What do ye imagine against the Lord?
Sin
I. The essence of sin is suggested. It is hostility to God. It is opposition to the laws, purposes, Spirit of God. It involves--
1. The basest of ingratitude.
2. The greatest injustice.
3. Impious presumption.
II. The seat of sin is suggested. It is in the mind. Sin is not language, not mere actions. Sin is in the deep mute thoughts of the hearts. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
III. The folly of sin is suggested. It is opposition to Omnipotence. In opposing Him, remember--
1. He will completely ruin you.
2. He will completely ruin you, whatever the kind of resistance you may offer. Fighting against God is a mad fight. (Homilist.)
Folly of opposing God
Sin, when it is mightiest and most successful, is transitory. Lord Rosebery has been telling us the story of Napoleon the Great. His energy, his intellect, his genius were such that he “enlarges the scope of human achievement.” Once he “fought the Austrians for five consecutive days without taking off his boots or closing his eyes.” “He was as much the first ruler as the first captain in the world.” “Ordinary measures do not apply to him; we seem to be trying to span a mountain with a tape.” Napoleon was the largest personal force that has come into the modern European world. But his career ended in defeat and exile. At forty-six the man who had dreamed of governing a continent was a captive. His conquests left no mark. The kings whom he made lost their thrones. France was beggared and exhausted by him. Why? Because God was not his God. “I am not a man like other men,” he asserted himself; “the laws of morality could not be intended to apply to me.” Therefore I will fear nothing, though wickedness seems to prosper for a time. Such prosperity has no permanence about it. It is better to walk humbly with God than to stand alone on the proudest eminence in the world. (A. Smellie, M. A.)
While they be folden together as thorns.--
National undergrowth
Illustrate by the undergrowth in a great forest. It must be cut; down before anything hopeful can be done with the soil There is a national moral undergrowth: a brutal, vile, wretched population of a most repulsive and dangerous character. Ignorance, sensuality, violence, and irreligion, fostered and perpetuated by drunkenness, forms a dismal, moral undergrowth, where human tigers watch for prey, where foul habits breed disease, where women lose all beauty and joy, and where children--the offspring of immoral parents-are like “a nest of unclean birds.” What is to be done with this deadly moral undergrowth? Soft measures, easy-going, self-indulgent Christianity are of no use here.
1. Let us take increased care that good and precious seed shall be sown in the hearts of the young. This is of paramount and urgent importance. Take care of the little ones.
2. Seek to reach the people who never enter places of worship.
3. Endeavour to abate incentives to drunkenness.
4. Consecrate yourselves afresh to God, and the work of His kingdom. (George W. McCree.)