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Steve Hiller: You know, Colin, you might actually meet Jonah in heaven. And what if he says to you, "I hear you had a series, you went on for eight weeks and the main point you told these folks seems to have been that you wanted everyone to be less like me." And then I thought perhaps I might also meet the King of Nineveh who might say, "Don't you think you were a little bit hard on Jonah? I mean, haven't you met the 120,000 folks from my city of Nineveh who are all here and were saved through his ministry? What were you thinking about?"

Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller, glad you've joined us as today we begin the last message in our series on Jonah. So Colin, I'm going to put you on the spot based on what we just heard. What are you going to do? What are you going to say to Jonah one day if he walks up and says, "What? You spent eight weeks telling people not to be like me?"

Colin Smith: Well, I think Jonah is going to be okay with this because his book is actually a confession. The fascination to me of this book in the Bible is that you have a man who's opening up his inner life and telling us honestly what was going on under the surface and what God had to deal with in him as a believer and as a leader and as a prophet. Someone who did bring revival to a great city, and yet what he wants to tell us about is not, "Hey, look at me, I brought revival to a great city." It's, "When God used me greatly, there was all kinds of stuff that I still needed to deal with in my own soul."

That is so compelling because we find ourselves saying, "Here is someone I can relate to because he has an ongoing need of the grace of God in his life." And that's true for every one of us as Christians until the day we enter heaven.

Steve Hiller: As you say, I think that can be an encouragement to us who do struggle in the midst of dealing with our sin nature. But yet at the same time, it also points out, at least to me, it points to the fact that salvation does not come through Jonah. Salvation is obviously then coming from God.

Colin Smith: It's coming from God and that's the very center of the message today. And isn't it a good thing that the Bible isn't some kind of counsel of perfection to say, "Oh, you've got to be some marvelous person like this." It is the book that reveals the grace of God in Jesus Christ, which is what people like us, sinners, need and what always extends from Christ through the cross.

Well, if you can, grab your Bible and join us in Jonah chapter two. We're going to drill down on verse nine in just a moment, but if you missed portions of the series, you picked a great day to tune in as we begin with a quick review of the story of Jonah.

We've been thinking throughout this series of how a person might avoid a God-centered life. We've been saying that a large part of the book of Jonah is really like a confession in which a mature believer tells us honestly that it's possible, even after knowing the Lord for some time, to spend much of your life actually avoiding the God that you serve. And we have seen from Jonah's confession how that could happen in our own lives.

For example, you could avoid a God-centered life if you resist God's call to something new. When God calls you to something new, you may find that your comfort is more important and your obedience more conditional than you had previously thought. And so, hold whatever he has put in your hands lightly because it will help you then to discover a God-centered life.

Secondly, we saw that we avoid a God-centered life if we refuse God's provision through someone else. The ship's crew, remember, were told by Jonah the only way for you to be saved is through the sacrifice of another. They didn't want to accept that. And we saw how important it is that we give up being the captain of our own soul and trust life, death, and eternity on Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. That leads to a God-centered life.

Another way in which a person could avoid a God-centered life is simply to quit God's work in the light of experience. Remember after all that Jonah had gone through, God called him a second time. And it would have been very easy for him to say, "Boy, I've been through very traumatic times. There's nothing useful that I can do for the Lord." But he moved forward in obedience. He did not wallow in his past failures. And that's an encouragement: press forward in what God calls you to do and you will grow in a God-centered life.

You can avoid a God-centered life, fourthly, simply by resenting God's providence in ruling the world. We saw how Jonah felt that God was too slow in judging evil, and he became angry with God. And really, as he opens up that theme, he's saying to us, "Don't go there. Don't become a person who's angry with God. Let God's grace lead you into worship. That will strengthen you in a God-centered life."

And then we saw a fifth way to avoid a God-centered life would be to rejoice in God's gifts as if they were rights. We thought about the vine and the worm and the wind and the danger when God gives us good gifts (that's what the vine is about) that we live a vine-centered life. And so God sent the worm and the wind to make sure that didn't happen to Jonah. So we saw a lesson there: don't live for the things of this world because all of them will pass away. The reason for living lies not in God's gifts, but rather in the one who gives them. Grasping that will help us to pursue a God-centered life.

And then sixthly, we saw that you can avoid a God-centered life by receiving God's mercy but being very reluctant about sharing it with others. It's great for us to rejoice in being saved, but what about our heart for those who are not yet saved? What about the heart of God for the lost? Catching God's passion for lost people and engaging in his work will help us to pursue a God-centered life.

Now, these are some of the ways in which Jonah avoided a God-centered life, and we've been learning from his example. We've formed this prayer: "Lord, make me less like Jonah and more like Jesus." And that's become a theme, I think, that's resonated in our hearts.

It's just occurred to me, thinking about this: you might actually meet Jonah in heaven. And what if he says to you, "I hear you had a series, you went on for eight weeks and the main point you told these folks seems to have been that you wanted everyone to be less like me." And then I thought perhaps I might also meet the King of Nineveh who might say, "Don't you think you were a little bit hard on Jonah? I mean, haven't you met the 120,000 folks from my city of Nineveh who are all here and were saved through his ministry? What were you thinking about?"

And so, I want us to see that actually Jonah becomes for us a model, especially in chapter two, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to end with this second chapter. Because here we see him really being a model of God-centeredness. He becomes more like Jesus, and therefore we want to become more like him also.

If I had been in a storm, if I had been thrown overboard from a ship, if I'd been three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, I'm not very sure that I would be singing songs of praise and thanksgiving. I might have been someone who was restraining praise, holding it back on account of my own pain and experience. But Jonah gives thanks to God in the middle of this great darkness because he knows that the God who has begun a saving work in his life will bring it to completion.

And so, that brings us to our last title today: to reduce God's salvation by crediting your response. And again, Jonah is a wonderful model for us here. I want you to see in Jonah chapter two and verse nine that he gives God all the glory, all the glory for his salvation. "Salvation comes from the Lord."

Now, I've got to quote Spurgeon, especially for all the guys who are at seminary. It's a good one for the seminary guys. This is Spurgeon's comment on salvation comes from the Lord: "Jonah learned this sentence of good theology in a very strange college." I love that. Where did you go to seminary? Well, it was the Seminary of the Deep. And Spurgeon says, "Most of the grand truths of God are learned by trouble. They must be burned into us by the hot iron of affliction; otherwise, we shall not truly receive them."

We've been talking about avoiding a God-centered life, and so I want us to see in this last message today how utterly God-centered Jonah became. Jonah chapter two, the whole of it, is a song of praise in which God gets all the glory for his salvation. Oh, that God would get all the glory for our salvation today and forever.

Now, I want you to look at Jonah two. I hope you have it open in front of you, and I want you to see how utterly God-centered Jonah has become inside the fish, how God's grace has triumphed in his life. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed. Notice how it's all about God: to the Lord his God. He said, "In my distress, I called on the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave, I called for help, and you listened to my cry."

So now, Jonah is speaking directly to God, and I want you to see how he focuses on the Lord all the way through this marvelous prayer of praise. In fact, every time we come to the word "you" or "your," I'm going to read through the chapter here, I want you to help me by giving me a strong "you" or "your," so that we see just how this runs all the way through the chapter. So we're beginning at verse three, and we're right there on the first word. You ready? You with me? Okay.

"You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, 'I have been banished from your sight,' yet I will look again to your holy temple." Then he goes into his own problems. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. "But you brought me up from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, O Lord, and my prayer rose to you and to your holy temple."

Then he says, "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs, but I with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes—say it with me—salvation comes from the Lord." And just in case we haven't got the point, the very next verse says, "And the Lord commanded the fish," and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.

Now, what does chapter two say then? It says this: God saves. That's the message. God saves. God saves. And Jonah is concerned that God gets all the glory for his salvation, and we are concerned that God gets all the glory for ours as well.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. A message called "Reduce God's Salvation," part of our series on the life of Jonah called "How to Avoid a God-Centered Life." And if you missed any broadcast in the series, come and listen online at openthebible.org.

Well, Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry, able to be on this station because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you one of Pastor Colin's very favorite books. It's called "Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure." It's written by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and in this book, Lloyd-Jones describes a person who loses the joy that they once had in serving Christ and is merely going on out of a sense of duty. This book will help you rediscover your joy in Christ, and we'd love to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or openthebible.org. Let's get back to the message. Again, here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now, it's worth thinking when we are looking at "salvation comes from the Lord," I've found it helpful to see that the Bible speaks about salvation in three tenses. I hope you'll find this helpful. The Bible speaks about salvation first as a completed transaction. Ephesians 2:8: "It is by grace that you have been saved," completed transaction, "through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."

Now, the Bible is full of language of a completed transaction. Romans 5:1: "Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ." We have been justified by faith. Or Romans 8:1: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ."

How have I been saved? I have been saved because Christ died for my sins and he rose for my justification. And being made one with Jesus Christ through the bond of faith, God counts all my sins as if they were Christ's and all Christ's righteousness as if it were mine. And that completed transaction of justification—justification in the perfect tense, the completed action—the Bible often refers to as justification. That is the completed transaction of salvation, salvation if you like in the past tense.

But the Bible speaks about salvation also as a continuing process. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:18: "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." So clearly here, salvation is a continuing process. My salvation has begun, but it is not yet complete. I am not yet, you are not yet, what we will be. We struggle with the flesh, we fail in many ways, yet we are not who we were. God has not left us in defeat. We are being saved. And that process comes from the Lord who continually is at work in our lives.

And we've seen this in Jonah. He had known the Lord for many years, been a prophet in Gath-hepher. Then he gets himself into a particular sin, and God intervenes in his life graciously through the storm and then through the fish. Why? Because God is still saving him. And then he goes on and has wonderful ministry in Nineveh. Many people come to the Lord, and then he gets into a strange funk, can I put it that way? And God has to intervene again because he's angry and he's out of sorts in chapter four. What is God doing? God is still saving him. It's a continuing process.

And that continuing work of our salvation, salvation in the present tense, the Bible often refers to as sanctification. See, salvation is the big word that embraces our justification, our sanctification, and something else. Because salvation thirdly is a future hope. 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 5: "You who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time." So now, salvation is something that's still to happen. It's future, it's for the last time.

And again, our hope of future salvation comes from the Lord, because our future salvation lies here. Paul says, "The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command and with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God. The dead in Christ will rise first."

And when we are brought into the presence of the Lord, we are caught up to meet him in the air and then will be with him forever. Revelation tells us what happens: God will make his dwelling with men. God will wipe all tears from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or sorrow or pain. Why? Because God says, "I am making everything new." So our future salvation comes from where? It comes from the Lord, from his coming and from his new creation.

And the future tense of our salvation, the Bible often calls glorification. So if you want to think how to relate these words together: salvation comes from the Lord, past, present, future; justification, sanctification, glorification. Salvation in three tenses, and it all comes from the Lord. Now, that's the teaching of Jonah chapter two and verse nine.

Now, I want for the rest of our time to focus in on just one very critical and most important question, and it's this: how does this help us? What difference does it make to know that salvation comes from the Lord? And I want to speak for a few moments perhaps a little more personally than I do at other times, and I hope that that will be helpful.

But the reason for doing that is that I was a Christian for about 20 years before I really came to appreciate the truth that Jonah saw so clearly. And I have to tell you honestly that it has been for me one of the most life-transforming truths since, about 20-25 years ago, it dawned into my own soul in a fresh way. And it has helped me so much that I covet that many would share the same help and joy and know already that many do.

But here is how it has helped me to know that salvation comes from the Lord, and I've isolated three ways. And they run very deep because they go to core issues in a Christian's life. Number one: grasping more clearly that salvation comes from the Lord more than anything else has helped in my experience to deepen my own worship. It really has, and I hope that this might help you in the same way.

Let me try and put it to you this way: it is a good thing to know that God is love. It is a greater thing to know that God loves me. Big difference. I am moved to know that Jesus died on the cross for sinners. I am more deeply moved to know that Jesus died on the cross for me.

And that is the language of the Bible. If you think about Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20, the Apostle Paul says, "The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me." Very, very personal, you see. That's the language of the Bible. It's not he died generically out there for people in a general sense. Paul says, "No, I've understood this: that the Lord Jesus died specifically, pointedly, for me."

In other words, when Jesus came into the world and when he died on the cross, he did more than provide a way of salvation for people in general. I've found it helpful to think of it this way: that when Jesus came into the world and when he died on the cross, he came to save people with names and faces. And here is where my own heart just gets lifted in amazement and wonder: one of them was me. I tell you, the more I think about the mystery of God's saving work in my life, the more staggering it gets. And I find just an increasing sense as I think about these things of worship welling up inside and saying: salvation comes from the Lord.

Steve Hiller: What a great truth and encouraging truth to wrap up with today: salvation comes from the Lord. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and the final message in our series on the life of Jonah. If you ever missed a broadcast, come and listen online at openthebible.org.

Colin, I think as we've listened to the message today, for many, they've begun to understand salvation a little bit more deeply. To understand it's not just this one little moment in history, it's to impact all of life. And next time, I know we're going to spend some time looking at where does salvation actually come from?

Colin Smith: It comes from the Lord. This great, great statement in the Bible. And you know, I know some folks are afraid that if we were to believe that salvation comes from the Lord, that somehow that would make us passive, that we wouldn't be engaged in evangelism and witnessing and praying and so forth and so on. "Hey, let's just leave it up to the Lord."

You know, I've found, Steve, in my own life precisely the opposite is the case. The fact that God is at work saving people is to me the motivation for engaging in prayer because there's hope, and engaging in sharing the gospel because it's through the sharing of the gospel that God does the work of saving. If it all depended on me, I'd be crushed by the whole thing. But knowing that God is at work and that he works through the gospel, that is to me the greatest motivation. So, we're going to look at a marvelous truth next time that I think inspires evangelism. It certainly lifts my heart in worship, and I hope we're going to learn a little bit more as to how powerful a motive that is.

Steve Hiller: Well, and as you said, not only does that lift your heart in worship—and I absolutely agree with you there—for me, it also leads to a tremendous sense of assurance. If I played no part in my salvation, well then I cannot lose my salvation because I did nothing to earn it; it was a gift.

Colin Smith: I was talking to someone just the other day who was really struggling with justification by faith. Does that mean that I'm saved by the strength of my faith, because my faith is not very strong? Of course, he was in difficulties and needed this great truth: salvation comes from the Lord. And the reason that you will ultimately be saved is not because of the strength of your grip on God, but because of the strength of God's grip on you. That's where Christian assurance comes from.

Steve Hiller: Absolutely. Well, Colin, it's Friday and the weekend's coming.

Colin Smith: And I want to encourage you to get to church on Sunday. If you live in the Chicago area and you don't have a church home, I'd love for you to join us at The Orchard. There are six locations in the northwest suburbs. For more information, go to theorchard.church. That's theorchard.church.

Steve Hiller: Well, thank you, Colin. Thanks for listening. I'm Steve Hiller and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: This is Pastor Colin, and I want you to know about a resource that will help you in your devotional life. It's called Open the Bible Daily. My colleague, Pastor Tim Augustyn, takes what you hear on Open the Bible and he edits it into daily bite-sized chunks that you can read in your devotional time in less than three minutes.

Every day you'll find a verse of Scripture, a short teaching from God's word, and an application that you can carry with you through the day. People who use this tell us that they read it every day, and I think that if you try it, you'll love it too. For more information, visit openthebible.org/daily. That's openthebible.org/daily.