It is the great mystery and tragedy of life that men oppose themselves
to God's merciful warnings that all sin is a bitter, because it is an
evil, thing. He has to lament, 'I have smitten your children, and they
have received no correction.' The question 'Wherefore?' is asked in very
various tones, but none of them has in it the accent of true conviction;
and there is a whole world of difference between the lowly petition,
'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me,' and the curt,
self-complacent brushing aside of God's merciful threatenings in the
text. The last thing which most of us think of as the cause of our
misfortunes is ourselves; and we resent as almost an insult the word,
which if we were wise, we should welcome as the crowning proof of the
seeking love of our Father in heaven. We are more obstinate and foolish
than Balaam, who persisted in his purpose when the angel with the drawn
sword in his hand would have barred his way, not to the tree of life,
but to death. The awful mystery that a human will can, and the yet
sadder mystery that it does, set itself against the divine, is never
more unintelligible, never so stupid, and never so tragic as when God
says, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?' and we say, 'Why need I die?
I will not turn.'
The 'Wherefore?' of our text is widely asked in the present day as an
expression of utter bewilderment at the miseries of humanity, both in
the wide area of this disordered world and in the narrower field of
individual lives. There are whole schools of so-called political and
social thinkers who have yet to learn that the one thing which the world
and the individual need is not a change of conditions or environment,
but redemption from sin. Man's sorrows are but a symptom of his disease,
and he is no more to be healed by tinkering with these than a
fever-stricken patient can be restored to health by treating the
blotches on his skin which tell of the disease that courses through his
veins.
But sometimes the question is more than an expression of bewilderment;
it conceals an arraignment of God's justice, or even a denial that there
is a God at all. There are men among us who hesitate not to avow that
the miseries of the world have rooted out of their minds a belief in
Him; and who point to all the ills under which humanity staggers as
conclusive against the ancient faith of a God of love. They, too, forget
that that love is righteousness, and that if there be sin in the world
and God above it, He must necessarily war against it and hate it.
Our right response to God's merciful threatenings is to ask this
question in the right spirit. We are not wise if we turn a deaf ear to
His warnings, or go on in a headlong course which He by His providences
declared to be dangerous and fatal. We use them as wise men should, only
if our 'Wherefore?' is asked in order to learn our evil, and having
learned it, to purge our bosoms of the perilous stuff by confession and
to seek pardon and victory in Christ. Then we shall 'know the secret of
the Lord' which is 'with them that fear Him'; and the mysteries that
still hang over our own histories and the world's destiny will have
shining down upon them the steadfast light of that love which seeks to
make men blessed by making them good.