Joppa is a small port town that lies on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and on several occasions this small town makes an appearance in Biblical history as a symbolic departure point for world evangelism. In the Old Testament, Joppa was a place of Gentile exclusion. Jonah 1:1-3 depicts for us an instance of God reaching out to the nations with the message of repentance. He determines to send His prophet Jonah to the wicked city of Nineveh, the main city of the mighty nation of Assyria. At this time, Assyria was a dominant political entity, and they were fearsome foes of the nation of Israel. Yet, God demonstrated through Jonah that He is a God for all nations.

At this point in history the Gentiles were welcome to come to redemption, but they had to come to Israel, as the Queen of Sheba did. The evangelistic message of Old Testament Judaism was an invitation to “come and see,” not a command to “go and tell” as we have under the New Testament. However, with Jonah 1 we begin to see a shift, a foreshadowing of sorts, that depicts for us God’s New Testament model for global evangelism. With Jonah, we see the message of God being intentionally carried across geopolitical borders to a pagan nation. However, Jonah was not in agreement with God regarding this model for global evangelism. Jonah was extremely prejudiced against the enemy nation, and as we see in the first chapter of the book of Jonah the prophet attempts to flee his missionary call. From whence does he flee? He travels to Joppa to flee to the other side of the world. Jonah attempts to exclude the Gentiles from the message of God.

In the New Testament, Joppa was a place of Gentile inclusion. Nearly 800 years following the events in the book of Jonah, we read in Acts 10 about another resistant missionary to the Gentiles. The apostle Peter receives his vision from the Lord, a missionary call to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles for the first time since the establishment of the church. Again, 800 years later, the prejudice against the “unclean” Gentiles was still present. Peter should have known better considering Jesus himself had already told his followers to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature (Mk 16:15), and this included every nation, not just the Jewish nation (Mt. 28:18-20). By Acts 10 the church had existed for about a decade, but they had yet to truly cross over and evangelize the Gentile world. However, just as with Jonah, God would not be dissuaded from accomplishing His missionary goal. Where is he sent? To the Gentiles in Joppa. This was the first place the New Testament church truly began to spread to include “all nations.”

Chris Anderson writes in Gospel Meditations for Missions, “The lack of concern of Jonah for the lost – the utter hatred – is shocking. However, it is no less shocking when we who have been so lavishly forgiven ignore the needs of fellow “Ninevites” around the world…we, like Jonah, are reluctant to share that same message of saving grace outside our own borders.” Let us not be lax in our efforts to reach those around us. Let us not have the attitude of the earliest prejudiced Christians who withheld the Gospel from those they deemed “unclean,” but let us recognize the grace that has been given to us so that we might share it with the world. Let Joppa serve as an example of God’s inclusionary Gospel for all creatures.