Readings: II Samuel 10-11, Psalm 138, I Corinthians 5
II Samuel 10-11: I hate II Samuel 11. It’s one of the most depressing chapters in the Bible. Shakespeare had nothing on tragedies. This is the chapter where the great and powerful King David, a man after God’s own heart, sleeps with another man’s wife, has the other man killed by commanding Joab to send him to the front lines after she becomes pregnant, and marries the girl. I kept reading the chapter over and over again trying to figure out a way that David might have been innocent, but I can’t find anything. The guy is an adulterous murderer.
And David went to heaven. So many times, we think we are righteous–or made righteous–by our works, i.e. the good things we do. That’s not how God works, however. Paul, in Hebrews and in Galatians, tells us that we are made righteous by our faith in him. (That’s what “justified” means: made righteous.) David the adulterer and murderer was made righteous by his faith in God and was forgiven by God. So tragic as this chapter may seem, it really does have a happy ending.
To Elysia & Back Again 