1 Samuel 13

[〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], You fool, this night shall your soul be required of you. (1 Samuel 13:13.) Is it not foolish to prefer a short lease before an inheritance? A sinner prefers the pleasures of sin for a season, before those pleasures which run at God's right hand for e…

The truth of the first is manifest, in that not only in this chapter, but often also in the Old Testament, God has made such honorable mention, and given such honorable titles unto many of these Elders: calling Abraham the friend of God, 2 Chronicles 20:7. And David, a man after…

Fifthly, because God's providence disposes all things, when we make lawful promises to do anything, we must put in, or at the least conceive this condition [if the Lord will]: for Saint James says, that we ought to say, If the Lord will, and if we live, we will do this or that (…

When we are set to thinking of our ways, we have many thoughts and sensible stirrings, but they come to nothing, because we do not follow it close: you think, and have some workings of conscience, but do they end in a fixed purpose? Some break through all as Saul forces himself…

This is to distrust God, and to entangle ourselves the more, and to miscarry in a long voyage, after we are about to enter into the port. See the story of Saul's sacrificing, in (1 Samuel 13, verses 8 to 15). If he had tarried a little longer all had been well; before the day wa…

We find Samuel reproving King Saul; Is it meet to be said to a King, you are wicked? Yet (1 Samuel 13:13) says the prophet to the King, you have done foolishly, you have done wickedly. And (1 Samuel 15:22-23) he calls his sin rebellion and stubbornness; thus cuttingly did he rep…

3. Propos. The washed heart that lodges not vain thoughts (Jeremiah 4:14), purged from dead works, by the blood of Christ (above all the blood of bullocks and goats) (Hebrews 9:14), purified by faith (Acts 15:14), is the good heart. It is a better heart according to the heart of…

What a poor case was David in (Psalm 51:10): "Renew a right spirit within me." There was a time when God had said of him that he was a man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). He had a heart that was careful and watchful, but now his heart is lost.

Their prayers were not cries, but howlings, brutish and mere sensual complaints, because they proceeded not from their hearts, from any inward and sincere affection, but only from fear of that hand which was able to cast them upon their beds. As a sick man eats meat, not for lov…