(T. De Witt Talmage.)

(T. De Witt Talmage.)

1. A child of God may sometimes miscarry, so far through infirmity, negligence, and temptation, that even a pagan, by nature's light, may see him reproveable and blameworthy, for so is Jonah reproved by the shipmaster.

2. It is deeply censurable and absurd, even to nature's eye, to be secure in trouble.

3. Variety of false gods hold men in suspense and uncertainty. Therefore every "man having cried unto his God," yet they are not settled, but will have Jonah to essay his God, if He be better than the rest.

4. Nature's light will acknowledge that He who is the true God hath power to deliver in most extreme dangers; for in this great tempest they assert it, — "If God think on us, we will not perish."

5. Howsoever in a calm day, nature conceit and boast of merit, yet in a strait, natural men are forced to have their recourse only to the favour of God. For this pagan shipmaster hath no ground of hope that they shall not perish, but in God's thinking (or being bright and shining, as the word also signifies, that is, looking favourably) on them.

(George Hutcheson.)

1. Apply it to the careless and ungodly. Thousands are rushing onward in the broad way which leadeth to destruction. Many a man, in the midst of the most awful realities of life, is locked up in fancied security, and not a pang, not a misgiving, not an apprehension is entertained. Well may it be said to such, "Awaken, thou that sleepest."

2. Apply to the backslider. Those who once knew the Lord, and who, remembering the blessedness of knowing Him, have nevertheless fallen from their stead fastness; who, by sin, have inflicted a deadly wound upon their souls. They may be, like Jonah, sleeping, insensible to the perils around them. But the words admit of a more extended application. They come, in a greater or less degree, pointed to us all. It seems to say to us all, "watch and pray, arise and be doing."

(Dennis Kofly, M. A.)

(F. R. H. H. Noyes, D. D.)

1. It must be obvious to every one that this impassioned inquiry into the conduct of the sleeper speaks it to be fraught with extreme folly. Man is placed under the regimen of a moral and an equitable administration, in which God deals with him as a rational creature. A door of hope is set before us. The awful consequences of refusing to accept God's mode of deliverance are fully displayed. Now, does the sleeper act the part of a wise man; to remain locked in the embraces of a most sluggish inaction, when affairs of such moment are to be decided? Surely no frenzy is half so desperate as this! The sleeper's conduct is fraught with extreme folly.

2. This awakening salutation intimates that the sleeper's conduct is full of danger. See the appalling and perilous position of this ship. Far more appalling and perilous is your condition, O ye spiritual slumberers. You are embarked on the ocean of Divine wrath. The vessel to which you have committed yourselves is frail and shattered, yet an ark of safety has all along attended you, but you will not be at the trouble of accepting its aid. By neglecting the great salvation, your peril is increased a thousand-fold. Jonah's condition in the ship gives but a faint idea of the danger you every moment run while without Christ, and "without God in the world."

3. The earnestness of the interrogatory imports that now is the proper time to awake. It should be a rule with every man who wishes to regulate his conduct wisely, to put off nothing till to-morrow which is necessary to be done to-day. The present time is always the best, and, what is more, it is all that we can call our own. The circumstances of this case demand that you decide instantly.

4. The vehemence of this call tells us, that the business for which the sleeper is called to awake is of the utmost importance, and well deserves his attention. Inconceivably greater than Jonah's is the business to which we now solicit your attention. By nature you are lost and undone; but we now announce to you a message of peace and reconciliation with God. We tell you of a Saviour. Will you, through the pride of your heart, banish from your mind that deep and mysterious project? Will you, through the listlessness of your inaction, discard, as not deserving your serious contemplation, that unrivalled event which filled the world with wonders?

5. The question here put to the sleeper may also be viewed as the language of reproof and astonishment. These sailors were heathen, yet in time of strain they called on their God. The one man who professed to fear the God of heaven remains fast asleep, makes no attempt to call upon his God.

(W. Nisbet.)

1. Like the prophet, you are exposed to the storm of Divine wrath, which every moment pursues and threatens to overwhelm you.

2. The inspired writers employ various figurative expressions to describe the situation and character of impenitent sinners. Persons of this description are represented sometimes as foolish, mad, or infatuated; sometimes as blind and senseless; sometimes as dead in trespasses and sins; and sometimes as slumbering or asleep.

(1)Sleep is a state of insensibility.

(2)Sleep is a state of dreams and delusions.Apply to unawakened sinners, and then to those whom God has been pleased to awaken.

(E. Payson, D. D.)

(George Fisk, LL. D.)

I. JONAH WAS IN IMMINENT PERIL; SO ARE YOU. What are the perils of the material shipwreck to the perils of a corrupt and disobedient soul?

II. Jonah was UNCONSCIOUS OF HIS PERIL; SO ARE YOU. You say to yourself, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace." If you were aware of your position, you would give no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.

1. Jonah's unconsciousness was foolish; so is yours. How unwise was the prophet to sleep under such circumstances; he should have been on deck, alert, all ear and eye, and with hands ready to grapple with the emergencies of the terrible hour.

2. Jonah's unconsciousness was wicked; so is yours. For the sake of his companions on board he ought not to have been fast asleep it indicated a shameful lack of interest in his fellow-men. Your indifferentism is wicked. You ought to be spiritually alive and awake, not only for your own sake, but also for those around you who are in similar peril.

III. JONAH HAD A MESSENGER TO WARN HIM OF HIS PERIL; SO HAVE YOU. There are certain points of analogy between this "shipmaster" and the godly ministers that are warning you.

1. He believed in the existence and power of God; so do they. "Call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us."

2. He believed in the efficacy of human prayer; so do they. What soul does not pray when in conscious contact with overwhelming dangers? Your ministers believe in prayer; they pray for you, and urge you to pray for yourselves.

3. He believed it to be his duty to sound the warning; so do they. Your ministers have a right to warn you; they are bound to warn you. They are commanded to "cry aloud, to lift up their voices like a trumpet." Do you say, when godly men speak to you about your moral condition, What business have they to interfere? My soul is my own; if I choose to throw it away, what matters it to them? It does matter to them. You are not your own, you are not an isolated unit, you are a member of the spiritual universe; you have therefore no right to be dishonest, corrupt, ungodly, and throw your soul away. You were made to serve the universe, not to curse it; you cannot sin without injuring others.

(Homilist.)

I. THE EXPOSTULATION. "What meanest thou, O sleeper?" Sleep implies a state —

1. Of insensibility. Jonah has no sense and feeling of his desperate condition. Sinners are dreaming, they are fast asleep.

2. Of insecurity. No one is more defenceless than he who is asleep. He is exposed to every danger, without anything wherewith to shield him. Just such is the state of the case with every impenitent sinner.

3. Of inactivity. Notwithstanding all the evils to which Jonah is exposed, he makes not one effort to escape. He is fast asleep. So is it with the souls of the unregenerate.

4. Of inability. What can a man that is asleep do to preserve himself, to save his property, or protect his life? The sinner cannot rescue himself from danger.

II. THE ADVICE. Open thine eyes, and see thy danger. Look, and behold the remedy. "Call upon thy God." Prayer is a haven to a shipwrecked mariner; an anchor to them that are sinking in the waves; a staff to the limbs that totter; a mine of jewels to the poor; a security to the rich; a healer of diseases, and a guardian of health; prayer at once secures the continuance of our blessings, and dissipates the cloud of our calamities.

III. THE. ENCOURAGEMENT. "If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not." It may be that God will hear us. At least we can try. Such was the encouragement which the shipmaster held out. We can add more to this. Our God can and will hear and answer prayer. He is "thy God." Address —

1. The careless sinner.

2. Those who are beginning to awake to a sense of their awful condition.

3. Those who have complied with the advice given.

(Robert Simpson, M. A.)

(John Robertson.)

I. INDOLENCE IN THE MIDST OF ACTIVITY. "He lay." Ease — rest — to be down in the sides of the ship, fast asleep in the bunks of formality and carnal ease, is the fullest realisation of the ordinary professor's dreams. Respectable Jonahs are the curse of our churches.

II. UNCONCERN IN THE MIDST OF DANGER. Men sleep on the very verge of eternal ruin. How is it possible to describe the sad condition of those who "will not" be aroused by all the Gospel admonitions which from time to time they hear?

III. DETECTION IN THE MIDST OF FLIGHT. Jonah little dreamed, when he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, that the Lord was marking his every step. God knows us through all our disguises. We must all "appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," and He who is to be your Judge has watched all your doings right throughout.

(W. H. Burton.)

2. That notwithstanding there is a just foundation laid in the human mind, for apprehensions of this sort, in a state of distress, or great danger, yet many of those who are most criminal and guilty are, in such a situation, quite unaffected and secure.

3. That a sense of the displeasure of God, manifested in present or apparently approaching calamities, would naturally excite and urge men to devotion, humiliation, and repentance.

(J. Orr, D. D.)

(John Foster.)

1. The physical conditions of human life are the same in all cases, — in the case of the good and of the bad. There is one law which makes sleep a necessity for all. In both these cases the immediate cause of sleep was bodily weariness and exhaustion. One had toiled in glad fulfilment of a ministry of love and sorrow; the other had angrily refused to obey the voice of the Lord. But both slept. Thus we see the check which the universal and mysterious law of sleep puts upon every form of human activity. This limitation of bodily energy puts its restraint on human wickedness. It enforces a perpetually recurring pause in the activities of the sinful, the thoughtless, the worldly. But we sometimes cry that the activities of the noble and the good should thus be stopped. Alas! that these must lay aside so often and so soon their toils, their consecrated tasks, their questionings, their search for truth. In discouragement and distress the Christian man at times longs for some exemption from the general law. But we may take heart again when we see Christ asleep. He sleeps, and His work stands still.

2. There are instances of peril in which physical causes conduce to the absence of alarm, both in the case of good men and bad. Jonah, fast asleep, was as untroubled by the threatening fury of the storm as Christ Himself. Sometimes the vigour and robustness of a man's bodily constitution contribute largely to indifference to dangers, which, if he regarded them, might fill him with dismay. Here is a physical cause largely helping to make a man altogether indifferent to the awful peril of irreligion. Often, when the time to die comes, the avenues of the soul seem to close up; the powers of expression fail; the whole man sinks into a lethargy and unconsciousness, in which he finally passes away. It is so with the good and bad, the prepared and unprepared.

3. This sleep of Jonah and sleep of Christ are indicative of two widely different spiritual conditions and processes issuing in strikingly similar results. We do not wonder that Christ should calmly resign Himself to sleep without apprehension or consciousness of peril. He knew that He was in the Father's hands. But how could Jonah sleep, whatever his weariness, in the very act of such unfaithfulness to God? In both instances the spiritual condition may have contributed to the soundness of the sleep and the consequent unconsciousness of danger. With what thought Jonah went to sleep we are not told. In proportion to the success which Jonah had in quieting conscience would be the ease with which he would drop off to sleep and the probable soundness of his slumber. There was no uneasiness at the heart of Christ, and so He slept. There was not uneasiness enough at the heart of Jonah to keep him awake, and so he slept also. Misery comes to men in gusts; it is not the permanent condition of life's atmosphere to any one. If a man refuse to be a Christian it by no means follows that he will live in a state of perpetual excitement and alarm. We almost wonder how it is that God lets men thus sleep on. It is not God's plan to compel men to His service. He never so speaks that we may not refuse to answer. He never so compels us to attend that we may not settle ourselves to sleep again. But the time of awaking comes. In most Christian congregations it may be there are some who are suffering from the pangs of an awakened conscience. For such Christ waits with infinite compassion and concern. But the probability is that the condition of the majority of those who habitually listen to Christian preaching is like that of the ten virgins, of whom Christ speaks in His parable. "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept." We slumber and sleep. Is it because we are finding our rest in reconciliation with God, or because we have dismissed the thought of God, and comforted ourselves with an opiate?

(Thomas Stephenson.)

2. The folly of contending with God. He sent the prophet one way; but because this prophet liked not the errand that he was charged with, he endeavoured to go quite a contrary way. The folly of such an attempt we are all ready to acknowledge; but are all, who would not hesitate or doubt to pass sentence upon Jonah, free from this very folly? Jonah disobeyed an express order of God; and in doing so somehow satisfied himself that an all-discerning Eye would not see perverseness in him, nor an almighty Hand reach him in his flight. Do not thousands practise the same deceit upon themselves?

3. Conscience hath its power and authority and terrors derived from God; with which it will surround the sinner in the day of trouble, forcing him to confess and acknowledge his guilt.

4. These terrors of conscience, if they seize the sinner in due time, are most blessed and desirable. For the most unhappy of all conditions is security in sin, without any feeling or apprehensions of danger from it. But an humble and contrite heart, confessing its unworthiness, bewailing its sins, fully sensible of its own inability to rid itself of this burden, is in the fit and only fit disposition to return to God: such a soul is not far from salvation. 5, The Almighty, who bringeth good out of evil, ordained that Jonah should set forth a type or sign of the burial and resurrection of Christ.

(T. Townson, D. D.)

1. That in man's inmost nature, originally and radically, there are certain principles of religion most strong and ineradicable.

2. That these, without the guidance of revelation and faith, are altogether insufficient as guides in his real relation to God. Man's natural helplessness, and his natural conscience, necessarily imply a capacity for religion and a certain religiousness, appertaining, of necessity, to human nature, and developed, in peculiar strength, even in heathen worship. In the progress of modern civilisation man may emancipate himself from the solemn awe with which the heathen contemplate the powers of nature, but if he rise not to a holy veneration of the one Supreme Author of nature, as a revealed and reconciled God, it is very questionable whether he does not become in some respects a more shallow and trifling being than the worshipper of idols. We might very easily maintain and prove the assertion, that godless men, in the days and in the state of society in which we live, are more thoroughly irreligious than the heathen are: that covetousness, which is idolatry, is more contemptible than the worship of stocks and stones. Two facts conspire to make man naturally and necessarily a religious being.

1. His observation of the powers of nature.

2. His experience of the powers of conscience.

I. WHAT CAN NATURAL RELIGION DO FOR US? What is it that reason, unenlightened by the Word and Spirit of God, can do towards furnishing man with a religion?

1. It may tell us that there is a God, that God is one. The existence and the unity of God may be proved by reason. These heathen mariners had many gods. Jonah, they took for granted, would have a God too. The whole herd of inferior deities whom the heathen worshipped were only so many sectional representatives of a portion of the powers believed to reside in a God, to whom might fairly be given, even by reason, the lofty designation, "God over all." The wisdom, power, and goodness which man sees to be requisite for creating, preserving, and controlling the visible universe, are felt to be unbounded, infinite. One such Infinite Being is felt to be necessary to account for things as they are. But not more than one is felt to be necessary. Indeed, more than one such Infinite Being, possessing all knowledge and power, is felt to be impossible. The same result follows from our connection with the moral world. Conscience tells of a Ruler and Judge, but only of one.

2. Reason, fairly interpreted, assures us that this God is a Being capable of intercourse with His creatures. The creation of an intelligent Being is manifestly the work of a Being who Himself is intelligent. Hence reason itself demonstrates the possibility of a revelation from God, and of the possibility and efficacy of prayer.

II. REASON'S LIMIT, AND REASON'S WEAKNESS.

1. Reason knows that God exists, but it does not know God. We need revelation to make us acquainted with Him. You never really know any person merely by discovering his intellectual or scientific abilities. You never do know a neighbour save by knowing his moral character and his heart.

2. Reason tells us that prayer is possible, yea reasonable, but revelation alone puts us in possession of the terms on which God actually hears prayer, — puts us in a condition actually to pray. Reason, therefore, without revelation, is sure fatally to err; and whether in ancient paganisms or in modern rationalisms, which are heathenisms, or in popery, or in nominal, formal Christianity, the error at bottom is identically one and the same.

(Hugh Martin, M. A.)

     5245   captain

Jonah 1:1-6

     8616   prayerlessness

Jonah 1:1-10

     5178   running

Jonah 1:3-15

     5517   seafaring

Jonah 1:4-17

     5828   danger

Jonah 1:5-6

     5533   sleep, physical

Christian Graces.
FAITH. FAITH! Peter saith, faith, in the very trial of it, is much more precious than gold that perisheth. If so, what is the worth or value that is in the grace itself? Faith is so great an artist in arguing and reasoning with the soul, that it will bring over the hardest heart that it hath to deal with. It will bring to my remembrance at once, both my vileness against God, and his goodness towards me; it will show me, that though I deserve not to breathe in the air, yet God will have me an heir …
John Bunyan—The Riches of Bunyan

Whether Divination by Drawing Lots is Unlawful?
Objection 1: It would seem that divination by drawing lots is not unlawful, because a gloss of Augustine on Ps. 30:16, "My lots are in Thy hands," says: "It is not wrong to cast lots, for it is a means of ascertaining the divine will when a man is in doubt." Objection 2: There is, seemingly, nothing unlawful in the observances which the Scriptures relate as being practiced by holy men. Now both in the Old and in the New Testament we find holy men practicing the casting of lots. For it is related …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

The Careless Sinner Awakened.
1, 2. It is too supposable a case that this Treatise may come into such hands.--3, 4. Since many, not grossly vicious, fail under that character.--5, 6. A more particular illustration of this case, with an appeal to the reader, whether it be not his own.--7 to 9. Expostulation with such.--10 to 12. More particularly--From acknowledged principles relating to the Nature of Got, his universal presence, agency, and perfection.--13. From a view of personal obligations to him.--14. From the danger Of this …
Philip Doddridge—The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul

Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Rom. 14:12). In our last chapter we considered at some length the much debated and difficult question of the human will. We have shown that the will of the natural man is neither Sovereign nor free but, instead, a servant and slave. We have argued that a right conception of the sinner's will-its servitude-is essential to a just estimate of his depravity and ruin. The utter corruption and degradation of human nature is something which …
Arthur W. Pink—The Sovereignty of God

Sign Seekers, and the Enthusiast Reproved.
(Galilee on the Same Day as the Last Section.) ^A Matt. XII. 38-45; ^C Luke XI. 24-36. ^c 29 And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, ^a 38 Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we would see a sign from thee. [Having been severely rebuked by Jesus, it is likely that the scribes and Pharisees asked for a sign that they might appear to the multitude more fair-minded and open to conviction than Jesus had represented them to be. Jesus had just wrought …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Nature of Covenanting.
A covenant is a mutual voluntary compact between two parties on given terms or conditions. It may be made between superiors and inferiors, or between equals. The sentiment that a covenant can be made only between parties respectively independent of one another is inconsistent with the testimony of Scripture. Parties to covenants in a great variety of relative circumstances, are there introduced. There, covenant relations among men are represented as obtaining not merely between nation and nation, …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Jonah
The book of Jonah is, in some ways, the greatest in the Old Testament: there is no other which so bravely claims the whole world for the love of God, or presents its noble lessons with so winning or subtle an art. Jonah, a Hebrew prophet, is divinely commanded to preach to Nineveh, the capital of the great Assyrian empire of his day. To escape the unwelcome task of preaching to a heathen people, he takes ship for the distant west, only to be overtaken by a storm, and thrown into the sea, when, by …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament