February 22, 2024

I Kings 15.5 (NIV)
For David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life – except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.

God has a habit of choosing flawed people to achieve great good.*

Have you ever been told not to “throw out the baby with the bathwater”? Do you even know what that means? I have some friends who perfectly illustrate this adage. (In order to “protect the innocent,” I can’t be specific about how.) Each of them has some very good and valuable qualities; each one loves and serves the Lord with those qualities; and each one has some personality flaws which cause others to dislike them. I have had the occasional bad experience with each of these friends but I have chosen to continue to value them for what they have to offer to me personally and to the Kingdom as a whole. Tossing out the clean baby with the dirty bathwater is fruitless.

In the life of David, we see God's perspective on babies and bathwater. The Bible makes no attempt to hide David's sin and, as another writer observes: “For all times to come, both his sin and his return to the Lord became part of the Scriptures which would be read publicly.”* To spell it out: The dirty bathwater = David’s sins – including the big two, adultery and murder. The clean baby = David loved God; he never worshipped other gods; he repented and paid the earthly consequences of his sins; God forgave him. 

Most of us go through life committing sins that will never be made public – or become an object lesson through the ages. We should all hope not to be identified and remembered by our failures and weaknesses. At the end of your life, your sin can be the exception, like it was for David.

The Lord brought his Son to earth through unlikely characters – the humble, the troubled, the flawed.*

*Quote sources available upon request.