This verse introduces us to a reflection which it is very important that we should sometimes thoughtfully dwell on; that thought is, the responsibility of power, or the temptations peculiar to power.
I. Of all things in heaven and earth which the human heart craves for most vehemently, there is nothing that it longs for so intensely and unceasingly, as power. "To be weak, is to be miserable, doing and suffering," says our great poet. To be weak is to be always craving and never having; always yearning and never possessing. We flatter ourselves with the belief that we lack nothing but strength, to make us heroes; nothing but resources to make us higher than the angels, and like unto God. Something better than mere power is wanted to make a hero or an angel. If we be blessed with the gifts of power, and vigour, and force, we must reflect that we watch them wisely, lest what God meant should be a boon become in our case a bane.
II. Had these men of Israel, over whose heads a heavy doom was hanging, been men of the mob, poor and feeble, how different their thoughts on their beds might have been, in that they would then have lacked the power of gratification. No man meditates long upon the doing of what he is convinced at starting is an impossibility. And therefore, if we be wise, we shall give thanks to God at times for weakness, as well as for strength, for failures as well as successes, for the difficulties that meet us day by day, as well as for our many helps and supporters. We shall thank G6d that we have been found outin many an unworthy act, and not suffered to go on in it, and that we have been put to shame in the course of many a wicked plan, and stopped ere we could quite accomplish it; and have been held back from the doing of many a shameful deed which we had devised upon our beds, and were only restrained from practising, because it was not in the power of our hands.
A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons,p. 11.