When God Takes Us Fishing

When God takes us Fishing

Sunday, August 20, 2022

I was seeking the Lord for the word for his church and as the pages of my bible opened up, my eyes were drawn to the first two verses of the Book of Jonah. Immediately I heard the Holy Ghost as he led me to focus my attention to what God would reveal as I read this familiar, yet very powerful message for this morning. Anyone who has been around the word of God for very long will know the story that the Book of Jonah tells, but I wonder how many have heard what it is saying to the church right now.

Jonah 1:1-2 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim [judgment] against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me."

What were the roots and the foundation of Nineveh and what was it about Nineveh that caused its wickedness to be so great that God was choosing to bring utter destruction upon it?

Going back to Genesis chapter 10 we find the sequence of events that came together to create this great city in the earth and it was all connected to Nimrod who was the grandson of Ham and great-grandson of Noah.

Genesis 10:8-9 Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD."

The name Cush means “unclear”, and he raised Nimrod, but I doubt that Cush emphasized the importance of serving Jehovah or made the ways of the Lord very clear to his son. If he did, Nimrod certainly didn’t get a clear picture of the kind of man that God expected him to be. Nimrod’s focus was on the earth and what he could get out of it for himself .

It could have been literally true that Nimrod became a great hunter for after the days of the great flood.

It’s very possible that the wild animal population grew at a fast pace and made it dangerous for men to travel around while living in tents. So Nimrod becoming a hunter to stem their attacks against people, and perhaps even supplying an extra source of food, would have earned him some respect and gratefulness among the people. But the notation of the word of God about Nimrod being a “great hunter”, took on a much more sinister and dark meaning.

Nimrod gained respect and notoriety among men, but it went to his head and became a matter of pride that drove him to build an army of “hunters” who not only hunted animals but hunted people as well. With this “army of hunters”, Nimrod gained power over men and began to establish himself as their ruler and king, forming his own tyrannical government.

It is said that the Assyrians, a godless nation founded by Asshur, made Nimrod into an idol god in their religious practices and gave him the title “Bacchus”, a name which means “a hunter”. They elevated Nimrod as a god to the point of claiming that he arose into the heavens and lived forever among the stars. He was given the name Orion, and to make him greater they claimed that he was given his favorite sidekick known as Sirius, the “Dog Star”!

I recently completed study of the gospel in the stars and it is clear that Orion represents the Prince of glory, (the Lord Jesus Christ), and the triumph and brightness of His coming! Nimrod was lifted up in the minds of the Assyrians and those who worshipped him as a replacement for the coming messiah. The message of the gospel in the stars that had been passed down from generation to generation was perverted to magnify Nimrod instead of the Son of God and the truth of God’s story in the stars of the heavens was perverted and lost.

Nimrod’s identity as a great hunter became more of a negative thing as he grew in power and became a greater rebel against God. He openly and publicly forced his will upon men before the Lord and acted as though he had no fear of God at all, provoking God to rise up against Nimrod. His identity of being a great hunter is not a complement but a statement against him because Nimrod used his abilities to defy God.

In his defiance against God, Nimrod chose to build a kingdom and a city that would be his legacy and the center of his power over mankind.

Reading from the Amplified Bible in Genesis chapter 10 we see how it all came about.

Genesis 10:10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, which in Hebrew means “to confound or confuse” and Erech, which in Hebrew means, “to be long or to prolong”; and Accad, which in Hebrew means “a jar with a glow or a spark”; and Calneh, which means, “Center Of The World, Beautifying Everything”, in the land of Shinar [in Babylonia]. Shinar means, “Cast Out A Breach; That What Is Young (or Shakes, Growls); Tooth Town; City Of Wit”.