Covenant or Comfort

You know, there is in this church.

I'm going to start with this. In this church are people that

have been in prison. I know my friend Jovan.

I know this church. There's somebody like Chris who

so beautifully read the Scriptures.

Is, is that such an amazing transformation almost We, we saw

it. It's part of this church.

In this church, there are people who have been into prostitution,

but they are part of us because it's a story that God want to

tell. There's a story of God that's

actually need to go out of this place in this church.

I've met people who have gone to fight war in Angola, neighboring

country, to my own country, because they thought that

communism was the biggest problem in this church.

But we hug each other in this church because God has weaved

our past stories into his stories, and we are part of this

church. In this church, I made a brother

of mine who used to be a member of the MK encounter with his

way, but he's a brother of mine. In this church, people have lost

the loved one in this church due to crime and sometimes those

crime has been committed by farm workers.

But in this church, black and white, we are worshipping

together in this church. We are telling a new story

because God has got a new story for this nation and it is

starting from this church and from any other church in

Pretoria. That should be the story.

And I think that's that's why we are in Jonah today.

It's not a matter of coincidence.

God knew that today we'll be here and he actually guided us

in an amazing way. Sometimes things don't make

sense, but when we look back, it always makes sense.

Who came up with this idea of Jonah?

You know, Rory set us around the table, but I think it was God

that's knew that we needed to, to go through Jonah in this

church. You know, you probably ask

yourself when we were going through Jonah, it was probably 2

weeks ago when Eugene was preaching and he, and he said

something significant and I was actually studying at the same

time around Jonah chapter 2. And he he told us that Jonah was

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

quoting the scriptures. He was quoting the scriptures.

He didn't have a bubble in the belly of a well.

I mean, just imagine a bubble inside what was going to he

didn't have an iPad, you know, because you say I'll, I'll take

my iPad in there because I can see in the dark one with my

iPad. He couldn't take it.

The battery wasn't going to work.

Just going to be a monument, monumental load shedding in that

belly of a well. It couldn't take it couldn't

take it. He could he could actually take

his iPads, but he was quoting from memory.

He was quoting the scriptures from memory.

And I had to ask myself how can someone know the scripture so

well? You know, there's something that

theologian have actually invented or maybe study.

They call it a gas gasmus. It almost like the word where

the word cross comes from, where the word X come from.

In fact, to to show us that I've got a, a slide Tana, if you can

show us that. So, so when you there's, there's

something called parallelism into the scriptures or

repetitions or symmetry into the Scriptures and the theologian,

I've actually called that Chasmus, something like that.

It's in, it's in, it isn't in, in Greek.

And that's what it's one of the techniques that the Hebrews were

using when they were reading the scriptures.

So that when you are repeating verse after verse, verse after

verse, we remember the text. We remember the text to such a

point that even in the belly of a fish, oliveoid well of a fish,

I'll avoid that. Even in the belly of a fish, we

can still remember the scripture because we have repeated it so

much. I'm actually going to

demonstrate a little bit of that.

We're going to read into Psalms. We're going to look into Psalms

67. I wish I can find it quickly.

Psalm, Let's be honest, English is not an easy language.

I don't know why you say some. I see there's AP there.

I actually prefer Afrikaans because it is Basalms.

Guys, let's be serious. OK?

Let me demonstrate that to you. I'll close my bubble.

OK, I'll close my bubble. I'll open it.

The P is still there. Basalms so I, I don't know where

you got Psalm from. I'm so glad that Chris read the

scriptures for us in I mean, in Afrikaans.

So if we look at it's actually Psalm.

OK, Psalms 67 verse one. May God be gracious to us and

bless us and make his face shine upon us.

Let's go to verse seven. God will bless us and all the

end of the earth will fear him. You know I know this this this

scripture because somebody call Nick Chadwick wrote a song.

Verse two, may people, May God people praise him.

Verse three, may the people praise him.

Verse four, may the nation be glad.

Verse five, may the people praise him.

May the people praise him, may the people praise him.

The text you'll never forget the test the text when you use the,

the, the, the basically the Hebrew parallelism.

We've got rhymes in in English, but they've got parallelism.

So they repeat the the same word a couple of time to say

different things or they use different words to say the same

thing so that we don't forget the scriptures.

But more than that, they will use repetition so that we don't

forget verses. So when you read verse one and

verse seven, actually this is reminding us of Genesis 12, I

will bless you. May God be gracious to us and

bless us and make his face shine upon us.

So that verse seven, God will bless us and all the end of the

earth will fear him. I will bless you and you'll be

such a blessing that all the end of the earth will also fear him.

So you'll never forget Genesis 12 because you read some 67.

You never forget number six because you read Psalm 67.

May God be gracious to us and make his face shine upon us.

That's how he remembered the word of God.

Even in difficult situation, He remembered the word of God.

When you go into into Psalm 2, I mean into Jonah two, you will

hear a lot of I, me, my, I, me, my.

Even if we have to start by remembering Scriptures that are

selfish, scriptures that are beneficial to us, there will

come a time where we will actually mature and we'll start

now remembering even the scriptures that are beneficial

to others. Let's start where we are.

Let's start where we are. Jonah was a very selfish person,

but he started where he was. You know, this thing of

parallelism wasn't just in the Psalm when somebody called

William D Ramsay started looking at it.

I've got some slides there. You see the slide of the arrows.

Let's let's look at it again. Let's let's go to John,

actually, Jonah chapter 2 and let us look at the the

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

Scriptures, Jonah chapter two. First two, we see that Jonah, if

you just, I hope you brought your Bible in the middle of the

of the Bible. You see that chapter 2 is

referring verse two is referring to Psalm 18, verse 6, verse 3,

Psalms 18:6

Psalm 888, verse 6 next slide. Yeah, yeah, that that's a slide

there. So if you look at Jonah two

chapter 2 verse 2, Psalm 18 verse 6, verse 3, Psalm 88,

Psalms 18:6 Psalms 88:6

verse 6, verse 4, Psalm 31, verse 2, verse 5, Psalm 69 verse

Psalms 31:2 Psalms 69:12

12. But in the some way verse 8 is

now referring to two kings 1715. And then he carries on verse 92,

King 17, sorry, verse 9, Psalm 50, verse Psalm 50 verse 14.

Psalms 50:14

We can see there that Jonah is actually quoting the scriptures,

the Psalm. But somehow there is one kind of

anomaly. Everything is parallel.

That's why I've got a, a, a, a, a there.

But then on verse 8 there's AB because the primary scripture

that is quoting is actually 2 king 17, verse 15.

And then after that there's, there's another parallel that

comes back. There's kind of a symmetry and

you're going to tell me that, you know, what kind of a

symmetry do you see, Christian? Because it seems like there are

more A's at the beginning than they are at the end.

And then there's kind of a parallel line that is different

to the others. So these theologians are saying

you actually need to read the Scripture that parallelism that

that chaosm by starting from left to right but then from top

to bottom. So if we we start reading the

scriptures in the same way like that, you can see what is

happening there by then. Remember we are part of a

Kingdom of God which is different to the Kingdom of the

world. There is a chasm.

The world is looking at things differently and we have to come

with a counter culture. So if we turn that X upside

down, guess what happened? 5 verses that we started with a,

a, a, A and then there's one verse that is a bit different,

it's AB. And then there's another one

verse that is going up. There is a picture of the cross.

Even when you study the pattern that the Hebrews were using.

My verse point. My first point was the

repetition allows us to remember the text, but the repetition

also allows us to remember the texture.

Let's do this. If you touch your bubble like

this, if you touch your bubble like this, there should be a

texture that one should feel because there are mountains and

ridges, there are mountains and valleys, There are parallel

lines that we we should be able to feel if we were reading it in

Hebrew. The texture of the text is

actually the cross. Every scripture that we read

from Genesis to Revelation is talking to us about the texture

of the Scripture, which is the cross.

We remember the text, but then there's also a texture.

It's a cross. There are more people that have

looked into this parallelism, and somehow even God is using

this parallelism. So we read the test, the text,

we remember the texture of the scripture so that when we are in

a context, we can actually apply the scripture.

Somebody else look at the parallelism and pointed out

something quite important that when you read Genesis 37, for

instance, it's a story of Joseph.

We all know the story of Joseph that is being sold by his

brothers into slavery into Egypt.

But then when you go to Genesis 38, it's a story of Judah and

Tamar. When you carry on to Genesis 39,

it's a story of Joseph again, you see the parallel.

There's a parallel there, but then the parallel of God will

always get us to a place where we ask ourselves what is the the

texture? Yes, the text is written Joseph,

Judah, Tamar and then Joseph again, but what is it that God

is wanting to communicate to us in that?

If you go deeper, you realise that Joseph was sold into

slavery because the older brother could not accept that he

will serve. He will serve the younger

brother. Then we carry on with Judah and

you ask yourself by then, what's the story of Judah and Tamar in

there? Let's go back to the other end,

Genesis 38 or Genesis actually 48.

Jacob is blessing Joseph's children.

How? How does he do that?

Instead of blessing menace as the first born, he actually

blessed Ephraim as the first born.

Why? Because of the cross.

Again, the younger will actually be served by the older.

Guess what? Now we go back to Judah and

Tamar. What do we see?

Parallelism. Symmetry because Judah and Tamar

will have children and guess what, we don't even know what is

the name. You can go and read it up of the

older brother, but we remember the name of the younger brother,

which is Perez, which is breakthrough.

Actually, the younger will be the one that will have a

breakthrough, while the older will serve the younger.

The texture of scripture. We are the older brother.

We have known Jesus before the world.

We have known Jesus before the lost.

We are the older brother. But the texture of Scripture is

that the older will serve the younger.

The one who will be first will be lost.

In fact, God was reversing the order by saying, you know,

actually the natural order where we serve the older is actually

going to be reversed by a spiritual order where we

actually serve the younger. So we as Christian, we serve the

lost, not the other way around, because we are the older

brothers. That the texture of Scripture,

it's a texture of the cross. It's a covenant message.

Sorry, my, my mouth is getting a bit dry.

I have some water. Sorry, there's no word in

Pretoria. So it's a bit of a problem that

the texture of Scripture, one other thing that the Hebrew will

use, not just so that you can remember the text, so that you

can remember the texture. The older will serve the

younger. The Hebrew will also just miss

out a word from the from the scripture.

So if you know a scripture quite well purposely, they'll just

drop one word so that you can fill it.

In Isaiah 6, verse eight, the word of God says, who shall I

send? And then there was a silence.

God didn't say he was talking to Isaiah, but he didn't say Isaiah

want to send you. He just said, who shall I send?

So God dropped out the name of Isaiah.

Why? Because the Scripture is written

in such a way that we have to fill in the dot ourselves.

When God was saying, I've heard the wickedness or maybe the

wickedness of Nineveh has come to me, He didn't even have to

carry on by saying Jonah go because Jonah knew Isaiah.

He could have filled in the dot by just putting His name in.

But unfortunately, Jonah couldn't fill in the dot.

So sometimes the Scripture will just leave a blank so that we

can put in our name because God is wanting all of us to

participate in what He's doing. What is the dot that we have to

fill in? Whether you are MK veterans,

maybe maybe you are you're a farmer that has been so hurt by

the crime rate in this country. Maybe you are a girl that is

currently at Girls High. God is saying, who shall I send?

And it is for us to fill in the dot because the gospel is a

gospel where we participate in what God is doing.

And he's saying, will you fill in the dot and go?

Jonah said, no, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go.

And if we carry on looking at the parallelism, we look at the

parallelism, you realize that Jonah one verse one to two, the

Word of God came to Jonah. Jonah 3 verse one to two, the

Word of God came to Jonah parallel, another parallel.

And then in Jonah one verse one to two, God says the wickedness

go to Jonah because the wickedness have come before me.

But then when you go to Jonah 3 verse one to two, there's no

wickedness that is actually referred to there because God,

Jonah was supposed to know that when God sees wickedness on the

land and when he sends somebody, that wickedness is actually

going to disappear because my person, my, my, my prophet has

filled in his name to actually go there.

So Jonah understood, he knew exactly what he was supposed to

do. He knew that the other has

changed. He knew that he was a Hebrew.

If you go into Jonah one verse eight, I think they asked him,

who are you? He said, I am a Hebrew and I

serve the God of Israel. I know my calling.

I know the calling is to be the older brother that will serve

the younger brother. The younger brother is the rest

of the world. The younger brother is people

who are still lost. And as an older brother, I'll

serve them. I will go.

But Jonah didn't want to go. And the question is, why did he

not want to go? You know, as as we're going

through the scriptures, studying through Jonah's, I kept on

asking myself, why did he not want to go?

Jonah 4 verse one to two, he said I'm angry.

In fact, I'm displeased. I'm so displeased that I'm

angry. Interesting.

When you go into the concordance in the middle of your Bible,

Luke 1528 is actually the reference, the cross reference

to I am angry. I'm displeased.

If we know Luke 15, and I think we should know we've just come

out of Galatians. Luke 15 talks about the older

brother. This is the older brother that

was so angry that the younger brother has come home.

I am angry, God, because the younger brother has come home.

Jonah is saying I am angry because Nineveh has come home.

I am angry because Nineveh has wasted so much of my opportunity

and now Nineveh has come home. I'm angry because you have

accepted Nineveh. I was standing under my shelter

hoping that you're going to destroy Nineveh, but now you've

accepted Nineveh. I am angry.

I want to die. I would rather die than have the

younger brother come home. Parallelism.

The man, The same man that wanted to die from the fish from

the boat, rather also wanted to die because they're younger.

So the same anger that was with him in chapter one is the same

anger that is parallel in chapter 4.

There's a parallelism there and God is wanting to tell us a

story what is happening. What was what was he so angry

about? You know, there's a, there was a

shaking in Jonah's life in Revelation 3, verse 5 / 7, the

Revelation 3:5

God words comes to, I mean God's words comes to the, to the

people of Philadelphia and say stand strong.

I know where you are. I know you are living on a, on

a, on a land that is prone to earthquakes, just like Pretoria.

By the way, the name of Pretoria was Pretoria, Philadelphia.

I know what you're going through, the earthquakes.

There's always a problem, there's always something

shaking, but stand strong. I will make you a pillar in the

House of God. Stand strong.

There's a shaking but stand strong Philadelphia.

But then what happened is that the shaking became so much that

the change the name to from Philadelphia.

It became Neo Caesarea, which is the King Caesar.

So basically they named themselves after the king.

Mitchell Dyer said something quite profound when he was

preaching. The king responded because the

people responded to God. But here Philadelphia changed

their name so that they can be serving the king instead of

serving God. Philadelphia, Pretoria, there's

a shaking. Are you going, are we going to

to, to actually give up our name, which is Our Calling

Bradley love, Pretoria Bradley love.

There's a shaking. The shaking could be the

WhatsApp group 12 Girls 01212 twelve 1120 The shaking could be

that. But are we going to stop being

our brother's keeper? There's a shaking.

Maybe the shaking is how much one has lost, how much

inheritance we have lost because of the younger brother, the

Ninevite. You know, Jonah had lost a lot.

He had lost a lot because of the Ninevite.

People died in his family. I'm sure friend died, he lost a

lot. There was a shaking, but God is

saying, you know what, I'm actually going to show you

something. Another parallelism.

Look at the response of Nineveh as we were studying, I looked at

it and I thought, how come in Jonah 3 verse seven, I think

people of Nineveh or maybe the king decreed of fire a fast.

Sorry. And that fast was also covering

the animals. What type of a fast do you do

where you're actually forcing your dog to go on a fast?

I know women who don't fast because they are breastfeeding

because you don't want to cause somebody else to fast, whereas

that person doesn't have a will to fast.

But here the ninvite actually say where we know that our our

our animals don't have a world to fast, but we're actually

going to cause them to fast. What was happening, God is

drawing the attention or our attention, the attention of

Jonah to the fact that there was a great revival in Nineveh.

The revival was such that people accept not only they accepted to

serve God, but they accepted to to serve God with everything

that they had, even the kettle and they herd their possession.

You know, Eugene said. We are not going to go for cars,

We're not going to go for houses.

We're going to go for people. But how do you know?

How do we know that we have gone for people?

We know that we have gone for people when we can go with our

cars, with our houses, with our kettle.

Exodus 10 verse 26 says we will go with our animals because we

Exodus 10:26

need to go and worship God. Therefore we'll go with our

animals. Not a single hoof will remain

into the land. We will go with our animals.

And these are the people that were the sinful people, the

Ninevite. They were the cruel people.

They were the people that wanted to destroy everything.

But revival came to a place to them such that they decided that

they are not. They are going to go with their

possession. And Jonah wasn't pleased with

that. The father saying I'm going to

add so many people to you so that the story that you'll be

able to tell will be like the story of the Ninevite.

They were in the dark, the chasm was so big.

But their conversion will be such that the people that we are

waiting for, their conversion will be such that they will go

not just themselves only, but they will go with the cattle,

they will go with the possession, they will go with

the houses. They will be part of our story

that so and so was involved in this crime.

But now he's part of three CI. And as part of three CI, he's

going to go with his cattle, he's going to go with his

possession, with his Land Cruiser, with everything.

Are you going to be unhappy about that, like Jonah, or are

you going to celebrate that these people were lost, but now

they've come home? The younger brother went and

took everything. We lost so much, but now he's

back. Are we going to celebrate that?

Jonah couldn't celebrate that story.

Why couldn't celebrate because he thought that he had lost so

much. He thought that he had lost so

much. And God said, OK, you know what?

I'm actually going to paint a picture.

I'm going to show you how much you lost.

The scripture carries on. Jonah built a suka.

You know what is a suka? A suka is actually a shelter.

A shelter, but in South Africa, we're going to call it John

Dole, a shack. That was a suka.

Jonah built a suka and that's suka.

If you go into the history into into into the feast of Israel

was supposed to be something temporal.

If you could maybe just have the the picture, there was supposed

to be something temporal and God said, I'm Jonah said, I'm going

to to shelter myself by something temporal.

And God said, I'm actually going to show you something even more

profound. I'll make it a bit.

I'll, I'll give you an upgrade to Yosuka, to your, to your John

Dole. Have you seen, have you seen a

shack that has been upgraded? Go drive next to a Township.

You see a shack and sometime you see that they've got a DSTV.

It looks strange. Maybe you've got an upgrade.

Maybe you've got an upgrade. Maybe now it's not, it's not a

Sheikh, but actually God is saying, OK, I'll just give you,

you live on an estate now. Now it's an estate.

It's an Jean Dolo. But actually I'll put it on an

estate. Maybe I'll add some megs onto

that car. Maybe I'll put a sound roof, but

the picture is still the same. It's a temporal habitat.

It's still going to be destroyed even if it has got a land

departure warning sign or even if it has got, you know, speed.

What is that? Cruise control?

Even if it has got security, even if it is still a temporal

picture, it's an upgrade of a sukkah, an upgrade of a temporal

picture. And God painted the picture to

Jonah by actually getting a worm to come and eat it up.

Because whatever that is earthly will be eaten up so that we can

only build things that are eternal.

Because what is eternal will not be heated up, will not be eaten

up. It will remain.

But Jonah was investing into something that was temporal and

God painted a picture and said, I will upgrade it, but it will

still die. I will upgrade it, but it will

still be eaten by worms of this earth.

The Ninevite chose something that was eternal, the blood.

The blood they kept, the cows, they kept the animals so that,

like the Egyptian, they could also go and worship that same

God with the cows. Something eternal.

But he was holding on to something temporal.

And he got so upset because they took things away from him.

I wouldn't want to end without paying tribute to my Afrikaans

teacher. I was born on the 1st of July.

One of my spiritual heroes born on the 13th of July.

She lost. Mandela was born on the 18th of

July. On the same day that Mandela was

born, she lost her whole family in a car crash.

Husband, two sons, one day gone. But you know what the word of

God says in Matthew 10 verse 48, I will never actually verse 28,

I will never forget that Scripture because I've got the

understanding of that Scripture because she said I am looking

forward to the day that I will meet them again.

The temporal absence cannot be overwhelmed, more overwhelming

than the eternal presence that I'm going to enjoy with them

when I meet them again. She could have say, look at what

life has taken away from me. She could have say, like Jonah,

look at what the Nineveh have taken away from me.

She could have say like some of us who say, look at what that MK

veteran took away from me. Or she could have say, look at

those farm workers, look at what they've taken away from me.

But we only say that if our perspective is only temporal.

But if our perspective is eternal, we'll understand that

this is just a sukkah. We can upgrade it as much as we

want. Worms will still eat it.

But if we we know that we've got an eternal home, we're not going

to be upset by what we have lost.

And we will actually go and welcome even those very same

people that have been so harmful to us and say, come, let us be

part of the story. The story will be we were at

each other where brother dwells together.

It's not brothers that that that get along.

It's brothers that we're in conflict when they get together.

God commands his blessing. I'll finish with this picture.

I don't know if you know that that that picture, if I say that

she is Elizabeth Elliot, you probably know the story.

Two years. Her daughter's there, probably 2

years old. So when her husband left, she

was probably pregnant. He went to to Nicaragua,

somewhere there to preach the gospel.

Unfortunately, there were brutal people, almost like the

Ninovite. Kill them.

Two years later, after she mourned, she didn't say I want

to die. She went to the same village and

preach the gospel. She could have said, look at

what I've lost. But she probably said this was

temporal. But Jim is in heaven.

These are the people that killed him.

But now they'll become part of the story, just like AMK veteran

is now part of the story. We are going telling the good

news of Jesus, the grace of God, just like that, that that that

soldier that went to fight people in Angola because they

were they were they were communists who say I'm part of

the story. They took away something

temporal from me, but actually I'm going to go to that island

in Nicaragua or whatever it was. I will deposit something eternal

in that, in Jesus name, Amen.