Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways.
The call of God
I. The person who issues this command. Note the Divine character of the speaker. The “Lord of hosts.” This name, containing in it every perfection, commands our regard and challenges our awe. Omnipotence, omniscience, and unlimited authority unite their beams in one blaze of glory in this truly august character, “The Lord of hosts.”
II. The command itself. “Consider your ways.” Fix your thoughts upon them with diligence, earnestness, and heart application. Be honest with yourselves, serious and particular in the inquiry into your real character in the sight of God. The command implies that--
1. God has given to us a revelation of His will as the rule of our duty, and the standard by which we are to examine our conduct. The Scriptures form the directory and rule by which we are to try our ways, and which God has in mercy given to us by His own revelation for this purpose.
2. God hath endowed us with the powers of recollection and reflection. By these we can bring the transactions of our whole lives into present view, and arrange the several actions of them in their proper order and colours. It is our wisdom to converse with our departed hours, that we may learn to redeem the time.
3. As God has given both the rule and capacity for the exercising of this duty, so the discharge of it is necessary and advantageous.
(1) The frequent and impartial consideration of our ways has a tendency to humble us before the footstool of the all-glorious Jehovah, and to convince us of our weakness, unworthiness, meanness, and insignificancy.
(2) The diligent and frequent consideration of our ways will be accompanied with this further advantage, of leading us to a cordial, entire dependence upon God, both for direction and assistance in every duty.
(3) Compliance with that required in our text will lead us to see and own that the salvation of a sinner is, and must be, all of grace and mercy. We shall then no longer boast of our good hearts, the integrity of our conduct, or our regular duties. We shall cry for mercy. If you would be humble Christians, dependent upon and sensible of your obligations to the free grace of God, be frequent and impartial in the consideration of your ways.
III. Appeal to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
1. Address the careless unconcerned part of the hearers.
2. Those who have experienced only some slight convictions of sin, and but a transient concern about their salvation.
3. Those who are backsliders. Invite them to serious thought about their present state and danger.
4. Those who are real believers. How crooked even their ways will appear in the review! How slow their progress in the path of duty and obedience. On the whole, as the consideration of our ways is a great duty, so it requires our present and most serious attention. The present now is the season that demands dispatch. Today we must hear God’s voice, before disease incapacitate, or death prevent us. (J. King, B. A.)
An address to servants
It should be the great concern of every one of us to “consider our ways”; to think over them; to search and try them. Applied to servants, we treat--
I. Their duties.
1. Your first duty is to God. You must turn unto Him as real penitents, seek forgiveness through the merits of Jesus Christ, wash in His precious blood, and believe the promises which He has given in His Gospel.
2. Earnest prayer is a duty which servants too often neglect. Weariness at night, and late rising in the morning, are the causes.
3. The diligent reading of the Scriptures. The busiest may find or make time for this spiritual improvement.
4. Attending constantly at the house of God. Whenever, that is, you can secure an opportunity. “Faith cometh by hearing.”
5. Consider your duty towards your employers. Such as the duty of fidelity or faithfulness; a strict regard for truth; obedience; keeping your temper. It is helpful and wise to make a friend, as we call it, of your master and mistress.
6. Consider your duty to your fellow-servants. You ought to show great care, tenderness, and affection for the welfare of each other. Endeavour to lead your fellow-servants into the paths of peace, by recommending, both by precept and example, religious habits. Aid them according to the ability which God giveth you, when they are in any distress.
II. Their trials and temptations.
1. Your early removal from your friends. Service is not like home, however comfortably you may be located. Home is home, however homely.
2. If a Christian servant, the irreligious habits of the families with whom you dwell is another trial.
3. The worldliness of your fellow-servants. These trials bring temptations. And there are special moral temptations for female servants.
III. Their privileges.
1. Wants supplied without involving personal anxiety.
2. Opportunity for receiving the Lord’s Supper.
3. Power to assist in the Lord’s work. (James R. Starey, M. A.)
Whither art thou going?
Every work, with every secret thing, shall reappear at the judgment-seat of Christ, whether good or whether evil. A journey ends somewhere; each step of it is somewhither. Whither, then, are we each going? Of some changes you must be aware, in some you have doubtless rejoiced. But what as to your souls? In what way have they changed? Are they fitter for their end, for that for which God created them? If you have not used God’s grace in the last year, you are, humanly speaking, less in the way to use it this next. Would you prepare for anything, which you care about in this life, as you prepare for eternity? You would not so prepare for any race in this life. God has divided our lives into lesser portions. But each resting-place should give us pause, and force us into ourselves, and make us think, for a time at]east, whether we have made ever so little progress in the way, or have sat down in the way, or have turned altogether aside out of the way. “Consider your ways.” Consider what you have been doing, what you are doing, and whither those doings are tending. “Set your heart upon them,” your heart, the seat of your affections. How, if you have not done it, are you to set about this considering your ways? How would you do if you suspected that you were out of your way on this earth? You would, if you could see it, look back to your starting-point, and see how, little by little, you had swerved from the right path. Then look back to earliest days, see by what lesser or greater steps thou first departedst from the narrow way; look how evil habits strengthen by repetition. “Sift thyself through and through,” says the prophet, “and so sift on.” Then shalt thou make progress, not if thou findest not what to blame, but if thou blame what thou findest. When thou didst not set thy heart upon thy ways, thou didst incur daily, well-nigh countless sin, in thought, word, desire, deed, yea, and in omission of duty. Then judge thyself, that thou be not judged of the Lord. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)