Jesus in Jonah
June 02, 2025
A Greater Jonah is Here
Jonah was a real, historical person. The record has been validated. Jonah was an Old Testament prophet, but his little book, which contains no prophecy, is instead a personal account of a major event in his life that points to the Lord Jesus Himself and His resurrection from the dead.
Eight centuries after Jonah’s story took place, Jesus Christ retells it in the company of the scribes and Pharisees. They asked Him for a sign that He was the Messiah, but they had no intention of believing. Jesus saw through their plot and said instead that He would give them the sign of Jonah.
“For 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. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” -Matthew 12:40-41
The Lord directed them back to Old Testament Jonah who was apparently raised from the dead when he was in the fish. God brought him out of darkness and death and into light and life (just as He would in Jesus’ soon death and resurrection). After his miraculous deliverance from the big fish, the Ninevites received Jonah’s message and repented from their sin. But, Jesus said, Israel as a nation was in a much worse position because she did not receive her Messiah and did not repent.
Jonah’s real story is not a fish story, but a picture of the man Jesus, raised from the dead and on a throne in heaven.
