On Mission With God

We're going to continue our study in the book of Jonah today.

I'm sure that is absolutely no surprise whatsoever.

If you'd like an outline you didn't get one please raise your hand.

Our usher would be happy to help you out.

Instead of starting in Jonah today, I thought I'd start in Genesis.

In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God created everything and it was all very good.

But then, you know, in Genesis, chapter 3, adam and Eve sinned against God by insisting on their right to choose what was good and evil for themselves.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

As a result, the human race, the world, was plunged into sin and death.

Immediately after Adam and Eve sinned and God confronted them, god began a rescue mission to save us and the world he created from the temporal and eternal consequences of our sins.

In Genesis, chapter 3 of 15, god promised to send a Savior through a descendant of Eve, who would redeem us and restore the world that he created to His former glory.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The rest of the Bible is essentially an unfolding history of God's redemption.

It was partially realized in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

But from the fall of man to the present day, god has been on a rescue mission to save people from the consequences of sin and evil.

So when we come to the book of Jonah, not only do we glimpse the fact that God is on a mission of redemption, we also learn some important elements of His mission.

That's what I want to talk about today.

I'm going to read this again Jonah, chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.

So Jonah rose, went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now, nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days walk.

And then Jonah began to go through the city one day's walk and cried out and said yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.

Then only is Jonah probably tired of hearing this again.

We are probably too.

He's telling him again go Give him the message.

I'm going to focus on three aspects today of God's redemptive mission.

We see, begin here.

We'll talk about God's mission, god's commission and our commission.

The first thing we see in the book of Jonah about God's mission is his actions to limit the extent of evil in the world.

That's part of his redemption.

Jonah, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, tells us why he's sending Jonah in the first place.

Jonah 1:1

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of the Midday of St Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry again since, because their wickedness has come up before me.

So, to limit the extent of evil in the world, he's going to send people proclaim his message.

Jonah, the believer and prophet of Yahweh, sent to Nineveh as his messenger because the wickedness of the people of Nineveh crossed a divine line that needed to be addressed before they're wiped out.

Jonah isn't their judge or the one who's going to bring judgment.

He's just the messenger, which leads us to another thing.

We learn about God's mission in Jonah.

God is actually concerned about people.

We see this in chapter one.

When the storm hit with Jonah in the boat on the sea with the sailors, the sailors prayed to their gods and the captain was wondering if Jonah's God was concerned about them.

Pray, jonah, maybe he's concerned about them.

Apparently, their gods were not.

The storm just increased.

But when Jonah gave his own life to save the sailors and going into the sea, god quieted the storm for them and from that they did conclude Yahweh cared about them.

God doesn't just want to stamp out evil by destroying the people he created.

He didn't with Adam and Eve.

God has always wanted to rescue people from the consequences of their sin in their lives, even with the flood in Genesis, chapter six, where God destroyed everyone on the earth because of their wickedness which he says was evil continually, except Noah and his family.

Even then Noah, the believer, who walked with God, was preaching to them and warning them of the consequences of their sin.

We see that in 2 Peter, chapter two, verse five, where Peter says and God did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness.

He was telling others about God's warning.

He brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly.

So God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites of the consequences of their sin.

Why?

So they would believe and repent and God could spare them and restrict the evil that is pervasive in the world through them.

Now I can tell you, when God rescued me and I got saved, god was able to restrict a little more evil in the world than I was doing.

He does with every one of us.

I think about the day when we're not here and evil is left to its own expansion.

That's scary thought.

Anyway, in His grace, god gives the Ninevites 40 days to think about it, pray about it, see what you want to do.

He's long suffering.

He's withholding the judgment, warning them.

Will they listen?

So in God's admission we see unfold in Jonah that God is concerned about us, about people.

He's concerned about everybody and everything in His creation.

We learn this from Jonah.

God is concerned about Jews and Gentiles.

He's concerned about ruthless, murderous Ninevites and also God-fearing Jews.

He's concerned about idolatrous, sailors and disobedient prophets.

He's concerned about adults and children, about plants and animals.

Just look at chapter 4, verse 11.

God says to Jonah Should I not have compassion on Ninevite, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right hand and left, as well as many animals?

He's concerned about His creation, everything in it.

That leads us to the third thing we learn in Jonah about God's mission.

God sends His people into the world to reach the ones who don't know Him and need to be rescued, hearing His saving message.

From that we learn God is ascending God.

If you're a believer and you haven't felt like God has sending you with the message he's given you, you don't know Him.

You don't know Him yet as well as you should.

In the book of Jonah, what's happening is God is passing on His concern for His world, the people in His world, to Jonah and to us who are His people.

God commissions Jonah to go speak to the Ninevites.

It wasn't Jonah's commission to change their hearts.

Jonah was sent just to speak to them.

Go to Nineveh, the great city, proclaim to it the proclamation which I'm going to give you.

I'm going to give you the proclamation.

All you got to do is speak it.

God is ascending God.

God sent Jonah to Nineveh the first time and he refused.

God sent Jonah second time and he obeyed.

God is not going to stop sending.

He's ascending God.

Jonah learned his lesson in the storm and the fish.

Now he's on dry land and he is going to go.

God is going to send Jonah and he's going to send us a third, fourth, fifth, sixth time, as many times as it takes for us to go.

You know why he's ascending God.

You cannot look at the scriptures and not conclude that what happens to Jonah in chapter three tells us something else about the mission God sends us on.

From Jonah, we learn that being sent by God on a mission is not just for the well rested, not just for the elite, not just for the retired or people with time on their hands, not just for the extroverts, it's not just for people with a theological education, it's not even for people who love other people.

It's for anybody who says I believe God and I belong to God.

He's going to send you.

Remember what Jesus said to the demoniac after he delivered him from being possessed by these demons?

In Mark, chapter five, verses 18 to 20, as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed was imploring Jesus that he might accompany him, and Jesus didn't let him.

You know what he said.

Go home, go and rest on your couch, my friend, and drink your wine and eat your meals.

Turn on the TV or the internet and just enjoy your life now.

Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he had mercy on you.

And you know what.

He went away and began to proclaim into the Copolis what great things Jesus had done for Him.

And everyone was amazed.

Are you saved?

Have you been born again through the blood of the Lamb, believed in His name for your salvation he's sending you.

God sent Jonah, a disobedient believer, prophetic failure to go on a mission for him and with him to a pagan wicked, lost people in Nineveh.

God has a really funny habit of sending the least likely, least worthy people on important missions.

The Canadian, for example, became a mighty warrior in Israel, but when God first called him he was scared to death, hid himself.

He didn't want to lead anybody.

The apostle Peter, leader in the early church, first denied Jesus Christ, deserted him.

And Jonah preached at Nineveh, which we'll read about, and brought a great revival.

But when he was first called he didn't want to go.

He dissipated, ran away.

When we believe in Jesus and belong to God I hate to tell you this God has just made you His partner in His rescue mission.

Goes with it.

God can't help it.

That's who he is.

God is ascending God.

God lives to rescue people, to change people through the people he's already redeemed and belong to Him, his people.

You could say that God is like a spiritual tornado sending people out.

God never brings you in without also spinning you out.

God's call to Abraham, for example, is kind of a paradigm of how God sends His people.

You know we said to Abraham in Genesis 12, two things First, abraham, I'm going to bless you so you can be a blessing.

And then second thing he said is go Now go to where I'm sending you.

What does that mean?

First, it means the reason God blesses us is to be a blessing.

That's his MO, that's his ways, that's what he's up to.

He saves us so we can help save others.

He heals us to make us a healer.

He provides for us to make us a provider and giver.

God brings us into Himself through our faith in Jesus and spins us out to be a blessing to others.

It never, ever stops with, just in ever.

What Jesus said to the demoniac that he saved, his first word was go, your Word report.

That's really it in a nutshell.

So first, it means the reason God blesses us is to become a blessing to others.

Second, it means the only way we can be that blessing is if we go, get out, get out of what.

For Abraham, going meant leaving his family, his country and his home by faith.

For the demoniac, it meant to leave Jesus' presence and go to his hometown.

In other words, it means getting out of our security zone, getting out of the comfortable, safe, familiar.

For Jonah, it meant getting out of Israel, going to his enemies, the Assyrians.

Recently, for Linda and me, it simply meant getting out of our nice warm house, going over to our new neighbor's house with a little gift to introduce ourselves and welcome them to the neighborhood we had to go.

And so through that, we're hoping and praying that simple kindness might open a door to further things, spiritual things, our testimonies, the gospel, inviting them to be with us in church, things like that.

But it didn't start to just start with us going speaking.

Until we are willing to get out of our comfort zone, to take a risk, we're not going to be able to be a blessing to people that God wants us to reach.

We are in fact partners with God in his mission of redemption and, like Jonah, he even will send us to people we don't even like.

As the apostle Paul explains, we are partners with God bringing the message of salvation, the gospel, to those who need Jesus.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17, to the beginning of chapter 6.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The oldest passed away, behold, the new has come, and all this is from God who, through Christ, reconciled us to Himself and gave us His mission ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ.

God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against Him, and entrusting us with the message of reconciliation, our ambassadors for Christ.

He doesn't say I want you to notice this.

He starts with if anyone is in Christ.

He doesn't say now, if you've got a theological education and 10 years as a Christian and know what you're doing, you are an ambassador for Christ.

Doesn't say that If you are in Christ, you are an ambassador.

And God.

This is what he's doing with Jonah.

God is making His appeal through us.

We implore you.

Paul says, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God For our sake.

He made Him, jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

And notice 6, 1,.

So working together with Him.

We're working together with God in Christ for people to receive the grace of God through believing the gospel.

I hope you've listened as I went through that.

God gave us, god entrusted us, god made us ambassadors and on behalf of Christ, we speak on God's behalf.

God is ascending God.

He doesn't bring somebody in without spinning them right back out.

Why, he's blessed us so we could be a blessing.

It doesn't just stop with us.

Many years after Abraham and Jonah left their comfort zones, god left his comfort zone.

He left the glory, the intimacy with his Father and the Spirit in heaven to want to become like us, share in our pain and troubles, understand our lives.

He gave up everything so he could be a blessing.

He endured a brutal torturous death so he could take our place and receive what we deserved on the cross for our sins.

And if you believe that, then open your heart and receive Jesus, God's Son, as your Lord and Savior and the blessing he has for you forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.

Nothing can compare.

But it is very, very easy, as a believer in Jesus, to live for nothing more than ourself or for our career or for our goals and desires.

Very easy.

We're not thinking about being sent, of going, leaving our comfort zone.

That's not a natural thought to us.

But if that's the case, if we're just living to get to the next day and just for ourselves or for something else, then we've missed the point of why God saved us in the first place, why, in His grace, he grabbed us and rescued us from an eternal death.

He saved us not because we're better than anybody else, not because we're more talented or skilled than anybody else, not because we deserve to have the blessing of salvation.

He saved us just because of His grace, when we believed in Jesus, who died on our behalf so he could bless us.

So the question that was screaming at me as I studied this passage, jim where are the places God wants you to get out of your comfort zone to serve others, to be a blessing, to share my testimony, perhaps to share the gospel?

Where?

Where's why I'm here to go?

The word go screams at us through the Scriptures Go, go.

But someone probably say, ah, you know what, I don't have the time or the talent or smarts to do that.

Well, you're underestimating the power of God.

Stick with me in Jonah and you're going to see something absolutely incredible what God can do with a willing voice.

God doesn't need any of what you bring to the table, except your heart to follow Him.

All he asks is to be willing to go, be his witness, his messenger, his ambassador, speak for Him on His behalf.

But God doesn't ask you to go until you come in by believing in Jesus and receiving the blessing of His salvation.

So if you never have I say it every time believe in Jesus and receive the gift of eternal life.

Let's pray, father, thank you for the rich blessings we receive through our faith in Jesus.

I don't think, I mean, even if we stayed here for a couple hours, we would ever get through the many blessings just from believing in Jesus that you've given to us.

You've adopted us as your sons and daughters.

We belong to you.

We're your children.

You gave us your spirit and with your spirit we cry out Abba, father, help us, father, whom you so greatly bless, to be a blessing to others you're concerned about and we're going to need you to help us, father, to be aware of where and how we can come out of our comfort zone and be your ambassadors in order to share what you've done for us and what you'd like to say to others through the gospel.

Help us to be the people who are sent, who go in your name and, like the demoniac, share what great things you have done for us.

I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.