For this thing is done of me. How much has God to do with the events and issues of our life? Speaking in the idiom of the ancient Hebrew writers, we should say - Everything. Speaking after our modern fashion, we should say - Much; and so much that we are altogether wrong and foolish if we do not take it into account. The words of the text, together with the context, suggest -

I. THAT GOD DOES MANY THINGS WHICH, ANTECEDENTLY, WE SHOULD NOT EXPECT HE WOULD DO. Who would have expected, apart from his own warnings, that he would bring about the rupture in the kingdom of Israel? How very preferable, in many ways, does it seem to us that that little kingdom should remain united and strong instead of becoming divided and weak! We should have thought that the Divine wisdom would devise some other punishment for Solomon's vain-gloriousness and defection, for Rehoboam's childish folly, than that which the text tells us was wrought of him; there might have been, we should say, some personal humiliation or some temporary national calamity from which it would soon have revived. But so it was not to be. And though it may yet remain inexplicable, it is certain that this rending of the kingdom in twain was "of God." In the history of our race, in the course of Christianity, we have witnessed or have read of the same thing. Sometimes it has been in the fate of institutions. God has let some prosper that we should have expected him to bring to ruin, and others he has allowed to perish that we should have expected his interposition to save. And many times it has been the lives of men How often have we wondered that the bad and baneful life has not been shortened, that the noble and valuable life has not been spared! How difficult it has been to believe that this thing and that thing were "done of him"! Yet we know that the guilty do not live one day longer than he permits, and we know that "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." We believe, though we cannot see, that God's hand is on all the springs of human life, that he is directing everything, and that those issues which at the time, or long after the time, seemed strange and deplorable, will prove to have been kind and wise and just.

II. THAT THE GUILTY SHOULD ASCRIBE TO HIM THE ISSUES OF THEIR FOLLY. Rehoboam's senseless behaviour at Shechem had obviously much to do with the political disaster that followed. Yet Divine righteousness had so much to do with it that God said," This thing is done of me." Crime, vice, folly, sin, work out their issues in poverty, shame, sorrow, death. The moralist stands over the fallen culprit and says, not untruly, "You have brought this upon yourself; it is your own guilty hand that has brought you to the ground." Yet, with equal truth, and perhaps with greater wisdom and kindness, the prophet of the Lord comes to him and says, "This end of evil is of God; he has brought it about; it is the mark of his Divine displeasure; it is a summons to another and a better course." Conversely, we may add -

III. THAT THE GOOD SHOULD, AND DO, ATTRIBUTE TO HIM THE RESULTS OF THEIR ENDEAVOURS. If it is the action of God's righteous laws, and in that way the working of his hand, that sin ends in misery and ruin, so is it on the other side. It is the outworking of Divine beneficence, it is the result of his wisdom and goodness, it is the consequence of his action, direct and indirect, that the fields are white unto the harvest, that the trees in the Master's vineyard are bringing forth fruit, that the young people are growing up into wisdom and spiritual comeliness, that character is ripening for the heavenly garner, that life is opening out into immortality. "This thing," also, "is of him." - C.

Three years of experimental goodness ought to be three years of personal consolidation. To get three years ahead of the enemy ought to be a great advantage. The doctors say that it takes three years to get drink really out of a man's system and no man is safe until he has quite passed the line of three years. These critical times in life are the making of life, when they are really seized aright as to their spirit and highest significance.

(J. Parks, D. D.).