David’s Census
Life of David • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Today, we are looking at the last chapter of the book of 2 Samuel, chapter 24. We are now near the end of David’s reign. And David takes a census or a headcount of his people.
1 Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”
At this point in time, David has accomplished much. He has transformed Israel into a powerhouse of the middle east. The nations fear him.
But it says here, “Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel.”
The keyword is ‘again’. There is a sin that’s being repeated in Israel, and the Lord is responding to it. The Bible doesn’t specify what sin it was, only that it was repeated, habitual, tolerated, and widespread.
So what happens? It says that “The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them.”
In the English, it seems that God is the actor. But the Hebrews is ambiguous.
However, the book of Chronicles records it differently.
1 Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.
So who is it that tempts David? Is it God or Satan? We need to be clear on this. There’s a difference between making someone sin, and allowing them to sin. And with God, it’s always the second option, not the first.
The Bible clearly states that God never tempts anyone to evil. It is Satan tugging on the sinfulness already present within our hearts.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
So what’s going on? The sinfulness is already inside David. He’s always wanted to know the size of his kingdom, so he can boast about it and take pride in it. But now God withdraws His hand of grace, leaving David to resist Satan alone.
This is not new to the Bible.
In the book of Job, God gives Satan permission to attack and harrass Job.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:7 about a thorn in the flesh, and he calls it “a messenger of Satan.”
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
We must never forget that God is sovereign over all things in our lives. Even over Satan.
Martin Luther said “The devil is God’s devil.”
Another pastor said, “God has Satan on a leash, but it’s a long leash.”
But the main point is this. Satan cannot do anything more than God allows him to do.
So what happens? David commands the census be taken.
The book of Chronicles tells us that David wanted to know his military strength. That’s why he has Joab and the commanders of his army take the lead in the census. And it takes them 9 months and 20 days (2 Sam. 24:8).
5 Joab gave the number of the census of all the people to David. And all Israel were 1,100,000 men who drew the sword; and Judah was 470,000 men who drew the sword.
Let us think about this. Do we take comfort in big numbers? Big numbers in the bank account. Big numbers in the congregation. Big numbers on the exam scores. Dare we even say it, big numbers in the number of Bible chapters I read each day.
David had started to believe that big numbers were part of the equation. Me plus big numbers equals peace. Me plus big numbers equals security. Me plus big numbers equals success.
So Joab reports to David the big numbers. But what happens after?
10 Now David’s heart troubled him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.”
When we are tempted to sin, Satan promises us it’s going to feel good, it’s going to be pleasurable, fun, exciting. But Satan is a scammer. The pleasures of this world never last more than a moment.
It says that David’s own heart troubled him.
And what does he do? He repents before the Lord. He doesn’t swim in his condemnation. He doesn’t run or hide from the presence of the Lord. He doesn’t put on fig leaves and carry on as per normal.
But we do. Sometimes we sin and just soak in it. We go to bed without repenting. Or we just carry on with daily life and numb the feeling of guilt. If we need to learn something from David in this passage, it is his quick and sincere repentance. Quick and sincere.
Notice how David doesn’t ask God to take away the consequence of his sin?
“But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of Your servant.”
He doesn’t ask for leniency. He doesn’t ask for a lighter punishment.
You know someone is unrepentant when they ask for a lighter sentence. David says, “Please forgive me, and please discipline me.”
So God gives David three options.
13 So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and see what answer I shall return to Him who sent me.”
14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”
Let’s pause here for a minute. I want to bring you to the book of Exodus.
There’s a law there about how to take a census.
11 The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “When you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them, then each one of them shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord, when you number them, so that there will be no plague among them when you number them. 13 “This is what everyone who is numbered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as a contribution to the Lord. 14 “Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the Lord. 15 “The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the Lord to make atonement for yourselves. 16 “You shall take the atonement money from the sons of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may be a memorial for the sons of Israel before the Lord, to make atonement for yourselves.”
So when you take a census, every person 20 years and older needs to pay a tax. Half a shekel of silver. That’s about $300 USD in today’s terms. And there’s a name for this tax. It’s called the atonement money. Why? Because it confesses that I am in need of what? Atonement. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, everyone pays the same amount. Meaning that everyone is in equal need of atonement.
But if they don’t pay this atonement money, and they take a census anyway, there will be a plague. Guess what happens after David’s census?
15 So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.
Seventy thousand men die from the plague. It says the angel of the Lord went around from Dan to Beersheba, killing people with this plague.
But God stops it at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. The book of Chronicles records his name as Ornan the Jebusite. It’s the same person.
16 When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough! Now relax your hand!” And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
A threshing floor is a big wide open space used for beating out the chaff. And who did this belong to? A Jebusite.
The Jebusites were living in Jerusalem before David came in and conquered it for himself (2 Sam. 5:6-7). So Araunah was a gentile.
So God stops the angel here, and commands David to build an altar at the threshing floor.
18 So Gad came to David that day and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 David went up according to the word of Gad, just as the Lord had commanded.
So David tells Araunah he needs to buy this place, and Araunah offers the place for free. But look at what David says.
24 However, the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
Can you see the repentance in his heart? I will not ask for leniency. I will not ask for a lighter punishment. I will not offer to the Lord something that cost me nothing. This is the true sincere repentance that we need. This is the true repentance that the Lord receives. And as a result of David’s repentance, the plague came to an end.
25 David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Thus the Lord was moved by prayer for the land, and the plague was held back from Israel.
That’s how this account ends in 2 Samuel.
But Ezra, the author of the book of Chronicles, continues the story.
And it says that after all this, David realizes that God wants to build His temple here, on the threshing floor of Araunah. And then Ezra tells us that this threshing floor is located on a historically significant mountain, whose name is familiar to us. Mount Moriah.
1 Then David said, “This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel.”
The threshing floor was a wide open stone area where they would gather the wheat and the grains. They would take oxen, and attach to the oxen a thresher, something like a sled, to pull over the grain and loosen the chaff from the kernel.
And when the winds comes, they would use a threshing fork and everything up in the air, and the winds blow the chaff away, and the kernels fall to the floor.
The chaff represents all the external factors of life. The outer things. The distractions of this world.
And the house of the Lord is the spiritual threshing floor, where all our chaff is blown away. That’s called repentance.
But then Ezra gives us another detail about this place.
1 Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
What’s the significance of this?
A thousand years before David, God called Abraham to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham obeyed.
A thousand years later, God called David to Mount Moriah to complete his repentance, and David repented.
So the temple of the Lord, the dwelling place of the Lord, is marked by the obedience of Abraham and the repentance of David.
Do we want our church and our homes to be God’s dwelling place? Then we need to live lives of obedience and repentance. Obedience and repentance.
And both require us to kill our pride.
We may be weak to certain kinds of temptations in different seasons of our lives. But pride is always around. It’s not something you overcome once and done. Even as an old man, David’s falls into pride.
A pastor once said that young Christians need to surrender their failures, but old Christians need to surrender their successes.
Now, let’s end on one final point.
Remember the census law in Exodus?
Each person had to give half a silver shekel as atonement money. But where did the silver go? It was used to build the Tabernacle. And specifically, it was used to build the bases of the sanctuary.
27 The hundred talents of silver were for casting the sockets of the sanctuary and the sockets of the veil; one hundred sockets for the hundred talents, a talent for a socket.
So the atonement money from the census was used to build the foundation of the temple, the dwelling place of God. So this census tax teaches us that numbering the people is connected the building of the temple.
Now, I want to bring you to the New Testament to explain the connection.
The New Testament teaches us that each disciple of Christ is a living stone in the temple of the Lord.
4 And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Although David didn’t collect the census tax, God in His mercy brings him to the place for building the temple. And it is David’s broken and contrite heart, his repentance, that becomes the sacrifice before the Lord (Ps. 51:17).
In the same way, Abraham didn’t actually kill Isaac as a burnt offering. God wanted Abraham’s heart. His loyalty.
6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
So both David and Abraham’s sacrifice point us to Jesus, the true burnt offering. Jesus put Himself on the altar, and He paid the true atonement money on our behalf.
God doesn’t want our big numbers. He wants our hearts. Our loyalty. Our love.
So let us let go of our love for big nubers, and learn to find satisfaction in God. Amen?
5 The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. 6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
I pray that Zion Church will be a threshing floor where all the chaff is blown away, all the big numbers, all the things I’ve done in the past, all the years I’ve been in church, all my titles and achievements, all my pride. And may we offer a true, sincere, and pure devotion to the Lord. Amen? Let us pray.
