Enough is recorded in the chapter before us to justify this serious admonition.
I. A SOLEMN WARNING. “Be ye not mockers.”
1. Are there no mockers in our religious assemblies Let us pursue the inquiry. God has given us His Word; but how is that Word regarded?
(1) The Word of God denounces threatenings. But if no rousing effect is produced, can it be that the awful sentence is believed? Faith invariably produces an effect corresponding with the nature of the truth it receives: a consolatory truth yields comfort, an alarming truth creates dread: if then by the threatenings of the Bible, you are not excited to “flee from the wrath to come,” and “warned to escape the damnation of hell,” how is it accounted for? Are ye not “mockers”?
(2) This Word is also enriched with promises. How are these promises regarded? When the message of grace is disregarded; when its joyful tidings are heard with unconcern; when no need of the Saviour is felt, no desire of His salvation indulged; what does it prove? Are ye not “mockers”!
(3) The Bible contains, likewise, a variety of precepts. But if unfeeling selfishness be the temper we cherish; if fraud and extortion be the practices we allow; if “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” he the element we love, are we not mockers?
(4) In this Holy Book sin is severely censured. But are there not persons to be found who make light of this malignant, destructive evil?
2. Who can utter the egregious folly of this? Fools mock, while God frowns. They mock at that which cast angels down from Heaven, which excluded Adam from paradise, and which spread disorder through all the works of creation. They mock at that which is the spring of all the miseries of man--at that which is their own disease and disgrace--at that which procures their own death, which kindles the flames of hell. As many as are guilty of this deepest folly mock at all the sorrows and suffering of the compassionate Redeemer. Can you wonder at this earnest expostulation, this solemn and faithful warning?
II. A POWERFUL ARGUMENT to enforce the warning. It is founded on the danger which evidently attends the indulgence of this evil, and is well adapted to interest and affect the mind. “Be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong.” It implies that mockers are in “bands,” already in a state of bondage. And what is this bondage? They are “tied and bound with the chain of their sins.” Now the danger is, perpetuating this bondage; so securing the cords, and riveting the fetters, as that destruction becomes inevitable. In tracing the fatal progress of this danger, observe--
1. The sin against which you are warned weakens every virtuous restraint.
2. The sin of mocking strengthens vicious propensities. This naturally results from the relaxing of restraints: as the one declines, the ether gains ground.
3. This sin gives great advantage to your worst enemies. Among these are improper companions. Every compliance you grant only emboldens their demands and facilitates their conquest. But there is a worse enemy than these: “the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Resist him, and he will flee from you; but invite his attacks, by parleying with temptation, and you inevitably fall--“your bands are made strong.”
4. It exposes to peculiar marks of the displeasure of God.
5. It terminates in remediless ruin.
III. We attempt an IMPROVEMENT of the subject, by recommending the opposite of what is reproved in the text. (T. Kidd.)
Mocking
Mocking the messengers of the Lord was Jerusalem’s measure-filling sin. (M. Henry.)
Lest your bands be made strong
Growing bands
In the tropical forests of South America, where everything climbs, and everything seeks to overcome everything else, there is a curious class of plants, to which the natives give the name of lianas or bush ropes. They are creeping plants, and twine round large trees in order to be lifted up above the dense mass of vegetation into the pure air and bright sunshine overhead. The lianas do not belong to the same family of plants; often there are great differences between their leaves and flowers; but they have this peculiarity in common, that they all climb round certain trees to reach the full, unbroken sunshine above the billowy top of the forest. When the seed of one of them, say the one known to the natives as the Sipo Matador, or Murderer Liana, is dropped by the wind or by a bird at the foot of a tree that is suitable, it begins to grow at once. At first it sends forth a slender, thread-like stem, that leans upon the tree for support. At this stage it is soft and brittle, and looks like a vein of sap flowing and hardening as it flows, and a child’s finger could snap it across with ease. But as it grows and lengthens it becomes thicker and tougher, and twines itself round the tree like a strongly twisted cable, composed of several strands. Its grasp of the tree becomes tighter the older it grows; and by and by the tree becomes strangled by its thick bands, which it would require an axe to cut. The leaves of the poor victim wither and fall off, the veins cannot circulate the sap through the branches, and thus it slowly dies and becomes a mere mass of dry, rotten wood, still clasped by its cruel enemy, which flourishes, green and vigorous, upon its decay. Ephraim was the noblest of the tribes of Israel But it suffered certain evil habits to grow around it. It indulged in idolatry, and covetousness, and drunkenness. And these evil habits, which might at first have been given up without any great difficulty, became at last so strong that they could not be broken, and completely bound and enslaved the people. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
