As they were increased, so they sinned against me.
Secular prosperity
The “increase” is in the number of the population; but it may refer to increase of wealth.
I. Secular prosperity attained by the wicked.
1. That is a common fact. Wicked men in all ages have, as a rule, been more prosperous than their contemporaries. Two things account for this fact--
(1) Their secular earnestness. Material good is the one thing With them.
(2) Their moral unscrupulousness. They have no high sense of honour, no inviolable rules of right, no swaying sense of moral responsibilities. Hence they will not reject the fraudulent and false if they will serve them in their course.
2. That is a trying fact. Men of incorruptible truth, honesty, and high devotion have in all ages been baffled and distressed by this fact.
II. Secular prosperity abused. In the hands of the wicked wealth can--
1. Promote injustice. It fattens the despotic in human nature.
2. It promotes sensuality. It provides means to inflame the low passions of human nature, and to pamper the brutal appetites.
3. It promotes practical atheism. The man with wealth, and without God in his heart, sinks into an utter forgetfulness of the Author of all good.
III. Secular prosperity is ruinous to the wicked. God will strip them of all they now glory in, all their worldly prosperity, and give them shame instead. “Therefore will I change their glory into shame.” I will quench all the lights which they have kindled. I will bring them into wretchedness and contempt. (Homilist.)
Prosperity encouraging sin
The Lord accuses them of ingratitude, that the more they prospered, or increased in number or glory, they were the more bold on sin; therefore He threatens them with ignominy to come in place of that glory which made them miscarry so far. Learn--
1. Such as do provoke God highly, may yet, in His long-suffering patience, not only continue as they are, but increase in prosperity, issue, and glory for a time.
2. As there is no outward mercy conferred on wicked or unrenewed men, but they do make it a snare to draw them into sin, and harden them in it, so this abuse of God’s goodness doth aggravate sin exceedingly, for it is a challenge that “as they were increased, so they sinned against Me.”
3. Any glory or splendour which men abuse to harden themselves in sin, neglecting that which is their true honour, will certainly end in ignominy; and especially when ministers glory of worldly state or riches as their chief excellency, neglecting that true honour of being faithful in their station. (George Hutcheson.)
Worldly prosperity an insidious danger
Once an English friend found Jenny Lind sitting on the steps of a bathing-machine, on the sands, with a Lutheran Bible open on her knee, and looking out into the glory of a sunset that was shining over the waters. They talked, and the talk drew near to the inevitable question: “Oh, Madame Goldschmidt, how was it that you ever came to abandon the stage, at the very height of your success?” “When, every day,” was the quiet answer, “it made me think less of this” (laying a finger on the Bible) “and nothing at all of that” (pointing to the sunset), “what else could I do?” (“Life of Jenny Lind,” by Canon Scott Holland.)
Spiritual ruin through temporal prosperity
It is not an unmixed blessing to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, for we all need the benefit of the struggle. I knew a man who commenced business on a small scale, and at that time he attended the chapel twice every Sunday. The business increased rapidly, and he attended chapel once a Sunday, and then once a month, and now he spends his Sundays in a house-boat on the river, and has lost all taste for sacred things! He is the miserable slave of his gold--he worships it by day and dreams of it by night- and one would not be surprised to hear of his seeking his euthanasia in suicide! A man alone with his money is a sorry sight, for his heart is petrified, his spirit materialised, and his life poisoned. The gold mines of Peru helped to wreck the fortunes of Spain, for men abandoned honest work, and became avaricious adventurers. Excessive luxury and avarice are the sure forerunners of national decadence, and we Britons must be on our guard against it, or the fate of Spain will be ours. Life is qualitative rather than quantitative, and our prosperity will spoil us unless we give to soul-culture the first and highest place. As Seneca says: “One of the most serious calamities which can befall any man is not to know something of adversity.” (J. Ossian Davies.)
Therefore will I turn their glory into shame.
Perverted gifts
God bestows on man gifts, which may be to him matter of praise and glory, if only ordered aright to their highest and only true end, the glory of God. Man perverts them to vainglory, and therefore to sin; God turns the gifts, so abused, to shame. He not only gives them shame instead of their glory; He makes the glory itself the means and occasion of their shame. Beauty becomes the occasion of degradation; pride is proverbially near a fall; “vaulting ambition overleaps itself and falls on the other side.” (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Man’s glory changed into shame
The very blessings which God had bestowed on these priests for their glory, in order to their good, were to be converted into their shame, and be made instrumental to their injury.
I. The threatening in its relation to the Jews. There never was a nation upon which were poured with such profusion things which should have been for their good and for their glory. But in a very wonderful manner the Jews perverted all their privileges, and thus turned their glory into shame. Their national mercies only strengthened the national apostasy, and then the threatening took literal effect, though only through their own misuse of their many advantages.
II. The threatening in its relation to ourselves. Constantly things which should have turned to our glory have been instrumental to our shame. But this cannot occur without fatal injury.
1. How may our temporal blessings be turned into shame? Nothing tries a man more than prosperity. There are many tempers and dispositions which are comparatively repressed by straitness of condition, but which walk abroad in full liberty when that condition is enlarged. Nevertheless, riches are designed of God to be for man’s glory. Alas! there too often occurs the reverse of this, and riches are turned into shame. This is also true of intellectual riches. Genius has often been the ruin of its possessor; the powers which ought to have been for their glory, needing nothing but righteous employment in order to the rendering their possessors happy in themselves, and benefactors to the world, have been given to the cause of vice and infidelity. But illustrations had better be taken from commonplace than from rare instances.
2. How may our spiritual advantages be turned into shame? Every doctrine of religion, every leading of providence may clearly be for our own glory if rightly employed, and as clearly for our shame if misused and perverted. Illustrate by the doctrine of human helplessness, or of the forbearance God manifests to sinners. In dealing with the dispensations of providence, illustrate by affections. They are our glory, but, unsanctified, they become our shame. The prophet Malachi has this threatening in the name of God, “I will curse your blessings.” (Henry Melvill, B. D.)
Shame for glory
God loves to stain the pride and haughtiness of men.
I. He would bring shame instead of glory. So God is wont to do. Women that glory in their beauty and splendour should mark well (Isaiah 3:16-24). If any will glory in parts, the Lord justly brings shame on them, blasting their gifts. It is reported of Albertus Magnus, that great scholar, that for five years before his death, he lost his faculties so completely that he could not read. If any glory in riches, God can soon turn that into shame. If any glory in honour, God can soon turn that into shame, as in the case of Herod. According to the glory of men in external things, so is their shame when God takes them away. Here is the difference between the saints and the wicked when they lose these outward things.
II. God makes the very things they glory in turn to their shame. He makes their very gifts to be their undoing. When men glory in this, that they had such success, and such a victory at such a time, and thence infer, “Surely God is with us, and blesses and owns us,” God will turn this glorying into shame when He blasts their success, and makes it manifest to all that though they have all outward means, yet they avail nothing. When the saints suffer any shame for God, they can glory. What the world accounts their shame is their glory; and that which the world judges to be their glory is their shame. The prophet is speaking here more especially of the priests. God casts shame upon wicked priests. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)