This Ain’t No Fish Story!
I want to tell you a story this morning about a fish. But it’s anything but a “fish story”.
Most of us can probably remember the story of “Jonah & the Whale” from our Sunday School days, but maybe now that we’re all grown up, we kind of put it in the same category as Santa Claus and Grimms Fairy Tales.
But Jonah was a real person, and his story is literally true.
Jesus Christ himself acknowledged the authenticity of the historical character of Jonah and his experience with the fish in Luke 11:30 (READ)
Then in Matt. 12:40-41
See the minute you begin to believe that the story of Jonah was just an allegory... (a make believe story with a spiritual truth), then you’re also calling Jesus Christ either ignorant, or a liar.
The story of Jonah is found towards the end of the O.T. after the book of Obadiah. If have trouble finding the book of Jonah, don’t feel bad because it’s only 4 chapters long.
When we come to vs. 1 & 2, we find the Lord speaking to Jonah... vs. 2 (READ)
God is calling and commissioning Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh. It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, located on the Tigris River. It was the world power of its day.
So Jonah leaves his home town and instead of heading east towards Nineveh... He goes down to “Joppa Grand Central Station”, and buys a ticket for the first boat leaving for Tarshish... going WEST!
Now as we’re going to see this morning... this fateful trip would make the “Titanic” look like a joy ride. And the problem in the book of Jonah isn’t the giant fish... (pause) ... it’s Jonah! Jonah has an attitude problem.
Jonah (as we’ll find out) is a lot like us, when it comes to reaching unbelievers with the message of life.
In Jonah, we’re going to find 5 attitudes that kept him from obeying Gods direct command to tell others about Him.
And amazingly enough... they’re the same 5 attitudes that keep us from telling others about the salvation that God offers them.
In preparation for Friends & Family Day next Sunday, I’m calling them ... 5 Attitudes that Keep us from Reaching Others...
And the 1st deadly attitude is the idea that, when it comes to telling people about God...
1. “God’s calling is DEBATABLE”.
This is the idea that says, “God doesn’t need me, He can always find someone else!”
God was specifically calling JONAH to go to Nineveh. No one else. But Jonah felt that if he refused, then God could always find somebody else to do what he didn’t want to do.
It kind of makes you wonder though doesn’t it? Why didn’t Jonah want to obey God? Why did he go off in the opposite direction?
Well, there are a lot of different reasons, but I think probably the most obvious one is that Jonah hated the Ninevites! He didn’t want God to show them mercy... and he had some good reasons.
Assyria was one of the most brutal and savage nations of the ancient world. They were feared and dreaded by all the other nations.
For example... their methods of torture could extract information from their victims very quickly. They would take a man out into the desert…bury him up to his neck, so that nothing but his head was sticking out… then they’d pierce his tongue, pull a rope through it and let him die in the hot sun with his tongue stretched out in front of him.
That was just one of the little niceties they hatched up for their victims!
When their armies would march towards a city, they would take their entire families with them... and so they moved like a plague of locusts across the landscape... swallowing up whole cities.
They were so feared, that many times an entire town would commit suicide rather than fall into their hands.
So is it any wonder that Jonah felt that they should get what they deserved... they should get what they’d given others... complete and total annihilation!
Besides that, preaching a message of judgment and destruction wasn’t exactly the safest way to approach these people. He might find himself buried in the sand somewhere! So he ran!
Nonetheless, God was calling Jonah to go and preach to these unreached people... and he’s calling for you and me to do the same thing!
In Mark 16:15 Jesus said... (READ) That’s an individual call to you and me. He is calling you & me personally to reach the people that he has put us in contact with. No one else will do.
He has “by design” put our neighbors, and our work associates, and our friends into our lives... for the specific purpose of sharing with them the good news of God’s saving grace.
Being afraid or intimidated is no excuse…
Yeh… they can be ornery. They can be hard to live and work with… but God has called us… and His calling isn’t up for debate!
God was calling Jonah... but Jonah decided to go the other way.
Not unlike us many times. It’s too easy to wave it off, and tell ourselves... “Serves ‘em right! You reap what you sow... and people get what they deserve in life!”
Now the 2nd attitude that Jonah had developed, and I think it’s all too easy for us to develop is the attitude that says...
2. “God’s commands are OPTIONAL!”
Jonah learned that when God told him to go to Nineveh… it was not a multiple choice question.
Jonah is aboard a ship now bound for Tarshish. As it pulls out of the dock, I can imagine him standing on the top deck, smiling as the land fades away in the distance.
He’s thinking, “This is just what I need… a Mediterranean cruise to soothe my conscience!”
You know, I used to think that if a person gets out of the will of God and begins to live in sin, that his guilty conscience will torment him to the point that he’ll be miserable. But since then, I’ve learned that some people can forsake God and not think another thing of it.
Jonah certainly was feeling no pain! He was confident that everythings all “A-Okay”… to the point that when a storm comes up… he’s sleeping like a baby in the hold.
But God wasn’t through with him yet! And He doesn’t give up on US that easily either! (READ vs.4)
Now, these sailors knew a storm when they saw one, and this was no “natural” storm they’re involved with here. This was a supernatural storm. God was directly responsible for it.
It gets so bad… and they’re so afraid, that the captain in vs. 6 goes down to wake Jonah up! God uses the casting of lots, to point the finger at Jonah and he’s forced to reveal his true identity.
He ends up confessing to the sailors that he was actually using them to try and escape from God. How many of you know that’s impossible to do?
Realizing now how futile that was, Jonah believes that the only way to stop the storm… is to throw him overboard!
Now, they kind of balk at the idea of throwing a paying passenger overboard, and so try their best to get the ship out of the storm… but they can’t do it.
Finally, in desperation they’re willing to try anything. Jonah’s life becomes expendable, and so praying that God won’t hold them accountable… heave ho… over he goes!
Look at vs. 17 (READ)
Although a lot of people think it was a whale, the word the bible uses is actually “great fish”. It could have been a whale… but as you probably know, a whale is a mammal, not a fish.
However, the type of fish isn’t what’s really as important. What’s important, is the fact that God actually “prepared” a great fish to swallow up Jonah. In otherwords, it wasn’t an accident!
God couldn’t get Jonah’s attention any other way, so He sent a “Whale-O-Gram”.
I think sometimes we forget that God’s command in Mt.28 to “go and make disciples of all nations… isn’t an option. If we are in fact, his followers… this is what we are called to do, no questions asked, no passing “Go”… no collecting $200.
I personally believe that you measure the strength and health of a church not by it’s “seating” capacity, but by it’s “sending” capacity!
We’re called to “GO!”
Win Arn, a church consultant once surveyed the members of nearly a 1000 churches and asked the question, “Why does the church exist?”
Of the church members surveyed… 89% said, “The church’s purpose is to take care of my family’s and my needs.”
To basically keep the sheep who are already in the “pen” happy, and not lose too many in the process.
Only 11% said, “The purpose of the church is to win the world for Jesus Christ!” That’s scary to me folks!
Reaching people for Christ is not an option! It’s commanded by Jesus Christ Himself. And to fail to follow a direct command of God has grave consequences (as Jonah was to quickly find out!). I’ve lit. seen churches die out, because they refused to take God seriously at this point!
Besides that, it’s more than a responsibility… it’s our privilege! We are being invited to bring people into God’s eternal family. What an honor!
Listen… if you knew the cure for cancer… wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get the news out? (If you didn’t, wouldn’t that be negligence?) Millions of lives would be at stake.
But guess what… you already know something better! You and I have eternal life to share, which is the greatest news of all! No wonder God doesn’t let Jonah off the hook… thousands of lives were hanging in the balance!
Now the 3rd attitude that we need to avoid, if we’re going to be effective in reaching out is found in the next phase of Jonah’s plight. And that is that somehow…
3. "God’s concern is TEMPORAL"
But God’s concern for the lost is not temporal... it’s eternal.
It took 3 days in the belly of this great fish, to turn Jonah from protester to preacher.
What exactly happened in the belly of that fish that brought about such a change of heart? Well, we don’t have to wonder, because Jonah tells us in the prayer that he prays starting in chap.2
But 1st of all, you should know that there are at least 2 known monsters of the deep that could have swallowed Jonah. The first is the “sulphur-bottom whale”, and the other is the “whale-shark”.
Neither of them have teeth, and both of them feed by opening their enormous mouths, (the sulphur whales mouth is about 12ft. wide), and letting a river of water rush in at terrific speed.
These “great fish” have 4-6 compartments in their stomachs and could hold a football team comfortably. In the head of this whale is a large sinus cavity (7 ft. high, 7ft. wide and 14 ft. long) that acts as an air storage chamber.
If they have an unwelcome guest giving them a headache, this whale swims to the nearest shoreline and coughs up the obstruction, just like this fish did to Jonah.
There have even been at least 2 scientific accounts of men who have actually been swallowed by these sea monsters and lived to tell about it. In the 1920’s there was a sailor who tried to harpoon one of these sharks and fell overboard. Before he could be picked up, the shark turned and gulped him up.
48 hrs. later they sighted the same shark and killed him. But when they opened him up, they were amazed to find their buddy unconscious, but alive! They later called him, “The Jonah of the 20th Century”
You knew it was him because his body was completely without hair, and he had yellowish-brown patches all over him from burns caused by the sharks stomach acids.
So if a man could survive in the 20th Century, why not in here?
Now Jonah survived, but it was far from a picnic. God used Jonah’s whale experience to teach him a lesson about compassion. I personally believe that while Jonah was in there… he got a personal glimpse of what hell is like.
Read 2:1-2
The word “grave” in the Heb. is lit. “Sheol”. It’s the Heb. word for “hell”. He’s praying, “I cried out of the belly of hell!”
You know, I’ve heard people say, “Hey, if I go to hell, it won’t be so bad... I’ll just party day and night. In fact, I hope I go to hell, so I can party with my friends”
What they don’t understand is that the bible describes hell not as a place to hang out with your buddies... but as 3 things....
1. Hell is a place of ISOLATION
Jonah says in 2:4... “I have been banished from Your sight.”
No matter how evil a person has been, or how wickedly they’ve acted, no one has ever experienced complete separation from God’s love while still living. Even the worst sinner, still has the oppurtunity to experience God’s love.
But in hell, they are completely and totally cut off from all love and affection. Believe me... if you’ve ever felt all alone... it’s nothing compared to the loneliness you experience for eternity in hell.
Jonah got a taste of what that was like in the belly of this fish.
2ndly, Hell is a place of TORMENT
Again, the bible describes hell as a place of the living dead. In otherwords, you want to die... but you already have!
Jonah in vs. 5 experienced the torment of drowning and suffocation. (READ)
Anybody here ever almost drown? (obviously you didn’t drown or you wouldn’t be here!)
I rem. as a kid, not knowing how to swim, I accidently let go of the side of the pool while at a pool party with my parents. I struggled and bobbed up and down for what seemed like an eternity.
Until finally, somebody spotted me. They yelled out and about 10 adults dropped their drinks and all jumped into the pool at once. The tidal wave almost finished me off! It was a horrifying experience.
Apparently this sea monster had also swallowed a whole bunch of seaweed and it was wrapped around his neck as he struggled to breath and swim at the same time.
Besides all of this, for 3 days, he experienced the torment of this fishes stomach acids as it burned every inch of his body.
He wanted to die, but he couldn’t. That’s what hell is like.
3rdly, Hell is a place of HOPELESSNESS.
The bible says that hell is a place of darkness. Jonah prays in vs. 6... (READ)
Darkness I think speaks of the hopelessness of hell.
Just think... Nothing to strive for. No weekends or retirement to anticipate... No light at the end of the tunnel...just more darkness.
Think about it...nothing to look forward to... for eternity! Just more never ending isolation, torment, and hopelessness.
I think that God wanted Jonah to experience all of this, because this is where the Ninevites are headed unless he obeyed and preached to them!
What you need to understand is that God doesn’t send anyone to go to hell. (really! He doesn’t) It wasn’t created for us in the first place. The bible says that it was created for the “devil and his angels”.
The only way a person gets to hell is by choosing to go there! By rejecting Christ... they choose eternal death.
But because God is not only loving, but He’s holy... He just can’t ignore sin as if it doesn’t exist. It has to be punished. And so He has set a day in the future where judgement will be given. And the final decision is made.
God (more than anyone else) knows that life is short and hell is hot! But before that Great Judgement Day, He’s going to do everything He possibly can to keep people from going there!
That’s where we come in. He wants us to be his messengers. To share with people that they don’t have to be judged, they can believe and be saved.
I admit... impending judgement isn’t a very popular message. It wasn’t in Jonah’s day, and for sure, it’s not in our day. But what would you rather have... would you rather be warned ahead of time, or find out the hard way?
I don’t know about you. But I’d like to at least have an oppurtunity to make a choice in the matter.
And that’s where I think we fail God. We don’t take judgement as seriously as he does! We forget how high the stakes are, and as a result we fail to tell others.
Someone has said that, “the quickest way to motivate Christians to tell others about God would be to let them spend just 3 seconds in hell.” I think they’ve got a point!
In fact thats exactly what happened in Luke 16 where Jesus tells the true story of the Rich man and Lazareth. The poor man (Laz.) lived a life for God and ended up in heaven. The rich man lived a life only for “self” and ended up in hell.
And from hell, he cries to Abraham... “... I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”
3 minutes in hell turned this guy who had cared less about God while on earth, into a passionate evangelist wanting to warn his brothers!
3 days in the belly of this fish turned an apathetic prophet like Jonah into a passionate preacher of God’s word!
Jonah came out of this “whale of an experience” believing that there’s only one way to be saved... he says in vs. 9... Salvation is from the Lord!”
Is that you’re conviction? Because if you don’t believe that... you’ll have no urgency whatsoever about getting the message out. Friends & Family Day will come and go, and it won’t matter to you.
If you believe that there’s not 1, but “many” ways to get to heaven... then why stress yourself out? They’ll figure it out for themselves!
If you think about it, the whole idea that there are many ways to heaven doesn’t make much logical sense, because if you’ve ever studied world religions at all, you know that many of them contradict each other!
But if you believe that there’s only one name under heaven by which man must be saved, the name of Jesus Christ... and that time is short, but eternity is long...
...there’ll be a new skip in your step when it comes to telling your friends and family about God’s message of salvation.
After 3 days, the great fish burped him up onto the shoreline and shortly after that, Jonah was headed in the right direction.
Now, a 4th attitude that Jonah had and I think we have many times which really serves to stop us from telling others is the idea that...
4. "God’s message is UNDESIRABLE"
It’s easy for us to get the idea that people really don’t want to hear about God. But you know what? I find just the opposite reaction! In fact, the more we see our society self-destructing around us... the more I find people are seeking answers.
Jonah arrives in Nineveh, and he automatically draws a crowd. Let’s face it... a guy who had just spent 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a fish was hard to ignore!
Just like the man I described earlier to you, Jonah didn’t have a hair on his head or anywhere else, and his skin was pock-marked with yellowish brown spots. He looked like a bald giraffe!
He’d stand there on the street corner and somebody would come up to him like he was some kind of “freak show” act and ask... “Whoa man, what happened to you?”
And he’d tell them! “I’m a man from the dead! A fish swallowed me I wasn’t to obey him... and if you don’t change your ways in 40 days, something much worse is going to happen to you”!
Now what surprised Jonah was that as blunt as this message was... instead of mocking him and making fun of his odd appearance... they actually listened and repented!
In fact, according to acheology Nineveh was a city as big as the entire San Francisco Bay area with a population of over 120,000. Yet chap.3:5 tells us... (READ)
According to this vs. the entire population turned to God! This is the greatest revival the world has ever known! That’s what a revival is... people sincerely turning to God. As a result, God decided not to destroy them and their city.
As evil and wicked as they were... God forgave them. And that’s the way He is with us... no matter what we’ve done, He’s willing to forgive if we’ll do what these people did. They “believed God.”
And that’s all God has ever asked any person to do... simply to believe Him. Believe it when He says that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
Believe that Jesus Christ has come to pay for our sins with his death. Believe that he was raised again and now offers forgiveness and eternal life to us!
It was a great revival unlike anything the world has ever known, and it all started with Jonah simply being faithful to say what God told him to say!
You know, I believe that if every Christian would simply stand before their fellow man, living a life of integrity, and faithfully say what God has told them to say... nothing more and nothing less... that people would respond to our message and we could have a great revival in our city!
Do you believe that? I do!
Yet in spite of this marvelous revival in Nineveh, instead of being ecstatic... Jonah was livid!
After all that he’d been through... Jonah still had a problem, and it’s the same problem we have. Jonah didn’t understand that...
5. "God’s love is IRREVOCABLE"
In otherwords, God loves us with an undying love. No matter what we do, we can’t cause God to stop loving us. Even when a person lives their life in total rebellion and hatred towards him... He’ll never stop loving them!
Now this may sound like a contradiction, but I believe that even in hell, (if that’s where a person decides they want to spend eternity)... even there... God loves them with an undying love.
Jonah didn’t understand God’s love... and neither do we.
Jonah was fully convinced that the Ninevites would reject God’s message and that he would destroy them. When it didn’t turn out the way he wanted, he got angry with God.
As a result look what he did in Vs. 5 of chap.4 (READ)
Here’s Jonah stomping out of the city like a tantrum throwing pre-schooler, and when he gets up on top of a hill overlooking the city, he sits down to pout.
Jonah didn’t believe that they’d really changed. And so, he wanted to be where he could see the fire fall, when they fell back into sin! That’s a great attitude huh?
So God sets out to change Jonah’s attitude for good. As he’s sitting there, God causes a gourd to grow. (READ 4:6)
As it grows, it’s leaves spread out and they provide Jonah with shade from the hot sun that was beating down on his bald head.
His raw skin is still pretty sensitive from his time in the fish, so this plant becomes especially fond to him.
Jonah doesn’t have any friends, he doesn’t like the Ninevites and he’s at odds with God... so as a result he really gets attached to this little gourd.
I’ve always been amazed at how close people can get to other living things like cats and dogs... even geraniums... (especially if they’re lonely) and Jonah gets attached to this little gourd.
I can just see him coming back everyday, after filling his bucket with water from the Tigris River and saying...”And how’s my little Gordon today? Is he thirsty? Daddy’s brought some water for his little Gordy!”
But then God moves in to break up this happy little scene. He sends a worm in vs. 7 to cut down the vine, because worms love gourds too, but for a different reason. As a result, little Gordy died.. (ahhh...), and Jonah was mad at God again.
“God, the only thing I had to live for was this little gourd and now you’ve even taken that away.”
Now listen to God’s response in vs.10,11... (READ)
He’s saying to Jonah... “Jonah, I love the the Ninevites. And if you can fall in love with a vine... why can’t you love something much more important?
I think we all carry around in our minds unpublished lists of people who if we were honest, we don’t think are very important. The guy who takes our money at the gas station, the waitress, the guy driving the slow car in front of me...
But the truth is, regardless of race, salary, gender, level of education... or whatever... people are the most important thing in the universe to God... and they need to be important to us.
Fact is... you and I have never locked eyes with another human being who isn’t valuable to God.
God sent Jonah to the Ninevites because in spite of all of their sin and all of their brutality... he loved them.
God never asked Jonah to wait until he loved the Ninevites before he went to them... he said, “Jonah, I want you to go because I love them!”
I can honestly say, that in the 4 churches I’ve pastored, (and 3 of them were church plants)... I never went to the community because I loved them. When I accepted the invitation to come to the Bay area... it wasn’t because I loved the people of the Bay area.
How can you really love people that you don’t know? I came because God loved the people of Antioch & Concord & Pittsburg & Brentwood & Oakley... I was just being obedient to God’s call.
But in the 3 years we’ve been here... and prayed with you, we’ve cried and laughed with you, I’ve buried your family members, and married off your daughters and sons... Rudonna & I have gotten involved in the ups and the downs of your lives...
... and I can honestly say, “I love this community and the people of this church more than I could have ever imagined I would.”
And now God says to you and me...”Go to the lost... and as you go... tell them of My love for them. Tell them that they matter to me. Tell them that I care...
Don’t wait for some feeling to sweep over your soul. (So many people are waiting to be motivated by their emotions.) Just go... and share My love with them... and before long you’ll love them too!
Since Jonah wrote this book, it’s reasonable to say that after this experience... he left his dead gourd vine and went down to where the living were.
He walked with them and he entered into life with them... he continued to share the love of God with them... and in time, he came to love the very people that earlier he loved to hate!
