The subject brought before us in the text is the weighing of consequences. It is the looking before we leap; it is the propriety of considering what is to follow from what we do before we do it.
I. The great principle which should guide all wise Christian people with regard to the consideration of consequences is this: Wherever we are sure that duty leads, wherever we are sure that God bids us go, then that way we should go, whatever and however painful the consequences may be. The rule is that we are to do right, and as for the consequences, leave them with God.
II. We are to do this humbly; we are not to do it in any strength of our own, but in simple reliance on the promised grace of God. The grand thing is, not that a man should say that he will go on in the path of duty, whatever loss that may bring him, but that those around him should see that he isgoing on in the path of duty, though that should not be the path of worldly gain.
III. This subject is a most practical one. The time will often come in which we see plainly enough what is the path of duty, but are tempted to ask, What shall we do for the hundred talents? There can be no doubt that in this world honesty is often the very worst policy. But in the long run no man will ever lose by obeying God's bidding; and, just as assuredly, no man will ever gain by disobeying it. To go where God commands and to do what God commands, though loss may come of it, is truly not a disdaining of consequences; it is a fuller and truer weighing of consequences. It is to look farther on; it is to throw eternity into the scale of duty and interest; it is to draw the wise and sound conclusion that what is wrong can never be expedient, because it would be no profit to gain the whole world and to lose the immortal soul.
A. K. H. B., Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit,p. 199.
Reference: 2 Chronicles 25:9. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 335.