Equipping the Saints with the Word of Christ

[0:00] love. That's the picture. So the mercy of God is the first color. It's this, the loving kindness. You can either look at steadfast love or loving kindness. Depending on your version, it's translated either way. Loving kindness is an incredibly wonderful, deep biblical word. But there's forgiveness that has to happen. You know, you don't just redeem without some accountability for sin.

[0:22] God had to forgive Jonah. Did he forgive Jonah? Did we see the word forgiveness? Well, let's look back on Jonah. When we look back in verse 6 of chapter 2, he says, this was at the lowest point. It says, at the roots of the mountains, I went down to the land whose bars closed over me forever.

[0:45] Yet you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. God's, again, the physical transition of Jonah mirrors his moral, spiritual decline. And yet God pulls him up. God had to either pardon in a sort of legal way or forgive the sins. This is the character of our God throughout his history.

[1:15] When, in Numbers 14, Moses has to intercede on Israel's behalf because they grumbled at, oh, the spies that are in there. We hear they're big and we don't want to go. Like, just send us back to, send us back. We don't want to go.

[1:32] And God, God actually wants to strike him. He wants to wipe him off and say, I'm going to start a new nation with you, Moses. And Moses intercedes. It's a picture of Christ interceding for us.

[1:43] And what does he use to describe the intercession? He actually uses the character of God back to God. He says, Let the power of the Lord be as great as you have promised, saying, the Lord is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression. And he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.

[2:10] Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt to now.

[2:23] Moses is calling on the forgiveness nature of God. It's also part of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31. The new covenant of Jeremiah 31 was given at a time when Israel was being taken into captivity.

[2:39] And there needed to be hope. And he gives them a hope when he talks to the future about what it's going to be like and why. And he says, For they shall know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity.

[2:55] I will remember their sin no more. Well, the sin had to be accounted for. We know where it was accounted for. We know on whom it was accounted. So this is the forgiving God.

[3:09] In fact, Jonah, looking ahead in our passage in verse 10 of chapter 3, God relents in destroying Nineveh because he saw the repentance of the Ninevites.

[3:24] He forgave them. Finally, we have this justification, this standing. Again, Jonah is given the exact same place he was given before.

[3:38] There is not an indication that there's not the trust that he had. It would have been right for him to pardon him and forgive him and say, But I'm going to go get another prophet to do this work.

[3:50] You're forgiven. Go back to Israel. Be a farmer. Do something else. You're not going to be a minister. That's not what he did. He does far more abundantly above all that we can ask or even think.

[4:04] Our benediction for today. There's a story. I charted it at the end of that first major point through Acts 13, 15, and 2 Timothy.

[4:16] I put the verses in your bulletin. This is the story of John Mark. John Mark was another man of God, a man used by God to minister that had to be redeemed.

[4:29] The story goes, he joined Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey in the early part of Acts 13. Acts 13, 13, it says, Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos to Perga in Pamphylia.

[4:43] Basically, this is off of the island of Cyprus, back to the mainland. And John left them. This is John Mark. John left them and returned to Jerusalem. No more word is said about it.

[4:54] We have no idea why John Mark left them. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he didn't like this whole preaching to Gentile thing. Maybe it was just too much stress. Acts 15, verses 36 to 39.

[5:09] And after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the word of God and see at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

[5:21] Jesus, this amazing sermon, right before he gets to the, on the solid rock, you build your house and then shifting sand, it's going to go away. Right before that whole passage in Matthew 7, verse 21, it says, he gives a stern warning.

[5:37] He says, That's scary.

[6:06] Let me tell you why it's, let me tell you why you can be assured that that scary, the scary nature of that doesn't have to concern you.

[6:19] When you plead Christ, you plead the one who knows God perfectly. And when you're in Christ, you're covered in Christ. But when you're in Christ, it means you now have a relationship.

[6:30] You have peace with God. You have peace with God. So you, the enmity isn't there. Now you can have the relationship that you've wanted. That's what it means. They're claiming their works.

[6:43] You see what they did? They said, did we not do this, this, and this? Uh-uh. That's not what we plead. We plead Christ's record. And then it means you know him. If you've pled Christ, you know him.

[6:54] But the point is, there's a relationship. Okay? The second aspect is holiness. So, sanctification, that's the same root word in sanctification is the same root word in holiness.

[7:07] It means set apart. It means set apart to do the work that God has called you. When instruments were called holy in the temple, it's because they were doing the work of the Lord. Like the coals and whatever and all the utensils.

[7:20] People, clothes, they were all called holy because all of them were involved in the service of the Lord. Now, we put perfection on that. We like to put a moral perfection.

[7:31] Now, they had to be clean. But the idea of holiness is still there. It's still set apart to do works for God. So, we have Jonah and the men, both in the end of chapter 1 and in chapter 2, both at the point of realization of what they've done and who this God is, both say they offer sacrifice and make vow.

[8:02] The men, after they threw Jonah in and the sea became calm, there was no more requirement. They didn't need God to bail them out of something.

[8:14] They didn't need to strike a deal where, hey, I'll do something for you here, God, if you can get me out of this. No, they were in awe of seeing this God of the universe display his glory. And they sacrifice and they make a vow.

[8:25] Jonah, in chapter 2, at the end of his prayer, talks about sacrifice and a vow. The holiness that is part of our relationship is seen in our obedience.

[8:37] It's an outflow of our sanctification, which the Holy Spirit works in us. Don't come away from this thinking we're earning, again, our points back with God. That's not what disobedience is.

[8:48] It's the natural outflow of what it is, of who we are. Finally, we're redeemed to glorify God. This isn't about us. This isn't about our proving out something to pat ourselves on the back.

[9:07] In fact, the beginning of that intercession that Moses had with Israel in Numbers 14, it's actually the first part of his plea to God wasn't what I read before.

[9:21] Earlier in verse 12 and 13 of Numbers 14, it says, when God says, I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.

[9:33] This is God telling Moses, I'm just going to wipe them out. Moses says this, then the Egyptians will hear of it. Further on it says, Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of your fame will say, it is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to them.

[10:06] Meaning, Moses is using God's reputation as a means of saving the people of Israel. Not the worth of Israel.

[10:17] It's the glory of the Lord. What are you going to look like, Lord? Again, God knew this was going to happen. He's not caught off guard and it's a plan B that he's rescuing. It was part of his plan.

[10:28] He wanted to use this picture of an intercessor. The intercessor that makes intercession on behalf of a people. And we have a great intercessor.

[10:45] We have one that is the author of our redemption. Christ has paid the ransom for you and me.

[10:57] As we look at God's mercy, forgiveness, and justification towards Jonah, we first ourselves now look to Christ. We see all the colors of what the Lord did with Jonah.

[11:12] He did through Christ for us. Christ is our mercy. In him we have the forgiveness of sins. He has redeemed us. He has fully redeemed us.

[11:24] It's not just a picture of the blood of sheep and goats that couldn't completely cover. It's the permanent blood. It's the eternal blood. The blood of the eternal covenant. I have the story of Hezekiah at the end of your bulletin.

[11:42] I have it there to show a little bit of what the picture of obedience looks like. I'll let you read through there. This is after Hezekiah rescued, turned the nation of Israel around as the first king in generations that actually obeyed the Lord as king and restored all of the laws and all of the sacrifices and all of the temple to the way God intended.

[12:08] And as the one of the few kings, He took away the high places. What do I mean by that? The high places were the places where their idol worship still He let remain.

[12:20] So many of the kings said they turned to the Lord, but they didn't take away the high places. They didn't let you touch this one part of their life. God, I'm not going to mess this up. I'm going to let them still have these idols.

[12:34] He took them away. And what do you have in this narrative is He asked certain people to bring sacrifices. Not only did those people bring sacrifices, but the whole country brought sacrifices and they brought a produce of the first fruits that was piled in heaps and Hezekiah was overwhelmed with the giving of the people.

[12:56] The obedience that was a result of their redemption was overwhelming. Hezekiah couldn't believe it. We're redeemed to obey. We're redeemed to be His people.

[13:10] What are your high places? Or low places? What are the places that you have not let the Lord in on? Turn it over to Him.

[13:23] Let God have it. Trust in the Christ of our redemption. Trust. Let the Spirit move you. The author of our sanctification is truly the Holy Spirit as He interacts in our lives.

[13:39] He's the one that sets us apart for good works. Not that we can glory in ourselves and not that it earns us anything, but it's the natural outflow of who we are in Christ. Turn to Him if you have not.

[13:54] He will give you heaps and heaps as the Hezekiah passage delineates. Let's pray. Father, we are humbled by your grace.

[14:08] We are humbled by your mercy. And we are humbled by your redemption. That you would redeem. That you would reach down and grab us out of the mire.

[14:19] To set your love upon us and in Christ rescue us. The songs that we sing help us to grasp it, but sometimes, Lord, it's overwhelming.

[14:33] Lord, we pray that you would send your Spirit to help us evermore. Lord, we cannot do it of our own. We are weak. Even in our redeemed condition, we have to remind ourselves, by your grace, that you have set us apart for yourselves.

[14:47] You have set us apart for your glory. Would you do that work in us today? In Jesus' name, amen.