A Practical Atheism

2 Samuel 24

How many of you have heard of this guy—Joe Mauer? Would you believe he is my second cousin, twice removed? ☺ I guess he's having a pretty good season so far, right? How would you like to have this mint rookie card of Mauer? Alright, how many have heard of this fellow—LaDanian Tomlinson? According to the fantasy football report, he is projected to have another stellar season, that is, if you care about such things.☺

You're doing well so far. Now, how many have heard of this gentleman—Josheb-Basshebeth? No one? You're kidding me, right? Not a single person has ever heard of Josheb-Basshebeth? If there were such a thing as Topps trading cards three thousand years ago, then I can guarantee you that Josheb-Basshebeth—let's call him JB for short—would have been the hottest collectible card in its day. Little Hebrew boys would have gathered together in their camel skin tents trading these cards and would have followed JB's career even more closely than we follow LT or Brett Favre. If you turn the card over you can read JB's stats. He was a Tahkemonite, he was chief of the three mighty men and he killed 800 men in one encounter. His stats are off the charts. His warrior exploits would be the modern equivalent of a 10,000 yard game for a running back or a 400 home run game for a ball player. JB was truly supernaturally empowered by the Lord.

His accomplishments earned him the title of “chief of the three”. In chapter 23 of 2 Samuel, the achievements of David's so-called “mighty men” are listed. David had tens of thousands of warriors, but out of all of them, the best of the best were in a group called “The Thirty. These 30 warriors were David's all-star team. A rank even higher than the thirty were called “the Three”. These three were so tough they could probably kill you just by looking at you. But our man JB was “chief of the three”. He was the best in all the land. He was the most valuable player times ten. But as every good coach or general manager knows, even your top guys will need to be replaced sooner or later. So in the next chapter, David decided to perform a nation-wide census of all military personnel.

You and I have read the chapter and we know that this was a really bad idea. But David did not know it at the time. So why did David do it? Most commentators say the census was motivated by David's pride. This makes sense. David was a military man at heart and it clearly would have stroked his ego to know that his fighting force was 1.3 million strong. While counting the fighting men it was likely that a potential Josheb-Basshebeth would have been uncovered. David sinned by counting the men, and we'll see how this plays out, but the text does not tell us David's real motive. But the first verse does give us a behind the scenes glimpse into what was really happening. “Again, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.'” This is strange, is it not? God incited David to sin, but later God punished Israel for David's actions. If you think this is strange, look at how 1 Chronicles describes this same event. “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” So which is it—did the Lord incite David to take the census or was Satan responsible? A skeptic would read these two passages and say, “See, here is more evidence that the Bible is full of errors!”

Here is how I understand this apparent discrepancy. I think there was a Job like battle happening in the Heavenlies. The text clearly states that the Lord was angry at the nation of Israel. It was the Lord's intention to discipline his chosen people in order to make them more holy. The Lord tested David by inciting him to take a census. At the same time that the Lord wanted to discipline and test his people, Satan wanted to tempt and destroy Israel. If you remember, this is exactly what happened with Job. Satan wanted to destroy Job and God wanted to test Job. Meanwhile, Job could not see any of this cosmic battle taking place; he could only respond to the awful circumstances in his life. I think something similar happened in this chapter; there was testing from the Lord and temptation from Satan.

We have to remember that Biblically speaking, testing and temptation are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the most common New Testament word for testing is the exact same word for temptation; only the context determines which word should be used. James is helpful here when he writes, “When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone: but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” When we put all of these pieces together, we get the following scenario. Satan was tempting David and wanted to destroy. The Lord was testing David and wanted to purify him and the nation. David was drawn away by his own evil desire, probably pride, and led the nation into sin.

The timing of this incident is amazing to me, because David is already in his late sixties and nearing the end of his reign as king and the end of his life. The kingdom was experiencing a relative time of peace, David was making preparations to build a temple and to pass on the baton of leadership to his son Solomon. The Bathsheba and Uriah problem happened thirty years before this. It seemed that David had learned his lessons by now. He was in his twilight of his life and ready to leave this world. But this is one reason this story is so important, because no matter his age or level of spiritual maturity, God was not yet finished with David. God still wanted to prune and grow David a little more.

Here is a comforting thought for us all—God is not finished with us yet. God does not care how old you are or what you have gone through; it doesn't matter how mature you are, or are not; it doesn't matter how many Bible studies you have led, how much money you have given to the Lord's work, how many hours and how many years you have served him—he is simply not finished with you yet. His chief desire is to give us more of himself, because there is nothing of more value that he could possibly give us. But in order for him to increase in our lives, we must decrease. And that requires pruning and testing. Like with David, God can use Satan's temptations and even our own evil desires to test us and prune away the idol of our self.

If you jump to the end of the story, we see that David bought the threshing floor of a man named Araunah because that is where the destroying angel stopped his progress. You realize what happens at a threshing floor, don't you? That is where the grain is beaten with a hard object in order to separate it the grain from the chaff. Because we are no longer an agricultural society, the only time I have seen true threshing of grain is at the annual Norskedalen Threshing Bee. Just like this picture shows, the threshers use two heavy rods connected by short rope—a tool which gives a great deal of force with which to strike the grain. Whack, whack, go the rods.  This is exactly how John the Baptist described the ministry of Jesus. “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with an unquenchable fire.”

As much as the winnowing rod can hurt at times, this is the very place you want to be. Believe me when I tell you that you do not want to be left among the chaff which is destined for an unquenchable fire. What trial or difficulty did you face this week? Was it something new or was it something that you have been wrestling with for some time. First of all, thank God that he is not finished with you yet! The pain you are feeling is the threshing floor bringing you to maturity. I do not know why you are there. It could be a temptation from Satan; it might be a test from the Lord; you could have led yourself into it by your own evil desire—or, like David, it could be all three at once. You are on the threshing floor because God is not finished with you yet. You may wish that God would leave you alone, but then that would mean you are asking for less of God, not more of him.

But before David reached the threshing floor of Araunah, he had a ways to go. First, he had to see what he had done wrong. Remember, when he ordered the census he was absolutely convinced that he was justified in the eyes of God. Even though Joab tried to warn him not to do it—and Joab was no lover of Yahweh—David refused to listen to any counsel. We can quickly get ourselves into trouble by refusing to listen to wise counsel.

Porch story...

For almost ten months during the taking of the census, David was convinced he was right, until the Spirit of God reached down and touched his heart. “David was conscience stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, 'I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, O Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.'” In this one verse we see the same basic pattern of repentance that David demonstrated in Psalm 51. he said three main things.

l        He confessed his sin: “I have sinned greatly”

l        He asked for cleansing: “I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant.”

l        He admitted his problem: “I have done a very foolish thing.”

This admission of foolishness is very telling, because David himself wrote a Psalm about foolishness. Psalm 15 begins, “The fool has said in his heart, (what?) 'There is no God.'” Foolish people say that there is no God, and David called himself a fool. Was David a God-hating atheist? Not by a long shot, but when he made up his own mind, when he stopped listening to his advisors, when he decided to do what he wanted to do, he was acting as if God didn't exist. In other words, for those ten months, he was a practical atheist. On paper, he was a follower of Yahweh, but in practical reality, he was an atheist; he was a fool. He had built this wall between God's commands and his actions.

How close are you and I to practicing practical atheism? We are not quite so foolish as to actually say, “there is no God,” but how many of our actions and decisions are lived from the standpoint of practical atheism? What kinds of walls have we built between God's commands and our actions? Here is another way of evaluating your practical atheism. We know that a filter is something that catches impurities. If you run a water line through a reverse osmosis water filter, all manner of impurities will be trapped in the filter. I want you to picture a large filter which is a Biblical worldview. This Biblical worldview is a Christ-centered, gospel-driven, God-glorifying filter. Now imagine that you poured all of your decisions and actions into this Biblical worldview. How much will get trapped in the filter and how much will pass through. The impurities that are left in the filter is the residue of our practical atheism.

For David, his foolishness came to an end when he repented. But like before, there were certain consequences that could not be avoided. The prophet Gad delivered a message from God which gave David a choice about the type of judgment to be afflicted. “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 plaque in your land?” Wow, how would you like to make a decision like that one. The choice presented to David reminds me of what happened to William Tyndale. Tyndale was found guilty as a heretic for the co-called “crime” of translating the New Testament into English. Instead of just burning him alive at the stake like all the other heretics, first they strangled him and then burned him at the stake. So had he been presented with options, they would have asked, “Would you rather be burned alive at the stake or would you prefer that we strangle you before we burn you? I remember a story from the Asian tsunami where a father was holding onto to two of his children and he had to make the horrible decision about which one to let go. If he held onto both children, all three of them would die, but if he let go of one, perhaps he could save that one. God forbid that we would ever be in such a position.

Is a choice between various calamities really an actual choice? At first glance, it sounds like a lose-lose scenario. No matter what David said, judgment was going to fall upon the nation. But in the midst of his personal repentance and this incredibly difficult decision, David prevailed in amazing faith when he said, “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.”

Before we go any further, let's make sure we are clear about what was happening. In verse one we learned that God was angry at the nation of Israel. We don't know what they did, but it was something that required Godly discipline. So even though David clearly sinned in counting the fighting men, God was not laying the blame of judgment at the feet of David. God was angry at the people and he planned to bring judgment upon the people. It just so happened that God used David's pride to expose the sin and make the final choice about which type of judgment. Do you see the difference? The people were about to be judged, not as a consequence of David's sin, but as a consequence of their own sin.

And what were those consequences? Verse 15. “So the Lord sent a plaque on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.” The striking thing about the deaths of these 70,000 Israelites is that David called this a form of mercy. When David answered the prophet and said, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great,” he knew full well that tens of thousands of his people would die. And yet David called this mercy, great mercy even. This is a struggle for us. The concept of judgment is so foreign to us that we are tempted to call this murder. Some would say that God was guilty of gross immorality in this mass slaughter. But this is the conclusion of a practical atheist, not a God-fearing Jew, like David, or a Christ-worshiping believer. God's judgment upon his people is always for our own good. Let me show you how this was true through David's own descendants.

We know that when David died, he died with passionate faith in God. He died as a man after God's own heart—much more so even than when God first anointed him as king. But David's son Solomon died as a rebel and a practical atheist. The result of his atheism was absolutely devastating. Solomon's son, Rehoboam, was responsible for dividing Israel into two separate kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Israel never again placed a Godly king on its throne and about half of Judah's kings were somewhat God-fearing, though almost none served the Lord as David did. The result of all of this practical atheism was untold suffering through endless wars, famine and plague—the very choice that David was given. Had a united Israel continued to serve the Lord like David, most of the suffering could have been prevented.

Israel's wars and famines and plagues did not kill their people—their atheism killed them. Can you begin to see why God's judgment was actually a type of “great mercy”? If God had not brought  this judgment at this moment in time, perhaps Solomon would have divided the kingdom and brought even more suffering to the Jews. A little pain then prevented even more pain later. Today, atheism continues to result in untold suffering and death, and by atheism, I mean anything less than Christ-centered, gospel-driven worship of the one true God. But it's not just fist-shaking atheism that causes suffering, it's also the quiet, practical atheism that happens when we separate God's commands from our decisions and actions. As the apostle Peter wrote, “it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God.” Moreover, we need to see and understand that any judgment from God upon the family of God is great mercy. It is for our good and for God's glory.

Many of you are in some kind of pain right now. It could be because Satan is tempting you. It could be because God is testing you. It could be because your evil desires have led you there. It could be the result of living in a fallen world—or even all of the above. Whatever the reason, take comfort in knowing that God is not finished with you yet. In his late sixties, God still held David by the hem of his tunic and would not let him go. Like David, the Lord is saying to us, Don't go that way. It will only lead to trouble. I will not let you go. I love you too much. I've got more for you to do. I'm not finished with you yet.”

Rich Maurer

July 13, 2008