MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 15:8-9
PRAYING AND LIVING
I. God loves righteous men with a special love. God has a love for all His human creatures—a love which springs out of His relationship to them as their Creator. He loves the “world” (John 3:16), but this love cannot be said to spring from likeness of character between Him and the objects of His love. There is a spontaneous love welling up in the mother’s heart towards her child long before that child has developed any qualities to win love. The love springs from the relationship that exists between the child and its parent, and it exists before there has been time and opportunity to develop a loveable character. And there is still love in the mother’s heart from the relationship, if, after there has been time to form a loveable character, no such character is manifested—if there is no response to the parent’s love. There is this spontaneous love in God for all His human children—a love that, even when it meets with no response, does not cease to pity those who reject it. “God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “But, after the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:4-5). But the special love which God has to righteous men—to men of integrity—to men who are sincere in their love of righteousness, and who make conformity to it the end and aim of their life (see on chap. Proverbs 11:3, page 196), is a love which springs from likeness of character. It is the personal love of a perfectly Righteous Being for persons whose characters, in some degree, resemble His own. The good human father loves to see his own character in miniature in that of his child. He delights to see his son “following after” him in his holy habits and feelings—he loves him with a deeper and more joyful love as he sees in him the germs of holy desires and aims which he knows will be more fully developed as he grows into manhood. And so the “Heavenly Father” loves with the love of delight (chap. Proverbs 12:22) those of His human sons and daughters who have begun to reflect His image in their hearts and lives, and waits with patience until the blade changes to the ear, and the ear into the full corn—until they are not only just men, but “just men made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23).
II. One act of a righteous man which God regards with special pleasure. “The prayer of the upright.”
1. Because it is an expression of conscious need. A sense of spiritual need and weakness is indispensable, even to the continuance of a righteous character, much more to its growth. While a man feels his need, he will not only keep what he already has, but will be in the way of getting more. While he feels that he has not “already attained” neither is “already perfect” he will “follow after” perfection, he will “reach forth unto those things which are before, and press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God”—(Philippians 3:12-14), even to entire and absolute holiness of character. When he prays, he expresses his sense of need, and thus gives proof of that lowliness and contrition of heart without which no man can receive supplies of Divine grace. Therefore God delights in his prayer.
2. It is an expression of filial confidence. He not only knows what he wants, but he knows who is able and willing to supply his need. Prayer is in itself an act of faith—it is an expression of belief that “God is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6.) A human benefactor, especially a human parent, feels that application to him for help is a tribute to his goodness and to his power—it is a manifestation that those who seek his aid are assured of his willingness and ability to meet their need. So with the Divine Friend and Father. He loves to have His compassion and His power confided in by His creatures.
3. It is an act of obedience. God has commanded “men always to pray.” (Luke 18:1.) It was a condition to be observed under the Old Testament dispensation, as well as under that of the new. “Thus saith the Lord, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.” (Ezekiel 36:37). “Ask and it shall be given you” (Luke 11:9). The conditions are easy, but they are indispensable. No wise parent gives his children what they desire, except certain conditions are fulfilled. They may be very easy, but in no well-governed family are they dispensed with. So in God’s family. True he knows what his children need before they ask Him, even better than the wisest and most tender human parent, but the command is absolute, the condition without exception. Prayer is therefore acceptable to Him because it is an act of obedience to His command.
III. God abhors the way of the wicked.
1. Because they are at war with their better nature. There are instincts in every mail which are opposed to wrong-doing. There is a light which lightens every man that cometh into the world. When men sin they war against their own better nature. Cain possessed instincts which he must have stifled and trampled down before he could shed his brother’s blood, and so it is with every son of Adam. God must hate that which debases the creature whom He created in His own image.
2. Because their ways are at war with His purpose to bless them. A wise statesman may conceive a plan which he sees by his superior intelligence is calculated to bring great blessings to his nation. He labours to make the nation see it also—he uses all his reasoning power and all the force of his eloquence to bring it into operation, to make it the law of the land. But the very people whom it is intended to benefit may, from ignorance and prejudice, oppose his wise and beneficent efforts. He looks upon their opposition with the deepest displeasure, because it is opposed to their own welfare. If a son rebel against the plans which a wise and good father has formed for his benefit, the father must be deeply displeased at the obstinacy which thus frustrates his purpose of love and wisdom. God’s complaint against Israel was, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me” (Isaiah 1:2)—rebelled against all His gracious plans and purposes concerning them, and that is His quarrel with the ways of wicked men in general that crosses all His purposes of mercy towards them.
IV. Their acts of worship are especially displeasing to Him. They are offered with no sense of spiritual need—with no desire to forsake sin. When such men engage in outward acts of worship it is as if a thief were to offer to his judge some of his unlawful gain as a bribe to be allowed to go free of punishment. God so regarded the sacrifices of Israel when they came into His courts with “hands full of blood.” “Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth” (Isaiah 1:14-15). They were an abomination to Jehovah because the hearts of the men who offered them were in love with sin and desired only, if possible, to escape the penalty due to it. Men in all ages would have been well pleased to “be pardoned and to retain the offence,” but the very suggestion of such a thing is a gross insult to the righteousness of God, and as this is the only construction that can be put upon a drawing near to Him in outward service while the heart is far from Him (Isaiah 29:13), the sacrifice of the wicked must be the act most abhorrent to God of a way which is altogether an “abomination unto Him.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 15:8. When an ungodly man prays, it is not the act of prayer that constitutes the sin, it is the want of a praying heart. The sin is in him, not in his prayer.—Wardlaw.
The formal devotion of a faithless man is not worth the crust of bread which he asks.—T. Adams.
Man judges by acts, God by principles. The sacrifice of the wicked, though it be part of God’s own service, yet “will be found in His register in the catalogue of sins to be accounted for” (Bp. Hopkins). Is he then finally rejected? Far from it. His desire to seek the Lord would be the beginning of the prayer that ensures acceptance. That which brings acceptance is—not the perfection, but the simplicity of uprightness.—Bridges.
“Sacrifice and prayer” are not here contrasted as the higher and the lower, but “sacrifice” is a gift to God, “prayer” is desiring from Him (Comp. Isaiah 1:11; Isaiah 1:15, etc.) Yet this is by no means an essential difference; for both sacrifice and prayer, which indeed fall likewise under the category of offering in the broadest sense (Psalms 119:108; Hebrews 13:15) come under consideration here only as general tokens of reverence for God; and the value of both is clearly defined by this test, whether the state of heart is or is not well pleasing to God.—Lange’s Commentary.
It is not works that make the man good, but when a man is justified his works are also good. God in His grace makes well pleasing to Himself the works that come of faith, even though great imperfections still mingle with them.—Starke.
“The sacrifice of the wicked,” though it may be very costly—the column of Stylites, the hook-swinging of the east, the millions of anxious charity—without grace must be purely sin. “The prayer of the upright,” though it asks instead of gives, yet is a delight, where the other is an abomination. A man may serve God out of sheer selfish wickedness. Moreover, all are abominable. There is no just man upon earth. But the righteous has the righteousness of Christ; while these others are left, without a cover, to their own abominable guiltiness.—Miller.
Works materially good may never prove so formally and eventually, viz:
(1) When they proceed not from a right principle;
(2) When they tend not to a right end. The glory of God must consume all other ends, as the sun puts out the light of the fire. But the prayer that proceeds from an upright heart, though but faint and feeble, doth come before God, even “into His ears” (Psalms 18:6), and so strangely charms Him (Isaiah 26:16) that He breaks forth into these words: “Ask me of things concerning my sons, and concerning the works of my hands command ye me” (Isaiah 45:11). Oh that we understood the latitude of this royal charter!—Trapp.
Proverbs 15:9. “The way of the wicked is abomination.” Not his sacrifices only, but his civilities: all his actions—natural, moral, recreative, religious—are offensive to God. The very “ploughing of the wicked is sin” (Proverbs 21:4).… “But He loveth him that followeth after righteousness, although he fulfil not all righteousness, yet if he make after it with might and main, if he pursue it and have it in chase, “if by any means he may attain to the resurrection of the dead” Philippians 3:11); that is, the height of holiness that accompanies the resurrection: this is the man whom God loves. Now God’s love is not an empty love; it is not like the winter sun, that casteth a goodly countenance when it shines, but gives little warmth and comfort. “Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness; those that remember Thee in Thy ways” (Isaiah 64:5), “that think upon Thy commandments to do them” (Psalms 103:20), that are weak but willing (Hebrews 13:8), that are lifting at the latch, though they cannot do up the door: “Surely, shall every such one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength” (Isaiah 45:24). “Righteousness,” that is, mercy to those that come over to Him, and “strength” to enable them to come, as the sea sends out waters to fetch us to it.—Trapp.
The way of the wicked and the abomination of the Lord go on with equal paces. It is his way, because he leadeth himself in it, refusing to follow the guide of instruction: and God’s way it is, wherein His abomination pursueth after him.… St. Bernard saith, “God loveth, neither doth this arise from anything in others, but Himself it is from whence He loveth; and therefore the more vehemently, because He doth not so much love, as rather Himself is love.”—Jermin.