2 Samuel 14:14
14 For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him.
I. God's heaviest punishment is separation from Himself. There are degrees of separation degrees in intensity and degrees in duration. There are two great divisions: the banished and the expelled. The banished wish to come back, the expelled do not; the banished have lost peace, the expelled have forfeited life.
II. Banishment is judicial, but it is not final. It is bitter, but it is curative. It is severe, but it is love. The banished must beware lest they go off further and further to remoter lands, lengthening and deepening their own punishment, till they get out of reach, beyond sound of recall and the circle of attraction, and then their banishment may become punishment.
III. God is always devising how His banished may be restored. His Son died that there might be a welcome to all the banished ones, and that expulsion might be a word unknown in heaven's vocabulary.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 97.
References: 2 Samuel 14:14. Parker, vol. vii., p. 237; S. Cox, Expositor's Notebook,p. 9; M. Daniell, Penny Pulpit,No. 2491; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 22; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvi., No. 950. 2 Samuel 14:25. Expositor,2nd series, vol. viii., p. 176. 2 Samuel 14:29. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. x., No. 563. 2Sam 14-18. Parker, vol. vii., p. 174. 2 Samuel 15:6. Ibid.,p. 238. 2 Samuel 15:10. F. W. Krummacher, David the King of Israel,p. 401. 2 Samuel 15:13. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit;vol. xxii., p. 395.