God’s Heart for the Nations

Man, as Pastor Leon said, it's so good to be here. It's such an honor and a privilege to be with you. My name is John. My wife, Chelsea, over there. As I said, we'll speak later.

And yeah, it's just, it's been so great to spend our summer here in Virginia Beach, which is Chelsea's hometown and back in Salt. And so, yeah, I'm just going to pray real quick. Lord, please be here. I pray that as I speak, it would be clear, clearly show who you are, your heart, and yeah, it would be all about you and what you're doing, that we would see that clearly. In Jesus' name, amen.

So, we're going to be changing gears after the last few weeks. The last few weeks have been on mental health. They've been great. They're awesome. But we're actually not changing gears 100%.

We're still going to be pressing in a little bit more with what Andrew was talking about last week, about renewing your mind. Because one thing that we see is that our natural mindsets are not the same as God's mindsets. And we're going to be looking at that throughout several passages of Scripture this morning. And we're going to be seeing, are people's mindsets good, bad? What are God's mindsets like?

And how can we renew our minds to be more like His? So, the topic that Pastor Leon asked me to speak on this morning is God's heart for the nations, which is bigger than Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, the Mid-Atlantic, America, or even the whole Western Hemisphere, right? Like, He wants us, and I'm so privileged and honored to be able to bring this word to you, is what's God doing in the nations? What's His heart? And so, this morning, we're going to be looking at that through three passages of Scripture, three passages from the Bible, because we're going to ask this question, right?

And this first question is, do you believe that God is the God of all the world and all of history? Yeah, most people say, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe that, I believe that. And what I find is that I say that with my mouth, I say that I believe that, but sometimes the way that I actually act shows that I haven't actually contemplated what that means, what are the ramifications of saying, okay, God is the God of all history and all the world, and, yeah, what does that mean in my life and in this world? Do we actually believe that? And we're going to see this morning that, no, we probably don't believe that all the way, but the heroes of the Bible didn't believe that either, which is because people are all people.

We're all more or less alike in some deep fundamental ways. We'll see this morning that people have small views, right? They have localized views. They care about their tribe, their family, their ethnic groups, their region, our lives. Yeah, that's what we tend to think about.

But God has big views, right? Because God tends to be who God is, which is the almighty creator of all of the universe. All of. All of humanity. History, all of our story, fits into His story, right?

He's the big one. We're not even just our individual, all of our history fits into His. So, then it brings us to ask this next question. This is a question about how God works in history, right? Does God care about the nations, all the nations of the world that are so different, so far from us and from our cultures?

Or do people, are people the ones caring about that? And I'll give you a little hint, as we'll see in these Bible passages, and it's all across the Bible. People want to stay, but it's God who wants to send people and to save people. We want to stay. It's God who's pushing.

It's God who's the force of good, force for good in the world, in the world that people have messed up and are messing up. And that might be, I think, maybe really encouraging for those of you who are like, you know, I'm not opposed to the idea of God, but I've been hurt by some Christians in my life, to know that this is always the case, that it is God who is the force of good. And if you meet good, kind people, it's because God's at work in their lives, not because they're independently good on their own. So, there's two things. We're going to have, like, this message.

We're going to look at the stuff. We're going to come to the application. But there's also two goals that I have this morning that are sort of run tangential to that. Is that I want to paint for you a picture of who God is, which I believe is a really good picture. And I want you to see his goodness and him as force of good in the world.

And I also, this is a really Bible-heavy sermon. We're going to spend a lot of time in the Bible. And I want you to see that, well, the Bible is not only this religious book, this inspired text, whatever that might mean to you, which I believe it is inspired text, but that it is insightful and true, and it speaks to the very deepest things in all of our lives. The very deepest things. And if you're newer to church and you're not so familiar with the Bible, I'm just going to be frank with you.

The Bible is weird and can be hard to understand. So the newest parts of the Bible are almost 2,000 years old. The oldest parts are at least 3,000, upwards of 4,000 years old. That's old. That's different.

Try to read stuff from 100 years ago and it's different, let alone thousands of years ago. And it wasn't written to Americans. It was written to ancient Middle Eastern people. There's a lot of steps between us and them. There's translation, there's culture, there's history, there's stuff we don't understand.

So it takes effort to get into the Bible and to really understand it. But what I hope that you see this morning is the Bible speaks very clearly into our human issues, that it is worth the effort. Because, I mean, it points to truth. It gives us truth. It teaches us.

So, it is Bible heavy. And I'm not apologetic from it. Because the Bible has better things to say than I do. Probably. So...

Please track with me, and if you have questions or some of the stuff, you're like, man, I hope at home you start digging into the Bible for yourself even more and finding all the good stuff that's there. Yeah, so, I will give you, I hope at least that it's enough, to give you enough information and context to understand the three passages that we're going to be looking at this morning, because they're from really different parts of the Bible, really different history, times, all that stuff. So, we're going to read three passages. The first passage is about this guy named Jonah, whom I like to call Jonah the Supremacist Prophet. The second passage is about, oh, sorry, he's the Jonah the Supremacist Prophet who tells God no.

So he's a real champ in the good prophet book. And then number two is the Apostle Peter, who's one of Jesus' friends. So, it's Peter whose religious xenophobia is only barely overcome by receiving a bunch of miraculous stuff, right? And then, so we're going negative to a little bit better. And then finally, our third passage compares God's heart, which is the really positive passage.

So, we're going to do some comparison and contrast and see what threads are woven through these passages. And while I'm just doing three passages of scripture, these threads are in the whole Bible. You could have chosen a handful of passages and found the same thing, more than a handful. So, as I begin, I want to just express my debt of gratitude for my team leader, who's really helped me understand the story of Jonah, our first story, a lot more. And let's jump into it.

So, in Jonah, you may be familiar with this story if you've ever read like a children's picture Bible book or attended Sunday school or something. But because there's this big fish in this story that swallows this guy up, it's great for children's stories. Unfortunately, those children's stories, they just don't like having the main character be a racial supremacist. So, they're not very faithful to what the Bible actually says about Jonah. But remember, the Bible is honest and true.

So, the Bible paints Jonah as who he is. Sometimes when we read Jonah, we have the Bible story version, the kids' Bible story version with paintings in our minds so much that it's hard for us to read it and really see what's there, right? Because we have so much lens. So, I'm going to read to you the first three verses of the first chapter. And then I'm going to basically summarize the next part of the story.

And then we're going to read a few verses from the end of the story. So, let me turn there. So, this is Jonah 1, 1 through 3. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.

Okay. You know, that's pretty normal beginning of a prophet sort of stuff. Next verse. But Jonah ran away. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port.

After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Okay, now that's a little bit different than the normal prophet stuff. So, in the Old Testament, there's prophets. God tells them things and says, hey, go tell my people this. In the Old Testament, God's people are the Israelite nation, Jews.

So, lots and lots and lots of times, prophets get words from God for the Jews. Lots of times, prophets get word about the Jewish enemies for the Jews. This is a little bit unique. So, the Ninevites, or the people of Assyria, that's their city, were the Jews' enemies. So, Jonah, okay, this is pretty unique.

He gets a message, not for God's people, but for their enemies. Okay, that's different. But what's really unique is that when a prophet gets a word from the Lord, they just do it. Maybe they say yes. Maybe they don't even say yes, because they're already obeying.

Jonah says, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm running away. What's the farthest place? You know, he goes down to the ancient version of an airport and gets the longest haul trip he can get. And what we don't see in these verses, that would take a little bit more time to get into the rest of Jonah that we don't have this morning, is we see, why?

Why does Jonah rebel? Why does he do what no other prophet in the Old Testament does? Well, because he's a supremacist. He believes that because he's a part of God's chosen people who have received the law, that they are superior. Right?

I'm a prophet, so I tell God's word to God's people, not those other people. Right? He's a supremacist. He thinks he's superior, and his people are superior, and he's fine being a prophet, but he's not going to be a prophet to those people. And, I mean, to be fair, which is a little bit hard to be fair, it's such a loser like Jonah, but to be fair, the Ninevites were bad people.

If I kind of, I tried to think of an example, and I thought, maybe the closest thing is, what if there was like a Jewish guy in New York, so not in Europe, in the mid-1940s, and was like, hey, go to Germany and tell them this message I have for them. A lot of resistance, right? So that's a little bit with Jonah. It's like, to be fair to this guy, he's going to this genocidal, conquering empire with God's message. So he's like, nope, I don't do that because I care about my people.

We're superior. I'm going to go. If you know the story, you know a big storm comes. It's a terrible storm. And all the sailors are like, we're going to drown and die at sea.

And the sailors are pictured as this good people. Jonah's not. And in the end, Jonah realizes that God is after him, right? And so what could he do? He could repent.

Maybe say, hey, God, I repent. We're going to go back. Maybe the storm would cease. I don't know. But he's not about repenting.

Never does he repent and turn around and say, I was wrong in the book of Jonah. Instead he's like, I'd rather die, throw me in the dust. And so they throw him overboard, and he's drowning. But God is good, and God is big, and God cares about the nations, so God overcomes Jonah's rebellious suicide attempt, and has this huge fish come, and Jonah's so disgusting, so wicked and evil, that the fish just says vomits him up onto the beach. So, Jonah, he's thrown himself into the middle of the ocean, or the Mediterranean Sea, the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, in a big storm, and even then can't get away from God, like, can't even get away from God and dying, so he finally goes to Nineveh.

He gets there, and he does not want to be there. He does not want to be doing God's work there, so he preaches this message. And, you know, I hope that you all are more charitable to my preaching this morning than I'm going to be to Jonah's, but, I mean, his message is really bad. This is his message. It comes from Jonah 3, 4.

He says this, Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown. The end. That's it. That's the whole message. What a terrible sermon, right?

It's a terrible sermon. But God is at work in Nineveh, and in the hearts of the Ninevites. Because the very next thing that the Bible says is their response. It says, The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

Even the king says, like, even the cows are going to be fasting, right? Like, everyone is fasting. They're all turning back. And what happens next? How does God respond?

It says in verse 10, When God saw what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented, and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened. Okay. That's great. God, they, Jonah preaches a terrible sermon. But God's at work.

They repent. God forgives them. It's great. The city's saved. Now, in Hebrew, we don't have this in English.

But in Hebrew, there's this little play on words. They use the word evil for lots and lots of different meanings in ways that we don't use it. So, sometimes it's not just a moral thing. It could just be bad stuff that happens, right? Like, the destruction of Ninevites would be called evil in Hebrew.

So, it says, basically, they repented of their evil. God stopped the evil that was going to come. And in the very next verse, it says, And to Jonah, this appeared to be evil. Right? So, Jonah is so twisted by his little perspective.

I care about God's people. That when God saves an entire people, a whole big city, an empire, He's like, well, that's bad. That's evil. I don't like that. He cares more about his values, his people, his perspectives, than about the work of God in the whole world.

Yeah. He rejected the real God and the real God's work for what, yeah, what he wanted. And my question now is for myself is, do I ever do the same? Do I ever place my values and my priorities above what God is doing? So that when God does something real in the world, my only perspective is that's bad because it doesn't match what I want to happen.

So, to review, before we move on to the next story, which is about Peter and Cornelius, Jonah, the supremacist prophet, rebelled against God because he did not want to see God doing anything in Nineveh, except for like maybe blasting them or something. He was opposed to their repentance, but God was there. God cared about the enemies of God's people, even when Jonah didn't. So, Peter and Cornelius, who, I'm going to give you a little bit of context, and then I'm going to let my, coincidentally, also named Peter, friend, read the passage so you get a break from my voice, because this is a longer passage. In this story, we're zooming over to the New Testament.

There was, this is after Jesus has come, done all of his work, died on the cross, was buried, resurrected, and then before he goes up to heaven in his ascension, he tells all of his friends and students and disciples, he says, hey, go all over the world and tell everyone about me. But before you do that, stop in Jerusalem and get the Holy Spirit. And so, they're scared. They're hiding in Jerusalem. Holy Spirit comes and they're transformed.

They're really, really bold. But remember how Jesus said, hey, go into all the world and tell everyone? They hadn't started doing that yet. They'd only been telling other Jews about Jesus. They had not crossed any ethnic borders yet.

So, I'm going to ask my friend Peter to read Acts 1, or sorry, Acts 10, 1 through 23, and then we'll skip a few verses to 28. And in those intervening verses, it's just moving on. So, also to give you a little tiny bit more context that I forgot, the story's in two parts. There's one part over here is this guy Cornelius. It's a story about what happens with him and his life and house.

Then there's this flash over to this other scene of Peter in this other city in this house, and then Cornelius' people come there. So, take it over, Mr. Peter. This is Acts 10, 1 through 23, and then 28 through 30. At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment.

He and all his family were devout and God-fearing. He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day, at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius. Cornelius stared at him in fear.

What is it, Lord? He asked. The angel answered, Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon, who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the Tanner, whose house is by the sea.

When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa. About noon the following day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry. He became hungry.

He wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.

Surely not, Lord, Peter replied. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean. The voice spoke to him a second time, Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of this vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate.

They called out, asking if Simon, who is known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them. Peter went down and said to the men, I'm the one you're looking for. Why have you come?

The men replied, We've come from Cornelius the Centurion. He's a righteous and God-fearing man who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say. Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests. And then on the next day, Peter says to Cornelius and his household, He said to them, You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.

But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent me? Thank you very much. All right.

So I'm going to summarize and we're going to see what's happening here. So there's Cornelius, right? Who is devout, God-fearing, which just then means he's not a Jewish convert, but he believes in the Jewish God. He believes in the true God. And he hasn't yet heard the gospel of Jesus.

He doesn't know Jesus yet. He doesn't know about that. But God is breaking into his life, right? An angel appears to him. And he responds in obedience.

He sends the men over to find this Peter guy. And then zoom over to Peter. Peter is just praying. Peter is Jewish. Peter has the Holy Spirit.

But he hasn't gone to all the nations yet. This sheet comes out with all these animals. And that's all about, he's like, go kill and eat. He says, Oh, I've never eaten anything impure. And in that, he's like, think, I've never eaten anything that's not kosher.

That's what that's all about. I've only been doing what you've told us to do. I've not done this. And God says, I'm expanding the boundaries, right? I'm expanding the boundaries.

So Peter ends up going. And what does he tell in those last two verses that our other friend Peter read here? He's not hiding it. He's saying, Hey, um, so, you know, we don't do this. He says, let me, uh, these are like, Luke, uh, and I'm getting here.

I don't hang out with you. You don't hang out with me. I don't invite you to my house. We don't go into your house. We've got these like Jewish laws, right?

But God convinced me that I should do this anyways. But I wasn't going to come. I wasn't going to preach. I wasn't even going to hang out with your house. But I can see that God is up to something here.

So he's come around to God's purpose in Cornelius' life. But how? It took him one vision, repeated three times, a word from God, and these other people also had to get an angel's visitation. But in the end, he does. So, he says, God's doing something here.

And then what happens? And we see this later in verses 34 through, in the end, 45. Peter began to speak. I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

And while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers, so the Jews, who had come with Peter were astonished to see that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. I love that even, right? So Gentiles are just anyone who's not Jewish. So they say, wow, God is giving his Holy Spirit even to those people.

Can you imagine that, right? Like that's, but that's, that's where they're at, right? In this story. Oh, God is even doing something with folks like them. And this is so radical in the, in the, after the story, Peter has to go back and report to the church leaders that God did something amongst those people.

And they're like, oh, wow. Okay. So I guess, I guess God's doing this thing. Um, so we read two different passages now. We read Jonah and we read about Peter and Cornelius from Acts and Jonah, that's bad news, right?

He rebelled. God wanted to reach the Ninevites. Earlier, we had that slide of saying people tend to stay or people want to stay. God wants to send and save. So God wanted to send Jonah and save the Ninevites.

Jonah wanted to stay and he never changed from that. That's bad. God wanted to save Gentiles, particularly starting with Cornelius's house. He wanted to send Peter to, and save them. Peter in the end went, that's good.

It took some convincing. So not only did God have to, uh, to get them to go, but he had to convince them to go, right? Um, so for us, we see that the same is really true, right? We like those who are like us. We fear the other people who are different from us.

We don't like to be uncomfortable. And sometimes we're even audacious enough to believe that like God's on our side, that God has the perspectives that, that we do. He is for us as people, but we think that God is for our agendas, that God is for our values. God is for our purposes. When at best, we're like Peter, coming alongside on his purposes and obedience.

And at worst, when God isn't for our values and our purposes, we can be like Jonah. So, yeah, Jonah never got it, but Peter did. Because people want to stay, and God wants to send and save. So then our question is, will we be like Jonah, or will we be like Peter? And I don't mean like going overseas or anything like that necessarily, because that's what my wife and I do.

It's more just, will we be sensitive to the other in our lives? Will we be for God's purposes and work in the world, even if we're not the center of it? We can say yes, yes, yes, sure, yeah. But when it gets uncomfortable, when we're like Jonah asked to go to people who are really hard, or our enemies, that gets a little bit harder. And I think that, at least for me, I need help to do that.

And what do we need? We need the mindset of Christ. God is at work today among the nations, as he always has been. Sometimes we think, maybe not sometimes, we probably always think that basically America is the center of the universe. Woohoo!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, woohoo! We're humble enough to know that it's not Hampton Roads, right? We like say that, like, oh, it's D.C. or New York or L.

A. But it's still America, it's still our people, it's still our perspectives, our agenda in the world. But we forget that we're almost, probably most people in this room are Gentiles, we're not Jewish. We forget that, had that story about Peter and Cornelius just happened, we wouldn't even be in this church. We wouldn't be a part of God's family at all.

I wouldn't be in this church. We're in the family of God because of Peter, allowing or not resisting God's work through him. But not just because of Peter, we're also in this church in the family of God because of Cornelius talking to other people about Jesus. And Cornelius talking to, or Cornelius' friends talking to their friends about Jesus, and their friends about Jesus, and their friends about Jesus. We're in this church because the Apostle Paul went all over telling people about Jesus.

Because they didn't stay in their comfort zone. We're in the family of God because of those weird monks in like the four and five hundreds who went all over the world telling people about Jesus. That's why we're here. Because, not because they were even good, but because God was driving them out of their comfort zone. Driving them out of their localized ethnocentric bubbles and into other places amongst the other.

And it didn't start, God didn't start doing this with Peter. Well, we already saw it with Jonah. But we see it all the way back in Genesis. The very first book in the Bible. When God tells Abraham, all the people of the earth will be blessed through you.

And what he really meant, as you see in context, is through his descendant, Jesus, the whole world is blessed. And that's not to mention that this has been God's plan from before he even made the world. In short, God cares about the peoples of the earth. And do you know what's most humbling about this? Is that we're talking about, like, taking God's message or serving people who are different from us.

But God doesn't need us. He doesn't need us to do that. He doesn't need us at all. But he cares about us enough to not let us become like Jonah and just navel-gaze, right? He cares about us to straighten us out.

He cares about us to expand our hearts and to give us the opportunity and privilege to participate with God's work in the world. We want to stay, but by being sent by God, whatever that sense means, and we'll talk about that too, God changes us. So we're going to kind of close with our final piece of scripture, which is from Philippians 2. And this is thought to be maybe the oldest hymn or church song in history. And it's about the mindset of Christ, is what it's often called.

The mindset of Christ, or some versions say the mind of Christ. And it shows us what lengths God himself went to reach the nations. Because God isn't asking us anything that he didn't already do himself. Because God in Christ left the community of the Trinity to go to an other, to a people that rejected, hated, and ultimately killed him in love for the nations. And this, more than anywhere else, I think, we see God's heart for the nations.

And it says, have the same mindset. And I don't think we can have the same mindset without the help of the Holy Spirit. Remember, we see in both of these stories, it's God trying to help people move and do these things. So, here it is, the earliest hymn of the church. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So, what does that mean for you? And what does that mean for me? Well, God's purposes are for the whole world. The gospel of Jesus Christ is for the whole world.

And if we are going to participate with Christ, if we're going to participate with God's work in the world, we first of all need his mindset. We need God by his spirit, like Andrew was talking, to renew our minds. In lots of ways, and in this way toward the other, especially. If we have this mindset of Christ, we will not be allowed to remain comfortably distant from the other, blithely unaware of their needs and concerns. And this other that I talk about is different for every person.

It could be immigrants and refugees. It could be people in other countries. It could be just people who are from different racial and ethnic groups than your own. It could be people from different socioeconomic spheres than your own. Whoever is different from you is the people you're probably being called, who you're rubbing shoulders with, you're probably being called to engage with, to not just stay comfortable in your own little sphere.

So will you join Christ in His work in the world? Or will you be like Jonah and be like, I'm superior? If you're going to join Christ, by prayer, let's lay aside those feelings of superiority, those feelings of maybe fear for those who are different from us, those feelings of hatred that we might have or bitterness or resentment that we might harbor. And let's move toward them in humble service. Let's give to overseas mission workers and mission organizations.

If you can't go yourself or go yourself, that's awesome. And here in Virginia Beach, seek out those who are different from you. Ask the Lord how you can do that. And you will find that God will expand your heart and your vision. You will find that you become a bigger person in that process.

So I'm going to pray because we can't do this without God's help. Father, thank you that you moved toward us in all history, but especially in the incarnation and the coming to earth of your own son, Jesus Christ. We pray that we would have his mindset by your spirit, that we would love those who are different from us and not shrink back in fear or senses of superiority. Would you please transform us? And for those who are here who don't yet know you, who don't yet have the spirit living in them, who cannot have your mindset of Christ, we pray that whoever that might be would come to find a life that is in Jesus Christ by repentance and receiving his work on the cross.

Please transform us and expand us and help us to participate with your work in the world. In Jesus name. Amen.