Let Me Fall Into the Hands of the Lord

2 Samuel 24:14

I. 'I am in a great strait.' How often we have all of us had to say that! Sometimes by our own sin, as David now; sometimes only by our own misfortune. But to whom did David say it? for that makes all the difference as to whether he said it wisely or foolishly. He asked the question of Gad, God's prophet; but mark you, David's seer, as it says also—the man who was the Lord's ambassador to David, and the man who also knew David best. We have prophets, it is true, no longer; but ambassadors from God we still have, namely, His priests. And as we shall never do wrong if we go to the great High Priest, and say to Him, 'I am in a great strait,' 'Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me,' so neither shall we be wrong if we go to the priests whom He has appointed in His own name, the shepherds whom He has set over His own fold, and tell them our troubles. David did wisely; and so shall we.

II. And what choice did he make? He made none at all; he left the whole matter in God's hands. 'Let me now fall into the hand of the Lord, for very great are His mercies.' No one ever really and earnestly and heartily said that—'Let me fall into the hand of the Lord'—and was lost. And why? because those hands were for us men and for our salvation nailed to the Cross, and are therefore mighty to save to the uttermost all that trust in them. It matters not from what degree of sin; it matters not in what extremity of danger; there is no limit to either: those blessed hands that wrought so many miracles, that cast out so many devils, that raised so many dead, they are able to heal us, to cleanse us, yes, and to raise us from any death of trespasses and sins.

III. You all know how remarkable a type David was of our Lord. Now see the great difference and contrast between them. David sinned, and the people suffered for his sake. 'These sheep,' he said, 'what have they done?' But, afterwards, it was the people that sinned, and the Son of David that suffered; it was expedient, as the Holy Ghost said by the mouth of wicked Caiaphas, 'that one Man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not'. As it is written, 'But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, and with His stripes we are healed'. In the one case the shepherd sins, and the sheep are punished; in the other the sheep wander, and the Good Shepherd dies to bring them back to the fold.

—J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, p. 85.

References.—XXIV. 14.—J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (4th Series), p. 161. XXIV. 24.—Church Times, vol. xxxvii. 1897, p. 240. E. S. Talbot, Keble College Sermons, 1870-76, p. 12.