"THE LORD IS MY LIGHT AND MY SALVATION."
—PSALM 27:1.—SEPT. 27.—
A REVIEW of the Quarter is appointed for this date, and our caption is the Golden Text. The four characters brought to our attention by the lessons of the past quarter have been Samuel the Prophet, Saul—Israel's first king,—Jonathan, his son, and David, successor to the kingdom. Three of these were grand characters, but one of them ignoble—Saul. The contrast before us has been chiefly as between Saul and David. Both were of good character in many respects; the differences between them we may safely credit to the fact that the one early gave his heart to the Lord, and the other kept his to himself. The secret of David's greatness is the Golden Text of this lesson. The Lord was his light and salvation—guiding his heart and overruling his affairs for good. But we should never forget that David was not only a great and good man of himself, because he chose the Lord for his portion and was always loyal at heart to him, but additionally because the Lord chose David, whose name signifies Beloved, to be a type of Christ, the well-beloved,—Head and body.
The grand lesson of this quarter to spiritual Israel is reverence for the Lord, faith in him, courage, the result of that faith, and patient endurance, another fruit of the same. The members of the body of Christ cannot fail to be profited by studying closely and deeply the character of the man after God's own heart, and learning from his experiences;—always remembering, nevertheless, that King David belonged to the house of servants, that he lived at too early a date to belong to the house of sons, of which our Lord Jesus was the first-born and fore-runner; that consequently David did not have the begetting of the holy Spirit, nor the privileges and advantages of the same; that he was not running in the race for the great prize, was not a member of the Royal Priesthood, consecrated to death.—Heb. 3:2,5,6; 11:40; Luke 7:28.
For these reasons, although drawing valuable lessons from David's experiences, we of this Gospel age, members of the house of sons (John 1:12) are not to regard David as our sample or pattern in consecrated living or self-sacrificing service. While we draw lessons from the experiences of David and other noble characters of the past, our patterns are Jesus and his apostles, whom we are to copy—walking in their footsteps in the narrow way of self-sacrifice even unto death.
We commend to all a careful reading of Psalm 27 entire. It is profitable, capable of an application to every member of the body of Christ, the Church, the house of sons.