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The Price of Disobedience.

Have you ever read 1 Chronicles chapter 21?  If not, let me give you some cliff notes.  David was the King of Israel.  He had already fought his years against King Saul and finally Saul was dead.  David had since been crowned king and had undergone many many many battles with neighboring nations, always emerging as the victor.  The Lord was with David.

Yet in chapter 21 of 1 Chronicles we run into a point in David’s life where he gets a little prideful.  He forgets that all he has is only because the Lord gave it to him and he orders that a census be taken of all the troops he has under his command.  He wanted to know a definite number of how big and powerful his army was.  His servant asked him, “But why, my lord, do you want to do this?  Are they not all your servants?  Why must you cause Israel to sin?”

But David insisted.  He was warned.  But he insisted.  So Joab (David’s servant) conducted the census and was so troubled by the fact that he was doing this and knew that it was wrong, that he forgot 1/6 of the population to interview!

The Lord was furious that David had done such a thing, and David knew it.  Verse 8 shows David repenting and saying, “I have sinned greatly and shouldn’t have taken the census. Please forgive me for doing this foolish thing.”  Then the Lord spoke to David through his servant and said that David had a choice of 3 punishements for his sin.  He could either choose 3 years of famine for Israel, 3 months of destruction by his enemies, or 3 days of severe plague.  David chose the 3 day option…  In the end, over 70,000 people were killed in Israel for David’s sin.

It would have been more, but just as the angel of the Lord was about to destroy Jerusalem as well, the Lord stopped him and said, “Stop! That is enough!”  David looked up and saw the angel standing between heaven and earth with his sword drawn, stretched out over Jerusalem…. David said to God, “I am the one who called for the census! I am the one who has sinned and done wrong! But these people are innocent – what have they done? O Lord my God, let your anger fall against me and my family, but do not destroy your people.” Then the Lord spoke to the angel, who put the sword back into its sheath.

The chapter ends with David offering sacrifices to the Lord at an alter he built right where the angel had stopped his path of destruction.  David looks up and sees the Tabernacle of the Lord and the alter that Moses had built off in the distance…. but he is too afraid to enter it becuase he was still terrified of the drawn sword of the angel.

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So I was reading this and I thought about how David had ALREADY repented before the destruction… punishment was unavoidable.  Wrong deeds can be forgiven… but they don’t mean we are free from the consequences of our actions.

David saw the angel of destruction sent to kill for HIS sin… and he was terrified.  A man “after God’s own heart” who had been so close, so blessed by, so in love with God, was terrified of the angel God had sent even after the Lord had told the angel to stand down.  Why?  It said that David was terrified of the drawn sword of the angel even after the angel had put the sword back in its sheath.

That image was burned in his mind.  What did that sword represent for David?  Was it the death of 30,000 more?  90,000?  Did he know?  Did it matter?

Is it any different today?  No.  Our sin hurts others whether we realize it or not.  It’s so easy for Satan to tempt us and tell us… no one is looking… or no one will ever know… but in the end there is always a price to pay… and it isn’t always paid by you.  Your sin can hurt so many people around you… and THAT is why God said it was sin.  God didn’t put rules and regulations in place to tell us “No!  Beacause I said so, that’s why!”  God has rules in place to protect us… to protect others around us from OUR actions.

Thankfully we don’t often see 70,000 people die for our sins (though we did see 1)… But if you realize how big of a deal this was to God back then… isn’t it still?  Think about it the next time you decide to tell a “little white” lie that no one will ever know about.  Heavy, huh?