A Costly Failure to Worship
Samuel • Sermon • Submitted
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· 6 viewsSuccessful worship is praise that God accepts with favor. God will only accept worship that follows his clear directions. Faulty worship can be quite costly, even if done sincerely.
Notes
Transcript
I. How the Census was part of God’s plan
I. How the Census was part of God’s plan
God can use evil actions to inflict punishment for prior evil.
“Again” refers to this being another time after 2 Samuel 21. God was angry with Israel because Saul had sinned as King, and therefore brought guilt on the entire nation.
We must assume here that God is similarly angry at Israel’s sin. The Bible is abundantly clear that God is not like pagan deities. He is not capricious, randomly being in a bad mood and punishing for no reason. Jer 17:7; Ps 22:5; 34:8, 22.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, And whose hope is the Lord.
They cried to You, and were delivered; They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, And none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.
Now here the author connects David’s sin in bringing the census not with David but with the people. May I suggest at minimum the reason for God’s anger is a simple, yet constant one. the People of Israel had a constant problem with failing to give God the worship he was due. This was a problem before 1 Samuel 8:7-8, and remained a problem later Jer 18:15-17, even when Judah had good kings 2 Kings 18:4. So much so that later on in ch18, the Assyrian commander believes that the pagan high place were Israel’s real God (v.22).
And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.
According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also.
“Because My people have forgotten Me, They have burned incense to worthless idols. And they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways, From the ancient paths, To walk in pathways and not on a highway,
To make their land desolate and a perpetual hissing; Everyone who passes by it will be astonished And shake his head.
I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them the back and not the face In the day of their calamity.”
He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.
God deserves our highest praise. To not worship him with everything we have is evil, for that means breaking what Jesus called the greatest commandment Deut 6:4-5. So when Israel failed to worship Him, he had every right to be angry. Murder may be the worst thing you can do to another human being, but much, much worse than sinning against a human being is sinning against almighty God. Even the spiritual dense Eli was wise enough to know that 1 Sam 2:25.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
If one man sins against another, God will judge him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him?” Nevertheless they did not heed the voice of their father, because the Lord desired to kill them.
Viewed this way, it’s not simply unsurprising that God was angry with Israel. Instead, it’s surprising he was so merciful. That’s exactly what Jeremiah concluded Lam 3:22-23
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
The Lord can use the free actions of others to accomplish his purposes, yet those individuals remain free and responsible.
The word “incite” (סות) has a range of meaning from “persuade” to “set someone against” in a neutral sense of causing to act. 1 Samuel 26:19 That is, the idea here isn’t that God tricked David into doing wrong, but rather that he “set David on Israel”, that is, it was part of God’s plan to punish Israel through the harm that David caused through his sin.
Now therefore, please, let my lord the king hear the words of his servant: If the Lord has stirred you up against me, let Him accept an offering. But if it is the children of men, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day from sharing in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods.’
Chronicles declares that Satan incited David, so which is it? 1 Chron 21:1 Well, the answer is yes - Satan wanted to make David sin, and he wanted to harm both David and Israel. So he tempted David to sin, hoping that would lead to, well, what actually happened. The Bible also uses the word translated “incite” to describe God’s use of Satan to accomplish his purposes Job 2:3.
Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause.”
God personally oversees judgment - we don’t suffer the impersonal whims of fate, but it is a loving and good God that personally directs our lives.
II. How the Census was a worship problem
II. How the Census was a worship problem
There can be no doubt that it was wrong, as David repented and God punished the nation for David’s actions. (v.10)
Joab doesn’t object because it was an arduous task
(see map for locations)
It took 9 months, 20 days
The total number was 800k for Israel, 500k for Judah. Now a few of you might have figured out that the numbers in Chronicles are quite different - 1.1 Mil for Israel, 470k for Judah. The difference is that Samuel is counting “valiant men” that is, men that are fit for war. Chronicles is numbering all men who could theoretically swing a sword, if their lives depended on it.
Joab, who wasn’t exactly known for his scrupulous actions, objected to numbering the people. Chronicles makes Joab’s objections even more clear 1 Chron 21:6
But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king’s word was abominable to Joab.
So, why was it wrong?
After all, God did command a census to be taken at times (Num 26:2 - it’s even a census to determine the number of fighting men, just as David did.).
“Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel from twenty years old and above, by their fathers’ houses, all who are able to go to war in Israel.”
One possibility - David was here trusting in his own military might rather than in the Lord. Israel was supposed to trust God to win their battles, and not their human strength. David himself wrote several times about the fact that a king must not trust in his own military strength Ps 20:7. Further, it was David who trusted God enough to kill the Giant 1 Samuel 17:47
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.
Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.”
David also many times declared that he trusted the Lord in addition to ch 22, Ps 7:1; 11:1; 28:7; 31:1;
O Lord my God, in You I put my trust; Save me from all those who persecute me; And deliver me,
In the Lord I put my trust; How can you say to my soul, “Flee as a bird to your mountain”?
The Lord is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, And with my song I will praise Him.
In You, O Lord, I put my trust; Let me never be ashamed; Deliver me in Your righteousness.
What is the difference between faith and presumption? We use that phrase “trust in the Lord” so often that it can become a mere slogan. The difference is that the one who trusts in the Lord takes his Word seriously and acts on it - the one that presumes uses his own intuition and calls it faith Prov 16:20; 28:25; 29:25.
He who heeds the word wisely will find good, And whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he.
He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, But he who trusts in the Lord will be prospered.
The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.
Another, simpler possibility. David omitted a detail from the right way to take a census. Supporting this idea is (1) David already did something similar, miss a very important detail about the worship of God with disastrous results. (2) God already said that this exact thing would happen if that detail was omitted Exod 30:12.
“When you take the census of the children of Israel for their number, then every man shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them.
Application
Why be careful to - take the Lord’s Table, Be baptized, go to church regularly, read the Bible? Because they are the command of God. Those who fail to worship God in the manner he directs will pay for it. How they will pay for it depends on the failure in question, and on specifically what God chooses to do, which will be uniquely tailored to your situation.
III. How God showed mercy through judgment
III. How God showed mercy through judgment
God gives David a choice - three years famine, three months fleeing from enemies, three days plague.
David appeals to God’s mercy and thus chooses the plague.
70,000 sounds like a lot. It is. But Israel numbered 1.57 million men, thus was approximately 4-5 million people, less than two percent of the population. That’s a lot of death in three days, but still, it’s hardly apocaplyptic in an era when plagues, wars, and famine frequently killed large numbers of people. Not to mention the deaths that occured from many diseases that are not fatal today.
the answer to David’s objection - what have these people done? - is that David is the King. His actions necessarily impact the people no matter what David chooses.
IV. How God turned a failure to worship into a triumph
IV. How God turned a failure to worship into a triumph
Why build an altar? Direct command of God. But why did God command? The failure was a failure to worship, so the cure ought to be refocusing on worship.
Why does David insist on buying the floor? It is possible that this offer to give it was just part of what they did back then, that no one took it seriously. Abraham also turned down the offer to obtain his burial property for free (Gen 23:11-15). However, it is also possible that Araunah (Chronicles calls him “Ornan”, That’s just an alternate spelling) understands what is at stake, and remembers that the last time David had to make a deal, seven sons of Saul died.
David claims the principle, that sacrifices must be offered out of your own resources. The purchase price here (50 shekels of Silver) is just for the threshing floor and oxen; Chronicles lists the price of the entire property (600 shekels of gold).
The property that David bought was the temple property (1 Chron 22:1).
Then David said, “This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel.”
See picture in powerpoint.
God used David’s failure to choose the place where he would be worshipped. Deut 12:5. in Moses’ day, the place that God would choose was unknown. Shiloh was not so much the place God chose, as it was where the tabernacle ended up. And since the tabernacle had to go somewhere, and God didn’t forbid it, that’s where it had been for centuries. After the Ark of the Covenant was captured, there really wasn’t a place, for a couple of generations. But God made the most important direction for worship in 500 years, right at the point and the place where David failed to worship.
“But you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go.
The worship failure started, not in the Temple, but with a census - Worship isn’t an add-on to life. We worship with everything we do.