Jesus, the True and Better Matthew 8:23-27

Intro:

Brief review: just taught two difficult sayings on Foxes and Dead-folks and now he’s following that up with another challenging message - but one that is wrapped into an amazing experience.

The OT is not about individuals as much as it is about . We are not to read ourselves into the text where we try to imagine promises , rather we are to see God’s character through the text.

Jesus message is to followers (vs 23).

Jesus is teaching his followers supernatural trust.

Typology - Jesus the True and Better Jonah1

Jonah is one of the better known stories from the . Ranked 4th on TheTopTens.com2. It was certainly a story well known to the disciples and it appears that the authors of Matthew (and Mark) are writing this account of Jesus to parallel the events leading up to Jonah being thrown to the fish!

Definition:

[Typology is] the idea that persons (e.g., ), events (e.g., ), and institutions (e.g., the temple) can — in the plan of God — prefigure a later stage in that ​ ​ plan and provide the conceptuality necessary for understanding the divine intent (e.g., the coming of to be the new Moses, to effect the new exodus, and to be the new temple).3

Show Youtube Clip of Tim Keller: True & Better4

How this account of Jesus and the are similar.

1 Several articles influenced my sermon, while not directly quoted I wanted to give credit where due - https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/keller-on-jonah-and-jesus/ and ​ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jesus-sleep-storm/ 2 https://www.thetoptens.com/most-famous-bible-stories/ 3 https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/where-do-we-find-jesus-in-the-old-testament 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmnSnNC8UJk ● Both get into a boat ● Both encourage a sudden violent storm ● Both storms threaten the ship ● Both Jonah and Jesus are asleep ● Both awake, at the request of sailors / disciples, for help ● Both sacrifice themselves ● The sea stops raging ● The sailors / disciples fear of the Lord

Fear

Key verse in this passage - “And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” ​ Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” (vs 26). ​

Seems like a reasonable fear… Just like Jonah seemed to have a reasonable fear. ​

“He does not chide them for disturbing him with their prayers, but for disturbing themselves with their fears.” (Henry, cited in Carson) 5

“Faith dispels fear, but only in proportion to its strength (Jaimeson, Faust, .”6

They had many reasons for faith - but often, after times of emotional highs, we can forget and have great failings.

Supernatural Trust / Faith

The youtube clip of the dad rescuing the kid at the bottom of the hill about to be run over by two kids in a Little Tykes cars.

If we approach the in a moralistic way instead of a typological method then we can fall into that trap...there will be no difference in fundamental principle (where) a citizen of Athens could identify with a play of Euripides or a tragic poet...the way we would identify with or or other figures of the Old Testament...Our experience does not conform to the experience of Old Testament saints, but it does so only in the central structure of faith in relation to God’s grace. Our identification with Old Testament saints ​ is with their critical point of faith.7 ​

5 https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2017-Mat/Mat-8.cfm?a=937026 6 https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/jfb/Mar/Mar_004.cfm#Mr4_35 7 Podcast - add link later. Jonah is to be read and understood as a historical account that teaches us about our need to trust. If we simply try to identify with the experiences of Jonah we fall short of the true purpose of narrative -

● Jonah (understandably) runs from God. ● Jonah obeys under duress. ● Jonah concludes his mission personally depressed and is never portrayed as at peace.

While these are all experiences we can identify with we miss the point if the story here. Jesus is teaching his followers that he will require a supernatural trust - a supernatural faith. And proves himself through supernatural provision.

The disciples finish with a much greater fear - but this fear is not based on trying to understand a supernatural event through the lens of superstition as the sailors where left with once Jonah was thrown overboard - rather, the disciples are left with a supernatural awe that Jesus is the true and better Jonah.

Final Thoughts - The Sign of Jonah

And the metaphor between Jesus and Jonah does not just end with the storm, Saint Augustine, the great scholar and Christian intellectual stated: “As, therefore, Jonah passed from the ship to the belly of the whale, so Christ passed from the cross to the sepulcher, or into the abyss of death.”8

This is what Jesus means when in Matthew 12:39-41 he says:

“A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.”

8 https://catholicexchange.com/9-ways-jonah-prefigured-jesus