The Sign of Jonah: God Sends the Storm

Introduction

"The LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).

This is a verse you've probably heard since childhood. A prophet fleeing from God, a storm, a great fish, three days in the darkness. It often gets turned into a children's story, a cartoon with a smiling whale. But if you read this text again today, you may receive it differently. Because the question Jonah is facing is your question too. What do you do when God tells you to go somewhere you don't want to go? What do you do when your will and his collide head on?

The preacher returns this Sunday, October 19, 2025, to the book of Jonah, and invites you to look at three things: the way this man flees from the presence of God, the way God never stops speaking to the one who is fleeing, and the way God displays his glory through the one who turns back to him. At the end of the journey stands one figure: Christ, of whom Jonah was only a sign.

Sermon Outline

1. Fleeing the presence of God: Jonah's hidden sin

The account opens with a clear command. God says to Jonah: "Arise, go to Nineveh" (Jonah 1:2). Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, east of the kingdom of Israel, in what is today Iraq. Now Jonah, a prophet of the northern kingdom, loves his country. He knows very well that a few decades later, this same Assyrian empire will destroy Israel. Go preach salvation to the people who are going to destroy you? Unthinkable.

So Jonah does exactly the opposite. He goes down to Joppa, pays his fare, and boards a ship for Tarshish, likely a port in what is now Spain, at the far end of the Mediterranean. A hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. Three times in a few verses, the text repeats the same phrase: Jonah flees "from the presence of the LORD" (Jonah 1:3, Jonah 1:10).

You find this same phrase all the way back at the beginning of the Bible. After disobeying, Adam and Eve "hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden" (Genesis 3:8). And God calls out: "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). Sin, in the Bible, is not first a list of bad actions. It's a movement of the heart that turns away, that hides, that no longer wants to hold God's gaze.

Jonah knew. He wasn't fooled. He knew God as few people ever had, he was in fact the very one who, a few years earlier, had prophesied the victories of King Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23-25). He knew the voice. But he decided that his own sense of justice would come before God's. "God can say whatever he wants, but I'm going to do what seems right to me."

2. A man alone, with no brother to pray with

There's a detail the preacher highlights that hits home. Look at Daniel, in Babylon. When the pressure becomes unbearable, Daniel has three friends at his side: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 1:7). They pray together, they support each other, they stand firm together.

Jonah, on the other hand, is alone. There's no one around him he could have said to: "Listen, God is asking something of me that I can't manage to do. Pray with me." No one. And this loneliness is, even before his flight, his true weakness. How many acts of disobedience would have collapsed if, at just the right moment, someone had said: "I understand what you're feeling, but God is preparing something bigger than your fears. Go."

This detail confronts you. Do you have that person in your life? Are you that person for someone else?

3. God never stops speaking to the one who is fleeing

Look at what happens on the ship. Jonah goes down into the hold and falls into a deep sleep. One translation puts it this way: "To hide from the LORD, he went down into the dark hold of the ship." Meanwhile, the storm rises. The sailors, terrified, cry out each to his own god. They throw the cargo into the sea. They do everything they can to save themselves.

And the preacher asks an unsettling question: which of the two is the "believer"? These pagans praying with all their might, or this prophet asleep in the bottom of the ship?

God sends the storm. Not to punish. To speak. To reach the one who is fleeing, even down into the darkest hold of the ship. This is exactly what Jesus will do on the road to Emmaus, when two discouraged disciples walk away from Jerusalem without having understood the resurrection: Jesus walks with them (Luke 24:13-32). God doesn't wait for you to come back before he speaks to you. He speaks to you while you're still fleeing.

4. The storm isn't a punishment, it's a grace

This needs to be said clearly, because the religious temptation is always there. The temptation to say: "If you disobey, you'll pay for it." "If you don't pray enough, if you don't give enough, watch out." That isn't the message of the Bible.

God isn't punishing Jonah by sending the storm. He's saving him. "God prepared the storm and the great fish not to make Jonah suffer, but to save him." Without that storm, Jonah would have made it all the way to Tarshish, would have lived out his life far from his calling, and would have died far from God. What man perceives as an unbearable trial, God uses to open eyes that would otherwise have stayed closed.

The preacher, who has just come through a difficult month himself (his wife hospitalized for four weeks, with a condition the doctor gave six months for), says it plainly: "I'm not speaking from theory. What God does with our failures and our pain, when we place them in his hands, he turns into instruments. He doesn't waste them."

5. The turning point: "I remembered the LORD"

The heart of the book of Jonah is found in chapter 2, verse 7: "When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple" (Jonah 2:7).

Hold on to this. However low you've fallen, however filthy you feel, however shameful your path has been, the moment you remember the cross, the moment you remember God, the moment you pray, right then, your prayer is already heard.

It isn't ten years of purification that saves you. It isn't religious performance. Look at the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32): at what moment is he saved? When his father embraces him? No, well before that. The moment when, in the pigpen, he "comes to himself" and decides to go back to his father. Because the father had never stopped waiting.

And if you wonder how anyone could even want to turn back to God, the answer is in 1 Corinthians 12:3: "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit." That very movement of the heart turning back is already the Spirit of God at work in you.

6. The sign of Jonah: the cross and the resurrection

Jesus himself picks up the story of Jonah. To religious leaders demanding a sign, he answers: "An evil generation seeks for a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:38-41).

This is why Jonah is not simply a nice story. It's a foreshadowing. Jonah's three days in the fish announce Christ's three days in the tomb. Jonah's deliverance announces the resurrection. And Jesus adds a phrase you shouldn't miss: "Something greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:41).

Jonah was saved from death. Christ, though, passes through death and comes out victorious in order to save you. The forgiveness of sins through the cross, the victory over death through the resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit who now lives in you: all of this is the sign that has been fulfilled. There won't be another one.

Key Takeaways

• Sin isn't first a list of actions: it's the movement of the heart that hides from the presence of God, like Adam, like Jonah.
• God never stops speaking to the one who is fleeing. He reaches you even in the darkest hold of the ship.
• The storm you're going through may not be a punishment, but a means God is using to save you.
• No failure is too great: the moment you remember God and pray, your prayer is already heard.
• Jonah is only a sign. The true sign is the cross and Christ's empty tomb. "Something greater than Jonah is here."

Personal Application

1. Is there a "Nineveh" today that God is asking you to go to (a place, a person, a decision), and that you're avoiding by boarding the ship for Tarshish?
2. What's your own dark hold, that place you go down to in order to fall asleep instead of facing things? Screens, work, silence, isolation, what's yours?
3. Do you have a brother or sister in your life you can pray with honestly, like Daniel with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? If not, who could you ask this week?
4. Think back on a storm you've been through. Looking back, what was God trying to show you through it? What did it open your eyes to that nothing else could have?
5. Is there a failure or a shame you're still carrying in silence? Can you, starting today, place it in the Father's hands, not to earn anything, but because "something greater than Jonah is here"?

Verses Cited

• Jonah 1 · the flight and the storm
• Jonah 1:17 · the great fish
• Jonah 2:7 · "I remembered the LORD"
• Genesis 3:8-9 · hiding from the presence of God
• 2 Kings 14:23-25 · Jonah, prophet under Jeroboam II
• Luke 15:11-32 · the prodigal son
• Luke 24:13-32 · the disciples on the road to Emmaus
• 1 Corinthians 12:3 · no one can say "Jesus is Lord" without the Holy Spirit
• Matthew 12:38-41 · the sign of Jonah
• Matthew 16:4 · no sign except the sign of Jonah

FAQ

Is Jonah's great fish a punishment sent by God?

No. The text presents the fish as a means of salvation, not punishment. God "appointed" or "prepared" the fish to catch Jonah, who was about to drown. It's a picture of grace going after a man wherever he is, even when that man is deliberately fleeing.

Why does Jesus say the sign of Jonah is the only sign that will be given?

Because Jonah's three days inside the fish foreshadow Christ's three days in the tomb. The true "sign" attesting to Jesus' mission is his resurrection. No other proof is needed, and no spectacular miracle can replace it. "Something greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:41).

How do I know if a trial I'm going through is a "Jonah storm"?

There's no mechanical rule. But you can ask yourself two honest questions before God: is there something I'm running from, a calling I keep pushing away? And second: in this trial, what is God revealing to me about himself and about myself that I wouldn't have seen otherwise? Not every storm is tied to disobedience, but every storm can become a place of encounter with God.