Jonah 1:2

Go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.

The comparative corruption of great cities proposition

That though by no means exclusively, yet in cities that are great and luxurious, integrity is exposed to peculiar snares, and depravity cherished to an extraordinary growth.

I. Explain this proposition.

1. We confine human depravity to no combination of circumstances. In some situations, it is true, the poison may evolve its noxious qualities more fully and freely than in others; but in one way or another it makes itself manifest in all. It is not intended to represent this depravity as in itself essential to our nature. Sin is not essential, but accidental, to our nature.

2. It should also be observed, that in great cities there are even advantages which are nowhere else to be so fully enjoyed. The children of this world, wise in their generation, instantly discern the advantages of city situations, in reference to their particular pursuits. Beside the civil and intellectual, there are moral and religious advantages which, in more sequestered situations, we can scarcely hope to enjoy. In cities there is an easy and regular access to the ordinances of grace.

3. There are peculiar temptations, to which more obscure situations are liable. In solitude the mind is in danger of being filled with prejudices, and the heart with passions, which at once destroy present tranquillity and endanger future well-being.

II. Illustrate the subject before us. That in populous cities corruption peculiarly prevails. Consider--

1. The multitude of transgressors.

2. The aggravated nature of the sins there particularly indulged.

3. The individual sinner usually attains a degree of presumptuous hardness, not common in less frequented scenes.

III. The causes from which this peculiar depravity proceeds.

1. The depravity of the heart is the groundwork of the whole.

2. Neglect of parental instruction.

3. The infectious power of example.

4. The chilling influence of the world.

5. The seducing influence of luxury. (James Simpson.)

Every man his call

This same event comes to every man. Do not suppose that Jonah is a lonely creature afar off in the ages somewhere, having an experience unique and incommunicable. The experience of Jonah is the experience of every good man. What is your call in life? To go wherever wickedness is, and cry against it. Nineveh has perished, but Ninevitish iniquity is upon our streets, is throwing its shadow upon our thresholds, is sending a keen wail of pain and blasphemy through the very air that blows about us. Every child of God is to be a protesting prophet. Every earnest man is to have no difficulty in finding the word of condemnation when he comes into the presence of sin. If we could realise this call, all the Lord’s people would be prophets. Is it not a burden to speak against wickedness? Where is the man that dare do it? It is easy to condemn wickedness generally. The difficulty is to say to the individual--“Thou art the man.” Almost anybody can stand up before a thousand people, and speak against iniquity in the mass. But he must be a lion from God that dare say to the individual criminal,” I charge you, in the name of the Living One, with doing things that are wrong.” Still, it is well that we should have men who stand up in the midst of cities, and who let the cities know that there are eyes upon them that see things in moral relationships, and aspects, and consequences: and woe betide the cities of the earth when the voice of the prophet is no longer heard in them. It is a harsh voice, it is a piercing cry; but believe it, and regeneration comes, and restora tion and lost peace return, and things are set right before the face of God. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)

Jonah’s commission

The city to which he was com missioned was remarkable for its magnitude and its wickedness.

1. Nineveh was a great city in many respects.

(1) It was of great antiquity (Genesis 10:9).

(2) It was great in respect of its power. It was the chief city of the mightiest monarchy in the world.

(3) In respect of its wealth.

(4) In respect of its extent. Probably sixty miles in circumference.

(5) In respect of its population. Probably 600,000 persons resided within its walls.

2. Nineveh was a guilty city. Cruelty was the characteristic vice. No man in Nineveh was secure from the violence to which its people were prone.

3. Nineveh was a Gentile city. It was this circumstance which chiefly rendered the commission addressed to Jonah so remarkable. It was so unusual that it startled Jonah. God displayed His interest in the welfare of mankind at large, even at that remote and unripe epoch. The Israelites were slow to learn that God did thus interest Himself in the welfare of the Gentiles. Now consider the disobedience of Jonah to the mandate addressed to him. The prophet’s object was to flee from the presence of the Lord; i.e., to get as far as possible beyond the range of those manifestations of the Divine presence which were peculiar to Palestine and its neighbourhood. Jonah sought to escape from such a consciousness of the Divine presence as he had been accustomed to experience in his own country, and may have regarded as peculiar to it. The presence of the Lord had become intolerable to Jonah from the moment that his want of sympathy with the Divine will in relation to Nineveh had become apparent to himself. Moreover, Jonah was an official of high rank in the theocracy, and his words may mean, “I will resign my office rather than undertake this duty.” But he had no right to resign the office he held in the service of Jehovah. His guilt and presumption are apparent; but have we not been as guilty and presumptuous as he; shrinking from duties that we knew were laid upon us? (Samuof Clift Burn.)

Jonah sent to Nineveh

A natural interpretation of the book is this,--Jonah had as great contempt for the heathen as his bigoted brethren of Israel. He was sent on a mission of mercy to his political enemies. As he had never learned to love his enemies, he fled from so distasteful a service. He was disciplined in the stomach of a fish till he was willing to deliver formally the commission given. He preached in Nineveh, still hating those who, if spared, might overthrow Israel. He was further disciplined by the lesson of the gourd. He at last learned the lesson of pity, and rejoiced in the good that accrued to his enemies, singing, “Salvation is of the Lord.”

I. The prophet’s commission to bless his enemies. About 825 b.c. God sent Jonah with a message to Nineveh, which was regarded by Israel as its natural enemy.

II. Jonah’s refusal to accept a mission of mercy to his foes. Jonah was not a son of Satan, but a wilful servant of the Lord, who, by reason of false views, failed to comprehend Jehovah’s broad policy in the government of this world.

III. How God humiliated His prophet before heathen sailors. Humiliating must have been the confession that he who knew move about holy things than all others on board was afraid to trust and obey his own God.

IV. How the heathen sailors made friends with Jonah’s God. The prophet’s acknowledgment of his fear of Jehovah struck a nameless terror to the consciences of the crew. They did their best to save him from his fate, but all was in vain. When Jonah was cast overboard, and the storm ceased, they felt that Jonah’s God was the true God, and must henceforth be their God. (Boston Homilies.)

God speaking to man in mercy, and man fleeing from God in disobedience

I. GOD SPEAKING TO MAN IN MERCY.

1. Here He speaks. “The Word of the Lord.” His Word to Jonah, like His word to all men, was clear, brief, weighty, practical.

2. Here He speaks to an individual. He speaks to all men in nature, conscience, history; but in sovereignty He singles some men out for special communications.

3. Here He speaks to an individual for the sake of a community. “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city.” Why does God call it a great city? To men it was considered “great,” great in numbers, pomp, pretensions, masonry. But to God it could only be great in sin, for sin is a great thing to God; it is a black cloud in His universe. For the sake of this city, in order to effect its moral reformation, and therefore to save it, Jonah receives a commission. “Arise,” shake off thy languor, quit thyself for action, and to work out the ideas of the Infinite. No other creature on earth has this power.

(2) God’s method of helping humanity. God enlightens, purifies, and ennobles man by man. We have this “treasure in earthen vessels.”

II. Man fleeing from god in disobedience. “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord.” Here is a threefold revelation of man.

1. His moral freedom. God did not coerce Jonah, did not drive him to Nineveh. Man has power to resist God--a greater power, this, than can be found in all the heavenly orbs, or in the whole history of material organisms. This power invests man with all but infinite importance, links him to moral government. “Ye do always resist the Spirit of God.”

2. His daring depravity. Alas! men have not merely the power but the disposition to oppose God. This is their guilt and their ruin; it is what men are doing everywhere, trying to break the shackles of moral responsibility, trying to elude the Infinite.

3. His egregious folly. His endeavouring to escape from God was--

(1) Not merely an impulse, but a resolution. Had it been a sudden wish it would have been bad. He “rose up.” He rallied and marshalled his energies.

(2) Not merely a resolution, but an effort. He “went down to Joppa.” The probability is, that he went with the greatest speed to Joppa, the Jaffa of this day. When he reached the spot, how long he was about the quays in search of a suitable vessel.

(3) Not merely an effort, but a persevering effort. It was not one or two or three spasmodic efforts and then over. When he found a suitable vessel he “paid the fare thereof.” Ah, what fares men pay in the career of sin! (Homilist.)

Jonah’s commission

1. When God has a work to do He is never at a loss for agents to accomplish His purposes. The Lord, on some occasions, fixes on instruments which appear to us the least suitable. All fitness is of God; He finds none fit for His service till He makes them so, and He can qualify the most defective. Should any ask why God fixed upon Jonah, and preferred him before any man on earth for this important service? We answer that God giveth no account of His matters; and though His footsteps are in the great deep, He never errs in judgment. The Word of the Lord came to Jonah. He knew who spoke to him, and what He said,--yet he was disobedient to the heavenly call.

2. The commission which God gave to Jonah. Great cities are great evils, seminaries of vice, and schools for profligacy. The more the fallen children of men herd together, the more deeply they corrupt one another. Cities may be great in many respects, and yet little in God’s account, because they are low in all real excellence.

3. Nineveh was ripe for destruction. Mark carefully, that all our sins go up before God, and are registered in His book of remembrance, with a view to the day of judgment. Cry against this “great city.” “Their” sins have cried long and loud against Me, and now My vengeance from heaven shall cry against them. When sinners kindle anger in the bosom of God, who is love itself, great must be their guilt, and tremendous will be their judgments when love turns to wrath. Nineveh is ripe for ruin; God is coming in His wrath against it; yet He halts by the way, and sends His messenger first, to say that He Himself is coming. (Thomas Jones, of Creaton.)

The reasons for Jonah’s mission to Nineveh

Jonah was a suitable agent, but he was not indispensable. God called him, but He could do without him. To be the bearer of such a message as that which is here recorded could not in itself be pleasant, but it was highly honourable. To refuse to speak in such a case, at Divine bidding, was almost to take part with the wrong-doers, and is recorded in this book, by Jonah’s own hand, to his personal discredit. There is but this one reason for the mission stated here; but there were at least several other reasons in reserve--some gently hinted, some unrevealed until ages afterwards. God, as we know, not only kindled in the indignation of justice against what was wrong, but He longed for the repentance of the wrong-doers, and for the manifestation of His mercy among them when thus penitent. He thought, too, of the future; of the use He would make of that people when His people should be led among them captive. As He sent Joseph into Egypt, He will send Jonah into Nineveh, to provide a remedy for a coming evil, a home for a captive people. He thought, too, of the far future of the world, and of the spiritual use to be made of the penitence of that wicked people in the proclamation of His mercy by the Gospel. He has made the Ninevites “a pattern” to all cities and ages--a proof that shall be known as long as history remains, that if a whole city, full of sinners, turn unto the Lord, they shall live. Whether Jonah knew much of these and such like reasons or not, it is certain that he knew quite enough to make the road to Nineveh, far and difficult as it might be, the Lord’s highway of duty and life to him; and any way else he could find, the devil’s road of crookedness, danger, and death. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)