Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - There's a Wrong Way to Read the Bible | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 24:18-25

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Is there a wrong way to read the Bible? What does real growth look like? Are you fighting your sin? In today's episode, Keith shares how 2 Samuel 24:18-25 encourages us to take our sins seriously and take them to God. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 24:18-25

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Can you read the Bible the wrong way and take away from it a message that is almost the opposite of what God intends for you? When I first became a Christian in college, I'm pretty sure I read the Bible the wrong way. Looking back on that time, I think I read the Bible in what I now call a moralistic way. Instead of looking for grace, I look for rules. instead of looking for the good news of God's redemption, I looked for good advice on how to be a good person.

Instead of seeing God as the only hero of the biblical story, I turned the characters in the story into heroes. This all led me to think the message of the Bible was to follow the rules and be like the people I read about. Be full of faith like Abraham, Moses, and Noah. Be brave like Daniel, Esther, and Mary. Be wise like Solomon, Priscilla and Phoebe. Be bold like Paul. I mean, you get the point. It's easy to think we're supposed to be like the people we read about and the biblical stories. Inevitably, we fail, or at least I do, to live up to the standard that I've set,

and that failure is followed by guilt and shame and then a commitment to try harder. Unfortunately, the cycle then repeats itself. We think that if the people we read about in the Bible could do the right thing, then surely I can do it too if I'd just be a little bit more committed, a little bit more dedicated. The only thing worse than really, I didn't measure up to what I called biblical heroes, is thinking I did measure up to them, because when I thought I had succeeded, I became insufferably proud and condescending toward those who didn't. Either way, whether I compared myself to the biblical heroes and thought I'd done well or thought I was another failure, I was reading the Bible wrongly. Instead of learning to depend on

God's grace, I was doing what I'd always done and just depended more on myself. A big turning point my faith came when I began to see that the men and women in the Bible who obeyed God also disobeyed them. The people who stepped out in faith also shrank back in fear. And that the people God used were deeply flawed. You could say that they struggled with the same sins I did. Abraham, Moses, Noah, along with so many others, demonstrated great faith. But Abraham also lied about his wife being his sister. Moses murdered a man trying to bring God's kingdom on his own timetable.

Noah got off the ark and shamed his family by getting drunk. I mean, the list goes on. Solomon married many women and his heart turned to idolatry. Jacob was a manipulator. Peter was captive to other people's approval. It turns out the only hero in the Bible is God. He is the one who is perfect. Sure, we can learn from the lives of people who live before us,

people in the pages of the Bible, but we're not trying to be like them. Through the Holy Spirit's work, we are trying to become more like Jesus. We aren't depending on our personal effort or moral accomplishments, but on God's grace. This sets us up for the last chapter in Second Samuel. The book which really started back in First Samuel ends in what initially seems like a weird way, because chapter 24, the last chapter, records a major sin by David.

He's taking a census of the people and it's motivated by pride. And that leads to God's judgment and then eventually David's confession and the build of an altar. Now, it's not exactly what we would think of as a satisfying ending. Now, Jeff thoroughly covered David's sin in the first part of the chapter last Friday, but let's briefly revisit it just to set the scene. David sought to count how many soldiers he had in his military. We know that was a bad idea, full of sinful motivations, because of the way his top general, Joab reacted to it. In chapter 24 verse 3, Joab says to the king, May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my Lord

the King see it. But why does my Lord the King want to do such a thing? Joab tried to talk David out of the census, but were told that the king overruled Joab and the counting began. Once Joab reported the findings, David concludes that Joab was right and that he'd been in the wrong. Verse 10, David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant.

I have done a very foolish thing. Verse 15 tells of God's judgment. So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of time designated, and 70,000 of the people from Dan to Bersheba died. The plague would have continued had God not intervened to stop it. Verse 16. When the angels stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who is afflicting the people, enough, withdraw your hand. The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Aruna, the Jebusite. So this prompts David to confess his sins. Verse 17, when David saw the angel who is striking down the people, he said to the Lord, I have sinned. The shepherd has done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.

So 2 Samuel ends with King David, the one that God anointing king over Israel, King David, the one who killed Goliath, King David who unified the nation, who defeated the Philistines, caught again in another serious sin. We all need God's grace. The only hero is God. The last section of chapter 24 tells us that David built an altar on the threshing floor of Aruna the Jebusite. Now who is this guy? Well, Aruna is likely a title rather than a personal name, and many assume he was the last Jebusite king of Jerusalem. Threshing floors were normally on the top of a hill, and were often the places that God appeared to people. We learned from First and Second Chronicles that this threshing floor eventually becomes the site of the temple that Solomon built. When David expresses

his wish to buy the threshing floor, Aruna says to him, and this is the last verses of the last chapter of the book. He says, let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering and here are threshing sledges and oxy yolks for the wood. Your majesty, Aruna, gives all this to the king. Aruna also said to him, may the Lord your God accept you. So Aruna is saying, look, you can have the threshing floor. You can have the oxen. You can have the tools. I'll give it all to you. You don't need to buy it from me. Verse 24, but King David replied to Aruna, no, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing. David bought the threshing floor and the oxen. He paid 50 shekels of silver for them. David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed

burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land and the plague on Israel was stopped. You hear that David recognized. that God's forgiveness is always costly. True worship always costs us something. David knew that he needed to sacrifice his wealth, or the whole offering would become meaningless. Okay, so let's try to land this plane as we close out the book of Second Samuel. First and Second Samuel have been wrestling with a question, who can be the king of Israel, what kind of king is God looking for, who is qualified for that role? and we've discussed this over the past few weeks. But unsurprisingly, we returned to this question in the last chapter.

David, we find out, is the ideal king, not because he is perfect, but because he is repentant. David sins in several serious ways, but he confesses, renounces, and repents of his sin. He does not hide his sin, nor does he minimize it. Proverbs 2813, Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them, mercy. Remember Saul denied his sin with the Amalekites. Then when he couldn't deny it anymore, he minimized it, he excused it, and he blamed others for it. In other words, Saul acted a lot like we do. When David sinned in the sordid ordeal with Bathsheba, his repentance came only after being

confronted by the prophet Nathan. But now in the last chapter of 2nd Samuel, in this last story, he isn't caught in sin. He's not prompted to repent. Instead, on his own, He recognizes his pride and his insecurity and his lack of trusting God, and he confesses on his own initiative. That's real growth in David's life. That can be a model for us. There's so much we can learn from David, but none more important than being a person who fights sin, repents of sin, and clings to God's grace.

This is a large part of what separates Saul from David. Who will you be more like? I mean, Saul had every chance to turn from his sin. He had every chance to be honest about it. Instead, he hid, he denied, he minimized, he blamed others. Is there any thing God is convicting you of that you're denying or you're refusing to deal with appropriately? Sin promises so much and delivers so little. It promises happiness but leaves you miserable. It promises life but brings death. If there's any sin on your heart today, take it to God. God is forgiving. God is gracious.

If there is a sin you're stuck in, if you're entangled in sin and you're not sure how to escape, share that with a trusted friend who can pray for you. Father, I pray that you would shine your light of truth into our heart and expose any and all sin that you want us to deal with today. I pray that we would turn from our sin and put our hope in you. A gracious God who loves us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.