It looks like the fisherman who caught these fish had a good day of fishing. He fished patiently with his rod and line, probably using a worm or minnow for bait. Many times during the day, he felt the exciting tug on his line that signaled hf had caught another “big one.”
Now that the fishing day is over, our fisherman must prepare the fish before they can be eaten. He will remove the fins and scales, maybe the head and tail, clean them, and then they are ready for the frying pan.
The fins and scales have to be roved, because they are not good to eat. But these were very important to the fish.
God told the children of Israel in the Bible that they could not eat anything that lived in the water that did not have fins and scales. (See Leviticus 11:1010And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: (Leviticus 11:10).) Frogs, crabs, lobsters and eels do not have scales and fins, so they could not eat them.
Do you know why God made this law and what lesson it has for us today? Fins enable the fish to swim against the current, so that it doesn’t just move along with the current. The scales of the fish are like a coat of armor. They give the fish protection from the things around which might injure it. God calls any fish “clean” that has fins and scales. The ones without these He calls “unclean.”
God shows us many examples like this in the Bible. Even fish remind us of how He wants us to live in this world. He wants us to swim against the current. It is very easy to do what other children are doing, and just go along with them. But it takes energy to swim upstream, against the current. It takes energy not to go along with the rest or do wrong things that they are doing, because you want to please the Lord Jesus.
Have you ever heard of the salmon which swims long distances and even leaps up over waterfalls to get back to the stream where it hatched from a tiny egg? God gave it the strength and energy to do this. He will give you the strength and energy to go against any force of evil, if you are one of His “clean” ones (saved), and ask for His help.
Do the other children do things that are wrong and unkind? Remember that you don’t have to go along with what they do. Going upstream against their ways may be very hard and a real struggle. The Bible gives us a very good example in our blessed Lord Jesus dying for us, with all the people against Him. His life and His death were “against the current.” Now those of us who have been saved, because He has washed away our sins in His precious blood, find that the world has not changed, nearly 2,000 years later. The world is still against the Lord Jesus Christ, and we can only expect its scorn when we try to please Him.
ML-09/06/1981