Everybody is familiar with the book of Jonah and what he did there, but very few are familiar with the ministry he had before that.
Most Christians can tell you about the storm, the great fish, the three days and three nights, and the city of Nineveh. Almost no one can tell you what Jonah was doing before any of that happened. There was a whole season of his life as a working prophet to his own nation, and it is tucked into one verse in 2 Kings.
2 Kings 14:25, “He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.”
Jonah was not some unknown preacher God plucked out of nowhere to send to Nineveh. He was already a seasoned prophet to his own people with a fulfilled prophecy on his resume.
Jonah’s First Ministry to Israel
Jonah lived during the reign of Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam II was a wicked king who never departed from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. But God in His mercy looked down on the affliction of Israel and gave them a word of grace through Jonah. God told Jonah that Israel’s borders would be restored from Hamath in the north down to the sea of the plain in the south.
And it happened. Jeroboam II reigned forty and one years, and the land was restored exactly the way God spoke it. Jonah was the prophet of national victory. He told Israel that better days were coming, the borders would expand, the army would win, and God was not done with the nation yet. Imagine being the prophet who delivered that message and then living to see every inch of it come true on the map.
You would think a nation that watched a prophecy like that come to pass would have run to the Lord. They did not. Read it carefully.
2 Kings 14:24, “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.”
The king did not turn. The people did not turn.
They took the blessing and kept the sin. They enjoyed the borders God gave them and went right on worshipping the calves at Bethel and Dan. Jonah preached, the prophecy was fulfilled in front of their eyes, and the nation shrugged.
What Happened After Jonah Preached to Israel
If you keep reading past 2 Kings 14, you watch the nation Jonah preached to slide off a cliff. After Jeroboam II died, his son Zechariah was assassinated after six months. Shallum lasted one month. Menahem took the throne by violence. Pekahiah, then Pekah, were both assassinated. Hoshea was the last king of Israel.
And then it ended.
2 Kings 17:6, “In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”
2 Kings 17:22-23, “For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.”
The very nation Jonah had given a word of mercy to was carried away by the very people Jonah was later sent to preach to. Israel had its chance.
They had a prophet, they had a fulfilled prophecy, they had decades of national blessing, and they would not turn. So God shut the door on the northern kingdom and the Assyrian army walked them out of the land in chains.
Jonah’s Second Ministry to Nineveh
That is when God came back to Jonah with a second assignment.
Jonah 1:1-2, “Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.”
This was not Jonah’s first rodeo. He had already preached to Israel. He had already seen God fulfill a prophecy through his mouth. And now God was sending him to the capital city of the very empire that would one day swallow up his own nation. Jonah knew who the Assyrians were. He knew their cruelty, armies, and he knew that if Nineveh repented, God might spare them.
Jonah 4:2, “And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.”
He had just spent his whole first ministry preaching to a hardened nation that would not repent, and now God was sending him to a wicked Gentile city that just might.
But God put him in the storm, in the fish, three days and three nights in the belly of the deep, and brought him out on dry land. Jonah went to Nineveh, preached one sentence the whole Bible records: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” And the city repented from the king on down to the cattle. The Gentiles in Nineveh did in forty days what Israel would not do in forty years.
A Picture of Christ
Once you see Jonah’s two ministries side by side, you cannot miss what is going on. This is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord came to His own people first. He preached in the synagogues, healed the sick, opened blind eyes, raised the dead, and walked among His own for three and a half years.
John 1:11
“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”
Matthew 15:24, “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
The lost sheep of the house of Israel had a Prophet greater than Jonah standing in their streets, and most of the nation would not have Him. Just like Jonah preached to Israel and they did not turn, Christ preached to Israel and they did not turn.
Then came the three days and three nights. The Lord Himself made the connection.
Matthew 12:39-40, “But 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: For 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.”
Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights and came out alive to preach to the Gentiles. The Lord Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights and came out of the grave to send the gospel to the Gentiles.
Jonah is one of the clearest pictures of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in the whole Old Testament, and the Lord put His own stamp on it.
After the resurrection, the same message that Israel rejected went out to the Gentile world.
Mark 16:15, “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”
The pattern is exact. Jonah preached to Israel, Israel refused, Jonah went through three days and three nights, then Jonah preached to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles repented.
The Lord Jesus preached to Israel, Israel refused, the Lord went through three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, then the gospel went to the Gentiles, and Gentiles by the thousands came to Christ.
And there is one more piece that lines up. Jonah was angry that God showed mercy to Gentiles. He sat under his gourd outside the city and pouted because Nineveh got saved. Many in Israel had the same heart in the book of Acts.
When Paul stood on the stairs in Jerusalem and told the crowd the Lord had sent him to the Gentiles, listen to what happened.
Acts 22:21-22, “And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.”
The crowd listened to the whole testimony right up to the word Gentiles, and then they wanted Paul dead on the spot. That is Jonah’s heart all over again. The Jonah who would rather die than see Nineveh saved is the same spirit that screamed for Paul’s blood in Acts 22.
The Lord Jesus Christ is greater than Jonah. He came to His own first, He gave His life, He rose on the third day, and He sent the gospel out to every creature. We get to be in that story if we responded to the one Greater than Jonah.
