Proverbs 6:27 - Homiletics

Fire in the bosom

I. SIN IS FIRE . Fire has an activity that mocks life; it is full of noise and movement. It hisses like a demon serpent; it sends forth its tongues of flame like living creatures. Yet it is lifeless and the deadliest enemy to all life. Though some animals are drowned in water, others are fitted to find it their natural element; but all living creatures perish in fire. The phoenix is an impossibility. So sin mocks life and beauty and healthy energy. But it is only a death power.

1 . It is destructive. Fire exists by consuming its victims. So sin does not simply use, it destroys the faculties it works through.

2 . It tends to spread. Fire leaps from object to object, rushing over a wide prairie, enveloping a whole city. "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" ( James 3:5 ). So sin spreads through the soul, and from one man to another.

3 . It converts into fire everything that it lays hold of. So sin turns all that comes under its power into its own nature.

4 . It rages furiously. Nothing is so like madness as a great fire. It is infinitely more horrible than the wildest tempest of wind and water. Sin is a fury of passion.

5 . It leaves smouldering embers and dismal heaps of ashes. When the fire of passion is burnt out, the soul is left charred, empty, dismal, as but dust and ashes.

II. THE SINNER CARRIES FIRE IN HIS BOSOM .

1 . It is in himself. You cannot kindle the fires of your sin outside your own soul at a safe distance. You cannot even sin with your hands while your heart is untouched. When sin is indulged, it takes up its abode in a man's bosom. It enters his affections, it lies close to his heart, it coils about his very life.

2 . Moreover, he who takes this fire in his bosom cannot readily get rid of it. It penetrates deeper and deeper and spreads further and further, till it fills the whole man. It is not possible to sin for a moment and leave the scene of guilt scatheless. He who enters the furnace of sin lets the fire of sin enter his own bosom, and when he goes forth carries it with him—himself a furnace of sins!

III. THE SINNER WITH FIRE IN HIS BOSOM WILL FIND IT BURN HIM . Men talk of the fires of retribution as though they were kindled in some remote region by some unknown executioner, and so they are often as little moved by the thought of them as they are affected by the heat of the stars. But the fire in a man's bosom will bring its own retribution. The wicked man has a hell within him. He is becoming like Milton's Satan when he felt the impossibility of escaping from hell because of his own fearful state, and exclaimed, "Myself am Hell!" This is natural. It would require a miracle to prevent the fire in the bosom from burning. But these terrible thoughts are not intended to induce despair. Rather they should so awaken us to the horror of sin as to lead us to shun it as we would run from a house on fire, and make us so realize our danger as to seek safety in that fountain opened for all uncleanness which can quench the fires of sin and stay all their fatal consequences.