The causes of national disaster.
I. IT IS PROFITABLE TO INQUIRE INTO THE CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER.
1. Intellectually, this is a subject of profound interest, dealing with fundamental principles and the vast issues to which they lead when working on the largest scale.
2. Morally, it is of great practical importance for the warning it supplies to all nations. The sight of terrible ruin rushing down upon a people is appalling, but the awe with which it strikes us will not have much whole- some effect till we have an intelligent appreciation of the sources from which it comes, and are thus enabled to watch them and guard against them.
II. SPIRITUAL WISDOM IS REQUISITE FOR THE DISCERNMENT OF THE CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER. They do not lie on the surface. No study is more difficult than that of the philosophy of history. Unless the mind is awake to spiritual facts, the inquiry will not go beyond secondary causes, or attempting more will commit injustice. The prophets needed inspiration for this as much as for the prediction of future events. No mere literary historian is fit for the work. Only a prophet can he fully equal to it, and other men can only pursue it with safety when they walk in his footsteps. Hence the immense value of the historical elements of the Old Testament to the statesman.
III. THE CHIEF CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER ARE MORAL. Material causes are visible on the surface, such as famine, plague, invasion, revolution. Political causes lying deeper may be easily discerned, such as diplomatic complications, class divisions, violent changes in popular sentiment. But beneath all such influences there are great moral causes.
1. These act through providence. God takes note of the conduct of nations, judges, ministers.
2. They also act directly. Luxury is enervating; injustice destroys the confidence of a people in its government, etc.
IV. ONCE REVEALED, THE MORAL CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER ARE SIMPLE AND INTELLIGIBLE. The prophets make these clear to us in the case of their own nation.
1. Negatively, the causes were traced to disobedience to the will of God, culpable because this was well understood—" set before them."
2. Positively, they were found in willful stubbornness and demoralizing idolatry. God was the shield of his people. When he was forsaken they were defenseless. Nations are only secure while they are governed by the will of God, by justice and humanity. Godlessness, bearing fruit in falsehood, cruelty, and vicious lawlessness of passion, is a sure source of national ruin. The state of the public conscience is more important to a nation than that of its army.
False boasting and true confidence.
I. FALSE BOASTING.
1. We are inclined to overvalue our own possessions. The wise man thinks wisdom the one source of security, the strong man strength, the rich man riches. That bulks most largely which lies most near to us.
2. The very good that is in a thing may deceive us by tempting us to overvalue it. Wisdom, strength, and riches are all good in their way. Trust in them is very different from trust in fraud and violence. Not regarding them as enemies, we are in danger of confiding in them as saviors instead of simply employing them as servants.
3. The number of earthly resources leads us to assume that security must be found in some of them at least; for when one fails we can fall back on another. But if the best do not protect in the extremity of danger, will inferior aids suffice? Wisdom is greater than strength, and strength than riches. If wisdom fails, what can the rest do for us?
4. The variety of advantages contained in earthly resources deceives us as to their value. Wisdom promises to outwit the enemy or devise some means of evading ruin. Yet the wisdom of the wisest Jews was defeated by those who came from the land of "the wise;" and how can it avail against the supreme wisdom? Strength as physical prowess and national power may be imposing and yet not almighty. Samson was weak under a woman's wiles. Goliath fell before the sling of the stripling David. Riches may buy much. They could not prevent the Chaldean invasion. They cannot buy off sickness, disappointment, death, the punishment of sin. Nebuchadnezzar found the possession of the world no security against the most humiliating affliction (Daniel 4:28-33). The rich fool was mocked by his own prudence (Luke 12:16-21).
II. TRUE CONFIDENCE.
1. This is to be sought in the knowledge of God. Wisdom, the best of earthly resources, is not sufficient for protection, but it is the type of a higher wisdom, wherein is the secret of safety. This is a wisdom which concerns itself, not with petty devices, subtle schemes, cunning, and cleverness, but with the highest knowledge, bearing fruit in "the fear of God" (Psalms 111:10). We must know God to trust him.
2. The knowledge of God will reveal to us the special grounds for confidence in him, viz.
Impartial justice.
I. SPECIAL PRIVILEGES DO NOT INTENSE WITH THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE. Judah is specially privileged, and prizes circumcision as a seal of the peculiar favor of Heaven (Genesis 17:9-14). Yet Judah must take its place in the indiscriminate catalogue of corrupt nations. If privileges are noted in God's exercise of justice, this can only be as an aggravation of guilt. The citizens of favored nations, the heirs of rank and wealth, persons whose lives have been peculiarly successful and unvisited with the usual amount of trouble, all stand in this position. Their present happy condition is no guarantee for favor in the day of Divine judgment, but, on the contrary, a reason for regarding the ingratitude of sin as, in their case, the more culpable.
II. THE OBSERVANCE OF EXTERNAL ORDINANCES HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE. Their utility is solely as regards their effect on men. They are profitable only in so far as they assist the corresponding spiritual acts, which are all that God takes note of (Colossians 2:11). The circumcised in body who are not circumcised in heart will suffer just as if they had never been circumcised at all. The ordinance without the spirituality is an offence rather than a pleasing thing. It shows knowledge; it is a mockery to God. This must be so,
III. NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE TO THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE. All kinds of nations are classed together. Cultivated Egyptians and wild Arabs, scrupulous Jews and idolatrous Ammonites, all come before the same judgment-bar, all have the same fair trial-and righteous sentence.
1. The heathen are not excluded from God's judgment; for
2. The Jews and professedly religious are not excluded. Many people make an utterly unwarrantable assumption that their respectability, position in the Church, etc; are such that the stern ordeal of the judgment is not for them. In his vision of judgment Christ made no such exceptions (Matthew 25:31-46).
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR