33. Therefore their days did he consume in vanity. Apart from faith life is vanity. To wander up and down in the
wilderness was a vain thing indeed, when unbelief had shut them out of the
promised land. It was meet that those who would not live to answer the divine
purpose by believing and obeying their God should be made to live to no
purpose, and to die before their time, unsatisfied, unblessed. Those who wasted
their days in sin had little cause to wonder when the Lord cut short their
lives, and swore that they should never enter the rest which they had despised.
And their years in trouble. Weary marches were their trouble, and to
come to no resting-place was their vanity. Innumerable graves were left all
along the track of Israel: they could not enter in because of unbelief.
Doubtless much of the vexation and failure of many lives results from their
being sapped by unbelief, and honeycombed by evil passions. None live so
fruitlessly and so wretchedly as those who allow sense and sight to override
faith, and their reason and appetite to domineer over their fear of God. Our days
go fast enough according to the ordinary lapse of time, but the Lord can make
them rust away at a bitterer rate, till we feel as if sorrow actually ate out
the heart of our life, and like a canker devoured our existence.
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