Sleeping With The Fishes

Some of the scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus and asked Him to do a miracle, which would be a sign that He was a prophet. Jesus replies; An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation at the judgment, and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here". (Matthew 12: 39-41)



I came to know God through faith. Although raised in a Catholic home, with parents who were serious about their faith, I became agnostic in high school, and was an atheist in college. Shortly after I married Jackie, God moved in my life, leading me one afternoon to surrender my life to the Lordship of Jesus. I stepped out in faith, one moment unable to grasp God, and the next with an assurance that He is, and that He had come into my very being. My life chaged, not through adopting a new theology, but because I had allowed the Spirit of the living God to move in and through my life.



In the past I had lain awake at night, trying to get hold of what God could be. But now I often laugh because, even though I know Him, and talk to Him, even though I need Him and long for more of His presence, even though I can talk and write about my understanding of how spiritual things work, yet still He is so intelligent and powerful and glorious that my mind even now can only hold onto a tiny part of who He is. The universe goes on for millions of light years, filled with multi-trillions of stars and other matter, held in balance by a thread . . . and He, the designer and creator, is there. The micro universe has comparatively similar distances between electrons and protons, with vast energy and amazing balance, and that is just one part of billions of more parts that make up one tiny building block for any material thing . . . and He, the designer and creator, is there. There is a spiritual creation, just a real and vast and intricate as the material world . . . and He, the designer and creator, is there. He, having designed us, and knowing the limits of our minds, has revealed Himself to us in time and space, creating us after His own image, and sending to us His Son, who came into the world as one of us.



Most of the scribes and Pharisees, when they encountered Jesus, could see Him with their physical eyes, but did not recognize Him as Lord of the Universe with their spiritual eyes. Doubting Jesus, they asked Him to show them a miracle, and the sense is that they were saying; 'Perhaps then we will agree that you are a prophet'. The interesting thing here is that prior to this Jesus had been performing quite a few miracles in His ministry. And many of the simple people came to believe in Him because the miracles helped open their hearts to accept Him. But the scribes and Pharisees were the educated people of the day. My guess is that their hearts were closed, not just because Jesus did not match their profile of Messiah, but also because they had discounted to some degree the accounts of miracles in their own scriptures. And so Jesus tells them that the wicked Assyrians who lived in Niniveh repented, their hearts being open to God without the benefit of signs, when Jonah preached to them. The witness of those men and women would testify at the judgment against the people in Jesus day. They wanted Jesus to do a miracle to prove that He was a prophet, but He was much more than a prophet. They would get their sign when Jesus, as Jonah did, would come back from the dead after three days. Even then, for most, that sign would not be enough to open their hearts.

It's funny, but as much as things change, many things remain the same. Today, even in the church, many have a hard time believing that Jonah could have spent three days and nights in the belly of a sea creature, and many even doubt that Jesus actually rose from the dead. They write these off as stories used to teach spiritual principles, although while doing so they miss the true principles. God can bend and shape material and time to His purpose. For anyone who is truly in awe of Him, miracles should not be a problem. My father-in-law was fond of saying that if Jonah spent those three days inside that fish sitting in a lawn chair, drinking lemonade, and enjoying air-conditioning, it would be fine with him. Jesus not only believed that the story of Jonah was true, but that it was pointing to His death and resurrection. The modern world cannot understand this, as they cannot understand a loving God who will one day judge those who keep their hearts closed to His Spirit. It understands neither love nor justice. It will not accept either the miracles of the past, or the move of the Spirit in the present. Yet it will flock to false signs and false wonders, and believe in false messiahs.

In the 24th chapter of Matthew, Jesus gives His great prophetic description of the events that will happen just before His second coming. "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be".

Like the story of Jonah, Jesus is confirming for us the truth about Noah and the flood. And in so doing He uses Noah as a warning to those whose hearts are closed to the Spirit. The Son of God did indeed come the first time, and will surely come again. Noah preached repentance to the antediluvian world before the flood, but unlike the citizens of Ninevah, they did not repent. And so it will be for many just before Jesus comes again. The Holy Spirit is still working today through scripture as well as through signs and wonders. Don't let the scribes and the Pharisees of the day rob you of that precous gift.