Hello, this is pastor gary from first baptist church of laplata. Today’s “Throwback Thursday” is from Thursday, November 5, 2020. With no apology, I offer another fish out of water story today. Some kayakers were off the coast of California when they experienced a close encounter of the whale kind. While the video appears to show the humpback whale attacking and attempting to swallow the kayakers, the kayakers themselves relate that they saw the large school of fish underneath their kayak that was the focus of the whale’s attention. As the whale breached the surface to swallow as many fish as possible, the kayak directly above was lifted, capsized, and emptied. One cannot help but think of the biblical story of Jonah who was actually swallowed by a large fish, possibly a whale. The tale of Jonah has been stylized into a children’s bedtime story, but there is a whale-sized amount of theology in Jonah’s four, short chapters. For instance, Jonah addresses Creation, God’s sovereignty over men and nature, human racism, repentance, missions, prophecy, and homoletics. What is homoletics, you may ask? Homoletics is the study of preaching. Jonah was called to preach, he eventually did preach, and an entire city of 120,000 people repented and believed. That must have been one whale of a sermon! Actually, it was only eight words: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” It seems that preachers have still not learned from Jonah that a sermon does not have to be long to be strong. Back to the kayak story. What happened to that school of fish that the whale was after? Most of them were probably swallowed; however, a few made it to shore with one of the kayakers. As the kayaker was shaking out her clothing after the incident, several of the little fish fell out. Here we see two types of storytelling: the one that got away and a fish out of water!
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