Ecclesiastes 9:3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event to all: yes… I. THEIR GUILT. "The heart — full of evil" (Mark 7:21). It applies to all. The most peaceable man alive has often probably committed murder in his heart. The man of purity and chastity may often, in the heart, have been guilty of adultery. Passions, vile and loathsome as the pit from which they spring, only wait their opportunity. Is the man provoked? He is enraged. Is he admired? He is proud and puffed up. Does God afflict him? He is rebellious. Does God cross him? He is discontented and impatient. II. THEIR MADNESS. 1. It is a well-known symptom of natural madness that the poor creature who is thus afflicted is apt to entertain most extravagant notions of his own greatness and importance. Whilst the chains are on his hands, whilst he is confined within the narrow limits of his gloomy cell, he often struts about, and thinks himself a king. Is this acknowledged to be madness? and is there none, then, in the conduct of those men Who, being spiritually "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked," are saying of themselves, "I am rich and increased with goods, and I have need of nothing"? 2. Men who are mad, in the ordinary sense of the expression, are, for the most part, utterly insensible of danger, and incapable of fleeing from it. They walk on unconcerned, where men possessed of reason and of foresight would be shifting for their safety. Are those men, then, to be set down for sober who show an equal unconcern when the danger is eternal? 3. But mark another painful symptom of the man who labours under a natural derangement, he knows not his best friend. Those whom, were he in his senses, he would hasten to embrace, he looks on with a cold, unfeeling eye. Nay, perhaps he turns away from them, he counts them enemies. It is also the worst symptom of that spiritual derangement with which the men of this world are afflicted. They also know not their best Friend. They "turn away from Him who speaketh to them from heaven." III. THEIR MISERABLE END. "After that, they go to the dead." After what? After all the evil and the madness of their earthly course — after having wasted all their years in worldliness and folly — then, "they go to the dead." Their souls are gathered to the place where all who lived and died like them are gone before. And what place? Can we doubt that hell is meant? Where else do they go "who forget God"? What other wages hath sin, the worldly man's master, to bestow upon its servants? (A. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead. |
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