Job 24:6
6 They reap every one his cornb in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
SUCCESSFUL SIN
‘The vintage of the wicked.’
I. When we think about sin we are almost always most impressed with its disastrousness when it is a failure.—When it brought infamy, disease, ruin we were distressed at the spectacle, but, in reality, unrighteousness is never more terrible than when it is successful. Successful sin has a blinding power—it obscures the highest beliefs. If a man once wins in sin, it is a bad lookout for him. When a man begins to steal money, if he is lucky enough to be found out—for that is where the luck lies in his first speculation—he may be saved. But let him succeed, and he goes on to larger villanies.
II. Another thing about successful sin is its torturing power.—No man suffers like the man who succeeds. The consciousness of sin poisons everything. Then there is the retributive power of successful sin. Successful sin is a paradox. I do not believe in it when I speak of it. There is no successful sin. Even in this world how wonderfully men are found out! ‘Be sure your sin will find you out!’ There is the religion of success and the religion of character. The religion of character will turn out at last to be the religion of success.
Illustration
‘Job laments that the times of punishment are not so explained by God that those who know Him may see and understand His reasons. He then turns to describe the life of the ungodly, who do dark deeds with apparent impunity. A very sad catalogue of crimes follows. The oppression of the needy, the driving away of the ass of the fatherless, the taking of the widow’s ox for a pledge, the frequenting of the wilderness, the plunder of caravans, regardless of the claims of pity, the stealing the oil and the wine from those who had laboured to produce them, the murdering of the poor labouring man at the dawn, the commissions of crimes at night—such are the iniquities which are described. And these are being committed under other forms in Christian England. Wonderful that God should bear with us, but His long-suffering would fain lead men to repent. It is only after long bearing and trial that He cuts down.’