Proverbs 14:14-34

The Backsliding Heart, Etc.

Pro 14:14-34

Backsliding takes place in the heart, and not in the foot. It is in the foot indeed that we show it, but the collapse took place in the spirit before the foot began to falter, and to recede, and to fall. The issue is that the backslider shall be filled with the fruit which he has coveted; he shall drink deeply of the draught which he has mingled: he shall be allowed to see how fully he has succeeded in making a failure of life. He shall be mocked and taunted by the spirit of judgment, so that when he takes up his idol of success, he shall find it to be an image of utterest disappointment; his harvests shall rot in his hands; if he pull down his barns and build greater that he may store his goods, he will find that when he has completed his barns his goods are nowhere to be found. There is no substance in sin, no real treasure, no solid enjoyment, nothing that abides with the consent of benediction and the security of a broad and generous defence. Sin gives what little it has in the way of joy at once, and at the end it is nothing but ruin. On the other hand, "a good man shall be satisfied from himself:" it has often been observed that he is not to be satisfied with himself, but from himself, from the treasure that is within him, from the thoughts which he has accumulated, from remembered prayers, from recollected promises, from all the retrospect of discipline and progress he shall draw comfort continually. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." The word of God becomes part of the very man who treasures it and studies it; it is impossible to distinguish between him and the word on which he lives, for the word has entered into the very fibre of his soul, and to take it away, were the extraction possible, would be to leave the man without faith, and hope, and joy. Here is the difference between badness and goodness; badness fails; after making desperate efforts to cheer and to gladden, it sinks into the deepest melancholy; whereas goodness grows, extends, ripens, becomes more and more by daily use, and at the end is a greater blessing than it was at the beginning. The good man can bear to look back upon life; he knows its failure; he owns the sins which he has committed against God; yet knowing that his supreme purpose has been to please the Almighty and to walk in the ways of Jesus Christ, he feels a blessing descending upon him, whilst he causes to pass before his eyes all the goodness and mercy of God. Take from a good man his money, his health, his society, yea, his very books, from which he has drawn innumerable thoughts stimulating and ennobling, yet his memory abides, a treasure-house well filled, an inspiration renewed from above day by day, as necessity increases in the urgency of its claims. Goodness shall stand when all things fail. A good man need not be a learned man, a pedantic man, a man full of intellectual ideas, speculations, and romances; he is to be meek, simple, genuine, real in every thought, unselfish in every desire; and when a man sets his life by the grace of God in this direction he will enjoy such satisfaction as God only can cause him to realise.

"The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going" ( Pro 14:15 ).

Such belief is not to the discredit of the simple man, but to the disgrace of the man who misleads him. No character is more admirable than that which is marked by simplicity and consequent trustfulness; it is only because the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and the courses of the world are so much out of line, that simplicity is not only undervalued but sometimes contemned. The prudent man is put in apposition to indicate that he is a man of affairs, who understands a good deal of the way of the world, and who looks below the surface to find real meanings: this kind of prudence is itself an affirmation of the wickedness of the world: prudence in itself may or may not be a virtue; everything depends upon its origin and its purpose: when a man is so prudent as to suspect everybody, to regard every word as a trap, and every proposition as a lure to destruction, his prudence simply signifies that he has found out that he is in a bad world, and that everything is to be examined with a view to detecting in it the spirit of selfishness and all evil. Whether simplicity or prudence would in the long run the more prevail cannot now be told, because no fair test can be applied. Certainly Jesus Christ would seem to teach that simplicity is better than wariness, and that trustfulness is nearer to the Spirit of God than is suspicion. It is right to understand the men by whom we are surrounded, and to obtain some notion of their spirit and purpose, in order that we may conduct ourselves aright towards them. This is what God himself does: to the froward he shows himself froward; to the meek he is all gentleness; to the trustful he is all grace. There are men who pride themselves upon their prudence, not knowing that their prudence may have been gained through an experience which has cost them dearly, and which has revealed in many instances their folly and their incompetence. The prudence of the wise man will be placed at the disposal of the simple, and will not be wholly devoted to the confounding of those whose intentions are evil. Wherever one man is wiser than another he is a debtor to the man who is not so wise, and is bound to pay him of the gold of wisdom, that the man may be able to manage his affairs in the world with discretion and success.

"He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked devices is hated" ( Pro 14:17 ).

The angry man and the man of wicked devices may be two very different characters; the one is foolish, but the other is morally bad. Anger that is soon excited seldom succeeds in its object; it is so obviously irrational, untimely, and unequal to the occasion, that it produces no lasting effect upon those who are the objects of the ebullition. Anger that comes soon goes soon. It is mere excitement, agitation, tumult, having no basis of reason and no spirit of justice; having no deepness of earth of a moral kind it soon withereth away. The very word "soon," however, shows that there is a place for anger in the administration of human life: "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Jesus Christ himself was angry; we are to be angry with all evil, all meanness, all want of honour, with everything that partakes not of the spirit of justice and charity. But the deliberateness of our anger will be the measure of its sacred effect. When a man is heated through and through with moral indignation his whole nature will feel the glow, and his words will be inspired with an energy which nothing could give them but a conception of what is due to the very throne of heaven. Angry men make speeches which they have to withdraw; angry men commit themselves by many words that are not critically chosen or justly applied; and in the multitude of their apologies and the abjectness of their humiliation they lose every trace of moral dignity. A man of wicked devices may appear to be very clever; he is inventive; he is always equal to the occasion; he is cunning in the manufacture of traps, in the manipulation of gins and snares; he always knows the course which the enemy is going to take, and he can lie in wait for him at some convenient point: but the very fact that he is a wicked man spoils all his devices of their inventiveness and genius; that which would be able, strategic, soldier-like, in arrangement and execution, becomes merely a trick, a shameless endeavour or attempt to outwit clever men in doing that which is good, or evil men in doing that which is destructive: the moral character of the man destroys even the intellectual attributes of his inventions and devices. Receive nothing from the bad man; have no dealings with him, avoid him, pass by him, and turn away; even when Satan himself quotes Scripture look not so much at the Scripture that is quoted as at the enemy who quotes it, and be sure that when he applies Scripture to human necessity he is about to wound rather than to heal, to stimulate in a wrong direction rather than to "allure to brighter worlds." Happily, the man of wicked devices so reveals himself in the issue that he is hated, contemned, loathed, and abandoned. He who once thought himself so clever as to be popular is now seen through, and is not so much the object of pity as of contempt. All wickedness leads downward. There are no upward slopes from wickedness; the whole course is bleak, downhill, and necessarily brings itself to a close in the fire that is unquenchable.

"In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury" ( Pro 14:23 ).

Sometimes it is difficult to see where the profit is. We speak of having spent our strength for nought, of having run in vain, of having brought the day to a close without having filled our arms with sheaves. There is, however, a sense in which all labour ends in advantage: it is so in learning, in study, in the prosecution of art, in devotion to business, in the study of character, indeed, throughout the whole circle of human thought and occupation. A man may write much, and may throw his writing away because it does not fulfil his expectation or purpose, yet the very act of having written it has been as a discipline to the writer, has stirred his faculties, and by even revealing weakness has prepared the way for the cultivation of strength. Every time the arm is lifted the muscles are improved. Every time the fresh air is breathed a blessing of healthfulness is left behind. Labour means industry, devotion, conscientious attention to affairs that demand our interest: it is set in apposition to the talk of the lips mere breathing, mere foaming, mere boasting, wordy declarations of great programmes which are never brought to realisation. The teaching of the text would seem to be that labour brings wealth, and mere talk brings penury. If this is so the law is obviously just and good. Society would no longer be consolidated and secure if mere talk brought men to honour and wealth and solidity of position. In all society the labourers must be more in number than the talkers. Understand that nothing is here said against talk; society cannot do without speech; eloquence has a great part to play in the education of the world; what is spoken against is the talk of the lips that is, mere talk, talking for talking's sake, love of hearing one's self speak, talking with the lips when the heart is taking no part in the communication: when a man truly talks his intellect, his heart, his conscience, his judgment, his whole being speaks; every word is marked by sacredness of purpose, every promise is a vow, every declaration binds the soul. It must not be understood that anything whatever is said in disparagement of talk, speech, eloquence; we must again and again remind ourselves that the talk that is condemned is formal, mechanical, labial, taking nothing of virtue out of the speaker, and communicating nothing of strength to the hearer.

"In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge" ( Pro 14:26 ).

Such is the testimony of the ages. The Bible is full of illustrations of the action of this doctrine. In no book probably is the fear of the Lord so elaborately described as to its nature and its application as in the Book of Proverbs. Throughout the whole of the Bible the fear of the Lord is declared to be the beginning of wisdom. It is not a servile fear; the worshipper is not a croucher, waiting in an abject position in order to be noticed by a tyrannical despot: fear means reverence, veneration, awe, a sense of the grandeur and majesty of the Lord, not only as that term stands for infinity, brilliance, and attributes of an intellectual kind, but as it stands for holiness, truth, purity, justice, and every expression that indicates moral supremacy. He who fears the Lord is strong in the confidence of ultimate justice; he is confident also in the final exposition of providence, being assured that the way of God to man will be so revealed at last that it will be seen to have been the right way, the only true way, notwithstanding the varieties of the road, the steep hills, the bleak deserts, the stony paths, the cold rivers that had to be crossed in the dark night, the afflictions that had to be endured when heart and flesh had failed and strength had been exhausted, at the last it will be seen that God has not given one stroke too much, taken away one treasure too many, or dug one grave too deep; the righteous will be the first to confess that God has done all things wisely, well, and lovingly. A beautiful expression is "his children." Here in the very midst of the Proverbs, a book of merely sententious maxims it might be thought, we find the sublime doctrine of the fatherhood of God. Here too we find that God's children need a place of refuge; they have often to flee from the storm, from the wrath of man, and from an apparently angry nature, for every law seems to fight against them: blessed be God, when all outward things are marked by an excitement of an apparently uncontrollable kind, are heaving and tossing as if shaken by an earthquake, the children of God can go not to law but to the Lawmaker himself, yea, to the very heart of God, and there can rest in hope and confidence, and whilst the storm howls without around the rock of the sanctuary that holy place can be filled with sacred and triumphant song. Have we really endeavoured to find a refuge in God? Have we not too often made him a mere object of veneration and not a tower that is to be fled into as into an inviolable home? What are the uses, so to say, which we have made of God? We ought to be able to exclaim, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

"Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people" ( Pro 14:34 ).

By "righteousness" we are not to understand any formal system of theology, or any sectarian definition of religion. Nor can we make an ideal religion and set it up as a national idol, pointing towards it as if it indicated all our belief, and then turning aside to do what we pleased in the world at large. Righteousness means morality, justice, truthfulness, moral frankness, a sense of moral obligation, a lofty, dignified, all but divine character. It is true to-day that wherever the character of a nation stands highest all its obligations are regarded as certain of fulfilment; men trust such a nation; even when that nation comes into temporary adversity men are perfectly sure that when due time has elapsed and strength has been recovered, every word that has been spoken will be redeemed with honour. Commerce bears the same testimony; let a nation be known to be fickle, to trifle with its monetary obligations, to be capable of making great promises and forgetting them, and that nation can never issue a loan with any advantage; the world laughs at the roguish device, and flees away from the tempter as from a robber: on the other hand, let it be known that a nation is so moral, so sensitive of honour, that come what may it will redeem its pledges, and all the world is anxious to lend money to that nation. We do not keep within theological bounds when we admit a proverd of this kind. We go outside all merely theological limitations, and find the proverb accepted and endorsed by men of the world. Sin is a reproach to any people, because it trifles with their character, destroys it, perverts their purposes, makes their word of non-effect, turns every covenant into an empty pretence. Sin enfeebles people, takes out of them their moral pith, and by so much depletes them of physical strength and dignity, so that they are unprepared for the time of assault, and are unable to cope with the overwhelming foe. Character should lie at the basis of all greatness and all stability: it does this in reality, but it ought to do this by universal admission, so that men may know to what they are trusting, on what ground they are sowing their seed, and with what reasonable expectation they are looking forward to harvest. A marvellous thing is this that sin operates politically as well as religiously bears upon the general condition of the people as well as upon the specific condition of the churches. Kings have to weigh their people morally as well as to number them physically when they would set forth on any expedition of aggression, advancement, acquisition, or civilisation. The people may be many, but if their character is rotten their arm cannot be strong; they will play fast and loose; they will flee away in time of danger, for only he whose soul is alive with a sense of the divine presence is courageous, steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the works of patriotism as well as in the works of the Lord. Every man who teaches a child the way of true wisdom is a benefactor of the nation. Every church that is wisely conducted is a support to the empire. Every sermon that is delivered with fervour, intelligence, and effect is a guarantee of national advancement. Let us look more to morals, and less to politics, when we would estimate the influence and dignity and usefulness of any nation. Let not our praying people cease their holy ministry; it is despised, laughed at, by men who are guided wholly by physical considerations, who bow down before the idol of pomp and glitter and wealth: but in reality prayer may be doing more for the nation than is being done by all its fortifications and battalions. It is our business, however, as Christian people, without endeavouring to compare and to balance one action against another, steadfastly to cleave to God and constantly to exhibit to those who look on a character that is marked at once by strength and gentleness, courage and unselfishness, a desire to advance and yet a willingness to let patience have her perfect work.