Untempered mortar.
The teaching of the false prophets of peace is here compared to a wall built of untempered mortar, which is overthrown in a tern pest.
I. A FALSE HOPE IS LIKE A WALL BUILT WITH UNTEMPERED MORTAR.
1. It offers protection. The wall is built, and it endures long enough to invite the threatened people to take shelter behind it. It stands between them and the enemy. So a false hope is planted between men and their danger, like a city wall, and it encourages them to despise the danger.
2. It presents a fair appearance. The wall may be well designed with towers, and bastions, and battlements, and all the latest improvements in plans of fortifications. It has a certain mortar holding the stones together, which may appear to be of the very best quality. So false hopes charm with an appearance of solidity.
3. It contains solid materials. It is not a mere mound of earth. There are good hewn stones in the structure. Hence its deceptive appearance. A lie that is half a truth is the most deadly lie. We may have certain solid truths of the Christian religion. Yet if these are not united by personal faith they hang loosely together, and will not save us.
4. It lacks an essential element. The mortar is rotten. Then all the rest goes for nothing. "One thing thou lackest" (Mark 10:21). Yet that one thing may be so vital that the absence of it may lead to utter failure. Our system of religion, like the teaching of the false prophets, may have every commendable element, beauty, symmetry, fulness, etc; except one—truth. Then, alas! there is nothing to hold it together, and the whole is no better than a heap of rubbish.
II. THE TEMPEST OF TRIAL WILL SHATTER A FALSE HOPE. When we see people who are comfortably ensconced in a neat little system of religious conceptions, though we know that that system is only held together by the friable mortar of fancy, not by the Portland cement of truth, at first it might seem cruel to unsettle them. But it should be remembered that they are certain to be unsettled at length, and the only questions are as to when and how this will take place. If the rotten wall is not pulled down, some day it will be thrown down.
1. The tempest of tribal will come. God sends his hailstorm, his hurricane. It came to Jerusalem in Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. It visits every soul at some time, for "man is born to trouble," etc. If our bark is only made for fair weather, it is doomed to shipwreck, because the storm will break at last on every life. If it dues not come during our earthly course, it will visit us at the close. Death will then come as a howling tempest.
2. The false hope will then crumble away. Hail and hurricane dash down the feeble, pretentious wall. Trouble overthrows false hopes. We may be content to live in the dreamland of illusion during the drowsy summer days of prosperity. But trouble compels us to be real. Then we are forced to ask ourselves in solemn earnestness, "What is truth?" Then the refuge of lies tumbles into a hopeless ruin.
3. The builder of the false hope will suffer in its overthrow. "Ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof." False teachers will suffer with the overthrow of their teachings. They who take refuge in falsehood will be buried in the ruin of their delusions. The greater the hope, the more fearful will be its fall, and the more dreadfully will they be bruised and crushed who take up their abode in it.
4. The false hope is overthrown that we may turn to the true Hope. "Christ our Hope."