Reduction.
In the spoliation and consequent decrepitude of Damascus and Samaria we have a picture of—
I. A NATION DENUDED OF ITS POWER. Under the judgments of Jehovah the proud city of Damascus becomes a "ruinous heap" (Isaiah 17:1), the populous towns are pasturage of herds and flocks (Isaiah 17:2), the strong places are reduced to utter weakness like the departed glory of Israel (Isaiah 17:3); under his judgment Ephraim also shall waste away, shall be as barren as the reaped corn-field, shall be reduced miserably like the tree on whose uppermost branches only a few thin berries can be discovered (Isaiah 17:4-6). Under the action of God's righteous laws, the strong nation is thus reduced by sin, from power to weakness, from pride to humiliation, from wealth to poverty, from populousness to depopulation. And it is always sin which is the true account of the reduction. Violence may be the immediate cause of overthrow, but violence only succeeds when corruption has brought enfeeblement and decline. Greece fell, not by the Roman sword, but by its own inherent weakness. The fall of Rome was due, not to the might of the barbarians, but to the corruption which sapped it of its strength, and thinned the ranks of its citizens. If England falls at some future day, it will not be because some European power has become irresistible, but because luxury will have bred corruption, and corruption have laid it open to the weapon of its foes. Its fatness will become thin, its strength will be seen only on its uppermost boughs; it will fall a prey to the first strong adversary that assails it.
II. A CHURCH BEREFT OF ITS BEAUTY AND ITS INFLUENCE. Churches do not, usually, suffer loss by the hand of violence. But, by sins of their own, they are often painfully reduced, so that they are as a man whose "fatness has waxed thin," as the field of corn that has been cut, as a tree stripped of its goodly fruit, with nothing left but "two or three berries in the top of the uttermost bough." The enemies which work this waste, which bring this pitiful reduction, are these.
1. Discord within the ranks.
2. The spirit of worldliness, robbing of devotion and therefore of strength.
3. Unbelief, acting as a cancer that cuts off all spiritual nourishment.
4. Inactivity, begetting selfishness of aim, and causing the Church to miss that noble exercise which is the source and spring of all moral vigor. The Church that would not be thus wretchedly reduced must sedulously shun these sources of reduction; that one which has to lament its wasted condition must "repent, and do the first works," and the field shall yet be covered with the precious grain, the tree with its clusters of fruit.
III. THE INDIVIDUAL MAN DEPRIVED OF HIS POSITION OR HIS STRENGTH. individual instances, the words of the text find illustration.
1. When the proud, godless man is brought down from his high position; when of all in which he gloried nothing but a few berries on the topmost boughs are left. Let youth shrink from entering on a course which will certainly have this pitiful end; let those who are pursuing it abandon it at the very earliest hour.
2. When death (the penalty of sin) intimates its approach, when the leanness and fruitlessness of death are apparent, then let a man ask whether there is life in its fullness and fruitfulness awaiting him on the other shore.—C.
The function of adversity.
I. THE PREVALENCE OF TROUBLE IN THIS WORLD OF SIN. "That day" was the day of national disaster, and, therefore, of individual distress. In the more settled and durable condition of modern times and Western lands, we are much less liable to suffer from this particular cause. But civilization brings its own perils and its own troubles, and while sin lasts "the day" of sorrow will be continually recurring. How many are the sources whence it may spring! Pecuniary embarrassment; disappointment; the loss of kindred or friends, or (what is worse) the loss of their love and their friendship; humiliation; ill health, and the fear of sudden removal from those who are clinging, and perhaps dependent; a sense of guilt before God; a sense of defeat as a Christian aspirant or Christian workman, etc.
II. GOD'S PURPOSE IN SENDING IT.
1. God does send it. (See Amos 3:6.) He directly inflicts it, or he furthers it in his Divine providence, or, at the least, he permits it (see, also, Matthew 10:29).
2. He sends it to draw us to himself.
The sin and doom of ungodliness.
We learn—
I. THAT GOD IS WRONGED AND GRIEVED BY OUR NEGLECT OF HIMSELF AS WELL AS BY OUR DISOBEDIENCE TO HIS LAWS. Men sometimes mistakenly suppose that their sin is limited by the number of their transgressions of God's positive enactments. They make a very serious mistake in so judging. Great guilt, indeed, is contracted by the breach of Divine commandment, by setting at defiance the "Thou shalt not" of sacred Scripture. But our obligation strikes deeper far, and, when we flail, our sin includes immeasurably more than this. God deserves, and he desires, and he even demands, that we, his human children, should render to him, himself, all that filial love and fellowship which is due from such beloved and enriched ones to such a gracious and bountiful Father. His charge against us is not merely that we have done numbers of things which he has prohibited; it is that we have lived on through days, weeks, months, years, through whole periods and stages of our life, and have forgotten him, the God of our salvation, have not been mindful of him, the Rock of our strength; it is that we have taken blessings and deliverances from his strong, redeeming hand, and have been content to spend our days in ungodliness, withholding the gratitude, the affection, the submission, the willing and joyous service which a relationship so near as is ours to him, and which benefits so great as are his to us, do emphatically demand. The simple and true answer to the question, "What have we failed to render to our redeeming and our beneficent God?" should cover us with shame and send us to our knees in penitence.
II. THAT AN UNGODLY LIFE IS NOT ONLY A PROLONGED INIQUITY, BUT IS ALSO A SUPREME MISTAKE. "Because thou hast forgotten … therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants … but the harvest shall be a heap," etc. The mistake of ungodliness is seen in that:
1. It leaves out and loses all the real nobility from human life—all that which raises man's nature above the brutes, and connects it with the angelic and Divine.
2. It includes only that which is absolutely insufficient and unsatisfactory. It supplies treasures which the thief can steal, joys which pall and perish, friendships which linger only for a few passing years. It has nothing which fills and satisfies the human soul, made, as that is made, for heavenly wisdom, for holy service, for the worship and the love of God. Its harvest is only a heap of husks, and not the granary of life-sustaining corn.
3. It makes no provision for the time of trial—for "the day of grief and of desperate sorrow," for the day of death, for the day of judgment.—C.