LAST time we considered the essentials of true religion - the deserving due for sin, and the necessity of death to purge sin. We now are led to view in a picture the blessing of true religion.

All religion purports to bring blessing upon its adherents. Great claims are made by each, but the question needs to be asked as to the foundation for these claims. Also what is the foundation for the promised blessings, and what truly is the character of the blessings. Here is the problem which deceives so many. All religions have an authority which is appealed to, and claims from experience that the authority is well founded. The trouble is that none of these various authorities have any true validation. They have to be taken on trust.

However the faith of the Bible has validation. The validation is that the one who is the author of salvation, Jesus Christ, has risen from the dead, and after his resurrection he upheld his teaching and his attitude to the Bible. So Christ gives validation to the Bible as the true word of God, and of Jesus as the true Saviour of the world. Nor is it a validation to say we base our religion on the Bible unless that basis is on the whole Bible, truly and honestly understood in the Bible’s plain and clear meaning. It can’t be a true validation to twist the Bible to our whims, or remove or add to the Bible things favourable to our cause.

I have begun with this short introduction because there is no point in discussing blessings unless we can rely that they are real. The great blessing open to us by a picture in the sentence before us is that the religion of Christ, the one and only true religion, achieves the great need of humanity, which is peace with God, and to be brought into the favour of God. This is what we have before us in this sentence “And the raging of the sea grew calm.”

THE PICTURE.

In the New Testament we are given the faith worked out by the apostles, and specially the apostle Paul, in teaching. In the Old Testament we have the faith illustrated and revealed in history and in the acts of God in history, and in the lives of people. These are pictures which open up in a vivid way the teaching of the New Testament. We have such a picture here.

The picture begins with a great storm rising in the sea which is extraordinary in its ferocity. It is a storm that grows more and more ferocious as the sailors sought to save themselves from its power. Nothing that these sailors can do is able to begin to save them. They are helpless and hopeless.

Then we are told in the narrative by Jonah that this storm came from the one true God, and was inflicted on account of sin. It was inflicted particularly against Jonah’s sin, but the plight of the sailors was not unjust, as like all human beings they were sinners also deserving of the just wrath of God against them.

Jonah tells the sailors to throw him into the sea, and by this the death of Jonah is inevitable. Certainly this is the only conclusion that the sailors can envisage. That Jonah was delivered from death by the grace of God does not change this, as apart from the sovereign grace of God Jonah would have died.

So last time we saw the deserving of sin, and the necessity of death. Then the picture changes. The moment the death is executed there is a great calm. Immediately death occurred the calm resulted.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNT FROM THE PICTURE.

1. The action of God.

The first lesson we learn is the action of God. The calm came by the direct action of God. This is clearly declared in the history from verse 8 of Jonah 1. God caused the storm, and it was action of judgement and death. Now when death has taken place God brings about a great calm. For the storm to cease immediately, as the narrative most surely indicates, the calm must have come by the direct hand and power of God. God in grace brought peace to the sailors.

2. The cross of Christ illustrated.

Surely this history reveals to us Christ crucified. Jonah being sacrificed speaks of the power of sacrificial death. It is true that Jonah was being punished for his own sin, and Christ was suffering for the sin of others, but the picture is there. The sailors were sinners, and here the wrath of God was turned away from them by the death of another. Without the death of Jonah in this way there would have been inevitable death for the sailors. In this Jonah is a type of Christ. Now because Jonah had been given over to death, they were delivered from the wrath of God against them as sinners and rebels. In the case of the sailors this seems to have been temporary for we have no evidence that they turned wholeheartedly to the living God, though one or more may have done later. However the picture is there. There is deliverance from the just punishment of God against sin and sinners by the sacrifice of another in the place of the sinner.

Here is the Gospel. God made Christ an offering for sin. This is the testimony of Isaiah in chapter 53 where we read from verse 10 “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of God will prosper in his hand.” God sacrificed his only begotten Son to atone for human sin. Jesus dying on the cross was a guilt offering. He took our guilt in our place, and because he did so we are his offspring spiritually, for we are born of God through the efficacy of the guilt offering Jesus made for us on the cross.

Through the sacrifice of the cross there is a calm brought about for the sinner who trusts in Christ. Being joined to Christ by faith, our guilt is taken away, and we are reconciled to God, and have peace with God.

This is the truth of the text from Romans 5 shown at the head of this sermon. We have been justified before God on account of what Christ has done to atone for our sins in his death on the cross. This blessing is ours because we have been granted faith in Jesus and his death for us. Being justified before God means that God can now account no sin against us, because our Saviours obedience to blood hides all our transgressions from view.

3. The resultant blessing.

As soon as Jonah was cast into the raging storm, that is into the full ferocity of the just wrath of God against all iniquity, there was a great calm. God took away the manifestation of his wrath, and the punishment that resulted from his wrath.

The resultant blessing of the death of Jesus is a great calm. The calm is of the wrath of God against us on account of our sin. This is peace with God. We are reconciled to God, and he is no more, and never will be, angry against us on account of our sin, because Christ has blotted them out.

Here is the great blessing of true religion. Again it is Isaiah who declares this wonder of God’s grace and mercy so clearly. It is given in Isaiah 44:22,23. “I have swept away your offences like a thick cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you. Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this; shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, he displays his glory in Israel.”

God has redeemed us by the death of his Son. Through this death all our sins are paid for, and swept away.

4. Living with God.

This great calm could not be greater. It is a calm that endures for ever. It can never be withdrawn. We have peace with God for ever.

The blessing of true religion - the religion of Christ, is in the permanence and completeness of the blessing. It can never be taken away. The reason for this is that the purchasing of this blessing is totally outside the one who receives it by faith. The blessing is founded outside the believer, and not on anything the believer has done or will do. The permanence of this blessing is found in the fact that Christ has won it for the believer, and he has paid a full price for it, and a price so full that it took in all the sins we have and ever will commit.

So Toplady writes in one of his hymns -

So I to the end will endure,
As sure as the promise is given.
More happy, but not more secure,
When glorified with him in Heaven.

We are secure of this blessing of peace and reconciliation with God in Christ the moment we are given faith to believe on Jesus, and give our souls in his care. The security is because it is based on his perfect work for us, which is a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for our sin. Because of this God cannot accuse us of any wrong, because if he did he would be unjust. Because Christ has died for our sin, God can’t claim our life too for our sin.

CONCLUSION.

There can not be any greater blessing than this calm, this peace with God. It takes away all servile fear of God. It takes from us all fear of death. It removes from us the threat of death and eternal damnation. It secures for us the protection of God throughout our lives, and the assurance that all things in life are working for our good, and our eternal comfort.