Amazing Grace

We are studying the book of Jonah.

If you haven't been with us for a while and if you'd like a sermon outline or would like to borrow a Bible, just raise your hand.

Our restrooms will be happy to help you.

Each week the plot thickens in the book.

Like I said at the beginning, I'm not going to hurry through this book because there's so much here I think can benefit us in our walk with the Lord.

I'm just going to take my time.

We are taking a break, though, for Advent.

So beginning of December, all through December, we'll be studying on the coming of Christ and then we'll pick back up in Jonah the first of the year.

So we'll hit our brains on pause.

Hopefully you remember everything we said.

Otherwise I've got to start over.

So don't do that.

You remember when God called Jonah to leave his home in ministry in Israel and go to the pagan Assyrian city of Nineveh?

He didn't want to go.

He ran away.

He went in the opposite direction.

In response, god sent a violent storm, the hurricane forced storm on the sea that threatened to wreck the boat, and Jonah tells the sailors, after a little prodding, that to save themselves they must throw him overboard into the storm of God's wrath for his sin.

Well, they expected him to drown, but the sailors eventually reluctantly, threw Jonah in the raging sea and when they did, sure enough, the sea became perfectly calm.

Jonah also expected to die, but God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah and he saved him from drowning.

Now we're going to begin chapter two, jonah, chapter two today, which describes Jonah's dramatic turnaround from his descent into death to rising again to life in the Lord.

I'm going to break in chapter one, verse 15, and read a little bit into chapter two to get this story.

If you want to follow along, start in Jonah one, verse 15.

So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea.

The sea stopped its raging.

Then the men feared Yahweh greatly and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows.

Then Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord Yahweh, his God, from the stomach of the fish and he said I called out of my distress to Yahweh and he answered me.

I cried for help from the depth of Sheol and you heard my voice, for you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the current and gulfed me.

All your breakers and billows passed over me.

So I said I've been expelled from your sight.

Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple.

Water encompassed me to the point of death.

The great deep engulfed me.

Weeds were wrapped around my head.

I descended to the roots of the mountains.

The earth with its bars was around me forever.

But you have brought up my life from the pit, yahweh, my God.

The second chapter of Jonah stands out from the rest of the book for several reasons.

First, chapter two is written in the form of a poem or a song.

The rest of the book is a narrative.

Chapter two is a kind of ballad describing Jonah's journey back to God.

And in chapter two, verse four, if you want to circle it, that's the very center of the book of Jonah.

The very center that's important because there's something important happening here, the hinge of the book.

And that matter happens to be God's grace, which we'll talk about today.

You see, jonah is a religious professional.

He's got his advanced theology degree.

He worked in the school of the prophets.

He's a prophet of Yahweh, he's a man of God, but he is deeply, deeply in the dark about God's grace.

Jonah's deepest fears, his racial prejudice, his failure to obey God what we're going to learn are all tied to his blindness to the reality of God's grace in his life.

And it's the same with us, and that's kind of the lesson I want you to take with you.

So, right here at the center in verse four, jonah finally gets it.

He gets it In the climax of his prayer.

That I didn't read today, but I will get to.

This is an extremely important conclusion.

He reaches about God's grace in chapter two.

He learned this important lesson in chapter two, verses eight and nine, in the NIV.

I love that translation better than any others.

He says Jonah says those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

There it is.

This is the whole theme of Jonah, and Jonah knows he's forfeited.

He forfeited God's grace clinging to an idol.

We'll talk about that, not today, but when he gets that.

At that point not before the fish releases him he got God's grace.

He got it.

Well, we're going to talk about chapter two in the details next time and further, but today I want to talk about how Jonah discovered God's grace in the belly of the fish of all places, and how it changed his heart.

Grace is the theme of Jonah.

I've said before and it's extremely important Can't tell you how important it is that we learn from Jonah's lesson on God's grace.

A lot is at stake and ignorance of God's grace is really at the root of most every one of our spiritual problems in life.

That can be tracked to that.

Because that's what was happening to Jonah.

He didn't get it.

Hebrews 12.15 in the New Testament tells us see to it that no one comes short of the grace of God.

You know why?

Because if you come short of it, if you don't get it, all kinds of bitterness comes up, all kinds of stuff causes trouble, defilement.

I'm convinced after my study, our fears, our anger, our anxieties, our bitterness, our discouragements and all other spiritual melodies, like Jonah, can be tied to a failure, our failure to understand God's grace in our lives.

We don't get it, we think we do.

We're religious, we're believers in Jesus, we come to church, mark off all the right boxes ed, jonah and Jonah's showing us.

I think until we get it the way Jonah got it, we're going to be just a shadow of all that we could be in God's kingdom.

So today I want to talk about what God's grace is, how to find God's grace and how to grow in God's grace Very important, I think, a lesson for all of us.

There's so much at stake Understanding God's grace.

You might think you got this already.

I urge you to think again, because if you're really honest about your life, you can point to things you're having trouble with spiritually, and I can pretty much demonstrate.

You know why that is.

You don't get it.

You don't get his grace Anyway.

So let's talk about it.

It's foundational to everything else in our relationship with God.

Jonah was one of God's people.

He was a gifted prophet of Yahweh.

He knew the sacred scriptures.

He was used by God to speak to others, ministering, but when it came to God's grace, his failure to grasp it led him to rebel against his God and run away.

Where did that come from?

He didn't get it until the middle of chapter 2.

Oh, now I get it.

Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

Our relationship with God is based wholly on his grace.

You can't have a relationship without it with him, and it's also understanding his grace is the key to experiencing his presence and power in our lives, especially when we're in trouble like Jonah was Her understanding of God's grace started with the beginning.

It begins with the gospel of our salvation.

If we don't understand that, we cannot have a relationship with God, as Ephesians 2.8 says, for by grace you have been saved.

Through faith, you don't start there.

This is important, see, and where we get into trouble and I think I'm passionate about this because God really hit me with this I can see myself.

I see it.

God's grace is not something we understand once.

Oh yeah, I got it.

I believe in Jesus and by grace I'm saved.

That's fantastic.

That's where you start, but it's not something you stop.

That's where we mess up.

We think we got it, came to Jesus.

It's grace.

Now just go on with the rest of my life.

No, no, no, no, no.

That's where you begin to understand his grace, but it's something we have to grow in.

Listen to Peter 2, peter 3, 18, his final charge to them.

But grow.

Grow in the grace and knowledge, because if you grow in the grace, those are connected.

You will grow in knowing who God is, what he's doing.

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ.

God's grace cannot be exhausted.

Every turn in your life you can experience it brand new.

This is what's happening to Jonah.

That's why you can continue to grow in it.

There's always another facet opening up to you.

You didn't see that.

God's grace is kind of like a picture a huge mansion.

Have you ever been to a big mansion?

Try to walk through it.

You go in, you look around, you think you've seen it all, but you have not.

When you turn the corner and enter another hallway, it opens up into many unexplored rooms, other hallways you don't even know exist yet.

Same with God's grace.

Remember, the Navigator's Ministry headquarters is actually a castle in Colorado Springs, colorado.

I worked there for a summer when I was in college.

There it is, you walk in and there are spiraling staircases leading to various hallways.

The hallways lead to rows of rooms and in the rooms were hidden rooms behind wooden panels.

Those rooms led to other rooms.

It was very easy to get very lost.

It seemed like, even though you were familiar with the castle, you really never knew if you saw it all.

And this kind of way it is, with God's grace.

Every time you find a new hallway, a new room, a new wing of God's grace, like Jonah in chapter 2, verse 6, you are lifted up out of your trouble, holy cow, every time you enter the new hallway.

That's what's happening in chapter 2.

You can see something for the first time about God's grace he never saw before.

It changed him.

We continue to grow in God's grace as a Christian and in the process, like Jonah, we will grow in our personal knowledge of God.

Even though we grow in God's grace, the big change, the aha moment, the first time we really grasp it, is when we come to faith in Jesus after hearing and understanding the gospel.

Now, a very important verse that's linked to this, I think, is Colossians, chapter 1, verses 4 to 6, where Paul tells them he connects some ideas here.

Colossians 1:4–6

I think is connected to Jonah.

He said we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all God's people, the faith and the love that sprang from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.

In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace.

There it is.

Understanding.

It is the key to receiving it.

Notice that the key to our spiritual growth is connected to understanding God's grace.

How do we personally understand and find God's grace?

Not many of us get swallowed by a whale.

If you have, please let me know after the service.

Believing in Christ through the gospel is how we first understand God's grace.

God's grace, as Paul told us in Colossians, is received when we get it, when we understand it.

In the Bible, the word grace, ken in Hebrew, means favor, but God's grace goes way beyond our English idea of favor.

So I got to explore that for just a second To find favor of the kaijona grace.

Kaijona we see in Jonah In the Bible.

It means to be let back in to a place you have no right to be in a relationship.

To be let back in to a place you have no right to be.

That's grace.

I remember when my son Ryan was about seven years old, kids were playing outside.

While they were outside, linda decided to mop the kitchen floor and there's an outside door right on our, off our kitchen.

Ryan was playing for a while.

All of a sudden he comes in that side door where Linda just mopped the door, the floor, and Linda said no, ryan, you cannot come in here.

I just mopped the floor, go back out and go around.

So he shuts the door.

About two minutes later, linda hears a knock on the door.

So who is it?

Open up, honey, it's me, jim.

Uh-huh, no, you're not getting back in.

Okay, what a clever dude.

Anyway, here's a biblical example Jacob and Esau.

If you remember the story, jacob swindled his brother, esau, out of his inheritance and Esau wasn't too happy and was ready to kill Jacob.

So Jacob fled, fearing for his life.

Esau would take revenge.

Well, years later God told Jacob to go back, meet Esau, face to face with his brother.

Of course, jacob was scared to death.

He procrastinated, held off.

You know why.

He knew he had no right to be welcomed back into that relationship, no right whatsoever.

But he went and obeyed him to God, scared to death when they met.

Let me read the verse in Genesis 3310.

Jacob said to Esau Now, if I found favor, grace, grace in your sight, then take my present from my hand, for I see your face as one who sees the face of God and you have received me favorably, with grace.

There it is To be let back in.

That's God's grace.

Esau let Jacob back in even though he had no right to be let in and Esau was under no obligation to let him in.

That's a good definition of God's grace.

By the way, grace is favor granted to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.

Grace is being let back into a place you don't deserve to be in by a person who's absolutely not obligated to let you in that's grace.

If they let you in that's grace, this is how Jonah began to understand God's grace.

God let him back in.

Jonah 2.4.

So I said I have been expelled from your sight, I'm cast out, I'm out.

Jonah 2.6.

I descended to the roots of the mountains, the earth where this virus thrived.

But you but you have brought up my life from the pillar.

He let him in that's grace.

Jonah learned to understand personally find God's grace.

When he almost drowned, god saved him with a big fish and he knew it.

He didn't deserve to be let back in.

God was not obligated to let him back in.

So how do we begin to understand personally find God's grace?

In a sense, the same way Jonah did, only not with a fish.

Jonas shows us the gospel of God's grace.

Let me show it to you.

What do we need to understand about the gospel that helps us understand and personally find God's grace.

The same principles in the gospel apply to any time we are in the church.

First thing we must understand about the gospel is the extreme danger we are in.

Every person, every single person, is accountable to God for the sins they've committed, and God's judgment for sin is death, not just temporal physical death, but ultimately, more significantly, our eternal spiritual death.

Everyone has sinned against God.

All have sinned Romans 3, 23, and fall short of the glory of God.

We're in extreme danger.

Second thing we need to understand about the gospel is how undeserving we are to be spared God's judgment.

Just like Jonah, god's not obligated to save us.

He's perfectly just and righteous to let his judgment fall on us for our sins.

Do we get that?

Do we know that no one is good enough to pass God's judgment?

And if you read Revelation, chapter 20, the final judgment, god's judgment for sin results in without Jesus, results in being cast into hell forever, separated from the presence of God, and like Jonah, unless God intervenes but God, unless God intervenes we're done, for we will perish forever.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

Third thing we must understand about the gospel is how God saves us from his wrath for our sins.

God didn't send a fish to save us.

He sent his son, and we need to be in his son, needs to be in us and we in him.

He took our sins on himself to receive God's judgment for our sins instead of us, in order to save us from perishing forever.

God sent Jesus who, by the way, in ancient times in the New Testament, his initials actually work out to be the Greek word fish.

Interesting.

First, peter 318,.

For Christ also suffered once for sins the righteous that's him, for the unrighteous that's us so he could bring us to God.

He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit.

And because Jesus died for our sins, those who believe in him and receive him as Savior will not perish forever.

They'll have everlasting life, as John 316, so well Jesus tells us there.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Whoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life.

In fact, according to Revelation 20 and John 5.24, those who do believe in Jesus won't even come into God's judgment, because Jesus was sacrificed for our sins once and for all.

John 5.24, jesus said truly, truly, I say to you you here's my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

I was expelled from your presence, but you brought my life up.

Fourth thing we need to understand about the gospel is that our salvation that Jesus provides is a free gift from God.

He's not obligated and we're undeserving.

Romans 6.23,.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift underline that free gift of God's eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

It's not something we salvation is not something we earn.

It's something we receive as a gift.

Listen to Ephesians 2.8 and 9,.

No, many of you know this as well.

For by grace, by grace, undeserving recipient, unobligated giver.

By grace, you've been saved through faith.

That's not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one could boast when we believe in Jesus.

To sum that up God lets us in.

He lets us in A profound theological statement in the New Testament is to be in Christ.

He lets us in.

He lets us into His presence through our faith in Jesus.

He lets us into the family of God through Jesus.

He listens to us as His children.

He meets our needs as His children.

He let us in, don't ever get over that.

The reason God's grace strikes us so deeply is because I believe it meets really a core, fundamental human need we all have.

We all share it.

It's the need we all have to be received.

We want to be let in.

It's relationships, we want to be on the inside of the significant people in our life.

It's a core human need to be let in.

Being let in means they like us, it means they love us, it means they want to be with us.

We let in I don't know, some of you may remember this when Sally Field maybe some of you don't know her, but Sally Field actress won an Oscar for her role at Places in the Heart in 1985.

While she's at the podium, she literally could not hold back her joy after years and years and years of acting.

Here's what she said what I wanted more than anything was your respect.

The first time I couldn't feel it.

It was so new.

But this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you like me.

You really like me.

This was the apex of her life.

She finally felt that they let her in.

There's no feeling like that.

By the way, I felt that way.

On June 11, when you surprised me for my 30th anniversary here's your pastor.

I couldn't believe it.

I was saying the same thing you like me, you want me to stay with you.

Wow, was that ever cool?

Wow, thank you.

I felt like Sally Field.

Wow, thirty years it took you, but never too late.

No, that was wonderful.

That's the feeling we like you, we love you, we want to be with you.

That's to be let in, and God feels that way about you when you believed in Jesus.

But ultimately, we are all restless until the one person lets us in who really counts God himself, our creator, yahweh.

We're all be restless till he lets us in.

Do we know him?

The good news of the gospel is that we can be received all the way in to our creator's presence when we believe in Jesus.

God helped Jonah personally understand his grace by revealing the danger he was in without it off to himself, and then by intervening to save him.

Now because Jonah deserved it, now because God was obligated to do it, but by sheer grace, and Jonah got that in verse 8 and 9.

Here's a good summary of the Christian doctrine of grace that I found.

No human being is so good that they don't need God's grace.

They know human being is so bad they can't find God's grace.

That's good.

It keeps us humble.

The words but God are at the heart of the gospel of grace.

Ephesians 2, 3, and 5, paul says we were by nature, by nature, children of wrath, even as everybody else.

Here it is, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which you love us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, and since God made us alive.

Here's Jonah, chapter 2,.

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

He made us alive Together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

Look, if you never have believed in Jesus, I invite you to believe in him as your Savior.

Receive the free gift of eternal life by God's grace.

Listen to me if you have believed in Jesus and received God's grace at least for the first time, let me answer this as we finish up how do you grow in God's grace?

Let me give you two things that have helped me, even as a result of this study.

Actually, two things to do every day.

You want to grow.

The first thing, I think, is to preach the gospel to yourself every single day, because we so quickly forget how much danger we were in and what God did so.

I was lost and you found here's the gospel you could preach to yourself every day.

I was lost and you found me.

I was dead in sin and you gave me life.

I was far away from you and you brought me near.

I was headed for hell without you.

You gave me heaven with you all because of your grace, through faith in Jesus.

If we don't remember that, we're going to stunt our spiritual growth.

The gospel is easy to forget but we just continue on like everything's just the same.

We'll stun our spiritual growth and we'll start thinking God, probably let us back in because we're special, we proudly deserved it.

Look at all those other people.

You don't want to do that.

That's what Jonah was doing.

When we do that, when we start taking it for granted, we move away from really understanding God's grace, and failing to understand it causes real problems in our lives, just like it did for Jonah.

Galatians, chapter 1-6.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

Paul says to the Galatians I'm amazed.

These are very strong words, so important was them to adhere.

Cling to the gospel, verbatim.

Here's what he said I am amazed.

Now these are believers.

See, they've come into church every single day.

I'm amazed You're so quickly deserving him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, and it is Once you are thinking otherwise about yourself and God's favor.

You're looking at a different gospel.

So I actually keep this little card with me.

It's called a gospel reminder and I read through this every morning.

Why I want to preach the gospel to myself.

My salvation is not based on me.

And it says I was lost.

You found me.

I was dead in sin and you gave me life.

I was far away from you.

You brought me near.

I was headed for hell without you.

You gave me heaven with you, all because of your grace, through faith in Jesus.

Now I printed off a number of these down here on this little table.

If you'd like to take one with you, you can come and grab one after the service if it'll help you.

It's helped me because my mind goes right back to, and by that we're just preaching the gospel to ourselves.

Do that?

That's the first thing.

Second thing I think is important to do every day is confess your sins to God.

Every day you say oh, I haven't sinned Really.

Oh, boy, we got another problem.

When we lose sight of our own sin, we literally stop understanding grace frozen.

You say what sin?

What are you talking about?

I'm a good guy, I'm a good person.

Read your Bible Pride, arrogance, selfishness, greed, lust, lying, idolatry, lack of love, not helping, not giving, gossip, self-righteousness, anger, immorality, disobedience.

Would you like me to go on, maybe make a list and say okay, lord, search me, as Psalm 139, 23 says.

What do I got to look at today?

Okay, because you're still a sinner.

Unfortunately, I am identifying and admitting to God when we've sinned allows us, allows us to experience His grace again and again and again, reminding us when we do that every time he's letting us back in First, john 1, 8, and 9.

If we say we have no sin, we are just deceiving ourselves.

The truth isn't in us.

But if we confess our sins to God, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Come back in Confession.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you today for the book of Jonah, who really does help us understand your amazing grace.

You rescued him from certain death because of his sin.

You rescued us from our sin and eternal death by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus.

We were dead in our trespass and sin, but you demonstrated your love toward us while we were yet sinners.

Christ died for us.

Father, we acknowledge by your grace.

We are saved.

By your grace we are here together today to sing grateful songs of praise to you because of what Jesus did for us.

Help us to go in the spirit of your grace this week.

Help us to preach the gospel to ourselves every day and to make sure we're keeping short accounts of sin with you so that we might remember every time, over and over again.

You're the one who let us back in.

I pray in Jesus' name, amen.