Giving till it costs
2 Samuel 24:18-25
David’s personal sacrifice strongly underscored his humility. It was David’s humility as well as his actions that brought about the restoration he sought.
The situation was grim. But it is hard for us to imagine why it was grim. David had counted the fighting men.
For some reason, taking a census in the days of the Israelites was a spiritually charged endeavor. We don’t know why this is. God commanded Moses to take the first census and census taking after that was risky business.
Why did David take this count?
• Some think that it was an issue of pride. David was arrogant because of the size of his army
• Some think David was contemplating an Imperial conquest that was not commanded by God, that David was getting delusions of grandeur
• Some think it is an affront to the God who promised that the offspring of Abram would be unnumerable, like the grains of sand on the shore. To number them, then, was to say that God had not kept his promise
Whatever the case, in spite of the protests of his generals, David went forward with a count that took the better part of a year and informed him that he had well over 1,000,000 fighting men available to him.
But David was instantly full of remorse for what he knew was sin. God sent a plague to discipline David.
For his repentance God, through Gad the prophet, sends David to do a sacrifice. Very specifically it was not a sacrifice at the Tabernacle, but designed to mark the spot where the plague stopped.
Araunah’s threshing floor. This was a platform near a hilltop where the wheat was separated from the chaff. The place where what was true and good was removed from the useless hulls.
There are a couple of options opened to David:
He could have just told the owner of the field that he had a sacrifice to perform there and obeyed what God commanded. But David decided that he should buy the threshing floor.
When he convinced Araunah that he was determined to buy the threshing floor, he could have accepted Araunah’s offer to give him the property and everything he needed. For the most part there seems to be nothing wrong with the offer or accepting it.
There is every reason to believe that Araunah’s offer was sincere and stemmed from his love for David. David, as the king, had every right to accept the offer and to see it as his due.
But David knew this was his problem and the solution had to be personal.
So he bought everything that Araunah offered for free:
• Property
• Offering
• Wood
So what was accomplished in the offering that David gave to God?
He refused to allow others to take his responsibility
When he spoke with God about the plague, he said:
I have sinned; I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done?
The citizens of Israel had no authority either to take a census or to refuse if the King commanded. It was David’s doing through and through, and he knew it. That the people should suffer for his sin was painful for him.
In addition, he would not use gifts to raise an offering to God. Araunah had been very generous and perhaps even was feeling sorry for the king in the trouble that he was trying to overcome. But David knew that if he offered Araunah’s animals on Araunah’s property over Araunah’s fire, then he was not really taking responsibility. It would be Araunah’s offering, not his.
There is a strong likelihood that this is a royal exchange. If you are reading the KJV, you will see that Araunah is referred to as a king. Araunah was probably the former king of the Jebusites that occupied Jerusalem. But he is now submitted to David and David cannot allow him to resume his former responsibility.
I remember my older brother bringing my mom a flower. I’m sure it was a very pretty flower, but it had been picked from the flower bed of a lady that lived Joe’s route home from school. Very wisely, my mom did not accept the flower, but walked Joe back to the lady’s house and made him give it back and apologize. The lady was very gracious and kind about it and tried to say it was ok, but mom would not allow it.
Parents often try to take the heat off their kids. When the kids do something wrong, the parent, in a passion of misplaced defensiveness or over-protectiveness does not allow the son or daughter to assume the responsibility for their actions. But the time to teach responsibility is when the child is small enough that their mistakes do not cost more than embarrassment and or a few pennies. When the responsibility measures in larger injuries and penalties, the effective time to learn the lesson is past.
As adults we often try to escape responsibility, but
• The laxness of our own self-discipline
• The irresponsibility of our financial practices
• Our overindulgence in luxuries
• The neglect of important relationships
• Our substance abuses
All carry natural and spiritual consequences, just as David’s sin did. David could not expect someone else’s investment and someone else’s humility to solve the problem.
David personally invested
The other side of this equation almost goes without saying. If David could not allow the investments of others to solve the breach in his relationship with God, it would be necessary for him to invest himself. His words in this regard should be engraved on our stone hard hearts and embossed in the leather of our wallets:
I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing
Our salvation is free in that there is nothing we can pay to God that will equal the debt we owe. But many times we mistake the freedom of our adoption into the family of God to be a free ride to everything that the spiritual life includes. We must rely on Jesus’ sacrifice for our salvation, we cannot buy it ourselves, but we should not deceive ourselves into thinking that our adoption into the family of God costs us nothing.
It costs us everything
If we do not submit our wills, our selves to the mastery of Christ, we cannot claim to love Him and we have no part with Him at all.
• When we give God Sunday morning, but live the rest of the week as if He does not exist
• When we spend our income on ourselves and act as if God has no claim on our tithe and our generosity to the poor
• When we give to God and to His people the seconds and rejects of our possessions and our lives and never consider that the King of the Universe and His people deserve our very best
• When we neglect our devotional lives but find plenty of time for hobbies and mindless, meaningless entertainment
We are offering God that which costs us nothing.
Our offerings in the past weeks have improved. This is good. But I am not naive enough to think that everyone is offering to God what they should. I am ashamed to say that in spite of the best of intentions, I don’t always do what I should myself.
When we offer in the plate less than we would leave on the table for a waitress after a modest meal, we are offering God that which costs us nothing.
When we spend less time in the week with God than we spend on the appearance of our yards or our cars, we are offering God that which costs us nothing.
What is our life worth aside from the sacrifice of that which God gave us in the first place:
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
(Genesis 2:7 TNIV)
Every breath you take is a gift from God, whether that breath is drawn easily in rest or vigorously in work and exercise or in pain from disease. Whether we draw it in righteousness or in sin, it is His.
David spent his silver to buy the land, the wood and the animals to send an offering up to the LORD. Not only did he resist the urge to allow others to take responsibility, He took the responsibility as his own.
He found refuge in humility
This was not a big splashy act. David was capable of that and he had done it on other occasions for other reasons. This seems almost to have been done in private. But David knew from experience that God was not impressed with spectacle:
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
(Psalms 51:17 TNIV)
Repentance requires humility. God is not looking for impressive acts of devotion, but for a humble heart. The consecration of our hearts involves personal cost and obedience, not just ritual.
I Chronicles relates the same story and tells us two facts that are not recorded in this passage.
God was so pleased with David’s offering that He personally threw fire from heaven to devour the offering. This is on done a few times in the Bible and always marks an event about which God feels strongly and is personally pleased.
In this, David redeemed both his past and his future
The other name of this threshing floor was Mt. Moriah.
For some of you this will ring a bell. This is the same mountain upon which Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice. I was also the same mountain upon which Solomon built the Temple.
In this act of devotion, repentance, and sacrifice, David was participating in the same kind of faithfulness that his forebear Abraham had embodied. He had brought his son to this mountain in obedience to God, and on that mountain was provided the sacrifice that would save that same son’s life. In David’s case it was the sacrifice that would save the lives of the people of Jerusalem from a plague that was sweeping the nation.
The same act of devotion acquired that historic place for the establishment for the official house of worship that would stand for centuries. The temple built here by Solomon became the site to which every future sacrifice of the land would be taken, including the sacrifice that would take away the sins of the world, though, He would actually die someplace else.
• By taking personal responsibility for our actions and investing ourselves in the solutions to the problems we create
• By investing ourselves in the offerings we bring to God so that they are neither minimal nor meaningless
• By humbling ourselves before God and depending upon His mercy toward the contrition of our hearts, and not by relying upon the empty exercise of ritual
We too redeem the heritage of our past. We represent all that is best within our families and circles of influence.
We too redeem our futures, exemplifying for coming generations and to those we lead the practices that feed our friendship with God.
• I encourage you to ask yourself two questions:
• Why am I giving it?
First: In what way am I giving to God?
• Do you give God your time?
• Do you give Him your best?
• Are you giving in a way that costs you personally?
• Do you give Him a portion of your resources?
• Have you given Him your family?
Really?
To do with as He pleases?
• Are you giving Him your seconds, your left overs?
Is that good enough?
Why are you giving it?
• Do you give to God because it is expected of you?
• Do you give to Him out of habit?
• Do you do it because the offering is part of our service and you think people will notice if you don’t give?
• Do you give in a way that is rote, or meaningless to you?
Or do you give out of a heart of humility and gratitude to God?
Do you give to Him out of a sincere desire to please Him and to align yourself with His will?
Do you give out of a desire to personally shoulder the responsibility that goes with being a disciple of Jesus?
Whatever the reasons, and whatever the gift. Give! Give with a heart to repent or a heart to respond. Give with a heart to be a part of God’s great plan.
For your past and your future.
