I. THE FIRST CONDITION OF A FIXED HEART IS A SIGHT OF THE CROSS. The world's religion ends with forgiveness; God's religion begins with it. There is nothing that imparts such solidity to character, and such strength and dignity to life, as conscious peace with Heaven.

II. The next thing is to LOOK UPON YOUR "BROIDERED COAT" — the righteousness that is "unto all and upon all them that believe."

III. Bunyan's pilgrim looked also oftentimes into the ROLL WHICH HE CARRIED IN HIS BOSOM. Habitual study of the Bible is indispensable to a healthy condition of the soul. McCheyne would not speak to any one in the morning till he had first of all heard the voice of God. It gives a tone to the whole day, when we begin the day with Him.

IV. "WHEN HIS THOUGHTS WAXED WARM ABOUT WHITHER HE WAS GOING," THAT GAVE FIXEDNESS TO CHRISTIAN'S HEART. You may be none the less shrewd as to the interests of time because you are wise as to the concerns of eternity; like a trusty pilot, who, though his eyes are on the stars, keeps his hand upon the helm.

(J. T. Davidson, D.D.)

II. SEEKING THE LORD. This is not born of nature, but of grace. Seeking the Lord implies a conscious sense of weakness and insufficiency.

III. HEART PREPARATION. All true and successful seeking of the Lord comes of prepared hearts. The heart is always the part that makes our hearing, believing, praying, and doing right or wrong. As soon as the sun rises in the morning the birds are ready to go forth from their nests to sing. So it is with all the moral forces or faculties of the soul when the heart is prepared to seek the Lord. The heart is to the whole man what the main-spring is to the watch — it sets all the other powers in motion. "But as the bowl," says one, "runs as the bias inclines it, and as the ship moves as the rudder steers it," so man seeks as the heart prompts him. A prepared heart is a loving heart, "believing true and clean." It enters into the secret place of the Most High as a loving child enters into his father's home. Whence cometh this preparation? There must be some efficient cause to account for the differences we see among men. The difference between the common field and the garden to-day has been brought about by the application of human thought and manual skill. It is even so with respect to differences among men. As the garden did not enclose itself, or of itself become more fertile than the field, neither have men become different among their fellows or before God except by different resolutions of will and energy of character. Those who exercise no forethought or natural sagacity become as the man who built his house upon the sand.

IV. THE EVIL OF NEGLECTING TO PREPARE THE HEART. Men may do evil by failing to do well. Mere neglect is sufficient to ruin a man. A man need not be openly profane or wicked to be excluded from God's presence; he has but to neglect the means of grace, or to prepare his heart to seek the Lord while He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near.

(John Kerr Campbell, D.D.).

     7230   genealogies
     7233   Israel, northern kingdom
     7245   Judah, kingdom of
     7781   seer

2 Chronicles 12:9-16

     5366   king

Chronicles
The comparative indifference with which Chronicles is regarded in modern times by all but professional scholars seems to have been shared by the ancient Jewish church. Though written by the same hand as wrote Ezra-Nehemiah, and forming, together with these books, a continuous history of Judah, it is placed after them in the Hebrew Bible, of which it forms the concluding book; and this no doubt points to the fact that it attained canonical distinction later than they. Nor is this unnatural. The book …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament