2 Samuel 12:1 The chief devotional exercise which turns religion into a personal thing, which brings it home to men's business and bosoms, is self-examination. A man's religion cannot well be one of merely good impressions, the staple of it cannot well be an evaporating sentiment, if he have acquir... [ Continue Reading ]
2 Samuel 12:4 The mixture of gold and clay of which our nature is composed is nowhere so strikingly displayed as in the constant tendency of men to conceive lofty purposes, and then to attain them by mean and sordid methods. The high impulse and the low self-indulgent method are both real, and this... [ Continue Reading ]
2 Samuel 12:7 I. It is just in this circumstance, that David's righteous and evil acts are not to be harmonised, that the wholesomeness of his written story lies. We do not feel the inconsistency which unbelievers point to in David, with the sneering question, "Is this the man after God's own heart... [ Continue Reading ]
2 Samuel 12:13 The David of the Old Testament and the Peter of the New were alike keen, impetuous, high-wrought. Each falls in his strong point, because the strength of the good is necessarily the strength of the evil. But in both sin is the parenthesis; the thread of grace is gathered up again. I... [ Continue Reading ]
2 Samuel 12:13 I. When we read the history of David's fall, what surprises and perhaps somewhat perplexes us at the first is the apparent suddenness of it. There seems no preparation, no warning. But if we look back to the first verse of the chapter preceding, we shall find the explanation there: ... [ Continue Reading ]
2 Samuel 12:23. The doctrine of our future meeting and recognition is intimated in the earlier records of Scripture. We are told of Abraham, Jacob, Aaron, and Moses that each was gathered to his people. This cannot be merely a peculiar idiom of language signifying that they died. In some instances... [ Continue Reading ]