24:1 Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2 So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army,1 who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.” 3 But Joab said to the king, “May the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” 4 But the king’s word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. 5 They crossed the Jordan and began from Aroer,2 and from the city that is in the middle of the valley, toward Gad and on to Jazer. 6 Then they came to Gilead, and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites;3 and they came to Dan, and from Dan4 they went around to Sidon, 7 and came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites; and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. 8 So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9 And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.
The Lord’s Judgment of David’s Sin
10 But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.” 11 And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, 12 “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer5 you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” 13 So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three6 years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” 14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
15 So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 17 Then David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father’s house.”
David Builds an Altar
18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up at Gad’s word, as the LORD commanded. 20 And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. 21 And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people.” 22 Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23 All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” 24 But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels7 of silver. 25 And David built there an altar to the LORD and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.
Footnotes
[1]24:2Septuagint to Joab and the commanders of the army [2]24:5Septuagint; Hebrew encamped in Aroer [3]24:6Septuagint; Hebrew to the land of Tahtim-hodshi [4]24:6Septuagint; Hebrew they came to Dan-jaan and [5]24:12Or hold over [6]24:13Compare 1 Chronicles 21:12, Septuagint; Hebrew seven [7]24:24A shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams
24:1 Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2 So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army,1 who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.” 3 But Joab said to the king, “May the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” 4 But the king’s word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. 5 They crossed the Jordan and began from Aroer,2 and from the city that is in the middle of the valley, toward Gad and on to Jazer. 6 Then they came to Gilead, and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites;3 and they came to Dan, and from Dan4 they went around to Sidon, 7 and came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites; and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. 8 So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9 And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.
The Lord’s Judgment of David’s Sin
10 But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.” 11 And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, 12 “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer5 you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” 13 So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three6 years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” 14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
15 So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 17 Then David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father’s house.”
David Builds an Altar
18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up at Gad’s word, as the LORD commanded. 20 And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. 21 And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people.” 22 Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23 All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” 24 But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels7 of silver. 25 And David built there an altar to the LORD and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.
Footnotes
[1]24:2Septuagint to Joab and the commanders of the army [2]24:5Septuagint; Hebrew encamped in Aroer [3]24:6Septuagint; Hebrew to the land of Tahtim-hodshi [4]24:6Septuagint; Hebrew they came to Dan-jaan and [5]24:12Or hold over [6]24:13Compare 1 Chronicles 21:12, Septuagint; Hebrew seven [7]24:24A shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:
Invite you to open your Bibles to 2nd Samuel chapter 24. 2nd Samuel 24, If you don't have a bible, there's some in the back. You're welcome to take those home with you if you want to. Also, the text should be found in your worship guide. We'll be reading the entire chapter.
Jeffrey Heine:
Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He incited David against them saying, go number Israel and Judah. So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people that I may know the number of the people. But Joab said to the king, may the Lord your God add to the people a 100 times as many as they are. And while the eyes of my Lord the King will still see it. But why does my lord, the king, delight in this thing?
Jeffrey Heine:
But the king's word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. They crossed the Jordan and began at Arroyer. And from the city that is the middle of the valley towards Gad and on to Jezer. Then they came to Gilead and to Kadesh, in the land of the Hittites.
Jeffrey Heine:
And they came to Dan, and from Dan, they went around to Sedan and came to the fortress of Tyre and all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites. And then he went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. So when they had gone through all through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of 9 months 20 days. And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king. In Israel, there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.
Jeffrey Heine:
But David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, oh Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer saying, go and say to David, thus says the Lord, 3 things I offer you, choose one of them that I may do it to you. So Gad came to David and told him and said to him, shall 3 years of famine come to you in your land?
Jeffrey Heine:
Or will you flee 3 months before your foes before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be 3 days pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to Him who sent me. Then David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great.
Jeffrey Heine:
But let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba, 70,000 men. And when the angel stretched out his hands towards Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, it is enough. Now stay your hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite.
Jeffrey Heine:
Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said, behold, I have sinned and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house. And Gad came that day to David and said to him, go up, raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Arana the Jebusite. So David went up at Gad's word, as the lord commanded.
Jeffrey Heine:
And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him, and Arana went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. And Arana said, why has my lord, the king, come to his servant? David said, to buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord that the plague may be averted from the people. Then Araunah said to David, let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges, and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.
Jeffrey Heine:
All this, oh king, Arana gives to the king. And Arana said to the king, the Lord your God accept you. But the king said to Arana, no, but I will buy it for from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver.
Jeffrey Heine:
And David built there an altar to the lord and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord responded to the plea for the land and the plague was averted from Israel. Pray with me. Lord, our eyes have seen many things this week. We have we have read countless things, yet those things are worthless compared to what we read now.
Jeffrey Heine:
For this is from you. This is your word. And when through your spirit, you breathe life through your word, it transforms us to look like your son, Jesus. So we pray that that would happen. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear.
Jeffrey Heine:
Where people need to be healed, heal them. Where they need to be convicted, convict them. But Lord, have your way in our midst. And Lord, now I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But may Your words remain and may they change us.
Jeffrey Heine:
We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Well, we're nearing our end of the study of David. I think that we began back in January. If you've been reading through the life of David, and you've gone through 2nd Samuel, you might be a little puzzled as to the ending of 2nd Samuel here.
Jeffrey Heine:
Because actually, if you go back one chapter to 2nd Samuel 23, and if your bible has headings like my Bible has headings, it would say, the last words of David. And so you have the last words of David, which aren't the last words of David according to the author of Samuel, because then it picks right back up and it tells this other story. The author didn't want to end his his long narrative of David's life. He didn't want to end it with David's last words. He wanted to end it with this story, and so he actually pulls it out of chronological order, and he puts this at the very end, and he puts it before us.
Jeffrey Heine:
And you've got to be thinking of all the stories from which you could draw on about David's life. This one, like this is the final exclamation point, this is what you want us to remember here, David taking a census. I read through a number of commentaries and one of the commentators said this. He said that this is to say the least awkward and anti climatic. Another one wrote that Samuel ends David's life on a whimper.
Jeffrey Heine:
Yet for some reason, the the author of 1 and 2nd Samuel deliberately chooses this to be the one story to end on to summarize David's life. And and he does so not by accident. This isn't a whimper. This is exactly what the author wants because there's no other story that so, brings together all the facets of David's life. Here, you see David at his worst when he sins.
Jeffrey Heine:
Here, you see David at his best when he repents. And so you can see kind of the entirety of David's life, and most importantly, you can see what his life points towards, How this wasn't just some isolated life that lived 3000 years ago, but this was a life that pointed us to someone greater than David. And you can see that so clearly here. I hope we have time for some Q and A. I'll try to end the message a little bit early.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's been a couple of months since we've had that, so if you have any questions as we're going through the sermon or any questions from previous weeks, write them down and I hope to give you some time to do that. At the beginning of chapter 24, it's the very first verse is one of those verses that you just kind of dread if you were a preacher. It's one of those ones you'd really, you would like to just avoid at all costs preaching from, because it begins by saying that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, And so God incited David to sin. The Lord incites David to sin. Now, now we don't know exactly what Israel was doing to deserve this.
Jeffrey Heine:
Israel doesn't have the best track record, so you could probably pick your, you know, take your pick on sins. Israel had done something to deserve God's anger and his wrath. And because God was angry, he incites their king David to sin. And and if this kinda rubs you the wrong way, let me make it rub a little worse the wrong way. In 1 Chronicles 21 when it records this story, the chronicler says that it wasn't the Lord, but it was Satan who incites David to do this.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so here you have the author of Samuel saying it was the Lord who incited David to do this, and then a chronicler says it was Satan who incited David to do this. Now there is an entire sermon and that alone, but I don't want us to dwell there because it's not the real point of this text. Plus at our next theological coffee house, I'm gonna be talking on the sovereignty of God and we're gonna flesh that out some more, but let me just say this is similar to Job. If you remember the story of Job, how Satan is the one who takes away Job's family, Satan is the one who takes away Job's health, Yet Job says not the Lord gave and Satan took away, he says the Lord gave and the Lord took away, Blessed be the name of the Lord. And Job sees that the Lord is the one behind all of these events, and Job was correct.
Jeffrey Heine:
And that's the biblical view of how all things work. There are no secondary causes in the Bible. There's always God causing everything. There's not a secondary cause. God is behind it all.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so God wants to work a purpose and a plan through Job's life and he uses Satan as just a pawn. And here, God is wanting to work something through David and all of Israel's life. And so he uses Satan as a pawn for his plan. But God didn't make David sin. David sinned freely.
Jeffrey Heine:
David could have resisted sinning, he doesn't, he could have chosen not to sin, but he does it, and that's why when David later confesses his sin, he doesn't say, God, you made me do it. He says, I have sinned. He takes responsibility. Now here was his sin, this great sin that cost the lives of 70,000 people. David decided to take a census.
Jeffrey Heine:
Counting was David's sin. Now Joab knows this is wrong, the commanders of the army know this is wrong immediately, and they try to talk him out of it, but David refuses. But why is this such a bad thing to count? After all, if you're going through the Bible, you'll see there's an entire book called Numbers, which is which is largely about counting. And actually in the book of numbers, God tells Moses to take a census.
Jeffrey Heine:
So why is it wrong here? Well, when God tells Moses to take the census, he has a very particular purpose. He wants to divide up the promised land and he needs to know how much land goes to each tribe. And so you have to count, you have to be practical to divide up the land. But that's not why David wants a census.
Jeffrey Heine:
He already had the land. If you notice in verse 9, when David takes the census and Joab gives him back the sum of the numbers, Joab does not include any women. He doesn't include any children. He only tells David how many men there were that were able to fight. David wants to know how large his army was.
Jeffrey Heine:
He wants to know what his fighting capability had. He doesn't really care about how many people he has, he just wants to know how many people who can fight. How large is his army? And God says that this is a terrible sin because the size of David's army is a non factor when it comes to God winning victories, should not even be part of the consideration. God uses Gideon and 300 people to conquer 1,000.
Jeffrey Heine:
God does not need an army. He's not limited by an army. We saw this at the very start of our study when we looked through David, and we saw how the Ark of the Covenant was stolen by the Philistines. And God himself took on the Philistines. He smoked them with disease and with tumors, and they couldn't wait to get rid of the Ark of God.
Jeffrey Heine:
God didn't need an army to take on the other nations. It's a non factor. And yet David here is making it a big deal, and not only that, but David might be thinking of future conquest. He might be thinking, I want to know how large my army is because I want to take even more land. I wanna do even even, you know, if there's a smaller army in a smaller country here, why not take them?
Jeffrey Heine:
God is saying no. No. Now counting is a sin that I think every one of us can relate to, because we all like to count. You did this from the earliest age. I see this with my children.
Jeffrey Heine:
I've got, you know, 3 little girls. If I were to give each one of my kids one cookie, just one cookie, they are as happy as as you could possibly be. If I were to give one more child just one more cookie, it is war war 3. You just you couldn't imagine how much they would fight. That's not fair.
Jeffrey Heine:
She has more than I have. And they're just they're all fighting, once so happy, but now once they begin counting and comparing, they're miserable. And not only that, but they must they must know geometry because they can size up just the single amounts of cookies. They know, you know, pie, what is it, r squared is the area, and so they quickly size up what is the greatest area of each cookie and who has more. We count from the earliest age, and it continues through our adult lives.
Jeffrey Heine:
We find security in counting just how much money is in our bank account. You know, if if it's above a certain number, we could we could kinda breathe easy. Now I'm guilty of this. I like to think I trust in the Lord for my finances, but it's a lot easier for me to trust the Lord in my finances if I have a certain amount in the bank. I'm just going to confess that.
Jeffrey Heine:
I feel a lot more comfortable trusting in the Lord when I have that little bit of cushion. We count everything. We count from how much money we have in retirement, which might be 0. You're hoping to grow, or we count how many Facebook likes we have to see how popular we are, or how many Facebook friends we have. We count things like the number of praises we get, or the number of compliments we receive.
Jeffrey Heine:
If people praise you a lot for doing something, you feel really great about yourself. If you if you don't get a certain number of praises, you're like, what did I do wrong? Let me tell you, I fall into this trap. One time I finished preaching, and I really thought after I had preached, I was like, I nailed it. No, that was the a game right there.
Jeffrey Heine:
I thought, wow, the Lord really, he brought a lot of things to mind. He really used this. And afterwards, I'm walking around the church and it was like I had the plague, all right? I'm walking up, people see me and they kinda just lower their heads and they would walk away. I mean, I couldn't even talk to anybody.
Jeffrey Heine:
Nobody said a single word to me. And so finally I talked with somebody, one of my friends. I was like, I don't know what happened. I actually thought the Lord really used the message and it was good, but I I think I tanked. And he goes, no, it was no, actually, that was one of the best messages I've ever heard you preach.
Jeffrey Heine:
People don't want to talk to you because they thought you were talking to them and they're all convicted and so they're trying to avoid you. I was like, oh, and then I felt really good at your misery. And so purely based on counting things, I didn't get any positive feedback, I feel really low. I get some positive feedback, I feel really high. I'm a counter instead of depending on the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's amazing how often I find my security through counting. Even my own righteousness, at times I base on counting. If I get up early, I have my quiet time and I get to read through 10 chapters of the Bible. I'm feeling pretty good. You know, I love, you know, those of you who are doing the daily reading plan, don't you love checking those boxes?
Jeffrey Heine:
I mean, you just check, check, check and your righteousness is building up with every single check. And I grew up with that. The church that I went to as a child actually had offering envelopes, and on the envelopes, it had a list of things with little check boxes. Did you pray every day? Are you tithing?
Jeffrey Heine:
Did you go to Sunday school? Did you read your Bible every day? And then the hard one of did you did you share your faith this week? And so every week it was like this little report card that you had to fill out for your own righteousness. And there were times when I would be going to bed and I'd be so tired and I would think of the offering envelope list and I would sit up and I would turn on the light and I would look at a little plaque that was by my bed that had my name, Joel, and under it it says declare of Jehovah, which is what Joel means, and then it had Matthew 5:16.
Jeffrey Heine:
Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. I have that verse memorized better than any other because that was my little, you know, security thing. I could turn that on, read it real quick, read my Bible today, got the check. No. So Sunday, I could check it off and and give God my good report card and see, count count the number of checks, I'm doing really well.
Jeffrey Heine:
But but what about those times I didn't? Did God love me less than my righteousness tank? We shouldn't find our righteousness through counting. Our security doesn't come in numbers. You know, David used to believe that.
Jeffrey Heine:
David wrote this in Psalm 20. Tell me if it sounds like the same David here. Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God. He wrote that earlier in his life. And there's times that we're really good and we think we we don't, we do trust the Lord, but then there's times we're counters and we fall, and David is falling here.
Jeffrey Heine:
He is doubting the lord. After David gets his census report back, immediately his heart strikes him. Look at verse 10, says, but David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. And now this is why David is considered a man after God's own heart is because he is so quick to repent.
Jeffrey Heine:
You would think as you grow in your walk with the Lord that you need to repent less and less, but it's actually the opposite that's true. The more you grow in your walk with the Lord, you begin repenting more and more and more, and it becomes easier to you. When David had a seemingly worse sin of adultery and murder, it was hard for him to repent. God had to send a prophet to him, Nathan, confront him, it was only after being confronted. He said, yes, you're right, I have sinned.
Jeffrey Heine:
But here in what seems like a more minor sin, there's no confrontation, It just hits him. David's heart heart gets this wound. I sinned, and he repents without confrontation. He doesn't rationalize things, saying well you know all kings are supposed to know the size of their army. He says I have sinned, period.
Jeffrey Heine:
I will call it by no other name, and he repents. I tell you, if there's one thing you can learn from David's life, learn repentance. Quit rationalizing your sin, be quick to confess, quick to repent. You know, every time you repent, you build your life less and less on what others think about you and more and more on what Christ thinks about you. Every time you repent you build more and more of your identity on Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:
Every time you repent, the more secure you become in your relationship with him. Now last week, after David repented, we saw how David repented. We saw the consequences of his sin, which was the death of a child. The consequences here are far greater. 70,000 people are gonna die.
Jeffrey Heine:
David sends his prophet Gad, to David, and, the lord sends his prophet there and and says, David, you get to choose your punishment. You can either get 3 years of famine, 3 months of fleeing from your enemies, or 3 days of pestilence, but you choose. Reminds me of how I was punished as a child. My dad said I got to choose the belt, And I can remember very vividly opening up his closet door and going, and he had lots of belts hanging down on the closet door, and I would just I would feel like this one is thick and not very flexible. This one's very flexible, but I bet it can move really fast, and I would weigh weigh all of my options trying to decide which would be the perfect belt.
Jeffrey Heine:
Sometimes, this didn't happen much, but sometimes when I knew was gonna do something wrong, I planned ahead, and I hid all of the belts beforehand before I sinned because I knew that my dad would send me to get those. It didn't stop him from punishing me. But David gets to choose here, choose what's going to be the punishment. And he chooses this, we read in verse 14. Said I am in great distress.
Jeffrey Heine:
Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercy is great, but let me not fall into the hand of men. David's thinking here is if he chose famine, well then you couldn't grow any crops, anything. You become completely dependent upon other nations. You would have to go to them and ask for mercy. If he picked fleeing from his enemies, well, that would mean that Jerusalem had been conquered and he had to flee, and it would mean that he'd have to depend on the mercy of his enemies not to slaughter everybody.
Jeffrey Heine:
So it's either being at the mercy of his enemies or being at the mercy of the Lord, and so he chooses put me in the hand of the Lord. Give me 3 days of pestilence. We then read how God sends a pestilence on Israel and 70,000 men are killed even before the allotted time is up. And and as the sickness is about to come upon Jerusalem, something remarkable happens in verse 16. Says when an angel stretched out his hand towards Jerusalem, I love it when you read this account at 1st Chronicles, it says the sword is extended ready to come down.
Jeffrey Heine:
Says the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, it is enough, now stay your hand. That word relented there is the same word for grieved. The Lord was grieved at what he saw happening. I read one translation that that says it broke the Lord's heart to see what was happening. He he weeps at what is happening.
Jeffrey Heine:
And this is extraordinary language to use, that God's heart would break as he sees his own judgment coming upon his people. What caused this grief that God would stop? I think there's three reasons that God didn't execute the full extent of his punishment. One we've looked at, repentance. David was quick to repent.
Jeffrey Heine:
He came completely clean. The other two things we're gonna see is that David offers himself as a substitute and then David offers a sacrifice. So David offers himself up as a substitute. Look at verse 17. Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people.
Jeffrey Heine:
He said, behold I have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house. I'm not sure if you noticed but David here, he calls himself a shepherd, not not a ruler, not a king, but he considers himself a shepherd. And he says, God, these are my sheep. Strike down the shepherd so that the sheep might live.
Jeffrey Heine:
Strike me down. And God, he listens to David, says, alright, alright, you're offering yourself as a substitute here. Okay, I'll stop, but you're not gonna be the substitute, you're not. Instead, I want you to build an altar and I want you to sacrifice an animal here. And so David, he goes up to the threshing floor of Arana on the top of the mountain and there he builds an altar and there he sacrifices an animal.
Jeffrey Heine:
And we know, I mean we know intrinsically, we know in our gut that animal sacrifices do not remove sin. The animal sacrifices should not have have have stopped God's hands, but something greater is going on here. And we get a hint at what is really going on here. You already got the hint when you read Psalm 30 at the beginning of the service. Pull back out your worship guides and and look at Psalm 30.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's a psalm of David. Look at the title of this psalm. This is the actual title in Hebrew of the psalm. It says, a psalm of David, a song at the dedication of the temple. That's a really strange title for a psalm, especially when you consider the content of it which has nothing to do with a temple.
Jeffrey Heine:
Doesn't talk about a temple at all. What what you do have is this psalm is all about healing. It's about God's anger lasting only for a moment, about people weeping through the night, the joy coming in the morning, David pleading for mercy. You have all of these things, nothing about a temple, but of these things of being in great distress, being in sickness, calling out for help, and then God having mercy. And what you need to know about this psalm and why this all fits together is because the temple was built at the threshing floor of Arana.
Jeffrey Heine:
That was the foundation for the temple. Where David builds his altar for the sacrifice, that becomes the place where 1,000 upon 1,000 and thousands of sacrifices will later be made at the temple. This is pointing forward to that time. It's it's here that God met David at the threshing floor of Arana and showed him mercy that healed him, that brought him up out of the pit of destruction. It's here that God's presence will come and will dwell among his people in a very real way at the temple.
Jeffrey Heine:
There's also an obscure verse in 2nd Chronicles 3 that sheds a little light on this. I'll read it to you. It says, then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place appointed on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Here in this little verse, we find out that that threshing floor of of Arana the Jebusite was on Mount Moriah, Mount Moriah, and maybe that's in the back of your mind just sounding really familiar, because if you go back centuries before this, 800 years before this to that same mountain at Mount Moriah, there was another sword coming down to make another sacrifice, and God said, wait, wait, and held its hand. And God said, sacrifice an animal instead.
Jeffrey Heine:
It was 800 years earlier that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac on this very spot, And as he was bringing the knife down, God said, Abraham, Abraham, stop. Do not kill your son. Instead, get an animal and kill it. And now you have 800 years after that, once again there's another sword coming down and God relenting and saying stop. Stop the judgment, stop the killing, instead take an animal, kill it.
Jeffrey Heine:
So what's going on? Well, I I think here, if I'm allowed to speculate, I think it's a good speculation which is why I'm gonna do it. I think when God looks down on this location, God looks down on this place, He remembers Abraham and he remembers what the sacrifice of Abraham there pointed towards, the lamb of God. And and then he thinks on that place and he thinks of the temple that will be built there and he thinks of all the sacrifices and all the sacrifices that would take place there and what they would point towards, and how the house of the Lord would be built there and how that represents God's presence among his people, and what that would cost him. And I think when he is thinking through all of these things, his heart breaks and he's moved to tears and he stops his judgment.
Jeffrey Heine:
All of this story here points us towards the ultimate shepherd who truly lays down his life for his sheep. Doesn't just offer it, but he offered and it was taken from him. This whole story points to the truer and greater David who would not be spared the sword of judgment from the Lord, but would have to take it. All of this points to the truer and the greater David who who who begged, please, if there's another way, don't let this happen, only to have that ignored and for God to be silent and to execute his judgment. All of this points to the ultimate and final sacrifice for our sins provided in Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so I hope you can see just right there why the author chose this story. Because here you see David at his worse through his sin, and we can all relate and be drawn into that. Here you see David at his best with his repentance and his clinging to the Lord for mercy, not man for mercy. But more importantly, you see David pointing us to the king that is to come, to the good shepherd who will lay down his life for his sheep, who will come and take on our judgment and be the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. I've been, accused of a number of things in my preaching.
Jeffrey Heine:
One is I don't do much application. Actually I remember I've preached several sermons and afterwards I was like man, I've gone like 3 weeks in a row without a single application. The application is worship, alright. It's worship. When you see the heart of God breaking over what he sees in order that he might not judge us, and knowing that he will give the sacrifice, our heart breaks and we are drawn into worship.
Jeffrey Heine:
Notice that David doesn't build an altar and sacrifice and worship, and then God's heart breaks. God's heart breaks first. He weeps first. He stays his hand first, and then David in response worships. When I read this, I'm reminded of Romans 8, as we stand before God and we are guilty as we could be and we deserve judgment, but we we read this.
Jeffrey Heine:
What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, then who could be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, halloween not also with Him. Graciously give us all things. Pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:
Lord, when I when I see your work here on glorious display, Lord, it makes me not want to be a counter. It makes me want to count on you to be my righteousness and my security and not to count in things. And lord we could count on you because we should never ever doubt the love that you have for us, because we see it on full display here. So god, I pray that as we see you clearly here through the life of David and in this text, we would be drawn into worship. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:
Amen. I'd like for us to take, if you have some questions, we do this from time to time for those of you who are new to Redeemer. We try to have some time where we respond. Either we might break up into groups and pray. We might have people come up and share.
Jeffrey Heine:
We might have q and a time, but it's been a couple of months since we've had a time of of q and a. So is there any questions that you'll have about this text or maybe from the previous weeks that you would like to ask? Good. Yeah. It is one of the surprising things because Joab is like a hatchet man.
Jeffrey Heine:
Yeah. He he really is. He like David tells him at times don't kill people, and when David looks the other way, he he kills them. I'm not sure why, but it certainly highlights the fact that David should have known this was wrong. If if even Joab and all of his commanders knew, David certainly should have known.
Jeffrey Heine:
And I would, you know, even go just kind of expanding that a little bit. Just even the fact that some you might have a problem that God kills, you know, 70 1,000 people here and God seems to do that throughout scripture, killing a whole lot of people. If you go back and you look through all of those instances, not in every case, but in most of the cases, you'll find that the reason he he does so is because he was judging a violent people. Yes. That was why the flood came, you know, with Noah.
Jeffrey Heine:
That's, gosh. You just go, I won't name them because it'll take up time. But basically God is looking at a people like Nineveh or something like that and he's like I'm gonna bring judgment because if I don't you will slaughter, slaughter nations after nations after nations. So there's a hint of even that in David here. Like, I see what you're doing in sizing up your army and I'm gonna stop it.
Jeffrey Heine:
Anybody else? Andrew. Yeah. We don't. It's what you pointed to is actually a really confusing passage.
Jeffrey Heine:
For 1, the tabernacle, it's really not the right word for that because the tabernacle doesn't have the ark of the Lord anymore. And so what's happening is you actually have several places of worship, and when it says that he's scared of the sword or of the angel or I can't remember the exact language it uses, it's the same thing as he's scared of God judging him like God has just judged these people. And it might just be that he's not supposed I don't know why. He's not supposed to go there, and he knows it. You know, Why?
Jeffrey Heine:
I'm not sure. You'll occasionally just get those little little things in scripture and you're like, I'm not sure why, but David knows he's not supposed to go there. Good question. At this point, you actually have 3 little tents set up in different places, with that being one of them. Anybody else?
Jeffrey Heine:
Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. There's, like, Stan Shell. Wait.
Jeffrey Heine:
Joel, we had a lot of more awkward products in the settlement. Yeah. With with Absalom and and some of those? You know, we're not done with the life of David, by the way. We at least have next week, maybe another.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's interesting when you go through first and second Samuel that the only good father is Saul. Okay? Eli, horrible children. Samuel, horrible children. David, horrible children.
Jeffrey Heine:
Saul, he's got Jonathan. Alright? You don't want to preach from that. It makes a horrible Father's Day message. Okay?
Jeffrey Heine:
But I think one of the things that you do get when you study that is you have to remember that Saul had already raised Jonathan before he was ever called to be king. Okay, so if there's any kind of thing you can pull out from that, it's that Jonathan was never raised in the palace or with a father who had a prestigious position. Eli had a prestigious position. Samuel had a prestigious position. David had a prestigious position, and so then you get these children underneath them.
Jeffrey Heine:
And essentially they kind of sacrificed their children on the altar of success. But Saul was a nobody when he had raised up Jonathan. And so you can, I think you could pull out some of those things there, whether it's an entire sermon in that, I'm not sure? And the whole Absalom thing, when you go through it, David grieves when Absalom dies, Grieves. In a way it's hard for him to pull out.
Jeffrey Heine:
You know Joab comes to him and is like, what are you doing? Absalom was your enemy. You're weeping when your enemies are killed and you're rejoicing, you know, when your enemies are reigning over you. I don't get it. And Joab actually says, if you don't change, if you don't repent, we're all leaving you.
Jeffrey Heine:
That's how David gets out of that grieving. And so I do think he points to Jesus a little bit in that in that He is loving His enemies. But I think one of the reasons that in just the whole fatherhood thing and why he doesn't get over really the death of Absalom is there's no hint that Absalom is in the covenant family, and he's grieving over a child who seems to have abandoned the covenant family of God, and there's just no comfort for that. Good question. Take one more.
Jeffrey Heine:
JK. One one significance and I'm trying to have the the worship team. If you all go ahead and come on up here while I'm answering this so we don't go over. Not so much as in a threshing floor other than that it's at the highest position which is where threshing floors were, and that's one of the things it signifies. Kind of an interesting thing there, Arana, the Jebusite, Arana can actually be a title, not a name.
Jeffrey Heine:
Actually First Chronicles gives this person a different name, Orna. Here's Arana. Arana in the Hittite language simply means lord. And so you could be talking to the lord of the Jebusites. The Jebusites were the people who reigned in Jerusalem before David conquered the city, and so the Lord of the Jebusites would have occupied the highest place in the land.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so you might have David going to the former king or lord of the Jebusites at this point, and and and it's it's a very, it's showing that even that king submits to David, and then you have that negotiating a price there which is interesting. If you remember, Abraham negotiated the price for Sarah's tomb, and when he did that, that was the very first purchase of the promised land, very first. This is the last. The promised land is the last purchase for the promised land, and they both end with a very similar story of going to kind of these rulers or these prestigious people of the land and saying I'm gonna buy this. I'm not gonna take it.
Jeffrey Heine:
I'm not gonna steal it, but God has given me this and we're gonna pay for this. And it's just a way of saying like this promised land is ours. And I think that's one of the points that's showing there. So those are actually bookends, the story of Araba the Arana the Jebusite and of Abraham and Sarah just for the whole promised land? Good question.
Jeffrey Heine:
If you don't withstand, you know, I told you that the the the application of all this is worship. I hope you see Jesus more clearly, that, you you appreciate Him more, you wanna give your life to Him more, and so I want us to take time and pour out our hearts before Him. And don't fall back. We worship the Lord with all of our heart and all of our soul, all of our strength.