And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Ver. 27. And the rain descended, &c.] The old heart cannot possibly hold out the hardship of holiness, nor bear the brunt of persecution for well doing. Like a chestnut cast into the fire, if not broken first on the top, it leaps out again; or like a false jade in a team, which being put to a stress, turns tail and tramples. When the godly hearer holds on his way to heaven, through all disasters; as those two kine of the Philistines that bore home the ark, held on their way, though they had calves at home, that might have made them turn back.
And it fell] The wise man's and fool's house come under a double difference. 1. In the foundation; this to see to, and above ground, is little discerned. The temple is said to be as low underground as it was high above. 2. In the building itself. The unprofitable hearer is not cemented to Christ by faith, but laid loose, as it were, upon a sandy foundation, and so slips beside the ground work in foul weather. He is not set into the stock as a scion, but only stuck into the ground as a stake, and is therefore easily pulled up. Whereas the true Christian is knit fast to Christ the rock by the ligament of a lively faith; and as a lively stone, is built up in a spiritual house,1 Peter 2:5, growing up in the mystical body with so much sweetness and evenness, as if the whole temple (like that of Solomon) were but one entire stone. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," 1 Corinthians 6:17. So that although, 1. Shakings and waverings in the very purpose of holy walking may befall a saint by violent temptations, Psalms 73:2; Psalms 73:13; yea, 2. Intermissions of the exercise of grace, as of life in a palsy or epilepsy; 3. Particular falls we are not exempted from, -Peter himself, though a pillar, fell from his former steadfastness, in part; -yet from intercision, prolapsion, from utter and irrecoverable falling away, they are freed, because founded upon a Rock, which can never be removed, he is both the "author and finisher of their faith," Hebrews 12:2; He hath prayed and procured that it utterly fail notLuke 22:32 .
And the fall thereof was great] Great and grievous, because irreparable, irrebuildable, as Jericho and the temple at Jerusalem. God lays them aside like broken vessels, of which there is no further use; and since they will needs wallow again, as swine, in the filth of their former pollutions, he pronounceth upon them that fearful sentence, "Let him that is filthy be filthy still;" that unclean spirit entereth him again, and his dispositions to evil are seven times more inflamed than ever. He hath despised and despited the Spirit of Grace, and is in the ready road to the unpardonable sin, Hebrews 10:26. The apostate cannot lightly choose unto himself a worse condition, Hebrews 10:26. He casts himself into hell's mouth, Hebrews 10:39, where "the backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways," Proverbs 14:14, and have the greater torment by how much he fell from greater hopes and possibilities of better; as Nebuchadnezzar from his monarchy, and as Cranmer from his high preferment to so low a condition, as that there was left him neither hope of better nor place of worse.