A New Beginning

Greg Laurie: The greatest critics that Christ faced when he walked this earth were not sinners. They were religious people. In fact, the thing they had against Jesus was he's even the friend of sinners. Yes, that's right. He was.

Guest (Male): We often want to stay in our safe little Christian cocoons. Pastor Greg Laurie says we need to follow the Lord's example. We should be willing to leave our comfort zone so we can reach them with the message of Jesus Christ.

This is the day when the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Again you hear the angels singing. This is the day, the day when life begins.

The first word of the Great Commission is an important one and a challenging one. Go and make disciples. What if we stay and make disciples? Can we just phone it in? Can we text them? Maybe a clever meme on social media?

No, today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out how we need to go and share our faith on their turf. We can't expect them to come to church. Jesus expects us to go and meet them right where they are. Today's talk is from our Best Of series of messages.

Greg Laurie: I want you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Jonah. This is a story of a guy who was running from God's will for his life. I wonder if some of you have felt called by the Lord to do something.

Maybe the Lord has prompted you to start a Bible study on your school campus, your college campus, your high school campus. Maybe the Lord has been leading you to share the gospel with a neighbor or someone that you know. Maybe the Lord has been directing you to think about committing your life to serve him in some other place that you're in right now and you're like, "I do not want to do it. That is not part of my career plan."

But here's what you need to know. God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called. God is not looking for qualified people. He's looking for people that will simply say, "Here I am, send me." So really what God is looking for more than anything else is availability, not so much ability, but availability. Someone who will say, "Lord, I want to be the person you've called me to be."

So that is what we're looking at in the story here. This is a guy that simply did not want to do it. Jonah the prophet. What a prophet he was. The place from which he prophesied was at the bottom of the sea. The pulpit from which he preached was in the stomach of a fish.

The Lord came and called him and he did not want to go. That's why the title of my message is, "Here Am I, Send Him." Remember the Lord came to Isaiah and he asked the question, "Who will go and speak for me?" Isaiah said, "Here I am, send me," and the Lord did send him. Well, now the Lord calls Jonah and Jonah effectively says, "Here I am, send him. I don't want to go."

I thought of other titles for this message in addition to "Here Am I, Send Him." One title I thought about was "The Hard to Swallow Truth About Obedience." The hard to swallow truth, okay, that was bad. How about this one? "Bad Decisions Eat Up Your Profits." "All's Whale That Ends Whale." And then I thought maybe call it "Reverse Sushi, Revenge of the Tuna." I don't know. So I ended up with "Here Am I, Send Him."

This book could be summed up as follows. God said go, Jonah said no, God said oh. God will always have the last word. So the Lord told him what to do and he did not want to do it. Now we come to the verses we're going to read together. Jonah 1, verses 1 to 3.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it for their wickedness has come up before me." But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Now why is it that Jonah did not want to preach to Nineveh? Let's sort of expand that and ask the question, why do we not want to share the gospel with people that we know? Well, number one, maybe he did not want to go to Nineveh because he was afraid he would be rejected. He was afraid he would be laughed at. That happens to us as well.

If everyone agrees with a certain thing, maybe you're in class and the teacher says a certain statement and everyone laughs or everyone agrees with it and you know it's not true and your heart's beating inside of you and you feel like you should say something, you're reluctant to speak up because you're afraid you'll be ridiculed. You're afraid you'll be laughed at. Maybe that's why Jonah didn't go to Nineveh. I don't think that's the real reason, actually.

Maybe he did not want to go because he just didn't care that much. He didn't care about the plight of these people. I think that's possible. Then again, maybe he thought it would be difficult, it would be an inconvenience. But I don't think actually any of those other reasons. I think Jonah did not want to go and preach to Nineveh because he knew it would succeed.

In other words, he knew that they would be forgiven by this loving God that he served. Why do I think that? Because later Jonah says in Jonah 4:2 to the Lord, after God pardoned the people of Nineveh, "Didn't I say before that you would do this, Lord? That's why I ran away to Tarshish. I knew you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. I knew how easily you would cancel your plans for destroying these people."

Yes, he did spare those people and that's what Jonah was afraid of. They deserved judgment, but God didn't give them what they deserved. Sometimes there are some people that take a perverse pleasure in knowing that people that they know are going to hell. "Yeah, that guy cut me off on the freeway. He's going to hell, I'm fine with that. Or that cranky neighbor drives me insane. They're going to hell, good. Or those people over there, they're going to hell. I don't like the way they're living their lives."

Wait, hold on for a second. Jesus did not say, "Hate your enemies and hope judgment comes to them." He said, "Love your neighbor and also love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you." Here was Jonah's real problem. He was a racist. He was a racist. He hated Ninevites. He hated everything about them. He didn't want them to believe and it was a bigotry. It was a prejudice.

I wonder if there's a group of people that you hate right now. "I'd never want to share the gospel with them. I'd never want a relationship with them." I hope not because there's no room in the life of the follower of Jesus for bigotry and racism of any kind. We might look on a certain people group and say, "Well, I don't want to share the gospel with them." Maybe it would be Muslims. "I don't like their belief. I don't like what they think is true."

Well, maybe you don't like it, but God loves them. God wants us to engage them with the gospel and God wants us to try to build bridges to them. Maybe it would be someone living in the LGBTQ community. "Well, I don't relate to that. I don't understand that. That's a sinful choice." Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that are sinful choices. Lying is a sinful choice. Hating someone is a sinful choice. Adultery is a sinful choice. Fornication is sinful. Gossip is sinful.

Now we can sit around and try to decide what sin is worse than another, but in the Bible, the worst sin of all is unbelief. Any other sin can be forgiven by God. So we should love people that are different than us and we should be willing to leave our comfort zone and establish rapport and relationships with them so we can reach them with a message of Jesus Christ.

The greatest critics that Christ faced when he walked this earth were not sinners. They were religious people. In fact, the thing they had against Jesus was he hangs around with sinners and they said he's even the friend of sinners. Yeah, that's right. He was.

So he could go to a woman caught in the very act of adultery and engage her and help her turn her life around as she turned from her sin and believed in him. He could engage a woman who had been married and divorced five times and was living with a man and come into her world and speak in a way she understood and bring her to faith.

But then he could reach a religious guy like Nicodemus who had tried to fill the hole in his heart with morality and rules and regulations and fame and fortune and all the rest. Jesus reached all kinds of people. And so this is the problem with Jonah is he did not want to reach people that were different than him. God said, "Go to Nineveh."

Guest (Male): Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment.

Hi everyone, I want you to know about our app called Harvest Plus. Think of it as a Harvest version of Netflix. We have all of our resources in one place. We have our movies like Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon, Johnny Cash, Redemption of an American Icon, A Rush of Hope, and much more. Then we have our television program, daily devotions, and much more. So go and download the Harvest Plus app.

Well today, in a message from our Best Of series, Pastor Greg is talking about the importance of reaching out with the gospel, even to people who are different than we are. And now he has a brief panel discussion on the subject with friends and family from his home church.

Greg Laurie: All right guys, let's talk about this a little bit. Let me ask you guys this: when you think about times you've shared the gospel, tell me about a time that was the hardest moment you ever engaged a person. A little bit like Jonah. He didn't want to do this. It was hard, but maybe though it was hard, it turned out really well. The person believed. Can any of you think of a story like that? Tim, anything like that happened to you?

Timothy: Yeah, well, the first time I shared my faith, I was actually walking. I had just left church. I was walking through an area and I saw this guy walk by me and he had tears in his eyes. He was crying. It wasn't at church. I said, "Hey man, you okay?" just as he was passing by.

He was tattooed up and looked rough. I just had that nudge like, "Just do it." I'd been hearing every week from Pastor Greg about sharing our faith. So I felt that nudge and so I started just kind of saying, "Hey man, there's hope," and kind of going into that. And I'm thinking this isn't going well.

I get through it and I said, "Would you like to accept Christ right now?" And he said, "Yes." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it." And so I didn't really think through the rest of it. So I put my hands out to like, "Okay, let's pray right now," and I put my hands out and he grabs my hands and so we're standing belly to belly. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing."

And so I just was like, "Let's bow our head and close our eyes now." And "What did Pastor Greg say in the service again?" And so I prayed with the guy, he accepted Christ. He cried, I cried. It was super awkward, but it was awesome and it worked out well.

Greg Laurie: That's beautiful. You know, were you a pretty young believer when this happened?

Timothy: Yeah, I was a new believer.

Greg Laurie: I think we overthink evangelism and that's one of the reasons why young believers are often better at it than older believers. We get so worked up about technique and things like that. Sometimes when you're a young believer you just go out and engage somebody.

The hardest part about evangelism is starting the conversation. That's the hardest part because once you get up and running, the Lord helps you, he gives you the words. But it's kind of leaving your comfort zone and saying hello to someone. All you just said is, "Is everything okay?" You didn't start preaching at him.

Timothy: I know that in my own life, there's sometimes the fear of rejection as well. Sometimes I don't feel like it, but there's the fear of rejection. I've been rejected a number of times when I'm sharing my faith. Let's be honest, that is definitely an aspect of it.

But I'm thankful that Jesus tells us that when we enter into heaven, he is not going to say, "Well done, good and successful servant." He's going to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." It's not about the results. It's about the heart behind it.

We are thankful that we get to play a small role in a person's conversion. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:6, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered the seed, it was God that brought the increase." It wasn't Paul that died on the cross for these people's sins. He was the messenger. He got to water the seed, he got to help plant the seed. If you share the gospel with a person for the very first time, or if you invite them to the church for the 156th time, you are going to get credit in heaven for that. It's up to the person whether they make the decision for Christ or not. It's up to the Holy Spirit how much he's going to lay it on their heart. You just be obedient to what God has called you to do.

Greg Laurie: That's right. Here's the little-known truth, or often not-known truth about sharing your faith. It's joyful and it's fun. I think a lot of people don't realize it. They think it's hard. They think it's like getting your teeth pulled. In some conversations, it's challenging, admittedly.

But there's a certain joy that comes from sharing the gospel. The gospel is designed to be shared, not hoarded. And actually, to not do it can potentially be a sin. There's a sin of commission where we cross a line, we do something wrong, but then there's a sin of omission that we've talked about, which is not doing what you're supposed to do. The Bible says, "To him that knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin."

I know it's hard because you have a fear of failure, but I think you'd be shocked by how many people are literally waiting for someone to pop the question. We don't want to ask someone, "Do you want to accept Jesus?" and have them say no. But maybe the real fear is that they'll say yes. That was Jonah's fear. He didn't want them to believe.

Because if you're sharing the gospel with somebody, and maybe you don't really want to hang around that person, but you felt inclined to tell them about Jesus, and if they become a Christian, they're kind of your responsibility now. You're thinking, "I don't want that responsibility. I don't want that person in my life." But the Lord may actually direct you to go to someone that's so unlike you and that can be a great discipline in your life. What do you think, Kathy?

Kathy: I was just thinking about how in my attempts to witness and share the gospel with people, I would always look at somebody and size them up and see if they were someone I could relate to, someone that I could identify with. I found myself sharing the gospel with people like I once was and that was always the easiest thing for me to do.

But I think that Jesus wants us to share the gospel with people that are not like us. He tells us that we're to love the stranger and the person that is the outcast. It's not just about sharing the gospel and getting another notch in your Bible, getting someone to pray the sinner's prayer. It's about a relationship. You really need to think about the fact that people know when you really care about them. Starting that conversation is not just, "Hey, has anybody ever told you that Jesus loves you?" It's really having someone come into their life. People are so lonely now that I think that the doors are wide open if you're willing to extend yourself and your heart and your life to them. I'm speaking to myself here because I need to do that more. It's hard to do.

Greg Laurie: Yeah, even little kids can do it. Britney, Allie's talked to people about Jesus, hasn't she?

Britney: She has. At her school. Allie, you want to tell them?

Greg Laurie: What happened, Allie?

Allie: So we were in line and we were walking to lunch and then I went up to one of the twins in my class and I said, "Have you ever heard of the story of Jonah and the fish?" And she's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Do you believe it?" and she's like, "No." And I'm like, "Well, it's true and you could get a Bible and learn about it." And she's like, "Okay."

Greg Laurie: We done? She's told me stories of kids she's talked to about Jesus. And Riley?

Britney: Yeah, even Riley. She's 13 and junior high is so scary already, but she's been brave enough to invite her friends here to church. It's really neat to see that in your kids and it motivates you as a parent to do the same thing. I think we have to start by caring. If you care enough, all the things that are holding you back from doing what you are called to do don't matter as much to you. I feel like we don't want to be inconvenienced in our lives with our time and our money. It does cost you something to invest in someone else, but in the long run and the eternal perspective, that's really all that matters.

Greg Laurie: That's very true.

Guest (Male): Pastor Greg Laurie speaking with family and friends at his home church in Southern California. His wife Kathy, Pastor Jonathan, Britney and Allie Laurie, and Pastor Tim Harding. Today on A New Beginning, an important talk about evangelism based on our studies of Jonah.

The gospel message is so important, it's worth stepping outside our comfort zone to share it. And for those who've never responded to the gospel, it's a message worth investigating, even if it's outside your comfort zone. Pastor Greg, what would you say to the person listening who just doesn't know if they've responded to that message? They can't really think of a time when they made a deliberate decision for the Lord. It's just not a good idea to assume everything's going to work out okay, is it?

Greg Laurie: No, this is one area of your life you want to be sure about: where you're going to spend eternity. The Bible says, "These things we write to you that you may believe on the Son of God and that you may know that you have eternal life."

Listen, I know I have eternal life. I know I'll go to heaven one day. I hope that doesn't sound boastful, and if it does, I'm boasting in what God has done for me, not in what I've done for God. The reason I know these things is because I've turned from my sin and I've put my faith in Christ, you see?

And if you do the same, you can have this same hope. You just need to call out to the Lord and admit you're a sinner and ask Jesus Christ to forgive you and come into your life. The Bible says whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Will you call upon him right now? I'm going to pray a simple prayer, and I'm going to ask you to pray this prayer after me if you would. So if you want to know that you'll go to heaven when you die, if you want to know for certain that Christ is living in your life, then pray this prayer with me. Just pray these words.

Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner. But I know you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin. I turn from my sin now and I choose to follow you from this moment forward as my Savior and my Lord, as my God and my friend. Thank you for hearing this prayer. Thank you for answering this prayer. And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Amen. And listen, if you have just prayed that prayer with Pastor Greg and you meant those words sincerely, the Lord has forgiven you of your sin and you're now a Christian. We want to help you get started in this new life of faith. Let us send you Pastor Greg's New Believer's Bible. It's in an easy-to-understand translation and there are scores of features to help a new believer build a solid foundation. So get in touch and ask for the New Believer's Bible. We'll send it free of charge. Just call us at 1-800-821-3300. You can call anytime, 1-800-821-3300. Or write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or go online to harvest.org and click "Know God."

And Pastor Greg, we're so thankful for the work God is doing through this ministry. We're touching lives for eternity and we're really thankful for our friends who see the fruit of this ministry and invest so this work can reach even further, isn't that right?

Greg Laurie: Absolutely. When you invest in Harvest Ministries, you're investing in the souls of men and women, boys and girls. And what is the value of a soul? Well, let me personalize it. What's the value of your soul? What's the value of the soul of your husband, your wife, your son or your daughter, or your mom or your dad, or your best friend? Well, I would say you probably couldn't put a price tag on it. It's so valuable.

Well, listen, God says all souls are mine. God loves us and sent his Son to die on the cross to pay the price for all of our sins so we could be forgiven and come into a relationship with him. I can't think of a better investment of my resources, of my money, than in the work of the Kingdom of God. So we would ask you to prayerfully consider investing in Harvest Ministries as we continue on to fulfill the Great Commission.

Guest (Male): Yeah, that's right. And you can make your donation right now at harvest.org. Or write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24/7 phone number, 1-800-821-3300.

Well, next time, Pastor Greg brings us more insight on the sad saga of Jonah's rebellion against God. But remember, we'll see a tremendous revival in the great city of Nineveh before the story's over. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Laurie.

This is the day when the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Again you hear the angels singing. This is the day, the day when life begins.