It’d been a hard winter in the Appalachian Mountains. Snow had piled up deeper and deeper, it turned bitter cold, rivers froze, people were suffering. The Red Cross used helicopters to fly in supplies. One crew had been working day after day--long hours. They were on their way home late in the afternoon when they saw a little cabin submerged in the snow, a thin whisp of smoke coming from the chimney. The rescue team figured they were probably about out of food, fuel, maybe medicine. Because of the trees they had to put the helicopter down a mile away. They put on heavy packs with emergency supplies, trudged through heavy snow, waist deep, to reach the cabin, exhausted. Panting, sweating, they pounded on the door. A thin, gaunt mountain woman opened the door and the lead man gasped, "Mam, we’re from the Red Cross!" She was silent for a moment and then she said, "It’s been a hard winter, Sonny, I just don’t think we can give anything this year.”
Ever said those words, or something like them? Before I say anything else about “sacrificial giving” this morning, let’s try to define “sacrifice.” Sometimes, in our relatively comfortable lives, it’s easy for us to lose track of the meaning of “sacrifice.”
Ill - A pig and a hen were walking down a country road when they came across a billboard. It advertised, “Bacon and eggs, the great American breakfast!” The hen said, “Isn’t it nice that we get to make a contribution to something important like that?” The pig said to the hen, “What you call a contribution is a sacrifice for me!”
In baseball, a sacrifice is when a batter intentional gets an out, but as he does someone else advances a base. He takes an out for the good of the team. That’s a sacrifice.
The story of David we’re looking at this morning helps us get a better handle on this subject. I recognize this morning that talking about sacrificial giving isn’t everyone’s favorite subject. It’s not always easy to give just what we consider “required” of us, let alone to give beyond that, or then to give to the point where we’d call it sacrificial. But then there are all those nagging examples of it floating around us! What do we do with all that? How do we live, or how should we live?
My hope this morning is to see a few points about sacrificial giving that will help us appreciate its place in our lives.
I. God’s grace doesn’t remove our need to give
When we turn to an OT event to talk about giving, right away there’s a challenge. We don’t do animal sacrifices anymore.
Hebrews 10:1-4
The law…can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship…it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
When Jesus came and gave Himself as the final sacrifice, once and for all, animal sacrifices were no longer a part of the plan. Jesus took the punishment for our sins on the cross. Jesus gave Himself as the perfect lamb. Jesus superseded the Law and, His death instituted a 2nd chance for people who had blown it. It’s called grace.
Even though he was living 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, David grasped God’s grace at this point in his life. David understood that, if he was going to be judged just by law, he was a lost cause. That’s because he lusted after a woman, committed adultery with her, making her pregnant, tried to cover it up by arranging for her husband’s death, and then took her as his wife, and went on like nothing had happened. All the while, David’s insides were eating him alive. It’s most likely what he was writing about in…
Psalm 32:1-4
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
By Law, David should have been killed more than one time. Instead, he received grace. So, we look at David as someone who had at least some concept of God’s grace at this point. It was David who wrote:
Psalm 103:10-12
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Now, 2 Sam 24. Later in his life, like many of us, David messes up again. This time, against better advice, he has taken a census of the fighting men in Israel. David wasn’t trusting God, and the whole thing dishonored God. So, He sends a prophet to David.
2 Samuel 24:12-13a
"Go and tell David, ’This is what the LORD says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’" So Gad went to David and said to him, "Shall there come upon you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land?..."
David chose door #3. For 3 days, an angel of the Lord kills 70,000 people all over Israel. Now, he pauses at God’s command. He’s floating in the air, with a drawn sword, holding it over the city of Jerusalem. It looks like the entire city is next.
David and the elders with him are there in sackcloth, falling down on their faces before the Lord. The angel sends a message through the prophet Gad: go offer a sacrifice on the threshing floor of Araunah. When David arrives, Araunah hears what’s going on and offers the whole thing to David – the land, and his oxen for the sacrifice. He’ll donate it.
But we have this line from David. He won’t accept it for free. (v24) "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."
David, a man with some understanding of God’s grace, understood this: you don’t call something a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost you anything.
That creates a problem for us people on this side of the cross, who live under God’s grace, who never even lived under the OT Law. Because grace is free. We don’t earn it. We don’t get it by jumping through all the right hoops. We don’t impress God until He gives it to us. It’s already there, all set for us. All we have to do is show up. It’s free.
Romans 5:1-2a
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
Grace is free. We’re no longer trying to be righteous enough as a way to make it to heaven. We’re no longer counting on our ability to keep a Law that commands us to not covet, to not eat certain meats…to give a certain amount of our increase to God.
Some people are under the impression that, because we’re no longer under the OT law, that our giving has been transferred to the “optional” category. Somehow, living under grace makes the way we give a non-issue. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Here’s why…
Living under grace doesn’t remove the need for giving
OT Law makes giving a requirement. Take away the Law, take away the requirement, right? Why did God require His people to give a tenth of their increase?
In those days, that giving would provide for the place of worship, and it provided for the priests. It served a practical purpose. Of course, God could have just done all of that on His own, couldn’t He? So, why have the people bring it in? Why receive an offering?
Dave Ramsey made an interesting point in the final lesson for Financial Peace University – that the main reason we need to give isn’t because God needs us to. We all realize that if we’d think about it! The reason we need to give is because it’s in giving that we fulfill the image of God. God is a giver, and when we give, it’s one way we imitate Him. We demonstrate His image. Whether we’re commanded to give or not, whether that’s a tenth or more or less doesn’t change this. We’re designed to be most fulfilled and most like what we’re supposed to be when we’re giving. Being under grace doesn’t change that about us.
Living under grace doesn’t remove the heart of giving
God didn’t need peoples’ money in the OT either. He wanted their hearts. But, when giving is a law, how does a person give? Think about it. When income taxes are a law, how much do you pay? All of them. Do you pay any more? Of course not! “Here. Take an extra $100!” Not only does law make you have to pay a certain amount, but it also tends to limit it to that amount, doesn’t it? Why pay more than the law requires?
Grace is the answer to that question.
Grace is God giving us more than we deserve. It’s God giving us favor and kindness when what we really deserve is His wrath. It’s like the IRS, not only forgiving you 25 years of back taxes, but then offering to pay off your mortgage too.
David could have owned the land, owned the oxen, and made a “sacrifice” that day, without any cost to himself. It was all offered to him without charge. But David understood grace – that it doesn’t remove our need to give.
Another lesson about sacrificial giving that can be gleaned from this story:
II. God is honored by giving that reflects Who He is
You could always tell if someone of “important” status was coming over to dinner by the way my Mom got ready for it. If they were some of our usual friends – people who came over once in a while, people who knew about us that we were just people – then we’d probably grill some burgers or chicken, maybe eat out on the picnic table off of paper plates. But then there were the other times when the people coming over were more VIP status – maybe some visiting missionaries or a professor. The silver came out. The table cloth came out. Cloth napkins. For some reason, we all had 2 forks! The food was classier. You could always tell. It was a way of honoring people.
We do that with gifts. I’ve never seen my wife disappointed when I give her a gift of quality. It’s an opportunity for me to say how much she means to me. That can work the other direction too! That’s because…
The quality of a gift that is given is often a reflection of someone’s worth to us
We can say a lot by the gift that we give. God knows that about our giving. During Malachi’s day, Israel’s giving was a reflection of their wrong attitudes toward God.
Malachi 1:8
When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?" says the LORD Almighty.
The thought of giving God something that didn’t cost David anything didn’t fit because of Who God is. That’s why…
The personal cost for a gift can be one of its most important features
Ill - An African boy listened intently as the teacher explained why Christians give presents to each other on Christmas Day. She said, “The gift is an expression of our joy over the birth of Jesus and our friendship for each other." When Christmas Day came, the boy brought the teacher an exquisitely beautiful seashell. She was touched. She said, "Where did you ever find such a beautiful shell?"
The boy told her that there was only one spot where that particular shell could be found - a certain bay several miles away.
She said, “Why, why it’s gorgeous, but you shouldn’t have walked all that way to get a gift for me.”
The boy’s eyes brightened and he told her, “Long walk part of gift.”
David understood that whatever he did that day needed to honor God. God didn’t need David’s money. God wanted David’s heart.
We’ve got to understand this about anything we give to God. It needs to be a reflection of Who He is and what He means to us.
So, do our gifts, whatever they are, reflect our understanding of Who God is? Do they demonstrate a willingness to not hold stuff above God?
Larry Kiser – The joy of sacrificial giving to the Lord’s work is one value easily lost in the presence of prosperity. I regularly saw my parents give beyond what was comfortable for them. I don’t know how frequently my children see me give sacrificially to God’s kingdom. Proverbs 3:9 tells us to honor the Lord with our "substance." We normally give to God from our surplus, but He desires our substance. There is a difference.
There’s another feature of this event in David’s life history that I want to point out:
III. God uses our giving to do far more than we realize at the time
Many years before David bought this threshing floor, somewhere nearby, Abraham took his son, his only son Isaac whom he loved, and prepared to offer him as a sacrifice to God there. It was Abraham offering his very best to God, and that became a stark picture of the way that God would offer His son, His only Son Jesus, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world – maybe even on the same hill where Abraham prepared to offer Isaac.
I doubt that David was thinking about the way 2 Sam and I Chron would record his actions that day. I doubt that David was thinking about the way you and I would be able to read his words and be moved by them. He knew his giving needed to be done in a way that honored God, but his giving did far more than he realized at the time. Giving often works that way.
That property, Araunah’s threshing floor, a place where grain was trampled out and dragged to loosen the seed from the stalk, became the place where the temple was built.
2 Chronicles 3:1
Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.
He didn’t realize it at the time, but David’s faithful sacrifice that day would become the location of the temple and the place where God would regularly appear to His people.
Conclusion
It was Elisabeth Elliot who wrote, “Personal sacrifice paves the way for God’s miracles.” What would she know about personal sacrifice and God doing something with it? Her husband, Jim Elliot, along with 4 other men gave their lives trying to reach the Auca tribe of Ecuador in 1956. All of them were killed by the spears of Auca men who ambushed them. They didn’t know at the time how their sacrifice would open a great door of opportunity to take the gospel to this people group; that they would end up baptizing the man who killed Jim; that countless numbers of young people would be encouraged to enter the mission field because of their story.
Hundreds of stories from the mission field tell us the same thing: God takes the sacrificial gifts of His people and uses them to do far more than we can possibly realize at the time they’re given.
I think that’s the reason we have it recorded for us to read. Giving sacrificially, in light of God’s grace, is a great reflection of Who God is and it accomplishes more than we can realize at the time.
We want for you to understand and appreciate just how much God has given for you today…
