Psalm 145:8-9 - December 31, 2009

Ps 145:8-9 "The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. 9 The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made." NIV

Can you say, “Thank God for mercy?” If the Lord was not intensely patient, and full of compassionate understanding who could stand before Him? David marveled at the Lord’s kindness to us when he said in Ps 8:4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” NIV David was a sinful man at times, one who not only fell into temptation but committed on at least one occasion intense acts of cruelty to hide his own transgressions from the public eye. He committed adultery with a vulnerable woman and then robbed her of her husband and him of his life by arranging for his death by betrayal in battle. And yet history knows him as the man after God’s own heart. How could this be?
This is a question that is answered in this revelation of God that David walked in. David was an imperfect yet passionate worshipper who loved God and was radically committed to serving God’s purposes in his generation. He fought the Lord’s battles, led the Lord’s people, sang the Lord’s praise, prophesied the Lord’s purposes and yet was a man who sinned against God and his people in diverse and damaging ways. In many ways it could be said that if any man deserved judgment David did. And yet he received mercy from the Lord. This is where David’s revelation of God came from. He knew he deserved God’s anger. He knew he deserved judgment. But he also knew the merciful God of heaven. His testimony of God is so clear; “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all…”

What separated David from so many other leaders was his readiness to repent. David had a heart for God trapped in a human, sinful body! But because he had a revelation of a merciful God he knew that each time he turned towards the Lord in genuine repentance and humility that grace and mercy would be waiting there for him. David knew a God who is “rich in love!” Do you? David knew the Lord who is slow to anger. Do you? So many of us lose out on the confidence we can have in life because we do not understand the compassion that the Lord has in his heart for us. David writes out of this same spirit of revelation earlier in Ps 103:13-14 “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; 14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” It is this understanding that enabled David to rise up after every failure and be restored to a place of grace before God. The good news is that Acts 10:34 states that God is “no respecter of persons.” The same mercy that He has shown to David, He will show to you when you fall short as you turn your heart to Him in repentance!