MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 13:25
WANT AND SATISFACTION
I. The limited truth of the assertion in relation both to the righteous and the wicked. Read in the light of personal experience, and in the light of history, it is found true, and is found not true in the case of the righteous. Elijah ate to satisfaction beside the brook Cherith, while many of his idolatrous countrymen suffered want. But Paul was often in hunger (2 Corinthians 11:27), while Nero lived in luxury. Christians have died from hunger, and others have had all their bodily wants supplied all their lives, and sometimes by most remarkable providential interpositions. Godliness is often profitable in this sense for the “life that now is” (1 Timothy 4:8), but not always, and wickedness often brings a man literally to the condition of the prodigal when he would “fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat;” but many a wicked man, like him of the parable (Luke 16:19), have “fared sumptuously every day” from their cradle to their grave. To take our text as absolutely true of material food would be to contradict the testimony of Scripture itself.
II. Its absolute truth in relation to both characters.
1. That wickedness gives a man no real satisfaction is a fact of experience. Men have testified over and over again that while they lived in sin they knew nothing of real heartsatisfaction and rest, and have borne witness to the words of St. Augustine, who spoke from experience when he said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and the heart is restless till it finds rest in Thee.” A man who feeds upon unwholesome food is always in want, because that upon which he feeds is not suited to meet the demands of his physical frame, so is it with the soul of a godless man.
2. The history of the world testifies that it is so. The unrest of the ungodly is the explanation of much of the ambition, of many of the selfish schemes of some men, as well as of the voluntary asceticism, the self-imposed sufferings of others. The key to both is that they have spent “money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not” (Isaiah 55:2). The teaching of Christ confirms it. Want was the condition of the prodigal; he wanted the bread which his father’s home and table alone could supply. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6:53). On this subject see Dr. Arnot’s remarks on Proverbs 13:12 in the comments on that verse.
3. That there is satisfaction in sainthood is declared by Christ, and testified to be true by all His followers. The bread upon which a renewed man feeds is the Divine word—the thoughts of God in the abstract, and the personal thought or word Jesus Christ. “As the living Father hath sent Me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me” (John 6:57). And life is but another word for satisfaction. “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of His heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Millions of men and women in all circumstances, both poor and rich in worldly wealth, have set to their “seal that God is true” (John 3:33) when He invites men to “hearken diligently unto Him, and eat that which is good, and let their souls delight themselves in fatness” (Isaiah 55:2).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
One of the confidences of the wicked is that he, at least, has his pleasure in this world. The inspired Solomon denies it. He himself has left us an experience (Ecclesiastes 1). The righteous man seeks righteousness and peace, and these things do satisfy him. He seeks them, not as the world does, under a mistake, but for what they really are. He seeks them more and more as he knows them better, and shall be seeking them and enjoying them through eternal ages. “But the wicked,” even in his “belly,” wants. His delights, even of the more carnal sort, are not to be directly gazed at. If they are, they vanish. He cannot trust himself to theorise over any solid pleasures. So hollow are they that he would not live over again the history of the past, and so poor that he grows tired of enjoying them.—Miller.
Have he more or less, he hath that which satisfies him. Nature is content with little, grace with less. If Jacob may have but “bread to eat and raiment to put on” it sufficeth him; and this he dare be bold to promise himself. Beg his bread he hopes he shall not, but if he should, he can say with Luther (who made many a meal of a broiled herring), “Let us be content to fare hard here: have we not the bread that came down from heaven?”—Trapp.
To have to eat is the common mercy of God, who openeth His hand and feedeth all things living. To have enough to eat is a great mercy in itself, and greater than man’s nature, which hath never enough of sinning anyway deserveth; but to be satisfied with that which is enough is a peculiar property bestowed on the righteous. The belly of the wicked wanting enough to eat in some degree is punished for feeding too greedily on the husks of sin. Wanting all food is more hardly punished, and it may be for the hardness of their hearts in resisting all instruction; but that it shall want though it have enough, this is a severe punishment of wickedness, though thought to be the least. The wise man doth not speak of the want of the mouth of the wicked as showing that the mouth should have Sufficient, and yet the belly be punished with want in not being satisfied.—Jermin.
HOMILETIC TREATMENT OF THE CHAPTER AS A WHOLE
“The true Christian education of children.”
(1) Its basis: God’s Word (Proverbs 13:1; Proverbs 13:13-14);
(2) Its means: Love and strictness in inculcating God’s Word (Proverbs 13:1; Proverbs 13:18; Proverbs 13:24);
(3) Its aim: Guidance of the youth to the promotion of his temporal and eternal welfare (Proverbs 13:2 sq. Proverbs 13:16 sq.)—Lange’s Commentary.