2 Samuel 3:39

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I am this day weak, though anointed king." 2 Samuel 3:39 .

Here is a remarkable distinction between the human and the official. What a tone of humiliation there is in the latter part of the text! Two men seem to be speaking here the one the man pure and simple, the other the man clothed with royal purple and loaded with a royal crown. Officialism does nothing towards the sustenance of humanity. Sometimes a man's office is greater than a man's strength. In all these circumstances it is the man who is to be considered, and not the officer. As the life is more than meat, so the man is more than the king; as the body is more than raiment, so the soul is more than the sovereign. It is most instructive to listen to the confessions of weakness made by kings and men who have all that the world can give them. It is too frequently supposed that if we had crown, and throne, and sceptre, and gilded palace, we should be content and strong, yea, even riotous in the overflow of power: nothing of the kind. All history shows us that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. We suppose that only poor men complain of being weak; yet here we have a king telling us that weakness has invaded the palace, and that weakness has thrown into contempt all the glamour and pomp of courts. Periods of weakness may be so used as to be the occasions of growing strength. One man was enabled to exclaim, "When I am weak, then am I strong." When our weakness is rightly felt we are driven to God for the renewal of our strength. All our springs are in him. He only can recover the soul from its moods of dejection, and build up our flesh into reality of power. So, again and again, in all conditions and varieties of life, we are brought back from heart-wandering and self-trusting to simple dependence upon the living and eternal God.