The purpose of God's gracious chastenings.
"He will speak peace …but let them not turn again to folly." The spirit of this psalm is compounded of penitence and praise, humility and hope; inspired by great troubles and great deliverances. This verse expresses what we may call the moral, the very heart of the psalm; the golden link between the thanksgivings blended with confessions of Psalms 85:1-7, and the splendid promises of Psalms 85:9-13. The lesson is twofold—first, that sin is folly, most of all in God's people; and secondly, that God's gracious purpose in chastening is to keep us from sliding back into sin, turning again to folly.
I. SIN IS FOLLY. Q.d. it is acting in disregard of known consequences. The Hebrew word here translated "folly" also means "hope" or "confidence"—the blind confidence of one who knows that "the end of these things is death," yet listens to the tempter who says, "Ye shall not surely die;" that "the wages of sin is death," but counts on their not being paid. He sins in spite of warning, reason, experience; hoping he may seize "the pleasures of sin for a season," and yet escape its eternal consequences. No man chooses perdition. But it comes to the same thing whether you leap over a precipice or walk along the brink with your eyes shut. Sometimes the sinner sins with open eyes, and, just because he knows the danger, flatters himself he can stop in time. He is not on the brink—only on the gentle grassy slope; but involuntarily his steps quicken—he cannot stop—he is lost! A traveller through the snow knows that the one fatal danger is to yield to sleep. "Only for five minutes," he says; and closes his eyes, never to open again. Or a thirsty wayfarer in the desert is warned that a spring is poisonous. The bones of those who have encamped near it whiten the ground. "One draught only!" he says; and presently his bones whiten with the rest. Every one is ready to say, "He sought his fate; has only himself to blame." Are there none amongst us to whom conscience (if awake) would answer, "Thou art the man"? "Their eyes have they closed" (Matthew 13:15). They have "forsaken the fountain of living waters" (Jeremiah 2:13). They "heard the sound of the warning (Ezekiel 33:5; Hebrews 10:28, Hebrews 10:29). If sin is folly, trumpet, and took not the clearer the light, the greater the folly. Therefore the sins of Christians must be the greatest folly. This does not apply to sins of infirmity, against which we are watching, fighting, praying, of which the Christian is sadly conscious, but which have not "dominion over" him. But what these lead to, if we fail to watch, fight, pray: willing yielding to temptation, wilful persistence in wrong, against conscience, loving what we are pledged and bound to hate, ceasing to strive to please God;—this is indeed to "turn again to folly."
II. GOD'S PURPOSE IN HIS DEALINGS WITH HIS CHILDREN IS TO PREVENT THEM TURNING BACK TO SIN. This both in his mercy and in his chastening.
1. In his mercy. "I will hear," etc. God's purpose in forgiving sin is both to incline and to enable us to forsake it. Its guilt is cancelled, that its power may be destroyed. Else forgiveness were useless, wasted. The cross of Christ, constantly set forth in the New Testament as the atonement for our sins, the reconciliation whereby we are brought back to God (Romans 5:9, Romans 5:10), is as plainly set forth as the mightiest motive to holiness (Galatians 2:20; see the whole of Romans 6:1-23.).
2. God's chastening discipline has the same end in view (Hebrews 12:10, Hebrews 12:11; Psalms 119:67, Psalms 119:71). The danger is real. Christians are exposed to the ordinary temptations which beset human nature, though with diminished force; and have some special temptations. We need constantly to open our hearts to the force of all the motives here suggested.
For the ransomed slave to run back to slavery, the released prisoner to hanker after his cell and fetters, the man restored to health to long for his sick-room, the blind whose eyes have been opened to shut himself up in the dark,—seems less insane than for those who "have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," to be "again entangled therein and overcome" (2 Peter 2:20; Hebrews 6:4-6).
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY