Proverbs 1:24-28

Because I have called, and ye refused.

The rejected call of Wisdom

I. The manner in which it has called upon you--in which the appeals of Wisdom and of religion have been made. In the manner, the variety, the intensity, the tenderness, the unwearied nature, and the sleepless watchfulness of appeal, nothing has occurred that can be compared with the calls which have been made to you to abandon a sinful course and to give your heart to God.

II. The manner of the reception of this call. You have neglected these calls and warnings; you paid no attention to them, as if they did not pertain to you, or as if they had no claim to your regard. You have argued against the truth; you have cavilled against the truth; you have urged excuses that you might not obey the truth; you have sought plausible reasons for neglecting to do what you knew to be your duty; you have taken refuge under the imperfections of Christians for not being yourself a Christian. You have done this long. In some cases it has been the work of a life; in all cases it has been a leading object of life thus far.

III. The effect of neglecting and disregarding these calls. “When your fear cometh,” etc. Your wealth cannot save you; your accomplishments cannot save you. Death cares for none of these things.

1. You will die, and the fear of death will come upon you.

2. The fear of the judgment day will come upon you, for that cannot always be avoided.

IV. When these things come it will be too late to cry for mercy. There must be a limit to the calls of religion and mercy, for life is very brief, and they all lie this side the grave. Can you suppose that He will always appeal to the sceptic and the caviller, and bear with his scepticism and cavils through a vast eternity? This cannot be; and somewhere there must be a limit to the offers of mercy to men. That may occur before you shall reach the deathbed, short as is the journey thither. May not the mind become so worldly, and the heart so vain, and the conscience so “seared,” and the life so wicked, and the will so obdurate, and the whole soul so utterly shattered and ruined by sin, that conversion shall be hopeless and ruin certain? It may occur on the death-bed: then the cry for mercy may be vain. And there is a world where the cry of mercy is never heard. Embrace the call, whether to you it be the last or not, and your eternal welfare will be secure. (A. Barnes, D.D.)

The folly and danger of refusing the calls of mercy

I. That God calls on sinners.

1. This is clear from many parts of Scripture (Isaiah 55:1; Isaiah 55:3; Isaiah 55:6, etc., 65:1, 2; Ezekiel 18:30).

2. The end to which He calls us in these different ways is to repent and turn from our sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21; Mark 1:15). As to the nature and manner of those calls, they are--

(1) Kind and gracious; they are full of love, tenderness, and pity (Deuteronomy 32:29; Hosea 11:8; Matthew 23:37; Luke 19:41). What moving expostulations are these!

(2) They carry the highest reason and persuasion along with them. It is to avoid our own ruin and secure our own happiness.

(3) They last but for a season. His patience will at last be worn out by our many obstinate refusals. The shining day of grace at last ends in the eternal shades of night (Matthew 23:38; Isaiah 66:4; Jeremiah 7:13).

II. That sinners too often refuse to hearken to the calls of God. Many hear the gospel calls, but few are obedient to them. The old world would not be reformed by the preaching of Noah. The Israelites stoned the prophets that were sent to them (Jeremiah 7:24; 2 Chronicles 24:21). Now, whence can this proceed, that so many are disobedient to the heavenly call?

1. It is partly owing to unbelief.

2. Others slight the Word because they are prejudiced against the messenger that brings it, regarding his imperfections and inadvertencies more than the weight of those things which he delivers.

3. Others do it through ignorance: darkness and blindness of mind make them hardened and obstinate. They know not God, their sinful state, their need of Christ, nor the beauty and excellency of spiritual things.

4. Others through pride reject the calls of God (Revelation 3:17).

5. Others through love of the world. The business of the world engrosses their time, and the pleasures of it entirely captivate their affections.

6. Others through a false peace.

III. The evil and danger of refusing to hearken to God’s calls, His counsel and reproof

1. It is the most heinous ingratitude to God.

2. It is a contempt of God’s power.

3. We rob ourselves of the greatest advantages.

4. By rejecting the calls of God we run ourselves into the greatest misery and ruin.

What threatenings and woe are denounced against the obstinate sinner! I now come to apply the subject.

1. Let us admire the mercy of God in thus calling sinners.

2. Let such as have obeyed the calls of God rejoice therein; they have cause of eternal joy and eternal thankfulness.

3. Let such as have shut their ears against the calls of God be persuaded now to hearken to them. (T. Hannam.)

Irreversible chastisements

These words are awful, but not hopeless; they pronounce God’s judgment on the finally impenitent; the penitent they but awaken, that they may “hear the voice of the Son of God and live.” The sentence pronounced is final. If, hearing, men will not hearken, a time will come when all these calls will but increase their anguish and misery. Because these words relate to the day of judgment, is there no sense in which they are fulfilled in this life? It should appal any one to find that they do not appal him. Conscience bears witness that he has been one of those against whom the words denounce woe. All suffering, mental or bodily, has a twofold character; it is at once punishment and chastisement; it at once expresses God’s hatred for sin and mercy to the sinner; it is at once the wrath and love of Almighty God. Of God’s judgments, many are for this life without remedy. God warns that He may not strike; but, when He does strike, a man’s whole life is changed. To certain courses of sin God annexes certain punishments, and although, for a time and up to a certain degree of sin, they may not, to any extent, follow, yet, beyond that bound, they do follow irresistibly, irreversibly. Manifold diseases “of mind, body, or estate,” whereby God chastens sin, have this in common, that there is no certain time when the blow comes. We cannot tell the rule by which God dispenseth suffering and loss. To us they seem to fall more suddenly on some, while others go on longer without visible punishment. We only know that happy they who are chastened soonest. The judgments God is constantly sending should awe us all, especially such as are even half-conscious that there is some besetting sin, slight as it may seem, to which they are continually yielding. Unheedful, such permit sin to accumulate after sin. And sin after sin is filling up the measure of their provocations and the fearful treasure of the wrath of Almighty God. All sin must be eating out the love of God and His life in the soul. If God’s fire do fall, then man’s only wisdom is, with what strength he has, darkened though his path be by the bewildering of past sin, to grope his way onward in the new path wherein God has set him. The past is, in one sense, closed. He has been tried, has failed, and is in this way, perhaps, tried no more. His trial is changed. If we failed, we have missed what, by God’s grace, we might have become. Man may gather hope from the very severity of God’s punishments. While we mourn our neglect of past calls, our sorrow, which is still His gift and call within us, will draw down His gladdening look, which will anew call us unto Him. As we would hear the last blissful call, hearken we each one of us to the next, whereby He calleth us to break off any, the very slightest, evil, or to gird ourselves to any good, and follow Him without delay. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)

God and the impenitent sinner

I. God and the impenitent sinner in probation.

1. God’s conduct towards the sinner in probation.

(1) He calls them, by His Word, His ministry, His Spirit.

(2) He stretches out His hand to them. “His arms are outstretched to receive them.”

(3) He counsels them. Presents lessons of wisdom to them.

(4) He reproves them. Rebukes them for their sins.

2. The sinner s conduct towards God in probation.

(1) They refuse His call. “Ye refused.”

(2) They disregard His outstretched hands. “No man regarded.”

(3) They set at nought His counsel. They rejected His “reproof.”

II. God and the impenitent sinner in retribution. 1.God’s conduct towards the impenitent sinner in retribution.

(1) He laughs at their distress. “I will laugh at your calamity.” Their distress is great. Their destruction has come as a “whirlwind,” and what is more, it has grown out of their conduct. “They eat of the fruit of their own way.”

(2) He disregards their prayers. “I will not answer.”

2. The impenitent sinner’s conduct towards God. They cried to Him for help. They may bitterly call upon Me, “but I will not answer.” There is earnest prayer in hell, but it is fruitless. (Homilist.)

Wisdom personified, and love incarnate

Wisdom is one of the Divine attributes; and Christ “is of God made unto us wisdom,” as well as “righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” We may surely expect, then, that up to a certain point the utterances of Wisdom and of Christ would coincide; so that in these passages in the Book of Proverbs we should be able to find, as we find throughout the whole of the Old Testament, some portion of “the testimony of Jesus.” But does it follow that because some, or even many, of Wisdom’s utterances may be correctly spoken of as the words of Christ Himself, therefore all of them may be so regarded? To see how utterly foolish is this way of reasoning, we have only to remember how many of David’s words not only coincide with those of Christ, but are actually quoted in the New Testament as if Christ Himself had uttered them; and yet no one is so foolish as to insist that all the words of David can be safely put into the mouth of Christ. As we said at the beginning, wisdom is one of the attributes of God; and therefore the words of Wisdom must be, up to a certain point, the expression of the Divine mind. We may say that Wisdom expresses the mind of God in creation, in providence, in the whole realm of law. And in this realm, as well as in the realm of grace, the Son of God has His place as the Revealer. We may regard Christ and Wisdom as identical throughout the realm of natural law; so that no error would result from the substitution of the one for the other within that range of truth; but when we leave the realm of law and enter that of grace, it is entirely different; then it may not only be injurious but fatal to take the utterances of mere wisdom and put them into the mouth of Christ. If Christ had been only wisdom, He could not have heard the sinner’s prayer. But He is also “righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”; and that makes all the difference, for now that He has made an atonement for our sins and opened up the way of life, He can speak, not only in the name of wisdom, but of pardoning mercy and redeeming grace; and, accordingly, far from laughing at calamity and scorning the penitent’s prayer, which wisdom if it were alone might do, He can, and will, and does “save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.” Having thus considered the extent to which we may expect to find “the testimony of Jesus” in the words of Wisdom, let us now test the principle we have laid down by an examination of the passage. The paragraph begins with this bold and striking personification: “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying”--and then follows the passage with which we have mainly to do. Let us, then, listen to Wisdom’s cry, and observe how truthfully and powerfully it is translated into the language of men. We shall see its truth to nature better if we first look back a little. She begins, not with a cry, but with tender words of counsel and of promise (verses 8, 9), “My son, hear the instruction of thy father,” etc. These are the tender and kindly words of counsel in which she addresses the young man setting out in life. Following this are tender and yet solemn words of warning against the tempter whom every one must meet (verse 19): “My, son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not,” etc. But now time passes on, and Wisdom’s protegé begins to go astray, to forget the instruction of the father and the loving law of the mother; and so now she lifts up her voice and cries, entreating the wanderer to turn before it is too late (verses 22, 23). Time passes on, and the warning cry has been as little heeded as had been the tender voice of Wisdom at the first. The son, instead of being prudent, has been rash; he has been, not economical, but extravagant; not temperate, but dissipated; and so he has gone on till his last opportunity has been thrown away, his patrimony squandered, his health gone, his last friend lost. Then once more his early monitor appears. The prodigal remembers the tender words of counsel and of promise. He remembers how, when he was just beginning to go astray, before he had become hopelessly entangled in evil, Wisdom lifted up her voice and cried. For a long time his old counsellor has not been present to his mind at all. He has been hurrying on in courses of evil, but now his very wretchedness forces him to stop and think. And, again, there stands Wisdom before him. How does she address him now? Does she speak to him in soothing tones? Does she promise to restore him his money, or his health, or his friends? Alas, no: she cannot. All she can say is, “I told you it would be so. I warned you what would be the end; and now the end has come. You must eat the fruit of your own ways, and be filled with your own devices.” That is positively all that Wisdom can say; and there is no tenderness in her tone. She seems to mock him rather, she seems to laugh at his calamity. Such is the voice of Wisdom in the end to those who have despised her counsel in the beginning. And is not the whole representation true to nature? Yes, it is perfectly true that “Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets,” and says these things so loudly that no listening ear can fail to hear them. It is no matter of deep philosophy. It is no ecclesiastical or theological dogma. It belongs to the Proverbs, the proverbs of the streets. The merit of Solomon, in this chapter, is not in telling us something we should not otherwise have known; but in putting what everybody knows in a very striking form. I question whether in all literature there can be found any more vivid and alarming description of the terror and despair of a remorseful conscience, as it looks back and recalls, when too late, the neglected counsels alike of earthly and of heavenly wisdom. So far Wisdom; and if it were only with her that sinners had to do, it would go hard, not only with the profligate and openly vicious, but with the most respectable. But He with whom we have to do is not known as wisdom. He is wise indeed; and all wisdom is from Him. But there is that in Him which is higher than wisdom. “God is love.” Wisdom is the expression of His will in the realm of law; but love is the expression of Himself. The love of God is not a lawless love. It is not at variance with wisdom. The law which ordains that the sinner must eat of the fruit of his own way and be filled with his own devices cannot be set aside by the mere emotion of compassion. Hence it was necessary, in order to redeem man from the condemnation of sin, that the Holy One of God should suffer. Hence, too, it is that, though by the suffering and death of Christ believers in Him are set free from the condemnation of sin, yet the natural consequences of the transgressions of wisdom’s laws are not abolished. If health has been wasted, it will not be miraculously restored. If money has been squandered, there must be suffering from the want of it. If character has been forfeited by dishonesty and impurity, it may never be redeemed on this side the grave. The laws of wisdom are not repealed or set at naught; they remain in force. But such has been the ingenuity, so to speak, of the Divine love, that without infringing on the proper domain of wisdom expressing itself in law, the way has been opened up for the full pardon and ultimate restoration even of those who have wandered farthest and sinned most. And accordingly, a passage like this awful one in the first chapter of the Book of Proverbs, instead of obscuring the Divine love in the smallest degree, or interposing so much as a thread between the sinner and his Saviour, rather serves as a background on which to set forth the radiant form of the Saviour of mankind,

“Whose love appears more orient and more bright,

Having a foil whereon to show its light.”

(J. M. Gibson, D.D.)

A neglected warning

Some years ago a terrible inundation occurred in Noah Holland, due entirely to neglected warnings. The dykes, as the custom is, are inspected by a dyke engineer on certain days every year. A farmer reported the dangerous condition of one repeatedly, but whether from carelessness or because he considered it interference, the engineer laughed at all his fears, saying the dyke would stand many years yet. Not long after, during a violent storm, part of the dyke was carried away by the waters. In a short time several villages, and miles of cultivated land, were under water, many lives being lost. (S. S. Chronicle.)

Critical periods in a sinner’s life

Every sinner, while unreconciled to God, is in constant and imminent danger of the loss of all things. Yet there are seasons of special danger, periods in his life when, unless he repent and turn to God, he ripens very fast for judgment.

I. The season of youth is one. The mind is then receptive, the heart is tender, the character is unformed, evil habits are not yet matured, and all things invite. It is “flood-tide,” and is sure to lead on to victory if he takes advantage of it. But neglected, thrown away, the future is almost sure to miscarry.

II. The period of conviction of sin is one of extreme peril. Then the sinner is on the threshold of life. But hesitating, grieving the Spirit, turning back, losing his conviction, he may be ruined for ever.

III. The period of Divine chastisements is a critical period. God’s end in these usually is to reclaim men. To sin on in spite of them; to refuse to be corrected; to wax worse and worse in the day of trial, and under God’s afflictive dispensations, is to run a fearful risk of final and eternal abandonment. (Anon.)

I also will laugh at your calamity.

Retribution

We have here a personification of that attribute of God which is specially employed in words of counsel and admonition, and is here made to represent God. The voice of Wisdom is the voice of God.

I. The merciful appeal of God to sinners, and its rejection.

1. God is said to call.

2. God is said to stretch out His hand. In the gesture of earnest appeal, making use of arguments of deed as well as of word. Providence warns. The hand of God in history demonstrates what providence in its dealings with individuals teaches, that virtue and happiness, vice and misery, go hand in hand; that morality and self-interest in the long run merge; that the path of duty and the path of safety coincide.

3. God is said to counsel. The message of Scripture, with its manifold invitations and warnings, is faithfully delivered.

4. God is said to reprove. By severe strokes of discipline God speaks to those who in their infatuation have refused to pay attention to His former appeals. But the rod of correction may be disregarded. The possibility of such reckless opposition to the merciful appeal of God demonstrates the power of the evil principle in fallen human nature. We have here a complete reversal of the ordinary principles of self-interest which actuate men in all circumstances, except in the sphere of morality.

II. The despairing appeal of sinners to God, and its futility. Their position, as here depicted--

1. It is unspeakably awful. The text speaks of calamity, of fear, of desolation, of destruction like a whirlwind, of distress and anguish. The text speaks of a terrible aggravation of their distress, occasioned by the stinging sarcasm which accompanies their suffering.

2. It is strictly retributive. All their suffering has been earned by themselves. As they formerly eluded Him in His efforts to seek and to save them, so now He will not be found of them.

3. It is utterly hopeless. The futility of their appeal is absolute. Their cry is the cry of blank despair. They have sinned away their day of grace, and their offended God will be entreated of them no more. It may be said that the moral sense is shocked by such a representation of God’s conduct towards impenitent sinners as that which we have drawn from the text. Our reply is, that it is presumptuous for any mortal to say what is, and what is not, in harmony with the Divine perfection, or consistent with the Divine character. In nature we know God can assume an attitude of sternness. In the moral sphere there may be occasions when He shall stand forth as an inflexible Ruler, as an immovable, righteous Judge. (A. O. Smith, B. A.)

The after-time for the sinner

Wisdom is represented as calling, waiting, pleading; but, as concerning some who heard the call, altogether in vain. At last Wisdom grows indignant, as well she may. In carrying out His gracious purpose of revealing Himself to us, God may use every act and every feeling that is genuine to man. It is quite proper that men should deride the proud and the malicious when they are baffled and put to shame, and this natural feeling is here used to represent the feeling of God towards those who contemptuously despise the riches of His grace. The merely human gave the tone to the revelations of God that were made in Old Testament times. It is the divinely human--it is humanity at its best--which gives tone to all the representations of God made in the New Testament. So we have now severities and indignations, even the “wrath of the Lamb,” but not derisions, not scorn, not any “laughing at calamity.” The text does but express the feeling we have when the wicked meet their deserts.

I. Evil has its certain fixed consequences. Law equally reigns in the moral and in the material world. Every moral action has its certain and well-defined consequences.

II. Nothing checks consequences but the removal of causes. Illustrate from cases of infectious disease. Man’s great evil is wilfulness, and to remove this ever-fruitful source of moral mischief requires no less than a regeneration.

III. By the resistance of good counsel the evil grows stronger. He who goes after sin has to resist much counsel and persuasive influence. And this is the ever-working law, good resisted leaves evil stronger.

IV. If evil grows stronger, its consequences must become more serious, and will be brought on more rapidly. The simple ones turn deaf ears, and hurry after the tempters; and then their “fear comes as desolation.”

V. Evil may grow beyond all influence of reproof, and then its issues must prow overwhelming indeed. Men may get beyond the reach of all available moral influences. Conceive what that condition must be. Compare the state of the “devil-possessed.” A most awful and alarming picture is that of a moral being abusing himself until he actually becomes insusceptible of moral impressions. In those who resist moral counsel and invitation a wilfulness grows up which becomes every day more difficult to overcome; a process of heart-hardening is actually going on. Be warned, then, of the “wrath of the Lamb.” (Weekly -Pulpit.)

And your destruction cometh as a whirlwind.--

The figure of the whirlwind

In eastern countries, so rapid and impetuous sometimes is the whirlwind that it is in vain to think of flying; the swiftest horse or the fastest sailing ship could be of no use to carry the traveller out of danger. Torrents of burning sand roll before it, the firmament is enveloped in a thick veil, and the sun appears of the colour of blood. The Arab who conducted Mr. Bruce through the frightful deserts of Senaar pointed out to him a spot among some sandy hillocks, where the ground seemed to be more elevated than the rest, where one of the largest caravans which ever came out to Egypt, to the number of several thousand camels, was covered with sand. The destruction of Sennacherib’s army (2 Kings 19:25) was probably (comp. Isaiah 37:7) by the blast of the hot pestilential south wind blowing from the deserts of Lybia, called the simoom. (B. E. Nicholls, M.A.)