Divine judgment in the confusion of plans.
"Turneth upside down," or "bends aside." "The Divine providence, when the wicked man has laid out his plans, and looks as it were along a plain and level road of prosperity, bends the prosperous course aside, makes the path crooked instead of straight, full of trouble and calamity instead of prosperous and sure." "That which happens in the course of God's providence, and as the inevitable result of his righteous laws, is usually ascribed in Scripture to his immediate agency." "Turneth upside down." "He fills it with crooked places; he reverses it, sets it down, upsets it. That which the man aimed at he misses, and he secures that for himself which he would gladly have avoided. The wicked man's way is in itself a turning of things upside down morally, and the Lord makes it so to him providentially. Everything goes wrong with him who goes wrong" (C.H.S.).
I. PLANS MADE WITHOUT GOD WILL HAVE, SOONER OR LATER, TO TAKE GOD INTO ACCOUNT. The honest truth is that man can never safely make any plans without taking God, and God's relation to things, into consideration. And yet this must be acknowledged as a truthful description of the wicked man—"God is not in all his thoughts." But all man can ever do is, strong-willedly persist in putting God out of consideration. And God may respond by leaving him alone for a while. But the man cannot keep up his self-willedness long, and God will not keep aloof forever. When God puts himself into consideration, man's schemes are confused, and man's plans fall about him in ruins. Man proposes; God disposes.
II. GOD WILL SURELY OVERRIDE ALL MAN'S SELF-WILLED PLANS IN THE LONG RUN. Asaph and the psalmists of his class are full of fretfulness because the plans of the wicked seem to succeed. "He brmgeth wicked devices to pass. But Asaph goes into the sanctuary of God, and then he understands their end. Wait but a while. God is sure to "arise and shake terribly the earth," and shake down the most apparently stable erections of self-willedness.—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT