Problems with Pride
This week we continue looking at the parallel accounts of David as we see how David's pride got him into trouble.
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good morning welcome if you are new here among us my name is gene and i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and i wonder is there anyone else here who isn't a big fan of flying i know i had left not a big fan welcome back my friend not a big fan of flying now i will not say that i have a fear of flying but i just don't like it there's something about being hurtled through the sky 30 000 feet above where my feet should actually be it's weird i don't like it but i'll tell you what here's where i do get afraid if i'm being honest when i have to get into one of those little puddle jumpers these are the planes you have to take when the place you're going to does not have an airport that can accommodate a proper plane a big plane oh whatever they're called anyway puddle jumper kind of scary sometimes especially if you're don't you don't do it a lot you're not used to it i heard a story of a pastor who had a similar fear of these puddle jumpers but he was forced to go to a place where he had to take one so he prayed and then he got on the plane on this plane there were three other people clearly the pilot the pastor a genius and a boy scout oh there's going to be a joke here yes they get on the plane it's going well at first they take off well it seems pretty smooth until they hit some turbulence things bouncing all over the place the pastor looks out the window and notices that the propeller it's not spinning so he says to the pilot is that supposed to not be doing that nope we're going to crash and guess what this ain't the navy so i don't need to go down with the ship i'm jumping out of the plane i hope you're good with that here's the problem there's four of us and only three parachutes uh-oh well i got a wife and kids i'm out he jumps out of the plane now the genius gets up and he says listen guys i am one of the smartest people in the world so the world clearly needs me i'm out jumps out the plane so now the pastor looks at the boy scout and says well i guess this is where the rubber meets the road where my faith is really being put to the test i got to prove it so son i've lived a full life i'm going to make this sacrifice for you the boy scout interrupts the sermon relax pastor you know that genius he just jumped out of the plane with my backpack on they're not always funny this one i think was pretty good all right today we find ourselves in the rest of the story this is where we are looking at the full counsel of god's word not just the books or verses that we like all of it we're going to deal with it we're going to unpack it and we're going to look at how it applies to us we see that there are certain sections of the bible that run in parallel and it gets really confusing i totally get it because then sometimes that stops and that was last week right so we saw an account that would have been if it were running perfectly in parallel right in the middle of first chronicles chapter 20 10 chapters and that's another thing we're doing we're looking at the whole story so sometimes it's one chapter sometimes it's 10 chapters because we get a complete picture of it right so we really understand the story when we break it up i gave you that illustration it's kind of like watching 10 seconds of tv or a movie every week or something like that and that's how people read the bible right just little verse and then to make it worse they jump all over the place you're never going to get it if you watch a two-hour movie 10 seconds at a time by the time you're done in two years you're not going to understand it and that's a problem so we're trying to resolve that a little bit and get you guys used to just looking at bigger chunks of the story today we come into alignment where second samuel and first chronicles actually now line back up and so we're going to look at one story just one chapter easy week for me today right my wife is laughing because he knows so we're in first chronicles 21 if you're following along and second samuel 24. we've been looking at the life of david we're taking our time going through these accounts david has talked about a lot in the bible so you're going to hear a lot more about him especially today last week we saw he suffered tremendous betrayal so david doesn't always get everything right but he doesn't always get everything wrong either so we're going to see this again today david takes a census second samuel 24 1 once again the anger of the lord burned against israel and he caused david to harm them by taking his census go and count the people of israel and judah the lord told him first chronicles 21 1 satan rose up against israel and caused david to take a census of the people of israel so david said to joab and the commanders of the army take a census of all the people of israel from beersheba and the south to dan in the north and bring me a report so i may know how many there are that's interesting so what's going on here we have different accounts so these are the parallel accounts of the same exact thing seems a little different doesn't it bothers some people well we can resolve it that's what we're going to work on it's kind of like the gospels you have different perspectives of the same thing going on sometimes one author will decide not to include other things that he knows an other author covered already kind of what we have going on here in this the chronicler gives us a little bit more information so remember when we have these parallel accounts they're not creating contradictions the word of god does not do that they just give us different perspectives and more information so what do we probably have going on here one david's prideful right now he's got a real big army and he wants to talk himself up pride that's what's going on so what does satan do encourages it yeah you're awesome david what do our parents often do when we're wrong go ahead do it that's probably what we have going on here in these two accounts so we get more information by looking at both now if we're looking at the story and you're reading along you see that at first joab has general protests why are you going to cause israel to send david don't do this what's wrong with this well again david's very prideful i'ma hop around a little bit for you he doesn't need to take the census he's boasting in his own strength there's also a possibility because it doesn't mention this if you're reading carefully and this is a really good i guess example of why we really need to be in the word so these things are kind of in recent memory if you remember in exodus it was a while ago for some of you but if you've been reading the word it's not if you remember in exodus 20 what does moses get 10 commandments right but we know if we're reading all of it that there's more there's like 613 different commandments that he gets one of them is regarding the census if you take a census there's a command there's something he's supposed to be doing exodus 30 verse 12 whenever so this is okay you take a census of the people of israel each man who is counted must pay a ransom for himself to the lord then pay attention to this and remember it back pocket then no plague will strike the people as you count them each person who is counted must give a small piece of silver as a sacred offering to the lord neither of these accounts mention anybody collecting a tax or anybody paying anything so keep that in mind it's not there but the real sin here in the beginning of this account is david's pride that's what we have to remember now although joab protests king david insists so they travel around for nine months and 20 days gathering up these numbers now if you're looking at both of them you're going to say uh-oh the numbers don't line up they're not the same second samuel 800 000 men who are capable with the sword some translations say in israel the north and in jude of the south 500 000 people in chronicles 1 million 100 000 people and 470 000 people in judah what is going on a lot of commentaries say different things here's what i think from my pastoral perspective if someone comes in and let's say i have 470 people in my church as a pastor you know what i'm probably going to do when someone asks me how many people there are 500 we round up right we're not trying to be exact and maybe we've got a little pride like david we're taking our census my church is bigger than your church some people do that okay i've told you in the past second samuel is not intended to be a very technical account it's a personal account first chronicles is extremely technical if you've ever read it you know that the first nine chapters you barely made it to chapter 10 because it's a lot of names and numbers of people this is what it's like the chronicler is more concerned with being technically accurate so i think we can move on and let that resolve itself but here's what happens afterward david's conscience begins to bother him he wants forgiveness now so the lord he sends the seer or prophet gad like nathan to deliver a message some punishments three choices now here's something that i'm going to sidebar for you and it's kind of important a lot of people wouldn't pay too much attention to it a lot of people don't but you should because a lot of bible translations three is really important here you got three punishments and each one is in a three so if you're reading along it should say three years of famine in the land now if you go to first chronicles 21 it'll say that no matter what version you're reading but if you're back in second samuel 24 it might say seven that is a contradiction and so you have my permission to cross it out and write three that's what the better versions are gonna say it's a mistake it is not that way in the earliest translation so we can have confidence in the word of god it does not contradict itself if you look at the septuagint the bible of the early church aka the bible of the apostles it will say seven if you look at older manuscripts it will say seven and second samuel so if you're looking at a translation that does not it's actually an error it is a mistake cross it out write three get a better version anyway three years of famine three months of devastation by your enemies or three days of plague plague remember that in exodus what happens if they don't pay the tax david chooses plague and it could be because now he's paying attention to god's word oh i didn't collect the tax maybe so that's the punishment i get he says let me fall into the hands of the lord not the hands of men that's his reasoning 70 000 people die and now we get a picture of the death angel of the lord holding his sword over jerusalem again we can go back to exodus and this is kind of what moses tells the people all right so for those who have their doorposts painted with the blood of the lamb the death angel will not strike those people down so it's a picture of the death angel getting ready to strike jerusalem but god stops the angel stop it it's enough now at this point the angel is at a very important place he's at the threshing floor of aruna the jebus site and i'll explain to you later why this place is very very important in the story and the rest of the story if we jump ahead when aruna sees the death angel he's terrified and so are his four sons only first chronicles gives us the four sons they take off aruna stays david sees the angel jump back a little bit puts on a sackcloth face to the floor repents all right so forgiveness please save jerusalem remember in last week's account he was concerned about jerusalem says something important i am the one who sinned strike me down my family not your people well the lord has told them stop the angel of the lord tells god to tell david to build an altar on this spot the threshing floor of aruna the jebusite what is a threshing floor i'm glad you asked instead of just sitting there pretending you knew of course if you raised your hand i wouldn't call on you anyway it's in the middle of a sermon wait till i'm done but i'll tell you a threshing floor so they would thresh out the wheat they'd get like weed or a barley harvest and they're going to separate so they get the grain out from the chaff and so what they're going to do usually sometimes they will beat it out they have like special tools to do this and so they beat it out or if they have them they get oxen or animals sometimes a donkey something like that and they pull like a board over it and these animals is important in the account are yoked together yolk is something that attaches two animals you need two because this thing's heavy it's got to be heavy because that's what's going to separate the chaff from the grain when they're done they're usually going to wait till the evening when it's colder and breezy and they're going to take a winnowing fork like a pitchfork and we're going to throw this stuff up in the air and the wind is going to blow the chaff away the grain is going to fall to the ground allergy nightmare anyway this is this is a threshing floor so there's an exchange now aruna this guy who owns the threshing floor he bows to king david and his men as they approach what do you want i want the threshing floor aruna's like take it and he gives him the idea i'm going to build an altar okay you can repurpose everything here it's made out of wood you can use that for the fire to burn the sacrifice have the animals he's parsing it out kind of important because we're going to see more numbers here david insists on pain here's his reasoning first chronicles 21 24 but king david replied to aruna no i insist on buying it for the full price i will not take what is yours and give it to the lord i will not present burnt offerings that have cost me nothing and here the bible gives us different numbers depending on what account you're reading now this one is a little easier to explain because some bible translations we'll talk about the weight of the gold some will talk about the amount of the gold so it can be a little different it's a little different in both of the accounts but probably because of what aruna said he's parsing it out so this is the cost of the oxen this is the cost of the yoke this is the cost of the property of the threshing floor and so one account is focusing on one the other accounts focusing on the other again more details the point david repurposes the materials he makes the altar fire in first chronicles comes down from heaven burns up the offering first chronicles 21 27 then the lord spoke to the angel who put the sword back into its sheath when david saw that the lord had answered his prayer he offered sacrifices there to ruin his threshing floor at that time the tabernacle of the lord and the altar of burnt offering that moses had made in the wilderness were located at the place of worship in gibeon but david was not able to go there to inquire of god because he was terrified by the drawn sword of the angel of the lord we're going to keep reading it's going to be important for the next part first chronicles 22 1 then interesting it starts with then david said this will be the location of the temple of the lord god and the place of the altar for israel's burnt offerings this is a really important account and a lot of people leave this out so this is when and where the place for the temple was determined it's really important and first chronicles it's very interesting we're going to concentrate on some of this material first chronicles is going to lay out all these plans for the temple david's going to get the materials from tyre all this stuff and so it'll keep going in first chronicles the detail because he's preparing it for solomon and you have to pay attention to that because otherwise if you hop over to first kings you'll get confused so here in second samuel 24 it ends that's it and it goes into first king kings where david's an old man and then you'll see adam nigel try to take the throne if you're just reading that account you're not getting it all you have to go over to first chronicles where david makes it very clear that solomon is the next king and you go to first kings and go oh that's what's wrong with this situation so this is a good example of you you kind of do need to jump around to get it but in the series i'm putting it together for you so hopefully it makes more sense sometimes pride can be like a parachute we need to check it before we jump we need to check it and likewise before we jump to conclusions we need to check it it must be checked for the parachute and the pride and maybe there are certain occasions where we shouldn't jump at all because jesus didn't bear with me again the gospels they give us different points of information so mark will give us a little less 16 chapters the gospel of immediately it gets right to it says immediately a lot jesus is just moving right along starts right with his ministry focused on snapshots of this ministry moves quick matthew kind of takes his time he adds more 28 chapters gives us a little bit more information early life of jesus and some more details about what happens within his ministry jesus begins his earthly ministry by fasting that's an interesting point we should probably pay a little bit more attention to that fasting in the bible do christians do that anymore we should he begins his ministry by fasting he's probably hungry he's impelled into the wilderness by the holy spirit 40 days and 40 nights where the devil tempts him tempt his hunger if you're the son of god turn this stone into a piece of bread no we don't live on bread alone but every word that comes from the mouth of god matthew 4 starting at verse 5. then the devil took jesus to the holy city jerusalem to the highest point of the temple this is interesting that's the site we were looking at today isn't it where aruna's threshing floor was devil took him to the highest point of the temple and said if you are the son of god jump off for the scriptures say he will order his angels to protect you and they hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone jesus responded the scriptures also say you must not test the lord your god so on the same spot in our account today of david when jesus was tempted he passed the test by not testing god he cited scriptures he didn't do what he already knew was wrong our pride will often lie to us as we've discussed in past weeks and tell us that we can get away with something and satan will be right there to encourage it to tell us that it's okay he wants us to be self-reliant overly self-confident so that we fall that's what he wants god wants us to be reliant on him so we don't fall for these schemes he wants us to be obedient to his word so we already know what is wrong satan tempts but god provides us with a way out first corinthians paul is writing to the church in corinth where they're having some problems in the context of meet sacrifice to idols he says this first corinthians 10 13 the temptations in your life are no different from what others experience and god is faithful he will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand when you are tempted he will show you a way out so that you can endure in our account today ironically it is joab that provides david with a way out that he didn't take in each situation you are presented with options they're there and one of those is a way out a pathway away from your pride now here's the thing i've found that christians are really good lawyers or at least you would all be most anyway they're good at lawyering things and so here's what people will say i'm going to take this away from you this morning but there wasn't a way out it was my only choice maybe at that point you'd already made the choice the sin begins with our motive perhaps satan told your pride to tell you to get in a situation that you shouldn't have been in the first place maybe in other words we often get deep in the mistake way before the actual mistake often our pride will tell us you can play with this fire and not get burned the word of god tells us something different this is why we need to be in the word a lot so we're listening to god not satan before we get burned not after okay nobody's perfect including me i'm not so let's answer another question what happens if we get burned right what do we do well we see in today's account there's an answer here we see what david did right first chronicles 21 starting at verse 16. david looked up and saw the angel of the lord standing between heaven and earth with his sword drawn reaching out over jerusalem at that point in the account so david and the leaders of israel put on burlap to show their deep distress and fell face down on the ground and david said to god i am the one who called for the senses i am the one who has sinned and done wrong but these people are as innocent as sheep what have they done o lord my god let your anger fall against me and my family do not destroy your people what david did right was admit when he was wrong that's hard isn't it let's do a little exercise today here's what i want you to do i want you to think of something that you've done wrong but you didn't take any responsibility for it think of something maybe you're perfect i don't know but i can think of like something yesterday this morning no but think of something that you might have done wrong but you didn't take responsibility for it and if you want to lighten it up go easy i'll give you some possibilities maybe you're driving and your spouse is in the car and maybe it's like saturday but you start driving to work you ever do that you're on autopilot and you're not thinking and you just drive somewhere you're not supposed to be going then maybe your spouse says why are you going the wrong way and then instead of saying oh man i was wrong that was stupid you go no i went this way on purpose right because we i forgot something at the depot the home deal we're going to the depot today and that's it but we're going to be late for the movie no it won't take long at all what do you got to get and then like i don't know you know like a hose something like that and then you keep i call these sitcom lies they're sitcom lies right it's a premise for every good sitcom episode ever right you watch the episode and the person does something wrong or lies or something goes wrong and then they just do all these other things to cover it up and you're watching the whole time like oh this is hard are you like that too this is hard to watch why didn't they just tell the truth in the beginning because there'd be no episode so anyway i call it sitcom lies they're kind of funny how far did you go i've told you in the past about how to get out of tickets if you're new here today you learn all kinds of cool stuff at c3 church you can ask deputy johnson he'll tell you i'm probably right on this one how to get out of a ticket i was wrong i'm sorry the worst things you can do well there's a third one i'll tell you but i hope none of you are doing this but anyway when you get pulled over you shouldn't say he's going to say this do you know why i pulled you over don't say i don't know because there are two logical conclusions you are stupid or you're drunk that's it so don't say that that's very very foolish you shouldn't do that at all i did that by accident once and it led to more problems i got like sobriety field tests and all this other stuff i told you the story a while back don't say that also don't say i pay your salary not going to go well very bad don't do that best thing you can do i'm sorry acknowledge rich be like david acknowledge what you did take responsibility for it now here's the thing you might say but then i admitted to it i'm definitely going to get a ticket not always not always but if you do like david it will probably stop there if you do not oh you're going to get more tickets ask deputy johnson he'll tell you he's gonna bang you up for some more stuff and say no no no write you some tickets but if you say i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i was wrong i had i'm sorry i made you get out of the car especially if it's raining i'm sorry and sometimes they'll say hey go ahead it's nice that you were agreeable with me today but if you do get a ticket it's probably going to stop there because you said i was wrong so here's what we're going to do together get that thing back in your head it could have been a traffic stop might have been something in your head where you blamed somebody else it was the cog why didn't you pull over the guy in front of me another bad thing to say you didn't see that well something you blamed somebody else for right and we're going to redeem ourselves here all right we're going to do an exercise together here's what i want you to admit i'm gonna say i was wrong ready i was wrong it's freeing it's actually freeing somebody just said no it's not when i see people like arguing with all their these points these principles they're arguing and arguing fighting and arguing doing everything that the bible tells us not to do arguing angry i see people who are prisoners of their own pride that's it imaginary fights in their head talked about a bible study rent in space in your head you're letting people do that prisoners of your own pride try it i was wrong and you know what it's disarming you just say that i was wrong might not always be able to say it in every scenario but i've told the staff this it's how we teach our people here if it's something you can let go of you're right it may not be totally true and you don't always want to say that right you do have certain principles you want to stick with but come on if we're being honest what are these principles really all about your pride right it's about your pride your anger we talked about that you're angry because you're afraid but it's about your pride let it go we had this one situation told one of our staff members i'm like just try it out you know what you're right came back to me and said it worked the person was shocked they're like these glitched they didn't know what to do like i know they came looking for a fight don't give it to him you're right maybe i would put maybe in there maybe i was wrong pastor wayne my my mentor overseer taught me that i used to say that all the time i could be wrong but then he was right but you see it made us feel good i could be wrong not about everything but come on most of the stuff we're arguing about really it's not that important i don't see too many christians doing serious apologetics on facebook it's not about that it's about something else if we're being honest i pick on facebook and all the kids are telling me pastor gene stop talking about we're not there anymore but you're not the ones arguing this is an area where the kids are getting it right they ran away from facebook to get away from all the old people who are arguing about the things that aren't really important to them it's funny because it's true so so i'm not going to tell you where they went because then you'll go there and ruin that too the last thing we need is another social media platform so you're welcome we are called to be counter-cultural do you know that counter-cultural the word of god does not read like the world it's nothing like it anybody who reads the new testament a lot you're like wow this is very very different from all the instructions we're given here in the world counter cultural and today's culture doesn't it seem like everybody is trying to blame somebody else for something that's our culture we need to be counter that no blaming it was me i'm the one who called the census i was wrong i'll take the punishment it's my fault counter cultural we are to love people in a crazy way it should blow that's the point that's what paul is writing about peter's writing about read first peter all the way through whoo that's different we did that at bible study a couple weeks ago shocking to some even longtime christians what i didn't know i was supposed to do that someone's beating me persecuting me torturing me thank you i love you i bless you i hope god blesses you it's what it says ever hear the phrase kill him with kindness you hear that kill them with kindness we looked at romans chapter 12. really hard chapter to read sometimes we're to be transformed really the way we worship is by loving people we're to be a living sacrifice that is worship that is worship the singing and all that other stuff it's just an extension of true worship if we're getting that part right otherwise and i've said it before you guys don't like it but that's okay because it's true otherwise if we're not getting the sacrificial love part right we're singing a bunch of lies that's it but for those really trying to get it right those with really repentant hearts it's just singing is just an extension of the real deal the real part getting it right being a sacrifice told you what paul said repeating jesus's word bless those who persecute you don't curse bless don't return insults for insults people bless them but he goes on to say something and i'll go a little deeper into it he's quoting proverbs 25. he's saying when you do that it's going to be like lumping burning coals on their head do not do that to anyone but it's like that he's saying kill him with kindness kill them with kindness you know what else he says don't think you know it all don't think you know it all instead i could be wrong don't think you know it all but in our pride we miss that point in our pride we develop principles in our pride we develop principles and we forget about our purpose we must always remember our purpose if we go to second corinthians after first corinthians get to chapter five kind of important it says this he's saying we're a new creation we're a new creation if you're born again you are a new creation in christ jesus new not like the old you are a new creation in christ jesus for all this good stuff we're supposed to be doing he talks about our purpose he says what we are second corinthians 5 starting at verse 18. and all of this is a gift from god who brought us back to himself through christ and god has given us this task god has given us this task that's our job of reconciling people to him for god was in christ reconciling the world to himself no longer counting people's sins against them and he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation so we are christ's ambassadors god is making his appeal through us so we speak for christ when we plead come back to god come back to god anyone have a pet last night putting the kids to bed that is the pet and my daughter the dog runs under the bed and now they're trying to get the dog well my wife is really smart i picked the bed up right you know i picked the bed up we had some teamwork going on it was pretty cool but anyway the dog is really smart but if you want to get the dog what do you do you don't go cause dog's just gonna right go deeper under the bed i'm gonna come to you she gets a treat that's how you get the dog from under the bed with a treat but our dog is so smart didn't work so i had to lay down on top of the bed and like get it anyway you get the treat okay come back to god come to god you say to your dog come right with a treat let's just do not walk around do street evangelism with candy that's not what i'm saying don't do that you might get arrested but come back to god you don't go come back to god but do we do evangelism like that huh was like signs condemning everybody else's sin well not you should put your own i'm a total sinner i was wrong and maybe later when you sign up for christianity we'll talk about yours but right now i signed up already and i got a lot going on what do we do come to god you've sinned is it effective no it's not it's not we're ambassadors what do ambassadors do you watch all these tv shows you see ambassadors if they they're kind and gracious they take insults right ambassadors saying come back to god we kept him there with love that's how it works as we close i think we need to ask ourselves a question what would it look like what would it look like if jesus and the spread of the gospel getting people to come back to god were really the most important thing to christians we need to drop our prideful principles and pursue our purpose in christ let me pray for you lord i thank you for this church i thank you for the people who came this morning the people interested in being built up in you digging into your word binding us together by the power of the holy spirit lord i pray i pray that we take that with us this week and we love others for the sake of the gospel and your glory i ask this in jesus name amen you