The Price of Pride
1 Chronicles 21 and Exodus 30:11-16
In 1 Chronicles 17 we see an important passage that helps us to set the scene for our passage tonight. In the first 15 verses we see described the LORD’s Covenant with David. The Lord is promising to David that he will establish his dynasty, the Davidic dynasty. Additionally we see in this passage the Lord will raise up an offspring of David who will build for the Lord a house and the Lord in return will establish his throne forever. On the surface we see that this was fulfilled through Solomon and the temple he built for the Lord’s dwelling but ultimately this would be through the Jesus’ death on the cross establishing him as the King of Kings in the line of David and that he would build his church that would become the dwelling place of the Lord.
So as we think about David in tonight’s passage what was his role in the Lord’s covenant. Well we see detailed in Chapters 18-20 by the Chronicler the wars of David. From the beginning of his reign to the end David enlarged the kingdom of Israel to about 3 times its original size and established Israel as the dominant power in Syria and Palestine and there by winning for the people “rest.” A time of peace from their enemies that was enjoyed through the reign of Solomon. In addition the wealth accrued from the wars was set aside for the building of the temple. But let us not forget as David did an important line spoken by the Lord that we find in 17:8
“I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you.”
So it was through David that the Lord brought rest to his people Israel through military success. Without the Lord there would have been no success. So David’s role in israel was to bring rest to the people and interestingly enough the two major episodes that we see David straying from this aspect of his reign. The first is the episode with Bathsheba when he stayed at home in Jerusalem during the time when the Kings go out to war. The second is the passage today at the height of his military prowess when we read of David having subdued his enemies but then being incited by Satan he called for a census of Israel.
So as we place tonight passage firmly in the context of the Lords’ covenant we understand the success and rest David achieved in his military campaigns. The philistines have been subdued, the Moabites and the Syrians had been defeated and were now servants bringing tribute. David also struck the Ammonites and subjected their people to hard labour. The people of Israel prospered, they had rest from their enemies. And so here we find David faced with a decision to whom does the honour go?
In the book of James we learn about two major trials that we face in life, too major circumstances where what is in our heart, the attitudes inside that the majority of the time we keep hidden, have a tendency to bubble to the surface. James identifies these two trials as follows: the first is a poverty and the second is riches. Now when we speak of the trial of poverty and riches we are not limiting ourselves to monetary poverty and riches but also things like the poverty and riches of time of friends of intellect of education of character. It is during these trials that we are tested. For the non-Christian this test leads to judgement and for the Christian for the people of God it is for sanctification, that is the process of becoming more Christ-like. So in this passage we see David fail to face his trial of riches in response to his military successes and we are going to look at his response to help us in how we are to correctly face these types of trials in our own lives.
I am going to break the passage down in to three areas: The nature of sin; the cost of pride; and the price of restoration. In order to ground our understanding of the nature of David’s sin we will need to look a little closer at the purpose of a census. For this we look to our second passage where for the first time in the Bible census is mentioned, Exodus 30:11-16 the census tax.
As part of the Laws that God gives to Moses after the Exodus we find instructions on the way a census is to be performed. As part of God’s laws, that he set down, for building a new community of people he told Moses that when you take a census, each adult male over twenty is to give a ransom for his life in order to avoid a plague. It seems almost out of place. This passage on the census tax is squeezed in between instructions for the altar of incense and instructions for the bronze basin of the tabernacle. This is no coincidence as we will see later, but instead an opportunity to learn about the passage from its context.
What it is important to note here and something that is easily missed, is that it is the census itself that brings forth the wrath and judgement of God. It is actually the act of performing a census that brings about the judgement of the plague not the refusal to pay the ransom price. We could read verse 12 to say that
“When you take a census of the people of Israel then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord… OR there will be plague among you”
But the fact is that that is not what verse 12 says, it says.
“When you take a census of the people of Israel then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord… THAT there will be no plague among you”
Why is that? Where is the evil in the act of numbering, the very act of taking the census. Well the answer lies in how the process of counting reveals something about one’s attitude to the count-ees. If I had a tin of biscuits and offered you one you would probably think nothing of it. If, however, before I offered you one I made you aware of the fact that I had exactly 38 biscuits in my tin you might hesitate a little before accepting one. The very fact that I had taken the time to number my biscuits and know exactly how many I had tells you something about my attitude towards those biscuits, a certain possessive attitude, a certain level of control, a certain unhealthy custody about my biscuits. Why should I bother to number them? In the actual process of counting my biscuits I am staking my claim as owner of the biscuits. It is no longer about the biscuits they become a means to an end. It is all about ownership, “My 38 biscuits”. It is all about control, exactly how many biscuits I have. It’s all about comparison, how many biscuits I have in comparison to others. It is all about self-worth, how the number of biscuits makes me feel. What does all this boil down too? It is all about Pride. It may seem an extreme example but hopefully the extremity of it brings clarity.
And so here lies the nature of David’s sin. In looking to count the armies of Israel he was wishing to draw attention to himself in pride. He had over a million men at his call and he was keen to let others know in order to reflect positively on himself. The attitude of pride in David’s heart over his military successes bubbled to the surface in his ordering of the census.
These temptations are not just limited to biscuits and armies however but are present in the counting of our money or processions our education or status. Pride is often a little more subtle than sending out the commander of your armies on a census mission that would have taken a few months to complete. What we find is pride hiding in our everyday life. But as we look at the outworking of pride in life we need to remember that there are two types of pride. The first type of pride is that of a superiority and tends to show itself in the trials of success. When we look down on people because we consider who they are or what they are doing beneath us. The second type of pride is that of inferiority and tends to show itself in the trial of poverty. When we look up at others and think “I wish i could be like that person” or “If only I could do the things they do” or “how come they have that job and not me i could do it much better?” Both of these are pride because as CS Lewis clearly puts it the Biblical view of pride is an unceasing, never sleeping focus on self. Can you see how both these forms of pride lead to self focus? Whereas humility is other-focused pride is self-focus. So we can see these forms of pride working themselves out in the everyday.
Pride can show itself if we are the type of person that is always seeking attention always wanting people to be interested in what we have to say, the dominant person in every conversation. Or pride can show itself if we are the type of person who is jealous or critical of others. Jealous of someone else’s success or critical of people actions, lifestyle or dress. Perhaps pride shows itself in our need to win even at a simple game of bridge. Or we have a particular pattern of lying to put ourselves in a favourable light or make someone else look worse. Perhaps we have a hard time acknowledging when we have done something wrong. We just shrug it off, “Oh well nobody’s perfect are they?” Perhaps our pride surfaces in our conflicts or as self-importance when we cut in line at the supermarket or on the motorway slip road. Maybe our pride comes out when we get upset that no-one has honoured our service or says thank you when we let them out or hold the door or give them a gift. Perhaps we tend towards an attitude of entitlement, “I have worked hard I deserve this.” Or perhaps we just have a general feeling that we are good people at heart, not like all those other people out there! You see how we have to be wary of our pride how it can easily hide itself.
And so now we come to cost of pride? What do we learn from this passage is the cost of pride? Well we see that there was a great cost to this sin. Gad David’s seer was sent by the Lord to give David a choice either three years of famine, three months of devastation by his enemies or three days of the sword of the Lord, through plague. David chose to fall into the hands of the Lord instead of the hands of man and 70,000 men of Israel fell. Interesting to note the judgement that came upon the people of Israel was the same as promised in our census passage in Exodus. In the Exodus passage we see the promise of God’s wrath towards the process of a census. In the Exodus passage we learn how the judgement of a census is to be avoid. The Lord tells Moses that each adult male numbered shall give a ransom for his life. The focus of a census with its possessiveness, ownership and pride is flipped on its head through the action of paying a life ransom. Because for them the people to pay a ransom is a big statement that shouts I am not the owner of my life but I owe it to another. I am not lord of my life I owe my life to another. This act of paying a ransom has two outworkings the first of which helps us to understand the cost of pride. So the first outworking of the ransom is a reminder that our life is not our own. What it is very important to notice at this point is that although it was David’s sin that ordered the census the judgement is felt by all the people of Israel because the sin of the representative head transfers to the people. You see in not calling for the life ransom during the census David caused the people of Israel to sin. The payment of a life ransom is actually an act of mercy from God as a reminder. The laws that God imposes on his people are always, always for their deliverance. In this particular case a deliverance from self, from pride. The death of 70,000 seems a little extreme to you and I but only because we have not fully accepted the power of sin! If the pride of the people was left to grow the situation would have been worse. Ironically in the act of taking our life into our own hands, through pride we will lose it. The cost of pride is that it will eat away at us like a plague and this was God’s physical judgement reflecting a spiritual reality. In the Lord’s wisdom even in the ransom price being equal for all, the same for the rich and the poor, diverts from pride the thinking of superiority. That in some way the rich are more important and therefore should pay a higher ransom for their lives. No all are equal in the eyes of the Lord, rich and poor alike. As we see in Job 34:19
“who shows no partiality to princes,
nor regards the rich more than the poor,
for they are all the work of his hands?”
You see our inner most desire in life is for value. It is the way we are built, deep down inside we have a longing for value and this value is comes through relationship, community and partnership. Before the fall this value was met perfectly in the relationship with God and one another that we were designed for. Our value came from him and we were content we were satisfied, we were naked and unashamed, that is our whole life laid bare to God and one another and in it we were unashamed. But then with pride, quite literally came the fall. This sin of pride has plagued humanity ever since. Our ultimate longing is now prevented by the ultimate sin and this is PRIDE! And what was the first thing that happened after the fall, a covering of our bodies and a hiding from the Lord. The pride in our life tries to restore the joy in relationship we had before the fall by filling this longing in our heart from the value we get on earth. But no matter how successful we are no matter how much money or power or acclaim we accrue it will not satisfy. This is the cost of pride in our life!
And so we come to our final point the price of restoration. Here we revisit the census ransom the first outworking of which reminded the people that their life was not their own, that we are created and that we have a creator. The second outworking of the census ransom is the connection to atonement. In this we can see that the placement of this passage in Exodus is not as random as it first seems. We find the Exodus passage right in the middle of God’s instruction on how the Israelites were to atone for their sin through worship in the Tabernacle. The Lord is our maker but in the beginning through pride we tried to take our life into our own hands. However, instead of gaining our life we lost it in slavery to sin. This is the other side of the ransom the atonement for our lives. The atonement money paid through the census was to go towards the service of the Tabernacle, the service of atonement. The ransom money was not only for the remembrance of our Maker but also for the remembrance of the price required to buy us out of our slavery to sin.
In this passage King David had set his value his self-worth in the strength of his army and wished them numbered that he might glory in his value. God had other plans and would show David the cost of his pride. What David was to learn that as representative of the nation of Israel the cost of his sin would affect the nation and 70,000 died? We too must fully understand the cost of our pride in our life and the life of those around us. The answer is humility but in a fallen world humility comes at a price. The solution is a true humility that draws its source of value from the one of ultimate value, the person we were designed to draw our value from. The definition of humility is to be other-focused. But there is no point in me standing here and telling you to try harder at being humble because that it just morality. And morality is just a form of religiosity which was the sin of the Pharisees. What does religion lead too? It leads to pride! So the answer to pride is humility going from self-focus to other-focused but we cannot achieve it through trying harder to be humble. So what is the answer?
The answer is a price needs to be paid. There is a price for pride because ultimately it is the reason we are separated from God. Something came between us and God that now we are ashamed of the nakedness of a ralationship with the Lord. There needs to be a complete change of nature. The change of our nature from self-centered to other-centered comes at the cost of removing our sin, our pride. In the passage David was called to build an altar to atone for the sin. The Lord acknowledged the sacrifice with fire, with his judgement. But this was only a shadow of the true cost that would be born to finally atone for sin. The place where David built the alter was the threshing floor where the temple would be built by Solomon. And the temple was a foreshadow of Jesus Christ who would once and for all atone for the sin of the world. Breaking down the barrier and allowing us the power to deal with sin, to deal with pride. So the first step to humility is to realise our pride and its cost. To realise that the only way out is if the price is paid but most importantly that we cannot pay. The price has to be paid on our behalf. And finally not only was it paid on our behalf but it was willingly paid. Only in a true understanding and acceptance of this lies humility. Only when we realise that true value comes from the Father. That a life filled with pride is a life destined for destruction. But that God loved us so much that he willingly paid the price of our pride that we could put on the value of Christ. And all this through grace for us who are not only undeserving but ill-deserving. Here lies true humility. When we allow the cost of our sin to sink in. When we understand the price that needed to be paid on our behalf because we could never pay it on our own. And finally the realisation that Jesus willingly laid down his life on our behalf because he puts that much value on our life that we can now stand before the throne of Grace once again stripped of our own efforts stripped of our pride and unashamed. Then we can move from self-focus to other-focused. That is true humility.
