CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 10:23. Second clause, “to a man of understanding wisdom is an enjoyment” (Zöckler).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 10:23
A TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER
The painter uses the dark background of his picture to set off the bright foreground. Sunlight never looks so beautiful as when seen shining upon a black thunder-cloud; it is the power of contrast. Solomon in his character-painting is constantly making use of this power. He is ever setting the dark and the light side by side—making the foolish or wicked man a dark background upon which to portray the moral features of the truly wise. The fool looks more foolish, and the good man more wise, by the contrast.
I. That which is an object of mirth is a touchstone of character. The fool makes sport out of mischief, out of that which does harm to his fellow-creatures, and consequently involves them in misery. If we saw a man making merriment over the burning of his neighbour’s house, we should conclude that he was either a maniac or utterly without a heart. A man who realised the meaning of such a calamity, and had any sympathy within him, could but be grieved at the sight. But men find occasions of mirth in matters that are of far more serious moment. The wise man tell us in chap. Proverbs 14:9, that “fools make a mock at sin”—that great “mischief of the universe.” The saint is made sad by that in which the sinner finds an occasion of mirth. “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people” (Jeremiah 9:1). “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament; but the world shall rejoice” (John 16:20). But the fool not only makes sport at mischief, it is his sport to do mischief; the one leads to the other. The fool who thinks sin is a laughing matter will not hesitate to commit sin himself, or to do his brother the irreparable mischief of leading him in the path of sin and death.
II. Men cease to make light of sin in proportion as they hare “understanding.” The text implies that a man who has any right comprehension of the end of life, the value of the soul, the reality of Divine and eternal things, will not, cannot, make a sport of mischief in any shape or degree, especially of the mischief of moral wrong. A baby might laugh at a blazing house, although its own mother might be enwrapped in the flames, but this would only be an evidence of his want of understanding. Nothing proclaims a man to be a fool so plainly as his mockery of sin. A man of wisdom has too just a sense of its terrible and ruinous consequence to feel anything but sad when he thinks of it. He knows what mischief it has worked, and is working in the universe, and his understanding of these things makes that which is the sport of the fool the subject of his most solemn thought.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
The difference between the lost and the saved is, that to one it is but trifling to live; to the other it is the gravest “wisdom.”—Miller.
That man has arrived at an advanced stage of folly who takes as much pleasure in it as if it were an agreeable amusement. This, however, is to be expected in its natural course. Sinners at first feel much uneasiness from the operation of fear and shame, but they are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, till at length they not only cast off all restraints, but become impudent in sin, and think it a manly action to cast away the cords of God, and to pour insult and abuse on their fellow-men. But it were safer far to sport with fire than with sin, which kindles a fire that will burn to the lowest hell. It may now be a sport to do mischief, but in the lake of fire and brimstone it will be no sport to have done it.—Lawson.
When a man diveth under water he feeleth no weight of the water, though there be many tons of it over his head; whereas half a tubful of the same water, taken out of the river and set upon the same man’s head, would be very burdensome unto him, and make him soon grow weary of it. In like manner, so long as a man is over head and ears in sin, he is not sensible of the weight of sin: it is not troublesome unto him; but when he beginneth once to come out of that state of sin wherein he lay and lived before, then beginneth sin to hang heavy upon him, and he to feel the heavy weight of it. So, so long as sin is in the will, the proper seat of sin, a man feeleth no weight of it, but, like a fool, it is a sport and pastime unto him to do evil. And it is therefore a good sign that sin is removed out of his seat—out of his chair of state—when it becomes ponderous and burdensome to us, as the elements do when they are out of their natural place.—Spencer’s Things New and Old.
The fool is then merriest when he hath the devil for his playfellow. He danceth well in his bolts, and is passing well afraid for his woful bondage.—Trapp.