Three Strikes, You’re Out

The American way.  Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.  

This memorable phrase was used in a Chevrolet commercial to evoke feelings of Americana.  It was launched on television in 1974, featuring a jingle with scenes that showcased these American staples. 

I am not a baseball fan, but it is apparent that when a batter strikes out, he is through, until his rotation is back up to bat.  Only if there are enough “innings” left in the game. 

America was founded on morals, ethics, and Christianity.  This is not a story about our history or influences “from sea to shining seas.”  It is about decay.  It is about disorder, and the answer to stop all the chaos we feel in 2025 in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 

 

I direct your attention to the classic Jonah story in the Bible. Jonah was a prophet who disobeyed God’s call to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh.  

Instead of doing what God commanded him to do, he ran. 

 

Notice that I said repentance.  

Preach repentance.  

Question: why is it that so many sermons on Sunday morning and in many churches, hardly ever talk about sin and repentance? 

 

Answer.  Because some, not all, preach a squishy Gospel.  

A feel-good Gospel.  

No confrontation about sin.  

No opportunity to get things right with God.  

Just a simple message about this or that.   

 

Yes, we should, as preachers and teachers of God’s Word, explain and direct the congregation to learn and grow in Him.  

This is assuming that everyone in the crowd is born again.  

 

Not the case where I primarily preach.  

I preach in maximum-security prisons. 

 

Equipping the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12) is valued by every church pastor.

He or she cannot do it all by themselves.  Every church needs volunteers.  

No leadership can lead unless someone follows. 

 

There is an old saying,

“So, you call yourself a leader?  Look behind you.  If no one is following you, you aren’t!” 

 

 Let us see Jonah for what really happened.  Most Christians know this story, so I will capsulate it. 

Jonah was told by God to go and preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. 

He rebelled and went instead to Tarshish.  

Once the storm came upon the ship, Jonah was thrown overboard because the men on the ship realized the storm was because of Johah and his disobedience.  

 

Jonah deserved what was coming. 

 

A great fish swallowed him.  He did not fall into the blow hole or in the great fish’s lungs.  

He did not get chewed up because the fish was hungry.   

 

He was swallowed because God had a plan of repentance for the people of Ninevah.  

 

It just so happened that Jonah had to repent first, before he could preach repentance. 

 

His first “strike” was not a swing and a miss.  It was almost drowning in the sea, a real sea.  

Not a sea of remembrance in his disobedient mind. 

Jonah got what was coming to him.  Not death.  

But a second chance to swing the bat and hit a homerun. 

 

The second strike was the living in the belly of a fish.  

The fish was digesting its food.  Stomach acid?  I do not know the inner works of a great fish.  

I just eat Halibut fish and chips from Newport Bay in Portland, Oregon when I visit there.  

“Hold the tartar sauce, please?” 

 

“For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me.  Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’”

Jonah 2: 3-6

Jonah was coming to an end of himself and his disobedience. 

“The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; the deep closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head.  I went down to the moorings of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever; yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God.”

 

Notice, that Jonah was not “out” of the baseball game yet.  

He had two strikes against him with the ball headed his way.  

 

Would he strike out?

 

Jonah declared, “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.”  verse 7. 

 

Had he not repented, he would have been digested, and would have left the great fish, like all the rest of the great fish’s food.  

Not through the blow hole.  

There were three other options.  

 

Vomit. 

 

God had the fish vomit Jonah up onto a beach. 

Jonah had a second chance to do what God told him to do.  And he did, and Nineveh was saved.  

Some scholars say over 120,000 inhabitants believed God and repented when Jonah preached to them.  

God spared them from judgment because of their repentance. 

 

This notion of the “earth with its bars” closed behind me forever, that Jonah said in verse 6, brings up a personal point with me. 

 

My bars were real.  

Maximum-security prison has bars, and I was behind many of them in 1976.  

This Texas prison was horrible, and there were times I would have rather been digested and destroyed by the inhabitants of this prison.  

But God had a better plan for me to be spit up on to a beach of freedom.  Not just freedom from my incarceration. 

Freedom in Christ.  

Free to take my one and only chance of redemption, and I ran with it.  

 

The stench of my sin was like Jonah and the digestive juices inside this great fish which surrounded Jonah.  

It stunk.

I had stunk in my sin.  

I was putrid. 

 

Jonah got a second chance to do right by God.  

 

I wonder how many chances people will get to repent, and receive Christ?

 

One, Two, or “Three strikes you're OUT.” 

 

I preached a similar message like this in Costa Rica in 2008. I was in a horrible, run- down prison near San Jose. 

The guard towers were made of wood and were leaning to one side.  

The perimeter guards, on the outside of the fence, rode a bicycle with a machine gun and bullets draped across their chests.  

They rode around the prison, hoping to see someone, anyone, try and escape. 

My interpreter did a great job taking my words in English, and “exactly” sending them into the crowd of prisoners in their language. 

When I was done, several men came forward and received Christ.  The crowd was around 70 men, and over fifty percent knelt at the altar and received Jesus as their Savior. 

I prayed for anyone, and everyone, who wanted prayer.  

The power of God was very thick and evident in this small chapel inside this prison.  My interpreter continued with his inflections and body language, mimicking me and my every word and hand movements.  

He was an excellent interpreter and became me, to a degree. 

 

Once I had prayed for all the men at the altar, I gently reached over and touched my interpreter on his forehead.  

He collapsed and fell on the wooden floor.  The Power of God hit him, and he stayed on the floor for over thirty minutes. 

Had this happened in a prison in America, the officers would think someone put a knife in him and would have locked down the prison.  

 

They do not understand the power of God. 

 

These Costa Rican guards noticed, but did nothing. 

When it was time to leave, the officers brought in a stretcher, thinking he was sick.  They wanted us out of there and instructed us to leave hurriedly. 

The other volunteers with me helped carry him out to the van. 

 

An hour passed, and he came out of his Anointed moment. 

 

He spoke to us about what had happened to him.  

He stated,

 

“I was caught up between Heaven and Earth.  I saw a dimension in the Spirit of the Lord I have never seen.  I was in a whirlwind and was moving fast, as the Lord showed me true, Godly repentance.  I was gone in the Spirit for what seemed like a few seconds to me.” 

 

He was out cold for over an hour and a half. 

 

Jose Louise, the interpreter, stated that he felt the sorrow of the Lord over lost souls.  

He felt Hell and the true meaning of being choked out with seaweed, like Jonah almost was. 

He told me privately,

“Joe, I got saved, all over again.

It is hard to imagine this, but I thought I was born again, but when you touched me with your finger on my forehead, I left my body.  My spirit was in a different place, sensing Heaven and Hell all at once.  I now know what it means to repent.  Truly repent.” 

 

I share this to let you know what Paul said…

“It is a Godly sorrow that leads to repentance, that leads to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

2nd Corinthians 7:10.

 

Jonah had his second chance.  He did not strike out. 

 

If you are playing a game of baseball, I hope you win.  

If you are playing games with God, you will lose.  

Do not take His grace for granted.  

You may feel you have already struck out with God.  

You haven’t.  

 

If you are breathing air, there is hope.  

 

You are not in a sea of forgetfulness.  

 

God knows all that is going on with you and me. 

 

If you strike out in baseball, there is always another opportunity to step up to the plate and swing. 

Take the opportunity to stay in the game.  

There will come a day when the lights of the ballpark go out forever.  

 

Keep swinging.

  

God owns the bat.  He owns the ball.  He owns the game.  

If Jesus is on the Throne of your heart, you will never find a day in this game of life where you will hear, “YOUR OUT.”   

 

You are not out, you are up.

Step up to The Cross.  

It is at the foot of The Cross, where you will “hit” it out of the park. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins