2 Chronicles 15:12-15 And they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul;… The search that always finds: — I. THE SEEKING. The highest bliss is to find God, the next highest is to seek Him. 1. Our text lays emphasis on the whole-heartedness of the people's seeking after God. One reason why the great mass of professing Christians make so little of their religion is because they are only half-hearted in it. If you divide a river into two streams the force of each is less than half the power of the original current; and the chances are that you will make a stagnant marsh where there used to be a flowing stream. "All in all or not at all" is the rule for life in all departments. 2. "They sought; Him with all their heart." That does not mean that there are to be no other desires, for it is a great mistake to pit religion against other things which are meant to be its instruments and its helps. 3. The one token of seeking God is casting out idols. There must be detachment if there is to be attachment. If some climbing plant, for instance, has twisted itself round the unprofitable thorns in the hedge, the gardener, before he can get it to go up the support that it is meant to encircle, has carefully to detach it from the stays to which it has wantonly clung, taking care that in the process he does not break its tendrils and destroy its power of growth. The heart must be emptied of base liquors if the new wine of the kingdom is to be poured into it. II. THE FINDING WHICH CROWNS SUCH SEEKING. 1. Anything is possible rather than that a whole-hearted search after God should be a vain search. For there are in that search two seekers — God is seeking for us more truly than we are seeking for Him. 2. This is the only direction for a man's desires and aims in which disappointment is an impossibility. 3. Our wisdom is to make this search. What would you think of a company of gold-seekers, hunting about in some exhausted claim for hypothetical grains — ragged, starving — and all the while in the next gully were lying lumps of gold for the picking up? And that figure fairly represents what people do and suffer who seek for good and do not seek after God. II. THE REST WHICH ENSUES ON FINDING GOD. We have no immunity from toil and conflict, but disturbance around is a very small matter if there be a better thing — rest within. A vessel with an outer casing and a layer of air between may be kept at a temperature above that of the external atmosphere. So we may have conflict and strife, and yet a better rest than that of my text may be ours. (A. Maclaren, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; |
    |