SPEAKER_00: Jonah 1, verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most simple and straightforward verses in the book of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: It's simple and straightforward.
SPEAKER_00: You understand immediately what happened.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah, as we saw in the beginning of chapter one, was thrown overboard by the sailors.
SPEAKER_00: He thought he was going to be left for dead in the water.
SPEAKER_00: It was his goal to leave this world and to end his life.
SPEAKER_00: And instead, he was swallowed up by a great fish that was sent, appointed, is the word in the SV, by the Lord, and the fish held Jonah for three days and for three nights.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I want to spend one sermon just looking at this verse is because this is the verse that Jesus chose as the text for one of his most significant and influential sermons.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sermon that was in his wilderness time, where Jesus had just done a series of miracles in Matthew 8 and in Matthew 9.
SPEAKER_00: He had healed scores of people, and the crowd had begun to follow him and congregate around him, and the Pharisees had turned against him.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember the context of this, Jesus had healed a leper.
SPEAKER_00: He had healed the servant of the centurion.
SPEAKER_00: He had healed countless people, including a demoniac.
SPEAKER_00: He had crisscrossed around the Sea of Galilee, healing people every which way.
SPEAKER_00: He had fed the five thousand in this part of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And after all of this, the crowd began to focus on him, and the Pharisees begin to turn their hostility towards him.
SPEAKER_00: And it came to a head on a particular Sabbath when Jesus was walking through the wilderness towards Capernaum for the synagogue that he often attended, and his disciples were plucking grain with their hands and rolling the grain in their hands.
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees demanded answers from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How is it that his disciples could do that and so flagrantly violate the Sabbath restrictions in their mind, of course?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus rebukes them and he proclaims to the Pharisees that his disciples could do whatever they wanted on the Sabbath, because the Sabbath was his day.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Lord of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And those to the Pharisees were very provocative fighting words that Jesus was declaring that he is the Lord of the Sabbath, the one whom the seventh day was supposed to honor.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Sabbath is the most critical, essential part of the Jewish calendar.
SPEAKER_00: Their whole life revolves around the celebration of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the Phariseal restrictions were about the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And here Jesus comes in and says that the Sabbath is his day.
SPEAKER_00: It's for worship of him.
SPEAKER_00: And this shocked the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus goes from there to the synagogue, and in the synagogue, on the Sabbath, is a man with a withered hand.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus then puts the Pharisees in the ultimate dilemma when he heals the man with a withered hand just by a look.
SPEAKER_00: And then he asks the Pharisees, Is it lawful for me to heal this man on the Sabbath or not?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Pharisees had prohibited any in their definition of working on the Sabbath, and they taught that, you know, turning dirt was working or lifting something of a certain weight was working.
SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly Jesus is a miracle worker, healing a man with a withered hand in their mind was working.
SPEAKER_00: But if you notice, Jesus exerted no energy in doing so.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't lift his own hand to heal the man's hand.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Pharisees couldn't very well accuse him of working on the Sabbath because he didn't move a muscle.
SPEAKER_00: And what were they going to say after all?
SPEAKER_00: That it is unlawful to heal with a look a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you critique that?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Jesus was a miracle worker.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the Pharisees deduced that Jesus must be able to cast out demons by the power of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: This is after Jesus had calmed the storms, after Jesus had healed the demoniac, after Jesus had healed the leper, after Jesus had healed the man with a withered hand, after Jesus declared he was the Lord of the Sabbath, after all of this and so much more, the Pharisees say, He must heal people by the power of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: And this was so outrageous that Jesus sort of pulls the car over when it comes to dealing with the Pharisees here, and he preaches a sermon directed at their thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: It's described in Luke 11, it's described later on or after Matthew 12, and it is one of the most significant and influential sermons of Jesus' ministry, I think.
SPEAKER_00: It's noteworthy because Luke betrays it after a day of teaching in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: It's the good fruit, bad fruit sermon.
SPEAKER_00: It's where Jesus lays out for everybody that you can tell the power and the veracity of a teacher by the fruits their ministry produces.
SPEAKER_00: What he means by that is that the ministry of Jesus has produced repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The ministry of Jesus has produced life.
SPEAKER_00: The ministry of Jesus has produced literally resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: In contrast, the ministry of the Pharisees has produced burdens.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the Pharisees are bringing darkness and death and burdens wherever they go.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how did the Pharisees respond to that?
SPEAKER_00: They responded by telling Jesus, really asking Jesus, can you give us a sign?
SPEAKER_00: Certainly.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most outlandish questions in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: After having watched Jesus, he has raised dead people back to life by this point.
SPEAKER_00: He has healed the blind.
SPEAKER_00: He has multiplied fish and loaves for thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00: He has rebuked the wind and the waves.
SPEAKER_00: And after all of that, including the healing of the man of the withered hand, that had just recently happened in Capernaum.
SPEAKER_00: After all of that, they say, you know, we would entertain this if only you gave us a sign.
SPEAKER_00: That is such an amazing display of recalcitrance.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' reply to them, he says, Oh, you are a wicked and adulterous people.
SPEAKER_00: You will get no more signs, he says, except for the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, truth be told, there are other signs in the future of Jesus' ministry after this point.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to raise Lazarus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the last sign he really gives the Israelites and his life directed at the Pharisees was the sign of the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he cursed the fig tree, and the next day it had withered.
SPEAKER_00: But in this rebuke to the Pharisees, he says, You will get no other sign other than the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: He's zeroing in on what their problem is.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees would not believe Jesus no matter what he did, because their hearts were hard.
SPEAKER_00: They did not see themselves in need of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus takes them back to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have covered this many times in our series through the book of Jonah so far, but the Pharisees really rejected Jonah as a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: The whole Jonah affair was scandalous in their mind.
SPEAKER_00: It was scandalous because, remember, the Pharisees wouldn't even identify with Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was sent to the Gentiles because Israel wouldn't receive him, Israel wouldn't repent at his preaching.
SPEAKER_00: So God sent the prophet of Israel to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah preached to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles converted and received forgiveness and a display of God's kindness that was available to Israel, but they had continually rejected it.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, the Israelites and the Pharisees, they perhaps would have identified with Jonah, but not with his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: They would have identified with Jonah with his attitude at the end of the book, where he was bitter about what was happening to Nineveh, because there was no revival coming to Israel, bitter at what was happening with the pagans and the those that were brutal to each other.
SPEAKER_00: The Ninevehs were the most brutal people in the world, and yet they were receiving forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees will not turn and believe the message of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the centurion servants, some Roman the Roman centurion is following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: A demoniac Gentile is believing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the Pharisees are hard-hearted, and Jesus exposes their rampant hypocrisy by driving them to what he calls the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's an interesting chronological problem in Jesus' statement, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: You will get no other sign other than the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: The sign of Jonah happened 800 years before Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But notice in Jesus' rebuke to the Pharisees, the whole analogy really hinges on Jesus connecting himself to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was not connecting to the Pharisees in Jesus' mind.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is connected to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: The Ninevehites are connected to the Israelites, then.
SPEAKER_00: If they will repent, they will be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is very provocative towards the Pharisees, very provocative towards the Israelites, because they would not want to identify with the Ninevites.
SPEAKER_00: They despised this whole affair.
SPEAKER_00: And now Jesus is identifying himself with the prophet to the Ninevites and telling the Pharisees, if you identify with the Nineveh, perhaps there will be forgiveness for you.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted a sign from Jesus after all they saw.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, they get a rebuke from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in that rebuke, Jesus connects himself to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how is Jesus like Jonah?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: Both were sent by God to Israel's enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Both were sent by God to Israel's enemies with a message of destruction and yet also a message of hope.
SPEAKER_00: The hope is predicated upon repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh would be spared if they repented from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to this in Jonah chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: And if they placed their faith in the truth of the message.
SPEAKER_00: The same thing is true for the Israelites under the light under the preaching and the ministry of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If they repent from their sins, this is what John the Baptist had told them repent from your sins and you can have forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Both Jonah and Jesus came bringing a message of grace.
SPEAKER_00: A message of grace.
SPEAKER_00: There was no effort, there was no works to be done.
SPEAKER_00: It was a gospel of grace.
SPEAKER_00: But the key parallel between Jonah and Jesus is one we haven't looked at so far.
SPEAKER_00: The key parallel between the two of them is that the truth of their message hinges on the sign.
SPEAKER_00: It hinges on the sign.
SPEAKER_00: The sign of Jonah, that he would be swallowed by a whale and would be buried in the ocean for three days and then resurrected on the shore.
SPEAKER_00: That is what gives Jonah's preaching ministry its power, its authenticity, and the same will be true for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so because Jesus drew his attention to Jonah chapter 1, verse 17, I want to draw our attention there this morning as well.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you this outline in this way.
SPEAKER_00: I want to describe it as the sign that is on the door.
SPEAKER_00: Sign that is on the door for the gospel for the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to picture the Gentiles having to walk into the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel becomes a door for them to walk into salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They have to walk in through this door.
SPEAKER_00: And this door has three words on it.
SPEAKER_00: It has three words on it.
SPEAKER_00: Those three words are death, descent, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Now that door is how the Israelites will access the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That door is how the Gentiles will access the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And that door is how you and I will access the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We will walk into the gospel through a door that has the words death, descent, and resurrection on it.
SPEAKER_00: It is with the death and the descent and the resurrection of God's messenger that we, like the Ninevites, will encounter the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at these three one at a time.
SPEAKER_00: First, that we'll look at is the death of the messenger, the death of the messenger.
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know it doesn't say Jonah died there, but you need to appreciate this verse from Jonah's perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah thought he was going to die.
SPEAKER_00: This sign hinges or begins when the prophet gets sovereignly swallowed up by a great fish.
SPEAKER_00: Now we know that Jonah doesn't die in the fish because this is Jonah chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: There's still three more chapters to go.
SPEAKER_00: If you're watching a movie and the lead character is in some life and death peril, and the, you know, 20 minutes into the movie, you know he's not going to die because there's the rest of the movie still has to take place.
SPEAKER_00: In a sense, Jonah is like that.
SPEAKER_00: We know he's not going to die here because we got several more chapters to go.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, I want you to appreciate this when Jonah is thrown overboard, he thinks he's going to his death, and then he gets swallowed up by a fish.
SPEAKER_00: That does not amount to a rescue from his perspective.
SPEAKER_00: If anything, that will prolong the agony with his death.
SPEAKER_00: If you're reading a story or a novel and the a person in the novel gets eaten by a shark, that doesn't mean like, oh, he got rescued.
SPEAKER_00: If he gets gobbled up by a fish, you don't think, oh, phew, that was close.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's over for him.
SPEAKER_00: It's over for him.
SPEAKER_00: Getting swallowed by a fish means you're dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's rather a worse means of death than merely drowning.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what happens to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get sidetracked by what kind of fish this is.
SPEAKER_00: I have a picture of a whale on the slide.
SPEAKER_00: Many people think that it's a whale.
SPEAKER_00: There are whales that are big enough, a sperm whale is what many books say.
SPEAKER_00: This could have been in the Mediterranean Sea at this time of year.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what kind of fish it was?
SPEAKER_00: If it was a giant kind of shark, if it was a giant kind of whale, if it was some ginormous fish, it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: The reason people go with whale is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, calls it a whale in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: But it calls it a whale in this text, but that doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get sidetracked by the kind of fish.
SPEAKER_00: Get sidetracked really by the miraculous nature of what happens here, that Jonah went overboard to his death and God sovereignly appointed a fish.
SPEAKER_00: God commanded a fish or a whale or what have you, and the fish went right on schedule and fetched Jonah from the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather drown or be eaten by a fish?
SPEAKER_00: Let me submit to you that if you find yourself having to make that choice, you have made some bad life decisions to get to that point in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is with Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: You know, as I mentioned, Jonah's not going to die because there's more to this book, but his death will be prolonged, at least in his mind.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin writes, quote, the Lord drew Jonah, as it were, by force to his tribunal.
SPEAKER_00: And he must have suffered a continual execution there.
SPEAKER_00: And I love the way Calvin says that.
SPEAKER_00: This is God bringing his judgment to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah had been fleeing from God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah had been fleeing from God's appointed trial.
SPEAKER_00: He was on the run from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's very clear in chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was trying to get away from God.
SPEAKER_00: If he thought he went as far away from Israel and as far away from where God told him to go as possible, that he would be spared God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord pursued him, the Lord found him.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah thought, if I go overboard and die, the Lord can't get me, and the Lord fetched him even there.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that the sailors, when they cast Jonah overboard, thought they were sending him to his death because that was the means of their own salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The sailors were caught in the storm, they were caught in the wrath of God, and they knew to appease the wrath of God there had to be a death.
SPEAKER_00: There had to be a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: This is true throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: Abel knew this.
SPEAKER_00: For Abel to have his sins forgiven, there had to be a death.
SPEAKER_00: Cain denied this.
SPEAKER_00: Cain rejected the demand for death, the demand for blood, and offered grain instead.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord was pleased with Abel's sacrifice and not with Cain's.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord requires the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins, and the Lord accepts in the Old Testament the shedding of the blood of a substitute for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: You put an animal forward in your stead, and that animal propitiates God's wrath for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: Now we recognize that the Old Testament animals did not actually in themselves atone for sins, but they were arrows pointing to the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who Himself would be the final and ultimate sacrifice to take away sins.
SPEAKER_00: All of the Old Testament sacrifices were merely indicating or pointing or prophetic of the sacrifice of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is with Jonah's sacrifice as well.
SPEAKER_00: He was thrown overboard as a sacrifice for sin.
SPEAKER_00: By his death, he is offered to assuage God's wrath, to propitiate God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: God accepts the sacrifice and removes his wrath from the sailors.
SPEAKER_00: The storm immediately dies down.
SPEAKER_00: Immediately, the sailors are soundly converted.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of this: that Jonah's death, Jonah's offering into the ocean, is a death.
SPEAKER_00: It's symbolic, of course, a big arrow that points towards the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sign, and listen to this: like all Old Testament sacrifices, Jonah going into the drink and then into the fish is a sign pointing towards the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Jesus says, you get no more signs other than the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: He's tying his own death as the consummation or as the fulfillment as the intended object of the death of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now we understand what a sign is.
SPEAKER_00: A sign isn't the actual thing.
SPEAKER_00: A sign points towards that thing.
SPEAKER_00: If you're on 395 and you see the 395 and the big green sign that says next exit Etsel Boulevard, you come to church and you see next exit Etsel.
SPEAKER_00: You don't mistake the sign that says Edsel for Edsel Boulevard.
SPEAKER_00: You don't think the sign is Edsel.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize it's pointing to Edsel.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way it is with Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's death, Jonah is not the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he didn't actually literally die here, although he thought he was, and the sailors thought he was.
SPEAKER_00: His going into the water and into the fish is a sign that points you to the death of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls it a sign.
SPEAKER_00: It's pointing towards him.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the truth behind this sign is that God's wrath must be propitiated by a death, by the shedding of blood.
SPEAKER_00: God is too holy to merely turn the other way and look away from sin.
SPEAKER_00: He must punish sin, and he does so through death.
SPEAKER_00: The wages of sin is death.
SPEAKER_00: And the soul that sins will surely die.
SPEAKER_00: When you sin, you deserve death.
SPEAKER_00: You will die physically because sin works its way out in the world in the form of physical death, and you will die spiritually as well, unless there is a substitute for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: This was the preaching of Jonah in Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: This is the preaching of Jesus in Israel, and this is the gospel preaching today.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a sinner and you are a sinner, there is no hope of salvation for you unless someone dies in your place.
SPEAKER_00: And then God doesn't accept just any death either.
SPEAKER_00: The person who dies in your place must be sinless.
SPEAKER_00: They must be a substitute.
SPEAKER_00: They must be able to take the wrath of God from God onto themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the only substitute that is true of is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why the first word on the gospel door is the word for death.
SPEAKER_00: You want to have your sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: The only way into that is through the door that is marked death.
SPEAKER_00: There must be someone who dies for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: The second word on that door is the word descent.
SPEAKER_00: It is the word descent.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was in the belly, verse 17 says, of the fish for three days and three nights.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah descends into the water.
SPEAKER_00: He descends into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: He descends, to quote Psalm 116, into the belly of the earth, into the death.
SPEAKER_00: He's wrapped up in the seaweed.
SPEAKER_00: He goes down, down, down.
SPEAKER_00: When people die, the Bible describes them as going to a place called Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Sheol is the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: This is Old Testament language here.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol is the realm of the dead in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol is where every human soul dies before Christ, they go into Sheol, the world of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: When a person dies, their body goes into the ground and their soul goes to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol contains, to use modern New Testament language, Sheol contains hell, and Sheol contains the realm of the righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Righteous dead.
SPEAKER_00: When a righteous soul dies, it also went to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: So Sheol is an all-encompassing term.
SPEAKER_00: Every soul who dies goes to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: And they're speaking of before Christ here.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 63, verse 9 calls it in the depths of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Your body goes to the ground, your soul goes further to the ground, to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah chapter 2, verse 3, looking ahead, Jonah describes his descent into the heart of the seas, he says in chapter 2, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: The waters closed in over me to take my life, deep surrounded me, weeds wrapped around my head.
SPEAKER_00: I was at the root of the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: I went down to the land whose bars closed in around me forever.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah is describing his experience.
SPEAKER_00: He is descending, descending, descending, using language that the Psalms speak of to describe Sheol, the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: In Jewish folklore, it took three days and three nights to journey to the underworld, to journey to Hades, the realm of the lost dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is obviously what Jesus means in Matthew 12 when he cites Jonah 1, verse 17, that he will be dead for three days in the heart of the earth, he says in Matthew 12.
SPEAKER_00: That just like Jonah, Jesus will be dead for three days in the heart of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: As Jonah was in the belly of the whale, Jesus will go into the heart of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: For the Jews, to die was to go to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Thus a resurrection would be simply to return to this world from Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Jews viewed the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Every dead person went to Sheol, the righteous would one day be resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: They hoped.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for Americans who generally do really bad with death anyway, we have a problem of Jesus when he dies going where dead people went.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus certainly did.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus dies, he says he goes into the belly of the earth, he goes down to the realm of Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: And we have a problem with that, generally thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Most of most Americans object to this teaching.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a clear biblical teaching that Jesus descended into Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: The creeds declared it as well.
SPEAKER_00: We often take that sentence out of creeds.
SPEAKER_00: We say that Jesus was dead, buried, and descended into the grave or descended into Sheol, we often take that phrase out and said dead, buried, resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: You can't get to the resurrection until you go to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: If human souls die and go to the realm of Sheol, then for Jesus to be truly human, he not only had to be born and then die a substitutionary death, his body was buried.
SPEAKER_00: For him to fulfill the human experience, he also had to go, his soul had to go to the grave.
SPEAKER_00: This is an essential part of believing in the resurrection, I think.
SPEAKER_00: To believe that Jesus really resurrected, you have to believe that he really did die.
SPEAKER_00: His body experienced death, his soul went to the world of death as well.
SPEAKER_00: There are 40 plus passages in the Old Testament that describe Sheol as the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: They all point as it's down.
SPEAKER_00: Job 7, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Job writes, When one dies, their soul goes down to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22, verse 29, all the prosperous of the earth eat and worship.
SPEAKER_00: Before him everyone bows down who goes down to the dust, even the one who couldn't keep himself alive.
SPEAKER_00: Your body returns to dust, your soul goes back down to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: You live your life with sin dragging you down, dragging you down, dragging you down.
SPEAKER_00: Your sin finally wins and your body dies, your soul goes down into the earth.
SPEAKER_00: This is speaking of again before Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus would have experienced this as well.
SPEAKER_00: Peter hits this point in his Pentecost sermon, Acts 2, verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is quoting Psalm 16 and says it applies to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 16 describes souls going down to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Peter quotes that passage in Acts 2, 27, and he says, You will not leave my soul in Sheol or abandon your holy one to corruption.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter claims that that verse describes Jesus' death, that Jesus' soul went down to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 16 becomes messianic because we know that Jesus' soul will not be left in Sheol, it will be resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says the same thing, Romans 10, verse 7, when he asks rhetorically, who can descend into Sheol to bring Jesus up from the dead?
SPEAKER_00: Where Paul describes the resurrection of Jesus as happening from Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons I think we have our time with this is because of what Jesus told the thief on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Today you will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: And in our mind, paradise is up.
SPEAKER_00: If souls go down when they die, that's bad.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus certainly went up.
SPEAKER_00: He tells the thief on the cross, She'll be with me in paradise going up.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the way the Jews understood paradise.
SPEAKER_00: In the Jewish mind, a soul dies, it goes down to the grave, down to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol has two different areas.
SPEAKER_00: You could say compartments if you wanted to, but two different realms in Sheol, where you have the realm of the righteous, often called paradise or Abraham's bosom.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the soul goes who dies in faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is called by Job going to the land of rest.
SPEAKER_00: It's a land where you cease from striving.
SPEAKER_00: It's a land of mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And rest is the most common word for it in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The soul that dies and goes to the realm of righteous or to paradise is at rest from their striving and their labors.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean soul sleep, it just means that they're no longer afflicted by sin.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, those that die outside of faith in the Savior, outside of faith in God's promise, they die and they go to a realm, their soul goes to a realm of suffering and torment.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus dies, he goes down to both of those places.
SPEAKER_00: And he proclaims the victory over sin that he achieved at the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He proclaims that in the realm of the lost dead, in the realm of those who are suffering for their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He proclaims victory.
SPEAKER_00: He proclaims victory to the angels that are there.
SPEAKER_00: This is hinted out in the New Testament as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's a different sermon, the angels that are there, but Jesus goes and proclaims victory to them, that he has conquered death.
SPEAKER_00: They've tried rebelling against God and rebelling against God's created order.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus comes, the Son of God comes incarnate with a human nature who triumphs over death.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes and proclaims that over even the angels that are suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But the culmination of his journey is not in the realm of the lost dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's not in the realm of the angels who are in chains.
SPEAKER_00: His journey culminates in the realm of paradise, in the realm of Abraham's bosom, in the realm of the righteous dead.
SPEAKER_00: He goes to them.
SPEAKER_00: And imagine how they would have been longing for their Savior.
SPEAKER_00: They died in faith of the Savior, but they died not having received what was promised, Paul says at the end of Hebrews 11.
SPEAKER_00: They died in faith and did not receive what was promised, waiting for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus goes and gets them.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and gets those souls.
SPEAKER_00: And when he resurrects, he's going back up to earth and then back up to heaven, having liberated those souls, elevating those souls so that now he's exalted in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's exalted at the right hand of God in glory with the souls who have died in faith with him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why when believers in the New Testament die, we do not go to Sheol, because Jesus has set those souls free.
SPEAKER_00: Believers in the New Testament who die, we go straight up to glory where we are with Jesus as well.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, before Christ, everyone who dies goes to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Some to the realm of suffering there, and those in faith go to a realm of rest.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, when he dies, liberates those in the realm of rest, triumphing over the grave, and brings them up to glory.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus resurrects, he goes to earth, then he goes to glory.
SPEAKER_00: And now when we die with faith in Christ, our bodies go to the ground and our soul.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, it turns it, our soul goes up.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, the righteous dead went down.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, the righteous dead go up.
SPEAKER_00: And we go and we join Jesus in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: We join Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Our soul joins Jesus in heaven, even though our bodies go down.
SPEAKER_00: At the second coming of Christ, Jesus will descend.
SPEAKER_00: The souls who are in glory with him now will come with him.
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies will be raised from the earth and be joined together with our soul in the air.
SPEAKER_00: Our resurrected bodies, we will rule on this earth with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The souls of the lost dead will remain in Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: They'll remain down.
SPEAKER_00: Until ultimately after the kingdom, when Jesus will resurrect even those souls, they will get a new body and they will be cast into hell forever.
SPEAKER_00: That's the full scope of what happens to someone when they die.
SPEAKER_00: The point of the sign of Jonah, though, to get back to Jonah here, the point of the sign of Jonah is that as Jonah descended down to the grave, so Jesus will descend down to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point Jesus makes in Matthew 12.
SPEAKER_00: He will descend to the grave to show that he is Lord even there.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how ironic this was to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah thought he could escape God's judgment by escaping this world.
SPEAKER_00: He thought if he went far enough to the west, God wouldn't get him.
SPEAKER_00: He thought if he left this world, God wouldn't get him.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: God is Lord even of Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Even there.
SPEAKER_00: You can't escape Christ's lordship by dying.
SPEAKER_00: You can't escape Christ's Lordship by fleeing to Tarshish.
SPEAKER_00: You can't escape Christ's Lordship from leaving this world.
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians 15, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I delivered to you that which is of first importance, that which I also received.
SPEAKER_00: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: He was buried and he was raised on the third day in accordance with our scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss the middle part of that.
SPEAKER_00: He died according to what the scriptures said, and he was buried according to what the scripture says.
SPEAKER_00: In Paul's mind, Jesus' triumph over Sheol is an authenticating part of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: It fulfills the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 21.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever dies on a tree must be buried that day because they are under a curse.
SPEAKER_00: They will go into the grave that day.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53 says the Savior will be buried in a rich man's grave.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, when he died, went into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: His soul went into Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 4, verse 6 says that while his soul went there, he was proclaiming victory to the captive spirits that were there, to the angels that were there, and he ends up liberating the souls of those who are righteous, and he ascends into glory.
SPEAKER_00: This is our future as well.
SPEAKER_00: And when you put your faith in the death of Jesus and the descent of Jesus, you're putting your faith in the fact that Jesus can take the righteous souls with him to glory when they die.
SPEAKER_00: The third sign on this gospel door is that of resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll deal with this one briefly because it's only implied in Jonah 1.17.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
SPEAKER_00: This speaks of resurrection here because it's limited.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't stay in the belly of the fish.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, which is representing his death here.
SPEAKER_00: He gets vomited back out of the fish.
SPEAKER_00: We find this at the end of chapter 2, in the last verse of chapter 2, verse 10, Yahweh spoke to the fish.
SPEAKER_00: It vomited Jonah onto the dry land.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is that Jonah receives his, what's a sign of resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus certainly takes it that way.
SPEAKER_00: When he proclaims to the Pharisees, you'll get the sign of Jonah, the Son of Man will die, he will be buried for three days and three nights, and then he will be resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: This is the heart of Christianity, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul makes this very clear how it's connected to the descent in Ephesians 4, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, How can we say that he ascended to heaven if he did not descend to the lowest parts of the earth?
SPEAKER_00: How can we say that Jesus ascended to glory if he didn't also descend to the lowest parts of the earth?
SPEAKER_00: He had to go to Sheol to resurrect.
SPEAKER_00: But now that he has done that, he has resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Death didn't kill Jesus ultimately.
SPEAKER_00: He's the Lord of life.
SPEAKER_00: And for those who put their faith in his resurrection, we know that we too will have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Our physical bodies will die and our souls will go to glory with him.
SPEAKER_00: Now a word about three days and three nights here.
SPEAKER_00: This can again be confusing because we understand Jesus was buried, let's say, at 4 o'clock on Friday.
SPEAKER_00: He was resurrected, let's say 6 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: So in the American mind, that's, you know, that's not even 48 hours.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do we get three days and three nights from that?
SPEAKER_00: But I understand the Jews told time very differently than Americans tell time.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews had a pretty hard and fixed cutoff from one day to the next, sundown.
SPEAKER_00: When the first star comes out, that's that's the start of a new day.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the sun goes down on Friday afternoon, you got the first star out.
SPEAKER_00: That is now officially what we would call Sabbath is Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: It's a new day.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews view time in units.
SPEAKER_00: And so someone who's buried at four o'clock, if they would have been resurrected at seven o'clock, three hours later, in the Jewish mind, that's two days and two nights, because they were obviously buried on Friday, and now they're resurrected on Saturday, what we would call Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: So in the Jewish calendar, the day flips over, not at midnight, like for Americans.
SPEAKER_00: For the Jewish calendar, the day flips to the next day at sundown on that day when the first star is up.
SPEAKER_00: So Friday, for us, Friday evening, the first star comes in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: For the Jew, that is Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: They don't divide days up, it's a full day.
SPEAKER_00: So as I said, Friday from 4 to Friday at 7:30.
SPEAKER_00: That's two days and two nights right there.
SPEAKER_00: And we kind of even as Americans can tell time like that.
SPEAKER_00: If you work from 9 to 5, you might say, I worked a full day.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't work 24 hours, you worked from 9 to 5.
SPEAKER_00: If you're French, you work from 11 to 1, and you might say, I worked a full day.
SPEAKER_00: Eh, not really.
SPEAKER_00: Not really.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we manipulate this kind of time depending on our own agenda as well.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I went to a board meeting for the Master's University out in Los Angeles, and I'll usually fly out Thursday evening to LA.
SPEAKER_00: I'll fly back.
SPEAKER_00: I might take a red eye and fly back, and I'll get back Saturday morning or even Saturday afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: And I tell the girls, listen, I'm gone for one day.
SPEAKER_00: I tell my daughters, I'm gone for one day.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, You're gone for three days.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, not gone for three days.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gone.
SPEAKER_00: I left Friday afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: I'm back before, you know, I'm back Saturday morning.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's barely one day.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, well, you're gone two nights.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's that kind of negotiation with how we tell time.
SPEAKER_00: For the Jews, there's no negotiation.
SPEAKER_00: Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is three days and three nights.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's not even cutting it close for them.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus resurrected, let's say, 6 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: Sunday morning, that overshot it by 12 hours.
SPEAKER_00: He would have been dead three days and three nights if he would have resurrected Saturday at, in our mind, Saturday at 7.30 p.m.
SPEAKER_00: He overshot it by a good 12 hours.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're dealing here with Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was Friday to Sunday for Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: There's no Sabbath figuring in on this, but for Jesus, he was certainly buried Friday afternoon, certainly resurrected Sunday morning, three days.
SPEAKER_00: And three nights is the Jewish expression.
SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew 12, verse 40, just as Jonah was in the for his three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to how Jesus ends his sermon to the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with the disgeneration and condemn it, he says, speaking of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
SPEAKER_00: Something greater than Jonah is here.
SPEAKER_00: The Ninevites knew of the sign of Jonah, and they would repent.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at that in the weeks to come.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to have your sins forgiven, you too need to place your faith in the signs on the store.
SPEAKER_00: You need to place your faith in the death of Jesus Christ for sinners.
SPEAKER_00: You need to place your faith in his descent and his victory over the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to place your faith in his resurrection from the dead and the offer of new life for all those who believe.
SPEAKER_00: The sailors on the boat got saved believing in this.
SPEAKER_00: The Ninevehes got saved believing in this.
SPEAKER_00: The centurion got saved believing in this.
SPEAKER_00: This is the only way for salvation for you to believe in the death, descent, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful for the ministry of your word, and we do pray that the sign of Jonah would be believed by every one listening to this message.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful that you conquered the grave.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful that you offer life to those who believe.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for how you have shared your son with us.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for him in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.
SPEAKER_00: It's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church, you can go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.