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2 Samuel
Chapter Twenty-four
2 Samuel 24
Chapter Contents
David numbers the people. (1-9) He chooses the
pestilence. (10-15) The staying the pestilence. (16,17) David's sacrifice, The
plague removed. (18-25)
Commentary on 2 Samuel 24:1-9
(Read 2 Samuel 24:1-9)
For the people's sin David was left to act wrong, and in
his chastisement they received punishment. This example throws light upon God's
government of the world, and furnishes a useful lesson. The pride of David's
heart, was his sin in numbering of the people. He thought thereby to appear the
more formidable, trusting in an arm of flesh more than he should have done, and
though he had written so much of trusting in God only. God judges not of sin as
we do. What appears to us harmless, or, at least, but a small offence, may be a
great sin in the eye of God, who discerns the thoughts and intents of the
heart. Even ungodly men can discern evil tempers and wrong conduct in
believers, of which they themselves often remain unconscious. But God seldom
allows those whom he loves the pleasures they sinfully covet.
Commentary on 2 Samuel 24:10-15
(Read 2 Samuel 24:10-15)
It is well, when a man has sinned, if he has a heart
within to smite him for it. If we confess our sins, we may pray in faith that
God would forgive them, and take away, by pardoning mercy, that sin which we
cast away by sincere repentance. What we make the matter of our pride, it is
just in God to take from us, or make bitter to us, and make it our punishment. This
must be such a punishment as the people have a large share in, for though it
was David's sin that opened the sluice, the sins of the people all contributed
to the flood. In this difficulty, David chose a judgment which came immediately
from God, whose mercies he knew to be very great, rather than from men, who
would have triumphed in the miseries of Israel, and have been thereby hardened
in their idolatry. He chose the pestilence; he and his family would be as much
exposed to it as the poorest Israelite; and he would continue for a shorter
time under the Divine rebuke, however severe it was. The rapid destruction by
the pestilence shows how easily God can bring down the proudest sinners, and
how much we owe daily to the Divine patience.
Commentary on 2 Samuel 24:16,17
(Read 2 Samuel 24:16,17)
Perhaps there was more wickedness, especially more pride,
and that was the sin now chastised, in Jerusalem than elsewhere, therefore the
hand of the destroyer is stretched out upon that city; but the Lord repented
him of the evil, changed not his mind, but his way. In the very place where
Abraham was stayed from slaying his son, this angel, by a like countermand, was
stayed from destroying Jerusalem. It is for the sake of the great Sacrifice,
that our forfeited lives are preserved from the destroying angel. And in David
is the spirit of a true shepherd of the people, offering himself as a sacrifice
to God, for the salvation of his subjects.
Commentary on 2 Samuel 24:18-25
(Read 2 Samuel 24:18-25)
God's encouraging us to offer to him spiritual
sacrifices, is an evidence of his reconciling us to himself. David purchased
the ground to build the altar. God hates robbery for burnt-offering. Those know
not what religion is, who chiefly care to make it cheap and easy to themselves,
and who are best pleased with that which costs them least pains or money. For
what have we our substance, but to honour God with it; and how can it be better
bestowed? See the building of the altar, and the offering proper sacrifices
upon it. Burnt-offerings to the glory of God's justice; peace-offerings to the
glory of his mercy. Christ is our Altar, our Sacrifice; in him alone we may
expect to escape his wrath, and to find favour with God. Death is destroying
all around, in so many forms, and so suddenly, that it is madness not to expect
and prepare for the close of life.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 2 Samuel》
24 Chapter 24
Verses 1-25
Go, number Israel and Judah.
David numbering the people
I. The sin
committed by David. It is possible that David dwelt with satisfaction upon the
thought of his ample resources and numerous armies, and calculated that he was
possessed of a power to repel aggression, and attempt fresh conquests. He may
have forgotten that God alone, who had made him great, could preserve to him
his greatness, and thence he may have longed to reckon up his forces, as though
he could thence learn his security, or compute the extension of his kingdom.
And let no man think that, because he occupies a private station, he cannot sin
after the exact mariner in which David sinned, who filled the throne of a
flourishing empire. The very same offence may be committed in any rank of life,
and is probably chargeable, in a degree, on most in this assembly. What! to
take one or two instances--is not the proud man he who delights to count up his
monies, and catalogue to himself his cargoes, and his stock, and his deposits,
and his speculations--is he not doing precisely what David did when taking the
stun of his forces?--ay, is it not with the very same feeling that he prepares
the inventory; the feeling that his wealth is his security against disaster;
that the having largo possessions will comparatively place him and his family
beyond the reach of trouble? The wish to be independent of Gad is natural to us
in our fallen condition. This rigidly virtuous man may be all the while pluming
himself on his excellence, and employing the captain of his host in summing up
the number of his righteous qualities and actions, that he may certify his
power for winning immortality. There may be freedom from gross vices, with a
growing strength of pride which puts more contempt on the crown of the Redeemer
than an open violation of every moral precept.
II. The punishment
incurred. No doubt there is something strange, which it is hard to reconcile
with our received notions of justice, in the declared fact that sins are often
visited on others than the perpetrators. Who will think that David escaped with
impunity because the pestilence smote down his subjects and touched not
himself? It is evident from his passionate imprecation--“Let thine hand, I pray
thee, be against me and my father’s house”--it is evident that the blow would
have fallen more lightly had it fallen on himself and not on his subjects. In
what manner should he be visited for his sin? So visited that the penalty may
best indicate the offence it resists. Under what shape must vengeance come that
it may touch him most closely, and most clearly prove by what it is provoked?
You will admit at once that, forasmuch as it was the thought of having many
subjects by which David had been puffed up, the most suitable punishment was
the destruction of thousands of those subjects; for this took away the source
of exultation, and stripped the boastful king of the strength on which he
vain-gloriously rested. Certainly this was adapting the penalty to the fault;
for not only was David punished, but punished by an act of retributive justice,
from which himself and others might learn what it was which had displeased the
Almighty. But, perhaps you will say that it is not enough to show that the king
was punished through the death of his subjects; you will say that this does not
touch the point of the innocent being made to suffer for the guilty. We allow
this; but it is of great importance to establish that David himself was not
left unpunished. One of the chief objections which seem to lay against the
justice of the crime being in one creature and judgment in another, arises from
the supposition that the guilty escape while the innocent suffer. Now we do not
believe that this is ever the case; it certainly was not in the instance now
under review. We believe that those who are punished deserve all which they
receive, though they have not committed the precise fault of which they bear
the penalty. It is evident enough that David regarded himself as the
sole-offending party, and had no suspicion that the penalty had any other end
than that of his own chastisement. The exclamation, “Lord, I have sinned; I
have clone wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done?”--this is sufficient
proof that the king thought of no criminal but himself, and of no punishment
but that of his own wickedness. But it is equally evident that David was
mistaken herein, and that God had other ends in view, besides that of
correcting the monarch for his pride. It was in order that there might be
occasion for the punishment of His subjects that God allowed Satan to tempt the
ruler. For it is this--“And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Israel, and he moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”
In the Book of Chronicles, where the instigation is ascribed to the devil, the
people are actually spoken of as the objects aimed at through the king--“And
Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” So that it
is put beyond doubt that the people had moved the anger of the Lord before the
king moved it by his worldly confidence and pride. And if David had not
offended, and thus made an inlet for Divine vengeance, another occasion would
have been found, and wrath would have come down on Israel. We are not, indeed,
told what the precise and particular sin was by which, at this time more
especially, the chosen people had moved the indignation of God. Possibly their frequent
rebellions against David, their ingratitude, their fickleness, and their
growing dissoluteness of manners, which is a too common attendant on national
prosperity, exposed them to those judgments by which God is wont to chastise an
erring community; buff it is of no importance that we ascertain what the
offence was of which the penalty was the punishment. We are at least certain
that the people were really smitten for their own sins, though apparently for
the sins of David; and that, therefore, there can be no place for the
objection, that the innocent were made to suffer for the guilty.
III. The expiation
that was made on the threshing floor of Araunah. So soon as the destroying
angel had stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem, and, therefore, before any
altar had been reared, or any burnt-offering presented, the Lord, we are told,
“repented Him of the evil, and said to the angel--It is enough; stay now thine
hand.” We sufficiently gather from this, even if it were not on other accounts
evident, that the plague was not stayed from any virtue in the sacrifice which
was offered by David. Even had the sacrifice preceded the arrest of the
pestilence, we should know that it could not of itself have procured it,
whereas now that it follows, none can dream of ascribing to it a solitary
energy. But though the burnt-offering would not of itself have been
efficacious, it would not have been commanded had not the presenting it
subserved some great end; we may believe, therefore, that it was as a type,
figuring that expiatory sacrifice, by which the moral pestilence that had been
let loose on the globe would be finally arrested, that the offering was
required from the contrite and terrified king. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
David’s numbering of the people
The boldness of the expression is startling. “He moved David
against them.” Can it be that Jehovah stirred up the king of His choice against
the people of His choice, to conceive and execute a design which so speedily
called down upon them a deadly punishment? Or can we smooth away the difficulty
by recourse to the parallel account in the book of Chronicles, and read the
text as the margin of our English version suggests “Satan moved David against
them?” Such an explanation is, I believe, untenable. If we had only the book of
Samuel before us, we should not think of proposing it. The problem must be
faced, that, in some sense or other, God is said to have moved David to this
sin; while, on the other, hand, it was due to the instigation of Satan. Can we
harmonise these divergent statements? We tread here on the skirts of that most
mysterious problem, the relation of the Divine sovereignty to the human will.
We approach here, also, and that still more closely, another problem wrapt in a
thick cloud of mystery: the relation of the Divine will to the causation of evil. God
never compels a man to sin. If that were possible, God would cease to be God;
sin would cease to be sin. The moral consciousness of man revolts instinctively
from such an idea. The teaching of Holy Scripture gives it no countenance
whatsoever.
1. He purposely leads His saints into circumstances of trial, that
their faith may be proved and tested, and coming forth from the furnace
triumphantly, shine as a witness before the world.
2. God sees a man’s heart turning aside from Him, and withdraws for a
time His
restraining grace and presence. He deserts the sinner who has deserted Him.
3. God is said to harden the hearts of men. But not until His mercy
has been set at naught, not until His long-suffering has been defied to the
uttermost, does He finally pronounce this sentence. Not until a Pharaoh has
hardened his own heath against judgment after judgment, is God said to harden
His heart. Not until a Saul has mocked His calling and despised repeated
admonitions, does the Spirit of the Lord leave him, and an evil spirit from the
Lord trouble him. Not until mercy has been tried and tried in vain is a
judgment pronounced in this world. And who shall dare in any easel to say that
it is final? But we not unnaturally ask, Why was David allowed to sin? There
was, it seems, some national transgression which roused God’s wrath and
demanded punishment. Nor was this the first occasion of the kind. We read,
“Again the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel.” Once before they had been smitten
with famine for the unexpiated sins of Saul and his bloody house: what the
offence was now, we are not told. The king’s sin was in some way the
culmination and representative of the nation’s sins. It was the final offence
which filled up the cup of wrath, and the punishment smote the nation, and
through the nation its ruler. A still more perplexing question meets us next.
Wherein lay the guilt of David’s Act? The answer must be that the
motive which inspired the act was sinful.
1. He designed, say some, a development of the military power of the nation with a view
to foreign conquest. He wished to organise the army, and visions of
self-aggrandisement dazzled his brain.
2. It was the outcome of pride: pride at the growth of the nation. He
wished to satisfy the foolish vanity of his heart; to know to the full over how
vast a kingdom he ruled. It may be said that the sin of the people was in
essence the same: that here on the very threshold of their national existence
as a powerful kingdom, they were tempted by visions of worldly glory to forget
that they were not to realise their vocation to the world in the guise of a
conquering secular state, but as Jehovah’s witness among the nations. It this
was so, if already Israel was in peril of a virtual apostasy, no wonder that
Jehovah’s wrath was kindled. Vet in such a case wrath is in truth but another
phase of love, chastisement is mercy in disguise. Judgment is mercy when it
leads unto repentance. Wisely wrote St. Augustine of this fall of David: “Let
us remember how that a certain man said in his prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’ But he was taught
how rash were his words, as though he attributed to his own strength what was
given him from on high. This we learn by his own confession, for he presently
adds, “Lord, by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: Thou
didst hide Thy face and I was troubled.” He was deserted for a moment by his
guide in healing Providence, lest in fatal pride he should himself desert that
guide” (“Works,” vol. 6. p. 530). Observe in this history:--
1. The hidden motive determines the character of the action.
2. If it was pride which was Israel’s transgression and David’s sin,
mark how heinous an offence it is in the sight of God. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Numbering the People
One spot on earth there is, which, for four thousand years, has
had more of human annals and human interest concentrated in it, by providential
suggestion, than any other in she world. For a while, it was only a
threshing-floor, owned by Araunah the Jebusite. This thrifty husbandman had
selected an area on the top of Mount Moriah. We do not know that his
imagination was ever awakened by the thought that here once was the thicket, in
which the ram was caught that Abraham substituted for Isaac as a sacrifice.
Nor, though Abraham saw the day of Christ afar off, and “was glad,” have we any
reason to think that Araunah’s faith ever gained a glimpse of the fact that the
cross on which Jesus Christ suffered, was to be planted there in the future
ages. Today, that spot lies covered with a canopy of silk, underneath a
Mohammedan dome in Jerusalem. Years have passed since the temple of Solomon
disappeared in its ruins, though for generations its matchless splendour
rendered the ridge of Moriah historic. Thus forty centuries of fame have made
that floor one of the centres of the world. We are to visit it to-day in our
studies, and it may be expected that question after question will seek an
answer.
1. What was this act of David, which brought on the catastrophe and
the pestilence, that was happily stayed there? At first sight, it seems almost
impossible to explain the transaction; for up to this time it had never been
considered a crime to take a census in Israel. Indeed, it was one of the
requirements of the Hebrew law, that each tribe and each family in it, and all
the persons in the households, should be enrolled openly and regularly. Except
for these disastrous circumstances detailed afterwards, we should never have
conjectured any wrong had been done: It was one of the most rational things in
history, that the ruler of any great nation should wish to be exactly informed
concerning the military resources of the people.
2. But now we ask again: what was the moral character of this act in
numbering the people? How do we know that it was one of the most sinful that
King David ever committed?
3. Still our question remains: what was there in the action of David
that made it so guilty in the sight of God?
For one thing, there must have been a pride of power moving the king:
the language of Job (1 Chronicles 21:3), as he sternly
expostulates, seems to touch on this; he intimates his hot contempt for a
vanity so childish. Then, also, the greed of gain may have been in the heart of
David: this may have been his first step towards the liberties of the people, a
plan of augmenting the power of the crown. We feel safe in saying that distrust
of God was in the wrong: he knew that Israel was not to be so strong because of
a large standing army; many a prosperous year had rendered it sure that the
nation’s strength was in God. Then there was the possible lust of conquest: if
David was thus appealing to the ambition of his people, his sin was greater, in
that he was teaching them positive unbelief, also.
4. Now in the next place, we come to the dreadful punishment which
this sin brought on; what was the course of it?
5. But was there to be no limit to this affliction? That leads us
forward to our final question: what was it that arrested the hand of God, and
brought relief to dying Israel?
David numbering the people
In what, then, did the sin of David consist? It appears to me that
the answer to this is exceedingly plain: it is an answer which we derive from
the account itself; it is an answer, too, full of very deep and profitable
instruction. David’s command was, “Go, number Israel and Judah;” and when Job
brought the sum to the king, it was divided under the two heads, Israel and
Judah. Israel, i.e. the ten tribes (excluding Levi and Benjamin), numbering
800,000 men; and Judah, 500,000. Here, then, we see the secret of David’s sin.
He wanted to know, not so much the number of the whole people, as the number of
Judah, the royal tribe--David’s own tribe--compared with the rest of Israel.
God had made him king over the whole people; and Satan tempted him to consider
himself the king of the one tribe, so that he should endeavour to ascertain
whether the tribe, upon whose strength and affections he could always rely, would
not be a match for all the rest; and so he should be at ease in governing in
the interest of his flesh and blood, rather than in the interest of all his
people. David’s sin, then, was not the sin of pride, but the sin of division
and party, spirit. God, as far as we can judge from the Bible, Himself ordained
the right of primogeniture, or the right of the first-born, and generally
upheld it. God assigned to Judah this pre-eminence, when He expressly commanded that the
standard of Judah should go the first before the tabernacle in the vanguard of
the children of Israel (Numbers 2:1-2). But God had prepared the
tribe of Judah, by His Providence, for this pre-eminence which He assigned to
it: for you will find that the tribe of Judah was, in point of numbers, by far
the most powerful of all. Its numbers were nearly double those of the greater
part of the other tribes: the next tribe, that of Dan, does not come within
twelve thousand of it. Then, when the tribes were settled in the promised land,
the same design of God is apparent. Reuben, the actual first-born, has his
portion assigned to him on the east side of Jordan, and so is removed out of
the way. Simeon at once sunk to be the lowest tribe in point of influence; and,
in fact, soon disappears altogether. Levi, by having the priesthood, could not
have the civil and military preeminence; so the field is left, as it were, to
Judah. Then he had by far the largest and the most compact portion of the
promised land assigned to him. Such was the tribe. But what was the first
family in this tribe? Beyond all doubt the family of Jesse. Throughout the
whole history of the people the first was that from which David sprung. David’s
ancestors were the first family in point of blood of the first tribe of Israel.
I believe that David, as a man of God, governed with a faithful and true heart,
as the King of all Israel; but in the best of men there is a mixture of
motives. In the most just line of human temporal policy there is that which is
crooked and time-serving, and David, in this instance, gave way and succumbed
to the temptation of the god of this world. He numbered the people for the
purpose of ascertaining the strength on which he felt sure that his family
could, under all circumstances, rely. David was right in his surmise. The
census was taken, and the extra-ordinary fact came to light, that God had so
increased and multiplied the tribe of Judah, that it was more than half as
strong as all the rest of the tribes put together: for the single tribe of
Judah showed 500,000 fighting men to the 800,000 of the other ten tribes. But
the gratifictaion of family or party pride, as opposed to national exultation
at the prosperity and numbers of God’s people, was short-lived. With the sum of
the numbers came the smiting of the heart--the precursor, in this case, of
immediate and signal punishment.
1. The account of David’s punishment is exceedingly instructive. God,
to try what was in David’s heart, gave to him the choice of three evils--the
sword, famine, and pestilence; and David, by his choice, showed plainly that
his heart was right with God. But another very instructive fact is that the
moment David surrendered to God those private family feelings and partialities
that had been the real root of the mischief, then God at once turned and
remitted the punishment.
2. And now let us say something respecting the punishment which God
inflicted. There seems, at first sight, a difficulty about the persons whom God
intended to punish. Throughout the chapter, however, David appears to be the
sinner, and the punishment is evidently directed against him, though it falls
on his people. Then, with reference to the effect of the punishment, it was
inflicted, as all God’s punishments are, in far-seeing mercy. For, if future
princes Of the House of David--Solomon and Rehoboam--had learnt the lesson
which God intended them to learn, the disastrous rebellion in the time of
Rehoboam, which entailed centuries of idolatry and civil war and its attendant
miseries, would, humanly speaking, have been avoided.
For the punishment inflicted by God was intended to show God’s
just displeasure at partial government. I must now, in conclusion, make two or
three practical applications of the foregoing remarks.
1. First of all, the Bible deserves to be well and carefully studied,
as a book full of the deepest insight into human nature--fallen and crooked
human nature.
2. Let us see how hateful division, party-spirit, partiality, or a
spirit of schism, is in the sight of God.
3. Let us also learn from this, that those who have the right to the
first social place may have this evil spirit, as well as those who have not. (F.
M. Sadler, M. A.)
The Church’s resources
Too much dependence may be placed in elements of power in the
Church which are secondary and inferior. There is power in numbers. We should
not despise numbers. It should awaken alarm and inquiry when the number of
Church members does not steadily and rapidly increase. God will not deal with
us when we make up the statistical tables as He did with David when he numbered
the people. But there is something more important than multitudes. A Church
with one hundred members may be stronger than one with a thousand. There is
power in wealth when wisely used. In the promotion of education, in the supply
of money to print Bibles and build churches and carry the Gospel to all parts
of the world, wealth is a mighty agent. But there are more potent elements than
wealth. A Church whose members are not worth one thousand pounds sometimes
excel in usefulness Churches whose members represent many thousands.
In what respect the census was sinful
An ordinary census was perfectly legitimate; it was expressly
provided for by the Mosaic law, and upon three occasions at least a census of
the people was taken by Moses without offence. It was not then the census which
was displeasing to God., but the motive which inspired David to take it. Some
suppose that he intended to develop the military power of the nation with a view to
foreign conquest; others that he meditated the organisation of an imperial
despotism and the imposition of fresh taxes. The military character of the
whole proceeding, which was discussed in a council of officers and carried out
under Joab’s superintendence, makes it probable that it was connected with some
plan for increasing the effective army, possibly with a view to foreign
conquests. But whether any definite design of increased armaments or heavier
taxation lay behind it or not, it seems clear that What constituted the sin of
the act was the vain-glorious spirit which prompted it. (A. F. Kirkpatrick,
M. A.)
Verses 1-25
Go, number Israel and Judah.
David numbering the people
I. The sin
committed by David. It is possible that David dwelt with satisfaction upon the
thought of his ample resources and numerous armies, and calculated that he was
possessed of a power to repel aggression, and attempt fresh conquests. He may
have forgotten that God alone, who had made him great, could preserve to him
his greatness, and thence he may have longed to reckon up his forces, as though
he could thence learn his security, or compute the extension of his kingdom. And
let no man think that, because he occupies a private station, he cannot sin
after the exact mariner in which David sinned, who filled the throne of a
flourishing empire. The very same offence may be committed in any rank of life,
and is probably chargeable, in a degree, on most in this assembly. What! to
take one or two instances--is not the proud man he who delights to count up his
monies, and catalogue to himself his cargoes, and his stock, and his deposits,
and his speculations--is he not doing precisely what David did when taking the
stun of his forces?--ay, is it not with the very same feeling that he prepares
the inventory; the feeling that his wealth is his security against disaster;
that the having largo possessions will comparatively place him and his family
beyond the reach of trouble? The wish to be independent of Gad is natural to us
in our fallen condition. This rigidly virtuous man may be all the while pluming
himself on his excellence, and employing the captain of his host in summing up
the number of his righteous qualities and actions, that he may certify his
power for winning immortality. There may be freedom from gross vices, with a
growing strength of pride which puts more contempt on the crown of the Redeemer
than an open violation of every moral precept.
II. The punishment
incurred. No doubt there is something strange, which it is hard to reconcile
with our received notions of justice, in the declared fact that sins are often
visited on others than the perpetrators. Who will think that David escaped with
impunity because the pestilence smote down his subjects and touched not
himself? It is evident from his passionate imprecation--“Let thine hand, I pray
thee, be against me and my father’s house”--it is evident that the blow would
have fallen more lightly had it fallen on himself and not on his subjects. In
what manner should he be visited for his sin? So visited that the penalty may
best indicate the offence it resists. Under what shape must vengeance come that
it may touch him most closely, and most clearly prove by what it is provoked?
You will admit at once that, forasmuch as it was the thought of having many
subjects by which David had been puffed up, the most suitable punishment was
the destruction of thousands of those subjects; for this took away the source
of exultation, and stripped the boastful king of the strength on which he
vain-gloriously rested. Certainly this was adapting the penalty to the fault;
for not only was David punished, but punished by an act of retributive justice,
from which himself and others might learn what it was which had displeased the
Almighty. But, perhaps you will say that it is not enough to show that the king
was punished through the death of his subjects; you will say that this does not
touch the point of the innocent being made to suffer for the guilty. We allow
this; but it is of great importance to establish that David himself was not
left unpunished. One of the chief objections which seem to lay against the
justice of the crime being in one creature and judgment in another, arises from
the supposition that the guilty escape while the innocent suffer. Now we do not
believe that this is ever the case; it certainly was not in the instance now
under review. We believe that those who are punished deserve all which they
receive, though they have not committed the precise fault of which they bear
the penalty. It is evident enough that David regarded himself as the
sole-offending party, and had no suspicion that the penalty had any other end
than that of his own chastisement. The exclamation, “Lord, I have sinned; I
have clone wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done?”--this is sufficient
proof that the king thought of no criminal but himself, and of no punishment
but that of his own wickedness. But it is equally evident that David was
mistaken herein, and that God had other ends in view, besides that of
correcting the monarch for his pride. It was in order that there might be
occasion for the punishment of His subjects that God allowed Satan to tempt the
ruler. For it is this--“And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Israel, and he moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”
In the Book of Chronicles, where the instigation is ascribed to the devil, the
people are actually spoken of as the objects aimed at through the king--“And
Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” So that it
is put beyond doubt that the people had moved the anger of the Lord before the
king moved it by his worldly confidence and pride. And if David had not
offended, and thus made an inlet for Divine vengeance, another occasion would
have been found, and wrath would have come down on Israel. We are not, indeed,
told what the precise and particular sin was by which, at this time more
especially, the chosen people had moved the indignation of God. Possibly their
frequent rebellions against David, their ingratitude, their fickleness, and
their growing dissoluteness of manners, which is a too common attendant on
national prosperity, exposed them to those judgments by which God is wont to
chastise an erring community; buff it is of no importance that we ascertain
what the offence was of which the penalty was the punishment. We are at least
certain that the people were really smitten for their own sins, though
apparently for the sins of David; and that, therefore, there can be no place
for the objection, that the innocent were made to suffer for the guilty.
III. The expiation
that was made on the threshing floor of Araunah. So soon as the destroying
angel had stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem, and, therefore, before any
altar had been reared, or any burnt-offering presented, the Lord, we are told,
“repented Him of the evil, and said to the angel--It is enough; stay now thine
hand.” We sufficiently gather from this, even if it were not on other accounts
evident, that the plague was not stayed from any virtue in the sacrifice which
was offered by David. Even had the sacrifice preceded the arrest of the
pestilence, we should know that it could not of itself have procured it,
whereas now that it follows, none can dream of ascribing to it a solitary
energy. But though the burnt-offering would not of itself have been
efficacious, it would not have been commanded had not the presenting it subserved
some great end; we may believe, therefore, that it was as a type, figuring that
expiatory sacrifice, by which the moral pestilence that had been let loose on
the globe would be finally arrested, that the offering was required from the
contrite and terrified king. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
David’s numbering of the people
The boldness of the expression is startling. “He moved David
against them.” Can it be that Jehovah stirred up the king of His choice against
the people of His choice, to conceive and execute a design which so speedily
called down upon them a deadly punishment? Or can we smooth away the difficulty
by recourse to the parallel account in the book of Chronicles, and read the
text as the margin of our English version suggests “Satan moved David against
them?” Such an explanation is, I believe, untenable. If we had only the book of
Samuel before us, we should not think of proposing it. The problem must be
faced, that, in some sense or other, God is said to have moved David to this
sin; while, on the other, hand, it was due to the instigation of Satan. Can we
harmonise these divergent statements? We tread here on the skirts of that most
mysterious problem, the relation of the Divine sovereignty to the human will.
We approach here, also, and that still more closely, another problem wrapt in a
thick cloud of mystery: the relation of the Divine will to the causation of evil. God
never compels a man to sin. If that were possible, God would cease to be God;
sin would cease to be sin. The moral consciousness of man revolts instinctively
from such an idea. The teaching of Holy Scripture gives it no countenance
whatsoever.
1. He purposely leads His saints into circumstances of trial, that
their faith may be proved and tested, and coming forth from the furnace triumphantly,
shine as a witness before the world.
2. God sees a man’s heart turning aside from Him, and withdraws for a
time His
restraining grace and presence. He deserts the sinner who has deserted Him.
3. God is said to harden the hearts of men. But not until His mercy
has been set at naught, not until His long-suffering has been defied to the
uttermost, does He finally pronounce this sentence. Not until a Pharaoh has
hardened his own heath against judgment after judgment, is God said to harden
His heart. Not until a Saul has mocked His calling and despised repeated
admonitions, does the Spirit of the Lord leave him, and an evil spirit from the
Lord trouble him. Not until mercy has been tried and tried in vain is a
judgment pronounced in this world. And who shall dare in any easel to say that
it is final? But we not unnaturally ask, Why was David allowed to sin? There
was, it seems, some national transgression which roused God’s wrath and
demanded punishment. Nor was this the first occasion of the kind. We read,
“Again the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel.” Once before they had been
smitten with famine for the unexpiated sins of Saul and his bloody house: what
the offence was now, we are not told. The king’s sin was in some way the
culmination and representative of the nation’s sins. It was the final offence
which filled up the cup of wrath, and the punishment smote the nation, and
through the nation its ruler. A still more perplexing question meets us next.
Wherein lay the guilt of David’s Act? The answer must be that the
motive which inspired the act was sinful.
1. He designed, say some, a development of the military power of the nation with a view
to foreign conquest. He wished to organise the army, and visions of
self-aggrandisement dazzled his brain.
2. It was the outcome of pride: pride at the growth of the nation. He
wished to satisfy the foolish vanity of his heart; to know to the full over how
vast a kingdom he ruled. It may be said that the sin of the people was in
essence the same: that here on the very threshold of their national existence
as a powerful kingdom, they were tempted by visions of worldly glory to forget
that they were not to realise their vocation to the world in the guise of a
conquering secular state, but as Jehovah’s witness among the nations. It this
was so, if already Israel was in peril of a virtual apostasy, no wonder that
Jehovah’s wrath was kindled. Vet in such a case wrath is in truth but another
phase of love, chastisement is mercy in disguise. Judgment is mercy when it
leads unto repentance. Wisely wrote St. Augustine of this fall of David: “Let
us remember how that a certain man said in his prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’ But he was taught
how rash were his words, as though he attributed to his own strength what was
given him from on high. This we learn by his own confession, for he presently
adds, “Lord, by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: Thou
didst hide Thy face and I was troubled.” He was deserted for a moment by his
guide in healing Providence, lest in fatal pride he should himself desert that
guide” (“Works,” vol. 6. p. 530). Observe in this history:--
1. The hidden motive determines the character of the action.
2. If it was pride which was Israel’s transgression and David’s sin,
mark how heinous an offence it is in the sight of God. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Numbering the People
One spot on earth there is, which, for four thousand years, has
had more of human annals and human interest concentrated in it, by providential
suggestion, than any other in she world. For a while, it was only a
threshing-floor, owned by Araunah the Jebusite. This thrifty husbandman had
selected an area on the top of Mount Moriah. We do not know that his
imagination was ever awakened by the thought that here once was the thicket, in
which the ram was caught that Abraham substituted for Isaac as a sacrifice.
Nor, though Abraham saw the day of Christ afar off, and “was glad,” have we any
reason to think that Araunah’s faith ever gained a glimpse of the fact that the
cross on which Jesus Christ suffered, was to be planted there in the future
ages. Today, that spot lies covered with a canopy of silk, underneath a
Mohammedan dome in Jerusalem. Years have passed since the temple of Solomon
disappeared in its ruins, though for generations its matchless splendour
rendered the ridge of Moriah historic. Thus forty centuries of fame have made
that floor one of the centres of the world. We are to visit it to-day in our
studies, and it may be expected that question after question will seek an
answer.
1. What was this act of David, which brought on the catastrophe and
the pestilence, that was happily stayed there? At first sight, it seems almost
impossible to explain the transaction; for up to this time it had never been
considered a crime to take a census in Israel. Indeed, it was one of the
requirements of the Hebrew law, that each tribe and each family in it, and all
the persons in the households, should be enrolled openly and regularly. Except
for these disastrous circumstances detailed afterwards, we should never have
conjectured any wrong had been done: It was one of the most rational things in
history, that the ruler of any great nation should wish to be exactly informed
concerning the military resources of the people.
2. But now we ask again: what was the moral character of this act in
numbering the people? How do we know that it was one of the most sinful that
King David ever committed?
3. Still our question remains: what was there in the action of David
that made it so guilty in the sight of God?
For one thing, there must have been a pride of power moving the
king: the language of Job (1 Chronicles 21:3), as he sternly
expostulates, seems to touch on this; he intimates his hot contempt for a
vanity so childish. Then, also, the greed of gain may have been in the heart of
David: this may have been his first step towards the liberties of the people, a
plan of augmenting the power of the crown. We feel safe in saying that distrust
of God was in the wrong: he knew that Israel was not to be so strong because of
a large standing army; many a prosperous year had rendered it sure that the
nation’s strength was in God. Then there was the possible lust of conquest: if
David was thus appealing to the ambition of his people, his sin was greater, in
that he was teaching them positive unbelief, also.
4. Now in the next place, we come to the dreadful punishment which
this sin brought on; what was the course of it?
5. But was there to be no limit to this affliction? That leads us
forward to our final question: what was it that arrested the hand of God, and
brought relief to dying Israel?
David numbering the people
In what, then, did the sin of David consist? It appears to me that
the answer to this is exceedingly plain: it is an answer which we derive from
the account itself; it is an answer, too, full of very deep and profitable
instruction. David’s command was, “Go, number Israel and Judah;” and when Job
brought the sum to the king, it was divided under the two heads, Israel and
Judah. Israel, i.e. the ten tribes (excluding Levi and Benjamin), numbering
800,000 men; and Judah, 500,000. Here, then, we see the secret of David’s sin.
He wanted to know, not so much the number of the whole people, as the number of
Judah, the royal tribe--David’s own tribe--compared with the rest of Israel.
God had made him king over the whole people; and Satan tempted him to consider
himself the king of the one tribe, so that he should endeavour to ascertain
whether the tribe, upon whose strength and affections he could always rely,
would not be a match for all the rest; and so he should be at ease in governing
in the interest of his flesh and blood, rather than in the interest of all his
people. David’s sin, then, was not the sin of pride, but the sin of division
and party, spirit. God, as far as we can judge from the Bible, Himself ordained
the right of primogeniture, or the right of the first-born, and generally
upheld it. God assigned to Judah this pre-eminence, when He expressly commanded that the
standard of Judah should go the first before the tabernacle in the vanguard of
the children of Israel (Numbers 2:1-2). But God had prepared the
tribe of Judah, by His Providence, for this pre-eminence which He assigned to
it: for you will find that the tribe of Judah was, in point of numbers, by far
the most powerful of all. Its numbers were nearly double those of the greater
part of the other tribes: the next tribe, that of Dan, does not come within
twelve thousand of it. Then, when the tribes were settled in the promised land,
the same design of God is apparent. Reuben, the actual first-born, has his
portion assigned to him on the east side of Jordan, and so is removed out of
the way. Simeon at once sunk to be the lowest tribe in point of influence; and,
in fact, soon disappears altogether. Levi, by having the priesthood, could not
have the civil and military preeminence; so the field is left, as it were, to
Judah. Then he had by far the largest and the most compact portion of the
promised land assigned to him. Such was the tribe. But what was the first
family in this tribe? Beyond all doubt the family of Jesse. Throughout the
whole history of the people the first was that from which David sprung. David’s
ancestors were the first family in point of blood of the first tribe of Israel.
I believe that David, as a man of God, governed with a faithful and true heart,
as the King of all Israel; but in the best of men there is a mixture of
motives. In the most just line of human temporal policy there is that which is
crooked and time-serving, and David, in this instance, gave way and succumbed
to the temptation of the god of this world. He numbered the people for the
purpose of ascertaining the strength on which he felt sure that his family
could, under all circumstances, rely. David was right in his surmise. The
census was taken, and the extra-ordinary fact came to light, that God had so
increased and multiplied the tribe of Judah, that it was more than half as
strong as all the rest of the tribes put together: for the single tribe of
Judah showed 500,000 fighting men to the 800,000 of the other ten tribes. But
the gratifictaion of family or party pride, as opposed to national exultation
at the prosperity and numbers of God’s people, was short-lived. With the sum of
the numbers came the smiting of the heart--the precursor, in this case, of
immediate and signal punishment.
1. The account of David’s punishment is exceedingly instructive. God,
to try what was in David’s heart, gave to him the choice of three evils--the
sword, famine, and pestilence; and David, by his choice, showed plainly that
his heart was right with God. But another very instructive fact is that the
moment David surrendered to God those private family feelings and partialities
that had been the real root of the mischief, then God at once turned and
remitted the punishment.
2. And now let us say something respecting the punishment which God
inflicted. There seems, at first sight, a difficulty about the persons whom God
intended to punish. Throughout the chapter, however, David appears to be the
sinner, and the punishment is evidently directed against him, though it falls
on his people. Then, with reference to the effect of the punishment, it was
inflicted, as all God’s punishments are, in far-seeing mercy. For, if future
princes Of the House of David--Solomon and Rehoboam--had learnt the lesson
which God intended them to learn, the disastrous rebellion in the time of
Rehoboam, which entailed centuries of idolatry and civil war and its attendant
miseries, would, humanly speaking, have been avoided.
For the punishment inflicted by God was intended to show God’s
just displeasure at partial government. I must now, in conclusion, make two or
three practical applications of the foregoing remarks.
1. First of all, the Bible deserves to be well and carefully studied,
as a book full of the deepest insight into human nature--fallen and crooked human
nature.
2. Let us see how hateful division, party-spirit, partiality, or a
spirit of schism, is in the sight of God.
3. Let us also learn from this, that those who have the right to the
first social place may have this evil spirit, as well as those who have not. (F.
M. Sadler, M. A.)
The Church’s resources
Too much dependence may be placed in elements of power in the
Church which are secondary and inferior. There is power in numbers. We should
not despise numbers. It should awaken alarm and inquiry when the number of
Church members does not steadily and rapidly increase. God will not deal with
us when we make up the statistical tables as He did with David when he numbered
the people. But there is something more important than multitudes. A Church
with one hundred members may be stronger than one with a thousand. There is
power in wealth when wisely used. In the promotion of education, in the supply
of money to print Bibles and build churches and carry the Gospel to all parts
of the world, wealth is a mighty agent. But there are more potent elements than
wealth. A Church whose members are not worth one thousand pounds sometimes
excel in usefulness Churches whose members represent many thousands.
In what respect the census was sinful
An ordinary census was perfectly legitimate; it was expressly
provided for by the Mosaic law, and upon three occasions at least a census of
the people was taken by Moses without offence. It was not then the census which
was displeasing to God., but the motive which inspired David to take it. Some
suppose that he intended to develop the military power of the nation with a view to
foreign conquest; others that he meditated the organisation of an imperial
despotism and the imposition of fresh taxes. The military character of the whole
proceeding, which was discussed in a council of officers and carried out under
Joab’s superintendence, makes it probable that it was connected with some plan
for increasing the effective army, possibly with a view to foreign conquests.
But whether any definite design of increased armaments or heavier taxation lay
behind it or not, it seems clear that What constituted the sin of the act was
the vain-glorious spirit which prompted it. (A. F. Kirkpatrick, M. A.)
Verse 10
And David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people.
David’s confession
I. David’s
confession--“And David said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly in that I have
done.” It is an unreserved confession. There are no excuses made by him for the
sin he has committed. If we would confess our sins acceptably we must confess,
as David did, without reserve--without any attempt to dissemble or to cloak
them.
II. The petition.
“And now, I beseech Thee, O Lord! take away the iniquity of Thy servant.” To
“take away” means something more than to forgive. To “take away iniquity” is
not only to pass it over, but to clear the soul of it; so that, though it
should be sought for, it should not be found. And this is the Blessed Saviour’s
office. It is “the Lamb of God,” and He alone, “that taketh away the sin of the world.”
III. The plea. For I
have done foolishly.”
When we want to get a pardon from a fellow-creature, we are not apt to lay a
stress upon the greatness of our fault, but to catch rather at something that
may take a little from its guilt. “Take away,” saith he, “I beseech Thee, the
iniquity of Thy servants;” and why? what is the argument he brings to give weight to his
petition? You might have thought he would have said, “for I did it in my haste;
it was no intentional offence.” But no; “Take away my iniquity,” says he, “for
I have done very foolishly.” It reminds us of a similar petition in the 25th
Psalm. Why, what could David mean, when he names the greatness of his sin as
the ground on which he asks for pardon? His meaning probably was this: “My sin
is great--I have acted very foolishly, and therefore Thou wilt shew the riches
of Thy grace the more abundantly in taking my iniquity away.” O! blessed be the
God of our salvation that such an argument as this can be adopted! If the
efficacy of the blood of Jesus had been limited--why then we should have been
afraid to say to God, “My sin is great.” (A. Roberts, M. A.)
The “afterward” of sin
Lord, before I commit a sin, it seems to me so shallow that I may
wade through it dry-shod from any guiltiness, but when I have committed it, it
often seems so deep that I cannot escape without drowning. Thus I am always in
extremities; either my sins are so small that they need not any repentance, or
so great that they cannot obtain thy pardon. Lend me, O Lord, a reed out of thy
sanctuary, truly to measure the dimension of my offences. But O! as thou
revealest to me more of my misery, reveal also more of thy mercy; lest if my
wounds, in my apprehension, gape wider than any tents (plugs of lint), my soul
run out at them. If my badness seem bigger than Thy goodness but one hair’s
breadth, but one moment, that-is room and time enough for me to run to eternal
despair. (Thomas Fuller.)
Verse 13
Now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent
me.
Christians exhorted to consider what answer their ministers will
have to return to God concerning them
I. Christian
ministers are the messengers of God, and sent on an important errand.
1. They are sent of God.
2. They are sent on an important errand.
II. Ministers are
to return an answer to Him that sendeth them.
1. They are to return to their Master.
2. They are to answer as to their own fidelity.
3. They are likewise to return an answer concerning the reception
which they themselves met with.
III. It becometh the
members of Christian churches seriously to consider what answers their
ministers will have to return concerning them. Application.
1. This subject affords some useful instruction to Christian
ministers. It should lead them to “magnify their office,” as “the messengers of
God.” It should excite their warmest gratitude that they are employed under
Christ, on the same errand which brought him into the world. Further, they may
learn to deliver their message with all plainness, seriousness, and fidelity.
2. Christian people may derive some useful instruction from these
particulars. Learn, then, to be thankful that messengers are sent to you on so
kind and gracious an errand. (J. Orton.)
Verse 14
I am in a great strait; let me fall now into the hand of the Lord.
David’s choice of a national calamity
The scene before us, while it is pregnant with interest on its own
account, develops two opposite classes of principles, and furnishes a lesson
both of seasonable direction and solemn warning.
I. It presents us
with a sin into which David fell at the close of his life, and a judgment
denounced upon him in consequence of that sin by the Almighty. He was at peace
in his kingdom; he had recovered from all the troubles of his house, and his
victorious sword had been lifted up above the heads of all his enemies round
about. The state of his affairs, after long agitation, had subsided into a
condition of peace and serenity, calling loudly for thankfulness to God for His
favours. But such seasons of temporal prosperity, alas! are not favourable to
the preservation of humility and good principles. Through the weakness and
corruption of our nature they are apt to soften and enervate, to secularise and
pollute, and thereby to render us accessible to the most perilous temptations.
If the prosperity of fools destroys
them, the prosperity of good men often does them incalculable injury. David,
therefore, though so wise and pious, is now off his guard. His conscience,
however, which had been enlightened by Divine grace, soon awoke out of the
slumber into which it had fallen, and unbraided him. “His heart smote him” for
what he had done, before he was left to prove his weakness by any outward
disaster. It was well for him that his own ways reproved him, and that’
conscience sounded the first trumpet of alarm. This is characteristic of the
regenerate. Thus Samson’s heart smote him in the midst of the night for what he
was doing, and he arose and carried away the gates of the city. Men who have no
light of grace, no tenderness of conscience, must have their sin recalled to
them by the circumstances which at once reveal its enormity and visit it with
punishment; but the regenerate have an inward monitor that awaits not for these
consequences to rouse its energy, but lights up the candle of the Lord within
them, and will not let them rest after they have done amiss, till they have
felt compunction and made confession. Their sin and their sorrow are near
together. No circumstance can keep them long apart. Let us not wonder at a
judgment so severe for a sin that appears to us so comparatively trifling. It
is only to us that it seems trifling. We are apt to be more terrified at
outward sins, and individual acts of atrocity between man and man; but
sins of the heart and of the spirit committed against the majesty, and the
purity, and the goodness of God, for which we feel but little conscious guilt,
are surely of far greater enormity and more especially offensive to God. We
are, moreover, to bring into account David’s relation to God. He was a man
after His own heart; he stood high in His favour: when he was a child, God
loved him and brought him into covenant with him; adopted him into His family,
made him most magnificent promises, and poured His favours upon him. And does the
near relation in which a man stands to God and the surpassing favours which he
has received, lessen his sin? Iris rather heightened in its enormity,
aggravated in its guilt, by such considerations.
II. Observe the
evils which the history represents to us as proposed to the king’s choice. They
are three of the most dreadful that can befall a country or a nation. But yet
in the permission of a choice among them, a singular test was presented of the
return of David’s heart to a proper sense of dependence and submission. Each of
them is a terrific scourge, but united, as they sometimes are, and naturally
may be, they form a three-fold plague, whose horrors are indescribable. But the
one which David chose, brought him and his people more immediately into conflict
with the sovereign hand of the Almighty than either of the others would have
done. Nothing could be here ascribed to second causes. Against God directly and
exclusively had David sinned, and from God’s hand visibly and directly, and by
sad preference, must come the punishment. If famine spread extensively among
nations, affecting more countries than one at the same time, the condition of
that which is its chief seat, or which, from other circumstances, is shut out
from foreign aid, will soon become desperate. New and disgusting modes of
supporting existence will be resorted to; the natural instincts will be
overpowered; all feelings will be subdued before the cravings of hunger and the
love of life. War, accompanied with defeat, is an equally dreadful calamity to
a country that is the seat of it. The most diabolical passions of human nature
are awakened and stimulated by war. But pestilence, in some respects, is yet a
more dreadful calamity than either. It is more silent in its approach, and less
horrible in its outward array; hut it is an evil preying upon the heart of a
nation. It is the destruction of its soul and spirit. Other evils may be seen
at a distance, and be guarded against; there valour may hope to defend,
prudence to resin, flight to escape. But no place exempts from the attacks of
this enemy; he gives no notice of his approach; his motion is silent and sure;
he steals upon us in the dead of night, as well as in the day; triumphantly and
secretly he rides upon the wings of the wind, and treacherously destroys us by
the breezes which we court for refreshment, or the air which we inspire for
life. We are not sensible of his presence till we feel his fangs, and are
inevitably within his grasp. At one and the same moment he is heard of by us at
the distance of leagues, and felt in our own bosoms. We are unconscious that
the shaft has flown, or found its mark, till we feel its venom boiling through
our veins.
III. But we have
here The choice he made, with the reasons of it. Let us attend to the wisdom
and piety that dictated it and to the merciful relief afforded him under it, in
consequence of it pleasing God.
1. But we may see in this preference the most exalted patriotism.
David, though a king, was too much identified with his subjects to think of
saving himself at their expense. If it must be a calamity, let it be one that
shall involve me with them. I and my people will survive or perish together.
Noble resolution, full of magnanimity, and demanding our admiration!
2. There was penitence also in this preference. Slight thoughts of
his sin, in comparison with the sins of his people, would have dictated the
choice of a calamity that might have left him free, while for them there was no
possibility of escape. But he was too sensible of the guilt of his preposterous
pride and presumption not to choose a judgment to which himself might be as
liable as any of the inhabitants of the land.
3. Nor is the piety that led to this preference less evident and
operative. There was piety in consulting by it the honour and interests of
religion, which in either of the other calamities would have very much
suffered. And there was piety in David’s choice, from the confidence it evinced
in the Divine compassion. He knew that God was provoked, but he could expect
mercy from Him in that state, sooner than from man whom he had not injured at
all. Conclusion:
1. In attempting some improvement, our desert of the judgments of the
Almighty because of our secret sins first occurs to us. A judgment worse than
war, pestilence, and famine awaits every such sinner. He stands exposed to
wrath that will destroy both body and soul in hell.
2. There is a retributive Providence. The punishment of God’s people
often grows out of their sin, and that so conspicuously and so instructively as
to convince them of it, and induce them to deplore and renounce it. (J.
Leifchild.)
Choice of David under anticipated judgments
What comparison is there between the evils that moral creatures
can inflict upon us, and those which we have to fear from a God immortal and
omnipotent? What comparison between those who kill the body, and after that
have nothing else that they can do, and him who can cast both body and soul
into hell? But if we consider the woes of the present life, if we compare the
compassions of God with those of men, then we must change our language, and the
penitent sinner, even at the moment when he sees heaven angry for his crimes,
will exclaim, “Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for very great are His
mercies, but let me not fall into the hands of men.” But, you ask, did David
reason justly? When we are suffering under war, or any other calamity whatever,
are we not in the hands of God? Are not the different agents of the universe,
men, angels, elements, equally the ministers of His justice, or of His mercy?
Yes; and no one more fully or explicitly acknowledged this universality of
Providence than did David. He always, without justifying the wickedness of the
instruments, bowed submissively to the disposals of God in all His persecutions.
But still, there is a wide difference between those afflictions which come to
us directly from the hand of God, and those which come by the intervention of
mere When men are the immediate authors of our sorrows, though it is always
true that it is God who permits them; that it depends only upon His pleasure to
arrest them; still, in the sufferings which they cause us to endure, it is they
whom we first behold; it is their unkindness or enmity which first strikes us;
and this view irritates the wounds of our souls, and agitates our afflicted
hearts. It is often with difficulty that we elevate our eyes to the Supreme
Governor of all, to acknowledge His sovereign justice in those same sufferings
that are unjustly inflicted by our fellow men. Besides, the malignity of the
principle whence our woes proceed, when they come from men, permits us to hope
neither for bounds nor mitigation to them, because the hatred and passions
which produced them still may continue. The heart then feels the present with
bitterness, while it beholds no resource in the future. All these visible
causes affect our senses and our mind, and hide from us more or less the
invisible hand of God. What a difference when our afflictions proceed
immediately from heaven! Then the believing soul sees only its God; it, adores
with submission the paternal hand which chastens it. Through His just anger, it
discerns His infinite goodness. Penitent sinner! how many motives are there to
induce you to adopt this language, and imitate this example.
1. “Let me fall into the hands of God,” for He is my Owner and
Proprietor; to Him I unreservedly belong.
2. Because mercy is His darling attribute: He loves to glorify it in
the forgiveness of the penitent.
3. Because he reads my heart. He has be held my secret groans, and
prayers, and tears.
4. Because He mingles with the strokes of His rod the consolations of
grace, and chastens as a Father.
5. For the design of His chastisements is merciful; they are intended
not to destroy, but to benefit.
6. From reflecting on the advantages that myself, that thousands of
the redeemed, have experienced from His chastisements. Let such be your
language and your feelings when penetrated by a sense of guilt. Bend to that
hand which supports while it smites.
Lessons:
1. This subject, in connection with the history of which our text is
a part, teaches us that sin may be pardoned, and yet punished with temporal
afflictions.
2. This subject should excite in us the tenderest love to God.
3. This subject teaches us where the soul may find a refuge from the
unkindness and cruelties of men. (H. Kollock, D. D.)
In the hand of God
David had learned from the history of his nation and his own
personal experience the blessedness of all who put their trust in the living
God. Let us notice a twofold train of thought, suggested by our text,
peculiarly appropriate for the new year.
I. Why fear
mingles with our greeting of the new year.
1. We are confronted by sorrowful memories of the past. Frailties,
failures, sins of omission and of commission, broken vows, ideals not reached,
prayer restrained--“unprofitable servants”; we have fallen short of the glory
of God.
2. Painful consciousness of present feebleness. No reserve of
strength, imperfectly equipped, hands hanging down, knees feeble, heart faint,
mind weary. We cannot pierce the impenetrable veil and see what battles we may
have to fig]it, what storms we may have to encounter, what burdens we may have
to bear, what sufferings to endure. Our only refuge is to fall into the hands
of the Lord.
II. How faith may
subdue fear in our greeting of the new year.
1. Faith in the unseen God. In His
III. Faith in the
unseen world. David felt that if desolation and death overtook him he would be
safe if, when leaving this life, he fell “into the hand of the Lord.” With home
in view, pilgrimage will be cheered, the heart will be calmed and comforted.
With the eternal God for our refuge and the eternal arms underneath us,
“forward” may be our fearless watchword. Into the infinite, unfailing “hand of
the Lord” let us commit ourselves. (Homilist.)
David’s choice of the plague
War would place the nation at the mercy of its enemies; famine
would make it dependent on corn merchants, who might greatly aggravate the
miseries of scarcity; only in the pestilence some form of plague sudden and
mysterious in its attack, and baffling the medical knowledge of the time--would
the punishment come directly from God, and depend immediately upon his will. (A.
F. Kirkpatrick, M. A.)
The stroke of God preferred
David prefers what was usually designated “The stroke of God.”
“Let us fall,” says lie, “now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are
great; and let me not fall into the hand of man.” A saying of Gordon (it was
among his last) may be recalled--were not the two men in many respects moulded
alike?: “I have the Shekinah, and I do like trusting to Him and not to men.” (J.
R. Macduff, D. D.)
The greatness of God’s unfailing, mercy
A well-known minister tells us lie once visited the ruins of a
noble city that had been built on a desert oasis. Mighty columns of roofless
temples stood in unbroken file. Halls in which kings and satraps had feasted
two thousand years ago were represented by solitary walls. Gateways of
richly-carved stone led to a paradise of bats and owls. All was ruin. But past
the dismantled city, brooks, which had once flowed through gorgeous flower
gardens and at the foot of marble halls, still swept on in undying music and
unwasted freshness. The waters were just as sweet as when queens quaffed them
two thousand years ago. A few hours before they had been melted from the snows
of the distant mountains. And so God’s love and mercy flow in ever-renewed,
form through the wreck of the past. Past vows and past covenants and noble
purposes may be represented by solitary columns and broken arches and scattered
foundations that are crumbling into dust; yet through the scene of ruin fresh
grace is ever flowing from His great heart on high.
Verses 15-25
So the Lord sent a pestilence.
The plague stayed
It was time of peace and prosperity in Israel. King David’s rule
had been blessed, and the people dwelt in safety. In the midst of this happy
quiet, David was moved to order a numbering of the people.
I. Sin overtaken
by judgment. What was the sin? Outwardly it was in the numbering already
referred to. But what wrong could there be in taking a census? It is now found
to be useful. It had before been done in Israel, and with Divine approval. The
wrong could not have been in the census itself. The real sin, then, like all
sin, was in the heart; and plainly its root was pride and vain-glory. King and
people forgot their dependence upon God, and the allegiance due to him. The
pestilence struck directly at the pride of people and ruler. It crippled their
power. It thwarted military ambition. It smote that of which they were ready to
boast into feebleness and death. Are we, of these later ages, to look upon like
visitations, as of fire or famine or war or pestilence as judgments for sin, or
corrections for moral transgression? Never are we to be in haste, or too
confident, in interpreting Divine Providence. But when we are told that
devouring flames consuming great cities, famine depopulating broad lands, and
pestilence which walketh in darkness, and destruction which wasteth at noonday,
mean wiser building, better agriculture, more careful drainage--just this and
nothing more, at least nothing moral or spiritual--we are sure that one great part
of the Divine purpose has been overlooked. Doubtless God does mean that the
lower lessons should be learned. He does mean to correct neglect of maxims of
prudence. He does so order His laws and dealings as to make us studious,
watchful, and faithful in all that pertains to physical life.
II. Judgment
deepening repentance. Our Saviour has taught us that the angels shall be God’s
ministers in the final judgment (Matthew 13:41.) Here we find that they
are His messengers in present ills. It was as one of these had reached
Jerusalem, and had outstretched his hand for its destruction, that tie became
visible to the king. What true humility, what deep repentance is here! There is
no syllable of complaint that the Divine stroke is too heavy. There is no word
of personal justification; no shielding of self under another’s fault. The sin
was not all his; but he saw only his own. “My sin, my transgression!” Such was
the language of his crushed, repentant heart. Such is the language of true
repentance always--when its work is deep and thorough.
III. Repentance met
by mercy. “The Lord repented Him of the evil.” The words are startling, as
applied to God. And yet they need not be obscure. Note three things with
respect to this mercy:--
1. It followed upon the deepened repentance.
2. It came in connection with expiation.
3. Then it did not straightway remove all the consequences of the
sin; but, as we may believe, did convert them into means of disciplinary good.
One thing only is required from us as the condition of restored
Divine favour. That is trusting repentance.
IV. A trustful
reconsecration. Observe the prompt and cheerful obedience which now marked the
king’s conduct. No sooner did the Divine message reach him than he “went up as
the Lord commanded” (v. 19). Nor did he find the way closed before him. Clearly
the Lord, as He is wont to do with contrite souls, had gone before to prepare
it. Observe, the Lord is now “the Lord my God!” Here is nearness, trust, love.
There is no longer distance or aversion; but such peace as assured pardon
always brings. Men who have had great deliverances felt to be from God have
always delighted to make them occasions of fresh consecration. With all the
more of humble, swelling joy will this be done when the deliverance is from
what is seen to be the effect of personal sin--mercy arresting deserved
judgment. In his description of the distress of Harold, the last of England’s
Saxon kings, on account of his false oath, the novelist, Bulwer, has said:
“There are sometimes seasons in the life of man when darkness wraps the
conscience as sudden night wraps the traveller in the desert, and the angel of
the past with a flaming sword closes on him the gates of the future. Then faith
flashes on him with a light from the cloud; then he clings to prayer as a
drowning wretch to a plank; then that mysterious recognition of atonement
smooths the frown on the past, and removes the flaming sword from the future.
He who hath never known in himself, nor marked in another, such strange crises
in human fate, cannot judge of the strength and weakness it bestows; but till
he can so judge, the spiritual part of all history is to him a blank scroll--a
sealed volume.” There would seem to be many of whom this is true.
Is there now any one of us to whom any part of the truth brought
to view in this Scripture has not some application?
1. Searching our own hearts, we should surely find some form of sin
there--perhaps the very spirit which provoked the displeasure of God against
Israel.
2. In His patience God may not as yet have made His displeasure felt
by us in pains and ills seen to be traceable to it; and yet He may have sent
sorrow, loss, hardships, intended to bring us to Himself; it is certain that He
has faithfully forewarned us that for every unpardoned sin He will at some time
bring us to judgment.
3. To escape in the evil day no way is offered, none is to be found,
save the old way of humble, trusting repentance.
4. For those who thus come the door of His heart is wide open;
expiation has already been provided; pardon will be instant and complete; and,
while to life’s end many painful effects of sin may remain, these, in their
case, will be changed to means of good, to chastisements whereby He wilt
perfect us in His own image and for His everlasting kingdom.
5. The proof of our repentance and trust and acceptance will appear
in prompt obedience, childlike thought of God as our God, and a heart ready,
nay, eager to serve in any, however costly, service He may appoint. (Monday
Club Sermons.)
The plague stayed
1. In this lesson we have, first, an account of the judgment: “So the
Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand
men.” Here is judgment following repentance and confession. There are some sins
which, though truly repented of and forgiven, still bring retributive
consequences from which the transgressor cannot escape in this life. He must
wear them as brands of condemnation set upon sin by Divine justice for his own
and others’ good. These consequences, while they come in just retribution, are
also sent in mercy as God’s barriers against the progress of sin. It is here
affirmed that the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel. Plagues and pestilence
have various national and physical causes. But it is equally plain that they
are connected with the sins and follies of men. They are the penalties of
violated law. In other words, they have a place in the righteous government of
God, and so come to execute His will. Here the pestilence is attributed,
instrumentally, to angelic agency.
2. This lesson furnishes an example of true penitence. Here is a case
of genuine repentance which is accepted with God. David’s confession was not
extorted from him by the pressure of the Divine judgment. Before it came he saw
his sin, and said unto the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in that I have done.”
Divine judgments are often, indeed, instrumental in arousing men to see the
enormity of their guilt. They are used as goads to prick a dull and sleeping
conscience. But true penitence is not the result of fear. It springs from
seeing the hatefulness and wickedness of sin as done against the wisdom,
justice, holiness and love of God. Sin is folly, and brings ruin to tile
transgressor, but its chief enormity lies in the fact that it is done against a
God of holiness and love. So true confession is confession to God.
3. This lesson also shows us how saving mercy was obtained for
Israel. The judgment of God was righteously destroying the people, and His
mercy, though free, sovereign and ready to save, could not ignore His
righteousness. There must be a way opened for its manifestation if Jerusalem is
saved. This is secured through the Divine appointment. David is directed by
Gad, a prophet of the Lord, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague
might be stayed from the people. It was not by David’s tears of penitence and
confession of sin that the plague was stayed. In like manner, not our tears or
prayers or confessions, but the blood of Christ shed for us, furnishes the only
ground for the removal of the sentence of death which the broken law of God has
passed upon us. He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him.
4. This passage presents another feature of spiritual life worthy of
attention. It is the spirit of generosity and unselfishness manifested by David
in fulfilling the command of God. Here was royal liberality; and it is set down
to his everlasting honour in the Word of God that he gave “like a king.” He
stands before us as a noble representative of those large-hearted, generous men
who are ever ready, when the occasion demands, to sacrifice their private
interests for the public good. And never did David make a better investment of
his means than when he bought Araunah’s threshing-floor. It was the
building-lot for the temple which for a thousand years prefigured Christ, and
so became a fountain of blessing to the nations. Money invested in such a cause
is not lost, but laid up in store for the life to come. (S. D. Niccolls, D.
D.)
God’s judgment on pride
See the power of the angels, when God gives them commission,
either to save or to destroy. Joab is nine months in passing with his pen, the
angel but nine hours in passing with his sword, through all the coasts and
corners of Israel. See how easily God can bring down the proudest sinners, and
how much we owe daily to the Divine patience. David’s adultery is punished, for
the present, only with the death of one infant, his pride with the death of all
those thousands, so much does God hate pride. (M. Henry.)
Divine justice in national retributions
Famine, pestilence, revolution, war, are judgments of the Ruler of
the world. What sort of a Ruler, we ask, is He? The answer to that question
will determine the true sense of the term, a judgment of God. The heathen saw Him
as a passionate, capricious, changeable Being, who could be angered and
appeased by men. The Jewish prophets saw Him as a God whose ways were equal,
who was unchangeable, whose decrees were perpetual, who was net to be bought
off by sacrifices, but pleased by righteous dealing, and who would remove the
punishment when the causes which brought it on were taken away; in their own
words, when men repented God would repent. That does not mean that He changed
His laws to relieve them of their suffering, but that they changed their
relationship to His laws, so that, to them thus changed, God seemed to change.
A boat rows against the stream; the current punishes it. So is a nation violating
a law of God; it is subject to a judgment. The boat turns and goes with the
stream; the current assists it. So is a nation which has repented and put
itself into harmony with God’s law; it is subject to a blessing. But the
current is the same; it has not changed, only the boat has changed its
relationship to the current. Neither does God change--we change; and the same
law which executed itself in punishment now expresses itself in reward. (G.
Brooke.)
The pestilence
Death on the Pale Horse--the Black Death of mediaeval times (1848)
in some one of divers forms, issued forth now. “Appearing in the heat of the
summer months, aggravated by the very greatness of the population which had
occasioned the census, spreading with the rapidity of an Oriental disorder in
crowded habitations, it flew from end to end of the country in three days.” (Dean
Stanley.)
Verse 17
And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the
people.
The problem of undeserved suffering
David’s sin in numbering the people was want of confidence in God.
At any rate, it is certain that for a time he lost his faith, and was in open
rebellion against God. Then came his punishment--a grievous punishment for the
king who has the welfare of his people at heart. One man sins; his sin is
punished; but the punishment fails on the innocent--that is the strange problem
which rises before us on reading this chapter, and it is a problem which very
often presents itself in the facts of human life. The problem is forced on our
notice every day we live. A careless shipwright does not send his bolt or rivet
home properly, and, in a storm at sea, a gallant ship founders, carrying with
it many precious lives. A man commits a great crime; he is found out and
punished, but the punishment does not stop with himself: it falls also on his
family, who have to bear the shame and the reverse of fortune. A husband and
father becomes a drunkard; the sin brings its inevitable punishment; but the
punishment is as heavy on the wife, who is never free from anxious care, and on
the children, who grow: up weakly, uneducated, and wilful, for the lack of
parental guidance. Two or three men combine in a gigantic fraud; they are detected
and punished, and utter ruin falls on them; but the consequences of the fraud,
in a thousand ramifications, affect the happiness and prosperity of a whole
nation. A sovereign does not feel himself secure on his throne, and, in order
to surround himself with military glory and strengthen his position, declares
war against a neighbouring people. The punishment of his ambition is disastrous
to himself; but still worse are the calamities which come on thousands of his
unoffending subjects. Is not the suffering of the innocent with the guilty, and
for the guilty, one of the most familiar facts in human life? We would think it
fair and right that each one should start in life with the same chance of good
and evil, and should have it in his power to carve out his fortunes as seemeth,
good to him but it is only too plain that such is not the case. Some are
overweighted from the very first; some spend all their lives in reaching the
point from which others start; some struggle on for a few years, and die in the
bloom of youth, through inherited feebleness of constitution. And even if we
did all start with the same chances, it is evident that we do not work through
life freely and independently; our aims are defeated, our efforts crushed by
events over which we have but little influence. Job, sitting among his
comforters and bewailing his unhappy fate; Prometheus, chained to the rock and
defying the unjust power that chains him; Philoctetes, left behind in his
misery on the desert island--these present, in the highest flights of tragic
poetry, what many a one feels bitterly in his own thoughts--the truth that
wrong-doing and suffering do not always go together; and to those who believe
in a Governor of the universe they present also some apparent justification for
the complaint of mankind, which is most briefly expressed in the words of Solon
to Croesus, King of Lydia, “The Deity is altogether envious and full of
confusion” (Herod 1, 32.) So long as the facts are put in this way, I do not
think it possible to explain or palliate them. It is of no use to say that,
looking to the whole experience of human history, sin is punished and
righteousness prospers. The doctrine of averages, however true and consoling to
the plilosophising observer, does not make the: individual wrong lighter. Nor
is it of much use, I fear, to point out that suffering is not always a
misfortune, nor prosperity a gain; for the man who has been ruined by others’
guilt, the wife who has been bereaved through another’s folly, the youth who
finds himself cramped and fettered by the circumstances of his birth, does not
cry out against the suffering so much as against the seeming injustice and
unfairness. But let us look at all these facts from another point of view. Our
difficulty hitherto has been, that the innocent have often to suffer for the
guilty, that punishment often falls on those who have not deserved it. But what
are we to say about the enjoyment of benefits for which we have not laboured,
the reaping of reward where there has been no desert on our part? Is there not
such a thing as receiving good where we had not earned it? And, when we talk of
the innocent suffering with or for the guilty, should we not also speak of the
undeserving being blessed with prosperity along with the deserving, or even
instead of the, deserving? We cry out passionately against receiving less than
justice in the arrangements of the universe; but do we not sometimes receive
more than our just share? To go back to the case from which we started: the
people were suffering in Israel on account of the sin of their king; but had
they not derived great benefit from the same king’s good government, or success
in war? If they did not deserve to share in his punishment, can we say that
they deserved to share in his prosperity? But the same is true of life
generally. If we suffer where we have not sinned, do we not also prosper where
we have not proved worthy? If, after all our toils and honest exertions, our
hopes are defeated through the fault of others, do we not also reap where we
have not sowed, and gather where we have not strawed? If the wrong-doing of
others sometimes brings an undeserved retribution on our heads, is it not true
that every day some happiness is added to our lot, through the right-doing of
others? The fraud of two or three men causes a national calamity; but the
honest dealing of a thousand others, with their conscientious discharge of
duty, makes the nation prosperous, secures to very many the advantages of an
easy income with little trouble to themselves, and preserves the country from
bankruptcy, moral and commercial; and if the calamity is undeserved, surely we
cannot say that we have deserved all the prosperity. Just think how, in a
hundred ways, we reap the benefit of other men’s labour; how our enormous
material prosperity during this century has been chiefly due to James Wart’s
invention of the steam-engine, so that thousands have now the opportunity of
culture and refinement, who otherwise would hays been toiling in the fields all
day, with dulled senses and faculties of thought disused. Think how many lives
are saved every year in our coal-mines by Sir Humphrey Davy’s lamp; think how
much physical suffering has been spared us, in the practice of surgery, by the
discovery of nitrous oxide and chloroform; think how many pure and pleasant
thoughts have come to us through the work of some great poet, or painter, or
musician--and say, is it not emphatically true that, if we suffer by the sins
of our fellow-men, we benefit also by their virtues? Here, again, it would be
easy to furnish examples; it is sufficient to observe the general’ principle
that the influence of other men on our fortunes is for good as well as for
evil. But look further at the problem of hereditary evil--“the sins of the
fathers coming on the children”--is there not also such a thing as hereditary
good? We have not all inherited feeble constitutions from our ancestors, or the
race would come to an end; we are not all placed in circumstances where we
cannot lead an honest life, otherwise society would cease to exist. As an
actual fact, hereditary evil is the exception; and what we have to consider, in
most cases, is the great fact of hereditary good, which is as little deserved
by us as the evil. Is it not the case with many of us that the patient
industry, the upright conduct, and the virtuous lives of our fathers and
forefathers, have surrounded us with advantages from the very moment of our
birth--advantages which they perhaps were morally bound to secure for us, but
which we have in no sense earned by our own merit? If our fathers and
forefathers were only discharging their duty, none the less have they, in such
ways, conferred great blessings upon us. Thus far our considerations have
involved no principle distinctively religious. We are dealing with facts which
are facts to the Atheist or Agnostic quite as much as to the Christian. Up to
this point, we have only reached this conclusion--that our weal and woe are
indissolubly linked with the actions of our fellow-men, that from this connection
there come to us both good and evil, and that we must be content to take the
evil with the good. Now, how does the gospel of Christ stand to all this? Does
it help us further in solving the problem? It does give a complete solution,
but in a very unexpected way. So far from regarding this problem of undeserved
suffering as a part of the universe to be explained or defended, Christianity
takes it up as the starting-point of its moral teaching. Now, see how all this
bears on our problem. The universe is so ordered that we live in the closest
relations to one another; we exercise an immense influence over one another’s
fortunes, both for good and evil. We accept the good without acknowledging it
with gratitude; we receive the evil with loud complainings against fate, and
passionate upbraidings against Providence; but all the time we think only of
ourselves. Christ bids us think of others. While we complain because we suffer
from others’ wrong-doing, Christ says to us, “Take heed that others do not
suffer from your wrong-doing. You live in close relation with your fellow-man;
then see to it that, from this relation, nothing but good flows to him; love
even your enemies, bless even them, that curse you, do good even to them that
hate you; in all things strive to make your fellow-man better, happier, nobler,
by loving him with all your heart.” In short, while we cry out about our
rights, Christ bids us think of our duties; while we think only of the claims
we have on others, He calls us to consider also the claims which others have on
us. In this there seems to me to lie the true solution of the problem. We must
cease to look at it with purblind selfishness of vision; we must not continue
to ask the one question, “Why should I suffer, being innocent?” but we must
also ask, “Why should I receive benefit when I have neither laboured nor
deserved?” and above all, we must ask, “How can I live and act, so that my life
and actions shall bring good, and good only, to my fellow-men?” We utter
passionate complaints about our own wrongs and woes, about the evil influences
which our fellow-men exercise on our fortunes; but we should utter heartfelt
acknowledgments of boundless good received from the good offices of those who
went before, and those who are living now. We are related to one another, not
as Alpine peaks rising from a cold sea of mist--divided, solitary; but as
stones which help each other in building up the great fabric of God’s world.
God has clearly meant it to be so. Not one of us lives to himself or dies to himself;
the living or dying, even of the humblest man, has its influence on some other
fellow-creature for evil or for good. What a changed world it would be if all
such influence--if the influence of every man’s living and dying--were an
unmixed good to others! Where, then, would be the undeserved suffering which at
present seems such a grievous wrong? But Christ’s command has, for its
practical result, the direction of every man’s influence for good; and the
whole essence of Christian morality lies in the words of St. John, “Little
children, love one another.” If we could only adopt, in its entirety, the
principle of Christ’s commandment, we would be vexed no more by perplexing
doubts and anxious fears--we would find, in this solidarity of the human race,
our greatest strength and our best educator. Buffering, whether deserved or
undeserved, can always be traced to sin; and sin has its root in the
selfishness of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. If love were to take the
place of selfishness in every human heart, sin would be unknown, its consequent
suffering unheard of, and earth be changed from a purgatory into a paradise. In
spite of the centuries which are completed since Christ lived and died in the
world, Christianity, as a moral force among men, is little more than in its
infancy. Whatever power it may have had over individual hearts, in cleansing
them from sin and widening them to some comprehension of God’s love, the full
significance of its teaching has been little felt on society as a whole. But
more and more, as men become possessed by this intense feeling of sympathy with
their fellows, this single-hearted desire to make all their influence on them
tell for good, this death of all selfishness, this regenerator of the moral
nature which Christ called forth, and which we denominate love--more and more
the evils under which the race of men now groan will disappear. (D. Hunter,
D. D.)
Verse 24
Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price.
The unselfish offering
Then David had not learned the now commonly approved methods of
piety. It was surely very strange for one who could offer a sacrifice without
expense, to prefer to offer a purchased sacrifice, and, instead of embracing a
presented opportunity of costless worship, to insist upon paying for the
materials of his service. It was a generous impulse which prompted the refusal,
and David had generous impulses. With all his faults, he could be quite at home
with the noble in sentiment and spirit.
I. The real spirit
of David’s conduct. We must keep in mind this fact, that David would not do
what he might have done. It was not compliance with a hard necessity; it was
not a reluctant submission to what could not well be helped: he might have
acted otherwise without inflicting any injury or causing any offence. Araunah
could well afford to make the gift, and he wished to make it. Had David
accepted it, his offering would not have been at all deficient; in place and
matter and instruments it would have been complete. He had a fine opportunity,
as some would esteem it, of reconciling self-interest with godliness, prudence
with principle; of doing a good thing for nothing: what would multitudes give
for such an opportunity? Why, then, did David forego it? The answer is, that he
felt that which would not have been represented by the acceptance of Araunah’s
present. He wished to sacrifice, did not wish another to do it. Acting
otherwise, the materials of the sacrifice would have been the same, but the
virtual offerer would have been different. It would have been no fit expression
of David’s spirit, no full gratification of the feelings that now filled his
heart. An illustration may be taken from some of the old sacred buildings. You
will find them “finished with the most circumstantial elegance and minuteness
in those concealed portions which are excluded from public view, and which can
only be inspected by laborious climbing or groping,” a fact explained by
saying, “that the whole carving and execution was considered as an act of
solemn worship and adoration, in which the artist offered up his best faculties
to the praise of the Creator.” These men of “the dark ages,” as we love in the
pride of our compassion to call them, had in this a true and grand idea: what
would they say of our veneered and gilded modern life, in which everything is
for show and nothing from reality, everything for a purpose and nothing from a
principle? Everything depends on the predominant principle and purpose. If a
man’s prime feeling be that of self, he will go to the easiest and most
economic way to work and worship; if a man’s prime feeling be that of God, he
will rebuke all thoughts of cheapness and facility. In the first case, he will
seek the largest possible results from the least possible expenditure; in the
second, the expenditure will be itself the result. Now it is the end and
essence of all religion to turn the mind from self to God; to give it absorbing
views of the Divine beauty and glory; to fill it with Divine love and zeal; to
make it feel honoured in honouring God, blessed in blessing Him; to make it
feel that nothing is good enough or great enough for him: and when the mind is
thus affected and thus possessed, it will understand and share the spirit of
David’s resolve, not to offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord God of that which
doth cost nothing.
II. See how this
spirit will act and manifest itself.
1. It will make our service, whatever it is, a living thing. What we
do, even when it is the same that others do, will be animated by another and a
loftier principle and passion. Whether it be worship or labour, it will be an
end and not a means. It will not be the driving of a bargain with God, not
compliance with terms and conditions of favour and recompense, but the pouring
out of a loving and reverential heart; not the result of a careful calculation,
but of sympathy with the goodness and glory of the Lord. A man thus inspired
will no more think of inquiring the advantages, the probable gains of his deeds
and his adoration, than he would think of the profitableness of gazing with
admiration on a lovely landscape, or regaling his soul with the noble qualities
of a hero or a martyr. But this spirit will not only affect what we do, not only
make a reality of our service, but it will make us do more, far more, than
would otherwise be possible. The language of the man who tools as David felt
will be, What can I do to glorify God? what modes and methods of honouring him
are within my power? There are two questions asked consciously or unconsciously
by men in relation to religious service: one is, How little may we do? The
other is, How much can we do? These questions involve different principles and
ends. He who puts the first thinks only of safety; he who puts the second
thinks only of duty: in the first it is interest that speaks; in the second it
is gratitude, love, reverence, and zeal. And if these inspire us, we need not
repeat David’s act; there is no necessity to insist on making costly what might
be without price. It would be easy to illustrate the operation of this spirit
in connection with every department of human service. It must, for instance,
influence the study of truth. We are satisfied with our religious faith; we
have no doubt at all that the great and life-giving principles of the Gospel
are understood and held by us; we can afford to look with profound pity on
those who think otherwise, to commiserate the paucity or erroneousness of the
articles of their creed. We have learned to distinguish between things
necessary to be believed in ordered to salvation and things unnecessary; the
first we maintain with rigorous fidelity, the last occasion us no concern: we
meet every suggestion or solicitation to inquiry and examination, to deep and
extended thought, with the response that it is not needful, a man may be saved
without it. Is that the spirit of the text? Is that giving God our best? Far
from it. Let us lose sight of the question of mere salvation, and be fired with
a zeal for the honour of the God of truth; let us love truth for its own sake,
and not for the sake only of the profit of believing it; and, whatever our
present convictions, we shall bring to its pursuit and its contemplation our
keenest investigations and finest thought, and, irrespective of all
considerations of gain or safety, shall “follow on to know.” It will influence
us in connection with the more difficult and least popular morals. We are not
only to do good, but not to let our “good be evil spoken of;” not only to avoid
evil, but “the appearance of evil;” not only to work that we may not steal, but
to work that we may “have to give;” not only to resist temptation, but to flee
from its scenes and instruments; to forbid the impure and wrathful thought and
desire, as well as the outward act; to be “without offence,” to “think “ upon
whatsoever things are “lovely and of good report,” to deny ourselves, to love
our enemies; in one word, to be “imitators of God,” and walk “even as Christ
also walked.”
3. This spirit will affect certain forms of religious profession.
When the duty of a formal acknowledgment of Christ, art identification with His
people, and the commemoration of His death in His Supper, are urged, the reply
for substance is frequently made: “It is not absolutely necessary to join a
church: you cannot maintain that only those who belong to religious societies
will enter the kingdom of heaven. It may be very good and profitable as a rule,
but I am left at liberty to do it or leave it alone as I think proper. You
cannot pretend that there is no salvation out of the church.” The answer to
this is not far to seek. We suppose that there is no fixed and universal rule
of necessity in such things. Necessity is not in the subject but in the man. We
can conceive of great things not being necessary sometimes, and of very little
things being necessary sometimes, on this ground. Is it necessary for a man to
do, or safe to leave undone, what he knows to be according to the will of God?
Is persistence in disobedience compatible with a state of spiritual security?
But why talk at all of necessity? Necessity in relation to what? Your
salvation? But, conceding what you assume, is that the only light in which to
regard the Divine will? Is personal profit the only thing that gives that will
power over your nature? Do you really mean that you will do only what you are
obliged to do, that you care nothing for law and love, that you are indifferent
to Maker’s pleasure and a Saviour’s grace, but that you do want to get to
heaven?’ Is that, the offering you make to God, an offering dictated by no
sense of his claims and favours, no passion to serve Him worthily, but a mere
calculation of spiritual profit?
4. This spirit will prompt us to labour to do good, and not to refuse
even the more arduous and self-denying services of benevolence.
III. The
considerations by which the spirit of the text should be excited.
1. Consider what God is; how worthy of your utmost zeal and love and
honour in Himself, in His ineffable perfections. How “glorious” He is “in
holiness”; “how great is His goodness, how great is His beauty.” To give to him
the best is a necessary fruit of any true, however inadequate conception of His
infinite worth.
2. Think, again, that every offering you make to God is already His
own. The materials of service are His, the power to use them is His;. His are
the outward instruments, and His the moral faculties.
3. But, lastly, remember that God does not offer to us that which
cost him nothing. (A. J. Morris.)
A test of sincerity
A free salvation does not necessarily imply a religion which costs
us nothing. If the text were to be translated into New Testament language, it
would read thus: “I will not make a profession of being a believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ which involves no necessity for self-denial or self-sacrifice.”
Now, in illustration of this subject I would observe, that both in the type and
in the fulfilment of the type the Lord Jehovah has set before us salvation as
that which on His part is free and gracious, “without money and without price.”
See how the graciousness and freeness of salvation were pointed out here. The
sinner might have been expected to be consumed himself, and that a sacrifice
was accepted as an atonement for him must only be attributable to the rich
grace and kindness and love of God. The sinner could never have expected that
in such a way as this, without anything that he had done to deserve favour, God
should have provided for him a way of escape; but it is even so in the
fulfilment of the type. But there was one circumstance, in the typical
institution, which tends still further to show the freeness of God’s salvation.
This burnt-offering was placed within reach of even the poorest; but in each
case the man was required to give something, in order that he might come before
God in the prescribed way of acceptance. Even so is it, when we come to look at
the fulfilment of these typical institutions, as set forth in the Gospel of
salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ is not only a Saviour for the rich man, but a
Saviour for the poor man; and the poor man may come to God with as great a
welcome as the richest and the most honourable. But then it is very possible
for men to deceive themselves, and to suppose that they are coming before God
in His appointed way of acceptable worship, when “a deceived heart hath turned
them aside,” so that they cannot ask themselves, “is there not a lie in my
right hand?” It becomes necessary, therefore, to show the second part of this
proposition--that although God’s salvation is free, it does not necessarily
imply a religion which costs a man nothing. Salvation itself costs him nothing.
In order that we may see this, observe the circumstances referred to in the
text. Now, the sacrifice might have been offered--the burnt-offering, God’s
appointed way of coming before Him acceptably under that dispensation, might
have been consumed on the altar--David might have been present, and ostensibly
have been the man to offer this sacrifice--and yet Araunah might have borne all
the cost of it; but, if so, would not David have been proved to have been a
hypocrite in his worship? For what was the signification of presenting a
burnt-offering to the Lord in this manner? Was it not an acknowledgment of the
sinner’s guilt, a thankful acceptance of God’s mercy, and at the same time a
dedication of all he had to the Lord’s service? See how this truth is brought
out clearly in New Testament language. “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought
with a price,” says the apostle Paul, “therefore glorify God in your body and
in your spirit, which are God’s.” So that the result of redemption received
into the heart by faith is the determination to “glorify God in our body and
our spirits, which are His.” Now, when there is this dedication of ourselves to
God, I ask whether it is possible to imagine a case in which there will be no
manifestation of it by some practical and self-denying acts. An act of my mind
may be connected with a thought known only to God, but the dedication of my
body as well as my spirit to God implies an outward act of which my
fellow-creatures can judge, though God Himself, who reads the heart, can alone
discern the motive from which that outward action proceeds; and inasmuch as it
is the duty of believers in Jesus Christ not merely to dedicate their spirits
unto God,. which have been “redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a
Lamb without spot,” but their bodies also, which have been redeemed at the same
precious price, it follows that such act of self-dedication must be attended with
the giving up of some things which we might have selfishly enjoyed--connected
with the making of sacrifices which perhaps would have been displeasing to
flesh and blood, but which we are now thankful to make, because under the
constraining power of the love of Christ--connected, in short, with the
manifestation of the feeling which makes us determine that while we serve God
we will not serve Him of that which costs us nothing. Now, let this truth be
applied to two or three individual characters, in order that we may see its
importance. Take the ease, for example, of the worldling, the man who is
following the customs and the habits of the world. Perhaps, if he have a
respect for religion, manifested by occasional attendance upon God’s
ordinances, he will tell you that he serves the Lord--that although he does not
care for being righteous overmuch, and although he makes no profession such as
many hypocrites do, yet that he means what is right. But the question is, does
that man offer burnt-offering to the Lord of that which costs him something?
Where is his self-denial? Where is his self-sacrifice? There must be a
devotedness of spirit and devotedness of life; there must be both acts of the
mind, and outward acts which his fellow-creatures can judge of, to denote his
devotedness to God, if he be indeed serving God as an acceptable worshipper of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Or take the case of the more determined professor of
religion. I allude to the case of the man who professes to value those great
doctrines of the Gospel concerning a full and free salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ. But every privilege is connected with a corresponding duty; every
blessing received from God involves responsibility on the part of the man who
receives it. For example, Christ’s presence with His people to the very end of
the world is a privilege; but it is connected with the duty, that they should
observe all things whatsoever He has commanded them, and that they should be
making constant efforts to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature. He who would be sincere in this matter must show his sincerity by the
determination which David manifested--that whilst his burnt-offering shall be
presented in the way God has appointed, it shall not be at other people’s cost,
but at his own--that he will not serve God of that which costs him nothing. And
now the point to which I am come is, that whether as to money, or time, or
influence, if we are really under the power of Christ’s constraining love, our
religion must be that which costs us something Has your religion ever cost you
anything in this respect? (W. Cadman, M. A)
The true principle of Divine service
On the place over which the angel of God had stayed his hand of
judgment, the king resolved to erect an altar, and to offer a burnt-offering.
That spot where judgment halted was the threshing-floor of Araunah. The point
in the transaction which will fix our attention is that of the king’s refusal
of Araunah’s generosity; not because so princely a nature as David’s could not
appreciate such generosity, but on principle. “I will surely buy of thee.”
There you have the principle which I desire to illustrate.
1. The principle was the expression of the true feeling of the
greatest, the devoutest, the most remarkable man of his day--a man whose
many-sidedness of nature links him with the highest; a man whose influence has
been felt in all ages, from his own till this, and in an ever-widening circle,
in the ratio of the missionary zeal of the Church of Jesus Christ, for there is
no religious poetry equal to David’s psalms. It received the Divine
endorsement. “The plague was stayed.”
2. The principle applies to the minister’s dedication, and
preparation for his work. He should resolve, “Neither will I offer to the Lord
my God of that which doth cost me nothing.”
3. The principle further applies to intellectual and heart
preparation for the work of the ministry.
4. Apply the principle to personal dedication. It will cost something
to offer yourself to the Lord your God. If it cost nothing, the enjoyment of
God’s favour would be little esteemed. The dedication of the person to God
involves the dedication of all that belongs to him. (R. Thomas.)
Genuine service for God
This subject is connected with that of “The Three Temples of the
One God,” not only because the event transpired on the very spot that became a
few years afterwards the site of the Temple, and so the centre of the worship
of Judea, but because of its association in motive and principle with Him Who
was the Second Temple, and because of its practice in the erection of the third
temple throughout the worm and the ages. The principle that comes out in these
words of David to Araunah is one that will sweep the whole circle of worship,
and work, and gifts, and personal religious life.
1. Worship. For in our buildings, in our service of praise and
prayer, preaching and hearing, we are to give our best in effort, in
intelligence, in all things, facing and resisting every temptation to the
contrary, with the words, “Shall I offer,” etc.
2. Work--not to schemes only that are pleasant, and in times that are
convenient and by proxies that are easily obtainable will the true worker for
God devote himself.
3. Gifts. Not with careless gifts, almost covertly given, or the
smallest coin doled out niggardly, can he give who says, “Shall I offer,” etc.
4. Personal religion. There is meanness and ingratitude in the spirit
that relegates all religious care to the leisure of Sunday, or of the
sick-room, or the infirmities of old age. Why should we not offer to God that
which costs nothing?
Three questions may throw light upon it.
1. How far what costs you nothing is any benefit to yourself? Such
may be of some benefit. But only what “costs something” calls out
2. How far what costs you nothing has much influence upon the world?
Sacrifice is the subtle and tremendous element needful in all great influence.
In the home, in the Church, in the state, they only climb true thrones, and
wear real crowns, who have the spirit of sacrifice. The Saviour Himself relied
on that--“I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me.” So does the Eternal
Father of men, for He has made “Christ,” who is incarnate Sacrifice, “the power
of God.”
3. How far what costs you nothing is acceptable to God? Christ’s
praise of the poor widow’s gift, God’s acceptance of the sacrifice of Christ,
sufficiently indicate the Divine estimate of self-denial. And since that
service which costs us something has the pulses of reality, the glow of love,
and the reflection of Christ, it surely is acceptable to God. (U. R. Thomas.)
The principle of giving
I. The true motive
to benevolence, “offering unto the Lord.” His offerings were
gifts to the Lord; and our offerings, too, must be gifts to the Lord. There may
be a sense in which we can give nothing to Him, and there are times in which He
reminds us of His sublime and eternal independence of us. We give to each other
what we may happen to need. God needs nothing. Into the infinite ocean of His
nature no streams are ever Seen to run. Unlike the oceans of the earth, it is
never supplied, but always supplies. Streams flow from it, but never to it.
They flow with a ceaseless and unflagging volume and speed. They flow to angels
and to men. They bear life, and strength, and wisdom, and grace, and love.
These streams ere carrying to-day light to unnumbered worlds, health to
unnumbered living things, comfort to unnumbered weary ones, hope to unnumbered
despairing ones. A father gives to his son a plot of ground that he may turn it
into a garden. He gives him the tools with which to prepare it. He gives him
the seeds from which he is to raise the fruits and flowers. He gives him a home
to live in. He gives him his daily food. At length, the father finds on his
table the richest fruit and fairest flowers which the garden has produced as a
loving acknowledgment from his son. What is this acknowledgment? It is a gift,
and yet it is only a gift of what is his own. In this manner, and in this only,
we can give to God. To offer to the Lord; this expression lies at the root of
all true service. To the Lord was a sort of touchstone, which the Apostle
carried with him everywhere, and by which he tested both his own doings and
those of others. You know that in life everything depends upon the motive from
which it springs. Man is what his motives are, and he is no better and no
worse. The outward, visible deed we may perform, or the audible word we may
speak, have no meaning to us, until we have first ascertained the motive which
incited them. It
is only too common to think of the giving of money as a lower branch of
Christian duty. On the contrary, that giving may be the highest and most
religious act of the godly man. Generosity may be one of their constitutional
peculiarities. It is so with many, and it may be so with them. They were born
with it. But there are others of a very different character, in whom the
generous giving of their means would be the sublimest shape in which their
religion could make itself manifest.
II. The measure of
Christian liberality. “I will not offer unto the Lord of that which costs me
nothing.” This was but the negative form of David’s noble principle. He meant
that he would give to the Lord of that which cost him something. This
principle, interpreted widely, and under the inspiration of a grateful love,
would yield a sufficiency of means for carrying on without embarrassment every
Christian agency in the world. The spirit of Christian liberality is evermore a
spirit of self-denial. It is prompted and fed by the thought of Him who, though
He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might
be rich. The vital nerve which runs through it is one of gratitude for infinite
mercy. And those whose Christianity has cost them the most are the men who will
be faithful unto death. Will Luther, will Melanchthon, will Zwingle, will
Calvin, will Latimer, will Knox, will Ridley, will Hooper, forsake the
reformation? Nay; they will go for it to prison if needful, or even unto death,
but they will not deny it. Having love as the impulse to our benevolence, its
measure will be determined by the nature of the case which appeals for our
help, and also by the means which God has placed at our disposal. Here is false
measure! It is stamped with the words, “What have I given before?” This carries
with it a double falsehood. It may be too heavy, or it may be too light. This
weight will be condemned at the last day. There is another weight, stamped with
the words, “How little can I give?” Of this weight I say nothing, nor of the
man who uses it, except this, that he that soweth sparingly shall read also
sparingly. Gratitude demands that we give to the Lord. Giving to the Lord is as
Christian a work as prayer or the avoidance of sin. Giving must always be
tending towards sacrifice and self-denial (E. Mellor, D. D.)
A religion that costs nothing
The doctrine of sacrifices, as under the old dispensation, is not
easy to fathom completely. Of course one purpose was to foreshadow the
sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But there must have been much more lying
behind the system than this typical teaching. Such elaborate directions as are
given as to the value, the composition, the way of celebrating these
burnt-offerings, were no doubt intended to serve a more direct purpose of
teaching than what was merely typical. There was one eternal principle of God,
a principle which has been running all through the ages, which these
burnt-offerings did teach. A burnt-offering meant the giving up of a certain
amount of pleasure, or trouble, or possessions, and was essentially, in the
literal sense of the word, a sacrifice. The man who presented a burnt-offering
to God was bound to take a certain amount of trouble before he could do so.
Wealth, or property, then, was far more equally divided than it is now. Much of
it was in kind. In fact, these old sacrifices were an instance of that
irrevocable law which prevails all through the universe, the necessity of
taking pains. This was the old principle, so well put by Carlyle, “It is only
with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.”
Renunciation, but of what? Of all that is satisfactory in life? By no means,
but renunciation of the self-spirit in man. One of the most favourite maxims
which we now hear quoted, and which has been quoted so often that we have
almost come to believe it is true, is that we should not, as a rule, force
ourselves to do anything. Wait till the desire comes--till the spirit moves
you--till you are in the humour for it--say many of our advisers. Forced work,
say they, is not good work. Sit down quietly, or take a walk, until you feel
more disposed to attack your difficult task. Which, in other words, means this,
wait until it is easier for me to do it. Wait until it costs me less exertion
to perform it, And this principle seems to be an entirely false one, and it is
at the root of a great deal of the mischief in the world. Every daily duty is,
or should be, a duty done to God--for God, whether it be wielding the workman’s
hammer, or presiding on the judicial bench. This plan, then, of not forcing
ourselves to do a disagreeable duty, when reduced, means, offering unto the
Lord that which costs me, not perhaps nothing, but at any rate not very much.
Can you conceive an Israelite, to whom the time had come to offer to God His accustomed
sacrifice, reasoning thus to himself? That is a true possession--that is a true
offering--that is the salt of life--that God demands at our hands service which
costs us something. The truth of this principle is shown in various ways. More
especially it is shown by the increased store which we always set upon any
possession which has cost us self-renunciation to obtain. The Canadian settler,
who is surrounded by the rough-hewn chairs and tables of his own construction,
probably values and cherishes these more than the owner of a fashionable London
drawing-room does her magnificent furniture. In the one case they are the
result of labour and toil, and very frequently, in the other case, they
represent no more than someone else’s toil. And it is an eternal law of God
that we cannot have as much true pleasure from some one else’s labour as from
our own. Or if we do contrive to extort much pleasure from it, it is an
indication of how very low we have fallen in character. It is one of the
misfortunes of those who inherit possessions, that they are unable to
appreciate the having them in anything like the same proportion as if they had
toiled for them themselves. But I desire to put before you the view of the
offering which every man has to make, willingly or unwillingly, unto his Maker.
That offering is the sum of his own life’s career. “We bring our years to an
end,” says the Psalmist, “as it were s tale that is told.” And having brought
them to an end, they are presented, as a long and patchy scroll, unto God who
gave them. I conceive that when the smoke of the years of our life ascends in
upward flight to God, that only can be an acceptable, or in any sense an
offering or sacrifice to Him, which bears the trace of the eternal principle of
having taken pains with it. Earthly successful careers, which in many ways are
typical of spiritually successful careers, are produced by the age-long genius
of taking pains. The fool physical, and the fool spiritual, is the man who
takes no pains. The one cannot succeed, neither can the other. In an infinitely
higher way our Saviour teaches us this same lesson: “If any man will come after
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” What
else is this but saying that life--life--that magnificent possession given to
us sons of God--this life is a sacrifice, living is a sacrifice, our years are
a sacrifice, and this sacrifice, when we shall enter the portals of Hades-land,
we must take, and present, and lay it upon the altar of God. Perhaps, then, the
question to be asked is this: Is your spiritual life costing you anything?
Sacrifice of money is but a small part of the life-sacrifice. The money is not
yours--the life is. Many of you are toiling, and wearing out brain and body
over the earthly life, are you straining every fibre, too, to make beautiful
and glorious the life which is hid with Christ in God? I am not hinting that
the spiritual life and the earthly life are separate and distinct--I know at
least that they need not be--but do not make the spiritual life earthly, but
make the earthly life spiritual. Do all to the glory of God. But to those who
find but little to do, there is the danger. Many a life stagnates because it
eats away its heart in comfortable inactivity. Those of you who are fed, and
clothed, and served, and protected, and toiled for by thousands of suffering
others, let me tell you, you cannot pay for these things, therefore your life,
when laid before God, must be a life that has cost you something, some
scouring, some cleaning, if God can accept it. Yes, assuredly, you too must go
up upon the hill of God, and by dropping your contribution of usefulness, real
usefulness, into God’s world, must help God. And the greatness and the reality
of that sacrifice of love which Jesus made for the whole world, and for you, is
an example of the sacrifice which He asks you to make of the jewel He has given
you--your life! A diamond it is, unpolished, uncut, but capable of infinite
beauty of form, infinite purity of lustre. He will help to shape and mould it,
then to brighten and polish it, and then to keep its lustre undimmed and its
sparkle clear. Finally, also, God will ask you for it, i.e., your
life, and if worthy, He will place it, a bright jewel, in the eternal crown.
High destiny! Great end! How can I, thus conscious of the eternal plan, do else
than present to Him my noblest and my best? I will not offer unto the Lord my
God that which has cost me nothing. (A. H. Powell, M. A.)
A costly gift freely bestowed
In Disruption times, a poor woman, Janet Fraser, owned a
small cottage and garden in Penpont, which she freely and cordially offered to
the Free Church. A “sough” of this having gone abroad, the duke’s agent called
on Janet, and began by offering her £25 for the ground, presently rising to
£50; but Janet declared that she had given it to the Lord, and would not recall
it for all the dukedom of Queensbury. On her ground the church was accordingly
built. (W. G. Blaikie.)
Service costs sacrifice
A fashionable and wealthy lady in America made up her mind to
become a missionary. For a long time the church of which she was a member,
doubting her fitness, delayed acceptance of her offer; but, at last, as she
persisted, they yielded and asked her what sphere of labour she preferred.
Looking down thoughtfully on her dainty gloves, she replied, “I think I should
prefer Paris to any other place.” That was the city that suited the belle of
fashion rather than the neglected millions of China or India, or Central
Africa. But our Master declares, “If any man will be My disciple, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (H. O. Mackey.)
Bibles gratis refused
When Mr. Campbell went upon his first mission to Africa, the Bible
Society sent along with him a number of Bibles to be distributed to a Highland
regiment stationed at the Cape of Good Hope. Arrived there, the regiment was
drawn out in order to receive the Bibles. The box which contained them was
placed in the centre, and on Mr. Campbell presenting the first Bible to one of
the men he took out his pocket four shillings and sixpence for the Bible,
saying, “I enlisted to serve my king arid my country, and I have been well and
regularly paid, and will not accept of a Bible as a present when I can pay for
it.” His example was instantly followed by all the regiment. (Anecdotes of
the Old Testament.)
Give God the best
This is a touching story a missionary tells of a Hindu mother who
had two children, one of them blind. The mother said her god was angry, and
must be appeased, or something worse would come to pass. One day the missionary
returned, and the little bed had but one child in it. The mother had thrown the
other into the Ganges. “And you cast away the one with good eyes?” “Oh, yes,”
she said; “my god must have the best.” Alas! Alas! the poor mother had a true
doctrine, but she put it to a bad use. Let us try to give God the best. Too
long already have we put Him off with the drippings from life’s overful cup.
Verse 25
And David built an altar there unto the Lord.
The altar and sacrifice
The history of David affords us an instructive lesson of the
blessings arising out of sanctified affliction, as well as the dangers of
prosperity.
1. At the beginning of the chapter it is said, “the anger of the Lord
was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, go number
Israel and Judah.” In the parallel passage (1 Chronicles 21:1-30.) it is said
“Satan provoked David to number Israel,” i.e., (as Bishop Hall remarks)
God did so by permission, Satan by suggestion; God as a judge, Satan as an
enemy.
2. It has occurred to some as difficult to see exactly wherein
David’s sin consisted.
3. Observe, again, “David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the
people; after, not before. Sin leaves a sting behind, though it may give a
momentary gratification.
4. Remark David’s sorrow and confession and guilt: “I have sinned and
done very foolishly.” Ah! here was grace; this was unnatural, it was
supernatural; it was the very opposite of fallen nature to take all the blame
to himself.
5. David was, on his repentance and acknowledgment, charged to rear
an altar and to offer a sacrifice which was intended, no doubt, to represent
that “without shedding of blood, there is no remission.”
I. The altar and
sacrifice represent the sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the
only sacrifice God will accept as an atonement for sin.
1. David offered “burnt-offerings and peace offerings.” The
burnt-offerings represent God’s justice; the peace offerings represent God’s
mercy--a striking emblem of our great sacrifice I Here, in Jesus, “Mercy and
truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Here, God’s
justice is satisfied, and His mercy manifested. Here, we see God “a just God,”
and yet “a Saviour”--“just, and the Justifier of all who believe.” Where shall
we look for the great proofs of God’s righteous displeasure against sin? The
great proof is found in the sufferings of God’s own Son. Again, where shall we
look for the great proof of God’s mercy? You remind me of the ark in which Noah
and his family were saved, or of Zoar, where Lot found refuge? Yes; but the
great proof of mercy is to be found in the same garden, and on the same cross
where we found the other
1. In one sense, and that a very important sense, our acceptance with
God cost us nothing--it is free. Nothing we can do is meritorious: salvation is
God’s free gift through Christ. This is the vital pulse of a sinner’s hope--“By
grace he is saved.”
2. The other point is: our redemption cost God much. “Ye are bought
with a price,” said St. Paul to his Corinthian brethren; how great a price he
did not say; he could not. “God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.” “God so loved.” Who can say how much? There is no mercy out
of Christ, and “no condemnation to them who are in Christ.”
II. David’s
resolution and conduct on the occasion of God’s mercy to him. David’s conduct
by no means implies he regarded his offering as meritorious. (Psalms 51:16-17,) “For thou desirest not
sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering; the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
Thou wilt act despise.” It proved two things as regarded David’s peculiar case,
viz., sincerity and thankfulness. Sincerity--unlike the ruler mentioned in the
Gospel, he wanted a religion which would cost him nothing, and therefore “he
went away sorrowful.” Thankfulness. David longed to show what he felt, like the
leper (Luke 17:1-37.), he “returned to give
glory to God.” Oh! what a spring it would give to charity, to feel as David
felt. Observe, in the parallel passage (1 Chronicles 21:1-30.) it is said,
David bought the threshing-floor for 600 shekels of gold. We can reconcile the
two accounts by merely supposing the author in the book of Samuel stated the
price of the oxen, while the author in the book of Chronicles mentioned the
price of the threshing floor. Let me now mention a few particulars which the
Gospel claims as proofs of gratitude, and God’s Word proposes as tests of
sincerity.
1. Coming out of the world.
2. The Gospel demands the sacrifice of every known sin--not one, but
all; not in part, but entirely.
3. The Gospel demands of us to deny self. “Of all idols,” says one,
“idol self is worshipped the longest.”
Let me close with a word or two of direct and personal
application.
1. I address those who suppose, by offering to God what cost them
much, thereby to merit heaven. Turn, my brethren, to 1 Corinthians 13:3. “Though I bestow
all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have
not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” This exactly meets your case.
2. To such as, Gallio
like, “care for none of these things,” I would say your case is an awful one. A
religion which costs you nothing--which allows you to keep your sins--to be
conformed to the world, and to indulge the flesh, is not of God. (W. E.
Ormsby, M. A.)
And the plague was stayed
from Israel.
The infliction and removal of the judgment upon David for
numbering the people
These words record the removal of a terrible visitation sent from
Heaven on the people of Israel. The circumstances connected with that Divine
judgment, and the means by which its terrors were ended, are replete with the
most valuable instruction. And therefore choose thee one of these three
things--“Shall three years of famine come unto thee in thy land? Or wilt thou
flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? Or that there
be three days’ pestilence in thy land? Now advise thee what answer I shall give
to Him that sent me.” How forcibly does this part of our subject teach us the
great danger of engaging in any scheme or course of action upon which we cannot
ask the blessing of God! How carefully ought we to examine and weigh by the
balance of the sanctuary, the motives by which we are actuated! How easily can
God crush our most favourite plans and blight our dearest hopes, and punish our
forgetfulness of Him, and dependence on our own strength, by turning those very
things upon which our hearts were most bent, into sources of the bitterest
anguish and the most humiliating mortification! Thus a man will often set his
heart upon riches, and worship Mammon rather than God; and those riches are
taken away from him after they have been for awhile possessed in abundance--a
deprivation, which makes poverty far bitterer than ever it was before; or while
actually possessed, they in various ways cause him troubles and sorrows more
intolerable than any that fall to the lot of the poor.
1. The great danger of prosperity, and the folly of coveting riches
and honours as the chief good.
2. The deceitful nature and the terrible consequences of sin. David’s
heart smote him after, not before, he had numbered the people. This is Satan’s
method of dealing with his prey, and this is the way he succeeds in beguiling
men to ruin. He blinds the eye to the guilt, until the evil deed is done. How
deeply is this felt by the penitent, when brought to loathe himself for his
iniquity! What a sting is left behind by sin, though it may have been committed
with very little alarm, and with scarcely any sense of its malignant nature!
What a picture is displayed in this history of sin’s terrible consequences--the
angel of God running to and fro through the land with the sword of vengeance, and
slaying seventy thousand men in less than three days! How it exhibits the
Almighty’s resolve not to let iniquity go unpunished!
3. The great and invaluable efficacy of the sacrifice of the death of
Christ. The Almighty God, who is “angry with the wicked every day,” and who has
declared that all the nations that forget Him shall be turned into hell, has,
nevertheless, made with them who believe in Christ, “a covenant well ordered in
all things and sure,” and, in that covenant, we have a Divine promise made, and
the Divine veracity pledged, that they shall never perish, who rest their hopes
on the offered propitiation.
4. The importance of promptitude in applying for mercy, and in
deprecating the Divine wrath through the appointed sacrifice.
5. Finally, learn hence the duty of activity, liberality in the
service of God, and for the benefit of your fellow sinners. It is a Scriptural
precept--“Honour the Lord with thy substance.” He who has a religion which
costs him nothing has a religion that is worth nothing. (H. Hughes, B. D.)
The destroying angel arrested
If we knew how to enjoy our blessings in the fear of God, they
would be continued unto us; but it is the sin of man that he extracts, even
from the mercies of God, the poison which destroys his comforts: ha grows fat
upon the bounty of Heaven, spurns its laws, and awakens it vengeance. This was
the case with the Israelites at the period to which our text refers. It is
probable their sin was a general forgetfulness of God, and a vain confidence in
the strength, numbers, and valour of the nation; for with this feeling of
national vanity David was affected. The time was come when punishment could be
no longer delayed; and the pestilence received its commission. Seventy thousand
men died from Dan to Beersheba; and that the judgment might be known to proceed
from God, an angel was made visible, with a drawn sword, directing, by His
terrible agency, the vengeance and the death. The history indicates to us:
I. The strict
regard paid by the Almighty to the conduct of His creatures. This is a
consideration which ought ever to impress our minds. The want of it is one of
the causes of the misconduct of men. All are not openly infidels; they do not
deny a God; nor do they allow His existence, and deny His omniscience. All do
not confine Him to His own heaven, and make it part of His greatness and
grandeur to avert His eyes from earth. All do not make Him indifferent to sin
and say, with the unbelief of those of old, “The Lord shall not see, neither
shall the God of Jacob regard it.” But though we may not, say this, we may be
influenced by the very principle from which it proceeds. All who sin forget
God; act as though there were no God, or He had no omniscience, or that He is
indifferent to their conduct. To awaken us to a consciousness of the regard he
pays to our actions, to His ever-bending, ever-watchful eye, it is, that he has
so often specially interposed to punish sin, and in a manner which could leave
no doubt of His agency. For this, among other purposes, the histories in the
Old Testament have been preserved; that observing the displays of His power and
justice, we might “sanctify the Lord in our hearts,” and that the whole earth
might “tremble and keep silence before Him.” Does any one suppose that because
He is but an individual, one amidst the myriads of the human race, he shall
pass in the crowd, and escape the notice of his Judge? Let him learn that David
was an individual, yet his individual sin was noticed, dragged to light,
reproved, and punished.
II. We are instructed
by the history to consider sin as an evil followed by the most disastrous
consequences. The pride, and forgetfulness of God, of which David and his
people were guilty, might appear, if sins at all, sins of a very venial kind,
the common infirmities of human nature; yet they were followed by the dreadful
choice of evils, and with the destruction of seventy thousand persons. One of
the most fatal habits of mind is to treat sin lightly or with ‘indifference. It
is exhibited as a mark of eminent folly. “Fools make a mock at sin.”
III. The history
also exhibits to us the only means of forgiveness and escape from punishment.
The altar was built unto the Lord: “David offered burnt-offerings and
peace-offerings; so the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was
stayed.” In other words, sin was expiated by the intervention of a sacrifice.
This is the doctrine of every book of Scripture, of every age, and of every
nation. Let us, then, observe that the testimony of the Church of God, from
every age, is that the anger of Him whom we have offended can only be
propitiated, and that He only can be approached, by sacrifice. When man became
a sinner, then an altar marked the place in which he worshipped, and his
offering was a bloody sacrifice. When Noah left the ark, his first act was to
erect an altar, to reconcile God to a world which bore so many marks of His
wrath; and at the Smell of the sweet savour of the offerings, He gave the
promise, “I will no more curse the ground for man’s sake.” When the first-born
of Egypt fell beneath the stroke of the angel, it was the blood of the lamb
sprinkled upon the door-posts that guarded in safety the offspring of Israel.
When the plague broke forth against the rebels in the wilderness, Aaron ran
between the living and the dead with his censer and incense, and the plague was
stayed; but it was incense inflamed by fire from the altar of sacrifice. Thus,
on ordinary occasions by stated, and on extraordinary displays of the Divine
anger by extraordinary sacrifices, did the Church show forth the intended death
of the true Sacrifice. This is our method of salvation: “We are saved by His
blood,” and it is important for us to know that, in this single doctrine of a
substituted sacrifice, the whole method of our salvation is included. The
manner in which sacrificial rites were performed illustrates even now the
method of salvation. The offerer confessed the fact of his offence by bringing
his victim; and he that believes in Christ, by assenting to this method of
expiation, confesses the fact too: “I have sinned, and therefore I fly to
Christ as my atonement.” The offerer was prompted by the fear of punishment to
slay his victim, and sprinkle the blood; so David in the text. If we are
properly alarmed at our, danger, we shall haste to the only refuge of a
Saviour’s bleeding side. The sacrifice was the instrument of sanctification; it
supposed a covenant with God; the sacrifice was eaten; the parties were made
friends; and sin, which only could make them enemies, was renounced for ever.
Thus, the appointment of sacrifices supposes the confession of sin; a salutary
fear of the terrors of a holy God; a just apprehension of the desert of sin,
death in its most painful forms; and a reliance and trust in God’s appointed
means of salvation, and the renunciation of all sin, and the recovery of His
blessing and friendship. All these are taught you and enjoined upon you by the
death of Christ; and on these terms we invite you to receive pardon and
salvation.
IV. We observe that
the erection of this altar by David was a public act, an act in which the
public were interested; and in this respect it agreed with the practice of all
ages. The building of an altar was ever a public act; the place was separate
from common purposes; and it stood as a religious memorial for the instruction
of mankind.
1. The erections themselves, and more especially the acts and
observances of worship, are memorials of religious facts and doctrines. They
keep a sense of God upon the minds of men; they turn She thoughts of the
public, whether they will or not to serious subjects.
2. Our worship is public, and the places we erect are places of
public resort.
3. Besides this, our places of worship are to be considered as the
places where the Gospel, the good and glad tidings of salvation, are announced
to men. They are the places of treaty and negotiation between God and man.
Ministers are the ambassadors of God. Clothed with authority by Him, they enter
His house, and a rebellious world is summoned to hear from them God’s gracious
terms of pardon, and His authoritative demand of submission.
4. They are houses of prayer, and remind us of our dependence upon
God, and of His condescension to us. They are houses of shelter from the storms
and cares of life; the places where we cast our care on Him, and prove that He
careth for us; the place where He is known, eminently known, for a refuge.
V. The zeal and
liberality which good men have ever discovered in the erection of houses and
altars to God. The words of the text are an instance. When Araunah saw David
coming, he went to meet him; and, when informed of the occasion--“to buy the
threshing-floor, to build an altar to the Lord”--he spontaneously makes him the
offer of his threshing-floor. (R. Watson.)
The arrest of the plague
In the modern city of Rome is a fortress, once the mausoleum of
the Emperor Hadrian, and bearing his name. About twelve hundred years ago so
tradition says, there raged a devastating plague in that old imperial town; and
while people and pope and priests were making a procession with prayers, there
appeared on the summit of the citadel the form of the Archangel Michael, in the
act of sheathing his sword, to show that the pestilence was stayed. So there,
in the place the vision, Gregory erected the statue of the angel poising on his
beautiful pinions, and hovering over the city he had saved. Ever since, this
edifice, converted into a stronghold, had been called “San Angelo,” the Castle
of the Holy Angel. Nobody asserts that an exquisite marble can render a fable
true; the legend is only a poor little travesty of our grand old Bible story;
but it may help in making our picture, as it shines out at the closing of our
lesson. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
The site of the altar
The last entry in the appendix to Samuel consists of a document
which may be described as the charter of the most famous of the world’s holy
places. By the theophany here recorded the threshing-floor of Araunah the
Jebusite received a consecration which has made it holy ground not only for
Judaism and Christianity, but for Islam as well. Upon this spot, we can
scarcely doubt, stood the great altar of Solomon’s temple. To-day, as all the
world knows, the site is covered by the magnificent mosque, the Kubbet
es-sahara, or Dome of the Rock, the most sacred of Mohammedan shrines after
those of Mecca and Medina. (Century Bible.)
Vicarious atonement
Starr King, one of the most eloquent champions of the Socinians,
paid the following tribute to the doctrine of the vicarious atonement: “It is
embodied by the holiest of memories, as it has been consecrated by the loftiest
talent of Christendom. It fired the fierce eloquence of Tertullian in the early
Church, and gushed in honeyed periods from the lips of Chrysostom; it enlisted
the life-long zeal of Atuanasius to keep it pure; the sublimity of it fired
every power, and commanded all the resources of the mighty soul of Augustine;
the learning of Jerome and the energy of Ambrose, were committed to its
defence; it was the text for the subtle eye and analytic thought of Aquinas; it
was the pillar of Luther’s soul, toiling for man; it was shapen into
intellectual proportions and systematic symmetry by the iron logic of Calvin;
it inspired the beautiful humility of Fenelon; fostered the devotion and
self-sacrifice of Oberlin; flowed like molten metal into the rigid forms of
Edwards’s intellect, and kindled the deep and steady rapture of Wesley’s heart
. . . All the great enterprises of Christian history have been born from the
influence, immediate or remote, which the vicarious theory of redemption has
exercised upon the mind and heart of humanity.”
──《The Biblical Illustrator》