Then they asked him, "Tell us, please, for whose cause this evil is on us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you?"
Nineveh was east and north from Israel. Jonah went down and caught a ship going west. He is going to run from the call of God. Now God is calling him to go and preach to the Gentiles, something he did not want to do. Felt this nationalistic spirit--salvation is of the Jews; it is not for the Gentiles. He did not want to go to the Gentiles. And so he went to Joppa to escape the call of God to go to the Gentiles.It is interesting that several years later in this very same port city of Joppa, as Peter was on the rooftop of the house of Simon the tanner, that he saw this sheet in a vision let down from heaven; tied at the corners with all manner of beast and creeping things on it. And the Lord said to Peter, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." And when Peter objected saying, "Lord, I've never eaten anything that was unclean or common." God said, "Don't call that common which I have cleansed." After this thing happened three times, Peter wondered, "What in the world does this mean?" And the Lord spoke to him and said, "There are some men now down at the gate inquiring for you. Go with them and don't ask any questions. I'll tell you what to say." And there in Joppa is where Peter was called to take the gospel to the Gentiles. Interesting how things always seem to come back.It was to Joppa that Jonah ran to catch a ship to escape preaching to the Gentiles. It was at Joppa that the Lord called Peter and said go to the Gentiles. And the door of the gospel was open to the Gentiles as God dealt with Peter there in Joppa.Jonah was arising and seeking to flee from the presence of the Lord, heading for Tarshish. Biblical scholars are divided as to the location of Tarshish. Some say it is a part of Spain; others say it is England. The preponderance of scholars seem to favor England. Wherever Tarshish was, it was the furthest outpost of the known world at that time. It was the jumping off. You can't go any farther than Tarshish from the civilized world. It was the end. It was as far as you could go. Beyond Tarshish lay that wild, boisterous Atlantic, and out there somewhere that precipice, that chasm, that just the ships dropped off into oblivion. No ships ever came back from their voyages on the Atlantic. They surely must have gone over the edge of the world someplace and disappeared. So Tarshish was as far as you dared to go, and that is where Jonah was heading. "I'm going to get as far away from God as I can. I'll head for Tarshish. I'll hide from the call of God, from the presence of the Lord."Now there are many people that do make the mistake of attempting to localize God, as though God dwells in one place as over against another place. As though God dwells here in the sanctuary more so than in your home. "Oh, I wanted to come to the church to pray so I could be close to God. I like to go up to the mountains to pray because I'm so much closer to God; five thousand feet." As though God were somewhere off in the vast universe. Of course, better yet if you could get into a balloon or into a U-2 or something, you get closer to God. Not so! God fills every place in this vast universe or in any other universe that exists.The astrophysicists are talking about some interesting things in our universe. One of the interesting things that the astrophysicists speaks of is the black hole. Now, there are some interesting theories about these black holes. You see, all matter is made up of expanded atoms, or expanded atoms which are made up of electrons rotating around the protons in the nucleus of an atom. But there is much more space than solid material in atoms, so that if the proton of the hydrogen atom was the size of a basketball, the electron that revolves around it would be some three thousand miles away, to give you an idea of the amount of space that is in the atom of hydrogen. There is the proton, the electron revolving around it, but quite a vast space in between in comparison to the size of the proton and the electron. So that, they tell us, that there is more space in solid matter or in material than in solid matter. In fact, they say if all of the atoms in your body would collapse so that there was no space, just the solid material of the protons and electrons, you would be the size of a microscopic speck of dust. So suddenly, all of the atoms in your body would collapse, you'd say, "Hey, where'd they go?" and we'd have to get an electron microscope to find you. But the interesting thing is that this little microscopic speck of dust would weigh the same as you weigh. So you go to blow that dust off the table and it doesn't move.Now they say if they started to compress the atoms in the earth...of course, we know Einstein's theory of relativity and then also of gravity, E= MC 2 . Now they say that if you would start compressing the earth, (you know we're eight thousand miles in diameter), so that you are four thousand miles from the center of the mass of the earth. Therefore, four thousand miles away from the center of the mass you weigh whatever the scales tell you you weigh. So let's say you ladies weigh 130 or 125 or whatever, and us fellows, (I'm not going to tell you what I weigh), but we weigh around two hundred, plus or minus, because we are four thousand miles away from the center of the earth, the center of the mass of the earth, and there is this pull towards the center of the mass. I'm being pulled towards the center of the earth, and that pull upon the mass of my body equals what I weigh.