The LORD has made everything for His purpose--even the wicked for the day of disaster. Sermons
I. THE MORAL DESIGNS OF GOD. (Ver. 4.) The creation is teleological; it has a beginning, a process, and an end in view, all determined by the will and wisdom of God. If this is true of every plant, of every mollusc, it is true of every man. We are formed to illustrate his praise. Disobedience, with its consequences, ratifies his just and holy laws. II. THE MORAL FEELINGS OF GOD. (Ver. 5.) Only that which stands in a true relation to him can be true. Haughtiness and arrogance are, so to speak, in the worst taste. In the eyes of God they are not beautiful, and cannot escape his criticism and correction. III. HIS PROVISION FOR THE OBLIVION OF GUILT AND THE CURE OF MORAL EVIL. (Ver. 6.) In social relations he has opened a fountain, sweet and healing, for mutual faults and sins. Love hides a multitude of sins. "I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much" (comp. Isaiah 58:7; Daniel 4:27). But prevention is better than healing, and in religion is the prophylactic against evil. IV. GOD'S RECONCILING LOVE. (Ver. 7.) What sweeter pleasure does life yield than reconciliation? 'Tis a deeper blessing than peace which has never been broken. Life is full of the principle of opposition; and God is manifested, first in the drawing of us to himself, and then in the union of estranged human hearts to one another. V. THE LAW OF COMPENSATION. (Ver. 8.) He hath set the one over against the other, that we should seek nothing alter him. Poverty has great advantages, if we will see it so - is more favourable, on the whole, to moral health than the reverse condition. And the hard crust of honest poverty, how sweet! the luxurious living of the dishonest rich, how insipid! or how bitter! VI. DIVINE RECTIFICATIONS. (Ver. 9.) We must take heed to our own way; yet with all our care, we cannot ensure right direction or security. We need God's rectification and criticism at every point, and hence should ever say to ourselves, "If the Lord will, we will do this or that" (James 4:15). The blending of human with Divine counsel, human endeavour with God's guidance, may defy analysis, but is known in experience to be real. - J. The Lord hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil No light on this passage comes from the context. The words may be taken — I. IN THE SENSE THAT GOD CREATED ALL THINGS MERELY FOR HIS OWN GOOD PLEASURE, WITHOUT ANY EXTERNAL MOTIVE. Then the latter part of the verse contains a great difficulty — how can God be said to have made the wicked for Himself, for the manifesting of His glory in the day of punishment? It is impossible that God could have any external motive, when in the universe there was nothing existing without Himself. The good pleasure of God is the only reason why things were brought into being at all. God has declared Himself by a clear revelation to persons of all capacities to be the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things that are therein. His goodness moved Him to bring creatures into being on which He might display that goodness, and to whom He might communicate His happiness. The glory of God is not anything properly relating to Himself, any advantage or benefit to Him; it is the communicating of His goodness, by creating the world; the promoting His likeness among rational creatures, by the practice of righteousness. But how can God be said to have made even the wicked for Himself? Some have contended that God has on purpose made many creatures necessarily inclined to wickedness, that He might manifest His power and authority in their destruction. But nothing can be more blasphemous than to imagine that He created any beings with design that they might be wicked and miserable. Nevertheless, because it is certain that nothing comes to pass without His permission, nothing subsists but by His power and concurrence, nothing is done but by the use or abuse of those faculties which He has created, therefore in Scripture phrase, and in acknowledgment of the supreme superintendence of providence over all events, God is represented as doing everything that is done in the world. II. CONSIDER THE TEXT AS MEANING, THE LORD HAS MADE ALL THINGS SUITED TO EACH OTHER: YEA, EVEN THE WICKED TO THE DAY OF EVIL. This is the more natural sense. The only question that arises is, How can God be said to have fitted the wicked to destruction? In the Jewish language all that is meant is, that God causes wickedness and punishment to be proportionable. It is only an instance of the wisdom and exact adjustment of the works of God. The adjustment of men's condition to their deserts is the true greatness and glory of a kingdom. It is the natural tendency of things to get conditions fitted to deserts; and God takes care, by the positive interposition of His power and authority in the world, that every evil work shall have its proper recompense in the day of evil. 1. We may justify God, and give glory to Him in all His proceedings. 2. If we would escape the day of evil, we must avoid the wickedness to which it is annexed. () All things are in God's hands, and He makes use of all things as He pleases; for He created them all. However the wicked may be set upon mischief, they can proceed no further than God permits; being instruments only in His hand, to afflict others; to exercise good men with trials, or to punish the wicked. All kinds of calamities and disasters that may befall mankind may therefore be ascribed to God as the supreme arbitrator, and disposer of all events. Mankind were very apt to suspect that there were two opposite powers in the world, one the fountain of good, and the other the fountain of mischief. Scripture teaches that both good and evil, both prosperity and adversity, proceed from the same fountain, and are both to be ascribed to one and the same God. God serves Himself of angels and men as His instruments, and permits them to act no further than He can turn to good. I. OPEN AND ILLUSTRATE THE GENERAL DOCTRINE. The Lord orders and disposes all things so as one way or other to serve His own wise purposes. Whatever second causes there are, or however they act, still it is God, and God alone, that governs the world. Events that seem merely casual and accidental are in reality providential. The most mysterious part of God's government of the moral world is His ordering even the wicked in a way consistent with human liberty, and so as to serve the ends of His providence, and to promote His glory. The fact is certain, the manner how is beyond our comprehension. This we can see, it was kind and gracious in God to create men, though He knew that many of them would prove wicked. And God makes use of the wicked men, who are His creatures, to serve the ends of His providence. They mean nothing but evil, while God turns it to good. Consider the power of God over the minds and hearts of wicked men. But does not God's making use of the sins of men look like concurring with, and countenancing their iniquities? Men commit the sins, God does but control, curb, and regulate. II. THE PRACTICAL USE AND IMPROVEMENT OF THIS DOCTRINE. 1. It is both our duty and interest to submit all our concerns to Him, upon whom all success, and every blessing, depend. A question may arise as to the use of means, and the necessity or serviceableness of human care or industry. But miracles are not to be expected in the ordinary course of affairs. Success in affairs is proposed by God as the reward consequent upon proper care and application. 2. God controls and bridles wicked men in all their machinations. Therefore we need never be afraid of wicked men, or of devils. Wicked men, however malicious or mischievous, are weak in themselves. They are held in as with bit and bridle. 3. Refer all the hard usage, all the injuries or troubles we meet with from men, to God, the real author of them. 4. Learn to estimate aright the ordinary stream of affairs, the common course of this world. It may be very bad: it is being over- ruled. 5. Fix in the mind an assurance of the constant working of Divine Providence. () 1. Apprehending this is designed to teach us a lesson in self-knowledge. What we are as creatures we can never know as we ought, save by studying the Uncreated. It is in the contemplation of the nature, purposes, and works of God, that we can best see the insignificance of man. We should be humbled not merely as beings, but much more as moral beings. The greatness of God fearfully enhances the guilt of man. 2. The doctrine we are considering inculcates a lesson in active duty, as well as self-knowledge and humility. It urges a plea for God's service, before which every pretext for disobedience must be hushed. Did God make all things for Himself? There can be no higher reason for obeying Him, and to disobey Him is made thereby infinitely irrational, impious, and vain. The fact that God seeks His own glory in all things should not only determine the form of our duty, but also be its motive and its end. To give this prominence to God's glory clashes with no real interest of man, and does no violence to any original principle of His nature; on the contrary, in aiming at it, man is aiming at his greatest good. Why should not the infinite and perfect God be capable of engrossing and satisfying the whole mind and heart of His creature man? The frame of mind is not indeed natural to man, and it cannot be attained in the independent exercise of his natural powers. It is only by God's Spirit that he can be made thus spiritual. Only by looking to Jesus in a simple, earnest, exclusive, and habitual faith, can any one learn to make God and His glory the end of his being. () The word "made" is not here" created," but it is used in the more general sense of "do," "work," "perform." The Lord Jehovah hath wrought, performed, all things for Himself. The final end of all Divine proceeding is God's own glory. This hidden and ultimate purpose of all the works of God is revealed in the text.1. The Lord hath made all things for Himself in creation. And man is part of His creation. 2. The principle of the text applies to the work of redemption. It is of God's sovereign will and pleasure, and for His own eternal glory, that God hath been pleased to choose a Church outer this fallen world, to be glorified in His Son, Jesus Christ. This view of redemption tends to humble the sinner. 3. God hath made all things for Himself in providence. Every event or circumstance in this world's history has been arranged or ordered for the glory of Jehovah. It is impossible that anything shall ever happen which shall not tend directly or indirectly to this great end. Sin is essentially the fault of the creature. God is not the author of evil. The wicked were not created as such. They are, however, appointed unto the day of evil as their fitting punishment. () Here attention is directed to God, to His general formation of all things, and to the arrangements which, in that creation, He has unquestionably made. God is the universal Creator. Yet philosophers, ancient and modern, have always been trying to find another maker of things than God. Wherever there is existence, there the hand of God has been put forth in conferring that existence. God has made everything just as a Being absolutely perfect ought to make it. Though God made man upright, He did not make man a sinner. Man has made himself a sinner. God made all things for Himself. He is the origin, and He is the end. There are, indeed, subordinate ends, but they lose themselves, as it were, in God, the great end of all. In saying that the Lord "made the wicked for the day of evil," we must recur to His foresight. He allows some sinners to go on in their guilt till death finds them ready for eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord; and therefore, at every stage in which these wicked ones may be contemplated, they are still to be considered as the works of God, supported by Him, provided for by Him. The day of evil looks to the final retribution of all things. We are to ascribe to God the existence, the support, the maintenance, of those individuals who are rising up every moment in rebellion against Him. The wicked are as much in the hands of God to be punished by Him as the good are in His hands to receive undeserved kindness.(, D.D.)
People SolomonPlaces JerusalemTopics Account, Disaster, Ends, Evil, Purpose, Sinner, Trouble, Wicked, Worketh, Wrought, Yea, YesOutline 1. The Plans of the heart
Dictionary of Bible Themes Proverbs 16:4 1115 God, purpose of
1175 God, will of
1305 God, activity of
1412 foreknowledge
6708 predestination Library April 27. "The Sweetness of the Lips" (Prov. xvi. 21).
"The sweetness of the lips" (Prov. xvi. 21). Spiritual conditions are inseparably connected with our physical life. The flow of the divine life-currents may be interrupted by a little clot of blood; the vital current may leak out through a very trifling wound. If you want to keep the health of Christ, keep from all spiritual sores, from all heart wounds and irritations. One hour of fretting will wear out more vitality than a week of work; and one minute of malignity, or rankling jealousy or envy …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth June 13. "The Sweetness of the Lips Increaseth Learning" (Prov. xvi. 21).
"The sweetness of the lips increaseth learning" (Prov. xvi. 21). Life is very largely made up of words. They are not so emphatic, perhaps, as deeds. Deeds are more deliberate expressions of thought. One of the most remarkable authors of the New Testament has said, "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." It is very often a test of victory in Christian life. Our triumph in this often depends on what we say, or what we do not say. It is said by James of the tongue, "It is set on …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth April 17. "He that Ruleth his Spirit is Better than He that Taketh a City" (Prov. xvi. 32).
"He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city" (Prov. xvi. 32). Temperance is true self-government. It involves the grace of self-denial and the spirit of a sound mind. It is that poise of spirit that holds us quiet, self-possessed, recollected, deliberate, and subject ever to the voice of God and the conviction of duty in every step we take. Many persons have not that poise and recollected spirit. They are drifting at the impulse of their own impressions, moods, the influence of …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth What I Think of Myself and what God Thinks of Me
'All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits.'--PROVERBS xvi. 2. 'All the ways of a man'--then there is no such thing as being conscious of having gone wrong, and having got into miry and foul ways? Of course there is; and equally of course a broad statement such as this of my text is not to be pressed into literal accuracy, but is a simple, general assertion of what we all know to be true, that we have a strange power of blinding ourselves as to what is wrong …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture A Bundle of Proverbs
'Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly. 23. The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth, and addeth learning to his lips. 24. Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. 25. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. 26. He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him. 27. An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Unsound Spiritual Trading
A sermon (No. 849) delivered on Lord's Day morning, January 10th, 1869, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, by C. H. Spurgeon. "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits."----Proverbs 16:2. During the last two years some of the most notable commercial reputations have been hopelessly destroyed. Men in the great world of trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, around whose characters there hovered no cloud of suspicion nor even the …
C.H. Spurgeon—Sermons on Proverbs Trust in God --True Wisdom
A sermon (No. 392) delivered on Sunday Morning, May 12th, 1861, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, by C. H. Spurgeon. "He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he."--Proverbs 16:20. Wisdom is man's true path--that which enables him to accomplish best the end of his being, and which therefore gives to him the richest enjoyment and the fullest play for all his powers. Wisdom is the compass by which man is to steer across the trackless waste …
C.H. Spurgeon—Sermons on Proverbs A Wise Desire
I remember once going to a chapel where this happened to be the text, and the good man who occupied the pulpit was more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore, when he commenced, he said, "This passage refers entirely to our temporal inheritance. It has nothing whatever to do with our everlasting destiny: for," said he, "We do not want Christ to choose for us in the matter of heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy that every man who has a grain of common sense will choose heaven; and any person …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855 Of Predestination
Eph. i. 11.--"In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will."--Rom. ix. 22, 23.--"What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory." In the creation of the world, it pleased the Lord, …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Conflict.
"Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against themselves, that ye …
Thomas Charles Edwards—The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews Of Self-Surrender
Of Self-Surrender We should now begin to abandon and give up our whole existence unto God, from the strong and positive conviction, that the occurrence of every moment is agreeable to His immediate will and permission, and just such as our state requires. This conviction will make us resigned in all things; and accept of all that happens, not as from the creature, but as from God Himself. But I conjure you, my dearly beloved, who sincerely wish to give up yourselves to God, that after you have made …
Madame Guyon—A Short and Easy Method of Prayer Abandonment to God --Its Fruit and Its Irrevocability --In what it Consists --God Exhorts us to It.
It is here that true abandonment and consecration to God should commence, by our being deeply convinced that all which happens to us moment by moment is the will of God, and therefore all that is necessary to us. This conviction will render us contented with everything, and will make us see the commonest events in God, and not in the creature. I beg of you, whoever you may be, who are desirous of giving yourselves to God, not to take yourselves back when once you are given to Him, and to remember …
Jeanne Marie Bouvières—A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents The Providence of God
Q-11: WHAT ARE GOD'S WORKS OF PROVIDENCE? A: God's works of providence are the acts of his most holy, wise, and powerful government of his creatures, and of their actions. Of the work of God's providence Christ says, My Father worketh hitherto and I work.' John 5:17. God has rested from the works of creation, he does not create any new species of things. He rested from all his works;' Gen 2:2; and therefore it must needs be meant of his works of providence: My Father worketh and I work.' His kingdom …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Epistle xx. To Mauricius Augustus.
To Mauricius Augustus. Gregory to Mauricius, &c. Our most pious and God-appointed lord, among his other august cares and burdens, watches also in the uprightness of spiritual zeal over the preservation of peace among the priesthood, inasmuch as he piously and truly considers that no one can govern earthly things aright unless he knows how to deal with divine things, and that the peace of the republic hangs on the peace of the universal Church. For, most serene Lord, what human power, and what strength …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great The Sovereignty of God in Reprobation
"Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God" (Rom. 11:22). In the last chapter when treating of the Sovereignty of God the Father in Salvation, we examined seven passages which represent Him as making a choice from among the children of men, and predestinating certain ones to be conformed to the image of His Son. The thoughtful reader will naturally ask, And what of those who were not "ordained to eternal life?" The answer which is usually returned to this question, even by those who profess …
Arthur W. Pink—The Sovereignty of God God's Glory the Chief End of Man's Being
Rom. xi. 36.--"Of him and through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever." And 1 Cor. x. 31--"Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." All that men have to know, may be comprised under these two heads,--What their end is, and What is the right way to attain to that end? And all that we have to do, is by any means to seek to compass that end. These are the two cardinal points of a man's knowledge and exercise. Quo et qua eundum est,--Whither to go, and what way to go. …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Reprobation.
In discussing this subject I shall endeavor to show, I. What the true doctrine of reprobation is not. 1. It is not that the ultimate end of God in the creation of any was their damnation. Neither reason nor revelation confirms, but both contradict the assumption, that God has created or can create any being for the purpose of rendering him miserable as an ultimate end. God is love, or he is benevolent, and cannot therefore will the misery of any being as an ultimate end, or for its own sake. It is …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology How the Rude in Sacred Learning, and those who are Learned but not Humble, are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 25.) Differently to be admonished are those who do not understand aright the words of the sacred Law, and those who understand them indeed aright, but speak them not humbly. For those who understand not aright the words of sacred Law are to be admonished to consider that they turn for themselves a most wholesome drought of wine into a cup of poison, and with a medicinal knife inflict on themselves a mortal wound, when they destroy in themselves what was sound by that whereby they ought, …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great The Consolation
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received at the LORD 's hand double for all her sins. T he particulars of the great "mystery of godliness," as enumerated by the Apostle Paul, constitute the grand and inexhaustible theme of the Gospel ministry, "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1 Epistle ii. To Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch. Gregory to Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch. I have received the letters of your most sweet Blessedness, which flowed with tears for words. For I saw in them a cloud flying aloft as clouds do; but, though it carried with it a darkness of sorrow, I could not easily discover at its commencement whence it came or whither it was going, since by reason of the darkness I speak of I did not fully understand its origin. Yet it becomes you, most holy ones, ever to recall …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great How the Impatient and the Patient are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 10.) Differently to be admonished are the impatient and the patient. For the impatient are to be told that, while they neglect to bridle their spirit, they are hurried through many steep places of iniquity which they seek not after, inasmuch as fury drives the mind whither desire draws it not, and, when perturbed, it does, not knowing, what it afterwards grieves for when it knows. The impatient are also to be told that, when carried headlong by the impulse of emotion, they act in some …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great Effects of Messiah's Appearance
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. H ow beautiful and magnificent is the imagery, by which the Prophet, in this chapter, represents the effects of MESSIAH'S appearance! The scene, proposed to our view, is a barren and desolate wilderness. But when He, who in the beginning said, Let there be light, and there was light, condescends to visit this wilderness, the face of nature is …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1 A Preliminary Discourse to Catechising
'If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.' - Col 1:23. Intending next Lord's day to enter upon the work of catechising, it will not be amiss to give you a preliminary discourse, to show you how needful it is for Christians to be well instructed in the grounds of religion. If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.' I. It is the duty of Christians to be settled in the doctrine of faith. II. The best way for Christians to be settled is to be well grounded. I. It is the duty of Christians …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Links Proverbs 16:4 NIV
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