The Steadfast Love of the Lord

February 27, 2021

“Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!” - Psalm 25:6-7

Yesterday, we read King David’s request for God to reveal his ways, his paths, and his truth. David desired for those ways of God, those truths of God to be ingrained within his very being so that he could faithfully walk with God and lead God’s people. Today, David remembered God’s revelation to Moses: “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’” (Exodus 34:5-7). The Lord could not reveal his full glory to Moses, so he revealed these attributes of his glory: mercy, graciousness, patience, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and forgiveness. This self-revelation of God to Moses was to encourage him to remain faithful in leading a wayward people. While the Lord was perfectly holy, he understood the frailty of his creation. Instead of executing justice against their sin, God showed mercy time and time again.

King David put his trust in this mercy, grace, and steadfast love of the Lord. He knew that God saw all his shortcomings and all his sin, yet in seeing David’s fallen state, God chose to show him mercy. It was mercy grounded and anchored in the steadfast love of God for his people. David trusted in this mercy of the Lord because he experienced it so profoundly. Most of us learned the story of David and Bathsheba back in Sunday School classes. While King David did great things for the Lord, David also sinned greatly before the Lord in his adulterous acts with Bathsheba and then in having her husband killed. With just these two acts, the king of Israel broke four of the Ten Commandments: You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; and you shall not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, servant, ox, or donkey (Exodus 20:3-17). David didn’t just make a mistake, David made royal mistakes! As we know, the cost was great to David as well as to Bathsheba, but God’s redemption of David’s mistakes was even greater.

David had personally experienced the mercy of the Lord coupled with his steadfast love. Those experiences taught David the importance of obedience as well as the grace that held him when he failed. Lent is our invitation to experience those things as well. As Paul wrote to the Roman church, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), but the story doesn’t end there. In his mercy, grace, patience, and steadfast love, God provided for our salvation and forgiveness. The love of the Lord is perfectly secure. For those who put their trust in the salvific work of his Son, there is no way to out-sin his grace.

The invitation of the Lenten season is to look into a mirror and to see our sin and to confess that sin to the Lord while trusting in his mercy, grace, and steadfast love. We lament what we have done and all the ways we have fallen short while we trust that God’s grace is working something glorious in us. We are never to stay comfortable in the sin, but to turn and to seek to walk faithfully with the Lord.

Reflection:
Take some time today to thank the Lord for his mercy, grace, and steadfast love. Soak in those glorious attributes of the Lord. He has you and he will never let you go. In that place of security, confess your sin and allow God’s grace to wash you clean.