1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him… I. WE LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOD'S JUDGMENT AND MAN'S. God looketh on the heart; man on the outward appearance. The greatest heart, in that family best in the humblest bosom. God saw the only kingly heart in the shepherd boy, and He made him king. So the world stands before God. He divests men of the trappings of wealth, the robes of office, the assumptions of power These things are temporal and adventitious circumstances, mere cobwebs we have woven round us. Man looks on the face, God on the heart; man on the body, God on the soul. Man's judgment is false; God's is true. II. THEN WE LEARN THAT APPEARANCES ARE OFTEN DECEITFUL. Our race has had bitter lessons of this truth. Our first parents learned that the glittering folds of the serpent only covered the malignant spirit of the devil. How often have we learned "one may smile and smile and be a villain." I remember that the grandest man I saw in the war, grand in the splendour of his military equipment, was an ignorant and presumptuous corporal; and the plainest and most unpretentious man was the greatest general. In the Saviour's time the most pretentious men, who "thanked God they were not like other men," were the Pharisees, who paraded their virtue and advertised their pride before the ignorant and astonished multitude. III. WE LEARN THAT HONOUR BELONGS TO NO STATION. This man was a shepherd. His brothers were warriors. God put the shepherd over the soldiers. When He would select a man to write the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," where did he find him? A noble from the English court? A professor from the Oxford faculty? No; but a tinker from Bedfordshire. Here is his own description of himself: "I was of low and inconsiderable generation; my father's house being of that rank that was meanest and most despised of all families in the land. I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up in my father's house in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen." James A. Froude says of this man: "This is the account given of himself and his origin by a man whose writings have, for two centuries, affected the spiritual condition of the English race, in every part of the world, more powerfully than any other book or books except the Bible." God saw the heart of a kingly man beneath the tinker's coat of John Bunyan. Do you wonder at the astonishment of the people when a poor peasant stood up in the synagogue in his own village and said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me." Do you wonder that they said, "Is not this a carpenter, the son of a carpenter?" That is the language of men. IV. FINALLY, LET US BE CONTENT WITH AN HUMBLE STATION. David's life is an illustrious example of this: He was, doubtless, never so happy or contented as when following his father's sheep over Judea's hills. His greater honours only brought him greater cares and greater sorrows. Then let us learn humility and contentment in our lot. (E. O. Guerrant, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. |
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