Proverbs 21:27,28

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Proverbs 21:27. With a wicked mind, literally “for iniquity, and may refer to a desire to cloak a sinful purpose by an outward show of piety, or an attempt to expiate a sinful act by an outward atonement. Miller reads for “how much more” “because also.”

Proverbs 21:28. Constantly, rather for ever. Stuart understands the verse to mean “that the sincere listener to the Divine commands will ever be at liberty to speak, and find confidence put in what he says.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 21:27

THE SACRIFICE OF THE WICKED

I. A Divine institution may become an abomination to the Divine Being. The right use of the gifts of God makes them blessings to men, but the abuse of them turns them into curses. So with the ordinances of worship, both under the Old Testament dispensation and in the New—that which is designed to bless men may by misuse add to their guilt before God, and that which, done in a right spirit, is most acceptable to Him, will, when joined to a sinful motive, be most abhorrent to His holy nature. The sacrifice of the Levitical dispensation was an ordinance of Divine appointment, but even those who lived before the days of the prophets were not left to suppose that the merely ceremonial act was of any value in the sight of God if a correspondent state of heart was wanting. The offering of Cain was unacceptable, because he lacked the faith of his brother Abel. (Hebrews 11:4). Samuel taught the truth that “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams (1 Samuel 15:22), and the father of our preacher was deeply conscious that “sacrifice and burnt offering” would not be acceptable to God unless they were the outcome of a “broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart” (Psalms 51:16). The doctrine that “God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), is taught in the Old Testament as well as in the New. It is the teaching of this proverb.

II. A Divine institution may be used by men to cloak their iniquity. The absence of right motive is enough to turn the sacrifice into an abomination, as we have seen (see also on chapter Proverbs 15:9, page 408), but this comparatively negative wrong seems to lose some of its guilt beside the actual crime of the second clause of the verse, when men actually put on an outward semblance of religion, not from inadequate ideas of the requirements of God’s law, or from the force of habit, or in a thoughtless spirit, but with the deliberate intention of deceiving their fellow-creatures. For it is inconceivable that any reasonable being can for a moment suppose that he can blind Him before whom all things must be “naked and opened” (Hebrews 4:13). If he believes in a God he cannot think that He is a Being who can be imposed upon by such a miserable deception, and, this being granted, it is most astonishing that any creature can presume to offer so great an insult to his Creator. And yet we know sacrifices have been and are even now being offered to God for no other purpose than to cloak sin.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

This is a New Testament idea:—“Ye ask and receive not,” saith the Apostle James, “because ye ask amiss.” How? Why, precisely in the way that the proverb points out, because ye do it for an interested purpose; as the Apostle expresses it, “that ye may consume it upon your desires.” The wicked man asks for heaven that he may consume it in keeping comfortable through a long eternity. The proverb in Proverbs 21:17 postulates the opposite, In merely loving happiness a man cannot create wealth. The mass of hypocrites, therefore, are these eternal-happiness hypocrites.… There may be other reasons, but that additional and fundamental among them all is this deepest one, that religious acts cannot be accepted if they are built upon nothing tenderer than “a calculated purpose.” (So Miller translates the last two words. See also Critical Notes.) “Ye seek Me,” says our blessed Redeemer, “not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled” (John 6:26).—Miller.

For Homiletics of Proverbs 21:28, see on chap. Proverbs 12:19, page 275. “The man that heareth” is evidently the man who is teachable and open to conviction, and therefore qualified to bear witness of the truth.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

The last clause of the proverb seems to fix and restrict the first. A false witness often becomes so by the culpable habit of thoughtlessly repeating, without examination or certain knowledge. A man may thus do very serious injury to his neighbour’s character or property. It proves a very loose conscience, and an utter want of that “charity which covers” instead of exposing faults. It is “rejoicing in iniquity” rather than “rejoicing in truth.” This false witness will certainly be punished by God; and even by man he will be confounded and silenced. No one for the future will regard or receive his testimony. But the man that heareth—the true witness who speaketh only what he heareth, and is fully acquainted with—he speaketh constantly—to conviction. He holds to his testimony and never contradicts himself. He “speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” His word, even if it had been slighted at first, gains more and more credit and authority when the false witness shall have perished (chap. Proverbs 12:19).—Bridges.