This, I do judge, is very striking—God's care for the house as well as for the man. And here I may observe that the principle of the divine procedure is always the principle of the conduct of faith. As it is written, “be ye followers (imitators) of God as dear children” (Eph. 5:11Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; (Ephesians 5:1)). It is, therefore, as thus being God's principle—His necessary principle, we may say to His praise, in a death-stained world, that death and resurrection are so often illustrated in the histories of God's servants. We find it more or less through all the line of the Old Testament worthies, as I may call them. Abel and Seth together present death and resurrection. Noah was carried, through the region of death and judgment, into the place of life that lay beyond it. Abraham had the promises, and was heir of all the land; but he walked in the place as a stranger and pilgrim, not having so much as to set his foot on. Joseph was to stand above his brethren; but he is first cast into the pit and then into the dungeon, as under sentence of death, till at length he rises into the glories of Egypt, which, mystically, were the heavenly and earthly glories of the kingdom. Moses was “drawn out” from the place of destruction, and afterward as a dead and risen man, like our Jonah, preaches to his brethren (Ex. 2:1313And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? (Exodus 2:13)); and again, after another burial as it were, in Midian, rises a second time to be the redeemer of Israel. David came forth from contempt and obscurity to be the slayer of the giant and the deliverer of Israel; and again, as from death in the wilderness, to rule the land as God's king in Zion.
And among all these, and others like them, we may especially notice Job among the patriarchs. Death and resurrection was the lesson he had to learn in his own soul, and to illustrate before us in his history. He had to take the sentence of death in himself, that he might not trust in himself but in Him that raises the dead, and gives brighter glory at the end than at the beginning.
In all these distinguished witnesses of God and His ways we see this principle exhibited as God's principle. And so it is, from the Son of God in the highest, down to the lowest orders in creation—all stand or are to stand before God as dead and risen, that the power of the enemy may be gloriously overthrown, and the holy honor of His own name, “the living God,” be vindicated forever.
And scripture thus teaches us this.—
1.-The Lord Himself is to take all His glories, as the One that was dead and is alive again. He is the Head of the church, the Heir of the sure mercies of David, and the Lord of creation as the Second Man, by this title (Col. 1:1818And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:18), Acts 13:3434And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. (Acts 13:34), Heb. 6-9). The thought of this His title to everything passed across the mind of Jesus when the Greeks, the Gentiles, came to the feast desiring to see Him. He then owned that but for His death He could take nothing (John 12:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)).
2.-The church has her peculiar life and glory in this way also. The saints were all dead in trespasses and sins, but have also been quickened together with Christ and raised up, and seated on high in Him; and by and by are, in body, to be fashioned after the likeness of His risen or glorious body (Ephesians 2, Phil. 3).
3.-Israel, as we have already noticed, are to stand in the same character, brought from their graves, and raised up as those that had slept in dust.
4.-The nations will be, after Israel's revival, as “life from the dead” (Rom. 11:1515For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15)), as the Ninevites repent and come into blessing after Jonah himself is raised up. Indeed it is as the dead and risen one, that Jerusalem will be the mother of them all. The “barren,” the “widow,” the “desolate,” is to have many more children than she which had a husband (Isa. 54.).
5.-The creation itself will, in the “world to come,” return to rest and beauty, as after the dead and wintry season of “this present evil world.” The world to come will in principle be a risen world, the risen Son of man having it all in subjection under Him. Now it is all groaning and travailing in pain, but it shall be delivered into glorious liberty (Rom. 8).
Thus is death and resurrection the great rule of all blessing and glory; and this is the sign of Jonah and of the Son of man, and God's pervading principle through the ranks and departments of this death-tainted system of ours. And, beloved, it was the apostle's purpose, and should be ours, to know more and more of the power of this principle (Philippians In Christ we are already apprehended for the full fruit of His death and resurrection; but we should be as though we had not ourselves apprehended it. In Him we are complete and perfect, but we should be as though we had not attained neither were already perfect. Liberty and holiness, joy in the Lord, and life in the Spirit, would then flourish together in our souls, as well-watered gardens.
To teach this, as God's great principle with everything, is the purpose, I judge, of the history of Jonah the prophet. I have hitherto followed it to the close of the third chapter, seeing the death and resurrection both of the Jewish prophet and of the Gentile city. And that is the formal close of the book. The fourth chapter then comes as a kind of moral or appendix.
But on opening this deeply interesting chapter, let me observe, beloved, that we have, each one of us, to do with the Lord as well in the secrecy of His own presence within, as in the activities of His service abroad. We may have run the appointed course, and done the Lord's business, but this is not all. The Lord may still have many a personal question with us, and have to speak with us in the cool of the day. There may have been many a taint in the spirit of the service within, while without all may have seemed as splendid and devoted as the mission of a prophet to the first city of the Gentiles. And these will have at the end, to be brought before the Lord. Workings in the heart, hidden from the eye of man, will then have to be brought fully under the eye and ear of God.
It is so now with our prophet. Nineveh had been visited of Jonah, but Jonah must now be visited of the Lord—not to destroy, we know full well, but to chasten and humble, and thus to make him more and more partaker of the divine holiness. He had done the service abroad. He had gone the way of Nineveh, and fulfilled the word of the Lord there. But there is still a question for the presence of God yet unsettled. There were lustings within that must now be brought forth and made a show of openly.
He is still, as we find here, angry because of mercy t the Gentiles, and he goes outside the city of Nineveh and sits down there a homeless exposed stranger all in sorrow and displeasure, saying, It is better for me to die than to live.” There he makes himself a booth to sit under, and the Lord then comes, in the secret of His own presence, to talk with him of his sin. He prepares a gourd to come up over his head and be a shadow to deliver him from his grief. But He scarcely allows him to find comfort in the gourd ere He prepares a worm to smite it and wither it and then a vehement east wind and the sun to beat upon the head of Jonah, till again in anger and die pleasure he says as before, “it is better for me to die than to live.”
Then the Lord catches him in the toils which He had now woven around him in consummate and divine skill. He convicts him out of his own mouth and makes his own words correct him. He shows him that he cannot retain both his proud and his angry sorrows. He must cease either to grieve for mercy to Nineveh, or for judgment on the gourd. If he will give up his anger because of the withered gourd, let him do so. But if he still judge it well to be angry on that account, as he says he does, even unto death then he must cease to be angry, because of preserved Nineveh; for Nineveh was to the Lord just what the gourd had been to the prophet, and if the prophet would fain spare the gourd, he must allow the Lord to spare Nineveh. “Thou hast had pity on the gourd,” says the Lord to him, “for the which thou hast not labored, neither makest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six-score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle?”
With these words the Lord ends, leaving that claim of His to Nineveh, its little ones and its cattle, upon the heart and conscience of Jonah. The echo as it were, of those sweet words is left in our ears, as we close this beautiful little book.
But however these words may have wrought on the prophet, as we may judge and hope they did with power, we have our blessed interest in them, and our exceeding great and precious comfort by them. For from this moral or parabolic action between the Lord and His servant, we learn that the Lord's desire if still to the works of His hands, that He would fain be refreshed and rest again in the creatures which He, of old, fashioned and made. He made them at the beginning for His glory and delight. For a moment He was allowed, so to speak, to rejoice in them. He looked on everything that He had made, and beheld it to be all very good (Gen. 1:3131And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)). He took His sabbath in His creatures, and walked with man in a garden of delight that was in the midst of them.
But all was soon beguiled from Him. The worm at the root of God's own gourd withered it. He that had the power of death did this, and left the Lord, as it were, a homeless stranger in His own creation (like Jonah outside Nineveh), a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry but for a night.
But they are still His creatures, and His desire is toward them. He seeks them all for Himself, the little ones and the cattle, as well as the cities and their people. All form to Him what the foliage of the gourd formed to the prophet, a shade and refreshing, where without it all is homelessness and exposure. And He would fain take His rest, His sabbath in creation again, as He here would have Jonah and all of us know.
And He will do it. He will accomplish the desire of His heart, for who can let Him? He will reconcile all things unto Himself by Jesus Christ. Israel and the nations shall revive and dwell in peace; the earth shall yield her increase, the hills, the floods, and the trees of the wood rejoicing before Jehovah the King; and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea making His name excellent in all the earth. For He has said of them, when the Branch grows out of Jesse's roots, “the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling. together, and a little child shall lead them, find the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox” (Isa. 11:1-71And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; 3And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 4But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. (Isaiah 11:1‑7)). He pronounced them all good at their creation, the living creatures which the waters brought forth, the winged fowl, the cattle and the creeping things, as well as man. As here He would have Jonah knew that He valued them, and would spare them and have them, as well as Nineveh and its people.
And of this final redemption and joy of the creatures we have had many pledges. Noah carried them, “two of every sort,” with himself and his household through the waters into the new world; and the same covenant, which settled him and his seed after him in it, provided equally for them (Gen. 9:1010And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. (Genesis 9:10)). Joseph purchased all the cattle as well as the people of Egypt for Pharaoh (Gen. 47:1717And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year. (Genesis 47:17)). Moses redeemed them all out of Egypt afterward, when it had corrupted itself, and was no longer the land of Joseph's glory (Ex. 10:26; 12:3826Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our God; and we know not with what we must serve the Lord, until we come thither. (Exodus 10:26)
38And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle. (Exodus 12:38)); and he sanctified them all, under the law, to Jehovah, the fruit of the land and of the cattle, as well as the fruit of man, thus showing us that Jehovah claimed the whole system as His own (Ex. 12:28, 2928And the children of Israel went away, and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they. 29And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. (Exodus 12:28‑29), Lev. 19:23-2523And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. 24But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal. 25And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:23‑25)). The first-born of beast as of man was sanctified to Himself (Num. 8:1717For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself. (Numbers 8:17)). Jesus claimed lordship of them all, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, and they owned His dominion (Matt. 17, 21.) and in the coming kingdom, they shall still own Him, for all shall be in subjection to Him, and join in the joy of redemption, beasts and all cattle praising the Lord (Psa. 148:1010Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl: (Psalm 148:10), Job. 2:8, Rev. 5:1313And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. (Revelation 5:13)).
These are sweet pledges of. the Lord's value for His creatures and that He will still clothe Himself with them all. And of this His care for them and His desire toward them He here speaks to Jonah. And He does more than that. He lets Jonah further learn that He had labored for them; that, unlike Jonah and His gourd, He would bring back His creatures to Him. at the cost of His own toil (4:10). And so we know it is. For “all things” are to be a part of that great reconciled system, for which the blood of His dear Son has been shed; as at the beginning they were all a part of that great created system, for which the six days' work was entered on.
It is our joy, beloved, to know this—to know that the blessed God still values all His creatures, and has, so to speak, “labored” for them, and paid a price for them. The ancient scene of His delight and glory may be disturbed and defiled, as we know it is; but as He once rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, so will He again; and as He once had the image of His dominion and glory over them all; so will He again in the Son of man and in “the world to come.” The Lord did indeed of old take His joy in them, as I have noticed, and His glory was displayed by them. Every succeeding evening and morning witnessed His joy, for then He paused and lingered over His works, as they grew under His hand, that He might see them and pronounce them to be good, according to the desire and good pleasure of His own will; and when all were made, He looked at them all together as good, and took His full Sabbath in them. And the morning stars sang their joy and His praise. Then was His gourd a sweet and refreshing gourd to Him, as Jonah's at the first. But a worm began soon to work at the root. For all this rested on Adam, and Adam was beguiled by him that had the power of death. Tares were then sown in the Lord's fair field of fruits and flowers. An enemy did that. But so it was, and the Lord had to repent that He had made man in the earth. Then did He look a second time at the work of His hands, and, behold, it was corrupt; and it repented Him that He had made it, and it grieved Him at His heart (Gen. 6:66And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6:6)). Then the gourd of the Lord became the withered gourd indeed. But His creatures are still His. The field does not belong to the enemy, though he may waste and defile it for a season; and the gourd must flourish and bud again to reward the toil of Him Who has labored for it. And it will then put forth a more fragrant smell than ever. Creation shall return to the Lord, to give Him more joy and more praise than ever.
He will joy in it as in the hand of One in Whom His soul delighteth, and by it not merely the skill of His hand but the riches of His love shall be praised. To Him as well as to us shall the eater then yield meat, and the strong man sweetness. The blood of Jesus shall efface the trail of the serpent. That will give “all things” in “the reconciliation,” a sweet smelling savor with our God, and over such a sacrifice, He can say, in the deep satisfaction of His heart, “I will not again curse the ground for man's sake” (Gen. 8:2121And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)).
And of this we have had early notice in the history of Noah. When Adam was created, he received a command to replenish the earth and subdue it. But we do not read of the way in which he owned his Creator in the midst of all this blessing, nor did the Lord God then say, that He would not curse the ground which He had made. But when Noah came forth of the ark, as man redeemed (not like Adam merely created) for the earth, he at once takes the earth as debtor to the blood of Jesus for it. He raises his altar and offers upon. it of every clean beast and of every clean fowl; and the blood of these victims (in type the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God) the Lord smells as a savor of sweet smell, and it awakens in His heart thoughts of abiding complacency in the earth. The blood on the altar, and not the evil of man, governs His counsels, and they are all counsels of grace (Gen. 8:2121And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)). And then He again gives Noah dominion of the earth; with the sign of the covenant of abiding complacency in the earth and its creatures, signifying that by the virtue of this blood, though not before in the hand of Adam, the creation could be established without fear or curse again. And then He gives Noah also, not only the herb of the field, but the flesh of everything that lived to be meat for him (Gen. 9:33Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (Genesis 9:3)), in token that his life now rested on the flesh and blood of another, that it was no longer the life of a creature merely, but of a creature redeemed, and redeemed by blood. Thus both he and his inheritance now stood only in the value of the blood of Jesus; but, standing in that, they stood secure.
All this was very significant, telling us of the character of that kingdom which is to arise in the last days, when the true Noah takes the dominion. Then shall the earth and its creatures be established in the covenant of abiding rest and certainty, the rainbow encircling the throne that is then to rule over all. And then shall the Lord God rest in His full complacency in it all, for it shall all stand in the sweet savor of the sacrifice which the Son of His love has offered, i.e. in the great reconciliation. As it is written, “and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven” (Col. 1:2020And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:20)).
And thus will God's praise and delight spring from the same source which gives us sinners our everlasting security, and puts a richer and sweeter song into our lips than that which awakened the morning stars, when the foundations of the old creation were laid. Such is the divine skill, weaving God's glory and our security together, and His delights with our delights for over. His own grace must account for this, for nothing else can, passing (as it does), all the fondest thoughts of our hearts. And then this redeemed creation, this gourd of our God, shall bud again, and be still in its freshness before Him. The worm, the power of death, shall not touch it to wither it; but under its shadow will He find His sabbath again, as it is written, “thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewed the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure forever, the Lord shall rejoice in His works” (Psa. 104:30, 3130Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. 31The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. (Psalm 104:30‑31)).
“Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man that thou makest account of him?” J.G.B.
(Concluded from p. 103.)