Psalm 137, 144; 2 Samuel 23:1-17; Acts 25:13-27; Mark 13:1-13
David is finishing is race and gives glory to God, ultimately what he holds on to is the everlasting covenant. What a glorious thing to know and in which to delight! David surely had no illusions about the perfection of the kingdom and the faithfulness of those who would come after him but he knew that the One with whom he was in covenant was faithful and everlasting and therefore the covenant was secure. He was prepared to die and his one thought was water from his home in Bethlehem. His memory raced back to his youth and the sweetness of that water. The love of his men bore gave testimony to what kind of man and king David truly was and it is a wonderful testimony that he lived in accord with the words in verses 2 and 3.
Jesus speaks of the end. He tells the disciples that finishing well is important and also that it will be difficult to do so. There will be persecution and there will be betrayal beyond imagining, they will be hated for the sake of Jesus’ Name. We know that all this was and is true. We know that the book of Acts tells of many of the persecutions that came the disciples’ way because of their testimony to Jesus and we know that today there are people all over the world, our brothers and sisters in Jesus, who are being persecuted for their unwavering witness to Him. We are fortunate, those of us who live in the west, that we are not persecuted for our faith, we can practice it openly and without fear, yet what are we making of that freedom? Finishing well is difficult under persecution but it is equally difficult to run the race and finish well in our own society but for different reasons. We have too many distractions, too many who don’t persecute us for our faith but who will look down on us for intellectual reasons. I would never counsel an unintellectual faith, faith is perfectly reasonable in my experience, but if we crave intellectual respectability to the extent that we fail to share Jesus then we have chosen that which is passing, and that which is foolishness in God’s eyes.
Festus states that he has found nothing wrong in Paul, much like Pilate could find nothing in Jesus that was unlawful and deserving of death. Paul was willing to go the distance, to persevere in his faithfulness to Jesus who had rescued him from eternal death, he never lost sight of the grace he had received. Grace is truly amazing when it animates all that we are and all that we do. Grace, truly perceived, will change us utterly, make us into the most grateful people on earth, give us hope and allow us to finish well as we strain towards the finish line of glory to be greeted by the author of grace. We, like David, are in everlasting covenant with God and we know through the resurrection from the dead of Jesus that our hope is secure. In Jesus we have something that David did not, proof of the everlasting nature of that covenant. We know that our hope is a living hope that perseveres beyond the grave because we know that Jesus is not dead but alive forever! Alleluia!
Full of kindness and compassion,
slow to anger, vast in love,
God is good to all creation;
all his works his goodness prove.
All thy works, O Lord, shall bless thee:
thee shall thy saints adore:
King supreme shall they confess thee,
and proclaim thy sovereign power.
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