Homilist Judges 13:1-25 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD… I. A GLOOMY DREAD. This dread of God, which is all but universal — 1. Is an abnormal state of the soul. Antecedently it is impossible to believe that the God of infinite goodness would create beings to dread Him, and the revelations of His love and loveliness in nature prove that they are made to admire and adore Him. Whence came this dread, then? It springs from a sense of guilt. 2. Explains atheism. A desire to ignore and forget and destroy if possible the being we dread is natural. Because men dread God they do not like to retain Him in their thoughts. 3. Is the source of all blasphemous theologies. The being we dread, by the law of mind, we invest with the attributes of a monster. Much of our popular theology presents a God before whom the human heart cowers with horror and recoils with alarm. 4. Keeps the soul away from Him. We shrink from the object we dread, we turn our backs from such an one and hasten from his very shadow. 5. Reveals the necessity of Christ's mission. With this dread in the human soul virtue and happiness are impossible. But how can it be removed? Only by such an appearance of God to the soul as we have in the all-loving tenderness of Christ. In Him God comes to man and says, "It is I, be not afraid." II. A CHEERING HOPE. The woman's hope was based upon an interpretation of God's dealing with them, and this indeed is a certain ground of hope. How has God dealt with us? "If the Lord were pleased to kill us" — 1. Would He have in our natures endowed us with such powers for enjoyment, and placed us in a world so full of blessedness and beauty? 2. Would He have continued our existence so long in such a world, notwithstanding all our transgressions? 3. Would He have sent His only begotten Son into the world to effect our salvation? 4. Would He have given us the gospel, the ministry, and all the morally restorative influences at work within us? (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. |
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