Overview of the Book of Jonah (Typology)

Moore's Corner Church

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The overview of the week for this Sunday is the book of Jonah. Think of all the minor prophets,

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Jonah has to be the most well -known, mostly because of the account of him being swallowed by the whale.

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Everybody knows that story. But this book goes much deeper than that.

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It's really a story of God's mercy towards the Gentiles, since Jonah was really the first foreign missionary outside of the borders of Israel.

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And here's the main point of the book. Jonah typifies

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Jesus Christ, who died and was raised, and then his message went out to the nations.

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If you know the story, at first Jonah was reluctant to go, because in the mind of the average

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Israelite, God only cared about them. So this story foreshadows the

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New Testament teaching that God doesn't just love Israel, God so loved the world.

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The book begins with these words. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying,

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Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

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But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish, from the presence of the

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Lord. So the Lord tells him to go one place. What does he do? He gets on a boat and heads in the opposite direction, which causes

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God to send a great storm. Long story short, Jonah ends up overboard in the sea, and that's when he's swallowed by the whale, or the great fish, as it's also called.

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Now there is some question whether or not Jonah survived, that God preserved his life in the belly of the fish, or, as I believe,

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Jonah died and was then raised from the dead, which would make him a type of Christ, either way.

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But what does that mean, type of Christ? You've heard this term before, a type of Christ.

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Well, typology is a method of biblical interpretation whereby an element found in the

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Old Testament is seen to prefigure one found in the New Testament.

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When we say someone is a type of Christ, we are saying that a person in the

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Old Testament behaves in such a way that corresponds to Jesus in his character or actions in the

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New Testament Scripture. So, in conclusion, the miraculous story of Jonah and the whale, if you think about it, it's a picture of the gospel, which is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

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As Jesus said in Matthew 12 verse 40, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the

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Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.