God’s Honour

God’s Honour

After the prophet Jonah had tried to flee from Gods presence, he was faithful to God again and obedient for a time. He preaches to the Ninevites the preaching that God bids him, and the most wonderful revival follows his words until, from the king on the throne to the meanest of his subjects, the people of Nineveh are prostrate at the feet of Jehovah and pleading for mercy.

But the moment that God hears their cry and disappoints Jonah’s predictions of their destruction, the prophet breaks down completely and falls into a fit of petulance and anger because God had failed to do what He had threatened and so destroyed his reputation as a prophet.

It was but another form of the same old self life. A man may give up the selfishness that seeks its gratification in the pleasures of the world, and yet may seek the gratification of the same self-life in some religious form. A woman may cease to be the queen of society and the idol of her hero worshippers, yet she may drink in the sweet delight of her influence and sway over the minds and hearts of men in her very work for Christ.

The orator, as he holds spellbound the hearts of thousands, even when he tells them of Jesus and salvation, may be just as selfish and self-conscious as the actor on the stage, or the politician on the rostrum who speaks only for his personal triumph and ambition. Jonah’s very success was his snare and led him to forget his Master’s glory and the real good of the people that he was sent to save.

We can never succeed in our service for God till we learn to cast our own shadow behind us and lose ourselves in the honour and glory of our Master. Oh, that we could look into the face of our Lord, and then forever forget ourselves!

We see in Jonah a man whom God had to humble in the dust to save him from destroying his own work.

God loves to make us partakers with Him in the fruits of our work. He likewise honoured Moses, Samuel and Paul, and their names have come down to us associated with their blessed service for the Master; but this was because they loved to forget themselves and seek only their Master’s glory. How different it was with Jonah! He was seeking his own glory, and God had to humiliate him, and let him fail altogether in the very thing he wanted. Jesus says: If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour. John 12:26.

Jonah lost his Father’s honour, because he sought his own honour; Paul found it, because he renounced his own honour, and sought only to live that Jesus might be satisfied, even if he should be forever forgotten. This is the spirit of true service. Conversely, Jonah is a humiliated spectacle, sitting, disappointed and rejected, under his withered gourd, and there ends his story.