Jonah 1:3 Runaway Jonah and the Convenient Ship or (Pdf)
Jonah 1:3 Travelling Expenses on the Two Great Roads  or (Pdf)
Jonah 1:5 Sleepers Aroused
Jonah 1:5-6 What Meanest Thou, O Sleeper?
Jonah 1:12-13 Labour in Vain - Pdf
Jonah 2:4 Jonah's Resolve or Look Again

Jonah 2:7 Plain Talk Upon an Encouraging Topic  or (Pdf)

Jonah 2:7 The Fainting Soul Revived

Jonah 2:9 Salvation of the Lord
Jonah 3:4 Sermon Notes - The Ninevites' Repentance

Jonah 3:9 Who Can Tell?

Jonah 1:5
Sleepers Aroused
NO. 2903
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1904,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 27TH, 1876.

“But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.” Jonah 1:5.

WE are told, before this fact is mentioned, that the Lord Sent out a great wind into the sea to overtake the bark in which Jonah was sailing for Tarshish. The great wheels of providence are continually revolving in fulfillment of God’s purposes concerning his own people. For them, winds blow, and tempests rise. It is a wonderful thing that the whole machinery of nature should be made subservient to the divine purpose of the salvation of his redeemed. I was in a diamond-cutting factory at Amsterdam, and I noticed that were were huge wheels revolving, and a great deal of power being developed and expended; but when I came to look at the little diamond, — in some cases a very small one indeed, — upon which that power was being brought to bear, it seemed very remarkable that all that power should be concentrated upon such a little yet very precious object. In a similar style, all the wheels of providence and nature, great as they are, are brought to bear, by divine skill and love, upon a thing which appears to many people to be of trifling value, but which is to Christ of priceless worth; namely, a human soul. Here is this common-looking Jew, Jonah, named, according to the general rule that names go by contraries, “a dove”, for, at, any rate, on this occasion, he looked more like the raven that would not come back to the ark; and for this one man, — this altogether unamiable prophet, — the sea must be tossed in tempest, and a whole ship full of people must have their lives put in jeopardy. This truth is a very far-reaching one. You cannot well exaggerate it. The vast universe it but a platform for the display of God’s grace, and all material things, that now exist, will be set aside when the great drama of grace is completed. The material universe is but scaffolding for the Church of Christ. It is but the temporary structure upon which the wonderful mystery of redeeming love is being carried on to perfection. See, then, that, as the great wind was raised to follow Jonah, and to lead to his return to the path of duty, so all things work together for the good of God’s people, and all things that exist are being bowed and bent towards God’s one solemn eternal purpose, — the salvation of his own.

But note also that, while God was awake, Jonah was asleep. While storms were blowing, Jonah was slumbering. It is a strange sight, O Christian, that you should be an important item in the universe, and yet that you should not know it, or care about it; — that for you all things are keeping their proper place and time, and yet that you are the only one who does not seem to perceive it; and, therefore, you fall into a dull, lethargic, sleepy state. Everything around you is awake for your good, yet you yourself are slumbering even as the fugitive prophet was while the storm was raging.

I am going to speak upon the case of Jonah, first, as we may regard it as a useful lesson to the people of God; and, secondly, as it may be considered as an equally valuable warning to the unconverted.

I. First, then, I shall use the case of Jonah as A Useful Lesson To The People Of God; and I may very fairly do so when we remember who Jonah was.

First, Jonah was a believer in God. He worshipped no false god; he worshipped only the living and true God. He was a professed and avowed believer in Jehovah. He was not ashamed to say, — even when his conduct had laid him open to blame, and when there was nobody to support him, — ”I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.” Yet, though he was a believer in God, he was in the sides of the ship, fast asleep. O Christian man, — a real Christian man, too, — if you are in a similar condition, how is it that you can be slumbering under such circumstances? Should not the privileges and the honor, which your being a believer has brought to you by divine grace, forbid that you should be a slumberer, inactive, careless, indifferent? I may be addressing dozens of Jonahs, those who are really God’s people, but who are not acting as if they were, chosen of the Most High; but are forgetful of their election, their redemption, their sanctification, the life they have begun to live here below and the eternal glory that awaits them hereafter.

Beside being a believer, or as a natural consequence of being a believer, Jonah was a man of prayer. Out of the whole company on board that ship, he was the only man who knew how to pray to the one living and true God. All the mariners “cried every man unto his god.” But those were idle prayers because they were offered to idols; they could not prevail because they were presented to dumb, dead deities. But here was a man who could pray,--and who could pray aright, too, — yet he was asleep. Praying men and praying women — you who have the keys of the kingdom of heaven swinging at your girdle — you who can ask what you will, and it shall he done for you, — you who have many a time in the past, prevailed with God in wrestling prayer, — you who have received countless blessings in answer to your supplications, — can you be, as Jonah was, sleeping in the time of storm? Can it be possible that he, who knows the power of prayer, is restraining it; — that he, to whom God has given this choice privilege, is not availing himself of it? I fear that this may be the case with some of you; and looking at Jonah, a praying man sinfully asleep, I cannot help feeling that I may be speaking to many others who are in exactly the same condition.

More than this, Jonah was not merely a believing man, and a praying man, but he was also a prophet of the Lord. He was one to whom God had spoken, and by whom God had spoken. He was a minister; that is to say, one of God’s own sent servants, though he was not in his proper place when he was in the ship sailing towards Tarshish. But can God’s minister neglect their duty like this? If I had been asked at that time, “Where is the prophet of the Lord?” — perhaps the only prophet of his age, — at any rate, a man who was the very foremost in his time, — if I had been asked, “Where is he?” I should have said that he must be looked for amidst the masses of the dense population of Nineveh, carrying out his Master’s commission with unstaggering faith; or else that he might be looked for amidst the thousands of Israel, denouncing their idol gods and their wicked ways. But who would have thought of finding Jonah asleep on board such a ship as that? He is a seer, yet he sees not, for he is sound asleep. He is a watchman, but.- he is not watching, for he is slumbering and sleeping. Everything is in confusion; yet this man, upon whom rests the divine anointing, and into whose mouth God has put a message to multitudes of his fellow-creatures, is sleeping instead of witnessing. Come Mr. Preacher, see to yourself while I am talking about Jonah, and I will take the message to myself while I am talking to you; for this is a matter which ought to come home to all of us upon whoen such great responsibilities are laid, and to whom such high privileges are given. But all of you, who love the Lord, are witnesses for Christ in some capacity or other; and it would be a very sad thing if you, who are called to speak in the name of the Lord, though it should only be in your Sunday-school class, or in a little cottage meeting, or to your own children, should be asleep when you ought to be wide awake and active. May the Lord awaken you; for you are the wrong person to be asleep! You, above all others, are bound to have both your eyes open, and to watch day and night to hear what God the Lord will speak to you, and what he would have you say to the ungodly or to his own chosen people in his name.

It is also worthy of notice that, at the very time when Jonah was asleep in the ship, he was not only a prophet, but he was a prophet under a special commission. He was not on furlough; he was, on the contrary, empowered by special warrant, under the King’s seal and sign manual, to go at once to a certain place, and there to deliver the King’s message; and yet there he is, asleep in this ship, and going in the very opposite direction to the one given him! When prophets sleep, it should be when their errand has been done, and their message has been delivered; but Jonah had not been on his Lord’s errand, nor had he delivered his Lords message; nay, he had refused to obey his Lord, and had run away from the path of duty and here he lies, fast asleep, in the sides of the ship. O dear brothers and sisters, if we could truthfully say that our own work for the Lord was done, we might be somewhat excused if we took our rest. But is our life-work done? Mine is not, that I feel certain; it seems to be scarcely begun. Is yours finished, my brother, my sister? Have you so lived that you can be perfectly content with what you have done? Would it not be a cause of grief to you if you were assured that you would have no more opportunities of glorifying God upon the earth? I think you would feel that very much. Well, then, how can you be willing to be indifferent, cold, and dead, when so much of God’s work lies before you scarcely touched as yet? All that you and I have done, so far, has been like apprentice work; we have been just getting our hand in, we have not become journeymen in God’s great workshop yes; certainly we cannot claim to be wise master-builders yet. Few of us, if any, have attained to that degree; so let us not go to sleep. O sir, shame on thee! Asleep in the early morning? A man may take his rest when he gets weary after a long day’s toil; but not yet, with all that work to be done, — with the King’s commission pressing upon us. With the call of the myriads of Nineveh sounding in his ears, Jonah, God’s appointed messenger, should not have been found asleep in the sides of the ship.

This, then, is who the man was. He was a believing man and a praying man, and a prophet, and a prophet under a special commission. But where was he? Where had he got to?

Well, he had gone down into the sides of the ship; that is to say, he had gone where he hoped he should not be observed or disturbed. He had gone down into the sides of the ship; — not among the cargo; the mariners threw that overboard, yet the noise did not wake the sleeping prophet. He was not upon the deck, ready to take a turn at keeping watch; but he had got as much out of the way as ever he could; and I have known Christian people try, as far as they could, to get out of the way. Possibly, they are not living inconsistently, or doing, as far as others can see, anything that is glaringly sinful; but they have just retired from their Master’s business. They have got into a little quiet place where nobody notices them. I wonder whether there is a Christian man who has gone to live in a country village, where he has not yet said anything for Christ, although, when he lived in London, he was a busy worker for God. He has, like Jonah, gone down into the sides of the ship, into a quiet place where nobody can see him. Around him there are very few Christian people, — perhaps hardly any, — and he does not want anybody to know that he is a Christian. He would like now to live in quite a private way. If he were asked about himself, he would answer, as Jonah did, “I fear God;” but he does not wish to be asked anything about himself. He does not want people to fix their eyes upon him; he is afraid of being too conspicuous. He says that he always was of a retiring disposition, like the soldier, who ran away as soon as the first shot of the battle was fired, and so was shot as a deserter. He says that he is like Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, or like Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple, but secretly, for fear of the Jews. He has gone down into the sides of the ship, though, at one time, he was one of the foremost workers for Christ.

He has gone, too, where he will not lend a hand in any service that needs to be done. He was in the Sunday-school once, but he says that he has had his turn at that, and does not intend to do anything more. He used to be, perhaps, a deacon of a church, but now he does not wish for such a, position as that. He says there is a great deal of trouble and toil in connection with such offices, and he intends, for the future, to avoid everything that will give him trouble, or cause him the slightest toil. Once, he took delight in preaching the Word; and, in those days, if anybody had said that he would live to be silent, and not speak in Christ’s name, he would have been very angry at the man who made such a statement; but it has come true now. Jonah is not up on deck helping to hold the rudder, or to set a sail, or to do anything, not even a hand’s turn to help the poor laboring vessel. He has gone to sleep in the sides of the ship where nobody enquires about him, at least for the present, and where there is nothing for him to do.

Observe, too, that Jonah was stopping away from the prayer meeting. Do you ask, “What prayer-meeting?” Why, every other man on board that ship was crying unto his god, but Jonah was asleep in the sides of the ship. He was not praying; he was sleeping, and perhaps dreaming, but he was certainly not praying; and it is a very bad thing when a true servant of God, a praying man, and one by whom God has spoken aforetime, begins to get into such a spiritually sleepy state that he not only does nothing to help the church, but he does not even join in prayer in the time of danger. Do you know anybody in such a state as that, my brother? “Yes,” you reply, “several.” Are you in that state yourself, brother? If so, let charity for people who are doing wrong begin at home, it may extend to others afterwards. But if this cap fits thee, wear it, and wear it till thou wearest it out, and hast improved thyself through wearing it.

This man, asleep in the sides of the ship, represents one who cannot even take any notice of what was going on around him. At first, he did not wish to be himself observed; but now, he does not care to observe others. What is the condition of the millions of heathen in foreign lands? That is a subject that he avoids, he is of opinion that they will be converted in the millennium, or that, even if they are not converted, their future lot may be a happy one. At any rate, it is a subject about which he does not concern himself. Jonah is asleep in the sides of the ship, and he appears quite content to let the millions of heathen perish. Then, with regard to the Church of Christ at home, sometimes he is told that everything is prospering, but from other quarters he is informed that we are all going to the bad. Well, he does not know which report is the true one, and he does not particularly care; and, as for the church of which he is a member, does he not care for that?

Well, yes, in a certain fashion; but he does not care enough for the Sunday-school, for instance, to lend a hand there, or for the preaching society to lend a hand there. He never encourages the minister’s heart by saying that the love of Christ constraineth him to take his share of holy service. Jonah is asleep in the side of the ship. He is not much noticed, if at all, for those around him have come to the conclusion that he is good for nothing; and he himself, as I have show you, does not take much notice of what is going on, though all the while he is a man of God, a, man of prayer, and one whom God has used in times past. I wonder whether these descriptions are at all applicable to any of my hearers. At any rate, I know that they represent, as in a mirror, the lives of many professors of religion. We trust they are sincere in heart in the sight of God; but, to us their sleepiness is more apparent than their sincerity.

Now, further, what was Jonah doing at that time? He was asleep, — asleep amid all that confusion and noise. What a hurly burly shore was outside that vessel. — storms raging, billows roaring, — and Jonah was not a sailor, but a landsman, yet he was asleep. Certainly he must have been in a remarkable state to be able to sleep through such a storm as that. And what a noise there was inside the ship as well as outside! Everybody else was crying to his god; and the mariners had been throwing the cargo out of the ship, so they must have stirred the whole place up from one end to the other. There seems to have been scarcely any opportunity for anybody to rest, yet Jonah could sleep right through it all, no matter what noise the men made as they pulled the ropes, or threw out their wares, or what outcries they made as they presented their prayers to their idol gods. Jonah was asleep amid all that confusion and noise; and, O Christian man, for you to be indifferent to all that is going on in such a world as this, for you to be negligent of God’s work in such a time as this is just as strange. The devil alone is making noise enough to wake all the Jonahs if they only want to awake. Then there are the rampant errors of the times, the sins of the times, the confusions of the times, the controversies of the times, all these things ought to wake us. And then, beyond the times, there is eternity, with all its terrors and its glories. There is the dread conflict that is going on between Christ and Belial, — between the true and the false, — between Jesus and antichrist. All around us there is tumult and storm, yet some professing Christians are able, like Jonah, to go to sleep in the sides of the ship. I think, brethren and sisters, if we are spiritually awake, if we only look at the condition of religion in our own country, we shall often be obliged at night to lie awake literally, and toss to and fro, crying, “O God, have mercy upon this distracted kingdom, and let thy truth triumph over the Popery which many are endeavoring to bring back among us! “But, alas! the great multitude of believers have little or no care about this matter; they do not even seem to notice it, for they are sound asleep in the midst of a storm.

Notice, also, that Jonah was asleep when other people were awake..

All around us people seem to be wide awake, whether we are asleep or not. When I see what is being done by Romanists, and observe the zeal and self-denial of many persons who have dedicated themselves to the propagation of their false faith, I am astonished that we are doing so little for the true faith. Is it really the case that God has the dullest set of servants in the whole world? It is certain that men are all alive in the service of Satan; then we should not be half alive in the service of our God. Are the worshippers of Baal crying aloud, “O Baal, hear us,” and the devotees of Ashtaroth shouting, “Hear us, O mighty Ashtaroth;” and yet the prophet of Jehovah is lying asleep in the sides of the ship? Is it so? Does everything else seem to arouse all a man’s energies, but does true religion paralyze them? I have really thought, when I have been reading some books written by very good men, that the best thing for sending a man to sleep was a book by an evangelical writer; but that, the moment a man becomes unsound in the faith, it seems as if he woke up, and had something to say which people were bound to hear. It is a great pity that it should be so, just as it was a great pity that everybody should have been awake on that vessel with the exception of Jonah; yet I fear that it is still only to true that those who serve the living God are not half filled with the arousing fervor which ought to possess them for the honor of the Lord Most High.

Jonah was asleep, next, not only in a time of great confusion, and when others were awake, but also in a time when he was in great danger, for the ship was likely to sink. The storm was raging furiously, yet Jonah was asleep. And, believer, when you, and those about you are in danger of falling into great sin through your careless living, — when your family is in danger of being brought up without the fear of God, — when your servants are in danger of concluding that religion is all a farce because you act as if it were, — when those who watch you in business are apt to sneer at Christian profession because they say that your profession is of very little worth to you, — when all this is taking place, and there is imminent danger to your own soul, and to the souls of others, can you still sleep in unconcern?

And Jonah was asleep when he was wanted to be awake. He, above all other men, was the one who ought to awake, and call upon his God. If anybody goes to sleep nowadays, it certainly ought not to be the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. All things demand that Christians should be in real earnest. I know of no argument that I could gather from time or eternity, from heaven, or earth, or hell, to allow a Christian man to be supine and careless but if I am asked for reasons why Christians are wanted to be in downright earnest and full of consecrated vigor in the service of God, those arguments are so plentiful that I have no time to mention them all. The world needs you; careless souls need to be awakened; enquiring souls need to be directed; mourning souls need to be comforted; rejoicing souls need to be established; the ignorant need to be taught, the desponding need to be cheered. On all sides, for a very Christian man, there is an earnest cry; and, certainly, in these days, God has made a truly godly man to be more precious than the gold of Ophir; and that man, who keeps himself back from earnest service for God in such a time as this, surely cannot expect the Lord’s blessing to rest upon him. Verily, the old curse of Meroz may well be pronounced upon the man who, in this age, and under present circumstances, like Jonah, goes down into the sides of the ship, lies down, and goes to sleep.

Jonah was asleep, with all the heathens around him, upbraiding him by their actions. They were praying while he was sleeping; and, at last, it came to this, — that the shipmaster sternly addressed the prophet of God, and said, “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” It is sad indeed when things have come to such a pass that a heathen captain rebukes a servant of God; and yet I am afraid that the Church of God, if she does not mend her ways, will have a great many similar rebukes from heathen practices and heathen utterances. Look at the enormous sums that the heathen spend upon their idols and their idol temples and worship, and then think how little we spend upon the service of the living God. One is amazed to read of the lacs of rupees that are given by Indian princes for the worship of their dead deities, and yet our missionary societies languish, and the work of God in a thousand ways is stopped, because, God’s stewards are not using what he has entrusted to them as they should. Think, too, of the flaming zeal with which the votaries of false faiths compass sea and land to make one proselyte, while we do so little to bring souls to Jesus Christ. One of these days you will have Hindoos and Brahmins talking to us in this fashion, “You profess that the love of Christ constrains you, but to what does it constrain you? “They even now ask us what kind of religion must ours be that forces opium upon the poor Chinese. They quote our great national sins against us, and I do not wonder that they do. I only wish that they could be told that Christians reprobate those evils, and that they are not Christians who practice them. But we must do more than even the best Christians are now doing or else we shall have the heathen saying, as the semi-heathen at home do say, “If we believed in eternal punishment, we should be earnest day and night to rescue souls from it,” — which is to me a strong corroboration of the truth of that doctrine. We do not want any doctrine that can make us less zealous than we are. We certainly do not want any doctrine that can give us any excuse for want of zeal. Still, there is great force in the remark I quoted just now. We are not as earnest to save men from going down to the pit as we ought to be if we do indeed believe that they are hastening to that doom. The shipmasters are again rebuking the Jonahs. Those who believe in error, those who worship false gods, turn round upon us and ask us what we mean. O Jonah, sleeping Jonah, is it not time that you were awake?

But why was Jonah asleep? I suppose that it was partly the reaction after the excitement through which his mind had passed in rebelling against God. He had wearied himself with seeking his own evil way; so now, after the disobedience to God of which he had been guilty, his spirit sinks, and he sleeps. Besides, it is according to the nature of sin to give — not physical sleep, I grant you, — but to give spiritual slumber. There is no opiate like the commission of an evil deed. A man, who has done wrong, is so much less able to repent of the wrong, so much the less likely to do so. Jonah’s conscience had become hardened by his willful rejection of his Lord’s commands, and therefore he could sleep when he ought to have been aroused and alarmed.

Besides, he wished to get rid of the very thought of God. He was trying to flee from God’s presence. I suppose he could not bear his own thoughts; they must have been dreadful to him. So, being in a pet against his God, and altogether in a wrong spirit, he hunts about for a snug corner of the ship, stretches himself out and there falls asleep, and sleeps on right through the storm. O sleepy Christian, there is something wrong about you, too! Conscience has been stupefied. There is some darling sin, I fear, that you are harbouring. Search it out, and drive it out. Sin is the mother of this shameful indifference. God help thee to get rid of it! Brother, I am speaking to you with as much directness as I possibly can, yet not with more than I use towards myself. Have I, in my preaching, been slumbering and sleeping? If you find that I am not in earnest, I charge you, my brother in Christ, tell me of it, and wake me out of my sleep if you can, as I now tell you of it, and say, by all that God has done to you in saving you by his grace, and in making you his servant, give not up your soul to slumber, but awake, awake, put on strength, and arouse yourself, by the power of the, Holy Spirit, to prayer and to the service of your God.

Thus I have spoken, perhaps at, too great length, to Christians.

II. Now, more briefly, I want to give A Warning To The Unconverted.

Jonah, asleep on board that ship, is a type of a great number of unconverted people who come to our various places of worship. Jonah was in imminent danger, for God had sent a great storm after him: and, my unconverted hearer, your danger, at this present moment, is beyond description. There is nothing but a breath between you and hell. One of our beloved elders was with us here last. Sabbath day; he is now with the spirits of just men made perfect; but if it had been the lot of any unconverted person here to suffer and to expire in the same manner, alas, how sad it would have been for you, my hearer! Driven from the presence of God, you would be cast in, the outer darkness where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The sword of divine justice is already furbished, will you yet make mirth? Can you laugh and jest when there is but a step between you and death, — but a step between you and hell? An enemy to God, unforgiven, the angel of justice seeking you out as the storm sought out Jonah in that ship, “What meanest thou, O sleeper,” when the peril of everlasting wrath is so near thee?

You are asleep, too, when there are a great many things to awake you. As I have already said, there was a great noise in the vessel where Jonah was, a great noise inside and outside the ship, yet he did not awake. I do believe that many of you, unconverted people, find it hard to remain as you are. You get hard blows, sometimes, from the preacher. At family prayer, often, your conscience is touched. When you hear a passage from the Bible read, or when you hear of a friend who has died, you get somewhat aroused. Why, the very conversion of others should surely awaken you. If nothing else had awoke Jonah, the prayers of the mariners ought to have awakened him; and the earnestness of your mother and father, the pleading of your sister, the cries of new converts, the earnest anxieties of enquirers, ought to have — and if you were not so deeply sunken in slumber, would have some influence over you to arouse you.

You are asleep, brother, while prayer could save you. If your prayers could not be heard, I think I should say, “Let him sleep on.” If there were no possibility of your salvation, I do not see why you should be aroused from your slumbers. Despair is an excellent excuse for sloth; but you have no reason to despair. “Arise, call upon thy God,” said the shipmaster to Jonah; and we say to you, “Friend, how is it that you are so indifferent, and do not pray, when it is written, ’Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;’ and when the facts prove the truth of the words of Jesus, ’for he that asketh receiveth, and he that, seeketh findeth’? “Heaven is within your reach, yet you will not stretch out your hand. Eternal life is so nigh to thee that. Paul writes, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Assuredly, that man, who has food heaped up before him, but who sits down, and goes to sleep with his head in Benjamin’s mess, and yet will not eat of it, deserves to be starved. He, who can slumber when the river runs up to his very lip; he who is dying of thirst, yet will not drink, deserves to die; does he not? With such wondrous blessings set before you in the gospel,- — with heaven itself just yonder, and the pearly gates set wide open, yet you are so indifferent that you despise the good land, and murmur, and refuse to accept the Savior who would lead you to it, — why, surely, you must be sleeping the sleep of death! You are sleeping while God’s people are wondering at you, just as those mariners in the ship wondered at Jonah; and while they are weeping over you, and praying for you. There are some, in this place, who are the constant subjects of prayer. Some of you, who are seated here, do not perhaps know it, but there are those who love you, and who mention your name day and night before God; and yet, while they are concerned about you, you are not concerned about yourself. O God, if storms cannot awaken these sleeping Jonahs, awaken them by some other means, even though it be by one like themselves, or one even worse than themselves! Send a message that shall upbraid them. Set some blasphemer to ask them how they can attend the means of grace, and yet be undecided. I have known that to happen. I have known a coarse, vile-living man to accost a moral and excellent attendant on the means of grace, and say to him, Why are you not either one thing - or the other? If religion is all a lie, why don’t you be as I am; but if it is true, why don’t you become a Christian? “And verily may they put such questions as those to some of you.

O friends, I pray you, if you are out of Christ, do not pretend to be happy! Do not accept any happiness till you find it in him. To some of you, I would speak very pointedly. Are you sick? Do you feel that your life is very precarious? O my dear friend, you are like Jonah when the ship was like to be broken. Do not delay. Are there the beginnings of consumption about you? Is it supposed to be so? Do not delay. Has some relative been taken away, and does there seem some likelihood that you may have the same disease? Oh, do not sleep, but awake! Are you getting old, friend? Are the grey hairs getting thick around your brow? Oh, do not delay! For unsaved young people, it is wrong to sleep, for he that sleeps when he is young sleeps during a siege; but he that slumbers when he is old sleeps during the attack, when the enemy is actually at the breach, and storming the walls. Do any of you work in dangerous trades? Do you have to eat your bread where an accident might easily happen, as it has often happened to others? Oh, be prepared to meet your God!

But, having begun this list, I might continue it almost indefinitely; but I will end it in a sentence or so. Are you a mortal man? Can you die? Will you die? May you die now? May you drop dead in the street? May you go to sleep, and never wake up again on earth? May your very food or drink become the vehicle of death to you? May there be death in the air you breathe? May it be so? Will you one day, at any rate, have to be carried to your long home, like others, and lie asleep in the grave? Will you give account to God for the things done in the body? Will you have to stand before the great, white throne, to make one of that innumerable throng, and to be there put into the balance to be weighed for eternity? If so, sleep not, I beseech you, as do others; but bestir yourself. May God’s Holy Spirit bestir you to make your calling and election sure! Lay hold on Jesus Christ with the grip of an earnest, humble faith, and surrender yourself, henceforth, to the service of him who has bought you with his precious blood. God grant to all of us the grace to awake, and arise, that Christ may give us life and light, for his dear name’s sake! Amen.

Jonah 2:4:
Jonah's Resolve or Look Again!

NO. 1813
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 14TH, 1884,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. — Jonah 2:4.

WHAT a complex creature is man! Those who fancy that they can fully describe him do not understand him. He is a riddle and a contradiction.

As says Ralph Erskine —

“I’m in mine own and others’ eyes
A labyrinth of mysteries.”

Here, for instance, is a confession from David.

So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand (Psalm 73:22, 23).

Paul saith,

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24, 25).

He is strengthened with all might by the Spirit of God in the inner man, and yet is he weakness itself. In the text Jonah appears to be in a despairing condition, — ”I am cast out of thy sight”; and still he has hope, for he resolves, “Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Everything seems lost, and yet as long as a man can look to God nothing is lost. God cannot see him, so he thinks; yet he talks about looking towards God, — this is singular, is it not? It is as if he said, “I am cast out of thy sight, and yet thou art the object of my sight.” I do not know of a more gloomy sentence that human lips can speak than this, — “I am cast out of thy sight”: I do not know of a more hopeful resolution that the human heart can determine upon than this, — ”Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Oh, untried and inexperienced brother, be not at all disconcerted when you cannot comprehend yourself, on the contrary, take it as one of the evidences that there is a divine life within you when you become a mystery to yourself. If, like a schoolboy, you can draw your own likeness on a slate with a piece of pencil, and can say, “This is all myself,” why, then you will be rubbed out, and your image will be forgotten; but an immortal and divinely-inhabited spirit which is to survive sun, moon, and stars is not so readily sketched. While you are brother to the worm, and akin to corruption, you are nevertheless nearly related to him that sitteth on the eternal throne. Vast regions of wonder-land lie between your condition as the abject prey of death and your portion as an heir of God by Christ Jesus. Manhood is a great deep. I set it not side by side with the fathomless abyss of Godhead, but I know of nothing else which surpasses it.

Our text next leads me to observe that faith in the child of God, whatever may be his circumstances, still comes to the front. Here is Jonah in such a wretched condition that he says, “I am cast out of thy sight;” and yet, despite this, he declares, “Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” The huge Atlantic wave comes rolling on, it sweeps not only over the feet and breast of faith, but it rises far above her head, and for the moment faith seems to be drowned. Wait an instant, and with her face ruddy from the wave and her locks streaming from the flood, faith lifts up her head again and cries, “Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Write faith’s motto, — INVICTA; she ever rides forth upon the white horse, conquering and to conquer. Faith is the child of the Omnipotent, and shares in his omnipotence; it is born of the Eternal, and it possesses his immortality. You may crush and grind it, but every fragment lives; you may cast it into the fire, but it cannot be burned, neither can the smell of fire pass upon it; you may hurl it into the great deeps but it is bound to rise again. Faith has an eye that was made to drink in the sunlight, and so long as God is a sun, there will be eyes of faith to rejoice in him. If we have faith, there is that in us which overcomes the world, baffles Satan, conquers sin, rules life, and abolishes death. All things are possible to him that believeth. Faith triumphs in every place notwithstanding that her life is one of continued trial. Offense is broken like a potter’s vessel, and reason is frail as a spider’s web; but faith abideth, and groweth, and reigneth in the power of the Most High.

Please observe, for it may be for the comfort of some here present, that Jonah was in a position altogether unique and yet faith stood him in good stead. You have read of Joseph in the dungeon; but his imprisonment was nothing compared with the entombment of Jonah in the belly of a fish. You have read of Job on a dunghill in utter misery, — it is a sorry plight; but there are many Jobs in one Jonah if we reckon by present misery and distress. To lie as a living man in a living sculpture was horrible. Jonah, no doubt, suffered from those inconveniences which, apart from miracle, would have ended his life right speedily. A dark, stifling, pestilential cell would have been preferable to the maw of a shark, or whatever great fish it may have been which had swallowed him. The singular thing of it is that he was aware of his position, and knew when the monster dived into the sea-bottom, when it passed through a meadow of sea-weed, when it neared some great mountain, and when again it rose to the surface. This makes the miracle all the more striking; for one is apt to imagine that the man must have lain dormant, or at least must, in a measure, have been unconscious while in such singular hiding. His position was such as never mortal man had known before or since. Now, it sometimes happens that singularity gives a sting to sorrow. When a man believes that nobody ever suffered as he is doing, he concludes his case to be well-nigh hopeless. Dear tried friend, you cannot say this with any certainty, I am sure; for you have comrades with you in your every grief; but Jonah could say it with absolute truthfulness: he was where never man had been before, and where never man has been since, to be alive. His trial was all his own; no stranger intermeddled in it: in his affliction he had no predecessor, and no successor; he was the first and the last that for three days and nights had dwelt in the belly of a fish. He was singular to the last degree, and yet — here is the blessedness of it — his faith was equal to his position. You cannot banish faith, her home is everywhere. You have seen upon the Manx penny the three legs which must always stand, turn the coin whichever way you please: such is faith, — throw it wherever you may, it always falls on its feet. If faith be in a little child, it gives the child wisdom beyond its years; if it be in a decrepit old man, it makes him strong out of feebleness; if it be faith in solitude, it blesses a man with the best of company; if it be faith in the midst of adversaries, it brings to a man the best of friends. Faith in weakness makes us strong, in poverty makes us rich, and in death makes us live. Get a firm confidence in God, and you need not enquire what is going to happen, — all must be well with you. Winding or straight, up hill or down dale, or through the fire or through the sea, if thou believes”, thy road is the King’s highway. If faith does not fail, nothing fails. Faith arms a man from head to foot with mail through which neither sword, nor spear, nor poisoned arrow can ever pierce. Though it be forged upon the anvil of the devil’s greatest subtlety, no weapon can prosper against thee, O true believer! Thou art as safe as he in whom thou believes”; for “he shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”

If I might at this time help any child of God who is in trouble into a solid rest in God, I should be indeed delighted. Oh that the ever blessed Spirit would help me to that end!

Carefully note, first, the verdict of sense — ”I am cast out of thy sight”; and, secondly, the resolve of faith — ”Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” These, remember, were both found in one man at one time.

—————

I. First, here is The Verdict Of Sense.

Please notice that it comes first in the text. Sense hurriedly decides, “I am cast out of thy sight.” It is noteworthy that unbelief is always first to speak. Whenever David observes, “I said in my haste,” you will notice that something is to be confessed which was unwise and untrue. Unbelief cannot wait, it must have its say; it blabs out all its silly soul at its earliest opportunity. In your own case, if you can be calm and patient you will speak to God’s glory; but if you are hasty and petulant, and must needs talk as soon as ever the trial comes upon you, it is almost an absolute certainty that you will say what you will be glad to unsay. Our hasty words are often dipped in wormwood and handed back to us that we may eat them. Hold thee still a while, my brother, or, if thou must speak, speak to thy God and not against him; speak to thy God and not to thyself. Soliloquies are frequently an increase of woe. The heart ferments and heats itself, creating an inward fever which parches the soul. If a vessel wanteth vent it is not helped by being stirred within itself; yet such is the case when we say with David “I pour out my soul in me.” Better is that word, “Ye people, pour out your heart before him,” even before the living God. Brother, speak thou not to thyself, lest thou seem to be a madman: thou mayest vex thy soul exceedingly by those lone maunderings; speak thou to thy God. Even if thou utter hasty words, and words of unbelief, they are better uttered in his presence than muttered within thine own heart. He will hear them in any case; but when he perceives that in thy spirit there is no guile, though much impatience, he will freely forgive thee all thy childish error of too hasty speech, and help thee to bear up under thy woe. Speak, for silence slays; but speak to God, for he is full of compassion. Take the warning of the text, however, and be slow to murmur, remembering that the carnal nature is ever swift to speak and sure to speak amiss.

This verdict of sense, in the next place, was apparently very correct. “I said, I am cast out of thy sight.” Did it not seem so? Jonah had tried to get away from God, and God had pursued him with a tempest, and almost broken the ship to pieces in order to be at him. As the result of the tempest he had been hurled into the sea, and in the sea a great fish had swallowed him, and he had been carried down till the floods compassed him about. Did not all his surroundings confirm his suspicion that he was a castaway? Could he expect ever again that the word of the Lord would come to Jonah the son of Amittai? Could he hope ever again to stand with the joyful multitude that kept holy day in the courts of the Lord’s house, or to present his sacrifice of thanksgiving upon Jehovah’s altar? No, if he judged by his feelings, he was shut up to the conclusion which he expressed. There remained nothing to him but bare life, and that in such a condition that one could hardly desire to have it continued. He reckoned with abundant show of reason that he must be cast out of God’s sight. Yet it was not so, and therefore I invite those of you who have begun to judge your God by what you feel, and by what you see, to revise your judgment, and in future to be very diffident as to your power to come to any just conclusion as to God’s dealings with you. Thank God, you will be wrong if you despair. It is much better for you to show your faith by relying on your God than to display your folly by saying, “I am cast out.”

As this verdict of sense seemed to be correct, Jonah must have felt that it was assuredly deserved. If the Lord had dealt with Jonah according to his sins, he would have been a castaway. He had hurried to Joppa, and taken a passage in a ship to go to Tarshish, or anywhere else, to flee from the presence of God. Now, what was a fitter punishment for him than that he should be cast out from the sight of God? Had not this been his inquiry at Joppa, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?” Was not this his demand, “Whither shall I flee from thy presence?” Now, he has his answer, — he is carried down till the depth closed him round about. His waywardness had come home to him: he had been paid in his own coin; and what could Jonah feel but that he was filled with his own ways? Had he died in the sea he could not have doubted the Lord’s justice. If he had been driven away as an outcast, it had but been righteous retribution to a runaway who refused his Master’s service. This must have made him doubly sorrowful; a guilty conscience is the sourest ingredient of all. When each ware howled in Jonah’s ear, “You deserve it,” he was in an evil plight indeed.

One sharp part of Jonah’s misery was that God’s hand was so evidently in his misery. He sees it and trembles. Observe how he ascribes all to God, — ”Thou hadst 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.” We can bear a blow from an enemy, but a wound from our best friend is hard. If the Lord himself go forth against us, the war is one to tremble at. If the messenger of grief be commissioned by Jehovah himself, and we know it, mere carnal reason concludes that all is over finally, and that henceforth all we can do is to sit down and die. Faith thinketh not so; but this is after the manner of flesh and sense.

Observe that this verdict of sense, “I am cast out from God,” was very bitter to Jonah. You can see by the way in which he speaks that it is a heavy burden to him, and yet it seems strange that it should be so. Here is a man who, when he was in a wrong state of heart, sought to flee from the presence of the Lord, and therefore went to the seacoast on purpose, rejoiced to find a ship boned for a distant and almost unknown land, and paid the fare to sail therein of set purpose that he might get away from God; and now that he thinks he is away from God, he is filled with horror and dismay. By this we know the children of God even at their worst estate. Oh, you that are the people of God, you may sometimes in your wilfulness wish that you could get away from the all-searching eye, but if you could do so it would be hell to you. If you are a child of God you must dwell in the presence of God; it is your life, and you cannot be happy anywhere else. Oh, redeemed, regenerate man, it is impossible now for thy once renewed spirit ever to be happy in the beggarly elements of thy former condition: except in the divine atmosphere of heavenly love there is no rest for thee. Thou art spoilt for this world, O heir of the world to come! There was a time when its dainties would have been sweet to thy taste, and thy soul could have been filled therewith; but that day is over now: thou must eat the bread of heaven or starve. If thou art not happy in thy God thou art doomed to be happy nowhere. There is no choice left for thee. Thy very nature is so affected now that as the needle rests not save as it points to the pole, so can thy heart never be quiet except in Jesus. The light of his countenance must be light to thee, or thou must walk in darkness; thy music must come from Jesus’ lips, or else there is nought for thee but wailing and gnashing of teeth; thy heaven must be in his embrace, there is no heaven elsewhere for thee. Nor would we wish to have it different. I am sure I can say from my very soul that if God could leave me it would be to me a hell worse than Dante or Milton could imagine. What if I still had to pursue my holy calling, and to preach! What woe to preach without him! What a hollow mockery! If I were bound to continue still the outward form of prayer and of a moral life, what vanity of vanities would it all be without my Lord! Without God! brothers, sisters, can you bear the thought? It is not the pang of hell, nor its fires, nor its undying worm, nor aught else that can be pictured of amazing terror that causes such alarm as the bare thought of being severed from God. To be cast out from his sight were hell indeed! Now, I should think that if Jonah has been in a calm state of mind, and had been able to consider things in the light of truth, it ought to have given him some ground of hope that he was not cast out from God after all, because he was so unhappy at the idea of being so cast out. Will the Lord leave a soul that is distressed by such leaving? No spirit is wholly cast off from God if it longs after God. If thou canst be content without God thou art indeed a lost one; but if there be in thee a wretched rankling discontent at the very thought of being severed from thy God, then thou art his, and he is thine, and no eternal division shall come between thee and him.

Thus I have brought out somewhat the force of this verdict of sense, — ”I am cast out of thy sight”; but I want you further to notice that it was not true. There was ground for grief, but not for this despairing inference. The verdict was not sustained by sufficient evidence. It was a great deal more than Jonah should have said, “I am cast out of thy sight.” What, alive in the sea, Jonah; alive in the deep! alive in the belly of a fish! and say that you are cast out from God’s sight! Surely if God was anywhere in the world, it was in that great fish. Where else could there have been surer proofs of his present power and Godhead than in keeping a man alive in a living charnel? There was a constant standing miracle for three days and nights; and where there is a miracle, there is God most visibly seen. If Jonah could have asked the seas and asked the deep places of the earth, they would have told him that the Lord was not far away. If he could have asked the fish itself, it would have owned that God was there. If those who go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep, much more might he have seen them who went into the sea in a fish’s belly. There is a text that Jonah could never have heard, which I commend to you against the time when you get to be where Jonah was. I do not suppose you ever will be buried alive in a fish literally; but you may spiritually sink as deep as the prophet did. What is that text? “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Jonah said, “I am cast out”: but that was not true. Poor Jonah! the mariners cast him out, but God did not; he was cast out of the ship, but not out of the sight of God. The Lord of old was faithful, and it was his rule never to cast away his people; even as David saith, “For the Lord will not cast off for ever: but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion, according to the multitude of his mercies.” Mark the text I quoted from our Lord’s own lips: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Never question this sacred word. He will never, never cast out a single one that trusts him. So that if ever you should be in a condition which seems to you quite as forlorn as that of this prophet in the midst of the sea, you may yet be sure that you are not cast off, nor cast out. He who says he is cast out, says more than can possibly be true; since the infallible promise is, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” It is not for us to forge a lie against the God of the whole earth. He does not speak that which is false, but out of his mouth proceedeth verity. Even if all things in earth and hell should swear that the Lord has cast away one of his own believing people, it will be our duty to disbelieve them all; for it is impossible that he should cast out any believer, in any wise, for any reason or motive whatsoever.

—————

II. Follow me, dear friends, and may the Lord make it profitable to you, while I dwell during the rest of my time upon The Resolve Of Faith.

Oh that the Holy Ghost may work in us “like precious faith” with Jonah. “Yet,” says Jonah, “even if I be cast out, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.”

Jonah was a man of God when he was in his worst state of mind, at no time was the eternal life quite extinct within him. An ugly kind of saint this Jonah, when he was in the sulks! A proud, self-conscious, wilful, and morose being, hard to love! Yet, as an oyster may bear a precious pearl within its rough shell, so did the harsh prophet contain, within his being, a priceless jewel of faith — faith eminent, prevalent, triumphant, faith of the highest degree.

This faith put him upon prayer. The chapter begins, “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly.” Jonah had not prayed when he went down to Joppa. He had taken the management of himself into his own hands, and referred nothing to God as to that rash voyage. How could he pray in such a temper? He paid his fare to go to Tarshish; he did not pray God’s blessing on that expenditure, I am quite sure. When the sea began to work, and was tempestuous, he was in the sides of the ship, but he did not pray; no, he went to sleep. His conscience had become stupid, and seared as with a hot iron; there was no prayer in him, but a certain numbness of mind and lethargy of heart. And now he gets into the fish’s belly, a very close, dead place, where one would think he would lie in a state of coma, or in a sort of fainting fit, if it were possible for him to live at all; yet there he begins to pray. You will find God’s children praying where you thought they would despair; and, on the other hand, you may discover that they do not pray where you thought they would abound in supplication. “Oh,” says one man, “if I could have my time all to myself, and had not the worry of this family and this business, what a deal of time I would spend in prayer!” Would you? I would not guarantee your abundant devotion. Some of those who have least time for prayer pray most, and those who have most opportunity and everything congenial, are too often found to be most slack in their petitions. Jonah’s oratory was narrow, and this pressed the prayer out of him. He did not pray in the sides of the ship, where he had room enough and to spare; but he prayed where he could not get upon his knees, or hear his own voice. Laid out in his living coffin, he began his pleadings. One would think it hard to make the belly of hell the gate of heaven, but Jonah did so. He prays, and one of the surest evidences of a living faith is prayer. If thou canst not do anything else, thou canst pray, and if thou be a child of God thou wilt as surely pray as a man breathes or as a child cries: thou canst not help it. Prayer is thy vital breath, thy native air. Whether on the land or in the sea, prayer is thy life, and thou canst not exist without it if thou be indeed born from on high. Answer, dear hearer, is it not so? It is not the prayer-book, but the prayer-faith that we must have. Hast thou such faith?

I beg you to notice, however, that this faith of Jonah showed itself not in prayer to God in general, but the passage runs, “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord HIS God.” There is a mint of meaning here!

If you go upstairs and pray to God, as everybody’s God, you have done what every Jack, Tom, and Harry may do; but to go to your closet and cry to the Lord as your own God, is what none but an heir of grace can do. Oh to cry — ”My Father and my Friend! My God in covenant. My God to whom I have spoken years ago, and from whom I have heard full many a time. Thou whom I love. Thou who lovest me, Jehovah, my God.” This laying hold upon God as our own God is a business which the outer-court worshipper knows nothing of. Have some of you got a God at all? “Oh,” you say, “I know there is a God.” Yes, I know there is a bank; but that does not make me rich. What is your God to me? I want to say “my God,” or I cannot be happy. Have you a God to yourself, all to yourself, for if it be so, you will pray the prayer of faith when you draw near to him, and this will prove that whatever your condition may be, you are not cast out from the sight of the Most High.

There is one thing about Jonah I want you particularly to notice, that as his faith made him pray, and made him pray to the Lord his God, his faith made him deal familiarly with holy Scripture. “What!” say you: “how know you that?” He had but a small Bible compared with ours, but he had laid much of it up in his memory. Evidently he loved the Book of Psalms, for his prayer is full of David’s expressions. Kindly look at Jonah’s prayer. I think I am right in saying that there are no less than seven extracts from the Psalms in that prayer and its preface. It was Jonah’s own prayer, and no man compiled it for him, for he was far away from the haunts of men; yet his heart led him to his former readings, and his memory came to his aid with expressions most suitable, and forcible, borrowed from a former much tried servant of the Lord. A deep experience is bound to resort to Scripture for its expression. Human compositions suffice for surface work, but when all God’s waves and billows have gone over us, we quote a Psalm. When our soul fainteth within us, we are not to be revived by human songs, but we turn to the grave sweet melodies of inspiration. When a true child of God is in trouble, it is wonderful how dear the Bible becomes to him, — aye, the very words of it. I say the very words of it, for I care nothing about the scorn which attaches to a belief in “Verbal Inspiration.” If the words are not inspired, neither is the sense, since there can be no sense apart from the words. My soul doth know what it is to hang her hope upon a single word of God; and to find her trust accepted. I would not even change the expression of our translation in many a place: not that I am bound by a translation, for God’s original is that which we accept as infallible, but yet there are translations which are evidently accurate, for the Lord’s own Spirit has made them unutterably dear to his saints. There are circumstances connected with the very words of many a text, and with God’s dealing with us through those words, and in such instances we cling even to the English text with all our might. I think you will find that tried saints are the most biblical saints. In summer weather we delight in hymns, but in winter’s storms we fly to psalms. Your frothy professors quote Dickens or George Eliot, but God’s afflicted quote David or Job. Those Psalms are marvellous. David seems to have lived for us all: he was not so much one man as all men in one. Somewhere or other, the great circle of his experience touches yours and mine, and the Holy Ghost by David has furnished us with the best expressions which we can utter before the Lord in prayer. Give me the faith which loves the Scriptures. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, and true faith always loves the Word from which it sprang; it feeds thereon, and grows thereby. In proportion as people begin to criticize the Scriptures, and to doubt the authenticity of this and that, in that proportion they move out of the latitude of faith: the region of criticism is cold as the polar seas; faith loves a warmer atmosphere. The faith of God’s elect clings to God and reverences his word. By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live, and upon such meat Jonah lived where others must have died.

I desire to come close up to my text, while I bid you note that faith dares come to God with a “yet.” Jonah said, “Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Faith in her worst circumstances trusts to God. Clog her, load her, shut her up, yet she looks to God alone. O God, I trusted thee once when I was but young, and I felt my need of a Savior, I came to thee then and I looked to Jesus, and I found peace at once, but then I did not know the evil of sin as I know it now. What then? Why, with this new knowledge yet will I look to Jesus. I did not know then the depravity of my heart as I know it now, but yet with this fresh sense of guilt I will look as at the first. I did not know then thy great and exceeding wrath against sin as I know it now, but yet with this fuller discovery I will look to thee. I did not know the burden of life then as I know it now; I did not know the power of Satan over me then as I know it now; yet will I look again unto thy holy temple. With all these new weights and fresh incumbrances I do to-day what I did many years ago; I throw myself on thee, my Lord, and trust in thy matchless plan of salvation through the precious blood of Christ. It charmed me once, it charms me yet again. This is the perseverance and determination of faith. She overleaps all walls, and dashes through all hedges with her “yet.” Come what may, she has looked to Christ, and she means to do so whatever may arise to suggest some other course.

According to the Hebrew, the word should be rendered “only” instead of “yet,” — ”only I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Faith looks to God only. Faith comes alone to her God, and seeks no company to keep her in countenance. When we were first saved it was by faith only, and we must be saved in the same way still. In Jonah’s case all props were knocked away; he had nothing to look to in the whale’s belly at the bottom of the sea; but then and there he trusted God, and that was all. He could not think very clearly, nor confess before men, neither could he be or do anything; for he was packed away in quarters too close for action; but he could look again towards the temple of God, and this alone he did. He could give the faith-look when all looking with the eyes was far out of the question. How could he tell in which direction to look for the temple when all around him rolled the dark sea? His look was inward and spiritual, and he was content to do that, and that only. His state was looking, looking — only looking. Be it ours to believe, to believe, and yet again to believe. Jonah looked again to the place where God revealed himself, and we look to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He looked to the mercy-seat sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice, where the Lord was wont to pardon and bless all suppliant sinners, and we also look to Jesus as the great Propitiation. To this look we will add nothing as a ground of trust. Jesus only is our hope, and only will we look to him. We will add nothing to our look, our look to Christ; he alone is our stay and our comfort. It is a blessed thing to get clear of all secondary hopes, and to live by faith alone. Mixtures will not do in the hour of trial. A single eye is what is needed: the least division in your trust is painful and dangerous. If you have lost some of your first light, look again; look toward his holy temple at once, and the light shall surely return to you.

Do you notice here that faith is driven to do according to her first acts — ”Yet I will look again.” You know faith is described in other ways beside looking; it is taking, grasping, possessing, feeding; but faith first of all is looking; and so, whenever you fall into grievous trouble, it will be wise to resort to the beginning of your confidence, and hold it fast to the end. If you cannot grasp, yet look. There are several grades of faith; and when you cannot reach the higher grade it will be wise to enter fully into the lower one. Remember, the lowest form of faith will save, and even the smallest measure of faith is effectual for salvation, though not for consolation. Look! Look to Jesus! “There is life in a look.” There is heaven in a look. “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Look! If thou canst not go forth to fight by faith, stand still and look by faith. If thou canst not declare the glory of the Lord, yet look. If thou canst not tell what God hath done for thee, yet keep thou still looking by faith to see what God will do for thee. Do thou thy first work, and as thy first work was a simple look at the Crucified One, look again to him.

With this I shall close, urging dear friends here present, even if they forget all the rest of my text, to remember those two words, “Look again.” If any of you are in sore trouble, I will bid you go home with only these two words ringing in your ears, “Look again!” If you did look once, but have fallen into new darkness, look again. I mean this morning, and I would ask you to follow me in it, to look to my Lord Jesus Christ again as I did at the first. It is frequently a great benefit to overhaul the foundations and begin again at the beginnings. I did look to Christ three and thirty years ago, or more; so did some of you. But the devil may say, “Your faith was fancy; your conversion was a delusion.” Be it so, O Satan; we will not dispute with you, but we will begin again from this moment. It is such a mercy that faith does not need to grow old before it saves us: the faith born this moment saves the soul in its very birth. Is it so, that your faith is not more than five minutes old, my brother? Have you only just begun to trust Christ? Well, thy faith hath saved thee quite as effectually as the faith of a man who has believed in Christ for fifty years. We must believe anew each day; yesterday’s believing will not do for to-day. Let us now look to Jesus Christ upon the cross, and trust him this morning as if we never trusted him before. “I will look again toward thy holy temple.” It will do each man good to look anew to that cross which is the sole hope of his soul. There is nothing more sweetening to the spirit than to confess sin and accept mercy in the original style, and to go to Jesus anew just as we went at first. Let us do so at this moment.

A person proudly said the other day that he could no longer sing, —

“I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all,
But Jesus Christ is my all in all.”

He had got beyond that! Highty tighty, here’s a fine fellow! He has just risen from the dunghill, and is come to be a grand gentleman all at once! Nothing will do for him but —

“See the conquering hero comes,
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums.”

Alas, for the top-lofty hypocrite! Shame on the proud self-magnifier! If he did but know himself he would confess his nothingness with a deeper emphasis than ever, and he would, like the publican, cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” I believe that as a child of God grows in sanctification he deepens in humility, and as he advances to perfection he sinks in his own esteem. Oh that men would give over that bladder-blowing which seems to be so much admired in certain quarters! We have had much occasion to mourn over the lower life of some professors; but the higher life of others is not a bit better; it is false, proud, censorious, and unpractical. Those who boast of perfection will have much to grieve over when once they come to their senses, and stand in truth before the living God. No man talks of living without sin till he is taken in the net of self-deception. I have walked with God for many years, and enjoyed the light of his countenance, but my experience is that I am this day obliged to take a far lower place before him than ever I took before, while —

“Less than nothing I can boast,
And vanity confess.”

Brethren, whether you will do so or not, I flee to the cross again. In the Rock of Ages I again hide myself. Who among us dares to come forth from that divine shelter? “Jesus, lover of our soul, let us to thy bosom by.” Let all of us sing as though it were for the first time —

“Just as I am — without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,
O Lamb of God. I come.”

Dear friends, it is due to God, it is due to Christ, it is due to the gospel, that we should every day believe with like simplicity of undivided trust. Keep on believing in Christ, “to whom coming as unto a living stone.” We are to live by faith. You may be quite sure that you are permitted to do this, for Christ is always a sinner’s Savior. If you cannot come to him as saints, come to him as sinners. If your unfitness for fellowship as a servant comes before your mind and breaks your heart, yet remember that you may always return as a prodigal son. If you cannot feed in green pastures as sheep of the fold, yet yield to the strong hand of him who seeketh the lost sheep. If you cannot come to Jesus as you should, yet come just as you are. If your garments are not clean, as they should be, yet come and wash them white in the blood of the Lamb.

This ought to be done more readily by us every day, for it should be a growingly easy thing to believe our God as experience proves his faithfulness. When we are at our worst let us trust with unshaking faith. Recollect that then is the time when we can most glorify God by faith. To trust Christ when thou hast a shallow sense of sin, when thy heart is glad and thy face is bright, is but a slender trusting him; but to believe that he can cleanse thee when thy heart is black as hell, when thou canst not see one good trait in all thy character, when thou seest nothing but fault and imperfection about thine entire life, when all thine outward circumstances seem to speak of an angry God, and all thine inward feelings threaten thee with doom from his right hand, — this is to believe indeed. Such faith the Lord deserves of thee. Oh, if thou be only a little sinner, a little Savior and a little faith may serve thy turn; if thou hast but little fear, and a little burden, and little care, and little need, why then thou canst not greatly prove or trust thy Lord. But if thou be up to thy neck in sorrow, aye, if thou be drowned in it, as Jonah was, and be driven well nigh to despair, then thou hast a great God, and thou shouldst glorify him by greatly trusting him. If thou be tempted to lay violent hands upon thyself, or to do some other rash and evil deed, do thou no such thing, but trust thyself with thy God, and this will give him more glory than seraphim and cherubim can do. To believe in the promise of God, as you read it in his word, is a grand thing. To believe it, though you are sick and sorry, though ready to die, this is to glorify the Lord. Brethren, if I live I will believe the promise, if I die I will believe the promise, and when I rise again I will believe the promise. Let us resolve to believe though the world be in flames, and the pillars thereof are removed. Let us believe though the sun be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. Let us believe though all the powers of the earth be marshalled in fight, and Gog and Magog gather themselves together to battle. Let us believe though the trumpet sounds for judgment, and the great white throne is set in the open heaven! Wherefore should we doubt? The covenant confirmed by promise and by oath, and ratified with the blood of Jesus, places every believer under the broad shield of divine truth; and what cause can there be for fear? O my hearer, believest thou in Christ? Dost thou trust thy God? If thou canst stand to that, thou art not only a saved man, but thou already givest glory to God. So may he help thee to do. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Jonah 1:2.
HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 90, 598, 533

Jonah 3:4:
Sermon Notes
by C H Spurgeon

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. — Jonah 3:4

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. — Matthew 12:41

OUR Lord never lost patience with an audience, and never brought railing accusation against any man: his rebuke was well deserved.

Nineveh under Jonah was indeed a reproof to the Jerusalem of our Lord's day, for the Jews, though favored with his divine ministry, did not repent, but wickedly crucified the Messenger of peace.

Might not our Lord rebuke the unbelievers of our day in the same way? Is not Nineveh a reproach to England?

Let us see.

The men of Nineveh repented, and turned to God; and yet—

I. THEIR CALLS TO REPENTANCE WERE NOT MANY.

Many unbelievers have been warned and entreated times without number, and yet they remain impenitent; but:

Nineveh enjoyed no privileges: it was in heathen darkness.

Nineveh heard but one prophet; and he was none of the greatest, or most affectionate.

Nineveh heard that prophet only once; and that was an open-air sermon, very short and very monotonous.

Nineveh had heard no word of good tidings; she heard the thunder of the law, but nothing else.
Yet the obedience to the warning was immediate, universal, practical, and acceptable, so that the city was spared.

II. THE MESSAGE Of THE PROPHET WAS NOT ENCOURAGING.

1. He proclaimed no promise of pardon.

2. He did not even mention repentance; and consequently he held out no hope to the penitent.

3. He foretold a crushing and final doom: "Nineveh shall be overthrown." His message began and ended with threatening.

4. He mentioned a speedy day: "yet forty days."

Yet out of this dreadful message the people made a gospel, and so acted as on it to find deliverance; while to many of us the rich, free, sure promise of the Lord has been of no force through our unbelief.

Those who heard the teaching of Jesus were, like ourselves, highly favored, for "never man spake like this Man"; and, like us, they were grievously guilty in that they repented not.

III. THE PROPHET HIMSELF WAS NO HELPER TO THEIR HOPE.

Jonah was no loving, tender pastor, anxious to gather the lost sheep.

1. He disliked the ministry in which he was engaged, and no doubt discharged it in a hard, harsh manner.

2. He uttered no word of sympathetic love, for he had none in his heart. He was of the school of Elijah, and knew not the love which burned in the heart of Jesus.

3. He offered no prayer of loving pity.

4. He was even displeased that the city was spared.

Yet these people obeyed his voice, and obtained mercy through hearkening to his warnings. Does not this rebuke many who have been favored with tender and loving admonitions? Certainly it rebuked those who lived in our Lord's day, for no two persons could afford a more singular contrast than Jonah and our Lord.

Indeed, a "greater," better, tenderer than Jonah was there.

IV. THE HOPE TO WHICH THE NINEVITES COULD REACH WAS SLENDER.

It was no more than, "Who can tell?"

1. They had no revelation of the character of the God of Israel.

2. They knew nothing of an atoning sacrifice.

3. They had received no invitation to seek the Lord, not even a command to repent.

4. Their argument was mainly negative. Nothing was said against their repenting. They could not be the worse for repenting.

5. The positive argument was slender.

The mission of the prophet was a warning: even a warning implies a degree of mercy: they ventured upon that bare hope, saying, "Who can tell?" Have we not all at least this much of hope? Have we not far more in the gospel? Will we not venture upon it?

Monitions

Jonah 1:
Exposition
by C H Spurgeon

Jonah 1:1-3. 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. 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.

Observe the misconduct of the prophet Jonah. He had a plain command from the Lord, and he knew it to be a command; but he felt that the commission given to him would not be pleasant and honoring to himself, and therefore he declined to comply with it. We see, from his action, how some, who really know God, may act as if they knew him not. Jonah knew that God was everywhere, yet he “rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” What strange inconsistencies there often are even in good men! Here is one, who is favored with a divine commission, — one who knows God, and fears him; yet, for all that, he ventures on the fool’s errand of endeavoring to escape from the Omnipresent. He “went down to Joppa,” which was the port of his country, “and he found a ship going to Tarshish.” Learn from this that providence alone is not a sufficient guide for our actions. He may have said, “It was very singular that there was a ship there going to Tarshish, just when I reached the port. I gather from this that God was not so very disinclined for me to go to Tarshish.” Precepts, not providences, are to guide believers; and when Christian men quote a providence against a precept, — which is to set God against God, — they act most strangely. There are devil’s providences as well as divine providences, and there are tempting providences as well as assisting providences, so learn to judge between the one and the other.

Jonah 1:4. 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.

Learn, hence, that “Omnipotence has servants everywhere.” The Lord is never short of sheriff’s officers to arrest his fugitives, and on that occasion he “sent out a great wind into the sea.” “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” That is true, but it is also true that the wind bloweth where God listeth, and he knew how to send that great wind to the particular ship. No doubt many ships wer