Proverbs 24:11-20

Opportunity and Obligation, Etc.

Pro 24:11-20

Thus a great fire is set to the excuses which men make in regard to their negligence of opportunity. We are not merely called upon to do the work that we see, we are also called upon to go out and see if there be not more work to be done. A man may enclose himself within walls of luxury and beauty, and declare that he sees no poverty, no weakness, no need of exertion on his own part; but he has put himself in a false relation to society, and that false relation will not save him from divine inquest and judgment. We do not destroy the poverty of the world by declining to look upon it. We are not released from moral obligation by moral indifference. Job says, "The cause which I knew not I searched out"; I made inquiry about it; I cross-examined men who could give information, and in conducting this course of inquest I was not gratifying curiosity, but creating a basis for beneficent action. Were we in proper mood of heart towards God and towards man, we should call upon poverty in its retreats, we should cause all human necessity to breathe its prayer into the ear that we might according to our means relieve its distress. Whoever pleads that he would do more good if he could see more occasion for doing it is guilty before God of falsehood. Poverty is at the door; if it is not on the broad thoroughfare, we have but to turn down a little to the right or to the left, and there we find every form of human want. God will not allow us to say we do not know; Jesus Christ himself protested against this foolish plea, when the men on his left hand said, "When saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or naked, or sick, or in prison?" He was not moved by the suggestion to release them from their obligations. The things we do not know we ought to know. Thus we are called upon to work with both hands diligently; we are called upon both to find the opportunity and to use it for God. If we sit until everything is made ready to our hands probably we should complain of having little to do; but if we go out in the early morning, and spend the whole day in anxious inquiry, we shall soon discover how large is the field within which our labour is to be spent. The poor and the neglected, the sore in heart and the helpless, should find from this verse that the divine eye is engaged on their behalf, and the divine judgment will follow those who neglect opportunities which might have been discovered. Poverty and want and helplessness are set in our midst as opportunities for the culture of the soul, as opportunities for proving that giving is the true receiving, that sacrifice is the true life, and that good-doing is the assured immortality. When is God represented in the Bible as other than the friend of the poor, the judge of the fatherless, and the saviour of all men? More people will be driven away into darkness on account of moral neglect than on account of intellectual heresy. Nowhere are we taught that mere opinion will save men, but everywhere we are assured that he who does justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God shall be received into everlasting habitations. Here, then, is a point at which all men may begin, without knowing aught of grammar, philosophy, or theology; salvation is not by metaphysics, salvation is not by works; salvation is a consciousness of the free gift of God, and a response to that free gift in the form of personal purity and social beneficence. Away with excuses, with shallow pleas, with selfish devices; let the overflowing river destroy them, and let the judgment from above burn them up.

"Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him" ( Pro 24:17-18 ).

What can be more intensely evangelical than this exhortation? Although it may appear to be but a moral maxim, yet in its outworking we shall require all the aid of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Never was human nature put to such strain and stress as at this point. How difficult it is not to wait for the halting of our foe, and not to rejoice in the fall of our enemy! Even when we restrain our lips from ostentatious delight, there may be hidden in the heart a subtle and secret congratulation, because our prophecies have been fulfilled and our estimates have been verified. The spirit of the gospel operates in a directly contrary way: "Love your enemies" is the golden motto of the Christian faith; "Feed those that would destroy you" is the holy exhortation of the Cross of Christ. The reason given for this self-repression is profoundly religious, namely, "lest the Lord see it, and it displease him." We know that the Lord looketh not on the outward action only, but on the inward and inspiring motive. Can we truly say that we are not glad when the enemy falls? Are we quite sure that in our heart there is no secret felicitation in consequence of the mischief which has come upon the head of him that opposed us? Do we not quietly say, it may be with assumed reverence, that we are not surprised, because we were sure that such conduct must be followed by such consequences? It is difficult for a personal enemy to be just; it is almost impossible for us, when we are prejudiced against a man, not to hear of that man's disasters without inwardly rejoicing that they have fallen upon him. We are called upon to be Godlike in our magnanimity; we are to have no merely personal enemies; we are to regard ourselves as parts of a great whole, and to consider that all evil-doing is directed against the Holy One rather than against ourselves. To these sacred realisations we are called by the Holy Spirit: how difficult it is to attain them, and to give practical utility to them, they know best who have seen most of the tragedy and horrible-ness of actual life. It is hard for Christians to be Christlike. We have certain theological opinions behind which we are too prone to perpetrate certain moral delinquencies; we mistake the nature of the kingdom of heaven, and we wound the very spirit of Christ, when we suppose we are right morally because we are right intellectually. Moreover, there can be no intellectual rectitude that does not stand upon moral righteousness; the words may be right, the form of the speech may be unquestionable, the nominal and formal orthodoxy may be beyond all successful contention, yet, because of the want of moral earnestness, integrity, love of honour, and love of equity, all that we profess in words and set forth in form shall be accounted worse than worthless. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin; to him who has a fine intellectual conception that is not balanced by a faithful moral consecration shall be given to feel the weight and the bitterness of the judgment of God.

"Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at the wicked; for there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out" ( Pro 24:19-20 ).

Thus we come again and again upon the commonplaces of moral behaviour. Why this repetition? Is it because of intellectual inability? Is it indicative of a failure of moral imagination? Far deeper than this lies the reason of the reiteration of such exhortation and injunction. It is because we are so weak, it is because temptations are so numerous, it is because the enemy is so industrious, that we require to be guarded at every point and that we need to be exhorted constantly, lest our inspiration should fail and our impulses should cool and vanish. After every period of intellectual excitement there should come a period of moral instruction and comfort, lest the excitement should leave us in a state of weakness, and so should leave us a prey to the ever-watchful enemy. A wonderful piece of mosaic is this Biblical literature: here we have intellect, there we have imagination; here is reasoning, there is music; here is a statement of doctrine in the sublimest terms, and there is a persuasion to obedience in tenderest words; here is a battle illustrative of great principles, and there is a prayer expressive of conscious need: we must comprehend the Bible in its totality and in its unity; we must be Biblically learned even if we are textually ignorant, that is to say, although we cannot quote separate and independent texts we should have within us the spirit of the Bible, the very genius of revelation, that shall prevent us foisting upon Jesus Christ any sentiment which is unworthy of his history or of his Cross. The reasoning which follows the exhortation is once more profoundly religious, "there shall be no reward to the evil man," for "the candle of the wicked shall be put out." We are to look at the end rather than at the beginning; where we cannot understand the beginning we may be able to comprehend the end; if men are continually sowing seed and no harvest comes, we know that the seed that has been sown was worthless or has been sown only in seeming and not in reality. Every action is known by the fruit it bears: first there comes the motive, then there comes the deed, then there comes the consequence of the deed; and not until we have seen the whole process are we qualified to judge any part of it. Beautiful and suggestive is the figure that the light in which the wicked man walks is but the light of a candle, an exhaustible flame, a perishing glory, a merely flickering spark; whereas the righteous man walketh in the glory of the sun, the splendour that is round about him is the radiance of the eternal throne; he walks not in a light of his own creation, but in the very radiance of heaven. Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and Christians are the light of the world only in a reflective sense. Many there be who light their own candles, who speak their own praise, who live upon their own theories and speculations, but in the end there is nothing but darkness. The earth receives its light from above, the flowers drink in the glory of the sun; so in our earthly light we should be related to the eternal fire, and in all the expansion of our character we should be fed and sustained, comforted and blessed, by ministries far beyond. We cannot struggle up by some poor intellectual effort to the moral dignity which does not fret itself because of evil men; all this superiority of circumstance comes out of our communion with God: he who is hidden with God in heaven can come down to the affairs of earth and time with a dignity which reckons correctly, and which abstains from the debasements which attach themselves to the earth. The man who has seen eternity makes a proper estimate of the bubble of time. He who has seen a light above the brightness of the sun is not dazzled by the candles of this world; he who has entered into the spirit of the triune God can look upon the prosperity of the bad man as upon an idle dream, coming out of nothing, and vanishing into nothing evermore.

Prayer

Almighty God, show us somewhat of the wonders of thy way, that we may be rebuked and kept in expectant silence, and restrained from interfering with the course of thy providence even by our words. Thou hast set us in a great mystery of life; one thing belongs to another; all the lines travel up towards thyself; the right hand of the Lord is full of power, and the Lord's throne is at the head of all. We are lost for want of view. All things are too near us. We are too near ourselves. We cannot see ourselves until we stand in God; then do we behold our littleness and frailty, and then do we begin to kindle with the consciousness of immortality. But we are looking down to the dust; we are mistaking all things as to their size and colour and use, and our very ability becomes a snare, and our inventiveness is but a new way to destruction. Oh that we were wise, that we were often silent, that we could breathe out our life in quiet prayer, and that many a time we could but look up when we wish to interfere. What an effectual working is thine. How thou dost commingle all things, and curiously relate them, so that men cannot take them to pieces, and understand the mechanism thereof. We always leave out the principal item; our calculation is always wrong in the first line, and therefore all our multiplication is but an elaborate mistake. Oh that we could stand still and see the salvation of God. Oh that we had grace enough to let things alone. If we could but watch thy wonder-working hand, we should see how thou dost crown all things with perfectness. Yet thou wilt keep us in our own sphere, and there we can do our little day's work with industry and patience, and with some measure of success. Yet help us to know that it is only an intermediate sphere, not a portion cut off from thy creation, without any relation to central life and thought; show us that we are working in a corner which is vitalised from the centre. May we be diligent cultivators; may we answer the opportunity which comes to us yea, may we buy it up as a precious pearl, and use it well, to the master's praise. May we be found at the last to have been wise, seeing things that are afar off, reckoning up forces that lie away at a great distance from the vision of the body; and thus as the ages come and go, may the word of the Lord, as known by us and spoken by us, appear, reappear, and shape the moulding of all time, and direct every thought and impulse, and sanctify every ambition. We bless thee for the religious life. How it warms the heart; how it stirs the mind; how it feeds the best forces of our nature; how it keeps us back from littleness, meanness, malevolence, impurity, injustice, wrong! Verily, it is the presence of God in the soul: may it never be taken away from us. All these things we have learned through Jesus Christ thy Son. He was like unto a man yea, he was in all points tempted like as we are: he hungered, thirsted, and was often tired and sat down by the roadside; but still when we came near him we fell back from him again: there was a line of limit there was a point of approach, and yet a point of separation. Never man spake like this man. Never man looked like this man. There was healing in the very hem of his garment; there was heaven in his gracious smile. He died for us, and rose again; he paid the price of his blood for our redemption: we will therefore not think of our littleness by reason of our sin, but of our value because of the price paid for our ransom. Amen.