And there are just two cities on your map. The Nineveh of obedience and the Tarshish of disobedience. You are going to Nineveh or to Tarshish. I do not claim to know where your Nineveh is. It may be a distant city. It may be a city across the seas whose streets you will crimson with the blood of your sacrifice. It may be a city as near to you as the home in which you live, as the child that nestles in your arms. But wherever it is, if you walk its streets you will walk them in the joy of the divine fellowship. On the other hand, you may go to Tarshish. Tarshish is the city of "Have-Your-Own-Way." It is the city of "Do-As-You-Please." It is the city of "Take-it-Easy." It is the city with no garden called Gethsemane without its gates and no rugged hill called Calvary overlooks its walls. It is a city without a cross and yet it is a city where people seldom sing and often sob. It is a city where nobody looks joyously into God's face and calls Him Father. I met Jonah that day on the wharf. He looked like he had passed through a terrible spell of sickness. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes were red with sleeplessness. He had a haggard, worn, hounded look about him. "Are you on the way home, Jonah?" And he shook his head and said, "No. I am going to Tarshish." Tarshish was the most far away place of which the Jew had any conception. "Tarshish!" I say in astonishment. "What are you going to do over at Tarshish?" "Oh," he said, "I hadn't thought about that. I do not know what the future has in store for me. What I am trying to do is to get away from God." "And Jonah arose to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." I wonder why the text did not say "And Jonah arose to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of his duty" instead of "from the presence of the Lord." The writer of this story had real spiritual insight. He was far clearer in his thinking than many of us. He knew that to flee from duty was to flee from God. Whenever you make up your mind to refuse to go where God wants you to go and to do what God wants you to do, you must make up your mind at the same time to renounce the friendship of God. You cannot walk with Him and at the same time be in rebellion against Him. God has no possible way of entering into fellowship with the soul that is disobedient to His will. Believe me, it is absolutely useless, it is mere mockery, to say "Lord, Lord" and then refuse to do the things that He commands you to do.