The character and the doom of covetousness.
The judgment denounced against those that joined house to house and field to field bring into view the nature of the sin of covetousness, and the desolation in which it ends.
I. THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE SIN. It is an immoderate ambition. To secure a house or a piece of land, or to extend that which has been acquired, may be not only lawful but positively commendable; it may, indeed, be highly honorable. But there are bounds beyond which this ambition may not pass, the transgression of which is wrong and soon becomes perilously evil. In the case of the Jews this limitation was defined by their statutes—by that Law which they had received direct from God himself, and to which they owed a strict and cheerful obedience. In our case ambition becomes covetousness when it is indulged either at our own expense or at the expense of our brother. If we are indulging a purpose which cannot be executed without moral or spiritual injury to ourselves, or without doing injustice or rendering unkindness to our neighbor, we are guilty of the sin of covetousness. To some men the transgression assumes the one form, to others the other. To some, covetousness is the craving for property or money which becomes engrossing, absorbing, positively devouring all the higher and purer aspirations; to others it is the desire and determination to secure the neighbor's good, however serious the loss they may thereby inflict. Solomon coveted many wives, greatly to his own injury; Ahab coveted Naboth's vineyard, shamefully disregarding his neighbor's rights.
II. ITS INSATIABLENESS. The prophet uses the language of hyperbole when he says, "Till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth" (Isaiah 5:8); but his words clearly point to the fact that when men allow their ambition to pass beyond moderate and reasonable bounds they permit it to carry everything before it, so that their earth-hunger, or house-hunger, or their thirst for money is never satisfied. However much they gain, they still crave and strive for more; it is not only gold itself but that which it will bring which is
"Hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould."
In nothing but death can the greedy eye be closed, and the grasping hand relaxed.
III. ITS HEEDLESSNESS. The concluding clause of the eighth verse not only intimates the extent to which covetousness urges its victim to go in search of a satisfaction which it does not find, but it suggests the heartlessness to which it leads. No matter who or how many are disturbed and displaced, it goes on its devouring way, even though it finds itself "alone in the midst of the land (earth)." Every vice tends to hardness of heart, to pitilessness of spirit; and covetousness not the least. Self is magnified in importance more and more, and the rights and feelings of others become of less and less consideration until they are made of no account whatever.
IV. ITS DOOM. The end of the covetous man was to be desolation (Isaiah 5:9) and poverty (Isaiah 5:10). Sin perpetually overreaches itself; and, of all particular sins, ambition "o'ervaults itself and comes down on th' other side." So far is covetousness from happiness that there is probably no more miserable man to be found in any spiritual region than is the victim of this vice.
1. He is desolate, friendless; hated by those whom he has injured; unloved, disregarded, or even despised, by those who watch his course.
2. He is destitute. Often, very often, avarice blinds the judgment, and the false move is made that ends in overthrow and ruin; always, covetousness shuts out those true treasures which make the heart rich and the life wealthy—those possessions which death cannot touch, which immortality secures forever.—C.
The evil and the end of intemperance.
When other evils have entered and other calamities have overtaken a state, intemperance is sure to make its black and hateful mark. These verses suggest—
I. ITS TYRANNY. Such is its strength that it makes its devotees, t rise up early in the morning" (Isaiah 5:11) in order to worship at its shrine. It is an unnatural and detestable action; the earliness of the hour of the day might well be pleaded as a proof of innocency (Acts 2:15). But when the passion for "strong drink" is at its height, it compels its helpless victims to break through all decencies and proprieties, and get up early in order to indulge. This is only one instance of its despotism; it leads those who "follow "it along many a path and into many a dark pit, from which they would fain turn away but cannot. At first a small silken cord, it becomes at last an adamantine chain.
II. ITS POWER OF PERVERSION. It compels good things to minister to evil (Isaiah 5:12). "The harp and the viol," etc; are excellent things in their way and in their place; but, used for the purpose of enlivening and protracting immoderate indulgence, they are perverted to an evil and guilty end. Music is meant to cheer, to attract toward that which is good, to gladden the heart and to brighten the life of man; it reaches its highest function when, in the worship of God, it conducts the thought and utters the feeling of man toward the Supreme. Made the minister of vice, it sinks to its lowest level. The love of strong drink can thus pervert the good gifts of God to unworthy uses.
III. ITS DEGRADING TOUCH. It leads "men of strength to mingle strong drink" (Isaiah 5:22) in order that they may glory in their power of drinking. In many lands and ages men have boasted of their power to withstand the influence of the intoxicating cup. What a miserable degradation of human strength! That men who are capable of performing noblest deeds, of rendering highest service, of engaging in Divine worship, should prostitute their powers by trying to drink much wine without becoming inebriated, this is a shocking degradation of human faculty.
IV. ITS BLINDING INFLUENCE. "They regard not the work of the Lord," etc. (Isaiah 5:12). Certainly, at the table of unrestrained reveling, God would be forgotten and his works be disregarded; but not there alone is the influence of intoxication felt. The man who gives way to this indulgence finds his mental powers becoming clouded, his spiritual sensibilities benumbed, his appreciation of the sacred and the Divine lessened if not lost. Strong drink dulls and deadens the higher faculties of the soul, and the nobler functions of our manhood are undischarged, its purer joys abandoned.
V. THE WOE IT WORKS. "Woe unto them," etc. (Isaiah 5:11)! Beyond the evils which we have been tracing to the intoxicating cup—evils which are of themselves woe enough for any one sin to work—there are:
1. The loss of physical strength and beauty.
2. The loss of reputation and of friendship.
3. The loss of self-respect and, with this, the sinking of the moral character; the upgrowth of attendant moral evils.
4. Death and condemnation.—C.