Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3356
“Although my house is not so with God; yet He has made with me an everlasting Covenant, orderedin all things and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although He makes it not to grow.” 2 Samuel 23:5.
NO GOLD but pure gold can stand the fire. And if a man’s religion has been a pretentious sham, it is very likely to tumble to pieces under the rough hand of death. There have been a few hypocrites who have been able to brazen it out, even in the last solemn article, but these must always be the few. David, at any rate, was never the man who would play the hypocrite in the last extremity of death. You can see how true, how deep, how thorough his faith in God must have been, for his dying bed was by no means an enviable one. His dying pillow was stuffed with sharp thorns. His was a life which, although it had much of Divine Grace about it, yet had much of sinful nature, too. He was dying as we might not wish to die in some respects, but his faith triumphed as we may well desire that our faith may triumph, whatever the outward circumstances of our life or death may be! We shall go at once, and without further preface, to consider our text and notice in turn the Psalmist-King’s grave lament. And then, blessed compensation, his glorious comfort. First, then, we shill ponder, and may the Holy Spirit make it greatly to profit everyone of us—
I. David’s Grave Lament
His house, he declares, was “not so” with God. And the numbers and the power of that house did not grow as he could have wished. Brothers and Sisters, there are some troubles that a man outgrows. There are some childish trials connected with our early Christian life which we, without effort, outlive and which in due course pass away. We shall not have to feel—thank God!—ever again the special perils of our youth and of our early manhood. When we have passed into riper years, we leave these things behind us. But there are some troubles which accumulate as we grow. For instance, there is the peculiar trouble alluded to in the text. There are, no doubt, multitudes of cares and trials connected with a family of little children, but every parent knows that the trials connected with little children are as nothing compared with the sorrows of those who have grown-up children that cause them heartache and heartbreak.
We could better afford to bury them one by one in their infancy, than that they should live to dishonor their father’s name and to blaspheme their father’s God! The mother might be well satisfied to watch over their sick couches night after night and to weary herself as though she labored in the very fire for their sakes. We could well put up with the little mistakes, sturbornesses, follies and even sins of their earliest days. But the sting is when, having left our roof, they leave our teaching! When, having gone from our training, they do not abide in it, but plunge into sin and prove to us most sadly that Divine Grace does not run in the blood, but that natural depravity most certainly does. Now, this particular form of trial accumulates as we grow older. Some of us here have not yet come to it. May God grant that we never may, but I know there are some here whose hairs are plentifully sprinkled with gray, who have this as their daily cross to carry and who look back on all the troubles of their youth and say that they were as nothing compared with this—the house being amiss with God, the children being disobedient—the sons and daughters training up their children, but not in the nurture and admonition of the Lord! This is a trial which comes when the battle of life, as we think, is almost over and when we might naturally expect to take a little repose in the eventide of life, before the dawning of the everlasting morning! This seems to be one of the last thorns that is thrust into our rest. With some it has been a thorn which, as in the case of David, has pierced their heart in its last beats and throbs. I may be addressing some such tonight. At any rate, I am addressing a great many who have need to pray against this trial. Oh, it is a dreadful thing—a terrible thing to look for-
ward to, but what must it be to bear, none can tell but those whose hearts have been wrung by the iron hand of such an affliction!—
“How sharper than a serpent’s teeth it is To have a thankless child.”
David had an Absalom and an Amnon, and a Tamar—of whom the less said the better—and outside his dying chamber door there was an Adonijah trying to upset his father’s last will and testament. And although Solomon was, in some respects, a great deal better, yet he was not, in those days, all that might be wished.