Jeremiah 3:5 Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, you have spoken and done evil things as you could. I. SOME OF THE RESTRAINING INFLUENCES OF LIFE. "As thou couldest." By many considerations we are restrained from fulfilling the evil impulses and designs of which we are conscious; our potential wickedness is not allowed to become actual. 1. There is the restraint imposed by revelation. The possession of God's Word was a grand discipline to the people of Israel. To know the moral perfections of God, to discern the moral significance of human life, to possess the moral law expressed with such clearness, fulness, and force, was a rare privilege. This kept Israel back from the things of lust and cruelty and shame which defiled and destroyed their heathen neighbours. Are we not today restrained by the same gracious influence? Our poet speaks of "the silver streak" that comes between us and the Continent, delivering our nation from fears, wars, and contagions. Is not that revelation which is in our hands a silver streak coming between us and contemporaneous paganism? 2. There is the restraint imposed by grace. The direct Divine action on our mind, will, conscience, feeling. This was the master-restraint of the antediluvian world. As a horse is held in by bit and bridle, as a ship on some rocky coast is held by her anchor, so have we all in dangerous clays been restrained by the Spirit of grace. Let men quench that Spirit, and the disastrous consequence is soon revealed. 3. There is the restraint imposed by society. Our civilisation, which is the grace of God organised, is full of restraining influences to which we owe far more than we sometimes think. The civil law. Public opinion. Social etiquette. Business. Domesticity. If it should be suggested that the laws, institutions, and properties of society which forbid excess are themselves expressions of the moral sense, it will at once be palpable to most that these circumscriptions are dictated by fear, policy, and selfishness rather than by any love of righteousness for its own sake. That one wolf holds another wolf in check must not be construed to mean that we are a flock of lambs. II. NOTWITHSTANDING THE RESTRAINTS OF LIFE, WE DISCOVER THE WICKEDNESS OF OUR NATURE BY GOING AS FAR AS POSSIBLE IN THE DIRECTION OF TRANSGRESSION. Israel hitherto had abstained from the extreme acts of transgression which would have involved immediate retribution, but they showed their disposition by playing with the fire, by trifling on the edge of the abyss. So in these days we show what we really are by going as far as we dare or can in actual disobedience. We go as far as our material will permit. "As thou couldest." As thou couldest with impunity. We are intemperate, with a due regard to our health; freer indulgence would destroy us, and that is not what we mean. We are uncharitable, with a due regard to our reputation; we must not infringe the law of libel. We are ambitious and vain; but our ostentation must be limited by considerations of pride and covetousness. As thou couldest with decency. We must not qualify our reputation; we must not be guilty of bad manners, bad form, bad taste. As thou couldest with advantage. Carrying out unrighteousness right up to the point where it ceases to be lucrative, and breaking it off just there. And let none conclude that sins toned down by such considerations are of less malignant quality, or less offensive before God, than are sins of a more violent or exaggerated order. III. MANY WOULD AT ONCE PROCEED TO GREATER LENGTHS OF WICKEDNESS IF THE RESTRICTIVE INFLUENCES OF LIFE WERE WITHDRAWN. 1. Note the extent to which men resist these saving influences. As some engineers are wishful to drive a tunnel under the Channel and establish immediate relations with the Continent, so men are busy in all directions ingeniously attempting to evade the silver streaks which heaven has mercifully placed between them and the excesses of passion and appetite. The criticism of the Bible in the literary world, the impatience felt with it in the individual life, are frequently nothing more than a revolt against its noble righteousness. We fret at the narrowness of the way which leadeth unto life. In the name of free thought, of a free press, of free restitutions, the nude m art must be encouraged, outspoken writings protected, sexual life must be unfettered. With what strange infatuation do we rebel against and seek to escape the crystal deep which God has established between us and ruin! 2. The second sign of the irregularity and inordinativeness of our desire is found in the popularity of certain imaginative literature Modern society has put distinct and authoritative limits to many forms of indulgence; but human nature shows its old quality unchanged, for when it can no longer gratify itself in the actual world it betakes itself to the ideal world.Conclusion — 1. Let us recognise the glory of God's preventing grace. The Dutch call the chain of dykes which protects their fields and their firesides from the wild sea, "the golden border." God's grace directly affecting our heart, or expressed in the constitution of society and the circumstances of life, is a golden border shutting out a raging threatening sea of evil. (2) Let us confess the folly of our self-righteousness. The consciousness of a self-righteousness often stands in the way of men attaining the righteousness which is of God, but the foregoing reflections show how little our self-righteousness is worth. Looking into our heart, we know ourselves to be worse than the world takes us to be. As Victor Hugo expresses it, "Our dark side is unfathomable...One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain what we dare not avow."(3) We see the necessity and urgency of the grace which converts and perfects. It is by no means wholly satisfactory that we are kept by restraining grace; the grace which converts us into a new self is what we must most earnestly covet and pursue. Christianity brings us a motive of unparalleled grandeur; it fills the soul with the highest visions, convictions, loves, ambitions. And there is a sublime concurrence of forces in its motive. (W. L. Watkinson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest. |
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