Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the portion we read, 1 Chronicles
chapter 21, and reading from our text, verse 13. Verse 13. And David said unto Gad, I am
in a great strait, Let me now fall into the hand of the Lord,
for very great are his mercies, but let me not fall into the
hand of man. 1 Chronicles 21 verse 13. You have an account here that
begins how this trial was actually instigated. And we'll look at
a little later the differences of the account. In the one that
we have read, it says that Satan stood up against Israel and provoked
David to number Israel. David, when convinced of what
he had done as being done wrong, through the pride of his heart
and other factors, then he says that he has sinned and he does
not lay that charge at Satan. And we should always remember
that, that it is the part of the right way for us to humble
ourselves before God as sinners, not blaming Satan, not blaming
anyone else, but taking that as being our sin because what
we want is to have our sins forgiven and pardoned and blotted out
and to know the saviour, not the saviour of other men, but
the saviour of ourselves and to be saved from our sin. And so we are told how the occasion
arose here, that cause the Lord to have a controversy with Israel,
with David, and to bring his chastening hand upon them. We
also have the situation and the word of our text where David
had been in effect given the choice of choosing the chastisement
and the difficulty that he had in this and how that it was resolved
his desire to fall into the hand of God and not into the hand
of men. And it must have been a tremendous
time in Israel. We think of the time that we
have had with the COVID and the pandemic, a pestilence in effect
with our land. But we certainly haven't had
the number of within three days, 70,000. that have died. It must have been a tremendous
loss of life at that time. And yet we know that from what
we are told that it was the people's sin, not just David's, and the
Lord was visiting Israel that had gone after idols and forsaken
the living God many, many times. supported Absalom in his seeking
to overthrow his father's kingdom and rob him, as it were, of that
throne that God had given him. Many people were complicit in
that seeking to overthrow with Absalom. And so the Lord had
many reasons that he should deal with Israel. And David here is
coming to the close of his life. He lived some 70 years, this
would have been in his 68th year, and though he was preparing for
the temple to be built by his son Solomon, and yet they did
not know where that was to be built and it was by this answer
to prayer and the deliverance from this pestilence that God
showed them where the temple should be built. And so the word
though that is before us here, there are several things that
come very prominently out of the verse, and I want to just
confine those thoughts to three thoughts, and they are this. Firstly, the cause of trouble. There is trouble here in Israel. What was the cause of it? And then secondly, sin is being
dealt with. God is dealing with sin, with
those things that his people have done that have moved him
to anger against them. So sin being dealt with to consider
in the second point. And then thirdly, Christ and
the gospel scene. Wherever we have the matter of
sin being dealt with, you can be sure in the word of God that
somewhere, especially the Old Testament, We are seeing the
types and the shadows, that which points to Christ and points to
the good news of the Gospel, the way of escape and the deliverance
from what is due to our sin. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die, and whoso sinneth in one point is guilty of all. And so
we do We want to be looking, looking for the gospel, looking
for where it is pointing us, to where hope is found for sinners. So I want to look firstly at
the cause of the trouble here. We know here below that the cause
of all trouble is because of sin. Man is born unto trouble
as the sparks fly upward. And wherever we get distress
and trouble and sorrow, we can be sure that sin does lie at
the root of it. Man was created in the image
of God and perfect and sinless and upright. and God pronounced
at the end of the creation that all that he saw was good and
his only went sin has entered into the world and the curse
that is attendant with it Cursed is every one that continueth
not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do
them. And all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. We've all turned out of the way. And so we know that all have
sinned, we do. all need that deliverance from
sin and sin is at the root and the cause of all the troubles,
bitterness and sorrows that this world has ever known. But there
are those times that there is a reason because of specific
sins that have been committed, those things that have been done
that provoke the Lord. to anger. We know that in the
case of the man in Christ's day that was born blind, the people
said to the Lord who has sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind. Now the Lord said neither he
nor his parents but that the works of God might be manifest
in him. Now the Lord wasn't saying that
he wasn't a sinner, he wasn't a fallen son of Adam, but what
he was saying was answering them according to their thoughts that
his parents must have committed or he some very notorious sin
that God was dealing with them and the Lord corrected in that. And we think of the case of Job
as well. The Lord said to Satan, thou
movest me against him without a cause. It wasn't that Job wasn't
a sinner, he was. But he'd not done any great sin
or reason for the Lord to visit upon him his judgments. And so there is to be a difference
between those sins that we feel working in us, those sins which
are bound with our nature. And when there are those things
done that really provoke the Lord to anger. The children of
Israel, when they left the true and living God, they made idols,
they directly contradicted the word of God and the forbidding
to make idols and likeness or to bow down to them. And we think
of how David, before he was king, he had the fear of God. He would not take the kingdom
away from King Saul. However wicked King Saul was,
he was God's anointed. And even when David cut off the
skirt of his garment, then David's heart smote him for doing that.
And yet David's own son Absalom rose up against David and not
only on his own, but gathered many men after him again and
you see we have a similar account or the parallel account in 2
Samuel chapter 24 as this one. In 2 Samuel, we read the beginning
of that chapter, and again, the anger of the Lord was kindled
against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, go
number Israel and Judah. And so we are told that the reason
for what happened with Israel is God had already and anger
against Israel because of their sins, those things that they
had been doing. And so the Lord brought that,
you might say, to a pinnacle in moving David to number Israel. But then we read in the account
where our text is that Satan stood up against Israel and provoked
David to number Israel. Again, thinking of the case of
Job, we have a background told us there. Satan was at the back
of it. Satan's desire was to destroy
Job and get him to curse God. God's use was to show the grace
that Job had that Job would not curse God and Job was kept in
the midst of those fires. And here we have Satan And he's
thinking he's standing up against Israel, but really he's doing
God's bidding. And that which is being done
is under the Lord's control. We must always remember that.
God is in control. Satan is not in control. Satan
is a powerful adversary. He does move men to evil and
wicked things, but God is in control and can turn that evil
about to good. We think of Joseph's brothers,
how they threw him into a pit and sold him for a slave. Their wickedness was great and
yet God used it and Joseph in the end was able to say that
God sent me hither, not you, and even to say to them not to
be angry with themselves. So we know that in those things
that happen in this world, God is working out his purposes. God is dealing with men and with
their sins. God is also in control of Satan. Satan thinks that he is in control
and he is fighting against God's people, but in effect he is just
a servant. He is doing God's bidding. And we had some youths in the
town, and they were breaking up things. And we had a derelict
house or a house that we wanted destroyed down the end of the
street. And we took them there, and we
said, well, here's a good opportunity. You can destroy this. And the
way they went, thinking that they were doing great damage
and destroying the house, in actual fact, we wanted it destroyed
and broken down. They were just doing what we
wanted them to do. And what they thought they were
doing would be different to what we knew that they were doing. And so Satan at the last shall
be so greatly enraged to see Like it was in Job's case, the
latter end of Job was better than his beginning. God was glorified,
Satan was defeated. We think even with what happened
at Calvary, Satan thought that he had destroyed the Lord, had
him crucified and slain. and by wicked hands, but it was
the time of the great sacrifice when the Lord would put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself. And our Lord said, no man taketh
my life from me, I lay it down of myself. And so we have there
Peter saying that those that had crucified him had taken them
by wicked hands, crucified and slain, but he was delivered by
the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. And so we see the God's
will being done, Satan's being used and his hand in it, but
man also in it. and those that had crucified
the Lord. They were pricked in their hearts.
They were rightly charged with the evil of what they had done.
The apostle Paul saw that he was persecuting the people of
God. He said he wasn't worthy to be
an apostle because he had persecuted the church of God and wasted
it. And we see with David here, Though
our account says that the Lord moved David or Satan provoked
David to number Israel, when David was convinced of it, he
says, I have sinned. And that should always be the
course that we take. When we do something that is
wrong, when we are convinced that it is wrong, that we acknowledge
our sin and do not seek to look into the supposed purposes or
hidden plans of God and excuse what we've done, these secret
things belonging to God that are revealed unto us, where the
Lord shows us what is right and what is good and we do not work
walking that way, then it must be the response when we are found
out, convinced of it, the same as David, I have sinned. And so when we think of the cause
of trouble, as being sin, we may say here, well, the cause
is Satan, or the cause is the Lord, but we should, if we are
to profit from it, we say, well, the cause is our own sin. We
have been the reason for this. If we are to be brought to repentance,
if we are brought to godly sorrow, then we are to humble ourselves
before the Lord. Where the Lord sees that it is
not us, or where Satan has tempted us, we've fallen, let the Lord
exonerate us, let the Lord deliver us, but let us not, as it were,
plead our innocence and blame others. The way to a true discharge,
and especially under the gospel, is to fall down and confess,
I have sinned, and to seek mercy of the Lord. And so we have the
cause of trouble here and maybe before we pass on regarding the
Lord and Satan, sometimes it can be when we can't understand
things to be a comfort that we know that the Lord is in control
and that we do have an adversary in the devil and that we may
comfort in that way. that the Lord does and is able
to control and overrule the workings of Satan and our own evil hearts
and make them work for good. We have that beautiful word in
Romans 8 verse 28. We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them that are the
called according to his purpose. But what is the cause of trouble? Here we are clearly told it is
a matter of which God was to chasten David and to chasten
Israel. You might say, why was he being
corrected in numbering? What was wrong with numbering
Israel? There's two things that were
wrong. One, the children of Israel were told that when they numbered, that there had to be paid into
the sanctuary the amount that had been appointed. And that
was appointed back in Exodus chapter 30 and verse 12, where
we read there, when thou takest the sum of the children of Israel
after their number, And it was set there at half a shekel after
the shekel of the sanctuary. And of course with David he numbered
Israel, and we don't read of any payment, of any ransom, any
shekels being paid. the judgment that was upon them
and carried out was the pestilence upon Israel. So we can be sure
that that was one of the reasons. The other reason is David's pride. They weren't going to battle.
They did not need to know the number. It should be a warning
to us. We often get so wrapped up in
numbers, don't we? numbers, numbering in the Lord's
house, numbering of those online, numbering of those that are attending
this or that. And how easy it can be that pride
is lying at the root of this. And pride is one of the cheapest
sins that we have. And so may we be delivered from
the sin of pride. But where there is chastening,
and in this case, David knew why. His heart smote him. He knew he was deserving. Later on, he says, what have
these people done? It is I that have sinned. He
clearly is able to see why the Lord has a controversy with him
and is dealing with him. And that will be the mark of
chastening, that the Lord does let us know why. His hand is
upon us. Another reason for the cause
of trouble is tribulation itself. The fire shall try every man's
work of what sort it is. It may be that those troubles
and those trials are coming as a fire to try. Is the work in our hearts real
work? Is it God's work or just man's
work? Have we taken up with religion
ourselves, or has God begun a work in us? Will it stand temptation? Will it stand Satan's work? Will
it stand being discouraged? Will it stand being brought through
Satan's sieve? You know, we had this with Peter. The Lord said, Satan has desire
to have thee, to sift thee of wheat. but I prayed for thee
that thy faith fail not. When thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren. Though he is left to deny his
Lord and Master three times, he came out the end of it, he
still loved his Lord and Master, and he is still a disciple, a
follower, and a great blessing to the Church of God. You may say, really again, the
cause of trouble Thinking of it with David here is men. It was something that David had
done, men had done. And however much Satan might
be at the back of it, we are reminded that God does deal with
men when men walk in a path that is contrary to him. And we should
be very careful how we walk or what we do. And especially when,
in this case, David was in a place of leadership. He was getting
others to do his bidding, to do what was wrong. And in the
Church of God, in our families, maybe as a husband, we direct
our wife, direct our children to walk contrary to the word
of God, contrary to the laws of the land, perhaps, And we
are responsible for that if we are leading others into sin and
into a wrong path of rebellion or walking contrary to the Lord. Man is accountable unto God. He is responsible for his actions. And yes, he is fallen. He is corrupt. He does sin. and cannot, in one sense, help
himself in that way. But we are still, must still
give an account of the last day of judgment. And we can't say
that anyone else is responsible. We are responsible. But just because we are responsible
for our sins and accountable to God for them, It doesn't mean
to say that we are responsible for our soul's salvation. The word that is given for our
Lord was, he shall save his people from their sins. Not his people
shall save themselves from their sins. No, that responsibility
is with the Lord and he shall have the honour and the glory
for that. Many make that mistake. They say, well, if man is responsible
for his sin, then he must be responsible for his salvation
as well. Well, you can get a child that
falls down or that does great damage or injury And they're
responsible for that, but they cannot be responsible for their
healing or restoration. They don't have power or ability
to actually do that. And so it doesn't apply on two
sides. The Lord said, with Israel, O
Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. And then he says this, but in
me is thy help found. not in themselves, in the Lord,
and that is the gospel. So a cause of trouble. In this account, you may draw
all of these various causes to bring us to be exercised too,
but may it all come down to watching over what we say, what we do,
And comparing that with the Word of God and being careful, prayerful,
seeking to know and do the will of God. And when we are found
out in our sin to confess it and humble ourselves before the
Lord. And may we see, as David did
see, the Lord able to bring good out of it. So I want to then
think secondly of sin being dealt with. In this account, it is
very evident that sin is being dealt with. God is dealing with
sins. We're not told the specific ones,
but of Israel, maybe in time past, as we mentioned, regarding
Absalom, and certainly with David in numbering Israel. God deals with sin. He must do. If God says that
in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, when man,
Adam and Eve, they ate of the fruit that was forbidden, God
must, according to his holiness and righteousness, he must do
as he has said. Many times you might go around
the supermarket and you will see a parent offering threat
after threat to a child. If they do this, then this will
happen. And their threats go on and on and never, they never
carried out. But God is not like that. God
will carry out what he has said and sin must be punished, must
be dealt with. And we are already under the
sentence of death. And from Adam's day to this,
there's been no man that has escaped death, save Enoch and
Elijah, who were translated and received straight up into heaven,
even though those before the flood lived many hundreds of
years. At the end of it, it was said
of every one of them, they died, and man must die. And after death,
the judgment, and we then have eternity before us, a second
death outside of Christ. So sin must be dealt with. When
is it dealt with? is either dealt with in this
life or is dealt with in that which is to come. There are many
that think they get away with sin and can just go through life
and God gives them riches and health and wealth and everything
that they want and they go to the grave and there's no troubles
in their death at all until after death and then they are in great
trouble. Then they see and they wake up
to the judgment and the wrath of God. And what a solemn thing
to go through life unchecked and with just let go and awaiting
the wrath to come. But then with others, the Lord
does deal with and is a solemn warning to others in this life,
suddenly cutting them off and dealing with them in a most solemn
way. but others of his dear people,
he deals with them because of their sin. And he deals with
them in a way to bring them into conviction of their sin and what
their sins deserve, and bring them into trouble because of
their sin, and bring them to repent of their sin, to be sorry
for it, and turn away from their sin. And to them he reveals to
them the way of escape from the wrath to come, in the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is because in the Lord Jesus
Christ there is a substitutionary offering. It is what the Father
did to his Son in punishing the sins of his people upon him that
laid on him the iniquity of us all and the wrath of God falling
upon Christ instead of his people. In Psalm 80 we have a wonderful
word, let thy hand be upon the man at thy right hand, the son
of man that thou madest strong for thyself. We have clearly
in Isaiah 53, he had laid on him the iniquity of us all, that
is all of God's dear people. So sin must be dealt with either
in ourselves eternally or in the Lord Jesus Christ, it must
be put away, a right satisfaction must be to it, You see it so
often in this land. We have someone that has done
atrocious murder or some terrible thing. They go to the courts
and they get a sentence and you've only got to look at the comments
in the newspaper. How many people feel that justice
has not been done? They haven't been dealt with
as they should be. They should have had longer in
prison or they should have had capital punishment. They should
have been dealt with in that way. And men rise up when they
feel there is an injustice and that sin is not dealt with. And
yet we have our own standards, as if, well, it must go so far. But if someone has lived a nice,
good life, then God must turn away his wrath. They do not have
an idea of what sin is. Sin in thought and word and deed. And even the thought of foolishness
is sin, and that one sin is enough to damn us to hell. God is a
perfect, holy, and pure God. And so the justice of God demands
that Christ die in the place of his people, and not just in
a general way, but particularly for a people, and that people
in their lifetime will be brought to know their sin, mourn over
it, seek for mercy and pardon, and seek by the grace of God
to forsake those sins and to follow after the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a personal faith in Christ. Don't ever think that Lord Jesus
Christ has come to this world and just put away sins and now
there's no problem. We can just live as we like We
don't need to have any trouble about sin at all. We don't need
to have a personal faith. We don't need to go to church
or read the Bible or pray. It must be a personal faith and
a new creature in Christ Jesus, being born again of the Spirit,
given eternal life, and seeking for an eternal inheritance and
not here below. So sin will be dealt with and
in God's children here. Rather than God casting off his
people, and David here was a man after God's own heart, God loved
him, the Lord will chasten his children. When a parent has a
child that does wrong, they don't suddenly say, well, you can't
be a child anymore. They chasten them, they correct
them. But if that child was just staying
and they were looking after it for a neighbour, and the child
kept on doing wrong, they said, we cannot have you in our house
anymore. You go back where you belong. We're not having you
here anymore. And they're cast out. But a child
will not be. And so with God's children, he
will chasten them and correct them. And how he does it is up
to the Lord. And whether he brings things
in their lives, a loss of crops, or goods, or accidents, or illnesses,
or sicknesses, or with his people, just withhold his blessings. Make their hearts hard, cause
that they don't feed upon the Word of God, or the heavens are
shut and they cannot have that access in prayer as they once
had. and they don't feel a love to
the brethren, they strife one with another. The Lord knows
the different ways that he brings his people to know that sin is
a bitter and an evil thing and it is a lass that's steeped and
is laid on his people but softened in his blood as we sung. But what I want to draw from
the words of our text is what a difficulty it would be if God
were to say to us like he did to David here, you choose your
own chastening. You choose what I shall do to
you. Gad, the seer, the prophet, he
gave David from the Lord, he gave him Those three alternatives,
choose thee either three years' famine or three months to be
destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies
overtaketh thee, or else three days, the sword of the Lord,
even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying
throughout all the coast of Israel. Now advise thyself what word
I shall bring again to him that sent me." There's no wonder David
says in the words of our text, I'm in a great strain, I'm a
great predicament, I don't know what to do. But he says, let
me now fall into the hand of the Lord. He knew something of
the Lord. He knew that His mercies were
very great. He knew that the Lord was more
merciful than man. I wonder how many of us realise
that. That God is more merciful, more
kind, more long-suffering than man. We'd rather fall into His
hand than into man's hand. And yes, we know that God has
control over man, but we would be under the Lord's direct hand. But such a verse like this should
make us say, Lord, choose thou the way that still lead on. Choose
my providences, choose my crosses, choose my tribulations, choose
my chastening. The Lord has not said it is an
option not to have tribulation. You must through much tribulation
enter the kingdom. But he is the one that appoints
that. Very different amongst the people
of God. And so this word is a good word
for us to make us think, what if the Lord does give us a choice? What would we do? What a predicament
we would be in the same as David. How much better to leave things
with the Lord, though he might not understand or work out or
fathom sometimes what the Lord is doing. yet to fall like David
into the hand of the Lord. And may we know, like David did
too, that his mercies are very, very great. Well, I want to look
thirdly at Christ and the gospel that is seen. I always like it
when we come to a part of the word of God and we have three,
three days especially, Three days Jonah was in the whale's
belly. Three days it took with Abraham
to go up to Mount Moriah and there he offered up his son.
The first day would have been as that Isaac was in his eyes
dead, the second the same, the third the beginning of it the
same. And at the end of that day though, Isaac had been taken
off the old to the ram, put in his stead, and Abraham greatly
blessed and the faith that God had given him and had been tried
greatly commended. In thee and in thy seed shall
all nations be blessed. And so we think of those three
days, we need a third day religion. Now it's not enough to have that
first day Christ crucified or the second day where Christ is
in the tomb, or even the beginning of the third day, when there's
such uncertainty. But at the end of that third
day, Christ is risen indeed. And we need that, which points
us, points us to the three days. the Lord Jesus Christ, what he
accomplished at Calvary. As much as we look at sin, to
the fall and all the troubles flowing from that, we look to
the second Adam, to Christ, and that every blessing comes to
us through Jesus' precious blood. And so here we have the gospel. David, he says in our text, let
me now fall into the hand of the Lord. That is salvation. Fall into the hand of the Lord.
Salvation is of the Lord, says Jonah. And the Lord spake unto
the fish, and he vomited him out into the dry land. Isaac,
he says to his father, my father, the fire and the wood, but where
is the lamb? for a burnt offering. My son,
God will provide a lamb for a burnt offering. And Abraham, as it
were, cast himself upon God. God will provide. The gospel
is God's provision for lost and ruined man. And the gospel is
such that we are to fall into the hand of the Lord. How many who have some knowledge
of their sin will rather come to the word of God and as they
start to read it, they start to pull it about. They don't
agree with that. They hold God up to the bar of
their morality, of their thoughts, that how he should work and how
the gospel should be. If we do like David does and
fall into the hand of the Lord, we say, Lord, thou hast given
us thy word, thou hast given us the plan of salvation, the
way of escape. Teach me, show me, reveal it
to me. I'll fall into thy hand. Whatever
is set before me, if I don't understand it, I'll trust thee. I'll ask thee to open it up.
I'll go to the house of God, I pray the Lord's servants will
open it up. But I trust that thou hast a
plan, and thou hast made a way of escape, and I want to know
that way. When Paul preached to the Bereans,
we read that they were more noble than those of Thessalonica, and
that they searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were
so, and therefore many of them believed. not seeking to pull
apart the Word, but to know it more and to verify it, to test
everything by the Word of God. You know, the many that are deceived
by false religions and false teachers and preachers, if they
only took the holy, pure Word of God and they examined all
that they heard by that, then they wouldn't be deceived. The
Word of God is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. The Lord gives his people that
Word as a standard. You know, if we wanted to know
whether a wall was completely vertical or a surface completely
flat, we'd get a spirit level and we'd put it on it. And if
it was out of level, we wouldn't say, well, stupid spirit level,
that's wrong. We'll go and make that right.
We'll bend it a bit here and we'll try and make it and get
it right. Wouldn't we rather say, well,
the spirit level is right, but the wall is wrong, or the floor
is wrong. And we'll set that right. But
men don't treat the Word of God like that. They say, well, it
shows our lies to be wrong. But our lies are not wrong. They're
right. The Bible's wrong. And they'll seek to set that
right. But David, he says, no, I'll
fall into the hand of the Lord. His salvation, His way, His terms,
God's plan, God's commandments, God's provision will fall into
that, go along with that. And that is the way of salvation,
not fighting against it. At the end, we shall stand before
God's bar and God's throne. And it's God's law we've broken.
That is what sin is, the transgression of the law of God. So may we
be like David in that way and fall into the hands of the Lord. The second thing here is that
there was a point into where the temple should be built and
it's where the Lord answered David in the threshing floor. And we read in the next chapter,
chapter 22 and verse 1, then David said, this is the house
of the Lord God and this is the altar for the burnt offering
for Israel. And David commanded to gather
together strangers that were in the land of Israel, and he
set masons to hew wrought stones to build the house of God. He
is preparing, preparing for Solomon. You can read on further in that
22nd chapter. But it was this that happened
that showed where that should be, when Jacob left his house
when he had that first night, the stones for his pillow. The
Lord gave him the vision of the ladder set up on earth and the
angels ascending and descending on it and the ladder extending
up into heaven. When he awoke, he said that this
is none other than the gate of heaven and this is the house
of God. He called it Bethel, the house
of God. And so here as well, the Lord
answered him, the Lord blessed him here, this shall be the house
of God. There's many places, I think
the little chapel in Horem is built on the spot where a man
was really blessed in that field, went into that field to pray
to the Lord, the Lord blessed him. So he bought the field and
he built the house of God that's still there now on that spot. but here is a more important
thing than just a building. That building, the temple, was
a type of Christ, and Solomon's dedication to it, he spoke of
those that were looking to look toward that temple. And Daniel,
even though the temple was destroyed at the time, he looked from Babylon,
opened his windows toward Jerusalem, Jonah, Now will I look again
toward thy holy temple. It wasn't just to bricks and
mortar. It wasn't to this spot. It was to what it pointed to,
the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of this latter house
shall be greater than the former. The second temple, when it was
built, why was the glory going to be better when it was not
as nice an outward building? Because Christ himself should
walk there. When our Lord was on earth, he
said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it up.
And the Jews, they said, this temple was 40 and two years in
building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days? And then
we read, but he spake of the temple of his body. The Lord
Jesus Christ is what was set forth there. And so our eyes
in our text here, in this account here, are directed to the Lord
Jesus Christ. That is the message here. The place, not Mount Moriah where
it is here, the same place as where Abraham offered up his
son, but to the Lord Jesus Christ himself, not even to Calvary,
but to the man who suffered at Calvary, to our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. None other name given among men
whereby we must be saved. The third thing in pointing to
the gospel and pointing to Christ is the sacrifice itself. We read
that David offered an offering here and called upon the name
of the Lord and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the
altar of burnt offering. When the temple was built here
and Solomon dedicated it, God answered by fire again. upon
the altar. With the altar and the sacrifice,
again, it sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ. The fire from heaven
is the wrath of God from heaven, burning up the sacrifice. And
we have a picture of the wrath of God falling not on a guilty
people, but falling upon Christ. Him suffering in our place, enduring
the wrath of God, Christ's sacrifice at Calvary, is spoken of as a
propitiation for our sin, a wrath-ending sacrifice. And so we are pointed
to Calvary in this way, in this account, that it is Christ that
has suffered, and the wrath of God falling upon him that stays
that upon men. Thus far and no further, and
we are pointed in a view what the Lord Jesus suffered in the
face of our soul. And so this account, it points
us, points us to the gospel, points us unto Christ himself. And the words of our text, David
said unto Gad, I am in a great strain. Let me now fall into
the hand of the Lord, for very great are his mercies. but let
me not fall into the hand of man. And truly what did come
out of this? Came out the blessing of clearly
pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the gospel, to the sin bearer,
to where the temple should be built, and to see the Lord turning
this to good and a blessing in Israel. Or may the Lord do the
same with us in all the convictions we may have of sin, the Lord's
dealings with us for sin. May we be humble because of it,
confess our sin, but embrace the gospel and seek for mercy
through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord add
his blessing and send that peace to our souls. Amen.