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Listen in as Pastor Mike preaches this recent sermon titled "Fish Story (Part 1)."
Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.
How many religions are there in the world? If you had to divide all the religious systems in the world, how many religions are there in the world? Well, many scholars would say two in a variety of different ways.
For instance, there's the religion of human achievement. You try to work to get to heaven, you try to be good, you go through religious deeds and you're better than other people. And there's a religion of divine accomplishment, that God has to do the work, that we're dead in trespasses and sins, and so God has to send a savior.
Every religion except Christianity fits in the first category, and only Christianity presents God as a seeking and a saving God, loving the lost. How many religions are there in the world? Some say you can think about it this way, there's the religion that says, God speaks to me from the inside subjectively with feelings and impressions and visions and thoughts and dreams, and maybe from the outside that is His Word.
And the other religion says there's only one way God speaks, outside of His natural creation, and that's through His Word, just two religions. But there's another way to think about how many religions there are in the world.
There's a religion that says, God is, He's a liberal God, He's a naturalistic God, He's a modern God, and He's kind of theistic, He just winds everything up and lets it go. And there's a religion that says, God is a supernatural God.
God is transcendent, and God is supernatural. Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Jonah, please, as we see the sovereign supremacy of a supernatural God. The world is influenced by naturalism, by rationalistic thinking, by ignoring the supernatural nature of God, and I like Jonah because it's such a good antidote to it.
Because everywhere you look in the book of Jonah, God's in control, and He injects Himself into humanity, He controls things, He does supernatural things. And this is very important for two reasons. Number one is that if you lose that God's supernatural, you're going to lose your praise.
You're going to lose the fear of God. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And if you don't have this view of God with awe, with fear, with just, you're so different, you're other, you're so amazing, you're so awesome, you could turn yourself into a naturalistic view of God person, and then just say, well, God fits perfectly into my little box, and I love the book of Jonah because you just sit back and think, there's a God who's so supernaturally transcendent, He's amazing.
It's also good because it helps us with our assurance that this God cares for us and loves us. But there's another reason I want to talk about the supernatural nature of God, is because lots of people attack it.
Did you know, up till about 15 years ago, the number one Bible commentary found in almost every evangelical pastor's library was written by a liberal, somebody that denied the supernatural nature of God.
He wrote things like this, nowhere does the New Testament identify Jesus as God. He wrote things like this, there are attributes of God I do not see in Jesus. I do not see God's omniscience in Jesus, for there are things which Jesus did not know.
He wrote things like this, I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God. He's a universalist. He said, God is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family forever in agony.
No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love.
In other words, everybody's going to go to heaven. This man said, an experimenting God needs men to correct his mistakes. This man said, God is not the omnipotent God he is, a struggling God instead. And the worst for last, I believe that this Jesus so appeared to his men that they were convinced that he had conquered death.
I do not know exactly what happened. And that man's name is William Barclay. Bible studies, Bible commentaries, and almost everybody has. And this liberalism, theological liberalism, is seeping into the local church.
So, let's go to the book of Jonah and get a good antidote, get a good vaccination against the rational only, the modern only, the post-modern only, the post-evangelical only, because Jonah presents God as a God who supernaturally is involved with his people.
Now, I look up the word supernatural, and this is what it said in the English dictionary, pertaining to, or attributed to, ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings, eerie, the occult. I'm not looking for that definition.
Pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural, unexplainable by natural law, are phenomena. That's a better definition of supernatural. It goes on to say, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God.
When God transcends and is above and beyond laws of nature, that is the supernatural character of God. Now, let's take a look at Jonah, and you're going to see everywhere the supernatural God who is involved in the life of his people, who is involved in the life of creation, who even by his name, Lord Yahweh, shows that he's not just a God that creates, he loves his people, and he's a personal God, he's a covenant-keeping God.
And I won't read all of verses 1 through 16, but a few verses to catch us up to chapter 1, verse 17. The word of the Lord, Jonah chapter 1, came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
And remember what's happening here? A lot of irony, a lot of instruction, you have a Jewish prophet, I want you to go preach to the Ninevites, these really wicked Assyrians, because the promise of God for salvation is certainly to the Jew first, but also to the Gentiles, and God wants to save these Gentiles.
And Jonah, he's got two problems, here are the two problems, are you ready? One, he's a racist. He hates the Gentiles. He loves the Jews, but he hates the Gentiles, and he knows God is very compassionate, God is long-suffering, that's chapter 4, right?
I know if I go there and preach, these people are going to get saved. Jonah's other problem, besides being a racist, was he wanted the Ninevites to go to hell. Now, how bad can you be, how wicked can you be, to desire, I want those people burning in hell forever?
You say, well, Jews didn't believe in hell, of course they did, Daniel chapter 12, verse 2, talks about everlasting destruction. I want them to go to hell, I'm not going to go. And what you see in chapter 1 is this strange irony, the God of Jews and Gentiles, who wants all kinds of people to be saved, has a prophet from Israel, Jonah, who doesn't want the Gentiles to be saved spiritually, yet the sailors, as we're going to see in a second, they want Jonah to be saved physically.
And the text says in verse 4, after Jonah rose to flee, the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea. Remember the mariners were afraid, verse 5. Verse 6, what do you mean, you sleeper, arise, call out to your God, perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we might not perish.
They're trying to do everything they can to save the Jewish prophet, and he's trying to do everything he can not to go to Nineveh, because damn you is his philosophy. Come let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us, verse 7.
And so they cast lots, and luckily, fortunately, serendipitously, the lot fell on Jonah. And they've got questions. Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from?
Where's your country? Of what people are you? And now he says, I'm a Jew before I'm a follower of Yahweh. I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord. Finally, after rowing hard, verse 13, they called out to the Lord, O Lord, let us perish for this man's life.
Wait a second, can't you see the irony? Can't you see Jonah, the Israelite, even going back to Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, even going back to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, there's a wideness to the salvation of God, not just Jews, but even Samaritans, even Gentiles.
Let's not perish for this man's life. Lay not on us this innocent blood, O Lord, if done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah, hurled him in the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. And now these men do what Jonah should have been doing.
These men do what Israelite worshipers do. These men do what believers in the Old Testament were to do. They feared the Lord exceedingly. They offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Verse 17 of chapter 1, which actually is chapter 2 in the Hebrew text.
How many people here are reading your Hebrew Bibles? Oh, zero more than first service. Chapter 1, verse 17, and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Dahan wrote in his little book on Jonah, when a dog bites a man, that's not news. When a man bites a dog, that's news. When a man catches a fish, that's not news. But when a fish catches a man, that's news.
But you know what's interesting to me, is if you're a liberal, if you're saying God, the supernatural God, doesn't exist. My religion is I have to explain everything with my tactile senses. And if I can't measure it scientifically, empirically, if there can't be a taxonomic chart about it, I have to offer alternative explanations.
It takes more faith to believe in that than it does in the supernatural version. Here's what liberals say about Jonah, chapter 1, verse 17. If my kids ask me, Daddy, what does this mean? Here's what I say.
I say, God had this fish come swallow up Jonah. He was there three days and three nights in his belly. But if you're not a supernaturalist, then you have to come up with things like this. They threw Jonah out and he landed on the deck of another ship named Fish.
The USS Fish. Like I said in the first service, it's a USS Minnow, right? Rescued by a fish. Someone else said that he landed on top of a living fish. So it's up on top, he gets thrown on top of this fish, and this is just kind of language, he gets rescued.
Some say that they threw him out and he landed on top of a bloated, dead carcass of a fish that floats and then he could get to shore, you know, with enough flutter kicks, I guess. Some say Jonah just dreamed everything.
It was just all a dream, it wasn't really real. We've got to get away from this naturalist, I mean, against the supernatural view of God, because that's a God that we don't want to have anything to do with, because he's holy, he's awesome, he's to be feared, and he's only pleased through the work of his son Jesus.
There's got to be a better explanation, because we like to please God through our bell curve. We like to please God through our education. We like to please God ourselves. We make the rules. Now, some also say it's an allegory.
It's not history, it's just an allegory. Carl Keating, in the book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, a Roman Catholic, he writes, the Catholic Church is silent on the proper interpretation of many biblical passages, readers being allowed to accept one of several understandings.
The most common interpretation nowadays, according to Carl Keating, and one that is held by indubitably orthodox exegetes, is that the story of the prophet being swallowed and then discouraged by a great fish is merely didactic fiction, a grand tale told to establish a religious point.
Catholics are free to take this, or a more literal view. But friends, Catholic or Protestant, if you take the view that this is a natural, modernistic, post-modernistic, post-evangelical view, you lose everything.
You lose everything. You lose worship, you lose fear, you lose awe, you lose it all. So let's take a look at the text. What's the text say? And the Lord appointed a great fish, Jonah 1 .17. Yahweh, this covenant-keeping personal God, when you see all capitals, L-O-R-D, all capitals, it's telling you about this God that Moses saw, remember?
Take your shoes off, Moses, because this is holy ground. I am who I am. And everything about this text presents it as a miracle. The Lord appointed a great fish. He sovereignly prepared it. He appointed it.
He assigned it. Now what does the text not say? The text does not say God created, ex nihilo, a fish perfectly for that spot right underneath Jonah's boat, Jonah's ship. This was a fish that was already alive, but now redirected by God.
You should probably be thinking to yourself, in the back of your mind, why is Jonah so attacked? Why are there so many liberal views? I mean, I don't see the ink spilt attacking the axe heads floating.
I don't see the ink spilt on, you know, the Red Sea issues. Oh, they attack those things, but not with the fervor, not with the earnestness of Jonah. Why is that? Why do they just kind of let Lot's wife go, but they attack Jonah?
And what's the answer? Because if you believe in Jonah, and if you believe in the literal, normal, plain meaning of Jonah, you are going to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Because it's a picture, it's a type of who Jesus is.
Death, burial, and resurrection. Death, burial, and resurrection. Supernatural deliverance from Jonah by Jonah. Supernatural deliverance Jesus raised from the dead. I don't think you're going to see any Jonah movies anytime soon.
Maybe. I didn't think about that with Noah either, but I haven't seen the Noah movie. But I don't think it's based too much on the text. The Lord appoints. This is all language of a sovereign, supernatural, transcendent God with whom we have to do.
Four times this word is used in Jonah. God appoints the great fish, chapter 117. Chapter 4, He appoints the plant. Chapter 4, He appoints the worm. Chapter 4, He appoints the wind. Supernaturally working everything out for the good of those who are called of God and for those who love Him.
He perfectly orchestrates all this in a supernatural way. And what does the text say? What kind of fish is it? Well, the King James version of the Greek word in Matthew 12 says whale, but it's just a fish.
A great fish. That's a good translation. A great fish. A sea monster kind of a fish. Did Jonah see the fish coming? Was he out of breath? Was he on his way down? We don't know. But you got to say to yourself, God supernaturally sent the fish.
He assigned the fish. Everything about this is supernaturally driven. And if that's the case, I don't need to know about the throat size of a baleen whale. I don't need to know. According to two people who are marine biologists at SeaWorld San Diego, they think it was a great white shark.
Maybe it was. Maybe it was Shamu. I don't have any idea. I don't think it was Shamu. See, because what happens is, it's like when I watched that show back in the 90s, CBS. How do we explain the Red Sea?
Well, they reconstructed the Red Sea in a garage. And they had everything, the depth was right. And they put a bunch of fans over here. There are sandbars over there. And see how it all worked out. I don't need a scientific explanation because I believe in the supernatural nature of God.
If no one has ever survived in the belly of a fish before that we know of, that doesn't make me wonder about this passage because the text says it. And God can do that because he's a supernatural creator.
Princeton Theological Review, 1927. It talks about two people in 1758 and 1771 that were swallowed by whales and then vomited up shortly with minor injuries. If it happened, great. If it didn't happen, I don't say I've got to read Jonah 1 through the lens of scientific experiment or experiences.
Gleason Archer records 1891. This is the famous one. Star of the East, Falkland Islands. People are after sperm whales. Boat attacked the whale. The whale's tail upset the boat. Two guys fall out. One guy drowns.
Another guy, James Bartley, disappears. They can't find him. They finally kill the whale. They're cutting its blubber off. They take out the innards. They see the stomach moving. They're startled. They open up the stomach and there is James Bartley.
It says, quote, his face and neck and hands were bleached to deadly whiteness and took on the appearance of parchment. What if that's not true and liberals attack it? That can't be true. That's made up.
That's folklore. Friends, it doesn't matter. The text says Jonah was swallowed by a fish. How do we solve this problem when we're wondering about this? Dr. William Anderson was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church and I knew he was a godly man.
Not because of his Presbyterianism, although that might be true, but because I like his last name. My mother's maiden name, Anderson, with an O, by the way. And his son came to him and said, Dad, I'm having trouble with the book of Jonah and the whale.
And like a good father, he makes the small problem into a bigger problem. Well, I must say, I've had trouble with that myself, my son. What's your trouble? Well, I don't see how God could put Jonah in the whale and keep him under the water for three days.
I can't understand it. Now, Father, your trouble is superficial. My problem is a great deal deeper than that. The problem with me was not how God could put Jonah in a whale and keep the whale and Jonah in the water for three days and nights, but rather, how could God make Jonah?
How could God even make a fish? That seems to me to be a more fundamental problem. If we grant that God is big enough, I'll use the word supernatural, to create a whale or a great fish and a man, then to have Jonah swallowed by a great fish is no problem at all.
Now, I like the way he said it. I think it was Billy Graham. I haven't looked it up. I think Billy Graham said, I would believe the story of Jonah and the fish if the text said that Jonah swallowed the fish, I'd still believe it.
I thought that was interesting. Everything about the God you worship depends on a holy, transcendent, supernatural God that creates. Everything in your Bible revolves around creation and recreation. And what I love about Jonah, it just slaps me again.
Just kind of like a salt water slap in the face again. There's a God who's great. Even though he's not doing certain kind of miracles today in the sense of through men like apostles. This God does whatever he wants and he's transcendent and he's supernatural.
Now, turn to Genesis chapter 1 for a minute. I liked what Anderson said. So, let's just go to Genesis 1. I want to remind you about the supernatural creative work of God because it's going to help you and it's going to help you with your praise, your adoration and your awe.
I know one thing if I walk into a liberal church, be it Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, any liberal church, I know when I walk in, here's what I won't do. God is big. Remember Lawson? Let's hear Steve Lawson.
He preached a whole series of psalms and he entitled it Big God Psalms. I need a God. I want a God to worship who's this God who just is so transcendent that my response is fearing Him, being in awe of Him.
And the Bible starts off exactly this way. Do you see it in Genesis chapter 1? Verse 1. At the very beginning you can't run from the supernatural nature of God. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Verse 3. And God said let there be light. There was light. God saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.
J. Gresham Machen said Christianity depends upon the entrance of a creative act of God. And that's right where it starts. God just makes things. How does God make light? I'll tell you how He doesn't make light.
He responds to all the people in the darkness and they're like we really would like some light here. God doesn't say to the light okay, if you take the first step I'll respond. You know, I don't want to cause any kind of controversy and I don't want to wear my sovereignty on my sleeve and I don't want to make you a robot and I don't want to make you an automaton and I don't want to make you a puppet light.
So, light, here's what I want you to do. If you will just take the first step I'll take the other 99. You're like, what does this have to do with anything? It seems like, Pastor, every time you can you try to talk about the sovereign monergistic regeneration of God.
You're right, I do. I guess now you're awake. I can't believe I just did that. Weak point, slam. Because this is a sovereign God. This is a supernatural God. And Paul uses this language of Genesis to say the way God creates light is the way God saves people.
Turn with me, if you would, to 2 Corinthians 4. Man, my hand's killing me. That's bad. It's getting hot in here, too. Look at 2 Corinthians 4. Now, this is wonderful. I've talked about this passage in the past but just to grab it again Jonah's helpful because it reminds us about the supernatural nature of God.
It helps us because it gives us assurance that that God would love me through Christ's work. It gives us an awe because the fear of this kind of God is the beginning of all kinds of wisdom. In 2 Corinthians 4, verses 1 -6 Paul is not really wanting to defend himself but he must and he says in chapter 4, verse 1 of 2 Corinthians.
Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.
For what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Christ's sake. Now don't miss this. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness. The God that said in Genesis chapter 1, verses 3, let there be light.
The God that did that physically that's how he saves people spiritually, has shown into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus our Jesus Christ.