Ecclesiastes 9:3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event to all: yes… This affirmation is not made of one or two men, nor of some men merely; but of "the sons of men," as if of them all. 1. The insanity spoken of in the text is moral, that of the heart. By the heart here is meant the will — the voluntary power. 2. Who are the morally insane? Those who, not being intellectually insane, yet act as if they were. The conduct of impenitent men is the perfection of irrationality. You see this in the ends to which they devote themselves, and in the means which they employ to secure them. An end madly chosen — sought by means madly devised; this is the life-history of the masses who reject God. 3. This moral insanity is a state of unmingled wickedness. (1) It is voluntary — not from the loss but from the abuse of reason. (2) It is often deliberate. (3) It is a total rejection of both God's law and Gospel.The law he will not obey; the Gospel of pardon he will not accept. He seems determined to brave the Omnipotence of Jehovah. Is he not mad upon his idols? Is it saying too much when the Bible affirms — "Madness is in their heart while they live"? Remarks: — 1. Sinners strangely accuse saints of being mad and crazy. Yet those very sinners admit the Bible to be true, and admit those things which Christians believe as true to be really so. 2. If intellectual insanity be a shocking fact, how much more so is moral? Suppose the case of a Webster. His brain becomes softened; he is an idler I There is not a man in all the land but would feel solemn. What! Daniel Webster — that great man, an idiot I How have the mighty fallen! What a horrible slight! But how much more horrible to see him become a moral idiot — to see a selfish heart run riot with the clear decisions of his gigantic intellect — to see his moral principles fading away before the demands of selfish ambition — to see such a man become a drunkard, a debauchee, a loafer. Intellectual idiocy is not to be named in the comparison! 3. Although some sinners may be externally fair, and may seem to be amiable in temper and character, yet every real sinner is actually insane. Eternity so vast, and its issues so dreadful, yet this sinner drives furiously to hell as if he were on the high-road to heaven! And all this only because he is infatuated with the pleasures of sin for a season. ( C. G. Finney, D. D.) 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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