2 Samuel 24:1-17 – Trusting God When You Don’t Understand
Are you willing to worship a God who you don’t always understand? Are you willing to obey God even if you don’t know why he asks you to do something? Those are questions we have to face up to as we come to this unexpected ending of 2nd Samuel. Because we have an event recorded here which seems utterly strange to us. David orders a census to see how many fighting men he can call on. Verse 9 makes it clear that he’s counting men who can bear the sword, not just having a census of the population in general. And it’s a wrong thing to do. Even though we’re not told exactly why it was wrong. But we can probably accept that if God says it was wrong, it was wrong! That’s not the hard bit. But what we do perhaps struggle with a bit more is that something which doesn’t sound like a big deal to us, results in the deaths of 70,000 people. Some people say that the Biblical accounts of David are fictional accounts to make David sound a better king than he actually was. And yet the books of Samuel, which tells us more about David than any other part of the Bible, end with him sinning against God. And his sin is so bad, that it results in the deaths of 70,000 men. It’s very hard for us to understand. But it’s not that there was any great mystery for those in the story. When David commanded Joab, his army commander, to go and number the people in verse 3, Joab tried to talk him out of it. And that in itself should make us sit up and take notice. Because Joab isn’t exactly known for having a tender conscience. He has murdered in cold blood before. But now, what David wants to do is so bad in Joab’s eyes that he tries to talk him out of it! In fact, 1st Chronicles 21 tells us that the king’s command was so abhorrent to Joab that he didn’t actually count everyone. So both before and during the census, Joab is horrified and disgusted. After he does it, David himself is conscience-stricken. But the Bible itself doesn’t actually tell us why it was wrong. Or why it deserved such a severe punishment. Most commentators conclude that David’s sin in counting his men is that it will stop him relying on God. Once he knows how many are in the army he’ll be able to think: ‘Everything’s going to be ok, because I have 1.3 million men who can fight if I need them to’. He’ll be able to glory in his army. And so while we’re not told why what David did was wrong, I don’t think we’ll be too far off if we conclude it was something to do with shifting his confidence from God to his army. That makes sense to us – but perhaps the punishment doesn’t. The challenge for us is: are we willing to trust God, even when we don’t understand him?
Question
- What is hard to understand about this passage?
Prayer Points
- Pray that you would trust God even when you don’t understand.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.