Embracing Our Mission: The Call to Share the Gospel

Thank you for coming.

The word came, and he went in the other direction. God said, "Cry tears of compassion, tears of repentance, cry against the reek of unrighteousness, cry for the right turn for the contrite spirit." And Jonah rose and fled in tearless silence.

The Book of Jonah is a parable of the people of God that shows us both our great apathy and God's great mercy. I haven't come across anyone who captures both sides of that with the depth and the feeling as Thomas John Carlisle, whose poem I just read to you out of the collection "You, Jonah" from 1968. It's fantastic. As soon as I read one of the poems, I went on Amazon and found an old copy and bought it. I'll read you a couple more as we go through today's message, but this poet really gets it.

We're in our family vocation series this morning, and I want to welcome everyone online and everyone here in Bethlehem. If you've been following along, we've seen that the Book of Jonah is about a runaway prophet who ends up swallowed by a sea monster, which is the thing that God uses to finally wake him up to his need for God.

And so we saw last week how Jonah, in the belly of the beast, begins finally to cry out and repent. And so God saves him from a certain and very much deserved death, even though, as we saw last week, actually his prayer was still quite self-seeking, self-serving. And again, I want to read you another poem by Carlisle, who captures that moment, Jonah's prayer, in this poem called "Just." He says, "If you just, just rescue me from this unpalatable predicament, just fish me out of this hot water, get me off the hook, you can just bet I will not only be excessively obliged, but also gladly go wherever you oblige me to, even if it means that tour to Nineveh."

And so the fish vomits Jonah back onto the dry land, and that's where we ended chapter two. And this morning, we're meeting Jonah again at the beginning of chapter three.

And so now, this is the second half of the book, Jonah one and two and three and four, two halves that perfectly parallel one another. There's this beautiful symmetry in the book that you can see just as you look at it and compare the flow of the story.

And our title today is "Mission Impossible," and we're going to see three things. We're going to see, first of all, the paradigm of mission, the problem of mission, and the power of the message. So let's turn to our passage today in chapter three of Jonah, and we're going to read verses one to four. You can find it on your YouVersion Bible app; you can follow the notes every week, follow my notes, the notes that come up on the screen.

Chapter three, beginning in verse one, "And the word of Yahweh was to Jonah, Jonah, a second time, saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out to it the calling out which I am speaking to you.'"

I'll just pause here to mention, you recognize that this is virtually the exact same thing that God said to him in chapter 1, verse 1, and it's the same three imperatives that God gives to Jonah: "Get up, go, call out." But there's one key difference. So in chapter one, it says, "Call out against Nineveh for their wickedness or their calamity has come up to me," and here it says, "Call out the calling out, or the message which I'm speaking to you." So the emphasis changes here; the focus changes to the message.

Verse 3, "And Jonah arose, and he went to Nineveh according to the word of Yahweh. Now Nineveh was a great city to Elohim, a walking of three days. And Jonah began to go into the city, a walking of one day. And he called out and said, '40 days and Nineveh is overturned.'"

So we're going to stop our reading there. And as we get into this, I just want to remind you, in case you haven't been following along, but I need to remind those of us who have anyway, that we're dealing with a very sophisticated ancient author here. This is a very sophisticated piece of literature, and we've seen how this is a multi-layered story. It's full of nuances, full of wordplay, it's full of humor, and it's full of this kind of comic book style of action and caricature. Everything is great. There's 14 times it says the word "great." No one and nothing is quite what you would expect in this story. And so by this point, we should realize that there's not a single word that this author chooses that's not very intentionally picked out for a specific effect.

So there are a couple of things that, as I read that, we should have perked our ears a little bit. And the first thing that should perk our ears is what I call the paradigm of mission. So chapter three takes us right back to the start. Jonah is back in the same place he began, and God is recommissioning him for the exact same mission. It's the same imperatives, same destination.

And so you should think, "Hold on a second, Jonah again? After everything he's just done, really, God? This is the guy you're going to give another chance?" And so Jonah has been completely faithless, even though his name means "son of faithfulness." He's been completely disgraced. And so you should, as a reader, say, "But hasn't he disqualified himself? Okay, he repented in the belly of the fish, and he's been forgiven. But even if you think, kind of compassionately, you might still think, 'Well, man, Jonah, hasn't he just gone to hell and back, literally? Couldn't he take, like, a vacation or something for a little while? Go see a counselor, right? Work on his mental-emotional health. He's just gone through a very traumatic experience. Doesn't he need time to recuperate?'"

And yet, God doesn't bench him. He sends him right back into the game. And so this is what I call the paradigm of mission, and it's this: Yahweh is a missionary God who sends a missionary people. And so this is part of who God is; it's his heart, and because he never stops being a missionary God, his people never stop being a missionary people. In every time, in every circumstance, and even when they fail, even when they disgrace themselves and run the other way, the mission is still the mission. The calling still remains.

And so as I was reflecting on this for us as a body and as a church, there are always a hundred and one reasons why we can say, "Well, now's not a good time to do evangelism. Now is not a good time to take on this mission. We're not ready for it. Or maybe we've disqualified ourselves. Or maybe we're too hurting or broken. Or maybe we're just too tired. You know, we've been through a pandemic, we've been through leadership transition."

Or you might think personally, "Well, God, don't use me. I've ruined my testimony. I've been chewed up and spat out like Jonah." Or as a church, we might say, "Well, once we've taken care of our own people and they're whole and healthy and everyone's good, then we'll worry about the people out there. Then we'll worry about Nineveh. Or we'll get on mission when there's enough training, enough preparation. Maybe after we do the Book of Acts series, then we'll be ready to go. Maybe when we have the right leaders in place, we don't have a pastor of evangelism, so it's kind of hard to do. Or maybe when we have the finances, when we finish our building projects and our refurb projects. Or maybe when the schedule allows, you know, summer's not a really good time, everyone's traveling."

Or, you see, there's never a perfect time. There is never a perfect time. There is never a perfect or convenient circumstance. Something will always make it uncomfortable and inconvenient. And here's the thing, here's my next point: I think that's exactly how God intends it. Because following God always, without exception, involves leaving safety, security, comfort, and trusting him. It always involves that. Why? Because it's a walk of faith. And unless there's some gap between your comfort, your safety, and what God's asking you to do, there's no room for trust. It always involves risk. There's always a going; there's always a leaving.

And so, I'll be as bold to say it like this: You cannot trust God if you never leave your safety zone.

I know someone's hearing this and they're saying, "Well, what about this? What about now?" I'm not saying – let me very explicitly say this: I'm not saying there's never a time where we don't need a place of refuge, a place of rest, a place of protection, a place of safety. Absolutely, but what I am saying is that there's never a time where following God doesn't involve leaving something behind. Sometimes it means letting go of your pain and helping someone else.

I saw that growing up in Bethel, where you would think, "It's crazy for a guy or a woman that's just come in off the streets, maybe they've been in addiction 10, 15, 20 years. And they're in this place of healing and refuge, and they go through a few months of being cared for. And then, before you know it, four or five months down the road, they're saying, 'Okay, now you take care, you take care of the new guy that just came in off the street. Here are the keys, you open up the shop.'"

And it would make perfect sense for that person to say, "Wait, whoa, I'm not healed and whole yet. I need more time to be." And that's true. But here's the thing, God continues that work as you leave that behind and help other people. And I've seen that. It's not a formula; there's not a certain day that you reach and, "Oh, well, forget about yourself, help other people." I'm just saying, no matter what place, what position, what season you're in, there's something that you have to step out of and leave in order to trust God. Sometimes it means letting go of your pride, letting go of your need to control life or control your plans. Or sometimes it's leaving your demands on other people.

So my question for you, even at the outset of this passage, is: What is it that, in your life right now, you need to die to, you need to leave, and exit from, in order to trust God and follow where he's taking you? What is it that you need to leave behind? Because it always requires some type of going.

And again, I'll read you another poem by Carlisle. This is how he puts it in his poem, "The Great Intruder." He says, "It is exasperating to be called so persistently when the last thing we want to do is get up and go. But God elects to keep on haunting like some Holy Ghost." This is who God is. He is a missionary God; he's the going, the sending God.

And so Jonah finally goes, and no sooner does he go than we're confronted by what I call the problem of mission.

What do I mean by the problem of mission? Well, all the way through this book, the city of Nineveh is described as the great city. But it's not only great; the narrator here tells us it is great to Elohim, and your translation might say "exceedingly great." In other words, this is a divine measurement. A walking of three days, now that's roughly 60 miles. Imagine a city so big that it takes an hour, driving 60 miles an hour, just to drive through it, with no traffic, which would be a miracle, right? That's a huge city. That's huge by today's standards; that is inconceivably large in ancient standards.

And so what the author's trying to do here is he's trying to give us this picture of this absolutely enormous, gigantic, influential, powerful city that doesn't need Jonah. And Jonah, who doesn't need or care for this city.

And so the question it raises here, our next point, is: What do we do when the mission and the missionary seem pointless and impossible? And what this raises for me in our current context is that you may or may not realize, I'm sure you do, that we live in a time in the history of the world where the terms "missions" and "missionaries" are not only seen as pointless and a bit quaint, a bit outdated, but they're even seen as harmful. And all this talk about judgment and going into this foreign city and telling them that their ways are wicked, that makes us very uncomfortable, even in the church.

And I'll just give you one example that I think perfectly illustrates this. This is pointed out by the author Craig Greenfield, who wrote this great book, "Subversive Mission." He's a missionary in Cambodia for the last 20-plus years. He points out, so in 1956, there was an American missionary named Jim Elliott. How many have heard of Jim Elliott? A lot of people. And Jim Elliott and several other American missionaries, they were speared to death attempting to reach the Harani tribe of Ecuador, an unreached people group, for Christ. And they were immediately hailed as heroes. Jim Elliott was put on the cover of Life magazine, and they have inspired millions of people since then.

Now, fast forward 62 years to 2018, and another American missionary named John Allen Chau was speared to death attempting to reach the indigenous tribes of the Andaman Islands off the coast of India. And this time, Chau was called a fool in the press, a colonialist. And here's the thing, even Christians, even Christian publications had a hard time wrestling whether to call him a hero or to call him a fool. Was he a hero? Was he a martyr? Or was he just a reckless adventurer, ruining things for all the other missionaries who are doing things the right way?

What changed in these last 60 years? Well, we now live in a post-colonial world, thank God, where we recognize that one nation does not have the right to impose their customs and their culture on another nation. And so we look back at the history of European colonization, we look at the history of forced conversions and oppression, and how those practices completely decimated whole cultures, whole people groups. And so we look back at those things and we rightly judge them as wrong, as evil, as harmful.

And so what's happened is the history of missions for many people has been reinterpreted through that lens. And so many people now are in the place where they would say, "Who are you to go to another culture and tell them that their traditional beliefs and practices are wrong?" In other words, that's not a message from God; that's just your culture, and your prejudice, of course, that doesn't apply to certain other practices, but it certainly applies to what our culture would call religious beliefs.

And so what happened was there was a shift away from proclamatory missions towards more humanitarian missions. And so helping people build houses and dig wells and that kind of stuff. And even those practices of Western people going to the majority world and doing those kind of projects, even those things have been shown to cause havoc in local economies. What about local builders? What about local artisans and painters and those kind of things? And not only that, but they create these unhealthy dependencies. And so a lot of people say, "Oh, that's just a savior complex."

And so you begin to ask, "What do we do?" The world has a problem with mission, and the church now has a problem with method. And so a lot of us, especially younger people in the church, we feel completely paralyzed when it comes to this stuff. Missions now seems impossible. And so we're caught in this dilemma. Many of us know that there is still a sense of calling, that God is still the same God; he's a missionary God, he still has concern. How can I not care for this great city that is going towards destruction? And yet, at the same time, we don't want to be white saviors or Western saviors of any color to those people.

So just like Jonah, what's happening is we look at our past sins, we look at our apathy as a church, and we wonder, "Have we disqualified ourselves? Would it be better to just stop?" And just like Jonah, we look at the vastness of Nineveh, and we're dwarfed by the need, by the wickedness, by the injustice. And we begin to ask, "Can we really even make a difference? And if we're helping, is it just doing more harm than good?"

I don't know if you particularly have thought about those questions, but I know that many young people in the church today are, and they really don't know what to do with this thing called missions. When we read on the story of Jonah, if you've read even just the next verse from what we read, what follows on is the greatest revival probably in the whole of scripture. The entire city repents, even the animals. And you say, "Wow, how did God do it? How did God use Jonah to do that?" He must have done some incredible miracle. Maybe this wasn't the whole sermon. Maybe Jonah went in there and he told them, "Guys, I was just swallowed by a big fish, and I've been spat up, and look, now I'm alive. Believe in God."

Maybe it was Jonah went in and said, "I prayed to God, and he stopped the storm." And maybe the sailors came and they told their testimonies, and it was all this amazing miracle. And yet, none of that happens in the story. It was not through the power of a miracle. It was purely through the power of the word.

And I think what the author is pointing us to here is the next point, that the power for mission is not in the prophet; it's in the message. The power for mission is not in the prophet, but in the message. And so you think, "Wow, he must have been some preacher. That must have been some message. Better than you're doing in your too kind. Maybe I should just preach his message. Okay, here it is: '40 days and Nineveh is overthrown.'" I mean, it's hardly the Gettysburg Address, right? He came all this way for that. He went through all this for that. And so we look at that, and we think, "Well, that's not going to be effective." And Jonah doesn't even seem to want it to be effective. And yet it has an effect.

And as we bring this to a close and just bring this home for us, there are two things that I think we need to see. First of all, in verse 1, the word for message or the calling out, it's the same word that's translated "kerugma" in the New Testament, which some of you will know means the proclamation, the proclamation of the Gospel. It's the word only used one time in the whole Old Testament, right here. This is the word that, in 1 Corinthians, Paul uses to talk about the message of Christ crucified. The kerugma.

And in the same way, as we look at Jonah's sermon, we look at that message of Christ crucified, and we say, "How can the message of a man being executed be effective? How can that be good news? Surely, this is nothing but a message of judgment, just like the message that Jonah brought." And that is exactly how many people, at the time, saw what was happening. There is a man being judged. And many people today look at Jesus and say the same thing.

But once again, there's a connection between Jonah and Jesus. We saw last week how Jesus appropriates, he calls it the sign of Jonah, that Jonah, just as he's in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, that he will be in the belly of the grave for three days and three nights. And the sign is that out of that death will come new life. But it's only through crying out to God in that death that new life emerges.

And so here Jonah comes into Nineveh and he gives this message that's death; it's only death. Nineveh will be overturned. It seems inevitable, and it is inevitable, unless they call out to God.

And there's this double meaning that Jonah probably didn't even realize, it seems like, this irony in what he's saying and how he intends it to come across. But there's a double meaning in the message, because the word he uses, "overturned," can also equally mean turned around, changed. "40 days and Nineveh will be turned around." And then the Ninevites hear this message that, on the surface, seems like death, but they hear it as a warning and an opportunity to turn around. And they cry out to God, and miraculously, the biggest miracle in the book is not the fish; it's this revival, that the city of wickedness and evil turns around, cries out to God.

And so Jesus talks about the cross in the same way. If I asked you, "What is the most famous single verse expressing the message of the Gospel in the New Testament?" Someone would probably say, "John 3:16," right? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life."

Well, just before that, did you know Jesus is the one talking when it's John 3:16? Jesus is the one saying that. Well, just before that, in John 3:14 and 15, he gives us a reference to this obscure story in the Old Testament, Numbers 21, where God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it up on a pole, and anyone who looks at the serpent will be saved from judgment. And Jesus says in the same way, anyone who looks to me on this cross will be saved from judgment.

And so what you see is that in that serpent, at one and the same time, the thing that was a symbol of death, the thing that was a symbol of judgment, in the very same moment it becomes a symbol of life for those who cry out to God. And so Jesus says the cross, which again is nothing but a symbol of judgment, in him it becomes a symbol of life, of an opportunity to turn around, if we will only cry out to him.

And so in other words, the next point here, the message offers the choice to turn around or be overturned. The same one symbol means both things. And so that's why Paul says to those who are perishing, this cross is folly; to those who are clinging to him for life, it is life.

And so we begin to ask, when we're in this moment historically of this paralysis in mission, how can we preach this message as anything but arrogance and judgmentalism? Because that's exactly what many people hear in the message that the church brings.

And here's what I want to say: It's only by a messenger who recognizes that he, too, or she, too, has been given a second chance. It's only by a messenger like Jonah, who knows that they, too, have been given a second chance. And when you know you're preaching, you're proclaiming the cross not out of a condemning, critical, superior spirit, but out of a spirit of humility that says, "You know what? I was where you were. I was just as lost. I was just as dead in my sin, and God gave me a second chance to live. That I'm only there because I was at death's door, just like anybody else. And God gave me new life."

And so not a prophet that's there because he's obedient or godly or wise or well-off, but because he's forgiven. The one whom God has given a second chance now becomes a messenger of second chances. And so the world looks at us and says, "You're disqualified, church. Look at your sin." Church, and the truth is, many times, we are. What right do we have to say, "Look at us, look at how well we've done, look at the purity of our lives and our culture"? No, it comes from the heart of saying, "All we can do is look at him. Look at him on that cross."

And so my final point here is that for the message to work, it must first work on you. For the message to work, it must first work on you. And I don't mean that there's no power in the gospel except the power that you give to it out of your testimony. What I'm saying is the preaching of the gospel has power when the means of preaching it also preach the gospel. That not only the words are true to what is the message, but that our very means are true to what is the message, crying out to him and turning... Our turning to our neighbors not out of our own righteousness, but out of his righteousness and our humility in the face of his love for us.

And so we trust in the message, not in the method. And yet the method has to be consistent with the message. Our means have to look like the gospel, just like our words have to sound like the gospel. And so what that means is we have to be wary of methods that make us out to be saviors. Are you following me here? I'm preaching that he's the only savior, but is what I'm doing proclaiming a different message – Jesus is the only savior.

And so that's why, for missions in our day, more than ever, we have to be wary of making ourselves saviors in any way, of making people dependent on us when what they should be doing is finding dependence on Jesus.

And so the way we do that – and this, to a degree, has always driven us – is why one of the reasons why we pursue a relational strategy of missions in this church, in the hopes to avoid some of this very thing. Because we recognize that it's not just by donations; it's not just by sending work teams to various places. But it's not doing for; it has to be doing with. It has to be coming alongside the people who are within a culture and serving them as outsiders, coming alongside the poor and the marginalized and the people of the majority world in partnership, in empowerment.

And so here's what I want to just offer as encouragement to anyone who maybe struggles with this whole idea of mission, is that the answer is not to abandon the mission. God is still a missionary God, and to not be on mission is to miss the heart of God, to be off track. But the answer is also not to continue perpetuating methods that we now know have largely caused a lot of harm and even dependency, even though many of the things were well-meaning.

What's the answer? It's re-envisioning what mission looks like in our generation. Re-envisioning, reimagining, "God, what is your heart to do now in this time, in this generation?"

And so I just close with this, that we've seen the paradigm of mission. That God is a missionary God, sending a missionary people. And so my question to you is, where is he sending you?

Now, I invite musicians up now if we can just close with something together. Where is he sending you? If your faith isn't causing you to leave something behind, something of your plans, of your pride, of your preference, then you have to wonder, who exactly are you following? Who is following whom?

And maybe you're hearing this and you see yourself as Jonah, and you look at your life, you look at your testimony, and you realize, "I've all but disqualified myself. I've been just as apathetic as Jonah. I've had just as bad an attitude as Jonah. You recognize that deep down, just like Jonah, I don't really care that much about how Nineveh is doing, about where Nineveh is going."

Here's what I want to tell you: If you're here this morning and you recognize that Jesus died for you on that cross because of your sin, and that the only reason you walk with him is because he had the grace and the mercy to give you a second chance that you absolutely did not deserve, then you have the same exact message as Jonah. And today, just as in that day, it carries the same exact power as in the message of the Gospel, not in us as the messengers or the prophets.

And so you might feel like you have very little to give, but if that's you, you do have something to give. You have the very same power that Jonah had because you have that same message of the Gospel, and the message of the Gospel has the power to transform lives, to transform families, to turn around cities and nations. It's done it before, and he will do it again. He's done it before, and he will do it again. How does he want to use you? How is he sending you?

And so my prayer is that we would repent of our pride and our failures and get up, go, call out with this very same message, not with our words of wisdom, but with his word of power. Amen. Amen.

Let's stand and close together. And the question for you as we leave today is, will you go? Will you call out the calling out, the message that he is giving you?

So Father, right now we come before you in humility, and we thank you for the message of the cross. Lord, that when we were on death's door and didn't even know it, you rescued us and you offered us a way to turn around.

Well, we recognize that that means that new life can only come through first dying to ourselves, to our sin, to our own righteousness. So if there's anyone here who has never looked at that man on the cross and seen that opportunity to cry out to him and turn around, you have that opportunity, that invitation right now. Call out to him. And as you call out to him, that death on the cross can be the death of your sin, the death of your old life, and the beginning of a new and eternal kind of life. Call out to him today, Lord.

And for all the rest of us who claim your name, who do profess our trust and our belief in you, God, fill us with the same heart and compassion for your mission, that has always been your heart, that extends to the ends of the earth, to the very least worthy. Going out to them, may we follow you there, in humility, in love, in passion.

But we pray for our team that is right now in Guatemala, (inaudible) family, or give them the boldness to proclaim the message that you've given them. And God, would it have an effect that is far beyond what we could expect of their own power or eloquence or testimony? May the word that goes forth from them not return void but reap a harvest for your kingdom.

In Jesus' name, we pray the same for our other short-term missions teams that are going out, in about a month from now, to the Czech Republic, to Bethel. We pray the same empowerment by your word and by your Spirit in the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen. Amen.