Morning, August 20

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"The sweet psalmist of Israel."

  2 Samuel 23:1

   Among all the saints whose lives are recorded in Holy Writ, David
   possesses an experience of the most striking, varied, and instructive
   character. In his history we meet with trials and temptations not to be
   discovered, as a whole, in other saints of ancient times, and hence he
   is all the more suggestive a type of our Lord. David knew the trials of
   all ranks and conditions of men. Kings have their troubles, and David
   wore a crown: the peasant has his cares, and David handled a shepherd's
   crook: the wanderer has many hardships, and David abode in the caves of
   Engedi: the captain has his difficulties, and David found the sons of
   Zeruiah too hard for him. The psalmist was also tried in his friends,
   his counsellor Ahithophel forsook him, "He that eateth bread with me,
   hath lifted up his heel against me." His worst foes were they of his
   own household: his children were his greatest affliction. The
   temptations of poverty and wealth, of honour and reproach, of health
   and weakness, all tried their power upon him. He had temptations from
   without to disturb his peace, and from within to mar his joy. David no
   sooner escaped from one trial than he fell into another; no sooner
   emerged from one season of despondency and alarm, than he was again
   brought into the lowest depths, and all God's waves and billows rolled
   over him. It is probably from this cause that David's psalms are so
   universally the delight of experienced Christians. Whatever our frame
   of mind, whether ecstasy or depression, David has exactly described our
   emotions. He was an able master of the human heart, because he had been
   tutored in the best of all schools--the school of heart-felt, personal
   experience. As we are instructed in the same school, as we grow matured
   in grace and in years, we increasingly appreciate David's psalms, and
   find them to be "green pastures." My soul, let David's experience cheer
   and counsel thee this day.