The Last Words of David - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2026

“He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” … Although my house is not so with God, yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure. For this is all my salvation and all my desire.
2 Samuel 23:3–5

The Last Words of David
Here, David sets up the divine standard of character for one called to rule over men: “He must be just”; and upon the basis of justice is erected a superstructure of cloudless light, richest blessing, and abundant fruitfulness. All this will only be realized when the Son of David, now hidden in the heavens, shall ascend the throne of His Father and stretch forth His scepter over a restored creation.

Not only does David set up the divine standard; he compares himself with it, and it is in this comparison we have the great moral and practical truth which I desire to fasten on my reader’s heart. “Although,” says David, “my house is not so with God, yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.”

The only way to get a right view of ourselves is by looking at Christ. This is what David does in these last words. He weighs himself in a perfect balance. He measures himself with a perfect rule and confesses himself entirely defective. He gazes upon the perfect model and exclaims, “I am not like that.” He looks back over the past and sees his failings and faults. He turns over page after page of life’s sad story, and his eye, enlightened by beams of light from the sanctuary, sees the blots and the blemishes. But, blessed be God, he can fall back upon “an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure,” and in that well-ordered covenant, finds all his salvation and all his desire. Oh, is it not a great mercy that, when we reach the close of our history and review the past, when, as regards ourselves, we have only to say, “My house is not so with God,” we shall then fully prove the eternal stability of that grace!

C. H. Mackintosh