December 14
Jonah 1:1-4:11 | PS 133:1-3 | Prov 29:26-27 | Rev 5:1-14
Jonah lived 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a great fish? Really? Critics of Scripture, playing God, like to ascribe those areas of Scripture they will accept as reality, and which they ascribe to fantasy. These same critics have no problem believing in a submarine, with its technology that has the ability to keep people alive for weeks and deposit them on whatever shore they desire. That is the danger of placing limits on a limitless God. That is the problem with scoffing at the supernatural because it doesn't mesh with our sense of reality. If we fail to accept this, can we accept a world that was created in 6 days, a flood that covered the earth with only eight human survivors, a sea that was parted down the middle, food being rained down from heaven, three men surviving a fiery furnace, an elderly man surviving a night in a lion's den, and most significantly, a Man being crucified and being raised from the dead? Faith accepts God's Word as His word. I don't have to be able to understand exactly how these things were made possible. My pea brain can not comprehend that which God can do. If we simply can lay aside our pride, our puny intellect, then we can sit as a child on our Father's lap and accept His story which unfolds from Genesis to Revelation, and come to realize the thread that we can be in His masterful tapestry.
We know that Jonah, the prophet, chose a path of disobedience in Jonah 1:3, "But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." Many supernatural events occurred before the Great Fish, as God brought about the storm, and calmed the storm, in addition to having the lot fall upon him. But we then read in 1:17, "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Though it took 3 days for this stubborn prophet to relent and seek God in prayer, God answered his prayer, as we read in 2:10, "So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." How did Jonah survive the 3 days? I can’t explain it on scientific grounds. If God states it, that is all that I need. Jonah then leads, though reluctantly, a tremendous revival in a very evil nation, Ninevah, to a very evil people, the Assyrians, who were the original terrorists.
Those who still choose to disbelieve this story from Jonah, would do well to realize they are choosing to disagree with the Lord, Jesus Christ, as He stated in Matthew 12:40, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Jesus cited the event as historical fact. Jesus then goes on to say in 12:41, "The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here." We better be careful whenever we open up the word of God with an eraser in our hand. It is not up to us to call what God states as fact, as fiction. If you question God's ability to work in the supernatural, then like a stack of cards your entire foundation of faith collapses. We are saved by the blood of Jesus, this is a fact. Heaven is a real place, and Jesus prepares our entry, this is a fact. Our God is all merciful, all just, all grace, and His plan continues to unfold. Are you willing to accept this?
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: