The general truth taught by these words is this: wrong-doing promises much, but it certainly ends in bitter disappointment. The good to be gained by sin is seen and tasted and handled only in dream. It is never actually possessed, and visible disappointment is the bitter fruit of transgression.
I. The very nature of sin suggests this fact. (1) Sin is a wandering from the way which God has appointed for us the way which was in His mind when He made man the only way which has ever been in His mind as the right way. There is no adaptation in nan's real nature to any way but one, and that is obedience to a Father in heaven, the result and fruit of true love for that Father. (2) Sin is a practical withdrawing from the protection of Divine providence. It thus wounds, sometimes instantly, and always eventually, the transgressor himself. It is as when a hungry man dreameth, and awaketh, and behold, he is faint.
II. Look at a few recognised facts about sin. (1) The angels who kept not their first estate left their own habitation. So far as we can understand the matter they sought freedom, but they found chains. They sought light; they found darkness. They sought happiness; they found misery, as when a hungry man dreameth and eateth, and awaketh and finds himself famishing. (2) Our first parents, in yielding to the first temptation, sought equality with God; but they soon found themselves fallen below the natural human level. (3) The general history of sin is found in epitome in the life of every sinner. In families and churches and nations, in societies of all kinds, we see illustrated the truth that sin everywhere, by whomsoever committed, is the occasion of most bitter disappointment.
S. Martin, Penny Pulpit,No. 621.