David's Sorrow and Resource
2 Samuel 23:5
Although my house be not so with God; yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure…


The great and elevated among mankind have sorrows proportioned to their greatness, as the highest points of earth are most exposed to the fury of the fiercest storms. Kings have their griefs as kings.

I. DAVID'S DOMESTIC SORROW: "My house is not so with God." Many were the occasions when this distinguished man had to say: "The sorrows of my heart are enlarged: bring thou me out of my distresses. All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. I sink in deep waters" (2 Samuel 22:5, 6.) Probably as a king, as a public man, David more habitually and simply cast himself upon the Lord. As a domestic man, he was less upon his guard. He expected no lion, no bear, no Goliath difficulty in his home; he therefore did not meet home temptations and troubles as he had met them: "I come to Thee in the name of the Lord of hosts." And some of you may now be drinking of a similar cup of domestic bitters.

II. Let us look at DAVID'S PERSONAL RESOURCE: "Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant."

1. In duration it is everlasting. From everlasting the counsel of peace was between them both — the Father and the Son; the Son, who as Messiah was to sit and rule upon His throne, and be a priest upon His throne (Zechariah 6:13.) It is that covenant, which, to use the forcible language of Paul to Titus, "God, who cannot lie, promised in Christ before the world began."

2. Observe its completeness: "Ordered in all things: This is all my salvation, and all my desire." Nothing is left to captious chance; nothing to inconstant and changeable man. There are no contingencies with God; nothing takes Him by surprise.

3. Look also at its certainty: "Sure." The uncertainty of all earthly things is one sad ingredient in the cup of earth's bitterness. Such was David's personal resource at seventy, amidst domestic sorrow. And when we look at the sufficiency: of it, we may well ask, What has the man of the world to fall back upon, when all his earthly hopes are blighted; what to be compared with the believer's resource?

(J. East, M. A.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.

WEB: Most certainly my house is not so with God, yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, for it is all my salvation, and all [my] desire, although he doesn't make it grow.




David's Dying Song
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