TODAY’S BIBLE READING CHALLENGE:
2 Samuel 23:24-24:25
Acts 3:1-26
Psalm 123:1-4
Proverbs 16:21-23
2 Samuel 23:24 — Our Bible reading plan jumps back in for the list of David’s Mighty Men. We may not all be part of David’s cohort, but we can be loyal soldiers!
2 Samuel 23:39 — Uriah the Hittite … the one that David had slain.
2 Samuel 24:1 — What was the big deal with the census? From GotQuestions.org:
In Exodus 30:12 God told Moses, “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the LORD a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them.” It was up to God to command a census, and if David counted he should only do it at God’s command, receiving a ransom to “atone” for the counting. This is why God was angry again with Israel and is also why David was “conscience-stricken” after he counted Israel. David knew it was wrong and begged God to take away the guilt of his sin (2 Samuel 24:10).
Was this from Satan or from God? From Answers in Genesis (AiG):
All temptation is permitted by God, but not caused by God. When evil spirits tempt us, they do so by permission (Job 1:12, 2:6; Luke 22:31). Satan therefore provoked David to number the people, and God allowed him to do so. God allows those things which serve to advance His holy and perfect will.
2 Samuel 24:3 — The loyal Joab who was ethically challenged realized that this was a bad idea. If your “Yes-Men” say “Wait a minute” … maybe they have a point …
2 Samuel 24:24 — What is special about the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite? In 2 Samuel 5, David captures the Jebusite city, but a threshing floor is fairly common. In 2 Chronicles 3:1, Solomon builds the house of the LORD on a threshing floor. From a sermon by Charles Spurgeon:
The threshing-floor of Ornan boasted no magnificence of size or beauty of construction. There was just the rock, and I suppose a composition spread upon it of hard clay or cement, that the feet of the oxen might all the better tread out the grain. That was all it was, yet when the Temple with all its glory crowned the place, God was never more conspicuously present than on that bare, ungarnished threshing-floor. “Meet God in a barn!” one says. Why not? Does that astonish you? God met Adam in a garden, Abraham under a tree, and Noah in an ark.
Acts 3:6 — And we’re back in the Temple, about a thousand years after our Old Testament reading. Peter had no silver or gold, but what have we read in Psalms and Proverbs that is better than silver and gold?
Acts 3:12 — Once you have a crowd – PREACH! I was with a young evangelist in training and a crowd had unexpectedly gathered around him at a local park. He asked me what to do – I said, “PREACH!”
Acts 3:19 — The message is reiterated from yesterday: Repent and be converted. But now we hear the message from the Mount of Olives – Jesus is coming!
Acts 3:22 — We read in the Torah about the coming of the Prophet. Now, Peter is saying this is the Prophet!
Psalm 123:2 — Yes, Jesus is our friend and our elder brother, but He is also our Master!
Psalm 123:4 — The Psalmist is repenting of sins of the heart here: pride at not being at ease and pride at not being proud (yes, that is an ironic sense of pride).
Proverbs 16:22 — Echoing Deuteronomy 30:19!
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