As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great and waxen rich.
Wicked professors the bane of the Church
I. God has a people on earth.
1. His creation.
2. Called by Him from darkness to light.
3. Privileged, pardoned, regenerated, adopted.
II. In the Church there is an unhappy admixture of wicked men. This applies to--
1. Those religious establishments whose constitution and discipline offer no restraints to the admission of such characters.
2. Mere hearers of the Gospel.
3. Those who have entered the Church without real conversion.
(1) Some professors are secretly wicked.
(2) Some professors are deceivers.
4. Those wilfully inactive in the Church.
5. Those who interrupt the peace and harmony of the Church.
III. This mixture of the wicked with the godly is a fact. “Are found”--by whom?
1. Frequently by themselves (1 John 2:19).
2. Persecution has, and so has temptation.
3. By Christians, to whom their unholy course is a grief.
4. By God (Revelation 3:18). Odious to Him.
5. Some will not be found till the day of judgment (Matthew 3:12; Matthew 13:28-30).
IV. The injurious influence of the conduct of such professors.
1. They bring reproach upon religion (Romans 2:24).
2. The hearts of the godly are grieved and their hands weakened (Joshua 7:12; Jos 7:25; 1 John 2:7; Philippians 3:18).
3. The Church is in danger of being injured by them (Hosea 5:3).
4. It frequently prevents accessions to the Church.
5. The guilt of such persons is highly aggravated, and their punishment will be awful. (Helps for the Pulpit.)
Wickedness rampant in the city
We have, in this chapter, a most melancholy set of pictures of untruthful men, which are drawn to the life with a grimly graphic touch which strongly reminds one of the series of Hogarth’s sketches known as the “Rake’s Progress.” They hold the mirror up not only to the life, but to the heart of the men of the times. Jerusalem was rotten at the core: the nation was deceitful through and through. “As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit.” They had schemes without number, plots without end, and tricks without limit, moving about in their minds like birds herded together in a little cage. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
My people love to have it so.--
God’s people love to have it so
Earnest people like to believe that the world is growing better all the time. They look upon the bright side of things; they behold the spread of the spirit of Christianity more and more in the affairs of nations; wars are discouraged; a higher standard of personal obligation obtains; the wrongs of the wretched and oppressed are being championed, and in many very important particulars redressed; man everywhere in civilised lands seems possessed of an enthusiasm to make the best of himself.
1. All of this sort of thing had its counterpart in the story of Israel in the olden time. We have gone beyond the ancient people of God in all sorts of ways; nevertheless, human nature is strangely akin still to what it was in those days.
(1) We have a host of prophets in these days. They begin by enlarging, as they call it, the notion of inspiration, so that it may include every one who fancies he has a bit of wisdom all his own to give to the world. Any bright author, or preacher, or poet may be a prophet, and if he is really bright, as men count brightness, his inspiration will not be gainsaid by many. We all love prophets, men of ideas, or great original thoughts. And they have many pleasant gospels to proclaim. For example, There is good in everything, every system, every creed, every earnest deed. It is a great mistake to suppose there is any absolute good, and that such things as do not square with its declarations are evil. There are many prophets of the good-in-everything doctrine. Another message to the world is that God is all mercy. It is a beautiful doctrine, is it not? It is certainly one most acceptable in these days, that there is no hell. Yet another of the prophecies which we love to hear is that the essence of all true religion is doing good to our fellow men. Charity and philanthropy are going to save souls. We are even told as if it were of direct revelation from out of heaven that God will not ask what a man believed, but only how he lived, when he appears for judgment. And the prophets who proclaim this truth are popular indeed. Still further, we have the gospel of making the most of one’s self, the gospel of progress, development. Man has in himself all the possibilities of perfection, and if he will but develop himself on sound lines, the future has no limitations for him. All sacraments and supernatural helps of any kind are child’s play, mythical superstitions, unworthy of thought on the part of strong-minded men.
(2) And as it was in Jeremiah’s time, so also is it true today, that the priests bear rule by the means of these modern prophets. Think of the topics with which our modern pulpits generally deal. The unreality and absurdity of the doctrines of the Christian creed; the falsity of the notion of sin as something to be seriously treated, a moral iniquity, and one to be condignly punished; the nobility of man as a splendid, unfallen creature, called upon to make the most of himself, and so to rise to God-like proportions. What is the explanation of this universal enlargement of the scope of sermon utterance? We are told that preaching of this sort reaches people. Your venerable Gospel, such as the Fathers loved, does not pay in these days; wherever you find it preached you will find dearth of money, dearth of works of mercy. So the pulpit must keep abreast of the times, and the priests can only hope to bear rule, lead their flocks and maintain their influence and position, by heartily accepting the revelations of the new prophets and basing their gospel upon them.
(3) Jeremiah added of the men of his time, that God’s people loved to have it so. No doubt this is the real explanation of the success of the prophets and the priests; they have hit upon the things which appeal to the popular heart. Once in a while the heart of the God-serving community is fired with a revival of earnestness and breaks away from the degrading embrace of the world, and then the popular voice of the believing community demands a high spiritual tone of the clergy. As a rule, however, the unbelieving world is too strong for the professors of religion, and gradually lowers their moral tone towards its own cynical, utilitarian standards. Then the believers refuse to hearken to a gospel of strictness from their preachers, and demand an easier doctrine at the penalty of refusing to listen at all. This threat almost always brings the priests to terms, and they weakly salve their consciences by the thought that it is most important to keep some hold upon the people, and that half the Gospel is better than none.
2. It is a very common temptation to rail at the degeneracy of our own time, at the shortcomings of our own Church. We are all of us apt to fancy ourselves prophets of the Lord when we know that we are in earnest, and the reason we fancy ourselves so strong in that role is because one cannot easily see all sides of a question at one time. Most earnest people are very one-sided, often very unfair in their judgments. So I would not have you fancy for a moment that I wish to pose as a Jeremiah denouncing and endeavouring to reform the abuses of the Church of his time. We have an impersonal Jeremiah to utter the solemn warnings of the Lord in our ears. It is the voice of the Church herself. Well, we are very much concerned with the rest of the verse, “My people love to have it so.” Is that true?
(1) Are we quite powerless to prevent things from being so bad as they are? One need not rush into every controversial fray, and yet one may often speak his mind fairly and clearly and so free his soul from the guilt of silence. One can speak in the company of his fellows and say, “I do not believe there is good in everything, for all systems of religion and philosophy which do not emanate from God must be wrong. There can only be one true doctrine about unearthly things, and whatever opposes itself to that which God has revealed is false and bad.” There are abundant opportunities in most of our lives for bearing our witness against the fashionable delusion that works of mercy on behalf of our neighbours are the sure passport to heaven, and that nothing else is needed. We can say strongly and firmly, “Nay, that is but the second commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The first and greatest of all is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. And no one will get to heaven on account of his benevolence to his fellows who neglects to worship and serve his Maker.”
(2) It is not to be forgotten, however, that there is more than bearing witness in speech. There is the living of the life. (Arthur Ritchie.)
And what will ye do in the end thereof?--
What will ye do in the end?
I. There is an end. Every step is getting nearer to the termination.
II. It would seem to be of great importance at the end, what has been the character of the course. It is not so much a question with God how the man died, as what the man was when he came to die.
III. It is the part of a thoughtful and wise man, often to consider the connection between the present and the anticipated result. Every one admits this in matters of worldly experience.
IV. This question should be frequently and earnestly entertained by young men. It is most important how you begin, so that as you go on habit may be on your side and become your friend. (T. Binney, D. D.)
A question for the beginning
A large part of the wise conduct of life depends on grave consideration of consequences. It is a sharp pointed question, that pricks many a bubble, and brings much wisdom down into the category of folly.
I. A question which every wise man will ask himself. The consideration of consequences is not the highest guide, or always a sufficient one; or, by any means, in every case, an easily applied one. Do right! and face any results therefrom. He who is always forecasting possible issues will be so afraid of results that he will not dare to move; and his creeping prudence will often turn out the truest imprudence. But whilst many deductions must be made from the principle laid down, that the consideration of circumstances is a good guide in life, yet there are regions in which the question comes home with illuminating force. I believe that, in the long run, condition is the result of character and of conduct, and, for the most part, men are the architects of their own condition, and that they make the houses that they dwell in to fit the convolutions of the body that dwells within them. That being so, there can be nothing more ridiculous than that a man should refrain from marking the issue of his conduct, and saying to himself, “What am I to do in the end?” If you would only do that in regard of hosts of things in your daily life you could not be the men and women that you are. If the lazy student would only bring clearly before his mind the examination room, and the unanswerable paper, and the bitter mortification when the pass list comes out and his name is not there, he would not trifle as he does, but bind himself to his desk and his task. If the young man that begins to tamper with purity could see, as the older of us have seen, men with their bones full of the iniquity of their youth, do you think the temptations of the streets and low places of amusement would not be stripped of their fascination? “What will you do in the end?” Use that question as the Ithuriel spear which will touch the squatting tempter at your ear, and there will start up, in its own shape, the fiend. But the main application that I would ask you to make of the text is in reference to the final end, the passing from life. Death, the end, is likewise death, the beginning. Surely every wise man will take that into consideration. Surely, if it be true that we all of us are silently drifting to that one little gateway through which we have to pass one by one, and then find ourselves in a region all full of consequences of the present, he has a good claim to be counted a prince of fools who “jumps the life to come,” and, in all his calculations of consequences, which he applies wisely and prudently to the trifles of the present, forgets to ask himself, “And, after all that is done, what shall I do then?”
II. A question which a great many of us never think about. “What will you do in the end?” Why! half of us put away that question with the thought in our minds, if not expressed, at least most operative, “There is not going to be any end; and it is always going to be just like what it is today.” Did you ever think that there is no good ground for being sure that the sun will rise tomorrow; that it rose for the first time once; that there will come a day when it will rise for the last time? The uniformity of nature may be a postulate, but you cannot find any logical basis for it. Or, to come down from heights of that sort, have you ever laid to heart, that the only unchangeable thing in this world is change, and the only thing certain, that there is no continuance of anything; and that, therefore, you and I are bound, if we are wise, to look that fact in the face, and not to allow ourselves to be befooled by the difficulty of imagining that things will ever be different from what they are? Another reason why so many of us shirk this question is the lamentable want of the habit of living by principle and reflection. They tell us that in nature there is such a thing as protective mimicry, as it is called--animals having the power--some of them to a much larger extent than others--of changing their hues in order to match the gravel of the stream in which they swim or the leaves of the trees on which they feed. It is like what a great many of us do. Put us into a place where certain forms of frivolity or vice are common, and we go in for them. Take us away from these, and we change our hue to something a little whiter. But all through we never know what it is to put forth a good solid force of resistance, and to say, “No! I will not!” or, what is sometimes quite as hard to say, “Yes! though”--as Luther said in his strong way--“there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the housetops, I will!” If people would live more by reflection and by the power of a resisting will, this question of my text would come oftener to them. And there is another cause that I must touch on for one moment, why so many people neglect this question, and that is because they know they durst not face it. What would you think of a man that never took stock because he knew he was insolvent, and yet did not want to know it? And what do you think of yourselves if, knowing that the thought of passing into that solemn eternity is anything but a cheering one, and that you have to pass into it, you never turn your head to look at it?
III. A question especially directed to you young folk. It is so because with your buoyancy, with your necessarily limited experience, with the small accumulation of results that you have already in your possession, and with the tendencies of your age to live rather by impulse than by reflection, you are specially tempted to forget the solemn significance of this interrogation. And it is a question especially for you, because you have special advantages in the matter of putting it. We older people are all fixed and fossils, as you are very fond of telling us. The iron has cooled and gone into rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may be pretty nearly what you like. You have not yet acquired habits--that awful thing that may be our worst foe or our best friend--you have not yet acquired habits that almost smother the power of reform and change. You have perhaps years before you in which you may practise the lessons of wisdom, the self-restraint which this question fairly fronted would bring.
IV. A question which Jesus Christ alone enables a man to answer with calm confidence. As I have said, the end is a beginning; the passage from life is the entrance on a progressive and eternal state of retribution. And Jesus Christ tells us two other things. He tells us that that state has two parts: that in one there is union with Him, life, blessedness forever; and that in the other there is darkness, separation from Him, death, and misery. These are the facts as revealed by the incarnate Word of God on which answers to this question must be shaped. “What will you do in the end?” If I am trusting to Him; if I have brought my poor, weak nature and sinful soul to Him, and cast them upon His merciful sacrifice and mighty intercession and life-giving Spirit, then I can say: “As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
What will ye do in the end thereof
This is the message of God to sinful men in all times; and its characteristics are the same now as they were when it was first uttered.
I. An unwelcome question. As the bankrupt does not dare investigate his affairs, and the man who is contracting intemperate habits or tampering with his employer’s property does not dare think of the ruin and disgrace to which he is hastening, so the man whose conscience is not easy, who suspects there is something wrong, dreads to look into the future, and counts that man his enemy who ventures to insist on his doing so. The whisper of this question sometimes comes into the heart of the procrastinator--the worldling--the trifler--the backslider; and, with one horrified glance forward, he too often shrinks back and tries to forget all about it.
II. An unanswerable question. The moment a man stands in thought in the midst of the degradation, ruin, and misery he has brought on himself, all his excuses fly; like the man without the wedding garment, he is “speechless.” How mad to persevere in a course that has such an end!
III. An imperative question.
1. Because no forgetfulness of consequences will prevent them coming. A man may put to sea in a leaky vessel and refuse to consider the remonstrances of friends--he may even be ignorant of the facts; but that will not prevent his foundering in the storm.
2. Because it furnishes the direct antidote to the seductions of sin. The burnt child dreads the fire. The sailor avoids the sunken rock.
3. Because the end may be avoided. “Now is the accepted time.” (J Ogle.)
Think about the end
Lange translates as follows: “What will they do when the end of the song comes?”--I wonder if you are like some people whom I know: do you ever turn to the end of the book in order that you may see how it finishes? It is not a good method of reading, but this is what the prophet wished the Jews to do: he desired them to think about the end of life. So many people forget all about the end until it actually comes upon them. The farmer does not do so, for while he sows he thinks about the harvest that will end his toil; it is good for us all to consider often what the future will be. In the East there are men who have most wonderful power over serpents. They play music and the snakes remain quite still and obedient all the time that the song lasts; but what when the song is done? While people are well and prosperous in doing evil they do not think much about God, but what will they do when the song is all over? Then they will find that they have been deceived. There were some wicked men who once induced a large number of people to come together. These people paid their money to the men and they came into the hall; but the men ran away with the money. The people found then that they had been deceived. Some people do worse, for they deceive themselves; they hope that they are all right with God, they hope that they shall reach heaven at last, and do no more. Others are deceived by the opinions or books of those who seek to harm them. All sinners, we know, will one day find that they have been deceived, unless they repent at once and believe on Jesus. And then they will also learn that they are unhealed. What a dreadful thing it will be, if, when we die, we find that our hearts are evil still! When people are in very great pain the doctors sometimes give to them medicines that make the sick people sleep. They are not cured because they sleep, but they do not feel the pain quite so much. So business and other things deaden the feelings, but they do not cure the soul, for only Jesus can do that. There is a fable that illustrates what I mean. A piper once played such sweet music that all the children enjoyed it very much. While the piper played upon his pipe the children were delighted. They followed him from their homes until they were enticed into a cavern, and thus the song ended. This is what Satan does: he entices us by his promises, but when the song is done we shall find out that he has led us away from happiness and into suffering and pain. Think about the end when you are tempted, and think also about the end when it appears to be hard to do good. Ask yourselves, what will come after the end? (J. J. Ellis.).