It is interesting to consider the connections between Jonah
and Jesus. Both were sent to a
foreign land—Jonah to Nineveh and Jesus Christ—as the eternal Son—to earth. While it took Jonah running away from
God’s will, being swallowed by a fish and having a conversion to get to his
mission, Jesus followed his Father’s path perfectly.
Both
came to preach repentance to a sinful people. Jonah proclaimed, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,” and then, “…when the people of Nineveh believed
God; they
proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small,
put on sackcloth.” Jesus,
in his call to union with the Father, used Jonah in his preaching: “Just as Jonah became a sign to the
Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this
generation.”
Finally,
the number forty connects the Jonah and Jesus. Remember, Jonah declared, “forty days more” to the Ninevites. Jesus spent forty days
in the desert before his temptation by Satan.
And
this important biblical number extends the relationship between Jonah and Jesus
to us. Here we are, in the forty-day season of Lent. Our challenge is to repent of our sins
as the Ninevites did as we seek closer union with God.
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