Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.
— 1 Chronicles 21:1
Here the author of Chronicles pulls back the curtain on the events behind a decision that would have severe consequences for Israel. David had decided to take a census of the fighting men in his army — and the author tells us plainly what was behind it: Satan had stood up against Israel and moved David to do this.
The Heart of the Problem
To understand why this was such a grave error, we need to understand David’s motivation. He wanted to count his soldiers — to take stock of his military strength and rest his confidence in the numbers he had. But this was entirely contrary to what God had been teaching him throughout his life. The consistent testimony of Scripture is that David’s victories had never come because of the size of his army. They came because God was with him. In case after case, before going into battle, David would seek God’s direction first — and it was only when God gave the go-ahead that David would advance, with victory following inevitably.
But here we see something different. David appears to have shifted his confidence away from God and onto human strength — onto numbers. Even Joab, his most trusted commander, could see that this was wrong:
Joab answered, “May the LORD make His people a hundred times as many as they are. But, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? Why does my lord seek this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt to Israel?”
— 1 Chronicles 21:3
Even Joab understood that it was the Lord who had been behind Israel’s victories — and that there was no need to seek validation in troop numbers.
The Spiritual Reality Behind the Physical
But the most important thing this passage reveals is the cause behind it all. The reason David made this decision was that Satan had moved him to do so. And this brings us to a reality we too easily forget — beyond this physical world, there is a spiritual one. In that spiritual realm, there are principalities, powers, and forces constantly at war, and what we see manifesting in the physical world has its roots there.
Paul writes to the Ephesians:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
— Ephesians 6:12
And to the Corinthians he writes that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. This is the world we actually live in — one in which an invisible spiritual realm is constantly shaping and influencing what happens in the physical.
In our fallen state, our wills are naturally inclined away from God and toward the desires the enemy exploits. Paul speaks of those who are trapped in the snare of the devil, taken captive by him to do his will — sometimes without even realising it. We see a striking example of this with Peter, when he rebuked Jesus for speaking of His coming suffering, and Jesus responded: get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.
If we do not come to terms with the reality of the spiritual realm — that there is a world where attacks are launched and wars are fought that then manifest in the physical — we will never fully understand why things happen the way they do, or why we find ourselves making the decisions we make.
The Only Way Out
This is precisely why our call for people everywhere to look to Christ is about far more than adding members to a church or adherents to a religion. It is about accessing a transfer of kingdoms — about a soul being pulled from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light.
Paul describes it exactly this way to the Colossians:
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.
— Colossians 1:13
And Peter agrees:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.
— 1 Peter 2:9
Without the power of God, we remain spiritually dead. Our wills remain in bondage to sin. The only way out is to look to Christ — to believe in His finished work, trusting that He lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved to die, and was raised again so that all who believe in Him would be made new creatures, given new hearts capable of resisting sin and walking in the newness of life.
May that be the reality of every person who reads these words — and for those in whom it is not yet so, may the Lord convict their hearts to see the realities of life as they truly are.
Amen.
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