Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

When a Fish Catches a Man

When a man catches a fish it’s no big deal. But when a fish catches a man, well, then you have a story. And what a story it is! In fact, the story of “Jonah and the Whale” is so fantastic that some think it is merely a fairy tale fit only for children and not for serious thinkers. I heard a story once about the little girl in elementary school who was in class one day studying about the ocean when the teacher told the class, “I don’t want any of you to ever be afraid of going into the sea because there are no sea creatures that can swallow you whole.” So this little girl raised her hand and said, “I learned in church that a great fish swallowed Jonah whole.” And the teacher scoffed at that and said, “That’s impossible, that could never happen.” And the little girl said, “When I get to heaven I’ll ask Jonah myself and find out if it was true.” To which the teacher replied, “What if Jonah didn’t go to heaven?” The little girl said, “Then you can ask him.”

Contrary to the critics and skeptics, I believe this story is recorded as historical truth. That is, there really was a man named Jonah who really did flee to Tarshish, who really was swallowed whole by a great fish, who really did survive for three days in the fish’s belly, and who actually was vomited up on dry ground. It’s all true, just the way it was written. It’s not a myth or a legend or a saga or a fable or a parable. Jonah is a true story. We love this story, yet for all our telling and re-telling, we barely understand what it means.

It is the story of struggles, of disobedience, of problems and of prayer. But above all, it’s a story about God’s sovereignty and his grace. God’s sovereignty is evident everywhere in this story. God is in control of the wind, the sea, the fish, and over humans. And we see his grace marvelously displayed throughout this story. Grace is a gift that costs everything to the giver and nothing to the receiver. It is given to those who don’t deserve it, barely recognize it, and hardly appreciate it.

God decides to extend grace to the people of Nineveh, the arch enemies of the Israelites. This concept was extremely difficult for Jonah and the Israelites to fathom. They could well understand God’s love and compassion for them and his judgment on the other Gentile nations who despised God’s people, but they could not fathom God’s love and compassion for an enemy nation that threatened Israel’s very existence. But God shows a lot of grace to Jonah, too. He gives him a second chance to obey and come back to God. The Lord does that with all of us, too. No matter how far you have run or how far down you have fallen, God will take you back. Run-a-way believers can still be trusted with sacred assignments. Our failures do not disqualify us from service. If God can use the world's worst evangelist to bring about the world's greatest revival then He can use us with all our faults.