Title: David and the Census
Reference: 2 Sam 24:1-25
Speaker: Paul Brandes, PaulB@cckc.church

> What do you want the final word of your story to be?

“...according to Hebrew thinking, whatever God permits he commits. By allowing this census-taking, God is viewed as having brought about the act. The Hebrews are not very concerned with determining secondary causes and properly attributing them to the exact cause. Under the divine providence everything ultimately was attributed to him; why not say he did it in the first place?” - Walter Kaiser

“Truth that is larger than ourselves, whether scientific or theological, is always at first baffling. It is painful to be torn away from the womblike security of accepted concepts. Honest readers of the Bible spend much of their time scratching their heads. And those who teach others to read the Bible do well not to be too ready to cook up explanations that eliminate the difficulties. When we submit ourselves to the story itself, we find that from the impenetrable dark clouds of divine sovereignty and human sin, shafts of sunlight break through — prayer, mercy, forgiveness, promise.” - Eugene Peterson

> When we fall on the Lord, His mercy gets the final word.

> Let repentance be our final word, even when it costs.

> Jesus is God’s final Word (and it cost Him everything).

> When we fall on the Lord, His mercy gets the final word.