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Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2005

Grace Church of Burlington October 2, 2005 “Men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God.”    G. Campbell Morgan             Out of all of the books of the Bible that liberal theologians and skeptics like to criticize, Jonah is one of their favorites. What was the big fish? I don’t know. Does it exist now? I don’t know. Does it actually matter? No, it doesn’t. I guess it’d be nice to know, but it would add nothing to what God intended by recording this event.                I love the story about one Christian woman who encountered a sceptic on a plane that highlights this. As this lady was on a flight, she was reading her Bible. When the passenger sitting next to her saw her Bible, he asked: “You really don’t believe all that stuff in there do you?” The woman responded: “Of course I do, it’s the Bible.” This man said, “Well, what about that guy that was swallowed by the whale?” She replied, “Oh, you are talking about Jonah. Yes, I believe that. It’s in the Bible.” So he asked, “Well, how do you suppose he survived all that time in the whale?” This woman replied, “I don’t really know. I guess when I get to heaven, I’ll ask him.” The man responded, “But what if Jonah isn’t in heaven?” To which this lady replied, “Then you can ask him.”             The book of Jonah has been the happy hunting ground for skeptics through the years in their efforts to discredit Scripture. Even some professing believers have suggested that it does not matter if Jonah was a parable or an historical account. One went so far as to say, “it doesn’t matter if the whale swallowed Jonah or if Jonah swallowed the whale.” But it does. The accuracy and inspiration of Scripture is at stake. Jonah is not an allegory. It’s a historical account. And if the Bible is inaccurate about Jonah, then the Lord Jesus was also the proliferater of a lie. On at least two occasions Jesus used Jonah as a historical example. Matthew 12:40 records that Jesus said,  “For as Jonah  was  three days and three  nights  in  the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” If Jesus was mistaken about this one event, what is to prevent Him from being wrong about a lot of other things, too? If Jesus was wrong about just one thing, if He was fallible on just one point then He is no longer God and is no longer capable of being our Savior. As I said, there is a lot at stake if Jonah is just a “fish story.”             Most Christians think that Jonah is primarily about Jonah’s fish food incident. But it’s not. In fact Jonah is not primarily about Jonah. He’s only mentioned 17 times in this short book. The fish is only mentioned 4 times. The primary character and the center of the book of Jonah is God Himself. God is mentioned 26 times. This is a God-book.             Jonah gives us some awesome and wonderful insights into the Lord that we serve yet that we too easily overlook. Too often we’re as out of touch with the heart of God as Jonah was. The book of Jonah is a parallel for both the contemporary Church and the average Christian. So as we dig in over the next few weeks, let me encourage you to prayerfully ask the Lord to open your eyes to see how much Jonah-itis you might have!