When children are still very little, there comes a day when they start saying to those trying to help them, “I can do it myself”! And when still small it is cute, and even commendable to see that independence develop. When they get older, too much of it starts to become a nuisance, especially when they need to learn something, or know their limits. In adulthood, independence is good, but again, it is a liability when people are so independent you can never help, strengthen, counsel them.

But when that independence eventually becomes a refusal to trust God, it has become downright deadly. To refuse God’s help is lethal in two ways. First, you are proudly overestimating your own ability to control life, which means you are acting like God in your own life. Second, you are snubbing and refusing the God who delights to help and save and show His power towards those who trust Him. To snub God, to usurp His place, to pretend to have powers you do not have is a perilous thing.

It is perilous both because you are acting like a toddler insisting on handling a dangerous tool. It is also dangerous because you are really competing with God, challenging Him at the game of controlling life. God warns against the pride of self-sufficiency or trusting in man many times in Scripture.

Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD.” (Jeremiah 17:5)

“Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3)

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, And rely on horses, Who trust in chariots because they are many, And in horsemen because they are very strong, But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, Nor seek the LORD!” (Isaiah 31:1)

“It is better to trust in the LORD Than to put confidence in man.” (Psalm 118:9)

The threat of proud self-sufficiency is with us all our lives. We meet David here towards the end of his reign, an aged king, likely feeling his vulnerability. And sadly, as we’ll see, David fell into the sin of proud self-sufficiency, or trusting in the flesh, becoming proudly self-protective. As we study this narrative, and see the peril and pain that pride brings, we should be asking: do I tell God, “I can do it myself? Am I at risk of falling into this?”

I. The Pride of David

Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”

Right up front, we have something of a conundrum. God is angry at Israel, and it seems He then moves David to call for census that He will punish. David is later going to confess and admit he was wrong in doing this, but was it God’s or was it David’s choice?

Making it more perplexing, the account in 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that it was Satan who stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel. So was it God or Satan? And was it God’s choice or David’s choice?

The will of God and the will of man is a very difficult subject to understand. One of the ways we do so is to talk about God as first cause or ultimate cause of things and then other things as second causes, or secondary agents. For example, God was the ultimate cause of sending His Son to die on the cross. But the secondary cause of Jesus dying was the evil actions of men who wanted to murder Him. Those secondary agents did their evil, but it fulfilled an ultimate good in God’s plan.

Here in this Scripture, the same is happening. God had righteous anger against Israel. He wasn’t yet angry at David, that is still to come in this passage. His anger was at something unspecified in Israel. We may speculate that it was with all those who followed Absalom or Sheba in rebellion against David. Perhaps it was that the people sacrificed at the high places instead of going to the Tabernacle, as 1 Kings 3 tells us they did. Whatever it was, Israel was in sin.

Sometimes, God judges a nation by giving it a wicked ruler, or through a bad decision by a good ruler, like when Hezekiah gave the Babylonians a tour of his city, or when Josiah foolishly attacked Pharaoh Necho. The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes (Proverbs 21:1).

In this case, God’s ultimate decision to chasten Israel took the form of allowing Satan to tempt David into a bad decision. Job 1 shows us that Satan needed permission from God before he could tempt Job, and so here it is God allowing Satan to do his evil.

But even so, David is still a free agent. He can choose to give in or to resist the devil. Had David resisted this temptation, he would not have been the means for this chastening upon the whole nation.

David, unfortunately, gives in to the flesh, to pride and carnal confidence. David sent out an order to number all the people in Israel.

Now we might ask, what’s wrong with that? Well, in the first place, the people hated it. It meant more taxation, more governmental encroachment into their lives. It also meant more military conscription. And that’s really at the heart of this census. David wanted to know how much military power he had. We see that because the census keeps referring to how many could draw the sword.

It’s significant that this chapter occurs right after the chapters of David’s military might, his last battle where he was almost killed by a Philistine and then forcibly retired. It comes after the chapters listing out David’s mighty men. This gives us a clue as to what was in David’s heart in taking this census.

Here is an aged king, no longer able to wield the sword himself, and being tempted in the direction of finding security in the size of his army. Here is a man whose heart is drifting away from what he wrote in chapter 22, or Psalm 18, where the Lord was his stronghold, his fortress, his shield. Now he wants to trust in numbers. He wants the hard facts, the figures. Maybe he wants to scare off other nations, but he is exchanging his position of a man after God’s own heart into one of the scared, self-protecting monarchs of the surrounding nations.

Here is the great irony of fleshly self-protection. The more an unbelieving man grows in power to protect himself, the more fearful he becomes that he is vulnerable somewhere. His ability to protect himself has become a lust, and lusts are never satisfied. The Mafia boss in his compound with fifteen armed thugs on the roof patrolling 24/7 ironically feels more vulnerable and fearful than the poor believing fellow down the road with just a gate and a lock on his door. The difference is that the poor man accepts what God has given, uses his means and then trusts. The Mafia boss tosses and turns, fretting over what would happen if Fabrizzio’s Uzzi jams just when it’s needed.

At this moment, David is sadly looking more like that Mafia boss than like the poor in spirit man we’ve known. And even one as wily and shrewd as Joab had a problem with this.

II. The Protest of Joab

So the king said to Joab the commander of the army who was with him, “Now go throughout all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and count the people, that I may know the number of the people.”

And Joab said to the king, “Now may the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times more than there are, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king desire this thing?”

Chronicles adds these words to Joab: “Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel?” (1 Chronicles 21:3). Joab knows this is all wrong. This is the king, the representative of the people, making a public act of independent self-sufficiency in the sight of God. For a nation built on giving God the glory, and crediting God with the victory, this is almost an act of God-rejection. Joab knows that the exploits of David and David’s mighty men were almost miraculous, supernatural in their power. God was the source of their power, not numbers.

So we picture Joab trying to argue with David. In fact, not only Joab protested, but all the military leaders. They knew that this was an act of defiance against the God who was the source of their power.

Now here is why this sin is so dangerous. The man doing it never feels he is. Had Joab said to David, “David, you need to trust the Lord”, what would David have said? “Trust the Lord? I am trusting the Lord. I’ve written psalms about trusting the Lord. Listen, I’m just being responsible. My son Solomon is a man of peace without military experience, and I need to make sure Israel has the forces to preserve peace. I need to set things in perfect order so that Solomon can one day build the Temple without distraction.”

The man in the grip of proud self-reliance doesn’t feel like it. The people around him are the ones saying, “Don’t you have enough locks on your door? Don’t you think you have more than enough insurance policies? Don’t you think it’s a bit much to check your bank balance five times a day? Don’t you think a mounted machine gun on your mountain bike is a bit excessive?” Pride never feels it is being proud.

But what about taking necessary precautions? Are we supposed to sleep with our doors open to display faith in God? Should we cancel every insurance policy, never again take medicine? No, God expects us to behave sensibly and take prudent precautions. But when God sends you a few Joabs to tell you, “This is excessive, this is not normal”, you would do well to listen.

Whatever it was, David argued Joab and all the captains into submission.

III. The Performance of the Census

Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army. Therefore Joab and the captains of the army went out from the presence of the king to count the people of Israel.

And they crossed over the Jordan and camped in Aroer, on the right side of the town which is in the midst of the ravine of Gad, and toward Jazer.

Then they came to Gilead and to the land of Tahtim Hodshi; they came to Dan, Jaan and around to Sidon;

and they came to the stronghold of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites. Then they went out to South Judah as far as Beersheba.

So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.

Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to the king. And there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.

So Joab’s men go out, and the path they travel is a kind of oval or ellipsis. They go southeast from Jerusalem, then through Transjordan and Gilead, then north and west through the northernmost parts of Israel to the coast, all the way to the very south of Israel and back to Jerusalem. The whole thing takes nine months and twenty days which is almost exactly the human gestation period, from a baby’s conception to birth. Ironic, given how much death will result.

Chronicles tells us that Joab refused to number Levi or Benjamin. The Levites were exempt from military service anyway, and the Benjamites were still a volatile bunch after the rebellions of Ishbosheth, Absalom, and Sheba.

The final headcount is 800,000 for the ten tribes. But not included in that number was the standing army of 12 units of 24,000 men each. That’s an additional figure of 288,000, and then there was an additional 12,000 attached to Jerusalem and the chariot cities. That’s another 300,000, add that to the 800,000 and you get the full number given in Chronicles, 1,100,000. The men of Judah, was the 470,000 recorded in Chronicles, plus their standing army of 30,000, which gives you this 500,000.

So in total, an army of 1.6 million men. That’s fairly impressive, even by today’s standards. In our world of seven billion people, only the U.S., China, Russia, India, Brazil, Korea, and Vietnam have standing armies bigger. From a carnal, fleshly point of view, David might really boast in this achievement. But David is no longer rejoicing in this number.

IV. The Penitence of David

And David’s heart condemned him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, I pray, O LORD, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly.”

At some point, David finally is overwhelmed by guilt and conviction. He has done wrong, God is displeased. Wait, didn’t God want David to do this? No, not in the sense of wanting David to fall into pride. God wanted to purify and chasten Israel, sadly David’s own pride became the means for this to happen. God wanted to save the world, Judas’s own sin became a means for that to happen.

David has done wrong, and knows it.

Suddenly those numbers no longer look encouraging, they are an indictment against him, evidence of his pride, self-sufficiency and trust in the arm of the flesh.

David, as he always does, confesses his sin properly and totally. Look at three characteristics of his confession.

• He says, “I have sinned” “I have done foolishly”. He doesn’t include others, blame others, spread the responsibility. “I have sinned”.
• He also calls it what God would call it. He says, “I have sinned”, “I have done very foolishly”. Sin is evil, sin is foolishness. David doesn’t call it mistakes, things I’m not proud of, my temperament, my personality.
• He then asks, “take away the iniquity of your servant”. Forgive me, cleanse me, wash me, remove the guilt. Not, “I’m sorry” or “I’ll do better next time”.

David was certainly forgiven, but like in his earlier life, sin comes with consequences. F.B Meyer comments, “A night of anguish could not, however, wipe out the wrong and folly of nine months. He might be forgiven, but must submit to one of three modes of chastisement.”

V. The Plague Upon Israel

Now when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,

“Go and tell David, ‘Thus says the LORD: “I offer you three things; choose one of them for yourself, that I may do it to you.” ’”

So Gad came to David and told him; and he said to him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or shall you flee three months before your enemies, while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ plague in your land? Now consider and see what answer I should take back to Him who sent me.”

And David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

So the LORD sent a plague upon Israel from the morning till the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men of the people died.

It might seem strange to us that David is offered these three forms of discipline. But actually, David wouldn’t have been surprised because these three punishments are named in God’s covenant with Israel (Deut. 28). There God told Israel that if they forsook Him, he would send famine—28:23–24; military defeat (25–26); pestilence (27–28, 35). So this is really a kind of miniature form of what was already promised in the Mosaic covenant: a covenant that Israel voluntarily entered into, and was bound by.

David is offered three months of enemy attack, three days of plague or seven years of famine. Chronicles says three years of famine, which either means the plague had already been on the land for four years, or possibly David had sought the face of the Lord, and had God lowered the famine period from seven years to three years.

As David is faced with the grinding pain of famine (where he and his household would be the least affected) or the cruelty of unbelieving enemies, or the possibility of three days of plague, he chooses what he thinks will be the most merciful option, to fall directly into the hands of God: three days of plague. And he is right.

And so the plague hits Israel from the far north, Dan, to the far south, Beersheba, and 70,000 die.

Remember, at the back of this is not merely David’s sin, but whatever sin had caused God to be angry with Israel. Wiersbe says, “It’s been suggested that this plague took the lives of the Israelites who had followed Absalom in his rebellion and didn’t want David as their king. This may be so, but the text doesn’t tell us.” Possibly David’s sin of pride may well have been very similar to theirs: perhaps the pride of refusing God’s king for a rebel, or the pride of saying, “We don’t need Jerusalem and God’s Tabernacle – we can make our own high places.”

But there is no taking away from the fact that this is also discipline upon David. There is a high price to be paid by leadership, especially when one represents the whole nation. In many ways, this sin is more severe than the one with Bathsheba. That sin was a sin of the flesh, yielding to lust after an afternoon of laziness. But this census was a sin of the spirit, a calculated, willful act of rebellion against God. This was a sin motivated by pride, the number one sin, the sin contained in all other sins.

And now the pain comes right home to David’s own city.

And when the angel stretched out His hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the destruction, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “It is enough; now restrain your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

Then David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, “Surely I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house.”

Chronicles tells us that the Lord allowed David to see the angel standing between earth and heaven, having in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Hard to imagine: an angel ready to destroy that great capital city, David’s city. David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces, confessed sin again and begged God to relent.

Spurgeon comments: “Here the great heart of the man who had sinned comes out again: he is no tyrant after all, he is a worthy man to be the Viceroy of the Most High. He has the same spirit that Moses had, when he cried, ‘If not, blot my name out of the Book of Life.’ He offers himself, not the innocent for the guilty, but, indeed, the guilty for the guilty; as far as he can, he will bear the consequences of his sin.”

Of course, God already had relented, and now it was time for healing.

VI. The Pity of God

And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Orunah the Jebusite.”

So David, according to the word of Gad, went up as the LORD commanded.

Now Orunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So Orunah went out and bowed before the king with his face to the ground.

Then Orunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.”

The prophet Gad comes to David with good news. The angel has told him to tell David to build an altar at the very place where he stopped destroying, and the plague will cease permanently. It is the threshing floor of Oranah, called Ornan in Chronicles. Ornan is likely the Hebraicised version of this Jebusite name. (אָרְנָן vs אוֹרְנָה). Araunah is actually a Jebusite, one of the foreigners that occupied Jerusalem before David conquered, showing that David didn’t destroy or evict everyone, and many of them happily submitted to David.

Chronicles tells us that Araunah saw the angel and kept threshing, but his four sons hid. He is apparently more moved by seeing David approach. It was not customary for a king to come to his subject; the greater does not go to the lesser. He is concerned and asks the reason for David’s visit. David explains he is here to buy the place, build an altar and offer.

David, as king, could have expropriated the property, or perhaps borrowed it, and Araunah is prepared to give it over.

Now Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up whatever seems good to him. Look, here are oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing implements and the yokes of the oxen for wood. All these, O king, Araunah has given to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.”

Then the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

And David built there an altar to the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.

Araunah doesn’t know of David’s sin, and is happy to give. But David knows the high cost of sin. He knows that sacrifices, by definition, are supposed to cost. Worship is worthship, showing how much something is worth. To give God what belonged to someone else, to offer to God what cost him nothing would not be fitting.

Imagine if Christians everywhere adopted this attitude: I will not give God what costs me nothing. I will not give God church attendance that costs me nothing. I will not serve God in the church in a way that costs me nothing. I will not disciple others in a way that costs me nothing.

So David pays Araunah fifty shekels of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen, and then 600 shekels of gold for the entire site: eight acres.

Undoubtedly there are priests with David, and once the altar is built, sacrifices are offered, David prays, and we’re told in Chronicles that God answered with fire, showing acceptance of the offering.

And now David sees that this terrifying providence hides a smiling face.

This threshing floor of Araunah is actually Mount Moriah. It is the very same place where Abraham came and offered his son Isaac, but where God provided a ram as a substitute. And here in that very place, David has offered burnt and peace offerings as substitutes for his sin and the sin of Israel. It has been accepted, and so David realises this place is special. And David’s very next words are recorded for us in 1 Chronicles 22:1:

Then David said, “This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel.”

In other words, David knows, on this site of grief, repentance and sadness will be the very site on which the Temple will be built. Here is God showing that though He chastens, He quickly restores; though He wounds, the healing is greater; though sin abounds, grace abounds much more.

Think of it: David’s two great sins: his sin with Bathsheba and his numbering of the people seem like his worst falls. But out of those two sins come the Temple. Bathsheba would give birth to Solomon, who would build the Temple. And on the site where the plague for numbering the people came to halt was the property, now owned by the king, on which Solomon would build that Temple.

When we yank our hand out of God’s hand, and exclaim, “I can do it myself”, God will sometimes allow us to, knowing there is pain ahead. Pride brings pain, every time. But then, here is God, standing at the end of our pain, at the end of the pride that has broken us. Pride brings pain; penitence brings pity. Ever and always is God willing to receive us. The verse does not say God resists the humble and give grace to the proud; He gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

Spurgeon: “Self-sufficiency is Satan’s net, wherein he catches men, like poor silly fish, and does destroy them. Be not self-sufficient. Think yourselves nothing, for you are nothing, and live by God’s help. The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man’s heart till man’s power is all poured out. Live, then, daily, a life of dependence on the grace of God.”