The sweet taste of sin and its bitter after-taste.
I. THE SWEET TASTE OF SIN. How can we account for the tact that if sin is essentially an evil thing it should ever be attractive to us? Surely its natural hatefulness should make it repulsive. If it is hideous in the sight of God, by what witchery can it be made to appear fascinating to our eyes?
1. It appeals to our lower desires. It makes its first appeal to nature. There was no evil at first in Adam and Eve, and yet sin was made attractive to them. Christ could not have been tempted unless sin had been made to wear a fair mask in his presence. The bodily appetites and the self-seeking desires are natural and innocent in themselves. But they should be kept under by our higher nature. If, however, the tempter appeals to them directly, he appeals to the prospect of natural pleasure.
2. It is aided by our selfish nature. We are all fallen creatures. If the fall has not taken the form of sensuality, it has certainly been accomplished in selfishness. Now sin appeals to our selfish nature, and promises personal gratification at the expense of righteousness.
3. It is intensified by corrupted desires. Sin perverts the natural appetites and corrupts the most innocent desires. The wicked thing which is first sought because of some promised result comes to be loved on its own account. As the miser loves his money, so the sinner loves his sin?봣irst for what it can purchase, then on its own account. He is like a hypnotized person, to whom gall tastes like sugar, because he is deluded into believing evil to be his good.
II. THE BITTER AFTER-TASTE OF SIN. Zophar rightly enlarges upon this subject. We do not need any amplification of the delights of sin. The very presentation of them to the imagination is degrading. The soul is soiled by contemplating them. We are quite ready to admit their strength. But it is not so easy to imagine vividly and to keep well in view the dreadful after-results. They are remote, unattractive, uncongenial. Therefore we need to be forced to see the results of sin in detail. Zophar narrates them with graphic ragout. Let us, then, consider the disagreeable details of the bitter after-taste.
1. It is pain within. The morsel is sweet in the mouth, and it is hidden under the tongue to keep it safe and to prolong the delicious enjoyment of it; yet when it is swallowed it becomes like the gall of asps. The recollection of past sin is a pain of conscience. Its very delights are turned to bitterness in the after-thought. Just in proportion to their tempting fascination before the deed is their repulsiveness after it has been committed. The foolish victim of temptation looks back on his orgies with disgust. He loathes himself, he grovels in humiliation. How could he have been such a fool as to sink to this shame and degradation?
2. It results in the loss of future delights. The sinner is made to give up his fiches. He is denied "the brooks, the rivers, the torrents of honey and butter," which he was greedily looking forward to. The justice of God will not permit him to revel for ever in wickedness. By his indulgence in sinful pleasures he has destroyed the faculty of innocent joy. His debauch has turned the garden of innocent delights into a desert. For such a man there is no hope but in complete regeneration. Yet that is possible. Even he can be converted, and made a new creature in Christ Jesus.?봚.F.A.
Oppressing the poor.
This is a sin most frequently referred to in the Bible, a common wrong against which the prophets of Israel continually pretested with vehement indignation. Christ, usually mild and gentle, spoke in great anger of this wickedness (Matthew 23:14). St. James denounced it as not unknown among Christians (James 5:4).
I. THE SIN.
1. Its various forms. It is not always seen in the bare and open fashion of primitive times. The sheikh exacts more than is due from his tribe, the Eastern landowner grinds down his fellaheen, the baron enslaves and robs his serfs, and we denounce the manifest wrong. But is not the same evil to be seen in the more decorous injustice of modern Western civilization? The great body of working men is now emancipated from the tyranny of past ages, and is able to assert itself and claim its rights. But below this powerful class is a mass of unskilled workers, the helpless men and women who crowd the lower quarters of great cities?봳he really poor. When advantage is taken of the poverty of these miserable people to grind them down, they are being robbed. With us the sweating system takes the place of the old territorial oppression.
2. Its invariable wickedness. Is the modern commercial oppression one whit less guilty than the old lordly tyranny? The evil is more disguised with us; it is more difficult to bring it home to its authors; our complicated civilization hushes it up?봸et the cruelty and wickedness are as real as ever.
II. THE PUNISHMENT. The writers of the Bible who denounced the sin of oppressing the poor continually threatened punishment to the guilty oppressors.
1. Direct loss. Zophar contemplates the actual loss of ill-gotten gains. This may happen in the present life. It will certainly occur at death. The oppressor can take none of the profits of his cruelty out of the world with him.
2. Disappointment. In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits. Even without the loss of property difficulties will arise. The rich man may be murdered in his palace. Most oppressors live in fear. Trouble of mind mingles like gall in the sweetest cup of pleasures got by cruelty.
III. THE CURE. Punishment is not cure. The fear of it may act as somewhat of a check. But we must go deeper for "the root of the matter" if we would cure it. Now undoubtedly in this case the root is not hard to find, for it is simply unmitigated selfishness. Therefore until men can be taught to substitute brotherliness for selfishness, oppression of the poor must continue. No social revolution, no legal enactment, no forcible change, can eradicate the evil. We must go for the cure of social evils to Christ. He is concerned with society as well as with the individual, and there is no hope for society until he is recognized as its Saviour and its Lord. Christianity instils brotherliness. No man can be a Christian who is destitute of this grace. Oppression of the poor belies the most sanctimonious profession of religion. We want to get back to the religion, of Christ, which made more of brotherliness than even of faith; the religion of St. Paul and St. John, which taught that love is the greatest thing in the world.?봚.F.A.