Last week, we studied the two Psalms of David that the narrator of Samuel placed at the end of his book to highlight David's core belief that God is always worthy of being fully trusted, obeyed, and praised.  However, this core belief was not an invention of David, but rather the only proper response by anyone with even an inkling of understanding of who God is.  All whose hearts are softened by the knowledge of God see this core belief formed within them.

For instance,  in the very beginning of the book, we met a woman named Hannah, who, after a long and emotionally exhausting journey of faith to trust the Lord with her desire to have a child, that included the burden of being mocked by her husband’s other wife, trusted the Lord and the word that was revealed to her that God would indeed give her a son.  She didn’t conceive and bear a son because she finally believed God was going to do it; God was going to do that anyway.  However, what did change was her experience in the journey.  Prior to truly trusting the Lord, she was in so much grief that she couldn’t even eat.  But, once she believed God was truly worthy to be trusted, obeyed, and praised no matter what, she was able to get up out of her grief and enjoy life, including her relationship with her husband, who ironically loved her more than the wife who was able to conceive and bear him children consistently.  The day that Hannah presented her son to the Lord, she prayed,

2 "There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. (1 Samuel 2:2)

Hannah didn’t project this belief onto God in that somehow she is the one who assigned it to Him, but rather, in having her eyes and heart opened to see who God is, she responded in willful and joyous surrender, believing Him to be who He is, the only One truly worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed, and praised!

Therefore, to no surprise, then, as the author of Samuel finishes his book, we see that the testimony of Hannah is also the testimony of David.  David said,

31 This God--his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. 32 "For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? (2 Samuel 22:31-32)

Once again, we discover that if our eyes and hearts are open to seeing God for who He truly is, then we will simultaneously develop a core belief that He alone is worthy of being fully trusted, obeyed, and praised.  On the other hand, just because we have this rational and appropriate core belief in God doesn’t mean we always live by it.  We may tell ourselves we will never walk away from our core belief in God, but the fact of the matter is that we do it all the time.  However, the testimony that something is a core belief isn’t that we never walk away from it or dilute it, but that when we do walk away from it or dilute it with compromise, we eventually find ourselves going back to it, and this is precisely how the author of Samuel concludes the book.

As we have seen throughout the book, David was indeed a sinner in need of God's grace.  But he was also a man whose core belief was that God was worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed, and praised at all times, and as such, when David departed from that core belief, he would eventually repent and return.   And herein lies the point of the book.  The point of the book is not Hannah’s faith, Samuel’s faith, or even David’s faith, but WHO their faith was in.  Therefore, the book ends, not with a story that testifies of the greatness of David’s faith, but of the greatness of God to perfectly accomplish His will even through our faithlessness and thus why, like David, our core belief should be that God is always worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed and praised!

There are three parts to the final story in the book of 2 Samuel that highlight why our core belief should be that God is worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed, and praised.

 In the first part of the story, we see David’s departure from his core belief.

David resisted the Lord’s discipline and took matters into his own 

1 Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, number Israel and Judah."

“Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.” - This story began with some sort of disciplinary action against Israel that is in line with God’s previous actions. Loving fathers discipline their children, but in Israel’s refusal to faithfully follow God into the Promised Land, God made a covenant with them that was particularly hard and consequential, both positively and negatively.  If they obeyed God, He promised prosperity in every way. However, any departure from His Law would be met with severe consequences, particularly if they worshiped other gods.

You would think the opportunity to abound in every kind of prosperity would have led Israel to joyfully obey the Law God gave them, but it didn’t.They consistently turned from the Lord, and in 2 Samuel chapter 24, it apparently happened again.  However, the context of this chapter is not the faithlessness of Israel that brought God’s anger upon them, but the faithless response of David.

Instead of seeking God as he did in 2 Samuel 21 when God inflicted the land with a famine, David instead took matters into his own hands and ordered a census.Instead of walking by faith (seeking the Lord and acting on His Word), David walked in the “flesh” and acted in his own power to fix what he saw to be a problem.

“It is impossible to determine the date of this episode from 2 Samuel alone, but the parallel version in 1 Chronicles 21 places it just prior to David’s instructions to Solomon about building the temple (1 Chron. 21:28–22:19). … In 1 Chronicles 21:1 this motivation is attributed to (lit.) “a Satan” (or adversary). … This is similar to the Lord’s permitting Satan to trouble Job (Job 1:12; 2:6) and His allowing an evil spirit to torment Saul (1 Sam. 16:14; see comments there). In any case, the Lord Himself did not incite David to do evil for “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone” (James 1:13).”¹Merrill, E. H. (1985). 2 Samuel. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 481). Victor Books.

The fact that this occurred not long before David gave Solomon instructions for building the temple when he became King has led some scholars to believe that David’s motivation for taking the census was to figure out if he had enough men to build it.However, that explanation doesn’t align with the report of the census we receive later in the story, which focuses on the number of available men in Israel who can go to war, nor would it explain the context of God being angry with Israel.  When God was angry at Israel, he typically either brought on some sort of natural disaster that not only noticeably damaged their economic prosperity but also their ability to feed themselves, or he empowered an enemy of Israel to threaten them militarily.  One could argue that an economic disaster would motivate David to find out if he had enough men to revive the economy and build the temple, but again, as you will see, the report was entirely focused on the context of how many men could go to war, which is why I believe the evidence of God’s anger was a credible military threat against Israel that was likely having significant success at raiding towns and villages within the territory of Israel.

However, regardless of the specific reason, instead of embracing the discipline of God and seeking Him to understand where the breakdown in Israel’s faith in Him occurred, David decided to take matters into his own hands and try to nullify or at least mitigate the impact of God’s discipline.

I’ll never forget the time one of my cousins attempted to thwart the discipline of his dad, my uncle.He put magazines in his pants to try to nullify the effect of the spanking he was getting ready to get for blatantly choosing to disobey his parents.  It never entered his mind that refusing to submit to the discipline of his father by putting magazines in his pants to try and not feel the sting of the belt he was getting ready to be spanked with was just as obvious, if not more obvious, than his refusal to submit to the instructions that earned his father’s discipline in the first place!  This is precisely what David is doing here.  We don’t know what the rebellion was that caused God to discipline Israel, but what we do know is that instead of David seeking the Lord to understand the sin of Israel and how to lead them to repentance, David began to figure out ways to mitigate, if not entirely avoid, the effects of God’s discipline.  In doing so, David was abandoning the core belief that God is always worthy of being trusted, obeyed, and praised.

Instead of seeking God's guidance to understand why He was empowering Israel’s enemies to defeat them, so that Israel could repent and restore its relationship with God, which would ensure its protection and power over its enemies, David decided to take matters into his own hands.

Now, you would think that this kind of decision made by David would be embraced by a man like Joab, who had a history of taking matters into his own hands, but ironically, it wasn’t.Look what happens next,

2 So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, who was with him, "Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people." 3 But Joab said to the king, "May the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?" 4 But the king's word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. 5 They crossed the Jordan and began from Aroer, and from the city that is in the middle of the valley, toward Gad and on to Jazer. 6 Then they came to Gilead, and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites; and they came to Dan, and from Dan they went around to Sidon, 7 and came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites; and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. 8 So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9 And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.

“Three different verbs—approximate synonyms—are used in this passage to describe the act of conducting the census: מָנָה (manah) (v. 1), פָקַד (phaqad) (vv. 2, 4), and סָפַר (saphar) (v. 10). The report given in v. 9 shows that the interest of the census was not a general population count, but a counting of men able to serve in the militia, or general levy (אִישׁ־חַיִל, ish-chayil, v. 9). Thus we must understand the noun “people” (עָם, am) used in vv. 2 and 4 as having this more restrictive scope, which is also attested elsewhere. Whether the report to Joab from the emissaries included only village or tribe names and numbers, or also the names of the fighting men in each locality, is not specified. One would suspect that the names would not be required: It was the groups that subdivided “Israel” and “Judah” and the expected manpower contributions from each that would have interested David and his commanders. The fact that this census was for the purpose of organizing a general militia, not a professional standing army, helps to explain why Joab and the commanders of the professional army were opposed to it from the outset, as Yadin remarks: “That this census was carried out for military purposes would seem evident from the fact that it was entrusted to Joab and his top commanders, and that the people enumerated were warriors—'valiant men that drew the sword.’” Some scholars have sought to maintain that the census was taken to make possible the establishment of an organized tax system. Others insist that it was a preliminary step to the organization of a permanent system of mobilization for the regular standing army. But if for the regular army, why should Joab have opposed it? He was, after all, a professional career man himself, and the King’s highest commander, and he would certainly have welcomed any move which would strengthen the regular forces. It seems obvious—and there is endorsement also in the large figure involved—that its purpose was the organization of the militia. And this also makes understandable the opposition of Joab, precisely this embodiment of the professional regular military mind, with his almost certain contempt for the “Saturday soldier” or, in this case, the “monthly militia-man.” Amasa, as commander of the militia, must have been anathema to him … Joab and the professional military men were intensely skeptical of relying on a militia and considered the effort of the census to be at best a waste of time. But they would go through the motions, if just to satisfy David.”²Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, pp. 889–890, 893). Lexham Press.

“Finally, after nine months and 20 days, the report was given; there were 800,000 eligible fighting men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah (v. 9). The figures in 1 Chronicles are 1,100,000 men in Israel and 470,000 in Judah, but the chronicler wrote that the Levites and Benjamites were not included (1 Chron. 21:5–6). The reconciliation of the data may lie in the possibility that 1,100,000 describes the grand total for Israel including the standing army which consisted of 12 units of 24,000 men each (288,000, 1 Chron. 27:1–15) plus 12,000 especially attached to Jerusalem and the chariot cities (2 Chron. 1:14). These 300,000 subtracted from 1,100,000 would yield the 800,000 figure in 2 Samuel 24:9. Also the chronicler may not have included the 30,000-man standing army of Judah (6:1) whereas they were included in chapter 24. This would raise the 470,000 total of Chronicles to the 500,000 of Samuel. This is only one solution, but with so little information available as to how the sums were obtained nothing further can be said with certainty.”³Merrill, E. H. (1985). 2 Samuel. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 482). Victor Books.

“The phrase “able to draw the sword” (שֹׁלֵף חֶרֶב, sholeph cherev, v. 9) simply means “able to serve in the military.” The report shows that the primary purpose of the census was not to establish a basis for taxation—no land measurements or enumerations of moveable assets are mentioned. The census was also not intended to determine the resources of public labor to build the temple, since corvée⁴⁰⁷²—at least in its first stages in ancient Israel—affected the embedded foreign groups, not the native Israelites who are the group being numbered here. The purpose of the census was recruitment in the military. The large number—1,300,000 men—shows that this was not a census for the much smaller professional army, but for a national recruitment, a militia.”⁴Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 894). Lexham Press.

“It showed a lack of trust in Yahweh, who had stood by him throughout his life. Never before had he needed to depend on a huge militia. Yahweh had always been more than enough of a shield.”⁵Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 899). Lexham Press.

“Matthew Henry hits the nail on the head in his assessment of the problem: ‘It was proud confidence in his own strength. By publishing among the nations the number of his people, he thought to appear the more formidable, … trusting in an arm of flesh more than he should have done who had written so much of trusting in God only.’”⁶Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (pp. 239–240). Evangelical Press.

The thrust of Matthew Henry’s observation, that this was a total act of faithlessness by the man who had written so many psalms about God being worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed, and praised, becomes immediately clear in the second part of the story.It’s in this second part of the story that we see what happened in the first part isn’t a reflection of David's core belief, but a drift away from it.

 In the second part of the story, we see David's return to the core belief that God is always worthy of being fully trusted, obeyed, and praised.

 David took full responsibility for his faithless actions and threw himself and Israel on the mercy of the Lord.

10 But David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And 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 done very foolishly."

It doesn’t appear that any consequence of David’s faithlessness had occurred other than a significant level of conviction in David’s heart that he had rebelled against The One he knew was worthy of fully trusting, obeying and praising!On the surface, a census appears to be a completely harmless, entirely ethical, and amoral issue.  There is no inherent morality or immorality in it!  It’s a survey.

"The Law allowed for censuses (Exod 30:11–16), and Yahweh even commanded them at various times (Num 1:2; 26:2).”⁷Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., Whitehead, M. M., Grigoni, M. R., & Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (2 Sa 24:10). Lexham Press.

HOWEVER, if the reason for the survey was an attempt to skirt the discipline of God rather than go to God to face the sin and its consequences, then the census was driven by the core definition of sin.The Bible says,

“For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."

I believe this is why David said he sinned “greatly” and did “very foolishly.”David knew trusting, obeying, and praising God wasn’t just a good idea, but rather the only proper and acceptable response to the only God; to the one who is eternally Holy and Righteous; to the one whose very identity so clearly announces that He should be trusted, obeyed and praised that there’s no need for Him to even say it.  David knew his motives for taking the census.  It didn’t matter if it was right or wrong by the letter of the law about taking a census; what mattered was that it violated the ultimate law of God to trust, obey, and praise Him!  David knew he was trying to avoid having to face the sin he had allowed to occur among the people and as such avoid the discipline of God, but because the core belief of David’s life was that God was always worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed and praised he couldn’t keep running from the conviction that was eating him alive!

It appears David tossed and turned all night in agony over his faithlessness towards the one He knew was so worthy of being trusted, obeyed, and praised.Finally, dawn came, and with it, God sent one of His prophets to David to inform him of the consequences of his sin.  The Bible states,

11 And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, 12 "Go and say to David, 'Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.'" 13 So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, "Shall three 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 decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me."

It should be noted that David has already been through the first two options presented to him, meaning he was aware of the impact those things had on the nation.For instance, he had already been through three years of famine, so he well knew what another three years of it would do to the nation.  People would not only starve to death in Israel, but the economy would be wrecked, which would weaken their influence on other nations to stand with them in battle and significantly increase the risk of invasion.  A nation’s economy is its greatest sustainable defense.  It not only funds their military, but it also gives them the ability to form alliances that multiply their power of deterrence.  For instance, if a nation can create a healthy economic relationship with the United States that significantly benefits the United States, then they can rest easier at night knowing it’s in the interest of the United States, the nation with the most powerful military on the planet, to protect them from foreign invaders.

Likewise, David knew what would happen to the nation if he were overthrown as king.He had already been down that road with his son Absalom.  David knew a coup would completely destabilize the nation and create a prime opportunity for it to be conquered by a foreign enemy.  The ensuing chaos of David being ousted as king would mean lots of innocent people would die, the division and bitterness between the tribes that had surfaced at different points in the history of Israel would be rekindled, and foreign adversaries would have no problem at all taking lands away from Israel if not conquering it all together.

So, as bad as it sounds, the three days of pestilence, that is, three days of a deadly virus, would truly be the least consequential thing that could happen to Israel long term.It would be a horrific three days, and people would die, but the economy, power, influence, and sustainability of the nation would be intact.

However, here’s the thing: David never technically picked any of those options.Instead, David threw himself on the mercy of God!  David had already relied on his own understanding of things, and he wasn’t going to do that again.  His core belief was that God is the only one worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed and praised, so this time, instead of trying to mitigate the discipline of God with his own rationality or attempted manipulation of the circumstances, he opted to just trust the Lord and throw himself on the mercy of God to do whatever it is that God determined should be done. David does cry out, begging not to end up in the hands of man, but does so in the context of representing the entire nation and wanting he and the entire nation to be in the hands of God, to be disciplined by God rather than by man.  The Bible states,

14 Then David said to Gad, "I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man."

Note: “Some commentators are sure that David did indeed choose the third option—the three days of plague. There is, however, no explicit confirmation of this in the text. All we are told is that David cast himself upon the mercy of the Lord, while expressing the desire that the Lord should not let him ‘fall into the hands of men’ (24:14). This suggests fairly strongly that David did not so much make a choice as simply throw himself repentantly on the Lord’s sovereign grace, trusting him to do his will, exact his penalty and he hoped, be merciful. There was no cold calculation of percentages, no plea-bargaining in the modern idiom, in which admission of guilt is traded for a lesser charge, and certainly no claim of innocence or diminished responsibility. A holy contrition gripped David’s chastened heart.”⁸Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (pp. 242–243). Evangelical Press.

 In the third part of the story, we see the trustworthiness of God's mercy shining forth not only in what takes place in this story but also in what it sets up for the future.

 God proved the trustworthiness of His mercy. 

It begins with God’s faithfulness to do what He said He would do.

 15 So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men.

 But then we clearly see that the heart of God is not to punish us, and thus we see His mercy.

 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, "It is enough; now stay your hand." And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

 Now, why is it important that the author of Samuel told us that the angel of the Lord was standing by somebody’s threshing floor?Well, we will discuss that further in a minute, but for now, I just want you to see that God didn’t find joy in punishing David and Israel.

God was not driven by a desire to punish Israel.As a loving Father, He did what needed to be done to display His holiness and teach David and Israel the importance of trusting and obeying Him.  However, at the same time, God’s wrath is not an out-of-control emotion of vengeance.  God’s wrath is never separated from His love.  His wrath is a demonstration of holiness, and holiness doesn’t allow for out-of-control fits of anger.  God’s wrath is a tool of His uncompromisable justice and love.  God is not driven by wrath; He’s driven by love, and sometimes love requires wrath.  But the core motive of God is love, so even in His wrath, there is a massive testimony of His mercy.  God had every right to be done with David and Israel.  However, on more occasions than can likely be properly counted, God restrained His wrath so that David and Israel could not only survive but also find a way back into a life with God, and this is in itself a testimony to God’s mercy.  Justice demands we never have access to God again, but His mercy makes a way!

If you stopped reading the passage at verse 16, you might assume David was out of the picture at this point, but he wasn’t.Apparently, David saw the angel of the Lord being used by God to administer judgment, and, not realizing that God had already told him to stop, David cried out to the Lord in a way that lets us see his heart for the people.  David was not a selfishly motivated man.  He was a shepherd who didn’t see people as a means to an end for his benefit, but rather as the context of his leadership for God’s glory and their benefit.  Therefore, we read,

17 Then David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, "Behold, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house."

David’s sin doesn’t appear to be what started this chapter, but David knows this pestilence is being brought on because of his sin, and it killed him to see everybody else having to suffer because of his failure!David loved the people he was called to lead and would gladly give his life for them; in this, we see a beautiful picture of the Gospel.

Unlike David, Jesus had no sin, but because Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the greater David, Jesus didn’t have to have any fault in our sin to be willing to suffer the consequence of our sin.Jesus said,

11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 

 David would rather his life end and his descendants be removed from ever ruling over Israel than to see Israel suffer, especially for something he knew was his fault!Instead of trying to find a way to nullify the discipline of the Lord or negate it in some way, David was now volunteering to bear it on behalf of the rest of the nation.  However, David didn’t realize that the only reason he even saw the angel standing on that threshing floor was because God had already ordered him to stop.  David was crying out in faith for God to have mercy, and unbeknownst to him, God was already implementing His mercy, not just for this situation, but to provide a way for Israel to see it in generations to come and to set up the ultimate display of God’s mercy on us in Christ. The Bible says,

 18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, "Go up, raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite." 19 So David went up at Gad's word, as the LORD commanded. 20 And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. 21 And Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?" David said, "To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people." 22 Then Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23 All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king." And Araunah said to the king, "May the LORD your God accept you." 24 But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25 And David built there an altar to the LORD and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.

There is a significant prophetic element associated with the location where this sacrifice took place. E.H. Merril notes, “This was where Abraham had offered Isaac (Gen. 22:2). And on this same spot Solomon later constructed his magnificent temple (1 Chron. 22:1; 2 Chron. 3:1).”⁹Merrill, E. H. (1985). 2 Samuel. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 482). Victor Books.

To dig into this further, I’ve included the following excerpts from trusted Bible scholars:

“The ethnic terms used are not intended as slurs but to clarify the role that the character plays within the narrative. In Araunah’s case, it indicates that he and his family before him had owned this property long before David had conquered the city of Jerusalem. One of the names that Jerusalem had borne in early times was “Jebus,” identifying it with the clan of the Jebusites.”¹⁰Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 904). Lexham Press.

“According to well-founded tradition, this threshing floor, a wide, smooth, ledge-like surface, was on Mount Moriah, just outside the northern wall of David’s Jerusalem. But David had no right to it because it was owned by a citizen. When Araunah learned of David’s desire (v. 21), however, he was willing not only to give the threshing floor to the king but also to provide the wood and sacrifices needed (v. 22). To this gracious offer David could only give a negative response. How could he sacrifice to the Lord what cost him nothing? That would be a denial of the very meaning of sacrifice. Araunah therefore sold him the threshing floor and oxen for 50 shekels of silver (the 600 shekels of gold in 1 Chron. 21:25 includes, however, “the site,” more than just the threshing floor). Fifty shekels was about 1 1/2 pounds of silver. The silver David paid was only for the oxen and the threshing floor, and the 600 shekels (15 pounds of gold) mentioned in 1 Chronicles 21:25 was for the lot of land surrounding the threshing floor.”¹¹Merrill, E. H. (1985). 2 Samuel. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 482). Victor Books.

“The books of 1-2 Samuel close on a positive and hopeful note: Yahweh will always respond favorably to his people when they are willing to confess their sins and appeal to his character as a loving and merciful God. And the primary location where confession, forgiveness, and mercy will take place is on the mount where Araunah’s threshing floor once lay, but where eventually Solomon’s temple will stand.”¹²Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 905). Lexham Press.

Ultimately, the altar in the tabernacle and later in the temple is obviously meant to point us to the altar of the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus on it, which permanently pays the penalty for our sin.Therefore, what David did on that threshing floor points us to the much more important and eternally greater demonstration of the mercy of God offered to us through the substitutionary death of Christ!

But, David didn’t know Christ or ultimately what Christ was going to do, but David did take God at His Word that He is merciful, and as such, David wasn’t crying out to God for mercy in some sort of act of desperation, but very much in brokenness over his own sin and the suffering of Israel.Most importantly, David went to God not crying out for mercy in desperation, but by a faith that was once again operating from the core belief that God is worthy to be fully trusted, obeyed, and praised; a faith that was therefore standing on what God had said was true about Himself.  Long before David was born, Moses wrote,

31 For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. (Deuteronomy 4:31)

Long after David was born, Jeremiah, who was suffering tremendous persecution in doing everything possible to get Judah and Israel to repent, wrote,

21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:21-23)

 It was this universal truth about God that led David himself to write,

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!  2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. 6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.  7 He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.  8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. (Psalm 103:1-9)

 So, understand, don’t confuse the brokenness of David in these actions as desperate actions; these are the actions of a humble and broken man who has climbed back up on the Rock; a man who has returned to the one who is his refuge and strength.These are the actions of a man who has returned to trusting in the one who is his rescuer and redeemer; the one he knows is not only holy in how He judges sin, but also holy in how He pours out His mercy.

Challenge

Do you trust God to be who He says He is—The Father who celebrates the return of the prodigal son?  Do you trust the mercy of God enough to stop rebelling from Him and instead repent and start trusting, obeying, and praising Him again? 

The first time we repented and surrendered our lives to Christ, we did so after feeling some sort of weight of the guilt of being a sinner. But later, after we had been following Jesus, when we found ourselves living faithlessly, disobeying God and doing so hypocritically, while pretending our lives were being lived out of praise to Him, the weight of sin felt even heavier than when we had been initially convicted to give our lives to Christ.  We, who knew better and had experienced better, rebelled anyway.  The weight of that guilt is crushing, and it feels heavier than the weight we felt when we first repented and believed in Jesus, but the Gospel is still the same!

John wasn’t kidding when he wrote,

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

The question then is, do you believe it enough to act on it?  Do you believe that God is worthy to be trusted, or do you believe the lie that your shame is telling you—that you will never be worth more than your failure?