Wisdom36 Jesus and a Time for Personal Parallels

[HKHaugan]

Wisdom 36 Jonah, Jesus and a Time for Personal Parallels

 “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.”

Jonah recognizes his deliverance and then he recounts what he went through. See his prayer as a foreshadowing of the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Consider the internal struggle Jesus had when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion. He was conscious of His aloneness; His limitations in a human body, the sleeping disciples who wouldn’t watch with Him, the rejection from +everyone in the world around Him, the temptation to call for relief. The following part of his prayer has parallels that prepare for the suffering Jesus bore from the start of His mission. We’ll take it line by line

 From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

Here the realm of the dead is the world of people who are spiritually separated from God by sin. If the wages of sin is death, then the unforgiven are the dead in need of a Savior. There can be no more succinct image of this ‘deep in the realm of the dead’ than Jesus going into Gethsemane to pray and there He sweated blood. He was experiencing hell’s corridors.

 You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

Jesus, obedient to the will of His Father, was ‘hurled’ into human nature ‘the very heart’ of aloneness, became a man with all its limitations, except sin (because He was conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit}. All the world’s social currents ‘swirled’ around Him from childhood on. After His baptism He had to ride the waves of rejection, conspiracy and temptation. When those waves turned into breakers. Those being the encounters He had with Pharisees, the Sadducees, public apathy and the Roman authorities. They ‘swept over’ Him and put Him on the Cross. Then,

 I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever.

Jesus died alone on the Cross experiencing the dreaded separation from His Father, descended to the place of departed souls and endured the ultimate aloneness that is hell. What is it like to be alone without a body? That’s the question we need to ask about hell. Every wave, current breaker that had to be faced, Jesus faced in our place. He felt the abandonment, the separation from His Father; His words on the Cross, “My God my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

 But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.

Jesus summed it all up for us when He submitted to death to identify with our death, “Into your hands I commit my Spirit. His faith carrying Him through the darkness and then into the light, He rose from the dead. The great belly of the fish could not hold Him, and He was vomited on to dry land. As we all know vomiting occurs when something that is extreme for the stomach reacts. The evil darkness of the world cannot handle the Light of the world and Jesus overcame its lonely misery as He rose from the dead.

 But now I turn to you and ask to see if Jonah’s prayer speaks to your experience of the ‘ups and downs’ the world throws at us. Can you relate to the specifics of what Jonah felt? Here’s the list again:

“currents swirled about me,

waves and breakers swept over me,

banished from the sight of God,

engulfing waters threatened me,

the deep surrounded me,

seaweed was wrapped around my head,

I sank down to the roots of the mountains

the earth barred me in forever.”

 The first thing to note is the depth of the aloneness Jonah felt. He was completely self-consumed, conscious only of himself and what was happening to him. The second thing is the fear that isolated him within himself even more. Then the third thing, he realized he was totally powerless to do anything about his plight.

 Our self-conscious being, the ‘I’ in each of us, is what will last after we die. Will it be alone forever, or will it be what it was intended to be, united with God and His family? Jonah was experiencing what hell is like, “the realm of the dead.”

 It was the effect of the risen Lord on Paul that caused him to write “O death, where is thy sting? Where is thy victory (1Cor.15:55)? That sting is aloneness. Death is defeated. No more fear. The devil loses. Hell is vanquished, and we will never experience aloneness again.

 Jonah’ prayer brought him to the reality he found when he turned himself over to God, But I with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’

Pray that each of us will rejoice in the salvation, the saving grace, the Holy love of our Holy God. That we too, will make good on our vow to serve Him.

 Ah, but this is not the end of Jonah’s story. Chapter 4 is a warning shot across our bow. Next.