| Back to Home Page | Back to Book Index
|
1
Chronicles Chapter Twenty-nine
1 Chronicles 29
Chapter Contents
David induces the princes and people to offer willingly.
(1-9) His thanksgiving and prayer. (10-19) Solomon enthroned. (20-25) David's
reign and death. (26-30)
Commentary on 1 Chronicles 29:1-9
(Read 1 Chronicles 29:1-9)
What is done in works of piety and charity, should be
done willingly, not by constraint; for God loves a cheerful giver. David set a
good example. This David offered, not from constraint, or for show; but because
he had set his affection to the house of God, and thought he could never do
enough towards promoting that good work. Those who would draw others to good,
must lead the way themselves.
Commentary on 1 Chronicles 29:10-19
(Read 1 Chronicles 29:10-19)
We cannot form a right idea of the magnificence of the
temple, and the buildings around it, about which such quantities of gold and
silver were employed. But the unsearchable riches of Christ exceed the
splendour of the temple, infinitely more than that surpassed the meanest
cottage on earth. Instead of boasting of these large oblations, David gave
solemn thanks to the Lord. All they gave for the Lord's temple was his own; if
they attempted to keep it, death would soon have removed them from it. They
only use they could make of it to their real advantage, was, to consecrate it
to the service of Him who gave it.
Commentary on 1 Chronicles 29:20-25
(Read 1 Chronicles 29:20-25)
This great assembly joined with David in adoring God.
Whoever is the mouth of the congregation, those only have the benefit who join
him, not by bowing down the head, so much as by lifting up the soul. Solomon
sat on the throne of the Lord. Solomon's kingdom typified the kingdom of the
Messiah, whose throne is the throne of the Lord.
Commentary on 1 Chronicles 29:26-30
(Read 1 Chronicles 29:26-30)
When we read the second book of Samuel, we could scarcely
have expected to behold David appear so illustrious in his closing scene. But
his repentance had been as remarkable as his sin; and his conduct during his
afflictions, and towards the end of his life, appears to have had a good effect
on his subjects. Blessed be God, even the chief of sinners may hope for a
glorious departure, when brought to repent and flee for refuge to the Saviour's
atoning blood. Let us mark the difference between the spirit and character of
the man after God's own heart, living and dying, and those of worthless
professors, who resemble him in nothing but their sins, and who wickedly try to
excuse their crimes by his sins. Let us watch and pray, lest we be overcome by
temptation, and overtaken by sin, to the dishonour of God, and the wounding of
our own consciences. When we feel that we have offended, let us follow David's
example of repentance and patience, looking for a glorious resurrection,
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 1 Chronicles》
1 Chronicles 29
Verse 2
[2] Now
I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God the gold for things
to be made of gold, and the silver for things of silver, and the brass for
things of brass, the iron for things of iron, and wood for things of wood; onyx
stones, and stones to be set, glistering stones, and of divers colours, and all
manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance.
My might —
Work for God must be done with all our might, or we shall bring nothing to pass
in it.
Verse 4
[4] Even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven
thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the houses withal:
Of Ophir —
The best and purest gold.
The walls —
The walls of the temple with God, and of the rooms adjoining to it, with silver
beaten out into plates.
Verse 5
[5] The
gold for things of gold, and the silver for things of silver, and for all
manner of work to be made by the hands of artificers. And who then is willing
to consecrate his service this day unto the LORD?
To consecrate — To
offer an offering, as I have done. Heb. To fill his hand unto the Lord. They
that engage themselves in the service of God, will have their hands full: there
is work enough for the whole man in that service.
Verse 9
[9] Then
the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because with perfect
heart they offered willingly to the LORD: and David the king also rejoiced with
great joy.
Rejoiced —
Because this was both an effect of God's grace in them, an eminent token of
God's favour to them, and a pledge that this long-desired work, would receive a
certain and speedy accomplishment.
Great joy — To
see the work, which his heart was so much set upon, likely to go on. It is a
great reviving to good men when they are leaving the world, to see those they
leave behind zealous for the work of God.
Verse 10
[10] Wherefore David blessed the LORD before all the congregation: and David
said, Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our father, for ever and ever.
Blessed, … —
David was now full of days, and near his end, and it well becomes the aged
children of God, to have their hearts much enlarged in praise and thanksgiving.
The nearer we come to the land of everlasting praise, the more we should speak
the language, and do the work of that world.
Verse 14
[14] But
who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly
after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given
thee.
To offer —
That thou shouldest give us both riches to make such an offering, and a willing
heart to offer them, both which are the gifts and the fruits of thy good grace
and mercy to us.
Of thine — We
return only what we have received, and therefore only pay a debt to thee. The
more we do for God, the more we are indebted to him; for the honour of being
employed in his service, and for grace enabling us in any measure to serve him.
Verse 15
[15] For
we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days
on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.
Strangers —
For the land which we possess is thine, not ours; we are not the proprietors
but only thy tenants: and as our fathers once were mere strangers in it, even
before men, so we at this day are no better before thee, having no absolute
right in it, but only to travel through it, and sojourn in it for the short
time that we live in the world.
None abiding — We
only give thee what we must shortly leave, and what we cannot keep to
ourselves: and therefore it is a great favour that thou wilt accept such
offerings. David's days had as much of substance in them as most men: for he
was upon the whole a good man, an useful man, and now an old man. And yet he
puts himself in the front of those who must acknowledge, that their days on the
earth are as a shadow: which speaks of our life as a vain life, a dark life, a
transient life, and a life that will have its period, either in perfect light
or perfect darkness.
Verse 16
[16] O
LORD our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for
thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.
All thine own — In
like manner we ought to acknowledge God in all spiritual things: referring
every good thought, good desire, and good work to his grace.
Verse 18
[18] O
LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in
the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their
heart unto thee:
Of Abraham, … — A
God in covenant with them, and with us for their sakes.
Keep forever —
Since it is from thy grace that thy people have such willing minds, continue
that grace to them, that they may persist in the same generous disposition
towards thee and thy worship.
Prepare —
Or, rather, confirm, thou who hast begun a good work, confirm and carry it on
by thy grace.
Verse 20
[20] And
David said to all the congregation, Now bless the LORD your God. And all the
congregation blessed the LORD God of their fathers, and bowed down their heads,
and worshipped the LORD, and the king.
Worshipped —
The Lord with religious, and the king with civil worship.
Verse 22
[22] And
did eat and drink before the LORD on that day with great gladness. And they
made Solomon the son of David king the second time, and anointed him unto the LORD
to be the chief governor, and Zadok to be priest.
The second time —
The first time, was when he was made king during Adonijah's conspiracy.
And Zadok — It
must be remembered that the high-priest had his viceregent who might officiate
in his stead. So that this action of theirs, the anointing Zadok, did not,
actually constitute him high-priest, but only settled the reversion of it upon
him and his line after Abiathar's death; even as David's making Solomon king,
and their anointing Solomon to be the chief governor here, did not put him into
actual possession of the kingdom, but only gave him a right to it after the
present king's death: hence, notwithstanding this anointing, Abiathar continued
to exercise his office 'till Solomon thrust him out, 1 Kings 2:27.
Verse 24
[24] And
all the princes, and the mighty men, and all the sons likewise of king David,
submitted themselves unto Solomon the king.
Of the Lord — On
the throne of Israel, which is called the throne of the Lord, because the Lord
himself was in a peculiar manner the king and governor of Israel. He had the
founding, he had the filling of their throne, by immediate direction.
Verse 26
[26] Thus
David the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.
Thus, … —
This sacred writer having mentioned the anointing of Solomon and upon that
occasion proceeded to give a farther account of Solomon's actual settlement in
his kingdom, returns to his main business, to give an account of the close of David's
reign and life. He here brings him to the end of his day, leaves him asleep,
and draws the curtains about him.
Verse 28
[28] And
he died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour: and Solomon his
son reigned in his stead.
Riches and honour —
That is, he had enough of this world, and of the riches of and honour of it;
and he knew when he had enough. He was satisfied with it, and very willing to
go to a better place.
Verse 29
[29] Now
the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are written in the
book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book
of Gad the seer,
The book — In
the chronicles of the kingdom, which were written by Nathan and Gad, who were
not only prophets, but historiographers out of which either they or some other
prophets took by the direction of God's spirit such passages, as were most
important and useful for the church in succeeding ages.
Verse 30
[30] With
all his reign and his might, and the times that went over him, and over Israel,
and over all the kingdoms of the countries.
The times —
The changes which befel him; both his troubles, and his successes, the word
time or times being often put for things done or happening in them.
The countries —
Bordering upon the land of Canaan.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 1 Chronicles》
29 Chapter 29
Verses 1-10
Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation.
Christian experience and Christian influence
I. The nearer a
good man approaches his end, the more spiritually-minded he becomes.
II. The more
spiritually-minded a good man becomes, the greater his influence upon others.
III. The greater
influence a good man has upon others, the more certainly will God’s work be
accomplished. (J. Wolfendale.)
The principles of Christian work
1. Personal consecration and example.
2. Willing co-operation by all.
3. Appropriateness of service and gifts.
4. Animated by a true spirit of enthusiasm and joy. (J.
Wolfendale.)
A good example and the power of it
God is calling His people everywhere to undertake a work for His
glory, which in importance and magnitude and grandeur infinitely transcends the
work He laid upon Solomon--the evangelisation of the entire world--the building
of that great spiritual temple which is to fill the earth and into which all
nations and peoples are to be gathered.
I. The Divine call
to this work is direct, imperative, and loud.
II. It is attested
by signs and wonders as marvellous and impressive to the spiritually discerning
as the miracles of apostolic times.
III. The call in
this instance is to the entire Church of Christ, individually and collectively.
The command, the obligation is universal and cannot be evaded. If you have not
gold and silver to bestow, give yourself--heart, soul, mind, prayers,
influence. If you cannot go to the heathen, send a substitute, give of your
means, etc.
IV. The times
demand large gifts, princely offerings.
V. Never had the
power of example such potency as now. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Interest in God’s work
It is always well for us to take a loving and deep interest in the
work of God. We may have at heart some end which we desire to achieve for God’s
glory, and because we know that it springs from such a motive may proceed to
carry it out without questioning whether we are to be the agents through which
it is to be
accomplished. But there may be others better fitted for the work than we are,
whom God has in reserve. And what matters it whether we or others do the work,
so long as it is done by men chosen of God? “The work goes on, though the
workmen die,” are the words which Dean Stanley most appropriately had inscribed
on Wesley’s memorial in Westminster Abbey. Other men labour, and we enter into
their labours. The work they sought to accomplish God denied to them, but lays
upon us. (Dr. Egbert.)
Power of example
Before us was a narrow bridge, and between us and the bridge were
several thousand sheep. They would have taken a long time going over, and would
effectually have checked our entrance into the town, but for a clever plan for
getting the sheep quickly over. A few sheep are trained as a sort of decoy.
They are at first pet lambs, and then in time become pet sheep. They are kept
by the authorities who have control of the bridge, and are let to the
sheep-drovers for so much, in order to effect a speedy passage of the bridge.
The keepers of the pets go first, then follow the three or four pets, and then
away after them the three or four thousand of the mob, as they are called here.
(H. T. Robjohns.)
The house of the Lord
I. The building is
for the Lord God, because it is for the presentation of God’s worship. God
claims to be worshipped. He deserves to be worshipped for--
II. The building is
for the Lord because it is built for the proclamation of God’s truth.
III. The building is
for the Lord because it is for the promotion of God’s purposes. God’s purposes
are that men should be saved, sanctified, enlightened, comforted, strengthened,
stimulated, and helped on to glory. (John Corbin.)
The palace for God
These words are not to be pressed unduly, nor their spirit
sacrificed to the letter, in forgetfulness of the idiom of the language in
which they are recorded. The patriotic king no more forgot his nation’s welfare
in the sense of the sacredness of the work, than the prophet who first uttered
the immortal words, “I love mercy and not sacrifice,” dreamed of extinguishing
the altar fires and abolishing the office of the priesthood seven centuries before
the “fulness of time.” Their principal meaning is obvious. An edifice was
formed, a pattern was already, it is written, present to his mind’s eye. It was
to be no regal palace, however stately, no home for oriental splendour and
magnificence; it was to be consecrated for ever to the Jehovah to whom he and
his people were bound by everlasting covenant. Yet the truth that no house made
with hands could in any literal sense hold Him whom the heaven of heavens could
not contain, was already deep in the conscience, and finding expression in the
words of God’s truest servant. He who was revealed to the Psalmist, the
Psalmist-king well knew, no roof of cedar, no walls of stone, no building
however sacred, however sumptuous, could be His real home. It could be only so
far His dwelling-place, when His unseen presence could be found and realised by
those who sought Him--found best by those who could rise in spirit above that
imageless temple, above that altar smoke, and all the machinery of ritual, to
the Father of their spirits and the God of their salvation. There is a sense,
therefore, in which we may, without irreverence, almost invert the words, and
yet gain, rather than lose, their true significance. The palace is not for God,
we might even say, as a literal dwelling-place. To Him, the marble, and the
cedar, and the palm-tree, and the olive, and the brass, and the gold are as
nothing. The palace in this sense is not for God, but it is for man--not for
man as merely the foremost of creatures to draw the breath of life on the
earth, but for man as the worshipper, as the servant, as the conscious and
devout adorer of Him who has created him in His own image; for man as the place
for worship which may reclaim, and purify, and uplift his fallen nature; which
may bring him into communion with his Father and his God; a place where all
that appeals to his highest earthly sense may enable him to forget the things
of sense, and reach out to
what eye hath not seen or ear heard. And for so bold an apparent inversion of
the letter, in order to bring home to our minds the inner spirit of the words,
I may surely plead the example of Him who taught His people that the seventh
day, which was proclaimed at Sinai to be the Sabbath of the Lord our God, was,
for all that, made for man, and that the Son of Man was Lord also of the
Sabbath. (Dean Bradley.)
The importance of Church extension
To realise the importance of the work of Church extension,
consider--
I. That religion
is essential to the welfare of a nation (Psalms 33:12; Isaiah 60:12).
II. It is a work
that shall reach forward through many generations (1 Chronicles 28:8).
III. It is your
appointed privilege (1 Chronicles 28:10).
IV. What is implied
in the word sanctuary? (1 Chronicles 28:10). A sanctuary is
a place of refuge from impending evils. If a man erect a lighthouse, he is
honoured for preventing a great loss of life. If he build a hospital he is
revered as the benefactor of his race for the mitigation of pain. But he who
builds a church, or assists in the work, does more. Under the Divine blessing
he is instrumental in enlightening dark minds, comforting troubled consciences,
and in saving immortal souls.
V. The temple was
a type of the Christian Church.
VI. If David and
Solomon were so zealous in providing means for having the type only, how much
more anxious should we Be to put ourselves and others in possession of the
substance?
VII. It is seldom
that a great work can be accomplished by an individual. (1 Chronicles 29:1).
VIII. It is for the
glory of God (1 Chronicles 29:1).
IX. David’s example
(1 Chronicles 29:2).
X. The affection
we ought to bear to God’s house (1 Chronicles 29:3). (H. Clissold,
M. A.)
David’s desire to build a house for God
I. The God whom
David worshipped. He worshipped God--
1. As the Supreme Being (1 Chronicles 29:11).
2. As the God of his fathers (1 Chronicles 29:10).
3. As personally appropriated: “My God”
II. Some of the
reasons which led David to desire to build a house for his God.
1. Jealousy for the honour of God.
2. Love and gratitude to God.
3. The thought that others besides himself should worship therein. (J.
Shillito.)
Attachment to the sanctuary
It is of one of the noble qualities of the religious life of the
Jews I would speak--their love for the house of God.
I. The house of
God. The house of worship is the house of God.
II. Because the
ancient Jews loved the Lord’s house they made it beautiful. This was natural,
lawful, and Divinely sanctioned. This impulse was recognised, called out, and
approved by God.
III. It was a
general affection exercised and expressed by all the people. (Henry J.
VanDyke.)
Godly giving
I. The object.
“The work is great; for the palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.”
1. In respect of the greatness of Him for whose use the palace is
made.
2. The value of what is wrought there to all mankind.
3. The consequent expenditure.
II. The giving.
Circumstances of David’s great collection and of ours are very different, but
the principles are the same.
1. Definitely to the Lord. The money went into the hands of
treasurers, but it was given to God.
2. Voluntary, “Who is willing?” “They offered willingly.”
3. Hearty and gladsome. “Because I have set my affection to the house
of my God,” is David’s reason for giving (1 Chronicles 29:3). And of all the
givers it is said, “The people rejoiced for that they offered willingly,
because with perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord” (1 Chronicles 29:9).
4. With preparation. Mistake to give on sudden impulse only or to
imagine that forethought, and method, and consideration are opposed to
heartiness; intelligent, Christian love will lead to these in proportion as it
is fervent. “I have prepared with all my might” (1 Chronicles 29:2).
5. With devout acknowledgement. “Both riches and honour come of
Thee.” “All this store cometh of Thine hand, and is all Thine own” (1 Chronicles 29:11-16).
6. With fervent prayer (1 Chronicles 29:18-19). (Homiletic
Magazine.)
Verse 5
And who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto
the Lord.
Consecration
I. Service. This
demands--
1. A settled purpose.
2. An active resolve.
II. A welling
service.
1. A willing service is the only efficient service.
2. The willingness of our service is the only part that is absolutely
required.
III. An immediate
service.
1. Seasons for service are never absent.
2. Efficiency and pleasure ensue when service is performed in its own
time.
IV. The highest
service. The service of the Lord implies--
1. That the mind is perpetually under the influence of Divine truth.
2. That holy thoughts are actuated by the presence of the Spirit in
them.
3. Entire consecration. (Thos. Davies, D. D.)
Self-dedication
It does the heart good to read over those closing chapters of this
book and to note the spirit which animated the generation for which the first
temple was built. As regards the cost and beauty of our churches there is this
to be borne in mind, that whatever our present shortcomings may be, there is
one great difference between ourselves and the ancient people of God--that
whereas all their gifts were offered for a single building, we have to maintain
all the churches in the kingdom, which in number must be fast approaching
twenty thousand. But large as are the sums which have been spent, and are daily
being spent on church building and church restoration, there is one offering
which God values more than any other gift, and which each of us, from highest
to lowest, may offer if we will--a perfect heart. (F. E. Paget.)
Consecration to God’s service
I. The nature of
the service required. The service of God is a phrase which amounts to much the
same thing as the worship of God.
1. Servitude sometimes arises from--
2. The service which God requires involves--
II. What are the
obligations under which we are all placed to render such service to the
Almighty?
1. It is the duty of man to obey and serve Him.
2. Such service is very profitable and beneficial to man.
3. It is a refuge to its subject in the day of trouble.
4. It is an antidote to the fear of death.
III. That the
service of God is indispensable.
1. Because it is the commandment of God.
2. The grand design of human life is the service of God.
3. The service of God is the only means of salvation.
IV. I come now to
propose the inquiry, “Who then is willing? “ etc.
1. The service of God is a willing service.
2. I address myself
(a) At the magnitude of the work.
(b) The difficulty with which it may afterwards be accomplished.
(c) The shortness and uncertainty of life.
(d) The consequences that will follow from this early devotement of
yourselves unto God. Objections:
1. Time enough yet.
2. I shall lose my friends if I embrace in my youth the religion of
Jesus Christ. It was once said by an ancient philosopher, “Caesar is my
friend--I have nothing to fear”; and a greater than Caesar is here. Jesus is “a
friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
3. To embrace religion in youth will expose to obloquy and shame. Was
it not said by one of the ancients that where God is there can be no exile--no
banishment from His presence?
4. God is merciful, and we may get religion when we please. You may
reckon on mercy until you are taken out of the world without it; and there is
no mercy beyond the gates of death. (W. Tease.)
Who is willing to serve God
I. The nature of
the service which God demands.
1. It is spiritual. It is the homage and devotion of the heart. All
the intellectual powers, the understanding, will, affections, conscience,
memory are to be dedicated to the worship of God. Without this no service can
be acceptable to God (Isaiah 1:11; Isaiah 1:13; Matthew 15:8-9).
2. It is to be constant and unremitting (1 Corinthians 10:31).
3. It must be affectionate. It is impossible for us to offer any
acceptable service to God which does not spring from this love in our heart (1 John 5:3). How is this to be
obtained? The answer is Very plain (Ephesians 4:22-24). Thus God will “create
a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within you.”
4. It must be practical (Matthew 5:16; 1 Corinthians 9:27; 2 Corinthians 10:5).
II. The service
which God requires of us should be performed without delay.
1. It is enjoined upon us by the Scriptures (Hebrews 3:15; Joshua 24:15; 2 Corinthians 6:2). You have no
certainty that any further opportunities will be afforded in which you may
serve God (Proverbs 27:1; Luke 13:25-27).
3. The longer you defer entering into the service of God the more
difficulties and obstacles will be thrown in your way. How absurd the notion
that futurity will present more favourable opportunities for serving God than
any with which we have yet been blessed. Suppose a sick man were to say, “As
long as this disorder remains upon me, and the more deeply my constitution is
affected by it, the more certainly shall I receive a speedy cure.” Would you
consider this person to be perfectly sane? Or should one of your debtors assure
you that by your increasing his obligations to you some three or four fold he
would be immediately able to cancel the whole, would you believe him? The
longer you live in sin the more grievously do you provoke God. You “crucify to
yourselves the Son of God afresh.” It is awfully possible for men to outlive
the day of grace (Psalms 95:11).
4. Our services will be more acceptable now than they can possibly be
at any future period.
III. Let us now
consider the import of the question, “Who then is willing? “ etc.
1. It carries with it the assumption that God is waiting to accept
your service.
2. It implies also that every one possesses the ability to consecrate
his service unto God.
3. We are taught by the text that there is a disinclination in the
heart of man to submit himself to the will of God.
Conclusion:
1. This is the most honourable service in which you can engage
2. It is pleasant (Proverbs 3:17; Isaiah 32:17; Psalms 16:3; Isaiah 2:5).
3. It is reasonable (Acts 17:28).
4. It is the only service which secures a vast reward (1 Corinthians 2:9). (R. Treffry.)
Consecration
The New Version reads, “Who then offereth willingly to consecrate
himself this day unto the Lord.” This preferable reading suggests the theme of
self consecration to God.
I. What this
consecration involves. A man may consecrate many things to God and yet not
consecrate himself. God does not value s man’s money, time, talents, if
he withholds himself. Consecration of self involves--
1. The heart. This is the seat of our affections, the love of our
nature, end the fountain from which flows everything that constitutes the
character. “Give me thine heart.”
2. The body. The body as well as the soul is the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:15; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 5:30). Self-consecration covers
our whole being--body, soul, and spirit. It will also embrace our time,
talents, wealth.
II. The claim which
God has to this self-consecration. His claim results--
1. From His love. God loves us. The love of a father constitutes a
claim to the love of a dutiful son, how much more to the love of a prodigal
son.
2. From the way in which God has consecrated or sanctified Himself
for us. “He gave Himself for me.”
3. He asks our self-consecration to His service because it is the
best thing we can do for ourselves.
III. This
self-consecration is immediate duty.
1. It is a great mistake for any to withhold self-consecration
because they are too young. It is easier to be pure, and truthful, and loving,
and diligent in the service of God when young than it will be to practise those
virtues when old, if you have neglected them when young. The habits formed by a
life of sin and neglect of God are like iron chains that you cannot easily
break. Many who once said they were too young are now saying they are too old.
2. The sooner you commence to serve God the more you will be able to
accomplish.
3. The present may be your only opportunity. We have been speaking
specially to the young; but this is also a word for the aged. It is a
delightful thing to see the young decide for Christ, but it is a sad thing to
see the parents left behind. I was deeply impressed with this one day. I was on
a visit close to the east coast where so many wrecks had recently taken place;
among them was a vessel at the mouth of the Tyne. It was Christmas day, and on
the pier among the crowd of spectators stood the son of the captain, watching
and waiting for his father; for he was expected to be at home on that festive
day. Probably as they gazed at each other a violent sea struck the vessel, and
it sunk with all hands--wrecked within sight of port and within sight of
friends. Parents, are there none of your children who have decided for Christ,
and are standing on the Rock and looking out and expecting you home? Shall they
see you wrecked within sight of port? (Absalom Clarke.)
Service for God
Men make a great deal of to-morrow. God always and everywhere lays
stress on to-day. Day by day God supplies, and day by day He asks us to serve.
In reference to this service we want to try and answer three questions.
I. Who is it asks
for it?
II. Why does he
want it? God wishes to use men, because by this means He can bestow richer
blessing upon them than He could in any other way.
III. How may we
render it?
1. By yielding your heart to Him.
2. By living an upright, consistent, unselfish life.
3. By earnest loving effort.
4. By helping and encouraging His people. (J. D. Kilburn.)
Christian consecration
I. Christian
consecration is a personal thing: “Who?”
II. Christian
consecration is a voluntary thing: “Who is willing?”
III. Christian
consecration is an active thing: His service.”
IV. Christian
consecration is a reasonable thing: “Unto the Lord.”
V. Christian
consecration is a prompt thing: “This day.”
VI. Christian
consecration is a sympathetic thing: it prompts the consecrated to commend the
grace of God to others and press the question, “Who is willing?” etc. (Thos.
Kelly, D. D.)
Consecration
A great disappointment in life is often a terrible experience. A
picturesque writer compares the setting of a secret hope to the setting of the
sun. The brightness of life seems gone. And such might well to some extent have
been the experience of David. He had set his heart on erecting the temple on
Mount Zion. We may judge, then, what a collapse fell on his intensest interest
and expectation when the decree issued that the work was not to be done by him.
Instead of sinking into sullen apathy, or the inertness of despair, he devoted
himself with renewed and consecrated energy to gather the materials necessary
for the work, and in the text he appeals to and seeks to stimulate the people.
The consecration here required--
I. Must have in it
the element of spontaneity. We must know what love to God really is, and we
must feel the spell of its sweet strength. As to the form in which our love is
to manifest itself, that is a question of inferior importance. We know that our
love to our fellow creatures is not conformed to any common or uniform law; it
is sometimes radiant in a smile, flippant on the tongue; its speech bewrayeth
itself; it asserts itself irrepressibly in a thousand ways. In other cases it
is reticent, it is reserved, it is like the image of moon or star in a mountain
tam, it abideth alone; few ever see it; and yet in both cases it is deep and
sincere, strong even as death. The great question is not as to how our love is
to express itself, but as to whether it really exists at all, the supreme power
of the soul, a living and present reality within us. One of our poets
represents a wretched slave, in reply to the query of her master in respect to
her affection for himself, as replying with a gladness-glamoured, “Yes,” with
her lips, when her heart, burned to say, “No.” The sad, pathetic picture of the
poet is the precise converse of what we are now insisting upon, namely, that
the professed devotion of ourselves to God must be the gift of love, or can He
do else than spurn the sacrifice altogether?
II. Must be a
whole-hearted, undivided thing--body as well as soul. The later representatives
of the Gnostics held that the body was so wholly bad as to be beyond redemption;
that it did not matter what became of it; that it might be plunged into the
blackest depths of vicious excess and that the spirit within would contract no
defilement and suffer no detriment. Accordingly the primitive Christians were
in imminent peril of being seduced into the immoralities which abounded around
them. Hence the warnings which abound in apostolic Epistles against
lasciviousness, revelling, banquetings, and such like. Why should we not feel
respecting the body that it is as truly consecrated to God in the case of a
Christian as the soul can be?
III. This
consecration is no cheap or easy thing. We must not offer unto God that which
costs us nothing.
1. There is the cost of self-discipline.
2. The diligent and laborious use of the means of grace. (Dean
Forrest.)
Consecration
I do not know a question in the sacred volume more full of import,
or more adapted to press upon the heart.
I. We shall
explain what we regard as the consecration of service to God.
1. There must be correct views of the Divine character and claims, as
they are revealed in the record of His word. You must receive Him as He there
appears.
2. A practical obedience to the will of God, whether expressly
declared, or whether to be inferred from His revealed attributes.
3. The use of active exertion to promote the Divine glory in the
world. Religion does not only direct our attention to duties which pertain
exclusively to our own personal characters and interests; it also prompts a
concern for the improvement and welfare of our fellow-men. It is not equivocal
testimony that your own hearts are given to God in faith and true holiness when
you desire to be instrumental in restoring the authority of His law over the
minds and lives of others.
II. We shall
present the considerations which ought to urge to as engagement in the service
of God.
1. We are placed under universal and imperative obligation to do so.
2. The influence His service has in preventing the degradation and
promoting the dignity of our nature. The habits of men must always according to
their moral nature tend to degrade or dignify. He who is truly devoted to God,
whatever be his deficiencies and disadvantages in other respects, is placed on
a far higher eminence than can ever be attained by the most arduous aspirations
of the carnal mind. Must not that bestow transcendent dignity which writes the
law of Jehovah on the heart, renders the body a living temple and an habitation
of God, places the thoughts and employments of men in a sphere where they
become associated with prophets and apostles and martyrs of the Redeemer and
the Redeemer Himself, and where they are blended with the sublime realities of
the invisible and eternal world? The service of God ennobles all that it
comprehends; it is as the rose which gave its fragrance to the very clay; it is
as the sunbeam which tints with a fresh hue of beauty and splendour the forms
of earth, and causes them to reflect its own glory.
3. The true and solid pleasure His service communicates to the soul.
Here is--
4. The glorious recompence by which the engagements of His service
are consummated.
III. We shall
impress the question by which, to an engagement in the service of God, you are
emphatically challenged. “Who is willing?” What excuses can you propose to
justify a negative. You are too young. “Suffer little children to come unto
Me.” You are too poor. The Saviour came to “preach the gospel to the poor.” You
are too guilty. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
You are prevented by worldly attachments. “He that loveth father or mother more
than Me is not worthy of Me,” etc. You are deterred by threatening of
persecution. “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” etc. (James Parsons.)
The true idea of the Christian life
I. This is God’s
appeal for service.
II. Service is the
true idea of the Christian life. For religion is not a mere viaticum to carry
the soul to glory;but a power and support required during life, and not in
death only.
III. Service implies
obedience, self-denial, and activity. Such a work requires generosity and
earnestness, resembling the zeal of the Jews in building their temple.
IV. The service of
God requires a voluntary and distinct consecration.
V. The service of
God is of the most pressing urgency. It should be “this day.” (L. H. Byrnes,
B. A.)
The act of the will
In making our choice there is a determined act of our own will. To
be willing is one thing; to will is another thing. We may be entirely willing,
for instance, to go to some other country--say America--and such willingness may
continue for years; but unless you will to go, you will never reach there. Our
choice involves a definite act of the will; we may think about religion; we may
talk about religion; we may be kindly affected towards religion; but we are
called to do more. We are called to make a determined act of our will and to
make our choice. You have seen a grand vessel about to be launched. Everything
was ready for her departure from dry land. Every impediment had been removed
but one, and that was the one which prevented her from entering the element on
which she was to sail. One single block hound her to earth. It was in itself a
mere trifle. A blow of the hammer wielded by a vigorous arm would set her free;
but let that block remain untouched, and no onward movement would be made by
the gallant ship. The hammer swings in the air; the blow is struck; she rushes
into the great deep, where she floats with ease and grace as one born to it as
her own possession. That stroke of the hammer corresponds to the act of the will--the
deliberate resolution taken and made to consecrate oneself to Christ and to
God. It must be taken, or the journey will never be traversed. (Cameron
Lees, D. D.)
Complete consecration
“I give Thee all--I keep back nothing for myself.” Such was the motto
engraved upon the ring and seals of the great Reformer Calvin. The words were
deeply cut in what was solid, whether of metal or stone. They were ever carried
about him, ever present with him. He meant them to be unchangeable by engraving
them where he did. Offered willingly:--Rich men’s presents are
gold and silver, or other costly things. Mine must be recommended by the
affectionate pleasure with which I give them. (The Ven. Bede when dying.)
Verses 10-19
Verses 10-20
Wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation.
The last thanksgiving
Every sentence weighed and measured for the occasion.
I. The infinite
perfections of God.
1. God in His unspeakable grandeur.
2. God in His universal dominion.
3. God in His absolute ownership.
4. God in His covenant relation.
5. God in His goodness to men.
II. The peculiar
relations of man to the infinite God.
1. Man is a dependent creature. “Who am I?”
2. Man is a short-lived creature.
3. Man’s conduct is observed by God. (J. Wolfendale.)
David’s thanksgiving
1. Its adoration of God.
2. Its acknowledgment of dependence upon Him.
3. Its recognition of the influence of His grace.
4. Its solemn appeal to conscious integrity.
5. Its earnest prayer for king and people. (J. Wolfendale.)
The reciprocal influence of mind upon mind in worship
In this address of the venerable King of Israel to the Omnipotent
Sovereign of the world, the natural influence of one mind upon another, the
secret but powerful sympathy of similar affections in the “devout congregation”
combine with his own grateful dispositions to enlarge his conceptions and to
bring forth the most affecting description of the excellences of the great
object of their common homage. You cannot but have observed and felt an
influence of this kind, and been moved by the affections of others, especially
when they corresponded with the condition of your own hearts. You have felt
auger, joy, or grief insinuate themselves into your minds from the expression
of them in others; and you have seen these affections increased in them by the
mutual sympathy of your feelings. How often has the rage of an individual,
expressed by the fiery glance of his eye, the fierceness of his countenance,
and the shrillness of his tones, with the force and quickness of lightning
inflamed a multitude, and exasperated their headstrong passions. With what
glowing delight has an assembly been filled by the joyful countenance, the
cheerful glance, the eloquent tones of a happy friend. How often has the
melancholy, downcast look, or the tender tear of an interesting mourner,
covered the face of the beholder with like pensive sadness, and infused into
your bosom sorrows not your own. This reciprocal impression of the affections
of the heart must hold equally true in the worship of the Supreme, as in the
intercourse of common life. (Anon.)
Thine, O Lord, is the
greatness and the power.--
God’s supreme dominion and universal authority
I. The supreme authority
and dominion of the ever-blessed God. God, under every possible consideration,
must be supreme. As, therefore, He must be supreme, so must He reign over all (Romans 9:5). God has an absolute right,
not only to claim allegiance from all, but to dispose of all according to His
own will and pleasure. Every part of God’s Word teems with His glorious
sovereign authority.
1. Witness a few confessions. Text. Solomon (1 Kings 8:22-23; 2 Chronicles 6:14); Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:14-19); Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20:3-12); the Levites (Nehemiah 9:4-6); the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13); Paul (Ephesians 1:3-6; 1 Timothy 1:11-17); Jude (verses
20-25).
2. How the Lord asserts and claims this glorious prerogative as
peculiar to Himself (Deuteronomy 32:39-43; Isaiah 40:25-26; Isaiah 41:14-16; Isaiah 42:5-8; Isaiah 43:15-17; Jeremiah 5:20-25; Daniel 7:13-14).
II. The nature of
this supreme dominion and sovereign authority. Observe--
1. Negatively. It is not--
2. Positively.
III. The aspect in
which it is to be viewed by us.
1. As a most glorious doctrine.
2. As a most humiliating doctrine.
3. As a most alarming doctrine.
4. As a most encouraging doctrine.
5. As a most invigorating and establishing doctrine. (R. Shittler.)
The Divine greatness and beneficence
We have in these words a confession--
I. Of the Divine
sovereignty.
II. Of the Divine
power.
III. Of the Divine
beneficence. (J. Johnson Cort, M. A.)
David’s thanksgiving
I. The occasion.
David, in a general assembly of his people, moves them to contribute towards
the building of the temple, and encourages them by his own example. They
contribute willingly and liberally. Reckoning a talent of silver at £375, and a
talent of gold at £4,500, what they offered amounted to above twenty-six
millions of pounds sterling (besides the ten thousand drams of gold, the other
metals, and precious stones), which, with what David gave himself out of his
private treasury, being above sixteen millions more, makes a vast sum. For this
he and the people rejoice. He blesses and praises God, not because they had so
much, but because they had hearts to lay out so much for God and His worship.
To have much may be a curse and a snare, but to have a heart to employ it for
God is a far more blessed thing than to keep it, or gain it, or any way to
receive it (Acts 20:25).
II. The mode or
form of his praising
God. It is an ascribing all excellences to Him. True praising or blessing of
God consists in acknowledging that to be God’s which is His. When Christ taught
His disciples how to pray and how to praise God, this is the mode of praising
Him (Matthew 7:18): “Thine is,” etc. After the
same manner does David here praise Him. (D. Clarkson.)
For all that is in the
heaven and in the earth is Thine.--
The Lord is the owner of all things
I. What evidence
there is in scripture for the Lord’s title to all things.
1. Those things are His which we have in common with others.
2. Those things are His which we think to be properly ours. We may be
proprietors in respect of men, so far as none of them may be able to produce
any good title or lay any just claim to what we have; but we are no proprietors
in reference to God.
II. What is the
foundation of the Lord’s title to a propriety in all things? He that gave to
all their being is clearly the owner of all (Psalms 89:11-12).
1. He made all for Himself, not for the pleasure of another, as the
Israelites wrought for Pharaoh.
2. He made all things of nothing.
3. He made all without the help or concurrence of any other.
4. He upholds all things in the same manner as He created.
III. The nature and
quality of this propriety.
1. He is the primary and original owner of all. His title and
propriety is underived.
2. He is the absolute owner of all, without any condition or
limitation.
3. He is the principal owner. All others that have right to anything
have it under Him, and in subordination to Him, and are tied to acknowledge it
by doing Him service for whatever they have.
4. He is total owner of all. When David gave the possession mentioned
(2 Samuel 19:29) between Ziba and
Mephibosheth, they had a joint interest therein, so Jehoshaphat and Ahaziah
would have had in the navy and adventure if they had joined their ships
according to the proposal (1 Kings 22:49). But none has a joint
interest with God.
5. He is the perpetual owner of all.
6. He is transcendently the owner of all. He has the greatest right
to them. He has more right to all than we have to anything.
7. He is the sole owner of all things.
Use 1. Of information.
Use 2. For exhortation.
This truth suggests many duties of greatest moment and consequence.
If God be the owner of all things, He is the owner of us; if He be
the owner of us, we are not to own ourselves, and not to own ourselves is to
deny ourselves.
We must deny ourselves--
(a) As to our judgments, We must give up ourselves to the conduct of
that judgment which is laid down in Scripture, that which is called the mind of
the Lord.
(b) As to our wills. The will of the Lord must be our will.
(c) As to our ends. The pleasing, and honouring, and enjoying God is
the only end we should propose to ourselves, either in holy duties or worldly
business.
(d) As to our interests. If God be our owner, we ought to own and
mind His interest and none else.
(e) As to our business and employments. The example of Christ (Luke 2:19; John 4:34; John 9:4).
(f)
As to our possessions. We ought to look upon all we possess as the
Lord’s and not ours.
Use 3. For
encouragement.
I. This truth
affords encouragement in those special cases which are most apt to trouble and
deject you. He can supply all your need.
2. There is encouragement to undergo or undertake anything for God
which He calls you to. He is the owner of all things, and so has enough to
requite you, to reward you, if all that is in heaven and in earth be enough to
do it. (D. Clarkson.)
Divine ownership
God’s ownership is--
1. Universal.
2. Absolute.
3. Eternal. From this ownership we infer--
I. The absolute
supremacy of God. He who owns all has a right--
1. To bestow on any creature whatever He pleases.
2. To withdraw from any creature in any way or at any time whatever
He thinks best. “The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away.”
II. The moral
obligation of man. What is that?
1. To obey His will in everything.
2. To be animated by supreme gratitude. (Homilist.)
Thine is the kingdom, O Lord.--
The kingdom of God
I. Thine, O Lord,
is the kingdom. What kingdom?
1. The kingdom of nature, with all its productions and materials.
2. The kingdom of providence. As He made all, so His care extends to
all.
3. The kingdom of grace. This is a kingdom within the kingdom of
nature and providence. It is a mediatorial, a spiritual empire, which is
designed to establish the peculiar reign of God, not only over men, but in
them.
II. The glory of
this kingdom. This is seen--
1. In its Sovereign--the Lord Jesus.
2. In its universality.
3. In its prospect (Daniel 2:44; Daniel 7:13-14).
4. In its subjects: “The excellent of the earth.”
5. its privileges: “Eye hath not seen,” etc.
And in Thine hand it is to
make great, and to give strength unto all.
The nature of true greatness
I. What is the
nature of true greatness? The scriptural idea of greatness is essentially different
from that which is formed by the world.
1. To a few names the world has by general consent appended the title
of “the Great”--Alexander, Constantine, Napoleon. These were great men with
little aims. Self was the beginning and end of all their plans and labours.
Their greatness was like a tree of ample trunk and wide-extended foliage, not
spreading a beneficent shade, but distilling a deadly poison on all beneath,
and thus killing its own roots and insuring its own decay.
2. A higher order of worldly greatness is that which consists purely
in exalted genius and great intellectual power, whatever be the form of its
manifestation. This form of greatness has been generally beneficent in its
influence. Still it is in itself incomplete and unfinished.
3. The greatness of the Bible is a holy greatness. The fear of God is
the source of its wisdom; the love of God is the spring of its activity; the
glory of God is the end of its enterprises and labours.
II. This greatness
is a proper object of aspiration and pursuit.
1. Man was made for this greatness. He is born great. Great powers,
great duties, great expectancies, a great sphere of action, great hopes and
promises, are his. If he becomes little, it is by his own fault and sin.
2. The Word of God exhorts us to it, “calls” us to “glory” as well as
to “virtue.”
3. We are taught that there will be a distinction in the rewards of
eternity, graduated to the different degrees of merit and earnestness in the
service of God in the present life.
4. The examples of Scripture are justifications of the highest aim.
All history besides contains no such list of heroes as Hebrews 11:1-40.
III. The source of
this greatness. All things are of God. Even the world’s heroes have felt and
acknowledged this. If it is in God’s hands to make great--
1. Then He is to be acknowledged and adored as the author of all the
endowments of men.
2. What must be the guilt of those who have perverted and abused
their talents to spread disorder, pollution, and misery among His moral
subjects!
3. Their greatness is to be solicited and expected from Him.
4. From Him we must derive our idea of greatness. This He has
revealed to us--
The agency of God in human greatness
I. God makes men
great by bestowing upon them distinguished genius and talents. Some of the
courtiers of the Emperor Sigismund, who had no taste for learning, inquired why
he so honoured and respected men of low birth on account of their science. The
emperor replied, “In one day I can confer knighthood or nobility on many; in
many years I cannot bestow genius on one. Wise and learned men are created by
God only.”
II. God makes men
great by an education, and by events in life suited to discover, to excite, to
encourage, to improve, and to direct their talents. The most luxuriant soil,
when uncultivated, often becomes wild and barren, while a soil less favourable
richly recompenses the seed sown, and the labours of the husbandman.
1. Early instruction and discipline correct the blemishes, brighten
the polish, and increase the excellences of genius.
2. The friends and companions of our early youth contribute not a
little to the strengthening and improving our natural talents.
3. Favourable providences expand the faculties, call forth exertions,
and discover the extent of talents, which otherwise might have lain dormant, or
shone with less lustre. Erpinius the critic, was first stimulated to a proper
improvement of his time and talents by looking into Fortius Ringelbergius’s
treatise on study Franklin was similarly affected by an essay of Dr. Cotton
Mathers, on doing good. Great occasions produce great talents. A Frederic and a
Washington might have lived obscure, and died forgotten, had the time, place,
and circumstances which called forth their abilities been different.
III. It is God who
implants dispositions, and excites to conduct, which enable men to improve
their natural abilities, and providential opportunities and advantages for
becoming great. Exercise and activity marvellously improve and increase
talents, comparatively small. God makes men great by influencing their tempers
and enabling them to govern their spirits and conduct their lives by the rules
of reason and religion.
IV. God makes men
great by bringing them into difficult and trying situations, which exercise and
manifest the greatness of their disposition and talents.
V. God makes men
great by rendering the exercise of their talents acceptable and useful.
VI. It is God who
assigns to the great the sphere of their greatness.
VII. In the hand of
God it is to limit the duration of human greatness.
Conclusion: Address--
1. Those whom the hand of God hath made great. God made you great for
the general good, and not merely for your own pleasure or profit. Distinguished
talents were bestowed that, with success, you might guide others to wisdom, to
religion, and happiness.
2. Those whom a scanty measure of natural talents or acquired
accomplishments confines to a lower and more ignoble and laborious line of
life. Beware of envy and discontent. (J. Erskine, D. D.)
All strength is from God
All Christians, in themselves, are but vessels, poor fragile
things, just like earthen pitchers. We should be worthless, only God puts His
life into our hearts. And this becomes part of the good news of Christ. It
brings the happy assurance to every heart who hears it that even a child may be
a vessel to carry the power of God. Weak people, little people, fragile people,
God uses them all. God can fill the weakest and most fragile with strength for
His work. He asks also that the heart may receive His life. The outside may be
no better than earthenware, but inside there will be an excellent light and power of God. (D.
Macleod.)
Verse 14
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to
offer so willingly?
The impossibility of creature-merit
No point in theology requires to be oftener stated, or more
carefully established, than the impossibility that a creature should merit at
the hands of the Creator. Each one of us, if he have ever probed his own heart,
will confess himself prone to the persuasion, that the creature can lay the
Creator under obligation. If one being merit of another, it must perform some
action which it was not obliged to perform, and by which that other is
advantaged. If either of these conditions fail, merit must vanish.
I. We are, in the
first place, to speak on the stated fact that all things come of God.
II. The inference
is--that we can give to God nothing which is not already His. If one creature
give a thing to another, he ceases to have property in the gift, and cannot
again claim it as his own. If a man make me a present he virtually cedes all
title to the thing given; and if i were after;yards to restore him the whole,
or a part, it would be of mine own that I gave him. But if I were reduced to
utter poverty, with no means whatsoever of earning a livelihood, and if a
generous individual came forward and gave me capital, and set me up in trade,
and if, in mine after prosperity, I should bring my benefactor some offering
expressive of gratitude, it is clear that I might, with the strictest truth
say, “ Of thine own do I give thee.” I should be indebted to my benefactor for
what I was able to give; and, of course, that for which I stood indebted to him
might be declared to be his. But even this comes far short of the Creator and
the creature. This will show that there is no merit in the commonly-presumed
instances of human desert.
1. Repentance.
2. Faith.
3. Works. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
God acknowledged
One of his gifts to his native town consisted of twenty-four
beautiful and commodious almshouses, which were built and endowed by Sir
Francis, “as a testimony of his gratitude to Almighty God, and with a view of
benefiting those of his fellow-townsmen who may be in need of assistance.” Over
the second-floor window of the central almshouse, along with the arms of Sir
Francis, is the text, from 1 Chronicles 29:14, “Of Thine own
have we given Thee.” Each of the inmates receives from the endowment of the
founder a weekly allowance sufficient to keep him from want. (Memoirs of Sir
Francis Crossley.)
All belongs to God
There is no portion of time that is our time, and the rest God’s;
there is no portion of money that is our money, and the rest God’s money. It is
all His; He owns it all, gives it all, and He has simply trusted it to us for
His service. A servant has two purses,
the master’s and his own; but we have only one. (A. Monod.)
Our obligations to God
A merchant in America, whom the Lord had greatly prospered, was a
member of a Church where the congregation was mainly composed of very poor
people, and therefore he had the privilege of contributing very largely to the
upkeep of the Church, and toward the minister’s salary. One of the members of
the Church was travelling, and in conversation with a clergyman whom he met, he
mentioned the case of Mr. D , and extolled his great liberality. The minister,
without denying the praiseworthiness of the action, said, “Now, you are a
merchant?” “Yes.” “Well, I suppose you employ a clerk to serve your goods, and
a schoolmaster to educate your children. Now, suppose the fees due to the
schoolmaster had become due, and you give your clerk instructions to pay these,
what would you think if that clerk were to receive great praise for having
disbursed the money according to your instructions?” “I should think it very
absurd.” “Well, do you not see that the case of your liberal-hearted friend and
that hypothetical case of mine are almost analagous? God employs him as His
steward or clerk to trade for Him; and out of the money which God has given him
he is commanded to pay the schoolmaster of God’s children. The merchant is
quite as much under obligation to trade for God as is the preacher to preach
for God.” We should remember that all things should be done to the glory of
God. (J. King.)
Christ, the author of blessings ministered through His servants
Florence Nightingale, having gone like an angel of mercy among the
hospitals in the Crimea, until her name was enshrined in every soldier’s heart,
asked to be excused from having her picture taken, as thousands begged, that
she might drop out and be forgotten, and that Christ alone might be remembered
as the author of the blessings her hands had ministered. That is the true
Christian spirit. (J. R. Miller, D. D.)
No room for God
It is said of Hadrian VI. that, having built a stately college at
Louvain, he set this inscription on the front in golden letters: “Trajectum
plantavie, Lovanium rigavit, sed Caesar dedit incrementum “ (“Utrecht planted
me, Louvain watered me, but Caesar gave the increase”). A passenger, reproving his
folly, underwrote: “Hic Deus nihil fecit” (“Here was no room for God to do
anything.”) (Patens.)
The building of the temple
I call your attention--
I. To the hallowed
work in which we are engaged; to build the temple, the Church of God, the house
of prayer for all the people.
1. The temple was to be a house for the holy name of God.
2. The temple was the place of authorised and accepted sacrifice.
3. The temple was the place of united worship and of united blessing.
4. It was the place of actual communion between God and man.
II. The sentiments
of deep abasement with which the circumstance of being permitted to take a part
in it impressed the mind of David. The honour of being employed in a work of
God ought to be deeply abasing to man. “Who am I, and what is my people?” These
questions suggest three views.
1. What are we with reference to our former selves? We are, at best, but
pardoned criminals; and have a long and sad retrospect of ingratitude and
disobedience.
2. What are we in reference to our associates in this work?
3. What are we in reference to our actual contributions to this work?
III. To a
consideration calculated powerfully to quicken our exertions in every
department of the work of God, which may by His mercy be assigned to us. “We
are strangers before Thee,” etc. This reminds us--
1. That what we do we must do quickly.
2. That what we do for others we must do quickly.
3. That short and uncertain as life is, within its narrow space works
of infinite importance may nevertheless be done. Apply this--
IV. In all works
undertaken for God, we are taught by the text to be mindful of the principle
from which they flow. “In the uprightness of my heart I have willingly offered
all these things.” To be upright in a moral sense signifies to be conformable to
the will or law of God. That law, with reference to, the exercises of religious
charity, has various parts, and taken together, they constitute uprightness.
There is--
1. The law of sincere intention.
2. The law of grateful return.
3. The law of faithfulness.
4. The law of liberality.
5. The law of cheerful distribution.
6. The law of perseverance.
V. The joyous and
benevolent feelings of the aged monarch when he saw the people assembled so
willingly to offer in so blessed a work. It is a joyful night.
1. As a declaration of faith.
2. As a declaration of lofty and truly Christian benevolence.
3. As it opens the gate of the most splendid and delightful hopes. (R.
Watson.)
Christian liberality in God’s cause
I. Liberality in
the cause of God is worthy of all men.
1. Our infinite obligations demand it.
(a) The protecting care of His providence;
(b) the blessings of life.
(a) The unspeakable gift of His Son;
(b) the promise of eternal glory.
2. Liberality in His cause is only the return to Him of part of that which
He has given to us (1 Chronicles 29:12).
3. To withhold from Him is to lose His blessing on what we retain. To
give to Him ever brings richer gifts, if only in the spiritual graces it calls
forth.
4. Liberality in the cause of God is urged by our interest in the
best welfare of our fellow-men.
II. Liberality is
not only a duty, but a privilege.
1. It is a grateful recognition of being so blessed as to be able to
give.
2. The willingness to, give is a ground of thankfulness.
III. The liberality
of David and his people a lesson.
IV. Reflections.
1. We should cherish liberality for God, for the good it does our own
souls. The gratitude, love, zeal, of which it is the expression, and which it
directly fosters.
2. For the good it does our fellow-men.
3. We should measure our gifts by what we retain.
God the bestower of all good gifts
I. The ability and
the disposition to give to God come alike from Himself.
II. We ought to be
more profoundly thankful for the possession of the disposition than of the
ability to give.
III. The ability and
the disposition to give are never more nobly employed than in erecting temples
for the worship of God. (H. Stowell, A. M.)
A voluntary gift under the law
I. The nature of
the gift. I do not dwell on the extent. I refer rather to its essential nature.
It was a gift distinctly for the public good. What is called public spirit is
surely one of the divinest things extant among men. God keeps alive this will to
serve and sacrifice for the public as the great antidote to the innate
selfishness of mankind. Public spirit rises in importance and dignity as man
rises in intelligence, and is able to take wise counsel about the welfare of
his fellows. If he is able to take heavenly counsel, to know what God is
seeking for man and to supply it, there you have in the highest form the
servant of his generation according to the will of God. This glory is theirs
who take counsel and work for the religious culture sad elevation of men. They
are the men who key the arch of progress and make it firm and sure.
II. The source of
David’s and the people’s joy.
1. Living under the constraint of love is the most joyful exercise of
the human powers. Man’s selfishness is not native. It is the dent’s poison in
his blood. Divine charity expels it. The sculls conscious of health again, sad
breaks out into praise.
2. The joy man takes in the accomplishment of a noble public object
is the purest and loftiest of all human joys.
3. I suppose a vision passed before David’s sight of what that work
would be to man, and would do for man, through ages.
4. Concord in good works realises perhaps more than anything in our
experience the angelic benediction, “Peace on earth and goodwill to men.”
III. The reason of
the praise.
1. It is God’s inspiration. Of Thine own, of the strength and joy
which Thine own hand has inspired, have we given Thee.
2. Praise and bless the Lord who inspires this spirit, for it
commands an abounding blessing. (Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
Verse 15-16
For we are strangers before Thee.
Human frailty and its lessons
Every solemn moment of human life discovers more or less its
vanity. It is not only when we stand beside the grave and mourn the wreck of
hopes sad aspirations buried out of eight. The marriage festival also awakens a
sense of insecurity, and the shadow of parting is thrown over the commencing
union. The meetings of friends recall the thought of their separation, sad the
inauguration of great works of public ceremonial brings up the image of those
changes which all end in dissolution. Thus was it with David, when on the last
public ceremony of his kingly life he presented with his people the offerings
for the temple to the God of Israel It was a turn of thought poetical and yet
natural to break away from that splendid throng, laden with gold and silver and
other offerings for the house of God, and resonant with the sounds of music and
the acclamations of joy, to dwell upon the shadows of vanished generations, and
to anticipate the day when the living race should be one shadow more added to
the crowd that had passed away.
I. First, then,
what are some of the lessons of humiliation taught by the shadowy and vanishing
character of human existence?
1. The insufficiency of man, for his own happiness. If he is but a
“stranger and sojourner upon the earth,” if he is only one of a succession of
vanishing ciphers, if his days be only as a “shadow that declineth,” and which
soon passes into darkness, is it possible for such a creature, if he have no
higher resources, to be happy? At best we must say that happiness is only
possible on one of two conditions. Either the nature of man must be capable of
being satisfied with this transient existence, when it is prolonged to its
greatest duration, or his nature must be capable of averting its view from all
the risks and hazards which tend at any moment to bring it to a close. Could
the longest life satisfy, man might have here some measure of true good; or
could he forget the perils which threaten at any moment to shorten it, he might
not be altogether miserable. But neither of these alternatives is possible.
Take the longest and the most untroubled life, the most filled with worldly
advantage and prosperity--can it satisfy the human soul upon the supposition
that this is the whole of existence? No. The soul shrinks from annihiilation.
But it it be impossible to be happy even with an untroubled life that vanishes
into nothing, how much less when the shadow of death is constantly invading us
and refusing to be put away! To forget the rapid flight of time and the certain descent to
the grave is for us impossible. Our life is strewn with mementos of its speedy
end. We have seen the summer flowers and the winter snows alike swept aside to
prepare a grave. The insufficiency of man to be his own portion is thus only
too visible. He cannot, because life does not contain sufficient scope for him,
and because the little that it contains is checkered with the thread of death
in all its texture. Man must learn that he is at best a frail and dying
creature, and that if in this life only he have hope he is of all God’s
creatures most miserable.
2. The blindness of human nature to its own mortality. We cannot make
ourselves happy either by resting in life as a whole, or by shutting out the
shadows of death which cloud it; but we are perpetually attempting to do so,
and thus are fighting against the nature of things and against God. What is the
whole struggle of the ungodly man but an attempt to build his all upon a mortal
foundation; to make a pilgrimage a home, a shadow a reality, the surface of a
river a solid and lasting pavement?
3. The third and last lesson of humiliation which I notice is the
evil of sin. Sin is the parent of death, the grand destroyer of life’s joys,
and the creator of its gloom, its shadow, and its insufficiency. Sin mows down
all the generations of mankind with relentless sternness. The plague of sin has been in our bones,
and therefore their strength has perished, and the beauty of man has consumed
like a moth, and he has been altogether vanity.
II. Having thus
spoken of lessons of humiliation, let me now mention some lessons of
consolation that may be set over against the brevity and uncertainty of earthly
existence. I confine myself to two drawn from the text.
1. We have for our consolation the knowledge of God’s eternity. “We
are,” says the King of Israel, “strangers before Thee.” This is the first ray
of comfort. It is like a rock in the midst of the tossing ocean. Take away an
everlasting God, and what an awful sadness covers all! If there be no living
personal Being before whom our little life is led, by whom its moments are
measured out and its destinies fixed; if all be under the dominion of a dark,
stern fate that knows and feels nothing, or of a blind chance that orders
nothing; if we are tossed and driven upon a waste and melancholy ocean, which
at last engulfs our frail bark in its dull, unconscious surge, with no sun or
star or eternal eye looking down upon our struggles and our extinction--then,
oh how dreary, how unrelieved the picture of utter hopelessness and emptiness,
making it good for us that we had never been born! The eternity of a living God
was David’s consolation, and that of all the fathers of Israel. It is not less
ours; and from this high tower we look down with composure on all the waves of
trouble, and feel that so long as we are not “without God” we can never be “without
hope in the world.”
2. But we have also, for our consolation, the knowledge of God’s
covenant love. David prays. The mutable and perishable addresses the Immutable
and the Imperishable. He rests on the basis of a covenant. He is dealing with a
God who has come near, who has His tabernacle with men, who is pacified towards
them for their sins, who has compassion upon their sorrows and their death, and
has delivered them from going down to the pit, having found a ransom. This is
the inspiration of David’s prayer. His confession is not the melancholy
utterance of nature’s despondency, which gives up all for lost. It is only the
voice of pious humility, which renounces all creature trust, that it may
recover all in God. We see more clearly than did David how God, the eternal
Justice, is become the dying sinner’s friend and portion; how the greatness of
His attributes harmonised in Christ, becomes the measure of the greatness of
our deliverance; how, united to Him, our life is no more the shadow, but our
death, and that which marks our true nature is not the evanescent, but the
abiding and the eternal. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” Oh! be it ours
to lay hold of this covenant of which Jesus is the Mediator; and then, in
unison with the eternal God, we may defy death to leave on us the print of its
corrupting finger, and to involve our existence in one permanent shadow, for He
whose life is the light of men shall swallow up our death in victory, and
neither things present nor things to come shall part us from His covenant love.
III. I now come, in
the third and last place, to mention some lessons of exhortation arising out of
our mortality and decay.
1. The first lesson of exhortation is to diligence in God’s work.
David does not reason, as some do, “What can shadows like us accomplish in
building up the temple of God?” This is an unworthy and an un-Christian
despondency. As David served his generation, in spite of his keen perception of
the evaneseance of human life in general, so should we. The Church of God has
been brought to its present state of advancement by such shadows. Each
generation has helped it forward, though by small degrees; and as the coral
insects build the islands of the Pacific Ocean, so have these small and
insignificant labourers of the human family, whose “foundation is in the dust
and who are crushed before the moth,” reared up the walls of Jerusalem, and
given it its present strength and beauty in the eyes of all nations. Let us
repel the idea that our life is of little worth and value in relation to the
advancement of the kingdom of God. The treasure may be in earthen vessels, but
the excellency of the power is all the more seen to be Divine. Life is ours as
death is theirs; and so long as we are in the world let us labour like our blessed
and Divine Lord to be the light of the world.
2. Our second lesson of exhortation is to acquiesce in God’s
appointments. David at this time felt himself on the edge of the grave, and was
willing to hand over to Solomon the prosecution of the work on which his heart
had so long been set. He felt that it belonged to God to choose His own
instruments, and from a rapidly vanishing race to select such individuals for
His work as to Him seemed best. We may apply this lesson in the way of teaching
us to be willing to depart and leave the work of God to others, whenever He
shall so ordain. But we may also apply it in another way, so as to teach us to
be willing to remain, and do the work of God which has fallen into our hands,
though others are withdrawn.
3. Our third lesson of exhortation is to prepare for our own
departure. We must be strangely constituted if the removal of others awakens in
us no foreboding of our own end. Are we, then, prepared? Preparation is of two
kinds. The saint is prepared when he is doing with his might whatsoever his
hand findeth to do; when he is steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord; when his eye is constantly directed towards the Cross that so
he may wash away the stains of daily sin, and not less towards the throne that
he may receive his daily instructions from his unseen Lord, and run in the way
of His commandments with enlarged heart. But there is also, the preparation of
the sinner, and this must begin at an earlier starting-point. Years have not repealed
the law, “Ye must be born again”; nor has the multitude of feet smoothed an
entrance into the Zion of God. (John Cairns.)
The grandeur of human opportunity
I. The shortness
of life.
II. The grandeur of
human opportunity.
1. There is no sign of sadness in the scene before us. David’s mind
and heart are filled with the thought of God, and with the things of God.
2. This preparation for the building of the temple was an act of
thanksgiving.
3. The splendour of the preparation is an evidence of David’s zeal
for the house of the Lord. Giving was regarded by David, not as a duty, but a
privilege--a grand opportunity of turning the “mammon of unrighteousness” to
eternal account. Thin zeal for the house of God is one of the marked features
of the Psalter (Psalms 26:1-12; Psalms 27:1-14; Psalms 84:1-12; Psalms 92:1-15; etc.).
III. Lessons.
1. The remembrance of the shortness of life (Psalms 39:4), for the purpose of using
time aright.
2. To take the measure of earthly things as we shall do when we look
back over the day of life (Deuteronomy 32:29).
3. All that is done for the kingdom of God remains. Another
generation may have to carry out what we only begin. (The Thinker.)
The transitoriness of life
I. To illustrate
the assertion, “No abiding.” This may apply to--
1. Human honours.
2. The pleasures of sense.
3. Worldly profits.
4. Particularly to man’s life.
To impress this truth, reflect--
II. To direct to a
proper improvement of the truth.
1. Immediately close with Christ the Saviour.
2. Diligently apply to your proper work.
3. Cleave not to earthly things.
4. Murmur not under crosses.
5. Labour for the conversion of sinners.
Address--
1. The aged.
2. The young. (E. Brown.)
Strangers and sojourners
1. How short our stay is! The average life is less than thirty-five
years. Multitudes die in infancy. No man can say that this is his home. He
knows not how long he will remain. He is not even sure that he will be here
to-morrow. He is a “sojourner.”
2. He is a “stranger.” He does not have time to become acquainted.
“The proper study of mankind” may be “man,” but life is too short to make much
proficiency in it. The average man has no real knowledge of his fellow-men. Of
their inner lives he knows nothing.
3. Nor have we a better knowledge of the world. Who knows the secrets
of rocks and hills,
or the laws of vegetable life? Who understands the mighty forces of nature, or
the mysteries of the visible universe? Who can interpret for me the message of
the pebble beneath my feet? One of the wisest of mankind likened himself to a
child playing on the shores of an unknown ocean. Sensible men no longer attempt
to learn everything. Realising the shortness of the time, they select some
particular branch of learning and count themselves fortunate if they succeed in
mastering that ere death comes.
4. The brevity and uncertainty of man’s sojourn make sad havoc with
cherished plans and stamp his whole career with incompleteness. Man’s tenure is
feeble and precarious.
5. This solemn undertone of life’s song is often referred to in the
Bible.
6. Out of the ashes of despair hope springs. The very words “strangers
and sojourners” are suggestive of a place where man will be at home. The very
brevity and incompleteness of earthly life raise the question whether there is
not some complemental life. Since the powers are not developed, the character
not matured, the plans not executed here, the mind instinctively believes that
there is a place where they will be. “What a waste,” exclaims Burr, “if death
ends all! What a host of abortive and abandoned undertakings! Whole cities of
houses in the first stages of building, and lo, all work finally suspended;
whole navies in the dockyards with great keels fairly laid, and then left to
rot! Who does such things? Here and there a fickle, foolish, or impoverished
man, but certainly not the all-wise and all-mighty and steadfast God.” A dead
man is “merely an evicted tenant.” He has gone out of sight but not out of
mind.
7. The Word of God sets this truth in the white light of revelation.
Christ comforts His sorrowing disciples by reminding them of “the mansions”
prepared for them.
8. This thought lends inspiration to endeavour and affords comfort
under the troubles of life.
Conclusion:
1. Take the right road. That road begins and ends in Christ.
2. Make spiritual use of temporal things. True riches are spiritual,
and temporal riches are of value only as they are used for spiritual ends. God
will require an account of our stewardship.
3. “Live by the faith of the Son of God.” (Arthur J. Brown,
D. D.)
The real nature of human life
I. As strangers
here we ought to guard against an excessive and unrestrained indulgence of our
appetites and passions. This objection will appear by reflecting--
1. Upon the nature of our present situation, and what our proper
employment ought to be while we sojourn here. We are placed here in order to
prepare for the perfection of the heavenly state. Our course ought to be a
continued and gradual progress from lesser to higher degrees of piety and
virtue. Like a river enlarging as it runs, these ought to increase, and flow in
a stream continually augmented. It is a sign of a base and ignoble spirit to
linger on the road, or set up his rest in a strange country, fond of its
foreign entertainments, and neglecting to move towards his home, where alone
his chief occupation and his chief happiness are to be found. As a man cannot
easily travel who is heavily burdened, neither can any one make any progress in
a virtuous course when fettered by the pleasures and interests of this world.
2. Upon the nature of those things which excite our desires and
solicit our indulgence. These are: wealth, outward honours, fame, pleasure,
everything included in the term prosperity. These are--
3. That death will put a final period to them all.
II. As strangers
here we ought with firmness to encounter and with patience to endure its
difficulties and distresses. This is suggested--
1. By the nature of our journey through this life.
2. By reflecting on the origin of our afflictions and for what end
they are intended. They are appointed by God, and are intended to improve man
in virtue and happiness.
3. By the fleeting and shortlived character of our troubles and
misfortunes. To the present state they are confined, and with our bodies they
shall die. (J. Drysdale, D. D.)
Mankind considered as strangers and sojourners on earth
This proposition is liable to many mistakes. It does not mean--
1. That we are here in a place unsuited to us, for which we were not
designed, or to which our Creator had either exiled us as a punishment or only
placed us in for a certain period without having any particular view in so
doing, till He could assign to us at some other time a different place in the
territory of His dominion.
2. That we must be as indifferent to all the objects around us and
take as little interest in them as travellers and strangers are wont to do in
the several places of their short sojourn.
3. That we here are only obnoxious to toils, troubles, and sorrows,
and incapable of real happiness, as though all that is so called existed
nowhere but in the imagination, or as though we could here enjoy happiness
merely in hope, in agreeable prospects of futurity. How, then, and in what
sense are we strangers and sojourners on earth?
I. Since we have
here no inheritance in the strictest import of the expression, since we possess
nothing on the possession whereof we can rely.
II. In that we
cannot here attain the whole of our destination, we cannot be and become all
that our Creator designs. We here only begin to unfold our faculties.
III. We cannot here
find all that we wish for and require, and what in itself may be good and
desirable, but that alone which is proper for this station and for our present
constitution. In the exercise of our faculties we frequently meet with
insurmountable obstacles. Seldom can we do as much good and for so long a time
as we could wish. We cannot here find happiness that fully satisfies, that is
uninterrupted in its duration, and its enjoyment not subject to casualty or
change.
IV. We are not
appointed in perpetuity to this terrestrial life.
V. We have a
country to which we are hastening, and in which alone we shall reach our
destination. Improvement:
1. Seek nothing here that is not here to be found.
2. Be not surprised nor troubled at anything which is a natural
consequence of your present condition, which is inseparable from the pilgrim
life which you lead.
3. Beware of rendering your pilgrimage still more laborious by
avoidable deviations and mistakes.
4. Reckon your present state always for that which it really is, and
use it always to the purposes for which it is designed. It is not the term, but
the way to the term. It is not the most perfect mode of existence and of life
whereof you are capable, but only the first, the lowest stage of it.
5. Never be unmindful of your better, celestial country. (Anon.)
Strangers and sojourners
This expression is remarkable, they are strangers “before the
Lord.” He knows them to be such, and it is by His wise and gracious appointment
that they are so.
I. All true
believers are strangers and sojourners upon earth, in respect to their actual
state and condition. The saints in this world are like travellers in a foreign
land, or like a merchant ship in a strange port; the day of return is set, and
it only waits till the freight is ready.
II. With respect to
their temper and disposition.
1. They manifest the disposition of strangers and sojourners by their
comparative indifference to the things of the present world.
2. As strangers they intermeddle not with things that do not
immediately concern them, and are not busybodies in other people’s matters.
3. Strangers long to be at home, are often sending home, and will be
grieved if they do not hear from thence.
III. Real Christians
are often treated like strangers by the men of the world. The principles by
which they are actuated, the inward conflicts, joys, and consolations which
they experience, the hopes and prospects which they entertain, are all unknown
to the unbelieving world, who regard them only as so many misguided
enthusiasts. Men wonder at their zeal and fervency, their mortification and
self-denial, their courage and resolution. They also wonder that they do not
run with them to the same excess of riot (1 Peter 4:4).
IV. Christians are
only sojourners. A sojourner is one who dwells in a strange country, in which
he has no possession, but takes up a temporary residence (Leviticus 25:23; 1 Peter 1:17).
V. Our being
strangers and sojourners upon the earth is sufficiently illustrated and
confirmed by our actual condition, or the shortness of time, and the mutability
of our state. Inferences:
1. Let us learn to be more indifferent about things present.
2. The brevity of our state should teach us to improve time while we
have it.
3. Adore the mercy and forbearance which did not cut us off in our
sins.
4. Learn to live in the constant expectation of death and judgment,
as if every day were to be the last.
5. If true believers in every age have been strangers and sojourners
upon the earth, let us carefully examine how far this character belongs to us.
6. If we really bear the character of a pilgrim in a strange land,
let us be careful to act upon it.
7. Let us bear with meekness and patience the troubles we may meet
with by the way.
8. Let us endeavour to lead others into the way we are going (Numbers 10:29; Jeremiah 6:16; John 14:6).
9. Learn to be kind-hearted to all who are travelling Zionward, to
love as brethren and strengthen each other’s hands in the Lord. 10. Consider
what a hearty welcome awaits you when you reach your destination. (B.
Beddome, M. A.)
Strangers and sojourners
This is the testimony of an old man, a wise man, a great man.
I. We have here a
description of human life--a pilgrimage. Other Scriptural figures--an arrow
flying through the air; a race; a flower. No figure more aptly describes human
life than that of a journey, as it represents the whole world in all its
distinctions, rich and poor, wise and foolish, young and old, all journeying to
their everlasting home.
II. An inference of
Christian duty. (R. C. Dillon.)
Earth not a place of rest
I have read in classic literature of men pursued by the avenging
furies; and in American story of certain Indians who, driven out of their
hunting-grounds by the pursuing flames, ran on and on until, half-dead, they
came to a noble river, and swiftly fording it sat round their chief as he
struck his tent-pole into the ground and threw himself on the cool turf,
crying, “Alabama! Alabama! here we may rest.” But no, before sleep had
refreshed their weary bodies their new home was claimed by hostile tribes.
Earth has no resting-place for souls. (J. Clifford, D. D.)
Folly of presuming on life
The late Mayor of Chicago uttered the following boast: “I believe
that I will live to see the day when Chicago will be the biggest city in
America. I don’t count the past. I have taken a new lease of life, and I intend
to live more than half a century; and at the end of that half-century London
will be trembling lest Chicago should surpass her.” Within eight hours the
bullet of the assassin had in ten brief minutes finished the earthly career of
the author of the words I have quoted. (The Christian.)
All must be quitted
A fatal malady seized on Cardinal Mazarin, whilst engaged in
affairs of State. He consulted Guenaud, the physician, who told him he had two
months to live. Some days after, the Cardinal was seen in his nightcap and
dressing-gown creeping along his picture-gallery and exclaiming, “Must I quit
all these?” He saw a friend and held him: “Look at that Correggio! this Venus
of Titian! that incomparable Deluge of Caracci! Ah! my friend, I must quit all
these. Farewell, dear pictures, that I love so dearly, and that cost me so
much!”
Verse 18
Keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart
of Thy people.
What must Christians do, that the influences of the ordinances may
abide upon them
The course to be taken for this purpose lies--
I. In the practice
of some things.
1. Get new hearts, and get them daily more and more renewed. A heart
thoroughly sanctified is to the ordinances like tinder, which soon takes fire
and is apt to keep it till it be forced out; whereas a carnal, unmortified
heart is like green wood, which is not soon kindled and will soon go out, if it
be not well looked to. Holiness makes the soul both receptive and retentive of
holy impressions.
2. Labour to be much affected with the ordinances while you are
employed in them. If the ordinances pierce no further than the surface of the
soul, the efficacy of them is not likely to continue. Prepare your hearts
before you draw near to God. The heart is prepared when it is made--
(a) Tender (Jeremiah 4:3; Hosea 10:12). That which can make no
impression at all upon a flint will sink deeply into softened wax.
(b) Sensible; apprehensive of your spiritual wants and necessities.
(c) Open. A quick sense of your spiritual condition will open your
hearts. Desire opens the heart (Matthew 5:6; Psalms 107:9). We come to the ordinances
too like the Egyptian dog, which laps a little as he runs by the side of Nilus,
but stays not to drink. Christ invites us to eat and drink abundantly (Song of Solomon 5:1).
3. Mind the ordinances after you use them. Be much in meditation.
Much of heaven and holiness is engraved on these ordinances; and the seal is,
as it were, set upon the heart, while you are under them; but after-consideration lays
more weight on it and impresseth it deeper. The heart takes fire at the mind (Psalms 39:3).
4. Let the efficacy of the ordinances be pursued presently into act (Psalms 119:60). When the blossoms of a
fruit-tree are once knit, though the flourish thereof be gone, and you see
nothing but the bare rudiment of the expected fruit, yet you think it more
secured from the injury of frosts and winds than if it were still in the
flower. Good motions, when they are once reduced into act, are thereby, as it were,
knit, and brought to more consistency.
5. You must take much pains with your hearts if you would have them
retain the virtue and efficacy of the ordinances. “The slothful man roasteth
not that which he took in hunting” (Proverbs 12:27). He loseth all his former
labour because he will not take a little more pains.
6. Comply with the Spirit of God.
7. Be frequent in the use of ordinances. Good impressions do most
usually wear off in the intervals of holy duties. It is observed that places
under the line are not so hot as some climates at a further distance from it;
and this reason is given for it: Those under the equinoctial, though they have
the sun more vertical, and the beams, falling more perpendicularly, cause a
more intense heat; yet the nights being of equal length with the days, the
coolness of those long nights doth more allay the heat than where the nights
are shorter. Long intermissions of holy duties are like long nights: you may
find them by experience to be great coolers. Elijah in the wilderness had to
eat more than once to be strengthened for his journey (1 Kings 19:6-8).
8. Look up to God for the continuance of this influence.
II. In the
avoidance of other things.
1. Take heed that you perform not your duties negligently (Jeremiah 48:10; Malachi 1:8; Malachi 1:14; Jeremiah 30:21; Deuteronomy 32:46-47).
2. Beware of the world. Meddle not with it more than needs must.
Carry yourself amongst worldly objects and employments as though you were
amongst cheats and thieves: they have the art to pick your hearts slily. When
your hearts are warmed with holy duties, you should be as cautious and wary how
you venture into the world as you are of going into the frosty air when you are
all in a sweat. What is kindled by the Word or prayer requires as much care to
keep it in as to keep a candle in when you would carry it through the open air
in a rainy, blustering night. The further you are above the world, the longer
may you retain any spiritual impressions. Geographers write of some mountains
whose tops are above the middle region of the air; and there lines and figures
being drawn in the dust have been found, say they, in the same form and order,
untouched, undefaced, a long time after; and the reason is because they are
above those winds and showers and storms, which soon wear out and efface any
such draughts in this lower region. The lower your minds and hearts and
conversations are, the less will anything that is heavenly and spiritual abide
upon them.
3. Take heed of any inordinacy in affection, inclination, or design.
The ministry of John the Baptist had some influence on Herod (Mark 6:20); but sensuality being
predominant, those better inclinations were quite overpowered.
4. Rest not in the best performance of any duty, nor in any
assistances you find therein, though they be special and more than ordinary. It
is observed that some professors have had the foulest falls, after they have
been most elevated in holy employments. We are apt to take the most dangerous
colds when we are in the greatest heats.
5. Make not the ordinances your end, but use them as the means to
attain it. Application: If the efficacy of thy ordinances abide not in you, you
cannot be fruitful under them; at least you cannot “bring forth fruit to
perfection.” (David Clarkson, B. D.)
Verse 20
Now bless the Lord your God.
National and individual thanksgiving
I. The abundant
encouragement to praise God afforded us in the scriptures.
II. The most
appropriate themes of thanksgiving.
III. The Best means
of showing God’s praise. (Richard Jones, B. A.)
The duty of praise
I. Why we should
praise God.
1. It is acceptable to God Himself.
2. It confers a blessing on him who renders it.
3. It is the joyous occupation of the saints before the throne.
II. What should be
the subjects of our praise? His mercies.
1. Creation.
2. Preservation.
3. Redemption.
4. The means of grace.
5. The hope of glory.
III. In what way
God’s people are to praise and bless Him.
1. With our lips.
2. In the life and conversation. (A. Roberts, M. A.)
Verse 23
And prospered.
A prosperous kingdom
I. For a king and
a people to be happy, the king must have a right to his kingdom.
II. The management
of the sceptre should be as wise as the tenure is just and royal.
III. The people must
be obedient.
IV. National fear
of the Lord is essential to national blessing. (Bishop Francis Turner.)
Verse 29-30
Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are
written in the book of Samuel the seer.
A pastoral retrospect
We are reminded--
I. Of the supreme
providence of God ordering all things after the counsel of His own will. Time
passes over us like a mighty current, but as Andrew Fuller observed, we are
like little fishes playing in the stream; we are borne along with the current,
but we cannot control its direction nor alter its course. This illustrates the
language of Scripture (Acts 16:26).
II. How
insignificant, in one point of view, and how important in another, is a life of
ordinary duration.
III. That though
times pass over us without being subject to our control, though we have but
little influence upon them, they hate a great influence upon us. By the
character of the times that pass over us our moral condition is greatly
affected.
IV. That in
proportion to the importance and the stirring character of the times that have
passed over us must be our personal responsibility. (Thomas Toller.)
Life’s vicissitudes
I. They are
numerous.
1. There are personal vicissitudes.
2. There are common vicissitudes. The earth is a theatre of perpetual
change.
II. They are
memorable. The vicissitudes of life deserve a record; they are things to be
remembered by man. Why?
1. Because they serve to unfold the preparatory character of our
state.
2. Because they develop the agency of God.
3. Because they show the importance of confiding in the Immutable.
4. Because they tend to direct us to the true scene of rest. The vicissitudes
of our history are hands on the face of life’s chronometer; they measure the
hours in our short days that are gone, and intimate the few that may yet
remain. (Homilist.)
And the times that went
over him.
The waves of time
The principle which dictated the selection by the chronicler of
this somewhat strange phrase is true about the life of every man.
I. Note “times”
which make up each life. By “the times” the writer does not merely mean the
succession of moments. Each life is made up of a series, not merely of
successive moments, but of well-marked epochs, each of which has its own
character, its own responsibilities, its own opportunities, in each of which
there is some special work to be done, some grace to be cultivated, some lesson
to be learned, some sacrifice to be made; and if it is let slip it never comes
back any more. The old alchemists used to believe that there was what they
called the “moment of projection” when, into the heaving molten mass in their
crucible, if they dropped the magic powder, the whole would turn into gold; an
instant later and there would be explosion and death; an instant earlier and
there would be no effect. And so God’s moments come to us, every one of them--a
crisis.
II. The power that
moves the times. How dreary a thing it is if all that we have to say about life
is, “The times pass over us,” like the blind rush of the stream, or the
movement of the sea around our coasts, eating away here, and depositing its
spoils there, sometimes taking and sometimes giving, but all the work of mere
aimless and purposeless chance or of natural causes. There is nothing more
dismal or paralysing than the contemplation of the flow of the times over our
heads, unless we see in their flow something far more than that. The passage of
our epochs over us is not merely the aimless low of a stream but the movement
of a current which God directs. “My times are in Thy hand.”
III. How eloquently
the text suggests the transiency of all the “times.” They “passed over him” as
the wind through an archway, that whistles and cometh not again. How blessed it
is to cherish that wholesome sense of the transieney of things here below! The
times roll over us, like the seas that break upon some isolated rock, and when
the tide has fallen and the vain flood has subsided the rock is them. If the
world helps us to God, we need not mind though it passes and the fashion
thereof.
IV. The transitory
“times that went over” Israel’s king are all recorded imperishably on the pages
here. The record, though condensed, lives for ever. It takes a thousand
rose-trees to make a vial full of essence of roses. The record and issues of
life will be condensed into small compass, but the essence of it is eternal. We
shall find it again, and have to drink as we have brewed, when we get yonder. (A.
M Maclaren, D. D.)
The times of individuals and nations
The word “times” does not convey here the ides of duration merely;
the word in the plural includes also the events and circumstances which marked
that period of duration, and in all their variety of complexion gave to it its
distinguishing character. The expression reminds us that seasons of eventful
importance are often occurring to individuals and peoples, and of the manner in
which these succeed each other in frequent alternations, both in personal and
national life.
I. In individual
life. Each one has his own times--his own part in the events which transpire as
the great wheel of providence revolves. How varied a scene does life for the
most part present. We are like travellers who pass now through smiling vales,
and now are shut in by mountains, and look up on steep cliffs and overhanging
crags. We am mariners around whom the winds are ever shifting, and often dying
into calm--now they spread their salts to the breeze, now again not a breath is
astir and they can scarcely feel that they advance--now yet again they have to
make way against head-wind, and to tack hither and thither to make way at
all--variable are the scenes of our journey or of our life’s navigation. Look
at David; at Paul. See the great Tasso, at one time frequenting a palace, and
wooing, as was thought, princesses with his song, but ere long immured in a
prison. Think of Napoleon at Erfurt when on his way to Russia, with attendant
kings waiting in his ante-chamber, and of the same man a few years afterwards
at St. Helena--his visions of glory all gone--thrown back wholly on the
memories of the past, the caged conqueror of the nations! These are marked
cases illustrative of “the times” of human life. All these things constitute an
important moral exercise. This discipline of life is in wise and beneficent
co-operation with the voice of conscience and the calls of the Bible. It varies
the tones of the appeal by which men are summoned to duty and to God.
II. The national.
Life. Here we find the same variety in the complexion of events, the same
aspect of vicissitude, as in the caps of individuals. Look, for example, at
Israel, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Venice, and our own country. In nature
the wild play of the winds, and the drifting of the snow, and the seething of
the lightning is all but part of a system. We might think that these agencies
were running riot, controlled by no law, and tending to no issue but confusion
and chaos. But it is not so. And in the times that go over the earth year by
year, as summer pasture into autumn, and the temperature declines, and the days
are shortened, and the trees are stripped of their foliage, and the discoloured
leaves are seen falling to the ground, and rotting there, till there comes the
rigour and the frost of winter--all, nevertheless, is not going to desolation.
The failing leaves nourish the soil on which they are left to decay. Wild winds
and storms, shortened days and lengthened nights, are just the discipline the
earth needs, and winter becomes thus the necessary prelude to and preparation
for the opening buds of spring and the fertility of summer. So it is in nature,
and so it often is in the providence of God over nations and the world. (E.
T. Prust.)
Life’s changing current
I. Times make a
deep mark upon the body.
II. Equally marked
is their effect u they pass over us upon our intellectual nature.
III. Not less
striking or important is the stamp of time upon the history of our
sensibilities.
IV. The most
important change is the one that refers to our moral and spiritual state.
V. Our social and
relative condition is subject to the constant variations of time. (S.
T. Spear.)
Times
Amongst rational beings that life is longest, whether brief or
protracted its outward turn, into which the largest amount of mind, of mental
and moral activity, is condensed. It is possible for the longest life to be
really briefer than the shortest, and the child or youth may die older, with
more of life crowded into its brief existence, than he whom dull mad stagnant
being drags on to an inglorious old age. (J. Caird.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》