1 Samuel 12

Chapter 12. The Law of Sacrifice"I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.“So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped. (2 Samuel 24:24-25)Three great thoughts are vividly presented and illustrated in the story of this chapter. Sin We have an account of the last great sin of David’s life. It was quite different from his former transgression and represented more subtle elements of temptation and disobedience. In the account given in the parallel passage in First Chronicles, it is represented as a masterpiece of Satanic subtlety. It was the devil who suggested and instigated it that he might lead David to provoke God and bring upon himself and his kingdom divine judgment. It was a sin which to the ordinary mind might seem comparatively trifling or, at least, difficult to weigh in the same balance with the foul crime committed against Uriah. And yet it provoked God’s severer judgment. It was the simple act of numbering the people, taking a census of the whole population of his kingdom, especially of the men able to bear arms. The peculiar element of sin in this act was the spirit of vainglory and self-conscious pride which prompted it. It was really the treacherous departure on David’s part from his humble and supreme reliance on Jehovah as the theocratic King and supreme Sovereign and support of the Hebrew monarchy, and a turning to the arm of flesh as well as the spirit of self-complacent pride in his own greatness and glory. It was the same spirit which afterwards manifested itself in the proud boast of Nebuchadnezzar “Is not this the great Babylon I have built… for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30), and which brought upon him a swift and terrible blow that sent him for seven years to grovel in insanity among the beasts of the field. This is one of the gilded sins of human nature whose enormity escapes the self-conceited thought of human ambition and pride. But it is the source of all sin and the very cause of Satan’s downfall. Pride is the “devil’s trap” (1 Timothy 3:7). And it seems the idea of Holy Scripture as well as the highest human genius, that when Satan looked into the mirror and saw his own beauty and brightness he became intoxicated with holy ambition and pride, and, assuming the place of a god, he sank from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell, and has ever since been dragging down all the spirits that he could control by the same subtle temptation. This was the eventual result which he made upon the innocency of Eve when he appealed to her spiritual pride and said, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Ever since that eventful morning her sons and daughters have been infested with a spirit of a false ambition and a delusive vainglory which has strewn the world with wrecks of ambition, vanity and pride. This was the subtle snare which Satan prepared for David’s latest days. It was the unconscious desire to display the greatness of his kingdom and the strength of his military resources. Joab, his shrewd commander-in-chief, while a man of no moral or religious principle whatever, was wise enough to know that David’s proposal was wrong, and he earnestly tried to dissuade him from it without success, and then reluctantly proceeded to carry out his master’s instructions. The census proceeded for nearly 10 months, including the whole kingdom except the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, and showed an available military force of more than a million and a quarter men. But the moment the result was announced to David, he felt in his inmost soul that he had erred and sinned; and with that deep intuition of a true and tender conscience which was so beautiful a feature of his character, when he really saw his fault he humbled himself before God and said, “I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing” (1 Chronicles 21:8). God was pleased to accept his penitence. But, nevertheless, He proceeded to teach him the important lesson rightly imparted to him and to the ages for whom he was living as a great object lesson. Happy for us if we could learn that lesson without having to go through the same sad discipline! This sin of vanity, self-consciousness and pride is one of the most alarming signs of our public, social and religious life of today. We see it in the proud despots of great nations. We see it in the spirit of bragging both in our own and in other lands. We see it in the disgusting and extravagant social display so characteristic of our time. We see it in ecclesiastical and religious ambition. And its subtle snare attends every stage of our religious experience and makes it so easy to seem rather than to do, and to turn even our holiest blessings into a dramatic exhibition or a self-conscious display of our own graces or victories or Christian work. Whenever we become occupied unduly with even the best religious experience, or think or speak in the spirit of pride of the most useful Christian work, we at once obscure it with its own shadow and defile it with the foul odor of carnal pride. Lowliness, whether it be physical, intellectual or spiritual, loses all its charm when it becomes conscious of its own attraction; and modesty is a heavenly veil which covers with divine beauty even the homeliest face and the simplest action. Let us take care as we come near the holiest to veil our faces with our wings and to be so absorbed with God that we shall not know that our faces shine. Let us never forget, as He blesses our work, to hide both it and ourselves under the shadow of His hand, and laying every crown at His blessed feet, to say, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory” (Psalms 115:1). David’s great sin was marked by God with the severest chastening. It was chastening mingled with mercy because David had already seen his fault and knew that God was dealing with him, not in judgment but in paternal discipline. It is very sweet to recognize our Father’s hand in our sorest trials. It would be terrible to find ourselves in the hands of an angry God. God’s disciplinary dealings with His children are always merciful and the tenderest proof of the Father’s love. “You only have I chosen,” He says, “of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins” (Amos 3:2). We see, in the manner in which David received God’s dealings with his sin, a beautiful example of penitence and submission of a believing soul. God gave David his choice of three judgments, either of a destructive famine, defeat in war or three days of pestilence. David’s answer is very instructive. “Let us fall,” he says, “into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men” (2 Samuel 24:14). Here lies the difference between the natural heart and the erring child of God. The former wants to get away from God, and the latter wants to fall into His hands and be dealt with by His wisdom and mercy. Here Peter and Judas part. The latter went out from the presence of Christ to despair by his conscience. The former lingered to catch his Master’s look, and was the first to swim to the Galilean shore when Jesus met His disciples after His resurrection. The hardest part of David’s chastening was the suffering it brought upon others, the innocent “sheep” (2 Samuel 24:17), as he called them, who had done no wrong, and yet who suffered the most terrible effects from his transgression. There is no form of trial so severe as that which comes to our innocent and loved ones in consequence of our own disobedience to God. Many a parent whose heart would not be reached by a personal affliction is often broken into penitence and humility by the dying anguish of a beloved child who acts as a messenger of discipline to that parent’s heart. Smitten friends Are angels sent on errands full of love. For us they languish and for us they die. And shall they languish, shall they die in vain? Shall we tread under foot their agonizing groans, Frustrate their anguish and make void their death? You may say, if you like, that this is unjust on God’s part, but its reason lies in the very nature of things. As well might you say that it was unjust for the branch to wither when the root of the tree is cut. God has interwoven us all together so that one involves many in mutual suffering. A father’s intemperance bequeaths a curse upon his innocent babes. A pastor’s fall wrecks the eternal hopes of many who leaned upon his faith and are undermined by his unfaithfulness. Every one of us carries with us the fate of precious souls as surely as the captain carries the lives of his passengers in his hand. David found this out when he saw 70,000 of Israel’s innocent men, women and children laying black with plague and convulsed with agony because of his rash, presumptuous act. Oh, is God thus dealing with you through another’s sorrow? God forbid that your hearts should be so hard as to “let them languish, let them die in vain.” Listen to the voice that speaks to you from their pallid brow and expiring breath, and turn to God whose hands have smitten, and He will again make you whole. David’s heart was crushed by this terrible calamity, and at last unable to endure it longer he cried out in truly magnanimous spirit as the angel lifted his sword above Jerusalem to destroy it, “I am 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” (2 Samuel 24:17). Atonement and Expiation But David’s self-sacrifice could not atone for his great sin. He and his father’s house, had they all perished, could not have made right the wrong which he had done. And so God taught him and taught the world through him that greatest lesson of divine revelation which had been enacted so often on the Jewish altars, and which was yet to be accomplished in its reality by the world’s Redeemer, that nothing less than the blood of God’s own appointed sacrifice could expiate the sins of men. And so the command was given, “‘Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.’… David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped” (2 Samuel 24:18, 2 Samuel 24:25). Here, on the very site where Abraham offered up his Isaac ages before as the type of the world’s greater sacrifice, and near where Jesus afterwards died, David reared by divine command a sacrificial altar and offered up victims which were but figures of the Lamb of God who, ages later, laid down His own life for the sins of men, and thus laid the foundation by which God can be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. This is the greatest truth of divine revelation, and this was the highest lesson which David could learn or teach. But what his own grief and penitence and sorrow and even his very death could not have done, the blessed Substitute whom God had for ages been preparing was at last to accomplish, and thus make an end of sin and bring in everlasting righteousness through His atoning sacrifice and His precious blood. This is the supreme truth which the folly of the world’s wisdom is setting aside, making the blood of the covenant a common thing. But this is the only foundation for the sinner’s hope and the loftiest themes of the sons of ransomed souls on earth and in the heavens. “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood… to him be glory and power for ever and ever” (Revelation 1:5-6). Never can this story grow old as long as the human conscience needs that precious blood to efface its sense of sin and dread of judgment. Every little while we see some illustration of the deep conviction in the human heart that blood must go for blood, and that the man who has outraged, wronged and murdered human virtue and innocence must receive in kind the wrong that he has done. Back of this lies a true instinct that is part of the nature of things, that sin must be expiated, and that the sin which has had grosser aggravations needs a corresponding satisfaction. Talking lately with one who had greatly sinned, the remark was made, “How can I expect to be so easily forgiven when my fault was so aggravated and shameful?” As I looked up for an answer, God gave me such a view of the judgment hall and the cross as I have never seen, and I answered, “Jesus Christ not only suffered death for sinners, but He suffered all the shame and horror, all the insult and ignominy and aggravated sufferings which every form of sin could deserve. He was insulted, abused, outraged and degraded before brutal men because He was standing for those that had outraged, insulted and fiendishly wronged the innocent and helpless, so that these vilest sinners might look back to His sufferings and see in them a substitution for what they deserved.” And so Christ is a qualified and complete Savior for every sort and degree of sin. This was the vision which God no doubt gave David in that day, and through which David found peace for his great transgression, and had a dying vision of Calvary and Christ such as he had left on record in some of his Messianic Psalms, where we can behold the dying agony and hear the cries of the Lamb of God as distinctly as if we ourselves were standing under the very shadow of His cross. Oh, beloved, have you had that vision? Has it lifted your burden, quenched your guilt, healed your conscience and given eternal peace and eternal gratitude to your redeemed soul? Self-Sacrifice But the sacrifice of Calvary demands from us another sacrifice, not by way of expiation, but by way of grateful love. What right have we to take that precious life as our substitute unless we are willing to give our consecrated lives in loving return. Therefore that sacrificial scene on Mount Moriah has a companion picture in the spirit of self-sacrifice which we see exemplified there, both in Araunah, the princely Jebusite, and in David. As David came to buy the site for the altar, Araunah with princely liberality offered to give both the site and all the accompaniments, oxen, ploughs, implements and everything. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all this to the king” (2 Samuel 24:22-23). He met the occasion with kingly nobility of spirit, and God paused a moment to pay tribute in the narrative to his nobleness of character. But David was not to be outdone by Araunah. “No,” he replied, “I insist on paying you for it” (2 Samuel 24:24). There was no petty bickering to get the best of the bargain, but the two men were contending who would be the nobler, and David insisted on giving him his price, uttering as he did this epigram of sacrifice and service, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). This is always the spirit produced by the true vision of Calvary. “Because we are convinced,” says the apostle, “that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). The blood of Calvary is fruitful seed in consecrated hearts and lives and reproduces itself in a similar spirit of self-renunciation. This was really why God chose this spot for David’s sacrifice. It was dear to Him because it had been the scene of an earlier sacrifice, where Abraham, as the type of God the Father, gave up his only son in willing sacrifice representing the greater sacrifice of Calvary. These are things that will live and shine when earth’s palaces and thrones have passed away. This is the light of heaven, the light of the coming judgment when the brightest rewards will be given, not so much for what was done as for what was sacrificed. Beloved, are you giving God that which costs you nothing? Is there real blood in your consecration? Have you ever shed a tear for Christ, or let go a pleasure that some soul might be saved or some cause might be helped for His dear sake? God lets these opportunities come to us in life to give us a chance of being like Christ, to help us to crucify our natural life and to lift us into His own likeness. If you have not yet learned this law of sacrifice it is because you have not yet gone out of self into Christ. It is one thing to have the blood of Christ on us. It is another to have the heart of Christ in us. The spirit of sacrifice is too hard for the human heart. It is possible only for Him who has already died for us, and is willing to live in us and teach us how to die with Him and live for Him. The blood of Christ upon your soul will save you from wrath and admit you to heaven; but unless you learn the law of sacrifice, and know Him in this deeper death and life through His own indwelling, you never can join the inner circle of His crowned ones, or know “the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” and “the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11).