| Back to Home Page | Back to Book Index
|
Proverbs
Chapter One
Proverbs 1
Chapter Contents
The use of the Proverbs. (1-6) Exhortations to fear God
and obey parents. (7-9) To avoid the enticings of sinners. (10-19) The address
of Wisdom to sinners. (20-33)
Commentary on Proverbs 1:1-6
(Read Proverbs 1:1-6)
The lessons here given are plain, and likely to benefit
those who feel their own ignorance, and their need to be taught. If young
people take heed to their ways, according to Solomon's Proverbs, they will gain
knowledge and discretion. Solomon speaks of the most important points of truth,
and a greater than Solomon is here. Christ speaks by his word and by his
Spirit. Christ is the Word and the Wisdom of God, and he is made to us wisdom.
Commentary on Proverbs 1:7-9
(Read Proverbs 1:7-9)
Fools are persons who have no true wisdom, who follow
their own devices, without regard to reason, or reverence for God. Children are
reasonable creatures, and when we tell them what they must do, we must tell
them why. But they are corrupt and wilful, therefore with the instruction there
is need of a law. Let Divine truths and commands be to us most honourable; let
us value them, and then they shall be so to us.
Commentary on Proverbs 1:10-19
(Read Proverbs 1:10-19)
Wicked people are zealous in seducing others into the
paths of the destroyer: sinners love company in sin. But they have so much the
more to answer for. How cautious young people should be! "Consent thou
not." Do not say as they say, nor do as they do, or would have thee to do;
have no fellowship with them. Who could think that it should be a pleasure to
one man to destroy another! See their idea of worldly wealth; but it is neither
substance, nor precious. It is the ruinous mistake of thousands, that they
overvalue the wealth of this world. Men promise themselves in vain that sin
will turn to their advantage. The way of sin is down-hill; men cannot stop
themselves. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin, let them refuse
to take one step in these destructive paths. Men's greediness of gain hurries
them upon practices which will not suffer them or others to live out half their
days. What is a man profited, though he gain the world, if he lose his life?
much less if he lose his soul?
Commentary on Proverbs 1:20-33
(Read Proverbs 1:20-33)
Solomon, having showed how dangerous it is to hearken to
the temptations of Satan, here declares how dangerous it is not to hearken to
the calls of God. Christ himself is Wisdom, is Wisdoms. Three sorts of persons
are here called by Him: 1. Simple ones. Sinners are fond of their simple
notions of good and evil, their simple prejudices against the ways of God, and
flatter themselves in their wickedness. 2. Scorners. Proud, jovial people, that
make a jest of every thing. Scoffers at religion, that run down every thing
sacred and serious. 3. Fools. Those are the worst of fools that hate to be
taught, and have a rooted dislike to serious godliness. The precept is plain;
Turn you at my reproof. We do not make a right use of reproofs, if we do not
turn from evil to that which is good. The promises are very encouraging. Men
cannot turn by any power of their own; but God answers, Behold, I will pour out
my Spirit unto you. Special grace is needful to sincere conversion. But that
grace shall never be denied to any who seek it. The love of Christ, and the
promises mingled with his reproofs, surely should have the attention of every
one. It may well be asked, how long men mean to proceed in such a perilous
path, when the uncertainty of life and the consequences of dying without Christ
are considered? Now sinners live at ease, and set sorrow at defiance; but their
calamity will come. Now God is ready to hear their prayers; but then they shall
cry in vain. Are we yet despisers of wisdom? Let us hearken diligently, and
obey the Lord Jesus, that we may enjoy peace of conscience and confidence in
God; be free from evil, in life, in death, and for ever.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Proverbs》
Proverbs 1
Verse 2
[2] To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of
understanding;
To know — Written to help men to know throughly and practically.
Both human wisdom to conduct our affairs in this life, and Divine wisdom.
Instruction — The instructions delivered either
by God, or men, in order to the attainment of wisdom.
To perceive — Which teach a man true
understanding.
Verse 3
[3] To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and
judgment, and equity;
To receive — Willing to receive the counsels
of others. Such as makes men wise and prudent, and to teach just judgments or
equity.
Verse 4
[4] To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man
knowledge and discretion.
Simple — Such as want wisdom.
Young man — Who wants both experience and
self-government.
Verse 5
[5] A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a
man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
Will hear — Is willing to learn.
Attain to — The art of governing himself or
others.
Verse 7
[7] The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
The fear — Reverence and obedience to God.
Beginning — The foundation without which all
other knowledge is vain.
Fools — That is, wicked men, are so far from attaining true
wisdom, that they despise it, and all the means of getting it.
Verse 8
[8] My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake
not the law of thy mother:
My son — He speaks to his scholars with paternal authority and
affection.
Of thy mother — Those pious instructions, which
thy mother instilled into thee in thy tender years.
Verse 17
[17] Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any
bird.
In vain — The fowler who spreads, his net in the sight of the
bird looseth his labour. But these, are more foolish than the silly birds, and
though they are not ignorant of the mischief which these evil courses will
bring upon themselves, yet they will not take warning.
Verse 18
[18] And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily
for their own lives.
Their own blood — The destruction which they design
to others, fall upon themselves.
Verse 19
[19] So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain;
which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
Greedy — That seeks gain by wicked practices.
Verse 20
[20] Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the
streets:
Wisdom — Having expressed the counsels of wicked men, he now
declares the voice of wisdom. By wisdom he understands the wisdom of God
revealed to men in his word. And this is said to cry with a loud voice, to
intimate God's earnestness in inviting sinners to repentance.
Abroad — Or, in the streets or open places. Not in corners, but
openly before all the world.
Verse 21
[21] She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the
openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying,
Gates — Where magistrates sit in judgment, and people are
assembled.
The city — Not only in the gate, but in every part of the city.
Verse 22
[22] How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and
the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
Scoffers — That scoff at religion and contemn the word and
faithful ministers of God.
Verse 23
[23] Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my
spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
My words — By my spirit I will cause you to understand my word.
Verse 24
[24] Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched
out my hand, and no man regarded;
Called — By my ministers, by my judgments, and by the motions
of my spirit and your own conscience.
Verse 26
[26] I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when
your fear cometh;
Your fear — The misery you do or should fear.
Verse 28
[28] Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer;
they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
Early — With diligence and fervency.
Verse 29
[29] For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the
fear of the LORD:
Knowledge — The practical knowledge of God
and of their duty.
Verse 31
[31] Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way,
and be filled with their own devices.
Eat — They should receive punishment answerable to their
sins.
Filled — With the fruits of them.
Verse 32
[32] For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and
the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
Turning — From God.
Destroy — Shall prove the occasion of their ruin, by making them
presumptuous, and secure.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Proverbs》
WISDOM’S START AND SEPARATION.
Proverbs 1:1-15.
Proverbs
1.brings out in vivid contrast the wisdom of the wise and the folly of the
foolish. The one is under the power of God, and therefore has His authority,
and the other is under the will of self, and in consequence ends his career in
dismay and destruction.
Ⅰ. Wisdom’s start. “ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge” (verse 7). Gladstone said some time since, “ The older I grow the
more confirmed I am in my faith and religion. I have been in public life
fifty-eight years, and forty-seven years I have been associated with sixty of
the master minds of the country, and all but five of the sixty were
Christians.” The above gives colouring to the statement that the men were what
they were because they were Christians.
What
a difference there is between the fear of the Lord and the fear of man. The
latter brings “ a snare” (Proverbs 29:25), while the former is:--
Departing
from evil (Proverbs 3:7).
Hating
all evil (Proverbs 8:13)/
Prolonging
of days (Proverbs 10:27)
Inspirer
of confidence (Proverbs 14:26).
Fountain
of life (Proverbs 14:27)
Minister
of contentment (Proverbs 15:16).
Instructor
of wisdom (Proverbs 15:33).
Satisfier
of soul (Proverbs 19:23).
Harbinger
of true riches (Proverbs 22:4).
Keeper
of the heart (Proverbs 23:17).
Steadier
of the soul (Proverbs 24:21).
The
fear of the Lord means to reverence Him humbly, to submit to Him gladly, to
trust in Him wholly, to obey Him continually, to love Him supremely, to follow
Him fully, and to walk with Him confidingly.
Ⅱ. Wisdom’s separation. The three “nots” are pointed in their bearing
and practical in their application. They are “ Forsake thou not” (verse 8), “
Consent not” (verse 10), and “ Walk not” (verse 15).
“
Forsake thou not. “ The law of the mother which the son is exhorted not to
forsake, is the law of God which the mother had made hers by her faith and
obedience, just as Paul speaks of the Gospel of God as “ My Gospel”
(2.Tim.2:8). Sherman says, “’Wanted—a boy who obeys his mother.’ So advertised
one employer. Thousands of such boys are wanted. I never yet knew a lad prosper
in the world who did not love his mother.” The mother’s apron strings, if
fastened on by the Lord, are cables to keep the soul steady on the sea of life.
“
Consent not” (verse 10). “ This is the defence, a blunt, peremptory ‘ No.’ The
method of defence must be different from the enemy’s mode of attack. His
strength lies in making gradual approaches; ours in a resistance, sudden,
resolute, total.” As a good man said of temptation, “ I cannot help an ill bird
flying over my head, but I can prevent him from making a nest in my hair.”
Whoever hesitates and argues when a known sin is presented before him, is
already half lost.
“
Walk not” (verse 15). Separation from sin and sinners is the Christian’s
safety. If we walk with the ungodly we shall be contaminated by them, even as a
canary if put with a sparrow, will begin to chirrup like it. Abraham
(Gen.12:10), Lot (Gen.19:17), Jehoshaphat (2.Chron.18:1), Peter (Luke 22:55),
got into bondage of spirit, bitterness of soul, and lost the blessing of the
Lord’s approval, through fellowship of the ungodly.
── F.E. Marsh《Five Hundred Bible Readings》
01 Chapter 1
Verses 1-33
The proverbs of
Solomon.
The Book of Proverbs
1. The book does not consist
of proverbs entirely.
Much of it is the language of pious exhortation and spiritual precept.
2. The book contains many worldly precepts. Some have a selfish,
secular sound. But--
3. The pre-eminent place in the book is assigned to Wisdom, which is
one of the names of Jesus Christ.
4. The proverbs contained in the book are peculiar in form. They are
highly antithetical. They often contain a double or threefold antithesis.
5. The point of a proverb may often be missed by inattention; sometimes
it needs acuteness to see the point.
6. The matter of the Proverbs calls for attention. Note how they
concern the gift of speech, riches, and poverty, such sins as sloth. They
proclaim great practical truths, and are often of great strength and sweetness. (Dean
Burgon.)
The proverbs of Solomon
1. The proverbs of Solomon are pleasing to refined taste. He was a
preacher accustomed to employ acceptable words full of pungent and profitable
instruction.
2. In the second place, proverbs are practical in their use. True
religion is not of the head only, nor of the heart only; it is the cultivator of all our
faculties, and acts upon our whole person, in its legitimate development, as
the God of nature forms a tree or flower, unfolding all parts at the same time,
breathing life and beauty on every leaf. The portion of sacred record now under
consideration is of especial importance to young persons. The inculcation of
duty is no less essential than the defence of doctrine. It is the symptom of a
diseased condition, when a patient desires intoxicating draughts rather than
wholesome aliment. When a religionist is more voracious of excitement than
instruction, and is much more prompt to fight for a dogma than to illustrate
his infallibility by a noble demeanour, he would do well to search into the divinity of a faith
which is so barren of heavenly deeds.
3. Thirdly, sacred proverbs are ennobling in their tendency.
4. Fourthly, the scriptural maxims, the merits of which we are
discussing, are not only pleasing to the taste, practical in their use, and ennobling in their
tendency, but they are saving in their design. (E. L. Magoon.)
Authoritative maxims
This is the meaning of the
term “Proverbs” in the original. A proverb is a weighty sentiment, moral or
prudential, expressed in sententious language. It is the recorded verdict of
men, sealed by experience, and reserved for future guidance. The proverbs of a
people have no small influence upon their character, and sometimes they have a
very evil influence. Let one which is erroneous in its morality, or perverted
in its application, become current, and it seems to give the sanction of
reason, experience, and almost of inspiration to that which is wrong, e.g.,
“Charity begins at home.” This has nourished selfishness and checked
benevolence. There is this advantage in a proverb, that it directs the conduct
without perplexing the mind or burdening the memory. Proverbs are to the morals
of a people what gold coin is to its currency--portable, rich, and always
passable. The form in which the Bible proverbs are expressed is usually that of
parallelism, or in two parts, the second line repeating the sentiment of the
first, or sometimes its opposite. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.)
The preacher
Solomon went through a
peculiar experience of his own, and God, who in nature gives sweet fruit to men
through the root-sap of a sour crab, when a new nature has been engrafted on
the upper stem, did not disdain to bring forth fruits of righteousness through
those parts of the king’s experience that cleaved most closely to the dust. The
heights of human prosperity he had reached; the paths of human learning he had
trodden farther than any in his day; the pleasures of wealth, and power, and
pomp he had tasted in all their variety. The man who has drained the cup of
pleasure can best tell the taste of its dregs. The fatal facility with which
men glide into the worship of men is a reason why some of the channels chosen
for conveying the mind of God were marred by glaring deficiencies. For
engraving the life-lessons of His Word, our leather uses only diamonds; but in
every diamond there is a flaw, in some a greater, and in some a less; and who
shall dare to dictate to the Omniscient the measure of defect that binds Him to
fling the instrument as a useless thing away? Two principles cover the whole
case. “All things are of God.” “All things are for your sakes.”
1. The universality of God’s government.
2. The special use for His own people to which He turns every person
and every thing. Here is a marvel. Not a line of Solomon’s writings tends to
palliate Solomon’s sins. (William Arnot, D.D.)
The proverbs of Solomon
No one subject is long
pursued in this treatise, nor is there any coherence and connection between its
parts. Yet there is a general design running through it, to instruct young
people at their entrance into public and active life. This Book of Proverbs is
short and soon read. It
will perhaps be slighted on account of its contents, as a mere system of dry
morality, by those who had rather deal in discourses of the mystic and
enthusiastic kind, and admire that sort of rapturous and ecstatic devotion. But
whether they will allow it or no, this book contains the main parts of pure and
undefiled religion, and lays down the best of rules for the prudent conduct of
life, and for obtaining the favour of God and the testimony of an approving
conscience. By wisdom Solomon means true religion and virtue, as by folly he
means disobedience and vice. Following is an abstract of the acts of religion
and morality recommended by him.
I. Positive duties. The foundation of religion is laid upon the
principle of fearing God. He exhorts us to love wisdom and to prize it above
all things, as the
only way and the infallible way to obtain it. He exhorts us to love wisdom
betimes, and to make it the first choice, the first object of our affections.
He exhorts young persons to honour and obey their parents, and to regard their
instructions. He advises discretion in choosing friends. He exhorts to
chastity, purity, contentment, control of temper, meekness, mercifulness,
industry, etc.
II. Negative duties. He dissuades from fornication and adultery, from
sloth and idleness, from pernicious company; he advises to shun strife,
contention, rebellion; to keep the heart free from irregular passions, and not
to be vicious in any way, or oppressors. He exhorts to avoid suretyship as a
most dangerous indiscretion. He teaches not to trust in riches, in friends, in
superior abilities, nor to value ourselves for our oblations and sacrifices,
for any of the externals or ceremonials of religion. He earnestly exhorts us
not to be scoffers and scorners of religion.
III. The motives by which these moral duties are enforced, and the
recompenses which are promised to those who practise them. And they are no less
than every advantage that a man can reasonably desire in this life; they are
the favour of God and His protection, and along with it the testimony of a good
consciences courage and confidence, safety from evil, long life, health,
plenty, riches, honours, reputation both present and posthumous, and an
inheritance that shall descend to children’s children. (John Jorton, D. D.)
Truths made compact and
portable
The late Dr. James
Hamilton said justly that we ought to be thankful to any one who makes a great
truth portable. Our memories are weak. Like travellers in the desert or amidst
Polar ice, we want to be lightly laden; and yet we must carry on our own
shoulders the equipments required for all the journey. And some teachers have
not the art of packing. They give out their thoughts in a style so verbose that
to listen is a feat and to remember would be a miracle. Occasionally, however,
there arises a master spirit, who in the wordy wilderness espies the important
principle, and who has the faculty of separating it from surrounding truisms,
and reproducing it in convenient and compact dimensions. From the mountain of
sponge he extracts the ounce of iodine; from the bushel of dry petals he
distils the flask of otto; or, what comes nearer our purpose, from bulky
decoctions he extracts the nutritious or the fragrant particles, and in a few
tiny packets gives you the essence of a hundred meals. Of such truth-condensers
the most distinguished in our country is Bacon. “Knowledge is power.” “They are
two things--unity and uniformity.” “Reading maketh a full man; conference a
ready man; and writing an exact man.” Truths like these flash like revelations,
or shine as the most brilliant novelties on the page of our mighty thinker; but
many of them are truths which he had heard discoursed by drowsy pedants, or
vaguely muttered by the multitude, and it is the work of his genius to reduce
vagueness to precision, and concentrate an ocean of commonplace into a single
aphorism. By making the truth portable he made it useful.
Proverbial sayings of wise
men
The seven wise men of
Greece acquired their fame from the proverbial sayings they originated or
adopted. Solon of Athens took for his motto, “Know thyself”; Chilon of Sparta,
“Consider the end”; Thales of Miletos, “Who hateth suretyship is sure”; Bias of
Priene, “Most men are bad”; Cleobulus of Lindos, “The golden mean,” or “Avoid
extremes”; Pittacos of Mitylene, “Seize time by the forelock”; Periander of Corinth, “Nothing is
impossible to industry.” (Christian Million.)
Profitable use of the Book
of Proverbs
An old man, well
known for his goodness, is full of sparkling epigrams, which he attributes to
his habit of reading the Book of Proverbs through each month. (F. B. Meyer,
B. A.)
Proverbs
A proverb is the child of
experience.
Verse 2
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of
understanding.
Wisdom and instruction
Wisdom is here taken for the theoretical part, to know the truth
of things, as appears by the opposition of manners in the next verse. It may be
meant of wisdom in general, knowledge of the truth; for many philosophical
truths are contained in this book. But it hath a special eye to the knowledge
of God and Divine truths. And it signifies an exact knowledge of things by
their causes, or other properties, whereby we may be able to distinguish
between real and apparent truths. The word “instruction” properly signifies the
manner of teaching by which wisdom is attained. It is set after wisdom, because
that is the end and perfection of instruction, and therefore more worthy than
the means. “The end is first in intention, last in execution.” Men think of
dwelling before they think of building. It signifies such instruction as is
communicated to boys, joined with correction, for the word imports both.
“Understanding” means words of weight worthy to be understood, and well
understood by those that delivered them; coming from men of great
understanding, and making them such that learn them. Acute sentences, full of
good matter, fit to pass for authentical like current money. Doctrines taught
by this verse are--
1. Wisdom is to be gotten out
of Scripture.
2. Divine truths are far more
excellent than other truths.
3. There is need of wisdom to
guide both the understanding and the will.
4. Divine truths must be
inquired into as well as Divine precepts.
5. Pains must be taken to
distinguish real truths from apparent. Because they are hard to distinguish,
they are worth
distinguishing.
6. Instruction is the means
to get wisdom out of Scripture.
7. Hearing Divine truth
without understanding doth men no good.
8. Knowledge of trivial
things is of little worth.
9. Knowledge of Divine truth
will do us much good. It will bring us acquainted with God more fully than the
creatures can. (Francis Taylor.)
Religion and virtue considered under the notion of wisdom
The principal scope of the Proverbs is to teach men wisdom. Wisdom
is introduced in the dramatic way, as a divine person appearing in a very
lovely form, displaying her native worth and beauty, and, by the most powerful
persuasions, and the most affectionate manner of address, soliciting the
degenerate sons of men to hearken to her counsels for their good. In general,
what the author meaneth by wisdom is true religion and virtue. “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear of the Lord signifieth universal
religion because it is an eminent part of it; and because it is a principle
which, when the mind is duly possessed with, and brought thoroughly under its
power, cannot fail of producing obedience to all the commandments of God. True
religion is nothing else but the practice of virtue from a regard to the Deity.
The wisdom recommended is called “the knowledge of the holy” (Proverbs 9:10). Acquaintance with
Divine objects, and with the duty we owe to God, is the truest understanding.
It is not mere speculative knowledge even of religion he meaneth; the instructions
of wisdom do all tend to practice; and the conformity of our lives to its rules
is that only which will dominate us “wise men.” The character of wisdom is
applied to particular virtues. “To receive the instructions of wisdom, justice,
and judgment, and equity.”
1. Justice is a very
important branch of our duty.
2. Another virtue is
chastity. All kinds of voluptuousness and excess are directly contrary to
wisdom. Slothfulness and neglect in government of the tongue are also signs of
unwisdom.
Observations:
1. That virtue and integrity,
to be preserved from the ways of sin and wickedness, must be the result of
deliberation and choice. Wisdom is the quality of a free-self determining
agent. Discretion consisteth in weighing maturely the motives of action, in
comparing them together, and being determined freely by that which, upon the
whole, appeareth to be the justest and the best. From this it is a plain
consequence, that the more calm and sedate, the more deliberate and free our
minds are in acting, our conduct is the wiser and the better.
2. That a good man useth
foresight, and looketh to the last issue of things, that so he may direct his
behaviour. Religion could not justly be called wisdom if it had not a view to
the future consequences of our present conduct. If men believe there is a God,
wise, just, and good, they must conclude that righteousness is pleasing to Him;
and if the soul is immortal, and shall subsist in another state, they who have
done good in this life have the best hope of being distinguished by the favour
of the Deity in the next. (J. Abernethy, M.A.)
A great teacher and a true learner
I. A great teacher.
1. His history. He was--
2. His lessons.
3. His design. The true
culture of the “simple.”
II. A true learner.
1. He is a wise man. He is
wise who does the best thing.
2. He pays attention. “A wise
man will hear.”
3. He improves. He increases
in “learning.” He attains “unto wise counsels.” He receives docilely into him
the words of his master, and he rises in intelligence, and worth, and power. (David
Thomas, D.D.)
Verse 3
To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment and equity.
Judgment and
equity
“Judgment”
is used for discerning right from wrong; for the law, manner, or rule of it;
for punishment or execution of judgment. “Equity” in Hebrew means, straight
ways, that go on foreright, and even, like plains; when men go not uphill and
downhill in their actions, but proceed in an even course. It signifies also a
thing right in God’s or man’s eyes, which they approve as just and equal. Some
understand by equity moderation, that we use not the extremity of the law, nor
do all that we may. Others, integrity of mind in working and discerning. The
doctrines suggested are--
1. Matters of practice must not be perceived only, but received.
There is a piercing of truth into the understanding, and receiving of it into
the judgment.
2. Knowledge is ordinarily received from others.
3. A spiritual wisdom is required to guide all our actions.
4. Every cue’s right must be preserved.
5. Men must study to know how to judge of interests.
6. Extremity of justice is not always to be used; moderation
sometimes is to be exercised. (Francis Taylor.)
Verse 4
To give subtilty to the
simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
Subtilty for the simple
The word is sometimes
taken in an ill sense, for a crafty wit to deceive others. Sometimes in a good
sense, for understanding to prevent dangers that crafty men might bring upon
us. So it is taken here. Compare “simple” with the Latin “fatuus,” a fool.
Simple comes from a verb which signifies to allure or seduce one that wants understanding
of God’s truths and will, and so is easily allured to any error or wickedness
by good words, as giving credit everything, because not able to examine things
for want of judgment. He falls into danger for lack of knowledge. The word also
signifies one who wants foresight to prevent danger.
1. The
Scripture contains a store of heavenly knowledge sufficient to inform simple
persons. Note the store of heavenly mysteries in the Scripture; the clearness
of them; the variousness of them.
2. Subtilty
for preventing of dangers is best learned out of the Scriptures.
3. We are
naturally simple, and easily led into error.
4. The
way to keep us from errors is the right understanding of Scripture.
5. Most
danger of going astray is in the time of youth.
6. Bare knowledge
is not enough, but discretion must be laboured for also. Knowledge is
imperfect, and will need further augmentation by deliberation. And knowing men
do things rashly oftentimes, being disturbed with passion. (Francis Taylor.)
Good subtilty
This term suggests the
very point of Solomon’s advice. The young man who comes from a quiet home,
where he has been under wise guidance, is really simple, unsophisticated,
unused to the ways of the world, unfit to meet its temptations, and needing
much good counsel and warning from those who are experienced in the world’s
ways. “Simple” here is not “silly,” but guileless, unsuspecting, easily drawn
aside, over-trustful. It is familiarly said that “experience is a dear school,
but fools will learn in no other.” Solomon urges on the young man that if he would be willing to
learn, he might be saved from many bitter and even degrading experiences. There
is an evil sense attaching to the word “subtilty,” from its association with
the serpent that tempted Eve; but the better meaning of the word comes to view
through Solomon’s connecting it with other good and suggestive terms. He thinks
that the young man, at the very outset of life, needs “wisdom,” which we may
take in the general sense of “culture”; an “instruction,” that is,
“discipline,” “training,” and “understanding,” or the power of weighing,
distinguishing, discriminating: and “wisdom,” in the further sense of
“thoughtfulness,” the habit of looking things well round before we decide on
our action. Impulsiveness is a constant weakness in young people. They act
before they think. And “Justice,” or the first principles of righteousness, by
which all proposed conduct should be appraised, and “judgment,” or the
self-estimating which is virtually the same as a cultured and active
“conscience,” and “equity,” or the various adjustment of “principles” to the
different relationships of men, and the various circumstances in which they may
be placed; and “discretion,” or that kind of reticence which keeps the young
man from being duped by false advisers.
1. Expect
subtilty in those who would tempt you astray. Here the word takes its bad form,
as crafty, designing, making good appearance in order to deceive; keeping back
part of the truth: and so leaving a designedly false impression. See temptation
of Eve. There is a good “suspiciousness,” which is a safeguard.
2. Show
subtilty in not readily yielding to the tempters. Here the word is used in a
good sense. Be on your guard. Do not give your love to the first person who
seeks it. Beware of the plausible man, and the flatterers. Be forewarned and so
you will be forearmed. Keep your own counsel. See underneath, and do not be
caught by mere outside glitter. (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
The simple man
Plato wrote on the door of
his academy,” Let no man unskilled in geometry come hither.” Solomon writes the
very reverse on the door of his school, “Let the simple man come hither.” (G.
Lawson, D. D.)
Discretion
There are many more
shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none more useful than
discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets
them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage
of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and
wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only
qualify a man to be more sprightly in his errors, and active to his own
prejudice. (W. Addison.)
Discretion
A father that had three
sons was desirous to try their discretion, which he did by giving to each of
them an apple that had some part of it rotten. The first eats up his apple,
rotten and all; the second throws all his away, because some part of it was
rotten; but the third picks out the rotten, and eats that which was good, so
that he appeared the wisest: thus, some in these days, for want of discretion,
swallow down all that is presented, rotten and sound altogether; others throw
away all truth, because everything delivered unto them is not truth, but surely
they are the wisest and most discreet, that know how to try the spirits whether
they be of God or not--how to choose the good and refuse the evil. (J.
Spencer.)
Verse
5
A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of
understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.
The increase of knowledge
I. No man is so wise but he
may learn more. And that both in theoretical and practical knowledge, how to
think better, and how to do better. Be not content with that measure of
knowledge ye have, but labour still for more.
II. Much knowledge comes in at
the ear. Hearing and seeing are by Aristotle called the learned senses, because
by these doors learning enters into the soul. Yea, and lips also. The ears are
the conduit pipes of wisdom to convey it to us.
III. The Scripture brings in
increase of knowledge. Because--
1. It is the highest book in the world.
2. All heavenly wisdom in other books comes from thence, as waters in
rivers from the fountain.
IV. Scripture learning is the
best learning. It is the most profound knowledge. It is the most profitable.
V. Natural parts well used
help much in religion. Paul’s learning was a great help to him, and Solomon’s
high reach. It is a wonder what may be attained by industry and God’s blessing
upon it. (Francis Taylor.)
Verse 6
The words of the wise and
their dark sayings.
The words of the wise
Nothing can give a deeper
insight into the character and genius of people than their household
words--those current maxims and sayings which influence their everyday life,
the popular proverbs which pass from mouth to mouth. These are the expression
of a people’s inward life. It does not belong to a high state of civilisation
to originate proverbs. One of our most homely maxims or proverbial sayings,
will stir the soul to its very centre and depth, and do more to regulate the
life and manners, than all the enactments in all the statute books of the
world. In the Book of Proverbs we have nothing but the lessons of practical
wisdom. They rest on great principles as their basis--those principles which
enter into the eternal reason of things, and which are as unchangeable as God
Himself. It follows that the maxims of this book are adapted to all time, all
countries, and all people. Humanity is one. The writers, whoever they were, had
a profound knowledge of men and things; and we have here the results of no
narrow experience. Principles are stated with great clearness; the rule of
conduct is laid down with consummate skill and precision, and the lofty aim of
the whole is to allure men, and especially the young and inexperienced, into
the way of happiness and peace.
1. Some maxims concern the relations which subsist between the young
and the old. The young are to take part in the progress and development of the
race. They are not only to be the fathers and mothers of a future generation,
but also their teachers, and their models. To prepare and qualify them for
this, they must have in them the elements of knowledge and of goodness. Youth
is the period of
acquisition. The present is always more or less dependent on the past. We
cannot sever ourselves from those who have gone before us, nor break the bond which
connects us with those who are coming after us. The young are to give the
impression of their own intellectual and moral life to the generations
following.
2. These maxims, though not set forth as coming immediately from the
mind or spirit of God, are in harmony with Infinite Wisdom. They have in them
nothing of a merely individual character. They contemplate man as man,
independently of all outward arrangements and institutions, and deal with that
which is common to the race. The Book of Proverbs stands unequalled among all
the writings which the world has ever produced. They are human sayings, but
possessed of Divine authority; and they have in them all those principles which
can ennoble and dignify
the character of man, clothing him with true greatness in this world, and in
the world to come crowning him with glory everlasting.
The following findings
seem to come as near as may be to the end or object of the writer:--
1. That a certain
degree of instruction and knowledge is essential to intercourse with the more
intelligent and better-informed classes.
2. That discretion, uprightness, and unyielding attachment to
justice, are qualities of which youth stands most in need, and which enter into
all integrity of character.
3. That youth being the period of greater simplicity and
inexperience, it needs increased reflection and sagacity to lead to the
apprehension and discovery of approaching temptation and danger, and of the
best means of escape.
4. That even the wisest and best informed of men have ever something
new to learn, and may by listening to the great oracle of truth, increase their
knowledge and power of perception without limit.
5. That true wisdom has its basis in true piety, and that there can
be no greater folly than to reject this highest form of knowledge. (R.
Ferguson, LL.D.)
The dark sayings of the
wise
Dark sayings mean properly
enigmas or riddles. These were used of old as one of the methods of conveying
instruction. It was conceived that by giving exercise to the understanding in
finding out the solution of the enigma, it was calculated to deepen on the mind
the impression of the lesson which was wrapt up in it. This was not done for mere amusement,
but for imparting serious instruction; although, to the young, there might in
some instances be the blending of an intellectual attainment with the
conveyance of useful information, or salutary counsel. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)
Verse 7
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
The first rudiments of knowledge
The fear of the Lord is an abiding and reverent sense of the
presence of God and of accountableness to Him: For this to exist God must be
that real, personal Being which we have every reason to believe God has
revealed Himself to be: such in character, as to love, holiness, and justice,
as He has declared Himself in His Word. Why is this fear the beginning of
knowledge?
1. Because knowledge being the apprehension of facts, and application
of them to life, it cannot properly begin, or be based on a right foundation,
without first apprehending and applying a fact which includes and which
modifies all other facts whatever.
2. Because knowledge is the food of the soul. And what is the soul?
What ought its stores and its accumulated powers to be, and to be useful for?
The knowledge which is to feed and train the soul must begin, continue, and
end, in the apprehension of Him.
3. Because knowledge, as the mere accumulation of facts, is
in-operative upon life. If you would be worth anything to society, worth
anything to your own families, worth anything to yourselves, the fear of God
must come first in your thoughts and lives. The fear of God is the first thing;
the consciousness of Him about you, the laying down His revealed facts
respecting Himself and you as your greatest facts; the setting up of His will
as the inner law of your being. (Dean Alford.)
How is the “fear of the Lord” the beginning of knowledge?
1. It quickens the intellect, and sustains its activity.
2. It restrains from those follies and corruptions which weaken the
powers, and divert from high themes.
3. This fear starts thought from the right centre and in right
directions.
4. This fear is the root of that right living and wise conduct, that
forethought, purity, temperance, uprightness, and obedience to God, which we
may call vital knowledge; knowledge in the heart and life, as well as in the
head. (Monday Club Sermons.)
The root of knowledge
The “fear of the Lord” implies a right state of heart towards God,
as opposed to the alienation of an unconverted man. Though the word is “fear,”
it does not exclude a filial confidence and a conscious peace. What God is
inspires awe; what God has done for His people commands affection. See here the
centrifugal and centripetal forces of the moral world. “Knowledge” and “wisdom”
are in effect synonymous--the best knowledge wisely used for the highest ends.
The “fear of the Lord” is the foundation, “knowledge” is the imposed
superstructure. He who does not reverentially trust in God knows nothing yet as
he ought to know. His knowledge is partial and distorted. The knowledge of
God--His character and plans, His hatred of sin, His law of holiness, His way
of mercy--is more excellent than all that an unbelieving philosopher has
attained. It is a knowledge more deeply laid, more difficult of attainment,
more fruitful, and more comprehensive, than all that philosophers know. Men
speak of the stupendous effects which knowledge, in the department of
mechanical philosophy, has produced on the face of the world, and in the
economy of human life; but the permanence of these acquisitions depends on the
authority of moral laws in the consciences of men. The moral encircles and controls the
economic in the affairs of men. The knowledge of God is the root of knowledge.
(William Arnot, D. D.)
A plea for reverence
Reverence is the alphabet of religion. As you cannot acquire
knowledge without the knowledge of the alphabet, so you cannot acquire anything
of the religious life without the spirit of reverence. Self-conceit is
precisely the negative of reverence. It is the absence of the spirit that looks
up to anything above us. It is the spirit that leads one to say, “I am the
greatest and the best.” There are many conditions in our life which tend to
produce the spirit of self-conceit and tend to counteract the spirit of
reverence. The absence of any traditions in America tend against the spirit of
reverence. Across the ocean, in the Old World, we stand in cathedrals a
thousand years or
more old, in the presence of customs hoary-headed with antiquity; we walk by
the city walls which have seen many a battle between liberty and despotism; and
these old cathedrals, these old cities, these old customs, awaken in us some
spirit of reverence. But we have no such cathedrals. The absence of any class
distinctions in America tends against the spirit of reverence. We are all on
the same level. There is no class to which we can look up with reverence. The
reaction against Puritanism has tended against reverence. It is no longer
customary in our homes to teach reverence of children to their parent, or in
schools to teach reverence of pupils to teachers. In the olden time every boy
bowed reverently to the minister; now the minister gets along very well if the
boy does not cry out, “Go up, thou baldhead!” The spirit of criticism, the
scientific spirit, has tended against reverence. Many things which of olden
time men superstitiously feared they fear no longer. We have analysed until all
great things have been picked to pieces in our laboratory. We will not allow
any mysteries. You cannot revere what you are criticising. The two processes
never can go on simultaneously in the same mind. The sectarian spirit has been
against the spirit of reverence. The Congregationalist has sneered at the
ritual of the Episcopalian, and the Episcopalian has shrugged his shoulders
over the non-ritual of the Congregationalist. The spirit of antagonism between
the different denominations has despoiled those symbols which were before the
common objects of a mutual reverence. Finally, our democratic theology has
tended against the old spirit of reverence. Just because we no longer reverence
a king in the nation we do not reverence the King in the heavens. Now, if it be
true that reverence is a fountain of life, and reverence is a beginning of
wisdom, how in this age, under these circumstances, are we to develop reverence
in ourselves, in our churches, and in our children? In the first place, then,
the old notion of holy places is gone. We cannot recover it. In truth there is
very little foundation for it. For it we are to substitute this larger,
grander, more awe-inspiring conception--that every place is holy place, every
ground is holy ground, and God is in all Nature. God is as truly here as He
ever was in Palestine, as truly in the White Mountains or the Rocky Mountains
as He ever was in the Sinaitic Mountains; He is everywhere, always speaking, in
all phenomena. This must come into our hearts to take the place of the older
and narrower conception of holy places. We cannot re-establish a united ritual,
nor all agree to climb to God’s throne by the steps “worn by the knees of many
centuries.” But we must learn the broader, the larger, more catholic, aye, and
profounder reverence which sees God in every form of worship; for wherever the
human heart is seeking God, there God is. We are to recognise Christ in all
truth. The old reverence for the Bible as a book without any error whatever,
and as a conclusive and final guide on questions of science, literature,
history, philosophy, and religion, is passing away. Our reverence is not for
the tables of stone that are broken and lost, nor for the words that were
inscribed upon them--we do not know exactly what form of words were inscribed upon
them--but for the great fundamental principles of the moral life which those
Ten Commandments embody. There is many a man who has reverence for the book and
none for the truth that is in the book. Woe to us if, throwing away the old
mechanical reverence for the outer thing, we fail to get the deeper reverence
for the inward truth! What reverence has God shown for truth! Think of it one
moment. He has launched into human history this volume of literature. The
ablest scholars are not agreed on such questions as who wrote these various
books, at what dates, for what purpose, and with what immediate intent. The
great majority of the books are anonymous; the great majority of them are
without definite and positive date. What does this mean? It means this: God has
launched truth without a sponsor into the world, and left the truth to bear
witness to itself. Truth answers to the human mind as cog to cog; and the
reverence for the shell is to be lost only that reverence for the kernel may
take the place. We find it difficult, many of us, to have any reverence for the
events that are taking place in America, and the leaders who are participating
in them. We cannot cure that irreverence towards leaders and politicians by
pretending respect for a man whom we do not respect, who has won his way to
office by dishonourable and disreputable methods. We must go further, we must
look deeper, we must see that, as God is in all worship and in all truth, so
God is in all history. We are to see God in every man, and in all of life.
There are times when there seems nothing more awe-inspiring than a simple,
single human soul. Said Phillips Brooks once to me, “There is no man so poor,
so ignorant, so outcast, that I do not stand in awe before him.” As the old
reverence for the priest and the robe and the pulpit fade away, reverence for
man as the battle-ground between good and evil must come in to take its place,
or reverence will disappear. “The fear of God is the fountain of life.” I think
it is Goethe who has drawn the distinction between fear and reverence. Fear, he
says, repels; reverence attracts. It is not the fear of God that repels, it is
the reverence for God which attracts, which is the fountain of life. And when
this reverence has found its place in our hearts, it is to be the fountain of
all our life; of our reason, and we are not to be afraid of being too rational;
of our commercial industries, and we are not to be afraid of being too
industrious; of our humour, and we are not to be afraid of a good hearty laugh;
reverence in all our life. You cannot have reverence on Sunday and irreverence
in the week; reverence in the church and irreverence in the daily life. And,
leaving in the past that reverence which was fragmentary, broken, and largely
idolatrous, we are to press forward to a grander, broader, nobler, diviner
reverence in the future. (L. Abbott, D. D.)
The fear of the Lord
1. The fear of God will urge us to a profitable study of the Holy
Scriptures.
2. The fear of God will especially influence us in our devotions.
3. The fear of God will bring us to the business of the day in the
right frame of mind to carry it on.
4. The fear of God will enable us to bear the trials and
disappointments of life.
5. In the last trial of all, in the hour of death, we shall assuredly
reap the fruit of having lived in the fear of the Lord, for then we shall have
nothing else to fear. (J. Edmunds.)
Piety
I. Piety is
reverence for God. Filial reverence is meant by “fear.” Reverence implies two
things, a recognition of Divine greatness, and a recognition of Divine
goodness. An impression of goodness lies at the foundation of reverence, and
hence, too, gratitude, love, adoration enter into this reverence.
II. Piety is
initiatory to knowledge. It is the beginning of it. But what knowledge? Not mere
intellectual knowledge. Many an impious man knows the circle of the sciences.
The devil is intelligent. It is spiritual knowledge--spiritual knowledge of
self, the universe, Christ, and God. True reverence for God is essential to
this knowledge. Religious reverence is the root of the tree of all spiritual
science. He knows nothing rightly who does not know God experimentally. (Homilist.)
Filial love
Filial love stands near and leans on godliness. It is next to
reverence for God. That first and highest commandment is like the earth’s
allegiance to the sun by general law; and filial obedience is like day and
night, summer and winter, budding spring and ripening harvest, on the earth’s
surface. There could be none of these sweet changes and beneficent operations
of nature on our globe if it were broken away from the sun. So when a people
burst the first and greatest bond--when a people cast off the fear of God, the
family relations, with all their beauty and benefit, disappear. (W. Arnot,
D. D.)
Practical piety
I. Speculative
piety, or a due knowledge of God and of our duty towards Him, is the first
foundation of true wisdom.
1. The proper exercise of true wisdom consists in directing and
conducting us to the chiefest happiness which human nature is capable of.
2. That religion is the only method by which we are directed and
conducted towards the attainment of this chief happiness.
3. That a due knowledge of God, and of our duty towards Him, is the
basis and groundwork
of true religion.
II. Practical
piety, or the regulating of our actions according to knowledge, is the height
and perfection of understanding.
1. To be habitually conversant in the exercises of piety is an
instance of the truest and most considerate wisdom, because it is the most
effectual means to promote our happiness and well-being in this life. There are
four things for the attainment of which we are chiefly solicitous. A clear
reputation. A comfortable fortune. A healthful body. A quiet mind.
2. The constant exercise of religious duties is an instance of the
truest and most considerate wisdom, because it is the most effectual means to
promote our eternal happiness in the world to come. (N. Brady.)
A reverent fear of God
I. Religiousness,
or a reverent fear of God, is the best wisdom. Because it brings a man to
acquaintance with God. It teaches us how to converse with God rightly by true
worship and obedience, and how to come to live with God for ever.
II. Things of
greatest worth should be of greatest account with us. The affections should ever
follow the judgment well informed.
III. Irreligious
persons are in God’s account the fools of the world. They want God’s fear, as
natural fools want wisdom.
IV. None despise
heavenly wisdom but such as know not the value of it. The excellency of it is
so great, that it would allure men to look after it, had they spiritual eyes to see it.
Knowledge hath no enemy but an ignorant man.
V. They that
slight the means of knowledge slight knowledge itself. We account so in outward
things. We ask sick men refusing physic if they make no account of their lives.
Neglect of the means of grace is a real slighting of wisdom. (Francis Taylor.)
Hear the instruction of thy father.
The family
The first and great commandment is the fear of God, and the
second, which is next to it and like to it, is obedience to parents. Wherever
the root is planted this is the first fruit which it bears. God honours His own
ordinance, the family. He gives parents rank next after Himself. Filial love
stands near, and leans on godliness. God is the author of the family
constitution. Its laws are the marriage of one man with one woman, the support
of children by parents, and the support of decayed parents by the children
grown. The polygamy of Eastern peoples has made the richest portions of the
earth like a howling wilderness. In the constitution of nature there is a
self-acting apparatus for punishing the transgression of the family laws. The
Divine institute is hedged all round. The prickles tear the flesh of those who
are so foolish as to kick against them. In practice, and for safety, it is well
to keep families together as long as it is possible. To violate the
providential laws is both a crime and a blunder. Love to parents ranks next
under reverence to God. When France threw off the first commandment the second
went after it. (William Arnot, D.D.)
Forsake not the law of thy
mother.
For mother’s sake
What a mysterious thing--what a mysterious, magical, Divine thing
is a mother’s love! How it nestles about the heart, and goes with the man, and
speaks to him pure words, and is like a guardian angel! This young man (of whom
he was then preaching) could never take any money that came to him from his mother
and spend that upon a Sunday excursion or a treat to a theatre. It was a sacred
thing with him; it had the impression and the inscription of his mother’s
image, and his mother’s purity, and his mother’s piety, and his mother’s love.
It was a sacred thing to him, and these things that he felt to be questionable,
or felt to be sinful, were always to be provided for by other resources and by
money that came to him from other hands. Oh! there is the poetry of the heart,
the poetry of our home and domestic affections, the poetry of the religion of
the heart and the altar, about that little incident, and it strikes me as being
perfectly beautiful. (Thomas Binney.)
A mother’s influence
The late Dr. Harvey Goodwin, Bishop of Carlisle, gave the
following account of his mother: “I am one of those who lost their mother at a
very early age. I was very little over six years old when my dear mother was
suddenly taken from me. I mention my age that I may put before you the effect
which my mother’s teaching had upon me, and the tender age at which it ceased,
and I think we may draw from it some useful lessons. Now, then, when I look
back to the teaching of my mother, what do I think of it? I say deliberately,
and without any amount of exaggeration, that though I have since that time been
at school, been under tutors, been at college, and had all the experience of
life, I do not believe that all the lessons that I have received since that
time put together amount in value and in importance to the lessons which I
learned from my mother before I was seven years old. I will tell you one of the
first lessons she taught me. She taught me always to speak the truth; and the
lesson she gave me concerning truth has never been lost upon me. She always
brought me up in the feeling that what was to be spoken was to be the whole
truth and nothing but the truth; that there was to be no evasion, that
everything was to be stated simply and honestly, exactly as it occurred; and I
will tell you how she enforced that lesson--she always spoke truth to me. I
never caught her in any kind of deceit; I always knew that what she said to me
she meant. I was always sure that if she told me she was going to do a thing
she would do it, and no amount of coaxing or persuasion would lead her to
change her mind. Absolute truth, absolute in the smallest matters, that was her
practice, and that was the lesson that she impressed upon me.”
For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head.
Filial love an ornament of beauty
It seems an instinct of humanity to put ornaments upon the person.
It does not rank high among the exercises of the human faculties, yet it is
quite above the reach of all inferior creatures. Ornaments on the fallen, like
many other innocent things, become the occasions of sin, but they are not in
their own nature evil. To deck with external beauty that which is morally
corrupt within is a cheat which men practise on themselves and others, but
adornment of the person, modest in measure and adopted instinctively by an
innate sense of propriety, is conducive to virtue and consistent with
Scripture. Moral qualities are the true adornments of a human being. All the
graces of the Spirit are lovely: but here the foremost of relative duties, a
child’s reverential regard for a parent, is recommended as an ornament of
surpassing beauty. Love, obey, cherish, reverence your parents. This is in
God’s sight of great price. These ornaments will not be out of date when time
has run its course. The moral laws of God have avenging sanctions even in the
powers of nature. Godliness is profitable unto all things. The first
commandment is fruitful even in this life, and the second is like it--like it
in its holy character, like it in its glad results. “Honour thy father and thy
mother,” this is an ornament of solid gold. Unlike the watering of superficial
accomplishments, the more rudely it is rubbed the more brightly it glows. (William
Arnot, D.D.)
My son, if sinners entice thee.
Reasons for resisting the enticements of sinners
By sinners is meant all persons who are not true Christians. Three
reasons why we should not consent when sinners entice us:
1. Because when we begin to sin it is hard to stop.
2. Because it is dangerous.
3. Because it is disgraceful.
Two things we ought to do:
1. Get rid of the sins we have committed.
2. Try to keep from sinning any more.
Said a boy to his sister one day, “I want the spirit to look sin
right in the face when it comes to me, and say, ‘Begone.’” “Yes,” replied the
sister, “and one thing more you want; you want God’s spectacles to see sin and
know it when it comes, for it does not always show its colours.” (R.
Newton, D.D.)
Sinful enticements
How industrious wicked people are to seduce others into the paths
of the destroyer. Sinners love company in sin; the angels that fell were
tempters almost as soon as they were sinners. They do not threaten or argue,
but entice with flattery and fair speech; with a bait they draw the unwary
young man to the hook.. But they mistake if they think that by bringing others to
partake with them in their guilt, and to be bound, as it were, in the bond with
them, they shall have the less to pay themselves, for they will have so much
the more to answer for. (Matthew Henry.)
The various ways by which sinners entice us to vice
I. I shall mention
some of the various ways by which sinners entice us to vice.
1. They represent it as a light and trivial matter, and at the worst
as venial and pardonable. “What is it,” they will probably say, “but a human
weakness and infirmity, to which all men are subject? Can it be criminal to
follow the dictates of one’s natural passions? You can be no worse than
thousands who indulge in the same excesses.” They will give soft names to the
greatest abominations in order to prevent alarm. In this way the understanding
is imposed upon and the conscience is silenced. When vice is painted in all its
black colours we are apt to be alarmed at the commission of it, but when it is
stripped of its deformity we become more reconciled to it, and more readily
yield. But can that be a light matter which is treason against the Almighty and
which has subjected us to death? Perhaps we are more in danger from smaller
than greater transgressions, because they steal upon us more imperceptibly, and
draw us insensibly into the commission of them. Is not this a good argument to
be jealous of the very appearance of evil and to loathe the garments spotted
with iniquity?
2. By representing the gain and the pleasure which accompany it. Gain
and pleasure are the two great charmers which have seduced mankind and led them
captive at their will. What foul and black crimes hath the love of money been
the means of perpetrating! To this corrupt source may be traced all the fraud
and injustice, all the theft and robbery which have been committed. And what is
the acquisition of wealth, upon which men are so much set? Is it any
substantial, permanent good? Will it preserve health, prolong life, or ward off
death? The love of pleasure has ruined many. It enchants the simple. Health has
been impaired.
3. By traducing the principles of good men and turning their manners
into ridicule. The gospel hath unfolded a glorious plan of salvation by which
God, consistently with the purity of His nature and the perfection of His
government, can be reconciled to the chief of sinners. It is nobly adapted to
restore peace to the troubled mind and to inspire the hope of immortality.
Shall we be laughed out of it by any set of men or for any gratification
whatever?
4. By leading the road and calling us to follow them. It must be
allowed that example has a powerful influence upon mankind and will often
prevail when all other means prove ineffectual. Good-nature may not allow him
to separate from his companions. To do as others do hath long been a powerful
principle of action, and hath carried men greater lengths than they ever
thought of.
Before I proceed to the second branch of the subject I shall give
an advice or two to the young.
1. Cultivate an early acquaintance with God.
2. Carefully avoid the company of the ungodly. Who knows but your
principles may be shaken and your morals corrupted before you are aware?
3. Be earnest in prayer to God that He may never suffer you to be
tempted beyond what you are able to bear. Heaven is your best resource, and
from whence your most effectual aids do come.
II. A few arguments
which, by the blessing of God, will enable us to resist them.
1. It is mean and dishonourable to be connected with bad men.
2. It is the most prejudicial to your best and eternal interests. The
health will be impaired, the soul lost.
3. The infinite obligations you are under to your God and Redeemer.
4. If you consent you will lay a foundation for much anguish and
remorse. Loose and dissipated men may put on what appearance of gaiety and
mirth they please, but I am apt to think it is more affected than real, more
feigned than true.
5. The distress and grief in which you must involve your parents and
friends. (D. Johnstone, D.D.)
The allurements of sin
I. A danger
implied It is the nature of sin to be aggressive. Wherever it obtains an
entrance it will, if not destroyed, ultimately become the master. It cannot
exist without seeking to push itself forward to some new conquest. There was
never one transgressor yet who did not try to make another like himself. There
is on earth what may be called a huge propaganda of evil. Self-security only makes
more easy victims.
II. A method
exposed. The word “entice” implies that they do not ask you plainly and
directly to commit sin as sin, but rather set before you some real or imaginary
pleasure which you can get only by a commission of that which is sin. They
dexterously conceal the fact that it is sin. They bait their hook. The sin is
to be committed as a means to an end, and the mind is so occupied by the end
that the guilt of the means is overlooked. Then it is well to know the
enticements which are commonly employed to delude and allure the unwary.
1. One common enticement is the increase of knowledge. The assertion
is made that they will “see life.”
2. Another is pleasure. That may be good, but it is well to ask,
“What will it cost?” It is dear if it can only be bought by the forfeiture of
peace of conscience and the favour of God.
3. Another is the love of liberty. You are asked to do the doubtful
or the wrong “just to assert your liberty.”
4. The tempter promises that you will never be discovered. It is
urged, “Nobody will ever know.” Yes, God will know.
III. Resistance.
Enforced. “Consent thou not.” Give a plain, downright, emphatic refusal. The
right use of the word “No” at the critical turning-points of life will save a
man from destruction. There are two excellent maxims as regards our moral
actions--
1. Always force yourselves to come to a positive decision in all
matters of conduct.
2. Never allow yourselves to deliberate on a matter in reference to
which conscience is clear.
IV. A motive suggested.
In this resistance which has been urged. The text is a parental appeal, and
brings to bear upon us all the memories and associations of our earliest home.
Cherish them, and they will build for you a breakwater within reach, by means
of which you may safely override the fiercest storms and whirlwinds of
temptation. (W. M. Taylor, D.D.)
Bad company
The desire to make proselytes to our speculative opinions, and
bring over others to think as we do, is not a more constant attendant on our
pride and conceit than the desire in men of vicious lives to make the practice
of others as bad as their own. Whether it be that many kinds of wickedness
require numbers to associate, in order to their being carried on with success,
so that they who are engaged in them are constantly beating up for allies;
whether the sense of shame is not lessened, and the censure of the decent
portion of mankind made more tolerable when multitudes share in it; whether the
conscience is not, also, soothed and flattered from the same cause; or whether,
lastly, the perversion of their ways has produced in such men a gratuitous
desire of doing hurt, and a love of mischief for its own sake; so it is--the
loss of his own virtue produces in a man the desire to overcome the virtue of
others. The particular sin which the preacher had in his thoughts at the time
was that of dishonesty, and the enticement he speaks of was to the taking of
property belonging to others, and living upon it, instead of labouring for an
honourable and independent livelihood. He selects that species of crime, out of
many that would have answered as well, as a specimen whereby to illustrate his
argument, and show the ruin and misery to which the path of sin conducts a man. There is one
property, common to the language of all enticers of others to sin, of whatever
kind the sin be; and Solomon has not failed to notice it in the case he has
supposed. It is the pretence of the most disinterested friendship, high
professions of good-will and regard for the person they undertake to entice.
“Come with us; cast thy lot among us; let us all have one purse.” They who
entice them to the sin disguise their secret ends, their abominable
selfishness, so successfully, under appearance of generosity, that they are
blinded for a time, and think the morality which they have learned at home too
strict and impracticable, and the kindness they received from their parents and
relations hardly worthy to be compared to the friendship of these men. How,
then, is a man to judge in this matter? Is he to pass through life with a sour
suspicion of mankind, reject all their kindness as a cloak for bad designs, and
hold the opinion that no man is ever loved save by his father and mother? Far
from it. In the passage before us he propounds a test and criterion whereby a
young person may distinguish between true and false friendship; and it is this:
that the true will always be accompanied with a concern for his virtue. “If
sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” I know not how I can better illustrate
this maxim of Solomon than by stating, in the royal author’s own words, the
consequences of listening to the counsels of the ungodly--the solicitations to
sin, with which the young are sure to be assailed by cunning and practised
offenders. For example, with respect to sins of licentiousness, and the
temptations thereto, he says of him that yieldeth to them that he that goeth
after the strange woman, “goeth as an ox to the slaughter, and as a fool to the
correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird
hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.” “For,” he says
again, “she hath cast down many wounded, yes, many strong men have been slain
by her.” Again, when he would dissuade from idleness, and inculcate the wisdom
of a provident regard to the future, he says, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard,
consider her ways and be wise.” Again, of dishonesty. “The thoughts of the
diligent tend only to plenteousness; but every one that is hasty, only to want.
The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity, tossed to and fro, of
them that seek death.” “The robbery of the wicked shall destroy them.” (A.
Gibson, M. A.)
The personal element in temptation
Sin is not so dangerous as is the sinner. Sin is repellent; but
the sinner may be winsome and attractive. The personal element in temptation is
often the attractive element.
I. Sin sometimes
clothes itself with personal authority. As of a master over a servant, or a
father over a son. Temptation becomes strong when it enlists authority on its
behalf.
II. Sin sometimes
clothes itself with personal affection. Many of the forms of vice depend
entirely upon friendship for their propagation. They would die a natural death
if it were not for a man’s friends.
III. Sin sometimes
clothes itself with personal attractions. Consider mental attractions. The
learned, the witty, the intellectual bad man, is a power for evil. There is a
passing over of power from the man to his sin. The more attractions a man has
personally the more ropes has sin to pull upon others with, and the more
deceptive attire has sin to clothe itself with.
IV. Sin sometimes
clothes itself with personal influence. Wealth gives a man influence in a
community. So does social or official position. Young men should be taught to
recognise sin promptly, no matter what it is clothed in. Christian manliness
and independence are the safeguards against the personal elements in
temptation. Dare to be right, even if sin should enlist all the powers of the
world on its side. Dare to say, “No.” This is Christian heroism. (The
Southern Pulpit.)
Youth counselled
The text refers to another state of society than that in which we
live.
I. Life is a scene
of real and daily temptation. Whether a man wishes it or not, he will be
enticed. The mistake of many is that they expect to pass through life without
being tried. They are not forearmed. There is not any perfect escape to be
expected. It is the necessary discipline through which man must pass. The
knowledge and experience of evil is just as inevitable as the knowledge and
experience of any of the ordinary affairs of human life.
II. There is one
period of life more specially exposed to temptation than others. At first sight
the temptations of youth seem to be at variance with the general principle,
that as a man’s day is so shall his strength be. Youth’s strength and youth’s
day often seem to be very disproportionate. It seems hard that youth should be
so severely tried.
1. The generosity of youth is tried by the callousness and coldness
of the world.
2. The guilelessness of youth is tried by severe lessons; friends
fall off, and depart like swallows in the winter, when we seem to need them
most.
3. The purity of youth is tried by having to go forth into the world
of real and actual impurity, to make venture in its own strength against it
all.
III. In society we
find many persons whose chief delight it seems to be to throw temptations in
the way of youth. No sooner does a man go astray than he strives to drag others
with him. It is done--
1. By ridicule.
2. By sly suggestions.
3. By lending bad books and indulging in bad conversation. To
overcome these temptations great decision of character is required. To get on
in life requires the steady, unbroken bent of a strong will. There is no
guarantee for real decision of character except in the fear of God. (W.
G. Barrett.)
The dangers to which the young are exposed
Youth is the most interesting and important period of our moral
probation for eternity. In it the young begin to be freed from that parental
authority and discipline which restrain them from the practice of vice. They
were then called, in some measure, to think, to judge, and to act for
themselves. Then the principles early instilled into their minds are to be
brought to the test of trial.
I. Young men may be
exposed to the baneful influence of bad example, to the force of ridicule, and
to the power of persuasion.
II. The young are
enticed by setting before them splendid and seductive representations of the
riches and enjoyment with which vice is accompanied.
III. The young are
enticed to the commission of vice by concealing its native deformity.
Sedulously endeavouring to diminish impressions of the danger with which it is
attended.
IV. The young are
enticed by misrepresentations of the Divine being and relations. God’s
mercifulness is overpressed, and His justice and holiness are put out of sight.
God will never let sin go unpunished. (John Hunter.)
The foe and the fight
I. The danger.
1. The sinners that entice from within are the man’s own thoughts and
desires. There is quite an army of these sinners in a young man’s breast.
Thoughts open up the way, and prepare a trodden path on which the man may
follow. A gossamer thread is attached to an arrow and shot through the air
unseen, over an impassable chasm. Fixed on the other side, it is sufficient to
draw over a cord; the cord draws over a rope, the rope draws over a bridge, by
which a highway is opened for all comers. Thus is the gulf passed that lies
between the goodly character of a youth fresh from his father’s family and the
daring heights of iniquity on which veteran libertines stand. From the brink on
this side the youth darts over a thought which makes itself fast to something
on these forbidden regions. Deeds will quickly follow when the way is prepared.
2. The sinners that entice from without are fellow-men, who, having
gone astray themselves, are busy leading others after them. The deed most
characteristic that the father of lies ever did was to lead others after him
into sin. An evil-doer has a craving for company in his wickedness. By a
natural necessity, the licentious recruit among the ranks of the virtuous, the
drunken among the ranks of the sober. It is a power of nature that is taken and
employed to enslave men. Men are gregarious. The principle of association is
implanted in their nature, and is mighty, according to the direction it gets,
for good or evil. This great power generally becomes a ready agency of ill.
II. The
enticements. These are manifold. As addressed to well-educated, well-conducted
youths, they are always more or less disguised. The tempter always flings over
at least his ugliest side some shred of an angel’s garment. Few young men who
have enjoyed a religious education come to a sudden stand, and at once turn
their back upon God and godliness. Most of those who do fall diverge at first
by imperceptible degrees from the path of righteousness. The importance of the
ancient rule, “Obsta principiis” (“resist the beginnings”), can
never be overrated. Watch the beginnings of evil. High in the list of dangerous
enticements stands the theatre. The custom of society encouraging the use of
intoxicating drinks constitutes one of the most formidable dangers to youth in
the present day. But we never yet met with a drunkard who either became one all
at once or who designed to become one. In every case the dreadful demon vice
has crept over the faculties by slow degrees, and at last surprised the victim.
III. The defence.
“Consent thou not.” It is a blunt, peremptory command. Your method of defence
must differ from the adversary’s mode of attack. His strength lies in making
gradual approaches; yours is a resistance, sudden, resolute, total. It is not
by partial compliances and polite excuses that enticements are to be repelled.
With such adversaries you are not obliged to keep terms. Much depends on the
unfaltering, undiluted, dignified “No” of one who fears God more than the sneer
of fools. The shortest answer is the best. The means of resisting may be found
in--
1. Refinement of manners.
2. Profitable study.
3. Benevolent effort.
4. Improving company.
But though the society of the good is an instrument of protection
not to be despised, it is still subordinate. There is another companion. “There
is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” You cannot fight the
enticements of sinful pleasure in your own strength. Under the Captain of
salvation you may fight and win. (William Arnot, D. D.)
Men each other’s tempters
There are two worlds from which temptation reaches us--the world
in which we live, and the world below us. There are two classes of beings who
act as tempters, devils and men. There is, however, but one class of
characters; sinners alone can be tempters. We do not know how the first sin
originated.
I. Look at the
case supposed.
1. It is a common case. Sinners do entice. It is in the nature of sin to make
men tempters one of another. The social character of mankind seems to involve
this.
2. It is a serious case. Generally speaking, the tempters are
stronger than the tempted. The tendencies of our human nature are in the
direction of transgression. The principles of every sin are latent in us all.
Those principles may be undeveloped because they have not been appealed to; but
let an appeal be made, and they will be manifest. Temptation is presented to a
nature more or less susceptible.
3. It is by no means a hopeless case. There is One who can be a
refuge, a strength, and a present helper.
II. Look at the
advice given. “Consent thou not.” Without consent the temptation cannot take
effect, and without consent the temptation can do no real harm. If you do
consent, be sure “your sin will find you out.” To consent now is to expose
yourself to greater danger hereafter. If you consent to enticement to-day, it
will be almost an impossible thing to refuse to-morrow. (S. Martin.)
Enticemerits and enticers
Some point is gained by regarding this as Solomon’s advice to his
son Rehoboam, who probably was an only son, and certainly was brought up amidst
the dangerous luxuries and flatteries of Eastern court life. One of his chief
perils lay in evil companionships. The surface of society never tells the truth
concerning it. It is strange to find Rehoboam warned of “wild banditti” (Proverbs 1:11-14). Illustrate from the
“Prince Hal” of English history and common sentiment concerning such men as
“Robin Hood.” Drinking, gambling, and impurity are the wild evils of our time,
and the caution of the text applies to them.
I. Temptations
must come. This is a necessary law for those who are placed on probation. Forms
of enticement differ in different ages. In each age, in each setting of social
circumstances, there is a lawless, self-indulgent side. There is in all young
people a love of romance, and a high-spiritedness, which makes them delight in
adventure; but selfishness and covetousness are the dispositions which most
readily respond to enticements of social evil. None can hope to escape
temptation, none should wish to escape it. There is no possible culture of
moral character without such testing.
II. Sin lies in
consenting to enticements. Personal consent is essential to sin. What advice
can then be given to the young?
1. Do not put yourself in the way of temptation.
2. Meet enticement with simple refusal.
III. The character
of an enticement is shown in the character of those who present it. We are
often placed in difficulty by the disguises of temptation. Especially before we
have gained life-experience. By the hands and the neck it does seem like Esau.
By the talk it does seem a wise serpent. A fair judgment of it is often beyond
our power, But judging those who offer the temptation is always possible. If a
man is not a good man, you had better suspect what he wants you to do. If you
know a man is good, you may begin with confidence in his advice. If sinners
entice, it is always safe not to consent. If the good invite, it is always best
to consent at once. God is the infinitely good One, and to His call and
invitation instant and unquestioning response should be given. (Weekly
Pulpit.)
Virtuous obstinacy
I. The tempters
are called sinners. A sinner here is one who has himself gone out of the
straight path of duty, and is now a wilful wanderer, aiming to draw others into
his own dangerous course.
II. The way of
tempting called enticing. Sometimes the enticement of flattery is employed;
sometimes misrepresentation; sometimes allurement; sometimes the barest
artifice. The most dangerous artifices are those that tend to shake the only
sure foundations of moral obligation and responsibility.
III. How are these
tempters to be dealt with? Parental authority and affection enforce the solemn
charge. Call in reason to your aid. Call in reflection. Call in self-knowledge.
Call in the solemn warnings of God’s holy oracles. Call in watchfulness and
prayer. Covet the approbation of conscience. Stop to count the final cost. Let
the sensual allure, let the unbelieving misrepresent, let the reckless scoff;
but by the help of God, in the name of all that is virtuous and praiseworthy,
for the happiness of your whole present life, in the aspiration after a life of
perfect virtue and of perfect bliss, let your one decisive answer ever be,
“No.” (J. Bullar.)
The enticements of sinners
Youth, neglected or corrupted, makes manhood despicable or
vicious. The crimes of riper years multiply and embitter the infirmities and
the sorrows of age. “Beware of poisoning the youthful mind with false
principles. Leave the rational powers gradually to unfold themselves. You may
aid reason in its operations, but never let authority supply the place of
conviction, nor cheek a passion, but by an argument level to the
comprehension.” This is the pernicious doctrine of the new philosophy, which is
but another name for infidelity. Better advice is, watch the first dawnings of
intellect. It begins to open sooner than most suspect. Its natural tendency is
towards error. It belongs to you to inform and to direct it. Watch, with equal
care, the first emotions of feeling and passion; their tendency is equally
towards vice. Tell your children that virtue derives its chief and its only
religious value from its conformity to the nature and will of God, and that
vice is odious and detestable from its opposition to both.
I. Is it not
strange the wicked should seek to entice others? That human nature is corrupted
appears in the practice and the contagion of vice. Vice, the natural product of
a tainted heart, first makes its appearance in the moral constitution; grows by
indulgence, and is propagated by example.
1. Sinners are prompted to the seduction of others by natural
impulse. It results both from their principles and their habits.
2. The wicked are led to seduction by a second motive. They feel a
shame which they refuse to acknowledge; they are anxious to wear off this
painful impression in their own minds, and divide the disgrace of their conduct
in the opinion of mankind by the society of others.
3. Vice is also attended with fear. The man wants society in order to
dissipate thought.
4. Vice, indeed, requires society either for its full enjoyment or
the effectual accomplishment of its purposes.
5. Indefatigable is the kingdom of darkness in propagating itself.
6. Infernal influences may be necessary to account for the activity
of the wicked in seduction.
II. The methods
employed in the work of seduction. The efforts of the seducer are not
systematic and uniform. They are accommodated to circumstances and tempers. You
are not guiltless if you suffer yourselves to be seduced. No temptation amounts
to a physical necessity of transgressing; neither sin nor sinners can prevail
against you without your own inclination. Your most effectual weapon of defence
is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, in connection with the
other parts of the Christian armour. (David Birchan, D. L.)
Bad company
I. The company
portrayed.
1. Lawlessness. “Sinners” (Proverbs 1:10; 1 John 3:4). To sin is to sink.
2. Persuasiveness. “Entice thee.” The gilded trappings of many modern
amusements, the gay apparel of fallen virtue, the promise of good to be enjoyed
that never comes, are baits by which thousands are lured into sin.
3. Combination. “Come with us” (Proverbs 1:11). “Combine,” said a great
politician, when speaking to a class of men who had a grievance which they
wished to redress. So says the enemy of souls. In the ranks of the wicked hand
joins in hand (Proverbs 11:21).
4. Cruelty. “Let us lay wait for blood.”
5. Cowardice. “Let us lay wait.” Cruelty and cowardice are often
allied.
6. Selfishness (Proverbs 1:13). The emptying of other
people’s houses is of no consequence so that they fill their own. It is said of
Napoleon, that for every step he rose in greatness the head of another fell.
7. Sociability (Proverbs 1:14). This sounds pleasant
enough; but what of the money to be put into the purse? Blood-money.
8. Activity (Proverbs 1:16). There is in the wicked an
impulse which impels them to hurry into sin.
II. Thy counsel
given.
1. Heed good advice (Proverbs 1:8). The voice of the tempter
is powerless to him who listens reverently to the voice of God (Mark 1:11; Mark 1:26).
2. Learn to say, “No” (Proverbs 1:10).
3. Shun evil company (Proverbs 1:15). “Evil companions,” says
one, “first make us sad, and then they make us bad.”
4. Keep away from the haunts of evil. “Refrain thy foot.” Some who
would not associate with the ungodly frequent the places where the wicked
congregate. They go to see, and in some cases as the result of seeing, “fall to
rise no more.” The Swiss mules have a habit of going close to the edge of
dangerous precipices. If men were as sure-footed in the path of life as are
mules upon the mountains, they might do so too; but with natures prone to evil,
it is safer to keep as far as possible from the place where danger is.
5. Cultivate true godliness. A godly character is a wall of defence
which the worldly are often afraid to attack. (H. Thorne.)
Warning against the enticements of the wicked
I. The evil
enticement mentioned in the text.
1. The wicked deed, it is promised, shall be done in secrecy and with
concealment.
2. It is a bold and spirited act to which the young man is incited.
The appeal is made to his “pluck” and love of adventure (Proverbs 1:12).
3. The allurement is held out of great spoil.
4. The offer of frank and jovial companionship.
II. The dissuasive
warning of the text (Proverbs 1:10).
1. Consider the awful extremes to which your evil course may lead.
2. Consider how faithfully and plainly you have been warned.
3. The ruinous consequences of a wicked course. (T. G. Horton.)
Admonition to the young
I. Who they are
against whose enticements the young are to be on their guard.
1. Such as have abandoned themselves to vice and crime. The
gratification of devils is to have men as sinful and miserable as they are.
2. Those who, however moral in the eye of men, are yet destitute of
godliness. It has always been the policy of the enemy of souls to lead men into
the depths of iniquity by little and little. The drunkard, for example, is as
sober, enlightened, industrious, respected in society, beloved in his own
family as any other when Satan first approaches him. Now, were the destroyer of
man at once to show to this individual the full picture of that beastliness and
misery to which he intended soon to reduce him, there would still be a
sufficiency of moral courage, of self-preservation, of human feeling in him to cause him to flee
even with horror and with tears from the snare. But Satan is too cunning and
too intent upon success. He has patience in mischief, and can exercise it long
in order to gain a mighty end.
3. Those especially who are acquaintances or companions. The
companionship of the young is usually formed by accidental circumstances,
without thought or discrimination. Some become companions at school, some by
neighbourhood, some by relationship, some by serving under the same master, or
working in the same establishment.
4. Those also who are strangers. Alas! such is the moral condition of
man that we must live in this world in a state of constant suspicion. It was by
listening to a stranger that our first mother was deceived; and in the same way
was the man of God, who had been sent from Judah to denounce the wrath of
Jehovah against Jeroboam and his idolatrous altar at Bethel, betrayed into an
act of fatal disobedience.
II. The nature of
the enticements against which the young are here warned.
1. Sinners will entice them by their example.
2. Sinners will entice them by holding out false hopes and
representations of enjoyment in the courses to which they allure them.
3. By misrepresenting or denying the truth of God.
4. By ridiculing their moral fears.
5. By appealing to the multitudes. We naturally hate singularity, and
in nothing so much as in religion.
6. By flattering kindness and attention.
7. By pretensions to religion.
III. Illustrate and
enforce the admonition, “consent thou not.”
1. It is only with their own consent that the young can be led
astray. The guilt as well as the bitter consequences of their yielding to sin
will rest with themselves.
2. To be ready to refuse their consent to the enticements of sinners,
their hearts must be well established in regard to both the ways of sin and the
ways of righteousness.
3. The young are to cherish in their minds a suspicion and terror of
all who would entice them to sin.
4. Let them carry about with them habitually a fear of God and a
sense of His presence.
5. Let them consider the extreme difficulty of entering into life.
Instead of tampering with sin, and exposing ourselves to its snares, we would
have enough ado to gain heaven though no such allurements lay in our path.
6. Let them ponder much and deeply the misery of those who are
pursuing the pleasures of sin.
7. Let them keep steadily before their minds the terrors of the wrath
that is to come.
8. Let them now give their consent to the invitations of Christ. (Joseph
Hay, M.A.)
Counsel for the tempted
I. Temptation is
inevitable.
1. The name of temptation is legion, for they are many, and yet one.
The strongest agencies appear in human form--sinners, who are agents of the
devil. They may be our companions. They may even call themselves our friends.
2. It is not a sin to be tempted.
II. The power of
temptation. Its power lies in the word “entice.” Enticements are the bait on
the devil’s hook. “Pleasure” is one of them. “Seeing life “ is another. The
love of liberty or of asserting independence is a powerful lure. The dread of
being laughed at is a strong compulsion. “Nobody will know “ is often the last
inducement which subdues the will and silences the conscience.
III. The limits of
temptation. Temptation is mighty, but it is not almighty. No one has power over
our will so that we must yield.
IV. The way of
escape. “Consent thou not.” Augustine traced the ways of the battle. They are “Cogitatio,
Imaginatio, Delectatio, Consensio.” Consent is the final stage of a
lost battle. It is the lowering of the flag before the enemy; the opening of
the gates of the citadel of life.
V. Say “no” to the
tempter, but say “yes” to Christ. He says, “Lo, I am with you alway”; “I have
prayed for you that your faith fail not”; “Take therefore the whole armour of
God,” etc. (John Reid, M. A.)
A courageous decision
In America there were some eight young men who went out one
Sabbath morning along the hanks of the Potomac, and they were breaking the
Sabbath and acting in a most outrageous way, when the bell of the village
church rang out, and one of the young men stopped short and said, “I must go to
church.” The others said, “What d’ye mean? You’re surely not going to church?”
“Yes, I am going.” “Oh, George is getting pious, and so he ought to be
baptized, and here we are by the Potomac River, and we will baptize him by
immersion.” And so they were about to plunge him in the river, when he said,
“Stop one minute, boys, and then I’m in your hands; but before you plunge me
into the river, I want to tell you one thing. My mother was an invalid, and I
never saw her out of bed, and when I was about to leave home and choose an
occupation, she said to me, ‘Now, George, after you are all ready to go, I want
to see you in my room, and to give you my dying blessing, for I am certain I
shall never see you again. Your father has not money enough to bring you home
at the holidays, and I am very certain before you return I shall have left you
for ever, so be sure and come.’ I went into my mother’s room after I was ready,
and she asked me
if I would kneel down by the bedside, and I knelt down. I remember just how her
hand looked. I remember the blue vein on the thin wasted hand as she put it out
over me. Then she dropped it upon my head and said, ‘This is my benediction. I
will never see you again, and I want you to remember this: you will be out in
the world, and there will be a great many temptations over you; but remember
when sinners entice thee consent thou not.’ Now,” said he, “I am going to church.” “Well,”
they said, “you mustn’t go to church.” He started; they followed, half in
derision, half in earnestness. They came to the church door. They went in. That
day the gospel was mighty in the heart of that young man. Then and there he
yielded himself to God. Before many months had passed along, some from one kind
of influence, some from another, but all those young men, had entered the
kingdom of Christ. Six of them are in heaven, two of them are occupying high
positions in the Church, and all because that young man dared to do his duty. (T.
De Witt Talmage.)
Let us lay wait for blood.--
The robber of Solomon’s time
The temptation against which the teacher seeks to guard his
disciple is that of joining a band of highway robbers. At no period in its
history has Palestine ever risen to the security of a well-ordered police
system, and the wild license of the marauder’s life attracted, we may well
believe, many who were brought up in towns. The “vain men” who gathered round
Jephthah ( 11:3), the lawless or discontented who
came to David in Adullam (1 Samuel 22:2), the bands of robbers
who infested every part of the country in the period of the New Testament, and
against whom every Roman governor had to wage incessant war, show how deeply
rooted the evil was there. The story of St. John and the young convert who
became a robber, the most interesting of all apostolic traditions, may serve as
another illustration. The history of many centuries (our own, e.g.,
in the popular traditions of Robin Hood and of Henry V.), presents like
phenomena. The robber-life has attractions for the open-hearted and
adventurous. No generation, perhaps no class, can afford to despise the warning
against it. (Dean Plumptre.)
The robber’s speech
I. Young men are
in great danger of being drawn away to sinful courses. Because they have not
that grounded experience that others have, nor are so able to look through
shows into substances. Because they are wilful and headstrong, and will follow
their own lusts, notwithstanding good men’s persuasions.
II. Secrecy is
great bait to wickedness. Because shame is a great bridle to keep men from open
wickedness. Many are kept in by it whom no counsel will keep from evil ways.
Because fear of punishment is a bit that keeps others from sin. Take heed of
secret solicitations to secret evils.
III. Wicked men have
many secret devices to bring their wicked designs to pass. As Esau (Genesis 27:41), Jezebel (1 Kings 21:9). It is their study day
and night (Psalms 36:4; Proverbs 4:16).
IV. Wicked men
promise themselves success of their mischievous plots. They think their mine
too deep for men to countermine, and look not to God, who can go beyond them.
This shows us how deeply sin is rooted in sinful souls, so that they dare
promise themselves good success, not only in lawful, but also in sinful
affairs. (Francis Taylor.)
My son, walk not thou in
the way with them.
Bad company
Hardly any young man goes to a place of dissipation alone. Each
one is accompanied. No man goes to ruin alone. He always takes some one else
with him. We may, in our places of business, be compelled to talk to and mingle
with bad men; but he who deliberately chooses to associate with vicious people
is engaged in carrying on a courtship with a Delilah, whose shears will clip
off all the locks of his strength, and he will be tripped into perdition.
1. I warn you to shun the sceptic--the young man who puts his fingers
in his vest and laughs at your old-fashioned religion, and turns over to some
mystery of the Bible and says, “Explain that, my pious friend--explain that”;
and who says, “Nobody shall scare me; I am not afraid of the future.” Alas! a
time will come when the blustering young infidel will have to die, and then his
diamond ring will flash no splendour in the eyes of Death as the grim foe
stands over the couch waiting for his soul.
2. Again, I urge you to shun the companionship of idlers, There are
men hanging around every store, and office, and shop who have nothing to do, or
act as if they had not. Idleness is next door to villainy. Thieves, gamblers,
burglars, shop-lifters, and assassins are made from the class who have nothing
to do.
3. I urge you to avoid the perpetual pleasure-seeker. Look out for
the man who always plays and never works. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Dissuasion from joining the robbers
The sum of all this advice is as if he had said, “Oh, my son, sinners
will entice thee with these or such like words and promises, and lay such
snares for thy inexperienced youth; but remember that thou art my son, and not
theirs, and therefore hast more reason to hearken to me, who speak to thee out
of a fatherly affection. Hearken not, therefore, to their counsels, flatteries,
or promises. Show thyself so strange to them that thou wilt not so much as
enter into their way, much less walk into it.”
I. Children should
rather hearken to their parents’ good counsel than to others’ bad. Because they
are more engaged to parents than to any other for life, education, pains, and
means. Parents’ counsels are given in love, and are for their good.
II. Young men have
need to labour for knowledge to discern between Good counsel and bad. Because
they are often put to it. Young men stand, as Hercules in his dream, between
virtue and vice, solicited by both. Because there are fair pretences for all
sins. Gluttony is called the free use of the creature; drunkenness,
good-fellowship; prodigality is called liberality; covetousness, thrift; lust
is entitled love; pride goes for handsomeness. It needs a good touchstone to
distinguish between gold and copper well gilt over. No less skill is needed to
distinguish between real and apparent good. Weigh things by the light of reason
and the light of Scripture.
III. Allurements to
sin ape no excuse for sin. Because allurers have no power to compel. They may,
and ought to be refused.
IV. Company excuses
no man in his sins. Company cannot alter the nature of things. It cannot make
good evil or evil good. There is choice of company; all company is not evil.
Company may draw our corrupt nature to sin, but cannot excuse us for Sin.
V. Continuance, or
walking in sin, is dangerous. It is the sign of a hard heart to continue in
sin. The mouth of the conscience is stopped. It makes the heart more hard
still. Custom will make a man not start at the greatest sins.
VI. The very
entrance into sinful ways is full of danger, like a downfall--no stay till you
come to the bottom. Keep out of evil ways, or get out quickly. (Francis
Taylor.)
The pernicious effects of evil company
The condition and circumstances in which we are placed here are
such that society is necessary to the happiness, if not to the very being, of
mankind. Besides this necessity, which compels us to seek assistance from
society, there is a natural inclination which strongly prompts us to it.
Solomon, having observed this absolute necessity of friendship and society, and
of what high importance it is to choose friends and companions rightly, hath,
in this Book of Proverbs, given many rules concerning that choice, of which the
text is one. “Walk not in the way of sinners”; enter not into any friendship
with wicked men. I shall show the dangers of evil, and the advantages of good,
company.
1. As the foundation of all, let me mention, first, the authority of
the Holy Scriptures, choosing a few out of the many passages to this purpose
with which the sacred writings abound. “Make no friendship,” saith Solomon,
“with an angry man, lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul. He
that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be
destroyed.” To this purpose the prophet expostulates very sharply with
Jehoshaphat concerning the alliance into which he had entered with Ahab, a
wicked and idolatrous king: “Shouldst thou love them that hate the Lord?” There
is something very strong and solemn in the adjuration used by St. Paul to the
Thessalonians: “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh
disorderly.”
2. To this authority of Holy Scripture I add the confirmation of
reason, to show that we ought to be careful in the choice of companions from
this consideration, that the nature of a man’s friends or company must be of
great consequence to his well-being. And this appears from hence, because they
always have an extraordinary influence, not only upon his own temper and
behaviour, but upon all his chief concernments. Now, comfort in distress is one
of the chief advantages that may be gained by friendship, and one of the
principal ends proposed by it. But how can this be hoped for from any wicked
person? However agreeable his temper may be to a mind at ease, however soothing
his discourse to the ear of the prosperous, yet can it bring little comfort to
a troubled spirit. Besides, the only support in adversity is religion, the firm
belief of a wise and good Providence, directing all things to the best ends.
And how is it possible for a man to administer comfort from this consideration
who lives in rebellion against that great Being? or how can one who hath any
love to religion delight in the company of him who disclaims or disregards it?
Even our interest is injured by intimacy with wicked men; for being guided by
their passions and sacrificing their most sacred obligations to their vices,
they are inconstant and insincere, and likely to betray our interests who
neglect and forfeit their own. Whereas, in conversing with the good man, there
are many advantages. His known sincerity secures us from the anxiety of
suspicion; the principles upon which he acts remove all fears of change in him.
Reputation, it is evident, cannot be obtained by living in familiarity with
wicked men. Friendship either finds or makes men alike; and the world justly
supposes that we resemble those with whom we live in strict intimacy. For this
reason nothing can be of greater use to our character than a close union with
wise and good men. From what hath been said may be drawn some observations
worthy of our attention and care.
1. We should fix in our minds a right sense of the great use which
may arise to us all from society and mutual converse.
2. All among us who may be considered in the different relations of
parents or masters ought to be careful, not only for ourselves, but for those
who are committed to our charge or dependent upon us, in the choice of
companions.
3. We should labour to acquire those good qualities which are most
proper to fit us for receiving and giving improvement by company. Such as
candour and ingenuousness of mind, by which we are brought readily to
acknowledge our own mistakes and to do justice to the perfections or
pre-eminence of another. Such, likewise, is humility, a virtue which makes us
inclined to listen and learn. We should also study to bring advantage to
company, as well as receive from it; to which end we should establish a
persuasion of our truth, honesty, and good-nature. (J. Lawson.)
Surely in vain the net is
spread in the sight of any bird.--
A warning against evil associations
In things temporal the knowledge of peril leads naturally to the
avoidance of it. The parallel of the text implies the existence of danger,
under the simile of the spreading of the net, and develops the character of the
safeguard, viz., consciousness of the purpose for which the net is spread.
Three sources from which the dangers of young people specially arise: evil
associations, false principles, and a perverse and wicked heart. The majority
of young men in the world consist of the sceptical, who despise religion; the
sensual, who hate it; and the indifferent, who neglect it. The sceptical or
philosophical young man is one who has read much, but reasoned little. His
philosophy consists in perplexing and unsettling what others believe rather
than in propounding anything rational of his own. He affects a thorough
contempt of the old tracks and beaten paths, and disclaims all views of
religion that do not afford scope for human reason. There is a second class of
tempters who leave the intellect
untouched, but who do the work of the enemy, and spread nets for the soul by
means of appetites and lusts. Its aim is to make the most of time as it passes,
to drain the cup of pleasure while yet it remains within our grasp, to resolve
the existence of man into the gratification of sense, and leave futurity, which
must be, and eternity, which may be, to shift for themselves. There is yet a
third class of evil associates or tempters, by whom snares are spread for the
soul, who do not pride themselves on their sensuality, like the second, or on
their infidelity, like the first, who literally “care for none of these
things.” These are persons who consider religion as a thing decent and proper enough
for those who have time to spare, such as children and servants, but account it
only the occasional concern of men devoted to study or engaged in business.
1. The antidote for the subtle poison insinuated by the infidel is to
be found in the just consideration of Christ’s atonement.
2. The antidote to the allurements of the sensual is the just
consideration of Christ’s example.
3. The most effectual antidote to the stealthy and subtle poison of
the companionship and example of the indifferent is the just appreciation of
the promises of Christ. Until the infidel can observe the brightness of
Christ’s glory; until the sensualist can sully the purity of Christ’s holiness;
until the worldling can demonstrate the fallacy of Christ’s promises, safety
may always be found by looking unto Jesus, by looking unto Him in our hours of
need. (Thomas Dale, M.A.)
Persuasions and dissuasions
“In vain.” So our translation and some others read it. Some take
it to be in vain in regard of the bird, which will take no warning, but will
fly to the meat, though it fall into the net. So will thieves go on till they
come to the gallows, notwithstanding examples of others hanged before, or
counsels of friends. Others apply it to the young man himself, as if Solomon
had said, “If birds have wit to see and avoid snares, thou, my son, being a
reasonable creature, shouldst much more see the danger of these evil men’s
counsels.”
I. Variety of
reasons are needful to dissuade from evil, Because of our private unbelief;
because of our positive unbelief; because of men’s different dispositions.
II. Reasons brought
to confirm truth must be solid ones. Because nothing but truth should come from
an informer (teacher). Reasons ought not only to be true, but to bear up all
truths. How can a man think to persuade others by that which does not persuade
himself?
III. There is a
world of injustice in the world. Men have different humours and affections. We
must be just in the midst of an unjust generation.
IV. Wicked men have
cunning devices to do mischief. To expedite the business the sooner, that they
may quickly effect their desire, and to remove all impediments. Take heed of
ungodly men’s plots.
Use the dove’s innocency, but with the serpent’s subtilty. (Francis Taylor.)
Warned by seeing
Early in the morning I went out with a fowler to catch wild
pigeons. We hastened through the gorge of the mountain. We spread out our net,
covering up the edges of the net, as well as we might, with the branches of
trees, so that the fowls of the air might not discover it. We arranged the
call-bird; its feet fast, its wings flapping, so as to invite all the fowls of
the air to come and lie there. Then we retired into a booth of branches, and
waited for the birds to come. In the far heights we saw a flock of birds approach.
They came nearer and nearer, and lower and lower, until they were just able to
drop into the net, when they suddenly darted away. We were disappointed. We
waited, and after a while saw another flock of birds come nearer and nearer,
and lower and lower, until just the moment when they were about to drop into
the net, suddenly they darted away. I said to the old fowler, “What is the
reason of this? Let us examine the thing.” So we went out, and we found that,
by the flutter of a tree-branch, part of the net had been exposed, so that the
birds, coming near, had seen their danger and had escaped. And when I saw that,
I said to the old fowler, “That reminds me of a passage of Scripture: ‘ Surely
in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird.’” (T. De Witt
Talmage.)
Traps for men
There are two classes of temptations--the superficial and
the subterraneous--those aboveground, those underground. If a man could see sin
as it is, he would no more embrace it than he would embrace a leper. I want to
point out the insidious temptations that are assailing more especially our
young men. The only kind of nature comparatively free from temptation, so far
as I can judge, is the cold, hard, stingy, mean temperament. What would Satan
do with such a man if he got him? Satan is not anxious to get a man who, after
a while, may dispute with him the realm of everlasting meanness. It is the
generous young man, the ardent young man, the warm- hearted young man, the
social young man that is in especial peril.
1. The first class of temptations that assault a young man is led on
by the sceptic. He will not admit he is an infidel or atheist. Oh, no! he is a
“free- thinker”; he is one of your “liberal” men; he is free and easy in
religion.
2. The second class of insidious temptations that come upon our young
men is led on by the dishonest employer.
3. Temptations to drink. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Moral traps
I. Sin lays traps
for souls. Sin has woven a net and laid it along the path of life. This net is
wrought of diverse materials, such as sensuality, avarice, ambition. Traps are
adjusted for men of every mental type, of every period in life, in every social
grade.
II. These traps
must be exposed. The fowler conceals his net. Sin works insidiously. It takes
advantage of men’s circumstances, ignorance, and inexperience. The work of the
true philanthropist is to expose the traps.
III. These traps
bring ruin to their authors. They lay wait for their own blood. Retribution
overtakes them. If they escape violence themselves, the Nemesis pursues them.
Their schemes may seem to prosper here, but justice tracks their steps, and
their ruin is inevitable. (David Thomas, D.D.)
So are the ways of every
one that is greedy of gain.--
Greed of gold
Midas, the Phrygian
king, asked a favour of the gods, and they agreed to grant him whatever he
should desire. The monarch, overjoyed, resolved to make the favour
inexhaustible. He prayed that whatever he touched might be turned into gold.
The prayer was granted, and bitter were the consequences. Whatever the poor
king touched did turn to gold. He laid his hand upon a rock, and it became a
huge mass of gold of priceless value; he clutched his oaken staff, and it
became in his hand a bar of virgin gold. At first the monarch’s joy was
unbounded, and he returned to his palace the most favoured of mortals. Alas for
the short-sightedness of man! He sat at table, and all he touched turned in
mockery of his wish to gold--pure, solid gold. Then the conviction came rushing
upon his humbled mind, that he must perish from his grasping wish--die in the
midst of plenty; and remembering the ominous saying he had heard, “The gods
themselves cannot take back their gifts,” he howled to the sternly smiling
Dionysius to restore him to the coarsest, vilest food, and deliver him from the
curse of gold.
Wisdom crieth without
The voice of true Wisdom
The Lord Jesus Christ is the true Wisdom which speaks to the sons
of men.
The ancients were accustomed to speak of their religion as wisdom or
philosophy, and therefore the Greeks represented Minerva as the goddess of
wisdom, saying that she had proceeded from the brain of Jupiter.
I. The attitude
which wisdom takes when she addresses the sons of men.
1. Her appeal is an open and public one.
2. Her proposals are of a varied description. She comes into the
streets, where are all manner of enticing frivolities. In the chief places of
concourse, where the multitudes assemble. In the opening of the gates, where
commerce is carried on.
3. Her appeals are pathetic. She “crieth.”
II. The characters
which wisdom addresses herself to. Simple ones; scorners; fools.
III. The promises
which she makes. “I will infuse My Spirit into you.” (W. Barker.)
The fatal policy of drift
I. The message.
1. Eastern method of publication. “She,” beautiful personification of
Wisdom, stands “at the head of the noisy streets” (R.V. margin). Our
methods--the voice--the press, its powerful agency.
2. But the substance of wisdom is always the same, because human
nature, life, and needs are the same. We still require higher guidance in our
hurried life of to-day. Wisdom sees into the heart of things; seeks their
essence; is not drawn aside by accidentals; and puts them in true proportions.
3. The Spirit of Wisdom. “I will pour out My Spirit,” etc. More a
spirit than a science: not to be learnt by rules, but reveals itself to love.
Ruskin says that no great painting can be produced unless the artist loves his
subject. There must be a leaning that way. A boy who leans to science will make
a better naturalist than one to whom slugs and insects are repulsive. So the
spirit of wisdom is poured out as love upon the lover. It purifies thought,
steadies life, and enriches the nature.
II. How treated. “I
have called,” etc. She stands and cries: but the stream passes by engrossed and
heedless, or turns to break a jest upon her. “Simple ones,” those who are as
weather-vanes, light of head, and turned by every wind; shallow of heart, they live
the easy life of hand to mouth. “Scorners,” the superior people, who “know,
don’t you know,” to whom earnestness is fanaticism, and devotion cant. “Fools,”
to whom knowledge is a reproach, who stupidly go on their way, and resent
interference, even for their good. But the excuses! “Let my schemes come to
completion, and then!” “When I have a bit more time!” If a youth neglects
learning a trade or profession, his life will be “bound in shallows and
miseries.” To drift is fatal. But too often this counsel is set at nought.
III. The punishment
of neglect. All through the day she has cried, and has been neglected or
despised. The light begins to fade, the night comes, not of “sleep, balmy
sleep,” but of wrath. Wisdom sadly leaves. The whirlwind begins to gather: the
air trembles: the earth shudders. Most fearful of all is God’s laughter through
the darkened heavens. (J. Feather.)
The cry of Wisdom
Evil-doers are not left without a warning. The warning is loud,
public, authoritative. The wisdom of God is a manifold wisdom. While it centres
bodily in Christ, and thence issues as from its source, it is reflected and
re-echoed from every object and every event. Every law of nature, and every
event in history, has a tongue by which Wisdom proclaims God’s holiness and
rebukes man’s sin. Wisdom speaks through man’s conscience. It is not conscience
proclaiming God’s anger against the man’s evil that has power to make the man
good. It is the conscience sprinkled with the blood of Christ that at once
speaks peace and works purity.
I. Reproof of the
simple who love simplicity. By the “simple” is meant that class of sinners
whose leading characteristic is the absence of good rather than positive
activity in evil. The root of bitterness has not shot forth in any form of outrageous
vice, but it remains destitute of righteousness. The simple for time are always
a numerous class; but the simple for eternity are a more numerous class still.
II. Reproof for the
scorners who love scorning. This class meet the threatening realities of
eternity, not by an easy indifference, but by a hardy resistance. Scorners may
be found on both the edges of society. Poverty and riches become by turns a
temptation to the same sin. Scorners love scorning. The habit grows by
indulgence. It becomes a second nature. It becomes the element in which they
live. Their scoffs are generally parrying strokes to keep convictions away.
These smart sayings are the fence to turn aside certain arrows which might
otherwise fix their tormenting barbs in the conscience. The scorner is not so
bold a man as he appears to be.
III. Reproof for the
fools who hate knowledge. Fools are those who have reached the very highest
degrees of evil. They hate knowledge, and knowledge has its beginning in the
fear of God. The emphatic “no God” of the fourteenth Psalm indicates, not the
despair of a seeker who is unable to find truth, but the anger of an enemy who does not like to
retain it. It is not a judgment formed in the fool’s understanding, but a
passion rankling in his heart. (William Arnot, D. D.)
Wisdom’s voice
I. A divine call.
1. The subject of the call.
2. The places in which it is given.
3. The manner in which it is addressed.
4. The persons to whom it is applied.
II. An important
exhortation--“Turn you at My reproof.”
1. The subject to which this exhortation refers. The great design of
the gospel is to turn men from the error of their way.
2. The inducement given in order to lead us to comply with this
exhortation. The sinner’s inability to turn to God is not of the same nature as
our inability to fly, which is a physical inability. To meet the moral
inability, and to encourage those who are oppressed with a sense of it, the
promise is given, “I will pour oat My Spirit unto you.” He is bestowed in order
to change our hearts, to aid our infirmities, and to strengthen us with
strength in our souls. It is also said, “I will make known My words unto you.”
III. A solemn
denunciation. Of the doom here denounced we have--
1. Its procuring cause. The disregard shown for, and the contempt
cast upon, the Divine message. The act “stretching out the hand” is done--
2. Its terrible nature. He who is shown as graciously promising and
helping is now described as “laughing at calamity and mocking at fears.” And
the woe will be aggravated by the consideration that mercy will be sought when
seeking it will be unavailing. (Author of “Footsteps of Jesus.”)
Wisdom’s warning
The Book of Proverbs is a jewel-case well filled with gems. This
passage is a delightfully Oriental presentation of the truth of the call of God
to the soul of man.
I. The call of
wisdom.
1. By wisdom is meant the beneficent Divine energy.
2. This Divine energy comes into connection with man, and produces a
reflection of itself in him.
3. The complete presentation of this Divine wisdom going forth for
the enlightenment of men is found in Jesus Christ.
II. The results of
the call of wisdom.
1. Refusal of God’s offer is possible, and consequences necessarily
follow.
2. It is possible for men to hear and obey Wisdom’s voice. The result
to the obedient is given thus.
This lesson has its full application in relation to Wisdom
incarnate, even the Lord Jesus Christ. There are diverse consequences for those
who answer this voice diversely. (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)
Heavenly wisdom
The Hebrew has “wisdoms” plural, as including all kinds of true
wisdom.
I. Heavenly wisdom
is worth the looking after. As things publicly cried and proclaimed are worth
taking notice of.
II. This heavenly
wisdom is to be found only in Jesus Christ. As the Son of God He knew the
Father’s will from all eternity. God spake to Him before His incarnation. God
gave Him the Spirit beyond measure. All wisdom that others have in heavenly
things comes from Him.
III. God is very
desirous that men should get heavenly wisdom. Therefore He cries loudly,
earnestly, affectionately. As He gives natural light in creatures and arts, so
He gives supernatural in revelations.
IV. This heavenly
knowledge is offered to the meanest. It is preached in villages. To show that
God is no respecter of persons. To bind men the more to God.
V. The way to this
heavenly knowledge is plain and easy. It is cried about the streets; it is
taught in all languages; it is taught by earthly similitudes as in parables
abundantly. (Francis Taylor.)
She uttereth her voice in
the streets.
The voices of the street
We are all ready to listen to the voices of nature--of the
mountain, the sea, the storm, the star. How few learn anything from the voices
of the noisy and dusty street. Learn--
I. That this life
is a scene of toil and struggle. Can it be that passing up and down these
streets on your way to work you do not learn anything of the world’s toil, and
anxiety, and struggle?
II. That all
classes and conditions of society must commingle. We sometimes culture a wicked
exclusiveness. All classes of people are compelled to meet on the street. The
democratic principle of the gospel recognises the fact that we stand before God on
one and the same platform.
III. That it is a
very hard thing for a man to keep his heart right and to get to heaven.
Infinite temptations spring upon us from these places of public concourse.
IV. That life is
full of pretension and sham. What subterfuge, what double-dealing, what two-facedness!
V. That the street
is a great field for Christian charity. There are hunger, and suffering, and
want, and wretchedness in the country; but these evils chiefly congregate in
our great cities. On every street crime prowls, and drunkenness staggers, and
shame winks, and pauperism thrusts out its hand, asking for alms. (T. De
Witt Talmage.)
How long, ye simple ones,
will ye love simplicity?--
The simplicity of unregenerate men
I. I am to show in
what respects every unregenerate sinner may be said to be a “simple one.” They
may be very far from this character, in point of natural sagacity, acquired
learning, and speculative knowledge of religious things. But, after all, they
are really simple.
1. The unregenerate are simple, in that they are satisfied with
slight, superficial apprehensions of God.
2. The unregenerate are simple, in their being satisfied with slight
thoughts of sin.
3. They are simple, in that they are easily induced to mistake good
and evil, to put the one for the other.
4. They are simple, as to believing the strength of sin in their own
hearts. They do not think their hearts so corrupt and prone to iniquity as
described in Jeremiah 17:9.
5. In consequence of these things, they are easily seduced into sin,
and led to entire apostasy from their former seeming faith and holiness.
6. They are simple, as to the ground on which they imagine their
spiritual state to be good. They are surprised at the niceness and scrupulousness
of the saints in this matter.
7. And as to the approaches of death and eternity: these steal upon
them at unawares. The saints see death in its causes--the holiness of God, and
the sinfulness of man.
II. This simplicity
is loved by sinners. It is not a harmless weakness, but attended with deadly
obstinacy.
1. They have a kind of happiness, notwithstanding of it, which suits
their carnal taste.
2. This happiness depends on the continuance of their simplicity. For
a little Divine wisdom would annihilate that dream, and make their present joys
tasteless.
3. They have an aversion to that happiness which is truly Divine and
holy.
4. Therefore, to part with this simplicity seems to them to be just
the same thing as running into despair.
5. Therefore, either in the way of deceit or of violence, they resist
the means of illumination.
III. What is implied
in God’s observing the time that a sinner continues in this character?
1. It is founded in His omniscience.
2. And in His character as the Judge of all.
3. Because every act of sin in the heart hath its own malignity.
4. Every period of impenitence is an aggravation of all past sins.
5. God is unwearied in this observation (Isaiah 40:28).
6. This observation is recorded that the sinner himself may be brought
to such an accurate remembrance of his sins as is necessary for his taking in a
sense of Divine wrath (Psalms 50:21). (J. Love, D.D.)
Scorners delight in their
scorning.--
Delight in scorning
I shall arrange the matter of this scorning in different
classes, so as to begin with the ultimate and fundamental objects of scorning,
and gradually to come down to the more immediate, and those which are obvious
to common observation.
I. Such things as
relate to the Divine nature and character in general.
1. The infinite holiness of God.
2. The infinite justice of God.
3. All the natural excellences of the Divine nature. When these
natural excellences of strength, wisdom, eternity, etc., are considered as
clothed with the moral lustre of infinite holiness, justice, etc., their beauty
is converted into gloom and horror to the sinner. He hates, and therefore
derides them.
4. The mercy of God.
II. Such things as
relate to the manifestation of the nature and character of God, in His way of
saving sinners: because the glory of God, as above described, shines forth in
this way.
1. The sovereign counsels, purposes, and compacts of the Three
Persons in the Godhead concerning the salvation of sinners.
2. The solemn, holy, and glorious operations of the Godhead, in the
actual procurement of salvation, in the incarnation and humiliation of the
Second Person in the glorious Trinity. While the Redeemer was on earth, there
was a multitude of sinners who poured out their hostile scorn upon Him,
especially when He was upon the Cross (Psalms 22:7, etc.).
3. The holy operations of the Spirit of God, in the Person of Christ,
and in His people.
III. The
manifestations of God, in the character and lives of His children. Here, the
excellences of God are brought near to the eyes of natural men; and there are
two reasons why the natural enmity is more exercised against the saints than
directly against God.
1. They have more lively views of the holiness of the saints than
they have of the holiness of God Himself.
2. Because there is greater appearance of impunity.
This enmity at the saints shows itself in derision.
1. At their sins. The wicked will give no quarter to the least sin in
a child of God.
2. At their sinless infirmities.
3. At the success of their efforts to draw them into sin (Isaiah 29:21).
4. Nicknaming their graces, and then taking liberty to ridicule them.
5. The sorrows and joys of the saints.
6. The hopes and fears of the saints; for the same reasons as above.
7. The counsels and reproofs of the saints.
IV. Such things as
relate to the pure and spiritual worship of God.
1. This is a combination of all the things already mentioned.
2. The spiritual substance of Divine worship is itself hateful to the
sinner; and that considered both as an exercise of sanctified self-love and as
springing from disinterested, voluntary love to God--particularly in this last
view.
3. But the sinner frequently dares not to avow this; not from any
want of enmity, but from a sneaking, cowardly dread of God. And therefore he
fixes his ridicule upon the outside of the service of God. Here he nibbles, and
plays off his sordid artillery.
V. The providence
of God.
1. The external operations of the power and wisdom of God in the
visible world, when considered by themselves, detachedly from His moral
administration, are indeed the lowest of His works. There is least of what is
peculiarly Divine apparent in them.
2. But if the external manifestations of God, in the creation, are
considered as intimately connected with His moral character, then even the
goodness of God therein appears under a gloom, if it be considered as leading
on the sinner to repentance, under certification of double vengeance if he
repent not, and as giving a low picture of his superior and sublime goodness as
to moral things (Romans 2:4-5).
3. And, much more, external judgments. There seems nothing so
material in sin as to justify external calamities. (J. Love, D. D.)
Nothing to replace the Christian religion
Lord Chesterfield being at supper with Voltaire and Madame C---- ,
the conversation turned on the affairs of England. “I think, my lord,” said the
lady, “that the Parliament of England consists of five or six hundred of the
best informed and most sensible men in the kingdom.” “True, madam, they are generally supposed to
be so.” “What, then, can be the reason they should tolerate so great an
absurdity as the Christian religion?” “I suppose, madam, it is because they
have not been able to substitute anything better in its stead; when they can, I
doubt not but in their wisdom they will readily accept it.”
Turn you at My reproof--
Turning from evil
1. What voices does Wisdom find in each generation? Parent-voice;
teacher-voice; experience-voice; revelation-voice; Christ’s voice.
2. Where does Wisdom raise her voice? For them that have ears to
hear, anywhere, everywhere.
3. What is the message which the voice delivers?
I. An assertion.
You need to be turned. This is not the message we expect Wisdom to bring. She
should say, “Study. Seek good teachers. Think. Read.” She does say, “Turn”; and
so she reveals the one deep and universal need. Simple ones, turn from folly.
Scorners, turn from the deceit of scorning. Fools, turn from your wilful,
wicked ways. The first thing Wisdom would have us do is change. The first call
of Christ, the true Wisdom, is, “Repent.”
II. A truth. You
must turn yourselves. The call is based on our possession of will, and on the
fact that we have hitherto made such misguided, such ruinous, choices with our
wills. Wisdom calls for a new and different exercise of our will. There is a
sense in which we cannot save ourselves; there is a sense in which nobody can
save us but ourselves. We can shift it on nobody’s shoulders. Therefore the
Divine persuasions are, “Choose; turn.”
III. A duty. You ought
to turn at once. Under the constraint of such gracious promises and
persuasions. For Wisdom wins as well as calls. She promises to give her spirit,
the love of knowledge, the joy of knowing, to all who will turn from selfish
pleasure’s giddy ways. And Christ persuades and promises that He may win. He
promises “the life that now is, and the life that is to come.”
1. Pardon.
2. Cleansing.
3. Healing.
4. Conscious sonship.
5. Love.
6. Joy unspeakable.
7. Heaven.
From dead-works--turn. From worldly pleasures--turn. From
self-seekings--turn. From sin--turn. Let the call of Wisdom and of Christ ring in our
ears wherever we go, in busy street, in quiet home, in bustling business, in
lonely room. (Weekly Pulpit.)
Sinners admonished
Various are the means which the Lord employs to convince the
wicked of the error of their ways, and bring them to a knowledge of Divine
truth.
I. The reproofs He
administers.
1. By the Scriptures, which contain the most pointed and salutary
admonitions, sending us for instruction and reproof to--
2. By ministers. They persuade men by the terrors of the Lord, and
encourage them by the promises of the gospel.
3. By conscience. The internal and universal monitor; the witness to
all our proceedings. It speaks with sovereign authority.
4. By providence. By--
II. The submission
He requires. He invites return--
1. With penitent hearts. Genuine repentance includes--
2. With believing minds. By faith we--
3. With fervent devotion. We should call upon Him--
4. With prompt obedience. Religion requires an universal renunciation
of the principles and habits of vice, and an entire devotedness to God, both of
heart and life.
III. The
encouragement He imparts. “Pour out My Spirit.” The participation of the Holy
Ghost is an inestimable privilege, which includes every holy principle that He
implants, and every gracious disposition which He requires. The Spirit of God
is--
1. A convincing Spirit. He opens the eyes of our understanding; and He imparts a
spiritual discernment (John 16:8-11).
2. A quickening Spirit. He removes the death of sin, and infuses the
life of grace.
3. A comforting Spirit.
4. A sanctifying Spirit. He is called “the Spirit of holiness.” He
sanctifies His people wholly, and preserves them blameless unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23). (Sketches
of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Hindrances to spiritual progress
I. God requires
nothing more than man can do. The text requires men to do something; and it
promises assistance only on the condition that they make use of some strength
which it supposes them to possess. But it does not require of them that they
should change their hearts or renew their natures. They are to “turn at God’s
reproof,” and it is assumed that they might turn if they would. We enjoin on
men that they set vigorously about the reforming what they know to be wrong,
and the cultivating what they know to be right. The command of the text does
not overrate the powers of those to whom it is addressed.
II. God makes a
gracious promise. We assume that the help of God’s Spirit is indispensable to
our taking the first step, as well as the last, in the path of salvation. But
our turning is the condition of our obtaining the Spirit. No men are altogether without the
inward strivings of the Spirit. Because the Spirit is not acting apparently in
a man’s renewal, we may not assume that He is not acting. He may be engaged in preparatory
work. Turn at God’s reproof, and you will receive the Spirit in its renovating
power, and have the wisdom which is strength, and peace, and life, and
immortality. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
I will pour out My Spirit
unto you.--
The gift of the Spirit
Some take it for illumination only, and gifts of knowledge. So it
agrees well with the words that follow, “I will make known My words unto you.”
If ye hearken to My reproof I will tell you more of My mind. Ye shall know more
of heavenly truths. Others take it for sanctifying gifts of the Spirit.
I. They that will
turn to God shall not want the plentiful help of God’s spirit to direct them.
They will pray for God’s Spirit. Encourage men to turn to God, for then they
shall have His Spirit for their instructor, sanctifier, and comforter.
II. The spirit and
the word must go together to guide. Both are joined in this verse. A lying
spirit it must needs be that contradicts
God’s plain Word. (Francis Taylor.)
Because I have called, and
ye refused.
The rejected call of
Wisdom
I. The manner in
which it has called upon you--in which the appeals of Wisdom and of religion
have been made. In the manner, the variety, the intensity, the tenderness, the
unwearied nature, and the sleepless watchfulness of appeal, nothing has
occurred that can be compared with the calls which have been made to you to
abandon a sinful course and to give your heart to God.
II. The manner of the
reception of this call. You have neglected these calls and warnings; you paid no attention to
them, as if they did not pertain to you, or as if they had no claim to your
regard. You have argued against the truth; you have cavilled against the truth;
you have urged excuses that you might not obey the truth; you have sought
plausible reasons for neglecting to do what you knew to be your duty; you have
taken refuge under the imperfections of Christians for not being yourself a
Christian. You have done this long. In some cases it has been the work of a
life; in all cases it has been a leading object of life thus far.
III. The effect of
neglecting and disregarding these calls. “When your fear cometh,” etc. Your
wealth cannot save you; your accomplishments cannot save you. Death cares for
none of these things.
1. You will die, and the fear of death will come upon you.
2. The fear of the judgment day will come upon you, for that cannot
always be avoided.
IV. When these
things come it will be too late to cry for mercy. There must be a limit to the
calls of religion and mercy, for life is very brief, and they all lie this side
the grave. Can you suppose that He will always appeal to the sceptic and the
caviller, and bear with his scepticism and cavils through a vast eternity? This
cannot be; and somewhere there must be a limit to the offers of mercy to men.
That may occur before you shall reach the deathbed, short as is the journey
thither. May not the mind become so worldly, and the heart so vain, and the
conscience so “seared,” and the life so wicked, and the will so obdurate, and
the whole soul so utterly shattered and ruined by sin, that conversion shall be
hopeless and ruin certain? It may occur on the death-bed: then the cry for
mercy may be vain. And there is a world where the cry of mercy is never heard.
Embrace the call, whether to you it be the last or not, and your eternal
welfare will be secure. (A. Barnes, D.D.)
The folly and danger of
refusing the calls of mercy
I. That God calls
on sinners.
1. This is clear from many parts of Scripture (Isaiah 55:1; Isaiah 55:3; Isaiah 55:6, etc., 65:1, 2; Ezekiel 18:30-31).
2. The end to which He calls us in these different ways is to repent
and turn from our sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21; Mark 1:15). As to the nature and manner of those calls, they are--
II. That sinners
too often refuse to hearken to the calls of God. Many hear the gospel calls,
but few are obedient to them. The old world would not be reformed by the
preaching of Noah. The Israelites stoned the prophets that were sent to them (Jeremiah 7:24-26; 2 Chronicles 24:21). Now, whence can this proceed, that so many
are disobedient to the heavenly call?
1. It is partly owing to unbelief.
2. Others slight the Word because they are prejudiced against the
messenger that brings it, regarding his imperfections and inadvertencies more
than the weight of those things which he delivers.
3. Others do it through ignorance: darkness and blindness of mind
make them hardened and obstinate. They know not God, their sinful state, their
need of Christ, nor the beauty and excellency of spiritual things.
4. Others through pride reject the calls of God (Revelation 3:17).
5. Others through love of the world. The business of the world
engrosses their time, and the pleasures of it entirely captivate their
affections.
6. Others through a false peace.
III. The evil and
danger of refusing to hearken to God’s calls, His counsel and reproof
1. It is the most heinous ingratitude to God.
2. It is a contempt of God’s power.
3. We rob ourselves of the greatest advantages.
4. By rejecting the calls of God we run ourselves into the greatest
misery and ruin.
What threatenings and woe
are denounced against the obstinate sinner! I now come to apply the subject.
1. Let us admire the mercy of God in thus calling sinners.
2. Let such as have obeyed the calls of God rejoice therein; they
have cause of eternal joy and eternal thankfulness.
3. Let such as have shut their ears against the calls of God be
persuaded now to hearken to them. (T. Hannam.)
Irreversible chastisements
These words are awful, but
not hopeless; they pronounce God’s judgment on the finally impenitent; the
penitent they but awaken, that they may “hear the voice of the Son of God and
live.” The sentence pronounced is final. If, hearing, men will not hearken, a
time will come when all these calls will but increase their anguish and misery.
Because these words relate to the day of judgment, is there no sense in which
they are fulfilled in this life? It should appal any one to find that they do
not appal him. Conscience bears witness that he has been one of those against whom
the words denounce woe. All suffering, mental or bodily, has a twofold
character; it is at once punishment and chastisement; it at once expresses
God’s hatred for sin and mercy to the sinner; it is at once the wrath and love
of Almighty God. Of God’s judgments, many are for this life without remedy. God
warns that He may not strike; but, when He does strike, a man’s whole life is
changed. To certain courses of sin God annexes certain punishments, and
although, for a time and up to a certain degree of sin, they may not, to any
extent, follow, yet, beyond that bound, they do follow irresistibly,
irreversibly. Manifold diseases “of mind, body, or estate,” whereby God
chastens sin, have this in common, that there is no certain time when the blow
comes. We cannot tell the rule by which God dispenseth suffering and loss. To
us they seem to fall more suddenly on some, while others go on longer without
visible punishment. We only know that happy they who are chastened soonest. The judgments God is
constantly sending should awe us all, especially such as are even
half-conscious that there is some besetting sin, slight as it may seem, to
which they are continually yielding. Unheedful, such permit sin to accumulate
after sin. And sin after sin is filling up the measure of their provocations
and the fearful treasure of the wrath of Almighty God. All sin must be eating
out the love of God and His life in the soul. If God’s fire do fall, then man’s
only wisdom is, with what strength he has, darkened though his path be by the
bewildering of past sin, to grope his way onward in the new path wherein God
has set him. The past is, in one sense, closed. He has been tried, has failed,
and is in this way, perhaps, tried no more. His trial is changed. If we failed,
we have missed what, by God’s grace, we might have become. Man may gather hope
from the very severity of God’s punishments. While we mourn our neglect of past
calls, our sorrow, which is still His gift and call within us, will draw down
His gladdening look, which will anew call us unto Him. As we would hear the
last blissful call, hearken we each one of us to the next, whereby He calleth
us to break off any, the very slightest, evil, or to gird ourselves to any
good, and follow Him without delay. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
God and the impenitent
sinner
I. God and the
impenitent sinner in probation.
1. God’s conduct towards the sinner in probation.
2. The sinner s conduct towards God in probation.
II. God and the
impenitent sinner in retribution. 1.God’s conduct towards the impenitent sinner
in retribution.
2. The impenitent sinner’s conduct towards God. They cried to Him for
help. They may bitterly call upon Me, “but I will not answer.” There is earnest
prayer in hell, but it is fruitless. (Homilist.)
Wisdom personified, and
love incarnate
Wisdom is one of the
Divine attributes; and Christ “is of God made unto us wisdom,” as well as
“righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” We may surely expect,
then, that up to a certain point the utterances of Wisdom and of Christ would
coincide; so that in these passages in the Book of Proverbs we should be able
to find, as we find throughout the whole of the Old Testament, some portion of
“the testimony of Jesus.” But does it follow that because some, or even many,
of Wisdom’s utterances may be correctly spoken of as the words of Christ
Himself, therefore all of them may be so regarded? To see how utterly foolish
is this way of reasoning, we have only to remember how many of David’s words
not only coincide with those of Christ, but are actually quoted in the New
Testament as if Christ Himself had uttered them; and yet no one is so foolish
as to insist that all the words of David can be safely put into the mouth of
Christ. As we said at the beginning, wisdom is one of the attributes of God;
and therefore the words of Wisdom must be, up to a certain point, the
expression of the Divine mind. We may say that Wisdom expresses the mind of God
in creation, in providence, in the whole realm of law. And in this realm, as
well as in the realm of grace, the Son of God has His place as the Revealer. We
may regard Christ and Wisdom as identical throughout the realm of natural law;
so that no error would result from the substitution of the one for the other
within that range of truth; but when we leave the realm of law and enter that
of grace, it is entirely different; then it may not only be injurious but fatal
to take the utterances of mere wisdom and put them into the mouth of Christ. If
Christ had been only wisdom, He could not have heard the sinner’s prayer. But
He is also “righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”; and that makes
all the difference, for now that He has made an atonement for our sins and
opened up the way of life, He can speak, not only in the name of wisdom, but of
pardoning mercy and redeeming grace; and, accordingly, far from laughing at
calamity and scorning the penitent’s prayer, which wisdom if it were alone
might do, He can, and will, and does “save them to the uttermost that come unto
God by Him.” Having thus considered the extent to which we may expect to find
“the testimony of Jesus” in the words of Wisdom, let us now test the principle
we have laid down by an examination of the passage. The paragraph begins with
this bold and striking personification: “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth
her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the
openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying”--and then
follows the passage with which we have mainly to do. Let us, then, listen to Wisdom’s
cry, and observe how truthfully and powerfully it is translated into the
language of men. We shall see its truth to nature better if we first look back
a little. She begins, not with a cry, but with tender words of counsel and of
promise (verses 8, 9), “My son, hear the instruction of thy father,” etc. These
are the tender and kindly words of counsel in which she addresses the young man
setting out in life. Following this are tender and yet solemn words of warning
against the tempter whom every one must meet (verse 19): “My, son, if sinners
entice thee, consent thou not,” etc. But now time passes on, and Wisdom’s protegé
begins to go astray, to forget the instruction of the father and the loving
law of the mother; and so now she lifts up her voice and cries, entreating the
wanderer to turn before it is too late (verses 22, 23). Time passes on, and the
warning cry has been as little heeded as had been the tender voice of Wisdom at
the first. The son, instead of being prudent, has been rash; he has been, not
economical, but extravagant; not temperate, but dissipated; and so he has gone
on till his last opportunity has been thrown away, his patrimony squandered,
his health gone, his last friend lost. Then once more his early monitor
appears. The prodigal remembers the tender words of counsel and of promise. He
remembers how, when he was just beginning to go astray, before he had become
hopelessly entangled in evil, Wisdom lifted up her voice and cried. For a long
time his old counsellor has not been present to his mind at all. He has been
hurrying on in courses of evil, but now his very wretchedness forces him to
stop and think. And, again, there stands Wisdom before him. How does she
address him now? Does she speak to him in soothing tones? Does she promise to
restore him his money, or his health, or his friends? Alas, no: she cannot. All
she can say is, “I told you it would be so. I warned you what would be the end;
and now the end has come. You must eat the fruit of your own ways, and be
filled with your own devices.” That is positively all that Wisdom can say; and there is no tenderness
in her tone. She seems to mock him rather, she seems to laugh at his calamity.
Such is the voice of Wisdom in the end to those who have despised her counsel
in the beginning. And is not the whole representation true to nature? Yes, it
is perfectly true that “Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the
streets,” and says these things so loudly that no listening ear can fail to
hear them. It is no matter of deep philosophy. It is no ecclesiastical or
theological dogma. It belongs to the Proverbs, the proverbs of the streets. The
merit of Solomon, in this chapter, is not in telling us something we should not
otherwise have known; but in putting what everybody knows in a very striking
form. I question whether in all literature there can be found any more vivid
and alarming description of the terror and despair of a remorseful conscience,
as it looks back and recalls, when too late, the neglected counsels alike of
earthly and of heavenly wisdom. So far Wisdom; and if it were only with her
that sinners had to do, it would go hard, not only with the profligate and
openly vicious, but with the most respectable. But He with whom we have to do
is not known as wisdom. He is wise indeed; and all wisdom is from Him. But
there is that in Him which is higher than wisdom. “God is love.” Wisdom is the
expression of His will in the realm of law; but love is the expression of
Himself. The love of God is not a lawless love. It is not at variance with
wisdom. The law which ordains that the sinner must eat of the fruit of his own
way and be filled with his own devices cannot be set aside by the mere emotion
of compassion. Hence it was necessary, in order to redeem man from the
condemnation of sin, that the Holy One of God should suffer. Hence, too, it is
that, though by the suffering and death of Christ believers in Him are set free
from the condemnation of sin, yet the natural consequences of the
transgressions of wisdom’s laws are not abolished. If health has been wasted,
it will not be miraculously restored. If money has been squandered, there must
be suffering from the want of it. If character has been forfeited by dishonesty
and impurity, it may never be redeemed on this side the grave. The laws of
wisdom are not repealed or set at naught; they remain in force. But such has
been the ingenuity, so to speak, of the Divine love, that without infringing on
the proper domain of wisdom expressing itself in law, the way has been opened up for the full
pardon and ultimate restoration even of those who have wandered farthest and
sinned most. And accordingly, a passage like this awful one in the first
chapter of the Book of Proverbs, instead of obscuring the Divine love in the
smallest degree, or interposing so much as a thread between the sinner and his
Saviour, rather serves as a background on which to set forth the radiant form
of the Saviour of mankind,
“Whose love appears more orient and more bright,
Having a foil whereon to show its light.”
(J. M. Gibson, D.D.)
A neglected warning
Some years ago a
terrible inundation occurred in Noah Holland, due entirely to neglected
warnings. The dykes, as the custom is, are inspected by a dyke engineer on
certain days every year. A farmer reported the dangerous condition of one
repeatedly, but whether from carelessness or because he considered it
interference, the engineer laughed at all his fears, saying the dyke would
stand many years yet. Not long after, during a violent storm, part of the dyke
was carried away by the waters. In a short time several villages, and miles of
cultivated land, were under water, many lives being lost. (S. S.
Chronicle.)
Critical periods in a
sinner’s life
Every sinner, while
unreconciled to God, is in constant and imminent danger of the loss of all
things. Yet there are seasons of special danger, periods in his life when,
unless he repent and turn to God, he ripens very fast for judgment.
I. The season of
youth is one. The mind is then receptive, the heart is tender, the character is
unformed, evil habits are not yet matured, and all things invite. It is
“flood-tide,” and is sure to lead on to victory if he takes advantage of it.
But neglected, thrown away, the future is almost sure to miscarry.
II. The period of
conviction of sin is one of extreme peril. Then the sinner is on the threshold
of life. But hesitating, grieving the Spirit, turning back, losing his
conviction, he may be ruined for ever.
III. The period of
Divine chastisements is a critical period. God’s end in these usually is to
reclaim men. To sin on in spite of them; to refuse to be corrected; to wax
worse and worse in the day of trial, and under God’s afflictive dispensations,
is to run a fearful risk of final and eternal abandonment. (Anon.)
I also will laugh at your calamity.
Retribution
We have here a
personification of that attribute of God which is specially employed in words
of counsel and admonition, and is here made to represent God. The voice of
Wisdom is the voice of God.
I. The merciful
appeal of God to sinners, and its rejection.
1. God is said to call.
2. God is said to stretch out His hand. In the gesture of earnest
appeal, making use of arguments of deed as well as of word. Providence warns.
The hand of God in history demonstrates what providence in its dealings with
individuals teaches, that virtue and happiness, vice and misery, go hand in
hand; that morality and self-interest in the long run merge; that the path of
duty and the path of safety coincide.
3. God is said to counsel. The message of Scripture, with its
manifold invitations and warnings, is faithfully delivered.
4. God is said to reprove. By severe strokes of discipline God speaks
to those who in their infatuation have refused to pay attention to His former
appeals. But the rod of correction may be disregarded. The possibility of such
reckless opposition to the merciful appeal of God demonstrates the power of the
evil principle in fallen human nature. We have here a complete reversal of the
ordinary principles of self-interest which actuate men in all circumstances,
except in the sphere of morality.
II. The despairing
appeal of sinners to God, and its futility. Their position, as here depicted--
1. It is unspeakably awful. The text speaks of calamity, of fear, of
desolation, of destruction like a whirlwind, of distress and anguish. The text
speaks of a terrible aggravation of their distress, occasioned by the stinging
sarcasm which accompanies their suffering.
2. It is strictly retributive. All their suffering has been earned by
themselves. As they formerly eluded Him in His efforts to seek and to save
them, so now He will not be found of them.
3. It is utterly hopeless. The futility of their appeal is absolute.
Their cry is the cry of blank despair. They have sinned away their day of
grace, and their offended God will be entreated of them no more. It may be said
that the moral sense is shocked by such a representation of God’s conduct
towards impenitent sinners as that which we have drawn from the text. Our reply
is, that it is presumptuous for any mortal to say what is, and what is not, in
harmony with the Divine perfection, or consistent with the Divine character. In
nature we know God can assume an attitude of sternness. In the moral sphere
there may be occasions when He shall stand forth as an inflexible Ruler, as an
immovable, righteous Judge. (A. O. Smith, B. A.)
The after-time for the
sinner
Wisdom is represented as
calling, waiting, pleading; but, as concerning some who heard the call,
altogether in vain. At last Wisdom grows indignant, as well she may. In
carrying out His gracious purpose of revealing Himself to us, God may use every
act and every feeling that is genuine to man. It is quite proper that men
should deride the proud and the malicious when they are baffled and put to
shame, and this natural feeling is here used to represent the feeling of God
towards those who contemptuously despise the riches of His grace. The merely
human gave the tone to the revelations of God that were made in Old Testament
times. It is the divinely human--it is humanity at its best--which gives tone
to all the representations of God made in the New Testament. So we have now
severities and indignations, even the “wrath of the Lamb,” but not derisions,
not scorn, not any “laughing at calamity.” The text does but express the
feeling we have when the wicked meet their deserts.
I. Evil has its
certain fixed consequences. Law equally reigns in the moral and in the material
world. Every moral action has its certain and well-defined consequences.
II. Nothing checks
consequences but the removal of causes. Illustrate from cases of infectious
disease. Man’s great evil is wilfulness, and to remove this ever-fruitful
source of moral mischief requires no less than a regeneration.
III. By the
resistance of good counsel the evil grows stronger. He who goes after sin has
to resist much counsel and persuasive influence. And this is the ever-working
law, good resisted leaves evil stronger.
IV. If evil grows
stronger, its consequences must become more serious, and will be brought on more
rapidly. The simple ones turn deaf ears, and hurry after the tempters; and then
their “fear comes as desolation.”
V. Evil may grow
beyond all influence of reproof, and then its issues must prow overwhelming
indeed. Men may get beyond the reach of all available moral influences.
Conceive what that condition must be. Compare the state of the
“devil-possessed.” A most awful and alarming picture is that of a moral being
abusing himself until he actually becomes insusceptible of moral impressions.
In those who resist moral counsel and invitation a wilfulness grows up which
becomes every day more difficult to overcome; a process of heart-hardening is
actually going on. Be warned, then, of the “wrath of the Lamb.” (Weekly
-Pulpit.)
And your destruction cometh as a whirlwind.--
The figure of the
whirlwind
In eastern countries, so
rapid and impetuous sometimes is the whirlwind that it is in vain to think of
flying; the swiftest horse or the fastest sailing ship could be of no use to
carry the traveller out of danger. Torrents of burning sand roll before it, the
firmament is enveloped in a thick veil, and the sun appears of the colour of
blood. The Arab who conducted Mr. Bruce through the frightful deserts of Senaar
pointed out to him a spot among some sandy hillocks, where the ground seemed to
be more elevated than the rest, where one of the largest caravans which ever
came out to Egypt, to the number of several thousand camels, was covered with
sand. The destruction of Sennacherib’s army (2 Kings 19:25) was probably (comp. Isaiah 37:7) by the blast of the hot pestilential south wind blowing from the
deserts of Lybia, called the simoom. (B. E. Nicholls, M.A.)
Verse 28
Then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer.
Sowing disobedience, reaping judgment
One of the marvellous reasonings of the Judge with the criminal is recorded
here.
I. God in mercy
visits a rebellious generation.
1. The call. It is in the earthquake and in the storm. Day unto day
proclaims it, and night unto night. There is no speech or language where it is
not heard. The call has come with distinct articulation from the lips of
prophets and apostles. It sounds with authority in a human conscience.
2. The hands stretched out. There is a way, and the way is open unto
the Father. There is no obstruction, there is no forbidding, there is no
upbraiding. Sinners are welcomed with open arms.
3. The counsel. Specially addressed to those who procrastinate.
4. Reproof. If they will not be enticed by the promise of heaven, He
will threaten them with the fear of hell. Everlasting love needs a strong, hard
instrument wherewith to work out her blessed purposes on an unpliant race.
Judgment looming in reserve, serving meantime by its blackness to make the
invitation more winning.
II. A rebellious
generation neglects or resists the gracious visitation of God. Men have ears and stop
them.
III. They shall eat
the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices. Judgment
will be an exact answer to disobedience, as fruit answers to seed, or an echo
to the sound. (William Arnot, D. D.)
The danger of deferring repentance
There is a good English proverb that “He who neglects the
occasion, the occasion will neglect him.” In previous verses we have a general
proclamation (Proverbs 1:20); a merciful reprehension (Proverbs 1:22); a gracious exhortation (Proverbs 1:23); a yearning promise (end Proverbs 1:23); a gracious threatening.
The words of the text are underclapt against all those that procrastinate their
repentance and returning home to God. Note the parties themselves that do
prolong this day of grace; their earnest and diligent seeking after God; the
unseasonableness of the time of their seeking; and the frustration of their
hopes. Those that will not hear when He calleth them, God will not hear when
they call unto Him. Thus the Lord dealt with His people in Ezekiel’s days.
There is a double day, a white day, and a black day; a day of salvation and a
day of damnation. There are three reasons for this point.
1. The law of retaliation.
2. The time of God’s attributes. Both mercy and justice have their
season in this life;
and when mercy hath acted her part, then cometh justice upon the stage, and
acteth her part.
3. It is God’s use to do so in other things, even upon the contempt
of temporal blessings, and therefore much more in matters of grace and
salvation. Illustrated in the cases of the Israelites, Ishmael, King Saul,
Esau. If God so severely punish contempt of temporal blessings, how will He
punish contempt of proffers of grace and salvation? He will come with martial
law against all those that contemn the gospel (John 3:18). God doth commonly give men a
day, but no man or angel doth know how long this day lasteth. God gave the
angels a day, Cain a day, Nineveh a day, the antediluvian world a day. All we
know is that this day is for us now. Now is the day of Christ upon you. What is
the meaning of all those Scriptures which show how God doth deliver up men unto
the spirit of giddiness, and unto the spirit of slumber? And what means the
“hardening of men’s hearts,” and “searing of men’s consciences,” but only to
show that the day of grace may end unto a particular man, ten, twenty, nay,
forty years before his death. If thou refuse this day, thou refusest all; for
what knowest thou but this very day may be thy day? The reason is--
1. Because God’s patience is in His own breast, and who can tell how
long it will last?
2. Because God’s patience gives no mark or inkling of it before it
ends.
3. Because God reckons up every hour.
4. It is a wonder that the day of grace is not ended already, and
that thou art not now in hell. When Christ first comes to the soul, He
witnesseth grace and mercy to thee if thou wilt repent and amend; yea, He
witnesseth forgiveness of sins, redemption, and salvation, if thou wilt
believe; but if not, He will be a swift witness against thee. (William
Fenner, B.D.)
Nature’s warning
This is a sublime dramatic utterance. It is Wisdom that is
represented as speaking. By wisdom among the Orientals moral philosophy was
understood, or science speaking on the side of morality. Taken in its largest
way it is as if nature (in the text) had risen up, and had declared from her
own seat, and by her own authority, what was the history of transgression
against her fundamental laws. It is the voice of physiology; it is the voice of
health, it is the voice of natural law. It is the voice of the poorhouse, the
gaol, the gallows, speaking out and telling men what are the ends of those ways
which are essentially the violation of God’s laws in nature. We see men
violating the fundamental laws of health, strength, character, prosperity, and
society, little by little, and because sentence is not speedily executed
against evildoers, they are presumptuous, and say, “How doth God know?” At a
later stage, when the fatal work is done, and disease, decay, poverty, the
coldness of men, the indifference of society, disgrace, neglect, infamy,
suffering, and death come upon them, then they begin to call out in these
several states, and condemn everybody but themselves. Then they seek to patch
up their broken constitutions. Then they attempt to put on the aspects of
honesty. Then they try to regraft themselves upon the tree from which they have
been broken off, but largely in vain. They call, but nature will not hear. They
plead unto deaf ears.
I. Look at the
mildest forms of transgression--those of indolence and self-indulgence. How
quietly men spend their lives doing nothing! But when they pass the meridian of
life, and begin to go down the farther slope, they find that nobody cares for
them. They are in everybody’s way. The probabilities are that one who has spent
the first part of his life in indolence and self-indulgence will spend the last
part of his life in the same way.
II. Look at the
same thing as it takes place in regard to a man’s reputation. Every man is a
character-builder. Every man is building himself up by his purposes, his deeds;
and these form his character, and it is his character that stands by him. His reputation
is simply the shadow that it casts. What a man is, is his character; and what
men think him to be is his reputation. Men sometimes think they are building
character when they are only getting reputation. Few are aware of this
distinction, and so it comes to pass that many men go steadily downward. They
begin to violate the truth. They equivocate. They walk on the perilous edge of insincerity. And,
notwithstanding this, they do not
perceive any change in themselves. But any man who lacks
simplicity very soon gets
to be suspected by other people. Men are dishonest in the same way. They are
tricky. Such a man goes on from day to day, and at last it is whispered of him,
“That man is not honest,” and presently all the world knows it except himself.
III. Look at the
same thing in respect to the sins which a man commits against his own self. Of
all wastefulness there is none like that which men commit upon their own persons.
There are many ways in which men drain off the vitality of their whole brain
and nervous system. Excessive virtuous industry will do it. Passionate
self-indulgence will do it. Excessive addiction to stimulating drinks will do
it. While there may be exceptional cases, the law for all such is destruction.
The laws of nature have only a limit of mercy, but they have a limit of mercy.
A man may be overtaken and yet may recover himself. There is a limited amount
of atonement in nature. But there must be no presuming on it. The laws of
nature are made for the obedient. Society is established for the obedient. It
has very limited resources for reforming men. You are safe if you do not go
down into vice. Let alone mischief before it be meddled with. Keep clear of all
evil. Obedience is safe. Obedience to God in nature; in your own body; in the
laws of society; obedience to God everywhere--that is absolutely safe, and
nothing else is safe. Sin, however sweet and smooth and safe it may seem, is
not safe. It is safe to be right; it is dangerous to be wrong. (H. W.
Beecher.)
They shall not find Me.--
Who seek and do not find?
Scripture speaks of men calling upon God, and of His refusing to
hear them. And yet our Lord said, “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye
shall find.” How explain this seeming contradiction? These things are not said
of the same persons, or rather
of the same characters, at the same time. What if I were to say that now, at
this very moment, the words of the text are both applicable to us, and not
applicable? The words were at no time in any man’s earthly life so true an they
will be at the day of judgment. Then they may be true in a greater or less
degree; they may be substantially true in the life that now is. Is Christ’s
promise, “Seek, and ye shall find,” equally true to all of us? Take most of us:
suppose cite of us to have reached boyhood with a bad disposition, ready for
the first temptation, with habits of good uncultivated. Does God hear his
prayers? Or in trying to turn from evil to good have you ever found your
resolutions give way, till you fell back again to what you were at the
beginning? In that case you sought God and failed to find Him. Or has it ever
happened to you to have done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo?
Then you may realise that you may seek some good and be unable to attain. We
know what it is that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not
thoroughly one in His Son Christ Jesus. The very feeling of coldness and
unwillingness to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working
in us that perfect death which is the full truth of the words of the text. (Thomas
Arnold, D. D.)
The misery of late repentance after a wicked life
I. There is a time
when wicked men will be overtaken with those miseries that no warning would
serve them to prevent by repentance and reformation.
II. They will be
one day sensible of their own folly, and cry unto God for mercy and
deliverance.
III. But God will
not then regard their repentance, nor be moved by their prayers. For
understanding--
1. Lay down three things.
1. How useless the prayers and repentance of wicked men will be as to
the recovery of their happiness in this life! They are usually unprofitable as
to those advantages which they have lost by their obstinate and, till now,
incurable folly; such as health, plenty, and good name. And they will not
procure them that comfort from the principles of religion which relieves good men under
their adversities.
2. How unprofitable their importunity in seeking the mercy of God
will be as to their escape in the day of judgment! For them who repent not till
their turn comes in the other world, it will turn to no account for them; they
must hear the irreversible sentence, and suffer the unavoidable effect of it
for ever. And all this implies no want of goodness in God. (W.
Clagett, D.D.)
Counsel rejected
Better stop now. Some years ago, near Princeton, New Jersey, some
young men were skating on a pond around an “air-hole,” and the ice began to
break in. Some of them stopped; but a young man said, “I am not afraid! Give us
one round more! “He swung nearly round, when the ice broke, and not until next
day was his lifeless body found. So men go on in sin. They are warned. They
expect soon to stop. But they cry, “Give us one round more!” They start, but
with a wild crash break through into bottomless perdition. Do not risk it any
longer. Stop now. God save us from the foolhardiness of the one round more! I
thank God that I have been permitted to tell you which is the right road and
which the wrong road. You must take one or the other. I leave you at the forks;
choose for yourselves! (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way.
God’s method of punishment
It is to let us punish ourselves. In this way man is led by bitter
experience to see his own folly and God’s wisdom. When we will not be guided by
God He grants all our wishes and desires to show us how foolish and miserable
they are. When a man is “cursed with every granted prayer” he learns by bitter
experience that it is possible to be his own worst enemy. His long-indulged
desires become tyrannical tormentors. The promises of God are conditional. He
will give us good things if we will do our part; but not if we neglect it, or
do the contrary to it. God has given us the dignity of freedom, which involves
the terrible possibility of disobeying His commands. It is the best thing for
the thoughtless and careless to be let alone of God. Those who look back over
their lives can trace most of their errors to the fact that they have tried to
take themselves, so to speak, away from the guidance of God. Within the man who
delights in sin, and loves darkness rather than light, there is a hell of his
own making, from which he cannot depart any more than from himself. Only those
who are beyond reformation, and who have altogether decided for the devil, God
in this way leaves alone to be creatures of their own appetites and the prey of
their sins. On others God inflicts sharp discipline in order to make them like
Himself. (E. J. Hardy.)
Vain regrets
A man in South Africa bought a piece of land for the
purpose of farming it, but, after a short trial, finding it unsuitable for that
purpose, and hearing that gold was found in the neighbourhood, set to work to
see if he could
find any, but failed. Disgusted with his purchase, he sold it for what it would fetch, getting
what we would call “a mere song” for it. The man who bought it, having also
heard that there was a likelihood of gold being found, lost no time in making a
vigorous search, and was rewarded in finding both gold and diamonds, which made
him rich beyond his wildest dreams. Some years after- wards the former owner,
who had left the country, heard from an old friend that gold by the ton and
diamonds by hundreds were being taken from his bit of land, and it is said that
he gnashed his teeth with rage and chagrin, as, with his hands clenched until
the nails entered the palms, he exclaimed, “Oh, what have I lost! what have I
lost! “You who have not accepted Christ, take care that some day when salvation
is no longer yours to take or refuse, you in the bitterness of anguish can only
say, “Oh, what have I lost! what have I lost!”
The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
Prosperity dangerous to virtue
By “fools” are here represented all wicked and vicious persons.
The misery of such persons is, that when God gives them what they most love,
they perish in the embraces of it. The reasons for this are three.
I. Because every
foolish or vicious person is either ignorant or regardless of the proper ends
and uses for which God designs the prosperity of those to whom He sends it. Which
ends are--
1. To try and discover what is in a man.
2. To encourage men in a constant, humble expression of their
gratitude to the bounty of their Maker, who deals forth such rich and plentiful
provisions to His undeserving creatures.
3. To make them helpful in society. No man holds the abundance of
wealth as a proprietor.
II. Because
prosperity (as the nature of man now stands) has a peculiar force and fitness
to abate men’s virtues and to heighten their corruptions. For its abating their
virtues. Virtue is such a plant as grows upon no ground save that which is
tilled and cultivated with the severest labour. But what a stranger is toil and
labour to a great fortune!
2. For heightening and inflaming men’s corruptions. Nothing more
effectually betrays the heart into a love of sin and a loathing of holiness
than an ill-managed prosperity. The vices which particularly receive
improvement by prosperity are--
1. Pride.
2. Luxury and uncleanness.
3. Profaneness and neglect of God in the duties of religion. Those
who lie soft and warm in a rich estate seldom come to heat themselves at the
altar.
III. Because
prosperity directly indisposes men to the proper means of their amendment and
recovery.
1. It renders them utterly averse to receiving counsel and admonition.
2. It unfits for the sharp trials of adversity which God uses to
correct and reduce the soul.
This he may avoid by a pious observance of these following rules:
1. Let him consider on what weak hinges his prosperity and felicity
hang.
2. Let him consider how little he is bettered by prosperity as to
those perfections which are chiefly valuable.
3. Let a man correct the gaieties and wanderings of his spirit by the
severe duties of mortification. Since the fool in his best--that is, in his
most prosperous condition--stands tottering upon the very brink of destruction,
we should solicit God, not for temporal enjoyment, but for a heart that may fit
us for it, if it be God’s will that prosperity be our lot. (R. South,
D.D.)
The danger of prosperity
The title of “fool” is the usual character of the sinner in the
language of Wisdom, in opposition to prudence. Prosperity comprehends all
things desired by worldly men--riches, honours, pleasures, health, strength,
peace, plenty, all that is grateful to the carnal mind and appetites. Prosperity
abused is fatal and destructive to foolish sinners.
I. Prosperity is
destructive to the wicked. There is no pestilence and contagion in the nature
of things that are pleasing to our faculties. They are dangerous, not as made
by God, but as managed by Satan. The primary design of God, in His most free
and rich benefits, is to endear Himself to us and bind us to His service. When
the wicked abuse God’s blessings, defeat His kindness, and frustrate the
excellent ends of it, He most righteously and severely continues their
prosperity, that foments their lusts and renders them more wilful and
incorrigible and the more guilty of their own damnation. Prosperity is a fatal
ambush for their surprisal and ruin. Prosperity abused is destructive to
sinners, both meritoriously, as it induces a deadly guilt and makes them
obnoxious to the revenging wrath of God, and effectively, as it is opposite to
the felicity and perfection of man.
1. Prosperity is the continual incentive of the vicious affections.
2. Prosperity occasionally incenses an irascible appetite.
3. Prosperity inclines sinners to an impious neglect of God.
4. Prosperity exposes dangerously to the tempting power of Satan.
5. Prosperity is destructive to many, in that it affords them advantages
to corrupt others, and reciprocally exposes them to be corrupted by others.
6. Prosperity usually renders the means of grace ineffectual.
7. Prosperity renders men averse to suffering for the sake of Christ.
8. Prosperity makes men
careless of evils that might happen.
9. Prosperity is the great temptation to delay repentance until the
sinner’s case is desperate.
II. The folly of
prosperous sinners. Folly is the cause of their abusing prosperity and the
effect of their prosperity abused.
1. The perfection of man consists in the excellences of his spiritual
and immortal part.
2. All the prosperity in the world cannot bring true satisfaction to
him that enjoys it, for it is disproportionate to the spiritual and immortal
nature of the soul. The folly of the sinner is a voluntarily chosen folly, a
culpable and guilty folly; the most ignominious folly, the most woful folly.
III. The justice,
certainty, and heaviness of the judgment coming on sinners who abuse their
prosperity. Justice, for their destruction is the fruit of their own choice.
Certainty, for it is unchangeably established by the Divine ordination that the
pleasures of sin shall end in the misery of obstinate sinners. The heaviness
will be according to the aggravation of their sin. Temporal prosperity is,
therefore, no special sign of God’s favour. (William Bates, D.D.)
The fool’s prosperity
I. These words
describe the ungodly.
1. By their present
way of sin.
2. By their future state of misery.
II. They describe
the sin of the ungodly.
1. By the occasion.
2. By the act.
3. By the habit. Prosperity and ease is the occasion; turning away
from God and rejecting His counsel is the act; and folly or simplicity is part
of the habit.
III. They describe
the Godly.
1. By their obedience. They hearken.
2. By their privilege or reward. They be quiet from fear of evil.
Self-slayers
Suppose an iceberg possessed an intelligence and conscience;
suppose it should say while dwelling in the polar region, “It is because of the
sun that I am an iceberg,” what would you answer? You would say, “It is not
because of the sun, but because of your attitude towards the sun.” Go down and
place yourself beneath its melting rays, permit yourself to be enfolded in the
arms of the Gulf Stream, and you will soon cease to be an iceberg, and become a
part of the warm and gentle waters which enfold you. Or suppose we take this
same truth in the realm of physical law. Many a Hindoo has stood for years with
a napkin bound about his eyes that he might not see the sun, and when the cloth
has been removed and he has sought to look upon that sun, he could not see.
Behold, he had become blinded. Was it not he who had blinded himself? And yet,
was it not also true that working through the natural law God had blinded him?
There is a man sweeping toward Niagara, and I, standing on the shore, cry out,
“Pull for the shore; the rapids are just below you, and you will go over the
falls”; but he simply says to me, “God is too good to permit me to go over the
falls”; and I cry again and he heeds not. But presently I see him grasp the
oars. Alas, it is too late. Sweeping, whirling, plunging, his boat, like a
cockle-shell, dashes over the cataract, and he is gone. Now we may say that the
God who made water run down hill slew that man, but is the responsibility with
Him? No. The man who knew that law and refused to recognise it slew himself.
Well, men realise this in relation to their own physical organisation, because
they realise that they have a physical constitution; but they do not realise
that they have just as truly a moral constitution; that the laws of the one are
as inevitable as the other; that in reference to the soul it is as true as of
the body; “the soul that sinneth ‘against the law of its being’ shall die.” (G.
T. Dowling, D.D.)
Whoso hearkeneth unto Me
shall dwell safely.
Quiet from the fear of evil
The secret of a quiet life has been the great quest of man. The
Confucian, the Buddhist, the Pythagorean have busied themselves with it, as
well as Solomon. It was the motive of the mightiest movement of mediaeval
Christendom. Simeon on his pillar, Bernard in his cell, Francis in his rags,
were all occupied with it; and in these restless, stormy, anxious times it is
the question of questions still.
I. The fear of
evil is the element of it with which man has most directly to do. Man is a
being “looking before and after.” Apprehension and memory furnish together
pretty well the whole of our bitter experience in life. The fear of evil is not
an animal, it is strictly a human experience; part of the endowment of our
race.
II. It is precisely
this fear of evil which, by God’s help, we are to conquer; the evil itself is
wholly beyond our power. Calamity haunts the evil air of an evil world, and man
catches the infection. He lives fearfully, and faces death fearfully, till he
has learnt the Divine secret.
III. How is the
power to be won?
1. By realising how purely independent of things is man’s peace and
happiness.
2. By taking a true measure of the range of our being and its resources.
3. By perfect filial trust in God. We want a heart, an arm to rest
on. The only perfect rest is in God. This sense of the Divine love, the clasp
of the everlasting arms, is exquisite and blessed rest. (Baldwin Brown, B.A.)
The blessedness of hearkening to the voice of heavenly wisdom
To hearken means not only to hear, but to hear with attention, so
as to follow the advice given (James 1:25); or, as the Saviour says (John 10:27). Such hear, not to forget,
but to treasure up in their memories, that they may reduce to practice what
they hear: such hear, not to cavil and find fault, but that they may profit by
the instruction they receive. Now, this attention is assuredly the work of the
Spirit on the heart, as we read of Lydia (Acts 16:14). And hence it behoves all,
when hearing God’s Word, to lift up their hearts to Him, that it may be with
profit to their souls. And what are the promises made to such hearers? Safe
dwelling and quietness from fear of evil. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
operating on the heart, brings solid and lasting peace. The first of these
promises is beautifully illustrated by our blessed Lord Himself at the close of
His sermon on the mount (Matthew 7:24-27). The man who hears
Christian instruction , and who satisfies himself with listening and approving,
but goes no further, never casts away his sins, or really lays hold on Christ,
may flatter himself that all is right with his soul, because he has feelings and
convictions and desires of a spiritual nature; but such a man’s religion will
break down entirely under the first flood of tribulation, and fail him
completely when his need is the sorest, whereas the man who hears Christian
instruction, and practises what he hears, upon such a man the floods of
sickness, sorrow, poverty, disappointments, bereavements may beat, but his soul
is unmoved, his faith does not give way, his comforts do not forsake him. Not
only, however, is safety promised to him who hearkeneth to the voice of
heavenly wisdom, but such an assurance of it as shall remove every distressing
fear. Not only quietness from evil, but from the fear of it. Men in general
suffer much more from fear of evils which they expect may come upon them than
from those which they actually have to undergo; but God “keeps him in perfect peace whose
mind is stayed on Him.” A wicked man is terrified with imagined danger; a godly
man is not afraid even when the danger is real; for the one has a witness for
him in his own breast, whereas the other carries within a witness against
himself; and this witness is a judge to condemn him, yea, an executioner to
torment and vex him. To be freed from the fear of evil is, in truth, the
perfection of a spiritual state; and a great part of the saint’s portion both on
earth and in heaven lies in the deliverance and security from it. But it may be
asked, To whom are these gracious promises made? They are made to all: high and
low, rich and poor, old and young. The term used is as large as any can desire:
“Whoso hearkeneth.” Let them only listen to Christ’s invitation in the gospel,
and render obedience to His commands,
and the promised blessings shall be vouchsafed to them. (T. Grantham.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》