Jonah 1:3 KJV 1900

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.

RUNNING FROM THE CALL

SAD sight!

Here is a servant of God running away from his work.

We do not suppose that Jonah thought that he could get away from God as to his omnipresence; but he wanted to escape serving in the divine presence: he wished to avoid being employed by God in his special service as a prophet.

Now, why did he desire to get away from his work?

Whatever reason he had, it must have been a bad one; for no servant of God ought, on any account whatever, to think of quitting the service of his Lord.

We should not wish to avoid the doing of the Lord’s will; but when we know what our duty is, we ought to follow it out with unswerving determination.

We must not wish to leave our post, no, not even to go to heaven.

We ought not to be sighing to be gone.

Employers do not like a man who is always looking for Saturday night. Let him attend to the work of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday, and the week will end quite soon enough.

One does not like to see a fellow standing about, stretching his arms upward, and sighing, “The week is very long; I wish it was Saturday.” You like a man who means to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage, and who does not watch till you turn your back that he may slacken his labour.

What was his reason?

Was it, in part, that he considered the work to be too great for him?

Certainly he had a great task appointed him. “Nineveh, an exceeding great city of three days’ journey,” how was one man to admonish and evangelize the whole of it? Preposterous!

Might he not have been aided by at least one other preacher?

Even Moses had his Aaron. Why did not the Lord send forth a college of prophets, or an army of preachers, and bid them go and divide the vast city into districts, and hold services in all the large halls, and at the corners of the streets, or even visit from house to house? Must one man be pitted against hundreds of thousands?

Would a single voice be heard amid the noise of a city which was full of tumult?

God gave you a pea patch, and if God has sent you we are well able to take the land.

Why did Jonah wish to run away?

Because he did not like the Ninevites?

I think that there was something of that on his mind.

He was a stern old Jew, and he loved his race, and he felt no desire to see anything done for the Gentiles or for the heathen outside the Abrahamic covenant; and therefore he had no passion for a mission to Nineveh.

Is there anybody here who does not want to go to a certain service because he does not like the people?

Are we backing out of your duty because those with whom you are to serve are not quite to your taste—too ignorant or too cultured.

If those to whom you are sent are greater sinners than others, they need Christ all the more; and if you have heard a very bad character of them, surely there is a call for you to elevate them.

Was it not, possibly, because Jonah knew that God was merciful?

But still there was a higher and a better motive, though even that was a bad one; for anything is bad, however true and excellent in itself, that leads a man to run contrary to God’s mind.

It was this.

He thought that the character of God himself would suffer; for if he went down to Nineveh and proclaimed, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” then the people might repent, and Jehovah would suffer them to live; and then, after a while, the people would say, “Who is Jehovah?

His word does not stand fast. He does not carry out his judgments. He lays his hand on the hilt of his sword, and then pushes it back into the scabbard.” Thus the Lord himself, by his mercy, would lose his name for truth and immutability. Jonah would have preferred the destruction of Nineveh to the least dishonour to the name of the Lord. Have you never felt as if you could wish that God would execute judgment on deadly forms of error, and cruel forms of oppression?

That, I think, was the great fear that lay in the heart of Jonah; for he said to God, when God had spared the city, “I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” This was not because the people were spared, but because he thought God had lost his honour by not fulfilling his threatening.

I would teach you four things:

I. The first is, that WE MAY NOT FOLLOW OUR IMPULSES TO DO WRONG.

Jonah felt it come upon him, all of a sudden, not to go to Nineveh, but to Tarshish. “Tarshish! Tarshish!” was constantly whispered in his ear, till he had Tarshish on the brain, and go he must.

II. My second remark is this: WE MAY NOT TAKE A WRONG COURSE BECAUSE IT SEEMS EASY. Jonah says, “I will go to Tarshish.”

And he goes down to the port of Joppa, and there he finds a ship just going to Tarshish.

How easy a thing it often is to carry out an evil purpose! My dear hearers, whether you are Christians or are not Christians, I want to put you on your guard against the idea that, because a certain course in life is very natural and easy, you may therefore follow it, though it is not right.

Remember that the way of destruction is always easy. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, and many there be which go in thereat.” The way to hell is downhill; and this is easy travelling.

III. Now, we will go a step further. WE MAY NEVER PLEAD PROVIDENTIAL ARRANGEMENT AS AN EXCUSE FOR DOING WRONG.

There could hardly ever be a more remarkable instance of apparently providential co-operation than we have here.

Jonah wants to go to Tarshish; and having selected that place as the region of his hiding, he must needs go down to Joppa, on the Mediterranean sea.

He walks on the quay, and the first thing he sees is a ship going to Tarshish! Is not that a providence?

Boats did not make that voyage often. Do we not confess that it is a providence when we learn that the vessel will take passengers at a set fare?

Jonah wants to go to Tarshish, and the very day that he gets to Joppa, a decked vessel is about to start for the remote region which he desired to reach.

IV. WE MAY NOT EXCUSE OURSELVES IN DOING WRONG BY THE LAWFULNESS OF AN ACT IN ITSELF.

What is right in another may not be right in me.

For the mariners to go to Tarshish was right enough.

We do not say that in itself it was wrong to go by sea to Tarshish.