“So God came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.” 2 Samuel 24:13-14)”

Life follows certain ‘rules’ that most people experience. Murphy’s Law is one such ‘rule’. If you dropped buttered toast it will always fall… on which side? Another example is the ‘law’ that bad things always happen in threes. On the day your phone runs out of battery and you realise for the first time ever, you left your charger at home, is the same day you get a flat tyre. Of course its just superstition.

What is really true is that the prophet Gad came to King David and gave him a choice between three disasters. Three years of famine, three months of defeat, or three days of a plague. Some choice!

The reason David and God’s people were being punished was because they had become proud and turned from God who had done them so much good. David was a lowly shepherd boy, the youngest of seven brothers. He came from nowhere and was going nowhere. But God chose him, raised him up, and made him the King of Israel. God made him an extraordinary warrior who fought many battles and extended God’s Kingdom – physical as it was in those days – to the borders God had promised Abraham. Israel also came from nowhere. She was a slave in Egypt but God had made her the envy of other nations. But God’s people became proud and disobeyed God.

David took a census, nothing wrong in and of itself, but in a theocracy under God, a census was a direct infringement on God’s rule over His people. It was a unilateral declaration of independence. David and Israel were under God’s judgement and God offered David a choice out of three disasters.

David makes a very wise choice. He admits he has done wrong. He acknowledges God’s right and goodness to rule. And He repents, which means he changes his life course away from independence and towards God.

Very importantly David accepts God’s punishment. David doesn’t say, ‘Oh, that’s not fair! Can’t you just forgive me?’ True repentance accepts the punishment. David asks to ‘fall into the hand of the Lord’. Notice God’s grace even in punishment. Three years of famine, three months of defeat, but only three days of God’s direct judgement! God always shows grace even in judgement.

What about us? We have done exactly what David and Israel did. We too have become proud and made our own unilateral declarations of independence. We too deserve God’s punishment. But, something else has happened since David’s day. David’s Greater Son, Jesus, came into the world to take the punishment we deserve on Himself.

For ‘three days’ Jesus ‘fell into God’s hands’ but on the third day disaster itself was defeated. Jesus rose from the dead having suffered all God’s righteous judgement against our sin. Thank God, grace has conquered judgement!