It’s All Right

Read 2 Samuel 21:1–24:25

26. To the faithful you show yourself faithful; to those with integrity you show integrity.
27. To the pure you show yourself pure, but to the wicked you show yourself hostile.
28. You rescue the humble, but your eyes watch the proud and humiliate them.
29. O Lord, you are my lamp. The Lord lights up my darkness.
30. In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall.
31. God’s way is perfect. All the Lord’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.
32. For who is God except the Lord? Who but our God is a solid rock?
33. God is my strong fortress, and he makes my way perfect.
34. He makes me as surefooted as a deer, enabling me to stand on mountain heights. 2 Samuel 22:26-34

“It’s all right,” Billy said forgivingly, and you couldn’t help but smile. You had accused him of conspiring to keep you out of the house, but that wasn’t what was truly going on. In fact, Billy had been decorating the house for your surprise birthday party. Now the truth was out, and so was your sheepish apology.

These are the later years of David’s rule, a song of praise that David wrote, and some of David’s last words. In this song, David brings up the subject of his own guilt. It’s a telling speech. As you read, you will see that, to paraphrase, “forgiveness is cool.”

You’ll find other lessons, too, about bringing justice to others and placing our security in God instead of money.

“I am blameless before God; I have kept myself from sin” (2 Samuel 22:24). With these words, David was not denying that he had ever sinned. Psalm 51 shows his tremendous anguish over his sins against Uriah and Bathsheba. But David understood God’s faithfulness and was writing this hymn from God’s perspective. He knew that God had made him pure again—“whiter than snow,” with a “clean heart” (Psalm 51:7, 10).

God will forgive our sins if we bring them to him in sorrow and repentance. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can be cleansed and made perfect in God’s eyes. God replaces our sin with his purity—he sees us as forgiven and clean.

Stop right now and confess your sins to your loving heavenly Father. Accept his total forgiveness through Christ.