Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/spurgeon/ps12.3

Text File | 1993-03-21 | 6KB | 111 lines

                           EXPOSITION.

        Total destruction shall overwhelm the lovers of flattery
and pride, but meanwhile how they hector and fume! Well did the
apostle call them "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own
shame." Free-thinkers are generally very free-talkers, and they
are never more at ease than when railing at God's dominion, and
arrogating to themselves unbounded license. Strange is it that
the easy yoke of the Lord should so gall the shoulders of the
proud, while the iron bands of Satan they bind about themselves
as chains of honour: they boastfully cry unto God, "Who is lord
over us?" and hear not the hollow voice of the evil one, who
cries from the infernal lake, "I am your lord, and right
faithfully do ye serve me." Alas, poor fools, their pride and
glory shall be cut off like a fading flower! May God grant that
our soul may not be gathered with them. It is worthy of
observation that flattering lips, and tongues speaking proud
things, are classed together: the fitness of this is clear, for
they are guilty of the same vice, the first flatters another, and
the second flatters himself, in both cases a lie is in their
right hands. One generally imagines that flatterers are such mean
parasites, so cringing and fawning, that they cannot be proud;
but the wise man will tell you that while all pride is truly
meanness, there is in the very lowest meanness no small degree of
pride. Caesar's horse is even more proud of carrying Caesar, than
Caesar is of riding him. The mat on which the emperor wiped his
shoes, boasts vaingloriously, crying out, "I cleaned the imperial
boots." None are so detestably domineering as the little
creatures who creep into office by cringing to the great; those
are bad times, indeed, in which these obnoxious beings are
numerous and powerful. No wonder that the justice of God in
cutting off such injurious persons is matter for a Psalm, for
both earth and heaven are weary of such provoking offenders,
whose presence is a very plague to the people afflicted thereby.
Men cannot tame the tongues of such boastful flatterers; but the
Lord's remedy if sharp is sure, and is an unanswerable answer to
their swelling words of vanity.

              EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.

        Verse 3.--"_The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips_,"
etc. They who take pleasure in deceiving others, will at the last
find themselves most of all deceived, when the Sun of truth, by
the brightness of his rising, shall at once detect and consume
hypocrisy.--^George Horne.

        Verse 3.--"_Cut off lips and tongues_." May there not be
here an allusion to those terrible but suggestive punishments
which Oriental monarchs were wont to execute on criminals? Lips
were cut off and tongues torn out when offenders were convicted
of lying or treason. So terrible and infinitely more so are the
punishments of sin. ^C. H. S.

        Verses 3,4.--It need not now seem strange to tell you
that the Lord is the owner of our bodies, that he has so much
propriety therein that they are more his than ours. The apostle
tells us as much. #1Co 6:20|. "Glorify God in your bodies which
are his." Our bodies and every member thereof, are his: for if
the whole be so, no part is exempted. And therefore they spake
proud things, and presumptuously usurped the propriety of God,
who said, "_Our lips are our own_;" as though their lips had not
been his who is Lord and Owner of all, but they had been lords
thereof, and might have used them as they list. This provoked God
to show what right he had to dispose of such lips and tongues, by
_cutting them off_.--^David Clarkson.

        Verse 4.--"_Who have said, With our tongues will we
prevail; who is Lord over us_?" So it was: twelve poor and
unlearned men on the one side, all the eloquence of Greece and
Rome arrayed on the other. From the time of Tertullus to that of
Julian the apostate, every species of oratory, learning, wit, was
lavished against the church of God; and the result, like the
well-known story of that dispute between the Christian peasant
and the heathen philosopher, when the latter, having challenged
the assembled fathers of a synod to silence him, was put to shame
by the simple faith of the former "In the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, I command thee to be dumb." _Who is Lord over us_? "Who
is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?" #Ex
5:2|. "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?" #Job
21:15|. "Who is that God that shall deliver you?" #Da
3:15|.--^Michael Ayguan, in J. M. Neale's Commentary.

        Verse 4.--"_Our lips are our own_." If we have to do with
God, we must quit claim to ourselves and look on God as our
owner; but this is fixed in the hearts of men, We will be our
own; we will not consent to the claim which God makes to us:
"_Our lips are our own_." Wicked men might as well say the same
thing of their whole selves; our bodies, strength, time, parts,
etc., are our own, and who is Lord over us?--^John Howe.

        Verse 4.--From the faults of the wicked we must learn
three contrary lessons; to wit: 1. That nothing which we have is
our own. But, 2. Whatsoever is given to us of God is for service
to be done to him. 3. That whatsoever we do or say, we have a
Lord over us to whom we must be answerable when he calleth us to
account.--^David Dickson.

                       HINTS TO PREACHERS.

        Verse 3.--God's hatred of those twin sins of the
lips--Flattery and Pride (which is self flattery). Why he hates
them. How he shows his hatred. In whom he hates them most. How to
be cleansed from them.

        Verse 3,4.--I. _The revolt of the tongue_. Its claim of
power, self-possession, and liberty. Contrast between this and
the believer's confession, "we are not our own." II. _The method
of its rebellion_--"flattery, and speaking proud things." III.
_The end of its treason_--" cut off."