2 Samuel 24:15-17

2 Samuel chapter 24 beginning with verse 15 so the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba 70,000 men when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it the Lord repented him of the and said to the angel that destroyed the people, it is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing place of Arana, the Jebusite. And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people and said, lo, I have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee be against me and against my father’s house. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this evening. National judgments, while they are often severe, quite frequently open the door for gospel witness. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous Baptist minister, when he first first opened, it came to London to preach. He found this city was in the midst of a cholera epidemic at the time. He said death was everywhere. Almost every family in that vast city had lost a loved one because of this epidemic. Spurgeon said he was called upon all day, all times of the day and night to go and visit people that were dying or sick. and they want the scriptures read and they want to have him pray with them. He said, families that wouldn’t have dawned the door of a church and never had dawned a door to church and their life would be calling him up to come and visit with them and he would get a chance to give out the gospel and to give a message. Spurgeon said this. So far, cholera did arouse our neighbor. and they flock to hear the word of God out of fear. So much of the benefit there may be in the plagues which are shot from the quiver of providence. So we see there is a silver lining at times in these plagues that come. What we find in our text here is a plague that strikes the land of Israel. In this chapter, God is about to set a devastating plague. upon the nation. The reason for the plague is the sinfulness, of course, of the nation. Not only David’s sinfulness in numbering the people, but from verse one, we see that God is provoked by the people themselves. And it’s not a light blow that comes, but a very heavy one that falls from the hand of the Lord. And yet in the end, this sharp arrow shot from God’s bow has a positive effect upon the nation because it was a dime of fear, a deep reflection upon their ways. And in the midst of the judgment here, we find God shows mercy. And we want to talk about mercy in judgment. Now let me begin tonight by saying this. You find that God is a God of judgment. Verse 15 says, So the Lord set a pestilence upon Israel from mourning even to the time appointed, and there died of the people from Dan, even to Beersheba, 70,000 men. And when the angel the Lord stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem destroyed it, the Lord repented him of the evil. Let me stop just at that point. People, as we go through this life, are often ignorant. of the absolute holiness of God, for they don’t study the scriptures, they don’t understand who God really is, his character. It is a fearful thing, Scripture says, to the fall into the hands of the living God. Let it be clearly seen that it is by God’s hand here that 70,000 men died in Israel. of the nation to the other. It’s said that there are many who profess to be Christians who are almost apologetic about the wrath of God. They wish God wasn’t like that. Some have gone so far as to say, well, that’s the God of the Old Testament, and not the God of the New Testament. Evidently, they never read the book of Revelation to see the outpouring of God’s wrath there. Some harbor the delusion that God’s wrath isn’t consistent with his goodness and his mercy, and they want to banish it from their minds. However, Scripture reveals God’s wrath is his displeasure, his indignation against evil or sin. Because God is holy, he hates all sin. And because he hates all sin, his wrath burns against the sinner. And thus, we have to be able to sin. have the biblical explanation of the wrath of God. Listen to what God says of himself in Deuteronomy chapter 32. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand, for I lift up my hand to heaven and say, I live forever. If I wet my glittering sword and my hand take hold on judgment. I will render vengeance to my enemies and will reward them that hate me. That is the God that reveals himself in the law of God. How can one possibly understand Christ’s death on the cross in the place of sinners if we don’t have an understanding of the wrath of God against sin? If we look upon God. His wrath as a blotch on the divine character, it casts a shadow, a dispersion on the cross of Jesus Christ. Let me say this tonight, your readiness or reluctance. Now meditate upon God’s wrath, as it is revealed here in our text, is a sure test of whether or not you love the God of Scripture. Because this is the God of Scripture. each of us needs to prayerfully be on God, guard against devising a God of our own liking. That we could have a God that would fit our particular concept of what God should be like. We don’t, you know, devise our own God. We go to Scripture and see the God that’s revealed there. And this is the God that we must deal with. So God’s judgment demonstrate to you his determination here to punish evil. Let’s be clear about it. This is God’s hand. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t some case of something just going wrong. It’s God’s hand that brought this judgment. And we know why he brought the judgment because of the sinfulness of the nation. Now, God’s judgments directly relate to your sin. We see here a rebuke of David. for numbering the people. Notice how exactly the punishment fits the crime here. If David and his pride wishes to boast about the great army that he can raise from the ranks of Israel, well, God will reduce the men capable of being soldiers. You notice in verse 15, it says 70,000 men. in particular, it mentions men here. The death toll amounted to about 1 and 20, we’re told of Israel’s manpower, it was a severe blow. It’s striking the sea how the rod of God falls at the very point of David’s transgression here. If David dotes upon his thousands, then his thousands will be drastically reduced. Whatever we idolize, whatever we grow proud of, God generally takes from you or God makes it a burden to you. And so the rebuke here is given to David for numbering the people. But as we saw from verse 1, God is also angry with the nation at large. God’s scourge falls immediately upon the people themselves, for it is against the people that he has a controversy as well. the whole nation felt this blow from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, we’re told. The nation in general had been rebellious against the Lord in embracing, as we said, Absalom to be king and going against God’s appointed king. So the plague here claims its victim throughout the length and the breadth of the land. The nation needed to learn the concept. of opposing God’s revealed will. Who would be next to be struck? No one could tell. And you can notice that there doesn’t seem to be any cure for the plague. The physicians aren’t able to touch the situation. And these people are dying right and left. God was, in a sense, waging war against them. And if you oppose God’s kingdom, indeed he will fight against you as a principle. So judgment here is against Israel. Now, in order for God’s judgment to be telling, it will relate to your sin. God doesn’t want the blow to be forgotten. He directs it specifically to the point of a connection so that you, you see the correlation between what you did and the judgment of God. According to Greek mythology, King Midas was once asked to judge a music contest between Apollo and Pan, who were two of the gods of the Greeks. Well, King Midas awarded the prize to Pan, even though Apollo was supposedly the god of music. It was obviously a bad judgment or a poor judgment on it. on Midas’ part. As punishment, the angry Apollo changed the ears of Midas into those of a donkey. King Midas was not likely to forget. His mistake, he was always confronted by. Whenever he looked in Amir, he saw a judgment on his ears. He must not have heard very well the contest because he got the wrong person. If a judgment is memorable, it becomes a valuable lesson to you. And we see that here in God’s judgment as it relates to your sin. Now, God’s judgments you discover, follow a common pattern. When you read Ezekiel chapter 14, when God talks about his judgments he’s going to bring upon the nation, he mentions his four major judgments that he always uses, it seems. They have common use. One is famine. God takes away the food supply of the people, and they pine away. and die of starvation, whether he sends a drought or too much rain or the locusts come and eat it up or an enemy army comes in and basically devastates the land by using it all up and burning it or either eating it or just stealing it. Mildew, frost, hail, whatever. God sends at times famine. His second judgment, he says, are wild beasts. There’s an interesting passage in Leviticus 26, where if the children of Israel don’t obey the Lord, God says, I will also send wild beast among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle, and make you few in number. In 2nd Kings chapter 17, God sent lions on the inhabitants of the northern kingdom to attack them. We saw the two she bears, we talked about this morning, and their children. judgment. That was a smaller type of plague, but the same idea is there. God says the third judgment he uses is the sword. And here he brings war. Foreign power comes and attacks the nation. And war causes a great loss of people which takes a heavy toll on the population. And the fourth main judgment, he says uses pestilence, the one that’s found in our text. Sickness, disease, the plague, an epidemic. A puzzle to the physicians, they don’t know what to do. There’s no cure for it. The farm animals even can die off. The people die off. It’s interesting in the reign of Vespasian, the Emperor of the Roman Empire. Ten thousand people a day for many days on end died in Rome from a plague. You imagine that? 10,000 a day. So no matter how numerous of people, how powerful their military, how prosperous their economy, God can come quickly and cut off man and animal and lay a nation desolate. He can just pull out one of his plagues, his major plagues or judgments, and bring them down. Whatever terrible judgment is sent, God is the author of it, he orders it. It comes from his hand. And we should see when his hand is stretched out like this and we should notice it. You know, in our day, it’s not always recognized that disease and death have an underlying problem in some cases. Now, not in all cases. God doesn’t always do this, but sinful people, destitute of any spirituality and not having any fear of God, if there’s a plague upon the land, there’s a lesson to be learned from that. When a plague, a plague, strikes the country and people suffer a great loss. They should seek the Lord in those situations. We should be like the people in London when Spurgeon was there. The Second Chronicles Chapter 16, we read about Asa in the 39th year of his reign. He became diseased in his feet until the disease was exceedingly great. And then we have that phrase. Yet in his disease, he sought not to the Lord but to the physicians. A typical problem. We think that, well, we’ll just get to go to the doctor and that’ll solve the problem. But the problem is deeper than that. And in his case, of course, he had not sought the Lord. I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t go to the physician. I’m just saying we should recognize that there are times, there are other reasons for sickness and disease. And make sure that we are right with the Lord. when we have this problem. Not just seek out some relief, but seek relief and a right relationship with God as well. So God’s judgments, in these judgments you discover a common pattern. Now, you were informed here that God’s judgments are normally executed by his angels. In verse 16, the first part of it, we see an angel of God carries out God’s purpose here. Scripture speaks of the holy angels as Christ mighty angels who excel in strength. One angel strikes down 70,000 men with ease. He has no problem. There’s no strain in doing this. One angel destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt in one night were tall. One angel slaughtered the mass of Assyrian army 185,000 men overnight. Two angels were sent to destroy Sodom and the four in the five cities of the plains, all those, in the days of Abraham and Lot. In the book of Revelation, there are seven angels that pour out vials of God’s judgment. And so we see that God often sends judgment. In Ezekiel chapter 9, there’s an interesting passage of scripture about God sending his angels out to bring judgment on the city of Jerusalem and destroy it. Before he does that, he sends one angel out and they mark all the righteous people of the city. God puts his mark upon them so that when he sends the judgment, they will be spared. And then he sends out his angelic destroyers and they use what is called a slaughter weapon, some type of sledge your hammer type weapon perhaps, which might break rocks, something of that nature. And while God has the righteous mark to spare them, the angels go and they wreck havoc on the rest of the city. While angels are not normally seen, their hand is invisible in most cases, they are busy during plague striking down people. That’s what we see and what is revealed to us in scripture. So you find God is a God of judgment we can’t escape this truth. It is here. It’s clearly stated for us and we should recognize it and embrace it. Secondly tonight, you find God often shows mercy in the midst of judgment. And we see that in the second part of our text tonight where we find the Lord repented him of the evil and said unto the angel that destroyed the people, it is enough. Stay thine thine hand. And the angel, Lord, was by the threshing place of Arana, the Jebusite. And the Lord spake unto the Lord, and excuse me, David spake under the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people and said, lo I have sinned, I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray be against me and against my father’s house. In judgment, God remembers mercy. Now, when we come to a passage like this, when it says that the Lord repents, we need to properly understand it. Scripture clearly proclaims to us God’s immutability. He is a God who doesn’t change. I, the Lord, change not, is what he says in Scripture. Numbers 2319 says, God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent, or change his mind. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? It’s impossible for language to be more clear than what we see here in Numbers chapter 2319. God doesn’t repent. He doesn’t change his mind. It’s quite obvious to any spiritually minded person that the scriptures cannot contradict themselves. And therefore, our understanding of the text must be carefully pondered, and we should seek more light on how to properly understand these passages that seemingly are different. But not all scripture is to be taken in its literal sense. For God often accommodates our limited human capacity to understand him and his character by putting things in human terms. When the Word of God speaks about the Lord awakening out of one that as one out of a sleep, Psalm 78, 65. Or rising early, Jeremiah 713, to do something. It isn’t literal. Our God neither slumbers nor sleeps. They don’t have to get up. He doesn’t have to be awakened or anything of this nature. He has no need of sleep. But it appears to us that God is inactive for a period of time and then all of a sudden he springs into action. and he does something and he does it suddenly. It’s like he rises early to do it. It implies his eagerness to do it. God doesn’t really have arms and hands and eyes or even a nose as he talks about people being as stench in his nostril and things of this nature. God is being portrayed here in human language to help us, to aid us. God is a pure spirit. He doesn’t have these bodily parts to it. And so when we come to this passage and we hear in scripture God declaring he never repents, he’s not like a human being that does repent, and we find that God repents, that he must be explaining himself in human terms, and therefore we should understand it that way. The secession of his judgment appears to indicate a change of mind, but this is what God actually planned to do along. God is a merciful God. He deems that the punishment already meted out is enough. So he stays the hand of the angel. This wonderfully presents to us a great truth that mercy rejoices against judgment. God’s holiness has been satisfied. His justice has been a peace, and God says enough. God isn’t one who willingly afflicts his people, as if he, you know, takes delight in doing these judgments and bringing down harm, but he does afflict to correct and to bring to repentance people. And that’s what he’s doing here. And when that point is reached, when he has a accomplished his purpose, he says enough. Psalm 30, verse 5 says, for his anger endureth but a moment in his life, in his favor, his life, weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Now here is the comfort we have in the day of our affliction. When we feel God’s severity falling upon us, and it seems like it’s a heavy chastast chastism. God is merciful. We may weep for a night in the time of the darkness of the punishment being meted out. But the encouragement is that it’ll be for a short while and then there’ll be a day that will come when the weeping will stop. The sunshine will come out again. And God’s favor will rest upon us and our joy can be restored. That is the encouragement that we have with our God. There was a pastor who was visiting an elderly woman. And she had been ill for many months, and he was seated by our bedside, and he said to her, now, if I were a doctor, I’d be writing out a prescription for you and leaving it here for you to take and tell you what exactly to do. And so he took out a card and he decided, I’m going to leave you something. He took this card out, he began writing on it, the following words of Scripture. Fear thou not, for I am with thee, be not dismayed, for I am thy God, I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness from Isaiah 41.10. At the bottom of the card, he wrote, for use before retiring, upon awakening, and as often during the day as needed. Now, if I could write you a prescription, in your time of suffering because of chastisement of the Lord upon you. It would come from the Book of Lamentations, chapter 3, verses 22 and 23, and it would be this. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we’re not consumed. Because his compassion’s fail not, they are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. God is faithful to His word. He will, you know, show mercy to us. He will forgive us. We may have some difficulties, but we will not be completely consumed and utterly cast aside because there’s mercies are new every morning. And that’s the encouragement I would leave with you as one of God’s people when the God’s chastening hand is upon. Yes, he’s a God of wrath, but he’s also, and we should fully understand this, a God of mercy. Now, you find God remembers His covenant promises. Long ago, the Lord had declared how his covenant relationship worked. If you read Leviticus chapter 26 versus 40 to 42, he says, when I bring judgment upon you, if you will repent, if you will confess your sin, if you will return to me, he says, then I will stop it and I will lift it from you. And our fellowship can be restored. And that’s exactly what he does here. And David, we’ve already talked about, in principle, he does this as the head of the nation. When he repents earlier in this chapter, we see him confessing his sin in verse 10, submitting the God’s rod in verse 14 and basically throwing himself on the mercy of the Lord. And so it is now in covenant faithfulness that Jehovah causes the judgment to cease. The whole nation of Israel was exposed, and God’s justice was aroused. However, the benefit of being in a covenant relationship with God as this, there is forgiveness with thee, thou mayest be feared. Psalm 130, verse 4. Your relationship with God may be restored. Your sins may be blotted up. God doesn’t cast off those who are truly in a covenant relationship. with him. Let the wicked forsake his way. Let the unrighteous man, his thoughts, let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon. It’s always good to cling to God’s covenant promises in the darkest hours that we have. When you have sinned, follow the prescription for restoration, and you won’t be disappointed. Repent. Return to the Lord. So you find God remembers his covenant promises. Now, the third thought I leave with you from verse 17 is this. You need a mediator to spare you from God’s judgment. In verse 17, the dreadful spectacle is the angel here, the avenging angel. And evidently, in this case, in many cases, the angels are invisible. We don’t see them acting. But in this case, evidently, they could. see the angel actually doing the judgment because he sees it stopping at the threshing floor of this Jebusite that’s mentioned here. And so as the shepherd of Israel, King David here desires to take the whole blame upon himself to spare the people. Let your judgment fall on me for what I’ve done. How nobly did David here stand in the breach and try to shoulder all the guilt. Now, no one could fill that honorable place of substitution except our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David. Nevertheless, David here captures the Spirit of Christ in his willingness as the head of the people to step in their place, to take their place, to take the judgment due unto them, that they might be spared. And isn’t that what Jesus Christ does as the head of his people? He lays down his life for the sheep. All we like sheep have gone astray and turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord have laid upon him the iniquity of us all. That’s the message that we find here in Scripture. The pilot of the military plane was forced to parachute out over a jungle. in South America. And how could he possibly find his way out? Well, there was a local farmer, a local man there that saw what happened, and he came to the pilot’s rescue, went through the jungle, and found him. And then he began slashing through the jungle underbrush and leading the pilot out of this jungle. The frightened pilot cried. out and where’s the road? Where’s the way out? The rescuer shouted back to him. No road. I am the way. Follow me. And sure enough, he was able to cut and hack his way out and the pilot was brought to safety. Jesus, I am the way, the truth in the life. No man come with unto the Father, but by me. He is the true substitute for sinners. And what we see just in a very small glimpse here with regard to David, Christ fulfilled completely for his people. And he is, of course, the hope of our salvation. Well, national judgments, while severe, often open up the door for a ministry of grace. We saw that with Spurgeon in London. We see it in a sense here in our text. You find God is a God of judgment. We shouldn’t shy away from that. but he’s also a God of mercy, and that’s the message we also bring. We don’t tell people half the message. We tell people the whole message. God is a God of wrath, and because we’re sinners, we’re under judgment there, but there is mercy with the Lord, and one can find mercy and forgiveness if one repents of their sin and turns to the Lord and his way of salvation through Jesus Christ to substitute for sinners. Well, let us… and what you plan.