So today we're going to be thinking
about David counting the people of Israel and Judah and the trouble
that that caused. We're in 2 Samuel chapter 24
and we're going to read from verse 1 through to the end of
the chapter. This is the Word of God. 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 host, 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. And
Joab said unto the king, Now the Lord thy God add unto the
people how many soever they be an 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 king to number the people of Israel. And they passed over
Jordan and pitched in Aror on the right side of the city that
lieth in the midst of the river of Gad and toward Jazar. Then they came to Gilead and
to the land of Tatim-Hodshi, and they came to Dan-Jahan. and about to Zidon, and came
to the stronghold of Tyre, and to the cities of the Hivites
and 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
twenty days. And Joab gave up the sum of the
number of the people unto the king. And there were 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 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. For when David was up in the
morning, the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad, David's
seer, saying, Go and say unto David, Thus saith the Lord, I
offer thee three things. Choose thee one of them, that
I may do it unto thee. So Gad came to David and told
him and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto
thee in thy land? Or wilt thou flee three months
before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? Or that there be
three days of pestilence in thy land? Now advise, and see what
answer I shall return to him that sent me. And David said
unto Gad, I am in a great strait. Let us fall now into the hand
of the Lord, for his mercies are great. And let me not fall
into the hand of man. 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. And when the angel stretched
out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented
him of the evil, 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 Arunah 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. And Gad came
that day to David and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto
the Lord in the threshing floor of Arunah the Jebusite. And David, according to the saying
of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. And Aruna looked and saw the
king and his servants coming on toward him. And Aruna went
out and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the
ground. And Aruna said, Wherefore is
my lord the king? Come to his servant. And David
said, To buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto
the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people. And
Arunah said unto David, Let my lord the king take and offer
up what seemeth good unto him. Behold, here be oxen for burnt
sacrifice, and threshing instruments, and other instruments of the
oxen for wood. All these things did Aruna, as
a king, give unto the king. And Aruna said unto the king,
The Lord thy God accept thee. The king said unto Aruna, Nay,
but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer
burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost
me nothing. So David bought the threshing
floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver. And David built there
an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
So the Lord was entreated for the land and the plague was stayed
from Israel. Amen, may the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word as well. I mentioned the last time
we spoke that though David was old, Sin still dwelt with him,
as it does with us all. Young or old, as long as we are
in this body, we will wrestle against temptation and the passions
of the flesh. It isn't certain when this incident
took place, but it is clear from the opening verses that despite
being God's chosen people, which is an Old Testament picture of
God's elect people. Despite being God's chosen people,
God's anger was against Israel for their sin as a nation. Now we're not told what particular
sin it was that offended God. And perhaps that should lead
us to think about what is our original sin. I think I've said
it to you before. It's not only the sins that we
do that offends and angers the Lord, but it's the people that
we are. We sin, we do sinful things because
we are a sinful people. And we all, like Israel of old,
are rebellious and idolatrous and proud. If the Lord does not
keep us, or if the Lord withdraws himself from us, we quickly fall
into sin, because it is our nature to do so. Israel had sinned against the
Lord. Again, we don't know what that
sin was, but in order to punish Israel, the Lord withdrew his
protective care from David, allowing Satan to tempt the king in this
matter of the counting of the people. And it seems, again,
it is not expressly said, but it seems that David's sin was
pride. He wanted to count the number
of the people, or he wanted to count the size of his army. and we're not told why this was
important to him. We are told that Joab, of all
people, and the captains of the host, David's counsellors and
his mighty men, advised against this plan. But David insisted. He was strong-minded in this
matter. Joab said to David, a hundred times more than they
are and you live to see it. What benefit is there in knowing
this fact? But David insisted and therefore
because he was the king, Joab and the army went through the
whole country and spent more than nine months, nine months
and 20 days we're told, counting the heads and numbering the people. And it took all of that time,
the nine months and the 20 days, before David's conscience was
stirred about his actions. And he realized that he'd been
wrong and foolish to act in this way. He had acted without seeking
the Lord's counsel. He had acted without considering
what would be the will of the Lord. And it seems that in the
middle of the night, he woke from sleep under deep conviction
of sin, deep conviction that he had done wrong. And he asked
the Lord for mercy and pardon. Here's what the word says, And
David's heart smote him after that he had numbered the people. And David said unto the Lord,
I have sinned 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. David understood that his sin
had been foolish. All sin is foolish. And this
sin now seemed particularly foolish to David. It was a completely
self-inflicted wound done simply to satisfy his own pride. At this very moment, the Lord
sent the prophet Gad to tell David what God was going to do. There would be a cost for this
sin and transgression. God would punish the people as
had been his original intention. He would do it in one of three
ways. David would choose the form of
judgment. This is another aspect of this
chapter, this account, this episode in David's life that is puzzling. It's unusual that God would allow
the guilty to choose their penalty. And it perhaps suggests to us
that there is a deeper meaning and a greater significance behind
the facts of this episode. And I'll come to that in a moment
or two. But it is unusual that God would allow the guilty to
choose their penalty. Nevertheless, three options were
laid before David. Seven years of famine in the
land, or perhaps that was three more years, because there had
already been a three-year famine that had afflicted Israel for
the sake of the Gibeonites. You'll remember that from a week
or two ago. or, so that was seven years of
famine, three more years, three months of fleeing before their
enemies, and three days of pestilence by the sword of God. And David
was to choose which of these options he would take. David
chose the pestilence, the three days of pestilence by the sword
of God. and he yielded himself and the
nation to the mercy of God. God acted by sending an angel
to inflict a disease on the people. And we're told that in the space
of this short time, 70,000 people died throughout Israel. David
had counted all these thousands of people And for that, David
had lost the lives of 70,000 of his own people. The angel
moved through the land until he came to Jerusalem. When David
saw what the angel had done, he pleaded with God to save the
people and rather punish him and his family in their place. Let the people go and punish
me, said David. Punish my father's house. The angel stretched out his hand
upon Jerusalem to destroy it. And we read, the Lord repented
him of the evil and said to the angel that destroyed the people,
it is enough. Stay now thine hand. The Lord paused the angel over
the property of Arunah the Jebusite and instructed Gad to tell David
to build an altar and make a sacrifice to God at the threshing floor
of Arunah. That's the place where they took
the corn and they threshed it out in order to get the kernel
of the wheat that they would use for making bread. And this
is what David did. He went to Arunah and he offered
to buy the threshing floor in order to sacrifice to the Lord.
Arunah offered to give David everything that he needed for
the sacrifice. But David insisted on personally
paying the full price that it was worth, saying, I will not
offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth
cost me nothing. And then we read in verse 25
that David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt
offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord was entreated for
the land and the plague was stayed from Israel. Now at this point,
I usually try to bring you some applications or lessons from
this passage and while I'm sure that there are lessons here about
pride and about self-importance and about not trusting the Lord,
I think Perhaps all of those myths, the greater point of what
this incident is all about. And here's what I mean. I need
to take you away back in the history of the Bible to Genesis
chapter 22. And I think this is interesting. In Genesis chapter 22, we read
about the man called Abraham. Abraham and his son Isaac. And we read in Genesis chapter
22 verse 2 that God said to Abraham, take now thy son, thine only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of
Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of
the mountains which I will tell thee of. So Abraham was told
to go into the land of Moriah, the mountains of Moriah, and
there he was to sacrifice his son Isaac. Then again, we move
forward to shortly after this time. And we read in 2 Chronicles
3, this verse, chapter 3, verse 1. Then Solomon, who's the new
king after David, then Solomon began to build the house of the
Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah. where the Lord appeared unto
David his father in the place that David had prepared in the
threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. So Solomon built this
temple in Mount Moriah in the very place where David had built
the altar where the angel of destruction had stopped over
the threshing floor of this Ornan the Jebusite. He's got a couple
of names in a couple of different places. Aaronah the Jebusite
and Ornan the Jebusite is the same person. But here we find
that the whole of this chapter is a picture for David's age
and indeed for all ages to remind God's people what God taught
Abraham many years before. There's no question that the
people understood this place where David offered as being
the very place where Abraham had offered his son. And Solomon
understood the significance of this place also, because it was
here that he built the temple that David had wanted to build,
but which had been reserved for Solomon to build. And here, after
many years, we find that the sacrifice of Abraham's son, or
rather the supply by God of a lamb in the person of God's own son
for the salvation of his people was being remembered. Solomon
built the temple in Jerusalem on the place where the judging
angel had halted. where the mercy of God was exhibited
and an altar of sacrifice had been built by David, which was
the very place where Isaac had been offered up so many centuries
before. Where David's sacrifice was made
to pacify the anger of God so that here we see a continuity. The history of the Bible and
the history of Israel From the Garden of Eden to Abraham to
David and to Solomon building the temple is a history of salvation
by grace, a history of God intervening to secure the forgiveness of
sinners. And the temple, of course, that
was built by Solomon is an emblem of God dwelling with his people,
with its altar for offering up of blood sacrifice. God's anger
in verse one was with the sin of all the people and our Lord
Jesus Christ came to bear the sin of all his people. David's sin was trying to count
the people. In God's church there is a number
known only to him. And our preoccupation with numbers
is just vanity and presumption. God gave David the choice of
punishment. David chose three days pestilence,
a time reduced by God's mercy and the blood offering that David
would make. So Christ suffered the pestilence
of God's wrath against our sin. Christ bared his breast to the
sword of God's justice and he died in the place of those that
he loved. David offered a suitable sacrifice
at his own expense and he personally paid in full for all that was
needed to pacify God. And the Lord Jesus Christ provided
a suitable sacrifice for the elect and he paid the full price
of our redemption personally. And David appealed to the Lord
that the people would be saved and that he might bear God's
wrath for them, which of course David could not do being a sinful
man. But the Lord Jesus did. as the
sinless, spotless Lamb of God. If the significance of this episode
in the history of Israel is to remind us of God's gracious purpose
and redemption from those early promises given to Abraham through
the covenant he formed with David to the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ to die, then it stands as a testimony to God's mercy. Judgment was halted. It was deserved
for Israel's sin, but it was halted. An offering was made
for sin, and the full price of salvation was paid by our substitute
and our surety, the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us today. Amen.