Human depravity and iniquity have existed in all ages and countries. The vices flowing therefrom have been much the same—selfishness, pride, sensualism, oppression, drunkenness. Alcohol acting directly on the brain, the seat of the mind, tends not only to derange, but to enfeeble and pervert, and produces moral obliquity, moral infatuation, and intensified delusion. All sorts of deceits are the consequence. Observe—I. The characters introduced (ver. 22). Observe also verses 11 and 12. In the last verses there is reference to confirmed drunkards, daily, early, and late; the sensual debauchees—their ignorance, want of thought and reflection. In the text, notorious drinkers, bold, impudent wager-layers, boasters, &c., and those who have got the victory over the usual drinks, and now make them stronger to meet the cravings of appetite and to keep up the excitement. Observe, this is the great peril of moderate drinking. It creates the appetite, it increases the appetite; last of all, it gives the appetite the control, and the man or woman becomes the slave and the victim.

II. The infatuation portrayed—by 1. Giving false names to things (ver. 20). Call (1) evil good: drinks (poisons) are called beverages; evil things made by men are called God’s good creatures. And so they call (2) good evil; despise the really good and safe; pour contempt on water and safe fluids, and treat them as evil or worthless. How drinks have secured the most alluring titles—strong cordials, dew, &c., generous. Not only false names, but 2. False qualities (ver. 20), “Bitter for sweet.” Now intoxicating drinks are not sweet or palatable to the natural taste; they blister the mouth of children; do burn the delicate nerves of the stomach; the tongue and lips have to be trained, drilled, hardened. Observe, they call sweet bitter; things really so are treated as insipid. Ask the spirit-drinker to taste milk or tea, or water, and see how his poisoned taste revolts, &c.

Then there is presented to us—3. Infatuated results. Put darkness for light; men plead and say these drinks—(1) Brighten the intellect. How false! See the bloated faces, the diseased eyes, the sensual expression, the stupid look, the stupor. The light is artificial, momentary, false—no better than the effects of certain gases or deadly stimulants, as opium, Indian hemp, &c. But they refer to men, to Burns, Pitt, Sheridan, and other drinking wits. But they were intellectually great in spite, &c. Look at Milton, Sir Isaac Newton; look at the inspired prophets—the seraphic Isaiah, the writer of the text. (2) They who drink say their drinks lighten the heart, give social joyousness. Right; but is it not sensual, spurious, evanescent, ends in darkness? So they put light for darkness. The calm, equable sobriety of soul they called dulness, darkness. But this is real, abiding, and rational. So, both in name and quality, and in effects, they call “evil good,” &c.

III. The woes denounced. 1. There is the woe of physical consequence. The seed and the harvest, the poisons and their effects, fire, deranged stomach, plague, diseased liver, excited heart, fevered brain, all tending to a host of maladies, shortened life, and an early grave. There is—2. Woe of a distracted mind. Reason beclouded; reflection, perception, all marred. The guiding star eclipsed, the light obscured with darkness. There is the—3. Woe of moral defects. The man is vitiated, made worse and worse; his affections, his desires, his conscience, his heart, the whole soul. There is—4. The woe of perverted powers. Gifts, talents, &c., all poisoned; influence deadly; the man a curse—a curse to all. 5. The woe of God’s malediction. God’s woe, His displeasure, His threatening, His curse; this is written in both volumes of the Scriptures—in frightful representation, in declared eternal condemnation.

Application.—Learn—1. The horrors associated with strong drink; 2. The advantages of absolute temperance; 3. The value of these associations; 4. The encouragement for labours—staying curses, bringing down blessings; 5. The necessity of immediate decision; 6. The solemn importance of earnest prayer for the Divine benediction; 7. Let us avoid exaggerated conclusions. This is not the only evil; temperance not the only good. To all we say, “One thing is needful;” “Except ye be converted,” &c.—Jabez Burns, D.D., LL.D., Sketches of Temperance Sermons.

The Doom of Despisers.

v. 24. Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

Shut God out of the heart, and this is what it comes to at last. In Jewish history, we have a commentary on the judgments announced in the text, written in fire and blood. We have here—I. God’s merciful approaches to the soul. 1. God begins with law. In the present day there is a nervous dread of law, as if it were the offspring of severity rather than of grace.[1] But law checks, rectifies, and blesses in innumerable ways (Ps. xix. 7–11; cxix. 105, &c). 2. To His law, He adds His word; His “word” of persuasion, exhortation, promise, and especially the great “word” of the Gospel. II. God’s merciful approaches rejected. “They have cast away the law,” &c. Man meets God’s law with resistance, His love with contempt. III. God’s merciful approaches giving place to indignation and wrath. “Therefore as the fire devoureth,” &c. Law being resisted, and love despised, things cannot be as they were before; one of two things must happen—there must be either pardon or punishment. If pardon be rejected, only punishment remains. The images under which this is set forth in the text are most alarming. They show—1. That at last God’s anger strikes at the root of our being—at the very substance of our life. The wrath of man at the worst rages only on the surface, but God strikes at the root (Luke xii. 4; Matt. x. 28). 2. God’s anger smites the blossom of our being. All that constitutes the show, promise, and pride of our life, is scattered like dust. 3. When God smites in anger, He smites suddenly and swiftly, “as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff.” 4. When God smites in anger, man can offer no resistance. What power to resist a hurricane has a tree whose roots are not only rotten, but “rottenness”? How can the stubble withstand the fire, or the chaff defend itself against tongues of flame?—J. R. Wood.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The spring of the law is love. With its “Thou shalt not do this,” and “Thou shalt not do that,” the law presents rather an ungracious aspect. We like ill to be bidden, but worse to be forbidden. But does love never forbid? A mother, does she never forbid her child; but, on the contrary, indulge every caprice and grant all his wishes? How disastrous the fate, and brief the life, of a child denied nothing, indulged in everything, allowed to play with fire, or fire-arms; to devour the painted but poisonous fruit—to bathe where the tide runs like a racehorse or the river rushes roaring into the black, swirling pool. And he who frets against the restraints of God’s holy law because it forbids this and the other thing, is no wiser than the infant who weeps, and screams, and struggles, and perhaps beats the kind bosom that nurses it, because its mother has snatched a knife from its foolish hands.—Guthrie.