Sermons on Biblical Characters | Page 7

and fundamental is this, that the word did come. That is the essential thing in your case and in mine. God does speak to us. God does move upon us. God does call us, command us. God does stir us up. "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah," and it comes this very moment to you and to me.
What was it that the Lord said to Jonah? He gave him a strange and unwelcome command. He said, "Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for its wickedness has come up before me." It was hard for Jonah to believe that he had heard aright. Was it possible that Nineveh was a great city in spite of the fact that it was a heathen city? Was it possible that Nineveh grieved God because of its wickedness? Could it be possible that God really loved Nineveh, though it was outside the covenant? Jonah did not want to believe this, but he had to believe it. He had to realize that
"The love of God is wider than the measure of man's mind And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind."
Jonah did not want to undertake this mission. His objection, however, did not grow out of the fear that Nineveh would refuse to repent. His reluctance was not born of the conviction that there was nothing in the people of Nineveh to which his message would appeal. I know we are often hampered by that conviction. We feel that it is absolutely useless to preach to some folks. There is no use in trying to christianize Africa. There is no use even in trying to christianize some of our next door neighbors. We so often forget that there is in every man an insatiable hunger and an unquenchable thirst that none but God can satisfy.
But to Jonah this call was unwelcome because he feared that Nineveh might repent. And that he did not want Nineveh to do. Jonah believed that God was the God of Israel only. He believed that God blessed Israel in two ways. First, He blessed her by giving her gifts spiritual and temporal. And He blessed her, in the second place, by sending calamities upon her enemies. An abundant harvest in Israel was a blessing from the Lord. A famine in Nineveh was also a blessing from the Lord. Jonah was firmly convinced that the prosperity of a nation other than his own meant calamity to Israel.
It is a pity that this selfish belief did not perish with Jonah. But when we face the facts we know that it did not. It is a very human trait in us to feel that another's advancement is in some way a blow to ourselves. It is equally a human trait to feel that another's downfall and disgrace in some way adds a bit of luster to our own crowns. Of course, nothing could be more utterly false, but in spite of this fact we cling to that faith through all the passing centuries.
On the whole this duty, then, that God had put upon Jonah was so distasteful that he made up his mind that whatever it might cost him he would not obey. Therefore, we read that he "rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." Ordered to Nineveh he sets out for Tarshish. There were two cities on his map and only two. There was Nineveh, the city to which he might go in the fellowship of God and within the circle of the will of God. There was also Tarshish, the city that lay at the end of the rebel's road, the city whose streets, if ever he walked them at all, he would walk without the fellowship of the God whom he had disobeyed.
And there are just two cities on your map. The Nineveh of obedience and the Tarshish of disobedience. You are going to Nineveh or to Tarshish. I do not claim to know where your Nineveh is. It may be a distant city. It may be a city across the seas whose streets you will crimson with the blood of your sacrifice. It may be a city as near to you as the home in which you live, as the child that nestles in your arms. But wherever it is, if you walk its streets you will walk them in the joy of the divine fellowship.
On the other hand, you may go to Tarshish. Tarshish is the city of "Have-Your-Own-Way." It is the city of "Do-As-You-Please." It is the city of "Take-it-Easy." It is the city with no garden called Gethsemane without its gates and no rugged hill called Calvary overlooks its walls. It is a city without a cross and yet it is a