I am in a great strait; let me fall now into the hand of the Lord.
David’s choice of a national calamity
The scene before us, while it is pregnant with interest on its own account, develops two opposite classes of principles, and furnishes a lesson both of seasonable direction and solemn warning.
I. It presents us with a sin into which David fell at the close of his life, and a judgment denounced upon him in consequence of that sin by the Almighty. He was at peace in his kingdom; he had recovered from all the troubles of his house, and his victorious sword had been lifted up above the heads of all his enemies round about. The state of his affairs, after long agitation, had subsided into a condition of peace and serenity, calling loudly for thankfulness to God for His favours. But such seasons of temporal prosperity, alas! are not favourable to the preservation of humility and good principles. Through the weakness and corruption of our nature they are apt to soften and enervate, to secularise and pollute, and thereby to render us accessible to the most perilous temptations. If the prosperity of foolsdestroys them, the prosperity of good men often does them incalculable injury. David, therefore, though so wise and pious, is now off his guard. His conscience, however, which had been enlightened by Divine grace, soon awoke out of the slumber into which it had fallen, and unbraided him. “His heart smote him” for what he had done, before he was left to prove his weakness by any outward disaster. It was well for him that his own ways reproved him, and that’ conscience sounded the first trumpet of alarm. This is characteristic of the regenerate. Thus Samson’s heart smote him in the midst of the night for what he was doing, and he arose and carried away the gates of the city. Men who have no light of grace, no tenderness of conscience, must have their sin recalled to them by the circumstances which at once reveal its enormity and visit it with punishment; but the regenerate have an inward monitor that awaits not for these consequences to rouse its energy, but lights up the candle of the Lord within them, and will not let them rest after they have done amiss, till they have felt compunction and made confession. Their sin and their sorrow are near together. No circumstance can keep them long apart. Let us not wonder at a judgment so severe for a sin that appears to us so comparatively trifling. It is only to us that it seems trifling. We are apt to be more terrified at outward sins, and individual acts of atrocity between man and man; but sins of the heart and of the spirit committed against the majesty, and the purity, and the goodness of God, for which we feel but little conscious guilt, are surely of far greater enormity and more especially offensive to God. We are, moreover, to bring into account David’s relation to God. He was a man after His own heart; he stood high in His favour: when he was a child, God loved him and brought him into covenant with him; adopted him into His family, made him most magnificent promises, and poured His favours upon him. And does the near relation in which a man stands to God and the surpassing favours which he has received, lessen his sin? Iris rather heightened in its enormity, aggravated in its guilt, by such considerations.
II. Observe the evils which the history represents to us as proposed to the king’s choice. They are three of the most dreadful that can befall a country or a nation. But yet in the permission of a choice among them, a singular test was presented of the return of David’s heart to a proper sense of dependence and submission. Each of them is a terrific scourge, but united, as they sometimes are, and naturally may be, they form a three-fold plague, whose horrors are indescribable. But the one which David chose, brought him and his people more immediately into conflict with the sovereign hand of the Almighty than either of the others would have done. Nothing could be here ascribed to second causes. Against God directly and exclusively had David sinned, and from God’s hand visibly and directly, and by sad preference, must come the punishment. If famine spread extensively among nations, affecting more countries than one at the same time, the condition of that which is its chief seat, or which, from other circumstances, is shut out from foreign aid, will soon become desperate. New and disgusting modes of supporting existence will be resorted to; the natural instincts will be overpowered; all feelings will be subdued before the cravings of hunger and the love of life. War, accompanied with defeat, is an equally dreadful calamity to a country that is the seat of it. The most diabolical passions of human nature are awakened and stimulated by war. But pestilence, in some respects, is yet a more dreadful calamity than either. It is more silent in its approach, and less horrible in its outward array; hut it is an evil preying upon the heart of a nation. It is the destruction of its soul and spirit. Other evils may be seen at a distance, and be guarded against; there valour may hope to defend, prudence to resin, flight to escape. But no place exempts from the attacks of this enemy; he gives no notice of his approach; his motion is silent and sure; he steals upon us in the dead of night, as well as in the day; triumphantly and secretly he rides upon the wings of the wind, and treacherously destroys us by the breezes which we court for refreshment, or the air which we inspire for life. We are not sensible of his presence till we feel hisfangs, and are inevitably within his grasp. At one and the same moment he is heard of by us at the distance of leagues, and felt in our own bosoms. We are unconscious that the shaft has flown, or found its mark, till we feel its venom boiling through our veins.
III. But we have here The choice he made, with the reasons of it. Let us attend to the wisdom and piety that dictated it and to the merciful relief afforded him under it, in consequence of it pleasing God.
1. But we may see in this preference the most exalted patriotism. David, though a king, was too much identified with his subjects to think of saving himself at their expense. If it must be a calamity, let it be one that shall involve me with them. I and my people will survive or perish together. Noble resolution, full of magnanimity, and demanding our admiration!
2. There was penitence also in this preference. Slight thoughts of his sin, in comparison with the sins of his people, would have dictated the choice of a calamity that might have left him free, while for them there was no possibility of escape. But he was too sensible of the guilt of his preposterous pride and presumption not to choose a judgment to which himself might be as liable as any of the inhabitants of the land.
3. Nor is the piety that led to this preference less evident and operative. There was piety in consulting by it the honour and interests of religion, which in either of the other calamities would have very much suffered. And there was piety in David’s choice, from the confidence it evinced in the Divine compassion. He knew that God was provoked, but he could expect mercy from Him in that state, sooner than from man whom he had not injured at all. Conclusion:
1. In attempting some improvement, our desert of the judgments of the Almighty because of our secret sins first occurs to us. A judgment worse than war, pestilence, and famine awaits every such sinner. He stands exposed to wrath that will destroy both body and soul in hell.
2. There is a retributive Providence. The punishment of God’s people often grows out of their sin, and that so conspicuously and so instructively as to convince them of it, and induce them to deplore and renounce it. (J. Leifchild.)
Choice of David under anticipated judgments
What comparison is there between the evils that moral creatures can inflict upon us, and those which we have to fear from a God immortal and omnipotent? What comparison between those who kill the body, and after that have nothing else that they can do, and him who can cast both body and soul into hell? But if we consider the woes of the present life, if we compare the compassions of God with those of men, then we must change our language, and the penitent sinner, even at the moment when he sees heaven angry for his crimes, will exclaim, “Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for very great are His mercies, but let me not fall into the hands of men.” But, you ask, did David reason justly? When we are suffering under war, or any other calamity whatever, are we not in the hands of God? Are not the different agents of the universe, men, angels, elements, equally the ministers of His justice, or of His mercy? Yes; and no one more fully or explicitly acknowledged this universality of Providence than did David. He always, without justifying the wickedness of the instruments, bowed submissively to the disposals of God in all His persecutions. But still, there is a wide difference between those afflictions which come to us directly from the hand of God, and those which come by the intervention of mere When men are the immediate authors of our sorrows, though it is always true that it is God who permits them; that it depends only upon His pleasure to arrest them; still, in the sufferings which they cause us to endure, it is they whom we first behold; it is their unkindness or enmity which first strikes us; and this view irritates the wounds of our souls, and agitates our afflicted hearts. It is often with difficulty that we elevate our eyes to the Supreme Governor of all, to acknowledge His sovereign justice in those same sufferings that are unjustly inflicted by our fellow men. Besides, the malignity of the principle whence our woes proceed, when they come from men, permits us to hope neither for bounds nor mitigation to them, because the hatred and passions which produced them still may continue. The heart then feels the present with bitterness, while it beholds no resource in the future. All these visible causes affect our senses and our mind, and hide from us more or less the invisible hand of God. What a difference when our afflictions proceed immediately from heaven! Then the believing soul sees only its God; it, adores with submission the paternal hand which chastens it. Through His just anger, it discerns His infinite goodness. Penitent sinner! how many motives are there to induce you to adopt this language, and imitate this example.
1. “Let me fall into the hands of God,” for He is my Owner and Proprietor; to Him I unreservedly belong.
2. Because mercy is His darling attribute: He loves to glorify it in the forgiveness of the penitent.
3. Because he reads my heart. He has be held my secret groans, and prayers, and tears.
4. Because He mingles with the strokes of His rod the consolations of grace, and chastens as a Father.
5. For the design of His chastisements is merciful; they are intended not to destroy, but to benefit.
6. From reflecting on the advantages that myself, that thousands of the redeemed, have experienced from His chastisements. Let such be your language and your feelings when penetrated by a sense of guilt. Bend to that hand which supports while it smites.
Lessons:
1. This subject, in connection with the history of which our text is a part, teaches us that sin may be pardoned, and yet punished with temporal afflictions.
2. This subject should excite in us the tenderest love to God.
3. This subject teaches us where the soul may find a refuge from the unkindness and cruelties of men. (H. Kollock, D. D.)
In the hand of God
David had learned from the history of his nation and his own personal experience the blessedness of all who put their trust in the living God. Let us notice a twofold train of thought, suggested by our text, peculiarly appropriate for the new year.
I. Why fear mingles with our greeting of the new year.
1. We are confronted by sorrowful memories of the past. Frailties, failures, sins of omission and of commission, broken vows, ideals not reached, prayer restrained--“unprofitable servants”; we have fallen short of the glory of God.
2. Painful consciousness of present feebleness. No reserve of strength, imperfectly equipped, hands hanging down, knees feeble, heart faint, mind weary. We cannot pierce the impenetrable veil and see what battles we may have to fig]it, what storms we may have to encounter, what burdens we may have to bear, what sufferings to endure. Our only refuge is to fall into the hands of the Lord.
II. How faith may subdue fear in our greeting of the new year.
1. Faith in the unseen God. In His
(1) Power; that is, He is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.
(2) Wisdom--to guide as well as guard amid the vicissitudes and mysteries of our earthly pilgrimage.
(3) Faithfulness--that He will never leave nor forsake, never falsify His Word.
(4) Goodness--To supply our ever returning wants, to withhold from us no good thing and make all things work together for our good.
(5) Mercy--to bear with our ingratitude and proneness to forget and wander from Him. Such faith in God stimulated and sustained the Old Testament heroes and New Testament saints; they all endured as seeing Him, who is invisible, realising His glorious and gracious presence ever with them.
III. Faith in the unseen world. David felt that if desolation and death overtook him he would be safe if, when leaving this life, he fell “into the hand of the Lord.” With home in view, pilgrimage will be cheered, the heart will be calmed and comforted. With the eternal God for our refuge and the eternal arms underneath us, “forward” may be our fearless watchword. Into the infinite, unfailing “hand of the Lord” let us commit ourselves. (Homilist.)
David’s choice of the plague
War would place the nation at the mercy of its enemies; famine would make it dependent on corn merchants, who might greatly aggravate the miseries of scarcity; only in the pestilence some form of plague sudden and mysterious in its attack, and baffling the medical knowledge of the time--would the punishment come directly from God, and depend immediately upon his will. (A. F. Kirkpatrick, M. A.)
The stroke of God preferred
David prefers what was usually designated “The stroke of God.” “Let us fall,” says lie, “now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man.” A saying of Gordon (it was among his last) may be recalled--were not the two men in many respects moulded alike?: “I have the Shekinah, and I do like trusting to Him and not to men.” (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
The greatness of God’s unfailing, mercy
A well-known minister tells us lie once visited the ruins of a noble city that had been built on a desert oasis. Mighty columns of roofless temples stood in unbroken file. Halls in which kings and satraps had feasted two thousand years ago were represented by solitary walls. Gateways of richly-carved stone led to a paradise of bats and owls. All was ruin. But past the dismantled city, brooks, which had once flowed through gorgeous flower gardens and at the foot of marble halls, still swept on in undying music and unwasted freshness. The waters were just as sweet as when queens quaffed them two thousand years ago. A few hours before they had been melted from the snows of the distant mountains. And so God’s love and mercy flow in ever-renewed, form through the wreck of the past. Past vows and past covenants and noble purposes may be represented by solitary columns and broken arches and scattered foundations that are crumbling into dust; yet through the scene of ruin fresh grace is ever flowing from His great heart on high.
