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“All Because of You”

Redemption In and Through the Life of David.

2 Samuel 24:1-25

 May 27th, 2012

 Theme of 1 & 2 Samuel has been Strength in Weakness

The picture I have is David as well as you and I, as fragile clay pots.

If you look closely you will notice that this pot is not perfect. It has flaws. It’s been broken and put back together. It is covered in fractures. Fissures criss-cross all over this pot.

But although David was broken, he was made whole, and was filled with the power of God. God is what made David great.

2 Cor. 4:7 seems to paint a clear picture of what we have seen in and through this narrative; and what we have seen in the life of David.

As I read this text think of David’s frailties, his weakness, chosen as a small boy – the least in his family, strength in weakness as David defeats Goliath, his loss, his many years running from Saul. Think of these things as I read from Paul.

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

David was hard pressed on every side by troubles, but he wasn’t crushed. Perplexed at times but not driven to despair. Hunted down by Saul, and others, but never abandoned. Knocked down but not destroyed.

David, like you and I, was not a perfect man, like you and I he was a fragile clay jar or pot, and this pot experienced brokenness.

And he knew it didn’t he?

That is part of what made David great, was that his heart was soft. He was aware of his weakness. He knew he was made of dust. He was a man who knew the value of brokenness.

Psalm 51:17

“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”

How did David experience brokenness? (Hit Fixed Pot with Hammer – cause cracks – break!

Life:

Life can be hard. It can give us some pretty hard blows. Troubles of every kind. It can cause fractures. Loss of friendship. Loved ones. Disappointments.

Sin of Others:

David being pursued by Saul for 20 some odd years. Attempted murder. Being hunted down. We live with the consequences of other’s sin all the time. It can bring us to a place of brokenness.

Our Sin

But also we have our own sin. Our wrong choices can bring us to that place of brokenness. Coping with life’s hardships and others sin without God. Our own coping mechanisms can bring some harsh consequences.

Sin has a way of highlighting our frailty doesn’t it?

Life, Other’s Sin and Our Own Sin can break us. Leaving us in pieces.

Have you ever experienced this? Life taking its toll? The crushing blow of sin? Leaving you in pieces on the floor?

Leaves us wondering if we can ever be made whole again.

TS: Interesting that 1 Samuel began with this barren woman named Hannah. She did all she could to have children but to no avail.

And it left her broken. She eventually got to the place in her life where she came to the Lord open handed & empty handed. Offering her brokenness to God, admitting her need, trusting in God’s mercy, laying it all down and being willing to obey God in whatever He said.

The picture is that she was offering to God her brokenness to see what God would do.

How did God respond? He gave her a son, and his name was Samuel. Ended up being the most significant judge in Israel’s history. Out of barrenness came a good gift!

That was one bookend; the other bookend is today’s text.

David too comes to God empty handed, trusting in the mercy of God; in exchange for his brokenness.

First let’s look at David’s sin.

David’s Sin

Text 2 Samuel 24: 1-9

Confusing passage. It seems that God instigates an act that later says He must punish!

Here we see Yahweh as untamed, undomesticated and unfettered. Good but dangerous. Not safe.

We are reminded that God cannot be understood simply with our conventional Sunday school notions of God. He’s way too complex for that.

But it must be understood that there is something going on behind the scenes that tells us just how complex the spiritual realm really is.

This text tells us that Yahweh incited David to take the census. But the corresponding text of 1 Chronicles 21:1 tells us that Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of the people of Israel.

Reminds us of Job where Satan asks permission from Yahweh to test Job. But God puts limits on what Satan can do. He cannot take Job’s life.

Not so cut and dry is it?

I wonder if this is part of what is happening here?

That God is testing David. His heart. Where is his heart? Like he did with Abraham and his son Isaac. Like he did with Job.

He allows Satan to put a thought in David’s head, “Take a census.”

And this wasn’t just a gathering of stats for Market Research.

Walter Bruggemann says that this census taking involved swift runners, powerful horses, and fearful royal agents invading villages. The census would have been like that of Caesar Augustus’ census in Luke 2. It is not a benign act of counting but an act of bureaucratic terrorism. The purpose was to count valiant men. The purpose was all about David yielding to the seduction of state power.”

This is what made David’s sin so deplorable. So Satanic. It was all about not trusting God, but trusting himself.

What does God say about Pride? God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

It’s like there’s this spiritual law at work. Pride comes before a fall. Pride opens us up to evil. It seems to remove God’s ability to bless or pour out favour or protect.

You can hear God beckoning David to stop in the words of Joab. “David, don’t do it. This isn’t going to go well.” But he doesn’t heed the warning.

This is the same temptation Jesus went through in the wilderness those 40 days. “Turn these stones to bread! I will give you all the kingdoms of the world if you just bow down to me.” The seduction of power. Take care of your own needs rather than trust God.

Jesus succeeds in resisting the temptation. David fails miserably.

This is the tricky thing about Satan/s tactics. He puts a thought into our head, an idea. To see what we will do with it. Most often it is so sly, and in first person, we think it’s our own thought.

Then he condemns us for thinking such a thing. In this spirit of defeat he knows it’s so much harder to resist.

No wonder Paul says take every thought captive, slow the process down and ask yourself – wait a minute. Where did this thought come from? Is this from God? Ask yourself, if I follow through on this thought, where will it lead me? What is the truth in this?

When I am tempted I try to stop, and ask God. “What is the truth in this?” Slow it down. Invite God’s voice into the situation.

But it’s hard to do in the moment. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

It’s like me crashing my bike in Moab. In the moment. Didn’t stop, look at the consequences. I should have resisted the temptation, walked away. Instead I did it and fell hard.

With sin we always fall harder than we ever imagined we would.

David too fell way harder than he ever imagined. Left him broken, but also the whole nation broken.

So we looked at David’s sin. Let’s Look at …

2.    David’s and Yahweh’s Response?

II Samuel 24:10-17

Here we see David’s heart. His conscience began to bother him. He recognized the dreadful thing he did.

It tells us that David’s heart is still soft to the Lord. He still recognizes when he fails and he cares about it.

Not what we see in David’s son Solomon who’s quite obtuse when it comes to obedience to God. Not alert or perceptive to God. Not sensitive but quite dull to His voice.

Here David confesses his sin before God saying, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

Not only does he confess he goes further.

David repents, but it isn’t an easy repentance.

Jesus paid for our sin, but here before Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, David’s sin had to be paid for.

How it’s played out is that David and Yahweh play a little Russian Roulette.

David must be punished but he get’s to pick his poison.

3 years of famine throughout the land.

3 months of fleeing from your enemies.

3 days of severe plague.

What would you choose?

Maybe you don’t think that’s the right question. Maybe you’re still wondering why Go would even punish? Why any consequences at all? Why would God even allow this in the first place?

Maybe you’re still there.

To address that question we need to look at both David’s response as well as Yahweh’s.

First David Response.

David’s response is not rooted in fear, or doubt in Yahweh’s goodness. His choice is rooted in faith, believing that God is good.

He responds.

“Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great. Do not let me fall into human hands.”

David chooses to trust God the most. He believes that even when God punishes or disciplines, He will be merciful.

Here David doesn’t believe in cheap grace, but believes God will for sure extend grace. He knows there will only be mercy from God, no one else.

In tough uncertain times do you bank on God’s mercy?

Mercy can be defined as God not giving us the punishment we deserve.

Or Grace. God’s grace can be defined as God giving us what we don’t deserve – blessing, patience, gifts, etc.

Trust is so huge isn’t it? How we respond in temptation and trial all depends on our ability to trust in God.

It comes down to a choice. Choose that God is good, and that He is merciful, gracious and kind. Even when all evidence seems to be pointing in the other direction.

Or choose that God is not good, and that He isn’t merciful and gracious. That He is against me, fighting me.

Not saying we don’t admit our struggle, and candy-coat our fear and struggle. David admitted how difficult this was for him. But he worked through his fear and came to a place of trust.

Even when God disciplines us, He is kind and merciful. Have you seen this?

Story: Kid Las Brovos Motorcycle Gang

Broken leg to get his attention. Keep him from entering.

God is merciful. Full of Grace.

How we choose directly impacts how we live our lives. Worried. Anxious. The need to control – thinking that I have to take care of myself because God surely won’t.

Looking at how busy and anxious and worry-filled our culture is tells me that we as a culture have serious trust issues.

David is in this desperate situation and he banks on God’s mercy and grace.

So Yahweh dispatches the angel of death, and the plague over a three-day period takes 70,000 people.

And the angel isn’t finished yet. He’s about to go for Jerusalem!

This is where we see the beautiful collision of David’s brokenness and God’s grace.

First we saw David’s Response, now we see Yahweh’s response.

Scripture says that as the angel prepares to go for Jerusalem Yahweh repents! Yes, that is the word in Hebrew. Yahweh repents. He has a change of heart. A change of mind. And says to the death angel “Stop! That’s enough!”

But not just Yahweh’s response, simultaneously David responds with repentance as well.

Yahweh stays the hand of the angel and David prays at the exact same time – what we see is both vantage points. David’s and Yahweh’s.

Yahweh repents of His anger. David repents of his foolish arrogance.

David’s response is simply to pray. And his prayer is simply a confession.

David comes to the end of himself.  Like Hannah David…

Came open handed & empty handed. Offering his brokenness to God, admitting his need, trusting in God’s mercy, laying it all down and being willing to obey God in whatever He said.

It is a prayer that the people are spared.

David here has finally come back to his true self. Who he really is. He has woken up from his sleep. No longer is David hard-nosed, autonomous, arrogant and self-serving. He is soft. Humble. Broken.

Out of this collision comes a gift.

 3.    The Gift.

What’s the gift?

II Sam. 24:18-25

David sees the death angel in the threshing floor.  And Yahweh tells David to build an altar in that space.

An altar in a threshing floor. The place where the chaff is removed from the wheat; the place where grapes are often crushed in order to make wine – is the place where God calls David to build an altar and to sacrifice.

Interesting that this site would eventually become the very place where David’s son Solomon would build God’s Temple.

Out of brokenness came a catalyste for worship. A place that manifested God’s presence.

Isn’t this the same for us? Often where our brokenness and God’s grace collide, where we lay it down, something beautiful emerges.

Here we see Yahweh’s faithfulness. It is Yahweh who guards and heals Israel. Not David.

TS: David is just like you and I, utterly and completely human.

But not afraid to trust God in all the seasons of his life, even the very painful ones. 

Back to the broken pot.

We are attracted to David because he’s real. David is fully human with wounds, scars and failures. He is neither sinless nor innocent.

Broken. But a life where something beautiful emerges out of his brokenness. Out of David’s line came Jesus. The Messiah. Out of David’s worst came God’s best! What a hope! We all want that to be our experience don’t we?

This is the hope of the Gospel. Out of Jesus’ crucifixion came resurrection. New life for all humanity.

By God’s grace we too can be made whole. By God’s grace He can take the ugly things and make something beautiful.

God, the glue of grace and mercy made David whole again. And not only put David back together again, he even filled him with Himself.

This is our hope too. That God override what is weak and vulnerable in us. That He too uses the weak and the vulnerable and out of our brokenness can come new life.

Yahweh doesn’t override or ignore our warts, but uses them in order to bring out new life.

We too are broken; we have been hit hard, made wrong choices and find our lives scattered on the floor – but we can like David offer to God our brokenness, and trust that God can make us whole again.

And make us beautiful again.

But the process is the same for us as it is for David.

This redeeming action isn’t automatic. The divine collision happens when God’s grace collides with our brokenness admitted.

We too come to God open handed & empty handed. Offering our brokenness to God, admitting our need, trusting in God’s mercy, laying it all down and being willing to obey God in whatever He says.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that brokenness not given to God so he can transform it, redeem it, just ends up being sharp edges. And when it comes up against someone else’s unsurrendered brokenness it just ends up causing conflict and more pain. Only when God’s glue of grace can God make something beautiful out of brokenness together.

You see this picture isn’t just for us individually, it is a beautiful picture of our whole community.

Each of us represent a single piece of broken clay; but redeemed we can come together – made whole. And out of us, a broken imperfect community can emerge new life.

So as God intended from the beginning, that through this broken fragile clay pot called the River, the people of Squamish will be blessed.

On your tables you will find broken pieces of pottery, each piece represents something about you that is broken (shame, guilt, hurt, wound, role you played as a kid, confessed sin).

I want you to write that on the piece of clay and keep it. Put it in your pocket. So you can share it with a trusted friend, or your house church. This is part of what it means to repent. Break the lie.

It’s in confessing that God can begin to redeem it.