For many years I was involved in international missions, traveling to some 60 countries where our organization worked. It was always interesting when I spoke in churches about working in difficult places, whether closed Muslim or Communist countries or areas where we Americans were not particularly welcome. The question was often, "why would we care about them?" As if to ask, "Do they deserve to hear the Good News of the Gospel?" Many thought not. After all, these were enemies of our country, so why go and share the Gospel?    

Here is what we often forget. Our God is a missionary God. In fact, many people asked Jesus the same question about why he spent time with sinners and who some thought were the scum of society. Jesus simply answered, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." (Matthew 9:12). 

When you think about it, neither you nor I deserved to hear of Jesus. We heard because God cared. We are simply recipients of His grace.

And so we come to the book of Jonah in the Old Testament. Of course, we know the story of Jonah because of Jonah’s encounter with a fish when he tried to run away from God and God’s call on his life. 

So the story starts in Jonah 1. 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.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. 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.

Why did Jonah run from God’s assignment? It is simple. He didn’t believe that the Ninevites deserved to hear about God. To give some context, the year is approximately  760 BC. Nineveh was a large city, had an evil reputation, was ruthless in its treatment of captured cities and citizens, and for a time was the largest city in the ancient world and the seat of the neo-Assyrian empire. Bluntly put, the Ninevites were bad bros, and everyone knew their reputation and feared them. Its reputation among historians was as a great, lawless, and, eventually, ruined city. Its wickedness is so great in Jonah’s time that God sends Jonah to preach to them.

Jonah had no intention of cooperating with God. To him, Nineveh didn't deserve the opportunity to repent! They deserved nothing but God’s destruction. But Jonah, and indeed you and I,  often miss the heart of God, which is a missionary heart and always has been. It is why Jesus’ last words to his followers before His ascension was what we call the Great Commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17). 

This is God's heart and what Jonah didn't like. Why share the good news with bad people? Why give those who deserved to be judged for their evil a second chance? Because of God's heart. The same heart that He calls us to have. A heart for needy people. A heart that people hear the Good News of a good God. A heart for those who have never heard of God's love.  

Jonah didn’t like God’s mercy. The nation of Israel didn’t think the Ninevites deserved anything but destruction. But they forgot what we often forget. We didn’t deserve the Good news of God either! Yet, Jesus made sure that we heard, and we are now a part of His family.

Here is a truth for us to remember. Those we look down on, those we think are evil or undeserving, are the same people who need to hear the Good News. That is the hea