Hope From the Word

Bill Luebkemann: Coming up on Hope From the Word, Jesus offered up his life for us and we should offer ours in return. What God wants from us is our lives, and yes, that is going to cost us something. We can't offer up to God someone else's life. We don't say, "Take his life and make him like you, Lord. I offer up my friend Harvey over here to you, Lord, and do with him whatever you want, but as for me, I'm going to go out and have a good time."

No. We offer up our own lives to God. We ask him to forgive our sins, and we submit ourselves to him, and we ask him to become our Lord. It costs us something. But it cost him something. It cost him the very life of his very own son. It costs us our life, not that we die in a physical sense, but that we offer ourselves to him as his servants, as his sons and daughters. He makes us his sons and daughters.

Guest (Male): Many years ago, Ladies' Home Journal posed a question to its readers: "In whom do you trust?" The answers spoke volumes about the state of Christianity in America. 40% of the people responding indicated that they trusted newsman Walter Cronkite. Pope John Paul II received 26% of the votes. Evangelist Billy Graham grabbed 6%, and sadly, only 3% replied that they placed their trust in God.

On today's broadcast, we'll meet a group of men who would have responded to the survey with a resounding 100% vote in favor of trusting God wholeheartedly. This is Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, and we're about to wrap up our series through 2 Samuel. Here's Pastor Bill now with today's message in 2 Samuel chapter 24.

Bill Luebkemann: You get the idea that David here towards the end of his life, his kingdom was vast. It had expanded greatly. You get the impression that maybe as he's sitting here in his palace, he just wants to gloat or have a great day thinking about how vast his assets are, kind of like Scrooge counting out his money on Christmas Eve. It doesn't matter that it's Christmas Eve. He'll count the money again. We just counted it yesterday. Let's count it again. See how many we have.

The kingdom is vast. It's far and wide. "How many men do we have, anyway? Tell me again. Was it a million? Did you say a million? Was it two million? Oh, let me hear that story again about how many men we have." You see here that this counting of the men was really not something that God wanted him to do. In fact, it was grievously wrong in God's sight.

It was so because David wasn't showing a great amount of faith and trust in the Lord in doing this. He enrolled the fighting men. There was just no need to do that. "So that I may know how many there are." Why do you need to know? Why does it matter? Joab knew better than David. Here's a place where Joab, for even some of the ways he had done some things he shouldn't have done in his career, at this time here, he is giving David really good advice.

He says, "May the Lord God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may you see it, but why would you want to do such a thing?" In other words, "Man, I hope God gives you a hundred times more troops than you already have. And you have a lot. And I hope you can see it all. I want you to have everything." He's loyal to David, fiercely loyal. "I'm hoping that the Lord will give you all this stuff, but why do you want to do this thing?" To paraphrase, "This is a big mistake, King. Don't do this."

The king's word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders. So they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel. Of course, King David, he was the king, they weren't. He said, "Look, I'm king, you're not the king. Get out there and get moving." After crossing the Jordan, they camped near Aroer, south of the town in the gorge, and then went through Gad and on to Jazer. They went to Gilead and the region of Tahtim Hodshi, and on to Dan Jaan and around toward Sidon.

Then they went toward the fortress of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites. Finally, they went on to Beersheba in the Negev of Judah. After they had gone through the entire land, they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. It took him almost ten months to travel around the land and count how many men they had.

Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king. In Israel, there were 800,000 able-bodied men who handled a sword, and in Judah, 500,000. So over a million people, 1.3 million men of fighting age who could handle a sword. That didn't include women or children. It didn't include old guys who couldn't... This was fighting-age men. This thing went on for nine months and twenty days while they gallivanted around the entire land. It wasn't until the very end that David realized that he did the wrong thing.

You get the impression that God allowed him to realize it here just at the right time. Nine months and twenty days, that's something like 290 days, more or less. Day one didn't bother David's conscience. Day two didn't bother him. Day three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten... I'm not going to count to 290. But who knows? Day 53, maybe he got a letter from these guys in the field saying, "Hey, we're down here at Jazer, everything's going well, see you in time for Christmas." Well, they didn't have Christmas yet. This was the Old Testament here.

As the time went by and the days ticked by, there was no thought in David's mind that he had done the wrong thing here. He didn't call them off partway through and say, "Look, give it up. Quit. I just realized how stupid can I be? What a fool I am." It took until they got back and reported the number. Something about hearing these numbers, somehow when he heard the number, the light bulb went on in David's brain. Uh-oh. This was a bad mistake. We shouldn't have counted these people.

David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, O Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." Too bad he didn't say that a day earlier or a month earlier. Too bad he didn't send a letter to the guys out in the field, Joab and whoever, and say, "Hey, call that off, come home, take your notes and throw them out. Burn them in a bonfire and then come home, and we'll pretend this never happened."

He was conscience-stricken only when the job was done, complete, finished, and over with. And then he's asking for forgiveness. Well, you've got to give him credit for that. Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David's seer: "Go and tell David, 'This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.'" So the Lord says there's going to be punishment. I'm going to give you three choices.

So Gad went to David and said to him, "Shall there come upon you three years of famine in your land, or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you, or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me." God said, "I don't want to hear from David. I want you, Gad, to go to David, pose the question. Gad will bring back the answer."

He said, "I'm going to give you a choice. Famine for three years." That would have affected huge numbers of people. No doubt there would be a huge number of people that would die and perish from that. I don't think David would have been in much danger there. I'm certain he had adequate storehouses. He could have survived, especially if he knew it was coming. Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you. Well, that's not too bad.

I don't think David would have been in any danger here also because remember a few chapters ago when he was being chased by Absalom, his troops said, "Hey, you stay in the back. We're not going to let anything happen to you. You're too important." This isn't Star Trek where the captain goes out and leads the battle with his fists. We're going to take care of you. You're important. You're going to stay in the background. We'll fight it for you.

If the enemy had come for three months, there would have been a lot of death also, but it wouldn't have been David who would have been dying either. Or three days of plague in your land. Now there's something David really wouldn't be exempt from. He can't run away from it. He can't be protected from it. He can't say, "Well, I'm going to go somewhere else where the enemy can't get me."

He can't say, "Well, I'm going to be exempt." The famine, he could have been exempt. He's the king. He could have stored up as much food as he wanted to. Fleeing from the enemy, no problem. He could have let his guys take care of that. But a plague, well, now that's dangerous. That could affect anybody.

Now then, Gad said to him, "Think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me." David said to Gad, "I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great, but do not let me fall into the hands of men." David's saying here, "It would be better if I let the Lord handle it," which would be the plague, "than if I let my enemies come against me."

The Lord has a great amount of mercy. "I am in deep distress. I'm sorry I let this happen. I wish I could rewind the clock." As we said before, you can't back up a clock. You can, but it doesn't back up time. You can't change the past. What happened a minute ago, you can't change what happened last year, last month, last week, yesterday, or even a minute ago.

The minute the second passes from the future to the past, it's over and done with. You can only change the future, not the past. "I wish I had done it differently," that seems to be what David is saying here. "But I would rather fall into the hands of the Lord because he has great mercy. We can call on his name then. Do not let me fall into the hands of men. I can't trust man."

So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and 70,000 of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 70,000 people. Now look, you might say the famine would have been better, but who knows how many would have died of famine? It could have been much worse. The enemies pursuing you, it could have been a much worse loss of life there.

You could say to yourself, "Why would God do that to 70,000 innocent people because of what David did?" But remember, nobody's innocent, first of all. And second of all, remember the chapter starts out with "the anger of the Lord burned against Israel." So for some reason, the Lord wasn't happy with where Israel was. He wasn't happy with what they were doing, the status quo wasn't cutting it.

My guess is the people there just weren't seeking him like they should have been. My guess is there was a lot of relaxation in the good things of life, kind of like America today. They had a lot of material wealth at this time, a lot of great prosperity. They had a relative amount of peace from their enemies. They could enjoy the fruits of their own vineyards and kick back and relax and forget about God. And maybe that's what they were doing.

And maybe that's why the anger of the Lord burned against them, and maybe that's why these 70,000 people perished. And maybe they were the 70,000 ones that needed judgment the most. When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord was grieved because of the calamity and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, "Enough! Withdraw your hand."

The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. So 70,000 people had perished. The angel of the Lord was moving on. He was getting to Jerusalem now. The angel of the Lord's about to wipe out Jerusalem. But David said before in verse 14, "Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, his mercy is great." We see that here.

Even though judgment was needed and even though the Lord exacted some amount of judgment here, the fact of the matter was the Lord is merciful and gracious to sinners. And he called it off at this point and he said to the angel, "That's it. Stop. Withdraw your hand." And the angel at the threshing floor there, the angel was, in other words, about to start moving through that area.

When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, "I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and my family." But God didn't do that. And I think again the reason is because I think the Lord was angry with Israel for whatever reason, I don't know.

On that day, Gad went to David and said to him, "Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite." So David went up as the Lord had commanded through Gad. When Araunah looked and saw the king and his men coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

You know, I would be nervous if I was him. I mean, 70,000 people have died in a plague and now the king is coming up to my place. "Whoa, man, wait a minute, what's going on? Did I do something wrong?" Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?" In other words, his teeth are chattering and his toes are knocking or his knees are knocking together. "What's going on here?"

"To buy your threshing floor," David answered, "so I can build an altar to the Lord that the plague on the people may be stopped." David said, "I want to buy your threshing floor because this is the place where God told me to build an altar." This was, by the way, the same general area where Abraham offered up or started to offer up his son Isaac. This is the same general area where Jesus was crucified.

David here says, "I want to buy your threshing floor here." The threshing floors were located on the higher spots because when they separated the wheat from the chaff, they needed the wind to blow the chaff away. And the wind was better up in the air, more wind at the top of a hill than at the bottom. So David said, "I want to build an altar here. I want to buy your threshing floor to put the altar there. That's going to stop the plague."

Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all of this to the king." Araunah also said to him, "May the Lord your God accept you." So this guy in fact offers the king a blessing, perhaps, if you want to call it that.

He says, "Look, you can have whatever you want. You can have the whole threshing floor. I'm going to give you this prime real estate absolutely free. No money down, no strings attached. Furthermore, you can have some of these oxen here to offer them up and you can even take the sledges and the yokes, and use the wood that they were made out of for the fire here. And I'm giving this all to you, and I pray the Lord your God would accept you."

But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." He said, "Look, if you just give it to me and then I sacrifice it to the Lord, it didn't cost me anything. I'm not giving anything to God. I'm just giving God your stuff. You're really the one making the offering then."

If this guy gave it to David and David offered it, it really would be Araunah's offering to God, not David's offering. David said, "If it didn't cost me anything, I can't offer it." And you know, the same applies today. What God wants from us is our lives, and yes, that is going to cost us something. And we can't offer up to God someone else's life.

We don't say, "Take his life and make him like you, Lord. I offer up my friend Harvey over here to you, Lord, and do with him whatever you want, but as for me, I'm going to go out and have a good time." No. We offer up our own lives to God. We ask him to forgive our sins and we submit ourselves to him and we ask him to become our Lord.

It costs us something. But it cost him something. It cost him the very life of his very own son. It costs us our life, not that we die in a physical sense, but that we offer ourselves to him as his servants, as his sons and daughters. He makes us his sons and daughters. David said here, "I'm not going to offer something that didn't cost me anything. If I didn't pay for it, then it's of no value. That's like giving God your leftovers or your garbage or whatever."

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped. So David went ahead and bought this land, and he bought the animals.

I guess he bought the wooden pieces with it so he could have the fire. And he paid good money for them, fifty shekels of silver. This guy got a good deal out of it. He could go set up Araunah's threshing floor and bakery outlet somewhere else. In this spot here, David built an altar and he made these offerings.

He offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. The burnt offerings were for the forgiveness of sins, they were for atonement. The fellowship offerings were the peace offerings, they were given to have fellowship with God. You see, that's really a fitting way to end 2 Samuel because that's what David was all about: having a relationship with the Lord.

It wasn't just about appeasing this mad God, but he was all about having a relationship with God and walking with him and knowing him and being in communion with him and having a relationship with him. He wants to have a relationship with us today. Not David, I'm not talking about David. I'm talking about the Lord God, who died for us.

He gave his only son for us that we might live for him. He did the hard part so we could do the living part. He did the dying part, we do the living part. And we see here in this life of David somebody who, yes, he had the burnt offerings right. He knew about that and he knew he needed to be forgiven of his sin.

But at the same time, he also knew he needed to have a relationship with God, that he needed to be at peace with God, that he needed to walk with God, talk to him and have a relationship with him, and he was able to do that. He went the extra mile here, if you will. He didn't just say, "O God, please forgive me for my sins until I go out and sin again, and I'll come tomorrow and see you again and we'll take care of things tomorrow."

He wanted to do better the next time and he wanted to have a better walk with the Lord. We see he's called a man after God's own heart. Man, he fouled up an awful bunch. The whole thing with Bathsheba, big foul-up. This thing here counting the troops, big foul-up. The way he raised his kids, you would not want to read the way David raised his kids and use that for advice in raising your own kids.

Not much of value there. But in so many ways, he was a guy that wanted to have a relationship with God, that he had faith in the Lord. He knew the Lord was there, and he had faith in him, and he walked with him and he trusted in him. He wasn't afraid to go out with that slingshot and knock over Goliath, and he wasn't afraid to take on the enemy when the Lord of God said go, he went.

He had his share of failures and he fell down a lot and messed up a lot, but he knew from where his salvation came. We saw that earlier as we were looking in chapter 23 when he said, "Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant arranged and secured in every part?" Verse 5 of chapter 23. In other words, if you'll allow me to paraphrase that, it doesn't matter if I foul up, the covenant is arranged and secured in every part.

Every part means in every part. So nothing left to chance, that it's secured. If it's secured, it can't be made loose. If you secure something, you borrow someone's pickup truck to move your furniture, you put it in the back, you secure it so when you're driving down the highway, it don't go blowing off the back. It's secured.

If it's secured, it isn't going to move. Whatever it is that you've tied down, lassoed down, or secured in some way. Well, the covenant here was arranged and secured in every part. We see that with David here as well in his relationship and his walk with the Lord. Then the Lord answered prayer in behalf of the land and the plague on Israel was stopped.

So David did what he had to do. 70,000 people died. The Lord was bringing judgment of some type there, but then the plague on Israel ended. We see here in 1 Kings, King David is old and he passes away, and the beginning part of 1 Kings, we start to move into the life of Solomon and stuff. Essentially the end of 2 Samuel here for the most part is the end of David's life.

And if you just had to wrap up that whole thing, you have to say a guy after God's own heart, a guy who had a relationship with the Lord, and we can only pray that our relationship with the Lord is as good as his was. We can learn from these kinds of things. He was responsive to the Lord. When he realized his sin, he repented of it.

And there were still the facts... you know, there's that old story used in Sunday school where they described that sin was like putting nails in a board, and when you repented, it was like taking the nails out of the board and the nails were gone, but there's still holes in the board. Sin can have lasting impact on your life.

David repented of the sin, but still he got run out of town by his son and his son still wound up dying. And here he repented of this sin, but still 70,000 people died from it. And we see that he was a guy that repented, that came back to the Lord, that wanted to have a relationship with the Lord, whose faith was in the Lord.

We can certainly see from the life story of David that your relationship with God is not based on you being perfect. It's got nothing to do with you achieving some goal or some quota or hitting some target or some level. "Well, if I can just do good enough, if I can just keep it up here, God's going to be happy. If I can just work hard enough, run fast enough, swim or whatever it is to keep my head above the water." No, we see that it's not that at all.

We see that God answers prayer, and we see that God wants to have a relationship. And I can tell you today that he wants to have a relationship with each of us as well.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 2 Samuel. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you'd prefer to listen via podcast, go wherever you find your podcasts and sign up there.

We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. Well, that does it for our study in 2 Samuel here on Hope From the Word. Return Monday when Pastor Bill Luebkemann will begin the book of 1 Kings. See you then, and may the Lord richly bless you.