“[The LORD] gives his king great victories;
    he shows unfailing kindness to his anointed,
    to David and his descendants forever.”
2 Samuel 22:51 (NIV)

You know the movie is over when the song begins and the ending credits roll. Our chapter-a-day journey has reached the end of David’s story. How fitting that the narrator chooses to drop one of David’s own songs into the text like a fitting End Theme to a movie.

In yesterday’s chapter, I unpacked the fact that the final few chapters of 2 Samuel are a carefully structured Appendix to David’s entire story:

A. National crisis <– 2 Sam 21
B. Warriors <– 2 Sam 21
C. David’s song <– Today’s chapter (2 Sam 22)
C. David’s final oracle
B. Warriors
A. National crisis

There’s an entire anthology of David’s songs to choose from. The narrator chooses Psalm 18. It’s a song David wrote after God had delivered him from Saul and his enemies. David looks at his life through a very focused lens: God delivered me.

Despite David’s moral failures and their tragic consequences, his story is about being chosen by God, trained up by God, and faithfully provided for and protected by God through years in the wilderness. God raised David up to the throne at the right time and established his throne over the entire nation. From David being saved from bears and lions as a shepherd boy to his being saved from a homicidal mad king for many years, David’s song continually recognizes God’s deliverance. David channels all of his praise to God, acknowledging that God was the source of his success.

As I studied and meditated on the psalm this morning, there were a couple of hidden gems that surfaced.

First, David sings in verse 36:

“You make your saving help my shield;
    your help has made me great.”

The Hebrew word translated “help” here is anavah, and it’s more meaningful than what we simply think of as “help” in English. It’s associated with humility, gentleness, or condescension. David’s greatness isn’t ultimately produced by David’s greatness. David becomes great because the Great One stooped down to help him.

Over the past few years, I’ve repeatedly returned to my Life on Four Levels concept. This world and the kingdoms of this world (Level 3) operate with a “power down” methodology. Whoever has the power, authority, and wealth to force their will on others does so. God, however, has a different modus operandi. He stoops down to Level 1 and transforms an individual. That transformed individual then channels God’s love, provision, strength, and faithfulness into impacting the people around them — and the world around them.

David is Exhibit A. He recognizes that he rose to greatness (all the way to a kingdom throne on Level 3!) because the Great One stooped down to love, prepare, provide, protect, and deliver him. What a great reminder for the ending theme and credits roll at the end of David’s story.

But there’s another hidden gem in this psalm, and it’s the final verse.

“[The LORD] gives his king great victories;
    he shows unfailing kindness to his anointed,
    to David and his descendants forever.”

The end of David’s story isn’t the end of the story. This is a “forever” story. David’s story is one chapter of the larger Great Story God is authoring between Genesis and Revelation. Notice that David specifies that God shows his unfailing kindness to his “anointed.” The Hebrew word is mashiach — Messiah.

The scribes and scholars of David’s day assumed that David was referring to himself as God’s “anointed.” Yet as the Great Story unfolded and time wore on, God’s people saw another layer of meaning in the metaphor. David was not only referring to himself. Another Messiah, an Anointed One, was coming.

Hundreds of years later, God’s Messiah would stoop down from heaven, put on flesh and blood, and pitch His tent among us. When that Messiah entered Jerusalem, the crowds shouted “Hosanna to the son of David.”

In the quiet this morning, it strikes me that David’s song isn’t really about what happened. It’s about what David eventually understood about what happened.

This chapter-a-day journey has spent the past couple of months walking beside David.

David the shepherd boy.
The giant killer.
The musician.
The fugitive.
The king.
The adulterer.
The murderer.
The grieving father.
The humiliated exile walking barefoot up the Mount of Olives.
The restored king.

We’ve watched him succeed magnificently and fail catastrophically. And now the old poet looks backward across the landscape of his life. What does he see?

Not Goliath, Saul, Bathsheba, or Absalom. Not Jerusalem, his victories, or even his failures.

He sees God.

That’s what decades of spiritual hindsight have done to him. The events that once seemed disconnected now form a pattern. God was my Rock and fortress. God heard me, reached down, and came for me. He pulled me from deep waters and brought me into a spacious place. God lit my darkness, strengthened my feet, and sustained me.

And perhaps the most astonishing line of all: “He rescued me because he delighted in me.”

David knows better than almost anyone that God’s delight isn’t earned by spotless performance. David’s life makes that interpretation impossible. Rather, underneath the entire messy story runs something deeper: covenant love. God’s stubborn, faithful, covenant-keeping love.

And perhaps that’s why this song belongs here. Because eventually this wayfarer reaches places on the journey where the question changes. Early in life I asked: “Where are you taking me, God?” Now I’m at a waypoint on Life’s road where I find myself looking back and asking: “Where have you brought me from, God?”

And when I take the time to really take a backward glance, I recognize divine fingerprints on things that once looked like accidents, disasters, detours, closed doors, enemies, disappointments—even my own failures.

Like David, it would be dishonest of me to pretend everything has gone well for me. Like David, I can recognize that God has remained faithful when everything didn’t go well — even when I’ve been faithless.

Which brings me back to the opening words “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.” The gift wasn’t a rock, a fortress, or deliverance. The gift was God Himself who lovingly and graciously stooped down and brought all those things with Him.

And after everything David has been through, it’s a fitting end theme.

[Cue: Roll Credits]

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