What the Whale Teaches Me About the Lord

By Pastor Justin Cooper  |  Gospel Light Baptist Church  |  Jonah, Part 4

What do you know about Jonah? Almost everyone gives the same answer: he was swallowed by a great fish. That is the verse Pastor Cooper opened with, Jonah 1:17, the last verse of the first chapter and probably the most familiar verse in the whole book.

When he thinks about this book, he sees a book of rebellion, because Jonah ran from God. God called him to Nineveh, a city of 600,000 people or better, the capital of the Assyrian Empire and an enemy of God, and Jonah went about as far in the other direction as he could go. It is also a book of repentance, and he was grateful for that.

"It's a book of rebellion. It's a book of repentance. Thank God it's also a book of revival."

The whole city of Nineveh believed God and repented in sackcloth and ashes. And Pastor Cooper was glad God is in the revival business, in Walkertown, in Winston-Salem, in Kernersville, and anywhere else He wants to send a breeze.

A Book of the Remarkable

There is a fourth word for Jonah, and it is the one people argue about: the remarkable. Pastor Cooper was plain about where he stands.

"I believe the Bible is accurate and historical that every miracle in the Bible happened just like the Bible says that it happened."

He went through them: Genesis 1, Noah and the ark, David and Goliath, the walls of Jericho, fire on Mount Carmel, the virgin birth, blinded eyes opened and the lame man who leaped. Throw out the miracles, he said, and you might as well throw away your Bible. Jonah is one of the most attacked books because the human mind cannot comprehend that this could be true. But believers do not rationalize their way through. "We faith our way through things."

And if God wanted a big fish to pass by at just the right time, he asked, who is going to tell Him He cannot? "God is big enough to send a fish wherever he wants it."

From there he asked the question the rest of the message answers: what does the whale teach me about the Lord? He gave five answers.

1. The Lord Is in Control Over All Things

Look at how God works through the whole story. He is in control of the weather, as the storm swells. He is in control of the whale, sending it by just in time. Later He controls a gourd that withers when a worm eats it, and a strong east wind. Natural and spiritual, man and animal, plant and worm, Jonah's life and Nineveh. God is directing it all.

If that is true of a whale, he asked, do you not think it is true of everything else? Some people stay up all night with their nerves shot, certain that the sky is falling.

"Nothing ever falls apart. Everything falls in place just like God wants it to."

"Never one time has God gotten up in the morning, watched the news, and thought, I didn't see that happening."

2. The Lord Can Preserve His Children in the Severest Circumstances

Pastor Cooper traveled as an evangelist for 15 years, and he has stayed in some bad places: a room in Arkansas where the cockroaches were almost as long as a dollar bill, an air conditioner that filled a five-gallon bucket every two hours, a coffee pot that looked like a planetarium. Then he made his point.

"I've never been anywhere as nasty as the belly of a fish."

Think about it. Cold, wet, cramped, dark, for three days. Jonah describes it in chapter 2: the floods compassed him about, the weeds were wrapped about his head, he went down to the bottoms of the mountains. You can imagine how frightened he was. But the blessing comes at the end of verse 6.

"But even in the belly of a fish, God was with him there. And God sustained him there."

He gave verses to hold: Psalm 34, where the Lord heard and delivered; Isaiah 43:2, where He promises to be with us through the waters and the fire; and 2 Peter 2:9, where "the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." The application is for anyone in a whale's belly of their own. It is dark, it is uncomfortable, and you feel trapped. The same God who brought Jonah up is the God we trust today.

"In the darkest moments of life, God's able to sustain his children."

3. The Lord Wants the Prodigal to Come Home

Jonah was a prophet, and prophets prophesy. God told him to go and prophesy, and he ran. How do you know if you are a prodigal? "If you're running from God, then you're a prodigal." Pastor Cooper reminded the church that everyone plays that part at one point or another. And what looks like trouble may be mercy.

"That's not God being mean. That's God being merciful."

The prodigal son in Luke 15 was not punished when everything was gone. He came to himself, turned around and went home, and his father killed the fatted calf, gave him a ring and new shoes, and called all the neighbors. It is almost as exciting to see someone get right with God as it is to see someone get saved.

"As bad as I want you to get right, God wants you to get right even more."

He spoke to anyone listening who might be away from God. God will not say, "Not you because you did this." "If you would come back in earnest wanting to get right with God, he will welcome you home tonight."

4. The Lord Wants Sinners to Hear Preaching and Get Saved

The whale was for Jonah, but it was also for Nineveh. They needed a preacher. And Jonah's whole message was only a few words: forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. The next verse says they believed.

"God will go to extreme measures to make sure sinners can hear preaching."

He is the God who puts a church on a corner, sends a soul winner to knock on a door, lets someone looking for sports land on a gospel preacher, and lets a tract sit on a table at a Waffle House. Then he gave the list: "God gives us the internet. God gives us the radio. God gives us our services. God gives us a Bible. God gives us these tracks. God sends missionaries. God calls preachers. God gives us Sunday school teachers. God lets the buses run. Why? Because he wants sinners to have a chance to repent and be saved."

5. The Lord Conquered Death, Hell, and the Grave

Why a whale? Why did God not just let Jonah float, or pull him onto another ship? Why three days and three nights? Because the Old Testament gives us a picture of what was still to come. Jesus said it himself.

A messenger from God is cast into the sea, swallowed up, held three days, and then brought out alive. And the greatest moment of Gentile salvation in the Bible follows, in Nineveh. Why did that happen?

"He was cast into the sea of humanity. He was swallowed up by the grave. But he didn't stay dead. He rose again on the third day."

Pastor Cooper closed by walking back through the list. The Lord is in control. If He is big enough to do everything we read about in the Bible, He is able to handle you and me. He can preserve us in the worst circumstances: "If he can keep Jonah in a whale's belly, he can keep you in your trial." He wants the prodigal home. He wants sinners to hear. And He is alive and well.