A beloved brother spoke about Jonah on the pulpit this morning - how the prophet of God turned from Resistance to Remembrance, then from Repentance to Relevance. He jokingly (though rightly) points out how we often run away from God, resisting His will for our lives - especially when He calls us to difficult endeavours, for example, witnessing to ISIS.
As a newsman, he'd have done his homework, but the depth of his passing remark might have been missed by many.
The fact is that ISIS has now taken Mosul as its capital. Mosul was Nineveh, and Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. Tradition holds it that Jonah was buried in Nineveh - and when ISIS took over Mosul, they destroyed his tomb. The Assyrians were pioneers of terrorism. Burning people alive, beheading, impaling bodies and displaying them publicly - oh sounds so familiar! Did you really think there was anything new under the sun? I hope that makes it clear why Jonah ran away. It was not a matter of wilfulness. It was fear!
Jonah feared for his life! Why would God ask any man to go speak with some of the most violent and merciless men in the world? People whose hearts have been hardened by warfare and blood - of what use is it to speak with such men? So you must imagine Jonah's shock, revulsion and despondency to have received such an impossible mission - it is in every sense, a suicide.
More than 150 years after Jonah's preaching had turned around Nineveh, the people of Nineveh returned to their wicked ways - so then a dog returns to its vomit. By the time of the prophet Nahum, it was again a "city of bloodshed".
So then, when the Lord Jesus says, "an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah" - it comes extremely loaded. Jesus explains the literal meaning in the subsequent verses - how he, like Jonah, will be in the belly for 3 days and 3 nights, and rise again. Like Jonah who was sent to men of violence, so was Jesus sent to men of violence. Jonah preached to hardened hearts, and people came to repentance - so likewise, Jesus came and preached to hardened hearts, and people came to repentance. But that's where it stops. God delivered a sulking Jonah from the hands of violent men and revealed to Jonah His heart of mercy even unto those who were undeserving; but when it came to His own Son, who came willingly for the undeserving - God did not spare him.
Jonah's name means "dove". When Jesus said, no sign but "the sign of the prophet Jonah" - did He also mean the sign of the dove? Did not the Holy Spirit descend like a dove on Him when He was baptised? Was not a sign already given and no one believed?
In our generation, the sign of Jonah (the Holy Spirit) was given, and I can only pray this generation receives it before the day that must come, when the Son of Man returns on this earth, and all these will be suddenly clear, all hearts will believe, all knees will bow and all tongues will confess, He is Lord.
