CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 10:29. “Jehovah’s way is a fortress to the upright, but it is destruction to the workers of iniquity.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 10:29
GOD’S WAY DESTRUCTION AND SALVATION
I. In common with all His intellectual and moral creatures, God has a way, or plan of action. A skilful artificer has a way by which he brings forth a certain result in a work of skill. His way is the out-come of his previous thought and purpose; he does not go about his work in uncertainty as to what he is going to do, or how he is going to do it. The architect proceeds to erect his building in accordance with a certain plan, in a certain way before determined on. The public instructor has ways of teaching which are the out-come of previous thought; he would otherwise work at random. Those who are leaders of others must think and teach within the limits of certain rules, in pursuance of some definite end, otherwise there could be no result from their teaching. God, the skilful Artificer and wise Architect of the material universe, the Great Instructor of men, is no exception to this rule.
1. He works in nature according to a definite and pre-ordained rule or law. All that we see around us reveals Divine forethought and intention, proclaims that the Creator works for a definite end, that He walks in a pre-arranged way. He has a way, or method, of producing day and night, summer and winter, of developing the seed-corn into the full ear, of watering the earth by clouds, and so fitting it for the habitation of man.
2. He has a way in Providence, and though here it is far more difficult than even in nature to trace His working or unravel His purposes, we know that He works in accordance with a definite plan for the accomplishment of a certain purpose, and that there is nothing of chance in the mysteries of life. A child may look on while his father is putting together the works of a watch, he cannot judge of the adaptation of certain processes and actions, but he knows that his father has made many watches before, and he judges from what has been, of what is, and what shall be. And so with God’s way of providence, we cannot trace the why of His operations, we cannot see the issue of His actions while He is at work. The workings are too complicated for us to trace the adaptation of the means to the end. But from past results we conclude what will be the issue of His present dealings, from what has been we know what shall be, viz., that all will be seen to be part of a great plan or way of action, and that the verdict of the universe at last will be, “just and true are Thy ways, Thou king of saints” (Revelation 15:3). Clouds and darkness have been around God’s working in the past, but righteousness and justice have come out of the darkness, and so we know it ever shall be.
3. God has a way of grace. Here His way is a way of forgiveness through a Divine Atoner, and of sanctification through a Divine Spirit, meeting human need if that human need is felt and confessed. The need of a man who has broken God’s law must be felt and acknowledged before the way of forgiveness and restoration is brought into operation. This is the law by which men are loosed from the bonds of sin, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). This is Jehovah’s “way of salvation.”
II. The opposite effects of the Divine way upon opposite characters. “The way of the Lord is strength to the upright, but destruction to the workers of iniquity” (see Critical Notes). All men who are not numbered with the “upright,” whose moral nature has not been lifted up by contact with the Divine, are “workers of iniquity.” Dr. David Thomas says of iniquity, “The word is negative—the want of equity. Men will be damned not merely for doing wrong, but for not doing the right” (see “The Practical Philosopher,” p. 132). We take the words therefore to signify the two great classes into which Christ divides the world, “He that believeth and he that believeth not” (John 3:18), and consider the different effect upon these two opposite characters of—
1. Jehovah’s way of nature. To the upright there comes strength from the contemplation of God as revealed in His material works. He feels that God is a necessity to account for what he sees around him. All created things speak to him of the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of their Maker and Up-holder, and his faith is strengthened by this manifestation of “the way of the Lord.” He obeys the injunction of the prophet, “Lift up your eyes on high and behold, who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number; He calleth them all by names, by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power, not one faileth.” And thence he draws the prophet’s argument, “That the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” that “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength,” and in thus “waiting upon the Lord” he “renews his strength,” he “runs and is not weary, he walks and does not faint” (Isaiah 40:26-31). But how different is the effect of the works of nature, when the God of nature is not acknowledged. They harden men in materialism, God’s own laws are used to bow Him out of His own universe, and their working becomes so many forces of destruction because they drive men further from their only hope and help. As Paul tells us, such men “hold (back) the truth in (or, by) unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in (or to) them; for God hath showed it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His Eternal Power and Godhead. But, “professing themselves wise, they became fools, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (see Romans 1:18-32). This is destruction to any man.
2. Of Jehovah’s way of providence. Faith in a personal God, in a Divine Saviour, makes this “way” also “strength to the upright.” If a seaman has faith in his captain, this gives him strength for his duty even in the roughest weather. He feels that he is not altogether left to the mercy of the blind elements, but that there is a strong and wise will guiding the ship. So confidence in an All-wise Father, in a King who “can do no wrong,” is the stronghold of the upright amidst all the apparent contradictions and mysteries of life. He knows who is at the wheel of all human affairs, that
“When He folds the cloud about Him,
Firm within it stands His throne;”
and the knowledge that “God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all,” makes what would otherwise overwhelm him in doubt, and consequently in weakness, a source of strength, a power of life. But where God is not known, this confidence is absent, and nothing but chance, or an arbitrary Judge, sits upon the throne of the Universe. The terrible perplexities of life are like the rings of the wheels in Ezekiel’s vision, “so high that they are dreadful,” and, as such a man does not discern above them the “man upon the throne” (Ezekiel 1:18-20), they are to him only mighty and resistless engines of destruction.
3. Of Jehovah’s way of grace. The upright man has gained his strength to be upright from the way of Divine forgiveness. Even a child feels stronger when assured of his father’s restored favour, and the forgiveness of God sets a man upon his feet and gives him that “joy of the Lord” which is “strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Unforgiven sin breaks the bones of the soul. “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old,” but “I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” “Make me to hear joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide Thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities” (Psalms 32:3-5; Psalms 51:8-9). And he gains strength to continue in the way of uprightness by communion with an unseen Saviour, by the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost. Christ is “the power of an endless life” to all who believe in Him (Hebrews 7:16). This is the “way” or law of the kingdom of grace. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12). But to those who reject this way of grace, this “righteousness of God” (Romans 3:22), this “way of salvation,” becomes a power of destruction; that which was ordained to be a “savour of life” becomes a “savour of death.” Christ crucified is a stumbling-block and foolishness to such (1 Corinthians 1:23). “Whosoever shall fall upon this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (Matthew 21:44). The way of Jehovah is in no instance the cause of the destruction of the wicked but it must be the occasion. The words and works of Christ were the occasion but not the cause of the great national sin of the Jewish nation. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father” (John 15:22-24). The knife in the hand of the surgeon is an instrument to save life, but the patient may use it to kill himself if he be so minded. A candle may be used to give light and comfort to all in the house—this is its use with regard to honest men—but the same light may be the means of the discovery and punishment of a thief. The light and heat of the sun, falling upon a bed of flowers fills the air with fragrance and the spirit of man with delight, but if it fall upon a noisome stagnant pool, or a dead body, it will hasten decomposition and spread the seeds of disease and death. It is not the nature of sunlight to destroy, but the objects upon which it falls turns the blessing into a curse. So with “the grace of God which bringeth salvation” (Titus 2:11). “Is it not true,” says Maclaren, “that every man that rejects Christ does in verity reject Him, and not merely neglect Him; that there is always an effort, that there is a struggle, feeble, perhaps, but real, which ends in the turning away? It is not that you stand there, and simply let him go past. That were bad enough; but it is more than that. It is that you turn your back npon Him! It is not that His hand is laid on yours, and yours remains dead and cold, and does not open to clasp it; but it is that His hand being laid on yours, you, clench yours the tighter, and will not have it. And so every man (I believe) that ever rejects Christ does these things thereby—wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man, just because he has had a glimpse, and has willingly, almost consciously, “loved darkness rather than light.” The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection.… If there were no judgment at all, the natural result of the simple rejection of the Gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, shall pass away; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, “I will not have Christ to rule over me,” the whole being shall degenerate, until manhood becomes devilhood, and the soul is lost by its own want of faith” (See Sermons, Vol. I. p. 7). And so it is all with man, and in no degree with God, that “His way,” which He intends to be the fortress, the strength of every human soul, becomes a destruction to “the workers of iniquity.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
This promise implies help for our work, and not rest from our labour. We shall have strength for the conflict. But “there is no discharge from the war.” There is supply for real, not for imaginary, wants; for present, not for future, need. The healthful energy of the man of God is also supposed. He is alive in the way; his heart is set in it. This makes it practicable. What before was drudgery is now meat and drink. Indeed, the more godly we are, the more godly we shall be. The habit of grace increases by exercise. One step helps on the next. Thus was the way of the Lord strength to the upright Nicodemus. His first step was feebleness and fear. Walking onwards, he waxed stronger; standing up in the ungodly council, and ultimately the bold confessor of his Saviour when his self-confident disciples slunk back (John 3:2; John 7:50; John 19:39).… Thus “the righteous shall hold on their way, going from strength to strength,” strengthened in the Lord, and walking up and down in His name (Job 17:9; Psalms 84:5-7; Zechariah 10:12).… No such resources support the workers of iniquity. Captives instead of soldiers, they know no conflicts; they realise no need of strength.—Bridges.
The way of the earth doth weary them that walk in it, and doth take away their strength: but the way of the Lord is strength to the upright, so that the more they go in it, the more able are they to go on in it. Or else because he that walketh uprightly walketh in the ways of God’s most gracious providence over him, and that must needs be a strength unto him. A strong staff, that is, to support him, a strong bulwark to defend him, a strong arm to fight for him. The angel, therefore, might well say to Gideon, “Thou mighty man of valour” when he had first said, “The Lord is with thee.” But as the way of the Lord is to the upright the way of His gracious providence over them, so He hath another way for the workers of iniquity, and that is the way of judgment.—Jermin.
Sin is man’s destruction.
1. Sin brings many evils upon man, from which, if he were virtuous, he would be totally free, such as a decayed body, a wounded conscience, a discontented heart, vexation in the present, fear for the future.
2. Sin puts man out of condition to render tolerable those evils which he cannot avoid. He feels the burden of them in all their pressure because he is destitute of the supports of reliance and hope. He cannot perceive in his afflictions the hand of a father, but is forced to confess them the punishment of an offended sovereign.
3. Sin prevents man from the full enjoyment of the good which outweighs the evil in the world. The Christian finds pleasure in the works of creation, the methods of providence, in beneficence, in friendship, in domestic happiness. Sin deprives us of a taste for these pleasures by enervating the mind, by selfishness, by pride.
4. Sin incapacitates us for the state of pure and perfect happiness in the world to come.—Zollikofer.
Sometimes, by the way of the Lord, the observing of God’s law, sometimes the course of God’s providence is meant in Scripture, as here in this place. It is said to strengthen the upright, not only for that it fortifieth their hearts, but because it preserveth them by sundry means from destruction. The manner of the Lord’s dealing with the wicked is quite contrary; for the Lord plagueth them and crosseth them for their iniquities, and in their evil doing, even throughout the whole course of their life, which is unfortunate and full of many miseries.—Muffet.
The “way” Jehovah personally walks in (as, for example, His way of justice) “is a fortress.” To Gabriel, for instance, it is the arch that shelters him for ever; to the poor saint it is a sworn certainty of defence; but to the wicked it is an eternal vengeance. The way of mercy—that is, in the cross of Christ—is life unto life to the saint, and death unto death to the rebellious sinner. Elihu pictures this in the outward creation (Job 36:31): “For by them” (that is, by the same elements of Nature) “judgeth He the people; He giveth meat in abundance.” The same showers fertilise the earth, or tear to pieces with a deluge.—Miller.