2 Samuel 24:1-10

2 Samuel chapter 24 I want to read the first 10 verses this evening and again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he moved David against them to say go number Israel and Judah for the king said to Joab the captain of the holst which was with him go now through all the tribes of Israel from dan even to beersheba and number ye the people that I may know the number of the people. Joab said unto the king, now the Lord thy God add unto the people how many soever they be a hundredfold and that the eyes of my lord the king may see it but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing? Notwithstanding the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the host and Joab and the captains of the host went out from the presence of the Lord to number the people of Israel and they passed over Jordan and pitched in Aurora on the right side of the city that lieeth in the midst of the river of Gad and toward Jaser then they came to Gilead and to the land of Ta-Tim-Hachi and they came to Dan ja’an and about to Zidin and came to the stronghold of Tyre into all the cities of the Heavites and all the of the Canaanites and they went out to the south of Judah even to Beersheba so when they had gone through all the land they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and 20 days Joab gave up the sum of the number of the people under the king and there was in Israel 800,000 valiant men that drew the sword and the men of Judah were 500,000 men. And David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people. And David said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly and that I have done. And now I beseeched thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. May God bless to us the reading of his sacred word this evening. One of Esop’s fables is about the story of the lion and the man who were companions and they were taking a journey. And in the course of their conversation they debated about who was the superior. Each claimed to be superior. to the other in strength and courage. While they were arguing, they came to a crossroad, and there at the crossword, there was a statue of a man that was strangling a lion. There, said the man triumphantly, look at that. Doesn’t that prove to you that we are stronger than you? The lion said, not so fast, my friend. That’s only your viewpoint in the case. If we lions made statutes, you can be sure, and most of them, you would see the man underneath. And the lesson, of course, is there’s always two sides to a story. When we come to David’s sin in this chapter, we find there are two sides to the sin. The census appears to be senseless, according to Joab and the captains of the host. But it was indeed sinful, as David finds out. and therefore punishable as God will meet out a punishment in this chapter. What caused this sin? Why was the census sinful? Where does the blame lie? The scripture reveals the two sides of the story. The divine side here is that God moved David against Israel to number the people. Verse 1. But the human side is, is, is, As David confesses in verse 10, I have sin greatly in that I have done. He sees himself as guilty of a terrible sin in the sight of God. The account of David’s senses provides us an opportunity here to explore all different sides of this particular sin. Now, let me begin by saying this. There is a mysterious aspect associated with your sin. In verse one, we read and again, the angle of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, go number Israel, Judah. Your sin is included in God’s overall purpose, as this verse certainly indicates to us. God uses your sin to teach you humility. Contrary to common thinking, evil does it roam about freely in this world to wreck havoc at random. Evil is controlled by God. God is the director and the controller of all evil. Nothing takes place outside of his decree and his purpose. As God told Abimelech, king of Gerar, I always, also withheld thee from sinning against me in Genesis chapter 20 and verse 6. God can keep people from sin. But here we see the opposite situation, where God is involved in moving David to sin. Now, we have to realize that God is the primary cause of all things, but he employs secondary causes to actually carry out his purpose. purposes. But the scriptures say in Amos 3. Shall there be evil in the city and the Lord hath not done it? Or Isaiah 457, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. By moving David to take this census, God is viewed as having brought about the act that we see here. Eventually, you’re going to find Satan’s hand in the matter, and of course David’s sinfulness and guilt in the mat. but we see here that’s how God ends up moving David to do this. and so we’ll have to look at this as we go along. the question arises though, but why would God move David to sin in the first place? The word and that begins this chapter certainly connects it with what has previously taken place. and it’s a remarkable juncture that we’ve reached here in David’s life in his history. The ancient foes of Israel, after centuries of conflict, have been conquered, defeated. All the Philistine giants, every one of them, of that one family of the giants, have been put to death by David and his men, as we’ve studied. All the surrounding nations have been. been subdued and their wealth has been given to David. Israel has gained unprecedented power and territory and now is a respected nation in the area. The temple is about to be constructed and it was a bright and glorious air that appeared to be before the nation. There is, however, some danger in any success that we have, because you can be become spiritually complacent. You can become self-sufficient and not rely upon God and begin to drift away from the Lord. When success crowns your efforts and your barns are well filled, you’re apt to work independently of God. It’s when you are brought low by losses, by trials, by trials, and by sin. that you’re cast upon the Lord the most. Therefore, sin, while a tremendous evil, is used by God to work for your spiritual good, as Romans 828 indicates to us, the shame and the guilt of sin, the great conviction that comes with sin, and the confession of it to God all produce humility. Scripture says, yea, all of you, be closed. with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God in verse Peter, chapter 5. Have you ever looked at weeds carefully? They serve as a reminder of sin. And if you think back to the Garden of Eden and God’s curse upon the ground, we see that this is the result. of that particular curse. But if you look closely, even in the weeds and the things that grow up out of the earth that are difficult for us when we’re, you know, farming or something of this nature, gardening, there are signs of mercy associated with weeds. Some weeds have gorgeous flowers, tiny blue bells, ruffled purple blooms, even magnificent, displays of gold. And in some way, when you look closely, you can see something beautiful in association with the evil weeds that plague mankind. God alone, in a mysterious way, can bring good out of evil. And so the gorgeous flower of humility is produced by God in your life as a believer, even by the evil of evil. sin. So let us not be quick here to find fault when we read in this scripture that God moved David as the primary cause here. This was a divine check to David, to one that has grown self-sufficient and spiritually complacent, and he’s taught humility by God. And we’ll look at this a little bit more carefully later. But God has a good motive in all this, and he does this same kind of thing in your life and mine. Now notice something else here. Not only does God use your sin to teach you humility, but God uses your sin to punish the evil of those associated with you. And again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, it says here. Not only does God deal with David, but through this sin of David, we find that Israel is also. so affected. The Israelites had offended God by their recent rebelliousness against God’s king, David. Remember the covenant that God made with David, that it was by David and through his seed that the blessing was going to come, the Davidic covenant. And they had opposed David on several occasions, both under Absalom and then under the blessing. Shiba, as we saw in this book. Well, David may have forgiven the people. We see that the people themselves had not been reconciled. God. Their hearts still appear to be far from the Lord. And sadly, the nation at large was not made up by those who walked by faith and those who obeyed God’s commandments. Second Samuel 236 indicates there were sons of Beliol in the land. that followed Shiba, and so we see that there’s a problem here with the people. So God’s wrath burns against the people. He’s intent on punishing them, and so God moves David to number the people of Israel and Judah, and this will lead directly to a plague that will fall upon them, and they will be reduced in number, as we shall see. In the righteous judgment of God, there’s an interconcernation. connection between rulers and leaders and the population. And there’s a reciprocal influence between the two. Bad leaders can lead the problem for the people, and bad people can lead to problems for the one who is leading, or the king in this case. Neither the king nor the people can sin without mutually affecting one another. When the wickedness of the nation provokes God. He leaves rulers to adopt foolish ways or to commit iniquity in order to punish the nation. This principle here is what we find in our text. We could also say this principle could relate to the church as well. A minister may be allowed by God to fall in the public disgrace because he’s angry with the members over which he rules as an elder. Neither the minister nor the members can claim innocence in such cases many times. Sometimes they’re both at full. There was a lonely stretch of beach three miles wide on a Florida coast where 100 pilot whales hurled themselves on the beach in an apparent mass suicide. The marine biologists were just back. by this destructive behavior. It seemed like whoever was the leader of the whale pack, if you would, musta just came ashore and all the rest just come flopping ashore too. And, of course, they all died. There was people who tried to rescue them, but, you know, rescuing pilot whales is not an easy task. They’re just too big and too bulky to try to get back in the water. The same thing happens in the human realm. Leaders can bring about the downfall of their subjects under them. Remember what God says in Hosea 1311. I gave thee a king in my anger. Took him away in my wrath. Sometimes God, being angry with the people, gives them the king that is foolish or a king that is going to be harmful to them in the long run as a means of punishment. So your sin is included in God’s overall purpose. God uses your sin to teach you humility, as the case is with David. But God also uses your sin to punish the evil of those associated with you, in this case, Israel. Now, notice something else in this. Your sin is the direct result of Satan’s temptation. Now, if you hold your place here, and you look at Second, or excuse me, First Chronicles, Chapter 21 in verse 1, we find an interesting corollary passage here. Notice what the verse 20 of chapter 21 of First Chronicles and verse 1st says. And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel. Bible critics have field day when you come to the situation like this and say, there you go, get contradictory things in the Bible. Well, these two statements. are not contradictory. They are complementary, and we have to understand it properly. So instead of thinking there’s error in the Bible, we need to ponder exactly what God is revealing to us. The words stood up here seem to have a legal connection, implication. You remember in Zachari I, where you find the high priest being charged by Satan. with sin. There’s an allusion to someone making an accusation against another in court. While there’s a mystery to this, it seems the poor spiritual condition of Israel gave Satan certainly an occasion to take advantage against them. And he promptly uses this opening to charge them before the Lord as a reason that he ought to punish them. nation of Israel. God therefore moves his hedge of protection away from David, away from the nation, so Satan may provoke David to do the evil and the people will suffer because of it. God is the primary cause, but they’re the secondary cause, is Satan involved in this. And the other secondary causes, of course, David’s own foolishness. his own sin. Ultimately, God moves David by giving permission to Satan to provoke David to number the people. You remember in Scripture in Second Chronicles Chapter 32, King Has Akaya, has a sickness, and it appears he’s going to die. In fact, Isaiah tells him, get your house in order because you’re going to die. And he, you know, he pleads with God to spare him. and God does. And he recovers from this sickness. And then he’s visited by some messengers of Babylon. Now, the Babylonians were not well known at this time. They seemed to be a far-off nation. And they wanted to inquire about Hezekiah’s miraculous victory over the massive Assyrian army. Of course, it was God who brought that victory by sending the death angel and then smiting the whole army of the Assyrians. But pride was a problem evidently, for in reality, Azakaya had done nothing militarily. But he seems to be glorying in this matter. And then you read those faithful words in Second Chronicles 3231. God left him to try him that he might know all that was in his heart. And that doesn’t mean that God was trying to figure out what was in Hezekiah’s heart. It means that Hezekiah would learn what was in his own heart, as the text indicates to us. In other words, God could have prevented this sin. But he had a holy end in mind. And that was to reveal to Hezekiah, his own pride, his own foolishness, so that he might be humbled. It’s good to know yourself. yourself. It’s good to be able to recognize the sinfulness of your own heart. And in that way, you will not be conceded or self-confident, as if you can do things or live independently of God. What there need there is to pray, as Jesus has taught us, Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We learn if we’re left by God on our own resources, we’re certainly going to be easy to pray for Satan. You know, when God tests you, it carries a positive intention. God always has a holy and a good purpose in what he does. When Satan tempts you, it carries a negative intention. He wants to bring out your bad points and cause you to fall. So God test you. you, but has a positive purpose in it. Satan tempts you, but he has an evil purpose in it. When some environmental green group tests the car, its aim is to bring out the bad points of that car, how much it pollutes the air, you know, its bad carbon footprint, and something of that nature. When GM test its own car, it’s most of the car, it’s most, it’s a bad carbon footprint, it’s most of that nature. motivation is to bring out the good points. Look at the fuel mileage. Look at the safety record. Look at the fast acceleration. Look at the comfort. So GM tests the car and their idea is to improve it, hopefully. Then the green groups does the testing in order to discredit the car. In the same manner, God tests you to improve you while Satan tempts to discredit you. We look at the case of Joe. when God speaks to Satan He says, Has thou consider my servant Job? There’s none like him and all the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God and shueth evil. And what does Satan say? Does God, or does Job fear God for not? And the Lord said unto Satan, behold, all that he hath is in thy power only upon himself put not forth thine hand. Satan wants Job to curse God. That’s his purpose and bringing temptation upon. God wants to demonstrate Job’s uprightness when he is held up by God’s power to demonstrate that. And this is why he allows Satan to attack him. So you look at this whole thing when God takes the hedge away from Job. and Satan gets his opportunity. Satan has one purpose. God has a completely different purpose in it all. So God as the director and controller of evil may leave you exposed to Satan, your adversary. Now, what we learn from this, obviously, is you can never lay down your spiritual armor. You can never think that you’ve reached a point in your Christian life that you don’t need to be on your guard. It’s very solemn when you see a man here that is so near the end of his earthly pilgrimage as David was, who for so many years walked closely with God. Now he gives place to the devil. What proof this is? It doesn’t matter how old we are in the Lord. It doesn’t matter what experience we have in our ourselves. None of those things are a safeguard against Satan’s attack ultimately. as long as we’re in this world, Satan is going to be a great enemy to us. He goes about seeking whom he may devour. And as long as Satan is allowed, he’s going to work on your corruptions, and he’s going to tempt you to do evil. So you’re never immune to his attacks. Spiritual warfare, therefore, is a constant thing for the Christian. We must always watch and pray lest we enter in a temptation. A number of years ago, the U.S. Secret Service observed that a high-ranking government official seemed to be the least protected of the cabinet members. So four glass security doors were installed in the official Washington suite at the cost of $58,000. They were put in in addition to a pair of huge, thick wooden doors that were supposedly impossible to break. Later, when the person who monitors the spending checked on the results, results of the work, he noted that the new security doors while installed were always open and always unlocked and unguarded on top of that. So that the security value was absolutely zero. And they had wasted the money putting in the doors. Now this can be true in the spiritual realm also. If you look at the spiritual armor that God has provided, you might say, boy, this is, it’s wonderful to have this spiritual arm. It doesn’t do you any good unless you put it on, unless you’re prepared. So there is a mysterious aspect associated with your sin. Your sin is included in God’s overall purpose, but your sin is the direct result of Satan’s temptation, as we see from our passage in First Chronicles 21. Secondly, tonight, you cannot escape blame in your sin, and we see that in verses 2 through 9. Now let’s look at the human side of this. You may be guilty of pride and self-sufficiency. David has just experienced a string of impressive military victories. Perhaps he wanted to see just how strong a military force he could muster. And if so, David lost sight of the fact that Israel’s military might was not what gave him the victory or protected him. It was God himself that did that. By numbering the people, David was guilty of diverting attention away from God and the need to trust in him. David’s act was at one at the same time due to God’s will, Satan’s evil intent, and David’s pride. So he has a problem in this situation. Counting military strength, seems to be a sign of self-sufficiency on David’s part. You read the Psalms, you know, not to trust in horses or men in the legs of a man or the legs of a horse. It doesn’t matter. That’s not where our trust is. One can easily trust in a human army rather than in the God who controls all things. Matthew Henry’s commentary says this. It was proud confidence in his own strength. By publishing among the nations the number of his people, he thought to appear more formidable and doubted not that if he should have any war, he should overpower his enemies with the multitude of his forces, trusting in the arm of the flesh more than he should have done, who had written so much of trusting in God only, as we saw in the Psalms. Counting heads has often been a snare to God’s people. It’s easy to assume that somehow bigger is better. We see that churches no sooner grow than they begin to boast of their size and their financial capabilities and so forth. A lot of people, you know, judge the church by how big it is. And whether you’re really, you know, being blessed of God, it depends on the size of your church. Numbers are equated with God’s blessing and success. While smallness is considered spiritual, spiritual weakness and failure. David’s seen here ought to make you look at numbers more carefully. The counting heads may be simply a sign of pride and self-sufficiency, as we see here. Some of the largest, fastest-growing religious movements in history have been and are deeply opposed to the Lord in his revealed truth. Whether we talk about the Roman Catholic Church, where we talk about more. Mormonism, where we talk about the Jehovah Witnesses, where we’ve talked about the mega church movement and so forth. All these church growth movements that we have in our society today. The test of a true faithful church is does it adhere to the truth and is God producing spiritual fruit within the people. That is what we should remember. And you’ll recall Jesus saying, we’re two or three are gathered. together, there I am in the midst of them. And he doesn’t say you have to have a, you know, a thousand before I will be present. But we’re just a few were gathered. In true worship, he certainly is present. Because Jesus knew that counting heads may tempt us to pride too. And small numbers may tempt us to discouragement. So his statement there, I think, covers both those ideas. We can be careful about both. We shouldn’t be discouraged because it’s. If the Lord is with us, what else can we ask? And just because we don’t have large numbers, it’s not that essential. But we shouldn’t think that large numbers is what would be necessary for the Lord to even take notice of us. So you may be guilty of pride and self-sufficiency. You may be guilty of a disregard for God’s word. It’s interesting, if you read this. account, and if you compare it to the law of God, it seems that David did not fall the law’s requirement in this particular case. Moses twice took a census of the people of Israel. So the census is not inadvertently, or I should say inherently wrong or evil. But each time Moses did it, he was commanded by God to do it. If you look at Numbers Chapter 1, 1 to 3, or Numbers Chapter 26, 1 to 2, it was commanded. David’s census was not commanded. In addition, David did not follow the prescribed way of God in his word. If you read in Exodus chapter 30, verses 11 through 16, when a census is taken, God required atonement money. to be paid. If you notice care of this, atonement money was paid, and Exodus 30 and verse 12 says, that no plague would befall the nation. So when they took the census, money had to be paid in as atonement for the people, and that was to prevent a plague from falling. Here we have a census. No atonement. money paid and what happens? A plague ends up falling upon the people. When you ignore biblical directives, you can’t expect God to bless your endeavors. You think that David would have learned in the past is remember he put the ark on the cart. He used the Philistine invention to try to transport the ark to Jerusalem. And so he should have learned that time and he had to figure out what he needed to do and realize that, oh, the Levites are supposed to carry it according to the law. And so here we find him failing again. Sometimes we ask, you know, how many times does God have to teach just the same lesson? Well, until we learn it, evidently. And so we find ourselves guilty sometimes of not following the scripture procedures. So you may be guilty of disregard for God’s word. You may be guilty of refusing to listen and persistence in sin. David’s sin was aggravated. By the fact they refused to listen to Joab and the army commanders here who tried to talk him out of it. In verses 2 to 4. The sinfulness of David’s action was made even worse because when he was tried to, when they tried to persuade him, don’t do this thing. He was persistent in it. And his word prevailed, the scripture says. At any time during the nine months, and 20 days of the census was taken, David could have called it off. And yet even after more reflection on the matter, he still didn’t call it off. And it’s completely finished here. Well, Joab got disgusted and didn’t quite finish it, but it’s pretty much finished. He doesn’t change his mind, though. It’s only after the census is completed, did David come to his census, and he’s convicted of the sin of what he’s done in verse 10. It’s strange that Joab is the one it ends up rebuking David about the census. Joab, not a man that we would classify as one known for godliness, as we know from his past actions and his killing of two innocent men. But even he knew that God wouldn’t approve of this event, which indicates how foolish David, acted here, sometimes the men of the world have more common sense than the believer does. And especially when we’re out of fellowship with God, when we’ll be given into Satan’s temptation, good counsel shouldn’t be likely discarded and resisted. When God puts an obstacle in your path, you ought to reconsider your ways, but David does not do that here. So you cannot escape blame for your sin. It seems that there’s some guilt here with regard to pride and self-sufficiency. There’s a disregard for God’s word. There’s a refusal to listen and persistence in this sin. And thus we see the situation. Well, the lion and the man who were traveling companions debated who was superior. When I got to the crossword and there was a statue of A man strangling a lion. The man said, there, look, see, man is superior. But the lion said, hey, if we lions made statutes, it would be just the opposite. The man would be underneath. The lions would be on top. There’s always two sides of the story. The same is the case here with our text. The divine side is God moved David against Israel. He’s the primary cause. But he did so by allowing Satan to provoke David, to number Israel, as First Chronicles 21-1 tells us. That’s what happens behind the scenes that we don’t see with a visible eye. But the human side is David’s pride, his self-sufficiency and so forth that we’ve talked about, was what got him into trouble. And while there’s a mystery to all of this, we can’t escape blame for our sin. At the same time, we can’t charge God as if he’s done something. wrong or evil. Because the truth of the matter is, he’s always working for the good of his people. And ultimately, even when sin and evil comes into the life of the Christian, it has a good purpose in God’s overall plan. Let us close with a word of prayer tonight.