Day 50: The Long Fall From A High Horse

Isaiah 22:15-18

New Living Translation (NLT)

A Message for Shebna

¹⁵ This is what the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, said to me: “Confront Shebna, the palace administrator, and give him this message:

¹⁶ “Who do you think you are,
    and what are you doing here,
building a beautiful tomb for yourself—
    a monument high up in the rock?
¹⁷ For the Lord is about to hurl you away, mighty man.
    He is going to grab you,
¹⁸ crumple you into a ball,
    and toss you away into a distant, barren land.
There you will die,
    and your glorious chariots will be broken and useless.
    You are a disgrace to your master!

***

Do you remember the chapter I wrote about liberal propaganda? The Assyrian king had sent some of his people to taunt King Hezekiah in an attempt to scare the people in Judah.The point was to make them more compliant when the Assyrians besieged Jerusalem. That is the time frame for this story. We're going to talk a guy named Shebna.

Now, I'm a little confused as to what Shebna's job actually was. In 2 Kings 18, he's named as the court secretary who is hanging out with Joah, the royal historian, and Eliakim, who is referred to as the palace administrator. But we see here in Isaiah 22, Shebna is named as the palace administrator who is succeeded by Eliakim. Maybe Shebna had been demoted shortly before the Assyrians came in spreading their lies and inuendo. 

Anyway, it's not really important what position he had, it's just important to understand what affect it had on Shenab's character. Any high ranking position came with a great deal of responsibility, but also came with a lot of royal perks. I think it's safe to say that Shenab was more interested in enjoying the perks than in taking care of his responsibilities. He enjoyed the pomp and circumstance. He loved riding around in his beautiful chariots, showing off how important he was.

If scripture lays out all his abuses of power, I don't recall reading them. But apparently at some point he'd decided to have a huge, beautiful tomb carved out of solid rock, that he could one day be laid to rest in. This was a custom usually reserved only for royalty, and even though Shenab was high ranking, he wasn't born into royalty himself. What an over-inflated ego! What an insult to the king! After all, he wasn't voted into the office he held, he'd been appointed there, either by King Hezekiah (who was one of the good guys who loved the Lord), or by his father, King Ahaz.

Such egotistical displays of grandeur to himself indicated a lack of self-control, and a lack of appreciation or respect for his king. He was a steward who wasn't demonstrating good stewardship. He didn't deserve the position he'd been given, and God was a little annoyed with him over it. Enough so that He sent the prophet Isaiah to put him in his place.

What the heck do you think you're doing, building yourself such a monument up there? For that matter, just who do you think you are? You're not of royal descent, you have no business building yourself a memorial to be remembered forever! You've wasted your own time and the king's, because God's about to knock you off our high horse so hard that you're going to crumple into a little wad and land somewhere out in the desert where you will die a slow, painful death. He's going to give your robes, your title, and your authority to Eliakim and give him the keys to the House of David. He will become the highest ranking person in the kings court, because he's a man that can handle the job and will get things done. He will live up to his responsibility. Where you have been a total disgrace to your master, Eliakim will bring honor even to the poorest member of his family.

So that's what pride will get ya. A very long fall from a very tall steed. 

We really live as though we are the center of our own little universe, don't we? Come on, admit it. We all do it. God doesn't want us to be full of self-importance. If anything is revolving around us, it had better be our responsibilities, not our ego. It had better be those we serve, not those who serve us. We'd better be sure that we put all that we have been entrusted with as a higher priority than our own desires. The needs of others must be more important than our own. God doesn't get along very well with mean, selfish people. 

But He sure loves those who are humble before Him.

Days 29 & 30: The Know-It-All

1 Chronicles 21:1-4

New Living Translation (NLT)

David orders a census.

V. Gilbert and Arlisle F. Beers

David Takes a Census

21 Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of the people of Israel. ² So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Take a census of all the people of Israel—from Beersheba in the south to Dan in the north—and bring me a report so I may know how many there are.”

³ But Joab replied, “May the Lordincrease the number of his people a hundred times over! But why, my lord the king, do you want to do this? Are they not all your servants? Why must you cause Israel to sin?”

⁴ But the king insisted that they take the census, so Joab traveled throughout all Israel to count the people. Then he returned to Jerusalem

***

Before I start, let me apologize for my absence the last several days. I made an unexpected trip out of town to attend the funeral of my last remaining uncle. While we grieve here on earth, heaven is rejoicing, and Uncle Frank is finally at peace, surrounded by the glory of God. So to catch up, I'm reading in double time and posting in half-time!

Many times I've read about David's census, and never really understood what the big deal was. At one point in time, God had wanted a census done of the Israelites. But when David decided it was a good idea, God didn't agree, and got really mad about it! Why?

King David was a devout man of God, no doubt. But no matter how much he loved the Lord, he was still human, and he still made a lot of mistakes. I like David, because his life is such a portrait of all true Christians; we can never be good enough. We can love the Lord with all our hearts, serve Him single-mindedly, but we're still not going to be perfect, we're still going to sin, we're still going to beg forgiveness, and we're still going to learn that even when God grants forgiveness, He doesn't exempt us from consequences.

So what was David's sin, here? Well, to start with, it wasn't entirely his sin. David's sin reflected the sin of israel, who had become a little too big for their britches, thinking they deserved to have a king they could see with their own eyes instead of allowing God to be their King. They'd lost their focus, and had let pride get in the way of better judgment. So in 2 Samuel 24:1, scripture says 

"And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah."

So there ya have it. David was human, and God used his sin as a vessel to bring about His discipline on a sinful nation. And He accomplished this by allowing Satan to rise up and goad him into doing something stupid. And being the fallible human being that he was, David fell for it.

This census was never God's will. It was David's. He was king of the hill and he was feeling pretty good about it. He didn't want the census taken for God's glory, he wanted the census taken for his own! He had thirty warriors that made up the membership of an elite "club", the best of the best, and even more exclusive than that were his "three muskateers", the mighty warriors who commanded the thirty. But as awesome as that group was in battle, David knew that he ruled over way more than that, and he wanted bragging rights. So he told Joab and the other commanders to go find out how many warriors he had.

Joab was a little wiser than David this time around. He knew this was going to be bad, and even tried to warn him. He told David God would grow his army even a hundred times bigger, if he'd just give God the honor instead of letting the numbers go to his head. But David didn't listen, and he sent them out to count. 

The numbers came back, but only partially. Joab failed to count the tribes of Levi and Benjamin. So he gave David an incomplete count to try to keep his already inflated ego in check. The numbers were still impressive though. Over a million swordsmen in Israel, and  half as many again in Judah alone. And David was apparently pleased with himself over how strong his armies were.

God, on the other hand, was anything but pleased. Through Gad, David's seer, God gave him three options to choose from as punishment for his pride. He could choose three years of famine, or three months of slaughter at the hands of his enemies, or three days of plague as an angel of the Lord brought devastation to the land. 

Not being able to read God's mind and know exactly what that meant, I think I would have gone with door number three, just like David did. And just like me, I don't think David really understood that three days wasn't going to be a slap on the wrist! During those three days, 70,000 people died in Israel, and then God sent an angel to destroy the city of Jerusalem. As the angel stood next to the threshing floor of a Jebusite named Araunah (because the angel had to stand somewhere!), sword raised and ready to strike, God relented and said "Ok, that's enough, for now!". The angel didn't lower his sword though. He was ready should further action be required. 

Araunah looked up from where he was threshing wheat, and saw what was going on in the spiritual realm. I wonder if he took it in stride, or if he stood there gawking in fear and awe.  We know it scared the daylights out of his four sons though, because scripture says they ran away and hid. Their daddy didn't, though. Whatever he was thinking at the sight of this great, big, huge warrior-angel  standing over his threshing floor weilding a sword, his reaction isn't noted until David approached, humbled and dressed in burlap, and asked to purchase the threshing floor to build an altar to God so He would stop the plague. Araunah bowed before the king and offered to give him not only the floor, but the oxen to sacrifice as well. David was starting to smarten up though. He told the man he could not take what cost him nothing to make amends with God, and insisted on paying for it. The transaction cost 600 pieces of gold.

Ya know, I can't count the times I've heard believers quip "i'm not perfect, just forgiven". Nor can I count, sadly, how many times I've heard believers say that because we are forgiven, we're exempt from consequences. What a total misunderstanding of God's nature! He's a loving God, yes. He's a forgiving God, yes. But above all, He is a just God. We don't get a free pass when we screw up, and God's discipline is often a bitter pill. It's pretty important that we realize that our lesson isn't learned until we've accepted the discipline, humbled ourselves, and made things right with our Father.

That's it for Sunday and Monday. I'll have to combine blog entries for two days at a time for a few days while I catch back up. In the meantime, I hope you got something out of this. And if you didn't, well, I did.