That Which Cost Me Nothing
March 3, 2002
Dear Friends,
In Second Samuel 24, King David makes a costly mistake. The King, probably moved by pride, takes a census of the people. The result is a plague upon the people that kills seventy thousand in Israel. The destroying angel is finally halted by God on the threshing floor of Araunah (also called Ornan) the Jebusite. King David, at the recommendation of his servant Gad, builds an altar on the site of the threshing floor (and future site of the temple). When David arrives seeking to purchase the threshing floor, a gracious Araunah offers free of charge to the King both the threshing floor, wood and the animals for sacrifice.
Although there are many things meriting comment in this narrative, we would like to draw your attention specifically to David’s reply to Araunah’s kind offer. King David says “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing.” (v.24 – NASB)
A very important principle is revealed here. What we give to God must come at a cost to us. Adam Clarke provides us with a maxim: “He who has a religion that costs him nothing, has a religion that is worth nothing.”
In this day and age of “instant everything”, we have become accustomed to the quick and easy. We want to lose weight by taking a pill and not via exercise or healthy eating. We walk into the kitchen, flip on the light, turn on the TV for the news and throw our dinner in the microwave to be done in 5 minutes without the slightest thought that this would have taken hours only a century ago. While we are thankful for all of our modern conveniences, perhaps we run the risk of treating our faith in a similar “quick and easy” manner. Are we bothered if the Sunday exhortation runs a little long? Have we reduced prayer to short, thoughtless and meaningless recitation of familiar phrases? Do we take time from our busy schedules to read the word of God daily? Are we the “cheerful giver” of our money and other resources that we are exhorted to be?
One of the greatest paradoxes in all of Scripture is that the greatest of all gifts in life, our salvation, comes as a FREE gift that costs us EVERYTHING. Jesus told his disciples “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” Perhaps time and familiarity denies us the full impact of this metaphor that Jesus uses. Jesus is telling us we must take up his mission. This is not a mission that costs nothing. Anyone who is carrying a cross off to their own brutal execution in the metaphorical manner of Christ is committed to the fullest extent possible. It is this complete dedication which the Apostle Paul refers in Romans 12 when he says “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies A LIVING SACRIFICE, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
King David understood that had he accepted Ornan’s sacrifice, Ornan would have made a sacrifice, but David would not have given anything. David, a thousand years before his “greater son”, knew that he must take up his cross. Do we?
Have a great week!
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