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2 Samuel chapter 24. And the
slice of bread we're going to take today is verses 10 through
17. And David's heart condemned him after
he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, I
have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now I pray, O Lord,
take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very
foolishly. Now when David arose in the morning,
The word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer,
saying, go and tell David, thus says the Lord, I offer you three
things. Choose one of them for yourself
that I may do it to you. So Gad came to David and told
him, and he said to him, shall seven years of famine come to
you in your land? Or shall you flee three months
before your enemies while they pursue you? Or shall there be
three days plague in your land? Now consider and see what answer
I should take back to him who sent me. David said to Gad, I
am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand
of the Lord, for his mercies are great, but do not let me
fall into the hand of man." So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel
from the morning till the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba,
70,000 men of the people died. And when the angel stretched
out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented
from the destruction and said to the angel who was destroying
the people, it is enough. Now restrain your hand. And the
angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of around now
the Jebusite. And David spoke to the Lord when
he saw the angel who was striking the people and said, surely I
have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they
done? Let your hand, I pray, be against
me and against my father's house. Father, we thank you for your
word. We pray that as we study it, as we respond to it, that
the meditations of our hearts would be acceptable in your sight.
Do anoint both the preaching and the hearing of your word.
We pray in Christ's name, amen. Well, as you know, Ebola has
been in the news a great deal recently. Some people think that
the government is covering up the degree to which it can spread. And with a confusion and a lack
of information, sometimes there is fear that accompanies that.
And people are wondering, you know, to what degree can it be
spread? Is it contagious? Can you catch
it by Breathing the air that somebody else is breathing or
touching a doorknob that this person has touched or is it simply
spread through bodily fluids as one? CDC bulletin has said
and even they have been somewhat inconsistent and the various
bulletins that they have sent out One bulletin said that you
can't catch it through Breathing the same air, but they another
bulletin said but you can catch it by breathing the air when
somebody has sneezed and Another bulletin admitted that the Zaire
Ebola virus, quote, can survive on surfaces such as doorknobs
and countertops for several hours. But for the most part, I think
they've been trying to calm the public, and maybe rightly so.
Time will tell. But what has made some people
nervous is contradictory information that's been coming out from other
sources. For example, the Journal of Applied Microbiology published
a research paper that stated, Zaire Ebola virus can survive
for long periods in different liquid media and can also be
recovered from plastic and glass surfaces at low temperatures
for over three weeks. The Public Health Agency of Canada
stated that their research shows that at ambient temperature,
37% of the viruses were still alive after 15.4 hours. And quote, when dried in tissue
culture media onto glass and stored at four degrees centigrade,
Zaire Ebola virus survived for over 50 days. So there is conflicting
evidence and a lot of uncertainty that's swirling around Ebola. But whatever the dangers of Ebola
may end up being, There are plenty of other bacteria and viruses
that have produced deadly plagues down through Earth's history.
And you can think of the smallpox plague that killed over 300 million
people since the year 1800, or the Spanish influenza, which
killed an estimated 100 million people in a two-year period of
time, 1918 to 1919. or the bubonic plague, which
had an estimated death rate of about 100 million people. And
there's a number of other diseases that have been deadly enough
that they could legitimately be labeled a plague. Now, plague
is something, it's a disease that's deadly enough and infectious
enough that it has a wide-scale infection rate and a high mortality
rate. Now, our passage does not say
everything that needs to be said about plagues. There are other
passages that talk about the importance of quarantine laws. The Bible also speaks about the
importance of civic officers as well as church officers dealing
with the plague. But this passage at least answers
some of the questions that have been coming into the minds of
people over the last few weeks. And the first question that I
want to ask the text is this. Who made the deadly bacteria
and viruses? And I think if you believe the
Bible, the answer is fairly straightforward. God did. And you could ask, well,
who made our immune systems to be so vulnerable to some of these
bacteria and viruses? And the Bible gives the same
answer. God did. Who made some bacteria much more
deadly than other bacteria and viruses the same? And God did. Uh, the, the, the, the issue
is that nothing is outside of God's control and that can either
bring fear into your heart or it can bring comfort to your
heart, depending upon your standing with the Lord. But verse 12 is
quite clear. God tells the prophet. Go and
tell David, thus says the Lord, I offer you three things. Choose
one of them for yourself that I may do it to you. And if you take a look at verse
15, it says, so the Lord sent a plague. So God's person and
his purpose stood behind that plague. It was not just random.
And there are a lot of Christians that have heartburn over that. They have a hard time even believing
it. I talked to a PCA elder who said that he was skeptical that
typhoons and earthquakes and plagues could in any way be the
result of God's judgment or purpose. While he affirmed that God was
sovereign, He denied that there could be a purpose or a design
behind those disasters. It was really a strangely deistic
kind of a perspective on disaster. And his reasoning was that these
modern disasters just seemed to be too arbitrary. to have
design behind it. And we need to leave this in
the realm of science. And he didn't realize what a
contradiction that was. If it is really so random and
so arbitrary, then science couldn't explain it at all, could it?
But in any case, when I pointed out some of the Old Testament
scriptures that showed that God himself was bringing earthquakes,
plagues, famine, other disasters, his response amazed me. He said,
well, yeah, that was back in the Old Testament, and that was
the period when there were miracles. He believed that God intervened
in nature back then, but he does not do so today. And I pointed
to the book of Revelation that was predicting the future and
saying that God himself was bringing earthquakes and hail and plagues
and other things like that in the future upon both Israel and
pagan nations, but it didn't seem to phase him. He said, that's
back then. We deal now with these things
in terms of science. Thank you. Well, yeah, science
can explain how a baby comes along, but that does not mean
that God does not create and design every baby. Science can explain how we get
rain, but scripture is quite clear that it's God who keeps
rain away from a region or who brings rain to a region. Science
can explain gravity and nuclear physics and cell division, but
that does not in any way contradict the scripture that says God is
working all of those things together for the good of his people. And the anomalies that are in
each of those fields that science cannot explain, at least cannot
explain yet, to me just points to the fact that this is not
a deistic world where God sets certain laws in motion and then
he leaves. And those laws are working without
any purpose, they just keep on working. No, those anomalies
show that yes, while God is bringing A certain order and the regularity
of how he deals with nature, the anomalies demonstrate that
God can deviate from his normal way of doing things anytime that
he chooses to do so if it suits his purposes. But his providential
governing is behind it all. And so it's a big mistake to
pit human responsibility and science against God's providence. Now God does want us to understand
disease. And he does want us to take dominion
over disease. But the fact that we wear masks
and take precautions does not guarantee our safety, as certain
health care workers have discovered. And even when we are exposed
to disease did not mean we will catch that disease as other people
and healthcare workers have discovered. You cannot rule God out of a
creation that he has said he will continue to rule by his
providence. He continues to afflict and he
continues to protect. Now, the main thing I want you
to understand under this first point is that these invisible
armies of viruses and bacteria are His servants, and they march
at His orders, and they accomplish His purposes. I think the text
is quite clear on that. They are not random, meaningless
events that are outside of His control. In fact, if you read
Deuteronomy 28 in your family this afternoon, you will discover
an enormous array of things that God brings to accomplish His
purposes in His people's lives. He says that when there are entire
cultures who are willing to obey His laws, that God will bring
health and prosperity, but when entire cultures begin to disrespect
God, to defy Him and to defy His laws, He's going to start
making all kinds of things start falling apart. And initially,
it'll be just on the irritation level, but when repentance is
not forthcoming, in Deuteronomy 28, He says He'll bring plagues
upon that society, verse 21. Consumption, fear, inflammation,
sword, blight, and mildew in verse 22. Lack of rain, verse
24. Losing wars, verse 25. Boils,
tumors, itchy skin, verse 27. Mental health issues, verse 28.
Marriage and family problems, verses 30 through 33. And you
keep reading, you just see a whole host of things that are a part
of God's tools, his arsenal, for bringing discipline, judgments
upon nations. All of those things are under
his providential control, and we slander God's providence when
we interpret it any other way. Now, as you've noticed, I'm not
going through the passage in the order that the verses occur
this morning. I'm going to cover every verse,
but I want to examine the passage analytically by asking a number
of questions, and the first question's already been answered. Who made
these things? And the text indicates that God
did. You may struggle with that, but
our God is the God who brings diseases into cultures and to
individual lives. You could not even get a cold,
a common cold without God's permission. Impossible. You can't get it.
You can't get over it without his permission. And therefore,
God must be the first one that we go to when we get a cold or
we get any other kind of a disease, not the doctor. Now we should
go to doctors, Bible speaks positively of doctors, but we need to be
going prayerfully to the doctors and only after we have first
humbled ourselves before God and said, Lord, would you please
heal me? We are dependent upon you. We live and move and have
our being in you. 2 Chronicles 16 verse 12 speaks
very poorly of King Asa because he went to doctors without seeking
for God's help. He went to doctors rather than
to the Lord for his foot disease. So that's the first thing. Are
we analyzing Ebola in a God-centered way? Are we praying to Him about
that and about all other diseases that come our way? On the second
question, while some people might agree that God's providence covers
these things, they will insist that God never brings sickness
by his own divine intervention. Instead, they will say that God
allows all diseases by allowing Satan to bring it. It's a permissive
providence. And there is a certain logic
in that. God does do this at times. We even saw that last
week. There is a permissive aspect to providence. we saw with regard
to sin. It's under his control, but he
is not directly involved. And so the argument that they
bring is that just as verse one says that God moved David, So
there is no denial of God's providence, just as God by his providence
moved David, but he did not do it directly. He moved David by
giving permission to Satan to move David's heart. Well, in
the same way, they will argue that God uses second causes for
disease. Now that's a legitimate argument.
And if that's as far as they went, I wouldn't even bother
arguing with them on it. But they insist that God himself
could never do so since all disease is by definition, their definition,
demonic in origin. They claim that it is never God's
will for us to be sick, okay? They cannot fathom a disease
coming from God's hand. It has to be demonic as far as
they are concerned. But that is taking the argument
way too far and treating disease as if it is evil or sinful in
itself. And I want you to take a look
at verses 16 through 17. This does indeed speak of an
angelic being as somehow involved in the spread of the disease.
But I want you to notice it's not a fallen angel. Okay. God could have used a fallen
angel, but in this case, it was the angel of the Lord who was
directly involved. And when the angel stretched
out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented
from the destruction and said to the angel who was destroying
the people, it is enough. Now restrain your hand. And the
angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the
Jebusite. Then David spoke to the Lord
when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said,
surely I have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep,
what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against
me and against my father's house. Now obviously, David didn't think
it strange to attribute disease to the hand of God. He did not
think it strange at all that God himself could bring disease
on him or upon anybody else. So there are several things that
are clear from this passage. First of all, it is clear that
God willed this disease to come as an act of discipline. Second,
it is clear that the angel of the Lord was involved. Third,
the angel of the Lord is not merely pointing. saying, okay,
you demons, you can go over there and do your work, don't go over
here. He's not just pointing where others people can go, but
verse 17 makes it quite clear that the angel of the Lord was
striking the people himself. Now, whether you see the angel
of the Lord as being the pre-incarnate Son of God, as many people take
it, Because angel means messenger and the pre-incarnate Son of
God is called the Word of God is called the messenger of God
the angel of the Lord and other passages so whether you take
it as the pre-incarnate Son of God or you take it as a created
angel either way It's still quite clear that This disease is under
the control of God and his armies. In fact, one of the dictionaries
TWOT said Quote, aside from about five instances, all uses of devere,
that's the word for plague, all uses of devere relate to pestilence
as sent by God as punishment. So it clearly was God's will
for the people to be afflicted by that disease. And this is
true of many other diseases as well. While Satan does indeed
bring some diseases, Deuteronomy 28 makes it quite clear that
God can bring diseases too. God instantaneously afflicted
Miriam with the disease of leprosy because of her rebellion, And
there's no indication he used a secondary cause. Come over
here, demon, and afflict Miriam. God instantaneously afflicted
her. It was God's hand. In Leviticus
14.34, God says that He is the one who brings that ruinous black
mold into homes to make those homes utterly unusable. Deuteronomy
7.15 says He afflicts with disease. In Exodus 4.11, God says, Who
has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf,
the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? You see,
you cannot gain comfort from Romans 8.28 if you do not come
to grips with the fact that God not only can, but He does afflict
people with disease. Now, sometimes he does use secondary
agents like angels or demons, and sometimes he does it personally.
Now, in terms of our passage, another reason it's important
to understand this is that it shows that demons cannot touch
you, angels cannot touch you, viruses cannot touch you without
God's permission. Okay? Should we take precautions? Well, of course, yes. We've been
commanded to take dominion of all things and taking precautions
is a part of taking dominion of life. But we must do so in
faith that there is a divine purpose behind Ebola and every
other plague. And God can protect his Davids
and his Aaronas even in the midst of the plague. They were both
at the epicenter of this plague. And we'll talk about that in
a bit. But panic is a sign of lack of faith. Presumption and
failure to take precaution is a sign of lack of responsibility. And we need to avoid both extremes
of unbelief as well as of testing God. God calls us to respond
to national calamities or potential calamities as David did. Now
before we get to his responses, there's another question that
I want to ask. Is there a relationship between
sin and national calamity today? Many Christians deny it. They'll
admit, yeah, that happened in the Old Testament. We'll see
with the case of David, it clearly was the case. Calamities and
diseases can come for any number of purposes. And I've got a paper
called Biblical Sufferology that shows a whole bunch of reasons
for why God brings disease. It's not only for discipline
over sin. But clearly in the Bible, I just want to demonstrate
that judgment for sin is one of the most frequent reasons
why God brings disasters, calamities, plagues upon nations. In fact,
that was the first impulse of the heart of the Puritans and
the pilgrims. is to fall on their knees before God and say, Lord,
why are you bringing this? We repent of our sins. They humbled
themselves before God. In Solomon's prayer for the temple,
when he was dedicating the temple, he was saying, Lord, any time
you bring plague upon a nation and they turn to you, they look
to this temple and they pray to you, would you hear them and
heal? Okay, so that was his take, was
that should be the first impulse of our heart to at least examine
to see, is there rebellion that the Lord is judging us for? Anyway,
take a look at verse 10. And David's heart condemned him
after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, I
have sinned greatly in what I have done, but now I pray, O Lord,
take away the iniquity of your servant. For I have done very
foolishly." So there's the sin that starts it all. And I want
you to notice that the discipline does not come immediately after
he sins. Okay? There's not like you sin
and instantly you get zapped. It came nine and a half months
later. Okay? So there is delay. But the text
still makes clear that there is a cause and effect relationship.
Even though God forgave David, there are consequences for his
sin. And just as Deuteronomy speaks
of an entire culture suffering in myriad ways for the sins of
its leaders, this passage shows three potential consequences
that could have happened in that year. Verses 12 and 13. Go and
tell David, thus says the Lord, I offer you three things. Choose
one of them for yourself that I may do it to you. So God came
to David and told him, and he said to him, shall seven years
of famine come to you and your land, or shall you flee three
months before your enemies while they pursue you? Or shall there
be three days of plague in your land? Now consider and see what
answer I should take back to him who sent me. So famine. Death in war and plague are all
possible consequences of national sin. And if you're trying to
avoid some of the potential fallout of a nation's sins, you might
not want to join the military. You know, that's one of the epicenters
of God's judgments falling upon a nation is death and destruction
in the military. Now, God can protect you in the
military if you're a Joab or an Abishai, if that's where God
wants you to be. We're going to be seeing God's
protection anywhere where the safest place to be is in the
center of God's will, right? So if God's called you in the
military, he can protect you there. But it's clear that God
can send a wide range of national catastrophes to discipline us
for our sins. And it highlights the fact why
It's very important we not ignore the sins of our nation, that
we repent on behalf of our nation. But this highlights yet another
question. We can understand why David would suffer, but why do
others have to suffer? Why didn't God just discipline
David? And we dealt with this last week
to some degree, but let me review very quickly. First, it is appropriate
for citizens to suffer along with their national leaders because
of the covenant relationship that we are in with those national
leaders. We are covenantally guilty of
our covenant leader's sins. And it's important to understand
that God deals with all of us and all of life in terms of the
covenant. We can never escape from the
covenant without, you know, the covenant relationship we have
with the nation, without leaving the nation or at least disagreeing
with the sins of our nation. And we'll get to that in a little
bit. That's really the second reason. Second, it is appropriate
for citizens to suffer along with their rulers when they do
not vigorously resist the ungodly actions of the civil government.
One of the slogans in 1776 was, resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God. But the inverse of that is also
true. If a population ignores the sins
of their government, ignores its tyranny, If they are not
resisting tyrants, they are disobeying God as a population. Another reason why God can judge
a population for David's sins, even the public has a responsibility
to oppose the lawless actions of government, whether those
are abortion or homosexuality, economic theft, or anything else.
So we saw last week that when Israel failed to resist the census,
they were involved in its guilt. The third reason that it's appropriate
for citizens to suffer for the sins of their leaders was already
given in verse one. God used David's sin as an occasion
to punish Israel for their own sins that they had already engaged
in previously. Verse 1, again, the anger of
the Lord was aroused against Israel and he moved David against
them to say, go number Israel and Judah. God was angry with
Israel. Why? They had engaged in sin.
They were in rebellion in some way on their own. So they had
their own guilt, and that meant they could not complain when
God disciplines the population for the first two reasons. They've
got their own third reason, so they can't complain when God
disciplines them for the first two reasons. But I suspect the
second reason was especially in God's mind, and it may help
to explain why commentators say that the tribes of Levi and Benjamin
didn't get judged. They didn't have any people that
died because those two tribes had resisted the most stoutly
against the census. They refused to be involved in
it. And so I believe God does protect
and bless citizens who are on the forefront of standing against
the lawlessness of a nation. It's a great motivation to get
involved in standing against tyranny. Now another question
that came to my mind is this. Why did the repentance expressed
in verse 10 and again in verse 17 not immediately stay God's
hand of discipline? Another way of wording it is
why this spiritual spanking when there was already repentance?
And it's, I think, a worthwhile question to examine. Verse 10
again, David's heart condemned him after he had numbered the
people. So David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in
what I have done, but now I pray, O Lord, take away the iniquity
of your servant for I have done very foolishly. So he's repented
and yet God disciplines him. Why? Well, repentance restores
to God's fellowship and to God's favor, but there are still other
purposes for discipline that may need to take place, especially
when the sin is as serious as heinous as we saw last week that
his sin had been. Though discipline can be reduced
to what it might otherwise have been, It still may need to take
place if five things, purposes need to be fulfilled. We already
saw this was the case in the Bathsheba sin, 2 Samuel 12, verses
13 through 15 says this. So David said to Nathan, I have
sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the
Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. So there was
a reduction of the discipline. But verse 14 goes on to say,
however, because by this deed you have given great occasion
to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who
is born to you shall surely die. Then Nathan departed to his house,
and the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bore to David,
and it became ill. So that discipline for the glory
of God and to teach people the seriousness of sin was not completely
done away with. We saw last week that the sin
of the census was far more serious than most people in our population
consider it to be. But there are other purposes
for discipline as well, including correction and training, bringing
fear of sin to others, bringing closure to an issue. And I think
this is a point on which many parents fail. Some parents always
withhold discipline from their child if their child repents. And I think it's a big mistake.
Such a son can learn that he can rebel or lie or engage in
anything serious. And so long as he repents, okay,
he gets off the hook. There's no repercussions. Yet
there is no closure in his heart. That's one of the purposes for
discipline. He knows his rebellion has not been dealt with and the
parent has missed out on the correction and the training side
of discipline. By the way, the word disciple,
discipleship, and discipline, they all come from the same root
word. They're all very, very closely connected. Hebrews 12,
verse 11. Now, no chastening seems to be
joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields
the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained
by it." Okay, so there's a training aspect to discipline that is
very, very important. So, for example, with a child
who has lied to me as a parent. and has gotten caught, and after
getting caught has confessed his sin, I might say, son, if
you had confessed to lying without ever having been caught, there
would have been a reduction, a significant reduction in the
severity of this discipline. But because I had to once again
catch you before you repented of this, it's still got to be
quite severe. Now, when there is confession,
I'll tell them, yes, there's a lessening of this discipline,
but there's still going to be discipline in place for its training
purpose. Now, the reason you reduce discipline
when there is confession voluntarily given is because they're already
learning what you're trying to train them in with discipline,
right? But if that's not been happening or forthcoming, It
still needs to come forward. So as an example, when God chastened
Miriam with leprosy after her rebellion against, uh, Moses
leadership, she repented, Aaron repented of the sin that, uh,
that he had engaged in. And even Moses pleaded with God,
please heal her. Oh God, I pray. And yet God refused
to do so. He refused to lift the discipline. He made her be outside the camp
with all the other lepers for seven days. So it's clear that
the repentance lessened the severity of the discipline, but did not
remove the need for that discipline. An interesting thing about that
passage is he compares his discipline as to why he would do this to
the discipline of a parent. So even with parental discipline,
the idea is that repentance does not always do away with the need
for the training of discipline. Now sometimes a child's restitution
will be all the discipline that is needed. Zacchaeus repented
of the extortion that he had engaged in as a tax collector,
but he recognized that he needed to go through the painful process
of restitution. That was probably all the discipline
he needed. It was plenty painful. So it's important to understand
that forgiveness of sin does not always remove the training
of discipline that may need to take place. But my next question is this.
Was it safe for David to go to the epicenter of that plague
in verses 16 through 17? And actually David does something
far more dangerous than going to the epicenter. He says, Lord,
strike me with the plague rather than striking Israel with the
plague. I'm the one who has sinned. So he's asking for something
far more dangerous and he is definitely more concerned about
Israel than he is his own life. And there is some analogy there
to what Christian doctors and nurses do when they minister
to plague patients. There's been a long history of
Christians and pastors ministering to plague victims when everyone
else has run away. And that is not a violation of
the quarantine laws. If you read the quarantine laws
in the Old Testament, you'll see that the priests were actually
trained in how to deal with these nasty bugs, you know, these nasty
diseases. And they were a part of the process
of making sure this person was quarantined. Sometimes civic
officers had to enforce the quarantines. So not everybody was completely
away from those who were sick. But I've mentioned in the past
that the historian Henry Chadwick has claimed that one of the major
reasons for the success of the gospel in the first few centuries
of the church was the way that Christians handled plagues. Very,
very interesting. And earthquakes and other disasters,
he's mentioned. But fearless Christians had a
balance between taking precautions, which we must do, And yet trusting
that God is sovereign over even plagues, the unseen nasties that
are out there. And as a result of their ministry,
countless thousands became Christian. So was it safe for David to go
to the epicenter of this plague? Now, in one sense, no, it's not
safe to go to the epicenter of the plague. But in another sense,
the safest place to be is in the center of God's will. And
when you are a doctor or a nurse or a civic officer who has a
responsibility for dealing with some of these things, and God
has put that calling upon you, he has burdened your heart as
he burdened David's heart. then yes, the safest place to
be is in the center of God's will. It's doing God's will,
right? There is no safer place. Now
we will be seeing next time that part of God's purpose in burdening
David in this way was to show David the beginning of the fulfillment
of his heart's desire to be able to see a temple for Almighty
God. And actually, it's going to be
on the place that he offers up the sacrifice, on this threshing
floor around the Jebusite. And the last verses of this chapter
show that purchasing of those temple grounds, the offering
of a sacrifice, and it all points to Jesus, who is the ultimate
priest king, to resolve the many political issues that we have
looked at in this chapter, I mean, in this book. Now, I'm not going
to dig into it very deeply, but let me summarize the issues involved
in that last section. The remedy for national disasters
like floods and hurricanes and earthquakes and droughts and
plagues and possible terrorist attacks. is first of all repentance,
repentance before Almighty God. The honest confession of sin
in verse 10 by a national leader is key. His deep distress over
the pain that he has brought to his people in verse 14 shows
the seriousness of his repentance, the genuineness of it. His willingness
to suffer in their place in verse 17 again accentuates the genuineness
and the sincerity of his repentance. In verse 20, David's servants
accompany him. But genuine repentance of a nation
is key. Now, unfortunately, some of the
calls for repentance by presidents of the United States have been
insincere and to a generic God. That itself is an insult to the
true God, Yahweh. Now, what kind of sacrifice is
needed? Obviously, in verse 17, David's sacrifice was not sufficient.
He was willing to lay down his life for his sheep. Now, that
may point as a symbol, as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who
would be willing to lay down his life for the sheep, but at
least it shows that he had the heart of Jesus Christ, as all
pastors should and as all civic ministers should. But it was
clear, Israel needed a greater substitute than David. And so
God himself initiated the true answer. And all through this
chapter, you see, God is the one who initiates. He's the one
who sends the prophet to David in verse 11. He tells the angel
in verse 16, okay, that's enough, hold back your hand. He sends
the prophet again with a message of what to do, yeah? You gotta
make a sacrifice. He's the one who shows the process
of purchasing the temple grounds. And both temple and sacrifice
point forward to the Lord Jesus who alone is the answer to the
national calamities that come in various countries. But even
this judgment was for Israel's good and shows the initiation
of God's grace. Our country needs Jesus. Judgments sometimes make people
flee to Jesus, as they did here. We call those redemptive judgments. Why? Because they produce redemption
in people's lives. But that's not always the case.
That is not always the case. Calamity apart from grace will
not achieve genuine change. And I'll just give you two examples.
Revelation 9 shows people tormented with providential judgments in
the form of plagues, and they refuse to repent. Does VD sometimes
scare people away from ungodly behavior? Yes, sometimes it does,
but more often than not, people are so irrational, they will
continue to do things despite the plagues and the divine judgments
that God brings upon them. Anyway, with the judgments in
Revelation 9, it was not a redemptive judgment that brought mercy.
It was a condemnatory judgment that sent to hell. So Revelation
9, 20 through 21, but the rest of mankind who were not killed
by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands,
that they should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver,
brass, stone, and wood, which can either see nor hear nor walk.
And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or
their sexual immorality or their thefts. So it just highlights
two different ways that people can respond to the national judgments
that he brings upon a nation. They can repent or they can hate
God all the more. And that's what happens in the
Revelation 9 passage. It's not a foregone conclusion
that the judgments God brings in America are going to be for
our good. They could be just like happened
in Europe where God plucks up the candlestick and removes his
presence for generations because the church has been faithless.
And that's why I keep emphasizing, we cannot be lackadaisical about
the sins of our nation. We need to take what actions
we can, but at least we need to pray. and lifted up before
the Lord. Okay, the second example, Revelation
16, nine, shows much the same reaction to yet another plague.
It says, and men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed
the name of God who has power over these plagues. And they
did not repent and give him glory. Unless God initiates, you're
not going to see salvation. You're not going to see people
coming to faith in Jesus Christ. The last verses of this chapter
show that Jesus is needed for every aspect of political reform. We need the gospel and it's my
hope and prayer that the judgments God's already been meeting out
on America over the past decades would lead our nation to trust
in Jesus Christ alone for its salvation. In other words, it's
my prayer that the judgments we have already been experiencing
would not be condemnatory judgments that remove His presence, but
they would be redemptive judgments. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Father God, we thank you for your word, the warnings that
it gives, the solutions that it provides as well. And I pray
that all across America, the Church of Jesus Christ would
wake up to its need to repent, repent of its own lawlessness
and turning away from the blueprints of scripture and that Father
as you caused the church to be a David repenting on behalf of
the nation that you would restore this nation into the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ and that you would cause a great
glory to come to your name. We pray for your mercies to flow.
We pray for your forgiveness that you would bring great conviction
of sin upon our nation on every level and that men would not
just look to politics and change, change, change to deal with the
problems that they see, but they would look to you who alone can
make the changes that are needed for judgment to be stayed. And
so we pray for your mercies to flow and pray this in Jesus name,
amen.
Providential Judgments
Series Life of David
How are Christians to react to plagues and other national disasters? This sermon gives concrete guidance.
| Sermon ID | 9953162023230 |
| Duration | 43:43 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 2 Samuel 24:10-17 |
| Language | English |
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