Jonah's Flight: Its Lessons
“But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship gomg to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” — Jonah i. 3. “Let no man say, luhen he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth lie any man; hut every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh dovm from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” — James i. 13-17.
JONAH was afraid lest, the inhabitants of Nineveh repenting, and the Lord remittingthe punishment threatened, the God of the Jews might be regarded as a changeable God. Inconsistency and inconstancy are charges which a sensitive man can scarcely with equanimity bear. When Paul did not arrive at Corinth so soon as he intended, and when the enemies of the gospel, ready to take any handle to disparage his character, represented this as “lightness” (2 Cor. i. 15-20) — levity, fickleness, the characteristic of a man that did not know his own mind — this gave the Apostle great distress. “I was minded to come unto you before, that ye might have a second benefit; and to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way toward Judea. When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay? But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay;” — it was not equivocal, uncertain, and inconstant; one thing to-day and another to-morrow; I meant what I said, with no reservation; “as God is true,” I did. But as an honourable man repels such y onaJt s Flight: its Lessons. 45
a charge as directed against himself, how much more must a faithful servant of the Lord indignantly repel such a charge against his King and his God. For if such a thing can be said of God, there is an eternal end of all constancy everywhere. Paul in defending himself appeals, as the last prop and hold, to God’s own unchangeableness. Says he, “As God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay.” But “if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? “If the very Gt)d to whom the last appeal must be taken be not” without variableness or shadow of turning,” who then can prove, maintain, or assert his own truth? “Is God unrighteous? God forbid: for how then shall God judge the world? “So reasoned Paul concerning the Divine righteousness.* And, Is God capable of change? God forbid: for where then were any everlasting rock or stay?” — so, in imitation, we may reason concerning the Divine unchangeableness. It was an inconceivable grief to Jonah to utter any denunciation which he saw that, through infinite graciousness, the Lord might yet, through repentance on Nineveh’s part, be, humanly speaking, prevailed upon to retract.
But why should he not allow the Lord to protect His own character in His own way? When he took counsel with flesh and blood, when he conferred with his own carnal wisdom, he forsook the first principle of piety, — subjection to the call and word and will of God. He did not need to be less concerned for the honour of God. Therein he did well; therein his soul was far more upright within him than in the case of multitudes who
* How would a “Broad Church” Catechism run, in reference to these questions of the Apostle? In some such way as this: —
Question.” Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?”
Answer. He would be, if He did. Vengeance is in all cases unholy and devilish.
Question. How then do you account for Paul telling the Romans (chap. ii. 8, 9) that God will “render indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul of man that doeth evil “?
Answer. Paul had not sufficiently shaken himself clear of the vengeful and sanguinary spirit of the Old Testament.
Question. “Then how shall God judge the world?”
Ansicer. He won’t do it. The “law of love” is working everything right of itself.
They should really try a Child’s Catechism. Henky Roger has shown thenx the way very nicely, in an adjoining department: — See “Eclipse of Faith,” pp. 89-91.
think it quite an easy thing to discuss his character and pronounce upon his sin. Nobly did he exhibit, even in and by his error, the deep desire that glowed within him to see his God riohtly understood and rightly honoured. But what he needed was a simpler Abrahamic faith, allowing this new disclosure of God’s character to go forward at God’s call, “not knowing whither” it “went;” but assured that God himself would bring it safely and in stainless glory, to the mark and goal which he had appointed.
Contrast, for instance, as to the principle involved, the faith of Abraham in offering up Isaac, with the unbelief of Jonah in fleeino- to Tarshish. Had Abraham so listed, besides the many temptations to disobedience arising from paternal affection, and from the unspeakable darkness that seemed to arise when the child of promise, and thereby the future Saviour, the Seed, and in Him all the promises, were put in danger, there was another point to prove a temptation — another point in which Abraham was tried on this most renowned occasion, and in which his faith triumphed, exactly similar to that in which Jonah’s faith was tried and failed. Abraham might well have reasoned thus: — “What will the Canaanites think — ’ for the Canaanite was still in the land ’ — when they learn that, at the command of my God, my hands have been imbrued in the blood of my child, offered a sacrifice upon His altar? How will they distinguish between this surrender which in unquestioning confidence and duty I make of my beloved one, and the bloody and accursed murders wherewith they stain the service and propitiate the favour of their unholy and abominable deities? Alas! alas! they will reckon my God, — my God, who is the Judge of all the earth, — and ’ shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? ’ — they will reckon my God altogether such an one as their own.” But no such imaginations were allowed to weigh with Abraham. If they arose and attempted to arrest his obedience, he warred against them with spiritual weapons. “The weapons of his warfare were not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thino- that exalte fch itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. X. 4-5). Abraham brought “every thought into captivity”
to the command of God. He cast down all his “reasonings.” Every “imagination” of his mind he bound with cords to the chariot of God’s Word, and made them follow as its humble captives. Against hope he believed in hope. He continued to believe that what God had promised He was able to perform — that He was able to raise up Isaac again from the dead, from which, indeed, he received him in a figure — and that He was able to justify His own character and procedure in the eyes of the Canaanites and of all the world, in His own time and in His own way. Casting down, therefore, all reasonings, all thoughts, all imaginations, and mastering them all in faith, Abraham calmly went to Mount Moriah. Jonah fell by unbelief under their power; they mastered him, and ruled and drove him hard. Jonah tied to Tarshish.
Blessed was Abraham’s reward; terrible was Jonah’s chastisement. In the upraising of Isaac from the altar, and in the substitution of the ram caught in the thicket; in the trial of his own love also in surrendering his beloved, Abraham “saw the day of Christ afar off,” and the eternal Father’s inconceivable love to sinners in giving His eternal Son to save them — and Abraham “was glad.” Terrible was Jonah’s punishment. He too may be said to have seen the day of Christ afar off — but to have been exceedingly filled, not with gladness, but with agony. For the cross of Christ is God’s work of infinite love and God’s work of infinite judgment too. On the side of its love, Abraham saw it and was glad. On the side of its judgment and terrors, Jonah doubtless saw it and was overwhelmed with anguish, while for three days and three nights his doom was as if entering into the sufferings of Him who was “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” So singularly suitable in each case was the reward and the punishment. “Great and marvellous are Thy works. Lord God Almighty; just and true are all Thy ways.”
There are several principles of God’s moral probation of man brought out in this third verse, describing, as it does, so graphically and rapidly Jonah’s flight.
I. And in the first place, observe, that though Jonah was not moved to disobey God originally by fear, alarm, or cowardice; though it was under the force of a more subtle and spiritual motive than these — one having in it apparently more of holiness and godly zeal; yet no sooner is he, through his disobedience, in a false position, than fears and alarms get the mastery over him. He is evidently in the attitude of a man who has lost his self-possession. He betakes himself to Hight. Though not a wicked man, yet engaged at present in a course of disobedience, he is doomed, for the time being, and in so far, to feel the sore restlessness and alarms of the ungodly, according to the unchangeable and terrible oracle: “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” It was not cowardice that tempted him to form his disobedient resolution. But he has no sooner formed it than the brave man is a coward immediately. He flees in terror. He is in haste to And a hiding-place.
And this teaches us that, though it may be from a comparatively higher and purer class of motives that we may be induced to disobey the Lord, no sooner are we committed to an act or course of disobedience, than motives far less high and far less pure, may immediately assert a most humiliating mastery over us. It matters not under what influence you take up the position of a rebel; you may have been omnipotent against your meaner enemies before; but you are weak as a child against them now. Once lay aside the spiritual weapons of implicit confidence in God’s truth and wisdom, righteousness and grace — once take counsel with carnal reason and your own devices, distrusting and forsaking the light of God’s Word and Spirit, — carnal wisdom and carnal weapons will not be found sufficient to protect you long from enemies that once would have been very lightly dealt with, very easily quelled and set aside. Principles of action too pitiful and paltry — nay, too mean and base — to have had any chance of securing your concurrence once, will present themselves now, in the hour of your revolt, claiming kindred with you, claiming control over you, with an insolence that may fill you with bitterness, but which it may now defy you to repress. The enemy at first may have needed to draw upon his more subtle devices, in order to waylay, deceive, delude, disarm you; but once you are disarmed, he can dispense with any peculiarly refined style of dealing. Coarser method now will suffice. Angels of light may have been required, as his messengers, to dazzle and mislead you from the narrow way into paths of disobedience: but once there, fiends or evils of ruder form may manage you; motives of impure and gross enough description may suffice to move you, now that you are at any rate within the meshes of his net. Cowardice may not have induced you; nay, such may have been the stuff of which your disposition, and especially as moulded anew by grace, is made, that cowardice never would have prevailed to cause you to refuse the mission to Nineveh; motives far deeper and more subtle, much more akin to godliness and zeal, it may have been needful to ply upon you, ere you were induced to adopt the sinful determination; but once adopted — your God now clearly and consciously disobeyed, and your God therefore consciously and entirely distrusted, as distrust grows assuredly out of disobedience — you are at once the coward now. The “spirit of bondage again to fear” gets distressing dominion over you. You will flee now, even “when no man pursueth.” Ah! it is very necessary to ply this solemn consideration on believers battling the good battle of faith, too often feeling as if the tide of it were going against them, too often ready to despond and to despair when, after sustaining losses and wounds not a few, they seem ready to refuse to resume the fight. The time was when — in simple faith, in contrite humble-hearted gratitude, in loyal acknowledgment that you were a little child, and your Father’s understanding alone fitted to guide you — you walked humbly with God, carefully keeping yourself unspotted from the world, rising nobly superior to the meaner forms in which the world’s evil too glaringly appears. The liberties with God’s pure and holy law which laxity of principle in worldly trade too often takes and pleads for, appeared to you then in their true character as bold offences against heaven’s righteous King, earth’s holy and omniscient Ruler. When offering their services to you, claiming your submission to them, in better than Hazael’s spirit you might have said: “Am I a dog, that I should do this wickedness?” And loving God’s Word, and throne, and Sabbath — and, in free and full reconciliation, walking with God — little success could the enemy
expect in tempting you in these directions. The holy and sensitive spirit of a friend of God, enjoying actual experience, and living in present habits of friendship with Him, recoiled directly from every such suggestion or assault. But did
D the enemy deal more subtly with you? Did he speak of your friendship with God as now very stedfastly secured? Did he whisper that the constant, scrupulous, watchful, self-denying self-jealousy, needed in the earlier stages of your Christian walk, were not so necessary now? Did he insinuate that being one of God’s friends and children, you might warrantably enough take things into your own hand more boldly, and tread in your daily walk and life with less timid footsteps? Did he speak of the great difficulty of judging precisely and exactly where the limits of worldliness terminate and those of godliness begin? Did he point out a sort of middle land, as it seemed to be, between the Church and the world — the children of God, and the children of the wicked one — a sort of neutral ground on which, without resigning their special character, both alike might meet and dwell, or at least mutually visit and compliment each other, in something, if not more like unity, at least less like bigotry and religious narrowness? Your solemn views of the dreadful condition of worldly, unconverted men, lying in the snare of the devil and beneath the wrath of God, were gradually worn down. Slowly at first, and step by step — perhaps under semblance of wishing to commend religion to some whose society you loved, whose souls you really cared for — expecting thereby to bring them all the more easily round to yours? Ah! but, like Jonah, you were affecting to be wiser than God; — you were, under the cloak of spiritual zeal, really acting at the dictate of carnal wisdom. You were disobeying a clear command — “Be not conformed to the world,” — a command as clear as that peremptory word, “Arise, go to Nineveh.” And, — having entered on a course of disobedience, — laxity of principle, worldliness of disposition, fear of man’s opinion, and false shame keep you from promptly retiring to the ground you have forsaken, and a thousand other very commonplace and coarse principles and motives, to which you would once have nobly and easily risen superior, have you in their power now; and it may be only through some sore crash of affliction, as in the case of Jonah, or at least through deep repentance, as in the case of Peter, that at last you return, softened and subdued, to trust the wisdom of God more than your own, and to walk with Him, not in sparks of your own kindling, but rather in the liirht of the Lord.
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Let this, then, be our first lesson. We may disobey God from subtle and spiritual holy-like motives; but we no sooner yield than the coarsest may too sadly overmaster us. The angel of light may be needed to betray us into sin. But our armour, our simplicity, our singleness, our strength, being then gone; the ruder evils and meaner kinds of sin, starting from their concealments and surrounding us, claiming us now as their own, saying, ^’ God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him” (Ps. lxxi. 11), may assert over us a power which in days of our integrity and good conscience we found it comparatively easy to refuse and resist.
No alarms prevailed with Jonah to disobey his King. But disobedient Jonah is easily alarmed. He flees in haste and terror.
II. There is a second and very solemn lesson in the words, “he found a ship going to Tarshish.” Committed to a course of disobedience, “he found” the means of holding on in it; his heart set on fleeing to Tarshish, a ship chartered for Tarshish without difficulty he “finds.” As evil luck would have it, as some speak; as his malignant stars appeared to rule, to use language equally heathenish! as God’s holy providence arranged, to speak as godliness and right reason dictate — Jonah finds events conspiring, as it were, to aid him in carrying out his evil purpose. Being in the way of disobedience, helps to disobedience meet him. A very terrible consideration! One that is always solemn and always seasonable.
Beyond all question, if you are on the paths of sin, on the broad road, which, if you be not turned aside from it, lands you ultimately in everlasting ruin — beyond all question, in that path, in that road, you will find means and opportunities, help and facilities to sin. Ah! how often the angry boy, on the playground, has found the ready stone with which to prosecute his quarrel and vent his wrath, creating long-lasting matter of pain to another and grief to himself! How often the man of unbridled temper and murderous envy, jealousy or rage, in the heat and fit of overboiling hatred of his brother, “breathing out threatening and slaughter,” has found as at his very hand, so opportune, so fatal, the deadly weapon by which the murder in the heart and feeling embodied itself beyond recall in the murder of the hand
52 JouaJis Flight: its Lessons.
and of fact! — as if the very fiend of malice placed the ready javelin in Saul’s hand, wherewith, save for special providence, the youthful Psalmist of Israel, their future king, had been pinned to the wall in instant death.
Yes; it is a terrible truth that the sinner will usually find provided, as it were, to his hand, the implements and opportunities which a heart set to do evil will easily transform into helps to sin. Doubtless this must be so in a state of probation such as that under which in this world we are placed. Omnipotence, indeed, might work so as that, when passion sways and rules the transgressor, every help to evil should, as it were, retire before his footsteps and elude his grasp. Miracle might snatch the weapon of murder beyond the reach of the hand of revenge. Miracle might draw a cloud of obscuration between the eye of lust and the object on which it feeds its secret and unhallowed fire. Miracle might make fire refuse to burn when applied by the incendiary’s hand. Miracle might make the atmosphere refuse to carry the sound of words when the hoary blasphemer essays to innoculate youth with his profanity. Miracle might so arrange as that Jonah, seeking to flee to Tarshish, shall find no ship bound for Tarshish. Nay, it is conceivable that God might institute a kind of government and providence among men, in which these things should form not miraculous and astonishing exceptions, but the very style and staple of the system. But it would be a wholly new system proceeding on new principles, making void and setting aside altogether our present probationary condition. To a state of probation — a state in which God suspends the immediately observed retribution, delays the instant and exact measuring out of justice till a day when the great drama shall be wound up and all outstanding cases settled — to such a state in which the sinner gets space or scope, time and opportunity, to prove his rebellion or repentance, time and opportunity to return and be reconciled, or to disclose thoroughly of what manner of spirit he is, so that justice in the ultimate judgment may be easily and clearly vindicated; to such a state it seems essential that the sinner should find, if he seek, the means of prolonging his rebellion to its aim of embodying the spirit of rebellion in its actions. To snatch away from him, as no doubt God could do if He chose, the incentive to his lust, the weapon of his wrath, the vehicle of yonaJis Flight: its Lessons. 53
his flight, were for God to cease dealing with him as one under probation. But God will not thus interfere to make completion of a sinful purpose impossible. And can you complain ot this? Can you reasonably complain? If your “heart is set in you to do evil,” and the ready means of evil most temptingly present themselves and lie ready to your hand; if you love worldly talk on Sabbath, and a worldly companion waylay you at the very door of the sanctuary, and you refuse not his converse till every sacred impression of the word and house and Spirit of God are worn off: if, in short, you are under a state of trial, and God actually arrange events to try you, can you complain? Would you wish this probation to end? Would you wish swift and sudden wrath to fall, as in every case where probation unimproved terminates, the wrath then swiftly falls at last? Would you wish it to fall immediately? Do you wish your probation ended? AVill you quarrel with God for so ruling in His providence that what is essential to a state of probation — essential, .therefore, to your deriving the benefit of a state of probation — falls to your lot? Will you say when tempted, that you ‘are “tempted of God”?* Nay: if the benefit of probation is assigned you; if your eternal estate is held in suspense, and you are now dealt with so that that eternal state shall depend on how you decide and act now; if God thus patiently deals with you on His part; then all that is essential to a probationary state must be submitted to on your part, and this among the rest — namely, that if, in rebellion and revolt against the clearly revealed will of God, you continue in the way of transgressors, you shall find the means and incentives and facilities for sin surrounding you on all sides, and multiplying as you go along; you shall find this as one of those continual facts and features which go to make that road “the broad road,” even as the gate of it is the wide gate, whereat, alas! the many enter in.
The righteousness of this arrangement on God’s part might be more clearly demonstrated were we to set forth the converse
* See Maclaxjrin’s Sermon, “The sins of men not Chargeable on God,” and Principal Candlish’s Sermon, “The Alleged Necessity of Sinning” ScripUire Characters); the one the more profound and exhaustive as a philosophical discussion, the other the more powerful and encouraging as a personal expostulation and aypeal.
view of it, the corresponding fact, namely, that if your heart be fixed and thoroughly set in you to do the will of God, you will find just as readily, and just as abundantly, the means and incentives and facilities for doing good. This is hinted at partly in that lovely declaration, “The Lord meeteth him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness.” Providences — the God of providence Himself even, and oftentimes very obviously His providences — come forth in friendly forms and helpful action to aid the devoted and joyful “worker of righteousness.” The Lord maketh straight His people’s way before their face. Those very ways of the Lord in which “transgressors fall” are all “right,” and “the just shall walk in them” (Hosea xiv. 9). He will keep them, from the evil that is in the world; and the very events which the wickedness of the wicked transforms into helps of sin, the righteous shall find the Lord disposing into hindrances. Ah! how often the humble believer, in the morning seeking increase of grace and usefulness throughout the day, has seen the means and occasions of usefulness come round about him to his hand as the day wore through; and in noticing his Father’s hand in so arranging them, with what heart of joy has he seized and improved them! Thus Abraham’s godly servant, having gone to his master’s kindred to take a wife unto Isaac, and having committed the matter to the Lord in prayer, with what lowly gratitude and adoration does he recognise and acknowledge the interposition of the Lord to aid and prosper him! In the path of his duty the facilities for success are found beautifully placed around him. “And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped the Lord. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of His mercy and His truth: / h(,inq in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren” (Gen. xxiv. 26, 27).
Thus twofold, or double-edged, is the providence of God — even as the Word of God always is; — as the gospel is, a savour of death unto death to some, of life unto life to others; — as the person of Christ also is, a foundation to them that believe, a stone of stumbling and rock of ofi’ence to the disobedient; even as aged Simeon prophesied, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke ii. 34, 35).
Consider, then, your position in the world. You walk, while here, in the midst of means, temptations, facilities to evil, innumerable. A heart at enmity to God will certainly, in one form or another, close with and accept these inducements to sin. It is by these means that the god of this world blinds, snares, and rules the ungodly. In the opposition of their hearts to God’s holy law and honourable rule, they are righteously tried, judged, and punished, by being left to fall under the degrading rule and tyrannising sway of the god of this world, plying upon them, as he does in his malice, that singular state of things which God in His holiness has established for rebels to whom He is patient and whom he places under probation. Ah! there is no security save in returning, surrendering, and being reconciled to God. Owning our unreasonable rebellion, our most heartless alienation from our Father in heaven; confessing and abjuring our suspicions, prejudices, and perverse misunderstandings of His glorious nature and gracious rewards to us- ward; accepting the sure peace which His Son’s blood has made, and tasting the free and full reconciliation which His sacrifice has established; embracing also, by free and firm faith, the regenerating spirit of adoption to dwell in us and keep our hearts in the love of God and righteousness; dwelling then in the secret of the Lord, and claiming, as His children and servants, the protection of the King amidst the dangers of an enemy’s country, and the perils of our probationary state; we shall find that the Lord keeps us from temptation or opens up a way of escape, and, delivering as us our “shield” from evil, He will be our “glory” also, and “the lifter up of our head” (Ps. iii. 3). Then, even amidst many dangers, amidst facilities to evil-doing through which the wicked plunge onward in accelerating speed to ruin, we shall walk at liberty, having respect to all God’s commandments (Ps. cxix. 45).
III. This verse reads a solemn lesson as to the intense determination with which the evil heart of unbelief will, when scope is given to its reasonings, depart from the living God.
It is hardly possible to conceive of a firmer, a more dogged, determined, resolved purpose of transgression than is indicated in the words which describe the flight of Jonah. Step after step the disobedient prophet takes in consummation of his purpose — and each following fast on the back of its predecessor, without repentance and, as it would almost seem, without reflection. (1.) He “rose up to flee.” (2.) He “went to Joppa.” (3.) He “found a ship.” (4.) He “paid the fare.” (5.) He “went down into it.” And all “to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” There is something awful and ominous in the very sound of the words. Read them continuously: “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord: and went down to Joppa: and he found a ship; and he paid the fare thereof; and he went down into it, — to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”
These words are like relentless, consecutive, fast-falling blows, under which his whole character as an obedient man of God is beaten to death and trampled under the foot of Satan. If Jonah’s past life of piety were likened to a field, and his character as a child of God were the harvest ripening on it, these successive clauses, telling the story of his wild rebelliousness, are in our ears, as if the rasping swing of death’s, scythe time after time passed through with mighty sweep and levelled all that waving harvest with the ground — no good angel nigh to gather, but the storm looming down which is to scatter it to the four winds of heaven! Or, if Jonah’s future destiny might be conceived to be told off” upon “the great bell of the universe,”* these same remorseless sentences, that utter forth his disobedience, are as if there fell fast and gloomily upon the ear stroke after stroke of the hammer of doom, pausing only with still more fearful omen when the criminal has gone down into the ship, the convict down into the hulk, — gone down into the cell of his condemnation!
Ah! beware of disobediences like these, stroke upon stroke. You may think you gain your end; but the Lord has you in His hand, and never more so than precisely when you think you have succeeded. You may resolve to disobey; you may rise up and flee; you may find your way to Joppa; you may find the ship ready there; you may find the mariners make no objection to your company, and are ready to receive the fare. You may
* John Foster.
y onaJi s Flight: its Lessons. 57
crown all, and think the clay is gained, when you go down into the ship. How successful has your scheme been! Not a single step in it has misgiven. The whole project thrives. Jonah is “gone down into the sides of the ship;” and after the weary conflict in his spirit, and the weary flight to Joppa, he is quiet at last, and “fast asleep.” You think it is all right now, and your plan is safe and your project sure. The last move has been all that you could wish it to be.
Yes; but that last move is your move into the very prison in which God holds you now under lock and key, and will hold you, till He either cast you out for execution, or bring you to repentance.