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Jonah's Reluctance: What We Can Learn
Our exploration of the book of Jonah reveals important truths about missions and our often-reluctant hearts toward sharing the gospel.
• God calls us out of our comfort zones to reach the lost.
• Jonah knew God was merciful but didn't want that mercy extended to Nineveh.
• Christians today often retreat into isolation or political arguments rather than gospel sharing.
• The gospel remains the same regardless of who we're sharing with.
• We don't need perfect answers to every question when witnessing.
• Our testimonies can open doors even in brief encounters.
• God looks at eternal souls while we focus on temporal differences.
• True forgiveness is a distinctive of Christianity worth sharing.
• Compassion for the lost should transcend cultural and political differences.
Read the book of Jonah and join us for our next episode where we'll continue exploring Jonah's relationship with God and the Ninevites.
Hello and welcome to Simply Edifies podcast. Our goal is to encourage women as we navigate the messiness of life through biblical studies, personal stories and practical tips that bolster our walk with Jesus daily. Thank you for joining us in our episode today.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome. Today we are going to talk a little bit about Jonah. In our last episode we've mentioned, we are going to start talking a little bit about missions and it might be a little strange to start with Jonah talking about missions. Usually people go to the Great Commission, right to the great mission, right. But I think jonah gives us a good example of what the majority of us are like when it comes to missions.
Speaker 3:Sadly, um, I was gonna say I don't, I don't like that, but also probably true yeah just in the first two verses of the book of jonah.
Speaker 2:It says now the word of the lord came to jonah, the son of amittaya, saying arise, go to nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for the wickedness has come up before me. So basically, it's it's God giving Jonah the great commission, the commission that we were giving, going into all the world and preach the gospel. It says arise and go to Nineveh. Jonah's being called to come out from his normal daily programming and reorient himself to God's will.
Speaker 3:And something to be noted, too, is he was in ministry. He was already doing the things that he was supposed to do. He was a prophet. He could have easily said am I not doing enough? I'm busy doing what you've called me to do.
Speaker 2:I have my ministry here in Israel preaching to your people and taking care of the things that I need to do.
Speaker 3:I have my.
Speaker 2:I have my ministry here in Israel, preaching to your people and taking care of the things that I need to do here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm doing, I'm doing stuff for you and that's not. You know, that wasn't really his argument, but I think that a lot of us kind of rest on our, our busyness. Um, oh, I go to church and I, you know, do all the things.
Speaker 2:Don't call me up higher or harder to harder things right or or things that are just uncomfortable in a lot of ways. And you know, we don't know Jonah's backstory. We don't know why he was so opposed to Nineveh. I mean, obviously Nineveh was a very wicked city, it was a gentile city. So there are those two things that just off the bat, we could look at and be like, well, he didn't want to go because of you know, them being gentiles or whatever we.
Speaker 2:We don't know if he had personal issues with the Ninevites, like if they had done something to his family or anything personally. But that's really not important, because when God calls us to go, it doesn't matter our backstory, it doesn't matter our history, and oftentimes, when God calls us to witness to people who are close to us, who we do have a history with, we are a little bit more intimidated to share the gospel. I don't know if that's true for you, but I find people that you kind of already have an established relationship with there's a little bit more at stake when you are witnessing to them.
Speaker 2:If they reject the gospel, it's like they're rejecting you and that relationship could be broken. So we feel that it's a little bit harder. Anyhow, just as an added side note there too as well, you know, we don't know the exact reasons why he was completely so opposed to going to Nineveh.
Speaker 3:There was something.
Speaker 2:There was something that made him yeah, and we often are just called to do uncomfortable things, regardless of where we're at, what we've got going on already, and whether we want to do it or not, and when we look at the book of Jonah, you know we could say, well, the book of Jonah is about Jonah and, or the whale, or Nineveh, or you know the story and how all of it happened, but really it's not about any of that. Really those are just the parts of the story that show us God and his dealings with nations and his dealings with individual men. So when we take a step back and look at the book as a whole, that's important to remember. God was in control of this entire situation the entire time and he knew exactly what was going to happen from the beginning. So you might say, well, why didn't he just ask somebody who was going to do it without a problem? Because and we wouldn't know the exact reason why but really God chooses who he will to do his will and he gives us opportunities and chances to follow that. And even when we mess up and make mistakes, he is still willing to use us, and this is a great picture of that right.
Speaker 2:And then, as far as Nineveh is concerned, I'm going to read Jeremiah 18, 7 and 8. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to plug it up and to pull it down and to destroy it. If that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. So this is just showing that God is a merciful God. Right, nineveh was a wicked city, and you can read more about Nineveh and the wicked things that it did in Nehemiah as a whole. When it comes to nations, we can look at history and we can be like, well, why did this nation survive and why did this nation, why did God let these people, you know, go so long? And it shows us the mercy of God and his compassion, and Jonah knew that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he knew that he was merciful, that's why he didn't want to go, like I mean, that's what he says later on and he we're fine, we're fine with accepting god's mercy for us, right? Um, he pulled up, you know, later on he like shows jonah so much mercy and just letting him live and yet you know he didn't want mercy showed upon people that he deemed unworthy of it, right?
Speaker 2:and jonah is kind of a I would say kind of, is a nice way of putting it kind of depressed person. I mean he really definitely something going on with him, for sure like he doesn't care if he lives or dies in any of this story, which is interesting to me, because the way that he acts like what? When he's on the ship, he's like, oh, just throw me into the sea, I don't care, whatever not funny but it is kind of a weird response.
Speaker 3:There's no like begging for mercy or for his life. He's just like yeah, I hadn't really thought about that before, probably overboard, okay, like he's just I don't know.
Speaker 2:He's kind of a weird kind of guy, I would think.
Speaker 3:So I don't know that this. I don't think we really know for sure who wrote the book of Jonah, but I have heard people say that possibly Jonah wrote the book of Jonah Right, which is very interesting to think about because he definitely does not paint himself in a?
Speaker 3:pleasant light. No, if that is the case, um, which it's just, it is interesting that he's such a gloomy character, um, and he really doesn't have any redeeming. There's not really a single point in the story where he says or does anything redeeming or um that, like you know, makes him a better person. But there's no like character arc. It doesn't change who he is, he just kind of stays at one point.
Speaker 3:He's kind of like well, fine, I'm here, I guess I gotta do it right it doesn't actually like show a heart heart change, or he probably could have done with a little bit of a personality change.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is comforting that God does use us, all personality quirks and all yes for sure so, going back to, kind of, our first point, I guess, is that when God calls us to go, we set up the obstacles and the roadblocks and stuff. And you know I'm not we're talking about missions. But we all know that missions doesn't have to be on a foreign field in Africa. Missions is, and always has been, at home first. But that's not where it stops in Christianity today. We have a mindset that is not a rise and go, it is not go into all the world, it is be, you know, at home, even if the, if there is evangelism, it's evangelism at home. Right, missions has really taken a backseat in a lot of churches today, if there is any seat.
Speaker 3:Well, we talked about this when we talked about our kind of the home study like movement. It was been quite a while ago, but we kind of talked about how there's the us versus them mentality, even set inside of churches, and so you see all these what would be labeled as like child wife accounts, where people are, you know, staying at home and raising their babies, but they're also kind of like pulling in, having their, their little world that is completely within their control and I there's parts of that that I love like I, I love gardening, I love like having food that we've made for ourselves, all that kind of stuff. But when it starts to become us versus them me and my world only they can all just figure things out on their own that leeches over into our evangelism and our missions, right?
Speaker 2:And we also, along that same line, have going back to the fact that the Ninevites were Gentiles. We're talking about completely different lifestyles, completely different, um, government systems, completely different laws and all of this stuff. Right, and God didn't tell Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach about their bad government, or right, you know he? He said repent, right, that's, you know, essentially, the gospel is repent and believe in God, and so sometimes we can get caught up in all of these social issues, and so it's kind of the one extreme is like the isolation. Right, we're going to just take care of me and mine, go to church and minister to the saved believers and stay home and take care of me and mine. The isolation.
Speaker 2:Or like the politicization where we like politics warriors, and we're preaching against politics.
Speaker 3:Right, we get those two extremes and that's where I feel like just my personal take on jonah. Again, my personal take is that I feel like that was more of jonah's thing. Like these people are different. I don't like what they stand for, I don't like who they are. I I don't like their history. I don't want to see God forgive them and I think that that if we really sat in and thought about our lack of compassion towards people who are not like us, I think that you might have to face some of that same, you know, is your heart. Is that where my heart is? Do I want God? Do I don't want God to show the same kind of mercy towards others that he's shown to me? Right, which is really awful to think about, but sometimes our actions speak louder than our words, right? And what are you doing to reach people that don't look and talk and act like you?
Speaker 2:Right. So there's just some things to be cautious of in our mindsets that we can see kind of a little bit in Jonah's mindset, right Like he's he's just clearly uncompassionate towards the lost.
Speaker 2:And I don't think we'd come right out and say it ourselves. But our lives and our choices, they say it for us. We do not care enough to come out of our bubbles to present the gospel to those around us, whether it be fear or just a general lack of knowledge on how to, it is our responsibility to learn the gospel so we can share the gospel.
Speaker 3:So when it's the excuse of, well, I just don't know how to, um, that's really not a good excuse and a lot of times we'll say I know that I've fallen into this trap of being like, well, I don't know how to share the gospel to that particular person and their particular belief system or politics or lifestyle or whatever, but the gospel is the gospel is the gospel. And so, yeah, there are some things that are helpful to know. Questions you might get asked by a, um, a certain religion let's say they're from a different religion. You might. There might be questions they have that are helpful to have answers for. But ultimately, if you know God's word, what he says about salvation, that's what we're required to know. That's what we're told to know. The Bible says to know, to have an answer about the hope that lies within you. You don't have to have a counter argument for every potential argument.
Speaker 2:Right, don't fall back on that crutch like well, I don't know what to say I was just talking with someone actually last week who was saying that there was a lady and that had started coming to a bible study that she was attending and she wasn't saved but through the bible study, my friends, well, I don't have all those answers, but we can figure that out or whatever type of thing. And it wasn't even like about questions that the other person was asking directly, but just in general how my friend responded with that like I'm not sure, but we can find it, just that she.
Speaker 2:She told her later on like she did end up getting saved and she said that was one of the things that kind of helped me to realize I didn't need to know all of the answers before. I just had faith and believed and got saved. Sometimes, when we are sharing the gospel, to say I'm not exactly sure right now, but we can figure it out, like to have that kind of spirit, is not bad, it's good. And also, when it comes to sharing the gospel and things, it's more about having a mindset of eternity with us instead of the here and the now, um, and and that's what can we can also pull out from some of the things with jonah is god's looking at these souls in their eternal destination and jonah's looking at their here and now and his here and now, um, and we can do the same thing. We can get caught up in the here and now very easily, so maybe something that could help us.
Speaker 2:We're going to wrap it up for right now, but, um, we'll probably revisit jonah in the future here, but for this week and what our responsibility is with the gospel, maybe we take a few minutes and we evaluate how am I doing with going out of isolation to share the gospel? Do I just care about me and mine? Is that what my actions show? And or am I, like a political preacher, right? Am I preaching against political issues but not sharing the gospel, the truth of the gospel, and am I watering down the gospel with my political arguments and not being as effective in how I present the gospel of Christ to other people because I'm getting sidetracked with these other issues?
Speaker 2:And one of the greatest things that we can tell people is how wonderful it is to be forgiven when we're sharing the gospel. If you think about other religions, there's really not any forgiveness involved, right? Not a lasting forgiveness. Your sins are gone. Forgiveness Catholicism. You have to continually ask for forgiveness and you have to continually bring your faults you know, before somebody to be forgiven or absolved or whatever it is. Other religions, like you're constantly working towards that, but with Christ we have complete and full forgiveness. So that is something that you can talk about rather easily. I'm so glad that God forgave me.
Speaker 3:I was going to say.
Speaker 3:I think that if you have a part of your testimony that you can share with people, say you have a quick interaction with somebody, cause you don't always know and we use that term like leading someone to the Lord, kind of like it's us that's doing it, but ultimately it's God and his word and his spirit, and so, yes, like there are people that will absolutely sit down and explain the gospel to you and that is invaluable.
Speaker 3:But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to like say exactly the right thing, lead someone through all you know 10 verses of the Romans road, or else it's not good enough. But if you have just something prepared, not scripted, I'm not saying that but just something that you know, that you can share, like what you just said, like I'm just grateful that God forgave me of my sins and I know that I have salvation, or something to that effect, can open the doors to a seeking heart, or open the door to someone that wasn't seeking and now you've, you know, kicked a hole in for the light to shine through. But just having like a truth about yourself, I think that our testimony is so hard. Even people who don't want to hear the full gospel, are generally going to be accepting of hearing a part of your testimony right because every, even, even far in the opposite direction of what we believe, there are people who would say, like follow your truth.
Speaker 3:And so there's that open, there's a slight little bit of open-mindedness that they should have practicing what they preach, and so, um, anyway, I just think that that's really important, because I think of all the times I have very brief interactions with people where I can't sit down and really open my bible and share with them, but I can give them the answer for the hope that's in me, right, yes, so if uh you're gonna follow along with us.
Speaker 2:Go on ahead and read the book of jonah, but I can't give them the answer for the hope that's in me, right? Yes, so if you're going to follow along with us, go on ahead and read the book of Jonah, and we'll probably do another episode and talk a little bit more about some things concerning Jonah and his relationship with God, and also the Ninevites.
