This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day four of week nine of our look through 1 and 2
Samuel. We're going to actually go all the way to the end today. We're going to
look at chapter 24 and then tomorrow come back to chapter 23 and look at David's
last words.

In chapter 24, David counts the men, the fighting men of Israel, and then he
builds an altar. And we learn a lot about worship from what he does. Let me read
for you.

It's a longer story, but let me read for you the story of what happens when
David counts the fighting men of Israel, beginning in verse one. "Again, the
anger of the Lord burned against Israel. And he incited David against them,
saying, 'Go and make a census of Israel and Judah.

' So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the
tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and enroll the fighting men, so that
they may know how many there are. ' Joab replied to the king, 'May the Lord your
God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my Lord the
king see it. But why does the Lord the king want to do such a thing?

' The king's word, however, overruled Joab. So they left the presence of the
king to enroll the fighting men of Israel. After they'd gone through the entire
land, they came back to Jerusalem.

At the end of nine months and 20 days, Joab reported the number of fighting men
to the king. In Israel, there were 800,000 able-bodied men who could handle a
sword. And in Judah, 500,000.

So David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men. And he
said to the Lord, 'I have sinned greatly in what I've done. Now, O Lord, I beg
you, take away the guilt of your servant.

I've done a very foolish thing. ' Before David got up the next morning, the word
of the Lord had come to Gad, the prophet, David's seer. 'Go and tell David, this
is what the Lord says, 'I'm giving you three options.

Choose one of them for me to carry out against you. ' So Gad went to David and
said to him, 'Shall there come upon you three years of famine in your land, or
three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you, or three days
of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer
the one who sent me.

' 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 the hands of men.

' So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the
time designated. And 70,000 of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. When the
angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord was grieved because
of the calamity and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, 'Enough!

Withdraw your hand. ' And the angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor
of Ravna, the Jebusite. As you read through this passage, you can see very
clearly, as I read it, there are probably some things that made you scratch your
head.

There are some things we usually don't talk about when it comes to the character
of God in this passage. But there are truths about the sovereignty of God. There
are truths about the God that you worship.

Let me walk through four specific truths about the sovereignty of God that you
see in this passage that you and I need to understand, that God wants us to
understand because he's the one who shares this story with us. Number one truth
about God's sovereignty is God is in control. But this passage shows us maybe as
clearly as you've ever seen that he's in control of everything.

God's in control of even Satan. In Chronicles, you may have noticed at the
beginning of this, I read David was incited by God to go and take this census.
In Chronicles, this same story, it says that Satan was the one who tempted David
to do this.

So why would one place say Satan and another place say God? Isn't that a
contradiction? No, because the only reason that Satan could tempt David is if
God allowed him to do it.

So one place says God did it, but the other place tells us how God did it. He
allowed Satan to tempt David to do this, to tempt this evil in his life. God's
in control even of Satan.

God's in control even of your temptations. The New Testament tells us you cannot
be tempted beyond what you can endure. That tells us that God's in control of
your temptations and God was in control of allowing this temptation in David's
life.

Now that may make you feel uncomfortable. Why would God allow that? But actually
for me, it makes me feel secure because I know that it's not out of his control.

We live in an evil world, but God is even in control of evil. He's the one who's
going to end it someday, but he's in control of it even now, even as he allows
it. God is in control even when you sin.

He didn't make you sin. He didn't choose your sin. You chose that, but he's
still in control.

When Adam and Eve sinned, God was still in control. When you sin, God is still
in control. In fact, he's so in control that he works in your life in the midst
of the sin and sometimes even through the sin.

It doesn't make the sin right. It just shows the power, the sovereignty, the
control of God. That's who God is.

That's the God that we worship. This passage also says to us that the reason God
did all this in the beginning is, second truth, God gets angry. God's in
control.

God gets angry. God was angered at what the people of Israel were doing. Now,
we're not told here exactly what they were doing, but we see this so many times
in the Old Testament we can just about guess.

The people of Israel often followed after false gods. They did it on the way to
the promised land. They did it in the promised land, and God gets angry at that.

Now, for you and I, we have a hard time with that because for us, anger is so
much tied up with sin, with selfishness, with ego, but God's anger is not. It's
pure anger. It's an anger that's all about the need that we have to worship Him,
and when we don't worship Him, there is an anger that comes to the heart of God
because He knows what could be happening in our lives.

That's who God is. He's a God who cares enough about you, about me, to get angry
when sin is tearing my life apart, when I'm allowing it to tear my life apart.
Learn a third truth about God as we walk through this.

God grieves. God grieves. He saw what was happening, how this plague was taking
the lives of the people, and as it came upon Jerusalem, He grieved at what was
happening.

God is a person. God is not some computer. He is a person, and His heart grieves
when His children are hurt more than we can possibly imagine, and you and I
think, "Well, how could He grieve?

He knows what's going to happen in the end. How could He grieve? He knows the
end of the story.

" Well, that doesn't mean you don't grieve when somebody you love gets hurt,
even if you do know the end of the story. Even if you do know what's going to
happen. God is a God who grieves.

The Bible tells us in Romans 8 and the New Testament that when you and I pray,
God grieves with us in our hurts. God grieves. And then a fourth amazing truth
about God in these verses, God repents.

God repents. Now, to repent is to change your mind. If it's about sin, we sin,
and if we repent of our sin, it's changing your mind about your sin and
following God's plan.

Well, God never sins. He's perfect. But God repents, because repentance does not
have to be about sin.

You can change your mind about other things besides sin. And there are many
examples in the Old Testament of God repenting of a judgment, particularly of a
judgment, of a judgment that He had decreed, that He had proclaimed. But as that
judgment starts to unfold, God repents.

He changes His mind, and He shows an unexpected mercy. Because that is the heart
of God. He is a God of mercy.

Now, I want you to see this heart of mercy in God and what happens at the end of
this chapter. At the end of this time of judgment, David builds an altar. After
God repented, relented, stopped the judgment, He decides to build an altar.

In verse 17, "When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said
to the Lord, 'I'm the one who has sinned and done wrong. '" These are but sheep.
What have they done?

Let your hand fall upon me and my family. On that day, God went to David and
said to him, "Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of
Aravna, the Jebusite. " Aravna said to David, "Let my Lord the King take
whatever pleases Him and offer it up.

Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and there are threshing sledges and ox
yokes for the wood. O King, Aravna, give all this to the King. " But the King
replied to Aravna, "No, I insist on paying you for it.

" And then in one of the most famous phrases in 2 Samuel, David says, "I will
not sacrifice to the Lord, to the Lord my God, burnt offerings that cost me
nothing. " In David's building of an altar, we learn three important things, and
they're all about sacrifice. We learn David's willingness to sacrifice himself
for the people.

We see David's unwillingness to sacrifice to the Lord that which cost him
nothing. But then we see a third thing here. It's a little bit hidden.

You have to go into the history of what happens later in the Old Testament. We
see that mercy comes before sacrifice. A sacrifice doesn't bring the mercy of
God.

Mercy actually comes before sacrifice. It motivates the sacrifice that depends
on the mercy of God. It all starts with God's mercy.

It doesn't start with us. It starts with God. We see some of that in the future
of this site, this threshing floor that David buys here.

In 2 Chronicles 3. 1, we're told, "Then Solomon began to build the temple of the
Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father
David. It was on the threshing floor of Aravna the Jebusite, the place provided
by David.

" This place, the place where God had had the mercy to say, "Enough, withdraw
your hand," and where David had gone and because of that built an altar to
recognize God's forgiveness, God's mercy. This is the place where the temple
would be built. Mercy comes before sacrifice.

Every sacrifice that was made day after day after day in that temple, before
those sacrifices came the mercy of God at this very site, at this very place. No
sacrifice was given that day. It was just the heart of God.

God's heart is to be merciful towards you. I know we face judgment for our sin,
and God allows that judgment for our sin, but you need to know, you see it here
in the place the temple was built, but you see it even more strongly in the
place where Jesus gave his life on the cross. The heart of God is a heart of
mercy.

So do not let the fact that we face judgment for our sin that God never wanted
to happen, don't let that fact cause you not to fall on the heart of the mercy
of God. In fact, do it right now. Just say to God, "God, I need your mercy.

I'm sorry for my sins. I'm sorry for those things in my life that have taken me
away from you. " And I just admit it, for the first time or for the millionth
time, I need your mercy in my life today.

I know that there is judgment for sin because sin is horrible, it's terrible,
but God, I never want that to cause me to miss your heart. You are a God of
mercy. You're the God who sent Jesus to die for me.

You're the God who died for me on that cross. And so I fall on your mercy right
now. I depend on your mercy like I never have before.

In Jesus' name, I depend on that mercy. Amen. Tomorrow, the end of our study of
1 and 2 Samuel.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at David's last words.