The “law of the wise” can be nothing but the Book of God. . . . It is essentially life-giving. Its design is not to publish and confirm the sentence of death, but to show how death may be escaped. The declaration of the sentence of death is only intended to show the necessity, and to impress the importance and value of the tidings of life. Life is the end of Divine revelation.—Wardlaw.
main homiletics of verse 15.
A Bad Way and a Good Understanding.
I. Favour is here spoken of as a thing to be desired. It is desirable to have the favour of any man if thereby we can do him any good. It was desirable that Joseph should have Pharaoh’s favour, as he was thereby enabled to gain his ear and help him in his perplexity. The favour which Daniel obtained from Nebuchadnezzar enabled him to be a great blessing to that monarch. A man who is regarded by his fellow creatures with favour possesses a powerful instrument which he may use to do them good. On this account the favour of men is to be desired. It is also desirable to have the favour of good men as thereby we may get good. Good men are the only living representatives of God in the world, and next to the blessedness of having the favour of the parent is the blessedness of having that of His children. Therefore the favour of men is to be desired both for their sakes and for our own.
II. The instrument of obtaining favour. “Good understanding” or “good intelligence.” Man’s highest and truest intelligence springs from moral relation and sympathy with God. All intellectual intelligence is derived from Him, and this intelligence alone will often gain for men a large share of human favour. There are many men of great mental intelligence, who do not acknowledge the existence of God, who have won high places in the esteem of men. But these words refer to those who have been enlightened by the teaching of the Divine spirit, and are in sympathy with God and with His moral laws. Such men are not less intelligent concerning other matters, but more so. Other things being equal, a godly man’s purely intellectual powers are quickened by his godliness. If an ungodly man becomes a true servant of God, all the powers of his mind are thereby strengthened. Observation confirms this, and it is impossible that it should be otherwise. If a man cannot come into communion with a wiser man, without gaining in intelligence, how can he come into communion with the Fountain of all wisdom without becoming a more intelligent man in every sense of the word? What a capable man of business Joseph was. When quite a youth, and without any previous training, he became controller of the household of an Egyptian nobleman; and when only thirty was not only the first lord of Egypt, but showed himself fully equal to all the exigencies of his position. Whence did his “good understanding” proceed? Was it not from his moral relationship with the God of his fathers? “Can we find such an one as this is?” said the heathen king,—“a man in whom the Spirit of God is” (Gen. xli. 38). The possession of this “good understanding” in temporal and secular matters gives a man favour in the eyes of other men. The possession of spiritual intelligence gives him favour in the eyes of all the good. There is a relationship among all true members of the family of God, which is stronger and deeper than any merely human relationship. And this spiritual intelligence gives a man a moral power among all his fellow-men. They cannot withhold the testimony of their consciences, unless they are altogether hardened they must secretly, if not openly, give him their esteem and confidence. “Natural conscience,” says Trapp, “cannot but do homage to the image of God stamped upon the nature and works of the godly.”
III. The way of those who are destitute of this spiritual intelligence. All such men are “transgressors.” Their spiritual nature is dormant—they are without spiritual discernment. In scriptural phrase they are “blind” (Rev. iii. 17) and “dead” (Ephes. ii. 1). Their way is hard, however we use the word. (See [Critical Notes].) 1. It is hard in the sense of being a well-trodden way. It has become hard by being much frequented—by being perpetually used. It has several elements of attraction. 2. Antiquity is on its side. It is an old way—it has been in use for ages. “No man,” says our Lord, “having drunk old wine, straight way desireth new” (Luke v. 39). Men are naturally conservative—naturally inclined to go as their fathers went. True it is that there is an older way—the way of the good (see Homiletics on chap. [iv. 14–19], page 58), but still the way of the transgressor is very ancient. 3. Men’s natural inclination leads into that way. Men are led by their inclination, unless there is a stronger principle within them. We are born with a tendency to evil rather than to good—to walk after the devices of our own heart rather than according to the will of God. In most men “inclination is as strong as will,” and leads them to tread the “way of the transgressor.” 4. It is attractive because of the numbers who tread it. “Many there be which go in thereat” (Matt. vii. 13). Many men make that fact a city of refuge wherein to shelter themselves from the admonitions of conscience. “I only do as others do” is regarded by many men as an impregnable citadel wherein they can securely await the righteous judgments of God (See Homiletics on [ch. i. 10–19], page 8, 2nd head). 5. It is hard and therefore desolate, unfruitful. The common highway that is trodden down by many feet is not the place in which to look for a golden harvest. The stony rock is not a soil whence flowers spring. Men do not expect to gather choice fruit on the desolate moorland. Neither can the way of the transgressor yield the flowers or the pleasant fruits of life. Thorns and nettles are there, but no golden harvest. The favour neither of God nor man is his portion. He can only reap as he has sown (See Homiletics on chap. [xi. 18–20], page 223). 6. It is a hard way in the sense that it is a miserable way. Every act carries with it present judgment. Every action has its reaction of pleasure or of pain. Every step, therefore, in the way of transgression has its accompanying reproach of conscience. Then the way of sin is a way of self-deception. What is more painful than to be the subject of constant deception? We have just dwelt upon the heart-sickness of hope deferred (verse 12); the sinner is a constant victim of this malady. Nothing can be a more bitter experience than to stake our all upon a promise, and when the time comes for its fulfilment, to find that it was made only to be broken. Yet this is the experience of a transgressor of God’s law, not once or twice, but all through his life. It is his lot not only to deceive but to be deceived (2 Tim. iii. 13). He is ever promising himself, and is ever being promised by the master whom he serves, satisfaction as the result of his deeds, but he is always finding that the performance falls as far short of the promise as it did when the devil led our first parents into sin, by the promise “ye shall be as gods,” and performed it by making them slaves to himself. This is another ingredient in the hardness of the way. He is a slave to him who has deceived him. Many a man is fully alive to the deceptive nature of sin—to its utter powerlessness to give him real pleasure—and yet he goes on it. Why is this? He is bound by a chain which he finds it well nigh impossible to break. Evil habits, as well as good ones, grow stronger by exercise. Slavery is hard under any master, excepting under Him whose service is perfect freedom. How bitter, then, is slavery to one who has deceived us. Yet this is not the hardest part of the hard way. None who are thus victims of the great deceiver—none whom he has made his bond slaves but feel that they are so by their own consent. Each evil thought unchecked, each evil thought indulged, has forged a link in the chain. Their condition has been likened, by an old writer, to that of a man who has been busily at work in carrying stick after stick to make a pile of wood, and then finds that he has only been heaping up materials for a fire upon which he is to be burned.
IV. But though the way of transgressors is hard, it is not too hard. Its very hardness is intended to lead them to leave it. Because the end will be worse than the way, it is the tenderest mercy to make the way hard. It only tells him that he has taken the wrong road. The pain that he suffers is only the voice of God, saying, “Do thyself no harm.” When a mountain pass becomes so blocked with fallen rocks that every step is a misery, does it not admonish the traveller to turn back before he makes a fatal slip? When in the regions of eternal snow a man feels intense pain from the biting cold, and encounters at every step the corpse of one who has been frozen to death by persistently disregarding the voice of nature, is it not suicide to continue? Can he say he received no admonition? Is it not a sentinel with a drawn sword to turn back the unwary from the precipice? Even so is the hardness of the way of the transgressor.
outlines and suggestive comments.
For the most part the word translated “good understanding” corresponds with that which, in a deep ethical sense, we call fine culture, which shows men how to take the right side, and in all circumstances to take the right key, exercise a kindly, heart-winning influence, not merely to the benefit of its possessor, but such as removes a partition wall, and brings men closer to each other. The word translated “hard” denotes that which stretches itself far, and with reference to time, that which remains the same during the course of time. That which does not change in time, continuing the same, according to its nature, strong, firm, thus becomes the designation of the enduring and the solid, whose quality remains always the same. The fundamental idea of remaining like itself, continuing, passes over into the idea of the firm, the hard, and, at the same time, of the uncultivated and the uncultivatable. The way of transgressors, or of the treacherous, i.e., the manner in which they transact with men, is stiff, as hard as stone, repulsive; they follow selfish views, never placing themselves in sympathy with the condition of their neighbour; they are without the tenderness which is connected with fine culture; they remain destitute of feeling in things which, as we say, would soften a stone.—Delitzsch.
Many seek favour as the gift of others which it is in their own power to give themselves. For, get a good understanding, whereby to understand well what thou goest about, and how to go about it. It is true, as Tertullian speaketh, now and then it falls out, that in a great tempest wherein sea and heaven are confounded, the haven is attained by a happy error; and now and then, in darkness, the way of entrance and going out is found by a blind happiness. But this is a favour which has no holdfast—it is a good understanding that giveth favour.—Jermin.