The bearer of a transitory message of repentance to one Gentile people, and the bearer of an eternal message of grace and love to the whole earth.
Jonah is remarkable as having had the sphere of his activity wholly outside Israel.
The nature of his message; a preaching of punishment; a call to repentance.
The sphere of it--one Gentile city. The effect of it--transitory. We know what Nineveh became.
Jesus is greater than Jonah or any prophet in this respect, that His message is to the world, and in this, that what He preaches and brings far transcends even the loftiest and most spiritual words of any of them.
His voice is sweetest, tenderest, clearest and fullest of all that have ever sounded in men's ears. And just because it is so, the hearing of it brings the most solemn responsibility that was ever laid on men, and to us still more gravely and truly may it be said than to those who heard Jesus speak on earth, The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and condemn it.'
