August 20, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"The sweet psalmist of Israel." — 2 Samuel 23:1 · KJV

Among all the saints whose lives are recorded in Scripture, David has an experience of the most striking, varied, and instructive kind. In his history we meet trials and temptations not found, as a whole, in other saints of ancient times, and so he is all the more suggestive a type of our Lord. David knew the trials of every rank and condition. Kings have their troubles, and David wore a crown; the peasant has his cares, and David handled a shepherd's crook; the wanderer has his hardships, and David hid in the caves of Engedi; the captain has his difficulties, and David found the sons of Zeruiah too hard for him. The psalmist was tried in his friends, too: his counselor Ahithophel forsook him — "He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me." His worst foes were of his own household, and his children were his greatest affliction. The temptations of poverty and wealth, of honor and reproach, of health and weakness, all tried their power on him; he had temptations from without to disturb his peace, and from within to mar his joy. No sooner did David escape one trial than he fell into another; no sooner emerged from one season of despondency than he was plunged into the lowest depths, and all God's waves and billows rolled over him. This is likely why David's psalms are so universally the delight of experienced Christians. Whatever our frame of mind — ecstasy or depression — David has exactly described our feelings. He was a master of the human heart, because he had been schooled in the best of all schools: heartfelt, personal experience. As we are taught in the same school, and grow mature in grace and in years, we prize David's psalms more and more, and find them to be "green pastures." My soul, let David's experience cheer and counsel you this day.