The Forgotten Consequences of Sin. (1 Chronicles 21:1 - 1-22:)

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Episode Notes: The Forgotten Consequences of Sin. (1 Chronicles 21:1 - 1-22:)

Welcome to The Bible Journey Daily Podcast — where every day we take one small step onwards and deeper into God’s Word. I’m your host, Jeremy McCandless, inviting you to open the bible, and let truth shape your day.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Bible Journey Daily Podcast, where every day we take one small step onwards and deeper into God's Word. I'm your host, Jeremy McCandless, inviting you to open the Bible and let the truth shape your day. If you're longing for encouragement and a simple rhythm of daily Bible study and engagement, you're in the right place. Subscribe and join thousands who've discovered that time spent in God's Word every day can transform their lives. So let's begin today's next step on our journey through the whole Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. Now we know that sin carries consequences. That's not a new idea, but what often escapes our attention is that some consequences remain hidden until the moment they confront us. We can ignore them, rationalise them, or simply fail to anticipate the consequences of them, but eventually they arrive. And when they do they reveal something about the nature of sin and the seriousness with which God responds to it. Now, if you were to ask what consequences are we talking about, Scripture in fact today gives us a vivid example tucked away in today's chapter, 1 Chronicles chapter 21. This is a chapter that records one of the most sobering moments in David's life. It is here that David learns painfully that sin is never isolated, it always has a source, and it always has a ripple effect. That's why we're looking at the forgotten consequences of sin. Welcome to today's episode of the Bible Journey Daily Podcast. Okay, today's chapter opens up with well a striking, maybe almost a confusing statement. It says, Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. Now immediately I'm sure that raises a question in your mind, a spiritual question. What does it mean when it says Satan incited David? Now the Hebrew term for Satan here can simply mean an evil adversary. But this is the first time the word appears in Scripture without the definitive article added. Not the Satan, not a Satan, but some scholars are have argued that the term may refer to a hostile nation. God is allowing to trouble David with Satan sort of working behind the scenes in that temptation. But most, as indeed I do, hold to the more familiar interpretation that Satan himself influenced David here, and God permitted it, much like the dynamic we see in the book of Job. Now in Job's case, Satan acted, God allowed it, and Job suffered. As Augustine wrote on this, the devil is still God's devil, in that he is sometimes permitted to act, but never permitted to triumph. I think that's helpful. In other words, Satan may instigate, but he never operates outside the sovereignty of God. But there's a third layer going on here we can't ignore. David himself made a free will choice. Thomas Aquinas, writing on this passage, put it this way: the devil may pursue, but he cannot compel. So the responsibility in this passage is sort of revealed and moves along three levels all at once. God permitted the temptation, that's all of God's part was in it. Satan instigated that temptation, but it was David who ultimately embraced the temptation and acted on it. And verse 2 shows us David's decision and his response and action. It says he instructs Job and the military commanders. So David says to them, Go and count the Israelites from Beers, Sheba to Dan, then report back to me so that I may know how many there are. That's first T. Now the term from Dan to Bersheba was simply the ancient way of saying the entire nation. From the northern border to the southern edge. David wanted a full military census here. Every man counted who is even capable of drawing a sword. Now Joab, who's not particularly noted for his spiritual sensitivity, suddenly, surprisingly, becomes the voice of caution here. It says, Joab replied, May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over. My lord the king, are they not all my lord's subject? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel? The king's word, however, overruled Job, so Joab left, went out throughout Israel, and then came back to Jerusalem. So Joab understood something here that David was choosing to ignore. The census wasn't really about stewardship, it was about trust. David was measuring his strength instead of simply relying on God. As Matthew Henry in his famous commentary noted, the sin was not in the numbering, but in the pride that prompted it. But David overrules Joab, so Joab obeys reluctantly, because that is what submission and authority in the real world properly looks like. He's voiced his concern, but when the one in authority, in this case the king, makes his decision, he carries it out. And verse five onwards records for us the results. It says, Joab reported the number of the fighting men to David in all Israel. There were one million one hundred thousand who could handle a sword, including four hundred and seventy thousand in Judah. But Joab did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, because the king's command was repulsive to him. The command was also evil in the sight of God, so God punished Israel. So Israel here has over one million fighting men. Judah has about just under half a million, but Joab interestingly refused to count Levi and Benjamin. You see, Levi he knew was exempt from military service, and perhaps the census was interrupted, and he probably he may have excluded them for that, or perhaps the census was interrupted before Benjamin could even be included. Scripture doesn't actually give the detail or say the reason, but what it does say is that Joab found the king's command, well, depending on your current translation, evil in the sight of the Lord or abhorrent as some others say. The deeper issue is that the census should never have been conducted at all. David's motivation for doing it was wrong, and he was leaning on numbers, not on God. And verse 7 makes God's response unmistakable. It said God was displeased with this thing, and he struck Israel. So David here intended to evaluate his military strength, and God's displeasure came because David was shifting his confidence from divine protection, what he'd previously relied on, to his human capability. And in verse 8, David finally admits it and recognizes and says, I've sinned greatly. Now these opening verses reveal the origin of sin and how the consequences are about to unfold. And that's why verse 8 says, Then David said to God, I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now I will beg you to take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a foolish thing. So you can probably sense here the response. David's response in verse 8 marks the turning point of the narrative. He says to God, I have greatly sinned now. Pray take away the guilt of your servant. He recognises he's active acted foolishly. He recognises also that the census was more than merely a lapse of judgment, it is a sin, and at last he confesses it plainly. Now what we begin to see now are the consequences of that sin, and the first consequence falls on David himself. His confession reveals the weight of the guilt pressing on him. As John Calvin observed in his famous commentary on this passage, nothing is more characteristic of repentance than a deep sense of one's own guilt. David feels that weight of guilt immediately. Verse 9 and 10 continue. I'm giving you three options, choose one of them for me to carry out against you. Now Gad is identified here and called a seer. That's just an older term for a prophet. The one who receives a divine revelation through either a vision or a dream. And prophets, and this prophet saw what God revealed. Whether that came by night or in walking vision, we don't know, or in waking vision, we don't know. But then it's communicated, that revelation is communicated to the king, or on some other occasions we see to the people. And God here speaks to God, the seer, the prophet, and God carries that message to Jav and tells him to choose one of three options. So the text continues, and now it lays out the options for us in verses eleven and twelve. So God went to David and said to him, This is what the Lord says. Take your choice. Three years of famine, three months of being swept away before your enemies, with their swords overtaking you, or three days of the sword of the Lord, days of plague in the land, with the angel of the Lord ravaging every part of Israel. Now then decide how I should answer the one who sent me. So three years of famine, or three months of defeat at the hands of the enemy, or three days of the sword of the Lord. In other words, a plague throughout Israel, accompanied by the angel of the Lord, destroying across the entire land. God then says, Now consider what answer I should take back to him who sent me. And of course the one who sent him was God itself. Now interestingly, this is the only place in all of Scripture, in all of the Bible, where God offers a human being a choice of punishment, so to speak. That's got to be an arresting moment, a sobering moment. And David, we see his response in verse 13. It says, He says to God, I am in deep distress, I am in deep distress, let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is very great. Do not let me fall into human hands. So David essentially says, I can't choose any of these, let God choose. And that's the level of wisdom there, because he also says, Let God choose because his mercy is greater than anything a man can inflict. Now Augustine once wrote, Better to fall into the hands of God, for he only wounds to heal. And I think that's what's going on here. David knows that even in judgment, God will always be merciful. So the Lord chooses. And verse 14 it says, So the Lord sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel died. Now notice something really important and unusual going on here. Verse 1, the opening of the chapter told us that Satan rose up against Israel. Israel was not innocent of in this matter. That has now been disclosed. David's sin was the catalyst, but Israel themselves shared in the guilt. Therefore they shared in the consequences. One of the frightening truths of Scripture is that sin rarely affects only the sinner. In this case David's pride cost him seventy thousand of his own men. Verse fifteen continues, and then God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem, but as the angel was doing so, the Lord saw it and relented concerning the disaster, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, enough, withdraw your hand. The angel of the Lord was standing at the threshing floor of Aruna the Jebusite. So God sees the devastation, and like David rightly recognized, very soon he reaches a point where he says enough. He stops the angel destroying Jerusalem. Now to us the severity of the judgment may seem quite overwhelming, but Scripture consistently teaches that God disciplines his people, but when he does, he ultimately does it for their good. Hebrews 12, verse 6 in the New Testament reminds us for whom the Lord loves, he chastens. Now David's sin here was rooted in pride. We've seen that. The very sin that characterizes Satan himself. David here was trusting in numbers, in military strength, in his own sense of pride and security rather than trusting in the arm of the Lord. And divine justice takes the course to make those numbers that he was so relying on just a bit fewer to make the point. God removed some of the very thing that David was tempted to boast about. Then verse sixteen paints a very dramatic picture. David, it says, looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem, and then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell face downwards. So David and the elders prostrate themselves on their faces, and they're dressed, clothed in sackcloth, the garments of mourning and repentance, and David is then seen to cry out in the next verse, Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I the shepherd have sinned and done wrong. These are but my sheep. What have they done? Lord my God, let your hand fall on me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people. So David pleads for mercy here. He acknowledges his personal guilt and asks for the punishment to fall on him rather than the people. Now, Matthew Henry's commentary on this passage is recognized as one of the most foundational, and it offers four insightful observations about David's response, and I'd like to tell you and quote them for you now. First, it said David confessed his sin earnestly. In other words, he admitted he had sinned greatly and foolishly and he begged God to pardon him. Secondly, David is seen here in this to accept the punishment. He said, Let your hand be on me and my father's house. He submitted to the rod of discipline, so to speak, and acknowledged his guilt. Thirdly, Henry says David casts himself upon God's mercy. He doesn't accuse God in any way or entertain wrong or hard, hardened heart towards him, or hot difficult thoughts towards him. He simply casts himself in his mercy. And fourthly and finally, David, in responding this way, shows a real tender concern for the people. It broke his heart to see them suffer for what was ultimately his transgression, his sin, and he calls them sheep, my sheep, emphasizing their innocence. So the consequences of David's sin fell both on David and Israel, but when it came to forgiveness, David pleaded for mercy. And verse 18 tells us, Then the angel of the Lord ordered God to tell David to go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Aruna the Jebusite. So God responds here and simply instructs David to build an altar at the very site where the judgment had been brought to an end. And he is to offer the sacrifices required by the Mosaic Law. Now this location, Aruna, Ornan's threshing floor, would later become the site of the temple, the place where judgment was seen to stop, would become the place where atonement would be made for generations. And verse 19 says, So David went up in obedience to the word that God had spoken in the name of the Lord. While Aruna was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angels, his four sons were with him, and hid themselves, and when David arrives, Aruna or Urna, depending on your translation, bows down before him. And David says, Grant me the place of this fleshing for, that I may build an altar to the Lord. Give it to me at full price, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people. And Ornan responds to this request genuously. He says to David, Take it, let my lord the king do whatever he pleases. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all of this. But interestingly, David refuses here, and verse twenty four and twenty five record his famous words of response. But the king replied, No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing. So David paid six hundred shekels of gold for the site. So David buys the site at full price, six hundred shekels of gold. He will not offer God a sacrifice that costs him nothing. That's the principle here. He knows that. He knows where there is no personal cost, there is no sacrifice, and thereby can be no worship. So David obeys the Lord's instructions and he purchases the site, and it is a substantial purchase fitting for a site that would become central to Israel's worship. Now, 2 Samuel 24, chapter 24, also records these events, but interestingly, some note it records a slightly different figure. 50 seconds of silver. So the two amounts do differ and significantly. But the explanation, many Bible experts say, is really quite silver is really quite straightforward. The silver covered the cost of the fleshing floor and the oxen while the gull purchased the entire property, a much larger parcel of land. So David bought not only the immediate spot where the angel halted judgment, but also the surrounding acreage that would later become the whole temple complex. And then verse 26 says David did build an altar to the Lord there and sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowshipped offerings. He called on the Lord, but the Lord answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of the burnt offering. So God responds with fire, which that's not a fire of judgment, it's a sign of divine acceptance. This echoes, of course, that earlier moment in Israel's history where fire fell on an altar in Leviticus 9, and where the priesthood were inaugurated. And those events in 1 Kings 18, where Elijah confronted those prophets of Baal and called down fire on heaven. So it's God's unmistakable way of saying, I accept this sacrifice, for it is the Lord himself who burns it up. Then verse 27 adds, Then the Lord spoke to the angel and put his sword back into its sheath, and the judgment ceased. It was too late to save the seventy thousand who had already died, but David's intercession here, let me not let's not be mistaken, it was that that spared Jerusalem here. The sword of judgment is seethed only when David's atonement is made. David's offering directly brings mercy upon the people. And then the chapter closes and says, At that time when David saw the Lord had answered him in the threshing floor of Aruna the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. The temple of the Lord, which God had made in the wilderness and the altar of burnt offerings, were at that time on the high place of Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the Lord on that day. So verse 28 to 30 explains how David recognizes the divine response as a sign that the fleshing floor was now accepted as a place of special significance. The Mosaic Tabernacle and the bronze altar, remember, was still located back at Gibeon, but David no longer went there. He worshipped now at Ornan's threshing floor instead. And the chronicler wants us to see that David understood through these events that God had chosen this location as the new centre of worship. And this is significant. And the chapter ends at this point in verse 30, but the story. Continues the narrative continues immediately into the next verse, the first verse of 1 Chronicles chapter 22, verse 1, in which David declares, This is the house of the Lord, and this is the altar of burnt offerings for Israel. So David sort of underlines the situation here. He solemnly announces that this is the place, this is the site, the very place where judgment stops, and it is the location God has now chosen for his house to be built. And later Solomon will indeed build the temple on the same piece of land. 2 Chronicles chapter 3, verse 1 will identify it for us as Mount Moriah, where Abraham had also offered Isaac centuries earlier. This is the place where Abraham demonstrated faith, and it's the same place where David experienced mercy here, and it will be the same place where Solomon will build the temple, the place that will become the spiritual heart of Israel and the place of the dwelling place of God. Now many scholars actually believe that the ridge of Moriah extends to the area where Jesus was indeed crucified, meaning there's a sort of geography of sacrifice at play here, and it runs like a thread throughout not just the redemptive history but the geographical location. But that closes the narrative, but that doesn't close the lessons we can draw from it. Now at the beginning of this episode today, we said that some consequences of sin are often ignored by people, and this passage definitely highlights two of them. Two like that. First, the fact that sin affects others. David committed the sin, but Israel suffered seventy thousand men to die. Now we often are inclined to imagine that our sin is private, it's sort of contained within us, it's personal. However, the Bible repeatedly shows us that sin always radiates outwards. It touches our families, our communities, and sometimes even entire nations. Sin is not only a personal blemish, friends, it can be, it is in fact a public contagion. David's sin illustrates that truth vividly for us here. And the second thing I think it highlights, and the more surprising thing, is that God sometimes uses sin or allows sin to still accomplish his purchases. Now that doesn't mean he approves of sin in any way, but he does overrule it. He can take it, he can redeem it, and he can bend it towards his sovereign plan. Now it's still sin, but he can allow it through his providence to be directed towards still achieving his sovereign plan. Now in this case, David's sin led him to the very spot God had chosen for the temple, and his confessions and his obedience there resulted in the identification of the future site of Israel's worship, the place where sacrifices would be offered, where the ark would eventually find rest, and where God would ultimately meet with his people, and identify the place through which David's desire to build that temple could take place. Now, one scholar I read summarizes all of chapters 17 through 21 by noting that this is actually the recorded fulfillment of the promises made to God in the Davidic covenant at the opening of this passage of chapters, chapter 17 through to now. God promised victory and influence and a secure dwelling place for Israel in that Davidic covenant, and these chapters show us those promises unfolding. The chronicler wrote all of this simply to encourage the post-exile community to rebuild the temple. And this story would have, of course, strengthened their confidence that it was the right thing to do. And if we see that God chose the site, and if they could see that God chose the site through David's repentance, then surely he intended his people to rebuild it, and in fact to get on and rebuild it. So chapter 21 therefore explains why the temple was built and where it was built, and the fact that it was not chosen by human preference, not by political convenience or even architectural plans or strategizing, it was chosen by divine command at the place where God's judgment was stopped, his mercy was able to descend, and the sacrifice that was offered him was accepted. So what do we do with all of this today? How can we live it out here in the twenty first century wherever you happen to be living at the moment? Well, perhaps the simplest application in this is the encouragement, the warning even, to deal with sin and deal with it quickly. Confess it, forsake it, do not allow it to spread to others and damage others. Better yet, stay close to the Lord so that your life can become a channel of blessing rather than a source of harm to yourself, your family, or your communities. As Charles Spurgeon again said, the best repentance is always a continual repentance. So friends, our call out of this, I think, is simply to walk in fellowship with God, to stay obedient to Him, to confess our sin immediately that it arises within it, and then thereby by doing that you can avoid the discipline that comes from that wandering off the straight way, and that you indeed can avoid the consequences, and that those you love or you're called into service with can also experience that blessing as well. Thanks for being with me today. That's it for today, but in our next episode tomorrow, we're going to follow the story directly into 1 Chronicles chapter 22, and we're going to pick up where we left off at verses 2, and I think we'll go through to verse 19 tomorrow, which is where we see David begin preparing for the construction of the temple. We'll see how he gathers the material, how he instructs Solomon's, and indeed he lays the foundation not of stone, but a foundation is laid of spiritual responsibility. So if chapter 21 we've looked at today shows us the consequences of sin, chapter 20 shows us the calling upon our life that God makes following that forgiveness offered and received. So join me next time as we explore how God turns David's repentance into a legacy that shapes the future of Israel's worship and how our own repentance before the Lord can drive us further into his plan and purposes in our life also. Thanks for joining me today. Bye bye, for now.