future, fear about what might possibly happen, fear about things that are outside of your control. We know what it's like to go down into suffering, into the diagnosis that you didn't expect, into the relationship that is strained, into those feelings that are heavier than you thought that you could carry. And we know, because we're we know what it feels like to go down, we know Jonah's feeling when he says, I'm driven away from the sight of the Lord. Not because God has actually left, but in those moments it feels like God has left. Like you're far from him, like you've gone too far, too deep. And the deeper you go, the more it feels like you can't get yourself back ever. Jesus goes down as well. He comes down from heaven. He takes on flesh, he enters into our world. We call this often the state of humiliation. Jesus does this for us. He gives up his place at the side of the Father. And make no mistake about it, he gives up his place at the side of the Father so that he can be by your side. Not because he was forced to, but he chose it. He chose to be by your side. And he goes down, down into brokenness, down into suffering, down into your sin. And what is his message? Should sound familiar. It's the same thing that Jonah preached: repentance and forgiveness. Which is why the Pharisees, by the way, why the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious leaders, they don't want to hear any of this. Because if the people of Nineveh, if they hear this message from Jonah and they don't repent, what's going to happen? Well, God said what was going to happen, that the whole city would be destroyed. And these religious leaders and these Sadducees and these Pharisees, they don't think they've done anything wrong. And the people of Nineveh, they repented when they heard the message from Jonah. But Jesus is greater. And so what happens when they hear this message of repentance and forgiveness from Jesus and they don't do anything? Well, that's why Jesus says that the Ninevehes, the people of Nineveh, are gonna rise up and they're gonna say, How dare you? We repented when Jonah came. But when Jesus came, you just continue to do things the way you want. In Jonah's story, the sailors come to the conclusion that Jonah, he's the reason that all the storms are coming. And so Jonah says, okay, throw me into the sea. And they do, and the storms stop, and the sailors are saved. And Jesus, too. Well, we know this to be true. He's not the reason that the storms are coming. You and I, we're the reason that the storms are there. The storms of our sin and our guilt and our shame. That's why things are tempestuous. And Jesus says, metaphorically, he says, throw me in. Throw me into their world. Throw me to the cross. Throw me into the grave. And this is what the heart of Jesus says here when he connects himself to Jonah's story. As the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious leaders, and they're all watching this, he says, For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so too must the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jonah goes down into the sea. Jesus goes down into death. Jonah says, I'm driven from your sight. Jesus says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jonah feels abandoned. Jesus is forsaken. Jonah gets close to death. Jesus actually enters death itself. That's the sign. That's the sign that Jesus points them to. Not something flashy like a miracle, because he's performed enough of them, and they didn't believe any of those anyway. But he points them to his future death and resurrection, the cross and the empty tomb. And it is greater than Jonah. And Jonah, along with the rest of the Old Testament, points to this moment in time when the Son of God enters the world, takes on flesh, and he suffers and he dies and he is buried. Jesus has come to accomplish all of it. Yes, something greater, someone greater than Jonah is here. He and he went down for you, for your sin, for your guilt, for your shame, for your running. For every moment that you've tried to do this thing we call life all by yourself, as a little God unto you. For every time you've demanded God that He give you a sign. For every place that you've gone down on account of your own choices and your own sin, and you've wondered, have I finally gone too far where I can't get back? For every moment that you've looked ahead and you'd wondered, is it all going to be okay? What's gonna happen next? How is this all going to turn out? Because we do, we want to know. We want to know what's coming, we want certainty, we want something that we can see and touch and taste, something that's in front of us. But dear friends, you don't need another sign. You don't. Because God has already given the world the greatest sign it could ever imagine. He gave up his own son on the cross. He forsook his own son, turned his back on his own son on the cross for you, crucified and then risen for you. He went into death so that you would never go into judgment. He was forsaken so that you would never feel abandoned. He entered darkness so that you and I we could live in the light. And this is not something you and I have to figure out, it's not something that we have to prove, it's not something we have to climb our way up to. It's already been done for you. And now God brings us into it. He gives us the fruits of Christ's death and resurrection. Listen to how Romans 6 puts it. The apostle Paul says, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death. That's a lot of words. Here's what that means: that when he came down and he took on flesh, and he suffered and he died and he was buried. In your baptism, you went down with him into those places. And that means your sin went down and your guilt went down and your old life, it went down with Christ into his death, and it was buried. And then the apostle Paul goes on, and he says, This is what that means also, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. You see, Christ's burial is part of it. But then he was raised. And that means that in your baptism, you too were raised to new life. And by the way, this isn't someday, it's not in the future, but it's now. You have a new life now. You have a new identity now, you have a new future now. If you want a sign, this is it. Your baptism by faith, the fruits of the cross and the resurrection delivered to you. And that means as much as you and I want a different sign sometimes, we don't need a sign about our future. Because our future, it's secure, it is secure in Christ. You are baptized, you are forgiven, you are alive in Him. And that means that no matter how far you've gone, no matter how far, you're not there anymore. Even if you feel like it, there's a new identity for you. You're not there anymore. And no matter how far you've gone, Christ has gone deeper. And he has brought you back up with him, and he has given you new life. That's the sign. And it's for you. The life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It's for you. That's your sign. That's for today, and that's for your future. It is secure in Jesus. Amen.