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Jonah 1:5 – Dozing Off While Others Drown

The Text of Jonah 1:5

Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship in into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.

In this discussion of Jonah 1:5 we look at:

The response of the sailors to the great storm
The response of Jonah to the great storm
Why Jonah’s response mirrors our own response in life

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

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Since Grace is Free, YES … You CAN just go sin all you want

By Jeremy Myers

206 Comments

I hold to radical, outrageous, shocking, scandalous, limitless grace. I believe there is no other kind of grace.

But whenever I teach or write about this sort of grace, it is almost guaranteed that someone will object by saying, “So are you saying that we can just go sin all we want?”

They are referring, of course, to the statement in Romans 6:1 where a person objects to Paul’s teaching about grace in exactly the same way. And Paul’s answer, of course, is “God forbid!”

Can I sin all I want?

In the past, I have responded similarly as Paul. I say “No, of course not!”

Then I go on to explain that just as obedience does nothing to help us earn or keep eternal life, sin does nothing to cause us to lose it or prove we never had it.

The reason God doesn’t want us to sin is because sin damages us.

(By the way, if you have a presentation of the Gospel which never gets the Romans 6:1 objection, then I submit to you that you are probably not teaching the same Gospel Paul was. If, after teaching about grace, no one says to you, “So are you saying I can just sin all i want?” then you probably have not taught grace. I call this question the Grace litmus test.)

But this past week I was talking to someone about grace, and they objected with the grace litmus test, and I don’t know what happened, but I sighed out of exasperation and decided to give a different answer than the one I had always given before.

The man said to me, “So are you saying I can just go sin all I want?”

And I smiled and said, “Yep. If that’s what you want to do, go right ahead.”

I got the “Deer in the headlights” look back from him. I think he had heard rumors that my type of theology existed, but he had never met anyone who was so willing to give him a license to sin as I had just done.

So yes, in a way, grace is a license to sin.

He started getting huffy with me, and tried to show that my response to him was different than what Paul said in Romans 6:1, and how therefore my understanding of grace different from that of Paul and so on…

But the more he preached at me the more convinced I became of what I had said out of exasperation.

Grace allows you to sin all you want … if that’s really what you want

If you really understand grace, and if you really understand God, and if you really understand God’s love for you, and after understanding all this, you really want to go sin, then be my guest, go right ahead.

Although grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust (Titus 2:12), grace also allows you to go sin all you want … if that is really what you want.

Let me put it another way.

If I told my daughters that I loved them completely, and that no matter what they did, I would always love them, forgive them, and be willing to die for them, and if, after I told them this, one of my daughters looked at me and said, “So I can just go stick my hand in the blender and you will still love me?” I would look at her a little strangely and say, “Well … yes … if that’s really want you want to do, go ahead. But know that if you do that, it’s going to be extremely painful. I will, of course, pull your hand out of the blender and rush you to the hospital to stop the bleeding and rescue what I can of your hand. But no matter what, I will still love you and cherish you as my daughter.”

This is what Paul means in Romans 6 when he responds with “God Forbid!” He is not saying, “No, you cannot!” but rather, “Why would you want to?”

You see, sin doesn’t stop God from loving us, nor does it stop God from doing everything He can to rescue us from the devastating and destructive consequences of sin. Sin definitely doesn’t prove that we were never His son or daughter to begin with.

No, sin hurts us. It cuts us. It ruins us. Sin destroys our relationships, our health, our finances, our marriages, our jobs, our longevity, our emotions, our psyche.

Asking the question “So I can just go sin all I want?” simply shows that you do not fully understand the love of God, the grace of God, or even God Himself! It also reveals that you do not understand the devastating and destructive consequences of sin.

Asking the question, “So I can just go sin all I want?” reveals that you don’t understand how painful sin can be.

Asking the question “So I can just go sin all I want?” is like asking, “So I can take this knife and stab it into my leg?” … Yes, if that is really what you want to do, go right ahead.

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

Jonah 1:4 – Does God Send Storms?

By Jeremy Myers

4 Comments

In Jonah 1:4, God sends a storm upon Jonah and the ship that carries him to Tarshish. Is this how God normally behaves? It’s a practical question that all of us face in life from time to time.

My wife and I are experiencing some difficulties in life right now. Quite often, it feels like we are in a storm, being buffeted by wind and waves. We sometimes have trouble keeping our heads above water.

My wife mentioned our struggles to someone this week, and they sent an email to her saying that the reason we are facing this storm is because we are sinning. The person who wrote the email said that God sent these troubles upon us because our views about church and about the LGBT community were sinful. We have been deceived by Satan, the email said, and so this is why God is punishing us with the storms of life.

People read in the Bible that Jonah disobeys God and so God sends a storm. Then when people see others facing storms in life, they says, “Oh, well, it must be because you are disobeying God.”

Is that really how God works? Does God send storms into our lives to punish us? If you sin, will God send disasters into your life to punish you? Does God send sickness, disease, famines, floods, earthquakes, or the loss of jobs, income, health, or even the death of a family member? Is this what God does?

Well, lots of people think so, and it is because of verses in the Bible like Jonah 1:4 that they think so. This is the verse we are looking at today, and by doing so we will hope to answer some of these questions.

The Text of Jonah 1:4

But the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up.

In this discussion of Jonah 1:4 we look at:

The description of the great storm in Jonah 1:4
Why some people think God sends storms upon sinners
Why Jesus reveals that God does not send storms to punish sinners
If God does not punish sin with storms of destruction, then what is going on in Jonah 1;4?
A brief preview and overview of the message in the book of Jonah

Resources:

While you wait for my book on the violence of God to come out, below are some additional resources that I have found helpful, and you might too…

Redeeming God Discipleship Area
Subscribe and Leave a Review on iTunes
Is God to Blame? by Greg Boyd
The Crucifixion of the Warrior God by Greg Boyd
Is God a Moral Monster? by Paul Copan
God’s Word in Human Words by Kenton Sparks
The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith
Disturbing Divine Behavior by Eric Seibert
The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark
Reading the Bible Again For the First Time by Markus Borg

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

You must join a discipleship group or login to download the MP3 and view the transcript.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,
Login here.

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to
Upgrade your Membership to one of the paid groups.

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:
Join Us Today.

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

Jonah 1:3 –Slapping God in the Face

By Jeremy Myers

The Text of Jonah 1:3

But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

In this discussion of Jonah 1:3 we look at:

What it means for Jonah to flee to Tarshish instead of go to Nineveh
The significance of the term “the presence of the Lord”
What the story is telling us by the repeated use of the word “down”

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

You must join a discipleship group or login to download the MP3 and view the transcript.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,
Login here.

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to
Upgrade your Membership to one of the paid groups.

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:
Join Us Today.

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

God’s Offer of Eternal Life is not Easy to Believe

By Jeremy Myers

35 Comments

God’s offer of eternal life is simple … but it is not easy to believe.

The simple offer of eternal life in the Gospel is that God gives eternal life to anyone who simply believes in Jesus Christ for it.

Simple, right?

But not easy to believe.

It is not easy to believe that God’s free gift of eternal life is by grace from first to last.

True grace is something completely foreign to the way life works or to the way most people think. Humans are unaccustomed to grace. We are told almost from birth that nothing is ever free, that there is always a hidden catch, and that we should always read the fine print.

So when the gospel is presented to us and we are told that eternal life is the absolutely free gift of God to anyone who receives it by faith in Jesus, and that there is nothing we need to do or even can do to earn it or keep it, most people start a get a little suspicious.

They start to look for the fine print.

They start to search for the catch.

The free offer of eternal life seems too good to be true.

So we go looking for the fine print, the footnotes, or the hidden conditions.

Sadly, there are far too many Christians who are more than willing to provide the fine print and explain the catch.

“Oh yes,” they say. “Eternal life is free, but you have to love God in return and obey what He says in Scripture in order to prove you have it.”

Others say, “Well, you need to understand, if you truly are a Christian, your life will have the good works to back up your claim. If you don’t have the good works, then this means you are not truly a Christian.”

Then there is this argument: “Eternal life is free, but before you can receive it, you have to fix up your life, seek after God, repent of your sin, submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, prepare your heart for faith, and pray the sinner’s prayer.”

To all these sorts of teachings, and countless similar ideas, the gospel in Scripture says “No! Eternal life is a free gift of God.”

Eternal life is by God’s grace from first to last.

There are no works needed to gain eternal life, keep eternal life, or prove you have eternal life.

Eternal life does not require you to reform your life, repent of your sin, submit to the Lordship of Jesus, get baptized, seek God, or pray a prayer.

Just receive eternal life as a free gift from God by believing in Jesus for it. That’s it!

It’s that simple … but it’s not easy to believe

This is why the free offer of eternal life is a problem for most people.

It sounds too good to be true.

It sounds too radical.

It sounds like it’s taking grace too far.

Since the gospel of grace is opposite to the way the rest of life works, many people have great trouble accepting it.

So almost without fail, when people first begin to grasp the implications of the freeness of God’s grace in the offer of eternal life—that God gives eternal life to anyone who simply and only believes in Jesus for it—they begin to ask questions.

One of the most frequent questions is this: “So if eternal life is free and all I have to do is believe in Jesus to get it, does this mean I can go sin all I want?”

A man recently posed the question to me this way, “Are you saying that I can believe in Jesus for eternal life, but I can still sleep around, and steal from people, and even murder anyone I want to, but I still get to go to heaven when I die? I don’t have to stop sinning? I don’t have to read the Bible? I don’t have to go to church?”

While many Christians would answer “No” to these questions, my answer is always, “Yes!”

No ifs, ands, or buts.

Without qualification.

Absent of all fine print, footnotes, or hidden conditions.

Yes, I know.

If I say that grace allows you to go sin all you want, you now are beginning to wonder if I am a false teacher who promotes licentious living.

You have probably heard rumors that teachers like me exist, but have rarely (if ever) encountered one in public.

Pastors often preach against “those grace teachers,” but few people have ever really met one.

This is because most so-called “grace teachers” still include a lot of “ifs, ands, or buts” in their teachings about grace. So the true “grace teacher” is viewed as a bit of a legend, sort like leprechauns and elves.

But I have now exposed myself as one of those mythical monsters that people are warned about by their pastors. Even still, you might be thinking I do not mean what I say.

But I do.

Since grace is free, you can go sin all you want.

I will explain this idea more in future blog posts, but if you absolutely must know NOW what I mean, take my course on the gospel. It explains all this (and more) in great detail.

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

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Jonah 1:5 – Dozing Off While Others Drown

The Text of Jonah 1:5

In this discussion of Jonah 1:5 we look at:

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

Since Grace is Free, YES … You CAN just go sin all you want

Can I sin all I want?

Grace allows you to sin all you want … if that’s really what you want

Jonah 1:4 – Does God Send Storms?

The Text of Jonah 1:4

In this discussion of Jonah 1:4 we look at:

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

Jonah 1:3 –Slapping God in the Face

The Text of Jonah 1:3

In this discussion of Jonah 1:3 we look at:

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

God’s Offer of Eternal Life is not Easy to Believe

The free offer of eternal life seems too good to be true.

It’s that simple … but it’s not easy to believe

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