Introduction
How much money do you have? Is it enough for today? How many days could you live comfortably with the money you have right now? Would you make it a week? A month? A year? The rest of your life? If you could live comfortably for more than several months or even a year, how does that make you feel? Do you rest securely because of your possessions?
Do you feel adequate in the place where you serve in the church? How does that make you feel? Are you comfortable in your comfort zone?
This week we will approve the budget for our church. If it is like usual, it probably will be a budget well within our means? What does that say about our hope in God, our dreams about His work and commitments to Him if we pass such a budget?
Please keep these questions in mind as I tell you a story. The story is found in I Chronicles 21 and also in II Samuel 24. We will be following the story in I Chronicles 21. It is a difficult story. When I looked for other sermons on this passage, I did not find any. It contains some difficult questions. In fact the most extensive comments I found on this passage were on a website called “The Sceptics Annotated Bible.” I will try to explain some of the difficulties as I tell the story. Although difficult, it is a story worth telling because I believe it has an important lesson for us to learn about dependence on God.
The Story
We know that there is a problem when the story begins by saying, “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census.” When David assigned Joab, his general, to carry out the plan to take a census, Joab knew this was wrong and asked David, “Why should he bring guilt on Israel?”
This is the first difficulty in the story. Why did Satan have an influence on David and why did God permit Satan to tempt David? The difficulty of this question is increased when we read in II Samuel 24:1, “Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them saying, ‘Go and count Israel and Judah.’” Now we have the problem of whether it was God or Satan who tempted David and the deeper question of how God could tempt him. We know that James 1:13 says, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” So how does this fit together? The best explanation for this that I can find is that Israel had done something wrong, perhaps it was the rebellion of Absalom against David, and God needed to punish them. He permitted Satan to tempt David and David sinned by yielding to the temptation to count the people. So simply put, Israel was guilty and deserving of punishment, God permitted Satan to tempt David and David became guilty when he yielded to the temptation.
In spite of the fact that David himself knew that this was a wrong thing to do, as we see in I Chronicles 21:8 and in spite of Joab’s warning to David that it was wrong, he did it anyway and assigned Joab to count the people, or more specifically, the men fit for war.
Joab was a faithful servant of David and carried out the command, although, as we see in 21:6, he did not do a complete job because he was so concerned about this command.
He came back to David with a number and reported in I Chronicles 21:5 that there were 1.1 million fighting men in Israel and 470,000 in Judah. If you read II Samuel 24, you will see that there are different numbers. I do not have an explanation for that, but am not overly concerned about that.
As soon as the job was completed David realized his sin and immediately repented and asked that the guilt for this wrongdoing would be taken away.
However, the deed had been done and so there had to be consequences. The prophet Gad went to David to give him three choices regarding the kind of punishment there would be for this sin. David could choose between 3 years of famine, 3 months of an enemy attacking the land and 3 days of a plague from God.
David was deeply saddened by the consequences that would come, as he says in 21:13, but he understood that of all the choices, the best was putting himself in God’s hands because he know that God was merciful.
As a result, God sent a plague on Israel in which 70,000 people died. It seems appropriate that since the sin was numbering the people that reducing the number would be the punishment.
David was right in relying on the mercy of God and His great mercy came into effect and he stopped the plague before it had gone to its full extent. However, there is an interesting thing that happened next. God told the destroying angel to stop in 21:15. The angel stood there, visible to David and to Araunah at whose threshing floor he had stopped. This threshing floor was located a little to the north of David’s city of Jerusalem as it existed at that time. The angel was poised to begin destroying people in this city with the plague. When the angel stopped, it was like a little pause in the action. This pause gave David a chance to seek God and to ask Him, in prayer, to stop the punishment. David tried to bargain with God and pointed out that it was his sin and that the people should not be punished for his sin. Of course, from II Samuel 24, we know that the people were also deserving of punishment for other reasons and so this punishment had come upon them justly from God’s perspective.
The solution was that David was to make a sacrifice. Since he was at the threshing floor, which was on the top of a mountain and was a hard level place, it was an appropriate place to build an altar. David asked Araunah if he could purchase the oxen and sledge he had been using to thresh. He also asked to purchase the grain and the location of the threshing floor in order to make this sacrifice. Araunah, who also saw the angel poised with his drawn sword was quite willing to give these things to David. But David knew that it would not be an appropriate sacrifice if it cost him nothing and so he insisted on paying the full price, as we see in verse 24. So David paid the price and sacrificed the offerings at that location.
It is interesting that although we read in verse 15 that God had already decided to stop the plague, it was still necessary for David to ask God for mercy and to pray and to make a sacrifice before we read in verse 27 that God spoke and the angel “put his sword back into its sheath.” This tells us something of the mystery of God’s sovereignty and the need for our prayers. It doesn’t explain why things are that way, but it does help us understand that this is how it works. God is sovereign and He is Lord, but for some reason he still requires us to pray and to be involved in some way in what he does.
After this event, David continued to offer sacrifices at this location. It seems that this was a special location, at which people had previously met God. This was the location where Abraham had gone up the mountain to offer Isaac. In Genesis 22:2 we read, “Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” In this story, we find that it was a place where David met God. Later it would become the place where the temple would be built and where all Israel could meet God. In I Chronicles 22:1 we read that “David said, ‘The house of the Lord God is to be here, and also the altar of burnt offering for Israel.’” Later in II Chronicles 3:1 we read, “Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.”
God’s Resources or Ours?
As we have thought about this story, the one question which we have not answered is, “Why was it such a sin for David to count the people?” It is in thinking about this that we come to the point of application today.
What Was David’s Sin?
In Genesis 22:17 God made a promise to Abraham when He said, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.”
When Joab objected to David’s plan he said to David, “May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over. My lord the king, are they not all my lord’s subjects? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?”
In I Chronicles 27:23,24 we read, “David did not take the number of the men twenty years old or less, because the Lord had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars in the sky. 24 Joab son of Zeruiah began to count the men but did not finish. Wrath came on Israel on account of this numbering, and the number was not entered in the book of the annals of King David.”
In these verses we have a hint about what the sin was. God’s promise was to multiply the people so that they would be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.” It seems that just like the number of stars or grains of sand on the seashore are to be a mystery and not counted, so the number of the people of Israel were not to be counted. From the words of Joab, I believe that there was a very important reason for this and this is the point at which we have a lesson worth applying to our lives. When Joab says, “May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over” I believe that he is challenging David that he was not to rely on the number of his troops, but on God. The sin of David is that he wanted to know what his military strength was. Knowing what his strength, his resources were, could lead to dependence on them. As long as he had no idea how many soldiers he had, he would have to depend on God in any battle.
The Bible is quite clear about the need for such dependence. Jeremiah 9:23 says, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.”
The Keil and Delitsch commentary says, “David wanted to know the number of his subjects - not so that he would boast of their number; not so that he could tax them, but that he would fully know his defensive power.” “He sought for the strength and glory of his kingdom in the number of the people and their readiness for war.”
It was a sin because it moved in a direction away from God. It could cause David and his nation to depend on their own resources instead of depending on God. God punished such a point of view.
Application
Now this is something that we know about and struggle with in our own life. Where do we wrestle with this? How do we sin by depending on our resources? In which areas do we need to learn to depend on God?
In the introduction, I suggested a few possibilities.
It is a powerful temptation for us, when we have much, to begin to depend on what we have instead of on God. When we have a pretty solid bank account, we are susceptible to the temptation to rely on what we have and to have peace in our heart because of what we have instead of because we are living under the loving care of God. A related temptation when we have financial resources is to solve problems by throwing money at them instead of seeking God’s help.
In the area of our ministry, whether it be teaching or leading music or however we serve God, we may be tempted to rely on the gifts which God has given us and the abilities which we have. If someone asks us to do something we have never done before, we may quickly dismiss it if we do not think that we have the gifts to do it. We like to stay comfortable and serve comfortably in our strengths. But what if God has new challenges for us? There is no question that God is the one who gifts for service and that we are probably going to be most effective in our area of giftedness. But at the same time, it is also true that call comes before gifting. God does not always call the gifted, but he always gives the necessary gifts to those whom he calls. Instead of evaluating our willingness to serve in a particular area by our interest or ability in that area, we should be seeking God and asking Him if this is something that He wants us to do. We need to grow in our dependence on God in our service for Him.
In the whole matter of the work of the church, we are also tempted to do only that which we know that we can do. A few months ago, we had a conversation in the mission’s committee about sending out a team from our church to plant a church in another area or even among an un-reached people group. The resources required for such a project would require an increase in trusting God to reveal His will to us, an increased need for prayer for God’s leading, a team of people who would be willing to be trained and to go and an increase in our mission’s budget. When we look at the whole package of such an idea, it seems that it is beyond us. Are we willing to seek God and realize that He has the resources and can provide us with the resources to do such a thing which seems beyond our resources? Will we be able to look beyond depending on what we know we have and stretching to rely on what God has?
Conclusion
What area in your life are you living at the level of reliance on your known resources? Is that where God wants you to live? Is He perhaps asking you to depend on Him instead of only what you know you can accomplish or perform?
When David counted the people in order to learn his military strength, his sin was that of trying to trust in what he had instead of depending on God. That this was a sin and that God punished it should certainly make us take this matter seriously. We have become quite comfortable living within our means. Up to this point, God has not evidently punished such faithlessness. We go along without ever stepping out of our comfort zone or really putting the full weight of faith on God because we don’t need Him. We live within the means we have and it goes alright. How much more exciting it would be to live beyond our resources and in the resources of God! How much more amazing it would be to live in the level of what God could do instead of only at the level of what we know we can do! What would God like to do in us and through us if we would give up dependence on our resources and chose to rely on His?
The only way that David could get out of this situation was by repentance. May we also repent of our self sufficiency and choose to glory in God’s all sufficiency.
Amazingly, God is able to redeem even our failures. That once again, as so often in Scripture, something good comes out of a human failure should not surprise us. That the site of the offering which would stop the plague became the site of the temple where God would meet with His people is right in line with how God works. He takes our weakness and failure and redeems it to become a site of His glory. Will we offer our ability and our inability and even our failures up to Him for redemption? Will we choose to put our confidence and hope in Him?
No comments:
Post a Comment