Jonah had a command, did he not?

And his command was to function like God had intended Israel to be all the time.

Why did God take this little group of people and put them here in this little strait of land between Asia, Europe, and Africa?

You have three continents that meet at this little place.

All places to be, you're in the way.

Well, you are in the way.

God intended the Jews to be in the way.

He deliberately brought Abraham to this little strip of land that all the armies had to go through, all the traders had to go through.

He put them here to be in the way, so that he could be a light to the Gentiles, to the people of Israel.

They had a calling.

They just never usually realized that calling.

And we may fault them as much as we do, forgetting that we also have a calling.

And when we find other people in the way, do we do any better than the Jews did with the Gentiles in our proclamation?

Sit on planes and buses and classes, we're people all the time, and we sometimes forget we are deliberately put in the way, the place we are to be missionaries for the Lord.

It's not some foreign field, it's where you are.

And so God put these Jews here so that they could be a light to the Gentiles.

Well, they failed in that so many ways over the years.

But God had a plan for Assyria.

Assyria was not a nice group of people.

They make Al-Qaeda look nice.

The Assyrians did some devastating things to prisoners.

I mean, they would take people as prisoners and cut off body parts, put hooks through their underneath, right through here, and pull them along beside them into captivity.

They were mean, nasty people.

People hated the Assyrians.

And God told Jonah, hey, listen, go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria.

I got a message for them, that they can be saved.

Jonah said, not a chance — opposite direction.

Assyria is a little northeast here.

I'm heading directly west from Jaffa, from Joppa.

The mission of God to the Gentiles and the Jewish people.

Years later, a man by the name of Peter had a vision from God.

And he obeyed — according to chapter 11 of Acts, he said, I obeyed that heavenly message.

Because God said, what I have called clean, you're not to call unclean.

Don't you be the one to decide what's right and wrong.

Let God be the decider.

And so he said, call for this man.

He's waiting to hear this message.

So obviously, I got that backwards there.

The point of view is, Cornelius had also a situation where he had a visitation, not a dream.

He had a visit from an angel.

Now, Cornelius was not a saved man.

He was not regenerated.

He sounds that way.

He gave alms to the poor.

He attended synagogue as a proselyte.

He was a Roman from the Latin Legion.

He wasn't just any Roman.

He was a centurion, one of the top guys in the Roman army, connected with Rome, Italy, Latin Legion.

And he gave alms.

He prayed three times a day.

He did things probably better than you do in those respects.

Some of you, I'm sure.

Thank God.

And yet he was not a believer in Jesus.

He was not a saved man.

Because when Peter came in Acts 10, it says, I came in order that you and your house might be saved.

They weren't.

And so we have almost the opposite.

Here God had intended the message to the Gentiles from Jonah, and rejected that message, to find that God made him.

And then we have also another call of God to the Gentiles, where the question is, can a person be a Gentile and be a believer in Jesus?

So many of the Christian Jews at that time said, no, you've got to become Jewish.

Yeah, right?

And then God demonstrated, no, you can still be a Gentile and be a believer.

Our issue today is whether you can be Jewish and be a believer.

You've got the opposite problem.

You've got Gentiles trying to make Jews to be Gentiles.

In those days, you had Jewish trying to make Gentiles to be Jews.

The opposite problem.

But here, just south of us, is Joppa, where God has continually, sort of in a microcosm, tried to do what he did in the whole nation of Israel:

that is, be a light to people regarding the salvation of God.

So this is a wonderful place to be.

We're going to find more when we get over to the place where Paul's judgment seat is.