Introduction

The story of Jonah is probably one of the most intriguing stories to hear as a child: a prophet called by God to do God’s work, a prophet who turned the other way; a raging sea; the strong mariners; a great fish; a mighty city brought to repentance; a flourishing gourd plant that withered and died; and a prophet who wished to perish because he did not have things go his way. For a young child hearing this story with a mind full of imagination, a vivid picture is easily painted. A father would tell his child what a great God our God is that he so controls the mighty beasts of the sea that even they do his bidding. A mother would tell her child how God gave life to a small gourd seed that germinated and grew in one day and was destroyed by a tiny worm the next. What an amazing contrast! From a great beast in the sea to a tiny worm, that child would know the majesty and glory of the creator of the heavens and earth, who holds all things in his hand. And that child would know that this all-powerful God works everything on this earth for the good of his children, and that child would hear the truth of Lord’s Day 1: “Without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head” (Confessions and Church Order, 83). The book of Jonah is a wonderful treasure. The sovereign, mighty hand of God is on full display, and Christ is revealed there.

There is little information known about Jonah. In 2 Kings 14:25, we learn that Jonah was a prophet who prophesied of the restoration of the coast of Israel from “Hamath unto the sea of the plain.” Although we do not know when the prophecy was made, the prophecy was fulfilled during the reign of Jeroboam II. In the first verses of the book of Jonah, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Jonah and said, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” When Jonah was commissioned to go south to Nineveh, he spurned God’s will, boarded a merchant vessel in Joppa, and went north by sea along the Mediterranean coast, headed to Tarshish. Tarshish was the same city that the apostle Paul was from. Tarshish would have been in the area later known as Cilicia, and today this city would be in the country of Turkey.

Why did Jonah attempt to run away from this commission of God? One might picture Jonah preaching to the chosen nation of Israel and then Jonah being called away by God to go to the great and wicked city of Nineveh. The Ninevites would certainly not listen to the word of the Lord when it would be brought. And one can imagine how even a Jew in the old dispensation might have viewed the book of Jonah. Picturing all the Old Testament scrolls, one can see the Hebrew skipping past the story of Jonah, maybe even viewing it with a little disdain. A message of repentance was brought to a great, wicked city that was not of the chosen nation of Israel. The word of God was brought to the uncircumcised!

Even today, men might pass over the book of Jonah because of the incomprehensibility of the event that God wrought in sustaining a man for three days and three nights in a fish’s belly. Man tries to rationalize the event. Man tries to find a scientific way to make what was a miracle something that could have been possible according to the laws of nature. If man cannot come up with some sort of explanation, then he tries to avoid the whole narrative as if it were too far-fetched. What must be known is that the preservation of Jonah was beyond a natural occurrence. His preservation was miraculous. God’s splendor was on full display over his creation, causing the sea to rage and to be stilled, guiding the path of the great fish, and giving Jonah the victory over the tomb into which he was swallowed.

Jonah’s Scruple

It is understandable that Jonah would not want to bring God’s word to the Ninevites because they were outside of Israel, but in Jonah 4:2 Jonah revealed his thoughts as to why he disobeyed God:

O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

Jonah was commissioned by God to cry against the city of Nineveh. As we just read in verse 2, Jonah said that he knew that if he were to cry against the city and say to the city that destruction was coming in forty days, that God, being gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, would not bring that destruction. Jonah had a vehement zeal for the grace and mercy of God, which are certain and true, but Jonah denied God’s sovereign will and good pleasure. He felt as though God’s name would be blasphemed when his message to the Ninevites was unfulfilled and they were not destroyed and also that he, Jonah, would be called a liar as the bearer of that false message. So Jonah was telling God here that he knew better all along, he had a better plan, and he had a better will than God’s will. Jonah had a feeling, and that feeling was even guided by a principle, but he was denying God’s appointed course of action and God’s secret plan. Jonah had a scruple. In all of this we can see the danger of a man’s scruple, when one takes a wonderful and amazing truth such as the truth of God’s grace and mercy and uses that truth for one’s own invention. Jonah had a vehement zeal for those attributes of God and used that feeling to try to justify denying God’s commission for him. Jonah’s own invention was to flee, standing on the principle that God is merciful and gracious. Jonah took something amazing and true and used it for his own plan.

Understanding why Jonah fled from God reveals something about how God deals with his people. Jonah had an imperfect repentance. Even after his chastisement and the fulfillment of his commission to cry against the city of Nineveh, he continued to maintain his scruple. Does Jonah’s repentance match the definition of repentance given in 2 Corinthians 7:11?

For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.

Did Jonah show himself in all things to be clear in the matter? Not by that description. Jonah did the Lord’s work for him and cried against Nineveh. But even after Jonah had run from God and was swallowed by the fish, even after Jonah had been saved from the fish’s belly and was delivered to dry land, even after Jonah had brought the cry of judgment through the streets of Nineveh to all the city and they repented, Jonah had the nerve to go before the face of God and say, “See?! This is why I fled in the first place, back when I was in my home country. I knew it was going to go this way, and now your name is blasphemed. Now take my life”—as though he knew better than God. This is man. He never truly knows the gravity of his sin. Man thinks he knows the right pathway. He thinks he knows better than God. Even through trials and the Lord’s clear direction for him, man continues to harbor his own sentiments. Jonah maintained his scruple even after he had been swallowed by the fish and delivered to dry ground and God’s word to preach to Nineveh had come to him a second time. Yet God continued to deal with Jonah by grace, even with Jonah’s imperfect repentance. God had restored that commission to Jonah to cry against the city, and God continued to deal with Jonah in loving-kindness.

So why would God use Jonah? Why did God treat Jonah only in loving-kindness? We know that God uses earthen vessels to fulfill his will. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). God loved Jonah. Jonah knew the promises of God. Jonah knew the grace and mercy of God. Jonah continued to question God’s sovereignty and will even to the point that Jonah wished his life would end, yet God continued to care for Jonah through God’s friendship and fellowship with Jonah. Not because Jonah had repented well enough, not because Jonah was reasonably righteous all in all but because God saw in Jonah someone greater than Jonah, someone who was perfectly righteous. God looked at Jonah and saw God’s Son. And that is how God dealt with Jonah. Jonah was sinful. We are sinful too, yet God loves us, and we stand with Jonah before God justified because there was one with no sin.

The tender care of God for Jonah is a wonderful comfort for the child of God. Even as we are continually sinning against God, he loves us unconditionally. Psalm 103:10: “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” Jonah had faith. Jonah was united with Jesus Christ. The lot for Jonah and the lot for you and me is death and destruction except for Jesus Christ and his perfect work. The same destruction that God had told Jonah to cry against Nineveh is what we deserve. Praise the Lord for his perfect work of salvation in Jesus Christ! Faith in Jesus Christ is the reason God dealt with Jonah, and all of God’s people, in his grace and mercy. Not Jonah’s faith and Jonah’s repentance. Jonah’s repentance was imperfect, but he was united with Christ, who perfectly atoned for the sins of his people even though he himself had never sinned. Jonah had faith, and through faith alone he was a partaker of the promises and was dealt with in grace.

The Song of Jonah

A glorious truth has been recovered in the Reformed Protestant Churches. Christ is in the psalms. Instead of reading a psalm and finding oneself, the psalms are taught and preached to show forth Christ. For example, take Psalm 24:3–5:

3. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

4. He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

5. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

One could corrupt these verses and teach the sheep that if they desire blessings from the Lord and righteousness from God, then there is something they have to do, or they must live a certain way to have clean hands and a pure heart. But there is no Christ in that teaching! Either the sheep will be discouraged because they know themselves to be who they really are—totally depraved—or they will be full of self-righteousness, thinking they could actually accomplish that great task. Now read the verses and see Christ. Jesus Christ and his clean hands ascends the holy hill. Jesus Christ with his pure heart stands in the holy place. Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He has fulfilled all things for us! That is the gospel! To make the charge that that will make us careless and profane is to be afraid of the gospel. Instead, hearing the gospel, the child of God will live a life full of gratitude and thanksgiving.

Christ can be found in the prayer of Jonah 2 just as Christ is found in the book of Psalms. In fact, does not Jonah 2 sound exactly like a psalm?

1. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly,

2. And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

3. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

4. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

5. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

6. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.

7. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

8. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

9. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

Just as we see a clear picture of Christ on the cross in Psalm 22, in Jonah’s prayer we see Christ as he endured all of the sufferings for our sins and as he was in the grave, forsaken by God for us. Jonah 2 shows us our savior when he made supplication to God from the grave, having accomplished victory over it before arising from the dead. “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice…All thy billows and thy waves passed over me…I am cast out of thy sight.” Even verse 5—“the weeds were wrapped about my head”—reminds us of how Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus wrapped a clean linen cloth about Jesus’ head for his burial. John 19:40: “Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” And John 20:7: “And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.”

Jesus himself made certain that the book of Jonah was included in the canon of scripture. One of the key proofs for canonical-inspired scripture is that other parts of scripture are often quoted or referred to by Christ. Jesus tells us in Matthew 12:40, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” When Jesus spoke about himself being in the heart of the earth, he was speaking about his time in the grave where he overcame sin and death for his people. A parallel is drawn to Jonah and his tomb in the belly of the great fish. So the child of God can read Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2 and hear Christ!

The second chapter of Jonah is also known as the Song of Jonah. The reason it is called the Song of Jonah is because the chapter is in poetic verse. It contains three movements. Each movement begins with the impossible situation Jonah was in, and each movement ends with an expression of faith. Jonah’s prayer is also a song, just as the songs in the book of Psalms are also called the “prayers of David” (Ps. 72:20). Systematizing the wisdom of scripture by the work of the Spirit, the Reformed creeds join prayer and singing in Lord’s Day 38 in the phrase “publicly to call upon the Lord” (Confessions and Church Order, 128).

Christ Is in the Scriptures

The scriptures are of infinite depth. Jesus Christ himself shows the richness of the book of Jonah. In Matthew 12:39–41 we read,

39. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

40. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

41. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

Jesus was speaking here to the scribes and Pharisees. They had asked him for a sign, and Jesus told them that they were not going to be given another sign. Jesus was saying to these wicked Jews that all of the Old Testament scriptures testify of him. He was saying that in all of the Old Testament, he is there. The signs and shadows of Christ and the reality of his perfect work, though not yet unfolded in history, are already there. “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). But the Jews could not see Christ in his word. He was standing right in front of them; they knew the Old Testament scriptures backward and forward, but they could not see him.

Christ told those Jews that Jonah was a type of himself: “Behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matt. 12:41). From this we can take another glimpse into the book of Jonah and see our Lord and savior. Jonah was a type and shadow of Christ in that after Jonah had been delivered from the fish’s belly, the gospel was brought to the Gentiles in Nineveh. This was a foreshadowing of things to come, for after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the gospel was then preached to the Gentiles.

Through a wonder of God’s grace, Jesus Christ is revealed to his people in the word. Jesus Christ is the Word.

What is it that draws God’s people to the preaching of the Reformed Protestant Churches? “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). In the Reformed Protestant Churches, Christ is found in the scriptures and is preached. God be praised! The law is not preached as a means of grace, for if the law were a means of grace, then grace is no more grace. “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” (Rom. 11:6).

The church of Jesus Christ hates when man says that to experience salvation there is something that man must do, for then there would never be salvation or the experience of it, which are one and the same. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). The church hates when faith is made to be man’s act, for faith is the bond that unites us to Jesus Christ and receives his finished work; and if faith were the doing of man, then man would never know salvation (see Heb. 11:5). The church hates when repentance is confounded to be part of faith and is not distinguished as a necessary fruit of faith. The church hates when repentance is said to be the means unto the forgiveness of sins, for we have forgiveness already by the means of faith. The church hates man-first theology and anything else that adds to Jesus Christ alone and him crucified. Those who preach and write lies such as these are the scribes and Pharisees of today. The scribes and Pharisees charged Christ that he cast out devils in the name of Beelzebub, which led to Christ’s telling of the sign of Jonah later in Matthew 12. In essence they were saying that Christ and his ministry were a wicked thing. The scribes and Pharisees denied the gospel and denied Christ’s work. All they could see was man and what man must do and that man is something.

The gospel in the Reformed Protestant Churches is charged today as antinomian: without a doubt! May those charges continue to come, for where the gospel is proclaimed, surely there will be the modern-day scribes and Pharisees. What the church joys in and what the church will demand is that Jesus Christ is preached and him alone. What brings excitement each Sunday is hearing Christ! May God be gracious and continue to show the churches Jesus Christ in the scriptures, so that they proclaim man as nothing and God as everything!

Conclusion

Jonah had cried against Nineveh, and the city repented. Jonah was exceedingly displeased and angry that this had happened, and he prayed to God for his life to end. God could have left Jonah in his anger as he sat sulking outside the city awaiting the destruction that Jonah knew would not come, but God did not forsake Jonah. God taught Jonah a lesson by raising up a small gourd tree to shade Jonah and then sending a worm to destroy that tree the next day. This made Jonah faint and wish to die.

9. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

10. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:

11. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:9–11)

God showed Jonah that Jonah had no right to wish for the destruction of Nineveh, for he had no part in the growth of that large city and no knowledge of God’s plan for that city and the people there. God sent Jonah to bring God’s word to that city. Certainly, the word of God is efficacious and never comes back to him void. God had his children there. God showed Jonah that even the cattle there belonged to him and were in his care.

10. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

11. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

12. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. (Ps. 50:10–12)

God had sent a great fish to swallow up Jonah to instruct Jonah of God’s will, and then God sent a tiny worm to Jonah to show him the error of his scruple.

We do not know what was the end of this earthly pilgrimage for Jonah. Scripture does not reveal it to us. The book of Jonah ends with Jonah and his discourse with God. Despite Jonah’s sin and his stubborn scruple, God shows in the book that he is Jonah’s covenant friend. Jonah spoke with God, and God cared for Jonah in his tender loving-kindness as he does for all his children for Jesus’ sake.