2 Samuel 24. God's Word is holy. It is our only rule, our only standard to determine what we are to believe and how we are to live our life. Take heed how you hear it. 2 Samuel 24 verse 1. 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. And Joab said to the king, Now may the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times more than there are, and may the eyes of my Lord the King see it. But why does my Lord the King desire this thing? Nevertheless, the king's word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army. Therefore, Joab and the captains of the army went out from the presence of the king to count the people of Israel. And they crossed over the Jordan and camped in Arur, on the right side of the town, which is in the midst of the ravine of Gad, and toward Jazer. Then they came to Gilead into the land of Tatum-Hatshi. They came to Danjan, and around to Sidon. And they came to the stronghold of Tyre, and to all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites. Then they went out to south Judah, as far as Beersheba. So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. Then Joab gave the sum, the number of the people, to the king. And there were in Israel 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword. And the men of Judah were 500,000 men. 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. Now when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and tell David. Thus says the Lord. I offer you three things, choose one of them for yourself that I may do it to you. So Gad came to David and told him and he said to him, shall seven years of famine come to you in your land or shall you flee three months before your enemies while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days plague in your land? Now consider and see what answer I should take back to him who sent me. And David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel from the morning till the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba, 70,000 men of the people died. And when the angel stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the destruction and said to the angel who was destroying the people, it is enough. Now restrain your hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite. Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said, surely I have sinned. And I have done wickedly with these sheep. What have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father's house." And Gad came that day to David and said to him, Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Aaron of the Jebusite. So David, according to the word of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. Now Aaronah looked and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So Aaronah went out and bowed before the king with his face to the ground. Then Aaronah said, Why has my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people. Now Araunah said to David, let my lord the king take and offer up whatever seems good to them. Look, here are oxen for a burnt sacrifice and threshing implements and the yokes of the oxen for wood. All these, O king, Araunah has given to the king. And Araunah said to the king, may the lord your God accept you. And 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 cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 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. the plague was withdrawn from Israel. Amen. The great presupposition of the gospel, or if you like, the context for the gospel, is this truth. God is angry with the wicked. God is a just judge and God is angry with the wicked every day. That's a quote from Psalm 7 verse 11. God is merciful. God is true. God is loving. God is holy. God is just. And God is a God who punishes sin. We see this truth throughout Scripture. We saw it this morning from Numbers 11. We see it again in this passage of Scripture. And the first truth that all people need to really wrestle with and know and to feel is actually not the Gospel. It's not. The gospel makes no sense without the bad news. It doesn't do us any good. I mean, who's Jesus dying on the cross? We read from Mark. Jesus dying on the cross, the great story. Why? What's the point? Well, God is a judge. And I want you to think about this tonight. It's the theme of our passage of scripture, but it's more than just in the area of God judging sinners for sin. And then, of course, in Christ, God's people are forgiven, aren't they? But it's not just that simple. I mean, who's David? Who are these people here? These aren't Moabites. They're Israelites. This is the people of God. Now, God chastens His people. He punishes His people. It's not eternal. It's not these 70 Thousand men aren't... we should not think that they're in hell. Okay? But it's not just the simple truth, the gospel, and sin, punishment, and Christ. It's the fact that God punishes his people. He visits his own people. He's angry with them. And we want to consider this because we're God's people, aren't we? We profess faith in Lord Jesus Christ. We're his visible church. And yet God punishes his people. Why? What can we do to handle, to negotiate, to deal with the anger that the Lord God has towards His people? I want to look at this under two main ideas. Chapter 24 is the last chapter in 2 Samuel. This is the last sermon. It's fitting. I didn't plan this, but I'm going on vacation. This is the last sermon in this series, in this book. We've seen a lot in this book. David, in the first half of this book, is really a type of Christ. Left, right, and center, he really is that prophet, priest, and king that points us to Jesus. He's faithful while he's persecuted by Saul. All of this is going on. Then Bathsheba happens in chapter 11. And then there's just several chapters of just It's awful. It's uncomfortable even to read it. How sinful it is. And there's all this going on. And we kind of wonder who David is and whether God is with David. And you'll recall the last few weeks, these last few chapters, 21 through 24, are a bit of appendix. And 24 is about judgment. It's about punishment. It's heavy. But really, as a unit, it reminds us that God is still with David. And here's why. This book was written by Hebrew. We're English-speaking Westerners in 2019. This is actually the sandwich or 21 and 24 are two sandwiches that point us to a middle. In the middle is this psalm that we looked at a few weeks ago and then these last words of David at the beginning of 23 that are more gracious and more confirming of David. So this is all part of that context. God is with David. And this chapter, in that sense, it's kind of a standalone chapter. It has a lesson for us. David is not a type of Christ here. a king who's sinning and he's leading a sinful people. So the lesson this evening is that God's punishment is avoided by taking heed both to oneself and to God and it is removed by Christ from those who repent. A little different from your bulletin outline. The lesson is this, God's punishment is avoided by taking heed both to oneself and to God and it is removed by Christ from those who repent. So four points tonight. The first two come from the first 15 verses and it has to do with avoiding God's punishment. Avoiding God's punishment. And that is first by taking heed to oneself. Taking heed. What do I mean by that? I mean paying attention to your life. How you live. That it's according to God's word. It's that simple. And really focusing on it. Thinking about it. The other day I left. I ran into the church building and we were off to Las Vegas. I needed to pick up the communion items. And I got the old glass communion cups that were in the tray. I was carrying him out the door. You know what the tray is like. It can come off and there's a bunch of glass cups there. And on one hand I was carrying the other items, but I was really focusing on this tray. Because if I dropped it, there goes the communion cups. I was really focusing on it. I was paying attention. I wouldn't drop it. That's what we need to do in regards to our life. We see David not doing that. David sins. pretty seriously here. Verse 2, he calls for a census. Now the census was not the sin itself. If we look at the law, Exodus 30 verse 12, you could take a census, you had to do a few things about it. To be quite clear, we don't know exactly why this was wrong, but we have a pretty good idea that David was Trusting in his own strength. Notice at the end of verse two he says, that I may know the number of the people. The king was to not trust in chariots, not trust in horses, but to remember the Lord, our God. Psalm 20, verse seven. Psalm 33, verse 16 through 17. No king is saved by the multitude of an army. A mighty man is not delivered by great strength." And here's David counting up his army. He either was trying to rest in the fact that he had such a large army or was probably maybe boasting about it. Either way this was a sin. Now there's some confusion on whether David actually sinned here. Verse 1 says that the anger of the Lord was roused against Israel and he moved David against them. How do we deal with this verse The Lord's anger is not aroused unless there's been sin. We need to notice that. Israel sinned. It was against Israel. We don't know. Maybe they were demonstrating national pride. That's where most commentators go. But God is angry because of sin. It's not that the Lord is responsible. Notice it says, He moved David against them to say, go number Israel and Judah. How do we deal with that? Now the Scriptures teach that on one hand God is not culpable for sin. He is not a sinner. That is what culpable means. He is not responsible for it. Yet on the other hand He is sovereign. And the Bible can say things like this, that He moved David to sin. It is a bit of a mystery. But we need to think like Hebrews who wrote this text. I was reading just devotionally this week from Psalm 140 verse 8. Listen to this. Do not grant, O Lord, the desires of the wicked. A Hebrew mind assumes that God is in control of even wicked things. He grants the desires of the wicked. He's not culpable for their sin. They are. But this is what's going on here. I find it helpful also to note that in the parallel passage In 1 Chronicles 21 verse 1, the text says, now Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel. Satan is God's Satan. And God is responding to David's sin and in some sense Israel's sin. And this should, we should stop here and just think for a moment. If we're gonna take heed to ourselves, we need to pray. that the Lord would lead us not into temptation. Satan tempted David. And so what happened? That's a petition in the Lord's Prayer. Lead us not into temptation. If you're taking heed to yourself, you're going to be conscious of that. You're going to be conscious of your weakness. David, this is the second time David did something pretty serious. Pretty serious, of course, murder, adultery. And here he is. We shouldn't put confidence in how long we've known the Lord. We, as mature Christians, later in life can do things that are quite serious. And even we, by God's strength, need to take heed to ourselves. Verses 3-4, David, who's not taking heed to himself, totally ignores counsel. One of the things that's useful for us is to pay attention to those who know better, to those who would be in the know, and their counsel to us. Here's Joab, he's not the greatest example in the world, but notice that it's also the captains of the army. Verse 4, the captains of the army. Here is this host of people saying, David, again we don't know exactly all the details, we don't need to know. David is blowing it off. Do you blow counsel off? You blow it vice off. Take heed to yourself. God uses other people. He uses parents, kids. Take heed to your parents. This is God's way. Often times it is His way to lead us from sin. Notice verses 5-8. Joab and the captains of their army go through the land from Dan to Beersheba. Dan is the northernmost point. Beersheba is the southernmost point. There you have the cities. They are going through. It takes them nine months and twenty days. So here you are. You are David. You are feeling pretty good about yourself. Nothing has happened for nine months and twenty days. The sin has already been committed. One of the things that we can do as Christians is we can say, well I am not in sin. Because nothing bad has happened to me. I'm doing quite well. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that when bad things happen to us and we have bad health, that means that we've sinned. But my point is this. We can't just rest in the fact that nothing's going well. We need to take heed to ourselves. We need to take heed to ourselves through the lens of Scripture. Here's David. Nothing's happened for nine months and twenty days, yet he has sinned. Notice verse 9 and the first part of verse 10 as well. There's much to be learned here. Joab comes, he gives the count. It's about 1,300,000 men, so over a million. I'm gonna come back to this, but you could say that the nation was about five to 10 million, depends how you wanna estimate it. So let's say 10 million. He gets the number, because he's just counting men there. What happens in verse 10? And David's heart condemned him after he had numbered the people. What's being expressed there? Well, it's the Spirit of God working in David's heart. His conscience has bothered him now. Maybe Gad came. Maybe he read Psalm 20 and he realized that he was boasting in himself and putting trust in his horses and chariots and whatnot. We don't know. It doesn't really matter. The point is this. The sin has been committed nine months ago. And David's conscience is totally fine. I think we should see that here. There's no reference to David's conscience until after all this has happened. Now, our conscience is oftentimes, right, it's not infallible. It needs to be conformed to scripture, of course. But Pinocchio, if you're familiar with Pinocchio, let your conscience be your guide. Listen, let the Bible be your guide. You can be going through your life and feel quite fine about it, Your conscience doesn't bother you. But the whole time David's wrong. We need to take heed to ourselves. This is just another example of why we need to to read scripture and why we need to ask for counsel and seek good advice. One of the things that's useful, a Christian discipline, is when you wake up in the morning and or whenever you have your devotion, you don't necessarily have to do it in the morning. You read and you pray. If you're like me, then you're good at praying for things that you need. Take time to pray in a form of prayer to reflect upon your previous day. Just say, Lord, search me. Know my heart. See if there is any wicked way in me this past 24-hour period. Did I please you with my thoughts? Did I please you with what I said? You may realize that something in your conscience suddenly comes alive. One of the ways that we as Christians can ignore our conscience is we can say something like this, I prayed about it. I prayed about it. Now I want you to pray about your decisions. But if that's an excuse for saying I'm not going to think about it anymore, because I prayed about it, I'm not going to read scripture about it anymore. what we're doing. We're just kind of suppressing our conscience. I don't know if David was doing that. But the point is this, take heed to yourself. Take heed to yourself. Conform your life to the Word of God and search the Word of God. We want to avoid these type of things and David was not doing this. Taking heed to yourself. But not just taking heed to yourself, taking heed to God. taking heed to God. The second part of verse 10, on through verse 13. God is serious about sin. He's a just. He's a just judge. He punishes his people. And he does so even after an admittance of sin. Now, perhaps you're familiar with this idea. A young child comes up to their parent It says, Dad, I lied. Or, Dad, I did this. Or whatnot. And perhaps there's situations as parents where we can not punish them. But the idea is that they're still guilty. They still did it. And they come with this sense of, well, I don't need to be punished at all, because I admitted to it. David, he says, I've sinned greatly. This is a good part of confession. He's owning his sin. He says it's sin. It's iniquity. He asks for forgiveness. But God doesn't say, okay, hey, we're good. No, he sends his prophet. His prophet comes, Gad. He gives him these three options. I'm not sure why we have these three options, but he gives these options to Gad. Notice there's a side comment. We learn something about preaching whenever we look at the prophets in the Old Testament. Really, the theology of preaching comes from the prophets, because we can learn about it in the New Testament as well. Notice how Gad thinks about himself. At the end of verse 13, he says, now consider and see what answer I should take back to him who sent me. God sees himself as a messenger from the Lord. He's on one hand serving David, but he knows he's ultimately and primarily serving the Lord. Paul says this about preachers. 2 Corinthians 5.20. He says, he's not speaking about himself as an apostle. He's speaking about the apostolic band, the evangelists with him. and ministers of that day. He says this, 2 Corinthians 5.20, Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Preachers are to say what God has said. They are to serve God in this way. This is their mentality. Now the point is this, is that God sends His prophet to David. Gives a word of judgment despite David's admittance. And this should wake us up a bit. This should make us think about God and His attributes and His holiness. Especially if we have sin in our life. Especially if you're thinking about just blowing off sin and not taking heed to yourself. God is serious. We're not talking about just judgment of the Moabites and the Hivites and the wicked. Those who never turn to Him. Of course this applies to that. We're talking about David, the man after God's own heart. Verse 15, why should we take he to God? I struggle with exactly how to say this, but I'll just put it to you this way. Look how many people died. This is not some small thing. I mentioned to you earlier that the nation was, let's say 10 million. Think about this for a moment. Our nation is 327 million people. And on 9-11, Okay, when the Muslim extremists flew planes into the Twin Towers, in that place alone, 2,753 people died. Now, I'm not trying to talk about it being a judgment from God or anything. I'm just trying to get you to think about, did our nation grieve over that? It grieved over that. That's terrible. 2,753 people died in a nation of 327 million. Here is this nation, the people of God, 10 million. 70,000 men die. Should we take God seriously? Is God serious about sin? God is very serious. God is not unjust here. God is not unjust. A couple of things to think about. I won't emphasize this in great detail. We looked at this in chapter 21. But you may be thinking to yourself, David sinned. Why? What about these 70,000? I mean, even David points this out in verse 17. Surely I have sinned and I have done wickedly. These sheep, what have they done? Let's just say that they're not part of that Israel that God's anger was aroused against in verse 1. If that's the case, then the explanation is clear. Let's just say that they were not. What did we learn about representation? Saul, 2 Samuel 21, he sinned and that guilt transferred to those he represented, his family. Now the law And you may be familiar with this, Deuteronomy 25, 16. It says, a person shall be put to death for his own sin. And that's true, and I believe that that's referring to private sins. And if I do something not representing my family, then God doesn't impute children. But there are times where representatives sin and that guilt and that punishment is imputed. The gospel hinges upon it. It's how God works. God's a covenantal God. Adam sinned. Yet Paul says in Romans 5.12 that all of you sinned because Adam represented you. And that's important for us to see because why would you be righteous? Does your faith in Christ make you righteous? No, Christ, he's righteous. And God in his providence, in his covenant system, gives you Christ's righteousness. So God's not unjust. There's another thing I wanna point out here. Maybe you have this. There's an idea that's floating out there that God, you have a right for God to grant you a long life and good health. Tragedy happens. And tragedies have happened in this congregation. Life's difficult. It's sad. We don't always understand it. But we must not look at this and be like, oh, God's unjust to these 70,000 men. Well, God has not promised us anything. We don't deserve anything but his justice without his mercy. That's not the way we should look at it. But it is a very heavy verse. It's a very heavy verse, 70,000 men. And I just simply want you to think about it. God's serious. I want you to think about Jonah. God was punishing Jonah. He was running from him. God punishes his people. He doesn't punish them in hell. You can't lose your forgiveness. It's free and it's final. But I want you to take heed unto your God, because He still punishes His people. He's zealous for His glory. When God's people live contrary to His law, He will correct them if He needs to. I was reading with the elders in a book, and I was reminded of 1 Corinthians 11, and it's a passage you're familiar with. Temporal judgments fall upon God's people, because they blasphemed, they desecrated the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Why does God do this? He says, For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. The idea is this, is that if we would take heed to ourselves and to God, and judge ourselves, and correct ourselves, and repent by His grace, then He won't judge us. But if we don't, He's zealous for His glory, His honor, His name by our sin is blasphemed among the nations. So He will judge us. He will punish us. Are you taking heed to God? Are you taking heed to God? I realize my time is passing quickly. I want to look at verse 16 and verse 25 and I want to encourage you. The fact of the matter is we can't avoid God's punishment because we're sinners, aren't we? And the question is how do we remove it? How do we have reconciliation? That is by Christ from those who repent. I want you to see Christ in this passage of scripture. There's a sacrifice, isn't there? There's a sacrifice, and it's a costly sacrifice. This whole discussion with the Rana is centered around the fact that David is going to pay for this. He's gonna pay for this. It's gonna cost something. I think immediately at 1 Peter 1.19, you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, for your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." These burnt sacrifices, these peace offerings here, this altar points us to Christ and his precious blood. I want you to look at verse 16. This is very helpful to me. It's very encouraging. I'm gonna read it again. And when the angel stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, The Lord relented from the destruction and said to the angel who was destroying the people, it is enough, now restrain your hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Arana the Jebusite. Why did the angel of the Lord say that's enough? Why did he yield? It was because of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's exactly why. Here's my point, is that God, just as now, He looks back to the cross. He forgives those who come to Him, who repent and call upon His name on account of Christ, looking back to the cross. Here He is looking forward to the cross. This threshing floor is where the temple will be built. It's that simple. It's Mount Moriah, actually. It's where Abraham was going to offer up Isaac. Second Chronicles, 3 verse 1, Now Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Aran and the Jebusite. God's people can carry their guilt. Do you carry guilt? talking about you as God's people. You know something about the death of Christ. And you've heard Mark 15 read to you. You understand that, but still people can carry guilt around. I didn't raise my kids like I should have raised my kids. I think of a classic example is from my background with soldiers who make a mistake in combat because they made a mistake someone dies. And they can't forgive themselves. Perhaps that's more complicated, but it's certainly involving with this The idea of how can I be forgiven? And it's Christ. That's what caused the Lord to stop his wrath, his anger, because of sin. It was the Lord Jesus Christ, his death, brought peace. 1 John 2, 2, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. We have an altar, and that altar is the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don't know the Lord Jesus, and you feel the weight of all of your sin and all of its guilt for the first time, come to Christ. Come to Christ. But you who know the Lord, and you believe in Jesus, and yet you're just down, you're depressed, you gotta go to Christ. The Lord really does forgive your sins because of Jesus. What did David do? No. The destruction relented because God saw the threshing floor. He looked at Christ. He looked forward to Christ. He is our altar. And I'll just mention, fourthly, what's the response to this? What's the response to this? I've mentioned it briefly, but it's to turn. It's to repent and to trust in Christ. And we'll just look at David, go through these verses a little bit. What is David doing? Well, he's repenting. I think there's an emphasis on repentance here. But repentance and faith always go together. Notice that he has confessed his sin, verse 10. He is generally sorry over his sin, verse 14. I am in great distress. I recall 2 Corinthians 7, verses 10 and 11, where Paul describes the genuine sorrow that's accompanied by repentance. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted. But the sorrow of the world produces death. There's two types of sorrows. You want the godly one. Verse 11. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner. What diligence is produced in you? What clearing of yourselves? What indignation? Okay, angry over sin. what clearing of yourselves, you're responding, you're changing your conduct, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication, and all these things you prove yourselves to be clear in this matter. Now David isn't exactly an addict to census. A census, right? We have drug addicts and we have alcoholics. We have people who are addicted to giving a census. But the idea is that David's returned from that. He's not gonna do that anymore. And he's trusting. He's trusting what God has given him. Gad comes to him and says, erect an altar, verse 18. So David, according to the word of God, Gad went up as the Lord commanded. He acts in faith. He's trusting in what God has provided for him. for forgiveness, for relief from God's anger. Verse 25, 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. In some sense, I can say to you that God's anger is removed by Christ. And in another sense I can say it's removed by faith in Christ. Because here's the thing, if you don't turn to Christ, if you don't change, and in the sense of conversion, turn from idols to the living God, in the sense of Christians forsaking sin and trusting in Christ, it's the same, then it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. As Christians, one of the ways we can not repent is we can do other good deeds, It's kind of like a way of atonement. Saul did this in 1 Samuel 17. He offered the Amalekites and all other things as a sacrifice, but God said no. Destroy it. We can do good things as if that's going to suffice. He really wants us to change our sin. We can be silent about it. We can be silent about it. We're not going to do it anymore. We're just not going to say anything about it. That's not repentance either. God calls all people to change their conduct and put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So tonight we see that God's wrath, his punishment is avoided by taking heed to ourselves and to God and it is removed by Christ from those who repent. Tonight I want you on one hand to think about whether you take God seriously. Whether you're taking heed to your life. But on the other hand, I want you to see the Lord Jesus Christ. Especially if you are weighed down with your own sin. God doesn't forgive you because of your repentance. He forgives you because of Christ. Go to Him. Trust in Him. And His wrath will be propitiated. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight in light of this difficult passage of Scripture, and we pray that you would give us understanding. We know that we do not save ourselves, and yet we know that we must respond to your Word. We must trust in your way of salvation, namely your Son. We thank you for your Son. We thank you for how we can be forgiven, and we can be at peace because of him, not because of us. We ask that you would give us the grace that David demonstrated to turn to you. We ask that you would keep us close to you, that we would listen to you, that we'd have soft hearts. Give us this grace. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.