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April 5                        Today’s Reading: 2 Samuel 11-12

“The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”

2 Samuel 11:27

 

We have read today of that horrible sin committed by God’s child, David, in the matter of Uriah. We are told plainly that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” Nothing is omitted. Nothing is held back. No excuses are offered to mitigate David’s crime. Everything is given to display the enormous infamy of this righteous man’s wicked conduct. His lust, his adultery, his betrayal, his plotting, his murder of his faithful servant, everything is set before us. Nothing is held back. Why? Why did God the Hoy Spirit set these things down in the inspired record? The answer is given by God the Holy Spirit himself. — “All these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” — “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” Spirit of God, be our Teacher, and write the lessons of these two chapters upon our hearts this day.

 

Sinners Still

Learn, child of God, from this sad part of David’s history that God’s saints in this world are sinners still. The best of men are but men and are as liable to fall into the worst of sins as the unrenewed and unawakened. Our old, Adamic nature of corruption is unchanged. Though we have been made partakers of the divine nature, though Christ is formed in us, our old nature of flesh is still just flesh, ever lusting against the spirit, so that we cannot do the things we would. If the lusts of our flesh do not break out and show themselves as vilely in us as in the reprobate, it is not because our flesh is more pure than theirs, but because of the blessed grace of God that restrains us from evil.

 

Restraining Grace

Oh, how we ought to thank God for that restraining grace by which he keeps us from the evil that is in us! — “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.” — “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me! My gracious Father, my dear Savior, if you keep me not from evil by the unfailing restraint of your grace by your Spirit, what falls are they by which I would dishonor your name! Hear my daily prayer for these many years, my God, and in my aging days make it the constant cry of my heart, “Keep me, my God, from the evil that is in me, for the glory of your own great name.”

 

Blood Atonement

Surely, these things are written to teach us the blessedness of blood atonement, of perfect, full redemption by Christ Jesus, to remind us that there is salvation in no other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. How sweet it is to be reminded that Christ is our redeemer and that we are redeemed by his precious blood, so fully and completely redeemed that God himself will not, and in justice cannot, charge us with sin! It was this man, David, who taught us to sing, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin!

 


 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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