Perhaps the Lord Will Relent

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the sixth chapter. Jesus said, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret, He will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.

Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret, He will reward you.

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. O Lord, have mercy on us. In the name of Jesus. Amen. We are embarking on yet another time of penitence. This is something that is good for us to be doing.

And you're going to note everything is centered around what? The Word of God. You'll note that there is a revival going on right now in Kentucky, the Asbury Revival. And you know what's missing? The Word of God, the Gospel.

People are repenting because they claim that they're having a feeling. I don't care about your feelings. God doesn't care about your feelings. What He cares about is that you hear His words. And when the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God, convicts you of your sin, then truly feel sorrowful as you ought.

But note this, that that does not mean that we should despair far from it. In fact, when we feel that pain, that anger, that disgust, that guilt regarding our sin, we are just now ready to hear the Gospel.

So here again, the words of the prophet Joel. Yet even now, declares Yahweh, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning, and rend your hearts, not your garments. Why does he have to say that?

Because it's one thing to put on a show. To go, ah, I feel terrible, God. And you rip your clothes. All you've done is mess up a good outfit, right? Instead, God wants you to rend your heart. But listen to these words.

Return to Yahweh your God. Why? Because He's gracious. He's merciful. He's slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And He relents over disaster. And who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him.

A grain offering, a drink offering, for the Lord your God. This is kind of the focus of our study tonight. But I would note here, this idea that maybe the Lord would relent from disaster fits very well with the passages that we'll be working our way through this Lenten season during our midweek services.

We're going to be doing a study, if you would, of many of the kings of Judah. And starting with, well, the one king that we're all familiar with, King David. Now, I need not remind you that David was described as a man after God's own heart.

Yet this man who was after God's own heart, well, also was after Bathsheba. And after bedding her and impregnating her, then proceeded to murder her husband. What a great saint he is, right? And you'll note that this is held up for us to note then that God truly is in the business of forgiving real sinners.

And if that offends you, then, well, you'll note that you're going to hear me basically tell you the same thing. You are a real sinner. You are not a make-believe sinner. You are not a partial sinner.

You are not one who only tries at sin. You are icky, wicked, and ungodly through and through, just like the rest of us. And you're going to note that God has rightly threatened all of us with the proper disaster that we all deserve.

And what is that disaster? Eternity in the lake of fire, along with the devil and his angels, for participating willingly in the rebellion against God that the devil launched all so many thousands of years ago.

Right?

This is what we deserve. This is the disaster that is impending all of us. But what did Joel say? The Lord is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity, and maybe, just maybe, he'll relent of disaster.

And indeed he does. And so where we pick up today is in 1 Chronicles chapter 21, a, well, not very often preached about text regarding David, and yet another one of his stumblings into sin. And this particular stumbling into sin led to the deaths of tens of thousands, if not more than a hundred thousand people, because we only have the death figures for the men, not the women also.

And here's what it says in 1 Chronicles 21. Satan stood against Israel, and Satan incited David to number Israel. Well, that's a great sentence to start things off with. What's so big about conducting a census?

We do that every 10 years here in the United States, and you're required to do so. I just got a letter from the Census Bureau regarding my business, and I have until March something to respond, and I'm required by law to answer their census questions.

If I don't, I'm liable to the government. But you're going to note that God has made it illegal to count Israel unless there is a proper amount of money given for the life and soul of each person counted.

God made it super expensive to do a census in Israel, and David decided he wanted to do it on the cheap. But why? Why would Satan incite him to do this? Have you ever stopped to think that even as we grow older, we're still tempted into the sin of idolatry, entrusting in everything and anything other than God to be our safety and safekeeper?

You think about it this way. As you get older, you watch that nest egg of yours, your savings account. It grows and it grows and it grows and it grows, and you just sit there and go, oh, goody, goody, goody, because when I retire, I won't have a thing to worry about.

All of my faith and trust is in this growing amount of money in my bank account. That's the same sin. And you'll note that I've seen over the course of my lifetime, people lose their entire life savings in a flash, in a moment, just one bad investment or one scam caller from India, and the whole thing is gone, right?

David is doing that. He's wanting to kind of feel some sense of peace and security by having the number of men counted, the number of men who can wield the sword. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, now remember, Joab is complicit.

He's an accomplice in the murder of Uriah the Hittite. Okay, so Joab is not exactly known for his moral scruples. He's a guy who follows orders, even if the order is to have somebody murdered. So he is even offended by this, and you'll see this.

So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, go and number Israel from Barashiba to Dan and bring me a report that I may know their number. But Joab said, may Yahweh add to his people a hundred times as many as they are.

Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord's servants? Why? Why then should my lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt in Israel? Joab doesn't like the idea. He knows that this is evil.

But the king's word prevailed against Joab. Have you ever been in a business meeting, and you know the boss has a stupid idea, and you speak up and say, this is really dumb, and everyone else, the yes men in the room go, yeah, but I think we should do what he says, because, I mean, after all, he's the boss.

And you just sit there and go, this isn't going to end well, right? And then you can have a PowerPoint at the end of it explaining why you knew this wasn't going to work, but that's a different story, right?

So the king's words prevailed against Joab. So Joab departed and went throughout all of Israel and came back to Jerusalem. Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to David. In all of Israel, there were 1 ,100 ,000 men who drew the sword.

Really? You conducted a census, and you came up with a round number? Uh-huh, okay. In other words, Joab didn't do a very good job. Reminds me of when I was a kid, and my mother, one of the things I was required to do during the summer months, during the warm months, is I was required to wash my mom's car,.

And I hated it.

I hated washing my mom's car. And so we had hard water in Monrovia when we were growing up, and so I would baptize my mom's car, run a sponge over it, and try to do it as quick as possible, but then my mom would come out, and she would go, no, this isn't gonna cut it.

Do it again.

No!

Right?

Why? Because I didn't do a good job. Joab is doing that kind of job here, just kind of roughing out the numbers. 1 ,100 ,000 men who drew the sword in Judah, 470 ,000 who drew the sword, but he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king's command was abhorrent to Joab.

Again, if it's abhorrent to Joab, what do you think God's gonna think of this? He's breaking a clear commandment here. But God, it says, was displeased with this thing, and he struck Israel. Notice it doesn't say he struck David.

You'll note that this gets into one of the thornier bits about sin, and that is that if you think that your sin doesn't impact other people, you are gravely mistaken. Think about it this way. Adam and Eve, they sinned against God, right?

And now we are all suffering death and misery and all the consequences of sin as if we're all guilty of it ourselves. That's how the doctrine of original sin works. And so if you seem to think, well, it doesn't really matter as long as, what I do in the privacy of my home is between me, myself, and I, and as long as my sin doesn't hurt anybody else, it doesn't matter.

Really, really. You'll note that God didn't strike David for his sin. He struck Israel. And that's one of the things. Your sin, no sin, is a private matter. All sin impacts every single one of us. I remember back in the days before homosexuality was so out in the open, people were initially saying, who are we to judge what people do in the privacy of their own homes?

That was one of their arguments. But that was an argument made how many decades ago? No one's making that argument now, right? Because here's the thing. That private sin has become so public that we're the ones being shamed in the culture for daring to say that God says that's a sin.

It started off as a private sin, and now the whole culture has gone gay crazy, for lack of a better way of putting it, right?

Okay?

So God struck Israel. David said to God, I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing, but now please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly. And Yahweh spoke to Gad, David's seer.

This was a prophet, saying, you go and you say to David, thus says Yahweh, three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I might do it to you. So Gad came to David and said to him, thus says Yahweh, choose what you will, either three years of famine, three months of devastation by your foes while the sword of your enemy overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of Yahweh, pestilence on the land with the angel of Yahweh destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.

This is like the worst game show ever. You know, look what's behind curtain number one, three years of famine. Behind curtain number two, three months of your enemies defeating you. And curtain number three, the sword of Yahweh destroying everybody everywhere.

Pick one.

Oh boy.

This is not a good choice.

Okay?

Is there a fourth option?

Please.

But if you're going to put your bets on anyone, put your bet on Yahweh. And this is what David was thinking, right? So David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of Yahweh.

Why?

Because his mercy is very great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man. David knows his scripture. David knows that Yahweh is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity, and perhaps he would even relent.

Joel wrote those words long after this. So Yahweh then sent a pestilence on Israel and the devastation's horrifying. 70 ,000 men of Israel fell. That's just the men. That doesn't include the women. I mean, to give you some context here, how many tens of thousands of people died in Turkey as a result of that earthquake just a couple weeks ago?

Right?

This is greater than that. And this is all happening in a three-day period. And we're not having apartment buildings falling. We're having God Himself sending the angel of the Lord with a drawn sword and He's running people through and killing them.

God is the direct agent of His wrath at this particular point. So then God sent the angel then to Jerusalem in order to destroy it. But as He was about to destroy it, Yahweh saw and He relented from the calamity.

He saw what? Notice the text doesn't say. Yahweh saw and He relented from the calamity. Well, that's an unsatisfactory sentence. What's going on here? This is going to lead us to a discussion of one of my quibbles with the ESV translation.

In fact, all the modern translations seem to kind of miss this. Turn with me back to Genesis chapter 22, if you would, because we're going to figure out what on earth Yahweh saw. Because He saw and then He relented.

What did He see?

It just doesn't say. We just heard Joel say that the Lord could relent of disaster. Well, the Lord just relented because He saw something and it doesn't help that we don't know what it is. So in Genesis chapter 22, the answer is actually embedded here and we'll have to do a little bit of Hebrew work to dig it out.

But here's what it says in Genesis 22. After these things God tested Abraham and He said to him, Abraham, and He said, Here I am. He said, Take your son, your only son, Itzhak, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.

All right.

We know what this text is about, but I have a quibble here with God. Abraham has two sons. Ishmael and Itzhak are his two sons. Why is God talking about Itzhak as if he's an only child? Doesn't make any sense, does it?

But here's the thing. This text is not about, really at its core, the sacrifice of Itzhak. This has always been about the sacrifice of the only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ. This is in the types and shadows a dress rehearsal for Jesus' crucifixion and His sacrifice.

And oddly enough, the geography, well, it's important. Mount Moriah is the place where the temple is built. Mount Moriah, the slopes of them, ascend past the temple from the Kidron Valley up past the temple and continue the ascent all the way up to a place now that is known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is right where Christ was crucified on the slopes of Mount Moriah.

So we read. So Abraham, he rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Itzhak, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day, pay attention to that third day stuff in Scripture. It's kind of important. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and he saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. Boy, look at that. Abraham just figured, well, all right, I'll kill him and God will raise him from the dead. We know that, by the way, from the book of Hebrews.

We know that that was exactly what he was thinking. But you'll note, it's right there in the text. We're going to go and worship and we're both going to come back. And well, Itzhak might need some stitches after that, but we'll work that out.

But he legitimately thought that God was capable of raising him from the dead. It's evident in what he says. So the both of them went together and Itzhak said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, here I am, my son.

He said, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? That's a good question. Things are a little awkward here. And you'll note that Itzhak is carrying the wood. Christ carried the wood too of his cross.

So Abraham said, well, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. And indeed, very true words. So they went both of them together. And when they came to the place of which God had told Abraham, he built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

They did the same thing to Jesus, by the way, on that same exact mountain. Then Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold, and behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

Now I know a thing or two about thickets. I grew up in Southern California in the foothills of Monrovia and Arcadia. And I liked to wander the foothills back in the day when I was young. And when you would come across a thicket or a growth of a thicket, you didn't want to get into that thing.

Uh-uh.

Because it was full of thorns and things that stick to your socks and to your clothes and will just easily open up your skin and make for a miserably bad experience. So thickets have thorns. So there's a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, which means he was caught by something that had thorns, prefiguring the crown of thorns of Christ.

God himself did provide the sacrifice that day, but that wasn't the sacrifice that was the miraculous one. It was the one that was going to come later. So Abraham called the name of that place, and here's where I take issue with the ESV.

Yahweh will provide, is how the ESV translates this sentence, but that's not a good translation. Let me give you the Hebrew. The name of that place is Yahweh Yichre,.

Yichre,.

Which means Yahweh will see. That's what it says in the Hebrew. Look it up. It's in the note in your Bible. Look, it says point number two in the ESV. And if you go to footnote number two, or will see, that's the actual literal translation of it.

And now all of a sudden it's starting to make sense. And it says, Abraham called the name of that place.

Which place?

The place he was going to sacrifice Itzhak. Yahweh will see. As it is said to this day on the Mount of Yahweh, it shall be seen. And so this prophecy sat dormant for how many hundreds of years? How many centuries did this thing sit dormant?

And now we come back to 1 Chronicles 21. And we see the angel of the Lord is wreaking destruction. The angel of the Lord was sent to Jerusalem to destroy it. And Yahweh saw, just as Abraham said he would.

And he relented from the calamity. What did he see? Well there, the angel of the Lord saw the very place that God had chosen for his only begotten son. To carry the cross to Golgotha on the slopes of Mount Moriah and lay down his life and bear the iniquity and sin of you and I and of King David.

You'll note here that all of these people were made to suffer and die for the sin of David. But Yahweh that day saw. He saw the place where the spotless Lamb of God would have all the sins of the whole world placed on him.

And rather than David die or you die or I die, that he would be the one who dies in our place. He saw the place where it was going to happen. Because on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. And the Lamb of God was provided.

So Yahweh relented from the calamity. Here again from Joel. Yet even now, declares Yahweh, return to me with all your heart. With fasting, with weeping, with mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments.

Return to Yahweh your God, for he is gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger. Abounding in steadfast love. And he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him.

And so the story continues. God has now relented of the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, it is enough. Stay your hand. And the angel of Yahweh was standing by the threshing floor of Ornon the Jebusite.

And David lifted up his eyes and he saw the angel of Yahweh standing between earth and heaven and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. But here's the thing. In just a few short centuries after this, the Son of God himself and the Son of David would stand between heaven and earth, not with a drawn sword, but with his arms and legs nailed to the cross.

Not for destruction, but for our salvation. The themes here are rich. This is a tapestry of God's mercy and of his wrath, which we should fear. But it's more so a testimony of his mercy and his great forgiveness.

So there he was, standing between heaven and earth. David and the elders, they were clothed in sackcloth. They fell upon their faces and David said to God, Was it not I who gave command to number the people?

It is I who have sinned and done great evil, but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Yahweh my God, be against me and against my father's house, but do not let the plague be on your people.

It's a good prayer, but that's not going to cut it. David suffering the consequences of his sin is not enough to save David, nor you suffering the consequences of your sin is not enough to save you. You'll note then our epistle text says, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ.

God himself is making his appeal through us. So we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

It wasn't enough for David to suffer the consequences. Christ himself would need to suffer in his place and for your place and mine. Now the angel of Yahweh had commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and raise an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Ornon the Jebusite.

Now we learn later that that is the site that Solomon then built the temple on. We know where this is. But I would note, I think it's quite fitting that on Mount Moriah, the place where Christ was crucified, that on Mount Moriah there used to be a threshing floor.

This is where wheat and chaff are separated, right? And think of it this way. None of us wants to be the chaff because we know the chaff gets burned up. What's the dividing line then? What is the thing that makes the difference?

Should I just try harder and do gooder? Should I pray more? Should I give more money to the church? What should I do? Should I pray five times a day rather than zero times? What do I need to do in order to be saved and not be threshed and then sorted out with the chaff?

Well, I would note that Christ's crucifixion itself is a threshing floor. There was Jesus crucified between two thieves. His cross was in the center, and the thief on his right and the thief on his left.

One of them hurled insults and chided Christ. If you're the Messiah, if you're truly the Christ, save yourself and save us too. It would be the ultimate prison break. It would be awesome, right? And the other one scolded him, rebuked him, and told him, shut up.

We are deserving. You are getting what we deserve, but he's done nothing wrong. And he says to Jesus, Lord Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. It's a humble prayer, but one of faith. Recognizing that he was guilty and that he was getting what he deserved, but he dared to throw himself at the mercy of Christ who at that moment was bleeding and dying for the very sins that he was dying for.

And so you'll note, what's the difference? The Lord is merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Repent, believe, trust in Christ. See your sin for what it is, something that has earned you hell.

Don't think it's a small thing or a trifling thing. It's not. There's no such thing as a white lie or a little sin. All of it will send you to hell. Confess your sins to God. He is merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and he pardons iniquity.

You want to be separated from those who are in the chaff and go with the wheat? The wheat are always those who are saved by grace and mercy through faith in Jesus Christ, not by any works of their own.

So Ornon himself, he was threshing the wheat. He turned and he saw the angel and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Good luck on that. As David came to Ornon, Ornon looked and saw David and went out from the threshing floor and paid homage to David with his face to the ground.

And David said to Ornon, Give me the site of the threshing floor so that I might build on it an altar to Yahweh. Give it to me at full price that the plague may be averted from the people. Ornon said to David, Take it.

Let my lord the king do what seems good to him. See, I give you the oxen for burnt offerings and the threshing sledges for the wood and the wheat for the grain offering. I give it all. But King David said to Ornon, No, but I will buy them for the full price.

I will not take for Yahweh what is yours nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing. So David paid Ornon 600 shekels of gold by weight for the site. And David built there an altar to Yahweh and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings and called on Yahweh.

And Yahweh answered with fire from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering. And then the Lord commanded the angel and he put away his sword back into its sheath. And the same happens for us. Christ is our sacrifice.

He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, your sin and mine. And although we have been threatened rightfully with the disaster of hell, but because Christ was crucified in our place and we now trust in him, Yahweh sheaths his sword.

And rather than receive destruction and death at the hand of God as we so richly deserve, we instead get mercy and peace. And you'll note again what Joel said, words that we should consider in this context.

Return to Yahweh your God. He is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for Yahweh your God.

A grain offering includes bread, a drink offering, wine. And isn't that what Christ has done for us? He has come and relented of the disaster because he has taken our sin upon himself and he has left us with the Lord's supper.

A grain offering and a drink offering. His very body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. So blow the trumpet in Zion. Consecrate a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the people.

Consecrate the congregation. Assemble the elders and gather the children, even the nursing infants. They're always included. Let the bridegroom leave his room in the bridal chamber between the vestibule and the altar.

Let the priests and the ministers of Yahweh weep and say, spare your people, oh Yahweh, and make not your heritage a reproach and a byword among the nations. Brothers and sisters, this is a good prayer for us.

And this is our prayer for this Lenten tide. To spare us, good Lord. To have mercy upon us. Why should they say that their God is not among them, right? So God, come and have pity on us and have mercy for the sake of Christ.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to. And again, that address is 470th Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support.

All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message. And again, thank you for listening.