THE SIGN OF JONAH
17th Jan 2018
Matthew 16 records an incident when the religious leaders are hounding Jesus, they are demanding ‘show us a sign’, ‘do a miracle’, then we will believe. He answers them with strange words, “none will be given except the sign of Jonah.” (Matthew 16:4)
The story of Jonah, an Old Testament prophet, is probably very familiar; disobedient to God’s command, he runs in the opposite direction and, caught in a terrible storm, he admits he is running away from God. To save the ship and crew he is thrown overboard to appease the God behind the storm. Jonah survives and knows he has been rescued supernaturally. God speaks a second time and Jonah overcoming his fear and reluctance goes to the heathen city of Nineveh and preaches.
I am sure he would have told of the terrible hopeless time, three days and nights in the body of a whale, conscious of his fate and imminent death. How he repented and cried out to God for deliverance and found himself spewed up on dry land. Confronted with the command to warn Nineveh and to preach repentance and deliverance, he has compassion and hope to offer them.
The sign of Jonah, a rescued, resurrected life holds an amazing message and is what we have to offer to this generation. Your testimony is powerful - once I was lost, spiritually dead, uncaring about how I lived and concerned only about myself - but resurrected by the power of God, accepted because of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross - I have a story to tell.
Jonah had authenticity - a man with a testimony is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. Jonah was living proof, he was alive when he should have been dead, and the urgency and reality of his story caused a vast nation to repent.
You and I are the “sign of Jonah”. the evidence of a resurrected life. Once blind, now seeing and telling others of this wonder.
Read again the book of Jonah, ponder on your own deliverance, and never be reluctant to tell “your story.”
by Joyce Sibthorpe
