GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
1 CHRONICLES 21:9-13
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9 And the LORD said to Gad, David’s seer, 10 “Go and say to David, ‘This is what the LORD says. I am offering you three things. Choose one of them, I will do that to you.’” 11 So Gad went to David and said to him, “This is what the LORD says. ‘Choose what you will: 12 Three years of famine, three months of defeat by your enemies while their swords overwhelm you, or three days of the sword of the LORD bringing a plague on the land and with the angel of the LORD bringing destruction throughout all the land of Israel.’ Now choose which answer I shall return to the one who sent me.” 13 So David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Please let me fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”
Gad was named after one of Jacob’s sons. He was a seer, that is, a prophet of God. The term “seer” (ha-roeh) means someone who sees visions and perhaps had dreams sent from the Lord. It was a word used for Samuel the prophet (1 Samuel 9:9) and for Zadok the priest (2 Samuel 15:27). The message Gad brought to his king was not pleasant. The nation was going to be punished. This punishment was a test for David’s faith, and a purification. God threatens calamity to the ungodly but consoles the godly. The choices bring the promised disaster closer and closer to David personally.
1, Three years of famine. If David chose this, tens of thousands of Israelites would die, or even hundreds of thousands, but it was not very likely that David the king would suffer very much. And pestilence like this often leads to a nation pushing outward to take what they need from other countries: It could mean war following the famine, and disease and death would be everywhere. To fall into the hands of famine would be to fall into the hands of nature.
2, Three months of defeat at the hands of David’s enemies. He had defeated the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Arameans, and others. Now, would he choose to let them destroy his armies and kill all his mighty men? To fall into the hands of his enemies would be to give up all of the victories God had already given to David.
3, Three days of the sword of God, swinging like a sickle within Israel. For good or bad, isn’t to be in the hands of the Lord better than anything else? If I am to suffer, don’t I want to be in God’s hands the whole time, rather than in the hands of the devil, or of the world?
So David chose to fall into the hands of God. His people were going to suffer. “The insanity of our rulers,” Luther reflects, thinking of the sinfulness of nations, “also calls down punishments upon us which we have merited for a long time so that our princes [and other leaders] become insane, and let the enemy come into the land. So that both subjects and rulers should be punished, it is necessary for them to increase and multiply their sins by a kind of final act of folly… the author(s) and beginner(s) of this stupid plan.”
So while the ultimate and final judgment of God upon sin is everlasting punishment in hell, he might also inflict a temporal punishment, that is, a punishment in this lifetime, to demonstrate his anger and displeasure over a sin in order to turn a sinner– in some cases, even a repentant sinner– away from ever considering such a sin again. This kind of punishment is discipline from God. It is similar to the fines our courts impose upon wicked men whose lawyers might be savvy enough to keep them from prison, but forcing them to pay money as a deterrent. Such punishments may have no effect on madmen, murderers, adulterers, drug addicts, and those who are so very wicked, so far removed from God’s holy will, that the man who is punished might convince himself that he is a victim, and becomes enraged all the more. In such cases a penalty more severe than fines or prison may need to be employed. “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him” (Proverbs 13:24). So discipline can be a blessing because it might prevent a person from falling under God’s terrible and eternal punishment.
David would have to bear the memory of this punishment for the rest of his life; the families who were about to lose loved ones, the grandfathers who would perish, the fathers, the mothers, the children– all because of a whim he had. Such is sin in our lives. Our sin stains us and infects us, and we cannot swim in the muck or stay afloat. But God has been merciful. He has pulled us up out of the quicksand and set us down on bedrock. Christ’s blood covers over all, and God gives us his correction so that we stop turning back to our sins. What about that pet sin, you may ask, that you have so far not been corrected or chastised about? Beware! That pet sin may cripple your life soon enough if you do not turn away from it now, today, and cry out to God, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” Pray that the Holy Spirit will work in you and wrestle you away from all temptations, and guide you instead to the light of life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 1 Chronicles 21:9-13 Punishment