2 Samuel 24:11-14

2 Samuel chapter 24 I want to read verses 10 through 14 for our text and study this evening and David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the people and David said unto the Lord I have sin greatly in that I have done and now I beseeched the Lord take away the iniquity of thy servant for I have done very foolishly for when David was up in the morning the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad David Seer saying go and say unto David thus if the Lord I offer thee three things choose thee one of them that I may do it unto thee so God came to David and told him and said unto him shall seven years of famine come unto thee and thy land or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies while they pursue thee or that there be three days pestilence in thy land now advise and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me 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. My God blessed to us his sacred and holy word this evening. In ancient times a box on the ears given by a master to a slave meant he had freedom. Little would the released slave care how hard the blow was for the great privilege of being free from slavery. By a stroke of a sword of a sword. a warrior was knighted by a king. Little would the warrior worry about how heavy the the blow was if the king was a little heavy-handed because of the knighthood that he would receive. Now when the Lord intends to lift up his servants to a higher state of spiritual life, he frequently sends a severe blow or a trial into their lives. Jacob, you remember, wrestled all night and was made limp with a shrunken sinew before he was made a prince with God. Such is the case with David in our text. We find a severe chastening about to fall upon David, a devastating blow. but a blow that will lead to spiritual progress in his life. David learns humility. He learns that he must act as a true shepherd for the people of God. And he has a deeper understanding of the mercy of God when it’s all over. Friends, who among us would wish to be deprived of trials if they were necessary for spiritual advancement? While you may say, suffer under the trial, you know that God is working in your life to make you a better Christian. And so that is what we see tonight. Conviction and confession of sin is the topic I’m addressing this evening. Let me begin with conviction of your sin from verse 10 here, and David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the people. God will not allow you as a believer to remain indifferent to sin very long. For almost a year, though, David appears here to be indifferent to his sin. We talked last week about his pride, his self-sufficiency. Look how many men I have in my army. And so he’s numbering the people. We talked about his disregard for God’s word. For unlawfulfulfulfulfulfulfulful. Under Moses’ law, when a census is taken, the atonement money must be paid. That’s sort of a head tax that was paid. There was a refusal to listen to rebuke because Joab and the army commanders tried to talk the king out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. And then we see him persistence in pursuing this sin. He’s undeterred for all this time goes by, and he still persist in allowing the census to go. go on. However, God uses here a human instrument, the prophet Gad, in this case, and presses upon David the evilness of his ways, and he’s convicted of his sin. It’s good to see that though he persisted so long in his sin here, he did not have a hardened heart, but indeed is feeling, his conscience is feeling the weight of the guilt of what he’s done. Holy Spirit may at times be grieved because of our sin, but he never abandons us. He never forsakes us. His goal is to bring us to repentance. And it’s one of his task to reprove the world of sin. And you being indelved by the Spirit, will find that he always does his work faithfully, and he’s persistent in it. The word smote here speaks about a heavy blow. David is aroused out of his spiritual stupor. His heart smote him. His conscience pained him, and he was left in agony about the sin that he has committed here. In 1. Christ, Chronicles 21, the parallel passage says that what he did highly displeased the Lord. So we have this same idea was when he sinned with Bashheba. What he did displeased the Lord. In both times, we have this kind of language. Now, friends, God can make you and I feel his sore displeasure with us, to know that his frown is upon. us. This is always an indication, though, when you think about it as a sign of our regeneration that were brought to this point by God. You know, an unbeliever often remains indifferent to his sin. He can go on years and years without being at least troubled. Sometimes his conscience is hardened, as the scriptures indicate. But God’s not going to let that happen to one of his children. He chasons. He scourges every son he receives, and it’s a sign of love to us that he does this. You know, in certain places on the alpine summits in Switzerland, there is particularly dangerous pathways. And as the traveler walks around on these pathways, he always has to worry about an avalanche from above, you know, coming and burying him. all this snow and just sweeping away, maybe even to death. So the traveler, if he’s wise, he’s going to have an eye on high. He’s going to be looking up to see if he sees any pipe of snow crashing down in a wave from above. Thus it is with one who is alarmed by awakened by God that we’re looking up, seeing what wave of displeasure of God is flowing down upon us. There is a fear that God’s wrath may suddenly fall upon us for what we’ve done. We are afraid that God’s blow will be heavy upon us. We’re alarmed at the danger. Our sin has put us in. Your heart is not at peace in this case. Your heart is deeply troubled. So God will not allow you to remain indifferent to your sin. And we see that with David. Notice that conviction is the first step toward your spiritual recovery. Why does God smite your conscience? Is it merely to make you feel bad? Is it merely to leave you in a fearful or ashamed, grief-stricken state? Of course not. God smote David’s heart in order to bring him to repentance that he might restore him to fellowship. The goal is ultimately to change your ways, but to grant you mercy and forgiveness. Now, as a child of God, you should realize that sometimes there’s a storm in your life because there’s a Jonah in your boat. And you’re tossed to and fro. You can find no rest for your troubled soul. Somebody has brought upon your soul this terrible storm of conscience. You have a jubble. In your boat, and that is the cause of the tempest. A Mr. Sin is the cause of your unpeaceful state. Until the Jonah of sin is thrown overboard and cast into the sea, you can do all the rowing you want to try to escape, and you will not be able to do so, because God won’t let you. Recovery calm in your life begins when you start doing a search. for the cause of the trouble. And only by identifying the sin in, casting it out, can we hope to have peace in our boat. So here is conviction of your sin. God’s not going to allow you to remain indifferent to your sin. And conviction is the first step toward your spiritual recovery. The second thing we see tonight is confession of your sin. First, we have acknowledgement of your sin before God in verse 10. the second phrase here. And David said unto the Lord, I have sin greatly in that I have done. And now I beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. The first part of this deals with the acknowledgment of your sin before God. It’s at this point we recognize one of the great differences between a child of God and just a religious hypocrite. David goes to the Lord. David confesses, I have sinned greatly, and that I have done. A mere professor may come to realize the madness of his ways and even be remorseful because of the trouble that it’s brought into his life. But he invariably excuses himself, maybe he blames the situation on his circumstances or on someone else, or Satan or something of this nature. But one of the outstanding characteristics of the depraved nature is the past the buck. If you go back to Adam and Eve, remember, when the first thing happened, when God held them accountable, Adam points to his wife, well, she is the blame. And, of course, Eve points to the serpent and says, he is the blame. someone who has been made the subject of divine grace is honest with himself. You are willing to openly confess and acknowledge your sin before God. Far from casting blame, even upon Satan, well, you recognize his part in it all. You say, I have sin greatly against the Lord. It’s my fault that I have sin. sin. I have given into his temptation. Numbering the people here may seem to be a small thing. David felt it was a great sin because, of course, he had sin against God’s light. So you must not treat your sin lightly, but acknowledge how evil it is. Notice here that David unsparingly condemns himself. That college freshman went to the dorm laundry with his dirty clothes, and he bundled them all up in an old sweatshirt. But he was so embarrassed about how dirty his clothes were, he decided he wouldn’t actually take them out of the sweatshirt. So he just stuffed the whole sweatshirt with this bundle in the washer. Turned the washer on, ran it, you know. Then took it out, still bundled, put it in the dryer. And ran it through the dryer. and finally he took the bundle home and then he opened the bundle back in his room. He discovered, of course, that his clothes had gotten wet, then dry, but they were still dirty. Now spiritually, you and I must not keep our sins all hidden in a tight little bundle if we desire forgiveness. We need to do, if you want a thorough cleansing, we have to open up and spread out our dirty laundry, if you would, before God, and say, I have sin, and this is how I’ve done it, and confess our sin before the Lord. Notice here, not only acknowledgement of your sin before God, but seek God’s forgiveness for your sin. I beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. David’s purpose in going to God is that he might be forgiven for what he has done. Psalm 130, verse 4, there is forgiveness with thee. thou mayest be feared. God is a God of forgiveness. If you would, look with me at Psalm 32. In verses 1 to 5, we see here something about how the psalmist found forgiveness of his sins. This is a very familiar Psalm. Here, this is the first five verses. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord impudeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no gall. While I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me, and my moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Sela. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin. See, look. When he stubbornly did not repent at first, we find him struggling, but only when he’s brought to that point where he actually repents as a difference made and his sin is taken away. Now, we always can have forgiveness of sin through Jesus, Christ, the Savior. For the Bible tells us in Ephesians 1-7, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. And to him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, we read about in Revelation 1-5. You’re all probably familiar with electronic calculator when I I balance the checkbook. I’m always using that calculator. What happens if you get the information confused, you punch the wrong numbers in, make an error? Well, you simply press the clear button. And it’s gone. Automatically all the data is eliminated and you can start afresh and start your calculations anew. You don’t have to sort out the previous mess completely. You just push the clear button. There’s no record of your mistake. It’s taken away for good. Well, that’s what happens to your sins when God forgives you. Those sins are no longer imputed or charged to your account. They disappear in a sense. They are removed. They are erased. They’re cleared. The guilt and legal condemnation for your sin is gone. Though as we shall see, God may still chasten us with regard to our sin. But the scripture says in Isaiah 557, let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. So, confession of your sin. You acknowledge it, you seek God’s forgiveness. The third point tonight is found in verses 11 to 14, and that is this. Cast yourself upon God’s mercy. Now, in verses 11 to 13, David is given a choice by God about the punishment he’s going to receive. You can always expect divine chastening for your sin. God is our heavenly Father, and he must correct David. He must learn a lesson about his foolish way, so he doesn’t repeat it. Now, in this sense, God is not acting as a strict judge. He’s not pronouncing some type of legal judgment here, but he’s acting as a loving father, chastening, to correct. So God gave David the choice of what kind of punishment he would receive, and of course the nation along with him, in this case. Davidson was public, and so the punishment ends up being public. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, as we saw in verse 1, and so it is Israel, too, that will bear punishment alongside of David. God had a good purpose in giving David the opportunity to choose this punishment. First, it would humble David more for his sin. For he would see that his sin was exceedingly sinful for, look at the punishments that it will be meted out regarding it. These are not. not light punishments by any means. It would upbraid David for his proud conceit. He has to learn that he cannot do whatever he desires just because he’s the king. He’s answerable to God. It would encourage David that the Lord had not forsaken him. The punishment here, while severe, was corrective. We don’t have anything here about God casting him off. He’s still a of God. He’s still included in the covenant. God doesn’t say, I’m going to cast you out of the covenant or anything of this nature. It would teach David patience because he’s going to have to patiently endure the rod of God knowing it was for a limited duration. Each one of these punishments is limited. And so the lesson is that God reserves to himself the sovereign right to meet out the governmental consequences of your sin. By that I simply mean his fatherly chastisement of your sin as he governs the world. God meets out the consequences of your sins as best as serves his glory and will benefit you as one of his children. As far as the believer is concerned, these consequences, as I said, are not penal, but they are disciplinary. Jacob, I think, is the one who said the Lord has not punished us, you know, according to what our sins deserved. He’s punished me less than my sins deserve. God doesn’t visit this punishment upon you without fatherly love. Now, having suffered some painful consequences for your sin, will leave a deeper impression upon you when it comes then the next time you face a situation that’s similar, you’re going to remember those issues. I remember growing up when we got a spanking. You know, when you get a spanking for the next couple of weeks, you’re pretty careful because you know what it feels like. Yeah, that memory is still there of what that felt like when you were disciplined by your father. When I was going to seminary, met an older man there who happened to attend the same church I was going to, who was preparing for the ministry as I was. And his testimony was that he had been an alcoholic for many years before Christ amazingly saved him and changed his life. So here was this former drunk preparing to preach the gospel of Christ. And Christ Christ had changed his life. However, he was battling liver disease because of the alcohol abuse that had taken place earlier in his life. It was my understanding that he eventually graduated from seminary, but he died shortly thereafter. Here was a person who repented of being an alcoholic, but the years that he had spent wrecked his body. It had had a consequence to it. Not that his soul didn’t go to heaven, not that he didn’t, served the Lord while he could on this earth. And not that he wasn’t forgiven of his sin, but there were consequences. And God did not see fit to heal his liver in this particular case. Sometimes we have to live with the consequences of our sin. So you can expect divine chasting for your sin. You know, if you lose your temper, get mad, and you know, strike your fist against the wall or put it through a glass window or something, and you may end up damaging your hand. You may have to live with that the rest of your life. And so we find you can expect divine chastening for your sin. You should cast yourself upon God’s mercy. Now, verse 14, I think, is really the key thing here in this section. David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait. I don’t know what to do. Let us fall in now, to the hand of the Lord. For his mercies are great and let me not fall into the hand of man. Boy, he looked at the penalties and he saw that these were not simple things. They were severe. And he’s saying, I’m struggling. I don’t know what to choose. I have no idea what would be best. It’s certainly seen better to him to fall into the hands of his merciful heavenly father and the fall into the hands of his the less than merciful enemies that he had. Now, it might appear here that David is actually choosing the third option by what he says. But there’s no clear indication of that in the text. I don’t think David so much made his choice as he just repentantly threw himself on God’s sovereign mercy and say, well, whatever God deems best, I will accept. He makes no careful calculations. He doesn’t seem to. cared to weigh out of what’s going to be best for me in this circumstance. He just submits to God’s good pleasure. He’s about to taste God’s wrath, and yet he’s convinced of God’s mercy. Is he not? Somehow, he believes that even in the wrath that he’s going to experience, God is going to remember mercy. How well he knows his God. In a moment of crisis, David’s theology surfaces and provides hope and consolation for him. Friends, your theology, and by that I’d simply mean your belief about God, is what sustains you in the darkest moments of your life. Is there a better place to fall into the hands than in the hands of a merciful God? Because in your life, in your life, crisis, your theology should come out sort of a reflex as a reflex action. It should be automatic, in a sense, in soothing your mind because you think about who God is, what is like, and then you find comfort in that moment. Several years ago, a newspaper reported an episode at the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois. There was a three-year-old toddler who fell 18 feet. into an area inhabited by seven guerrillas. The young boy would still be alert when taken to the hospital, but he would be listed in critical condition. How did he ever get out of that gorilla pit? Well, Binti, a seven-year-old female gorilla, picked up the child, cradled the child in her arms, and then put him down near a door where the zookeepers could get him. And they could open that door and just get the child and pull him out. Now, we may be grateful for Binti, but we would prefer not to trust her with any children to take care of. We would say it was nice that worked out that way, but it’s not something we would trust her with in the future. I wonder, and for our gut-level thinking, sometimes we have sort of a guerrilla view of God’s mercy. Do we tend to look upon God’s mercy as a divine exception to his character? Or do we actually see it as part of his character? That this is the God we serve, that he’s a God of mercy as well as a God of justice. Are you as a believer, one who has a grasp of the fact that your God is a merciful God, that he forgives sin, that in wrath he remembers mercy. This is the help that we have. When we realize who God is and he’s merciful and he forgives sins, that is that is the blessing that we have in knowing the true and living God. So when we have these moments when things look bad and we get into circumstances, we’re perhaps perhaps God’s chastening is upon us. Let us remember he’s a God of mercy, and we can cast ourselves upon him in our hour of trial and difficulty. In ancient times, a box on the ear meant freedom for the slave, a stroke from a sword met knighthood. When the Lord intends to lift his servants to a higher spiritual level, he often sends a severe blow or trial unto your life. Such is the case with David. We learn. from David’s example here for the need of conviction for your sin, confession of your sin, and casting yourself upon the mercy of God. Let us close with a word of prayer.