Proverbs 6:1-5 - Homiletics

The surety

Our Christian charity may naturally be shocked at the selfishness apparently inculcated by the frequent warnings against giving security for others that are scattered up and down the Book of Proverbs. They have done more than anything else to lead people to regard the standard of morality of the Proverbs as low and worldly. Let us consider the subject from various points of view.

I. THE STANDARD OF MORALITY OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS IS LOWER THAN THAT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT . Let this fact be clearly recognized. Revelation is progressive. Doctrine is only revealed by degrees. The same applies to ethics. Such a method is most suited to the moral education of the race. A less-advanced people can only live up to a less-elevated principle. If the standard be raised too high, it ceases to be effective, and becomes like a counsel of perfection, which ordinary people disregard. On the other hand, Christians have no excuse for taking refuge in the lower principles of an obsolete dispensation.

II. AN EXCLUSIVE ATTENTION TO ONE DUTY WILL ALWAYS MILITATE AGAINST OTHER DUTIES . Duties cross and qualify one another. Each taken by itself and pressed to its extreme wilt lead to conflict with others. Now, here prudence only is commended. To enforce it the more powerfully, other duties are for the time left out of sight. When they are taken up they will qualify, it considerably.

III. IT IS FOOLISH TO UNDERTAKE AN OBLIGATION WHICH WE ARE UNWILLING TO CARRY OUT . It is so easy to make chivalrous promises. But immense harm is done by overhaste in professions of generosity. Let a man count the cost enough to see whether he is morally able to bear the strain before making a very liberal offer.

IV. MUCH EVIL WAS DONE BY THE MONEY LENDING SYSTEM OF THE JEWS . The laws of debt were most stringent, and "the goods of the sureties might be distrained, or they even sold as slaves, just as in the case of insolvent debtors." Such an outrageously cruel state of things was justly deprecated.

V. OTHER MORE PRESSING CLAIMS FORBID US TO CONTRACT SOME OF THE MOST EXACTING OBLIGATIONS . The good-natured Jew who beggared his children and lost his liberty by becoming surety to a spendthrift, robbed those who had most right to enjoy his property, and hindered himself from doing more good in the future. The duty of a man to his family is often pleaded as an excuse for some act of mean selfishness. Nevertheless, the duty is real, and must not be neglected. A man has no right to risk his children's welfare in order to oblige a friend. People who are too hasty in putting their names to bills should remember thin

VI. THE SURETY IS ONLY ADVISED TO ESCAPE BY JUST MEANS . He is not told to break his promise, to hide, to leave the country. He is urged to seek a release by requesting his friend to grant it him. Such a course is humiliating. But it is not dishonest.