2 Chronicles 25:2

There were not wanting certain good elements about Amaziah; and had he not given way to a haughty temper and ambitious pride, his career might have been a useful and happy one. He was acquainted with the Scriptures, and paid respect to the ordinances of religion. He had the desire to live a virtuous and godly life, but the secret of his failure was that his heart was not right with God. His goodness was superficial, and therefore artificial; it was not the outcome of a regenerate nature.

I. Do not misunderstand this word "perfect." No man is perfect, in the absolute sense of the term, though we are to strive after this as the goal. It was not because Amaziah was not sinless that his life proved such a failure, but because he was not thorough-going in his principle and piety.

II. English life at present seems to be afflicted with a plague of levity. There is so much hollowness and unreality, so much veneer in character and work, that it behoves us to preach aloud the gospel of thoroughness. It is just because you claim to be the Lord's that any sort of work will not do. Bearing His name, you are responsible to Him for every detail of your daily life. Our religion is given us to be a universal blessing, to sharpen our faculties, to quicken our diligence, to increase our likelihood of success.

III. Remember that religion is something within you, working outward from the centre, and that centre a heart possessed by the grace of God. It is not, as too many imagine it, a reformation commencing in the outer circumference of one's life and habits, and then working its way to the core, till the heart is reached and changed; it takes its start in the innermost recesses of our being, and from thence reaches outwards, till the whole character and conduct are brought under its blissful sway.

J. Thain Davidson, The City Youth, p. 253.

2 Chronicles 25:9The subject brought before us in the text is the weighing of consequences. It is the looking before we leap; it is the propriety of considering what is to follow from what we do before we do it.

I. The great principle which should guide all wise Christian people with regard to the consideration of consequences is this: Wherever we are sure that duty leads, wherever we are sure that God bids us go, then that way we should go, whatever and however painful the consequences may be. The rule is that we are to do right, and as for the consequences, leave them with God.

II. We are to do this humbly; we are not to do it in any strength of our own, but in simple reliance on the promised grace of God. The grand thing is, not that a man should say that he will go on in the path of duty, whatever loss that may bring him, but that those around him should see that he is going on in the path of duty, though that should not be the path of worldly gain.

III. This subject is a most practical one. The time will often come in which we see plainly enough what is the path of duty, but are tempted to ask, What shall we do for the hundred talents? There can be no doubt that in this world honesty is often the very worst policy. But in the long run no man will ever lose by obeying God's bidding; and, just as assuredly, no man will ever gain by disobeying it. To go where God commands and to do what God commands, though loss may come of it, is truly not a disdaining of consequences; it is a fuller and truer weighing of consequences. It is to look farther on; it is to throw eternity into the scale of duty and interest; it is to draw the wise and sound conclusion that what is wrong can never be expedient, because it would be no profit to gain the whole world and to lose the immortal soul.

A. K. H. B., Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit, p. 199.

Reference: 2 Chronicles 25:9.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 335.