You Don't Have to Tidy Up First — What God Does With the Frayed Ends

Central Image

The threshing floor of Araunah. The ground where the plague stopped and the bodies fell becomes the foundation of the holiest place in Israel's religion.

The Turn

We assume God takes the tidy version, and that the frayed ends have to be tied off before we come. 2 Samuel 24 is nothing but frayed ends God never explains - and then He builds His house on that very spot.

Outline

Toby ends up being the illustration

He planned all week to open on how church folks have a well-earned reputation for liking everything tidy, locked down, in order, answered, and nice. Then he was up at 4 a.m. Sunday morning making announcement slides he likes finished by Friday, and it landed on him: "I'm the illustration." He likes to walk in at 6 a.m. knowing every word everybody is going to say. He wanted a story about people who want it tidy. God made him the story.

The question people are afraid to ask

People find out he is a preacher and ask, "Can I ask you a question?" - already braced, because asking questions has gotten them in trouble at church before. His answer: the only bad question is the one you ask to be a jerk. Sometimes the answer is "I don't know," and that is okay. His first year of Bible college he showed up at the big church all the college kids went to, a little redneck straight off the farm, and was not sure he could fit in with the tidy folks. Maybe he never did. Maybe that is okay too.

Anger with no reason given (24:1-2)

"The anger of the LORD burned against Israel again." Why? The text does not say. About the only thing you can assume is that they had it coming, because it is the LORD. And what God does about it is incite David to go number Israel and Judah - God moving David to do the thing David should not do.

Even Joab knows better (24:3-4)

It is not easy to find a verse saying a king must not count his troops. It is not obvious why this is wrong. But Joab knows - Joab, who is usually the least trustworthy man in the book, the one who is a little bit off. "Why does my lord the king delight in this thing?" Everybody in this story knows except David. David's word prevails, and Joab goes off before he loses his head.

Nine months and twenty days (24:5-9)

All you needed was one sentence: they went, they counted, here is the number. Instead there are six verses of route detail nobody needed - over the Jordan, north to Dan and Sidon, the fortress of Tyre, the Hivites, the Canaanites, then south to Beersheba. Nine months and twenty days. The number comes back 800,000 and 500,000. That is 1.3 million, and it does not add up, and the text does not care that it does not.

A conscience that wakes up a year late (24:10)

The whole business takes nearly a year. Only when Joab hands over the number does David's heart strike him: "I have sinned greatly in what I have done... I have acted foolishly." A year, and it could not occur to him before that.

Cut your own switch (24:11-14)

Gad the prophet turns up, unseen since 1 Samuel, some twenty-seven chapters back. Three choices: seven years of famine, three months running from enemies, or three days of disease. God lets David pick his own punishment. Anybody ever get sent out to cut their own switch? No matter which one you cut, it was the wrong one. David gives the most sensible line in the chapter - "I am in distress" - and then: "let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are many, but into a man's hand let me not fall."

70,000 dead, and a plague with two explanations (24:15-16)

Seventy thousand men die. Then the question the text will not answer: what happened in the previous twelve months that would make it convenient for a plague to move through Israel? Mustering 1.3 million men from one end of the country to the other, with all the gathering and all the contact that takes. So was it the plague David chose, or was it all those people moving? Think about it too long and you melt your brain. And then "the LORD relented concerning the evil." The evil there is ra'ah in the Hebrew, which is hard enough to hear about God to begin with. And the verb behind "relented" is the one rendered "repented" in other places - which we avoid, because God repenting is too messy for us.

The angel had already been stopped (24:16-19)

The angel is halted at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, out on the outskirts before Jerusalem proper. David knows none of it. He sees the angel striking the people and says, "I sinned. I did wrong... these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand be on me and my father's house." That same day God sends Gad to tell David to go up and raise an altar on that exact floor - the floor where God had already told the angel to stop, before David ever climbed the hill. It looks one way from where David is standing and another way from where God is standing. Which one caused the other? "That's not your business." Your business is that the prophet said go up, so you go up.

Ascensions that cost me nothing (24:20-25)

Araunah - called "the king" here, and the text never explains why - offers the whole thing free: the floor, the oxen, the wood, the offerings, the whole nine yards. David will not have it: "I will not send up to the LORD my God ascensions that cost me nothing." Not "whole burnt offerings." There is no whole burnt offering in the Old Testament; they are ascensions, because the animal goes up. The point is not that it is burned up, the point is that it goes up to the LORD in my place, because I cannot climb up on that altar and go up into His presence myself. So the animal goes up for me. David will not send up a stand-in for himself that cost him nothing, and he will not take another man's property and then play holy with it. Fifty shekels of silver for the floor and the oxen. He builds the altar, sends up the ascensions and the peace offerings, the LORD is persuaded on behalf of the land, and the plague stops.

The Paul Harvey reveal

Everybody who first heard this story already knew what the threshing floor of Araunah was. They just did not know this story behind it. Solomon's temple was built on that floor - the holy place, the most holy place, the ark, the spot where God said He would be present among His people. The holiest ground in all of Old Testament religion stands on Israel's sin, David's sin, 70,000 dead, a plague running through the people, and a chapter that hands you no flannel-graph Sunday school answers for any of it.

Two things you can say for certain

One: bring you. Not a fake, not a mask, not pretend, not your mom and daddy's religion. You - with your sin, your mess, your brokenness, your foolishness, whatever you have done and whatever has been done to you. Two: God already had a plan before you ever thought to ask. He told the angel to stop before David came up the hill. God never intended the temple to be a place too holy for anybody to show up; He intended it to be so holy that anybody could show up, holy enough to deal with whatever you are carrying. The one thing forbidden in His presence is pretending, "because you can't send up what ain't you." Toby can confess his own sins, not yours. He can pour out his own heart, not yours.

Jesus walked into the mess

Jesus entered a world of brokenness and cried out, give me your mess. Church can handle the fact that His line runs through Solomon, whose mother was Bathsheba - the woman David had an affair with after having her husband killed. It runs back through Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who turned to the LORD. We covered that up with "harlot," which is how sweet Thelma Gardner had always understood her: an innkeeper. Not wrong. Not the whole job description either. The sinful woman washed His feet while the holy people sniffed that a real prophet would not allow it. He would. He did.

Grace on both ends of Samuel

First and Second Samuel are one book. It opens with a woman named Hannah - grace, in Hebrew - crying out barren in the middle of her own Jerry Springer drama, and grace is what moves the lever that sets everything after it in motion. It ends with grace acting in the mess to establish God's throne among His people, on that threshing floor. "I've already prepared. I'm ready. I'm just waiting for you to say, I want it."

The Landing

If there is something you are convinced God cannot handle, that is exactly the thing to bring Him - down the aisle if that is what He is calling for, or praying with somebody, or at home with your spouse or somebody you trust. Every human being on this planet has a line where they will finally blow up on you. He does not have one. He will take everything you have got and tell you to keep it coming.

1. Toby spent all week planning to preach about people who like everything tidy, and then caught himself at 4 a.m. being that exact guy. Where does the itch to have it all locked down before anybody sees it show up in you?
2. People come up to him already braced, asking if they are allowed to ask a question. What is it about church that teaches people questions will get them in trouble?
3. Go back through the chapter: God is angry with Israel for a reason we are never given, God moves David to count them, and then Israel is punished for the count. Which of those frayed ends bothers you most?
4. Joab, the least trustworthy man in the book, knew the census was wrong when David did not. What do you do with the fact that God can send the truth to you through somebody you would not have picked?
5. David refused to send up ascensions that cost him nothing, and paid full price for ground that was being handed to him free. What have you given God lately that did not actually cost you anything?
6. God had already told the angel to stop before David ever climbed that hill, and David had no idea. Where might God have already moved in something you are still frantic about?
7. Toby said God meant the temple to be so holy that anybody could show up, and that the one forbidden thing is pretending. Is there anything about the way we do things here that tells a messed-up person to clean up first?
8. What is the one thing you are most convinced God cannot handle? Take that one to Him this week.