MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 14:12
WHAT SEEMS TO BE AND WHAT IS
I. Human nature needs more light than is found in the human conscience. The way which “seems right unto a man” may be “the way of death.” A mariner who has insufficient light to observe correctly the needle in the compass, may think he is steering for the haven when he is taking the vessel straight upon the rocks. He may be very sincere in his conviction that he is going right, but his thinking so will not make it so. He needs more light than he has. So the light of conscience is not enough to guide a man with certainty in the true and right way. If conscientious sincerity was an infallible guide Paul would not have “delivered to prison” men and women for being followers of Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 22:4). The way that in his ignorance seemed right to him, was felt by him to be a “way of death” when his conscience was enlightened. Conscience may be deadened by sin, or warped by prejudice or self-interest; it is not a reliable and certain guide. If it were, it was needless for the Son of God to visit the earth and make known the will of His Father—the revelation of God’s will in the books of the Old and New Testaments is a superfluity. The existence of the Bible is explained by the fact which is found to be true by all God-taught men, that “the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). God, by speaking unto men in “sundry times and in divers manners,” and especially “in these last days by His Son” (Hebrews 1:1) declares plainly that man needs something outside of himself to guide him into that path of righteousness which alone is a way of life. The history of the world confirms this truth. Observation of every-day life tells the same tale.
II. The need of human nature has been fully met. All that the mariner needs in order to keep the vessel’s head right is light to see the compass. God in Christ is a sufficient light to man. Paul says: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Christ Himself tells us that it is those only who “follow Him” who have the “light of life” (John 8:12). That the way thus revealed is fully adapted to meet man’s need is proved by the results which follow from walking in it. The progress which a sick man makes towards health is the most convincing proof of the efficacy of his physician’s treatment. The light which is shed upon men by the revelation of God, and especially by the Gospel, has been proven by its result upon individuals and upon nations, to be all-powerful to turn men from “darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). The way of sin is the way of death—death morally, socially, and physically. The w ay of holiness is the only way of spiritual life to the soul and to the community, and ensures victory over the penalty of bodily death.
ILLUSTRATION
THE LAST WORDS OF HILDEBRAND.—One of the greatest of the sons of earth (if we measure greatness either by posthumous fame or posthumous influence) lay on his death-bed. Prelates, princes, priests, devoted adherents and attendants stood around. Anxious to catch the last accents of that once oracular voice, the mourners were bending over him, when, struggling in the very grasp of death, he collected, for one last effort, his failing powers, and breathed out his spirit with the indignant exclamation, “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.” … That he went into the unseen world consciously and deliberately with a lie in his right hand, is a supposition utterly inadmissible. Passionate earnestness and intense conviction were stamped upon all his words and works.… He had climbed by the slippery steps of intrigue to the Papal throne, and to set that throne above all the thrones of the earth, and to cause everyone, “both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond,” to bow down in the dust before it, was thenceforward his sole aim and object.… It was for this that he enforced that celibacy of the clergy which has ever since been the law of the Church. He found thousands of married priests ministering at her altars in innocence of heart, thinking no sin, and fearing no dishonour.… He commanded them to put away their wives on pain of excommunication, which meant deprivation of all rights, spiritual, social, and human.… One cry of indignation, one prolonged and bitter wail of agony, arose throughout Europe, from the Apennines to the Baltic Sea.… Wives were torn from their husbands, children from their fathers. Popular fanaticism allied itself with Papal tyranny.… There was no pity for worse than widowed wives, and worse than orphaned children flung out upon the cold world to starve. The Pontiff trod his stern, remorseless way over broken hearts.… But he had a dangerous antagonist to encounter.… The Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Church were together to dominate the world. But which of them was to dominate the other? Hildebrand’s long contest with Henry IV. may be said to have decided the question. But with what weapons was it fought? We see the gallant Saxons tempted by bribes and promises to revolt, and then, in their hour of distress, treacherously abandoned by him who was at once their ally and “spiritual father,” and to whom they addressed in vain those noble and pathetic remonstrances which, even to this day, cannot be read without emotion. Thus Hildebrand “loved righteousness.” … But the Pontiff, so stern to his antagonists, could be mild to his allies. Keen swords in strong hands were necessary to support his power, the heaviest swords in Europe were borne by Norman knights. Robert, the conqueror of Sicily, William, the conqueror of England, were the representative men of this fierce and fiery race.… They were bloody, avaricious and unscrupulous. No more cruel conquerors ever turned a fruitful land into a waste, howling wilderness. No more remorseless oppressors ever trod down the poor with a heel of iron.… But their crimes were unrebuked by Hildebrand.… William was “addressed in the blandest accents of esteem and tenderness,” while Robert, the tyrant of Sicily, “was embraced and honoured as the faithful ally of Rome.” Thus Hildebrand “hated iniquity.” That “way” in which he walked all his life long with a consistency of purpose and intensity of energy that moves our admiration, seemed “right unto himself,” nay, it seemed to be preeminently the way of righteousness, but what shall we say of “the end thereof.”—Etchings from History, by Miss Alcock. See Sunday at Home, February 15th, 1879.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Souls perish always with surprise … But yet the seeming here noted must be taken cum grano. Deep in the lost heart is the knowledge of its “end,” rather its “afterpart.” The way lasts for ever, and its afterward “is the ways of death!” Deep in the lost man’s heart he knows all this, and this makes a dark ground for his gaieties. (See next verse).—Miller.
There are some ways which can hardly “seem right” to any man—the ways, namely, of open and flagrant wickedness. But there are many ways, which, under the biassing influence of pride and corruption, “seem right,” and yet their “end” is “death.”
I. The way of the sober, well-behaved worldling. He thinks of the law as if it had been only one table, the first being entirely overlooked. He passes among his circle for a man of good character, and flatters himself, in proportion as he is flattered by others, that all is right.… But his way is not the way of life, for God is not in it.
II. The way of the formalist. He follows, strictly and punctually, the round of religious observance.… But his heart has not been given to God. The world still has it. He compromises the retention of its affections for the things of sense by giving God the pitiful and worthless offering of outward homage. But it will not do. Those services cannot terminate in life, which have no life in them.
III. The way of the speculative religionist. From education, or as a matter of curiosity, he has made himself an adept in religous controversy. He holds by the creed of orthodoxy, and imagines that this kind of knowledge is religion. But speculative opinion is not saving knowledge—is not the faith which “worketh by love” and “overcomes the world.”—Wardlaw.
Good intentions are not a justification for wrong doing (2 Samuel 6:6). Judges 17:6 gives an awful illustration of the end of “every man doing that which is right in his own eyes.” (Cf. the prohibition of this, Deuteronomy 12:8.)—Fausset.
This may be his easily besetting sin, the sin of his constitution, the sin of his trade. Or it may be his own false views of religion: he may have an imperfect repentance, a false faith, a very false creed. Many of the Papists, when they were burning the saints of God in the flames at Smithfield, thought they were doing God service.—A. Clarke.
The self-delusion of one ends in death by the sentence of the judge, that of another in self-murder; of one in loathsome disease, of another in slow decay under the agony of conscience, or in sorrow over a henceforth dishonoured and distracted life.—Delitzsch.
Sin comes clothed with a show of reason (Exodus 1:10); and lust will so blear the understanding, that he shall think there is great sense in sinning. “Adam was not deceived.” (1 Timothy 2:14), that is, he was not so much deceived by his judgment—though also by that too—as by his affection to his wife, which at length blinded his judgment. The heart first deceives us with colours; and when we are once a-doting after sin, then we join and deceive our hearts (James 1:26), using fallacious and specious sophism, to make ourelves think that lawful to-day which we held unlawful yesterday.… But it falls out with us as with him that, lying upon a steep rock, and dreaming of good matters befallen him, starts suddenly for joy, and breaks his neck at the bottom. As he that makes a bridge of his own shadow cannot but fall into the water, so neither can he escape the pit of hell who lays his own presumption in the place of God’s promise.—Trapp.
Some say, surely God will not punish a man hereafter who conscientiously walks up to his convictions, although these convictions be in point of fact mistaken. They err, knowing neither the inspired word of God nor natural laws. Do men imagine that God, who has established this world in such exquisite order, and rules it by regular laws, will abdicate, and leave the better world in anarchy? This world is blessed by an undeviating connection between cause and effect; will the next be abandoned to random impulses, or left to chaos?… It is not even conceivable that the direction of a man’s course should not determine his landing-place.… Perhaps the secret reason why an expectation so contrary to all analogy is yet so fondly entertained, is a tacit disbelief in the reality of things spiritual and eternal. We see clearly the laws by which effects follow causes in time; but the matters upon which these laws operate are substantial realities. If there were a firm conviction that the world to come is a substance, and not merely a name, the expectation would naturally be generated, that the same principles which regulate the divine administration of the world now, will stretch into the unseen, and rule it all.… Truth shines like light from heaven; but the mind and conscience within the man constitute the reflector that receives it. Thence we must read off the impression, as the astronomer reads the image from the reflector at the bottom of his tube. When that tablet is dimmed by the breath of evil spirits dwelling within, the truth is distorted and turned into a lie.—Arnot.
There is no way which doth not seem right in his eyes who liketh to go in it. For man is led in all things by a seeming good; and such is the foulness of doing amiss, that it must put on the painted colours of doing right, or else it cannot draw the eyes of man’s mind unto it. But it is the not seeing the end which causeth the seeming rightness of the way, and it is to man that it seems so, who is so apt to be deceived. He that hath a long fight, and in the beginning can see the end, he maketh the shortest journey and speedeth the best in it. If the beginning be a due consideration of the end, the end will be a beginning of true joy and comfort. It is not so in the way which seemeth to be right. For being but a way, it is passed and ended, and then begin the ways of death, which are said to be many, because there is an endless going on in them.—Jermin.