Isaiah 9:16

For the leaders of this people cause them to err

Leaders misleading

Render: “And the leaders of this people have become misleaders.

” (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)

Leaders’ responsibility for the people’s faults

1. By conniving at their wickedness.

2. By countenancing wicked people.

3. By setting them ill examples. (M. Henry.)

Unfaithful physicians

It is ill with a people when their physicians are their worse disease. (M. Henry.)

A shameless ruler

(Charles II):--A king might be pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty, but it was intolerable that he should sink into a mere saunterer and voluptuary; that the gravest affairs of State should be neglected, and that the public service should be starved, and the finances deranged in order that harlots and parasites might grow rich. (Macaulay’s England.)

The responsibility of leaders

The ancients placed the statues of their princes and patriots near the fountains, to show that they were the spring heads of good or evil to the public. (J. Trapp.)

Leadership

I. The world is so constituted that LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE ARE AT PRESENT A NECESSITY.

II. LEADERSHIP INVOLVES FOR THE LEADERS THE HIGHEST HONOUR OR THE DEEPEST SHAME.

1. The man who leads his fellow men well is entitled to the highest honour.

2. But leadership does not necessarily involve any honour at all.

3. Through leadership a man may reach the most utter degradation and shame.

(1) Through his incompetence.

(2) Through his dishonesty.

III. LEADERSHIP INVOLVES FOR THE LED SALVATION OR DESTRUCTION. (R. A. Bertram.)