“To the faithful you show yourself faithful,
To the blameless you show yourself blameless,
To the pure you show yourself pure,
But to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.
You save the humble
But bring low those whose eyes are haughty.
You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning;
My God turns my darkness into light.
With your help I can advance against a troop;
With my God I can scale a wall.”
Psalm 18:25-29 NIV 1984
God responds in kind. To the faithful, He’s faithful. To the cruel, He’s harsh. Psalm 18 is King David praising God for delivering him from his enemies and those of Israel. The same chapter, worded slightly differently, is 2 Samuel 22. That comes just after warriors from Israel destroyed enemy soldiers that were considered giants. David recognized that God had given the kingdom and the king victories. The small kingdom of Israel was now a mighty army to be feared by their enemies, all because God was on their side. David took 50 verses to praise God and thank Him for the victories.
As king, he may also have been reminding his people not to get too sure of themselves. Their victories had only come because God saw them worthy. As long as they realized that their victories were God-given and thanked God for them, the victories would continue. David knew that once the soldiers and people started to think that the victories came from their own power, God would need to remind them of His power and defuse their pride. Saul was replaced by David as king because Saul had gotten too proud and the rest of the Old Testament is full of God reminding the Israelites to trust Him. Time after time, the Israelites and their kings had to be conquered in order to be stripped of their pride and call on God for help.
David’s story is full of trusting God, but even he sinned. His most famous sin was sleeping with a married woman, getting her pregnant, then having her husband killed so David could marry her, but there was other stuff hinted at, such as not punishing his sons. As a result, David’s family life was a mess and at least two of his sons tried to take the throne from their father before David died. We can’t be perfect, but we can try and God will treat us as we treat Him. If we focus on Him, He will guide our ways, but if we get distracted by other focuses, He will bring us back, hoping to bring us to heaven one day.
How does this apply to us today?
David’s story is full of trusting God, but even he sinned. His most famous sin was sleeping with a married woman, getting her pregnant, then having her husband killed so David could marry her, but there was other stuff hinted at, such as not punishing his sons. As a result, David’s family life was a mess and at least two of his sons tried to take the throne from their father before David died. We can’t be perfect, but we can try and God will treat us as we treat Him. If we focus on Him, He will guide our ways, but if we get distracted by other focuses, He will bring us back, hoping to bring us to heaven one day.
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