"Three Days and Three Nights"

“And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,” (Jonah 1:17- 2:1 ESV)

There are two Old Testament books that I believe model our human lives best. The first is The Book of Job, and the second, The Book of Jonah. Job shows our ability through the cross to suffer in faith, and second our propensity to question God. The first is good, the second is not. We also see our affinity in judging others, and our failures to see our own depravity.

In Jonah, one of my favorite Bible books, we can see our rejection of God. If we look at chapter one, we see Jonah receiving a call from God to go to Nineveh. Jonah fearfully fled God rejecting His call. Is that not us? Think of your life. If you are a believer, how many times did God call you and you rejected Him. How many gospel calls did you receive? How many time had you felt a pull from God and you turned from Him. How many times did God lay the truth of the cross and your feet and you trampled over it?  Yet in His love, despite your rejection, He called you ethereally and you came unable to resist the magnetic grace of God.

Or do you not know the Lord who has been calling you. You too have received the gospel calling and push it away. God pursued you also which is why you were drawn to seek more information about Him and the free gift of salvation offered to you by grace and through faith in Jesus Christ, the risen Son of God. We are just like Jonah foolishly trying to flee an all-knowing, all-seeing God. Now finally you seek Him and just like every other Christian, despite your sin and rebellion, He is offering you salvation.

Also in the first chapter, we see that in Jonah’s attempt to flee God, the Lord pursues Him. In his rebellion, Jonah dangers others as the tempest of God envelops those around Jonah. Maybe you can remember the others you involved in your sin. You can see those who suffered because of your depravity. Your spouse, your family, or your friends and so on. The tempest of your sins cast a whirlwind on many until God broke you and you saw your depravity. Just like Jonah who had the sailors to cast him in the sea so they would be spared from the troubles he had brought upon them because you recognized your sins.

Then something miraculous happened. For Jonah, God appointed a giant fish, not a whale, a fish to swallow Jonah. In the belly of the great fish Jonah repented. Much like us God appointed Christ to come in the incarnation. We were then swallowed up by the truth of the gospel. Christ laid in the ground three days having been beaten, scourged, and murdered bearing our sins in the grave. As Jonah said in chapter 2:6,  “To the roots of the mountains I went down, to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought up my life from the pit,”  In His resurrection, having paid for our sins, by grace He saves us through faith in His finished work pulling us from the pit just as He did Jonah. Jonah, in the time of the sacrificial system said, “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” (2:9) For us it was Christ who was our sacrifice, He vowed to die on that cross so that we may find righteousness imputed to us, by Him, in our salvation. It is in Jonah’s prayer that we see our repentance in his having been made aware of our own depravity before God.

We cannot run from God. Having been chosen as His elect, we can only try and flee His call like Jonah, but in the end we will follow God’s will His grace is irresistible. Even more, like Jonah, we may be displeased with God’s work in our life, yet on this side of the cross, we know that suffering is God molding us further into the image of Christ. We know that the life of a Christian is not easy, but is it temporary, and that in eternal life, we will have no pain, not tears, and nor strife.

Are you sure about your eternity? Do you know the risen Son of God as your Savior. Are your still trying to run from an omniscient, omnipresent God? Take a lesson from Jonah. Run to Christ, turn to Him and tell Him you want salvation and you believe in His resurrection and His power to resurrect us as well. Run to Him quickly because He is waiting on You.

Grace and Peace.