I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13
In my previous post I looked at King David’s many proclamations throughout the Book of Psalms of the goodness of the LORD in general, as well as his innumerable personal experiences of the same. Nowhere in God’s word is God’s benevolence, kindness, generosity, mercy, grace, faithfulness and justice attested to then throughout the Psalms.
David was born into a simple family yet had the tremendous privileged and blessing of being born as a citizen of God’s covenant people, Israel. As such, he would have grown up under the teachings of Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and likely the Book of Job, which most conservative Bible scholars believe was written around 1500 BC.
The Torah, or Law, which was given directly to Moses by God, revealed the goodness of God’s nature and character (Exodus 34:5-7), the goodness or blessedness of God in His creation (Genesis 1:26-31), and the goodness or blessedness of God in establishing Israel as His covenant people, whom He would bless and set above all the nations of the world, granting them good and wise laws and statutes revealing how they are to relate to Him and one another to fully enjoy the blessedness of His presence as His people, despite living in a sin cursed world (Deuteronomy 28:1-14) (Deuteronomy 4:5-8) (Psalm 19:7-11) .
David would have learned all of this as a boy, and particularly how the LORD had set Israel above all the other nations of the earth as a witness to His greatness, His goodness and the glory of His grace, with the intention of bringing blessing, the manifestation of His abundant goodness and amazing grace, to all of the nations of the earth through them (Genesis 22:18). It would be blessing that would be accomplished in the coming of the promised seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15) – the promised seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:3) – and the promised seed of David (Acts 13:21-23) , who would bring about and rule over God’s eternal kingdom of everlasting and unmitigated joy and gladness Isaiah 51:10-11, namely David’s greater Son, the LORD Jesus Christ (Luke 1:31-33) (Mark 1:14-15) .
Though nothing more than a lowly teenage sheepherder, David, the son of Jesse, is chosen by God from among all of the most esteemed men of Israel to be king of God’s chosen people. (1 Samuel 16:1) (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).
Why David? Why not Saul’s son Jonathan who would have been seen to be the rightful heir to the throne, and had shown himself to be a mighty warrior and concerned for the people? Why not one of Saul’s faithful military leaders or even one of Jesse’s other seven sons.
Well, it would appear, based on 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22, that God chose David because he was declared to be, by God, “a man after mine own heart, who will do all of my will”.
Commentators, when addressing this declaration by God, see David being described here as a man who wanted to know, love and experience the love of God at the deepest level of his being – wholly devoted to God’s will and purposes for his life, seeking to do everything God required out of love for God and faith in His goodness. And David’s life for the most part would bear this out (1 Kings 15:4-5).
However, the question that is essential to answer here is, was this David’s natural spiritual condition? Did God see in David some special qualities, an innate potential for greatness in God’s kingdom that endeared him to God and made him worthy of this most lofty position of Israel’s king? I would suggest the answer to be no, but ultimately yes.
If I believe what both the Bible and David himself had to say about all of mankind, the answer would have to be a resounding no! In Romans 3:9-12, the Apostle Paul proclaims, in agreement with David’s own exclamation in Psalm 14:2-3, that there are none righteous – none who seeks after the true and living God – none who is good in the eyes of God – no not one!! In Psalm 16:2, David himself acknowledges that there is no good in him apart from God’s grace.
As for the LORD, who looks upon the heart (1 Samuel 16:7) seeing any innate potential for good in David’s heart, we are told in Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart, the core of our being, the seat of our thoughts, desires, affections, motivations and will, is deceitful and desperately wicked. In Genesis 6:5, we are told that the thoughts and imaginations that proceed from it in every person are only evil continually. That is what God would have initially seen in David’s heart.
And above all else, Ephesians 2:1-3 reveals that we are physically born into this world, (spiritually) dead in our trespasses and sins, with the devil’s disobedient nature and character, helpless to do anything about it (Jeremiah 13:23). So, was David the exception to all of this?
No. He became a “man after God’s own heart”, because the LORD God made him so, by giving Him a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). This is the same way He made the Chaldean idolater Abram the father of many nations; the same way He made the idolatrous murderer Moses, mediator of the Old Covenant, able to lead Israel out of bondage in Egypt to the promised land. It is the same way He made the Chrisitan-hating, murderous, self-righteous Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus to be the writer of at least 11 books of the New Testament. And, is the same way He made 11 nondescript, religiously uneducated men from a tiny region of Israel His Apostles, able to faithfully follow Him in His three plus years of ministry on earth as the man Jesus Christ, and then to go into all of the world and proclaim the Gospel, the good news of how God, in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, has made a way, the only way for sinful men and women to be justly forgiven of our Hell deserving sin, declared righteous in the eyes of a holy God and reconciled to God as Father, no longer children of the devil, subject to God’s wrath and judgment, but now made the beloved children of God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus of God’s eternal kingdom (Galatians 3:26) (Luke 12:32) (John 14:6) (Mark 16:15).
And the Bible makes it clear that the way the LORD God brings this all to pass is by grace – a free gift, undeserved, unearned, unmerited and in the case of sinners, ill deserved (Romans 3:21-26). Grace describes God’s joyful and free expression of His infinite goodness and steadfast love which He first displayed in in the Garden of Eden, wherein it was despised and disdained by the first man Adam, and every man and women since. Yet, it was God’s eternal plan to display the glory of His grace in the salvation of sinful men and women, whom He would grant the gift of faith necessary to receive this grace both now and in the ages to come when He will graciously make all things new (Ephesians 1:3-9) (Ephesians 2:4-9) (Galatians 2:20) (Revelation 21:1-5).
And it is this glorious truth and its wonderous exaltation of the “goodness of the LORD” I hope to expand upon in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×