2 Samuel 23:15 And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! David was feeling the strong pressure of memory. He was living again in his boyhood days, What he said was no doubt only a sentiment. Other wells were just as refreshing, and their waters as cool as this well of his old home, but for the moment David was living in the past, and his thirst for water, which he drank in childhood could be taken, I think, as a longing for a draught of the purity and the abundance of all that which went to make life happy when he was a boy. Life is not all plain sailing for anyone, and so for a brief hour, amid the pressure of your daily business and toil, you step aside from the hurrying crowds and stop to rest awhile in the presence of God and to think. 1. The old simple faith. The water may be taken as typifying and standing for faith, the faith which the child always seems to drink in from any religious-minded teacher. Those were the days when faith came simply and easily to you; but you have been out into the world since then. 2. The dangers of young manhood. Is there any secret sin in your life, come temptation to impurity, some yielding to that degrading sin of intemperance, some playing with that modern vice of gambling which spoils and mare and destroys so many lifes? Is there anything which you know is fouling the purity of that religious youth that you had as s boy, which is clogging up the stream and making it, alas! very muddy indeed? Well, do you sigh and long to-day like David, for that pure stream, so fresh, so abundant, which satisfies, that deep thirst for God which you had in the days gone by, before sin and doubt had crept in? Thank God if you do, it shows your heart is. still in the right place, and that your life is not turned away so much from God as perhaps at times you may have suspected. Will you renew that faith to-day? 3. The one standard. Remember, there is only one standard put before us all, the highest of all standards — the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." (W. F. J. Robberds.) Parallel Verses KJV: And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! |
    |