Verse 3
I. While Jonah works God waits. When Jonah falls asleep, God begins to work. The scene is thus arrestive and striking. The man hasting away for days from "the presence," out among second causes and exterior things, into a blank world of indifference. Then God, with a touch of His hand, raising up those second causes, which hitherto had seemed to favour the flight, into an irresistible combination for the arrest and recovery of the fugitive. Men dig pits and fall into them. They weave webs and by a touch of His hand they are snared and taken.
II. "The mariners were afraid and cried every man unto his god." Not all to one heathen deity, but each man to his own god. When God is forsaken, men forsake each other. They lose the power of mutual sympathy and help in the highest things. Only the true worshippers have that great power the power of social sympathy working in full strength among them. And yet we have no ground for uttering one word of reproach or blame against these men. They did all that could be expected of them. They prayed and wrought. They cried to their gods, and cast the wares out of the ship; a clear and good example to all men who are in straits.
III. Let us take our last lesson from the heathen captain. (1) He teaches us by his example. He is master of the ship, and he feels that, in an hour of peril especially, it lies within his province to incite and constrain all who sail in the ship, and who, therefore, as passengers or sailors, are under his care, to the discharge of their very highest duties. Remember that you have religious duties to the full breadth and length of your mastery. (2) He teaches us by his words. These words of his have aroused many a sleeper besides Jonah. They have been heard through the ages since, as watchman's cry, as trumpet's sound, to awaken and save souls from death.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 76.
References: John 1:3 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 622; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 56; E. Monro, Practical Sermons, vol. ii., p. 283; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 270.
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