How Confusion and Discipline Lead to Delight

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel 24. And as you do that, just to let you know, obviously we’ve been in Ezra in the morning. 2 Samuel 24 this evening. It’s about 400 years before Ezra and the rebuilding of the temple. In fact, it’s before the first temple was built. So why 2 Samuel? If you know anything about the Sunday evening services, these are supposed to be our favorite passages. And I’ll go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. This is not my favorite passage. I do have some others that I think more fondly of, but I do love the point that this makes to all the readers. Now, our launch team is in Acts. It’s a good church planting book to study and looking at the Holy Spirit, igniting a fresh movement of the church through faith in Jesus Christ, the promised one who was sent. His promises are true. In Acts, it’s clear what the Lord is doing. But what about those places in the Bible that cause us to scratch our heads? This passage in 2 Samuel is one of those. Where do we go when we’re confused with what we read in God’s word? Where do we go when we’re confused about what God is doing in our world? What about places where the church or the people of the church make bad decisions? What happens when the Lord disciplines his people? This evening, we’re going to see how confusion from God, and even discipline by God, in the passage leads to our ultimate delight. This story shows how we are to read and study the scriptures even when confused, how we are to see the Lord’s discipline as having a good ending.

So, in 2 Samuel chapter 24, we’re going to be looking at David, the great king of Israel in the Old Testament. He did a lot of good, but he’s not perfect. David was like us. How? Well, he made some bad decisions, but he’s still a good example. Why? He shows us in this passage, and he showed people at that time how believers should respond to God when they make bad decisions. How does God respond in these moments to those who love him and yet fail him? When his disciples disobey him? Oh, there’s consequences for disobedience to God, even for believers. But 2 Samuel also deals with the situation that is perplexing in the first part. It almost seems like God changes his mind. Is that possible? Well, let’s look at the passage. But first, let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your word is a light unto our path. And Lord, often when we don’t know what the next step should look like, we need to look, even then, at what your word says and to trust you with that next step. Lord, I pray that as we read your scripture tonight, we would be encouraged that you always have a plan, and it’s always good. Pray that you would reveal that to us in this time. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So, let’s look together at 2 Samuel. I am skipping just a few verses because it pretty much does what it says it’s going to do. So, I’m going 1 through 4, and then I’m going to read 10 through13 to begin our time. But I will actually come back. This is not due to Christ Covenant’s bulletin. This is due to me not giving them the full passage. But it’ll be 2 Samuel 24:1-4. Then we’ll shoot to verses 10 to the end of the chapter, but I will stop at 13 for now. It’s the word of the Lord. 2 Samuel 24, starting in verse 1:

“Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go number Israel and Judah.’ So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, ‘Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people that I may know the number of the people.’ But Joab said to the king, ‘May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?’ But the king’s word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel.”

And that’s what they do in the next few verses. So we go to verse 10:

“But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, oh Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.’ And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, ‘Go and say to David, “Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them that I may do it to you.”’ So Gad came to David and told him and said to him, ‘Shall three years of famine come to you in your land, or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.’”

We’ll come back to the chapter later, but isn’t that confusing? Is there more than meets the eye here? Because it seems like verse one says he incited David. And then we get to verse 10, and David confessed the sin of what the Lord, it seems, told him to do. The Lord disciplines David and the people for this. Again, sometimes God’s story seems confusing, but he’s bigger and his ways are better than we may first think in the moment. I want to show us how if we can hold on in our confusion and let it lead us to curiosity when we read God’s word and when we experience God’s world sometimes in a more difficult fashion, how we can see the story come through and for indeed – for the Lord to come through – to delight in the Lord.

Our confusion should lead to curiosity. Perhaps you say, “I don’t understand why God would do that.” And you’re tempted to doubt his goodness. But we must always say, “God is good.” So what’s going on here? A few key questions to stick out in these first few verses. Verse 1: God is angry with Israel through the text, but it doesn’t tell us why. The chapter before, all seems well in 2 Samuel, and so, nonetheless, all the scriptures can give us a hint of why the Lord might in fact be angry at Israel. If you read your Old Testament, you know Israel, God’s people, are always forgetting about God. Israel is constantly turning their own way. And God is responding to yet another time of disobedience. But we don’t know which one in the passage. It doesn’t tell us. Have you noticed I think the main issue that is curious is the second part of verse 1 where it says that God incited David to take a census. Another way to say it might be God led David to do this, but later God seems to discipline David for that very act. So what’s going on here? What do you think? Not asking you to answer out loud, but could sometimes we think, is God wrong here or just hard to understand? That’s two very different things. Wrong would say, “Ah this shows that God’s fickle, or the Bible’s confusing, and it’s not accurate so it must not be true.” Be careful. Give it time like a young child who immediately thinks that a parent’s unfair when he can’t play with a knife, so we sometimes second guess God when we don’t understand him. But if we look at this passage and say, “I don’t understand what God is doing, but I trust he knows what he is doing, and I’m going to keep looking. I’m going to keep being curious.” Then this puts us in a position to learn more about what God is doing and his ways. Again, the whole Bible is a conversation with God. God is saying to his people, “Trust me. I am much bigger than you think, and I see much further than you can. Have faith.”

That is the first view we must have when reading a difficult text. You may not like it for lack of answer, but the author’s intent is to show the reader that God is in control beyond the characters and what they can see. And it challenges us to trust that he is good. Yes, as we all know, God is, in fact, good all the time. And he’s good in this passage today, but how?

First, Israel has earned God’s disapproval by constant disobedience. But we know David did as well. He already received grace for the past adultery and murder. And David is still a sinner, but he is saying something here. You might be saying, “But pastor, God incites David. It seems he told him to do it.” Well, again, to be curious is to look a little deeper. And if you know anything – anyone who’s read the Bible through in a year has probably had this experience. You read 1 and 2 Samuel, then you read 1 and 2 Kings, then you read 1 and 2 Chronicles, and you think to yourself, “I just read that. It’s true. You did. A lot of times they repeat stories. Well, this exact story is found in 1 Chronicles chapter 21 with one change. I think it gives us a picture of what’s going on here. In 1 Chronicles chapter 21 verse 1, you will see that it says Satan is the one who incited David to do this census: “Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel.”

So which book is right? Both. We must see that Satan is under God’s supervision and is not allowed to do anything outside of God’s control. Think of Job. If you know the story, it’s another place where God proves the point where Satan is on a leash. He is not running rampant in this world. It’s an allowance that Satan receives. In the story of Job, Job questions who? He questions God. That’s the right source. That’s the right person. That’s the right being to ask what’s going on. He doesn’t go to Satan. He goes to God. And of course, God shows up for Job, and it ends in praise. Again, I think this is just how we ought to read the scriptures often. You may not understand what God is doing in your life or what he’s doing in a text, but do you understand that nothing is above God, and nothing can stop him from taking a bad situation and bringing ultimate good from it. Satan, as we all know, thought he was defeating God when he put Christ on the cross. And yet here we are, talking about him still on the Lord’s day. God is in control of life, death, and the evil one.

But here’s a bigger question. Do you trust him? Even though that might be a hard teaching, do you trust him even if you don’t understand him? I moved into my first real neighborhood of families about a decade ago. And I’m going to tell you, all the neighbors had green grass, and I knew I had to up my grass and my lawn game. And so I started going and asking people, “What do I need to do to get the weeds out of my yard, to get some green grass going?” And so I just immediately started throwing seed on it, doing some fertilizer, and it was looking pretty good. And then my neighbor came in, he and his family, and he just annihilated his yard. It’s like everybody in the whole neighborhood had green grass except for my neighbor. His was yellow. It was ruined. And I was so confused. I started to think my neighbor is a little woo. Until I realized that his profession is, in fact, lawn care. And what he was doing is he was killing all the weeds by putting out this type of killer. And then he put on the good soil after that. And guess what happened a year later? He had the greenest grass in the neighborhood. And I had yard envy. I didn’t see or understand what the owner saw. So I didn’t trust his process. So it is with us not seeing God’s process sometimes. We must be more curious in our confusion with what God is up to, and even when we read difficult texts, we must trust God has a better ending than we understand. Curiosity can lead to delight.

So I ask, are you experiencing something right now that makes no sense to you? Is God doing something that you can’t understand? Is work not going well, or are you out of work? Did you hear the doctor say something you never thought you would hear? Does your family seem distant? Does your spouse seem distant? Does your life just seem blah? Perhaps God is killing some weeds in your life to make room for something better. Even in hard moments, do you trust him? Do you trust he’s doing a work? Is he that good surgeon with the knife, helping you to cut out some things? Could God be using this time in your life to tell a bigger story than you can see, to grow your faith in him? I’ve had cancer. In 2017 I heard the words – I never thought it would happen. And when that happened, it was time to trust the Lord in my confusion. It was time to lean in and to see what he was up to. And of course, from that, to come out of that and to realize how much I depended on him more during that time, it was a sweet time with the Lord. I learned that even though I didn’t understand him, he’s still good. Confusion can lead to delight.

But I want to jump into this text and see that discipline is a part of this text. Discipline can lead us to delight as it leads David to delight. David made a bad decision. We may not see as the readers why the census was wrong unless we know all of scripture. And then we can go back to the book of Exodus. What happened there? Israel was about to have to fight for their new home. They didn’t have everything they needed, but they had the God who had everything they needed. And so what God told them to do was not take a census, in order to show that they were putting their trust in the Lord’s strength and not in their own. So some commentators, even, of this passage will say David’s sin was because he was proud of his accomplishments. The people of Israel had certainly grown under David’s reign. David had forgotten the real reason of his success was God’s blessing. Some commentators would say the point of this section is not the nature of the sin though, but on the consequence of the sin and the response of the sinner. This passage is about the consequence of the sin and the response of the sinner.

King David shows us how to receive the Lord’s discipline. Remember verses 10-13: David’s heart was hit. He was convicted. And then what did he do with that conviction? He didn’t hide it. He didn’t hope that it would just go away. David confessed, “I have sinned greatly.” He brings it before the Lord. He confesses his sin, and God shows David the consequence of his sin. This is an important part and an important point. David and the Israelites must suffer consequences of their sin, of their disobedience. Like a father or mother disciplines their children, they are giving consequences for disobedience for the good of their child. While God loves us, he also develops and grows us more into his likeness by sometimes bringing correction. So he does it in this passage. Again, are we trying to avoid consequences, someone in here? Are we trying to hide from a bad decision that we made? Are we hoping that it will go away? There are consequences, and God desires more for us than to live in fear of what we’ve done – to look over our shoulder or to simply ignore our sin and to take it lightly. There are consequences. One of my favorite passages or verses in the Bible – maybe I should have preached on it – was Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemn for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But there are consequences for our disobedience.

God’s use of correction here is interesting. Did you notice it? He gives David a choice on which consequence he will choose in verses 12 and 13 of our passage. The choice spans from three years of famine to three days of pestilence. It’s a no-brainer. If we’re looking for comfort, it’s a no-brainer what David would desire. Three days would be the choice, right? Again, God will discipline because he loves him. What would you choose? Three years or three days? What does it look like to trust God with how he disciplines us? Do we sometimes want to barter with what the discipline is going to look like? I love how David says it here. Then David said to Gad – look at verse 14 with me. Here’s David’s answer to the discipline that the Lord offers. Three years or three days. What does David say? He said to Gad, “I’m in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” There were three options here, but David chose to trust God’s discipline. Three years or three days was not the issue for David. His answer shows he wanted God to see that he was sorry and that he trusted him to do what is best. David trusted God to do what was just. He essentially said, “God knows better than me.” Sin is because we don’t trust him. So David says here in the text, I’m coming back to you and I’m trusting you even with the consequences. I’m done trying to fix this on my own. I want you to have it, Lord.

David trusted God to be gentle and gracious, and he was right. Look at verses 15 and 16. Reading on:

“So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, ‘It is enough. Now stay your hand.’ And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”

We see David’s submission to God, and it’s met with mercy. God chooses the lesser of the three options. He chooses three days of discipline. But look at verse 16. Look at what happens here. It says he restrains the angel who was going to do more damage according to what was God’s just right. But God says whoa, and the angel stops his destruction. Do you see the whisper of the underlying message again? God is in control. He is the ruler from start to finish, and he is merciful. Do we see it that way, or do we say this is not much mercy or grace? Often our culture believes in a lot of something called enablement, not grace or mercy. Mercy is not being punished for all that we deserve. But enablement is getting permission to do whatever you want without any consequences. Mercy is not free. It costs someone their right to justice. Someone has to give up their right to justice and decide to give mercy instead. Think of a husband who loses a wife. It’s not just “I forgive you” for mercy. But in addition, mercy, for that to be there, there’s an acquittal of what that murderer had done. It’s a staying of a hand for all that that murderer deserves. And God has every right. He has every right to give David and all of Israel their full punishment, but he stays his hand. He offers a staying of the hand. He offers a sinner a chance to be right again.

The last thing to see from this last chapter of 2 Samuel is that to be right with God, we need a sacrifice. There’s a final sacrifice we’re going to see, and it leads to a great delight. This brings us to the climax of the story in 2 Samuel 24. It’s delightful. Pay attention to what happens here. When I first saw this, I was like, “What?” Let’s read verses 17-25 of 2 Samuel 24:

“Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said, ‘Behold, I have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father’s house.’ And Gad came that day to David and said to him, ‘Go up, raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.’ So David went up at Gad’s word as the Lord commanded. And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. And Araunah said, ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’ David said, ‘To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be averted from the people. Then Araunah said to David, ‘Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yolks of the oxen for the wood. All this, oh king, Araunah gives to the king.’ And Araunah said to the king, ‘May the Lord your God accept you.’ But the king said to Araunah, ‘No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that 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 responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.”

David does a few things in these verses that are worthy to note. First, in verse 17, David seeks to intercede for Israel being punished. Again, the bigger picture according to verse 1 is that God was angry at Israel. But David confesses his sin as well, and he wants to take their place. As the king, he is seeking to take the place of his people and take the punishment that they were getting by the Lord’s hand. David did not just ask God to stop. He knew that someone had to pay for God’s people’s disobedience. He requested to take the wrath pointed towards the Israelites. You know where this is going. There’s a better king who took all God’s wrath for us who believe.

In verse 19, it says that David did as the Lord commanded. This phrase “as the Lord commanded” is often found in the first five books of the Bible. This phrase is called the covenant phrase because it showed the people doing as the Lord commanded and were keeping his commands. This phrase was often associated with worship of God and proper sacrifice. These were roles of the priests of Israel. But David is a king, so stay with me. What is the author trying to point out here? There seems to be a connection with the priest in the early days of Israel and with David. Again, David points to someone else who is also a king, one who rules and a priest who brings sacrifice for the people to God. In the New Testament, God has a bigger plan here. Where did David go? Where did God tell David to go in verse 18? He tells him to go to the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. This is where the Lord does his thing. This is the place where God’s wrath was stayed in our passage, and it is important. We miss stuff like this when we’re confused and not curious enough to look more into the Bible. The prophet Gad tells David to go to a specific place and build an altar to make a sacrifice to the Lord – the same place the angel’s destruction was stayed. That’s where he tells him to go back and to make this offering. What is this place? This place is special. Church, God is not just winging it in this story. He is in complete control, and he has a message to share with us. This place, this threshing floor of Araunah, again where God’s wrath was averted becomes the place where the temple of God is erected by Solomon. This temple is where Jews would continually offer sacrifices in Israel, that people might be able to be put back in right relationship with God while they wait for an ultimate sacrifice, a final sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

The point of the Old Testament sacrifices is to point to the New Testament ultimate sacrifice. In the Old Testament, continual sacrifices of animals was the price of Israel’s disobedience. To keep good relationship with God, they had to offer sacrifice. Sacrifice had to be made for their sin. It was not free. Mercy was not free. They were pointing to a better sacrifice. But there’s the promise for Christians. Someone else has paid the price for you to be forgiven and be in right relationship with God. To those of us who are willing to confess that they have rejected the God who made them and want to trust him, there is good news. You can experience God’s grace. But we must repent, and we must offer appropriate sacrifice. And our sacrifice is not an animal like David and the believers in the Old Testament. But our sacrifice is found in Hebrews chapter 10 that we read earlier where it says, “And by that will we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once and for all.” We get the picture of the temple of Solomon. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties. Again and again, he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

Church, God’s wrath for us in the New Testament is stayed at the cross of Jesus Christ. And King David and 2 Samuel point to this ultimate king and priest and sacrifice. The better king has come to us. This is a picture of a priest that truly did all that the Lord commanded his entire life as the great high priest. He didn’t offer God an animal to stop his wrath for a day like David. But Christ offered his perfect obedient life to stop God’s wrath forever for those who believe in him. Jesus, when on earth, said that the temple of animal sacrifice would fall, and he would be a new temple of God. He would build it – the church. David interceded for Israel. Jesus Christ intercedes for all who have been disobedient but seek forgiveness. In verse 25, God’s just punishment is averted for a day with David here. But Christ – by him, God’s wrath isn’t averted for a day, but forever. Christ doesn’t stop there. God appoints him to not only be the proper sacrifice, because he is not dead. Jesus Christ resurrected to show he is king of the world, and he is in control, and God is good even when we don’t understand him. We can trust he’s telling a bigger story than we can see. Our confusion can lead to delight if he disciplines us. It can lead us to delight in a greater picture. One day, we will see what we can’t in times that God is doing things we don’t understand. But Christians, are you curious when you’re confused by God’s ways? Do you see your discipline as a new way to delight in God’s forgiveness? Do you need to seek forgiveness? God is gracious when he disciplines us. Do you need to see the splendor of the better king and priest who took the eternal punishment that you and I deserve – the hand was stayed by Jesus Christ. If we can trust God in our confusion and in our discipline, we can delight in him fully.

So, I want to close with a story of two young men who professed that they trusted God, but their faith was challenged, and they didn’t understand him. For each of them, their circumstances caused them to think deeper about God and their commitment to him and what God was up to. One of the professing young men had some success as a speaker for Christ. In fact, he was a partner to one of the most well-known Christians of our time and toured around declaring his faith in Jesus Christ. He loved God and his country, but his country did not have the same beliefs. His country was seemingly more liberal than he was accustomed to and open to all kinds of faiths, and he started to be influenced by its politics more than his God. And he went to a liberal religious school and, again, challenged his thoughts, and in the end a man named Charles Templeton declared that he just wasn’t sure there was a God. Who is this? He first toured with Billy Graham on some of his first crusades and was even considered by some to be a better speaker. He was excited about Christ until he noticed some things he didn’t understand. He didn’t believe God was good. He didn’t trust God. He questioned God’s character and didn’t seek to see him rightly.

But there’s this other professing Christian who had trials of his own. He, too, was a Christian leader in his earlier days. In fact, he was a pastor. But he had to give up the pastorate because he had an illness that would not allow him to fulfill the many duties that were necessary for a pastor. He believed God was in control even when he didn’t understand it. Even when an illness disqualified him from public ministry. Like the charge I’ve given this evening, this man trusted in God’s grace even when he didn’t understand why God had did that to him. For the next 36 years of his life, this follower of Jesus Christ put his thoughts down in writing and composed many hymns that our churches enjoy today. In fact, this last hymn was written by him. See how this man trusted God, even with an illness that he could not shake, and thus was able and not able to enjoy much of what a normal person enjoys in life. But listen to this man who wrote a line in When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. This Christian man named Isaac Watts – he says, “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

God calls us to trust him in our confusion. Like David in this passage, if you’re feeling guilty of something you’ve done, repent and put your life in the hands of a good God. Let him discipline you as a loving father. God calls us to accept a sacrifice, not an animal, but his very son Jesus Christ, who was sacrificed so that we could have right relationship with him. Do you delight in this merciful God? Do you believe you can trust him as your king, your guide, your lord, no matter what? If so, sing this last song with us. But first, let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your word that constantly reminds us that you have a plan that is bigger than us and bigger than our understanding. And there’s many passages in your word that tell us to rely on you and trust in you and lean not on our own understanding, to know that your ways are not our ways and your thoughts, not our thoughts. Jesus, even you tell us that we are to follow you because you are the way, the truth, and the life. And that if we try to find any other way to God, that will not do, because no one comes to the Father except through you, and except through the sacrifice that you offered when God’s wrath was stayed at the cross. Thank you for how we can survey that wondrous cross and say we’ll give up everything for it because you did not stay dead, but you resurrected from the dead. And we worship you now as the living God until you return. Do so now. If not, let us sing this song as we believe it. In Christ’s name. Amen.