Are you the Messiah (The Anointed One), or shall we look for another?

I preached the following sermon in September, 2006. The setting was in a church in Marshall, Texas.
Hear the Word of the Lord
Old Testament Reading
Jonah 1: 17 – 2: 10 (King James Version)

17Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah’s Prayer and Deliverance From Jonah 1: 17 through the end of chapter 2

17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
1Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
2And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
3For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
4Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
5The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
6I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.
7When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
8They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
9But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.
10And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

New Testament Reading

Matthew 12: 38-42 (King James Version)

38Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
39But 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:
40For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
41The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
42The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.


The Sermon

Are you the Messiah (The Anointed One), or shall we look for another?

The title of the sermon this morning is taken from a question asked by John the Baptist about Jesus, when he was in Prison.

Matthew 11:2-4 (King James Version)

2Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
3And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?
4Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:
2Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
3And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?
4Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see:

Things about the lame walking, the blind seeing and folks getting healed and the dead getting raised. Jesus knew that John was familiar with the prophesies of the Messiah from the Psalms and Jeremiah and Isaiah

In our New Testament reading this morning from Mathew 12, Jesus states that the idea that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days and lived to tell it, was the only sign that they were going to get.

What did they want a sign of, a sign for, What were they looking for proof of?

Well, the answer is obvious if we give the question a little thought. Here was a man going around, calling himself the Son of Man, a title church folk of the day knew quite well, because it was a title used by the prophets of old. So, here was this fellow, walking around calling himself a prophet, preaching stuff that was a little too close for comfort, healing people on the Sabbath and eating without the customary ceremonial washing of the hands. And as far as they were able to find out, had never been to rabbinical school. The story went that he just walked in from the river Jordan one day, a man about 30 years old after having been a carpenter, a worker in wood in that little town of Nazareth (and nothing good has ever come from Nazareth), a Galilean, certainly not qualified to be proclaiming such high ideals and such teachings, stuff that made the church folk nervous to listen too, in fact made some of them downright angry. Angry enough to think about trying to hush him up, even to kill him.

Well Jesus—give us a sign to prove that you are the Messiah. All this healing and preaching is not enough. We need proof, a sign before we will believe.
“Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” (Matt. 12)
39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 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. 41 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.
We might just note here also that Luke gives his version of this exchange in chapter 11.

Sometimes, when you read a passage in the Bible, do you ever question and wonder just why God decided to give us that particular information? Or, maybe you think, what is the point, Lord? Why, Jonah?

Who was Jonah anyway?

Jonah, was one of the minor prophets who lived about 750 years before Jesus was born. The Old Testament book of 2nd Kings (II Kings 14: 23-29) tells us that Jonah was a prophet and statesman who helped King Jeroboam to regain territory that Israel had lost in the past. The passage also states that Jonah was from a little town called Gath Hepher, which was just 6 miles north of another little Galilean town, Nazareth. So, Jonah and Jesus were born just six miles and 750 years apart. Coincidence? Maybe.

Scholars mostly attribute the book of Jonah in the Old Testament, to Jonah himself. Although, if he did write it himself, he was pretty hard on himself, as we will see in a minute. The book of Jonah tells a preposterous tale about a man being thrown overboard, swallowed by a fish and then spit out on a beach alive--all over a space of three days.

Speaking of Bible scholars, some of them today do not believe that this story really happened, they believe that it is merely an allegory, a fictional account intended to teach a lesson.

I want to go on record right here and declare that I believe the story is true, that it really happened and that it has some significance for us here and now.

Lets look at some facts. Gospel writers Matthew and Luke state that Jesus said that the only sign of his Messiahship he was going to offer was the sign of the prophet Jonah’s journey to the bottom of the sea, his being ingested into a big fish and, after 3 days, his being spit out upon the beach and his subsequent evangelical mission to the foreign city of Nineveh, whereupon they repented and were saved from the wrath of God.

Unless we are willing to disregard the testimony of Matthew and Luke that Jesus believed Jonah was a real live person who actually lived through an actual fish-swallowing event, as well as the testimony in 2nd Kings, that Jonah actually lived and did activities in Israel during the reign of Jeroboam, then we would have to conclude, with our Lord, that the fish story was not so preposterous after all! My Bible says that with God, all things are possible.

So, the Jonah story actually happened just the way the Bible says it did.

God told the prophet that He wants Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell them to repent of their wickedness, or He (God) will destroy them. Nineveh was a city of 120,000 (little bigger than Marshall). Its ruins can be found today, located just outside of Mosul, Iraq. You have probably heard newscasters speak of recent battles and incidents in and around that area. So, about 2,750 years ago, Nineveh was a very important city on the north-south trade routes right on the banks of the Tigris river. It was the capital of the Assyrian empire and its king exerted pressure on all surrounding nations, off times exacting taxes or payments for protection. Evidently folks’ behaviors were about the same then as they are now. So, Nineveh was the stronghold of the enemy of Israel.

Can you imagine being asked by God to go into the capital city of your nation’s worst enemy unarmed and then preach a message that warns of their destruction if they do not immediately repent and quit doing their wickedness?

What ever else Jonah was, he was evidently not too big on bravery. Have you ever noticed that God sometimes uses people who are not the strongest and best, but maybe are the weakest and most unlikely. Maybe God can use me for something. Maybe he can use you. Anyway, Jonah was not going to do it. Have I ever defied God and just refused to change or to do something I knew was His will? I think you know the answer to that one.

Have you ever done something you absolutely knew that God had said in His word not to do, and you understood it and there was no doubt, but you just refused to heed the warning and went ahead anyway? Don’t everybody answer at once! Well, you get the point.

Jonah bought a ticket on a Phoenician ship to the end of the known world, a place called Tarshish. The town was a mining port off the western coast of Spain. Jonah was taking no chances. He was somehow going to hide from God. Well, the ship got underway, and before they got hardly out of sight of land a most fierce storm suddenly appeared without warning and was so bad that the sailors dumped their cargo overboard in hopes of lightening the load to make the ship ride higher in the water, but nothing seemed to work and they feared that the ship would break apart in the swirling waters or be swamped and sink in either case.

All else done, the sailors, each prayed to his god. But the storm continued to pound them. They cast lots and somehow Jonah was identified as the culprit.

Well, Jonah, the prophet, knew he was caught, finished, found out, done. He confessed he was running away from the very Lord Who made the sea in the first place. Jonah volunteered to give his life for the lives on board the ship. Throw me overboard, he said. As soon as he hit the water, the sea ceased its raging, the wind calmed and the ship was safe.

We read Jonah’s prayer in the belly of the big fish that God had prepared. He said that he went down to the bottom of the sea and go tangled in the sea weed and used the term Sheol. Now in Hebrew, the word signifies the place the dead go after life ends. So, the case could be made that Jonah actually drowned and the fish took him up from the ocean’s floor, swallowed him and provided a safe place for his return to life so that he composed this prayer.

From the depths of trouble, despair and perhaps even death, Jonah remembered the Lord, prayed to Him, knowing that his prayer was heard, and then repented and said he would do what God wanted him to do. Three days are passed and the fish spits him out on land at God’s direction.

Allow me a bit of imagination here. Don’t you suppose that this spitting out from the fish, this miraculous resurrection from the dead, the storm damaged ship limping back to Joppa and the sailors who had a tale to tell about this Hebrew they threw overboard—don’t you suppose that this kind of thing gets told around. They didn’t have CNN or FOX back then, but mankind has always been able to get word about that kind of thing out and about.

So—by the time Jonah gets to Nineveh and just gets a day’s walk into the city with his cry of repentance or destruction, they had heard about the God of the Hebrews and this man Jonah and they were ready to put on the sackcloth and ashes.

And God did not destroy the city, just then anyway. Jonah pouted. Got mad at God. Got mad, that the bad guys did not get what was coming to them, but instead got mercy.

I see Jonah as a type of Christ and most of the typology works, until we get to the last little drama about the gourd plant and the worm. But perhaps most significant in the story of Jonah is God’s statement in the very last verse:

the LORD said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?”

God, our Father in Heaven, loved those Ninevehites even though they had done many bad deeds. And God, our Father in Heaven loves these Marshallites, no matter what. He loves you and wants you to do right and, like Jonah’s case, will even do miracles to get his will accomplished

We have covered a lot of ground this morning and we have not really scratched the surface of what these scriptures have for us, and I would hope that you would go home and get your word down and read these passages and see what might be there for you, individually.

The scriptures are real and are about real people who lived and died and we can learn from the record of their lives and their activities. The one thing the Bible does is to tell it like it is and not to put any kind of “spin” on it. Jesus is very real, he was born a little baby and had to learn to talk and walk just like you did. He was born of Mary and I believe the story is true that she knew not a man, but that God somehow caused that child to be formed. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit at the river Jordan right after his baptism by his cousin John the Baptist and Jesus ministered in Galilee and Judea for the space of three years, was executed on a Roman cross in the City of Jerusalem at the request of the local Sanhedrin Court (church folks, if you will) who said let his blood be upon us. He was buried in a borrowed tomb and when they went back to embalm the body on the third day, he was gone. He was risen! And he showed himself, first to the women and to the apostles and to upwards of 500 followers. And when the disciples were with him in his resurrected body just before the day of Jewish feast day of Pentecost, they saw him lifted up into the heavens and there was an angel that said to them, that Jesus was coming back to get his own. Someday.

I want to be able when that time comes to say hello Lord, and to hear that “well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joys of the Lord.”

Jesus said come unto me, you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He said he that if we would confess that he is Lord, that he would certainly confess us, speak up for us, to his and our Father in heaven.

The invitation to come home and make Jesus Lord of your life is given to you right this minute.

Amen.