Introduction:
In my preaching through Luke's Gospel, a curious comparison is mentioned by Jesus where He compares Jonah the Prophet to himself in Luke 11:29-30. How Jesus does this is by a special type of comparison we find in the Bible called a "type". Theologian Vern Poythress defines this term type as "a symbol that points to fulfillment".
To illustrate this idea, not too long ago I was watching some street workers here in town off-loading a couple of mysterious rectangles. These shapes had other shapes and backwards lettering cut into them. The workers placed those rectangles on the street. Then a worker took a spray gun and sprayed white paint onto the rectangle, lifting it from the ground to reveal an arrow, a word, or a line. I then understood that the rectangles were imprinted with symbols, were patterns to leave behind a far greater impression on the road.
The Bible has this use of types all over its pages, including our text here. As noted earlier from a definition given by theologian Vern Poythress in his book on typology, a "type" is a symbol that point to a fulfillment. To press home further clarity about what we mean by "types", Poythress' wonderful book is based off the earlier work of the late Edmund Clowney, who devised a diagram or "triangle" that helps summarize how types relate to whatever they are pointing to.
In the above diagram of "Clowney's Triangle" (for which Poythress does a great job explaining in his book on the subject of typology or the study of types), you have "S" which is the symbol in question (whether a person, institution, or event).
A Biblical example of a type
For instance, Romans 5:14b “Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” To use my street-worker illustration from earlier, Adam is like that rectangle with a shape cut out in the middle. Adam was a real man in history, the first man created and the representative head of all humanity. He is a “type” or forward pointing word-picture to an even greater Adam-like figure, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the representative head of redeemed humanity - giving us the common truth shared between Himself and Adam.
Paul makes this connection very plain in 1 Corinthians 15:45 “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
How Jonah the Prophet is a type of Jesus' death and resurrection
With our orientation on types and their study (typology) made, let’s pick up the text in Luke 11:29-30 “As the crowds were increasing, He began to say, ‘This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.”
How does Jesus bring forth “the sign of Jonah” as a revelation of His greatness? Let's note two observations.
A. The greatness of Christ’s cross.
If you were to turn to the Book of Jonah in our Old Testament, you would find it to be a rather short book – just four chapters. However, contained within its pages is the account of a prophet, Jonah, who was sent by God to a non-Jewish people in a pagan city – Ninevah. Jonah did not want to go and instead chose to run away from God, get on a ship, and go to the opposite direction. God would then throw a mighty storm upon the Mediterranean Sea where Jonah was attempting to hide from God. Consequently, Jonah 1 ends with Jonah thrown overboard and swallowed up by a great fish or sea monster.
It is in Jonah 2 we find our hapless prophet inside the belly of the great beast, crying out to God, expecting to die. Non-Christian people cannot run and hide from God. His sentence of Divine judgment has already passed on you and unless you believe and repent of your sins in Jesus Christ, that judgment will come to pass (John 3:36).
However, for some of you who are followers of Jesus, you cannot get very far either when you're not in right fellowship with God (Hebrews 12:5). Jonah highlights this for us. The biggest proof we have of Jonah being a believer in Yahweh is how God disciplined Him. He had to face death itself before he waved the flag of surrender.
In Jonah 2:5 we see Jonah’s greatest desperation, “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.” For all intents and purposes, Jonah was as good as dead. He prays to God in Jonah 2:6 “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever.” The first half of Jonah follows a “descending and dying pattern” for the prophet.
When we study a type, we look for similarities and differences and we look for a Biblical pattern between the type and its fulfillment (or anti-type). Jesus was willing to come into the world, totally different from Jonah, who was a reluctant prophet. Jonah, though a believer, was still sinful. Jesus, truly God in human flesh, could not sin and never sinned. With those differences, the connection between Jonah as a “type” and Jesus as the “anti-type” or fulfillment has to do with the general pattern of death and resurrection in their respective lives.
Jesus’ human existence from His incarnation to the cross was in a “descending, downward pattern”. Philippians 2:8 “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” He was sent into the world, not only to the Jews, but to be the Savior of the nations (John 3:16).
Jonah is the only prophet in the Old Testament sent exclusively to a pagan nation outside of Israel. He would experience a “descending pattern leading to death” in Jonah 1:1-2:6).
Jesus would experience death and taste death for everyone of those whom He came to redeem (Hebrews 2:9 “tasted death for every man”). Jonah would come close to death, so much so, that he could taste death in the belly of the great beast. It is in such similarities that Jesus shows Himself greater than Jonah. Matthew’s account of this episode in Luke records in Matthew 12:40 “for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” We see the greatness of Christ’s crucifixion.
B. The greatness of Christ’s resurrection.
In the first half of the Book of Jonah we see a “descending and death pattern”, forecasting what Jesus said was to be true about Himself, namely He came to die on the cross. But then we turn to the second half of the Book of Jonah to see a pattern of resurrection. In Jonah 2:6b Jonah is still praying from the belly of the Great Fish, “But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.”
Although Jonah was a hard-headed prophet, he still was a man of faith who believed in the doctrine of the resurrection. He figured that God was going to bring him out somehow on the other side of his predicament. The Hebrew text is very emphatic in its record of Jonah’s prayer, “you will cause me to rise up out of the grave, Oh Yahweh my God!”
The Book of Jonah is like two mirror images in its two halves. Jonah 1:1-2:6a records a “descent and death” pattern; and Jonah 2:6b-4:10 records an “ascent and life” pattern. Jonah is spat out at the end of chapter 2 and Jonah 3:1 has God telling Jonah after his harrowing experience, “Arise, go!”
Here again Jonah is functioning as that “type”, pointing ahead to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It's as if God laid down Jonah’s life as a pattern and spray-painted his prophetic book, which when finished, yielded the death and resurrection pattern of Jesus Christ.
Luke 11:30 tells us Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. It is quite likely word had spread about of Jonah’s frightening adventure. His presence in Ninevah alone would have sparked much interest, since whatever God Jonah worshipped had caused him to be spat out and he survived to tell about it!
God used Jonah’s brush with death and escape with his life to prepare the hearts of the people of Ninevah. Luke 11:32 “The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
Jonah's death and resurrection pattern points us to Jesus' death and resurrection
As we close this post, we find the richness of studying types in how someone like Jonah points us to the greatness of Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. Jesus saw fit to utilize Jonah's life and adventure in the belly of the great fish to draw attention to what He came to achieve. Such "types" were used by Jesus to prepare His disciples for what would be His death and resurrection. When Jesus raised from the dead, those disciples and eyewitnesses testified of His post-resurrection, physical appearances. They testified as we read in Acts 5:30-31 “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. 31 He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” May our introduction to types and typology in this post cause us to study God's Word and get to know Jesus better, who is "Greater than Jonah".
