The covetous spirit, and its judgment.
The picture presented in this verse can be matched by the conduct of our English king, who destroyed the villages to make the New Forest; or by the makers of deer-forests in North Britain, who have driven away the natives. In Isaiah's time the wealthy men were buying up the houses and estates, and destroying the old village life of Palestine. "In the place of the small freeholders, there rose up a class of large proprietors, while the original holders sank into slavery, or tenants-at-will, paying exorbitant rents in kind or money, and liable at any moment to be evicted" (Dean Plump, re). Bishop Latimer, in the sixteenth century, makes a bold protest against the enclosure of commons. Grasping after property is almost always connected with a neglect of charitable duties and a willingness to sacrifice the good of others. Such accumulation of landed property was fundamentally opposed to the Mosaic regulations. Illustrate by the law of jubilee, which made all land in Palestine purchaseable only on lease (comp. Numbers 27:1-11; Numbers 33:54; 1 Kings 21:4; Le 25:8-17).
I. LIVING TO GET. There are three ways of looking at life; three things which we may supremely aim at in life.
1. We may live to get. South says, "The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and part. with nothing." Austin defines covetousness as a dishonest and insatiable desire of gain." The Prophet Micah describes such persons," They covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage." The tenth commandment wholly forbids our making any personal gain the end and aim of life. Show under what self-deceiving forms this covetous desire to get ensnares men nowadays.
2. We may live to be. That is, to culture ourselves, and win the worship of men for what we are, in talent, skill, and virtue. This is nobler; and this is, in measure, right and good; yet it has this exceeding moral peril, that it keeps us in the self-spheres. It may easily pass into the degrading thing—covetousness for fame.
3. We may live to serve. This is the Divine idea of life for us. This is the Christ-like pattern of life for us. This is the kind of life that suffering, sinning humanity asks for from us. They who can live to serve are, with Christ, after Christ, and in his strength, the world's saviors, and the God-glorifiers.
II. GOD'S JUDGMENTS ON HIM WHO LIVES TO GET. Those judgments will come as natural agencies, as fixed results of ever-working law, and as circumstances for which men may think to find easy explanation; but they are none the less direct Divine judgments. Such judgments on the covetous take two forms.
1. Character is debased by the constant getting and grasping. This may be effectively illustrated in the case of the apostate Judas. No moral deterioration is so serious or so certain as that of the covetous man. Hardening against his fellow-men, he is hardening against God. Crushing out all considerateness and all charity, he loses men's love and God's smile, and is wretched indeed when he has got all, and is "placed alone in the midst of the land." If any poor creature of our humanity calls for our supremest pity, it is surely the man who tins lived to get, and made his immortal soul grovel among mere possessions. "Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth."
2. The calamities of life will prove utterly ruinous to the covetous. Because they will touch them at their tenderest point, destroying their gains. The picture presented in the verses is a most affecting one. By the insecurity of the land the fine mansions are uninhabited, and the fields are neglected. Travelers tells us of the humiliating sight of decayed mansions in the East. War and civil commotion, often the natural result of the masterful ruling of covetous men, make property valueless, and so the evil brings round its own judgment. The law works universally, sometimes quickly, at other times slowly, so that men presume on its delaying, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Apply by inquiring what is the end and aim of life to the hearers. Jacob would get, and he got years of homelessness, hard toil, and care. Achan would get, and he got an early and dreadful death. Gehazi would get, and he got the leprosy. Ananias and Sapphira would get, and they got a sudden destruction. Woe—earth cries for it, and heaven sends it—woe, sooner or later, for very one who liveth that he may get, and is utterly unworthy of him who, showing God to us, went about among his fellows as "One that serveth."—R.T.
The sin of dissipation.
That which is here reproved is not mere drinking habits; it is the riotous feasting and wasting which characterizes the sensualist. Early drinking was considered by the Jews, as it was by the Romans, a mark of the most degraded sensuality. "In the time of Isaiah, the sensual Jews appear to have employed musicians, and all kinds of merry-makers, as dancers, mimics, buffoons, etc; such as are still common all over the East." "They shocked public feeling by morning banquets" (Ecclesiastes 10:16, Ecclesiastes 10:17; Acts 2:14). Morier says, "The Persians, when they commit a debauch, arise betimes, and esteem the morning as the best time for beginning to drink wine, by which means they carry on their excess till night." Dissipation, in its comprehensive sense, is the temptation and the sin of our young men, especially of those belonging to the wealthier classes. The excitement and rioting of it may be illustrated by the following true incident. When inflamed with wine, a young man was challenged to eat a five-pound note. Placing it between slices of bread, in wild foolishness and wickedness, he actually destroyed the note in this way. We fix attention on the wastefulness of dissipation, and point out that it is a grievous sin before God, as abusing his sacred trusts. Illustrate from
Show how mischievous is the influence exerted by the familiar saying, "Young men must sow their wild oats." They should have no wild oats to sow; and if they have any, the very last thing they should do with them is sow them, for they will surely spring up, and bear, for their reaping, a harvest of woe unspeakable. F. W. Robertson says, "There are men who make provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." They whet the appetites by indulgence. They whip the jaded senses to their work. Whatever the constitutional bias may be—anger, intemperance, epicurism, indolence, desires—there are societies, conversations, scenes, which supply fuel for the flame, as well as opposite ones which cut off the nutriment. Such a man is looking forward to a harvest wherein he may reap the fruit of his present anticipations. And he shall reap it. He has sown to the flesh, and of the flesh he shall reap corruption. This is in his case the ruin of the soul. He shall reap the harvest of disappointment—the harvest of bitter, useless remorse. "His harvest is a soul in flames, and the tongue that no drop can cool."—R.T.
Four grievous sins.
The ungodly spirit finds very various modes of expression in willful and self-pleasing actions. Men's sins are repeated over and over again in every age, sometimes taking more open and defiant forms, and sometimes hiding behind a pleasant outward show of delicacy and refinement, but always the "abominable things which God hates." The coarse sins of Eastern peoples seem offensive to our sensitive Western nations; but the sins are here amongst us, only in a disguise which deceives us. Isaiah reproves—
I. THE SIN OF PRESUMPTION. (Verses 18, 19.) Evil-doers are thought of as harnessing themselves to the chariot of sin; as bold enough even to scoff at God's threatened judgments, and taunt him with his merciful delayings, saying, "Let Jehovah hasten; let him hurry on his work, that we may see it." Wordsworth paraphrases verse 18 thus: "Woe to them that harness themselves as brute beasts to iniquity, with cords of falsehood, and drag on the weight of sin, as a waggon, with the ropes of vicious habits." Illustrate by the scoffing thief on the cross; and by the ramble of the man who presumed upon his abundant harvest, and found he was suddenly called away from all his wealth. Presumption is the evil into which men are led through temporary successes. See the effect of prosperity on Nebuchadnezzar. It is a constant effect of luxury and self-indulgence and immorality. It is the brink of utter and irretrievable ruin. For the presumptuous man there is little hope. He must fall, and be bruised and crushed, ere he will learn lessons of humility and trust. David knew human nature well, and he taught us to pray, "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me."
II. THE SIN OF CONFUSING MORAL DISTINCTIONS. (Verse 20.) "Those do a great deal of wrong to God and religion and conscience—to their own souls, and to the souls of others who misrepresent ['evil and good'], and put false colors upon them; who call drunkenness good fellowship, and covetousness good husbandry, and, when they persecute the people of God, think they do him good service; and on the other hand, call seriousness ill nature, and sober singularity ill breeding, and say all manner of evil falsely concerning the ways of godliness "(Matthew Henry). The text well describes the spirit of our age. In our over-refinements we are losing the sternness of the truth, carefully polishing off every edge and point and corner that might prick conscience into activity. We are toning down moral distinctions until they are becoming quite confused and indistinct; we can hardly tell for certain what is right and what is wrong, what is evil and what is good. One of the most thoughtful of American divines, Dr. J. A. Alexander, writes thus: "Do not we with one breath assert the inviolable sanctity of the truth, but with the next breath make provision for benevolent, business, jocose, or thoughtless falsehood? Do we not, in the abstract, assert the claims of justice, and the obligation to give every man his own, but, in application to specific cases, think it lawful to enrich ourselves at other men's expense, or take advantage of another's weakness, ignorance, or error? Do we not admit the paramount importance of religious duties in general, but in detail dissect away the vital parts as superstition, sanctimony, or fanaticism? Do we not approve the requisitions of the Law, and the provisions of the gospel, in so far as they apply to other people, but repudiate or pass them by as applying to ourselves? What is all this but saying of evil, it is good, and of good, it is evil?"
III. THESIS OF SELF-CONCEIT. (Verse 21.) The first reference is to counselors, "whose ideal of statesmanship was a series of shifts and expedients, based on no principle of righteousness." This form of sin is too familiar to need much suggestion as to its treatment. God resisteth those who are conceited of their own wisdom and lean to their own understanding. "Seest thou a man wise in his own eyes? there is more hope of a fool than of him."
IV. THE SIN OF CORRUPTING JUSTICE. (Verse 23.) "Who cleat the guilty for a bribe, and take the rights of worthy men from them." The idea is that justice is sacrificed to meet the demands of an expensive luxuriousness. So men now grind the faces of those who work for them to support their own extravagances. No greater evil can come upon a land than the poisoning of the fountains of justice; and there is no more certain source of national discontent hastening to rebellion. The prophet was himself deeply moved by the picture of the evils of his time which rose up before him. Nowhere could he look and gain the relief of a hope. Such an utterly wicked people must suffer. Seaward he looked, but there was not one gleam of light. Landward he looked, but not one gleam of light. Such is the end of wickedness. Bold though it may seem, defiant as it may sound, long as it may appear to hold out, this is the issue of it—dark, all dark. The very "light is darkened in the heavens thereof."—R.T.