When David looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, with his drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem, David and the elders, covered in sackcloth, fell facedown. ~1 Chronicles 21:16
“Wait until your father gets home!” my mother would finally say after I had taken her to the breaking point. “He’ll deal with you!”
Samuel Wolgemuth wasn’t a big man. I was only sixteen years old when I scooted past him in size. And even though he played baseball at the college level, my dad wasn’t a particularly quick man. But my dad was strong. A spanking from my father was a serious and memorable punishment. And how well my naughty brothers and I can remember how Dad, behind the steering wheel and gliding down the highway at seventy miles per hour, could find us in the back seat with his powerful hand. As we were unsuccessfully trying to escape by squeezing into the ashtrays on the door handles, he would locate the soft flesh just under our thighs with a pinch that would throb for six to eight weeks. The pain threshold could vary, depending on conditions.
Mother was always the disciplinarian of choice. We believed we could finesse our way through her emotions, capturing a little mercy for our childhood transgressions.
I don’t remember how old I was when it dawned on me that I was making a terrible choice. The physical pain of my dad’s punishment was a walk in the park when compared to the emotional pain of knowing I had disappointed my mother. Her downcast spirit and penetrating silence in response to my youthful deficiencies was torturous. Knowing I had hurt her made me long for the pain from my father’s hand.
David deserved punishment, and he knew it. So God gave him a choice: three years of famine, three months of bludgeoning by his enemies, or three days of God’s discipline. Believing that God would be merciful, David chose door number three.
Bad choice, David.
Even though God made David and his people pay a dear price, nothing was as awful as the moment David saw God’s fury (see v. 16) in the form of a sword-wielding angel. When he realized that the gracious God of the universe was punishing his people as a result of his own sin, David fell on his face. In fact, David pled with the Lord to take him instead.
Our lives are filled with choices. From our choice of socks—if we wear them—in the morning to decisions in lonely hotel rooms on the road, we’re faced with options. Have you ever decided to do the wrong thing, determining that God’s mercy would cover you? I have. This is a bad choice.
Does God forgive? Yes. Does His mercy endure forever? Of course, it does. But is it ever worth it to choose to disappoint Him? Never. The anguish of gazing at His holiness and seeing His displeasure with my willful disobedience and sin ought to have a life-changing and profound effect on what I do.
The message is pretty simple. Asking God to give us the self-control we need to restrain ourselves is the best thing to do, rather than experiencing the discipline of a loving God. I’m sure David would agree. This would be far less painful.