Jonah and Jesus, Land and Sea

On Easter Sunday, my sermon included references to the many connections between Jonah and Jesus.

One of the things I referenced was from Matthew 12, where Jesus says, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).

I talked about how Jesus was the greater Jonah. How both were sent with God’s Word, but Jonah only goes reluctantly. How Jonah gets angry about God’s forgiveness to Nineveh, but Jesus gives His life in order to forgive God’s people. Jesus even cries out for the forgiveness of the people who are crucifying Him. Also, I made the connection between Jonah’s stay in the belly of that sea creature, and Jesus’ stay in the grave or what Jesus calls the belly of the earth.

After the sermon, a young man who has been a guest with us a handful of times shared a helpful insight, pointing to these words of Jonah.

“I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9).

The pattern the young man had seen, that I had quite missed, was that Jonah proclaims the Lord as God of sea and land. Jonah is tossed into the sea and remains there for a three-day stay.

Jesus is thrown into the earth and remains there for a three-day stay.

As Jonah points out, our God is God of both land and sea. God sees to Jonah’s deliverance from the sea and sea creature. And God sees to Jesus’ deliverance from death and burial in the belly of the earth.

That the same God can do this is odd to many religions of the past and present. The various gods of the world are said to have specialties. In many pantheons there is the god of the sea and the god of the river and the god of mountains and the god of forests etc. There is a god of the sun and another of the moon. But our God is God of all places. He is the Creator of land and sea. Which means He can cause problems on land and sea. And He can deliver on land and sea.

I obviously don’t have all the answers, and this was a connection I had missed. And that’s one of the things I love about preaching and studying the Scriptures with other people. So often the sermon is not finished when I stop talking, but it is finished in the minds of everyone else. As people keep thinking about the text and chewing on what was said, they frequently find more than I did.

Have you ever had a similar experience while listening to a sermon? What insights have you had that continued the sermon?

Thanks for reading!

Andy