He that trusteth in his riches shall fall
Trusting in riches
I. Here is a common tendency. Trusting in wealth is--
1. Spiritually unsatisfactory.
2. Necessarily evanescent.
II. Here is a terrible catastrophe. “Fall.”
1. Whence? From all his hopes.
2. Whither? To disappointment and despair.
3. When? Whenever moral conviction seizes the soul, whether before or after death.
4. Why? Because wealth was never a fit foundation for the soul. (Homilist.)
But the righteous shall flourish as a branch.--
The secret of spiritual life
The righteous--and some such there have been even in the darkest periods of the world’s history--the righteous “flourish as a branch.” They lean not on their own stem and live not on their own root. From the beginning the same Jesus to whom we look was made known to faith. The manner and measure of making known truth to the understanding were in those days widely different; but the nature and the source of spiritual life were the same. But though all the real branches live, all do not equally flourish. Whatever girds the branch too tightly round impedes the flow of sap from the stem and leaves the extremities to wither. Many cares and vanities and passions wrap themselves round a soul and cause the life even of the living to pine away. When the world in any of its forms lays its grasp round the life, the stricture chokes the secret channels between the disciple and his Lord, and the fruit of unrighteousness drops unripe. It is only as a branch that Christians can flourish in this wilderness; they have no independent source of life and growth. (W. Arnot, D.D.)