Jonah 1

Jonah 1:1-3

JONAH AT SEA Jonah 1:1-3IN beginning this series of talks on the Book of Jonah, my purpose is threefold. First, to familiarize you with this Book of the Bible. One of the weaknesses of present-day Bible study exists in the circumstance that so few people study carefully even a single Book of the sixty-six that go to make it up. In the next place I want to expose the absurdities contained in the critics’ attacks upon this volume of Sacred Writ. And, finally, I hope to see the Holy Spirit reach men’s hearts with its messages, that souls may be saved.There is every reason to believe that this Book wears its author’s name. The objections that have been urged against this opinion—three or four in number—are too flimsy for thoughtful people to give them any serious consideration. The objection that if Jonah was its author he would speak of himself in the first person instead of in the third, as Dr. Pusey has said, “belongs to the babyhood of criticism”. Since Caesar, Xenophen, Solomon, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Daniel, Haggai, John, Peter, and Paul, every one write of themselves in the third person, do the critics stand ready to part with Caesar’s Commentaries, Xenophen’s Anabasis, The Pentateuch, The Proverbs, The Psalms, The Prophecies, The Gospels, and The Epistles?Again, the objection that we hear nothing else of this Prophet Jonah, and consequently may question whether such a one existed, is adequately answered by referring to 2 Kings 14:25, where we read of Jeroboam, who was then on the throne, that“He restored the border of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the Sea of the plain, according to the Word of the Lord God of Israel, which He spake by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the Prophet, which was of Gath-hepher”. The claim of some that had Jonah been the author he would have dealt less severely with his own character, rounding off its rough corners and deftly concealing its defects, is a criticism born of the lack of appreciation of prophetic character. Moses never dreamed of shielding himself when it came to the making of the record of his mistakes. David in the 51st Psalm paints his own sin in crimson colors, and instead of attempting to paliate his guilt, prays for pardon; while the Apostle Peter is supposed to have seen and consented to the faithful record of his own cowardly conduct.The truth is that if anybody else than Jonah had been the author of this Book the Prophet would have fared better and the truth worse.The name Jonah signifies “a dove,” and when first given doubtless meant to his mother gentleness and love. But, in the process of time, it came to be more significant still, as this man mourned as the dove mourns, as he witnessed the Wickedness of his own people—Israel.It may seem a strange circumstance that a man who was a Prophet of Israel should receive an appointment to preach to the Gentiles of a great heathen city. But we must remember that from the beginning it was God’s custom to give to Israel’s Gentile neighbors an opportunity of salvation through the proclamation of His truth. To the Canaanites He preached by the character and faith of Abraham; to the Egyptians by the mouths of Joseph and Moses; to the Assyrians by Elisha; and to Nebuchadnezzar, Darius and Cyrus, and their respective kingdoms, by Daniel. If Israel had been either faithful students of Divine providence or careful observers of the Divine practice, they would have understood from the first what sounded so strangely in their ears when declared by the Apostle Peter, namely—“That God is no respecter of persons; “But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:34-35), There are four thoughts around which all the lessons of this first chapter may be arranged—Jonah’s Commission; Jonah’s Resignation; Jonah’s Experience; and Jonah’s Judgment.HIS “Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me” (Jonah 1:1-2), It was from the Lord. “Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah, saying”. There are those who question whether men ever receive direct communication from God. But, to call that into question is to dethrone every Prophet and Apostle of Old and New Testament, for the one claim which they all make in common is that of being commissioned by the Lord. To call that into question is to dethrone God Himself, for what rational man could admit that there was a God in Heaven, of infinite wisdom and unlimited power, whose chief attribute was love, and at the same time deny that such a God would be interested in men and communicate to them His mind? And I am among those who believe that God is speaking to men today; speaking to His prophets— preachers—by the still, small voice of the Spirit, and yet by a voice so distinct that they cannot misunderstand, commissioning them to cry aloud against wickedness and call men to repentance. He speaks to the unsaved so that they understand Him, and calls upon them to repent and return to the Lord that they might be saved.It is the greatest wickedness on the part of the saved, and the greatest folly on the part of the sinner when either shuts his ears against that voice, and refuses to hear the commission, or respond to the call.This commission was definitely expressed,“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it”. There is no uncertainty in the sound. There is no question as to the language. Men often talk about their perfect disposition to do the will of God if only they could know what it was. All such speeches charge God with unfaithfulness or indifference, and prove the men who make them to be insincere.“If any man will do His mil, he shall know”, is the statement of the Holy Word, and it has been a thousand times corroborated by sincere souls. When God called Moses, He made Himself so understood that Moses had no rest until he accepted the divinely-appointed ministry; when God called Samuel, He kept repeating it over and over until Samuel did understand; when God commissioned Peter to the Gentiles, even Peter’s Jewish prejudices could not obscure for him the will of his Lord; and when God convicted Saul, He distinctly questioned, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me”? And God, who is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” has not changed His method.Every now and then we meet a man who tells us that the reason he is not a Christian is because God has not called him as yet, and we cannot help wondering what he has been doing with his ears that he has failed to hear the call to repentance, the call to faith, the call to obedience; and we cannot help fearing that he has been doing as a friend in Chicago used to do.

He was deaf in one ear, and when he laid down to sleep, he found it easy to shut out all disagreeable sounds by burying the good ear in the pillow and turning the bad one up. And the man who has never heard God calling him has unquestionably his deaf ear toward Heaven, for God has made the ages ring with this sentence,—“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else”. I dare say there are few who, if they had now to give an account of the deeds done in the body, could honestly excuse themselves for not having accepted Christ upon the ground that they had never had a call from God. Not a one who hears me shall ever be able again to give that excuse and be honest, for here is God’s Word to you,—“Come now, and let us reason together”, and “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). The execution of this commission required courage. In order to appreciate how much courage, one must keep in mind some of the facts of this bit of history.It was five hundred miles over mountains, through trackless forests, and across burning deserts to Nineveh; and there is no hint in the record that he was to have other means of transportation than to go on foot. The elements of air and water might smite him with disease; the wild beast might leap upon him from his place of hiding; the highway robbers might treat him as they did the man on his way to Jericho. If he escaped all this, and after weeks of travel reached Nineveh, he then had to confront people who were the sworn enemies of his nation; whose Paganism was utterly opposed to the faith of Israel, and cry in the streets of that city,—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall he overthrown”, exciting thereby the probable anger of men who were famed far and wide for their violence and bloodshed. The simple truth is that to be God’s at all requires courage.The weakness of the present-day Christianity comes partly in consequence of the denial of this fact. People have come to think that Christ requires us to give up nothing when we become His, and take up nothing.

On the contrary, Christ requires us to give up everything that can possibly militate against absolute obedience to His will, and take up the Cross, His Cross, the Cross on which self is to be crucified. The most potent reason unconverted men have for rejecting Jesus is at this very point.

They know what true Christianity means. They know that faithfulness to God will often transfix the flesh and the lusts thereof. They know that the Christianity of Jesus Christ will excite criticism, raise opposition, and imperil interests that are dear. And, in lack of courage, they refuse to respond to the call.Dr. Van Dyke is right in claiming “it requires bravery to be truthful, generous, just, pure, kind, or loyal”; right in saying, “courage is essential to guard the best forces of the soul, and clear the way of their action.”“Courage, the highest gift that scorns to bend To mean devices for a sordid end; Courage, an independent spark from Heaven’s throne, By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high alone; The spring of all true acts is seated here, All falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear.” HIS “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3). In other words, Jonah resigned his office as Prophet. Heretofore he had been fulfilling that office as we saw by the reference to 2 Kings 14:25. But now God requires of him a difficult thing, and he prefers to resign rather than attempt it. That is the secret of a great many resignations. Jonah knew perfectly well that he could not get away from the presence of the Lord, for Jonah was familiar with the Psalm in which David had said,—“Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; “Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me” (Psalms 139:7; Psalms 139:9-10). Jonah knew it to be the truth. He fled, therefore, not so much from the presence of God as from the appointment of God. It meant a good deal to lay down the Prophet’s office at that time. It was one of the most honored offices known to Israel.It means no less to lay down the prophet’s office at this time. The world has no office so honorable, and the Church none more so. It is easy to run back over the Old Testament times and show what a prominent part a Prophet played in national as well as ecclesiastical history; but it is equally easy to run back over the immediate centuries of the past to show that preachers of the Gospel of the Son of God have exercised an equal, if not a greater power.Germany has no such debt to any other dead as she owes to Martin Luther, whose labors and opinions made possible her schools of learning and her improved religion.

Italy will never sing sweetly enough to sound all the praises due Savonarola for his protest against political corruption and ecclesiastical crimes; while Switzerland is what she is, and ought to be far more and better, because John Calvin dwelt at Geneva.I have been going up and down the eastern coast from Maine to Richmond, and no man can go through the coast cities and regard their churches and schools without remembering that John Cotton, John Harvard, Roger Williams, Jonathan Edwards, Increase and Cotton Mather, had more to do with molding new American thought and life, with making possible the universities and churches that are at once the pride and preservation of the people, than the men of all other employments and professions combined.Yet, Jonah resigned this honorable office rather than keep it, and attempt a difficult task. He was afraid of the six hundred thousand heathen he had to face—fierce, terrible fellows they were!

No wonder he feared them; and many a modern preacher has called attention to Jonah’s cowardice, and held him up to the public as weak, to resign himself the very first time he had to face three opponents. Jonah was a giant beside most of us. His worst cowardice was better than our best courage, and yet he was not justified in being cowardly.No man is justified in being cowardly. The grand Martin Luther gave us the better illustration of a true prophet when he boldly professed himself willing to face all the devils of hell, if need be, and confidently believing that if he had God with him he would conquer.There was a sense in which Jonah sought to flee the Divine Presence.He knew, of course, as we all know, that there was no place in the universe where God was not. In the abstract he would have consented to what God said by the mouth of Amos (Amos 9:1-3) as true,—“He that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not he delivered. “Though they dig into hell, thence shall Mine hand take them; though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down: “And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from My sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them”: And yet, all this truth to the contrary notwithstanding, Jonah did what every disobedient servant is prone to do,—tried to run away from God. Circumstances seemed to favor his endeavor, for when he went down to Joppa, he found a ship going to Tarshish. That is no sign he is doing right! The devil will always have a ship ready when a man wants to sail away from God. We want always to remember that it is far more important to know where a man is going and why he is going there, than it is that he should be getting on swiftly.It is related that Huxley used to tell how, on one occasion when the British Science Association met in Dublin, he was late in reaching the day; and, fearing lest he might miss the opening address, he ran from his train to a jaunting-car, and jumping in cried to the driver, “Drive fast, I am in a hurry.” The Irish cabman slashed his horse with his whip and went spinning down the street. Presently Mr.

Huxley noticed that he was not going toward the place of meeting, and calling out to the cabman, he said, “Driver, do you know where I want to go?” “No, yer honor, I don’t; but I am driving fast as yer told me.”It may be a good deal easier at the outset to take ship for Tarshish than to walk to Nineveh. But, if the latter would leave you in His company, you are foolish if you set sail.

You cannot pay the fare for any such privileges.Jonah thought he had paid the fare and the ship captain supposed the same, but they were both mistaken. There was more to be paid, as each of them soon realized. The most expensive sail that any man ever takes is when he sails away from God. No matter how smooth it is when he first starts, nor how cheaply he can commence his voyage, he will be rocked in a storm before he has finished it, and shortly find himself a hopeless bankrupt, compelled to cast all his wares overboard, and forced to follow them by going overboard himself.Louis Albert Banks says, “Go ask the young man who has been tampering with strong drink until his nerves are unsteady, his mother’s or his wife’s heart is broken, his position lost, what the fare was from Joppa to Tarshish. Go ask the young man who was arrested last week for forgery and is lying in jail waiting for his trial, his good name blighted, his promising business career forever destroyed, his home draped in shame, his conscience burning with remorse, what the fare is from Joppa to Tarshish.”Years ago when I was in New Albany, Ill., I conferred with, and helped him in a little matter, to collect some of the statistics that Dr. J.

W. Clokey wrought into that little book, “Dying at the Top.” Being interested in it, I came into possession of a volume, and was profoundly moved as I perused its pages.

Nothing said in the volume stirred me more than his description of what the drink demon did for J. J. Talbot, at one time a minister of the Gospel, later a brilliant, but drinking lawyer, and eventually a dying drunkard. His love of drink separated him from his wife, caused his children to be taken from him, sent his old mother into her grave with a broken heart Just before he died he said to Mr. Colfax, referring to all these losses of position as preacher, of honor as a lawyer, of love as a husband, of affection as a father, and of benediction as a son, and of respect as a citizen, and fellowship as a friend,—“Now that the struggle is over, I can survey the field and measure the loss. I had position high and holy * * I had business large and lucrative * * I had money ample for all necessities * * I had a home adorned with all that the most exquisite taste could suggest.

I had children, beautiful—to me at least—as a dream of the morning * * I had a wife whose charms of mind and person were such that to see her was to remember, and to know her was to love * * I had a mother whose choicest delight was the reflection that the lessons which she had taught at her knee had taken root in the heart of her youngest born. But the thunderbolt reached me even there, and there it did its most cruel work * * and while her boy raved in his wild delirium two thousand miles away, the pitying angels pushed the golden gates ajar, and the mother of the drunkard entered into rest.

Thus I stand a clergyman without a cure; a barrister without brief or business; a father without a child; a husband without a wife; a son without a parent; a man with scarcely a friend; a soul without a hope—all swallowed up in the maelstrom of drink!”Oh, young men, young women, if God is calling you, and you know what He wants you to do, don’t sail away from Him! As you prize holiness here, as you hope for happiness hereafter, as you value the life of the soul itself, don’t sail away from Him; but in answer to His call, say as Samuel said, “Here am I”; and if He have duties that He is clearly defining for you, say as Isaiah said, “Lord, here am I, send me”.

Jonah 1:4-16

JONAH IN THE STORM Jonah 1:4-16WHEN we parted from Jonah in the former address, he was standing at the office window of a merchant vessel in the act of paying his fare to Tarshish. When we part from him next he will be overboard in consequence of his disobedience. God had commissioned him to go due east from Gath-hepher, five hundred miles, to preach in Nineveh. He decided to ship for Tarshish, a thousand miles in exactly the opposite direction, for the ancient Tarshish was in Spain, just about where Gibraltar is now.When a man starts to run away from God he can hardly expect smooth sailing, and so this vessel had little more than cleared the harbor before a stiff breeze was in her canvas. And the farther away they went the stronger that gale became, until by and by a hurricane was on, and even the old mariners were so filled with alarm that they betook themselves to prayer, and “cried every man unto his god”. And while they prayed, they wrought, tossing the wares into the sea hoping to lighten the ship, and thereby save it from being broken. When a storm at sea becomes so severe that the captain concludes there is no hope unless God shall interpose, and, going over the vessel, calls upon every passenger to betake himself to prayer, it is a euroclydon indeed. But to that very condition Jonah’s ship shortly came.

And the old ship master must have been surprised indeed as he went down into the sides of the ship and stumbled on this man fast asleep. It requires no special activity of the imagination to see the sea-tried captain laying hold upon Jonah and shaking him, wondering whether he were drunk, or fallen in a faint from fear. Even over these centuries we can hear him say, ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper”? don’t you know our condition? “Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God mill think upon us, that me perish not”.You know what came after that—the casting of the lots, the coming out of Jonah’s offense, endeavor of the seamen to save both themselves and him, and the final assent to Jonah’s request to be cast into the sea; the calm that followed, the sacrifice and the vows.But I want us to go into this Scripture tonight to trace there Jonah’s experience and his judgment.HIS “But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. “Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them”. God’s storm follows every sinning sinner. If you ask me who are the men and women sailing life’s sea without chart or rudder, I should answer, Those who are going on in their sin. If you ask me, who are the men and women that must come into storms of sorrow, storms of suffering, storms of disease, and storms of death, that will whelm them, body and soul, I should answer, Those who are going on in sin.Years ago I knew a young man who began to tipple and talk loudly of being temperate in all things. He defended his right to take a drink, and boasted his ability to stop when he pleased. He is in the storms now— storms of financial stress, storms of physical debility, storms of social degradation, storms of domestic unhappiness, storms of spiritual decline.Years ago I knew a young woman who gave ear to Satanic whispers, and forsook the instruction of her youth, and already she has been cast overboard, and in a little time she will lie dead in the deep. And every young man and every young woman starting out as they started will find storms of judgment after them.

In the very hours in which they ought to be at rest they will find themselves in the agony of moral earthquake and mental whirlwind, for “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption”.Again, every impenitent man is in danger of falling asleep.“But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep”.The critics have called attention to this statement and tried to make it the basis of an argument against the historicity of Jonah. They say a man who is running away from God would not likely be asleep, and still less likely sleep in such a storm as is here reported.

But such a criticism marks the man who makes it as a superficial observer of life, and without familiarity with Psychology.There is scarcely a touch in the Book of Jonah so true to universal experience as this report of his sound slumbers. Whenever a man refuses to be obedient to God, if he be keenly sensitive to Divine authority, mental restlessness will result, and sleep will go from his eyes. So long as he continues to debate against evident duty the restlessness will remain. But when once he has made up his mind upon a certain course, and sets about carrying it out, the question being settled, tired nature will react and deep slumbers will ensue. I have no doubt that Jonah had lost many nights’ sleep over this matter. But that was before he had decided definitely what he would do.

Now that he had decided, the mind was making up for lost time by unnatural slumber.What a picture this of the mental stupor into which he who continues in his sin is sure to come. People often wonder why men, known to be sinners, known to be transgressors of every righteous law, seem nevertheless to be at peace, filled with no misgivings, entertaining no fears.

But that is no marvel; it is natural. The mind is so constituted that when we first go wrong it cries out against the iniquity; but if we continue indefinitely in an evil course, it ceases its remonstrance and a moral stupor ensues, and a great many will die in that same stupor, will go down to the grave without ever being awakened to their true condition.Years since at Portland, Me., I was on “The Kentucky” of the North Atlantic Squadron. There were several hundred people on board, tramping here and there, and talking incessantly, and yet in one room through which we went, a half dozen sailors lay sound asleep. Nothing that we said disturbed them. Everything in the natural world has its counterpart in the spiritual. And there are men whose souls sleep under the sound of the Gospel, and despite all cries of “Awake thou sleeper”! their spirits are undisturbed.It is reported that in the year 1775, the captain of a Greenland whaling vessel found himself at night surrounded by icebergs and lay to until morning.

When the day dawned he looked about and saw a ship near by. He hailed it, but no answer came.

Getting into a boat with some of his crew he pushed toward this mysterious craft, and when he came on board he found a man standing before the log book. He saluted him, but no answer. He approached the man and found that he was frozen to death. The log book was dated 1762. Going over the vessel he found sailor after sailor frozen to death, some in the hammocks, others in the cabin For thirteen years these men who, to all outward appearances, had been at the post of duty had been deaf to the shout of any vessel going that way.Oh, beloved, I believe that tonight there are all about us men whose bodies are at the post of secular duty, but whose souls are held by a slumber that will be broken by nothing short of the rising of God’s storm of judgment!When Aaron Burr was a student at Princeton he was brought under special conviction of sin in connection with a series of meetings. He went into the country and stayed two weeks.

When he returned he said the subject of religion was settled with him, and it was settled against the claims of the Gospel. From that time his soul was as dead.

No matter how tender the preacher’s appeal, it never touched him for his spiritual lethargy remained until the end was on, and that soul stood before God to be judged for deeds done in the body. And yet, God mercifully sends His messengers to sleeping souls.Jonah was not left undisturbed to perish in this storm. God has his minister in this shipmaster, and God treated Jonah as He treated Lot when Sodom was about to bum. You remember it is written of that ancient unworthy:“When the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. “And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city” (Genesis 19:15-16). It is often true that men do not appreciate the endeavors God’s agents make to save them. Mr. Moody asked a policeman whom he passed on the street in Chicago one night if he was a Christian. The question jarred on that policeman’s feelings just as the shipmaster’s shaking disturbed Jonah’s nerves. He doubled up his fist and threatened to knock Mr. Moody into the mud. But afterwards he came to his senses and wondered whether this man was sent of God. One morning before daybreak he rapped at Mr.

Moody’s door and when admitted into his room he said, “You, sir, aroused me to a sense of my sin. Now won’t you pray for me that I may be saved?” The ministry of the shipmaster is a ministry that men in sin dislike, and yet it is the very ministry for lack of which those same men are dying.Beloved, cannot we afford to be rebuffed occasionally by those who would prefer to sleep and sink than be wakened up to be saved, if in return for our rebuff we may see them roused to a sense of their danger and hear them call upon their God? More than fifty years ago I was walking a country road one cold winter night. In one corner of a rail fence I saw by the moonlight the form of a man; and going up to him I found that he was drunk and insensible. Hurrying to my home I notified two older brothers and we three went back to rouse him if possible; and if not, to carry him into the house, where by the warm fire his chilled blood might circulate again. When we shook him he moaned: “Let me alone.” When we laid hold on him and lifted him up he swore at us and feebly fought.

But despite all that we dragged him along and put him into the colored man’s cabin and cared for him until he came to himself. He was an ignorant fellow who knew little concerning the higher traits of character, but after the night in which we saved his life he was our steadfast friend.I often think of Jesus’ dealing with the Gadarene.

Don’t you remember how Mark tells that story? When the Gadarene saw Jesus approaching him he cried with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the Most High God? I adjure Thee by God, that Thou torment me not”!That is the speech of a soul that would remain in sin, the soul that does not want its spiritual stupor disturbed. And yet that same man, when once he is disposed of the devils, will be so devoted to Jesus Christ that when others are praying Him to depart out of their coasts, this redeemed one will pray Him that he may be with Him. There are many people in the world who take pains to make friends of such of their fellows as will likely prove faithful throughout all time. But I can tell you how to make unto yourself friends whose affection will increase through all eternity,—accept the ministry of the shipmaster!

Go about shaking up the sleeping! And every man that you bring to rise and call upon his God will live to praise your name.

The best friends I have ever had in this world have been the men and women, the boys and girls Jesus Christ has privileged me to point to Him and baptize in His Name.But note further, To slumber in sin is not to keep it secret.“And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah” (Jonah 1:7). It is always so! The one thing that cannot be covered up is crime. Sin of any sort is like a fire. It will find its way to the surface, and with a red tongue tell its own tale. Charles Spurgeon illustrates this fact in one of his sermons.He says: “Beware of committing acts which it will be necessary to conceal. There is a singular poem by Hood, called “The Dream of Eugene Aram.” A most remarkable piece it is indeed, illustrating the point on which I am now dwelling. Aram has murdered a man, casting his body into the river, “A sluggish water, black as ink, the depth was so extreme.” The next morning he visited the scene of his guilt: “And sought the black, accursed pool, With a wild, misgiving eye; And he saw the dead in the river bed, For the faithless stream was dry!” Next he covered the corpse with heaps of leaves, but a mighty wind swept through the wood and left the secret bare before the sun. “Then down I cast me on my face, And first began to weep, For I knew my secret then was one That earth refused to keep, Or land or sea, though it should be Ten thousand fathoms deep.” Now we turn from Jonah’s experience to HIS “Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. “And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you”. Jonah assented to the justice of his judgment.In some measure every sinner must do that. Men do not rebel against God without realizing the wrong of it. Most men, I believe, do not expect to escape the storms which their sins invite. The iniquities in which they indulge are so passed upon by conscience, when roused by the conviction of the Holy Ghost, that they must say, as David said,“I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest he justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest”. The sailors saw the necessity of this judgment. At first they hoped to escape it, and “the men rowed hard” literally, “dug their oars into the deep, to bring them to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them.”It is impossible for the innocent and guilty to go on together. Unless the latter can be converted divorcement is absolutely essential to the former. That profane associate of yours; that cigarette fiend you call a companion; that tippler with the intoxicating cup; that immodest maid whose companionship you have shared, —you are not safe, if you continue in association with these. So long as you are laboring to the utmost to bring them to a better life, God will not let you go down. But, failing in that endeavor, you must do one of two things, separate from them, or sink with them.

The most effective emmissary that Satan has at work is an evil associate, and there is not a man or a woman starting out to sail life’s sea with such an one who is not in danger of the tempest and storm. I never see a young person part from an evil companion but I want to cry, Bravo! and turn my ear Heavenward to hear the shout of the glad angels who celebrate the soul’s victory.And, finally, God’s judgment seemed to be Jonah’s end.“So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. “Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows”. The disobedient goes overboard. The disobedient descends into the deep. The disobedient is regarded as dead, and all of this is a symbol of the actual experience of the soul that disobeys God, and without hope, self-condemned, and commiserated. It is not a pleasant sight. It is not an experience to be desired. It is a sight that makes angels weep! It is an experience that makes devils laugh. Heirs happiness is Heaven’s sorrow. And when the soul goes overboard and is left to sink in the sea of sin, never to see the haven of rest, all good men should sob and all bad men shake with fear.

Jonah 1:17

JONAH Jonah 1:17 to Jonah 2:9WE come now to a further study of the Book of Jonah. You will remember our last discourse ended with the sixteenth verse, with Jonah overboard, and the sailors offering sacrifice unto the Lord and making vows. That seemed indeed to be the end of Jonah; but one of my professors used to say, “A man is immortal until his ministry is finished”. Whether that is always true, it will appear to have been the fact of this Prophet’s existence, for although he is thrown into the midst of the sea and is swallowed up by a great fish, his history goes right on, and the belly of that fish, instead of being his grave, was converted into a closet of prayer.This is one of the points at which the critics stumble. They cannot quite believe that anything so improbable ever actually took place. If the text of this night could be cut out of the Book of Jonah, the modern Jehoiakims would be made more happy thereby, and would the more readily consent to the inspiration of the Minor Prophets. But this is the very part of the Book which cannot be set aside. Upon these ten verses Jesus Christ has set the seal of His own acceptance. To cut them out is to call in question either His knowledge or His honesty.

Personally I am not disposed to do either! To me this record contains no serious barrier to belief. My reason is no more offended by it than by many another historical incident of the Word of the Lord. I do not see one feature in the whole narrative which ought to strain the faith of the man who admits that there is a God in Heaven. The record is,“The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly. “And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and Thou hearest my voice. “For Thou hast cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about; all Thy billows and Thy waves passed over me, “Then I said, I am cast out of Thy sight; yet I will look again toward Thy holy Temple, “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head, “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God, “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy Temple, “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy, “But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord”. Three or four suggestions for our consideration! In the first place Jonah’s experience involves bothTHE NATURAL AND THE “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah”—natural!There is not the least occasion to suppose a miracle here. The Mediterranean Sea has in it many a white shark which could, and if he had a chance, would swallow a man. The scholarly Pusey in his “Notes on the Book of Jonah” cites from history a number of instances in confirmation of the naturalness of this episode. There are a half dozen instances on record where these sharks, which sometimes attain the enormous weight of 10,000 pounds, with an extreme length of thirty to forty feet, have swallowed men. He also cites well authenticated instances where this same specie of fish has been found, one with a deer, absolutely whole, in the stomach; one with a large sea-calf, undigested; and one which had a full grown horse. Mueller still further confirms the naturalness of this incident by saying, “In 1758, in stormy weather, a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Mediterranean.

A shark was close by, which, as he was swimming and crying for help, took him in his wide throat so that he forthwith disappeared. The captain had a gun which stood on the deck discharged at the fish, striking it and sickening it so that it cast out the sailor, who was taken up alive.

The wounded fish was harpooned and presented to the man who, by God’s providence, had been so wonderfully preserved. The sailor went around Europe exhibiting it at Farnconia, Erlangen, Numberg, and other places. It was twenty feet long and weighed 3,924 pounds when dried.”Yet people go up and down the country saying, “A whale cannot swallow a man.” Well, the record says, “A great fish”. Naturalists know that the larger of these white sharks could, at one gulp, swallow a descent sized family without effecting a sore throat. Natural!“And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights”—supernatural!This might have been accomplished by natural means so far at least as the preservation of life is concerned. It is claimed that the fakirs of India have a custom of sealing up the lungs by turning the human tongue back into the epiglotis, thereby rendering the victim insensible, and leaving him in a comatose condition for weeks, out of which he is aroused at their pleasure.

It is a fact of natural history that life can be sustained for sometime in the belly of a fish, possibly because the gastric juices hermetically seal the body swallowed.But we are not so anxious to escape the miracle as to insist upon this as an explanation of Jonah’s remaining alive. In fact, we do not believe it is the explanation.

The admission of a miracle from God in preserving his life seems the more rational. It is one of the amazing features of modern thinking that so many men seem determined to deny the supernatural. Anything, any explanation, is regarded by a certain class of so-called thinkers as more satisfactory than an assent to the intervention of divinity. You have heard the story perhaps of the colored man who had caught the spirit of modem criticism and was disposed to remove the miraculous element from the Word. He was preaching about the Israelites’ passage over the Red Sea, and the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host in the waters thereof. Looking at his congregation with a learned air, he said, “My bredern; der ain’t no use sposin a miracle heah.

Dis can all be splained on natural grounds. You see, it was like dis: It was about de middle ob de winter when dese Israelites was agittin out ob Egypt, and when dey come down to de sea, dey found it well froze ober.

And dey, bein’ afoot, all walked across on de ice. But when Pharo, with his great heaby charots tried to foiler ‘em, de ice wouldn’t hold ‘em up, and so he and all his army broke thro, and got drowned.”An old deacon of this colored church, not quite satisfied with this explanation on natural grounds, rose and said, “Hold on, Elder; jes’ a minute dere! I got one question I would jes’ like to ask ye! Ise been studin’ Gogaphy, an’ de Gogaphy do say dat am de place ob de tropics, whar it don’t freeze ober; now will you splain dat?”To which the colored parson replied, “Yes, sah; dat’s all easy enough. You see dis all happened before dey made any gogaphies, and dere warn’t no tropics den.”We smile at the colored man’s irrational method of avoiding the miracle, but we are not able to see wherein it is one whit less rational than the present-day critics’ endeavors to do the same. The man who has a mind so constituted that it can accept the Gospel record of Lazarus’ resurrection, a mind so constituted that it can believe Daniel’s report of how the three Hebrew children passed, unhurt, through the fiery furnace, and yet denies the possibility of Jonah’s Divine preservation in the fish’s belly at the bottom of the deep is not saved from the charge of faulty reasoning because his skin is white and he speaks the lingo of the schools.

The only man who need have trouble with this incident in the Book of Jonah is the man who is unwilling to admit the claim of Scripture, “With God all things are possible”.This supernatural experience was significantly symbolical. It had another meaning than that which then appeared.

If as a judgment it looked backward to Jonah’s sin, as a symbol it looked forward to Christ’s burial and resurrection. Doubtless that was the very reason God had prepared the fish to swallow Jonah up. He could as easily have gotten him ashore by means of a floating spar. He could have sent an angel to keep him afloat until another vessel came that way. He could have gone to him Himself, walking on the water, as He went to Peter and other disciples in an awful night of similar storm. But He let him go into the deep, and be swallowed up by this fish that He might prefigure His own descent into the earth and His escape therefrom by His resurrection. One day certain of the Scribes and of the Pharisees said to Jesus,“Master, we would see a sign from Thee. “But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the Prophet Jonas: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”. When Paul came to write to the Corinthians, touching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he spoke of how “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures”. A disposition, therefore, to take Jonah from the sacred cannon, the present-day endeavor to cast discredit upon the record of the Prophet’s experience in the deep, is the disposition and endeavor which, if it were successful, would leave the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be followed by an interrogation point. Then, as the Apostle Paul says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished”.God forbid! “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable”.In the second place Jonah’s experience as here narrated illustratesGOD’S PURPOSE IN If He follows with affliction it is for our reform.“Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly, “And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me”. Of course He did. Long before this time David had been subjected to severe judgment, a judgment sent upon him for his good, and he wrote what Jonah is now quoting, “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me”.The devil is responsible for our sufferings. He it is who led Jonah away from his Lord and landed him in the deep; but God in His great mercy makes even the plans of this arch enemy to praise Him, and the very troubles into which Jonah’s sin led were overruled for his good, in that he saw how serious it was to run away from the Heavenly Father. It was the devil who put it into the heart of the Prodigal son to say, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me”. It was the devil who deceived him into supposing that “riotous living” would lead to pleasure; and it was the devil who paid him off with pigs for his associates, and the sweet honeysuckle for his sustenance.But those very hardships proved to be a power in the hand of God in impressing the awfulness of his iniquity, the degradation of his station, and bringing him to a keen appreciation of the fellowships and the food in his father’s house.That is always the purpose of judgment so far as God has anything to do with it. His speech for the present-day sinner is exactly what it was three thousand years ago, when by Ezekiel’s lips He said, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O House of Israel”?Jonah accepted his affliction with wisdom.

There are two ways to meet judgment. The one is to declare it unjust and plunge into deeper sin; the other is to see as Jonah saw, that it is sent for our good, and turn back to God.

Although he believed that God had cast him into the sea, so that the floods had compassed him about, and billows and waves had gone over him, still he said, “I will look again toward Thy holy Temple”. When the waters came even to the soul, when the depth closed him round about, when the weeds wrapped his head—symbol of the graveclothes—when he went down to the bottoms of the mountains, when the earth with Her bars were about him forever, when his soul fainted within him, he remembered the Lord, and his prayer made in the deep was heard in the holy Temple. That is the way to meet affliction.The prodigal son gives us an example of what to do in the darkest hour. When the waves and billows of trouble were rolling over him he said, “I will arise and go to my father”. Blessed way to meet them! The man who so treats affliction will convert it into a friend.

Manasseh at Jerusalem had forgotten God and gone after sin, but when he found himself in prison in Babylon, he turned again to God and was blessed in the turning.Charles Spurgeon says: “Troubles are called weights, and a weight, you know, generally cloggeth and keepeth down to the earth; but by the use of the laws of mechanics you can make a weight lift you up.” And the man who knows how to take hold on God in the time of trouble will find his affliction a weight that can be made to lift him into the very presence of the Infinite One.Jonah did his utmost, also, toward reparation.He offered “the [sacrifice] of thanksgiving”, and pledged the fulfillment of his vows. That was all he could do under the circumstances.

It was his best—his utmost. Had he been on land it would have been his business to have gone to Nineveh, and only such an action would have been acceptable; but, situated as he was he could only resolve, and God accepted the resolution as sufficient. It is high time that men who have sinned against God learn that in turning back to Him again, so far as lieth in them they must put the past right. There are some acts that one cannot undo, and for such he must plead forgiveness. There are others that he can reverse, and in these, reparation alone will suffice.A friend of mine about to die could gain no peace of mind whatever until she had sent for her stepmother and asked forgiveness for some things she had said to her.Dr. Louis Albert Banks tells the story of a lawyer of distinguished ability who went into the Music Hall of Cleveland, Ohio, to attend the Mills meeting there.

As he listened to the truth, he was convicted of sin, and because he had been pushing a suit and had already won it in the lower courts, knowing that the principal witness on the winning side had falsified for a definite sum of money, the attorney had been promised a fee of $12,000 on condition that the suit was won in the highest court. He went out from this meeting to face the crisis of his life—$12,000 on the one side for pleading a false issue, and defrauding the defendant.

On the other side a clean conscience, if he restored the payments already received, and refused to further prosecute the suit. All night he wrestled like Jacob of old, but the next day he settled the question by determining to retore the ill-gotten money, and resign his office as attorney in the case. Then it was he realized God’s favor in forgiveness; then it was he said to the friends to whom he communicated it all, “Now let me go home to my wife. She will be so happy, for she is a Christian woman, and godliness means more to her than gain.”Zacchaeus gave an excellent evidence of his conversion when he said, “If I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold”.But the concluding sentence of this study contains a most important suggestion, namely: IS OF THE LORD Jonah had lost confidence in self.There had been a time when Jonah had felt some self-sufficiency, but a fish’s belly is a poor place to exercise any such sentiment. When Peter attempted to walk on the sea, and found himself suddenly sinking, his self-confident spirit departed and he cried, “Lord, save me”. But even his predicament had more of promise in it than Jonah’s position presents. He has gone down already. He is at the bottom of the deep. Except God interfere, he is dead.

Except God save, there is absolutely no hope. Where could you find a better figure of the condition of the natural man who is “dead in trespasses and sins”, and who can do nothing whatever to help or save himself?Charles Spurgeon, in one of his sermons says:“Last week I stood beside that window of Carisbrooke Castle, out of which King Charles, of unhappy and unrighteous memory, attempted to escape.

I read in the guidebook that everything was provided for his escape. His fellows had means at the bottom of the wall to enable him to fly across the country, and on the coast they had their boats lying ready to take him to another land. In fact, everything was ready for his escape, but here was the important circumstance. His friends had done all they could, he was to do the rest. But that doing the rest was just the point and brunt of the battle. It was to get out of the window, out of which he was not able to escape by any means; so that all his friends did for him went for nothing so far as he was concerned.“So with the sinner, if God had provided every means of escape and only required him to get out of his dungeon, he would have remained there to all eternity.

Why, is not the sinner by nature “dead in sin?’ The Spirit must quicken him. He is bound hand and foot, and fettered by transgression.

The Spirit must cut his bands and then he will leap to liberty.”Spurgeon is right! Salvation is not of our effort. Salvation is of the Lord, and to see that truth as Jonah saw it is the first essential. So long as a man is expecting to be saved in some other way he remains in his sins, for “There is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved”.Jonah had ceased from trusting to circumstances.There had been a time when he was in health and his feet on solid ground, and he felt he could do as he pleased, and somehow or other make it right with God at the end. But all of that is past now, for at the bottom of the deep a man does not so reason. It is only when he is in health and prosperity!

After he is brought down low, after he is utterly buried, as it were, he wonders how he could ever so blunder as to imagine that sin could escape judgment, or that circumstances could be depended upon to effect a favorable issue of life.I appeal to those of you who are in health tonight, to those of you who are in prosperity, to make your calling and election sure. Circumstances now are favorable to your doing so, but who can tell what a day may bring forth.

Tomorrow the end may be on, and it may be associated with such untold suffering, such indescribable agony of body or mind, or both that it would be a poor time to settle the great questions of the soul. A dying man may pray but all preparation for a deathbed repentance seems unwarranted when we remember Jesus’ words, “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heaven”.Jonah knew that God, and God alone, could save.Our text is authority for the claim, “Salvation is of the Lord”.The sea captain had seen the same truth in the time of storm. When the vessel rocked to the winds and was ready to go down, the shipmaster came to Jonah and said unto him, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not”.But there is something better than either the conduct of the shipmaster or that of Jonah, and that is to call upon God before the storm comes. I plead with those of you who have not made your peace with Him, to make it now, “Behold, now is the accepted time”. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near”.Dr. Talmage tells the story about the ship “Rebecca Goddard”, which comes into our ports in midwinter. She was all scoured up and ready for the landing, when, coming almost into the harbor, an ice floe came and pushed the ship out to sea, and it drifted about two or three days.

There was great suffering and one was frozen dead at his post. They had been almost in the harbor, but they did not go altogether in.

Many of you will either come in now, or else the ice floe of indifference will push you out and out, upon the seas of irreligion, until at last you will be going down without hope and without God. God help you, now, to come!