1 Samuel 16:7

It is very striking to find Samuel so much and so often mistaken in this chapter. He mourned for Saul. He hesitated to go and anoint David. He was wrong about Eliab. All of it shows how far he was from God's ways. How solemn the Lord's word is: "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." This is the great difference: "the outward appearance" and "the heart." Appearance almost trapped Samuel himself. The Lord stepped in to teach him the worth of the heart.

When Jesse's sons came in, Samuel was struck by Eliab's fine appearance and said, "Surely the LORD's anointed is before Him." But at that very moment Israel's throne held a man "taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward" (1 Sam. 10:23). That man was a complete failure. God's answer to the prophet reaches far beyond that day… "Let no one boast in men" (1 Cor. 3:21).

What if everything looks fine? The person behaves well and performs religious duties with care. What more will the Lord need? The simple but weighty answer is — the heart. Eliab's heart was separated from God. We see it in the next chapter (v. 28). He mocked David, and he was the first to resent the working of God's grace in him. Human nature always does this, despite its religion. Yet appearances deceived the prophet, and he thought Eliab was fit for the Lord's service.

This chapter gives us in a very striking way the clear sentence of death on all man's thoughts. Look at the contrast. Everyone admired Saul, and God's people chose him for his outward appearance. David, meanwhile, was forgotten even by his own father — and that was when the prophet himself asked about him. No lesson could teach us more. He counted for nothing in the eyes of a single member of the family; yet this was the man destined for the throne.

When did God ever choose the firstborn of the flesh? All through the Bible God sets aside the one who seems to have the claim by birth. He does it so that everyone may learn that blessing comes only by grace. Not Cain, but Abel. Not Ishmael, but Isaac. Not Esau, but Jacob. Not Reuben, but Joseph. Not Aaron, but Moses. This is always God's way.

How quickly we forget what past experience taught us. How ready we are to look "on the outward appearance," and so be deceived again and again. The believers at Corinth, whom Paul had led to faith, thought his physical presence was weak. So they made the foolish mistake of dismissing his power and worth, and followed men who boasted in appearance… It has always been this way, and it will stay this way until the Antichrist comes. He "will come in his own name," and the handsome Absalom pictured him in advance. Scripture says this about the gentle, humble One who came in His Father's name: "He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him."

A person may have much learning and great natural ability. He may be attractive to look at and a fine speaker. He may still be useless, because his heart is not right, and its purpose was never formed alone with God. If God's things hold power over the inner person, the outward person will gladly serve the holy and perfect will of God. God looks on the heart, not on the outward appearance. Appearance deceives.

People would give the greatest reward for the greatest display and the largest visible results. But in the coming day the best prizes may go to others: those who made little noise, whose names few people knew, but who served Christ faithfully with what they were given.