Turning to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12. While you're turning, let me just remind you I had to vacate the pulpit pretty quickly after the prayer to get a cough drop or something to try and carry me through the rest of the service here. I didn't give any announcements, but I do want to remind you that we do come, Lord willing, this evening to the Lord's Table, the first Lord's Day of the month. Mindful of that, let us make preparation in our hearts and ask the Lord to be near to us tonight as we gather around the table together. So in our evening service tonight, be mindful of that. Matthew chapter 12, we are continuing our studies in the prophecy of Jonah, or of the prophet Jonah. But we have concluded our brief journey through the chapters of his little prophecy. I want us, Lord willing, beginning today, to turn our thoughts to the New Testament scriptures. As you'll see here, Jonah finds notable mention in the New Testament as well. But a brief reading this morning, Matthew chapter 12, beginning in verse 38. Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For if Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonas. And behold, a greater than Jonas is here. A gracious Heavenly Father, we enter your presence again today, and we come confessing our need of cleansing. And yet, Lord, we come confessing that as we have sung and rejoiced in your praise today, that you have in the blood of Christ taken away all the sins of your people. Lord, we rejoice today that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Lord, we also rejoice today to confess that your word speaks to us directly not only of our sins being removed from us and placed upon Christ, but of his righteousness being taken and counted as ours. And Lord, we reckon upon that today. And we thank thee for the smile of God upon his believing people. And we pray that this very day, this very hour, you'll look upon us and smile, that you will give us help as we consider together your word, Lord, that we might look at it aright and understand and that we might go away having received a blessing in your house, thoughts of Christ, words that will exalt him in this place, that he might, as we've even received instruction, give him preeminence in all things. So, Lord, we commit this to you in his name and ask you now to bless us in Jesus' name. Amen. The last weeks as we have journeyed together somewhat with Jonah the prophet. We have perhaps just here and there sought to remind ourselves of the great theme of his prophecy. Jonah had a lot of different ups and downs in his own experience. He had some great struggles. He had some great lows. He had some great sins. He also knew some great mountaintop experiences. He had some real experience with God. He had some real experience and enjoyment of forgiveness. He enjoyed even powerful ministry, though he struggled with its results. The Lord used him and owned his ministry in a mighty and a great way. Perhaps, as we have seen, he wanted to be used in other places and in other ways, and the Lord did not see fit to do that. But the Lord did see fit to bless him and to use him. And in all of that, we said that we read through this theme in the prophecy of the sovereignty of God. That God is God, and we are, as His believing people, to let Him be God. We're not to judge His actions by feeble sense. We're not to alter our response to Him by our sense. That's walking by sight, rather than by faith walking. and obeying him, even when we do not understand what he is doing. We saw last Lord's Day in particular as we came to chapter 4 and saw Jonah's anger, that it was in this unbelief, in this sense in which he missed, at least at that point in his experience, the very theme of his book, the sovereignty of God, salvation, as Jonah himself said, is of the Lord. It would not then be any surprise as we see that theme of God's sovereignty, as we've seen already in our studies, much gospel light shining through his book, that we come to the New Testament and find Jonah is taken up by the Lord, that Jonah is used by the Lord Jesus in his own ministry to give illustration to those that he ministered to. We read this portion here. It has its parallel as well. Christ looks at Jonah. He speaks of Jonah and he says in verse 41 in particular that these that have repented at the preaching of Jonas and yet are greater than Jonas is here. Christ sees in Jonah a type of himself. We can go further and actually what we hope to do over the next few weeks is to see that there are three ways in which Jonah is a parallel or is someone to teach us of the ministry of our own Savior. Jonah, we find, is a type of Christ. The Lord brings it out and even uses the language of typology. As Jonah was three days and three nights, etc., even so the Son of Man. As Jonah, even so Christ. Jonah is a type of Christ. We'll also see as we come, Lord willing, next time together, as you read in the prophecy here, a greater than Jonah is here, that not only is Jonah a type of Christ, but there's a contrast that is contained in the type. Jonah is one thing, Christ is another. Jonah had a great ministry, Christ is far greater. Greater than Jonah is here. And Jonah finds himself in the list, even as the Lord used that word of Solomon. A greater than Solomon is here. So not only is Jonah a type of Christ, But we'll find, Lord willing, next time, a contrast between the two. And then finally, perhaps the most significant thing, is that Jonah is a sign. Christ said to this generation that was rejecting his message of grace, that they would not receive a sign. That's what they asked for. That's the introduction to this passage and why the Lord brings Jonah into the picture when he speaks to these people. He says, there's not a sign going to be given you except this one. the sign of the prophet Jonah. So a type, a contrast, and also a sign. These things that the Lord ascribes to Jonah, our little prophet tucked away. And I want us, Lord willing, over these next weeks to focus upon this New Testament reflection upon Jonah and see how we have in him a very wonderful picture of our Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jonah himself, also a prophet from Galilee, from Gathipher. But today, if you would join with me, and let us consider the first of these then, and that is that in Jonah we have a great type of Christ. And I want to just put before you today three very simple thoughts. The first of these, in a sense, we've anticipated in our opening study when we did a little bit with the historical and theological background of the prophecy of Jonah. But I want us to be reminded of that today as we see him as a type. Because in Jonah, we have in his ministry, as well as in the ministry of Christ, the severance of a partition. The severance of a partition. Jonah, you recall, is a minister to the people of Israel. And yet God calls Jonah to his amazement, to his dismay, and to his stumble. He calls him to go minister to a different people. He calls him not to minister in Israel where his heart and his burden was and the people that had such heritage and tradition and received the word of God. They were an apostasy. They were in need. They needed faithful preachers. They were few in number. And yet God sends him to go preach to the Gentiles. And again, this nearly overwhelmed our prophet. But I say, even in this, this that caused Jonah to struggle, we find a wonderful part of his being a type of Christ. There was, as we said, the severance of a partition. There's a harbinger of that great day of the gospel in which now the gospel is going to every nation, to every tribe and tongue and kindred. And there's a little window of that in the prophecy of Jonah, as Jonah goes and he ministers to this, the capital of the Gentile world. I want this morning for a few moments, and particularly if you are relatively new to us here, I want to turn you to some scriptures to understand in this perspective one of the very kernels or hearts of the theological system of the Reformation, what is embraced and unfolded in our Reformation creed, the Westminster Confession, and the other creeds that were built upon this. It is called popularly, or perhaps we should say in our generation, pretty unpopularly, covenant theology. And yet, this is, we believe, the theology that we see throughout the scriptures. I want you to turn with me for a moment back to the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 17. While you're turning, let me just try and set the stage from the scriptures that precede our passage in Genesis. But in Genesis 17, we have here, early in the life and ministry of Abraham, a most significant event. That is the institution of the Old Testament ritual of circumcision. But understand with me, even prior to this time, God has been dealing with the people of the world. God, in the call of Abraham, was calling out a man of whom he would make a great nation. in his descendants. He would form the nation of Israel out of those descendants. And even as you see one of the great themes in studies of the Old Testament, there is a broad perspective at the beginning and it just continues to narrow and narrow and narrow until you get down to the very person of Christ Himself. You have God dealing with the seed of the woman and saving a people and calling a people out of the mass of those that fell in Adam. You have been from these people subsequent to the flood and God's judgment upon ungodliness there, he preserved some of that seed of woman he promised to deal with. And in the family of Noah, he preserved the human race and repopulated the world. And out of these peoples then he called Abraham, who we'll see in a moment in our chapter. From Abraham he formed a nation. In that nation, he promised that the seed would come. And in Abraham and in his seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed. I mean, this is just the giant theme and outline of the Bible. And as you follow that progression, the funnel begins to narrow. Not only now is it the nation that he formed from Abraham, but it's going to be through particular tribes. The tribe of Judah. And Judah, the family and the offspring of David. And it just funnels right down until you come to Christ Himself. hear the fulfillment of God's promise. But I say in all the unfolding of God's promise, that one promise of salvation, in all the different changes in the outworking of God's dealing with His people, there has always been one body of people, one body of redeemed men that He has taken out of Adam and He has united to Christ. You can illustrate it in a sense this way, one of the competing systems in our modern age of the church, that of dispensationalism, and in a real sense the same is true of what some call a new covenant theology. If you could take history, the history of the earth, and make it a line, we distinguish underneath the line different segments of history. We can even use the biblical term and call these dispensations. And we see that there are various changes in the ways in which God deals with his people in between these little cliques underneath the line. But the difference between covenant theology and these other systems is that covenant theology doesn't let, if we could picture it this way, any of those little cliques from underneath the line creep up above the line. We see that above the line there is a unity. There is an organic and spiritual unity among all of God's saved people no matter what age they live in throughout the history of this earth. There are one body that are taken out of Adam and placed into the second Adam. There are one body of people that are united to Jesus Christ. And in being united to Christ as the only way of being redeemed, as the only way of ever being saved, this body has something in common with each other. There is an organic unity to them. And I say it doesn't matter whether there be various administrative differences, various ecclesiastical differences in between these little divisions underneath the line. There can be different types of distinctions under there. Most notably, we don't offer sacrifices today. They did in the age of the people of Israel. That's a significant distinction. But it's ceremonial. It's outward. It's a ritual distinction. It's not a spiritual distinction. It doesn't mark us as belonging to a different group of saved people. It doesn't mark us as having a different Savior. It doesn't mark us as having a different promise, a different covenant, any of these things. And I say, as we look through the Scriptures, we find this unity is presented. And I've turned you to Genesis 17 because obviously prior to this point, In Abraham's call and his experience, that nation of Israel and that distinct part of history hadn't been brought into being. But had God not been saving a people prior to this? We understand we're pretty early in our Bibles. You get to that part in your binding. I've got a new Bible. I'm trying to make sure it's broken in right and good. It doesn't look quite as well made as the one my wife bought, or my fiancé bought. twenty more than that years ago now, but pretty early in here, trying to be careful not to break the seam or any of the stitches there. We're early in our Bibles, but over a third of history has already gone by, by the time we get to this point in our Scriptures. That's a significant group of people, and there are many as we see in the story already, and is even reflected in Hebrews 11. Many saved people already there. We have something in common with them. We have a spiritual bond with them. We've been brought into Christ with them. But now as we come to Abraham and to his descendants in the nation of Israel where these competing systems draw up the most distinction, let us read here what we find. Circumcision, that initiatory ritual whereby people were admitted into this community. We read here, I don't want to take time to read the whole chapter, but the latter half of the chapter, verse 10, let's read together. This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me and you, and thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised. Ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a token of the covenant between me and you. He that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you. Every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised, and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people, he hath broken my covenant." Now, we've just read a snippet in the middle here. But what I put before you here is this. This is a point in the history in which God was narrowing his focus. He was now going to deal in a particular way with this particular people of the nation of Israel. But even in that dispensation, even in that age, there was a recognition that others could be brought into this covenant. You read in Genesis 17 in the institution of circumcision, we have here the establishment the recognition of a covenant community, if you will, a community that named the name of Christ, a community that take God's name upon it. And here we have, as God outlines it for Abraham, the possibility, yea, even the necessity, of any believers that are brought into this community, any from outside that aren't of the seed, the physical seed, yet there to receive the sign of the covenant as they're brought into the community. So we have here Gentiles that are not physical descendants recognized. But then you read on, and it says of the man-child who isn't circumcised, that soul should be cut off from among his people. So you have a community into which believing outsiders might be received, and from which unbelieving insiders must be distinguished. And so even at this point of the narrowing of focus, the breadth of God's promise, the unity of God's people is clearly seen. Now, as we go back to our particular story, Jonah is living in a time in which God had narrowed that focus. God was working in a peculiar way. You see, even the designs and the responsibilities that belong to the nation That they were to be themselves a light to the Gentiles. They were to be their dwelling in the midst of the nations, bringing them in. And you see Israel's great failure. You see Israel's apostasy. Rather than influencing those round about her in the right direction, Israel was influenced in the wrong direction and brought in heathenism to her own borders. And it's for that reason the Lord ultimately chastened them and drove them out of the land. It's only by the miraculous intervention of God that we see the promise fulfilled. Even the promise of Genesis 49, that the scepter would not depart from Judah until Shiloh came. Israel and then finally Judah were taken to captivity to these powerful and vast Gentile empires. But God brought a remnant back. And it's amazing as you read the story and as you even get into Genesis or to Matthew and to the other accounts and you see the genealogies of Christ himself, the great promise, and God fulfilling and keeping that promise through the remnant. We live, as we suggested in that opening study, in a time of God's chastening and sifting of that nation. God is now provoking them to jealousy by letting the gospel go throughout all the world. In the very chapter in the New Testament, Romans 11, in which we see this outlined and described and explained for us, we have an image that teaches us the same thing we find in Genesis 17. If you look over in Romans chapter 11, we'll just quickly turn there for a moment. But in Romans chapter 11, as the Lord outlines this provoking of Israel to jealousy and God setting them corporately aside, It doesn't mean there are no individual Jews being converted in this age. Obviously there are. The writer of this very epistle is one of them. But what God has done is He has judicially now set them, by and large, aside corporately. But He is now taking out of the other nations, calling out of them a people for His name. And what is He doing? He is grafting us. He uses the illustration of an olive tree. And he says here, this is an olive tree that by nature, you can see the natural seed as it's outlined here. There are going to be unbelievers that are going to be broken off from this tree. Just as in Genesis 17, the soul that is not circumcised, the soul that is in unbelief and not in conformity to God's will and way, that soul should be cut off from among his people. So it is here. And the image, there are some of the natural branches that are broken off. And some of us wild branches are grafted in." Now again, what does he have here? He has one tree. I was this week speaking, actually for a couple of hours, to a young believer in our city that had been directed to me, asking some of these very questions. He had written out on his paper some of his studies and his thoughts, and he said, as I come to Romans 11 and I see the picture of the olive tree here, what I've been taught and been hearing in this other system, that you're going to have to have at least two, maybe more trees. But there's only one tree. Again, here's this one covenant community from which unbelievers are cut off and into which believers, no matter what nationality they come from, into which believers are grafted. This is the one picture of that covenant unity of God's people. But I say in Jonah, we come today to understand and see a picture of a mighty severance of partition. In Jonah's day, Jonah lived in one of those days of the narrowing of God's focus, but yet the Lord sent him to a people, of all people, that were strangers and aliens from the covenants They hadn't been recipients of the oracles of God. They didn't have the advantages of the Scriptures. And yet, God took of this prophet from Galilee and sent him over to this part of the Gentile world that many of these might repent and come out from under the judgment of God. Many of them even coming to know conversion to Christ. And I say in this way, is not Jonah a great type of our Savior in the severance of a partition. God is going forth and building this people that he will unite to Jesus Christ. Jonah stands for us as a very small and faint picture of the one prophet who has now sent his word throughout all the world. We sit in this very room today, a people that are the direct recipients of this gracious promise, of this gracious overflow of the grace of God that the word of Christ has come forth to us in the far corners of the world. We were a people, and we can understand it now. There have been days of revival among the Gentiles. There have been days of such revival that the scriptures came to permeate Gentile society. Our very nation, in its history, is illustrative of that. We can rejoice in it. What we see now is apostasy has entered in. We see the Gentiles and the pagan thinking, and all of these grievous sins are coming right back upon us. I don't want to divert too far or steal any thunder from a thought I hope to share this evening as we gather around the table. Friends, let me say what I've said many times before, but say again. come in our understanding to a realization that we're strangers and pilgrims in a perverse generation. Our society that was so influenced by the gospel became, in a sense, a society where Christians could let their hair down, as it were. There were a lot of props There were a lot of places in our society where the influence of Scripture, the law of God had gone forth and been incorporated by the masses. Those days, these things have piece by piece been attacked and let go, whether attacked by those rampant ungodly unbelievers, or even let slip by the church itself as we've seen so often in our day. And I really believe You want to look at the Gentiles, you look at the world and its wickedness and its sin? Yeah, you can look back to sin and to depravity, but one of the root causes when society is overrun by sin is the failure of the church. The influence of salt and light has ceased. If I can just say here, in a sense a pet peeve of mine for the current generation, our influence is salt and light. cannot begin to touch our society again in an outward administrative way. The only way we'll have an impact on our society is from a spiritual way. Being salt and light within it. You don't just legislate the outward particulars of God's law and say if we all keep these particular rules we're all great. You do that you have the very wicked and adulterous generation that Christ is speaking to in Matthew 12. A people that looked to themselves and said, we're okay, because we've kept these rules. Look at the laws that are in our nation and how we differ from the other nations. Christ said the minute men are going to rise up in the judgment and condemn this generation, then you don't have the gospel. They rejected the very Messiah that God had promised throughout their scripture. I know we've touched and gone to different directions, but I say even in this little window, Joan, as a type of Christ, the severance of a partition, that the gospel is a gospel of grace. And it is the same grace that will save people of any tribe and tongue and kindred. And it will be people from those tribes and tongues and kindreds that we read in Revelation that will be singing the glories of the Lamb. The severance of a partition. But secondly, this morning, I believe Jonah serves as a type of Christ for us in the satisfaction of a penalty. You remember back in our story, really beautiful and brief in the prophecy of Jonah. But as Jonah's disobedience and in his sin is fleeing from the Lord, as he is seeking now to disobey and go by his own wisdom rather than by faith, obey simply what God has said. Jonah flees. Hires himself into a ship going to Tarsus, as far away as he can get. The ship sails. The storm descends upon the sea. It is of such a violent nature we've read and seen of even these hardened sailors and themselves, experienced men. They fear for their lives. They throw all the wares off the ship, but still there's no hope it appears. They come then to the place where men turn finally when there's no hope anywhere else. They start to pray. Of course, as we read the story, God discovers unto them what's happened. Jonah is revealed, the lot falls upon him, and Jonah speaks and tells them the truth. He proclaims who he is and who God is that made the sea and the dry land. And the sea won't be calm until Jonah is thrown in. I believe in this. We find in Jonah a type of our Savior. the satisfaction of a penalty. Jonah in this itself is a type of Christ. Now, understand with me here the different spheres of God's judgment. God lives and rules and reigns over all things. And we know that ultimately there is only one sacrifice for sin, that's the sacrifice of Christ. So Jonah isn't offering here an atonement for his soul. But yet, in some of the smaller spheres of God's judgment, there are particular crimes, particular sins, particular offenses that God says must be dealt with in a particular way. You see that in the nation of Israel, the civil laws that governed that people. And in a great sense, it is one of these laws that God brings to bear upon Jonah. Here is one that under his great high priest, under his king, all of these things that God was to the nation, that God certainly was to the prophet, an officer, if you will, in that nation and in that army, Jonah has committed a crime against his head. And it is a crime, as there were many crimes seen in that time, worthy even of death. We've wrestled with even the question of whether Jonah actually died in the fish or not. Be that as it may, I say there is here in picture in a small way a type of our Savior and the satisfaction of the penalty. I was very tempted today to read a few paragraphs from Hugh Martin's commentary on Jonah, because in our last few years there has been a great resurgence of interest and rebellion against capital punishment in our nation. Interestingly, this effort is being led by in many cases religious leaders, ministers in churches. Hugh Martin, who ministered more than a century and a half ago, had interesting comments about the motives behind seeking to overturn capital punishment. He says, what it is, is it is seeking, if I could seek to summarize here, to get out from under the whole issue of the payment of a penalty. All the efforts then come to the reformation of the criminal, if we can work with him in a certain way and perhaps maybe imprison him and keep him from doing these things again until we're sure he's a changed man and etc., etc., etc. You just see how our modern system has come to work. He says all of this to avoid the one issue that is hated of the mind of the flesh, and that is a penalty that God's law demands. Now here, penalties that are demanded in this smaller sphere. of human government and of our own relations one to another. But it's just a reflection there of their hatred of the fact and of the necessity of a penalty in the ultimate arena of God's judgment. Of God ever dealing with sin. God has a law. And that law demands that sinners be punished. And the punishment for sin is death. And it's amazing. Do you come to understand and read through the Scripture all the different aspects of sin and its hardness and what it brings? That the Lord would summarize these things in the one word, death. Consider that in contrast to life. Death has at its root separation. We think of death when our heart stops beating and the body ceases to function. And there is a sense in which obviously there is a physical death there. There is a literal death that occurs. But the thing that is in a sense more basic is that the soul is separated from the body. This shell is not inhabited anymore. The soul is gone. And in a real sense, that shows us what death is. Separation. Alienation from God, the author of life. That is how men in eternity in hell will be, if we can get back in our narrow thinking, alive. They'll be conscious. They'll be living. But they'll be living an eternal death, an eternal alienation from God, an eternal alienation from all that is good, from all of the blessing of life. and connectedness to God and even connectedness to other people. I don't know about that much even in this very week. God has created us. We can't get away from the facts of creation. God created us to breathe oxygen. You hop on a space shuttle and you go up and you don't provide oxygen. You're going to die. Why? Because God created you to need oxygen. You can illustrate that in so many ways. God created us, we need social interaction, we're social creatures. I think there are times in which here, maybe it's because of the fall, which we need privacy, we need solitude as well, to reflect and heal our hearts. Men will seek a group, they will seek someone to belong to, and that's why the poles of the world are so great. We get to thinking in that lowest common denominator. What connects us to other people? Well, if I believe this and do this and don't do that and don't do the other thing, look how many people that cuts me off from. We need to rejoice in the bond we have as believers in Christ in the community and the faithful. The bond we have with believers and those of like precious faith. And to jealously rejoice and guard that community. And even from the influences of the death. that surrounds us. But I say in all rebellion of man there is a desire to get out from under the simple fact that God is holy, that he has a law, and that that law must be honored or God will cease to be God. The scripture says the wages of sin is death. The breach of that covenant is death. And Jonah here is one, I say, in a smaller sphere, and in a smaller question, has transgressed the law. And these men, as they seek to come out from under the storm, to get themselves freed from this danger, they seek to do all kind of things. They cry out to other gods. They throw the cargo of the ship overboard. It's amazing, even after Jonah has related to them the story. That he's to blame, that the storm's because of him. It says, even after they'd lightened the ship, that the men rode hard to bring it to land. They tried everything. And I say, in that smaller arena, there was some nobility to their efforts. But if you take the application to the spiritual arena, what does the sinner seek to do? To lighten the load. And is this not the case very often, particularly when the Spirit of God begins to deal in the heart of an individual, brings him under conviction? You know, friends, that's something we don't hear a lot about anymore. I even thought about recently in my own preaching, conviction of sin. The sin to be present and the Spirit of God to move upon our hearts and convince us of it, that we might turn from it. even as believers. But for the unbeliever, when he begins to be convicted of his sin as the Spirit of God stirs his heart and shows him his guilt and his crime, what's the first thing that normally happens? What is the first response? The flesh says, I've got a problem. And he starts to unload the cargo. Yeah, I've been doing some bad stuff. I've got to stop doing this. I've got to stop doing that. I've got to clean up my life. I've got to turn over a new leaf. How many times have we seen sinners in doing that? They even go beyond lightening the load. They get into the territory of rowing. You know, I'm going to stop doing this stuff and I'm going to start doing this stuff. And it's going to be better. It's going to be different. Particularly as a minister, when I get introduced to people or meet people that already know me, Very interesting at times, where the conversation immediately goes to lightening the cargo and rowing the boat. Friends, when we have gospel thinking, the conversation goes to Christ. Here I say, the satisfaction of the penitent. That storm would not cease. It wouldn't cease for the throwing of the wares overboard. It wouldn't cease for the rowing hard and trying to bring the boat to land. The storm demanded something. It demanded Jonah. Friends, that's exactly what the wrath of God against our sin demands. It demands me. And here is the beauty of the gospel. In the person of Jesus Christ, That is exactly what God gets. He gets me. There is a penalty that cannot be waived. There is a law that cannot be disobeyed or cast aside. And the law says the soul that sinneth, it shall die. And in the wonderful, mystical union of Christ and His people, It is this very satisfaction of a penalty that God receives. We certainly do not have time, as I look up today and see the club racing, to follow these thoughts. But friends, when you even get into the debates of theology about the nature of the atonement, even the extent of the atonement, and understand you cannot distinguish the extent of the atonement from the nature of the atonement. If it is an atonement that is made for people that are in hell, versus an atonement that is made only for people that go to heaven, then the very nature of what that atonement is, is different. If it's something that can be offered and given and received and yet never applied, it's very different than something that's effective. something that's efficacious, something that's successful. And that is why the debate between Arminianism and Calvinism is an age-old debate. It has other names listed for the different views. It's why it's important. It's not just a lofty thing for theologians to argue and get in the flesh about. It's an important thing to humbly and yet carefully weigh out through the Scripture. that here is an atonement that really atones. Here is the satisfaction of a penalty that is really satisfied because my sins were actually laid upon Jesus Christ. He did not pay an atonement for them and an atonement not be made, not be received. This is why, again something that isn't emphasized enough in the church today, the resurrection of Christ, and then following from that, the ascension of Christ. Christ's resurrection from the tomb, friend, is not merely, as so many think, just the inevitable outcome of the God-man, the supernatural Christ, being laid in the tomb, and the tomb couldn't hold him. I don't deny that's true, but that's not the point of the resurrection. The point of the resurrection is that just as simply, just as actually, just as faithfully as my sins were laid upon Christ and they were actually judged there, that God dealt with me in Christ, that when He looked at Christ, He was seeing me, He was seeing my sin, He was actually punishing my sin. He was actually exhausting his wrath against my sin. It's only for that reason Christ could possibly, legally, actually have died. You make it merely potential, and you lose an atonement. And you lose something. You really lose all of the justice and holiness of God. My sins were really there. God really dealt with them there. Christ is risen. And that was the thing that the disciples rejoiced in preaching. Because the fact that Christ is risen from the dead is the testimony of God Himself. That He has accepted Christ's work. That He has accepted that atonement. And that He has bestowed that righteousness that Christ merited for His people upon His people. It's going to happen! Because in God's mind it already has happened. And He is applying that work throughout the ages to all for whom Christ died. Now do I as a believer have the list? No. So am I as a believer obligated to evangelize as a Calvinist? Absolutely. And when Calvinism degenerates into a failure to evangelize, it's disobedient to scripture, and it's dishonoring to the very gospel it seeks to honor. But friends, in Christ there was a satisfaction of the penalty. The storm is over. We sang this morning, perhaps an unfamiliar tune to us, but the tremendous words of Toplin, from whence this fear and unbelief. When you would tremble and struggle, dear brother or sister, you might labor with assurance. The flesh and the devil always tell you, go back to your decision. Go back to the night you were in church. Go back to what that evangelist said. Go back to walking the aisle. Go back to your decision card. You examine all those things and you are still going to be in a tempest of a storm. But you go back to understand, it isn't my faith that saves me. It is the object of my faith that saves me. And you start looking at the the work of Jesus Christ. You see in Him the satisfaction of a penalty, and you will be coming to joy and assurance of faith. Say, Jonah is a great type of our Savior because Christ having entered in, the storm is over. In a real sense, we've come already to our last thought this morning. entitled this one, A Service of Power. Jonah went forth into Nineveh and his ministry was successful in many ways, obviously, to follow that particular thought. But I'd like, as I said, we've anticipated to just close with a thought. When I can see the risen Christ, when I can understand that it's not merely the fact that he was God and he was truly divine, the union of the two natures there. But the fact that he's risen is a testimony to something. The fact that he's risen is an evidence of a work that's been accepted, of a penalty that's been satisfied, of a righteousness that has been imputed. I am then liberated in a far greater way than ever before to go on in service. I think in a real sense this is one reason that the devil seeks to fight against the preaching of free justification, against the preaching of the person and work of Christ, and even why these doctrines of grace come under attack so often. Because it's only when God's people come to understand these truths of what it is to be accepted in the beloved that they are liberated in a great sense to go forth and serve. Because they're not looking at self anymore. They're looking at Christ. And they're seeing in Him a victorious Savior. They're seeing in Him an exalted head. They're seeing in Him a received representative. And they're seeing in Him the smile of God that they are accepted in Him. Jonah, we could say, was a failure in a lot of ways. Even in the natural sense, Jonah was a stunning success in a lot of ways, too. Here our Lord looks back upon this prophet, and in a point of controversy with a religious people, but those he described as a wicked and adulterous generation. He pulls from the experience of Jonah the fact that here's a man who's a type of man. And I say, what better place could there be for the Lord to speak again of his gospel of grace and speak of himself. Jonah, the type. Lord willing, we'll come in our next studies to see him as a contrast and also as a sign I pray the Lord will minister to our hearts today in thinking upon this one type of Christ. Let's bow our heads together. Heavenly Father, we ask Thee today to minister unto us. We have, in a sense, opened the very briefly and hurriedly great subjects that have often been a controversy among you people. Lord, we open them today only to show the importance of right views, of the atoning sacrifice and the successful work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I pray today that, Lord, every believer in this house will go forth rejoicing that the penalty has been fully satisfied and paid. And if you're here today outside of Christ, understand God in his infinite wisdom and omniscience knows the end from the beginning. Friend, neither you nor I have recorded for us the secret councils. What we have recorded is those outside are under wrath. And they're called to repent and believe the gospel, to close with Jesus Christ. And so we ask you today, take up the word for saint and sinner alike. If I can be of any help to any of you today, I certainly urge you to remain. Turn, even as we sing often, your eyes upon Jesus this day. We pray and ask these things in his most precious and worthy name. Amen.