Heart of the Earth
For just as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and
three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the
earth. (Matthew 12:40)
There has been much heated discussion,
debate and speculation about the meaning of these words of Jesus.
What did He intend to convey here? Was He saying that He was going to
die and be dead for a full three days and three nights? One of the
arguments many theologians use is that so long as any part of a day
was involved it could be counted as a full day. But even if we take
that popular view and include Friday afternoon, all day Sabbath and
Sunday morning as three days, how do we account for the specific
reference here to also three nights? Why was Jesus so specific as to
make it difficult to fit what happened to Jesus during His last hours
here on earth into this prediction?
Another explanation is to insist that
Jesus did not die on Friday but on Wednesday afternoon. This is
theorized to fit this prophecy of Jesus and makes it the primary
factor to override what seems to be strong evidence otherwise from
the accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection story. This theory
insists that Passover, which was itself considered a Sabbath, came a
couple days before the seventh day Sabbath making Wednesday a
preparation day for this feast Sabbath. This has Jesus lying in the
tomb Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. But that still leaves
Sabbath night as well making His death last four nights with
Thursday, Friday and Sabbath days making up three days.
As one can see the arguments can go on
endlessly with various opinions being asserted that their explanation
provides the most evidence. I am not going to attempt to address all
the various ways put forward for explaining this, but I would like to
offer an alternative approach that you may or may not have considered
up to this point.
What if all these arguments are
predicated on a faulty presumption about other parts of this
prediction of Jesus? What if the number of days and nights is not the
problem to solve as most arguments presume but something else is
being overlooked here? That is where I would like to start.
I want to take some time to carefully
examine what Jesus might have meant by 'the heart of the earth.' As
with many things in Scripture, we need to be sensitive to the fact
that words and phrases should not be presumed to mean what we first
assume by a surface reading. Even as I came back to revisit this
passage again today, I decided to look for any other texts I might
find, at least in the New Testament for now, that might contain both
of the Greek words translated heart and earth. What I
found caught my attention. But first I want to start by laying out
what I believe is a foundation for unpacking what I think I might be
seeing here.
Then the LORD God formed
man from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became
a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
I find a very close relationship in
Scripture between human beings and the ground or earth
from which they were originally formed. Eve was somewhat of an
exception since she was crafted from more refined material, i.e. the
side of Adam, including both bone and flesh. But even that had very
recently been molded by God from dirt to shape the first human being
into which the life of God was then breathed after which the first
movements of a living being were observed by all looking on.
It was not long after that that another
encounter involving that same dirt raised serious issues related to
the stuff from which we had been created. Take notice of what
happened right after the first infection of sin in humans was
diagnosed by the Creator involving the curse that sin would produce.
The LORD God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures; upon your belly
you shall go, and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life." (Genesis 3:14)
Within minutes God explained to Adam
that sin would also bring about a de-creation of his body, that after
a life of unpleasantness and hard labor he would return to once again
becoming the very dust from which he had been originally derived. But
remember that this same dust had just been noted as becoming food for
the serpent, which itself has interesting implications given that
this prediction must be symbolic since snakes are not known to
actually eat dust.
By the sweat of your face you shall
eat bread until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken; you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
(Genesis 3:19)
Now let me return to what I found in my
search for verses containing both these two key words in the light of
what I have just reviewed and see if something interesting starts to
emerge. Other than in this prophecy of Jesus that uses the phrase
heart of the earth, I found only
two other verses in the New Testament that contain both these words.
But they have interesting implications for what I am starting to
sense concerning the meaning of this prophecy by Jesus.
But as for that in the good
soil, these are the ones who, when
they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest
and good heart,
and bear fruit with patient endurance. (Luke 8:15)
You have lived on the
earth in luxury and in pleasure; you
have fattened your hearts
in a day of slaughter. (James 5:5)
What might be seen as something
significant when comparing these two texts? What I see is one text
referring to a group of people the text says are good and the other
to a group of people who are very selfish which we would assume are
bad. But both of these groups contain the two words for earth
and heart found in the prophecy of Jesus.
Now let me go back and look at the
original story that Jesus used as the backdrop for what He was
predicting would happen to Him. Where did Jesus derive the idea of
three days and three nights and what did that time frame originally
involve?
But the LORD provided a large fish
to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish
three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:17)
Now let me ask a question here. What
happened to Jonah while he spent that time in the stomach of a big
fish? Was he dead for three days and nights and then resurrected
after the third night after being puked out on a beach somewhere? I
don't think so. Jonah was not dead for three days and three nights
but was in an extremely uncomfortable condition physically as well as
emotionally.
Then Jonah prayed
to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,
saying, "I called to the LORD out of my distress,
and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol
I cried, and you heard my voice. (Jonah 2:1-2)
I agree that normally the definition of
Sheol is the grave. But Jonah was not dead, maybe feeling very close
to it or possibly even wishing he could. But God allowed this extreme
situation to happen in Jonah's life for a reason, in his case to give
him a wakeup call to get him to let go of his resistance to doing
what God wanted him to do. During three days of extreme distress,
Jonah had a conversion and was ready to change directions and
cooperate with God's desire to deliver a much needed warning to some
very wicked people before He allowed disaster and judgments to fall
on them.
What does any of this have to do with
Jesus? He certainly was not running away from God by any means. He
was the only human who had consistently listened to the voice of God
in His spirit and had always willingly obeyed Him His entire life. So
how could the story of rebellious Jonah give us any useful clues as
to what Jesus might have been thinking to convey in His words?
First of all I want to emphasize again
that Jonah was not dead while he experienced that distressing
experience of living inside a fish stomach for three full days and
nights. So there is no reason to insist that this part of the
prophecy should imply Jesus being in the tomb for that amount of
time. I believe it is a mistake to make such an presumption when
there are better ways of viewing this prediction of Jesus related to
what would happen to Him during the last days of His mission on
earth.
If I accept that Jesus specified three
days and three nights carefully so as to not be ignored, I believe it
is safe to say that He may have wanted us to take that part
seriously. I also am willing to make the assumption that whatever the
phrase in the heart of the earth means, it very likely ended
with His resurrection. I don't see any reason to assert that anything
happening after the resurrection could qualify as fitting into the
meaning of this phrase.
So if I count backwards from Sunday
morning, which seems to be rather certain as to the time and day of
the resurrection of Christ, and count back three days and three
nights, I arrive at the same time of day on Thursday morning. So if I
use Jesus' time frame and calculate it back from His resurrection and
say that this time period is what He was referring to in His
prediction, then I need to look for significant clues in the gospels
that might give insight as to what Jesus may have experienced during
those days that might be similar in nature to what Jonah experienced
starting on Thursday morning.
In fact I have found in recent years
clues that I do find compelling for me. Some of them surfaced while
doing a study of the word 'hour' where I discovered some fascinating
concepts and patterns connected with applications to this passage. I
took into account all the references to the word hour
throughout Scripture and especially in the New Testament and found
that most of them came from the writings of John. For a more complete
study on this you can read my article on that study here.
What I noticed as significant from that
study was when the record suddenly shifted from saying things like
His hour had not yet come to Jesus announcing that now His
hour had come.
Now among those who went up to
worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who
was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to
see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip
went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, "The hour
has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
(John 12:20-23)
After this point of transition there
are significant references using the word hour. And nearly all
of them seem to confirm that whatever was involved in this idea of
hour, it correlates to what was happening to Jesus during the last
few days of His life culminating in the tomb. So what I suggest is
this, that this hour Jesus speaks about several times over the
last couple days of His life involves the experience Jesus had in
mind that He would endure during the period of three days and three
nights preceding His resurrection.
Trying to locate in the gospels just
when this event took place with the Greeks and the voice of God
speaking publicly, I find that it may fit into the timeframe of maybe
Wednesday afternoon or even Thursday. If the three days began on
Thursday morning and the Greeks came to Jesus late in the day on
Wednesday, Jesus could at that time have started to begin feeling the
effects internally of whatever this experience was referred to as
entering into the heart of the earth. And this seems to
corroborate with John's comment about Jesus sudden feeling of trouble
at that time.
Now my soul is troubled.
And what should I say--' Father, save me from this hour'?
No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.
(John 12:27)
This troubling of the soul of Jesus is
repeated several times after this point in the story. This indicates
to me that it parallels what Jesus meant when He spoke of being in
the heart of the earth for the same period of time as Jonah was
in the belly of the fish. Also, if you notice the language that Jonah
used to describe his feelings inside the fish they align closely with
the feelings Jesus experienced from around this first reference to
His soul being troubled all the way to the point of His death.
For me this is a more satisfying
explanation of this prophecy of Jesus concerning what would happen to
Him at the end of His ministry on earth. When I compare this
interpretation of the heart of the earth with the previous
passages listed above indicating how intimately connected the literal
earth is with humanity, I see an even stronger correlation. Humans
could be considered the heart of this world, the part that was
originally designed to reflect the heart of its Creator as well.
Because sin first entered the heart of humans but extended to affect
everything else on this planet including the ground from which humans
originated, it can be seen that from heaven's viewpoint humanity
itself is the heart of this planet.
Now link this with the possibility that
during the last three days of His ministry Jesus was immersed not
just in humanity but experienced at that time what is described in
Isaiah 53 where we are told that the iniquities of us all were laid
on Him as He absorbed into Himself the sins of all humanity. Thus
Jesus entered into the very heart of this fallen planet overcome by
evil by entering this earth not only by becoming human but going all
the way down to the very center of the sin problem by taking into His
own heart of divine love all of the pain, suffering and rebellion
that sin has produced in every human being; He felt in full all those
effects in His heart and emotions increasingly during those last
three days and nights. No wonder He was sweating drops of blood and
finally died of a broken heart on the cross.
When we discard the lies about
appeasement as being the reason for the death of Jesus, we find room
to make sense of what was experienced in the last hours of Jesus'
life leading up to His death and that this is where the vitally
important work of Jesus took place. Dying is nothing compared to the
excruciating agony and suffering one can experience before the relief
of death extinguishes awareness of pain. When facing torture and
suffering many would prefer to die quickly, for they are not nearly
so intimidated by death as they loathe the suffering that comes
before their death.
Yet for Jesus there was much more
involved than simply the dread of the physical suffering that would
be unjustly inflicted on Him through all the scourgings and abuse He
would experience. Exponentially worse than the physical suffering He
had to endure was the mental and emotional torture that few could
even detect from the outside. It was during those relatively silent
hours on the cross where most of the agony that brought about His
death took its toll inside His mind and body. But it was not God who
was inflicting the pain that was hastening His death but was the
rejection and spurning of His passionate love for all of us that
broke the heart of God on that cross. This is something I explored
recently as I examined the reason why there are only two
references to the literal blood of Jesus in all of the gospels.
To close let me try to summarize what I
am seeing from these passages. God created humanity using dirt on
this planet to shape the first human who would become the father of
every other human who would ever exist. The enemy of God used a
serpent to exploit and deceive our first parents into abdicating
their authority and privileges as the enemy behind the serpent
usurped their position as rulers over this world and kidnaped all of
humanity into becoming his slaves.
The effect of this according to God's
words to Adam and Eve included the fact that the serpent would
henceforth eat the dust, the same dust from which humans were formed.
Does this have something to do with Satan's involvement in so much
death and destruction on this planet that returns billions of people
back into becoming dirt again? Quite possibly and likely much more.
The poison of the serpent includes the lies that cause so much havoc
at the heart level in all of humanity. Every human being would now be
doomed to live under the curse of sin that would turn their body back
into the dirt from which they came and which was also being licked by
the evil one.
This was a tragic condition into which
the human race had become trapped. But God was willing to just sit
back and let Satan get his way as a ruthless abuser of God's
children. So He arranged a way in which He could unravel the works of
the devil and redeem as many children of humanity as would be willing
to accept His rescue (1 John 3:8). But this plan involved the
insertion of the godhead into humanity to become one with us in order
to rescue us from inside our prison rather than launching some kind
of assault from the outside. This was a surprise that caught the
enemy off-balance and initiated an intense war to stop the plans of
God by doing anything and everything possible to defeat Jesus from
accomplishing His mission to break open the prison in which Satan
wanted to keep humanity forever.
Since the earth is intimately involved
with all humanity as the source of their substance, and since humans
by design are supposed to reveal the truth about the heart of God,
humanity as the heart of earth now became infected with lies about
God that spread sin everywhere as they came to reflect more the
attributes of the enemy of God more than the heart of the One who is
pure love and truth. The only way in which this tragic condition
could be reversed was for the Son of God who knew the Father's heart
fully, to enter into the deepest parts of the heart of humanity to
infuse a new power so that new access to life and love could be
reconnected to provide a means of salvation to rescue all who would
embrace and participate in it by believing the truth about God Jesus
came to reveal.
For three days and three nights Jesus
increasingly felt the heaviness of all the lies and despair, shame
and guilt, fear and sin and pain that kept this world and its heart –
humanity – hostages of Satan. For three days and three nights God
pulled away His protection from around Jesus to allow enemies to
close in on Him and push Him to extreme limits to see if they could
get Jesus to act defensively or react in the slightest way selfishly.
If they could only get Jesus to even for a moment feel resentment or
desire for retaliation, or if they could even weaken His passionate
love for every human being, Satan would have claimed that God indeed
did have a dark side and the war over God's reputation would have
turned to his favor. This was the battle taking place during those
three days and nights.
His time spent in the tomb was simply
the last few hours of those days and nights as Jesus rested after
proving conclusively that God could not be tempted to act selfishly
or defensively in the slightest. Jesus thus destroyed the lies of the
enemy in those days leading up to the cross. Jesus did enter fully
into the heart of the earth by absorbing into His own heart all the
rejection and selfishness and hatred and evil that had infected the
rest of humanity to neutralize all the power of evil and infuse new
life into the human race. And Jesus also wrested away from Satan the
title of representative for this earth by becoming a second Adam to
replace the defeated first Adam who had failed and long since died.
After absorbing all of humanity into
Himself and defeating sin (distrust of God) and the devil while
earning the full right to become the new head of the human race,
Jesus rested in the tomb over Sabbath before taking up His life again
at His Father's bidding. He then introduced a new humanity to the
watching universe when He raised up from death never to die again.
Jesus not only defeated all the schemes of His enemies to destroy Him
but He also won the right to resurrect every human being who ever
dies to free everyone to embrace whatever destiny they decide to
choose.
For since death came through a human
being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human
being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in
Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)
Comments
Post a Comment