God's net.
I. GOD SPREADS A NET.
1. God will not leave guilty men free. They have a time of liberty, but there will be a limit to this. Though they have a long tether, some day its end will be reached. Freedom is given to allow scope for choice. If the power of choice is abused, the freedom will be withdrawn.
2. God employs means for restraining the liberty of bad men. He does not lay hold of them with his hand; he uses a net. In the present instance the net was Nebuchadnezzar. That heathen monarch did not know that he was a mere instrument in the hand of God; yet did God so completely hold him in this respect that he called the man "my servant Nebuchadnezzar" (Jeremiah 25:9). Thus God overrules the movements of kings.
3. These means may not be perceived by the unhappy victims. The net is a snare, and "in vain is a snare spread in the sight of any bind." We must not suppose that God really deceives his children. The Jews had been warned. But their eyes were blind and their ears deaf (Ezekiel 12:2). The danger is not the less because men do not perceive it. Just when a man boasts of his greatest triumph the meshes of a Divine judgment may be drawing together about his doomed life.
II. GOD ENSNARES IN HIS NET WHOMSOEVER HE WILL.
1. He designs the net for particular persons. In the verse before us it is spread for one man. There is no element of chance in the judgments of Heaven. God considers the case of each soul, and acts accordingly.
2. All the men caught in God's net are sinners. He has no terrors for the good. He is not like the tempter, who ensnares men into evil. Every man who is caught in God's net of judgment has been first ensnared in the devil's net of sin.
3. The greatest are not beyond the reach of this net. In the present instance the net is spread expressly to catch no less a person than Zedekiah, the King of Jerusalem. Massive battlements and the serried ranks of a mighty army cannot keep off the invisible entanglement of the net of judgment.
III. THERE IS NO EARTHLY MEANS OF ESCAPING FROM GOD'S NET. Its threads may be fine as gossamer, but they are strong as steel. Zedekiah was to be taken in the snare, and brought to Babylon in so helpless a state that he would not even see the place, for, as the event proved, his eyes were to be put out. The king fled by night from Jerusalem, but was caught by the Chaldeans near Jericho. As "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," the course of armies and nations turned against the guilty Jews and their wicked king. There is no hope for the impenitent.
IV. CHRIST HAS SPREAD A NEW NET OF SALVATION. He told his apostles that they should be fishers of men (Matthew 4:19), and he compared the kingdom of heaven to a dragnet (Matthew 13:47). The only way of escaping from the awful net of judgment is to permit one's self to be taken in the saving net of the gospel.