To-morrow will I bring the locusts.
Humiliation before God
“How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before Me?”
I. I shall show our need of humiliation before God.
1. Let us inquire how we have acted toward God. As our Creator, our Governor, our Benefactor.
2. Let us inquire how we have acted toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Was made flesh. Died for us.
3. Let us inquire how we have acted toward the Holy Spirit. Rebelled, vexed, grieved, quenched.
II. I shall show wherein true humiliation consists.
1. In confession of our sin before God. Fully and unreservedly. With deep and ingenuous sorrow.
2. In believing application to God through Christ for pardon of our sin.
3. In renouncing our sins and commencing a course of obedience to God.
III. I shall show the evils of delaying true humiliation before God.
1. The guilt (Romans 2:4-5).
2. The folly. Stronger than He?
3. The danger. Pharaoh. Manasseh.
(1) Repentance is never too late.
(2) Repentance is never too soon. (G. Brooks.)
The delay of soul humility
I. In what does soul-humility consist?
1. It does not consist in mournful verbal utterances, k humble word may conceal a proud spirit.
2. Nor in outward manifestations of repentance.
3. It is rather evinced in calm resignation to the will of God as revealed in His Word, and as made known in the conscience by the Holy Spirit.
II. How is soul-humility to be obtained?
1. By having a clear conception of the will of God and of the beauty of truth.
2. By allowing the varied discipline of life its due effect upon the soul. Pain ought to humble a man, reminding him of his mortality.
3. By submitting to the gentle influences of the Holy Spirit.
III. Why is soul-humility so long delayed?
1. Because men will not give up their sins. Humility is the outcome of purity.
2. Because men will not yield to the claims of God.
3. Because men are rendered proud by exalted social position.
4. Men can give no reason for the delay of soul-humility.
Humility is the richest and best ornament of the soul, and no good excuse can be assigned for neglecting to wear it. This ornament is but seldom seen in this vaunting age. It is welcome to the eye of heaven.
Lessons:
1. Soul-humility should be manifested by man.
2. God’s ministers should enforce it.
3. God’s people should cultivate it.
4. Its absence cannot be excused. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The plague of locusts threatened
I. It was threatened in case that Pharaoh would not give the Israelites the freedom demanded by God (verse 4). The good have in God a stern Defender.
II. That some men are much more sensitive to the threatenings of God than others (verse 7).
III. That Divine threatenings must make ministers faithful in the discharge of their duty (verse 9). Denounce all attempts at moral compromise. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
To-morrow
1. A judgment.
2. A mystery.
3. A crisis.
4. An anxiety.
5. A hope. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
If thou refuse
1. Then man can refuse to obey God.
2. Then man can dare the judgments of God.
3. Then man takes a great responsibility upon himself. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The locusts
1. Very grievous.
2. Darkening the light.
3. Devouring the fruit.
4. Entering the houses. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Good men should leave sinners u, hen they have declared the message of God
1. As a reproof.
2. As a contempt.
3. As a prophecy.
4. As a relief. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Locust-scaring gods
The Egyptians, in common with other nations whose ideas of religion were derived originally from Egypt, had particular deities to whom they appealed for help in times of particular necessity. There is reason to believe that they had gods to whom they looked for protection against locusts as well as against flies and vermin. Strabo, speaking of certain gods whose titles were derived from insignificant objects, says: “The inhabitants of Mount Å’ta worshipped Hercules under the title of Hercules Cornopion, because he had delivered them from locusts. So the Erythraeans, who live near Melius, worship Hercules Ipoctonus, because he destroyed the ipes, or worms, which are destructive to vines: for this pest is found everywhere except in the country of the Erythraeans. The Rhodians have in their island a temple of Apollo Erythibius, so called from erysibe (mildew), which they call erythibe. Among the AEolians in Asia one of their months is called Pornopion, for this name the Boeotians give to parnopes (locusts), and sacrifices are performed to Apollo Pornopion. “The locust was esteemed sacred in Greece, and the Athenians wore golden cicadae, or grasshoppers, in their hair, to denote the antiquity of their race, as αὐτόχθονες, “of the land itself,” or aborigines. Early historians tell us that the Greeks came originally from Egypt; Cecrops, the first king of Attica, was from Sais; Cadmus, from Thebes; and Danaus and Lynceus, with their colonies, from Chemnis. The locust-scarers of Greece and Asia were, therefore, in all probability, gods of the Egyptians in time of Pharaoh, and were put to shame, with the rest of their deities, by this unprecedented and miraculous visitation. Thus the winds from the four corners of heaven obey the command of Jehovah. As far as man is concerned, nothing is more uncertain, nothing more absolutely beyond control: “the wind bloweth were it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth” (John 3:8). But God directeth it under the whole heaven; He calleth it, “Awake, O north wind, and come thou south (Song of Solomon 4:16); He gathereth the wind in His fists (Proverbs 30:4); “He bringeth it out of His treasuries” (Psalms 135:7). At God’s command the east wind brought the locusts, in twenty-four hours, from the uttermost parts of the east, collecting them, it may be, from the far-off deserts of Arabia and Persia; and at God’s command the west wind carried them away again, as far as the Red Sea. There they all fell down and perished. “I am tossed up and down as the locust” (Psalms 109:23), says David. These creatures were tossed up and down by the wind wherever God would send them. He had used them as His scourge, an instrument of punishment, in which He could have no pleasure; and when their ungrateful task was done, He drowned them in the sea. To those same depths the infatuated king who refused to be warned by the chastisement was presently to follow them, and with his miserable people, in their turn, to perish. (T. S. Millington.)