I. God's knowledge of human nature, according to the passage before us, is immediate and direct.
II. Being immediate and direct, God's knowledge of man is perfect.
III. Because God's knowledge is direct and perfect, it surpasses men's knowledge of each other and of themselves.
Consider: IV. The life-lessons yielded by the text. (1) The folly of permitted self-delusion. (2) The utter uselessness of all hypocrisy. (3) The exposed position of all our sins. (4) The duty of being passive under Divine discipline. (5) The reasonableness of our acting on God's judgment of men. (6) A motive to diligence in keeping the heart.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit,5th series, No. xxiii.
There is something in the character of Eliab which makes him unfit for the office of king. Eliab seems to have become a great man afterwards. We read of him as a prince of the tribe of Judah, and of his daughter or his granddaughter as the queen of Rehoboam. But, though the eldest son of the house and of the tribe, there was wanting in him the especial spirit of David; he showed, though in less degree, the fault of Saul, and the very next thing we find him doing is exhibiting the contrary character to Samuel's and David's, and saying and doing exactly what Saul might have done. It is an instance of envy, of harsh, uncharitable judgment. When David came down with a message from his father, Eliab, utterly misunderstanding the case, caring nothing to know the rights of it, heedless of justice or of feeling, forgets that the boy has been sent by his father, sent for his good and sent at a risk, and he shows penetration, as he thinks, in accusing David of coming down merely to see the battle. How prone we all are to ascribe our neighbour's act to self-seeking and self-conceit and self-indulgence, while for our own faults we find excuses, justifications, easy assertions. There are pleasures greater than triumphs, clearer insight than worldly penetration. Let us rejoice over each other's good and discern each other's goodness, because "charity envieth not, seeketh not her own, thinketh no evil."
Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College,p. 74.
Consider the necessity we lie under, if we would be Christians indeed, of drawing our religious notions and views, not from what we see, but from what we do not see and only hear, or rather the great mistake under which men of the world lie of judging religious subjects merely by what the experience of life tells them. We must believe something; the difference between religious men and others is, that the latter trust this world, the former the world unseen. Both of them have faith, but the one have faith in the surface of things, the other in the word of God.
I. We see this truth in a doctrine much debated, much resisted, at this day the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Here we find that experience is counter to the word of God, which says that except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he is no member of Christ's kingdom. We have here a trial of faith the faith which alone overcomes the world.
II. Another trial of faith is the success which attends measures or institutions which are not in accordance with the revealed rule of duty. In every age and at all times, the Church seems to be failing and its enemies to be prevailing.
III. Another instance in which experience and faith are opposed to each other is to be found in the case of those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the Atonement, or original sin.
IV. A fourth instance is the difficulty of believing the words of Scripture that the impenitent shall go into fire everlasting. We feel it a hard saying that even the most wicked should be destined to eternal punishment. But we must accept the truth, as an act of faith towards God and as a solemn warning to ourselves.
J. H. Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day,p. 63.
References: 1 Samuel 16:7. Parker, vol. vii., p. 71; A. F. Reid, Dundee Pulpit,1872, p. 92; Bailey, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 53; J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation,vol. ii., p. 427; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 84. 1 Samuel 16:11. Outline Sermons for Children,p. 39; T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 150; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 345. 1 Samuel 16:11; 1 Samuel 16:12. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children,5th series, p. 1.