Proverbs 1:24-28 Because I have called, and you refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;… 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.) Parallel Verses KJV: Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; |
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