The scope of the apostle in all these similitudes is to show that these seducers were nothing less than what they pretended to be: “clouds,” but dry, barren clouds; “trees,” but such as bore either none or rotten fruit; “waves,” that seemed to mount up unto heaven, and to promise great matters, as if they would swallow up the whole earth, but being dashed against a rock, all this raging and swelling turneth into a little foam and froth.
1. From the scope observe that spiritual boasters will certainly come short of their great promises. All is but noise, such as is made by empty vessels.
2. But let us a little examine the force of the words. The whole similitude alludeth to what is said of wicked men in general (Isa_57:20). Observe that they are waves, which noteth their inconstancy (Gen_49:4). Water, you know, is movable, soon furled, and driven to and fro by the winds; so were these (Eph_4:14). Note thence that seducers are unsettled and uncertain in their opinions (2Pe_3:16). Why? Because they are not rooted and grounded in their profession, but led by sudden affection and interests rather than judgment; they are unstable because unlearned; such as do not proceed upon clear and certain grounds. Well, then, discover them by their levity; you will never have comfort andcertainty in following them who, like weathercocks, turn with every wind. “Waves of the sea.” There you have their restless activity, they are always tossed to and fro (Jer_49:23). They are acted by Satan, who is a restless spirit. “Raging waves of the sea.” There you have their turbulency; they fill all places with troubles and strifes. Why? Because they are urged by their own pride and vanity, and have lost all restraints of modesty, and are usually, as to their constitution, of violent and eager spirits. Well, then, be not borne down with impudence and rage; there may be daring attempts and much resolution in an ill cause. The next expression is “foaming out their own shame,” as a raging sea casteth up mire and dirt; or it alluded to that scum and froth which the waves leave upon the rocks, and so it noteth the abominableness of their opinions and practices. So errors come in like a raging wave, as if they would bear all before them, but they go out like foam and froth, in scorn and infamy. Well, then, observe the fruitless-ness of all Satan’s attempts. We come now to the next similitude, “wandering stars.” It may be taken two ways--properly or improperly.
(1) Properly, for the stars which we call planets, or wandering, though indeed no stars wander less than they do; they have their name from the opinion and common judgment of sense, because they are not carried about the whole circuit of the heavens, but in a shorter orb and course.
(2) Improperly; there are a second sort of wandering stars, which Aristotle calleth running and gliding stars; not stars indeed, but only dry exhalations inflamed, which glare much and deceive the eye with an appearance of light, but soon vanish and are quenched. Now these glancing, shooting stars do excellently express the quality of these seducers, who pretended great knowledge, being therefore called Gnostics, and gave out themselves for illuminate and profound doctors, but were various and uncertain in their motions, and soon extinguished and obscured. The guides of the Lord’s people should be stars, but not wandering, gliding stars. These seducers pretended to be “stars,” and great lights of the Church, but were indeed “wandering stars,” and such as did seduce and cause to err.
1. Stars they should be--
(1) In regard of the light of doctrine (Mat_5:14).
(2) In regard of the lustre of their conversations.
It is said of all Christians (Php_2:15) that they “shouldshine as lights in this world”; they are the bright part of the world, as the stars are the shining part of heaven; as the star directed the wise men to Christ, so they must shine to light others by their example to Him. Alas! we are but dim lights; we have our spots and eclipses, but this sets the world a-talking.
2. They must not be gliding, falling stars; that is charged upon these seducers. A false teacher and a falling star symboliseth in three respects--
(1) It is but a counterfeit star; so is he an “angel of light” only in appearance (2Co_11:14). A true Christian should covet more to be than to seem to be; to be “light in the Lord” before he is a “light in the world.”
(2) In respect of the uncertainty of its motion. Falling stars are not moved with the heavens, but with the motion of the air, hither and thither, and so are no sure direction. So are they inconstant in the doctrines which they teach, running from opinion to opinion; vagabond lights, that seduce, not direct, as meteors mislead travellers out of the way.
(3) In regard of the fatal issue. A wandering star falleth to the ground, and becometh a dark slime and jelly; so their pretences vanish at length, and they are found to be those that were never enlightened and fixed in the firmament of God; counterfeits cannot last long; we see stars shoot in the turn of an eye, and Satan’s instruments fall from heaven like lightning. Well, then, for a guide to heaven, choose a star, but not a wandering star. New light is admired, but it should be suspected rather. True stars have influences; they do not only enlighten and fill you with notions, but enflame and stir you to practice. The last clause of the text is, “to whom is reserved blackness of darkness for ever.”
In this threatening three things are notable--
(1) The dreadfulness of the punishment;
(2) the sureness;
(3) the suitableness of it.
1. The dreadfulness, in two circumstances--
(1) The nature of it;
(2) the duration of it.
(a) The nature of it, “the blackness of darkness.” It is a Hebraism for exceeding great darkness, called in the gospel “outer darkness,” as being furthest from God, the fountain of life and glory, and so expressing that extreme misery, horror, and torment which is in hell. Well, then, let us not begin our hell ourselves, by shunning God’s presence, by preferring carnal pleasures before the light of His countenance, by remaining in the night or darkness of ignorance or error, by darkening the glory of our holy profession through scandalous living, by sinning against conscience, and so providing food for the gnawing worm, or matter of despair to ourselves to all eternity.
(b) The next thing is the duration, “theblackness of darkness for ever.” The torment prepared for the wicked is everlasting (Mar_9:44). This is the hell of hell, that, as the torments there are without measure, so without end. Here they might have life and would not, and now would have death, and cannot (Rev_20:10).
2. So much for the terribleness of the judgment; now, secondly, let us consider the sureness of it: it is “reserved.” Hell torment is sure, prepared, kept for the wicked (Mat_25:1-46). Carnal men may lord it abroad for a while, and ruffle and shine in worldly pomp, but “the blackness of darkness is kept for them.”
3. Observe the suitableness of the judgment to the sin; he saith “darkness,” not fire. Clouds that darken the truth are justly punished with “the mists of darkness for ever” (2Pe_2:17). They that would quench the true light are cast into eternal darkness. (T. Manton.)
Wandering stars.
Wandering stars
Dean Alford, with many other commentators, says, “These words, ‘wandering stars,’ mean comets, which astonish the world for a while and then pass away into darkness.” The Bible takes up this thought about comets, or “wandering stars,” and applies it to certain kinds of people. Let us trace some of the features of similarity.
I. In the first place, some folk are very much like comets in that there is not much substance in them.
II. Notice, that some people are like comets in thatthey are easily swayed out of their orbits. The metaphor applies to unstable men, driven hither and thither by temptations, whose life presents the strongest kind of contrast to the safe, well-ordered life of Christians, more fixed, like the orbit of a planet.
(a) Young friends, keep to your orbit of purpose. Have an aim and stick to it. Many a life goes to waste and ruin simply because, like an abandoned and drifting vessel, or a wandering star, no guiding purpose directs its course.
(b) More important, young friends, keep to your orbit of right. Let no Jupiter attraction sway you out of it.
III. Notice, again, that comets grow brighter as they get near the sun and darker as they go away from it. So do we all grow more bright and beautiful as we get near to Christ, and darker as we go from Him.
IV. Notice, lastly, that some comets are truly “wandering stars.” As unstable, disrupted ruins, they are hastening forward to a final darkness. Surely this is very suggestive of the sad ending of sin. To die in one’s sins is the darkest of deaths. (G. B. F. Hallock.)
The blackness of darkness for ever.--
“Outer darkness”
You have been out in a very dark night, when you could not see an inch before you, and the whole world seemed blotted out of existence. I dare say you thought that there could be no darkness deeper than that. And yet the darkest night that any one has ever seen is not the “blackness of darkness” to which the apostle alludes; for there is some light mixed with it--light which other creatures can see, such as cats and owls, though you cannot. The stars are shining all the time, and their rays are piercing through the universal gloom and lighting it up, so that it is not so dense as it would otherwise be. We know nothing of the “blackness of darkness”--darkness without light; darkness in blank, empty space. There is one spot in the visible universe that can in some measure enable us to realise the awful conception of Jude. When Sir William Herschel examined the southern part of the starry heavens on one occasion with his huge telescope, he noticed in the constellation of the Scorpion--the eighth sign of the Zodiac, into which the sun enters about the 23rd of October--a particular dark spot; and he was very much startled and said, “There is certainly a hole in the heavens there.” There was in that spot a total absence of any star, or gleam of light such as elsewhere, in countless myriads, overspread the entire firmament. His son Sir John was some time afterwards at the Cape of Good Hope as Astronomer Royal, and with the same telescope, in the clear atmosphere of South Africa, he looked up at the same spot in the starry sky, and saw that his father was correct. He was, indeed, looking at a hole in the heavens, where no mortal eye with any instrument that the highest skill could devise could detect one solitary glimmer of far-off light. It is into outer darkness like that that lost souls are cast which have separated themselves from God and refused to obey His law of love and light. Human beings cannot bear darkness. There are some creatures that love it--that hide themselves under stones and in dark corners of the earth. But man was made for the light, and therefore dreads darkness more than anything else. God has given to us this instinctive fear of darkness because it is injurious to us, except during the short time that it is necessary to aid and deepen our sleep at night, which may be said to be a kind of death. He meant us to dread it and avoid it, and to live in the light. I said that in this world it is impossible to get out of the reach of light. In the natural world God has placed the orbit of our earth amid regions that are continually lit up with the light of suns and stars everywhere. And so too in the spiritual world God has placed your sphere and orbit in a region of light. The Sun of Righteousness shines upon you always. You cannot get beyond the reach of God’s light. Behind the gloom in which you bury yourself by conscious and wilful sin, He works to bring you out of the darkness into His own marvellous light. God wishes you in His own light to see light upon all the great things that concern your immortal welfare. He wishes you to walk in the light, for He knows that darkness is your greatest enemy; for darkness means the loss of power to use the organs of life, the loss of enjoyment in the bright and beautiful world which He has made for your happiness, and, if carried to an extreme, the loss of life itself. Have you ever seen a root, say a potato, or a dahlia root, sprouting in a dark cellar? What a brittle, feeble, monstrous growth does it produce; the semblance of a plant, without sap, or strength, or beauty--a white, death-like ghost! But even that feeble abortive effort to grow is caused by the small quantity of light that finds its way into the darkest cellar, and cannot be shut out. But supposing that you could exclude the light altogether, and make the place absolutely dark, then not only would the root of the plant make no effort to grow, but it would wither and die away altogether; it would lose the life that it had. Complete darkness is fatal to all life. And so, hiding yourself from the light of God that shines all around you, loving darkness rather than light, because your deeds are evil, you become like blind fishes--you lose some faculty or power of your soul. You make yourself blind to the things that belong to your peace. You deprive yourself of much that is fitted to bless and ennoble your life. But separating yourself from God altogether, you would lose the life itself of your soul. Your living soul would become a dead, inanimate thing, without a pulse of love or a glow of hope. It would be all darkness--not the darkness cast by the shadow of God’s presence, but the utter, deathly darkness of the absence of God. You would wander out of the region of God’s light, out of the Milky Way of God’s gracious influences, into outer darkness, where Dante’s terrible words would be realised to the full, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” Does not the thought of that awful “blackness of darkness for ever” urge you to cry for the light, to come to the light, to ask God to lighten your eyes lest you sleep the sleep of death--to walk in the light while you have the light?(H. Macmillan, D. D.)
