The sin of presuming.
"And Hezekiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his precious things." Presumption is taking the ordering of our lives into our own hands, without consulting God or remembering our dependence on him. It is the sin to which kings and rulers and men of masterful dispositions are specially exposed. Therefore David prayed so earnestly, "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me." The singular thing, and the suggestive thing, in the case of Hezekiah is that he took the insulting Assyrian letter and at once spread it before the Lord. Trouble drove him at once to God, but flattery disarmed him, and he acted without consulting God. Not without good reason is it urged that prosperity is a severer test of character than adversity; that "woe is unto us when all men speak well of us;" and that added years after a serious illness are oftentimes a very doubtful blessing. The writer of the Chronicles (2 Chronicles 32:25) helps us to read the heart of Hezekiah. He says that Isaiah was displeased with him because "his heart was lifted up." Vanity is indicated in this exhibition of all his treasures. Cheyne finds all the excuse that can be found for Hezekiah. He says, 'Was it merely vanity which prompted the king thus to throw open his treasuries? Surely not. It was to satisfy the emissaries of Baladan that Hezekiah had considerable resources, and was worthy of becoming his ally on equal terms. To Isaiah, as a prophet of Jehovah, the king's fault was principally in allowing himself to be courted by a foreign potentate, as if it were not true that 'Jehovah had founded Zion,' and that 'the afflicted of his people could find refuge therein.'" Matthew Henry says of Hezekiah, "He was a wise and good man, but when one miracle after another was wrought in his favour, he found it hard to keep his heart from being lifted up, nay, a little thing then drew him into the snare of pride. Blessed Paul himself needed a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being lifted up with the abundance of revelations." The sin of presumption is a more common, and a more serious, sill than we are wont to consider it. It is one that finds frequent illustration in Holy Scripture. The sin that lost Eden was presumption. Jacob's grasping at the birthright was presumption. Moses' smiting the rock twice was presumption. Saul's forcing himself to sacrifice when Samuel tarried was presumption. David's numbering the people was presumption. Peter striking off the ear of Malchus was presumption. These are but specimen cases, readily recalled. A careful estimate of many sins will reveal presumption at the root of them. Still, if we read our lives aright, we shall find that we are constantly presuming on what God would have us to do, and acting without making due inquiries of him.
I. TEMPTATIONS TO PRESUMPTION.
1. These come partly out of natural disposition. There is an evil of over-meekness; sometimes we find a lack of energy and self-assertion which prevents men from impressing themselves on any sphere of life which they may be called to occupy. But there is much more frequently the evil of over-assertion, that belongs to energetic, enterprising natures, that take life with a strong grip. Many men cannot wait. They form their judgments quickly, and want them immediately acted on. And such persons are constantly tempted to presume. If good men, they act first, and ask of God the approval of their actions. Oftentimes this strong self-willedness is a hereditary disposition, which the Christian spirit has to battle with and overcome. Oftentimes it is sadly fostered by the pettings of childhood, and the false education of youth; and then it is the serious confirmed evil that is hardly overcome even in a lifelong struggle.
2. The temptations come partly out of circumstances. In the desperateness of business pressure, the almost bankrupt man presumes on his friends, acts wilfully, and even brings others down in his ruin. But circumstances of success prove even greater temptations. Nebuchadnezzar is the type of the presumers, as he stands in the midst of his city, saying, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?"
II. SIN OF PRESUMPTION.
1. It is sin against man's creaturehood. Man is not an independent being. He cannot stand alone. "No man can keep alive his own soul." He has nothing of his own. Then he has no right to presume.
2. It is a sin against a man's childhood. Parents have to repress this spirit in their children, because it is subversive of true home-life. And so must the great Father.
3. It is especially sin in man as redeemed. Because, as redeemed, man is the humbled sinner, who is made a monument of grace, and ought to walk humbly with God, always coming after him, and never pressing on before. The evil of this sin is seen in the deterioration of Christian character which follows whenever it is indulged.
III. PUNISHMENT OF PRESUMPTION. Usually this comes by the failure of the self-willed plans; or the sad results that follow the self willed course that is taken. In the case of Hezekiah God sends a vision of what will follow out of that embassy of which the king was so proud. It was the thin end of a wedge. Driven home, by-and-by, it meant the destruction of Jerusalem, and the captivity of Judah, by those very Babylonians. Hezekiah boasted in order to get a worldly alliance. His boastings excited cupidity, which presently led to the carrying away of the exhibited treasures. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall" into the sin of presumption.—R.T.
Shadows projected from coming trouble.
Almost our worst troubles are the things we fear. They loom so large and seem so terrible, like distant figures in a fog. The mind is so long occupied with them before it can do anything in relation to them. Our Saviour's life was darkened with the shadows of his coming woe. As he talked with heavenly visitants, he "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." He cried, "Now is my soul troubled … Father, save me from this hour." The shadow seemed easier to bear when it darkened down into an actual present conflict and woe. Most men are "all their life in bondage through fear of death," and thousands of men are almost hypochondriacal in their anxieties about troubles that always seem to 'be coming, but seldom really come.
I. FUTURE THINGS THAT FLING SHADOWS OVER THE PRESENT.
1. The fear of the young Christian that he will not hold out to the end, Often a morbid fear; always an unworthy fear, because it really means our doubting whether God can keep us safely to the end.
2. Fears born of the difficulties of times of business depression. Parents often talk, in their homes, about the workhouse, in a joking way, which nevertheless means that the shadow of it lies upon their lives. A dread of failure and bankruptcy broods over many a business man. Unworthy dread, in view of the promise, "Verily thou shalt be fed."
3. Fears growing out of conditions of health. The exaggeration of this is observed in cases of religious mania or nervous depression. Then all the future is black and hopeless, and the soul immovably accepts the idea that it is for ever lost. These fears, alas! often inspire the suicide to his self-murderous deed.
4. Fears that gather about the certainty of judgment when the conscience bears testimony to guilt. A whole life may be shadowed by a crime. It is not the memory of the crime that flings the shadows; it is the conviction that the crime must come up again to view some day, and make its appeal for vengeance. In one way or another shadows lie on all our lives.
II. PRESENT THINGS THAT RELIEVE THE SHADOWS FLUNG BY THE FUTURE.
1. Human hope. The most indestructible thing in human breasts.
2. Right estimate of life; as the sphere in which a great moral purpose is being wrought out: character is being moulded by the mingled influence of things evil and things good.
3. The comforting promises of God; which assure us of Divine overcomings and overrulings.
4. And the assurance of the abiding Divine presence, which is a constant sweet light that, falling on the very shadows, touches them with golden glowing, even as dark evening clouds are kindled into glory at the after-sunset.—R.T.