Sorrow dogging the secure.
Human life is proverbially uncertain. "We know not what shall be on the morrow," whether we ourselves shall be. "The unexpected" is always happening; and the lesson of this is—take nothing for granted that is still future. In the religious sphere the application of this principle would put an end to carnal security, and at this object our text aims. As to the security denounced here, notice—
I. THE SPHERE OF IT. "In Zion." This is often in Scripture a name for the Church on earth (Romans 9:33; see on Amos 1:2). The membership of this is mixed (Matthew 13:30, Matthew 13:41). There are cold and hot and lukewarm among them. Some love God, some hate him; some are in equilibrio, having neither declared for him nor against him. Of the last two classes many are at ease. The ideal of spiritual life is watchfulness, activity, and self-suspicion; but these qualities need not be looked for in unspiritual men. Their fitness is not seen, nor the motives to them felt. Though in the Church, they are not of it; and the characters of their life are not those proper to the sincere believer.
II. THE MEANING OF IT. There are principles at hand on which to account for it without difficulty.
1. Preoccupation. Spiritual things ought to get our first and best and continuous attention (Matthew 6:33; Matthew 26:41; Luke 13:24). But they do not. The careless "eats and drink, and marry, and are given in marriage" (Luke 17:27), and so events come on them unawares. The householder relaxes his vigilance, and as a result his house is broken into (Matthew 24:43). The wise virgins as well as the foolish sleep (Matthew 25:5), and the bridegroom comes on them unawares. The security is foolish in proportion to the interests involved, and criminal in proportion to the number and plainness of arousing circumstances.
2. Blindness. The natural man is blind in spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14). He does not see the beauty of spiritual qualities (Isaiah 53:2), nor the self-evidentness of spiritual principles, nor the inviolability of spiritual deliverances, nor the grounds of spiritual assurance, nor the evidences of approaching Divine action, He sees neither what has been, nor what is, nor what is coming. Accordingly, he is secure and at ease in the very teeth of danger.
3. Presumption. Men do not adequately realize sin as to either its guilt or danger. They live in it equably and calmly, as if it were the normal thing. They anticipate no evil and no disturbance. They reckon on being spiritual fixtures, and on the perpetual maintenance of the status quo. They do not mean to turn, nor take account of being disturbed; but assume that there will be "no changes" forevermore. Character is become stereotyped, conscience is silent, and the quiet of strong delusion is within them and around.
III. THE VARIETIES OF IT. The secure in Zion are not all secure in the same degree or sense.
1. Some are secure in sin. They expect to sin on and suffer no evil. Either they do not recognize the inseparable connection between the two, or they trust to the chapter of accidents for something to intervene and stay proceedings before evil actually falls (Isaiah 28:15).
2. Some are secure in morality. They trust in the arm of flesh. They persuade themselves that they are but little to blame. They view the coming judgments as provoked by, and meant for, others. They see nothing in their own life to provoke them; and they build on this as a ground of immunity from evil when the day of it shall come. And so they are secure; less guiltily, it may be, but no more reasonably than the secure in sin (Jeremiah 17:5; Romans 3:20).
3. Some are secure in ordinances. They locate spiritual power in Church forms. The sacraments, they say, contain and convey the grace they signify. Regeneration with them means a sprinkled face, and justification an elevated host, and sanctification an exhaustive observance of ordinances. Many are secure in the persuasion of these things. They put a hollow form of godliness for its spirit and power, and lull their souls to rest in its deep recesses.
IV. THE OCCASIONS OF IT. There is an incongruity about it that seems to call for explanation. In the case of Israel, and others like it, one cause was:
1. Unvarying prosperity. "Because they have no changes they forget God." People calculate on uniformity. As life has been, so they easily assume it will be. A smiling world is a dangerous tranquillizer. Even the godly experience this (Psalms 119:67), and the direct tendency of adversity is to prevent it (2 Corinthians 4:17, 2 Corinthians 4:18). An unbroken run of prosperity is most unfavourable to spiritual life and liveliness.
2. Luxurious living. (Amos 6:4.) The course of religion in the soul is just the progress of a warfare between flesh and spirit (Romans 7:23). To this warfare there is one uniform issue—the triumph of the spiritual principle. But victory is not won without a struggle. The spiritual principle waxes strong only under culture. The flesh gets weak only By being crucified. If it be let alone it will grow strong, much more if it is indulged and fed. Hence "fulness of bread and abundance of idleness" (Ezekiel 16:19) are a revealed occasion of spiritual declension; and God was lightly esteemed and forsaken when Jeshurun "waxed fat, and grew thick" (Deuteronomy 32:15). Luxury is leaving its mark on all the Churches in indolence and self-indulgence and a lowered spiritual tone.
3. Companionship of the ungodly. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise," etc. Character propagates itself—begets character in its own likeness. Familiarity with sin breeds tolerance of it. A sinful example is a temptation to sin. So long as men not impeccable instinctively imitate each other, association with the wicked must, to a certain extent, corrupt. The corrupter any society is, the lower will be the spiritual tone of the Church in it. All Israel were not alike guilty, nor alike secure. Many were innocent, no doubt, of the special national sins; and there is no reason to suppose that they all were recklessly at ease in Zion. But it is certain that the security of many was due to the hardening influence of the sins become familiar to his mind.
4. Sin. This is not an occasion merely, but a cause, and the most fruitful cause of all. Sin both blinds and hardens. The more sin we commit the less do we see of its consequences, the less do we fear what we can see, and the further are we from an appreciative knowledge of God in those characters which lead inevitably to the punishment of it. The climax of security is more than likely to correspond to the extreme of wickedness. It was so with Israel. Never was she more corrupt, yet never was she more recklessly at ease, than when these words were spoken.
V. THE EVIL OF IT. "Woe to them," etc.! Wherever the security is the woe is denounced.
1. With the godly it comes before a fall. They stand by faith. That faith is not an act merely; it is a habit of soul It is not maintained at normal strength without an effort. And the frame most favourable to its maintenance at par is evident from the injunction, "Be not high-minded, but fear" (Romans 11:20). In the perfect realization of our dependence on God is the condition of abiding faith, and in the maintenance of such faith is the condition of escaping a fall From the moment Peter soared in his own imagination, his fall was a foregone conclusion (Matthew 26:33, Matthew 26:34).
2. With the ungodly it comes before destruction. Carnal security is in proportion to blindness, and blindness is in proportion to corruption. When a sinner is most secure he most of all deserves his doom, and is least of all on his guard against it. Hence, as the height of imagined safety is the depth of real danger (1 Thessalonians 5:3). No surer sign of destruction near than the cry, "Peace, peace!"