MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 10:6-7; Proverbs 10:11
THE WAY TO PRESENT BLESSEDNESS AND FUTURE FAME
We connect the first and last of these verses, because the latter clause in both is the same.
I. Opposite characters revealed by a great contrast in speech (Proverbs 10:11). When a righteous man opens his mouth, it is as if the cover was removed from a pure, clear well of water. He has no evil intentions to conceal: his words are an index to his heart. By them men may read his thoughts with the same ease as they can see what is at the bottom of a clear spring of water. There is medicinal virtue in them—they heal as well as refresh the spirits of men. What a well of life have the words of Christ been for centuries to millions of the human race. But a wicked man cannot let all the thoughts of his heart be laid open to the light of day. His “mouth conceals injury” (see Critical Notes). He has plans which are not devised for the good of his fellow-creatures, and he must use his words not to reveal, but to hide what is in his mind. And if he lets his tongue loose, and permits his thoughts to flow out into words, they do not bless his hearers, but are like a poisonous stream, carrying moral death wherever they flow.
II. Character yields a present blessing or a present curse. “Blessings are upon the head of the righteous,” etc. A man’s present comfort within himself, and the inheritance of good-will he now receives from his fellow-men, as well as the favour of God, are all dependent upon what he is in his character. The kingdom of heaven is now inherited by him. All the beatitudes uttered by our Lord speak of a present blessedness. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” etc. The opposite truth is not expressed, but it is implied. Curses, not blessings, are the present inheritance of the man whose “mouth is covered by violence.”
III. Character determines the nature of our future fame (Proverbs 10:7).
1. The memory of the righteous is blessed, because what they did upon the earth is the means of bringing blessings upon others after they are gone. Many a son has received kindness for the sake of the righteousness of his father. God blesses the children for the father’s sake. “I will make him prince all the days of his life for David my servant’s sake, whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes” (1 Kings 11:34). “Fear not,” said God to Isaac, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake (Genesis 26:24). Cyrus was raised up to deliver Israel for Jacob’s sake (Isaiah 45:4). Men can but bless the memory of those whose past godliness is the means of bringing blessings upon them in the present.
2. The just man’s memory is blessed because he leaves behind him reproductions of his own character. All life will reproduce itself. After a tree has decayed and gone to dust, others will be in full life and vigour that were seedlings of the old tree. Intellectual life is reproductive. The man of mighty genius leaves disciples to carry out his ideas after he is gone. Good men are the parents of good children, or make other men good by their words and lives. “They that dwell under his shadow shall return,” and “they shall grow as the vine” (Hosea 14:7). The good must be held in blessed remembrance so long as there are those upon earth who are the reproductions of their character.
3. The memory of some is blessed because they did deeds which never can be reproduced by others—which have left a fragrance behind them which can never be repeated. The one act of Abraham, when he prepared to offer up Isaac at God’s command, can never be repeated; but is the one which, above all his other acts of faith, causes him to be held in everlasting remembrance. And so it has been with many of the leaders of the Church in all ages. They have performed acts of godly heroism which we cannot imitate, but of which we reap the reward, and for which we bless their memory. Especially is this true of Him who is pre-eminently the Holy One and the Just, whose glorious “name is blessed for ever” (Psalms 72:19), because “He endured the cross and despised the shame.” But the converse of all this is the lot of the wicked. We can but remember them when we are brought face to face with the evil they have left behind them; but we turn from the remembrance as we turn from some offensive putrid object, while the memory of the just is as a sweet savour. Contrast the feelings with which Christendom now regards the emperors of Rome and the fishermen of Galilee.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 10:6. Not one, but many blessings are on the head of the righteous: the blessing of peace, the blessing of plenty, the blessing of health, and the blessing of grace, shall be upon them. The precious ointment of the Lord’s favour or blessing shall so be poured upon their heads as that it shall not here stay, but run down to the rest of the members of their bodies, and enter into their very hearts.—Muffet.
“Blessings:” not simply good things, but good things bestowed by another; not simply good things bestowed by another, but divinely bestowed as sacred benedictions. “Blessings” are for the righteous exclusively; that is, for no one else. “For the head;” not the mouth, not the hand; because often without either’s agency. “On his head;” because unconsciously, and sometimes even when asleep.—Miller.
Proverbs 10:7. The memory of the just is blessed
(1) because of his winning friendship;
(2) because of his unfeigned piety;
(3) because of his steadfast patience;
(4) because of his noble, public-spirited activity.—Ziegler, from Lange’s Commentary.
And what signifies an empty name? It brings honour to God, and prolongs the influence of his good example who has left it. His good works not only follow him, but live behind him. As Jeroboam made Israel to sin after he was dead, so the good man helps to make others holy whilst he is lying in the grave. Should it so happen that his character is mistaken in the world, or should his name die out among men, it shall yet be had in everlasting remembrance before God; for never shall those names be erased from the Lamb’s book of life, which were written in it from the foundation of the world.—Lawson.
Not what he remembers, but what is remembered of him. He blesses after he is dead. So does the wicked, but, like most other growths in nature, by his decay. “Name;” that which is known of a man. The “name of God” is that which may be known of God. “The memory of the righteous,” viz., of the Church of God, is that which propagates her, and causes her to hand down her strength. Our walk about Zion, our telling her towers, our marking her bulwarks, is for this grand aim, among the rest, that we may tell to the generation following (Psalms 48:12-13).—Miller.
I. The memory of the just is blessed, self-evidently so, for the mind blesses it and reverts to it with complacency, mingled with solemnity,—returns to it with delight from the sight of the living evil in the world, sometimes even prefers this silent society to the living good. They show in a most evident and pleasing manner the gracious connection which God has constantly maintained with a sinful world. His uninterrupted connection with it by justice and sovereign power has been manifest in mighty evidence: but His saints have been the peculiar illustration of His grace, His mercy, acting on this world. II. It is so, when we consider them as practical illustrations, verifying examples of the exellence of genuine religion; that it is a noble thing in human nature, and makes, and alone makes, that nature noble;—that, whatever scoffers may say, or the vain world pretend to disbelieve, here is what has made such men as nothing else, under heaven, could or can. III. Their memory is blessed while we regard them as diminishing to our view the repulsiveness and horror of death. Our Lord’s dying was the fact that threw out the mightiest agency to this effect. But, in their measure, His faithful disciples have done the same. When we contemplate them as having prepared for it with a calm resolution—as having approached it—multitudes with a calm resignation and fortitude, and very many with an animated exultation;—as having passed it, and emerged in brightness beyond its gloom—they seem to shine back through the gloom, and make the shade less thick. IV. It is blessed, also, as combined with the whole progress of God upon the earth,—with its living agency throughout every stage. He has never, and nowhere, had a visible cause in the world, without putting men in trust with it.… Think of what men have been employed and empowered to do in the propagation of truth, in the incessant warfare against evil, in the exemplification of all the virtues by which he could be honoured.—John Foster.
Proverbs 10:11. A Church is but a body of righteous men. What would the world do without the Church? The influences of a Church, and that a land is ruined without a Church, and that one generation hands on the worship of God to another, all are illustrations on a grand scale of how the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. A good man will constantly be doing good to others. But “wrong covers the mouth of the wicked,” so that he can give no blessing; so keeps him from any possible usefulness, that he cannot utter good, or make his mouth, as the righteous can, “a fountain of life” to all about him.—Miller.
In a hot summer’s day I was sailing with a friend in a tiny boat on a miniature lake, enclosed like a cup within a circle of steep, bare Scottish hills. On the shoulders of the brown, sun-burnt mountain, and full in sight, was a well, with a crystal stream trickling over its lip, and making its way down towards the lake. Around the well’s mouth, and along the course of the rivulet, a belt of green stood out in strong contrast with the iron surface of the rock all around. “What do you make of that?” said my friend, who had both an open eye to read the book of Nature and a heart all aglow with its lessons of love. We soon agreed as to what should be made of it. It did not need us to make it into anything. There it was, a legend clearly printed by the finger of God on the side of these silent hills, teaching the passer-by how needful a good man is, and how useful he may be in a desert world.… The Lord looks down, and men look up, expecting to see a fringe of living green around the lip of a Christian’s life-course.—Arnot.