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2 Samuel
Chapter Twenty-three
2 Samuel 23
Chapter Contents
David's last words. (1-7) David's mighty men. (8-39)
Commentary on 2 Samuel 23:1-7
(Read 2 Samuel 23:1-7)
These words of David are very worthy of regard. Let those
who have had long experience of God's goodness, and the pleasantness of heavenly
wisdom, when they come to finish their course, bear their testimony to the
truth of the promise. David avows his Divine inspiration, that the Spirit of
God spake by him. He, and other holy men, spake and wrote as they were moved by
the Holy Ghost. In many things he had his own neglect and wrong conduct to
blame. But David comforted himself that the Lord had made with him an
everlasting covenant. By this he principally intended the covenant of mercy and
peace, which the Lord made with him as a sinner, who believed in the promised
Saviour, who embraced the promised blessing, who yielded up himself to the
Lord, to be his redeemed servant. Believers shall for ever enjoy covenant
blessings; and God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, shall be for ever glorified
in their salvation. Thus pardon, righteousness, grace, and eternal life, are
secured as the gift of God through Jesus Christ. There is an infinite fulness
of grace and all blessings treasured up in Christ, for those who seek his
salvation. This covenant was all David's salvation, he so well knew the holy
law of God and the extent of his own sinfulness, that he perceived what was
needful for his own case in this salvation. It was therefore all his desire. In
comparison, all earthly objects lost their attractions; he was willing to give
them up, or to die and leave them, that he might enjoy full happiness, Psalm 73:24-28. Still the power of evil, and the
weakness of his faith, hope, and love, were his grief and burden. Doubtless he
would have allowed that his own slackness and want of care were the cause; but
the hope that he should soon be made perfect in glory, encouraged him in his
dying moments.
Commentary on 2 Samuel 23:8-39
(Read 2 Samuel 23:8-39)
David once earnestly longed for the water at the well of
Bethlehem. It seems to be an instance of weakness. He was thirsty; with the
water of that well he had often refreshed himself when a youth, and it was
without due thought that he desired it. Were his valiant men so forward to
expose themselves, upon the least hint of their prince's mind, and so eager to
please him, and shall not we long to approve ourselves to our Lord Jesus, by
ready compliance with his will, as shown us by his word, Spirit, and
providence? But David poured out the water as a drink-offering to the Lord.
Thus he would cross his own foolish fancy, and punish himself for indulging it,
and show that he had sober thoughts to correct his rash ones, and knew how to
deny himself. Did David look upon that water as very precious which was got at
the hazard of these men's blood, and shall not we much more value those
benefits for purchasing which our blessed Saviour shed his blood? Let all
beware of neglecting so great salvation.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 2 Samuel》
2 Samuel 23
Verse 1
[1] Now
these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who
was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist
of Israel, said,
Last words —
Not simply the last that he spoke, but the last which he spake by the spirit of
God, assisting and directing him in an extraordinary manner. When we find death
approaching, we should endeavour both to honour God, and to profit others with
our last words. Let those who have had experience of God's goodness, and the
pleasantness of the ways of wisdom, when they come to finish their course,
leave a record of those experiences, and bear their testimony to the truth of
the promise.
Raised —
Advanced from an obscure estate, to the kingdom. Whom, God singled out from all
the families of Israel, and anointed to be king.
Psalmist — He
who was eminent among the people of God, for composing sweet and holy songs to
the praise of God, and for the use of his church in after ages: these seem not
to be the words of David, but of the sacred penman of this book.
Verse 2
[2] The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.
His word —
The following words, and consequently the other words and Psalms composed and
uttered by me upon the like solemn occasions, are not to be looked upon as
human inventions, but both the matter and the words of them are suggested by
God's spirit, the great teacher of the church.
Verse 3
[3] The
God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men
must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
Rock — He
who is the strength, and defence, and protector of his people; which he
manifests by directing kings and rulers so to manage their power as may most
conduce to their comfort and benefit.
Ruleth —
Here are the two principal parts of a king's duty, answerable to the two tables
of God's law, justice towards men, and piety towards God, both which he is to
maintain and promote among his people.
Verse 4
[4] And
he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning
without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining
after rain.
Shall be —
These words are a farther description of the king's duty, which is not only to rule
with justice and piety, but also with sweetness, and gentleness, and
condescension to the infirmities of his people; to render his government as
acceptable to them, as is the sun-shine in a clear morning, or the tender grass
which springs out of the earth by the warm beams of the sun after the rain.
Verse 5
[5] Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my
salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.
Altho' —
Although God knows, that neither I, nor my children have lived and ruled as we
should have done, so justly, and in the fear of the Lord; and therefore have
not enjoyed that uninterrupted prosperity which we might have enjoyed.
Covenant —
Notwithstanding all our transgressions whereby we have broken covenant with
God, yet God, to whom all my sins were known, was graciously pleased to make a
sure covenant, to continue the kingdom to me, and to my seed for ever, chap. 7:16, until the coming of the Messiah who is to
be my son and successor, and whose kingdom shall have no end.
Ordered —
Ordained in all points by God's eternal counsel; and disposed by his wise and
powerful providence which will over-rule all things, even the sins of my house
so far, that although he punished them for their sins, yet he will not utterly
root them out, nor break his covenant made with me and mine.
Sure —
Or, preserved, by God's power and faithfulness in the midst of all oppositions.
For this —
Or, in this is, that is, it consists in, and depends upon this covenant.
Salvation —
Both mine own eternal salvation, and the preservation of the kingdom to me and
mine.
Tho' —
Although God as yet hath not made my house or family to grow; that is, to
increase, or to flourish with worldly glory as I expected; yet this is my
comfort, that God will inviolably keep this covenant. But this refers also to
the covenant of grace made with all believers. This is indeed an everlasting
covenant, from everlasting, in the contrivance of it, and to everlasting, in
the continuance and the consequence of it. It is ordered, well ordered in all
things; admirably well, to advance the glory of God and the honour of the mediator,
together with the holiness and happiness of believers. It is sure, and
therefore sure, because well-ordered: the promised mercies are sure, on the
performance of the conditions. It is all our salvation: nothing but this will
save us, and this is sufficient. Therefore it should be all our desire. Let me
have an interest in this covenant, and I have enough, I desire no more.
Verse 6
[6] But
the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they
cannot be taken with hands:
But —
Having in the foregoing verses described the nature, and stability of that
kingdom which God had by a sure covenant settled upon him and his seed; and
especially, upon the Messiah, who was to be one of his posterity; he now
describes the nature and miserable condition, of all the enemies of this holy
and blessed kingdom.
As thorns —
Which men do not use to handle, but thrust them away. And so will God thrust
away from himself, and from his people, and kingdom, all those who shall either
secretly or openly set themselves against it.
Verse 7
[7] But
the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a
spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place.
Fenced — He
must arm himself with some iron weapon, whereby he may cut them down; or, with
the staff of a spear, or some such thing, whereby he may thrust them away from
himself, that they do him no hurt.
Burnt —
Or, if they do not cut them down or thrust them away they will burn and consume
them.
The place —
Or, in their place, where they grow or stand.
Verse 8
[8]
These be the names of the mighty men whom David had: The Tachmonite that sat in
the seat, chief among the captains; the same was Adino the Eznite: he lift up
his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time.
These —
But this catalogue, though placed here, was taken long before, as is manifest
from hence, that Asahel and Uriah are named here. And whereas there are some
difference between this list, and that, 1 Chronicles 11:10-47, most of them are easily
reconciled by these two considerations; 1. that nothing is more common than for
one person to have divers names. 2. That as some of the worthies died, and
others came in their stead; this must needs cause some alteration in the latter
catalogue, 1 Chronicles 11:10-47, from this which was the
former. Learn hence, how much religion tends to inspire men with true courage.
David both by his writings and example greatly promoted piety among the
grandees of the kingdom. And when they became famous for piety, they became
famous for bravery.
Adino —
This was his proper name.
Lift up —
Which words are fitly supplied out of 1 Chronicles 11:11, where they are expressed.
One time — In
one battle, which though it be strange, yet cannot seem incredible, supposing
him to be a person of extraordinary strength and activity, and his enemies to
be discouraged, and fleeing away.
Verse 9
[9] And
after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men
with David, when they defied the Philistines that were there gathered together
to battle, and the men of Israel were gone away:
Gone away —
That is, fled away, 1 Chronicles 11:13, being dismayed at the
approach of their enemies.
Verse 11
[11] And
after him was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. And the Philistines were
gathered together into a troop, where was a piece of ground full of lentiles:
and the people fled from the Philistines.
Lentiles — Or
barley, as it is 1 Chronicles 11:13. For both might grow in the
same field, in divers parts of it. And this fact is ascribed to Eleazar, 1 Chronicles 11:12, but it is implied, that he
had some partner or partners in it; for it is there said, 1 Chronicles 11:14 they set themselves, etc. So
Eleazar might fight in that part where the barley was and Shammah where the
lentiles were.
Verse 12
[12] But
he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines:
and the LORD wrought a great victory.
Lord wrought —
How great soever the bravery of the instruments is, the praise of the achievement
is to be given to God. These fought, but God wrought the victory.
Verse 15
[15] And
David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the
well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!
Said —
Being hot and thirsty, he expresses how acceptable a draught of that water
would be to him; but was far from desiring, or expecting that any of his men
should hazard their lives to procure it.
Verse 16
[16] And
the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water
out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it
to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the
LORD.
Would not —
Lest by gratifying himself upon such terms, he should seem either to set too
high a price upon the satisfaction of his appetite, or too low a price upon the
lives of his soldiers.
Poured it — As
a kind of drink offering, and acknowledgment of God's goodness in preserving
the lives of his captains in so dangerous an enterprize; and to shew, that he
esteemed it as a sacred thing, which it was not fit for him to drink.
Verse 17
[17] And
he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the
blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not
drink it. These things did these three mighty men.
These three —
Jointly: then two of them are mentioned severally.
Verse 19
[19] Was
he not most honourable of three? therefore he was their captain: howbeit he
attained not unto the first three.
Attained not — He
fell short of them in strength and valour.
Verse 21
[21] And
he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man: and the Egyptian had a spear in his hand;
but he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the
Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear.
Pit —
Where he put himself under a necessity, either of killing, or being killed.
Of snow —
When lions are most fierce, both from the sharpness of their appetite in cold
seasons, and from want of provisions.
Verse 25
[25]
Shammah the Harodite, Elika the Harodite,
Harodite — In
1 Chronicles 11:27, Shammoth the Harorite.
Concerning which, and other changes of the names, which will be observed, by
comparing this catalogue with that, it will be sufficient to suggest, 1. that
the same names of persons, or places, are differently pronounced according to
the different dialects of divers places or ages. 2. That one man had often two
names. 3. That David had more worthies than those here mentioned; and as some
of these were slain in the former part of David's reign, as Asahel was; so
others came up in their stead; and some were added to this number, as appears
from 1 Chronicles 11:10-47, where they are named, but
not numbered, as they were here; and where there is a greater number than is
here expressed.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 2
Samuel》
23 Chapter 23
Verses 1-7
Verses 1-5
Now these be the last words of David.
The “last words” of David
According to a commonly received interpretation of this passage,
David mourned over the ungodly state of his children, but exulted in the
assurance of his, own personal salvation. He first repeated the description he
had received from the Lord of the character which kings and rulers should
maintain, and it is supposed that he next lamented the fact that his children
did not answer to the Divine ideal. It is further supposed that his sorrow on
account of their shortcomings instantly gave place to grateful joy in the hope
that, through the mercy and faithfulness of God, he himself should be secure
and blessed for ever. It might go ill with his children, but it would be well
with him. His family troubles were great and many. Some of his children were
anything but what his conscience could approve and his heart could desire. They
were thorns in his side and arrows in his heart. Still, is it not incredible
that David, as he contemplated the lost condition of his children, could
instantly get comfort by thinking of his own safety? He was sometimes sadly
unlike his true self, but assuredly he was never so unlike himself as to say in
effect, “My children may perish, but, the Lord be praised, I shall get to
heaven myself!” This must be deemed impossible to David, even by those who take
the worst view of his conduct in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. There is
another interpretation of the passage which makes it chiefly and almost
exclusively a prophecy of Christ. It is supposed to regard Him as the King
ordained of God, and to describe the perfection of His kingly character, the
righteousness of His rule, the benignity of His sway over those who submit to
it, and the destructive effects of His sovereignty upon those who are
rebellious and disobedient. Those who adopt this interpretation make certain
changes in the translation of the passage which remove from it everything like
lamentation on David’s part. There is a third interpretation according to which
David here sets forth the Divine ideal of a ruler over men as he in early life
received it from the Spirit of the Lord. Now that he has reached the close of
his kingly career, he compares that career with the description of a good king
which God had given to him, and he finds that he has fallen far short of it.
When he speaks of his “house” not being “so with God,” he does not mean his
domestic circle, but the reigning dynasty, and he refers, not to the godless
character of his children, but to the imperfections of his own kingship. That
had not been altogether such as Gad had enjoined, and as he himself had desired
and determined. When he speaks of the “covenant ordered in all things,” he exults,
not in the thought that he is personally safe despite the irreligion of his
children, but in the assurance that he shall be saved despite his shortcomings
and failures as a king.
1. These “last words” reveal to us the lofty standard of kingly character
which was set before David in early life. Righteousness towards men and
reverence towards God are named as the two great essentials in a good king. For
lack of these, monarchs have been curses instead of blessings, and peoples have
been oppressed, and kingdoms have been ruined. But where the authority of God
has been recognised, and the rights of the people have been respected, nations
have flourished, and kings have been a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to
them that do well. Stress is laid upon justice rather than upon compassion, and
history warrants the emphasis. The benignant influence of a God-fearing and
righteous ruler is described in expressive figurative language. Gladness and
growth shall characterise his reign, for “he shall be as the light of the
morning,” etc. Several years elapsed before the throne promised to David came
into his possession; and it is probable that this vivid picture of kingly
perfection was also placed before him some time prior to his accession. These
last words reveal to us the sad consciousness which David had in his old age,
that the lofty standard set before him in early life had not been reached. His
kingship was anything but a great failure. It cannot be questioned that David’s
reign was a great blessing to the Jews, and that in the review of his career
there was much to inspire him with joy and thankfulness. Earthly perfection is
one of the pleasant dreams of inexperience. It is generally the honest
determination of young beginners to do very great things, and they firmly
believe that all their lofty aspirations will be fully realised This is one of
the illusions of life by which every new generation is fascinated despite all
the disappointments of preceding generations. Each fresh comer into the field
is blissfully forgetful of human frailties and heroically defiant of
difficulties, and nothing but his own personal experience will be able to shake
his faith in the splendour of his future achievements. There never lived but
One in this world whose review of His earthly life was free from all the
sadness which sight of fault and failure brings. When Jesus hung upon the
cross, He could think of such a work as had never been devolved upon man or
angel, and of that matchless work He could say, “It is finished!” (C. Vince.)
The last words of David
The song falls into four parts.
1. In the introduction, we cannot but be struck with the formality
and solemnity of the affirmation respecting the singer and the inspiration
under which he sang. The first four clauses represent David as the speaker; the
second four represent God’s Spirit as inspiring his words. The introduction to
Balaam’s prophecies is the only passage where we find a similar structure, nor
is this the only point of resemblance between the two songs. In both prophecies,
the word translated “saith” is peculiar. While occurring between two and three
hundred times in the formula, “Thus saith the Lord:” it is used by a human
speaker only in these two places and in Proverbs 30:1. The second part of the
introduction stamps the prophecy with a fourfold mark of inspiration.
1. “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me.”
2. “His word was in my tongue.”
3. “The God of Israel said.”
4. “The Rock of Israel spake to me.”
So remarkable an introduction must be followed by no ordinary
prophecy.
2. We come, then, to the great subject of the prophecy--a Ruler over
men. It is a vision of a remarkable Ruler, not a Ruler over the kingdom of
Israel merely, but a Ruler “over men.” The Ruler seen is One whose government
knows no earthly limits, but prevails wherever there are men. It is worthy of
very special remark that the first characteristic of this Ruler is
“righteousness.” There is no grander or more majestic word in the language of
men. Not even love or mercy can be preferred to righteousness. And this is no
casual expression, happening in David’s vision, for it is common to the whole
class of prophecies that predict the Messiah. It is the grand characteristic of
Christ’s salvation in theory that it is through righteousness; it is not less
its effect in practice to promote righteousness. To any who would dream, under
colour of free grace, of breaking down the law of righteousness, the words of
“the Holy One and the Just” stand out as an eternal rebuke, “Think not that I
am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to
fulfil.” And as Christ’s work was founded on righteousness, so it was
constantly done “in the fear of God”--with the highest possible regard for His
will, and reverence for His law. Having shown the character of the Ruler, the
vision next pictures the effects of His rule. No imagery could be more
delightful, or more fitly applied to Christ. The image of the morning sun
presents Christ in His gladdening influences, bringing pardon to the guilty,
health to the diseased, hope to the despairing. The chief idea under the other
emblem, the grass shining clearly after rain, is that of renewed beauty and
growth. The heavy rain batters the grass, as heavy trials batter the soul; but
when the morning shines out clearly, the grass recovers, it sparkles with a
fresher lustre, and grows with intenser activity. So when Christ shines on the
heart after trial, a new beauty and a new growth and prosperity come to it.
3. Next comes David’s allusion to his own house. In our translation,
and in the text of the Revised Version, this comes in to indicate a sad
contrast between the bright vision just described and the Psalmist’s own
family. The key to the passage will be found, if we mistake not, in the
expression “my house.” We are liable
to think of this as the domestic circle, whereas it ought to be thought of as the reigning dynasty.
What is denoted by the house of Hapsburg, the house of Hanover, the house of
Savoy, is quite different from the personal family of any of the kings. So when
David speaks of his house, he means his dynasty. In this sense his “house” had
been made the subject of the most gracious promise. But take the marginal
reading--“Is not my house so with God?” Is not my dynasty embraced in the scope
of this promise? Hath He not made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in
all things and sure? And will He not make this promise, which is all my
salvation and all my desire, to grow, to fructify? It is infinitely more
natural to represent David on this joyous occasion congratulating himself on
the promise of long continuance and prosperity made to his dynasty, than
dwelling on the unhappy condition of the members of his family circle. And the
facts of the future correspond to this explanation. Was not the government of
David’s house or dynasty in the main righteous, at least for many a reign,
conducted in the fear of God, and followed by great prosperity and blessing?
David himself, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah--what other nation
had ever so many Christlike kings?
4. The last part of the prophecy, in the way of contrast to the
leading vision, is a prediction of the doom of the ungodly. While some would
fain think of Christ’s sceptre as one of mercy only, the uniform representation
of the Bible is different. In this, as in most predictions of Christ’s kingly
office, there is an instructive combination of mercy and judgment. Nor could it
be otherwise. The union of mercy and judgment is the inevitable result of the
righteousness which is the foundation of His government. Sin is the abominable
thing which He hates. To separate men from sin is the grand purpose of His
government. Oh, let us not be satisfied with admiring beautiful images of
Christi Let us not deem it enough to think with pleasure of Him as the light of
the morning, a morning without clouds, brightening the earth, and making it
sparkle with the lustre of the sunshine on the grass after rain! (W. G.
Blaikie, D. D.)
The dying king’s last vision and psalm
It was fitting that “the last words of David” should be a prophecy
of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less than his consecration
and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying eyes see on the horizon of
the far-off future the form of Him who is to be a just and perfect ruler,
before the brightness of whose presence and the refreshing of whose influence
verdure and beauty shall clothe the world. As the shades gather round the dying
monarch, the radiant glory to come brightens. He departs in peace, having seen
the salvation from afar, and stretched out longing bands of greeting toward it.
Then his harp is silent, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings
had snapped them.
1. We have first a prelude extending to the middle of 2 Samuel 23:3. In it there is first
a fourfold designation of the personality of the Psalmist-prophet, and then a
fourfold designation of the Divine oracle spoken through him. Similarly, the
fourfold designation of the Divine source has the same purpose, and corresponds
with the four clauses of 2 Samuel 23:1, “The spirit of the Lord
spake in (or, ‘into’) me.” That gives the Psalmist’s consciousness that in his
prophecy he was but the recipient of a message. It wonderfully describes the
penetrating power of that inward voice which clearly came to him from without,
and as clearly spoke to him within. Words could not more plainly declare the
prophetic consciousness of the distinction between himself and the Voice which
he heard in the depths of his spirit. It spoke in him before he spoke of his
lyric prophecy.
2. The Divine oracle thus solemnly introduced and guaranteed must be
worthy of such a prelude. Abruptly, and in clauses without verbs, the picture
of the righteous Ruler is divinely flashed before the Seer’s inward eye. The
broken construction may perhaps indicate that he is describing what he beholds
in vision. There is no need for any supplement such as “There shall be,” which,
however true in meaning, mars the vividness of the presentation of the Ruler to
the prophet’s sight. David sees him painted on the else blank wall of the
future. When and where the realisation may be he knows not. What are the
majestic outlines? A universal sovereign over collective humanity, righteous
and God-fearing. In the same manner as he described the vision of the King,
David goes on, as a man on some height telling what he saw to the people below,
and paints the blessed issues of the King’s coming. It had been night before he
came--the night of ignorance, sorrow, and sin--but his coming is like one of
these glorious Eastern sunrises without a cloud, when everything laughs in its
early beams, and, with tropical swiftness, the tender herbage bursts from the
ground, as born from the dazzling brightness and the fertilising rain. So all
things shall rejoice in the reign of the King, and humanity be productive,
under his glad and quickening influences, of growths of beauty and fruitfulness
impossible to it without these.
3. The difficult 2 Samuel 23:5, whether its first and
last clauses be taken interrogatively or negatively, in its central part, bases
the assurance of the coming of the king on God’s covenant (2 Samuel 7:1-29), which is glorified
as being everlasting, provided with all requisites for its realisation, and
therefore “sure,” or perhaps “preserved,” as if guarded by God’s inviolable
sanctity and faithfulness. The fulfilment of the dying saint’s hopes depends on
God’s truth. Whatever sense might say, or doubt whisper, he silences them by
gazing on that great Word. So we have all to do.
4. But the oracle cannot end with painting only blessings as flowing
from the king’s reign. If he is to rule in righteousness and the fear of the
Lord, then he must fight against evil. If his coming causes the tender grass to
spring, it will quicken ugly growths too. The former representation is only
half the truth; and the threatening of destruction for the evil is as much a
part of the Divine oracle as the other. Strictly, it is “wickedness” the
abstract quality rather than the concrete persons who embody it--which is
spoken of. May we recall the old distinction that God loves the sinner while He
hates the sin? The picture is vivid. The wicked--and all the enemies of this
king are wicked, in the prophet’s view--are like some of these thorn-brakes,
that cannot be laid hold of, even to root them out, but need to be attacked
with sharp pruning-hooks on long shafts, or burned where they grow. There is a
destructive side to the coming of the king, shadowed in every prophecy of him,
and brought emphatically to prominence in his own descriptions of his reign and
its final issues. It is a poor kindness to suppress that side of the truth.
Thorns as well as tender grass spring up in the quickening beams; and the best
commentary on the solemn words which close David’s closing song is the saying
of the King Himself: “In the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers,”
Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.” (A.
Maclaren, D. D.)
David’s last words
I. God’s words by
david.
1. David’s words as king, “David, the man who was raised on high,
saith” (2 Samuel 23:1.)
2. David’s words as Psalmist, “David saith, the sweet psalmist of
Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1.)
3. David’s words from God, “The spirit of the Lord spake by me” (2 Samuel 23:2.)
1. “These be the last words of David.”
2. “The man whom God raised on high.”
3. “The spirit of the Lord spake by me.”
II. God’s words
concerning rulers.
1. What good rulers must be: “One that ruleth righteously, in the fear
of God” (2 Samuel 23:3.)
2. What good rulers are like: “He shall be as the light of the
morning” (2 Samuel 23:4.)
3. How God treats good rulers: “He Hath made with me an everlasting
covenant” (2 Samuel 23:5.)
1. “He shall be as the light of the morning.”
2. “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant,”
3. “It is all my salvation, and all my desire.” God’s covenant
III. God’s words
concerning enemies.
1. Equipped for evil: “The ungodly shall be all of them as thorns” (2 Samuel 23:6.)
2. Overcome by power: “The man that touched them must be armed with
iron” (2 Samuel 23:7.)
3. Doomed to destruction: “They shall be utterly burned with fire” (2 Samuel 23:7.)
1. “The ungodly shall be all of them as thorns to be thrust away.”
The ungodly
2. “Armed with iron and the staff of a spear.”
3. “They shall be utterly burned with fire in their place.” The end
of the wicked:
Broken ideals
The history
does not inform us at what period of David’s chequered life “the God of
Israel--the Rock of Israel,” spake thus to him. We may not be presumptuous,
however, in fixing on what in our judgment would appear to have been the most
likely time. Voices of highest inspiration, visions of loftiest things, come,
as a rule, to men in early life. By an irresistible sense of the fitness of the
figure, we speak of the youth as the “Morning of life,” when all within and
without is at its brightest and its best, and heaven and earth smile with the
promise of the coming
day. It would seem but natural, then, that we should place this vision of the
ideal man--the ideal ruler--at least in some period of David’s earlier life.
There are two or three purposes which ideals and visions serve, and though they
are the mere commonplaces of all serious thinking, I may be permitted briefly
to state them.
I. Ideals and
visions are our only possible means of enlargement and enrichment. For the
chances of true greatness everywhere never lie so much in what a man is as in
what he sees, in perhaps rare moments, he may become. This is clear and obvious
enough to all our minds; but in days when men are asking whether ideals do not
stand in our way, it will bear enforcement. An ideal is the soul, the only
soul, and the only soul in every conceivable direction of sustained effort and
assured progress. Our Saviour knew this full well when He pitched the tune of
our Christian lives in the highest key of all, and bade us “be perfect, as our
Father who is in heaven is perfect.” And the high ground which He took, all
experience approves. A vision of our personal possibilities may be
extravagant--it may even be misleading; but find a man who has ceased to see
such visions, who has ceased to be allured by them, who has ceased to follow
them, and you find a man who is growing from small to less, from mediocrity to
insignificance.
II. We should feel
things as well as know them, There is no chance of continuous and successful
effort, apart from a strict fidelity to what, in our best moments, “the God of
Israel--the Rock of Israel,” has said to us, or has set before us. Moral
precepts will help us on a long way, but they cannot kindle an abiding endeavour.
Abstract injunctions and commands will help us on a long way, but I doubt if
they ever yet carried a single struggling soul within sight of a very high
goal.
III. God sends us
our ideals--our religious ideals--to break the binding arid blinding spell of
religious custom. What stagnation, what paralysis sometimes comes over us!
Then, happy is the man whom the memories of former days, of former visions, of
former vows, disturb at such a time; who accepts, as from God, the reproachful
looks of former ideals; who goes back in thought to the times of his youthful
consecration, and who determines that henceforth Christ and not custom shall be
his King. And when memory travels back to life as it shaped itself to our young
imagination, and then reflect on the way and manner in which it has all turned
out, it requires something like ah effort to talk about ideals. And yet
consider--
1. Most of the deepest things m life we can only, learn from
conscious, perhaps repeated failure. In a fine lecture on Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, the late Principal Shairp tins the following: “Through the wounds
made in his own spirit, through the brokenness of a heart humbled and made
contrite by the experience of his own sin, he entered into the faith which gave
rest, the peace which settles where the intellect is meek.” Now wounds and
failures, and even sin, remembered ideals that seem sometimes only to reproach
us, sometimes almost to mock us, these things have a good account to give of
themselves, if they accomplish for us anything like that
2. Patiently, too, do we come to look upon our brother’s failures.
Sons of consolation indeed do we become when we learn to look through the open
windows of our own. The Voice of voices to this generation exclaims, “Oh! my
brother, my brother, why cannot I fold thee to my breast?” That brother cannot
be folded to this breast in any very effective way till I have come to know
much more what is inside than I could know when “the God of Israel--the Rock of
Israel,” first spake to me.
3. Lastly, there are many great sights in this world. There are many
great and noble things done under the sun. Heroes and heroines are only scarce
to those who, often enough for good reason, cannot see them. (J. Thew.)
David’s swan song
And now comes the last “Lay of the Minstrel,” with its flashes of
heavenly fire--the true “Swan song.” If we treasure with peculiar fondness the
closing sayings of great men, with what devout interest may we not listen to
the concluding strains of the Laureate of the universal church--the last
cadences of that harp of a thousand strings! The grandeur of earthly empire is
fast waning. He has heaven in view. But he would give to his people--to the
world--this dying “Confession of faith” farewell ode of victory. The whole
poetry of his nature seems summoned up for the expiring effort. (J. R.
Macduff, D. D.)
Last wards
Dr. Preston: “Blessed be God! though I change my place, I shall
not change my company; for I have walked with God while living, and now I go to
rest with God.” Matthew Henry: “You have been used to take notice of the
sayings of dying men, this is mine--that a life spent in the service of God,
and communion with Him, is the most comfortable life that any one can lead in
this present world.” Rutherford: “If he should slay me ten thousand times ten
thousand times, I’ll trust.” “I feel, I feel, I believe in joy, and rejoice; I
feed on manna.” “Oh, for arms to embrace Him. Oh, for a well-tuned harp!” Rev.
James Hervey: “You tell me that I have but a few moments to live. Oh, let me
spend them in adoring our great Reedeemer! Oh, welcome death! thou mayest well
be reckoned among the treasures of the Christian.” His last words, “The great
conflict is over: all is done.” President Edwards, after bidding goodbye to all
his children, looked about, and said, “Now, where is Jesus of Nazareth, my
never-failing Friend?” And so he fell asleep, and went to the Lord he loved.
Rev. John Wesley: “The best of all is, God is with us.” Rev. Charles Wesley: “I
shall be satisfied with Thy likeness; satisfied--satisfied!” Dr. Payson: “The
battle’s fought--the battle’s fought; and the victory is won--the victory is
won, for ever! I am going to bathe in an ocean of purity, and benevolence, and
happiness to all eternity.” “Faith and patience, hold out.” (G. S. Bowes, M.
A.)
Verse 2
The Spirit of the Lord spake by me.
The inspiration of the Scriptures
I. The Inspiration
Of The Scriptures. This may be shown by the combined testimony of Moses, the
Psalmist, the Prophets of our Lord, and also of the Apostles and Evangelists.
Consider:
1. The language of Moses. Now what does Moses say of his own
writings? “Thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep His
statutes and His commandments, which are written in this book of the law.”
2. The language of the Psalmist. David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel,
claims inspiration for those psalms which are of his own composition. “The
Spirit of the Lord,” he says, “spake by me.” And what are his other testimonies
respecting the word of God at large? Very wonderful, he says, are its
properties. It is the grand instrument, he tells us, in the sinner’s
conversion. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.”
3. The language of the prophets. What does Jeremiah say concerning
his own writings? The Lord commanded Jeremiah to set down in a book certain
prophecies. Those prophecies Baruch read in the audience of the king and the
princes. And what is said respecting Baruch’s reading? “Then read he in the
book the words of the Lord in the house of the Lord.” He read in the book “the
words of the Lord.”
4. The language of Christ. He met His adversaries with the Scripture.
5. The language of the Evangelists and Apostles. Our Lord, before His
departure, promised to send to His disciples the Holy Ghost. “And when He is
come, He will bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have spoken
unto you.” The Evangelists and Apostles, therefore, wrote under the controlling
power of the Holy Ghost. “All Scripture, wrote St. Peter,” is given by
inspiration of God,” or, is “God-breathed.” That Scripture Timothy had known
from a child; arid that Scripture was able to make Timothy “wise unto salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus.” By that term “Scripture,” which was able to
make its readers savingly acquainted with Christ, was meant the Old Testament
writings. Now, these Old Testament books are directly quoted or alluded to in
the New Testament several hundreds of times. There are more than eighty such
references in St. Matthew; more than thirty in St. Mark; more than fifty in St.
Luke; forty in St. John; more than fifty in the Acts of the Apostles; more than
seventy in the Romans.
II. Words of
counsel.
1. Beware of the sin of unbelief. God has given us-a revelation. The
mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken. That revelation contains difficulties
and mysteries. Our Lord was satisfied with the Old Testament, and we,
therefore, should surely be satisfied. But we have, in addition, a most clear
commentary on the Old Testament. We have the New Testament.
2. Cultivate a childlike spirit. Our Lord has plainly told us that,
except we be converted and become as little children, we shall not enter the
kingdom of heaven.
3. Receive all that the Bible reveals. In the Bible, as St Peter
tells us, there are many things “hard to be understood.” This is no more than
we ought to expect, when the infinite God reveals Himself to a finite being
like man. Those things, however, which are necessary for our salvation--sin,
death, hell, heaven, the general resurrection, the atonement of Christ, the
work of the Spirit--are written so plainly “that he may run that reads.” (C.
Clayton, M. A.)
God the Author of Scripture
Who built St. Paul’s Cathedral? So many masons, carpenters,
iron-workers, carvers, painters--and then there was Wren. Yes, there was
Christopher Wren. He was not a mason, nor a carpenter, nor an ironworker. He
never laid a single stone, drove a nail, or forged a railing. What did he do?
He did it all. He planned the splendid edifice: inspired with his thought and
purpose all their toil, and wrought through every worker. They were his
“hands,” and people flock to-day in their thousands from all over the world to
see Christopher Wren’s masterpiece. Who wrote the Bible? Moses, David, Isaiah,
John, Paul? Yes. But the Holy Spirit did it all. “Holy men of old spake as they
were borne along by the Holy Ghost.”
Plenary inspiration of Scripture
In an interesting little pamphlet, written by the late Dr. A. J.
Gordon, and called “Three weeks with Joseph Rabinowitz,” there are several
striking expressions uttered by the Russian Jew. “What is your view of
inspiration?” we asked him, in order to draw him out concerning certain
much-mooted questions Of our time. “My view is,” he said, holding up his Hebrew
Bible, “that this is the Word of God; the Spirit of God dwells in it; when I
read it, I know that God is speaking to me; and when I preach it, I say to the
people, ‘Be silent, and hear what Jehovah will say to you.’ As for comparing
the inspiration of Scripture with that of Homer or Shakespeare,” he continued,
“it is not a question of degree, but of kind.. Electricity will pass through an
iron bar, but it will not go through a rod of glass, however beautiful and
transparent, because it has no affinity for it. So the Spirit of God dwells in
the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, because these are His proper medium, but
not in Homer or Shakespeare, because He has no affinity with these writings.”
Verse 3
The Rock of Israel spake to me.
The voice of a rock
The phraseology is peculiarly dramatic and picturesque.
I. The rock has a
voice; the Rock of Israel had been speaking to him ever since he had been in
the kingly seat of power. David’s wild and outlaw life had made him know what
was the value of a stronghold, a shelter, a refuge. Rocks had been in his
experience his best friends for many a year. Rocks were unchanging in their
affection for him; they were immovable in their stability; they were
impregnable for defence; often he had found rest under the “shadow of a great
rock in a weary land.” What had this Rock of Israel said to him during this
wonderful career?
1. For one thing, it had told him, as a counsel of superior wisdom,
that he ought to reign righteously all his life: “He that ruleth over men must
be just, ruling in the fear of God.”
2. For another thing, the Rock had spoken the terms and the
conditions of a fine promise. A just ruler would be prospered in proportion to
the purity and piety of his administration: “And he shall be as the light of
the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender
grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”
3. And for the best thing of all, the Rock had assured him graciously
of a permanent continuance of the Divine favour: “Although my house be not so
with God, yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all
things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he
make it not to grow.”
II. Modern
religious experience. What are the conditions of implicit trust in the Lord of
our salvation, such trust ah will insure peace and comfort?
1. The main condition of resting in the Lord is found in looking
outside of one’s self. There is a habit of morbid self-examination which needs
to be shunned. The more conscientious any believer is, the more apt he is to
press unnecessary scrutiny of introspection.
2. The next condition of spiritual repose is found in the avoiding of
unwise counsellors. Once a Christian friend wrote a letter to me, saying that
she had just, after a long struggle, come to something like peace in believing,
when along came a “so-called evangelist to torment her before her time,”
telling her that “all we have to do is to accept salvation as we would accept a
book from Christ’s hand.” She could not do this so easily, and hence she was
informed again that her faith had no foundation upon which to be “secure.” It
would break up two-thirds of the business firms in the United States if an
evangelist were to keep going round among the counting-rooms, telling people
that they were in jeopardy every hour unless they could come to absolute
confidence in their senior partners; and then they must be sure, still, that
they have the-right kind of confidence in them; and then they must be modest,
and become surest of all that they are not becoming over-sure of anything this
side of heaven. Human beings cannot get on with this; they cannot live so with
God or with man. We must cultivate some measure of unquestioning trust. We must
learn to trust our trust, and not keep rooting it up. No plant grows which is
continually being rooted up.
3. Another condition of rest in God is found in drawing a clear
distinction between historic faith and saving faith. What secures to us a
perfect salvation is spiritual trust in the Saviour, and this is the gift of
the Holy Ghost. And whoever says that we receive Divine grace as we would
receive a book from a man’s hand, is simply mistaken in ignorance, or is
misunderstood in his statement. Mechanical acts are frightfully poor
illustrations of deep religious exercises. Some sort of fervour, some degree of
emotion, is needed in order to appreciate Divine grace and receive it fitly.
Tameness and lukewarmness are simply insipid. It is a heart-trust that God asks
for, not a mere head-trust. A maiden may be told by her enthusiastic lover that
it is as easy to trust him for ever with her life as it is to take a flower he
offers; she knows better. It is easy to receive facts, perhaps, but not so easy
to understand experiences which lie deeper than any mere outward acts. Historic
faith is not necessarily saving faith.
4. Yet again: we are to cultivate confidence in the slowly reached
answers to our prayers for Divine grace.
5. Yet again: we must distinguish between emotions, and religious
states. The one may vary, the other is fixed Faith is a very different thing
from the result of faith; and confidence of faith is even a different thing
from faith itself; and yet the safety of a soul depends on faith, and nothing
else. We are justified by faith--not by joy or peace or love or hope or zeal.
These last are the results of faith, generally, and will depend largely upon temperament
and education.
6. Finally, this unbroken courage is a condition of rest. We must not
think everything is lost when we happen to have become beclouded. That faith is
the best which has been tried and tested. In my study lies a little flower. It
came to me long ago, by the hand of one who plucked it upon the highest ridge
ever reached in the Rocky Mountains. It is of a rich purple colour, light and
graceful in form, and retains yet, I imagine, a faint and delicate perfume. The
lesson which it teaches me is one of endurance and patience. Away up there,
where the snow lies late and the storms come early, it has held its own. The
bleak solitudes had no charm for it; nay, I think that this flower was created
to give a charm to a solitude which would have been the bleaker without it. To
me it is the symbol of trust--absolute and implicit trust in God. It is a
living thing that knows how to keep its warmth in despite of ice, and its
beauty in despite of desolation
all around it. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
He that ruleth over men
must be just.
The importance of character in rulers
Mr. Stead quotes from Major Lennard’s “How We Made Rhodesia,” a
passage to illustrate Dr. Jameson’s opinions on morality and public life. “What
differences can it make in a man as a legislator what his morals are, if he has
genius and intellect, and can use them? I cannot see how in any way morals can
affect a man’s intellect, and so long as he keeps his immoralities to himself,
I do not see how they can affect any one else.” So the Prime Minister of Cape
Colony. The man who cannot see the influence of morality upon mind, how it
affects motive and outlook, and his whole attitude and action in public affairs
may have many gifts, but he is unfit to be Prime Minister of any colony or
state. Far higher than the view of the modern Prime Minister of South Africa
was that which inspired that ancient, Prime Minister of North Africa, who
regarded his position as a trust, and his work as a mission from God. “And
Joseph said: It was not you that sent me hither, but God; and He hath made me a
father to Pharaoh, and lord of all ills house, and a ruler throughout all the
land of Egypt.”
A righteous monarch
When Alfred made his laws his difficulties were only beginning. He
had to depend for their execution on the Ealdermen and Thanes, most of whom
were rude, uncultivated warriors, unable even to read the laws they had to
administer. Many also were careless and unprincipled, either taking no pains
about the matter at all, or favouring the rich against the poor. Alfred
accordingly undertook the enormous labour of going over in person and in detail
“almost all cases” in the kingdom. When he found, as he did very often, that
the judgment given was unjust, he would send for the offending judge, and ask
him why he had delivered it, taking great pains to ascertain whether this was
done out of greed or partiality, or out of simple ignorance. Probably a judge
who was convicted of the former would be suspended or superseded. But more
often the perplexed Thane or Ealderman, when hard pressed, would stammer out
the candid confession, “An’ it please you, my lord king, I did not know any
better.” Asset has preserved us a specimen of the reproof that would follow,
which he calls “discreet and moderate.” “I wonder truly at your insolence that,
whereas, by God’s favour and mine, you have occupied the rank and office of the
Wise, you have neglected the studies and labours of the Wise. Either,
therefore, at once resign your office or endeavour more zealously to study the
lessons of wisdom. Such are my commands.” He adds that the judges, almost
without exception, chose to learn their duties properly rather than to resign
them. (J. Alcock.)
Verse 4
He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth.
King David’s vision of Christ
It is generally allowed that, the Authorised Version is not very
happy here, and that the true idea of the passage is got by reading it as a
vision--a bright vision of a glorious Ruler, as it rose before the entranced
sight of the psalmist. The form of this Ruler is projected before him; He is
one who is “righteous,” and who “rules in the fear of God.” A Divine radiance
goes from Him, diffusing a silvery brightness on every side. “As the light of
the morning!” exclaims the psalmist, recalling the welcome sight of the purple
dawn after a dark and stormy night. By-and-by “the sun ariseth,” rejoicing like
a strong man to run a race. It is “a morning without clouds”; there is nothing
to obstruct the influence of the orb of day as he scatters his treasures from
his golden chariot. See how his beams fall on “the tender grass,” making it
sparkle with diamonds and pearls! This was King David’s last vision--the vision
of a ruler appearing on earth, worthy of these glorious emblems. Who can this
Ruler be? Not Solomon, not Jehoshaphat, not Hezekiah: for though these and
other kings were noble rulers, they did not come up to the high eulogy of
David; neither were they “rulers over men” as such, but only over a small
section of them--David’s own kingdom, if even the whole of that. The Ruler of
the vision has a wider dominion, and belongs to a nobler order. There are few
things that strike the imagination more, or that dwell more vividly in the
memory than a beautiful sunrise in an Alpine country. The Alpine horn wakens
you in the early morning, and, flushed with the expectation of a rare
enjoyment, you hasten to the spot where the view is to be seen. Your patience
is somewhat taxed as the minutes slowly pass, and no sun appears. But as you
look, the flush of dawn begins to brighten the sky, and now, just over the dark
mountain range in the east, you see a speck of ruby peering, brighter than any
gem. Quickly broadens into a slender bow, then to a golden semicircle, and in a
few more seconds the round globe itself stands above the horizon. And what a
glory it spreads over mountain and valley, over lake and river! What a
transformation of the dull dark globe, now bright with a hundred hues and
sparkling with a thousand smiles! Not only are your eyes feasted, but your soul
is thrilled with a holy emotion; your mind carries you to a brighter
transformation, to the thought of the new heaven and the new earth, and of the
great Resurrection morn, when they that dwell in dust shall awake and sing, and
the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads! In the imagery of the vision our Lord is
compared to light; and it is interesting to note the successive touches by
which the image grows in brilliancy. First, He is as “the light”--the most
cheering and reviving, the most beautiful and beautifying of earthly things.
Then He is as the light of “the morning,” for morning light is more cheerful and
reviving than any other. Then the great fountain of light, the sun, comes into
view, suggesting inexhaustible fulness. And lastly, it is a morning “without
clouds,” there is nothing to obscure or interrupt the light in its passage to
earth; it falls on the face
of Nature in an unbroken flood, giving radiance and beauty to every object; and
“there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.”
1. It is indeed a gloomy experience when one first feels what it is
to be a sinner, and first knows oneself to be a sinner--a great sinner--in the
Sight of God. What the Holy Spirit brings home to one may not be dark flagrant
acts of sin, but the fact of one’s rebellious will--one’s systematic disregard
of the holy will of God. Young Bruce of Kinnaird, three hundred years ago,
declared that he would rather wade through a stream of boiling lead half a mile
long than endure what befell him one night in the house of Airth, when the Holy
Spirit was convincing him of sin. But when one apprehends the true meaning of
the Baptist’s call--“Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world”--is it not as if one passed into the light of the morning?
2. There is another gloomy experience to which many are subject after
they have entered on the Christian life--the sense of indwelling sin, of the
perpetual activity of evil desires, giving birth to a sad contrast between
their souls and those saintly, angelic, Christ-like, beings whom they have
sometimes met with, or about whom they have read. “Oh, wretched men that we
are!” they sometimes cry, “who shall deliver us?” St. Paul was far in the depths when he uttered
that groan. But hardly was it uttered when the light of the morning burst on
him--“I thank God, through Jesus Christ.” He saw in Jesus Christ, over and
above His atoning merit, a sanctifying grace capable of renewing him wholly,
and he thanked God.
3. A third gloomy experience of Christians is that which often arises
from the trials and troubles of life. There are St. Sebastians in this world
whom God seems to make a target for all His arrows: all His waves and billows
seem to pass over them. There is a tradition that once a great painter, seeing
a rough block of white marble, said, “I see an angel imprisoned in that stone;
but I will set him free.” It was his way of saying that out of the rough block
he would carve the form of an angel. But what an infinite amount of labour,
what innumerable strokes of the hammer and touches of the chisel, were needed
to fulfil the task! Certainly the task of turning the human soul into a pure
unsullied spirit is not an easier one. We may be helped here by another emblem
of the text--“Clear shining after rain.” Heavy rain, pelting fiercely during
the night, batters the tender grass, seems rude, and reckless, arid
destructive; but the morning sun not only makes the grass bright, but helps it
to rise and helps it to grow; and in a little while the grass is stronger and
richer than ever. I knew an eminent Christian, in a prominent position, who
said that on looking back on his life he saw that the times of sorest trial--of
trials that seemed as if they would crush him utterly were the very times when
he got most spiritual good; it was out of such weakness that he was made
strong.
4. We note one other gloomy experience against which Jesus is emphatically
as the light of the morning--that which is bred under the shadow of death. This
is probably due to that feebler faith in the unseen and eternal, in heaven and
hell, in rewards and punishments, which marks the present age. But for oneself,
and for all who die in the Lord, how welcome is the vision of Him who is as the
light of the morning! Jesus has Himself died. O Light of the morning! how
welcome is Thy rising to all who have eyes to see! Arise and shine on all the
dark places of the earth. Again and again let these words be verified: “The
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light!” (The Quiver.)
David’s last and best song concerning Christ
This was a prediction of the advent of Christ uttered by David as
his last words: not, probably, the last words that he ever spoke, but the last
recorded of his public and inspired utterances.
I. He comes from
without. The hope of the world, according to the teaching of the Scriptures, is
not in itself. Just as this morning the earth’s face is beautified not by any
brilliancy of its own, but by the light that streams from the open heavens, and
is reflected by the grateful earth, so when Christ should come He would come to
a dark world m the effulgency of the Father’s glory, and the brightness of heaven’s
own light.
II. Like the
morning without, clouds, the revelation which He will give, and the light and
joy which He will shed shall be perfect. There shall be nothing imperfect in
His personality or in His teaching or works. The revelation of God in Jesus
Christ shall be as the light of the morning when the sun ariseth, a morning
without clouds.
III. Christ’s advent
would be like the day-dawn because of the certainty of his coming. What, more
certain than the morning? You have your dark nights, but then there is the
counterbalancing assurance that morning cometh. Yes, the light always succeeds
darkness, and day succeeds night. This is the Divine order of things. “God
called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night, and the evening and the
morning were the first day.” All God’s evenings burst into mornings. God began
with darkness and finished with light, that is the idea here. The evening of
the world has been dark, tedious, and depressing, but “He shall be as the light
of the morning, when the sun riseth.”
IV. The fulness of
His glory and blessing connected with His advent. He would come to all men
alike.
V. Christ would
come with the gentleness of the morning. Oh, the gentleness with which the
light comes to us! Have you thought of it? There is nothing so gentle. You know
that the speed at which light travels is twelve millions of miles per minute.
An engine that comes at seventy miles an hour comes dashing through everything
in its way; but the light that comes at the rate of 200,000 miles per second
has not knocked any of us down yet, nay, not even an insect in its feeble
flight. It comes direct from the sun, through space, at the rate of 200,000
miles per second, and yet this sensitive eye of ours, which is hurt if you but
touch it with even a feather, and is injured even if a breeze comes at the rate
of sixty or seventy miles an hour, and still more if water were splashed
against it with any force, receives that ray without the consciousness of being
touched at all. Anything else but the light, coming at this fearful velocity,
would kill us, yet the eye takes in the light and is thankful for it. The most
sensitive nerve is only gratified. Christ’s advent is compared to this coming
of that light. Such is the gentle grace of Christ. He comes to enlighten the
world--comes with the great impetus of almighty love that began in
eternity--and yet a love that falls as gentle as the day of light upon an
infant’s eyes.
VI. His coming
shall be all the more glorious because of the darkness and sorrow which have preceded
it: “When the tender grass springeth out of the earth through clear shining
after rain.” It would not be so glorious if the darkness had not preceded it,
and the rain had not come. If you would see things clearly, go out in the
morning. Just when the sun rises, everything appears at its best. During the
day you have the moist land sending up heated vapours, and the denser airs mix
up with the rarer atmosphere, so that you see nothing clearly. But the morning
light is pure and undisturbed, and it is never so pure as when showers of rain
have immediately preceded the dawn. Then it seems as if the rain had cleansed
the atmosphere. A shower does wonders in purifying air. That is the figure in
our text. Just as when a shower has been cleansing the nit of its impurity, and
then the pure light of dawn reveals the landscape, there is nothing so glorious
in nature; so in thy spiritual realm there is nothing so charming as the
revelation of Christ to the heart after its long night of darkness and grief.
Oh, if He but dawned upon the darkness of many of you to-day, you would thank
God for all the sorrows which have prepared the way for His more clear shining
into your heart and life. (D. Davies.)
Christ’s coming as the light of the morning
These are some of the last` words of David; not the very last
which he uttered while on earth, but of those, we may conceive, which he spake
when he knew that he was about to close his course below, and which he would
leave as his dying testimony to the truth which had been the matter of his
faith, and which was still the ground of his hope. These words, as we read
them, might be regarded as those which David now recalled as having been spoken
to him on his elevation to the throne, conveying a lesson concerning the duties
of a sovereign, which he had on the whole endeavoured to fulfil. But a greater
than David is here; and the words may be more properly’ regarded as a prophecy,
announcing the reign of that descendant of David in whom his throne was to be
built up for ever. You see, that to what is here said, considered as a
prediction of the Messiah and his times, the voices of the other prophets
agree. But I would direct your attention to what may be suggested concerning
him, and the effects of his mission and work, by the beautiful imagery here
employed.
I. He Is Most
Glorious In Himself. Light, you will acknowledge, is the most beautiful of all
material things: Nature’s resplendent robe, without whose vesting radiance all
were wrapt in unrelieved gloom. Its name is associated with all that we know of
what is fair and pleasant for the eyes to behold. But when we turn from its
lesser sources, from the lamps which man kindles, or even from the moon and the
stars which shine by night, to the light of the morning, to the sun when he riseth
on a morning without clouds, what an object of splendour is before us! But who
is He of whom it is said that “He shall be as the light of the morning, when
the sun riseth?” He is one of whom this sun is only a faint image. But in the
application of the figure which likens the Messiah to the morning sun, we are
to notice not merely the superior excellence of the things represented to those
by which they are held up to view, but the truth that they are found in him in
similar purity and fulness and perfection to that in which their emblems appear
in the natural sun. Wisdom, holiness, benignity, equity, and truth and mercy,
are not only more excellent in themselves, more worthy to be admired, more
suited in their manifestations to awaken a sense of beauty and grandeur in the
mind of the beholder than the most brilliant appearances of the light which is
taken in by the bodily eye; but as in him, and shown forth by him of whom we
speak, they have a plenitude and an exuberance which place him, we may say, infinitely
farther above all created excellence than the sun is above the dim lamps that
men kindle by night,. He “is the brightness of the Father’s glory, the express
image of His person.” He is the light of the heavenly world. The seraphim that
worship there veil their faces with their wings before him. He is the Sun of
spirits, and His beams of all-informing thought irradiate every created
intellect. He is “the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world.” Raise your eyes, O believer, to this Sun of Righteousness. He dwelleth
indeed in light to which no man can approach.
II. He came to show
to a benighted world the way of truth and peace. The sun is the great fountain
of light to the natural world. His absence makes night. Though there be lesser
lights to relieve the darkness, even these derive from him their borrowed lustre. The
evening’s twilight and the morning’s dawn give us his faint diffused beams, and
the moon and the planets shine with his reflected glories. But what would our
earth be if he was utterly darkened in the heavens? In the coming of the
Messiah, in that revelation of truth and mercy, of which He is the giver and
great subject,, the dayspring from on high hath visited us. “I am come,” said
Jesus, “a light unto the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide
in darkness.” How glorious are the discoveries which He makes to mankind, who
were sunk under debasing superstition; who, in the depths of their ignorance of
the true God, offered the homage due to him to dumb idols, the work of their
own hands, nay, to the personified ideas of hate and lust.
III. He comes to put
forth on a depraved world a renovating influence. The sun in the natural world
not only sheds light, “there is nothing hidden from his heat.” He warms and by
his genial influence renews the face of the earth. We have spoken of Him as
revealing the way of truth and peace, this He does not only in His external
word; it is He who opens the eyes of the understanding to discern it, and
inclines the heart to walk in it; to return to God in the faith of offered
mercy, in penitence, grief for past wanderings, and new-born love and
devotedness to his service. A willing people come to him in the day of his
power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning he has the dew
of his youth; under His quickening influence the spiritual life and beauty
which sin had blasted revive and flourish. He purges out the gross and debasing
elements of corruption, implants and cherishes the principles and affections which
adorn and bless the soul, and makes it fair and bright in his own reflected
image. Arid it is when he comes in the might of his renewing Spirit that a
voice is heard, saying to the souls which He visits, “Arise, shine, for thy
light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.”
1. We may observe that when he came in the flesh, He appeared in the
character and for the ends here assigned. It was to this coming that the
Psalmist looked forward when he said, “There shall be a ruler over men,” etc. The
Saviour promised long was born. He appears by the blood of whose cross peace
has been made, and by whom it hath pleased the Father to reconcile all things
to himself.
2. We may observe that He comes in tiffs character, and for the ends
we have spoken of, in the dispensation of His gospel, and when it is made
effectual, to give “light to them that sit, in darkness and in the shadow of
death, to guide their feet into the way of peace.” The invitations of mercy are
from him, and tell of him; and when it enters a nation or a city, when it is
preached to the poor and the guilty among men, there he is evidently set forth,
and the light of His salvation diffused.
3. And the time is approaching when He shall thus come in all the
world A great part of it yet lieth in wickedness. Monstrous forms of idolatry
prevail in many places of the earth, and in others a false prophet has deceived
the nations, or Antichristian superstitions perverted the gospel of Jesus. Even
where the light shines most clearly multitudes shut their eyes on it, and show
that they love the darkness better than the light. But we have a sure promise
that thus it shall not always be. The everlasting gospel shall be preached to
every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. “The glory of the Lord shall
be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it.”
4. He is to come in the end of the world, when He shall be to them
that look for Him “as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a
morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear
shining after rain.” (J. Henderson, D. D.)
Royal emblems for loyal subjects
Eastern despots fleece their subjects to an enormous extent. Even
at the present day one would hardly wish to be subjected to the demands of an
Oriental government; but in David’s time a bad king was a continual pestilence,
plague, and famine--a bane to the lives of his subjects, who were under his
caprice; and spoliation to their fields, which he perpetually swept, clean to
enrich himself with the produce thereof. Hence, a good king was a rara avis in
those days, and could never be too highly prized. So soon as he mounted the
throne, his subjects began to feel the beneficent influence, of his sway. He was to them “as when
the sun riseth.” The confusion which had existed under weak governors gave
place to settled order, while the rapacity which had continually emptied the
coffers of the rich, and filched the earnings of the poor, gave place to a
regular system of assessment, and men knew how to go about, their business with
some degree of certainty. It was to them “a morning without clouds” Forthwith,
trade began to flourish; persons who had emigrated to avoid the exactions of
the tyrant came back again; fields which had fallen out of tillage, because
they would not pay the farmer to cultivate them, began to be sown; and the new
ruler was to the land as “clear shining after rain, which makes the tender
grass spring up.”
1. David says of Christ, “He shall be as the light of the morning
when the sun riseth.” This he is as king, already, in His church, and as the
rightful monarch in the individual heart of the believer. Wherever Christ comes
into a soul, it, is as the light of the morning when the sun riseth. And, how
glorious is the; sun when from his pavilion he looks forth at morn! Job
describes the sunrise as being the stamping of the earth with a seal; as if,
when in darkness, the earth were like a lump of clay that is pervious; then, as
it is turned to the light, it beginneth to receive the impress of Divine
wisdom; mountain and vale all stream with it, till impressed on its, surface we
begin to perceive the glorious works of God. So when Christ riseth upon the
heart, what a glorious transformation is wrought! Where there has been no love,
no faith, no peace, no joy, none of the blessed fruits of the Spirit, no sooner
doth Christ come than we perceive all the graces in blossom; yea, they soon
become fragrant and blooming, for we are made complete in Him. The advent of Christ
bringeth to the heart celestial beauty; faith in Him decketh us with ornaments
and clothes us as with royal apparel. The sunrise, moreover, is very much like
the coming of Christ, because of that which it involveth. Those rays of light
which first forced the darkness from the sky with golden prophecy of day, tell
of flowers that shall open their cups to drink in the sunlight; they tell of
streams that shall sparkle as they flow; they tell of the virgins that shall
make merry, and the young men that shall rejoice, because the sun shineth on
them, and the darkness of night is fled. And so the coming of Christ into the
heart is a prophecy of years of sweet enjoyment--a prophecy, of God’s goodness
and long-suffering, let night reign, elsewhere, as it may--yea, and it is a
prophecy of the fulness of the river of God, for ever and ever, before the
throne of God in heaven.
2. We must proceed to notice that the psalmist uses another figure:
“Even as a morning without clouds.” There are no clouds in Christ when He
ariseth in a sinner’s heart. The clouds that mostly cover our sky come from
Sinai, from the law, and from our own legal propensities, for we are always
wishing to do something by which we may inherit eternal life; but there are
none of these clouds in Christ.
4. But, now, to the last figure. David says of Christ, the king, that
his sway is like “clear shining after rain, whereby the tender grass is made to
spring out of the tartly.” We have often seen how, after a very heavy shower of
rain, and sometimes after a continued rainy season, when the sun shines, there
is a delightful clearness and freshness in the air that we seldom perceive at
other times. Perhaps, the brightest weather is just when the wind has drifted
away the clouds, and the rain has ceased, and the sun peers forth from his
chambers to look down upon the glad earth. Welt, now, Christ, is to His people
lust like that--exceedingly clear-staining when the rain is over.
The character of Christ’s government
These words are generally understood to describe duties of civil
governments and the happiness of a people righteously ruled. But they have
doubtless a further reference even to Christ Himself. They designate His
character most appropriately. The energetic manner in which the prophecy is
introduced, and the strong profusion which the dying king makes of his
immediate inspiration, leave no doubt that something more is conveyed than a
mere direction to magistrates.
I. The nature of
the saviour’s government. In the sacred writings peculiar stress is laid on the
equity of that dominion which the Saviour exercises over His people (Isaiah 9:7). And who that has submitted
to His government will not confirm the truth?
1. Behold His laws. Is there one which does not kind to the happiness
of His subjects? They are all comprehended in one--love to God and man. And can
anything be conceived more excellent in itself and more beneficial to man? Well
does the apostle say of it that it is holy, just, and good.
2. Behold His administration. Is there any one point in which a
righteous governor can excel, that is not found in its most perfect measure in
Him? He relieves the needy, succours the weak, protects the oppressed, and
executes judgment without respect of persons.
II. The benefits it
confers.
1. Illumination and joy. The sun rising on the unclouded hemisphere
cheers and gladdens all who behold it. And when it shines on the earth that has
been refreshed, with gentle showers it causes the grass to grow almost visibly.
And is it not thus with all who submit to Christ?
2. Abundant fruitfulness. What an astonishing effect, too, does the
light of his countenance produce in respect to fruitfulness in good works. Let
the soul watered with tears of penitence, or softened by contrition, once feel
the influence of His genial rays, and there is a change in the whole
deportment.
Inferences:
1. How earnestly should we desire the universal establishment of
Christ’s kingdom. Little do men consider the import of the petition, “Thy
kingdom come.” In uttering it we desire that our whole souls, and the souls of
all mankind, may be subjected to Christ.
2. What madness is it to continue in rebellion to Christ. It is not
at our option whether Christ be our ruler or not. For God has set Him king on
the holy hill of Zion. In due season He will “put all His enemies under His
feet.” (Evangelical Preacher.)
The character of the Messiah’s rule genial and beneficent
This psalm describes the empire of the King of kings, and our text
exhibits the gracious and genial character of His dominion. Some men say that
Christianity is not genial, that the Christian scheme exhibits God in a most
unlovely aspect, that the doctrines of Christ are dark with awful mysteries,
that the promises of the Christian dispensation offer but little of present
benefit, and therefore of certain and tangible advantage, that its precepts
demand conduct which is too high and self-sacrificing, that its ordinances are
depressing rather than elevating, and that, as a whole, Christianity promotes a
narrow mind and a feeble judgment, morbid and morose feelings, an enslaved
will, a too sensitive conscience, an unmanly bearing, and a character which is
intellectually low, and unsocial, and melancholy. Is this charge against the
religion of Jesus Christ just, and can it be substantiated? We assert that it
is most unjust, and cannot be maintained. (Samuel Martin.)
A morning without clouds.
A morning without clouds
David is at the head of this chapter a representation of all the
people of God; he is raised up on high; do every one who is born of the Spirit
is raised up by the atonement and righteousness of Christ Jesus; even as the
poor out of the dust, and made to inherit that life, and light, and glory,
which can be only by faith in Him in whom they are complete and accepted. David
was the anointed of the God of Jacob: so are all who have the spirit of Christ.
This anointing means consecration to God; and in, and by which, anointing, they
know all things essential to salvation. Also David is called “the sweet
Psalmist of Israel.” He was indeed the poet of the Hebrew nation. But all the
people of God shall be sweet singers of Israel: God and salvation their theme;
truly with them the bitterness of death is past, and they are passed from death
unto life--a life of eternal delight. “The Rock of Israel spake to me, and
showed me the way to prosper; he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in
the fear of God.” And unto none do these words apply as unto the Son of God: He
was that Just One that died for the unjust, that He might bring us to God; He
feared God in perfection, and did always those things that pleased Him. Can we
say this of ourselves? We cannot, for there is not a just man upon the earth
that doeth good and sinneth not: but He did no sin, neither was guile found in
His mouth; He is, therefore, as the light of the morning when the sun riseth,
and as fresh as new grass springing out of the earth; by clear shining after
rain, He is “a morning without clouds;” and is thus a pattern of what all the
mystic morning stars shall be.
I. It was when
Adam fell. A morning without clouds.
1. Sin came in as a cloud, a thick cloud, a tempestuous cloud, a
gloomy cloud. And this cloud of darkness is universal--all are involved therein,
all are encompassed thereby; no light from any quarter, but darkness every way.
And we, by nature, love this darkness, and hereby prove ourselves to be under
condemnation. We cannot endure the true light! But if God, who “commanded the
light to shine out of darkness,” shine into our hearts, then we see and feel
the desperate wickedness of our hearts, and become a terror to ourselves, and
begin to be drawn by and to love the light of the bright and morning Star.
2. But not only is there the cloud of sin, but also the cloud of
Sinai, where God is inaccessible. Here “clouds and tempests are round about
him!”
3. But there is the cloud not only of sin, and of Sinai, but also of
tribulation. The clouds of tribulation will more or less darken the path of every
one whose face is truly set Zionward: “Many are the afflictions of the
righteous.”
4. But there is also the cloud of death. It casts its shadow over
everything; and this King of Terrors is, indeed, often a terror of kings. But
to those who love the Gospel light, unto such the cloud of death will be but a
passing shadow.
II. What the
morning is without clouds. The morning without clouds is the morning of
Christ’s resurrection. He dieth no more. “Death hath no more dominion over
him.” And now let us carefully trace out how the Lord was unto David a morning
without clouds. It was by a covenant. “He hath made with me a covenant.” This
means a testamentary will.
1. But this covenant is an everlasting covenant. This made David say,
“The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.”
2. But this covenant is ordered in all things and sure; there is
nothing vague--nothing at random; as the ark, the tabernacle, and temple, were
not made at random, so this covenant in all its arrangements, is such as shall
meet, and establish, and make good all its provisions and designs. Jesus Christ
is the executor of this will, “And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
His hands.”
3. And this covenant is all our salvation; it is included in this
covenant; here none are reckoned otherwise than sons, saints, and kings, and
priests to God.
4. But not only is this covenant all salvation, but it answers all
desires. No Christian desires anything more, yet nothing less can save, supply,
and satisfy; while neither faith, nor hope, nor love, nor prayer, nor godly
fear, nor good works are the rule of measurement here as to what our real
standing in the covenant is, these graces of the Spirit distinguish the real
Christian from others. (J. Wells.)
Rain clouds not devoid el beauty
Ruskin reminds us that we habitually think of the rain-cloud only
as dark and grey, yet we owe to it, some of the fairest hues of heaven. “Often
in our English mornings,” says he, “the rain-clouds in the dawn form soft level
fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue.” He describes them, too, as
gathering into apparent bars that cross the sheets of broader clouds, all
bathed in soft, unspeakable light, the barred masses, composed of tresses of
cloud, “looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain.”
As the tender grass
springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.--
Clear shining after rain
The beautiful picture that David draws is produced by a
combination, first, rain, and then, clear shining after rain; and the most flourishing
condition of spirituality is produced by the same two causes; it comes as the
result of a combination of rain and sunshine.
I. How the “clear
shining after rain” is manifested in the heart of the convert.
1. The work of grace begins in the heart with a time of gloom. Clouds
gather; there is a general dampness round about; the soul seems saturated with
doubt, fear, dread. There is something coming, but the soul knows not what; it
feels that it is very sinful, and deserves whatever punishment God may send.
2. After the clouds, in the next place, the rain falls. The real work
of the. Spirit of God often follows upon an inward depression of spirit. An
Irish friend of mine once said, that he had carefully noticed that it did not
rain when the sun was shining; but that, whenever it rained, there were always
some clouds to keep the sunshine off. There is a great truth in what my friend
said. Rain becomes doubly precious to the earth when all the surroundings are
suitable for its reception. All the atmosphere becomes damp; whereas, if rain
could fall when all is dry and warm, mischief might come of it. Well, now,
God’s Holy Spirit loves to come and work ill man a congenial atmosphere, a holy
tenderness, a devout heartbreaking; then with the clouds He brings a heavenly
rain.
3. Then the sun shines: “Clear shining after rain.” The man perceives
that he is a sinner, but that Christ has come to save him. He sees his own
blackness; but he believes that Christ can make him whiter than the snow.
4. Then everything grows. The grass is sure to grow when we have mist
and heat together; and When a soul, having felt its need of Christ, at last
beholds the light of His countenance, then it begins to grow.
II. This “clear
stoning after rain” often produces the very best condition of things in the
soul of the believer.
1. Trial followed by deliverance.
2. This experience is realised in humiliation of self followed by joy
in the Lord. It is a very healthy thing for a man to be made to know himself;
and if he is made to know himself, he will have no cause for boasting.
3. Tenderness mixed with assurance. I like to meet with that man,
whom Mr. Bunyan speaks of in his “Pilgrim’s Progress,” who was, above many,
tender of sin. He was not afraid of lions; but he was dreadfully afraid of
sins. Mr. Fearing is very tender of sin.
4. The blending of experience and knowledge.
III. Our text makes
a very happy combination in the ministry of the word.
1. He who would have a fruitful ministry must have clear shining
after the rain, by which I mean, first, law,, and then, Gospel.
2. First, repentance, and then zeal: rain, and then clear shining.
3. If your service is to be successful, bringing glory to God, there
must be in it, first, prayer, and then blessing.
4. My text also means grace softening, and then shining.
IV. The clear
shining after rain in the ages to come.
1. And, first, times of gloom are to be expected.
2. Although times of gloom are to be expected, an age of light will
follow. There will come a day when Christ shall reign amongst His ancients
gloriously; when the ungodly shall hide themselves in obscure places, and the
meek shall have dominion in the earth, and the sons of God in that morning
shall be owned as the noblest of men. There is to come yet “a thousand years”
(whatever that period may mean) of a reign of righteousness, wherein the whole
of the earth shall be filled with the glory of God, and become the vestibule of
heaven. Have comfort about that glorious truth. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God causeth the grass to spring forth
The grass springs up; the bud opens; the leaf expands; the flowers
breathe forth their fragrance as if they were under the most careful
cultivation. All this must be the work of God, since it cannot even be
pretended that man is there to produce these effects. Perhaps one would be more
deeply impressed with a sense of the presence of God in the pathless desert, or
on the boundless prairie, where no man is, than in the most splendid park, or
the most tastefully cultivated garden which man could make. In the one case,
the hand of God alone is seen; in the other, we are constantly admiring the
skill of man. (A. Barnes.)
Verse 5
Although my house be not so with God.
David’s sorrow and resource
The great and elevated among mankind have sorrows proportioned to
their greatness, as the highest points of earth are most exposed to the fury of
the fiercest storms. Kings have their griefs as kings.
I. David’s
domestic sorrow: “My house is not so with God.” Many were the occasions when
this distinguished man had to say: “The sorrows of my heart are enlarged: bring
thou me out of my distresses. All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. I
sink in deep waters” (2 Samuel 22:5-6.) Probably as a
king, as a public man, David more habitually and simply cast himself upon the
Lord. As a domestic man, he was less upon his guard. He expected no lion, no
bear, no Goliath difficulty in his home; he therefore did not meet home
temptations and troubles as he had met them: “I come to Thee in the name of the
Lord of hosts.” And some of you may now be drinking of a similar cup of
domestic bitters.
II. Let us look at
David’s personal resource: “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant.”
1. In duration it is everlasting. From everlasting the counsel of
peace was between them both--the Father and the Son; the Son, who as Messiah
was to sit and rule upon His throne, and be a priest upon His throne (Zechariah 6:13.) It is that covenant,
which, to use the forcible language of Paul to Titus, “God, who cannot lie,
promised in Christ before the world began.”
2. Observe its completeness: “Ordered in all things: This is all my
salvation, and all my desire.” Nothing is left to captious chance; nothing to
inconstant and changeable man. There are no contingencies with God; nothing
takes Him by surprise.
3. Look also at its certainty: “Sure.” The uncertainty of all earthly
things is one sad ingredient in the cup of earth’s bitterness. Such was David’s
personal resource at seventy, amidst domestic sorrow. And when we look at the
sufficiency: of it, we may well ask, What has the man of the world to fall back
upon, when all his earthly hopes are blighted; what to be compared with the
believer’s resource? (J. East, M. A.)
David’s dying song
How many choice thoughts have we gained in the bedchamber of the
righteous, beloved? I remember one sweet idea; which I once won from a
death-bed. A dying man desired to have one of the Psalms read to him, and the
17th being chosen, he stopped at the 6th verse, “Incline thine ear unto me and
hear my speech,” and faintly whispering, said, “Ah, Lord, I cannot speak, my
voice fails me; incline Thine ear, put it against my mouth, that Thou mayest
hear me.” None but a weak and dying man, whose life was ebbing fast, could have
conceived such a thought. It is well to hear saints’ words when they are near
heaven--when they stand upon the banks of Jordan. But here is a special case,
for these be the last words of David.
I. The Psalmist
says he had sorrow in his house. “Although my house be not so with God.” What
man is there of all our race, who, if he had to write his history, would not
need to use a great many “althoughs?” If you read the biography of any man, as
recorded in the Sacred Word, you will always find a “but,” or an “although,”
before you have finished. Naaman was a mighty man of valour, and s great man
with his master, but he was a leper. There is always a “but” in every
condition, a crook in every lot, some dark tint upon the marble pillar, some
cloud in the summer sky, some discord in the music, some alloy in the gold. So
David, though a man who had been raised from the sheepfold, a mighty warrior, a
conqueror of giants, a king over a great nation, yet had his “althoughs,” and
the “although” which he had was one in his own house.
1. But I imagine that the principal meaning of these words of David
refers to his family--his children. David had many trials in his children. It
has often been the lot of good men to have great troubles from their sons and
daughters.
2. What must I say to any of those who are thus tried and distressed
in estate and family? First, let me say to you, it is necessary that you should
have an “although” in your lot, because if you had not, you know what you would
do; you would build a very downy nest on earth, and there you would 1ie down in
sleep; so God puts a thorn in your nest in order that you may sing. It is said
by the old writers that the nightingale never sang so sweetly as when she sat
among thorns, since say they, the thorns prick her breast, and remind her of
her song. So it may be with you. Ye, like the larks, would sleep in your nest
did not some trouble pass by and affright you; then you stretch your wings, and
carolling the matin song, rise to greet the sun. Trials are sent to wean you
from the world; bitters are put into your drink, that ye may learn to live upon
the dew of heaven: the food of earth is mingled with gall, that ye may only
seek: for true bread in the manna which droppeth from the sky. Your soul
without trouble would be as the sea if it were without tide or motion; it would
become foul and obnoxious. But, furthermore, recollect this, O thou who art
tried in thy children--that prayer can remove thy troubles. There is not a
pious father or mother here, who is suffering in the family, but may have that
trial taken sway yet. Faith is as omnipotent as God Himself, for it moves the
arm which leads the stars along.
II. David had
confidence in the covenant. Oh! how sweet it is to look from the dulness of
earth to the brilliancy of heaven! How glorious it is to leap from the ever
tempest-tossed bark of this world, and stand upon the terra-firma of the
covenant! So did David. Having done with his “Although,” he then puts in a
blessed “yet.” Oh! it is a “yet,” with jewels set: “He hath made with me an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.”
1. David rejoiced in the covenant, because it is Divine in its
origin. “Yet hath He made with me an everlasting covenant.”
2. But notice its particular application. “Yet hath He made with me
an everlasting covenant.” Here lies the sweetness-of it to me, as an
individual.
3. Furthermore, this covenant is not only Divine in its origin, but
it is everlasting in its duration.
4. But notice the next word. “It is ordered in all things.” “Order is
heaven’s first law,” and God has not a disorderly covenant. It is an orderly
one. When He planned it, before the world began, it was in all things ordered
well.
5. That word things is not in the original, and we may read it
persons, as well as things. It is ordered in all persons--all the persons whose
names are in the covenant; it is ordered for them, and they shall come
according to the promise: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and
him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.”
6. To wind up our description of this covenant, it is sure. We cannot
call anything “sure” on earth; the only place where we can write that word is
on the covenant,
which is “ordered in all things and sure.”
III. The Psalmist
had a satisfaction in his heart.
“This is,” he said, “all my salvation, and all my desire.”
1. He is satisfied with his salvation.
2. Then, the Psalmist says, he has all his desire. There is nought
that can fill the heart of man except the Trinity. God has made man’s heart a
triangle. Men have been for centuries trying to make the globe fill the
triangle, but they cannot do it; it is the Trinity alone that can fill a
triangle, as old Quarles well says. There is no way of getting satisfaction but
by gaining Christ, getting heaven, winning glory, getting the covenant, for the
word covenant comprises all the other things. “All my desire”--says the
Psalmist. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The everlasting covenant, the believer’s support under distress
Now there are three parts of this last prophecy of David:, The
first of them concerns the subject of all prophecy and promises, that he had
preached about and declared, and that is Christ himself, in the third and
fourth verses. The second of them concerns himself, as he was a type of Christ
(2 Samuel 23:5.) The third part
concerns Satan and the enemies of the Church, in opposition unto the kingdom of
Jesus Christ.
I. A great
surprisal and disappointment; “Although my house be not so with God.” I have
looked that it should be otherways, saith he, that my house should have a great
deal of glory, especially that my house should be upright with God; but I begin
to see it will be otherwise. The best of the saints of God do oftentimes meet
with great surprisals and disappointments in the best of their earthly comforts:
their houses are not so with God. The reasons hereof why it may be thus, are:
1. Because there is no promise of the covenant to the contrary. There
is no promise of God secures absolutely unto us our outward comforts, be they
of what nature they will, be they in our relations, in our enjoyments, in our
persons, of what kind they will, why yet we may have a surprisal befal them in
reference to them all; because there is no promise of God to secure the
contrary, therefore it may be so.
2. Sometimes it is needful it should be so, though we are apt to
think the contrary; and that for these three reasons:
That which we should learn from hence, by way of use, is:
1. Not to put too great a value upon any contentment whatever we have
in this world, lest God make us write an “although” upon it.
2. Let us be in an expectation of such changes of Providence, that
they may not be great surprisals unto us.
II. That the great
reserve and relief for believers, under their surprisals and distresses, lies,
in betaking themselves to the covenant of God, or to God in His covenant.
“Although my house be not so with God.” Why do they so?
1. They do it because of the author of the covenant.
2. The second reason is taken from the properties of the covenant;
what kind of one it is: and they are three. It is an everlasting covenant. His
a covenant that is ordered in all things. And it is a covenant that is sure.
He hath undertaken two things.
There is an addition of order, in reference to the matter of it,
here expressed.
The springs of the security of this covenant are two:
1. The oath of God;
2. The intercession of Christ. (J. Owen, D. D.)
Household religion
Last words of dying David. As the dying are sometimes visited with
a wave of physical strength to which they were strangers in life, so often in
death the believer is blessed with a mental and spiritual vision, he rises to a
state of exultation in which he feels, sees, comprehends things altogether
beyond his usual ken. “At evening-time there” is often marvellous “light” for the
child of God. To King David it took the form of a vision of the ideal King that
one day should arise (see marg. R.V.) No contemporary suggested it, no history
fanned a recollection; it was an inspiration of God. (2 Samuel 23:2.) Nothing else was
sufficient to explain how a warrior of those brutal days came to conceive of a
kingdom that should be as morning light after darkness. Not even yet has a
kingdom of earth appeared that might be so described. Where is the realm to-day
whose working-classes, e.g., would say it was as “a morning without
clouds?” David, like Abraham, saw afar off the day of Christ. Then, turning
from the vision of the ideal future to the actual present, the bitter
confession of the text is made.
I. We have here
the confession of the disappointed idealist. Compared with others, David,
easily first of the kings, gave peace from enemies round about, established
religion, and by his hymns and personal character made it popular, and made
internal order and justice sure. The secret of his success was the secret of
his acknowledgment of failure, viz., that he had a very lofty standard which he
felt he had failed to reach. The explanation of many a believer’s depression, and
of many an earnest worker’s discouragement.
II. We have here
the confession of the disappointed Godly parent. We know what had happened in
the matter of Absalom, and what subsequently transpired between Adonijah and
Solomon. Coming events which cast their shadows before upon the dying father’s
heart. He saw there was no likelihood that the ideal he had failed to attain
would be attained by any of his house. And this, although a father’s hope will
linger longer than anyone’s respecting his children. We have then, here a dying
father’s pillow stuffed with thorns because his family is not right “with God.”
In the dying hour it is our own kith and kin we want around us--fortune, fame,
etc., are of little moment--and if believers ourselves the all-consuming anxiety
is how do they stand “with God?” What explanations or warnings may we get from
David’s instance?
David’s distress, consolation, and experience
I. A depth of
distress. “My house,” says David, “is not so with God.” He had many trials; but
with regard to the affliction before us, we may observe two things; that it was
domestic; and that it was principally, though not entirely, of a moral nature.
II. An
all-sufficiency of consolation. “Although my house is not so with God.”
1. And first it tells us that this “covenant” is everlasting. Its
counsels and its contrivances were from eternity.
2. Secondly, he tells us that this “everlasting covenant” is ordered
in all things. Nothing in it is left to any contingency, nothing left to the
intermeddlings of men.
3. Thirdly, he tells us that this “covenant ordered in all things” is
sure. The covenant of works made with Adam was soon destroyed; the national
covenant of the Jews was soon destroyed; and the people, dispersed over the
face of the earth, remain to this day a proverb and a by-word. But this
covenant is unchangeable; it is as sure, as the truth of God, as the
faithfulness of God can make it.
4. Fourthly, the importance he attached to it. “It is all my
salvation,” says he. All my salvation requires to be done is here, and all my
salvation requires to be given is here. And how much is required? Is the pardon
of our sins necessary? There it is. Is holiness necessary? There it is. Is
strength necessary? He will put strength in us. Is grace necessary? This covenant
gives it. Is glory necessary? It provides it. Is God necessary Himself, with
all His relations and attributes? This is the grand provision in the
covenant--“I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” They have all of
them a God, each a God for himself; a God to guide them, a God to guard them, a
God to supply all their need from His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
5. He tells us also of the love he bare to it. It is “all my desire.”
What can I wish for besides?
III. An instructive
experience.
1. This experience of David calls upon you, in the first place, and
says, see what variations there are in the views and the feelings even of the
Godly. If it is now dab, with them, the day is neither clear nor dark, as
Zechariah says, it is a mixture of both. Every thing with regard to them now is
a chequered scene. The image of the Church now may be a bush burning with fire,
and not consumed; and the motto of the Church should be, “Perplexed, but not
ill despair; cast, down, but not destroyed.”
2. This experience admonishes you, in the next place, and says, do
not look for too much here. There are some persons, who idolize life; but after
all, what is it found to be? In what condition, and at what period of it, does
it effectually belie the language of Young, who says that, for solid
happiness--
“Too
low they build who build beneath the stars?”
They are “walking in a vain show,” they are “disquieting
themselves in vain;” they are seeking the living among the dead.
3. This experience admonishes you how to improve your afflictions;
and how to render them, not only harmless, but even beneficial. And this will
be the ease, when, like David, we are turned towards Him, and ask, “Where is
God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night?” “Though no affliction for the present
is joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit
of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby.” The ploughman is not
angry with the ground; but he drives the ploughshare through it to prepare it
for the reception of the seed. The husbandman is not angry with the vine; but
he cuts it, and prunes it, in order that it may bring forth more fruit. As
constantly as the ox is in the field of labour, he must have the yoke on; and
Jeremiah compares affliction to a yoke, and says, “It is good for a man to bear
the yoke.” Let but the Lord impose it upon us, and it will sit easy, and it
will bear well.
4. This experience of David admonishes you not to cherish discontent,
nor to dwell principally on the dark side of your condition, but to cherish
cheerfulness, to look on the bright side.
5. What you are principally to derive from this experience is to see
what resources genuine Godliness has. From what you have heard, you learn that
it-does not exempt; its votaries from afflictions; but then, you see, it
sustains them under those afflictions; it turns them, at least, into a
blessing. (W. Jay.)
The covenant of grace, a support under sorrow
Standing on the borders of the eternal world, David looks back to
his humble original, and blesses that goodness Which God had displayed to him,
in elevating him to eminence both in the Church and the state.
I. Even the
children of God, those who are within the bonds of His covenant, may have to
contend with domestic afflictions, may have to lament their errors and their
falls, and must be extended on the bed of death.
II. The nature of
this covenant. It was primarily made with the glorious Redeemer, as the head
and surety of believers; but it is also made with all those who, by faith,
accept that Saviour who has ratified it with His blood, and who make of this
covenant thus sealed, “all their salvation and all their desire.”
1. It is everlasting; it is, in the language of the apostle, “The
eternal purpose which the Father purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” All the
manifestations of it in time, and all the blessings which constantly flow from
it, are only the accomplishment of the gracious designs that were formed
infinite ages before a creature lived.
2. It is “ordered in all things;” planned and arranged by Him whose
knowledge is infinite, and whose wisdom is unerring; by Him rendered so
comprehensive that “all things,” all possible exigencies, all conceivable
events that can befall the Christian, are provided for; every difficulty, every
trial, every, tear, and every struggle, were foreseen; together with the
effects to be produced by them.
3. This covenant is sure. If there be any truth in the promise and in
the oath of Jehovah; if there be any strength in that mighty Redeemer, who is
its surety, or any virtue in that blood which sealed it, then those who have a
personal interest, in it, may triumph in the stability of their hopes. (H:
Kollock, D. D.)
A sure covenant
I. The description
which he gives of this great covenant.
1. The time it is to last. It is “an everlasting covenant”--strictly
everlasting--never, never to expire.
2. The completeness of its arrangements. It is “ordered in all
things, and sure.” The covenants of men are often very incomplete. Something,
perhaps, hath been forgotten or lost sight of in the drawing of them up, which
makes them almost good for nothing to the parties they are made with. Some
case, some circumstance, is unprovided for, which, as soon as it occurs, makes
the covenant of none effect. Not so in respect of the covenant of grace made
with sinners through a Saviour. No, that is all complete in its provisions.
Complete in reference to God’s requirements. For it satisfies His justice; it
fulfils His truth; it displays His holiness; it magnifies His love; it sets forth
His wisdom; it commends His mercy; it shows forth at once all His glorious
perfections, and puts a song of praise into the lips of men and angels. And it
is complete, again: in reference to man; nothing, nothing is there wanting in
the salvation of Christ Jesus to make it everything poor sinners want.
II. The interest
which David states himself to have in this everlasting covenant. “God hath made
it,” saith he, “with me.” He had an assurance, then, that he was personally
interested in this covenant. He could lay his hand on it and call it his--a
covenant made particularly with himself. And, brethren, there is little comfort
otherwise. It is a poor thing to look upon salvation, and to say, “This and
that man have a part in it. The comfort is when we can bring it nearer home;
when we can think, upon good grounds, “I have a share in it.”
III. David’s
fillings.
1. “All my salvation.” Why that, in other words, is to tell us that
he could most comfortably rest upon it, rest upon it altogether.
2. “This,” saith he, this everlasting covenant of grace, “is all my
desire.” (A. Roberts, M. A.)
Consolations of the covenant of grace
“Yet” this little word “yet” wraps up a great and sovereign
cordial in it. “Though Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah be gone, and gone
with many smarting aggravations too; yet hath He made with me a covenant; yet I
have this sheet anchor left to secure me: God’s covenant with me, in relation
to Christ, this under-props and shores up my heart. As all the rivers run into
the sea, and there is the congregation of all the waters; so all the promises
and comforts of the Gospel are gathered into the covenant of grace, and there
is the congregation of all the sweet streams of refreshment, that are dispersed
throughout the Scriptures. The covenant is the storehouse of promises, the shop
of cordials and rare elixirs, to revive us in all our faintings; though, alas,
most men know no more what are t, heir virtues or where to find them, than an
illiterate rustic put into an apothecary’s shop. (Flavel.)
Divine covenant compensates earthly disappointment
It is wise, when we are disappointed in one thing, to set over
against it a hopeful expectancy of another, like the farmer who said, “If the
peas don’t pay, let us hope the beans will.” Yet it would be idle to patch up
one rotten expectation with another of like character, for that would, only
make the rent worse. It is better to turn from the fictions of the sanguine
worldling to the facts of the believer in the Word of the Lord. Then, if we
find no profit in our trading with earth, we shall fall back upon our heart’s
treasure in heaven. We may lose our gold, but we can never lose our God. The
expectation of the righteous is from the Lord, and nothing that comes from Him
shall ever fail.
Verses 8-39
Verse 10
His hand clave unto the sword.
A heroic sword-grasp
In the roll
of honour of King David’s army, there was one, Eleazor by name, who was counted
worthy to stand with the first three mighty men of David, because “he arose and
smote the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand clave unto the
sword, and the Lord wrought a great victory that day, and the people returned
after him only to spoil.” In this account we see that his heroic sword-grasp
was looked upon as a proof of his valour, and was made the mark of his honour
and of his reward.
I. We observe that
Eleazar’s grasp shows his appreciation of the sword as a weapon both for
defence and for aggression.
1. We cannot do much with a weapon in which we have little or no
confidence.
2. The sword of the Spirit is the only weapon by which we can gain a
great victory.
3. The efficiency of God’s Word does not consist in the mere letter,
but in the doctrines and duties which it teaches, and in the virtues which it
commends such as truthfulness, justice, purity, benevolence, holiness. Our
grasp of these shows cur appreciation of them.
II. Eleazar grasped
his sword firmly, and did not relax his hold.
1. The enemy, knowing the power of the sword, will seek to wrest it
from one’s grasp. If the grasp be weak, a sly thrust at the “Mistakes of Moses,”
or a bold, materialistic blow at the “Miracles of Jesus,” may break the grasp,
and then we are helpless.
2. Worldliness, or avarice, or appetite, or lust, or malice, may so
loosen our grasp upon the principles of the Word that we shall be compelled to
surrender.
3. It requires true heroism to hold on to principle when “the men of
Israel are gone away,” and “the Philistines are arrayed against” us.
4. A true soldier will die rather than lose his sword.
III. Eleazar’s grasp
was made firmer by the conflict.
1. Heroic conflict requires and produces an heroic sword-grasp.
2. A true hero does not stop to count the enemy nor to consider a
compromise, nor to hide himself through fear of ridicule or other evil weapons;
but putting his strength into his sword he rushes on to victory.
3. Christian conflict is not controversy, but an heroic Christian
life which requires and produces a firm grasp on the words and the principles
of the Gospel.
4. Jesus With this sword met and repulsed Satan. (Matthew 4:10.)
5. When we are alone, as Jesus was and as Eleazar was, we can gain
our greatest victories.
IV. Eleazar’s
firmness of grasp, and fierceness of conflict, made his sword cleave unto his
hand.
1. Whatever we cling to, shapes the grasp, and will, in proportion to
the strength of the grasp, cleave unto the hand.
2. The more firmly we grasp, and the more efficiently we use, the
words and the principles of the Word, the more deeply will they be impressed
into our nature and cleave unto us.
3. When the sword cleaves unto the hand, and the hand grows weary, we
can still fight on.
4. The sword of the Spirit has adhered so firmly to the hand of many
a hero in God’s army that even death could not break the grasp.
V. Eleazar’s
heroic sword-grasp was made the mark of his heroism and of his reward.
1. The true marks of honour are obtained through conflict and
suffering.
2. The cleaving of the sword unto the hand is the mark of God’s
greatest heroes: the prophets, apostles, martyrs, reformers, missionaries, and
others.
3. Clinging to the true and the right until the true and the right
cleave unto us, is as heroic in the peculiar temptations of our day as was
Eleazar’s conflict.
4. The marks of our sword-grasp will be our badge of honour in
eternity. Let us, then, be assured that if we rightly appreciate the sword of
the Spirit, grasp it firmly, and use it efficiently until it cleave unto the
hand, we also shall gain a great victory in the conflicts of life, and in the
kingdom of heaven a glorious reward. (J. Saxtell.)
The warrior’s scars
I want you to hold the truth with undetachable grip, and I
want you to strike so hard for God that it will react, and while you take the
sword, the sword will take you. Soldiers coming together are very apt, to
recount their experiences, and to show their scars. Here is a soldier who pulls
up his sleeve and says, “There I was wounded. I have had no use of that limb
since the gunshot fracture.” Oh, when the battle of life is over, and the
resurrection has come, and our bodies rise from the dead, will we have on us
any scars of bravery for God? Christ will be there all covered with scars. And
all heaven will shout aloud as they look at those scars. Ignatius will be
there, and he will point out the place where the tooth and the paw of the lion
seized him in the Coliseum; and John Huss will be there, and he will show where
the coal first scorched the foot on that day when his spirit took wing of flame
from Constance. McMillan, and Campbell, and Freeman, American missionaries in
India, will be there--the men who with their wives and children went down in
the awful massacre at Cawnpore, and they will show where the daggers of the Sepoys struck them.
The Waldenses will be there, and they will show where their hones were broken on that day the
Piedmontese soldiery pitched them over the rocks. And there will be those there
who took care of the sick and who looked after the poor, and they will have
evidences of earthly exhaustion. And Christ, with His scarred hand waving over
the scarred multitude, will say, “You suffered with Me on earth; now be
glorified with Me.” (T. De Witt Talmage.)
The sword of the valiant
Of the old hero the minstrel sung, “With his Yemen sword for aid,
ornament it carried none but the notches on the blade.” What nobler declaration
of honour can any good man seek after than his scar of service, his losses for
the cross, his reproaches for Christ’s sake, his being worn out in the Master’s
service. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The sword for use
The glittering sword with its keen edge and jewelled hilt is an
object of beauty as a work of art, yet it is harmless. But in the muscular grip
of a soldier’s hand and swung with a purpose and an aim, it is a dread weapon.
So with truth wielded with skill and power by the consecrated preacher.
Hitting hard
It is told of Abraham Lincoln that once, when quite a young man,
he saw men and women put on the block, exhibited for sale, and bought like
cattle. He saw the humbling and degrading familiarities which the buyers took
with file human chattels, saw the looks of dumb and piteous agony which stole
across the poor black faces as wives were sold away from their husbands, and
children torn from their mother’s arms; and he forced his way out the ring and
with flaming eyes, and voice husky with suppressed passion, said to a
companion, gripping him by the arm, “If ever I get a chance to hit at this
thing I’ll hit hard, by the Eternal God.” “My chance has come,” he exclaimed,
later in life, “and I mean to hit hard.”
Verse 11
Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite.
Shammah
I wish
you to look at the deed of this man Shammah, who stood in the midst of the plot
of lentils and defended it, and slew the Philistines. The one idea that leaps
up from this narrative is that which you often find through Scripture, that in
the clay of defeat and disaster all God wants is one whole-hearted man. If the
Lord can only get a beginning made, if He can, amidst all the disgraceful
stampede and rout, get but one man to stop running, one to stop flying, one
soul to cease from unbelief and panic and fear, and begin to trust in Him,
there and then the tide of battle shall be turned. Shammah did, that is to say,
the unexpected. Fleeing had been the order of the day for Israel, and
pursuing;had been the order of the day for Philistia. A very pretty game,
truly! We shout and you run. We appear, and you disappear. You sow in the
spring--it was very kind of you, Israelites--and we step in in the autumn and
take the harvest. It is a wonderfully nicely arranged system for Philistia,
whatever it may be for Israel. And, just so; don’t we seem to make nothing of
our Christianity (meaning by that, Christ), as against the powers of Philistia?
Look at them in London to-day. What are we doing? Where are we gaining?
Speaking broadly, it is invisible. Where are we defeated? Everywhere. The world
laughing at us, scandal upon scandal, tale upon tale, wreck upon wreck, ruin
upon ruin. Drink, lust, uncleanness, commercial dishonour, everything that
belongs to the Devil, strong and vigorous, successful and sweeping; and
everything that belongs to Jesus Christ, like those dispirited Israelites, weak
and scattering as a flock of sheep. It is bad enough. But just as then, so I
believe still, if here and there some man would only understand that in all
this there is a trumpet being blown for rallying, times for the individual and
for the community might be mightily changed. There is Shammah, and what seems
to be sweeping through the breast of--I was going to say the poor man, the
noble man--was this: “This is too bad! I am sick and tired of this. Are we for
ever to sow in the spring, and are these Philistines to reap our crop in the
autumn? Are we for ever to be at their mercy? Are we for ever to be trodden
underfoot and scattered like sheep? Death is preferable to this running and
running and running; and in God’s great name I stand to-day--Death or Victory!
If some of us would do that we would be big Christians before night. Just where
you have always yielded, my hardly beset brother or sister, try how it will work
to stand to-day. Resist this onset that always before has made a clean sweep of
you, and what will happen? It will be what always happens: “Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you”--he is a bigger coward than you are. “Whom resist
steadfast in the faith.” Then, it was a big fight for very little. “He defended
a plot of lentils.” Not much to fight for, a plot of lentils! But, coarse
horse-feed after all, as I believe it was, it was Israel’s lentils, and
Philistia had no right to them. It was God’s, and not theirs; and little as it
seemed to be to make a fight for, Shammah stepped into the middle of the plot,
like one who would say, “It is mine, it is my countrymen’s, it is my God’s, and
ye shall not have it if one man can prevent it.” I wish come one here, young or
old man, would, like Shammah, stand in the middle of the wreck that is left,
and have one fight for it. Although what is left may have no more proportion to
what used to be or what might have been than a patch of lentils has to a
broad-acred farm, yet in God’s name stand in the middle of the wreck, and see
what will happen. That is all God asks: Stand, stand in the midst, and then
see! If the Church of Christ would only get possessed of Shammah’s spirit, and
in all the howling wreck that is at home and abroad, if she would stand and
fight, there would be such a central victory as would tell to the furthermost
circumference. I think I see him. He is a sight for dispirited Christians, a
sight for all poor backsliders. You are defeated, overcome, overborne. Old
sins, like Philistines, have come back on you; redeemed though you call
yourself, old sins have come back fore the last month or year and more, and
they have been driving you before them pitiably, somewhat
contemptuously--secret sins, or open sins, or both combined. You have lost
heart, the roaring flood in its strength has swept you away, especially the
weakest thing that ever dared to call itself Christian man, believing man,
redeemed man. Now, what are you to do? In God’s name let us all try it, let us
all do what Shammah did--stand in the middle of what is left. What shall you
do? My brother, late in the day as it is, and although night is coming near,
although you are not now the man you used to be, and a hundred voices in your
ear say to you, “It is too late to retrieve the past,” those hundred voices are
a hundred lies and liars. It is not too late: stand in the middle of the wreck
left, in God’s great name. Stand, stand! you might die more than conqueror yet.
Over you, there may yet be heard in Heaven the shout of victory: Stand! Shammah stood in
the midst of it, and though it wee not worth two half-crowns of any man’s
money, he defended it, and slew the Philistines, and God came down from heaven
to win a patch of lentils! For the Lord loves victory, and the Lord hates
defeat, and the only thing He wants is to get at His adversary through some
faithful, upright, believing soul. (John McNeill.)
Verses 13-17
And three of the thirty chiefs went down.
The dear-bought draught
I do not think that this was what you might call a mere
sentimental longing. David was strong in true and real sentiment; but I do not
think that when we have him pictured here longing and sighing, that he was, as
some have supposed, merely suffering from passing home-sickness. Some take that
view, and imagine that he just momentarily gave way to one of those whims or
morbidities that come across the spirits of otherwise brave and earnest men,
and make them as
weakly sentimental as their neighbours. When I read that “David longed,” and I
hear his longing set forth, I like to think of him as showing here something of
his deepest and best. The Spirit of God would make us know that He understands
us when we are like David. There is a depth in us; a deep below, perhaps, what
we ourselves, in our commonplaces, were unaware of. The hard-beaten bottom or
floor of our soul sometimes gives way. Many a time and oft, when we are not
thinking, or ever we are aware, these common, ordinary, worldly hearts of ours
are cleft as by a great chasm and depth, through which there comes, like the
breath of the mountain wind sighing through a gorge, a great, inexhaustible
“Oh!” Like David, we long! “Oh, for youth; oh for renewal; oh for freshness; oh
to get rid of what, is making me tame, and flat, and dull; of the earth,
earthy; and of the world, worldly!” You see, there was a great deal in that
water. There is no water like the water we drank at home, when we were young.
Is that sentimental? Is not that feeling derived from something deep and true
within the soul? It is more than ordinary water. What memory brings into mind
of all the years that have come and gone between! And this “water of the well”
is the type, and symbol, and picture of it--the rush of the spring, with the
sheen and the bubble of the water, We are not so utterly dead, and dark, and
given up as we seem to-day. God can open rivers in dry places. He can pierce
down, down through all the mortification and all the corruption; through all
the sand and sawdust; all that is earthly and carnal--clown to the quick. Then
up there comes that burdened sigh--“Oh for living water! oh for cooling
streams!” Rightly used, it leads the longing soul back to more than original
purity. And this is also a type of the cry of the backslider who once knew the joys of
salvation; who once lived in Bethlehem, the House of Bread; and drank of the
well that bubbles up from beneath its walls. Ah, yes, we repeat it again, there
is a great deal in a drink, in what it suggests. Oh, may you get that
suggestion and the satisfaction of it to-day. “Oh! that I could get back to
God, the living God!” Do not go easily over that word: David longed. Oh that
God would give us to-day longing hearts, to find Him out. For you will never
find out God by greater intellect; never by wider reading and deeper study.
This is the road to God; this is the “new organ” by which we receive the truth
that alone can satisfy. “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth
my soul after thee, O God.” May it be given us to-day to taste, and see that
God is good. David’s desire was gratified. The three mighty men said, “He shall
have it.” Shall I say one had wisdom, and the other love, and the other power;
and these three together scattered the powers of Philistia? Oh! don’t you see
how the Gospel breaks out upon us? You yearn for something the possession of
which would be
the renewing of your youth; the lack of which is decay; and your longing is
heard, and your prayer answered before you know it. The Three Mighties, the
Blessed and Glorious Three, Wisdom, Love, Might, have broken the host of the
Philistines, and liars brought to us--right to our parched lips--before our
sighing is done, that bubbling spring for lack of which we die. I knew the
Gospel was there. I knew it when I read the story. I felt it more deeply the
longer I studied it. Do not accuse me of dragging things in--of putting the
Gospel where it is not. The grand key to open the Old Testament is Christ--put
Him in wherever He will fit, and certainly He will fit here. Still further, the
story deepens in
interest. “Nevertheless, he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the
Lord.” Here we have the very crown and flower of Gospel teaching. What ought
this great love of God to produce in our hearts? What did this great love of
these three mighty men produce in David’s heart? It begot in him a like spirit
again. They flung themselves away for him; he flung himself, and them with him,
back Upon God, the Fount and Spring of all. So with us: Christ has brought us
pardon, and peace, and everlasting life. But let Christ’s sacrifice produce a
self-sacrificing spirit in you--as Christ flung Himself away for you, so fling
your life away for God--and you will enjoy it. It has been brought to you; lay
yourself, body, soul, and spirit, on the altar--it is your reasonable
sacrifice. Give now your money, for money is a covenant blessing. It is one
rill of the fountain that comes from the well--the spring of Bethlehem. (J.
McNeill.)
Longing for the water of the well of Bethlehem
It must have been a rare and imposing assembly that came to crown
David king of all Israel. The Chronicles record the names and numbers of the
principal contingents that were present on that memorable occasion. The
Philistines, however, were watching the scene with profound dissatisfaction. So
long as David was content to rule as a petty king in Hebron, leaving them free
to raid the northern tribes at their will, they were not disposed to interfere;
but when they heard that they had anointed David king over all Israel, all the
Philistines went down to seek David. They probably waited until the august
ceremonial was over, and the thousands of Israel had dispersed to ‘their homes,
and then poured over into Judah in such vast numbers--spreading themselves in
the Valley of Ephraim, and cutting off David’s connection with the northern
tribes--that he was forced to retire with his mighty men and faithful six
hundred to the hold, which, by comparison of passages, must have been the
celebrated fortress-cave of Adullam (2 Samuel 5:17; 2 Samuel 22:13-14.)
I. A sudden
reversal of fortune. It was but as yesterday that David was the centre of the
greatest assembly of warriors that his land had seen for many generations. With
national acclaim he had been carried to the throne of a united people. He
realised that he was fondly enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen; but
to-day he is driven from Hebron, where for more than seven years he had dwelt
in undisturbed security, back to that desolate mountain fastness, in which
years before tie had taken refuge from the hatred of Saul. It was a startling
reversal of fortune, a sudden overcasting of a radiant noon, a bolt out of a
clear sky. Such sudden reversals come to us all--to wean us from confidence in
men and things; to stay us from building our nest on any earth-grown tree; to force us to root
ourselves in God alone. Child of mortality, such lessons will inevitably be set
before thee to learn. In the hour of most radiant triumphs, thou must remember
Him who has accounted thee fit to be his steward; thou must understand that thy
place and power are thine only as His gift, and as a trusteeship for His glory.
This contrast between the anointing of Hebron and the conflict of Adullam
presents a striking analogy to the experiences of our Lord, who, after His
anointing at the banks of the Jordan, was driven by the Spirit into the
wilderness of Judaea to be forty days tempted of the devil. It is the law of
the spiritual life. The bright light of popularity is too strong and searching
for the perfect
development of the Divine life. Loneliness, solitude, temptation,
conflict--these are the flames that burn the Divine colours into our
characters; such the processes through which the blessings of our anointing are
made available for the poor, the broken-hearted, the prisoners, the captives,
and the blind.
II. Gleams of
light. The misty gloom of these dark hours was lit by some notable incidents.
The mighty men excelled themselves in single combats with the Philistine
champions. What marvels may be wrought by the inspiration of a single life! We
cannot but revert in thought to that hour when, hard by that Very spot, an
unknown youth stepped forth from the affrighted hosts of Israel to face the
dreaded Goliath. Thus the lives of great men light up and inspire other lives.
They mould their contemporaries. The inspiration of a Wesley’s career raises a
great army of preachers. The enthusiasm of a Carey, a Livingstone, a Paten
stirs multitudes of hearts with missionary zeal. Those who had been the
disciples of. Jesus became his apostles and martyrs. His own life of
self-sacrifice for men has become the beacon-fire that has summoned myriads
from the lowland valley of selfishness to the surrender, the self-denial, the
anguish of the Cross, if only they might be permitted to follow in his steps.
III. A touching
incident.
Adullam was not far from Bethlehem. One sultry afternoon he was a
semi-prisoner in the hold. Over yonder, almost within sight, a garrison of
Philistines held Bethlehem. Suddenly an irresistible longing swept across him
to taste the water of the well of Bethlehem, which was by the gate. Almost
involuntarily he gave expression to the wish. How often we sigh: for the waters
of the well of Bethlehem! We go back on our past, and dwelt longingly on
never-to-be-forgotten memories. Oh to see again that face; to feel the touch of
that gentle hand; to hear that voice! Oh to be again as in those guileless
happy years, when the forbidden fruit had never been tasted! Oh for that fresh
vision of life, that devotion to the Saviour’s service, that new glad outburst
of love! Oh that one would give us a drink of the water of the well of
Bethlehem’, which is beside the gate! They are vain regrets; there are no,
mighties strong enough to break through, the serried ranks of the years, and
fetch back the past. But the quest of the soul may yet be satisfied by what
awaits it in Him who said, “He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again;
but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst:
but it shall be in him a spring of water, rising up to everlasting life.” Not
in Bethlehem’s well, but in Him who was born there, shall the soul’s thirst be
quenched for ever.
IV. The overthrow
of the Philistines.--Prosperity had not altered the attitude of David’s soul, in
its persistent waiting on God. As he was when first he came to Hebron, so he
was still; and in this hour of perplexity; he inquired of the Lord, saying,
“Shall I go up against the Philistines? Wilt Thou deliver them into mine hand?”
In reply, he received the Divine assurance of certain victory; and when the
battle commenced, it seemed to him as if the Lord Himself were sweeping them
before Him like a winter flood, which, rushing down the mountain-side, carries
all before it in its impetuous rush. Again the Philistines came up to assert
their olden supremacy, and again David waited on the Lord for direction. It was
well that he did so, because the plan of campaign was not as before. Those that
rely on God’s co-operation must be careful to be in constant touch with Him.
The aid which was given yesterday in one form, will be given to-morrow in
another. In the first battle the position of the Philistines was carried by
assault; in the second it was turned by ambush. Sometimes we have to march,
sometimes to halt; now we are called to action, again to suffering; in this
battle to rush forward like a torrent; in the next to glide stealthily to
ambush and wait. We must admit nothing stereotyped in our methods. What did
very well in the house of Dorcas will not suit in the stately palace of
Cornelius. Let there be living faith in God. Then shall we know what God can do
as a mighty co-operating force in our lives, making a breach in our foes, and
marching his swift-stepping legions to our succour. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The well of Bethlehem
This incident, which is strangely unlike the ordinary records of
history, and has about it the air of an old-world romance, is here narrated,
not in chronological order, but in a review of David’s life, when that life had
well-nigh reached its close and its leading events stood out in their true
proportions. It occurred immediately after David had been made king at Hebron,
where there was war between him and the Philistines, who had pushed their way
to Bethlehem, and threatened still further advance. In times of deprivation and
danger, in great crises, which life itself is hanging in the balance, the mind
reverts to early and familiar scenes, and invests them with a strong and
pathetic charm. The man, whose boyhood was spent at the seaside, longs for a
breath of its bracing air. The Swiss mountaineer, far away from home, listens
to the songs of his early days, and is seized with a restless impulse to
return. The old Highland woman, dying in the Red River settlements, surrounded
by miles of prairies, can find no comfort save in remembering the bens and
glens which she loved so well. “Oh, doctor dear, for a wee bit of a hill!”
Surely we can understand it. Heaven lay about us in our infancy, and, from the
rough world in which we dwell it is pleasant to look back and revive the
vanished glory. David’s wish seemed foolish and vain, for the foe was encamped
between him and the well. To reach it was all but impossible. David no doubt
knew that, and his longing was the keener in consequence. We often fail to
value our privileges until we have lost them. We know their worth only when
they are beyond our reach. But the expression of the king’s longing was heard.
They listened to his faintest wish and made it their law. It was a noble and
heroic act, a deed of splendid daring, the mere recital of which rebukes our
selfishness and covers our cowardice with contempt.
1. The incident affords a remarkable instance of David’s power to
inspire devotion. He could have been no sordid, common-place, self-seeking
usurper for whom they did this; no slave of greedy ambition, swayed only by the
lust of power. He was manly, trustful, and chivalrous, as a king should be, and
the enthusiasm and fidelity of his soldiers were but the answering reflection
of his own nobility and grace.
2. The incident exemplifies the power and inventiveness of love. Love
will laugh at impossibilities. It is quick to devise means of fulfilling its
desires, and though it be tender it is also courageous. It is gentle, but full
of power, and can set its face like a flint against all opposition. Love to
Christ will make us pure, strong, brave and victorious. We shall scorn to serve
Him with that which costs us nothing, arid for His sake we shall count all
things as loss. When David had in his hand the water, which only love strong as
death could have secured, he refused to drink it, and poured it on the ground
unto the Lord. How fickle and capricious! we have heard men say. Not so! Far
other feelings prompted the refusal. There is a higher law than
self-gratification. David was the very soul of chivalry, and felt that he had
no right to the water which had been brought as by priestly hands and in a cup
that had on it the marks of sacrifice. To have drunk it himself would have been
sacrilege. There was but One Being worthy of it--He who had inspired the
heroism and devotion which secured it. David saw in the act of the captains who
had jeopardised their lives for him a love, a courage, and a self-surrender of
which no mortal was the fitting object.
4. The action of David’s friends is a witness on both its sides to
the unselfishness and grandeur of our nature. It shows that we have other than
material instincts to satisfy, that we live not by bread alone. Physical
gratification, bodily ease and comfort, prosperity in all its forms leave
untouched vast spaces of our worldly thought and aspiration and need; and if we
possess only what they can yield, the noblest elements of our nature will be
feeble and impoverished, aye, and will become the means of our acutest suffering and
most dreaded retribution. When the depths of our being are stirred, we think of
God and our relation to Him. We live by admiration, love, and hope. There is
something dearer than material pleasure, personal safety, and even life itself
to the man who has been entranced by the vision of the Divine. He reveres the
majesty of truth and duty, fidelity, honour, God. It is not necessary that we
should be at ease, with an abundance of pleasure and of wealth. It is not even
necessary that we should continue to live, but, it is necessary that we should
be true, pure, upright, godly; and to fulfil this great law of our being there
is absolutely no sacrifice which we should not be prepared to make. (J.
Stuart.)
Courage
When the brave and ill-fated English envoy, Cavagnari, was warned
by the Ameer of Afghanistan that his life was not safe at Cabul, he coolly
replied that if he were shot down, there were others ready to take his place.
Whilst one cannot but honour the courage of such a man, and feel a desire to
throw a wreath upon his grave, it would be the greatest possible error to
imagine that the commonest spheres of civil end prosaic life, do not, many and many a time,
yield instances of an equally noble, though less showy heroism. (J. Thain
Davidson, D. D.)
Energetic Men
We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that
way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Knock them down, and
in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they
will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning sway existence, or walking
about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you
cannot keep them down, you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would
soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble
project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the
ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their
steam vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the mine; they plough
the earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage;
imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you
will deserve, and no doubt command, success. (Christian Weekly.)
Verse 15
And David longed, and said, Oh, that one would give me drink of
the water of the well of Bethlehem.
Craving to enjoy a past comforter
The scene in this chapter was one of the remarkable events in
David’s life. While hiding in the cave he saw from its rocky cliffs, across the
green landscape, the place of the dear, familiar well whose cooling beverage
had often quenched his parched lips when a youth. The picture so revived cravings
of his heart that he gave expression to the innermost feelings of his life.
I. The graphic
description which David gave of the well.
1. The right appellation was truly stated. “The well of Bethlehem.”
It is the most noted, and appears to have made a deep impression on his mind,
which the lapse of years had failed to erase. Is not this illustrative of “the
well of Bethlehem” sunk at the birth of Christ? Before this time men had drunk
of impure water, but when God was manifest in the flesh He became the well
without an equal. It is the well of mercy, peace, consolation, and love.
2. The distinctive mark was clearly given. “Which is by the gate.” We
need in our longings to do the same, as there are many wells--science, arts,
philosophy, and literature, and the well of, salvation. We must be distinct, as
our lives can only be satisfied with the “well of Bethlehem,” whose bubblings
are ready to give heavenly refreshment. We find it by the Holy Communion table,
the spiritual devotion meetings, etc.
3. The proper occupant was fully proclaimed. “The water.” Some wells
are useless, being filled with rubbish or polluted streams; but the well named
by David was faithfully doing its mission. Many wells with us are of no
service--empty or impure.
II. The earnest
longing which David expressed.
1. The sight rekindled the thought of his heart. We wish to recall
hallowed seasons and comforts. The sight of parent, teachers, and friends
rekindle our hearts afresh with comfort and joy. We sigh to taste of the old
streams, to sit by the side of loving parents, to hear the faithful entreaty of
our teachers, to walk with the companions whose society we prized.
2. He gave utterance to the thought of his heart. David had keen
aspirations and passionate longings, so that what he felt readily passed into
words. He-gave vent to his pent-up feelings. In the midst of the worry and
battle of life the scenes of our past days are so vividly portrayed to the
mental sight that we crave for the times and enjoyments that are gone. At such
seasons we cannot contain our feelings, but give expression to them. In things
spiritual it is the same; when we have gone from all the comforts and happiness
of religion a time dawns when we cannot any longer keep the state of mind to,
ourselves. We cry out to be satisfied with the living water from the well of
Bethlehem.
3. The unconscious entreaty for brave help. David knew that Bethlehem
had been taken by the enemy. There were great obstacles in the way of obtaining
a drink from the well of his ancestors. Probably he little thought that his
pathetic wish was heard. We often imperil the lives and characters of others by
unconsciously speaking what we feel.
4. The deep craving was of a personal character. David knew what he
wanted. It was not that common, foolish wish for something fresh and new, but
he sought to taste of that which he had often been refreshed with before. The
reason why we have not much enjoyment in this life is because our cravings are
indefinite.
Lessons:--
1. We never realise the worth of our best comforts until we are
separated from them.
2. After a season of spiritual declension how anxiously we crave to
drink again of the eternal spring. (Alfred Buckley.)
The well by the gate
I. The Gospel a
well of Bethlehem. David had known hundreds of wells of water, but he wanted to
drink from that particular one; and he thought nothing could slake his thirst
like that; and, unless your soul and mine can get access to the fountain opened
for sin and for uncleanliness, we must die. That fountain is the well of
Bethlehem. It was dug in the night. It was dug by the light of a lantern--the
star that hung down over the manger. It was dug not at the gate of Caesar’s
palaces--not in the park of a Jerusalem bargain-maker. It was dug in a barn.
The camels lifted their weary heads to listen as the work went on; the
shepherds, unable to sleep because the heavens were filled with bands of music,
came down to see the opening of the well. The angels of God, at the first gush
of the living water, dipped their chalices of joy into it, and drank to the
health of earth and heaven, as they cried: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth
peace.” Sometimes, in our modern times, the water is brought through the pipes of the city to the
very nostrils of the horses or cattle; but this well in the Bethlehem barn was
not so much for the beasts that perish as for our race--thirst-smited,
desert-travelled, simoom-struck. Oh! my soul, weary with sill, stoop down and’
drink to-day out of that Bethlehem well.
II. This Gospel is
a captured well. David remembered the time when that good water of Bethlehem
was in the possession of his ancestors; his father drank there, his mother
drank there. He remembered how that water tasted when he was a boy, and came up
from play. We never forget the old well we used to drink from when we were boys
or girls. There was something in it which blessed the lips and refreshed the
brows better than anything we have found since. As we think of that old well,
the memories of the past flow into each other like crystalline drops,
sun-glinted; and, all the more, we remember that the hand that used to lay hold
of the rope, and the hearts that beat against the well-curb, are still now. We
never get over these reminiscences. George P. Morris, the great song writer of this
country, once said to me that his song, “Woodman, spare that tree,” was sung in
a great concert hall, and the memories of early life were so wrought upon the
audience by that song, “Woodman, spare that tree,” that, after the song was
done, an aged mall arose in the audience, overwhelmed with emotion, and said,
“Sir, will you please tell me whether the woodman really spared the tree?” We
never forget the tree under which we played. We never forget the fountain at
which we drank. Alas! for the man who has no early memories. David thought of
that well, and he wanted a drink of it; but he remembered that the Philistines
had captured it. And this is true of this Gospel well. The Philistines have at
times captured it. When we come to take a full, old-fashioned drink of pardon
and comfort, don’t their swords of indignation and sarcasm flash? Why, the
sceptics tell us we cannot come to that fountain. They say the water is not fit
to drink anyhow. Depend upon it that well will come into our possession again,
though it has been captured. If there be not three anointed men in the Lord’s
host with enough consecration to do the work, then the swords will leap from
Jehovah’s bucklers, and the eternal three will descend--God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Ghost--conquering for our dying race the way back again
to “the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate.”
III. The Gospel well
is a well at the gate. Do you know that that well was at the gate, so that
nobody could go into Bethlehem without going right past it? And So it is with
this Gospel well--it is at the gate.
1. It is at the gate of purification. We cannot wash away our sins
unless with that water.
2. This well of the Gospel is at the gate of comfort. There is life
in the well at the gate. “All things work together for good to those who love
God.”
3. This Gospel well is at the gate of heaven. After you have been on
a long journey, and you come in all bedusted and tired to your house,
the first thing you want is refreshing ablution; and I am glad to know that
after we get through the pilgrimage of this world--the hard dusty
pilgrimage--we will find a well at the gate. In that one wash away will go our
sins and sorrows. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Memories of childhood
The incident belongs to that period in David’s life when he was an
outlaw, when Saul was hunting trim and he was hiding with ills ragged followers
in various mountains and eaves.
I. There are times
in every life when we are reminded of the well of bethlehem, and wish in vain
that we could drink of that well again. A children’s anniversary always brings
one of these times to grown-up people. I mean times when our thoughts are
carried back to early days, and we almost sigh as David did because we cannot
cross over to them again, We have visions of happy wells of which we drank in
the dear young days, and from which we are now separated by a barrier of years
and other things. And there are other things which we should like to return to
if it were in any way possible--the leisure, the golden opportunities, the
school days, and the wells of knowledge, the hours which we thought so little
of and for the most part wasted when we had them, the books we might have read,
the things we might, have learned, the fitness for life’s work we might have
gained. Most of us would be glad to have those chances repeated. And we have
all longings and regrets sadder than these. All of us, I say, though some have
reason to feel them more than others. Certain other things have left us which
the child had--a certain stock of happy innocence and purity and simple faith.
There were days when we knew little of evil; when we had no thought which we
wished to hide, when our feet had not been in any crooked ways; when our minds
were not defiled; when no chains of habit held us bound, and no fierce passions
within drove us to wrongdoing. It was our Garden of Eden, and the angel with
the flaming sword stops our return. This is what we mean by the wells of
Bethlehem. Or, as Tennyson expresses it--
“The
tender grace of a day that is dead
Will
never come back to me.”
II. We are
reminded by this story that there are better things in life than the well of
Bethlehem. David here was crying for his vanished childhood, and in a moment
certain things happened which proved to him that he was richer as a man than he
had ever been as a child. For one thing, he had won friendships that were
faithful to him even unto death. There are better things than the glory of
childhood, just as the gnarled, strong, winter-worn oak is nobler than the
slender sapling with its first shoots of green. God did not send us into the
world to be always children, but to be strong, long-suffering, serviceable men
and women; to make friends and deserve their friendship; to learn patience
through sorrow and courage, by facing difficulties, and take a real soldier’s
part m the great battle of life. And if we are doing that in a measure there is
no need to sigh for our Bethlehem days. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.)
The memory of boyhood
David was feeling the strong pressure of memory. He was living
again in his boyhood days, What he said was no doubt only a sentiment. Other
wells were just as refreshing, and their waters as cool as this well of his old
home, but for the moment David was living in the past, and his thirst for
water, which he drank in childhood could be taken, I think, as a longing for a
draught of the purity and the abundance of all that which went to make life
happy when he was a boy. Life is not all plain sailing for anyone, and so for a
brief hour, amid the pressure of your daily business and toil, you step aside
from the hurrying crowds and stop to rest awhile in the presence of God and to
think.
1. The old simple faith. The water may be taken as typifying and
standing for faith, the faith which the child always seems to drink in from any
religious-minded teacher. Those were the days when faith came simply and easily
to you; but you have been out into the world since then.
2. The dangers of young manhood. Is there any secret sin in your
life, come temptation to impurity, some yielding to that degrading sin of
intemperance, some playing with that modern vice of gambling which spoils and
mare and destroys so many lifes? Is there anything which you know is fouling
the purity of that religious youth that you had as s boy, which is clogging up
the stream and making it, alas! very muddy indeed? Well, do you sigh and long
to-day like David, for that pure stream, so fresh, so abundant, which
satisfies, that deep thirst for God which you had in the days gone by, before
sin and doubt had crept in? Thank God if you do, it shows your heart is still
in the right place, and that your life is not turned away so much from God as
perhaps at times you may have suspected. Will you renew that faith to-day?
3. The one standard. Remember, there is only one standard put before
us all, the highest of all standards--the measure of the stature of the fulness
of Christ. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (W. F.
J. Robberds.)
Costly water
This gift of water was associated with memories of early days. It
is wonderful how little sometimes will bring back old times to those who have
wandered far, in time or place, from the scenes of childhood’s years. It is
always so. “To this day,” says a French writer, wearied with his work in Paris,
and thinking longingly of a quiet holiday he once spent in algeria, “to this
day I cannot think of that siesta in the tent without regret and longing; but
on that afternoon, I must own, in that country, I thirsted for Paris.” When in
Paris he thirsts for Algeria, and when in Algeria he thirsts for Paris. So
David, when in Bethlehem as a boy, hoped likely for better days, and now,
looking back, he thinks there could not be anything better than those old times
over again. Cherish your dreams by all means, but, at the time time, learn to
prize the present, and to make the most and best of your opportunities now. Try
to see the present--its beauty and its value--as you will be sure to see it if
you are spared to look back from after years.
2. This gift of water would always be associated in David’s mind with
the love that brought it. What a splendid gift it was! Only a drink of water,
but it was turned, as it were, into sacramental wine by the love that brought
it. Just so is it that God values our gifts. The best of earthly gifts is poor,
but if it is given with a hearty spirit it will be graciously accepted. Some
one has said that God cares more for adverbs than for verbs; that is, more for
how a thing is done than for what is done. “Do it heartily as to the Lord,”
says St. Paul. The important word is not the verb “do,” but the adverb
“heartily.”
3. David felt that he must associate this gift in a special way with
God. It was one of the finest things he had ever had done to him in his life. Men’s
lives had been in jeopardy to get it. It was too rich an offering to make use
of only for his own gratification, and he poured it out unto the Lord. (J.
S. Maver, M. A.)
Verse 16-17
Nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out before
the Lord.
The sacredness of life
This event is probably to be referred to the time which
immediately succeeded David’s accession to the throne over an undivided
people. (2 Samuel 5:3; 2 Samuel 5:17.)
I. The sacredness
of life. To the Hebrew the blood was the vital principle (Genesis 4:4.) Hence it was not to be eaten. Even the
blood of a hunted animal or bird was to be reverently covered with dust (Leviticus 17:13.) Because of its
sacredness it was used in the temple worship in acts of consecration (Exodus 29:20), and in acts of
propitiation (Leviticus 4:6), and in its Divine
sacredness, as flowing from the Incarnate Word, it was poured out for, that
“full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins
of the whole world.” So, too, the solemn act of David expressed the fact that
life is a sacred thing.
1. With what mysteries is it linked, and mankind has ever associated
the mysterious with the sacred. In what manner did life, in its most
rudimentary form, enter into a world that till then had been lifeless? How
wondrous is the chain of life--each following link made of more precious
material arid more “curiously wrought”--that runs up from its first appearing
to man, to the angels, and to the Eternal!
2. How strangely is life interwoven with life, husband and wife,
child and parent, brother and brother, friend and friend. Weakness is linked to
strength, and folly to wisdom; while the weakness that is wise is helped by and
vet delivers the strength that is foolish. “No man liveth to himself” in the
economy of God.
3. What possibilities lie undeveloped in life. The child that
slumbers in its cradle may be a Croesus, a Raphael, a Napoleon, a Shakespeare,
a Luther. Even when life’s first stages may seem to justify a forecast of the
future, what possibilities remain to us in virtue of diligence, application,
fortitude, or through that overruling of things which we name fortune.
4. The everlastingness of its issues makes life sacred. The character
it fashions lasts. Any chord once made to vibrate--be it of feeling or thought,
or word, or act, or influence--may vibrate for ever. Death far from ending
rather reveals life’s issues.
5. Yet in the fact that the Son of God took to Himself a human
nature, lived a human life in its varied stages as babe and boy, as youth and
man, has life obtained its weightiest and indelible sanctity.
II. What is gained
by life’s risk partakes of life’s sanctity. Unharmed the three returned bearing
with them a draught of water for which their king and captain had longed. It
was the Balaclava of Israelitish history--an act of fruitless bravery, a
blunder only possible to heroes--though less fatal in its consequences. Had a
warrior been lost then regret for the foolish wish might have prompted the
libation. But though no evil had overtaken them the “jeopardy” had made the
water bleed-like and sacred, and lie “poured it out unto the Lord.”
1. Things necessary when purchased by life’s risk partake of this
sacredness. Every life sacrificed in the service of mankind makes man a debtor,
and sets the seal of sanctity upon the survivors. The substitute for the
conscript who dies upon the battlefield, the fireman who perishes at his task,
the lifeboatman who falls a victim to the raging sea, the physician and nurse who
die saving the patient, should make these whom they ransom at so great a cost
feel that every breath they draw is no common but a most sacred thing.
2. But things of convenience, hardly of necessity, are purchased at
the same cost, and obtain a like sanctity. Our boasted and elaborate
civilisation is costly in lives. To some it gives comfort and days, for others
it shortens the span of existence. And the civilisation which lengthens life is
largely dispensible; life without these blessings would be possible, though far
less enjoyable. Men could still live in wattled huts and warm themselves with a
wood or turf fire. There need be no coal fire, no steam engine, no railway
travelling, no great engineering works such as we are accustomed to. Yet, how
many and terrible are the disasters to life and limb, which have given us these
advantages, and to our nation so much of her wealth. Very costly are many of
the comforts and conveniences of our modern civilisation. The cutlery which,
bright and sharp, lies upon our dining table, has meant a reduction of the
years of life to the grinders who gave it edge. In many of the chemical and
mechanical processes which furnish us the conveniences of modern life there is
a similar sacrifice of the health and life of the workers. We should shrink
from doing without these things; deprived of them men would question if life be
worth living; but in the use of things purchased at such a cost let us remember
that cost; it would give an earnestness to much of the morally relaxed life we
live, could we see these things bedabbled with the blood that procured them.
3. Still more must we feel our responsibility when whims are
gratified by the risk of life. That water from the well by the gate was not a
necessity; it was the gratification of a sentiment; And it was the sense that
life had been jeoparded for a sentiment that made David treat it as he did.
III. There are two
directions in which these words have their bearing upon modern life.
1. Employment means employment of life, the hiring of blood. To say a
man employs so many “hands” is to mention the least important of the powers he
gets a claim upon. He employs lives, hearts, characters; souls that must live
for ever, destinies that never become spent. But these lives must be regarded as
sacred things, and every employer should bear with him the solemn sense of
responsibility. If he feels as David felt, “Is it not the blood of those men
who jeoparded their lives?” he will give in respect of those who serve him
every care for life and for health. Such a man would never send men to sea in
an unworthy ship, or to work with deficient apparatus, or expose them to the
peril of a risky boiler. Neither should the moral perils of employees be
forgotten. No man can justly retain as foreman a man of good ability but bad
morals. No clerk should be asked to pen a letter that goes against his moral
convictions; no traveller should be permitted to feel he must get orders by
means which are not “as the noonday clear,” The wealth that comes from ruined health,
lost lives, seared consciences, damned souls, “is it not the blood of these
men?”
2. Perhaps it is well to remember that most persons are the employers
of those who afford amusement. The stern Puritan days are largely past, and the
average Christian man does not refrain from public spectacles on the high
principle that “the world passeth away and the fashion thereof.” But dare men
believing in the Bible countenance amusements involving the risk of life; did
not the early church bring to an end the cruel sport of the Roman amphitheatre?
should not such sports as to-day involve the health and lives of those who
afford others pleasure be discountenanced, and by moral influence suppressed by
the followers of Christ. When we see in the coveted water from the well that is
by the gate, in the gratification we have or craved, the whim we have indulged,
the needless convenience we have thoughtlessly enjoyed--“the blood of men who
have jeoparded their lives”--then will a solemn sense of life’s sacredness
steal upon us, and we shall pray, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God.” (J.
T. L. Maggs, B. A.)
Waste
We speak of things being wasted when they are not used, or when
they are used for an inferior purpose to that which was originally intended.
But waste is a relative term; and in these economic days some of the most
valuable products have been obtained from substances that used to be thrown out
as utter refuse. The most brilliant colours are got from the waste of gas
manufacture; the sweetest perfumes and most delicate flavourings from the offal
of the street; and the mounds of rubbish excavated from the placer mines of
California have formed ever since the most fertile soil, in which have grown
harvests far more valuable than their richest gold. That which is said to be
wasted is often more precious than that which is employed for some utilitarian
purpose. The well of Bethlehem was associated with the happiest days of David’s
life, when, as a shepherd boy, without any care or trouble, he drank of it, and
went on his way rejoicing. The heat and burden of the day had consumed him in
the beleaguered garrison, and the thought of that water was to him like the
beautiful mirage--the desert’s dream of dewy fields and sparkling streams. And
yet, when a goblet full of the clear cold water was put into his bands, and he
was free to drink and slake his burning thirst, he would not take it. His
spirit rose above his languid frame and asserted its superiority. He nobly
denied himself what his body weakly craved. Some might call such spilling of
the water upon the ground an uncalled-for waste, and might blame David severely
for appearing to lightly esteem the act of the brave men. What though the water
had been procured at the cost of so much trouble and danger, did not that circumstance
enhance its value? Was it not the very reason why it should not have been
thrown away? The worst use to which it could be put was surely to pour it upon
the dry ground, where it would do no good to living thing, but would speedily
evaporate into the hot air, and leave no trace behind. We have all heard such
selfish reasonings, and witnessed such penurious prudence in regard to similar
acts of apparently rash generosity. But though the narrow-minded, capable only
of the most short-sighted policy, may condemn it, every enlightened conscience,
every generous heart, must deeply feel that David’s act of seeming wastefulness
was in reality one of the noblest in his life. It would have been selfish in
him to drink the water; but it was the height of unselfishness to refuse to
drink it. By not using it, he put it to the highest use. By pouring it out upon
the ground, seeming to waste it, he put a far greater value upon it than could
possibly have been done if it had been used only to slake his thirst. Drunk, it
would have refreshed the parched lips of David for a moment, and then the
incident would have been forgotten. The draught of water would have
accomplished its purpose, and that would have been the end of it for ever. But
by being refused, by being wasted upon the ground,, and offered as a libation
to the Lord of heaven and earth, its use remained unexhausted, its memory would
be for ever cherished. To all generations the deed will he spoken of as one of
the finest examples of generous self-denial and pious gratitude; and it will
have an inspiring effect upon all who come to know of it, inducing them to
practice similar self-denial and devotion in their own lives. The water spilt
upon the ground in this way, which could not be gathered up again, rose up to
heaven, a beautiful cloud gilded by the sun, to adorn the sky, to be seen and
admired of all eyes, and to fall again in fertilising rain and dew upon ground
that, but for it would have been for ever barren. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
Verse 19
Howbeit he attained not unto the first three.
The might of mediocrity
Everybody just now is deploring the singular dearth of genius
which marks our immediate era. Some historic periods are remarkable in
consequence of the brilliant constellations of extraordinarily gifted men which
illuminate them; but the current age threatens to resemble those starless
spaces of the firmament which perplex astronomers. In the musical world no one remains
to play the first fiddle. The dropped mantle of Macaulay lies unclaimed. A
modern commentator warmly protests against the custom of describing certain
prophets as “minor prophets”; but no one proposes to abolish the designation
“minor poets”--they are very much to the |ore, and there is no forehead worthy
of Tennyson’s laurel. Epoch-making scientists like Darwin and Faraday, and
masterly expositors of science like Huxley and Tyndall, have left no
successors. As to great singers like Lind and Titiens, we feel the silence that
Israel felt on the day and in the place of which the sacred historian wrote:
“Miriam died there, and was buried there.” No artist appears competent to take
up Millais’ fallen pencil. No orator like Bright charms the nation. We might
think that the forces of nature were spent. The greatest souls are rarer than
ever. This is the age of democracy, and it would seem as ii it were going to
justify Amiel’s dictum that “democracy is the grave of talent.” The nineteenth
century ended without leaving a single really great figure on the stage. We
rather welcome this parenthesis in the annals of the sublime; it gives a rare
opportunity to mediocrity to demonstrate its great merits, and to show that it
is not without considerable glory of its own. Nothing may compare with the
Divine virtue of genius; it is a direct gleam of the eternal light: and there
is little danger in our day that any real greatness will suffer depreciation
and neglect. The danger always is lest we should disesteem faithful mediocrity.
Victor Hugo regrets the English victory at Waterloo because it was “the victory
of mediocrity.” We do not care to attempt any refutation of this epigram; let
us allow that Wellington was not a brilliant adventurer like Napoleon, and
that, as poets reason, the victory of Waterloo was the triumph of mediocrity.
It must be acknowledged also that the victory of mediocrity is quite a feature
of the world’s general affairs and history. Ages ago the author of Ecclesiastes
wrote: “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to
men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance
happened to them all.” This keen observer discerned what Victor Hugo regretted,
that there is a place in the government of the world for the triumph of
mediocrity. We ourselves constantly observe the same thing. The brilliant
preacher conspicuously fails to create a church, whilst the plodding pastor
ministers through years to a flourishing congregation. The brilliant speculator
dies poor, whilst the homespun’ shopkeeper leaves an inheritance to his
children’s children. The fable of the hare and the tortoise never grows
obsolete. Said Diderot, “The world is for the strong.” But the world is not
altogether for the strong, neither are brilliant men permitted to ride
roughshod over the simple. The world is also for the faithful, the artless, the
industrious, the modest, and the meek. All things are not delivered over into
the hands of William the Conqueror, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Peter the
Great; strugglers destitute of original power and brilliant parts have a trick
of coming out at the top and sharing the spoils with the strong. We may
honestly rejoice that this is so. It may affront the romantic critic to see the
soldier of genius banished to St. Helena whilst the soldier of patience stands
before kings; but the fact is comforting and inspiring to the faithful many.
Intense, decisive faithfulness has the character of the sublime, and it sets
the virtuous man of ordinary intelligence on a level with the most gifted.
Commonplace talent united with high moral qualities is certainly one of the
most precious factors of civilisation. We must not permit ourselves to be
browbeaten by towering greatness; we too have possibilities. Faithful
mediocrity may enter hopefully into all social competitions; it often turns out
to be genius in undress; it has a good chance of the prizes of life. We are not
equal to daring assaults, far-reaching speculations, dazzling manoeuvres; but
simple truth and perfect patience possess mysterious efficacy, and they as well
as genius bring riches and honours, power, and fame. In our struggle against
gifted and splendid wickedness let us remember the victory of mediocrity. The
New Testament frequently calls attention to the power and magnificence of the
kingdom of evil. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” “And there was war in
heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought
and his angels.” The Apocalypse brings out very strikingly the glory and power
of the evil with which the saints contend. Wickedness is seen with many heads,
eyes, and horns; she is arrayed in purple and scarlet, decked with precious
stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand; force, fire, and fury are
attributes of the awful power. This picture is not mere rhetoric. In the actual
world we find these gigantic and lurid poetic images distinctly and powerfully
reflected. A thousand times over wickedness is seen identified with royal
magnificence, luminous intellect, immense learning, fabulous riches,
indomitable courage, and resources all but infinite. Now it seems simply
impossible for good, plain, honest, spiritual souls to make headway against the
devilry thus leagued with might, magnificence, and stratagem. Men smile
pitifully when they read on the page of history of clowns going forth with
scythes, pikes, and pitchforks to do battle with panoplied hosts; but it seems
unutterably more absurd for simple men and women to dare the rampant wickedness
of the universe, boasting as it does this strength and splendour. In the
natural world we daily witness the victories of mediocrity, and we may be sure
that in the spiritual universe these victories are not less wonderful. The
conflict of simple souls with the dash and guile of the demoniac powers appears
a battle of doves with eagles; but tiny humming birds are said to attack the
eagle with impunity, ignominiously driving it away. So wickedness in its utmost
pride is strangely vulnerable, and sinks vanquished by very weakness There is a
haste in wickedness which threatens its overthrow; it is feverish, premature,
precipitate, and in its hurry comes to grief, despite the greatest advantages.
Goodness, on the other hand, is deliberate, tranquil, patient, and herein finds
a source of strength and victory. “Here is the patience and faith of the
saints.” All hell in its wrath and pride makes shipwreck on this
innocent-looking rock of simple faith and steadfastness, as at Waterloo the
glittering, impetuous legions of France were worn out by the sheer patience and
confidence of the duke. There is a blindness in wickedness which frustrates its
designs. Brilliant, crafty sinners fall into egregious mistakes; they are
guilty of surprising lapses, oversights, miscalculations. There is also in
wickedness s pride and presumption which work its confusion, and in Strange
ways turn its pomp into shame, its boastings into failure. Napoleon is reported
to have said on the morning of Waterloo that he would “teach that little English general a
lesson.” Such pride cometh before destruction. How utterly wrong are they who
capitulate to temptation from the
notion that evil is overwhelming, that it is necessarily
victorious! We too often forget the penetration of sincerity, the depth of
simplicity, the cleverness of uprightness, the strategy of straightforwardness;
we forget that patience is genius, that persistence is the most unequivocal
sign of force, that there is a conquering awfulness in real goodness, an
all-subduing loveliness in the form of simple virtue. Mediocre as we are, we
are destined to great victories. Entrenched in nature, exalted on thrones,
defended by literature and eloquence, wickedness shall be vanquished by plain,
good men. (W. L. Watkinson.)
The value of second-rate
To the student who asked, “What is the good of second-rate art?”
Ruskin replied: “I am glad you asked me that question. Fifth rate, sixth rate,
to s hundredth rate art is good. Art that gives s pleasure to any one has s
right to exist. For instance, if I can only draw a duck that looks as though he
waddled, I may give pleasure to the last baby of our hostess, while a flower
beautifully drawn will give pleasure to her eldest girl, who is just beginning
to learn botany, and it may be useful to some man of science. The true outline
of a leaf shown a child may turn the whole course of its life.
Second-rate art is useful to a greater number of people than even first-rate
art--there are so few minds of high enough order to understand the highest kind
of art. Many more people find pleasure in Copley or Fielding than in Turner.
Most people only see the small vulgarisms in Turner, and cannot appreciate his
grander qualities.” (Christian Weekly.)
Verse 20
He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of
snow.
A lion in the snow
Perhaps, like me, you have at times found yourself wondering how
it was that Palestine was chosen to be the land of She Bible? There is a
reason, if we did but know it. Perhaps because, so far as I know the world,
there is no other country which for climate and other things is so much of a
world in itself. For instance, we read of a man who slew a lion in time of
snow. Now we don’t often think of lions and snow in the same place, but the
Holy Land was a place where you could get all sorts of weather and all sorts of
beasts. The fact is, the old Book was written for all the world; and, live
where you like, you find it speaking of something which you see every day.
Whoever reads the Bible should, however, use his imagination. For instance, in
this story, as we read, we must think Of that old quarry, and how it would look
when the snow was falling. Was the hero of the tale a farmer, and had he gone
out to look after the stock, and did he see, to his horror, the footprints of a
large beast? The marks on the snow are like those of a cat’s feet, but very
much larger. We can hear him say, “There’s a lion down there! He has gone for
shelter. Won’t he be hungry? When the snow-storm is over, he will have my
calves or sheep. No, he won’t! if I am the man I ought to be, there shall be a
dead lion or a dead man in five minutes;” so he went down and slew the great
cat that would have otherwise robbed his flock or his family.
I. God always did
like courage, especially the sort that is not afraid of great odds. He who
always waits to count his enemies will never wear the Victoria Cross. If you
are the only Christian in She shop, there’s a chance for you to distinguish
yourself. When I was a lad, elections were much rougher than they are nowadays.
You could get your head broken without any trouble. A man I knew was
electioneering, and strayed into the wrong committee-room. However, he found
out his mistake in time, and pulled off his ribbon, put it in his mouth, and
swallowed it. That is what some fellows do with their religion when they are in
the midst of God’s foes.
II. Difficulties
and dangers which give the chance of promotion. If you will follow this man to
other parts of the Bible, you will find him at the head of four-and twenty
thousand men. Now David did not make men captains because their fathers before
them were officers; they had to rise by merit; and King David’s greater Son,.
the Prince of Peace, lifts privates into captains when they have shown their
mettle. They tell a tale in Lancashire of an Oldham man enlisting with the
distinct understanding that he was to he an officer; but next morning, when he
woke from his drunken slumbers, he found himself a full private. I am afraid if
he ever got a stripe it was only one of many, and they were on his back and not
on his arm! Distinguish yourself, and ignominy cannot claim you. The higher you
get up the hill the less crowding you will find. When a collection is taken,
and some one drops in a piece of gold, it may be hidden by penny pieces while
in the box, but when counting begins they will soon see. This man Benaiah
little dreamed that three thousand years after he killed the lion somebody
would think it worth his while to talk of what happened that snowy day. The
fact is, we are making history every day, and it is for ourselves to settle
whether it is to be sheen or shade. (T. Champness.)
Benaiah
Benaiah went down also and “slew a lion in the midst of the pit in
the time of snow.” That is a man worth looking at! It is a snow day; think of
it. It is difficult to be brave on a day like that. But that was the day when
Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of Kabzeel, who had done
many mighty acts, went and did another. Did it ever occur to you that that man
was wonderfully like another Benaiah? Did you ever think he was wonderfully
like the Lord Jesus Christ, who, on one of the dullest and darkest days that
ever the world saw, went down into the pit, and encountered, face to face, the
devourer and the destroyer of men. And He had nobody to encourage and nobody to
cheer. All His disciples forsook Him and fled; and single, unaided, and alone,
He went down into the pit, and slew the lion, the dragon, the devourer. He
fought and He won. There is a lion-like strength of evil in every one of us,
and we are not saved till our foot is upon its neck, and its power is broken.
With some, the lion is out, ranging and roaring, as that lion might be supposed
to have been before this snowy day when he fell into the pit. No, the big work
is to be done yet. Go down into the pit; go down into the deeps of your own
fallen nature, the depths of Satan in you; go down there quick, in the strength
of Benaiah, and win that fight, or you are not saved yet. None of us, old or
young, ignorant or learned, has a right to feel safe until he has done
Benaiah’s deed, and gone down into the depths of sin that are in himself with
the lamp of God and the sword of God, and stabbed to the heart the life of sin
that is in the very deep places of his soul. What does Benaiah mean? Benaiah
means, literally, the man whom God built. There is something in a name, after
all The man whom God built from the protoplasm upward and onward, the
God-built, God-strengthened, God-nerved, God-sustained man. May God grant that
all of us shall have that pedigree! “Born not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of man, but born of God.” Born again! Spiritual men, whose
foundations God hath laid in Christ Jesus; and out of whom God is making strong,
stalwart, heroic, spiritual, men, because He has built them and founded them on
the Eternal Rock of His own dear Son. (J. McNeill.)
Possible achievement of a man plus God
The Rev. F. B. Meyer had been shown a wonderful collection of
chrysanthemums. The horticulturist said to him, “And all these glorious blooms
come from a common field daisy.” In response to Mr. Meyer’s questions, the
expert told how, by long processes of patient cultivation pursued through a
number of years, the simple wild-flower had become a triumph of scientific
development. “I see,” he said, “the chrysanthemum is a field-daisy, plus a
man.” “Yes,” said the gardener, “that is it.” “And,” said Mr. Meyer, with
impressive intensity, “A Christian is a man plus God--God in Christ, who came
to give us life, abundantly.”
Possibility of great achievements
There is a wonderful power in honest work to develop latent
energies and reveal a man to himself. I suppose, in most cases, nobody is half
so much surprised at a great man’s greatest deed as he is himself. They say
that, there is dormant electric energy enough to make a thunderstorm in a few
rain drops, and there is dormant spiritual force enough in the weakest of us to
flush into beneficent light, and peal notes of awaking into many a deaf ear. (A.
Malaren, D. D.)
Enterprise essential to success
Success is the reward of endeavour not of accident. Rufus Cheats,
when someone remarked that great achievements often resulted from chance,
thundered out, “Nonsense! as well talk of dropping the alphabet and picking up
the Iliad.”
──《The Biblical Illustrator》