In previous two posts I argued that King David’s life is counter intuitive to typically religious sinners who basically equate “religion” with moralism. Naturally, we think the purpose of religion is to be more moral, do more good than evil, more right than wrong, and that if we do, God will like us. If not, he won’t. God specifically chose David to be king of Israel because he was “a man after his own heart.” We would naturally interpret this through the lens of moralism, that it means, to be this man, David would do more good than evil, more right than wrong. But that is not the man we find in the pages of 2 Samuel, not at all. Therefore, in the title of my book, David had to be Uninvented. Somebody, anybody, making up the life of David would not make up the terribly flawed David that actually existed, the one who God declares is “a man after his own heart.”
I’ll briefly reiterate below the profound theological lesson we learn through David that culminates in the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, but first let’s take a look at what is to me the most disturbing event in David’s very imperfect, sinful life. Most Christians focus on David and Bathsheba, as I did in my first post, and that’s bad enough. In my second post I focused on David as a pathetic father and leader, how he mishandled his son Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar, and his son Absalom’s attempt to overthrow his father’s kingdom. All of this is merely prologue for what I consider the greatest sin of David’s life, something that caused the death of 70,000 of David’s innocent subjects. I’ll also briefly deal with the theology inherent in these disturbing events.
We read about it in 2 Samuel 24 (and a parallel account in I Chronicles 21). Because I want to focus on the theology, I’ll only briefly explain what happened, but here is an excellent short explanation from the Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia (where my wife and I attended when we were in seminary). David gave a command to “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah” so he could “enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.” Joab, the commander of David’s army begged him not to do it, but the king overruled him. Bad idea.
As I was reading this story yet again, I found it distressing. It took nine months and twenty days (I love the specificity, which is an indication of the story’s veracity) of counting, and the whole time David was oblivious to his sin and the coming judgment of God for it. That’s a long time in which David had to reconsider what he was doing, but he never did. Hubris will do that to a man, which indicates the great sin David committed: he did not trust God, Yahweh, who created Israel, and promised to sustain her.
After Joab returns with the results, then David gets it, too late:
10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”
The bastard knew all along what he was doing was wrong! That makes me angry because he doesn’t seem to have cared if it was. But we see in his immediate response why he was “a man after God’s own heart.” Unlike King Saul who he replaced, when David was confronted by his sin, he repented. While he didn’t trust God in the most obvious of ways, he did trust God in the most important, to take away his sin. In this, he points us forward to the gospel. We cannot attain acceptance with God by obedience to the law; nothing we can do or not do will ever make us any more acceptable to him than we are in Christ, who is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Unfortunately, though, there are consequences for sin, and as we’ve already seen in his messy life, there are here as well.
The Lord says as punishment he will give David three options: three years of famine, three months of fleeing from his enemies while they pursue him, or three days of plague in the land. David responds in a way that again reflects his trust in God:
14 David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”
The plague came, and 70,000 people died, not just one because of his sin with Bathsheba. That’s why to me David counting his fighting men is the far worse sin, yet most Christians don’t know about it while everyone, including many non-Christians, know the story of David and Bathsheba.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this story because it seems so blatantly unjust. David sinned, yet 70,000 innocent people died and not him? As I come across things like this in Scripture, I always go back to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 32:3, 4:
3 I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.
I don’t get to determine what is just or unjust because of the way it seems to me from my limited, finite perspective. If the Lord does it or allows it, it is just, or if he allows injustice, it is for a greater good, or something we can’t conceive.
Many reject the of God of Scripture because they think they have the right to judge what they read in the Old Testament (seldom do they argue against the New, except to reject miracles). No God, they assume, would act that way, or cause a people to act that way. Really? How would they know? Based on what standard? Whose standard? Is there even a standard? The only reason we know a line is crooked is because we know what a straight line is. Where does morally straight come from? Well, the God they reject! This idea of condemning God by the standard that comes from God himself is a fascinating study, and beyond the cope of a blog post, obviously. But when I come to things in Scripture that make no sense to me, like David counting his fighting men, and 70,000 people dying as a result, I accept something else Moses said in Deuteronomy 29:
29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
And boy, are there a lot of secret things!
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