CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 29:18. Vision. Rather “Revelation.” “The word denotes prophetic prediction, the revelation of God by His seers (1 Samuel 9:9); the chief function of these consisted in their watching over the vigorous fulfilling of the law, or in the enforcement of the claims of the law (Zöckler).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 29:18
DIVINE REVELATION AND HUMAN OBEDIENCE
I. The human soul needs what it cannot produce. If the flower is to attain to its development of beauty and colour it must have the sunlight and the rain from without itself—it needs what it has no power to produce. The husbandman and all mankind need a harvest, but they have no power within themselves to supply their need; although they can plough, and plant, and sow, they cannot give the quickening rays of light and heat which alone can make the seed to live and grow. The entire human race has spiritual needs which it cannot supply, and capabilities which must be developed by influences outside and above itself. It needs a knowledge of God’s nature, and will, and purposes, if it is to grow in moral stature, and blossom and ripen into moral beauty and fruitfulness, but no human intellect or heart can acquire this knowledge by its own unaided efforts. If the human soul is to grow in goodness it must know God, and if it is to know Him, God must reveal Himself.
II. God by revelation has supplied man’s need. This supply man had a right to look for and expect. He had a right to look to the Creator of his bodily appetites and needs for the supplies that are necessary to his physical life and well-being, and he does not look in vain. God has given the “earth to the children of men” (Psalms 115:16), and every year He causes it to bring forth and bud, not only giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, but an abundance of luxuries for his enjoyment. It is most natural and reasonable to look to the Giver of all these good things for the body, and expect from Him the supply of the deeper needs of the soul. We do not think a human parent does his duty to his child if he only feeds and clothes him and makes no effort to enlighten his mind and satisfy his heart. And surely the Great Father of the universe would not be worthy of His name if He dealt so with the children of whose bodies and souls He is the Author. But He has not left us thus unprovided for, but “at sundry times and in divers manners He has spoken unto men” (Hebrews 1:1), telling them enough of Himself and of themselves to satisfy their spiritual cravings, and to elevate their spiritual nature.
III. It follows that gratitude and self-love should prompt men to listen to God, and to obey Him. If the foregoing assertions are true, it follows that man must give heed to the revelation of God, or sustain permanent and irretrievable loss. As he cannot reject the Divine provision for the body without bodily death, so he cannot refuse attention to God’s provision for his soul without spiritual ruin—without causing to perish all those powers and faculties of his highest nature the exercise of which make existence worth having. Self-love, therefore, should prompt a man to “keep the law,” and if he do not listen to its voice he has only himself to blame for missing real happiness. If a man is starving, his best friend can do no more than supply his need, he must eat the food set before him; and when God has offered to the children of men that wine and milk which will satisfy the soul, and cause it to grow, He has done all that even a God can do. (Isaiah 55:1-2.) Man is a self-murderer if he refuse it.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
He doth not say they may perish, but they do perish; or they are in danger of perishing, but they do certainly perish where there is no serious, conscientious, faithful, powerful preaching.… There men perish temporarily; when vision, when preaching ceased among the Jews, oh, the dreadful calamities and miseries that came upon the people!… There men perish totally: both the bodies and the souls of men perish where serious conscientious preaching fails (Hosea 4:6); “My people are destroyed for want of knowledge.” … The Papists say that ignorance is the mother of devotion; but this text tells us that it is the mother of destruction.—Brooks.
This is only a hypothetical case, for there are no such “people.” Nevertheless there is such a principle. Just in proportion as men do not know they will not be punished. Paul and Solomon are in full accord. “They that sin without law shall also perish without law; but they that sin in the law shall be judged by the law.” (Romans 2:12.) These Proverbs elsewhere have taught the same doctrine (chap. Proverbs 8:36). Men might all perish, but some less terribly, from a difference of light. All men have some light (Romans 1:20); and that which they actually have is all that they shall answer for in the day of final account. Still there is a form of ignorance that will exactly proportion our guilt. It is ghostly ignorance, or the absence of spiritual knowledge. Perhaps I may still say that a man is punished for what he has, and not for what he has not. A man who knows of this ignorance, and has light enough to know his need of light, has enough to give account for in that without being supposed to suffer for a profound negation. Be this as it may, there is such an ignorance. It exactly grades our sins. It is the measure of our depravity, The profounder it sinks we sink. No man need sink or perish. There is a remedy. “The word is nigh” (us.)—Miller.