2 Samuel 24
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you will, grab a Bible and go to 2 Samuel 24. We are in the last chapter of 2 Samuel, so we'll have worked through 1 and 2 Samuel.
And we've said over the past few weeks that these final few chapters form an epilogue for the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. They've stepped a little bit out of chronological order and are operating in a thematic order, and so we're going to see what the author chose to end the book on today. And this holds an interesting spot in 2 Samuel and an interesting spot in 1 Chronicles because this story is related there as well. And there it's kind of a central hinge, and here it's the final section. And we're getting this last picture of David and his kingship.
Now, I don't know if any of y'all have met or if all of you have met. I know some of y'all have. I know that that first sentence didn't make any sense as soon as you hear who I'm talking about. Mike Goble. I don't know if all of you have met Mike Goble, Dr. Mike Goble.
He is an elder in training here. Our intent is to install him and then send him out with a church plant in the near future. And since he's a medical doctor, as his trade, what happens a lot when I'm around him is we'll be talking about things, and people will talk about medical stuff that they have going on or their understanding of a situation, or they'll hear somebody's a prayer request or talking through these things. And one of the things that he'll do quite often is he'll go, actually, and then he'll give you much more accurate medical information than whatever it was you were saying or whatever it was someone else was saying.
And I found that several times I've made jokes around him, you know, about something hilarious like high blood pressure. And he'll go, well, he'll kind of like stop and he'll be like, if your cholesterol level is actually that, like the joke is over and he's going to like, you might be about to die. Like whatever the thing is I've made a joke about, he's like, and so every once in a while, he'll stop and be like, it's more complicated than you think. There's more to it than what you just said. That's partially true, but he gets into some of the nuance of things.
And in some ways, I feel that way as I read this chapter is that I keep going, oh, this is more complicated than we think it is. There's more to it. There's more to sin. There's more to our relationship to God. There's more to what's going on in the world.
It's more complicated. There's more to it than we often want it to be. And so as we read through this passage, we're going to run into some questions that we're going to take a little bit of time to try to wrap our heads around. But I think one of the main things we're going to see in this passage is a distinction between the way David responds to God and the way that we want to interact with God. And I think in that distinction, we will find that something that David says here, his approach, his attitude here challenges us to follow David's example and to respond to God, to change the way we think about God and our interactions with him.
So we're going to try to answer a few questions as we go through. We're going to try to answer some questions as we come to the end, but we're also going to try to see how David responds and how we ought to respond. So if you look, verse 1, chapter 24. Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, go number Israel and Judah. We're in the thick of it in the first verse here.
So we're going to try to wrap our head around some of this. We're going to break it in half. The first part is the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And I want to make two observations from that.
The first one is this. If I started a story by saying, I want to tell you about the time that my mother was the angriest with me she's ever been. Immediately, you would begin to prepare yourself to find out what I had done. That's how you would be hearing the story. You might even just say it.
It might just pop out of your mouth, what'd you do? And what I want to ask is, why would you immediately join my mother's team? What would make you assume? But that's the way we would hear that. If someone said, I want to tell you about the time my parents were the angriest, I want to tell you about that, like you would be like, oh, what would you do?
What happened? How did you start that? How did you cause that? Because your understanding is that you haven't met my mom, but she probably had a good reason. And it would be weird if you assumed the opposite.
If I said, I want to tell you a story about the time my mom was the angriest with me she's ever been, and you went, oh, she's the worst. You'd be like, we talk about Marianne like that. The reason I point that out, the reason I wanted to make that observation is that I think we often get this completely reversed when we're reading the scriptures. That there's a tendency for us to read the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel again and go, what's he on about? What's he upset about?
Why is he acting like that? Almost as if we're hostile. We're going to jump in the story and take Israel's side, not his. And you'll hear some people who will read through passages like this, and their general understanding is somehow God's interfering, God's at work doing something. Why is he acting like that?
And the reality is we should assume Israel has done something. God's anger is always righteous. God's anger is always valid. But you should investigate that spot in you that makes you want to go, but why? Why is he angry?
What's happening? And the answer the text gives is no answer at all. It's not going to tell us why he's angry, but we can assume that Israel has done things that they shouldn't have done. And God has a covenant with Israel, and there are covenant blessings and covenant curses. And we're not going to go read Deuteronomy chapter 28, but if you'd like to make a note of that, Deuteronomy chapter 28 is going to give you a list of covenantal curses.
And they basically function like if the people of Israel follow God, everything will just kind of work. They'll win their battles. They'll have good harvest. They'll be blessed. They'll have lots of children.
It'll just work. And if they don't, if they rebel against him, if they walk in sin, if they follow other gods, basically he's like, you're going to have a rock in your shoe. Like just nothing will work. There's going to be a hole in your pocket. You're going to harvest grain and someone else is going to eat it or there's going to be no harvest.
Your kings are going to make dumb choices. Like all of it's going to go poorly. That's kind of how the curses work. Like there'll be plague and pestilence. It's just going to go poorly.
And so what we see is that Israel has sinned. This is how it starts. Israel sinned. And now we're going to work into some covenantal curses because it's not going to work out well for them. God's anger is kindled against them, baked into that as an understanding of their being wayward.
And it says that God, he incited David against them. So the people have sinned, but God is actually going to get David to lead them into trouble. He incites David against them. Go, number, Israel and Judah. So in response to the sin of people, the sin of the people of Israel, they're going to be led by David into a mess.
Verse 2. So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people that I may know the number of the people. But Joab said to the king, May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my Lord the king still see it. But why does my Lord the king delight in this thing? But the king's word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army.
So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. Okay, let's follow the logic here. God is inciting David against Israel so that he'll number the people. So we should assume that's bad. I'm just trying to follow the logic of the story.
David goes to Joab and says, go count the people so I can know how many there are. And Joab says, let's not do that. Because Joab also understands that's bad. And that's real bad if Joab, old knife to the stomach whenever he wants to, Joab is like, hey, this is going to go against the law. Like you're way off if Joab knows you're doing something that's off.
And he says, may the Lord bless all of us, but don't do this. But David pushes forward. So the question is like, wait, are censuses bad? Like if they knock on your door, you know, every 10 years and like how many people are in here, are you supposed to be like, get out of here, pagan? You're not going to lead me astray.
You can't count people in this house. Like, are censuses bad? Is that what's supposed to happen? And I want to read a passage from Exodus so that you can see why they're going wrong here. This is Exodus chapter 30.
The Lord said to Moses, when you take the census of the people of Israel, okay, so censuses are not bad on their own, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. So you can count them, but they have to pay a ransom for their life when you do it. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this, half a shekel, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel is 20 geras. Half a shekel as an offering to the Lord.
Everyone who is numbered in the census from 20 years old and upward shall give the Lord's offering. Okay. So there was a process and a reason for a census. Process being they have to pay a ransom for themselves when you take the census. And the reason being for the Lord's offering for the upkeep of the tabernacle.
And that's the way they would help pay for some of the things that happened. So you could take a census, but they needed to pay a ransom, and the proceeds were to use for the upkeep of the tabernacle. It doesn't say it in what we read, but that's what the point was. It says it later. So David is not doing the correct process. He's not taking the ransom, and he's not doing it for the right reason. It's not for the upkeep of the Levites and the tabernacle. It's so that I might know how many there are. That was his reason. He told us, I want to know. Now, we don't know if that's pride that's leading to that. We don't know if it's fearfulness that's leading to that. He's trying to make sure we're okay in case we're attacked, but we can understand that it is faithless no matter what his reasoning is, because he's not going to follow the right process and he doesn't have the right purpose behind it.
So Joab says this is a bad idea and David prevails and sends him on to go do it. Verse 5, They crossed the Jordan and began from Aroer and from the city that is in the middle of the valley toward Gad and on to Jazer. Then they came to Gilead and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites. And they came to Dan, and from Dan they went around to Sidon. And they came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites.
And they went out to the Negev of Judah at Beersheba. So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and 20 days. And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king. In Israel, there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000. So the counting was of military age men.
So it seems like potentially pride, potentially fearfulness, regardless, faithlessness. And they do a big loop, and they count everybody, and they come back. So he continues in the sin for nine months. After nine months, when it finally is culminated, he realizes he's wrong. And David immediately repents.
His heart strikes him when he sees it, and when he sees that he sinned, he repents. And I actually think that's part of the primary purpose of this passage at the end of 2 Samuel, is that 2 Samuel has no... It does not present to you that David is perfect, that he's a hero in, you should follow his example, and if you do everything David did, you'll be fine. That's not what it's doing. The Old Testament doesn't hold up heroes in humans as they never sinned, they never made mistakes, everything they said was right.
That's just not how it works. But what it does indicate to us about David is that he repents. He sins. Certainly he sins, but he repents. When he sees his sin, he turns from it.
And I think in some ways what 2 Samuel is leaving us with is that David is a repenter king, not just a prideful, willful king. He makes mistakes like all people will, but he repents when he does. Verse 11. And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and say to David, Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.
So Gad came to David and told him and said to him, Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you, or shall there be three days pestilence in the land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me. So David repents. Gad shows up and says, God has given you three options.
You can have three years of famine, three years of being on the run from your foes, three days of pestilence, which would be plague, sickness. Those are your options, which if you doubt God's sovereignty over the world and human history. He just presented him with three catastrophic history-altering things. Do you want a famine where he controls the weather, where he controls blight and mildew and locust? Do you want a famine where it doesn't rain?
And what he's saying is, do you want people to starve? Or do you want to lose and the nations around you to rise up in anger against you? And your swords don't work and your 500,000 and 800,000 can't defend you and you're on the run. And do you want people to die as their villages burn and as they're hauled off into captivity? Do you want the screaming of women and children in the streets for three months?
As you run? Or do you want three days where sickness comes and people die through horrible physical agony? Which is it, king? That's the choice laid before David. And here's David's response.
Verse 14. Then David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great. But let me not fall into the hand of man. And David's answer is basically not option two.
Let's not be on the run from our enemies. Let's not fall into the hands of man. Let's fall into the hands of a merciful Lord. Basically one of the other ones. Verse 15, So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time.
And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba, 70,000 men, which most likely indicates that there were women and children who would also die. It's just that their counting was soldiers, and then their counting again is how many men die. So upwards of 100,000 people die in three days. And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, It is enough. Now stay your hand.
And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. I want to point something out to us that you may have noticed and you may not have thought about because we're reading the Bible and sometimes we just read the Bible differently than we think about things normally. God sent a pestilence, which would be a sickness, and then it says he told the angel who was working destruction to stop, which is good Western Americans. We want to go, wait, which was it, sickness or an angel? Yes, because there's more going on than we see, and it's more complicated than you think.
There's more to it than you think. We'd love to isolate things down to, well, this is just like a physical phenomenon. This is just something that happens. And God says, do you want pestilence, which is going to reach them as sickness? And then he tells an angel that's enough because the angel is the one who was working that across the land.
And the lines between spiritual and natural are not as clean as we like to pretend that they are. I can't tell you all the places that you have those lines drawn incorrectly. All I'm helping you with is just don't trust your picture perfectly. You've probably got some lines drawn in the wrong places. Where you say, well, this is just a natural thing.
It's not a physical, it's not a spiritual thing. It's just this, it's just that. When you try to make those not bleed across, it doesn't seem to be how the Bible treats it. And if you'll remember back to our working through the book of Revelation, we saw that a good bit as well. So God tells him to stop verse 17 then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said behold I have sinned and I have done wickedly but these sheep what have they done please let your hand be against me and against my father's house David here tries to stand in the middle he says this was my fault I'm the one who did this why are you striking the people?
Why? Put it on me. Put it on my house. And it also says that David seems to be able to see this angel, that God allows David to see the full spiritual ramification of what's going on. And David begins to plead with the Lord, put it on me, not on them.
Let me stand in the middle. It was my fault in the first place. Now, did David sin? Yes. Is this in response to David's sin? Yes. Did Israel sin? Yes. Is it in response to Israel's sin? Yes. Does David know that this began in response to Israel's sin? No. David sees his sin clearly, though, and David pleads with the Lord. Verse 18: And Gad came that day to David and said to him, go up, raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
So David went up at Gad's word as the Lord commanded. And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went down and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. And Araunah said, why has my lord, the king, come to his servant? It just makes me think Araunah couldn't see the angel that stopped over his house.
Because otherwise he'd be like, are you here because of the angel that's standing over my house? I think David was able to see it, but I don't think everybody got to see it. David said to buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord that the plague may be averted from the people. Then Araunah said to David, let my Lord, the king, take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.
All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king. And Araunah said to the king, may the Lord your God accept you. But the king said to Araunah, no, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord, my God, that cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver.
And David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord responded to the plea for the land and the plague was averted from Israel. And those are the last words of 2 Samuel. This story is placed here to show us, I believe, David's response to sin. David's intent to navigate through very difficult situations.
But as we read it, I think there are things that come to us as questions that we're trying to wrap our head around, we're concerned with. I think it begins at the very beginning where it says that God incited David against Israel. I almost can feel the places where it's like we want to raise our hand. Excuse me, pardon me. Sorry, hold on real quick.
What? And we almost... How does he do that? What does that mean? Well, I'd love to begin by making it more complicated.
In 1 Chronicles 21, it's where it relates to this story. And 1 Chronicles says this, then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. If we read through this, you studied this, you're like, okay, I kind of have my head around that story. Then you read 1 Chronicles and you go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Who was it?
God or Satan? And there are some who will go, obviously there's a contradiction. Obviously the Bible's wrong. It says God here. It says Satan here.
But what it's doing is that both are correct. God allows Satan to incite David. 2 Samuel wants us to know that it originated with God. 1 Chronicles wants us to know that Satan was involved. Satan is not a free agent who does what he wants.
He is limited in his ability to operate. And there are times where he's allowed to do something and times where he's not allowed to do something. And because of the sin of Israel, God allows Satan to incite David to sin. So is God at back of it? Yes.
Is Satan in it? Yes. Is David in it? Yes. Are the people of Israel in it?
Yes. And is it more complicated than we want to make it? Yes. Is there more to sin and the sins of people? Yes.
But I don't think our question is really, how did God go about doing it? I think the question we have more is, how is that okay? Hey, how is he allowed to do that? How is that not wrong to do? If we want to say that the people of Israel, in some ways by obedience, put a shield around themselves and around their king by walking and following God, and that when they don't, God removes the protection.
It's like, okay, I see that. But how does that work? And how does it work where God's angry and he's actually acting in the story? So I think that's our first question. And I don't think this text answers it.
How is that okay for God to do? Why does God do that? Some of the tensions that we have with it, some of the instinct that we had at the very beginning to join my mom's team, but not to join God's team, is at play here when we're asking, but why is he doing that and how is that okay? And our second question, I think, as we read passages like this, is how is it okay for him to kill 70,000 men, maybe 150,000, 200,000 people in response to David's sin, in response to Israel's sin. Like we want to make that real clean.
If David sins, punish David. If Israel sins, punish Israel, but punish the ones who sinned. But it's really hard to read this and think there was no just generic casualties, no children who had been actively trying to live in rebellion against God that caught this sickness. Maybe it was really pinpointed. Text doesn't tell us that.
It's not usually how things work. And so you read this and you go, wait, the whole nation was punished because of David's sin, but David was punished because of the nation's sin and God was the back of that. How does that work and how is that okay? And again, we're running into the same kind of question, which is, what is God, what is he doing? How is he allowed to do that?
And in some ways, I think when we read passages like this, it's like an itch you kind of can't scratch. Like, I know some of you are blessed with the ability to touch the middle of your back. I'm not one of those people. If you put a sticker in the center of my back, I'm going to need help to get that off. I cannot reach the middle of my back, so it's not going to happen. And this feels like that. It feels like it's in an unreachable spot for us. This: but how is it okay for him to do that? And why does he act that way? And are we okay with that? And there's this general tension with God being an actor in the story.
I think we're willing to see, and we should be willing to see, how we can affect each other. I think that's one of the things that we should take away from this. In a sermon that Charles Simeon, a pastor, taught on this, he says it this way, and I think it's helpful for us to consider. He says this, Let us therefore be on guard, lest we be instrumental to the destruction rather than the welfare of each other. What evil may not a head of a family bring on the members, a ruler on his subjects, a minister on his people?
What he's pointing out is, if your dad is bad, that's bad. If pastors are following in sin and greed, that's bad. If politicians are bad, that's bad. And it causes a lot of problems for everybody. He says, we should see that.
And he says, or, and he flips it, what may not they, that's the head of the household, the pastor, the politician, what may they not suffer through the misconduct over those whom they are placed? Let this connection be duly considered. And whatever station we are called to fill, let us determine through grace that we will perform the duties of it, every joint supplying its utmost aid for the edification of the whole body, and let us be more ready to take blame to ourselves than to cast it on others. It is very easy for you to think our team is bad because our coach is bad, our job is bad because our boss is bad, this family is bad because my children are bad. Our group would be better if our group leaders would blank, and group leaders could say our group would be better if the people in our group would just blank. I haven't met a married couple yet who wouldn't have all their problems solved if their spouse would just get it together. If my wife would understand how right I am all the time, we would live in such peace and happiness. But that's how we're prone to work, and we need to see how our sin can affect the other, and we need to be mindful of our sin in the relationships that we have, and we need to be, like he said, quicker to blame ourselves than to cast it on others.
He says, more particularly, let us watch and pray that we enter not into temptation and that Satan may not be permitted to get advantage against us. Thus shall we be blessings to the community and to the church of God. You should take very seriously the roles and the positions that you're placed in and consider how well to bless those around you. That should absolutely happen. And we should read a story like this and see that.
But that doesn't scratch the itch. That doesn't fix the problem that we have when we read passages like this. And God, I'm going to be honest with you, seems a little too involved. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that at times. And what happens is we read passages like this and we kind of go, yeah, hey, okay.
But I want, I almost want God, it's like, hey, take us just one step back. I want him to be a little more like he set the system up and he lets it play out. That's kind of how we, at times, if we're honest, like I love the stories where like an angel shows up and saves somebody from a car falling on him. I love all the times where somebody, like I love all the good places where you see God intervene, but then you read passages like this and you go, hmm, it feels like he's messing with stuff. Like he should let it play out.
It should be something that's, if there's going to be a plague, let it be like a generic plague that doesn't involve an angel instead of one that you're sending and telling to stop it as a specific spot. And it's like, I don't think that's how plague works. They may all be angels, y'all. I don't think we can get to a spot where God is less involved. I think we need to understand the reality of the situation that we're in, and we need to see in our hearts that we have the exact inverse desire that David has.
David in the middle says anything but have it in the hands of men. And so often we're like, hey, can we get out of the merciful hands of God and just have this in the hands of men? Could it just be up to me? Could we just kind of let it play out? Could we just vote for politicians and see what happens?
I don't really like the idea that God's involved. It doesn't feel fair that God would be stepping in and doing things. I really just kind of want it to be in the hands of men. I'd really love for my situation between me and God to really just be up to how well do I play the game that he gave me to play? And so where David says, anything but let us be in the hands of men, we often step into situations and go, can it just be in the hands of us? And I think the reason is it feels safer because it feels more controllable. And I want us to wrap our heads around every desire in that direction is absolute foolishness. It might feel better, but it is not better. It leads to destruction. We don't want it in our hands. We need, like David, to respond with, God's merciful; let us be in his hands. We need our hearts to say that we're in his hands anyway, but we need to wrap our head around it. There's so often that I'll try toâwe'll take time to try to help us understand the reasoning behind something, the logic behind something, how God is just and good in these things.
And we do that often when we're preaching, but sometimes I think we need to wrap our heads around, you need humility more than you need God to explain everything to you. You need to understand his vastness, his unknowableness, that he is carrying out things of immense import constantly with a thousand million variables that you couldn't even begin to wrap your head around. You failed ninth grade algebra. Some of you hit calculus and you were like, I'm done. It's like algebra two is as far as I can go.
And this is so far beyond that. And we're like, I don't know if he's allowed to do that. I'm not sure I feel good about that. Like we would just send you in to help make rocket ships where you just got to feel your way around it. Like if I was just there and I was like, I know you just wrote all that up on a chalkboard, but it feels like we should just do this.
They would get rid of us so fast, and we'd be thankful. That would make perfect sense to us. But we read things like this, where God is holding out massive history-altering options to David, and we're like, I don't know if he should be allowed to do that. And we need humility before the face of God, more than we need him to explain himself to us. And one of the things you need to wrap your head around is that we will respond to God's being an actor in the story so often with options that let us feel like we're in control.
So rebellion is one of those. I'm not going to do what he says. I'm not even going to believe in him. I'm going to do whatever I want. That lets me be in control.
I make my own choices. I make my own decisions. I don't trust him. I don't follow him. And when I see him, if he actually is real, I've given him a piece of my mind.
And so you can run off into rebellion and it's just a way for you to continue to have control. But you can also walk into the most obedient religious position you could possibly find in just an effort to have control. What does he want from me? I'll do that. What does he expect from me?
I'll do that. What are the rules? I'll do them and then he'll owe me. I'll play his game and I'll win it. This is why so often you'll find in your heart or in the religious people around you who are obeying and behaving as best they can.
What they'll say is, I did what he asked. Why isn't it working? We'll say things like, I trusted him and he let me down, which meant I trusted him to do what I asked him to do. I trusted him to let it play out the way I wanted it to play out. Or we'll say things like, I saved myself from marriage.
Why is it not working? I raised my children in the church. Why are they rebelling? I did the things he asked of me. Now he has to hold up his end of the bargain.
And both of those say, I want it to be in my hands. And we need to say, I want to be in the merciful hands of God. In the middle of rebellion and religion stands a cross where Jesus shows up and interferes immensely in the story, becomes an actor in the story beyond comparison. And he does it because if it stays in our hands, it's a train wreck. But he comes and says, come to me and find mercy. We get to go to the merciful hands of God, and they're more merciful than David understood, because when David pictured God's merciful hands, he probably pictured massive hands that held the whole world and he knew that God could be merciful. But when we picture the merciful hands of God, we get to see them stained with blood.
We get to know that God made a sacrifice that cost him so that we might be welcomed and that we get to go, Lord, I need mercy more than I need anything else. I need to be in your hands more than I need to be in mine. And some of us need to repent of rebellion where we're running from God and we need to come and say, I need you to be an actor in this story so that it might have a good conclusion for me. And some of us need to repent from the times that we've said, Lord, I did what you told me to do. You owe me.
And we need to realize that he does not, but he graciously and mercifully rescues sinners so that we might be welcomed. May we follow King David to a greater king. And may we walk and say, I need mercy more than I need anything else. Let's pray. Lord, we ask for mercy.
We ask for mercy to see our sin. We ask for mercy to see your goodness. Lord, don't let us be blind to our sin. Don't let us listen to the voice of the enemy who calls us towards our own self-righteousness, our own self-satisfaction. God, may you work through your spirit to draw us near so that we might trust your hands more than ours.
And in all the places where we're bothered with how you carry things out, may we kneel in humility to your wisdom and your greatness rather than to revolt in our own pride. Oh Lord, be gracious on us. We are so small and in need of so much help, but we look to you. Our hope is not in our hands, it's in yours. In Jesus' name, amen.