Session #31

II Samuel 21:15-II Samuel 24
“The Beginning Of The Beginning” • 5.6.08 • Autonomy, Authority And The Man Of God, Session #31

Intro.

- David’s life, with all of it’s ups and downs, is winding down toward the end. We find the he has plenty of spirit left in him, but his body is giving way to age.
- David is out on the battlefield again against his old enemies, the Philistines, when the Bible tells us that David grew faint. He suffered a close call, only to be spared in the last moment.
• II Samuel 21:17 : “But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid, and struck the Philistine and killed him. Then the men of David swore to him, saying, ‘You shall go out no more with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel.’”
- David, I am sure, struggled with this loss of ability, as he had been fighting battles ever since that fateful day with Goliath. Now, he was forcefully retired, being more of a liability than an asset.
- What is this man to do? He takes up full time Psaltry work! Chapter 22 and the first seven verses of chapter 23 might as well be called Psalms.
- What we grab from these verses are David’s perspective about the character of God and the faithfulness that he had seen first hand.
• II Samuel 22:2-4 : “And he said: ‘The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; The God of my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, My stronghold and my refuge; My Savior, You save me from violence. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies.”
- David affirms God’s fidelity over and over again, and shows us that a man of God, a man under authority is never perfect. They are imperfect people with whom a perfect God has a covenant.
• II Samuel 23:2-5 : “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spoke to me: ‘He who rules over men must be just, Ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, A morning without clouds, Like the tender grass springing out of the earth, By clear shining after rain.’ Although my house is not so with God, Yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant, Ordered in all things and secure. For this is all my salvation and all my desire; Will He not make it increase?”
- The final portion of chapter 23 is dedicated to the great men that accompanied David throughout his military years.
- That section rolls off like a list of credits to the end of a movie. But after that wonderful end, we come to chapter 24 and an interesting finale.
• II Samuel 24:1,2 : “Again the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’ So the king said to Joab the commander of the army who was with him, ‘Now go throughout all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and count the people, that I may know the number of the people.’”
- A little over 9 months later, the census was finished. David knew that this was sinful.
• II Samuel 24:10 : “And David’s heart condemned him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, I pray, O Lord, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly.’”
- David’s sin brought about difficult consequences, a severe plague killing a large part of the population. Seeing the results of his sin, David pleads before the Lord for the sheep of Israel.
- The answer to the end of the plague will be a sacrifice to the Lord at a specific house in Israel. The owner of the house offered to give the home and the oxen for the sacrifice.
• II Samuel 24:24,25 : “Then the king said to Araunah, ‘No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.’ So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.”
- This narrative destroys three common misconceptions. We conquer continuously, are holier with age and are less inclined to rebel over time.

I. Our Stories Are From Beginning To Beginning
II. Our Capacity Is Not Determined
III. Our Rebellion Is Not Diminished

Text

I. Our Stories Are From Beginning To Beginning

- The Holy Spirit sure does not know how to tell our kind of stories! As we come to the end of chapter 23, all of us seem to have a moment of closure.
- The story seems to breathe and come to a natural end. But the end is just the beginning and we come to chapter 24.
- It’s notable to acknowledge that chapter 23 is a great spiritual peak for David. He has taught wonderful truths about God, noting God’s faithfulness to him and his trust in the Lord.
• II Samuel 22:47-50 : “The Lord lives! Blessed be my Rock! Let God be exalted, The Rock of my salvation! It is God who avenges me, And subdues the peoples under me; He delivers me from my enemies. You also lift me up above those who rise against me; You have delivered me from the violent man. Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the Gentiles, And sing praises to Your name.”
- What a wonderful way to end the story, if that were the end. But it is not.
• II Samuel 24:1 : “Again the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’”
- I don’t want to get too far from my point here, but this is an intriguing verse. God was angry. He move David against them. Interesting passage. Let’s turn over to a parallel passage.
• I Chronicles 21:1-3 : “Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, ‘Go, number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to me that I may know it.’ And Joab answered, ‘May the Lord make His people a hundred times more than they are. But, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? Why then does my lord require this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel?’”
- Joab understood what David was doing. He was looking to see what strength he had in himself. What number could be counted upon? How strong am I? Joab himself was disgusted.
• I Chronicles 21:6 : “But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king’s word was abominable to Joab.”
- Now, my point is not to answer the difficult dilemma here: Was it God or was it Satan?
- My point is that David is the guy who just spoke these wonderful truths of God’s delivering power over all of his enemies. Now, just the proverbial next day, David is attempting to number his people in an effort to determine his own strength!
- Right thoughts, right words and right feelings about God does not always lead to right actions by His people. Sunday may be a high holy day, but Monday is right around the corner!
- It reminds me of Peter’s story and the high that he must have had at Caesarea Philippi. Jesus has asked the disciples a pointed question: Who do you think I am?
- After a moment of ackward silence, Peter answers profoundly that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God! Jesus tells Peter, “You have heard from God himself in giving this knowledge.” - Peter stood proudly and wondered at his newly discovered wisdom. As he pondered at himself, he listened as Jesus told the disciples that He was going to Jerusalem to die.
• Matthew 16:22,23 : “Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.’”
- How careful we must be as we take heed to ourselves.

II. Our Capacity Is Not Determined

- After all the years of understanding, and we can say definitively, that he had advantages that we can never equal in terms of experience, that even then, holiness is not a determined quality of life.
- In fact, if there is any “X-Factor” in the story of redemption, it is the unpredictability of the man of God, the man under authority.
- God is faithful. He is love. He is just, true and righteous. That will never change. That will always be the constant. But there is no such guarantee with you and I.
• II Samuel 23:3-5 : “The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spoke to me: ‘He who rules over men must be just, Ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, A morning without clouds, Like the tender grass springing out of the earth, By clear shining after rain.’ Although my house is not so with God, Yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant, Ordered in all things and secure. For this is all my salvation and all my desire; Will He not make it increase?”
- God had spoken to David about the requirement that God had for the ruling family over His people. They were to rule in the fear of God. Then David rolls out a lovely descriptive triplet.
- There shall be a clarity and a beauty to the King’s reign. But that was hardly the case.
- From David’s sinful actions to Absalom’s rebellion, David’s reign has been far from the ideal expressed in these platitudes. Then, after all of these things, there is the ungodly census.
- The older David got, the more consistent he may have become, but the sin that indwells David, indeed us today, has ruined the intentions that God had for us from the beginning.
- Today, perhaps you have not muddied God’s plans for your life. Perhaps you have had a good week. Don’t get too confident!
- The same truth that David comes to, we must also come to. David says, “Yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant!”
- I have not held to my end of the bargain. I have failed, repeatedly, miserably. Yet because of His faithfulness, because of His character.
- Jeremiah, speaking of the judgment of God that he saw in His days, commented on the hope that he had in the middle of it all.
• Lamentations 3:22-24 : “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.”
- Paul speaking to Timothy, calling him to remain strong in the ministry, enouraged him with these words:
• II Timothy 2:11-13 : “This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”

III. Our Rebellion Is Not Diminished

- Finally, as we come to last point, we recognize that the rebellion within us, the desire to live autonomously, deeply resides in our lives.
- David wanted to number the people of Israel. From what we have already discovered, this was a well known, intentional sin on David’s behalf.
• II Samuel 24:10 : “And David’s heart condemned him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, I pray, O Lord, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly.’”
- I love the KJV’s translation of this verse: “David’s heart smote him after.”
- Why after and not before? The actual numbering was not the problem. The motive for numbering is left to our conjecture.
- Did David want to know how many armed men he could count on? That would betray a trust in his own numbers and not in the Lord. Perhaps he coveted a larger empire so that he might boast.
- Perhaps David is thinking about God’s word to Moses.
• Exodus 30:12-16 : “When you take the census of the children of Israel for their number, then every man shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them. This is what everyone among those who are numbered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (a shekel is twenty gerahs). The half-shekel shall be an offering to the Lord. Everyone included among those who are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering to the Lord. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when you give an offering to the Lord, to make atonement for yourselves. And you shall take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of meeting, that it may be a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord, to make atonement for yourselves.’”
- In any event, David’s heart rebelled against the Lord. This is a seasoned believer, a man who has been well acquainted with sin.
- He has seen the destructive affects, written poetry about it and still his heart is inclined to rebel against the Lord.
- Robert Robinson was just a small boy when his dad died. In 18th century England, there was little in the way of a social welfare system and this meant that he had to go to work while still very young. Without a father to guide and steady him, he fell in with bad companions.
- One day his gang of rowdies harassed a drunken gypsy. Pouring liquor into her, they demanded she tell their fortunes for free. Pointing her finger at Robert she told him he would live to see his children and grandchildren. This struck a tender spot in his heart. "If I'm going to live to see my children and grandchildren," he thought, "I'll have to change my way of living. I can't keep on like I'm going now."
- He decided to go hear the Methodist preacher George Whitefield. To cover his "weak" urge, he suggested that the boys go with him and heckle the gathering. Whitefield preached on the text: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew 3:7). Robert left in dread, under a deep sense of sin that lasted for three years.
- Finally, at the age of twenty, he made peace with God and immediately set out to become a Methodist preacher himself. Two years later, in 1757, he wrote a hymn which expressed his joy in his new faith:
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love.
- This was printed the next year. At first people thought that Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, a strong Methodist had written this. Eventually it was learned that Robert was the writer.
- In the last stanza, Robert had written:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love
Take my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.
- Prone to wander Robert was. He left the Methodists and became a Baptist. Later on, having become a close friend of Joseph Priestly, he was accused of becoming a Unitarian. Priestly and other Unitarians denied the full divinity of Christ. However, in a sermon he preached after he supposedly became a Unitarian, Robinson clearly declared that Jesus was God, and added, "Christ in Himself is a person infinitely lovely as both God and man."
- Robert died on this day, June 9, 1790. Had he left the God he loved? A widely-told, but unverifiable, story says that one day as he was riding in a stagecoach a lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming. He responded, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then." http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2003/06/daily-06-09-2003.shtml

Conclusion

- I pray that we have been duly warned today that our stories end with the beginning of another struggle. A struggle against the flesh and for holiness in our lives.
- There are no gimmes. Every day is a decision to surrender ourselves to the authority of Christ, so that we might live in a way that’s pleasing to him. I pray that that would be your resolve.