'His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be
holden with the cords of his sins.'--PROVERBS v. 22.
In Hosea's tender picture of the divine training of Israel which,
alas! failed of its effect, we read, 'I drew them with cords of a
man,' which is further explained as being 'with bands of love.' The
metaphor in the prophet's mind is probably that of a child being
'taught to go' and upheld in its first tottering steps by
leading-strings. God drew Israel, though Israel did not yield to the
drawing. But if these gentle, attractive influences, which ever are
raying out from Him, are resisted, another set of cords, not now
sustaining and attracting, but hampering and fettering, twine
themselves round the rebellious life, and the man is like a wild
creature snared in the hunter's toils, enmeshed in a net, and with its
once free limbs restrained. The choice is open to us all, whether we
will let God draw us to Himself with the sweet manlike cords of His
educative and forbearing love, or, flinging off these, which only
foolish self-will construes into limitations, shall condemn ourselves
to be prisoned within the narrow room of our own sins. We may choose
which condition shall be ours, but one or other of them must be ours.
We may either be drawn by the silken cord of God's love or we may be
'holden by the cords' of our sins.
In both clauses of our text evil deeds done are regarded as having a
strange, solemn life apart from the doer of them, by which they become
influential factors in his subsequent life. Their issues on others may
be important, but their issues on him are the most important of all.
The recoil of the gun on the shoulder of him who fired it is certain,
whether the cartridge that flew from its muzzle wounded anything or
not. 'His own iniquities shall take the wicked'--they ring him round,
a grim company to whom he has given an independent being, and who have
now 'taken' him prisoner and laid violent hands on him. A long since
forgotten novel told of the fate of 'a modern Prometheus,' who made
and put life into a dreadful creature in man's shape, that became the
curse of its creator's life. That tragedy is repeated over and over
again. We have not done with our evil deeds when we have done them,
but they, in a very terrible sense, begin to be when they are done. We
sow the seeds broadcast, and the seed springs up dragon's teeth.
The view of human experience set forth, especially in the second
clause of this text, directs our gaze into dark places, into which it
is not pleasant to look, and many of you will accuse me of preaching
gloomily if I try to turn a reflective eye inwards upon them, but no
one will be able to accuse me of not preaching truly. It is impossible
to enumerate all the cords that make up the net in which our own evil
doings hold us meshed, but let me point out some of these.