Proverbs 9:17-18

But he knoweth not that the dead are there.

The fatal banquet

Here two texts. Preach concerning a couple of preachers; one by usurpation, the other by assignation: the world’s chaplain, and the Lord’s prophet. First, the delightfulness of sin; second, converted Solomon. The text of the one is from hell’s scriotum est. The text of the other is the word of eternal truth. We are here presented with a banquet. The inviter is a degenerate woman, representing sin--such as ambition, pride, engrossing, bribery, faction, riot, oppression. The cheer is presented in several dishes--waters, stolen, secret; bread, eaten in secret, pleasant. Sins may be in some sense likened to waters.

1. Water is an enemy to digestion.

2. Water dulls the brain.

3. Grace is compared to fire, gracelessness to water.

4. Water is a baser element, as it were, sophisticate with transfusion.

5. Physicians say that water is a binder.

On the other hand--

(1) Waters mundify and cleanse; but these soil and infect.

(2) Waters quench the thirst, and cool the heat of the body; but these rather fire the heart and inflame the affections.

(3) We say of water, “It is a good servant, though an ill master”; but we cannot apply this to sin. It is not good at all; indeed, less ill when it serves than when it reigns. The nature of these waters is not more pernicious than their number is numerous. The first course of these waters are such sins as more immediately rob God. Atheism is the highest theft against God, because it would steal from Him, not His goods, but Himself. Heresy soon tickles the brain, and makes a man drunk. This sin robs God of His truth. Sacrilege robs God of His goods. Faction robs God of His order and peace. Profaneness robs God of His glory. The second sort of stolen waters are those sins which mediately rob God, immediately our brethren, depriving them of some comfort or right which the inviolable law of God hath interested them to--such as irreverence, murder, adultery, thievery, slander, flattery. The third sort of stolen waters--sins which immediately rob ourselves--such as pride, epicurism, idleness, envy, drunkenness, covetousness. Stolen--in this consists the approbation of their sweetness, that they come by stealth, and are compassed by dangerous and forbidden pains. A second argument of their sweetness is their cheapness. What a man gets by robbery comes without cost. A third argument is derived from our corrupt affections. Sin pleaseth the flesh. The other service at this banquet is bread; bread of secrecies, bread of pleasure. Bread implies much health, great comforts, fulness of all requisite good things. Since the devil will put the form of bread upon his tempting wickedness, let us examine what kind of bread it is. The seed is corruption; the influences that ripen the seed are temptations; when ripe it is cut down by the sickle of the devil’s subtlety; it is threshed out with the flail of his strength; the flood of concupiscence drives the mill that grinds it. The mill consists of two stones--pleasure and profit. The leaven is the colourable and fallacious arguments that persuade the sweetness of this bread. The oven that bakes it is our own evil affections. It is called” bread of secrecy.” Unjust things love privacy. But God sees. Satan’s guests unhappily come from the end of a feast to the beginning of a fray. All sinful joys are dammed up with a “but.” The devil does but cozen the wicked with his cates. The punishments of the wicked are most usually in the like; proper and proportional to their offences. The perdition that follows the feast of sin destroys a man in his goods, in his good name, in his health, in his soul. The tempted are called the dead. There are three kinds of death--corporal, spiritual, eternal. Corporal, when the body leaves this life spiritual, when the soul forsakes and is forsaken of grace; eternal, when both shall be thrown into hell. The text has also the attempted, the new guest whom sin strives to bring in to the rest. He is described by his ignorance: “Knoweth not.” Five kinds of ignorance: human, natural, affected, invincible, proud. The place of the banquet is the “depths of hell.” This amplifies the misery of the guests in three circumstances.

1. Their weakness: they are soon in.

2. The place: hell.

3. The unrecoverableness of it: the depth of hell.

By hell is meant the deep bondage of wicked souls, Satan having by sin a full dominion over their consciences. (T. Adams.)