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My heart aches when I begin a sermon on a theme like this. But what makes my heart ache is that a man or a woman born so high should sink so low. That one who had the possibility of being the good grain in God's field, that might have been useful and happy, should have so resisted the gracious influence of God's husbandry as at last to have become of no value, and only to be compared to the chaff which the wind driveth away. Importance hinges on the word "ungodly." Who are the ungodly? I do not understand that it means, necessarily, that a man is outbreakingly and viciously wicked. The ungodly man or woman is simply a person who does not live in the way that God demands; one whose thoughts and purposes and conduct are not in harmony with God's laws; who does not please God. What a graphic suggestion is here of the vanity of a sinful life! The man who loves and serves God is building up a character which is abiding like a great tree. He is gathering many treasures of character and personality that can never be taken from him. Truth, and integrity, and love and faith, and hope, and patience, and gentleness, these great spiritual qualities in which God develops the Christian, are qualities that cannot be taken away from us by any disaster that can come. Money, and honour, and friends, and health, and life itself may go, and all these qualities remain in their full measure; but a sinful life, a life that resists God's grace, has nothing left that is substantial. If a man gives himself up to worldliness he may be ever so successful in his ambitions, but there is nothing about it that will last. A rich man goes out of the world as poor as when he came into it. His wealth fails, and is like the chaff which the wind driveth away Physical strength is fragile in the same way; often a man rejoices in his strength one week and the next he is in his grave. But if he lives to be an old man, with trembling hands and tottering footsteps, his physical strength fails him at last and is like the chaff in the wind. The same is true of physical beauty and all the attractiveness of physical life. Many people who do not obey God are nevertheless very ambitious to make themselves of some account in the world; but one's work must be like the chaff if it is not in harmony with God. God could not be the good God that you dream of if He did not make a difference between chaff and wheat. It is not that God is not good, but that the ungodly man has failed to avail himself of God's goodness, has sinned against God's goodness and mercy, and has brought ruin upon himself. You say that the chaff cannot help being chaff; yes, but the man can. You will not be chaff unless you choose to be chaff. God did not make you to be chaff; He made you ill His own likeness and image, and when you had wandered from Him by wicked ways Jesus Christ wrought out your salvation on the Cross.

(L. A. Banks, D. D.)

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KJV: The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

WEB: The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.