Houses have been sometimes built through wickedness but never established. By wisdom and knowledge, they are built as it were on a rock, to stand firm against every blast. Convenient furniture is desirable, as well as a sure house; and this also is a fruit of that wisdom and industry which belongs to religion.
Wicked men are represented by Solomon as entertaining their imaginations with high expectations of the precious substance, with which robbery and fraud will fill their houses. But what wicked men vainly expect godly men find, if God sees it to be good for them. Should the wicked prosper in their pursuits, their joy is mingled with the racks of a tormenting consciousness of guilt, and the apprehensions of a speedy end to the pleasures of sin. If godly men are disappointed in their expectations and wishes as to this world, they have the consolation of knowing that they have mansions of blessedness prepared for them in Christ's father's house, and that their substance is the better and enduring substance, laid up for them in Heaven.
Although the Old Testament dispensation of grace abounded in promises of earthly blessings yet many of the ancient saints met with innumerable crosses and afflictions. They were obliged to dwell in dens and caves of the earth. They were destitute, afflicted, tormented and still they believed that God was faithful to his word, although outward events contradicted it. Or if at any time, doubts of God's faithfulness and goodness arose in their minds, they resisted the abominable thoughts so derogatory to the Highest and called themselves brutes and idiots before God.
How inexcusable then must it be for us, who live in the sunshine of the Gospel, to give place to blasphemous doubts of the providence of God, and the truth of his word when God does not think fit to give splendid palaces and fine furniture to his people! The promises respecting this life, belong to godliness under the New Testament as well at the old but they are to be understood in a consistency with the nobler promises that respect spiritual blessings, and the happy influence which crosses of different kinds have in the accomplishment of these promises.
When God appoints poverty and losses to the wise and bereaves them of the native fruits of their honest labors and temperate course of life, he is not breaking, but fulfilling, his word. And the most afflicted saints will find reason to say in the end of their curse, "we know that all your judgments are righteous, and that you in faithfulness have afflicted us."
[George Lawson]
