I loved David's faithfulness to Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan. It was customary to have entire households slaughtered to prevent someone of the previous king's bloodline attempting to claim the throne, but instead David acts honorably towards Mephibosheth.
Are our actions towards others dictated by our own selfish agendas, or by our love of God?
Unfortunately, our passage also contains David's betrayal of Uriah, one of his very own mighty men. Uriah was a warrior of great integrity and David betrays him by committing adultery with Uriah's wife, and then ordering battle instructions that will ensure his death. The results and ripple effects of David's sin would be catastrophic and marked the beginning of the end of the kingdom of Israel.
Sin, particularly sexual sin, has extremely far reaching consequences that we often cannot even see. As we see in 1 John, David allowed the desires of the eyes and of the flesh to control his actions. Thankfully, there is forgiveness for even such great sin. Though forgiveness washes away our sin, it does not remove our consequences. May we be ever mindful of that and may it help us to resist temptation when it comes our way.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: 2 Samuel 12-13; 1 John 3
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1 John 2:23
No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
Some people claim they believe in God, but don't believe in Jesus. In fact, I believe many in this world would claim they believe in a creator or supreme being. This verse tells us you can't believe in one without the other. If you truelly believe their is a God, you then need to believe in Jesus.
6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
David chose to walk in a way contrary to what God wanted and his actions displeased God.
This morning, on the way to a vollyeball tournament, my son and I caught an episode of Adventures in Odyssey on the radio. The story today was about a boy who broke a vase and then did not want to confess his act because no one knew who had done it and so it was like he could get off free and clear. Our sin is not without consequence. Just as David was "caught" when Bathsheba became pregnant, his sinful behaviour by sleeping with someone's wife would have been just as bad as if she had not become pregnant. But David continued his sin after as often happens and it became a huge issue and he had a hand in the death of one of his men. May we see the errors of our ways before it becomes a much bigger problem.
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