I’ve recently done some CAD work for my Father-in-Law who runs Mayflower Homes. The work was the drawing up of both some existing and proposed plans of a large house in London which he intends to buy, renovate and re-sell.

Old buildings are quite hard to draw accurately for a number of reasons.

1. they’re not made out of nice regular bricks; but rather stone of various sizes; therefore walls tend to vary in thickness rather randomly.
2. walls are thicker and so door and window openings are much more complex
3. old buildings have usually undergone various DIY projects which means rooms, layout and spaces are complex. You can see form the image above how the different shaped rooms struggle to fit together.

But probably the most annoying thing when it comes to drawing up old and altered buildings is this: there are far too many doors. Looka t the number of doors in those plans. TOO MANY!!

One of the things that has taken a lot of my thinking on Jonah is ‘the sign of Jonah’.

The Sign of Jonah is mentioned in three places in the NT: Matt 12; Matt 16 and Luke 11.

Here’s the issue: Matt 12:40 suggests that the sign is Jonah’s time in (and delivery from) the big fish. Whereas Luke 11 doesn’t mention the fish and just focusses on the Ninevites’ repentance. So which is the sign?

There are a couple of solutions. The easiest (and favoured by liberals) is that Matt 12:40 is a later addition to the text. It’s not original so it shoul be removed. Then all the problems magically go away and the sign is the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites. The major problem with such a solution is that there is no evidence that Matt 12:40 is a later addition. NA27 and GNT4 record no textual varients at this point in the text. There are no manuscripts which give us even a hint that Matthew’s gospel ever existed without 12:40. So that seems like a dead end.

Commentators are generally unhelpful on this issue because they only write about their text. Commentators on Matthew write about Matthew and so ignore Luke and vice versa. The one helpful writer I’ve found is R. T. France. In his book on Jesus and the OT he as a page or so about the Sign of Jonah (Google Books). France’s conclusion, which seems to make good sense to me, is that there are two different “points of historical correspondence”.

The first (Matt 12:40) is the link between Jonah’s time in the fish and Jesus’ time in the grave. At both points in their respective ministries, it looked like God’s plan had failed. It looked like God’s plan to include the Gentiles had failed because Jonah was dead. It looked like God’s plan to save the world had failed becasue Jesus was dead. But after 3 days and 3 nights each of the p/Prophets or m/Missionaries were miraculously brought back to complete God’s plan. The Ninevites did repent and the world was saved.

The second correspondence is the connection between the Ninevites and the Jews of Jesus’ day. One the one hand the pagan gentile Ninevites earnestly repented at the preaching of Jonah (=the rubbish prophet). Whereas the historically priveleged Jews of Jesus day didn’t accept Jesus’ own teaching.

The sign of Jonah – more like the signs of Jonah.

Just playing with android app WPtoGo.
I can’t see myself writing extensive blog posts with it – but it works well enought for brief/emergency posts.

I had a great meeting with New Breed today. The meeting was partly to talk about their Jump School training which I hope to go on to learn and meet people.

But our meeting was also to talk about a New Breed website. They have kindly let me build them a website – which I’m looking forward to. I’ll be, probably, the biggest website I’ve ever created from scratch and they’ll be loads for me to learn on the way. Here’s my plan/propals for them:

The site will have a public and private section. The public bit will, as expected, contain all the information about New Breed, their contact details, blog etc.

But the really exciting bit will be creating the private part of the site. There’ll be a New Breed On The City-esque social network. Since New Breed is all about networking and relationships, then, hopefully, the website can aid those relationships. There’ll be abilities to contact each other, share events, files, ideas; as well as list your skills and abilities which might be of help to other church planters.

It’s all very exciting (for geeky people like me, anyway). Working title for the social network: The Coal Face.

This Sunday I’ll preach at Broadlands Evangelical Church on Jonah chs3-4. I was asked to do a three week series and this Sunday is the last of three. I kind of wish it was a four week series – so I could have dedicated a week to each chapter of Jonah…but never mind.

Anyway, it’s been a good time for me. Provoked some good thinking.

Here are my theme sentences for each chapter of Jonah, you can tell me what you think:

1. God’s sovereign grace to include Gentiles is not frustrated by Jonah’s rebellion.
2. Jonah’s deliverance points to God’s salvation and Jesus’ resurrection.
3. Jonah’s preaching causes Nineveh’s repentance and so God relents.
4. Jonah’s selfish compassion for the plant illustrates God’s gracious compassion for Nineveh.

I still don’t think I’ve got to the bottom of the book. I don’t think those are perfect theme sentences (esp for ch2), but they served me in my sermon prep and preaching.

My preaching on Jonah has also got me thinking a lot about preaching in general. I’ve been reading Sidney Greidanus’ book on Preaching Christ in the Old Testament. I’ve also been having some fruitful discussion with @MikePatrigdge on the general nature of preaching. He’s put up some notes thereon on his blog: here and here.

If anyone cares, my sermons notes for my first and second sermons are here (Jonah 1) and here (Jonah 2). My notes for Jonah 3-4 will follow shortly.

UPDATE: Notes for Jonah 3-4 are here.