“Let me out of here!” I cried. Nothing happened. I pounded on the door. Still nothing. A few minutes later I called again. This time I begged: “Please, open up.” Silence. Then suddenly I heard a soft “click.” I burst through the door and was free, happy to be out of the basement – again. You see, when I was small, being the youngest of three boys, every now and then my older brothers and their friends would tease me by locking me somewhere in a confining place. Now, I don't consider myself claustrophobic, but I don't like to be hemmed in either – squeezed into a tiny spot..
Buried alive! What would that be like? There are stories about such incidences. We actually have one before us in our text this morning. In one sense the prophet Jonah was “buried alive,” not in the ground but in the belly of a great fish from which escape seemed all but impossible.
“But, preacher, this is Easter,” you might say. “What does Jonah have to do with Easter?” Quite a bit! dear friend. Do you realize that this story of Jonah is the only story from the Bible that Jesus referred to when He foretold His resurrection?
From the book of Matthew (12:38f) we read that some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law were testing Him. They wanted to see Jesus do a miracle to prove that He was sent from God. For them God's word on it wasn't enough. Jesus told them, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
There it is, dear friends, the connection between Jonah, Jesus, Easter, and ultimately us. If there is one thing that hems us in the most, squeezes us into a feared spot, it is death and the grave. But through faith in a risen Savior, the believer bursts through and says with Jonah, “Saved! Thank God, I'm Saved from the Grave!”
I. I was helpless, yet not hopeless.
But before he could get to that point of praise, Jonah had to see the reality of the situation into which his sin brought him. And his situation was bad, much worse than being locked in a closet or a basement or an abandoned shed. Jonah lay in the belly of a great fish. How had he gotten there? One word, dear friends, sin. Jonah had disobeyed God and this was its consequence.
You know the story, don't you? In His concern for the heathen Ninevites, God told Jonah to go and preach His Word to them. But instead of traveling to the city of Nineveh to the east, Jonah boarded a ship heading the opposite way, west. God was not pleased, not just because Jonah had disobeyed Him, but in that disobedience Jonah would have shut the door of hell behind the Ninevites, not giving them the chance to hear of God's plan of salvation.
So God caused a storm to fall upon the sea. It got so bad and the situation so hopeless that the sailors felt doomed. Jonah told them that he had caused their peril. But if they threw him overboard, God would calm the sea. They did, and the storm subsided.
Meanwhile, Jonah sank - sank like a stone down…down…down. Seaweed grabbed at his hair; saltwater rushed into his mouth; he dropped to the floor of the sea, where the bottoms of the mountains locked him in. This was more than confined to a basement; this was trapped in the heart of the earth. And he could do nothing. Helpless ! No matter how hard he struggled and thrashed about, life was being squeezed from him.
But that was not the worst of it. As he sank Jonah felt God's angry scowl. The wrath of the Lord fell upon him. He cried, “O Lord, You hurled me into the deep…Your waves and breakers swept over me.” It wasn't as much the sailors who cast him into the sea as much as it was the hand of God. And Jonah knew God was totally right in it because of his disobedience to Him. Jonah's heart condemned him - a sinner helpless in the presence of divine Justice. It nearly made him quit. He was ready to give up. Still, though helpless in himself, he was not yet without hope. “In my distress I called to the Lord,” Jonah says, “and He answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and You listened to my cry.”
Dear friend, learn from this, no matter how great your sin might be. No situation is so hopeless, no individual so far gone that the sinner cannot cry out to the Lord God for pardon and deliverance. Indeed, God bids us, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me” (Ps.50:15). Sometimes the Lord must bring His loved ones down to the depths of despair and hem them in so that He might fix their wayward eyes on Him.
Though helpless in ourselves, the situation is never hopeless in Him. God heard Jonah's cry and had a great fish swallow him.
Oh great, now he's entombed in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea! What does a person do now? The same as before; one turns to God, for with God all things are possible. Even imminent death cannot thwart Him – Christ proved that when He rose on Easter. But what does a person say to God from the belly of a fish. “Lord, get me out of here!”? That's not what Jonah said.
“Thank you, Lord God, my Savior!” That's what Jonah cried. He offered a prayer of thanksgiving from within the fish. What? Thanksgiving? That's right, a prayer of thanksgiving, for the righteous God had every right to let him drown in the depths of the sea for his sin. Instead He had provided this fish to save Jonah. So it was that entombed within the belly of a fish, Jonah praised God saying, “Salvation comes from the Lord.” It was like saying, “ Saved! Thank God, I'm Saved for in His mercy the Lord used this “grave” to save me.”
You know, dear friends, God used a grave to save us too. On Good Friday the body of the Lord Jesus, who bore our sins on the cross, was laid to rest in a grave. That was the price for sin, a price only He could pay. Thank goodness He paid it for us and was laid in that grave because we were helpless to withstand its punishment.
But today is the third day, and Jesus' grave stands empty. The angels tell us why. “He's not here; He's risen, just as He said….He is risen from the dead” (Mt.28:6).
We needed Him to go to the grave for us; and more, we needed Him to come out of the grave for us. So it was that the Bible says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” Saved from our sin through a grave!
Helpless, yet not hopeless for we have a crucified and risen Savior. With Jonah we sing, “ Saved! Thank God, I'm Saved!”
II. I was rebellious, but now am victorious.
But Jonah was still in the belly of the fish. What could he do there? So the Lord God commanded the fish, and it spit Jonah onto dry ground, right onto the land; he didn't even have to swim to it.
As Jonah lay on the seashore, he might well have sighed within his heart, “Oh, Lord, I was rebellious against You. But look what You've done. Once more You have helped me.”
Jonah hadn't done a thing to help himself, not a thing. But help Came; it came from God, whose creatures must bow to His commands. “My help comes from the Lord,” the psalmist said (121:2), “the Maker of heaven and earth.” To admit that, dear friends, in everything that we are about, is to know the victory in the midst of defeat that comes from the Lord. And therein lies an important part of this book and its connection for us with Easter.
Sadly, for many people the story of Jonah is just that, the story of a man and a whale. But that does not do justice to our God. Above all it is a true story about the Lord and about His saving love for rebellious people whom He made victorious over death in His deliverance of them. It's about the grace of God who deals mercifully with disobedient children. And it's about the power of the Lord at whose command all graves are opened to give up their dead.
It's about us, too. It's the story of our rebellion against God. It's about us deserving to die for our disobedience. And it's about us being spared from death in hell by God's grace in Christ.
Most importantly of all, since the Lord Jesus Himself made the connection, it's a story about Easter and the risen Savior who said, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Seeing Jonah alive on dry ground foreshadows Christ's resurrection.
And Christ's resurrection is a guarantee of our own for “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1Cor.15:20). Christ was the first to rise; more will follow as they believe in Him. And just as Jonah's “grave” had to spit him out, so one day our graves will spit us out, too, for the Bible says, “The Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise” (1Thess.4:16).
Jonah had it right: “Salvation comes from the Lord” – salvation from sin, salvation from death.
My brothers may not have let me out when I was a kid and locked in a basement, but God let us out with the risen Savior on Easter morn, and no grave can shut us in again for ever. None! He is risen! He is risen indeed! We are Saved! Thank God, We Are Saved! Helpless in our disobedience, yet not hopeless; rebellious in sin , but now victorious over sin and the grave in Christ . God grant it in our lives of faith this Easter and always for Jesus' sake.