I. SADLY PREVALENT. "This is their eye" - what they mind and what they lust after. There is a climax. First two classes of sinners are figured, next one great indistinguishable mass. Then "wickedness" is personified, as one woman. This teaches how worldliness is:

1. Common.

2. Absorbing.

3. Debasing - corrupting all that is beautiful and fair.

II. SPECIALLY OFFENSIVE. Bad in the world; infinitely worse in the Church.

1. Opposed to the Spirit of Christ.

2. Incompatible with the service of God.

3. Obstructive to the progress of the gospel.

III. RIGHTEOUSLY DOOMED. Even now restrained. Limited as to place and power. But the end cometh. The judgment set forth implies:

1. Disinheritment. They defrauded others, and will themselves be impoverished. Like Satan, cast out. Like Esau, lose their birthright.

2. Banishment. Judgment based on sympathies. What is right in law is true to feeling. Society cleansed. The bad go with the bad. Ungodliness is driven to the land of ungodliness. Captivity leads to captivity. Judas went "to his own place."

3. Abandonment. Judgment swift, thorough, irresistible. There is a terrible retention of character. "The wicked are driven away in their wickedness: but the righteous hath hope in his death." - F.

This is the ruin of thousands and tens of thousands. It is not at all necessary to insure a man's perdition that he either "steal" or "swear falsely." A man may be a thorough worldling, without the practice of these or any gross iniquities. Whatever shuts God out from His place in the heart as the object of fear and love, and from His place in the conscience as the authoritative regulator of the life, that, be it what it may, is the ruin of the man. In the parable of the marriage feast, the men who declined the invitation, and went away to their farms and to their merchandise, are not charged with any selfish and fraudulent dealings in the management of their farms or the prosecution of their merchandise. What was their sin? Worldliness. They preferred the world to God. They declined the blessings of the Gospel for something more to their taste. They chose the world and the things of the world — no matter in how innocent a form — even the sweets of domestic life itself — to God and the things of God. And in the enjoyment of these, as their chosen portion, they "had their reward." Thus it was of old; thus it is still. Let no man deceive himself by fancying it necessary to his forfeiture of the blessings of God's salvation, that he give himself up to the practice of dishonesty and of open vice. If his heart is in the world, with the world he must have his portion. Let Christians be on their guard against "the love of this present world." It is as insinuating and perilous principle. In proportion as it gains upon the heart, it tends to enfeeble the energies, and deaden the sensibilities, of the Divine life in the soul. God will not have a divided heart. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."

(Ralph Wardlaw, D. D.).