Jesus became highly frustrated at the Temple . The people wanted signs that He was the Messiah
sent from God. So, He gave them the Sign
of Jonah.
Three days and three nights, then Jesus would rise
victorious. Christians find this exhilarating,
but everyone else rolls their eyes.
Why? Because, any way it is
counted, Jesus was not entombed for three days and three nights.
In the traditional counting of days, they buried Jesus
Friday before sunset (the start of the Jewish day) so that the dead would not
remain hanging on the Sabbath. He arose
pre-dawn Sunday morning. That makes two
days and two nights, the very end of Friday through Saturday night.
To obtain three days and three nights, an alternate solution
places Jesus’ death on a Wednesday. This
is possible since the Passover Sabbath is based on the rising of the full moon
and is separate from the weekly Sabbath.
For a Wednesday death, Jesus had to have died in the year 0030 or much
later in 0037. However, this
interpretation does not account for the detail stated in John 19:31, which referred
to this as a “special Sabbath,” meaning the Passover Sabbath occurred on the
Saturday Sabbath. The “special Sabbath,”
occurred in the year 0033. On that
night, the full moon rose in full eclipse, a blood moon (Joel 2:28-32; Acts
2:21).
Does that mean the prediction was false? No. It
means looking at the surface details fails to illuminate the sign Jesus gave.
Prophets regularly spoke in parables. Jesus was a prophet. These stories taught righteousness and wisdom
to young and old, to the studious and the uneducated. They relay information more meaningful then
simple facts. Parables convict the soul
to fear God and keep His ways. However,
people only learn these things if they ponder the deeper meaning within the
stories (Psalm 78:2; Proverbs 1:1-7).
The people Jesus addressed looked for fault not insight, so
concluding the sign must only mean “in the tomb” is myopic. Jonah did not die. Jesus did not mention death. Instead, He used the idiom, “in the heart of
the earth.”
Jesus explained this phrase in the Parable of the Sower
(Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:1-15).
The earth represented the hearts of men in which God sowed the living
word. Therefore, three days and three nights
encompasses more than physical death. He
meant the entire event where God exposed the true hearts of men.
The apostle Paul called that event the ultimate sacrifice of
atonement. Jesus became the sacrifice as
well as the only high priest capable of presenting that sacrifice. He entered the hearts of men and covered
their transgressions. (Romans 3:21-26;
Hebrews 2:14-18; Hebrews 9:11-14).
Thursday, Jesus entered Jerusalem
and asked His followers to remember as they shared the Passover meal. Thursday night, He was betrayed by a kiss and
solders took Jesus to the High Priest’s house.
There, as law prescribed, the first drops of sacrificial blood fell at
dawn. Then, blood splashed at the hands
of governmental leaders. His blood
anointed the public all the way to Golgotha . As Jesus hung in agony, He asked God to
forgive those who committed murder and those who followed their leaders. Before dawn of the fourth day, Jesus arose as
our high priest capable of presenting His blood sacrifice in Heaven’s Holy of
Holy.
“The Passion” took three days and three nights to expose the
hearts of men. Only then could anyone
see Jonah as a sign that God sent Jesus.