Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.

The Consistency of God

These are the last words of David the son of Jesse.
The God of Jacob chose David and made him a great king.
The Mighty God of Israel loved him.
When God told him to speak, David said:
The Spirit of the LORD has told me what to say.
Our Mighty Rock, the God of Jacob, told me, "A ruler who obeys God and does right is like the sunrise on a cloudless day, or like rain that sparkles on the grass."
I have ruled this way, and God will never break his promise to me.
God's promise is complete and unchanging; he will always help me and give me what I hope for.
But evil people are pulled up like thorn bushes.
They are not dug up by hand, but with a sharp spear and are burned on the spot. - 2 Samuel 23:1-7 CEV

God doesn't love us because we're good. David referred to God as "the God of Jacob" because he wanted to make a point. Just as God had chosen Jacob despite all Jacob's faults, so God had chosen David. David was good at killing Philistines, but he was not good at raising his children: Amnon raped his sister Tamar; Absalom killed Amnon. Then Absalom rebelled against David, precipitated a civil war, and both he and many Israelites on both sides of the issue died in battle. David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then saw to it that her husband was killed in battle. Just before he died, like a mob boss, he told his son Solomon—the crown prince born to the woman he had committed adultery with—to settle accounts, old grudges, with everyone who had wronged him. But at the end of his life, David looked back on it all and said that he had been a king who obeyed God and did what was right.

How can we reconcile David's life with his claim to righteousness? And with God's words, that a king must be righteous? By remembering that righteousness came from David's relationship with God rather than from his behavior. David did not need to fear the wrath of God because God's wrath had been—or in David's case, would be—directed at the ultimate sacrifice. David was forgiven. God declared him righteous. That's how David could know he was a good man: his goodness was in God, not in himself. It's the same way we know we're righteous today.