PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 262,303 words · 371 reading sections
Contrasted Services
'They shall be his servants: that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.'--2 Chron. xii. 8. Rehoboam was a self-willed, godless king who, like some other kings, learned nothing by experience. His kingdom was nearly wrecked at the very beginning of his reign, and was saved much more…
853 wordsSECTION 62Contrasted Services
II. The contrasted experience of the servants. Judah learned that the yoke of obedience to God's law was a world lighter than the grinding oppression of the Egyptian invader. God's service is freedom; the world's is slavery. Liberty is unrestrained power to do what we ought. Man must be subject to law. The solemn im…
799 wordsSECTION 63Contrasted Services
God's service has final issues and the world's service has final issues. Only fools try to blink the fact that all our doings have consequences. And it augurs no less levity and insensibility to blink the other fact that these consequences show no indications of being broken short off at the end of our earthly life. M…
693 wordsSECTION 64The Secret Of Victory
Is it not, then, the part of wise men to lay to heart the lessons of experience, and to let what we have learned of the bitter fruit of godless living turn us away from such service, and draw us by merciful chastisement to yield ourselves to God, whom to serve accords with our deepest needs and brings first fruits and …
866 wordsSECTION 65The Secret Of Victory
But Abijah's example teaches us another lesson--that for a vigorous faith, there must be obedience to all God's known will. True, thank God! faith often springs in its power in a soul that is conscious but of sin, but a continuance in disobedience will inevitably kill faith. It was because Abijah and his people had kep…
656 wordsSECTION 66The Secret Of Victory
The text puts in a striking form another lesson well worth learning, that, in the greatest crises, no time is better spent than time used for prayer. A rush on the enemy would not have served Abijah's purpose nearly so well as that moment's pause for crying to the Lord, before his charge. Hands lifted to heaven are ner…
709 wordsSECTION 67Asa'S Reformation, And Consequent Peace And Victory
'And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God; 3. For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves: 4. And commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment. 5. Also he took aw…
819 wordsSECTION 68Asa'S Reformation, And Consequent Peace And Victory
Asa's experience embodies a truth which is substantially fulfilled in nations and in individuals; for obedience brings rest, often outward tranquillity, always inward calm. Note the heightened earnestness expressed in the repetition of the expression 'We have sought the Lord' in verse 7, and the grand assurance of His …
282 wordsSECTION 69Asa'S Prayer
'And Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go against this multitude. O Lord, Thou art our God; let not man prevail against Thee.'--2 CHRON. xiv. 11. This Kin…
876 wordsSECTION 70Asa'S Prayer
II. Summoning God into the field should follow wholesome self-distrust. Asa uses a remarkable expression, which is, perhaps, scarcely reproduced adequately in our Authorised Version: 'It is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power.' It is a strange phrase, but it seems most probable…
868 wordsSECTION 71Asa'S Prayer
III. Courageous advance should follow self-distrust and summoning God by faith. It is well when self-distrust leads to confidence, when, as Charles Wesley has it in his great hymn: '... I am weak, But confident in self-despair.' But that is not enough. It is better when self-distrust and confidence in God lead to c…
672 wordsSECTION 72The Search That Always Finds
'They ... sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them: and the Lord gave them rest round about.'--2 CHRON. xv. 15. These words occur in one of the least familiar passages of the Old Testament. They describe an incident in the reign of Asa, who was the grandson of Solomon's foolish son Rehoboam, and wa…
865 wordsSECTION 73The Search That Always Finds
Oh! dear brethren, I do believe there is more unconscious unreality in the average Christian man's endeavour to be a better Christian than there is in almost anything else in the world:-- 'One foot on sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never.' That is why so many of us know nothing of a progressive strengt…
823 wordsSECTION 74The Search That Always Finds
Brethren! is there anything else in the world of which you can say, 'Seek, and ye shall find'? You, with white hairs on your heads, have you found anything else in which the chase was sure to result in the capture; in which capture was sure to yield all that the hunter had wished? There is only one direction for a man'…
720 wordsSECTION 75Jehoshaphat'S Reform
Thus we may have the peace of God, rest in and from Him, entering into us, and in due time, by His gracious guidance and help, we shall enter into eternal rest. Whilst to seek is to find Him, in a very deep and blessed sense, even in this life; in another aspect all our earthly life may be regarded as seeking after Him…
789 wordsSECTION 76Jehoshaphat'S Reform
Jehoshaphat's religion was, further, resolutely held in the face of prevailing opposition. 'The Baalim' were popular; it was fashionable to worship them. They were numerous, and all varieties of taste could find a Baal to please them. But this young king turned from the tempting ways that opened flower-strewn before hi…
691 wordsSECTION 77Jehoshaphat'S Reform
But that destructive work is not to be done by force. Institutions can only be swept away when public opinion has grown to see their evils. Forcible reformations of manners, and, still more, of religion, never last, but are sure to be followed by violent rebounds to the old order. So, side by side with the removal of i…
617 wordsSECTION 78Amasiah
'Amasiah, the son of Zichri, who willingly offered himself unto the Lord.'--1 CHRON. xvii, 16. This is a scrap from the catalogue of Jehoshaphat's 'mighty men of valour'; and is Amasiah's sole record. We see him for a moment and hear his eulogium and then oblivion swallows him up. We do not know what it was that he di…
851 wordsSECTION 79Amasiah
III. This willing offering is accepted by God. We may hear a mightier voice behind the chronicler's, and the judgment of the Judge of all pronounced by His lips. It matters little what men say of one another, but it matters everything what God says of us. We are but too apt to forget that He is now saying something as…
559 wordsSECTION 80'A Mirror For Magistrates'
'And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned to his house in peace to Jerusalem. 2. And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord. 3. Nevertheless there are good …
905 wordsSECTION 81'A Mirror For Magistrates'
And for us all the spirit of Jehoshaphat's charge is binding, and every trivial and secular task is to be discharged for God, with God, in the fear of God. 'On the bells of the horses shall be Holiness unto Jehovah.' If our religion does not drive the wheels of daily life, so much the worse for our life and our religio…
701 wordsSECTION 82A Strange Battle
'We have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee.'--2 CHRON xx. 12. A formidable combination of neighbouring nations, of which Moab and Ammon, the ancestral enemies of Judah, were the chief, was threatening Judah. Jehoshaphat, the king, was pan…
859 wordsSECTION 83A Strange Battle
II. We see here the peaceful assurance of victory that attends on faith. A flash of inspiration came to one of the Levitical singers who had, no doubt, been deeply moved and had unconsciously fitted himself for receiving it. Divinely breathed confidence illuminated his waiting spirit, and a great message of encouragem…
719 wordsSECTION 84A Strange Battle
We are most likely to conquer if we lift up the voice of thanks for victory in advance, and go into the battle expecting to triumph, because we trust in God. The world's expectation of success is too often a dream, a will-o'-the-wisp that tempts to bogs where the beguiled victim is choked, though even in the world it i…
525 wordsSECTION 85Holding Fast And Held Fast
'As they went forth Jehoshaphat stood and said, Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established.'--2 CHRON. xx. 20. Certainly no stronger army ever went forth to victory than these Jews, who poured out of Jerusalem that morning with no weapon in all their ranks, and having for their van, not their picked men,…
768 wordsSECTION 86Holding Fast And Held Fast
Jehoshaphat, in the same breath in which he exhorted his people to 'believe in the Lord, that they might be established,' also said, 'Believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.' The immediate reference, of course, was to the man who the day before had assured them of victory. But the wider truth suggested is, that the …
861 wordsSECTION 87Holding Fast And Held Fast
And what do we mean by clasping God? I mean making daily efforts to rivet our love on Him, and not to let the world, with all its delusive and cloying sweets, draw us away from Him. I mean continual and strenuous efforts to fix our _thoughts_ upon Him, and not to allow the trivialities of life, or the claims of culture…
712 wordsSECTION 88Joash
'And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.... 17. Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah, and made obeisance to the king. Then the king hearkened unto them.'--2 CHRON. xxiv. 2, 17. Here we have the tragedy of a soul. Joash begins life well and f…
802 wordsSECTION 89Joash
Let us learn from this story in the next place, how little power of continuance there is in a merely traditional religion. Many of you call yourselves Christian people mainly because other people do the same. It is customary to respect and regard Christianity. You have been brought up in the midst of it. Our country is…
667 wordsSECTION 90Joash
So he went on apparently all right, like a tree that has become quite hollow, till during some storm it is blown down and falls with a crash, and it is seen that for years it has been only the skin of a tree, bark outside, and inside--emptiness. II. We come now to the second stage in the later life of Joash: His resis…
670 wordsSECTION 91Joash
III. Last comes the final scene: The retribution. We have that picture of Zechariah, solemnly lifting up his eyes to heaven and committing his cause to God. 'The Lord look upon it and require it,' says the martyr priest in the spirit of the old Law. The dying appeal was soon answered in the invasion of the Syrian army…
377 wordsSECTION 92Glad Givers And Faithful Workers
'And it came to pass after this, that Joash was minded to repair the house of the Lord. 5. And he gathered together the priests and the Levites, and said to them, go out unto the cities of Judah, and gather of all Israel money to repair the house of your God from year to year, and see that ye hasten the matter. Howbeit…
700 wordsSECTION 93Glad Givers And Faithful Workers
The first intention was to raise the funds by sending out the priests and Levites to collect locally the statutory half-shekel, as well as other contributions mentioned in 2 Kings xii. There we learn that each collector was to go to 'his acquaintance.' The subscription was to be spread over some years, and for a while …
701 wordsSECTION 94Glad Givers And Faithful Workers
No doubt, too, Joash's earnestness kindled others. Chronicles speaks only of the 'tax,'--that is, the half-shekel,--but Kings mentions two other sources, one of which is purely spontaneous gifts, and these are implied by the tone of verse 10, which lays stress on the gladness of the offerers. That is the incense which …
696 wordsSECTION 95Glad Givers And Faithful Workers
Joash knew when to trust and when to keep a sharp eye on men. His experience with the priests had not soured him into suspecting everybody. Cynical disbelief in honesty is more foolish and hurtful to ourselves than even excessive trust. These workmen wrought all the more faithfully because they knew that they were trus…
394 wordsSECTION 96Prudence And Faith
'And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man of God answered, The Lord is able to give thee much more than this.'--2 CHRON. xxv. 9. The character of this Amaziah, one of the Kings of Judah, is summed up by the chronicler in a da…
1,038 wordsSECTION 97Prudence And Faith
But we have here an instance of a right thing in a wrong place. It was right to ask the question, but wrong to ask it at that point. Amaziah thought nothing about duty. There sprang up in his mind at once the cowardly and ignoble thought: 'I cannot afford to do what is right, because it will cost me a hundred talents,'…
800 wordsSECTION 98Prudence And Faith
II. The triumphant answer. 'The Lord is able to give thee much more than this.' Now, this answer, like the question, may be right or wrong, according as it is taken. In what aspect is it wrong? In what sense is it not true? I suppose this prophet did not mean more than the undeniable truth that God was able to give Am…
693 wordsSECTION 99Jotham
Remember the old prophecy: 'For brass I will bring gold; and for iron, silver.' The brass and the iron may be worth something, but if we barter them away and get instead gold and silver, we are gainers by the transaction. Fling out the ballast if you wish the balloon to rise. Let the hundred talents go if you wish to g…
698 wordsSECTION 100Jotham
Why is it not? and might it not be? and if it might not, ought it not to be? And what are we to say to Him whom we profess to love as our Supreme Good, if all the day long the thought of Him seldom comes into our minds, and if any triviality, held near the eye, is large enough and bright enough to shut Him out from our…
800 wordsSECTION 101Jotham
But the lesson that is pressed upon us by this word, understood in the other meanings of 'prepared' or 'ordered,' is that all our 'ways,' that is, our practical life, our acts, direction of mind, habits, should be regulated by continual consciousness of, and reference to, the All-discerning Eye that looks down upon us,…
793 wordsSECTION 102Jotham
But though the husk of my text falls away--and we should thank God that it has fallen away--the kernel of it is ever true. Whosoever will thus root his life in the living thought of a loving, divine Eye being perpetually upon him, and make that thought a motive for holiness and loving obedience and effort after service…
288 wordsSECTION 103Costly And Fatal Help
'He sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him: and he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him, and of all Israel.'--2 CHRON. xxviii. 23. Ahaz came to the throne when a youth of twenty. From the beginnin…
667 wordsSECTION 104Costly And Fatal Help
Side by side with that multiplication of false deities went the almost entire neglect of the worship of Jehovah, until at last, as his reign advanced and he floundered deeper into his troubles, the Temple was spoiled, everything in it that could be laid hands upon was sent to the melting-pot, to pay the Assyrian tribut…
785 wordsSECTION 105Costly And Fatal Help
II. So notice again how this story teaches the heavy cost of these helpers' help. Ahaz had, as he thought, two strings to his bow. He had the gods of Damascus and of other lands on one hand, he had the king of Assyria on another. They both of them exacted onerous terms before they would stir a foot to his aid. As for …
701 wordsSECTION 106Costly And Fatal Help
Ay! and that is what this world always does. In the case before us there was providential guidance of the politics of the Eastern nations in order to bring about these results; and we do not look for anything of that sort. No! But there are natural laws at work today which are God's laws, and which ensure the worthless…
757 wordsSECTION 107Costly And Fatal Help
So let me plead with you. With some of you, perhaps, my voice, as a familiar voice, that in some measure, however undeservedly, you trust, may have influence. Let me plead with you--do not run after these will-o'-the-wisps that will only lure you into destruction, but follow the light of life which is Jesus Christ Hims…
322 wordsSECTION 108A Godly Reformation
'Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. 2. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. 3. He in the first year of his rei…
806 wordsSECTION 109A Godly Reformation
And there are some things which are best done quickly, both in individual and national life. Leaving off bad habits by degrees is not hopeful. The only thing to be done is to break with them utterly and at once. One strong, swift blow, right through the heart, kills the wild beast. Slighter cuts may make him bleed to d…
808 wordsSECTION 110A Godly Reformation
That phrase 'an astonishment, and an hissing' (ver. 8) is new. It appears for the first time in Micah (Micah vi. 16), and he, we know, exercised influence on Hezekiah (Jer. xxvi. 18, 19). Perhaps the king is here quoting the prophet. The exposition of the sin and its fruit is followed by the king's resolve for himself…
742 wordsSECTION 111Sacrifice Renewed
'Then they went in to Hezekiah the king, and said, We have cleansed all the house of the Lord, and the altar of burnt-offering, with all the vessels thereof, and the shew-bread table, with all the vessels thereof. 19. Moreover, all the vessels, which king Ahaz in his reign did cast away in his transgression, have we pr…
677 wordsSECTION 112Sacrifice Renewed
The first thing to be noted is that the whole movement back to Jehovah was a one-man movement. It was Hezekiah's doing and his only. No priest is named as prominent in it, and the slowness of the whole order is especially branded in verse 34. No prophet is named; was there any one prompting the king? Perhaps Isaiah did…
653 wordsSECTION 113Sacrifice Renewed
That brings us to the most important aspect of Hezekiah's great sacrifice. It sets forth the stages by which men can approach to God. It is symbolic of spiritual facts, and prophetic of Christ's work and of our way of coming to God through Him. The first requisite for Judah's return to Jehovah, whom they had forsaken, …
556 wordsSECTION 114A Loving Call To Reunion
'And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel. 2. For the king had taken counsel, and his princes, and all the congregation in Jerusalem, to keep the passover in th…
687 wordsSECTION 115A Loving Call To Reunion
The alteration of the time of keeping the passover from the thirteenth day of the first month to the same day of the second was in accordance with the liberty granted in Numbers ix. 10, 11, to persons unclean by contact with a dead body or 'in a journey afar off.' The decision to have the passover was not taken in time…
726 wordsSECTION 116A Loving Call To Reunion
We note further the deep true insight into God's character and ways expressed in this message. There is a very striking variation in the three designations of Jehovah as 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel' (ver. 6), 'the god of their [that is, the preceding generation] fathers' (ver. 7), and 'your God' (ver. 8). Th…
504 wordsSECTION 117A Strange Reward For Faithfulness
'After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came.'--2 CHRON. XXXII. 1. The Revised Version gives a much more accurate and significant rendering of a part of these words. It reads: 'After these things and _this faithfulness_, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came.' What are 'these thi…
865 wordsSECTION 118A Strange Reward For Faithfulness
Now, that is the principle by which we have to estimate all the events that befall us. There are two ways of looking at them. You may look at them from the under side or from the top side. You may see them as they appear to men who cannot look beyond their noses and only have concern with the visible cranks and shaftin…
721 wordsSECTION 119A Strange Reward For Faithfulness
The next was that his invasion increased dependence upon God. You will remember the story of the insolent taunts and vulgar vaunting by him and his servants, and the one answer that was given: 'Hezekiah, the king, and Isaiah the son of Amoz the prophet, prayed and cried to God.' Ah! dear brethren, any thing that drives…
784 wordsSECTION 120Manasseh'S Sin And Repentance
Dear friends! do not let it be said of us, 'In vain have I smitten thy children. They have received no correction'; but rather let us keep close to Him, and seek to learn the sweet and loving meaning of His sharpest strokes. Then the little book, 'written within and without with lamentation and woe,' which we all in ou…
740 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.