Psalm 119:113 I hate vain thoughts: but your law do I love. I hate them that are of a double mind men who "halt between two opinions" (1 Kings 18:2). "Perhaps we are to think of those among the Jews who were for political reasons favorably inclined towards foreign customs and ideas, and who would not throw in their lot frankly and courageously with the national party." Compare St. James's "double-minded man" (James 1:8). The good man has a natural repugnance to the "two-faced" man. He revolts from him. He cannot trust him. He shrinks from him as from the serpent, which is the type of subtlety in a bad and perilous sense. When the ideal Man moved to and fro among men, this characteristic of the good man was most marked in him. He was keenly sensitive to insincerity; he most vigorously denounced the hypocrite; the two-faced man was ever an unendurable offence to him. I. THE INSINCERE ARE AN OFFENSE TO EVERY MAN. Genuineness is the basis of all human trust. The schemer undermines society. We can only deal with our fellow-men on the assumption that they are what they seem to be. Home, friendship, business, society, nations, Churches, all are so seriously injured by the influence of the insincere, that they are always on the watch for them. To stand in any relation in this world, a man must be true to himself. II. THE INSINCERE ARE AN OFFENSE TO THE GOOD MAN. Everything that is characteristic of man is sharpened and polished (furbished) by his becoming a good man. And this may especially be observed in relation to truth and truthfulness. To apprehend and know God is to gain an altogether higher estimate of sincerity; for he "desireth truth in the inward parts." And to endeavor to live a godly life is to establish and confirm truth as the basis of character and relationships; and the man of truth requires truth in others. And he is keen to detect and to renounce that almost unconscious insincerity into which men fall whose lives are not ruled by high and noble principles. Their "permissions" are an offence to him. III. THE INSINCERE ARE AN OFFENSE TO GOD. This can be illustrated from Old Testament character-studies, from Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets; but more fully from the relations of the God-Man, the Lord Jesus, with the hypocrite and the insincere (Matthew 23.). - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: SAMECH. I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love. |
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