Proverbs 20:20-21

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 20:20

AN UNNATURAL CHILD AND A NATURAL LAW

I. An unnatural child. The ungrateful son or daughter of good parents is an unnatural being. If experience did not contradict, we should say that even fallen human creatures must return love for love, and could not help feeling gratitude to those who have denied themselves for their good. And as there is no love so strong and so unselfish as that which a parent feels toward a child, it does seem almost impossible that any child can be unresponsive to it. But if to remain untouched by it is unnatural, how much more so is it to attain to the height of wickedness upon which the text passes judgment. We must suppose that the proverb refers to fathers and mothers who are, to some extent, what they ought to be—who do in some measure reflect upon their offspring the tenderness of the Great and Divine Father—and then we can conceive of no more unnatural being than he “who curseth his father or his mother.” Every natural instinct tends in the opposite direction.

II. A natural law. It does not need any special Divine interposition to blight and ruin such a man. The most powerful and blessed human influences are those which flow from the home-life, and from the emotions which ought to be kindled by the relationship of a child to its parent. But if these holiest influences are resisted and these emotions are stifled, moral darkness must overshadow the life, and it will continue to deepen while the hardness of heart continues. It is well known that even the remembrance of parental love after long years of insensibility to it is often the first step back into the light of righteousness and hope, and that many who have sunk very low in crime could trace their present condition to the unnatural sin of hardening their hearts against parental love.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

This cursing, according to our Lord’s standard, includes “setting light by father or mother;” wilful disobedience—a fearful, palpable mark of the last days. How God regards it, let his own curse on Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 27:16), and his judgment of temporal death, testify. The present degradation of Africa is a witness, on the confirming page of history, of the frown upon an undutiful son (Genesis 9:22)—his lamp put out in darkness.—Bridges.

It must needs be an obscure darkness that is fallen upon that soul, in whom the light of nature is so far extinguished as that he curseth them from whom he had the blessing of being. It must needs be a smoky breath that shall reproach him who was the breath of his nostrils. And what can he expect but that his lamp shall be put out in darkness.—Jermin.

For Homiletics of Proverbs 20:21, see on chap. Proverbs 13:11, page 306; also on chap. Proverbs 21:5, page 596.