Bible Study Jonah's Three Days and Nights of Sleep Deprivation

[ugmug]

Jonah's Three Days and Nights of Sleep Deprivation

This past week during Yom Kippur services at the Messianic synagogue that I attend the Rabbi mentioned that the Jewish faith is always trying to figure out the mystery of the story of Jonah, especially as this synagogue is Messianic. Since Jesus Christ mentioned the story of Jonah they are especially eager to find the true meaning and significance of Jonah.

I think the mystery of Jonah is that when the fish swallowed Jonah, Jonah was forced to fast for three days and nights (without sleep?) in order for God to prepare him for the task of preaching to Nineveh! Without that fast Jonah would never have been successful.

Whenever I talk religion to unbelievers they always ask, “why doesn't God show himself to us.” The unbeliever will say that when they finally see God then they will believe in him. But now I see that the absence of God forces all of humanity to fast, to go without the ability to feast on the sight of God, just like with Moses as God did not allow Moses to see his face.

When Jesus Christ was in the tomb he was fasting, not a physical fast, but a spiritual fast as he was separated from God the Father while dying on the cross. And just like Jonah, Jesus was preparing himself to appear before God the Father in heaven to ready himself to bring salvation to everyone, Jew and Gentile, for eternity.

It must be remembered that Jesus said that those who people believed were dead were just sleeping. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus found the disciples sleeping three times. Was Jonah in a sleep fast where he did not sleep for three days or nights inside the belly of the fish? How else could a person tell how many days and nights he was in a dark place, under the water, inside a belly of a fish, except for the fact that Jonah was being deprived of sleep.

Believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and you'll become one with Jesus Christ and you'll join Christ in his eternal fast as he stands before God his Father as his only son in human form. Just imagine that all those who will be sent to hell will also be engaged in an eternal fast but this fast is apart from the presence of God in the 'Lake of Fire'.

God Bless

 

[JLB]

This past week during Yom Kippur services at the Messianic synagogue that I attend the Rabbi mentioned that the Jewish faith is always trying to figure out the mystery of the story of Jonah, especially as this synagogue is Messianic. Since Jesus Christ mentioned the story of Jonah they are especially eager to find the true meaning and significance 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. Matthew 12:40

• Jesus was in the heart of the earth, preaching to the disobedient angels who were cast down there for their sin in the days of Noah.

• His body was in the Tomb, and on the third Day He arose from the dead, as His Spirit came up from the heart of the earth, and into His body that was in the Tomb.

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20 who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. 1 Peter 3:18-20


JLB

 

[Eugene]

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Brother ugmug, I’m not sure if this following excerpt from the study of Luke by Gene Hawkins will be of any help in what you’re looking for, but it may provide additional concepts.

Lk 11:29-30 And when the people were gathered thick together, He began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. His words were not sparing, as they cut to the heart like a two-edged sword. This generation, as a whole, was evil, because they refused to believe on Him. One characteristic of the Jew is that they require a sign (I Cor 1:22), and those signs abounded. The time for signs was past, and now they were shut up to simply believing the Word of God.

Mat 12:39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. Jonah was only a figure of Him who was to come. We read in Matthew 12:40 that Jonah's stay of three days and nights in the belly of the fish, was but a type of Christ's tenure in the heart of the earth. When Jonah came forth "in resurrection," he preached deliverance to the city of Ninevah, and the people repented (Lk 11:32). Jesus used the Queen of Sheba as another example of one "who shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon." Jonah and Solomon were types of Christ. Solomon was noted for his wisdom, but the "greater than Solomon" is Wisdom personified. The Ninevites and the queen of the south were Gentiles, and though none of them saw the realities of Christ, as did these Jews, yet they believed. It is no wonder that they should condemn the unbelief described here, for a Greater than both Jonah and Solomon was in their midst.

The Great Master continued His parables describing the gross unbelief of this people. "No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light" (Lk 11:33). Israel claimed to be that lighted candle, because God had given them the Law. Had this been true, they would have been a beacon in darkness, setting an example for others, as did the Queen of Sheba and repentant Ninevah. Any light which they may have had, however, was hidden beneath the bushel of hypocrisy and unbelief. "The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light" (Lk 11:34).