Scripture: 2 Samuel 24:1-25
Sermon Series: 2 Samuel: When God is Your King! – Sermon 24
Unless you’re a Church History buff, you’ve probably never heard of the Great Ejection. On August 24, 1662, some 2,500 Puritan ministers entered their pulpits to preach the last sermon to their churches. The Great Ejection followed the restoration of Charles II (picture) to the English throne. Pastors were required to submit to the Church of England with all of its rites and rules. Those who refused were banned from preaching in a church.
One of the ejected pastors was London pastor, Edmund Calamy (picture). Calamy had been a chief supporter of King Charles’ restoration and used his access to the king to plead for religious tolerance. When those appeals were rejected, he joined other faithful pastors who departed rather than compromise on biblical principle. The text that Edmund Calamy used for his last sermon was 2 Samuel 24:14: “And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man” (KJV).
The passage Calamy preached from is about one of the extensive lessons in David’s life. This last chapter of 2 Samuel begins with foolishness, sin and judgement. 2 Samuel 24 starts with David being incited to sin, continues with him committing and confessing his sin. But David and the nation of Israel suffer God’s chastisement for their sin. It ends with God’s mercy and sacrifice. It all revolves around A Senseless Census.
Today we’re in the conclusion of 1 and 2 Samuel, one book in the Jewish Bible. David’s story continues into the first chapters of 1 Kings. The sacred historian doesn’t finish with David’s death but with one more narrative full of questions. It’s a difficult chapter, one of the hardest in 1 and 2 Samuel.
The story we’re looking at is found twice in the Bible, in 2 Samuel 24 and in 1 Chronicles 21. It’s a good case study of how to handle a tough passage. We’ll learn a couple of principles in this passage that will help us deal with other tough passages. The two principles are this:
Principle One: Ask the question, “What does this passage teach me about God?”
That question will help us with other tough passages we’ll encounter.
Principle Two: Begin with what we do know rather than focusing on what we don’t know.
This passage will leave us with lots of questions. That’s okay because if we focus on what we do know in this passage, it will help us even if we still have some unanswered questions at the end.
2 Samuel 24 unpacks for us that when He is angered by sin, God may severely punish the sinners, but He is willing to relent from His judgment when sinners repent. As we work our way through 2 Samuel 24, we’re to dividing it into three parts: The sin of a stubborn heart; God’s Discipline and a sensitive heart, and The Atonement and a sacrificial heart.
If you’re taking notes…
1. The sin of a stubborn heart, vss. 1-9
2 Samuel 24:1, “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah” and 1 Chronicles 21:1, “Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.”
These opening verses present us with several perplexing questions Why is God angry? Why does the Lord incite David to do something sinful? Why is taking the census sinful?
Why is God angry? We don’t know why God is angry. We do know God is always angry at sin and we know that God is always just. It may be that God is angry at the nation because they’d rebelled with Absalom against, David, God’s anointed king and never repented. We don’t know for sure. What we do know is that God’s anger is always righteous and just.
All of us have the emotion of anger. It’s part of our design in that we’re Imago Dei, made in God’s image. Anger is one of God’s emotions. The difference between God’s and our anger is that God’s anger is always righteous but ours is often sinful. But God’s anger isn’t something we talk about much in the contemporary church though it’s a biblical reality.
Because Scripture tells us we do know that the nation had sinned, and God was punishing them. God never tempts us with sin. James 1:13: “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one.”
Why does the Lord incite David to do something sinful? Because God is sovereign and in total control, He will use Satan and evil people to accomplish His will. An example is found in Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Peter said, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it” (Acts 2:22-24). Lawless men crucified Jesus and thus are responsible. At the same time, God was in control. Christ’s sacrifice was part of His redemptive plan before Creation.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Scott, do you understand that?” No, but I trust God even when I don’t understand.
The story of Joseph has encouraged me through the years. Joseph is now a ruler in Egypt after his brothers sold him into slavery. After their father, Jacob, died, his brothers thought that Joseph might bring the hammer down on them. Listen to what Joseph told them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:19-20). They meant it for evil, but God in His sovereignty used their evil for good and His will. That’s true for us too!
Some of you have suffered great evil from others and even when you can’t see it – God is in control. That’s what’s happening here. God is using Satan to do His will. Satan incites David to number the people.
How can David be held responsible for something that’s God’s will, that Satan incited? I don’t know. Passages like this make us uncomfortable. We must understand though that God is not the author of evil. God is good.
David did exactly what he wanted to do, yet somehow God was involved and Satan. It’s a mystery. God also holds us accountable for our actions. We’re not marionettes, puppets on strings. The Bible never attempts to explain this relationship. In the mind of God there is no contradiction.
So, we must live with incomplete answers and sometimes no answers at all. The questions of our hearts must never overturn our faith.
Why is taking a census sinful? Scripture, as in many narratives, never clearly tells us but it does give us hints. It’s noteworthy that the one bothered most by it wasn’t exactly a Boy Scout. It’s Joab, a man we’d never describe as godly. “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?’ 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” (2 Samuel 24:3-4). Joab and the commanders argue against the census. Somehow, they knew it was wrong. Joab even has a mini-rebellion and never completes it. “But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king’s command was abhorrent to Joab” (1 Chronicles 21:6).
The passage indicates that it wasn’t the census that was wrong. It was the motive for the census. That’s often the case with sin. It’s not the action. It’s what’s driving the action. Motives are hard to judge because they’re within the heart. Let me suggest two reasons why David ordered this census.
Pride. Puritan writer, John Boys (picture), said, “As death is the last enemy; so pride the last sin that shall be destroyed in us.” Pride probably causes more marital squabbles and family feuds than any other sin. The problem with pride is it’s so subtle. No wonder Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” David wants to see how many soldiers he has and how big his army is.
Pride keeps more from coming to Christ than any other sin. They’re too “good” to need a Savior. To be born again, you must humble yourself and admit you need one.
Did you know the Bible never tells us to rejoice in our prosperity? We’re told to count it all joy when we face trials. A. W. Pink (picture) notes that, “The fuller be our cup of joy, the steadier the hand required to hold it.” Many would testify that prosperity is a far harder challenge than that which drives us to our knees.
Doubt. David just lost a battle with a giant and must be rescued by Abishai. Instead of trusting God, he wants to make sure he has enough swords and spears. But the God who gave him the victory over Goliath doesn’t need David’s army and doesn’t need whatever our “army” is either. If you’re trusting in your 401K or your talents, you’re foolish like David. We like to trust in numbers more than God whether it’s our health or our paycheck.
As we grow older, we may begin to wonder – Is God enough? It would be wonderful that as we age, we’d also grow up spiritually…that the longer we walk with the Lord, we’re guaranteed more immunity from sin. That’s not the case. You and I will never be immune from sin’s appeal. Often those who fall the hardest are those who’ve walked with the Lord the longest. Just last week, I learned of a well-known pastor in his seventies who had to resign because of an inappropriate relationship with a woman.
There’s much of David in all of us. Like a child who ignores their parents, we know that something is wrong, that it’s a violation of Scripture – but we’re determined to go our own way. The problem is that not only do we hurt ourselves, but others suffer when we stubbornly choose sin. Today’s Christian doesn’t take sin seriously. Most of us are more afraid of Covid, which can only harm us physically, than we are of the spiritually deadly consequences of sin. We’ll scrub our hands but never cleanse our souls.
We’re not totally sure why but one of the things 2 Samuel 24 teaches so clearly is that God is a God who gets angry at sin. The wrath of God is behind almost every detail of this chapter. That needs to get our attention.
This doesn’t mean that God flies off the handle. J.I. Packer (picture) explains, “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for.”
So, let me ask: have you come to understand God as a God who is angry with sin? Until you do, you don’t know who God really is. If we’re going to worship the God of the Bible, we must come to terms with a God who is slow to anger, but who does get angry at sin with a holy wrath.
2. God’s Discipline and a sensitive heart. Vss. 10-14
In her memoirs, One More Time, Carol Burnett (picture) shares a story that illustrates the nature of guilt. She describes that as child she spent a lot of time with her grandmother. Together, they’d visit a diner where “Nanny” would order sodas and when no one is looking, put her arm on the counter and sweep knives, forks, spoons or whatever was within reach into her bag. With such an example, Carol tried some shoplifting of her own.
One day while in a store, she saw some ruby red lipstick on a makeup counter. Following her grandmother‘s example, she lifted it off the counter, made her way out of the store and ran all the way home with the lipstick in her pocket. Reaching home, she ran inside, slamming the door behind her. So terrified that she was going to be caught, she even looked under her bed to make sure no one was there.
Going to the bathroom, Carol locked the door and took the lipstick out of her pocket. She was just about to unscrew the tube, when her grandmother banged on the door demanding to know what she was doing. Carol nearly died of fright. She promptly opened the door, fled past her grandmother and ran back to the store. There she confessed what she’d done and turned herself in. Although her guilt was prompted by fear, her repentance was real. As a result of her confession, she was forgiven. The manager treated her graciously and Carol went home feeling cleansed.
Confession is the only way to handle feelings of guilt. At least six times in Scripture David confesses, “I have sinned.” The basic meaning of the word translated “confess” in the New Testament is “to say the same thing as God about what we’ve done.” God doesn’t expect sinlessness, He wants honesty. David, in his great psalm of confession, Psalm 51, writes of God, “Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being” (Psalm 51:6).
David had a sensitive heart. Have you ever been troubled by something in your spiritual walk? If so, what did you do about it? Did you ignore it and keep going? Or did you stop and confess to God, “I was wrong!”
David doesn’t blame others. He’s a model for us. Without excuse he correctly blames himself. “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” (2 Samuel 24:10).
Here David isn’t, as he was with Bathsheba, confronted by a prophet. His own conscience convicted him. David’s heart condemned him or literally attacked and struck him. It’s same word David used for killing the lion, the bear and Goliath. When David confessed his sins of adultery and murder he said, “I have sinned.” Yet, when he confessed his sins of numbering the people he said, “I have sinned greatly.”
The mark of a godly person is sensitivity to sin and a willingness to seek restoration with God, even it means facing His judgment! As Eugene Peterson (picture) observed, “David does not always obey God, but he always deals with God.”
David saw the enormity of what he’d done. His sin with Bathsheba ultimately took the lives of six people. This sin took 70,000 lives.
It was a willful act of rebellion against God motivated by pride. David confesses, repents, is forgiven, but he still faced the consequences of his sin.
Sin has consequences. If you lose your temper with your spouse, there will be forgiveness, but it may take time for a rift to heal. If you get pulled into gossip about someone, it could cost you a friendship if the victim finds out.
God forgave David but he still faced consequences for his sin. God sends the prophet, Gad, to let David pick his poison. Gad was a type of royal court chaplain. David is given three choices of divine discipline: famine, military defeat or plague.
Why did God offer him three choices? We don’t know. Maybe because his sin was a deliberate choice on David’s part, so God allowed him to make another choice and choose his punishment.
But God didn’t pull three punishments out of His hat. These were named in Deuteronomy 28 in God’s Covenant with Israel: famine, military defeat and pestilence. David wisely chose the third option, for even under judgment, a person is safest within the hand of God. David is focused on numbers and now the punishment is that God was going to lower the numbers.
Whenever David is exposed to God’s wrath, he always sees God’s mercies. “Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me” (2 Samuel 12:22). “It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me, and that the Lord will repay me with good” (2 Samuel 16:12). Where you and I tend to only see God’s wrath, David’s default was continually seeing God as merciful.
We need to keep in mind that David’s plea for mercy was not wishful thinking. He knew God. His experience with God taught him that he was right to plead for God’s mercy. David knew that God’s mercy is kinder and gentler than any disaster that could ever come his way.
Dale Ralph Davis (picture) tells the story that some time ago newspapers told of an episode at the Brookfield (Illinois) Zoo. A three-year-old toddler fell eighteen feet into an area inhabited by seven gorillas. It turns out that the toddler was still alert when taken to a hospital where he would be listed in critical condition. But how did he ever get out of gorilla-land?
Binti, a seven-year-old female gorilla, picked up the small child, cradled him in her arms, and put him down near a door where zookeepers could get him. Davis says, “I suppose the story seems amazing to us because we do not customarily associate gorillas with kindness. We may be grateful to Binti but would prefer not to trust her with another child.”
Then Davis goes on to note, “I wonder if in our gut-level thinking we don’t have a gorilla view of God’s mercies? We tend to look upon mercy as a divine exception rather than as the divine character. Not so David. Even in His wrath, David knew he was not facing a gorilla-God.”
3. The Atonement and a sacrificial heart
“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” (2 Samuel 24:16).
The plague began when God sent an angel to bring it about. When the angel got to Jerusalem and was about to destroy it, God relented. God promised three days of plague. It appears the Lord cut that short and spared the city of Jerusalem. God is merciful and gives us less than we deserve!
Why didn’t God destroy Jerusalem? Maybe it was because it was the city that housed the Ark of the Covenant and the city of David. It was the city God promised to establish forever. God commanded the destroying angel to stop, so he stopped by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
2 Samuel 24 presents this event from God’s perspective. The same event is described in 1 Chronicles 21 showing it from David’s perspective. “And David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the LORD standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces” (1 Chronicles 21:16).
David could see the angel standing between heaven and earth with his destroying sword stretched over the city of Jerusalem. David and the elders fell on their faces in repentance, asking for mercy. “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.” (2 Samuel 24:17). David was willing to offer himself as a substitute for the people. But David couldn’t die for the nation’s sin because he had his own problem with the wrath of God for his own sin!
Threshing floors were normally on hilltops. The harvest was collected and thrown into the air – the chaff would blow away, but the heavier kernels would fall to the ground. Gad the prophet instructs David to make atonement for this plague. David builds an altar and offers sacrifices, and the plague is stopped. This sacrifice was an atonement for sin.
Atonement is offensive to us moderns. Our views of atonement sanitize it, and our church art even beautifies it. This atonement is symbolic of the slow, bloody death of Jesus on a crude cross of wood. It wasn’t clean or beautiful. It was brutal, violent and bloody…David’s sacrifice was all of that.
In the parallel passage God affirmed this by sending fire from heaven. “And David built there an altar to the Lord and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings and called on the Lord, and the Lord answered him with fire from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering” (1 Chronicles 21:26).
We don’t know if Araunah also saw the angel or knew what was going on. We do know that he was eager to help. He freely offered David the land and any animals or supplies needed for the sacrifice. However, David responded, “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” (2 Samuel 24:24). This is one of the great statements of Scripture. Once again, we see the man with the heart for God. Atonement is costly. Worship has a price.
I want you to hear something very important that’s taught over and over again in the Bible. God doesn’t need your money. No, God He wants something much more costly and valuable – He wants YOU. It’s why He gave His Son to die for you. But you and I desperately need Him so that He can transform our lives! Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
When you know the sacrificed Savior as your Savior, it radically changes everything. Emil Mettler, a restaurant owner in London, was known for his generosity. He often fed people for nothing. If a representative of a Christian organization came in and told him of a need, he’d open his cash drawer and give a sizable donation.
One day Emil opened his cash drawer in the presence of the Secretary for the London Missionary Society. The man was astonished to see among the bills and coins a six-inch nail. Surprised, the man asked, “What’s that doing there?” Emil picked up the 6-inch spike and replied, “I keep this with my money to remind me of the price Christ paid for my salvation and what I owe Him in return.” Emil used that nail to remind himself that he owed the Lord a great debt of love because Jesus laid down His life for him and paid for his sin. It’s why his life was a “living sacrifice. He used that nail to encourage his own generosity as he remembered the Savior’s sacrifice.
Conclusion
That’s it for 2 Samuel. It’s almost anticlimactic. It doesn’t end with an ancient king taking his last breath. That’s in 1 Kings that we’ll look at next Sunday. 2 Samuel ends with David offering an atoning sacrifice.
It’s an important moment, a historic moment. David somehow realizes that he’s part of a drama that’s far greater than himself. In this moment in time, having experienced all that has preceded it, here is the picture we have of him – a needy sinner needing someone to die in his place.
What it provides us with should be no surprise because it gives us a sense of anticipation. At that same place as the threshing floor of Araunah, a thousand years earlier, Abraham was told by God to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice. It’s the same place a thousand years before found in Genesis 22. On that occasion, the hand of God stopped Abraham and a substitute, a ram caught in the thicket, died in the place of the son.
This threshing floor is an important place. In the very place where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son…a thousand years later, Solomon’s Temple would be built. The temple – the place where men and women could come before God, meet God, repent of their sin, and be restored to a relationship with Him. The temple, a place where sacrifice after sacrifice was offered.
And Solomon’s temple was a short distance from the spot where another thousand years later, there was an old rugged cross – and the Son of David, the Good Shepherd, would lay down His life for the sins of the world. Jesus died as the atoning sacrifice for me and you there.
You see, what David desired to do he couldn’t do. He was the king after God’s own heart, but he was human, and he was sinful. “Maybe you could punish me and let them go.” You can’t do that, David. But there is One who will do it. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement…was upon Him” (Isaiah 53:5) that brought us peace. There’s no one else who can save us, save us from ourselves and from our sin, save us from the wrath of God—except Jesus, the Son of David.
Paul, Saul of Tarsus, didn’t believe that. He thought it was all a bunch of nonsense. Some of you are here today, and maybe that’s your perspective too. Then Saul met Jesus.
When he writes to Timothy, he says, “You know, there was shown to me mercy” (1 Timothy 1:16). Mercy. You see, Saul thought that with all of his background, his capacities, his intelligence and his religion, that somehow or another, he was high up on the spectrum. Heaven for him was a sure thing. Nope! It was only when he was brought low: “I was shown mercy.”
O the love that drew salvation’s plan!
O the grace that brought it down to man!
O the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary.
Mercy there was great, and grace was free,
[And] pardon there was multiplied to me,
[And] there my burdened soul found liberty
—At Calvary.
1 Samuel 1 begins with a sacrifice and 2 Samuel ends with one. It ends looking forward to Jesus, His sacrifice. The whole story of the whole Bible points us to Jesus, the atoning sacrifice, the One who shows mercy.
He wants to show you mercy. Have you let Him? Have you accepted His sacrifice for you?