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00:00 joy and privilege to be standing here sharing with you from the word of God. I trust that all of you have had a good
00:07 start to the new year. Uh if you are new, we are now in the
00:13 midst of a series on the book of Jonah. Today is the third installment in the series. Over the past two sermons, we
00:20 have covered uh Jonah chapter one and uh today we are at Jonah 2 uh plus a few
00:27 verses from chapter 3. The title of today's sermon is u those who cling
00:33 forfeit the grace which uh sounds a little incomplete because it begs the question those who
00:40 cling cling to what? Forfeit the grace whose grace and if you have noticed
00:47 during the um uh during the scripture reading the title is a is a shortened
00:53 phrase taken from verse eight in our text. those who cling to worthless idols
00:59 turn away from God's love for them. To forfeit means to be deprived of a of
01:06 a right or a privilege uh due to an act of wrongdoing.
01:11 And hence this is a a warning to us lest our actions uh cause us to lose the
01:18 grace of God. Indeed, the the book of uh Jonah uh is often studied because of its
01:24 lessons on obedience or rather disobedience. Obedience brings
01:31 favors. Disobedience results in ruin.
01:37 Obedience and uh disobedience both come with consequences as far as our God is
01:42 concerned. But is it that simple? When we study the life of Jonah, you will see
01:48 that the lessons on obedience or disobedience are really only at the surface of uh these verses and and
01:56 chapters. But we will try to dig deeper into the text in order to uncover hidden
02:01 lessons underneath the surface. Shall we first commit this time to the Lord in prayer?
02:08 Our father in heaven, who exactly are you?
02:14 What are you like? How do you deal with people? Why did you do the things you do?
02:22 May your spirit help us to fathom these deeper truths as we study this text from Jonah chapter 2. May these verses cause
02:30 us to change the way we know you and the manner by which we relate to you. For we
02:36 ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Now I would like to begin uh the sermon
02:41 with a on a on a lighter note uh by showing you a humorous video clip uh as
02:46 a kind of introduction. I I came across uh this clip produced in
02:53 Nigeria Africa uh that is like slightly more than a minute long so it won't take much time.
02:59 It is part of this uh Mark Angel comedy series featuring this little girl by the
03:05 name of uh Emmanuela. Uh he's she's seated on the left and she's getting
03:10 rather well known now. Can we have the video, please?
03:18 So,
03:26 who can give us an example of a big animal?
03:34 Elephants. Good. You donkey.
03:41 Is not an animal. Emmanuela, the fish. Which fish?
03:46 The big fish that follow Uncle Jonah. Who taught you that?
03:53 My uncle told me that the big fish follow Uncle Jonah. Anyway, what does your uncle know?
03:58 But that is in the Bible. Shut up. Listen, I studied zoologology. There's
04:04 no way a well can swallow a human being because it has a small truth. Anyway, you're my teacher. You know
04:11 better. But when I go to heaven, I will ask Uncle Jonah. And what if your uncle Jonah is not in
04:18 heaven? The way you go to hell, you ask him.
04:24 Okay, we can stop the video here. I I had fun watching this uh when I
04:31 first came across it. Now the reason why I have this video shown uh is to illustrate an observation
04:38 that I have. Some people when they read uh the story of Jonah being swallowed by
04:44 the big fish, they dismiss it outright because of questions to which they find
04:49 no answers. How can a big fish swallow a grown man?
04:54 And as the as the teacher in the video remarked, uh she studied apparently uh
04:60 zoologology, the fish throat is not big enough to allow the passage of a human
05:05 body. Even if he could, how could a man survive three days inside the fish,
05:11 commonly thought to be a whale, but the the Bible doesn't specify that it was a whale? And so so they reject the story
05:19 of Jonah as as a fable story for Sunday school children. perhaps and they often
05:26 also reject the whole Bible because of such stories between its covers and by
05:31 extension they end up rejecting God and his existence because they cannot
05:37 overcome such mental obstacles uh like the story of a of a big fish swallowing
05:43 a man. Now, I'm not here to try to prove or to argue that a big fish, if big enough,
05:49 can swallow can indeed swallow the man and that he can survive three days inside. I'm not going to do go down that
05:55 road. This is not a lecture on marine zoologology. Whatever gaps there might be now between
06:01 science and the Bible, I believe they will be reconciled at the end of time, if not sooner. The Bible was not written
06:09 to teach us about signs. Although I'm confident that this book will stand up to all scrutiny of signs. This is the
06:16 word of God given to us to show us how to live a purposeful and meaningful life
06:23 in the context of a of an intimate relationship with a personal God. And it
06:28 is therefore such a great pity that some people forfeit this privilege all
06:34 because of some scientific questions to which they find no answers.
06:40 My secular work uh in part uh involves uh teaching government employees how to
06:46 use their minds creatively. And I often tell my students that just because you don't have an
06:53 answer to a question, it doesn't mean that the question has no answer.
07:00 It simply means that you don't know everything. Now, the book of Jonah goes beyond just
07:06 the issue of obedience. As I pointed out at the beginning, it also transcends the question of how the big fish could
07:13 swallow a man. Beneath and beyond these verses are precious lessons about God
07:18 and his nature and also about how we ought to respond to him. And the sooner we know we learn these lessons, the
07:25 better and wiser we will be. Now to get started, right at the beginning in verse one, we
07:31 find Jonah inside the fish and in desperation he prays to God. As a matter
07:38 of fact, the bulk of our text today is on this particular prayer stretching
07:43 nine verses long out of 13 verses. He pleads with God because he has nowhere
07:48 else to go. He went down uh to to Jopa as we learned uh in in chapter 1 verse3
07:55 and then he went further down below deck in the ship from chapter 1 verse5 and
08:01 now he's finally down and out uh in the belly of the fish from chapter 1 verse 17 down
08:09 and down he goes now perhaps by by divine arrangement in
08:14 July last year I was assigned uh to preach on another great prayer in Daniel
08:19 chapter 9 by the prophet Daniel when he pleaded with God regarding the return of
08:24 his people from exile. And then a few months ago as at my live group meeting
08:30 on a Friday night, I had to teach from u Nehemiah chapter 1 which contains
08:36 another great prayer by the prophet Nehemiah when he also pleaded with God
08:42 now concerning the rebuilding of the walls in Jerusalem. There is something very instructive
08:48 about these prayers by Old Testament giants of faith. We will do well to
08:53 study them carefully. The words of their prayer somehow seem to emanate from from
08:59 deep within their soul from the deep recesses of their heart as they cry out
09:04 cried out to God. And this prayer in Jonah chapter 2 is is no different.
09:10 And so we find Jonah praying desperately inside the fish. His situation is desperate, even hopeless. And this is
09:17 well illustrated uh in the text. In verse two, he says that he is in distress. He knows that he's going to
09:24 die because also in verse two, he says from the from deep in the realm of the dead. Now, in the King James version,
09:32 this phrase is translated as out of the out of the belly of hell.
09:37 This certainly reminds us of of the debate in the video just now on whether Jonah went to heaven or hell.
09:44 But to be sure, Jonah is not yet dead,
09:49 but he's facing death. For in verse 7, he laymans, when my life
09:55 was ebbing away, death is knocking at his door. Now his desperate situation is
10:02 further described in verse three. He's hurled into the depths into the very heart of the seas. And in verse three,
10:09 the currents swirl about me. Waves and breakers swept over me. And then in
10:15 verse five, the engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me.
10:20 Even seaweeds was wrapped around my head. In verse six, he uses the metaphors of
10:26 the mountains and the earth. uh it says to the roots of the mountain I sank down the earth beneath b me in forever.
10:35 Now all these verses sounded rather poetic or darkly poetic. In fact, Jonah
10:42 chapter 2 was written as a psalm. And one small point of interest to note here is that the Hebrew writers,
10:49 especially in the Old Testament, they often use a poetic device or a or a technique known as parallelism in which
10:56 they they repeat uh their thoughts or their their their feelings. And a good example of parallelism uh is in the
11:03 famous verse in Psalm 109:115. Your word is a is a lamp for my feet, a
11:09 light on my path. So a lamb for my feet is a parallel of a light uh on my path.
11:16 They actually two sets of parallel words here, light and lamb and feet and path.
11:22 And hence in verse three uh the currents swirl about me is a
11:28 mirror of uh waves and breakers swept over me. And in verse five, the engulfing waters threatened me pairs
11:35 with the deep surrounded me. And in verse six, to the roots of the mountain, I sang down. And that is a parallel uh
11:42 to uh the earth beneath b me in forever. In English poetry, we often repeat the
11:48 sound of a word uh by by choosing words, other words that rhyme, while in Hebrew
11:55 poetry, they repeat not the sound but the idea mostly for the purpose of
12:01 effect and emphasis. And so repetition, this feature called parallelism is is
12:08 often found in scripture. So please uh don't be so impatient or so like we say
12:14 in Chinese mang if your preacher or your Bible teacher keeps repeating a point
12:19 because that is a biblical feature. Sorry for the digression but this may be a useful useful piece of information to
12:25 make your your Bible study more interesting. Now before we dive further into our text it will be worthwhile for
12:32 us to to take a quick look at the life of Jonah before this episode in Jonah
12:38 chapter 2. Now Jonah was a prophet uh who lived in the 8th century BC and he
12:44 ministered in the in the northern kingdom of the Israelites. I think this this was mentioned to us in the past two sermons and he's mentioned in 2 Kings uh
12:52 14:2 which covers the reign of this uh king Jeroboam I uh of the northern kingdom.
13:00 There were two kingdoms uh Israel to the north and Judah to the south. And this king Jeroboam II ruled from 1786 to 1746
13:09 BC. So 8th century story here. Now this is a painting of Jonah by the
13:16 Renaissance master Michelangelo which you can find on the ceiling of the
13:21 assistant chapel in the Vatican palace. I think the fisher may be a bit too
13:27 small. Jonah was a man of God, preaching and
13:33 speaking the word of God. And being a prophet, he obviously knew who God was
13:39 and what he was like. He had a relationship with God and he had faith in God. In fact, he was doing very well
13:47 carrying out his duties and work as a servant of God. Everything was fine in
13:52 his life until the situation changed abruptly. His days were smooth and and
13:59 easy until he suddenly came to this crossroad in his life and then things
14:05 went downhill. The story of Jonah in chapters 1 and two
14:12 can be very similar to our own. The narratives of Jonah running away from God can be very uh relevant to us. Here
14:20 we have a prophet of God, a man of faith who couldn't face a drastic change in
14:25 his situation. God took him out of his comfort zone and he couldn't cope with the change in the
14:32 status quo. He didn't want to to go to Nineve, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, because the Assyrians were were
14:39 cruel and and ruthless people and the trip there would have been fraught with all kinds of dangers. But later in
14:45 chapter 4, the real reason behind his reluctance to go will be revealed. But
14:50 I'll leave that to uh Dr. Peter to preach on that next month. Anyway, you may wonder
14:57 this is a prophet. What happened to Jonah's faith in God?
15:02 Obviously, the faith that he thought he had wasn't there, or rather wasn't
15:08 enough to allow him to deal with a new situation, and so he ran away. Whatever
15:14 confidence he had in God collapsed completely in the face of a new reality.
15:19 Jonah has often been described as the reluctant prophet. And the question before us is therefore if or when we are
15:27 faced similarly with a with a drastic change in our situation
15:33 will the level of our faith carry us through? Will the level of faith carry
15:38 us through? Now I grew up in a in a small quiet town in Joho
15:44 and life was happy and and easy. If you lived in a small town you know I I
15:50 attended Sunday school. I was uh very active in youth fellowship, had a good
15:56 education, I did very well in my studies, uh studied at a reputable university and later had a good job. And
16:04 this went on for for almost 30 years of my life until the situation changed
16:11 abruptly. It changed drastically and dramatically.
16:17 In the late 1980s, I was confronted uh with a major crisis of a personal kind
16:24 which totally overwhelmed me. Now, I don't wish to go into details, but it
16:30 ended in the ugly and uh painful divorce
16:35 and my world came crashing down and I went like Jonah down.
16:45 But still, I don't ever recall uh polishing a rice cooker and trying to
16:51 give it to my ex-wife. If you were not here last Sunday, then
16:56 you would you wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Is Masimo here.
17:02 Sorry, I'm making a joke out of this. Actually, it's no laughing matter, you know.
17:08 As it happened, I I shook my fist at God and I and I complained
17:14 bitterly and repeatedly why it had to happen to me.
17:19 Whatever faith I had in God, it wasn't enough to help me cope with my
17:25 situation that has changed. Now, I grew up in a in a Christian home. My late
17:30 father was a faithful servant of God. I received solid teachings from the Bible
17:37 and my spiritual foundation was firm or so I thought.
17:44 But it just wasn't enough when it mattered most. And so I stayed away from from church. I
17:50 refused to have anything to do with God. And I was in a spiritual wilderness for seven eight years. When I said my world
17:58 came crashing down, it included my spiritual world. And this went on and on
18:03 until I remarried in 1994 to the love of my life who is sitting there
18:16 to whom I've been now married uh 22 years 22 happy years and uh when my
18:22 daughter when our daughter was born a year later 1985 I started to go back to church to regain my spiritual bearing.
18:30 Yes, I started to attend FBC. Lean was already at the time worshiing
18:35 at Calvary Church for several years already, but she came along to join me
18:40 in FBC and for that I thank her. As pas as pastor Masimo pointed out last
18:46 Sunday, often the storms of life are not so much retribution retributions from
18:51 from God because of our disobedience as much they are opportunities for
18:57 redemption and restoration. And in my case, it was more of a chance
19:03 for the re-examination of my faith or the lack of. As I look back over the years, I realize
19:10 now that God had a better plan for me. My faith in God has grown much much deeper. Now I
19:18 understand more clearly who God is and how his will unfolds in my life. I have
19:24 become wiser in conducting relationships. Also have become much uh
19:31 more humble. I used to think that there was no problem uh in my life that I I could not
19:37 solve using my intellect and abilities and how wrong I was.
19:42 The surprising thing about Jonah and Jonah 2 here is that that his situation can be very similar to our own. The text
19:50 today is can be very relevant to us. And so the first major lesson for us today
19:55 is this. Don't be too sure of your faith.
20:00 Don't be too sure of your faith. Now I'm not talking about salvation here. Our
20:06 salvation is guaranteed on the basis of John 1 uh John 1 vers12. Yet to all who
20:12 received him to to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. I'm not talking about
20:18 salvation. Rather, I'm talking about the level of our trust in God.
20:24 Don't be too sure of yourself. When your situation change changes for the worse,
20:31 when the storms of life rage, will you be able to weather the winds and the
20:37 waves? Or will you run away like Jonah the way I also ran away from God? How will you
20:45 respond when your faith in it has been two weeks since New Year? As we move
20:51 into a new season, it's my prayer that all of us at whatever level of faith, we
20:56 will continue to draw closer to God to deepen our faith and our trust in him
21:03 throughout 2017 and beyond 2017 because you never know when a storm of life will
21:09 hit you. And when it does, I hope that you would have been securely anchored on
21:16 the rock of Jesus and not on the sense of worldly thinking. I often have said that the storms of
21:22 life come generally in three categories. Relationship, money and health or if you
21:30 like the three major trials of life are family, finance, fitness. I said family
21:38 because that is where most relationship problems come from. And if you are more than if you're above 50, then the issue
21:45 of health will threaten you in greater and greater measure. From the book of Jonah, we get a sense
21:51 that God sometimes allows or even engineers the storms in our life. And
21:56 when it happens, it is your level of faith that counts. You will learn that your money, your intellect, your
22:03 abilities, and even your motivation will not achieve for you any measure of peace
22:08 or answers. And so the first major lesson from Jonah 2 is that uh we need
22:14 to find and then grow our faith in God to deepen our trust in God so that we can seal through uh the storms of life.
22:21 Now for the second lesson, let's now go back to the text and and see what else it says. We have seen in verses 3, five
22:27 and six and how Jonah was lamenting about his desperate situation. The currents swirl about me. The engulfing
22:34 waters threatened me and life was ebbing away and so on. And yet at the same time
22:40 he was able to say in verse two, this is interesting. I called to the Lord and he
22:46 answered me, I called for help and you listened to my cry. By the way, that's
22:52 another parallelism for you. But what's going on here? Why would God want to
22:59 answer him or listen to his cry? This is a a reluctant prophet who ran
23:05 away. A disobedient servant of God who turned his back against God. Let him die
23:10 in a fish. But God did answer him. And God did
23:16 listen to his cry which Jonah proclaimed right at the beginning of his prayer.
23:22 Why? Why did God do that? The answer to this is further down uh in
23:28 the in in the text in verse 9 towards the end of his prayer when Jonah said
23:33 salvation comes from the Lord. And this is the key that will unlock the
23:41 whole passage. This is the the pivot or the falcrum around which the entire book
23:48 will turn. And we have to understand clearly what this means. As a matter of fact, uh someone once
23:54 suggested that the whole Bible can be condensed into this one phrase, salvation comes from the Lord. He
24:01 summarized the entire Bible in just five words. Salvation comes from the Lord. And this is echoed in Psalm 3:8.
24:09 Salvation belongs to the Lord. And also in Psalm 37:39, the salvation of the
24:14 righteous comes from the Lord. But what does it mean? the salvation
24:19 that the salvation comes from God. Now the converse of this might be easier to grasp. It simply means that you cannot
24:26 save yourself. For the truth of the matter is that you may build yourself a comfortable and
24:32 successful life here on earth. But there is nothing you can do about your life in the hereafter.
24:39 A drowning man cannot save himself. Jonah in the belly of the fish could not
24:45 save himself. Actually, the picture of Jonah inside the fish is is symbolic of our situation that we cannot save
24:51 ourselves for salvation comes from God. He's the only one who saves.
24:58 Scripture from Genesis right to to Revelation at its core is about God
25:05 reaching out to man to save him. And he does that because of this important
25:11 attribute of his and that is grace. Our God is a gracious God. When we think of
25:17 salvation, how salvation comes from God, we think of his grace. In fact, if you were to try to condense the Bible
25:24 further into just one word, the best word I can think of is grace.
25:29 Now, let's spend a spend a couple of minutes to dwell further on this concept of God's grace so that we can we can
25:34 further unpack the rest of the verses and also unlock the entire text.
25:39 If your wife's name is grace and you don't understand grace, that I can understand.
25:45 But the Bible paints a clear picture of what our gracious God is like. We can
25:50 understand grace if we if we survey the Bible and we have to make sure that we
25:56 accurately understand God's grace because it will affect our faith. How so? Paul says in Colossians 1:6, "In the
26:04 same way, the gospel is bearing fruit just as it has just as it has been doing
26:09 among you since the day you heard it and truly understand God's grace." Now, bearing fruit here refers to something
26:15 organic, something that is growing. It is a a nice metaphor to describe
26:21 spiritual transformation. Paul says that it has been happening when since the day you heard the gospel.
26:27 But more interestingly he also says hint since the day you truly understand God's
26:32 grace. In other words spiritual transformation effectively begins after
26:38 you have fully grasped the meaning of God's grace.
26:44 So what does it mean? This word grace last Sunday pastor pastor Masimo gave us
26:49 a definition in his sermon. Grace he said is unmmerited favor.
26:56 Grace is something given to someone who doesn't deserve it. But actually that is
27:02 only half the picture. The full definition of grace is unmmerited favor
27:08 from an unobligated giver. Unmmerited favor from an unobligated
27:16 giver. Now let me give you three illustrations, three or three examples to illustrate this. The first one,
27:23 imagine you have a 18year-old rebellious son at home uh with you,
27:31 a disobedient child who won't listen to you. He is rude to you. He's defiant and
27:36 and he gives you he causes you a lot of pain. But you still care for him. You still
27:42 provide for him. And you make sure that his needs are met. And you even buy him a a present on his birthday.
27:50 Now that is unmmerited favor because the child doesn't deserve it. But you are
27:56 not exactly an unobligated giver because parenting comes with responsibilities.
28:03 When you when you brought him into this world, you have a moral duty or even a legal one to ensure his well-being. And
28:10 so this doesn't come under grace. For while it is unmmerited favor from you,
28:15 you are not exactly an unobligated giver. Second example, suppose the church
28:23 announced a free guitar lessons for those who want to learn to play the instrument and they found a a volunteer
28:28 teacher and accomplished guitarist. 10 lessons totally free of charge and he will teach you to play the guitar. And
28:36 at the end of 10 lessons, okay, you and the other students got together and decided to buy him to buy him an
28:42 expensive gift. Now, you are an unobligated giver. Why I say so? Because under the terms of this
28:48 so-called contract, you owe him nothing. But the gift is not exactly an
28:54 unmmerited favor because he deserves the gift. And so this also doesn't come under grace. For while you are an
29:01 unobligated giver, the gift is not exactly an unmmerited favor.
29:08 And what is an example of grace? It is when you have an obnoxious neighbor uh who has the character of a gangster. He
29:14 plays his music very loudly late into the night. He throws rubbish into your compound. He screams at your children
29:20 and does all kinds of other nasty things. But one day he falls very sick.
29:25 Let's assume he lives alone. But yet you go over to his house to care for him, to
29:33 cook for him, even wash his clothes, even pay his utility bills. Now that is
29:40 grace because he re he has received unmmerited favors from you. He doesn't deserve them
29:47 one bit and you are an unobligated giver because you don't have to do it. In
29:53 fact, most people won't do it or can't do it. And so if you understand these
29:58 three examples, then you are closer to understanding the meaning of grace. When Jonah finally understood this, when he
30:06 finally got it, when he finally was able to say, "Salvation comes from the Lord,"
30:11 he released him spiritually. It was a breakthrough for him. He realized that
30:17 his desperate situation inside the belly of the fish was merited. He deserved it
30:25 for he had been an a disobedient servant of God. But more importantly, he now
30:30 recognized that anything that God might do to save him would be unmmerited. He
30:36 doesn't he didn't deserve any favors from God. And God was not obligated to
30:41 do anything to save him. But yet God did exactly that. It was so
30:47 it was a crucial lesson in grace and also in faith for the reluctant prophet.
30:53 So now Jonah was ready to go to Nineve. Earlier on he was so reluctant. Now God
30:58 was ready to you to allow him a second chance. God could now use him for greater things to lend him a a higher
31:03 purpose in his life. Remember what pastor Masmo said last week that the storms in life are not so much
31:11 retributions from God but also as much as they are opportunities for redemption
31:16 and restoration. In the case of Jonah, we might also add for rededication,
31:22 which in a sort of a pale comparison was what happened to me after 1994
31:27 because between 199 1988 and 1994, I was like in the belly of a fish learning a
31:33 new what God's grace meant. And so God sent uh Jonah to Nineve as evident from
31:40 the end of our text, the first three verses of chapter 3. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. go
31:47 to the great city of Nineve and proclaim to it the message I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to
31:52 Nineve. But not before God had the the fish uh
31:58 cough Jonah out from the last verse in chapter 2 and the Lord commanded the fish and it womited Jonah onto dry land.
32:05 And so this ended Jonah's ordeal but it marked a new beginning of his uh
32:13 spiritual journey. dry land must have felt very good for him and having fully
32:18 understood having truly understood God's grace he was now ready to start bearing
32:23 fruits now for people in general in the light
32:29 of what we have discussed I'm talking about Christians and non-Christians alike
32:35 this idea of uh grace as unmmerited favor from an unobligated giver is not
32:42 something easy to understand much less uh to accept even much less to
32:50 emulate and recall the example of the nasty neighbor is not something that you and I are willing to do or can do or
32:56 worse still is you may think that is not something that we should do and because
33:02 many people cannot simply cannot see themselves extending grace in a situation like that. So they cannot
33:07 understand or accept the idea of a God of grace because they themselves cannot
33:13 extend grace. You mean God doing something for me when he doesn't have to
33:19 when I don't deserve it. And so based on this we can generally classify people
33:24 into two categories actually three but I shall start with the first two. One the irreligious and
33:33 two the religious. The irreligious people who are not religious obviously don't see a need for
33:40 God in their lives. They are likely to even deny the existence of God. And this
33:45 group includes the atheists and the freethinkers. And it also includes the
33:50 agnostics, people who don't disbelieve the existence of God, but they maintain that God is an unknowable entity. They
33:58 don't know who God is, nor do they understand what he's doing.
34:04 The irreligious essentially says everything is good in my life. I'm basically an okay person, even a moral
34:11 person. I don't harm others. I try to get along in life as best as I can. So I don't
34:18 have a need for God. Now the second group, the religious
34:24 group is different. Those in this group uh they belong to the world of organized religions. They
34:31 firmly believe in that God exists. And not only does he exist, this god will also meet out rewards and punishments in
34:39 the afterlife. And so they try their best to please their god to do as much good as they can. And they live by uh
34:46 this list of dos and don'ts so that they might get merited favors from this god
34:53 so that this god might be obligated to reward them. In short, it is the
34:59 doctrine of salvation comes from me. Now, I received this video clip the
35:05 other day via WhatsApp. You might have received it. There was this imam delivering a ser a sermon to his flock
35:12 and he was warning them to avoid those self-service laundrys where you wash
35:18 your laundry because you never know the person who who just used the machine the
35:23 washing machine before you. He might have consumed pork
35:29 and his his laundry might have been contaminated and the washing machine might have been
35:35 contaminated. And in using the washing machine, you might be contaminated too.
35:42 Wow. I thought this is a very very severe code of conduct.
35:48 It is the height of religiosity. The extreme practice of the religious.
35:56 Now to be sure both people, people in both groups, they are generally good
36:01 people. And furthermore, many do not fall strictly into one group or the other. They may identify themselves uh
36:08 under one group, but they may shift between the two poles depending on how much they adhere to the rules. And hence
36:15 a religious person uh can can sometimes behave like a like a irreligious person
36:20 and vice versa. Even an atheist if he's in deep trouble, he might cry, oh my god. You know,
36:28 now what about the third group? Who are these people? What word should I use for
36:35 number three? You might think that I'm going to put Christians in the last line, but you're
36:41 wrong. I got you there.
36:46 Because many Christians show traits of the irreligious. The term Christian is only a label on
36:53 them because they live as if life they they live their life as if God doesn't matter. And many many more Christians
37:01 display the belie the behavior of the of the religious because the practice of their faith can only be described as
37:07 very ritualistic or legalistic like the imam I mentioned.
37:13 And so I would hesitate to write the word Christian here. The third group of people rightly so are
37:21 the redeemed people of God. These are Christians who truly understand the concept of God's grace. those who have
37:28 been truly touched by God's grace. They realize that like Jonah in the belly of the fish that their sins and their
37:33 disobedience have condemned them and there is absolutely nothing they can do to save themselves. They realize that
37:39 the God of grace and unobligated giver is extending in extending salvation to
37:45 them is offering them unmmerited favors. And when that happen, when it happens,
37:52 spiritual transformation will take place and the fruits will be more visible in
37:57 their lives. God's grace changes his people.
38:03 For one thing, they become more humble because they are aware that they are they were condemned sinners given a
38:09 second chance. They become less judgmental because they acknowledge that they are no different
38:14 from the next person. They also become more forgiving. because they remember that God has
38:20 forgiven them. And these are some of the characteristics of of a true believer, the the fruit of the spirit, if you
38:26 like, God's grace has a profound effect on Christians if they internalize it.
38:34 And going back to the example of the of the nasty neighbor, despite he being so so bad to you, but after you've extended
38:40 him all those acts of kindness, what is he going to do? You see, he's most likely going to change his behavior.
38:47 is likely to want to get to know you better. He might even want to to to to extend this same kindness to other
38:54 people. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm talking about the response to grace.
39:00 Grace has this surprising ability to change a person. If we truly understand
39:05 God's grace, it will launch our faith on on a new and more dynamic trae
39:11 trajectory. It will raise our our plane of faith from one level to a much higher one. And this is the second major lesson
39:18 from Jonah chapter 2 that we ought to examine if we truly understand God's
39:24 grace. Now we have to hurry up. We have covered a lot of grounds and we have
39:29 looked at many of the the verses in our text and let's continue with the rest of the text quickly and see what else Jonah
39:35 said in his prayer. Now we earlier saw that his response to grace was what was that he want he was ready to go to N but
39:42 that was after he was womitted out of the fish but while while he was still inside the fish he said uh this in verse
39:50 six but you Lord my God brought my life up from the pit. Now the word pit here
39:57 of course if you remember the metaphors of the mountains and the earth in in the same verse it is part of that metaphor
40:04 he used it to describe his situation that God saved him from the pit
40:10 and this verse is actually a reflection of the of the key verse in verse 9 that salvation comes from the lord uh which
40:16 we have already discussed at length. Sometimes the word pit is used in Psalms
40:22 to describe the place for the dead or Hades. Not really exactly hell. Uh but
40:27 in Revelation uh chapter 20, the pit is a bottomless abyss for Satan. And if
40:33 that is the same pit referred to here in our text, then it settles kind of
40:39 settles the question of whether Jonah went to heaven or hell, which was debated in the video just now. Because
40:44 if God saved him from the pit, then of course Jonah is now in heaven. But more
40:50 interestingly, Jonah also said other things that might require further interpretation. He said in verse four,
40:57 "I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple." Also in verse 7, when my life
41:04 was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you to your holy temple. Twice the mention of holy
41:12 temple. And furthermore, he promised in verse 9, but I with shouts of grateful praise will sacrifice to you what I vow
41:19 I will make good. Now the word sacrifice here is surely connected to the holy temple.
41:25 Now why these three references to the holy temple? It must be important. What
41:33 has all this got to do? You know the account of Jonah and Jonah chapter 2 got to do with God's temple and the
41:39 sacrifice and bring and this brings us to the conclusion of our unpacking of Jonah chapter 2. This is a a picture of
41:47 the holy temple in Jerusalem that Jonah was talking about. It was built by King Solomon and it existed at the time of
41:55 Jonah. Now you see the holy temple was the dwelling place of God
42:02 back in the time of the prophets and in the Old Testament. It was a was a
42:07 physical place where God's people would come to commune with him.
42:13 But this was before of course the days the age of the Holy Spirit, the current age of the Holy Spirit which started in the in Acts chapter 2. But the trouble
42:21 is before a person could come and commune with God, there was the issue of
42:26 sin. With all the sins in him, big and small sins, he just couldn't come into
42:32 the presence of a holy and righteous God. And hence the sacrifice,
42:38 he had to bring an animal for sacrifice, which was done on the altar, which in
42:43 this picture is that raised platform to the right of the entrance to the to the holy place.
42:49 And animal was placed on the altar. He was supposed to place his hand on the
42:55 head of the animal to symbolize the transfer of his sins to the animal
43:02 which would then be slaughtered and burned. And all this was a rather bloody
43:08 and gruesome act. This act of uh sacrifice blood everywhere around the temple. It was God's way of stressing
43:16 the seriousness of sin before a tri holy God. Sin is no small matter. It was
43:21 God's way of telling his people, look there is a severe penalty for sin. Sin has serious consequences. Because of
43:28 your sins, this animal, this innocent animal has to die. It is paying the
43:33 penalty on your behalf. Now, all this of course is purely symbolic. Obviously, if you think about
43:39 it, your sins cannot be literally transferred to an animal. It doesn't make sense. It can only make sense if
43:47 you realize that this sacrifice of the animal at the holy temple was actually a pointer or a signpost to a future event,
43:56 which is the cross. 800 years after Jonah wrote this book, Jesus, the lamb
44:02 of God, was sacrificed on the cross as he bore our sins as our substitute.
44:08 This was the ultimate act of grace by God for all mankind. The ultimate
44:15 unmmerited favors to us from an unobligated giver. In Jonah chapter 2,
44:20 God extended grace to Jonah when he saved him from the from inside the belly of the fish or from the pit. 800 years
44:27 later through the death of Jesus on the cross, God again extended his grace this time to all who will who will receive
44:35 Jesus and believe in his name to save us from the pit. So the word sacrifice here
44:41 in verse six is yet another key to the text because it provides the vital link
44:47 to to God's ultimate salvation plan to the cross. And hence when we when we study Jonah chapter 2, we get the sense
44:53 that this is really a foreshadow of the gospel or a foretelling of how our
44:59 gracious God uh would extend his salvation also to us. And so at the foot
45:04 of the cross, we readily acknowledge that salvation comes from the Lord as
45:09 what Jonah also proclaimed in his in his prayer. I think we have covered all the
45:14 verses in the text as we close except for one last verse. Verse eight, I kept
45:21 that to the end. And here Jonah says, "Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them." And our
45:27 sermon title is based on this. Those who cling forfeit the grace. It is a warning
45:33 verse for us. But you may say, I'm not Buddhist. I I don't have idols at home, but I don't
45:39 worship idols. You see, the idols referred to here may not be something physical.
45:45 If you don't worship the Almighty God, then you are likely to be worshiping
45:52 some form of idols in your life. It may be money,
45:58 career, or even golf or even your looks
46:05 or even your children. I know of many to whom the children meant everything.
46:13 be very careful about what or whom you worship because you might end up
46:19 forfeiting the grace of God. That's why Jesus warns us in Matthew 7:21, "Not
46:25 everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven." But let me end with a positive note and I
46:32 shall recap quickly the two men lessons, two main lessons from Jonah 2. Firstly,
46:37 deepen your faith in God. draw closer to him so that when the storms of life hit you when your situation changes for the
46:44 worst, you'll be well prepared. But how do we do that? That brings me to the second main lesson. Truly understand
46:51 God's grace so that your spiritual transformation can be speeded up so that you will start to bear fruit. Shall we
46:58 close in prayer? Our Father in heaven, we praise you for
47:04 you are a God of grace, amazing grace. And it's only by grace
47:09 that we can enter your kingdom and only by grace that we can stand before you, not by our human endeavor, but by the
47:16 blood of the lamb. Help us to be impacted by this profound truth so that we will be transformed so that we will
47:23 be able to withstand the storms of life. For we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
