Does it Cost you something?
I have been reading about the life of David recently in the Bible. This dude is interesting. He went from Sheppard boy to King of Israel. He did good things and really bad things and yet was still considered a man after God’s own heart.
I find a particular passage interesting in his story. 2 Samuel 24. David is King and wants to take a count of the Fighting Men throughout the land. He was warned by Joab, the prophet, to not do it. He does it anyway. So here is David, a guy who himself killed a lion and a bear. A guy who killed a giant and saw an entire army flee, a guy who with very few men put thousands to flight, a guy who has seen the Lord deliver him and his men no matter what the odds. And now he has it in his mind to count the potential army. Why? Did it really matter how many there were? Did David just need to justify his Kingness? It took 9 months and 20 days according to verse 8 and the number came to 1.3 million. After Joab reported to the number to David his heart became troubled (v10) and he goes before the Lord to confess his sin. He says, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have acted very foolishly”. I think it had to do with trusting God.
So the next morning, Gad, David’s seer, comes to him with a message from God and says that the Lord is offering David a choice of punishment. Now we should all long for the day when our relationship with God is so good He asks us to choose our punishment. Anyway, neither choice given by God is a good choice (remember it is punishment). They all have costs, big costs. Why is that?
Because when the King, the one appointed by God messes up, everything in his domain has to pay the price.
So the choices are 7 years of famine, or David fleeing from his enemies for 3 months or 3 days of pestilence on the land. David prays for God’s mercy and not to fall into the hands of man. Pestilence comes. Seventy thousand people die at the hand of the Angel sent to deliver the punishment. When David sees it he begs to be the one punished asking for the people to be spared. The Lord stops the Angel and David is advised to go build an altar in a certain place. When he gets there the place belongs to someone else. David offers to buy the threshing floor and he owner offers to give David all he needs for the sacrifice. That’s when the verse comes along that grabbed me the most.
David says,”I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing.”
There is a high cost to sacrifice. Sacrifice itself is defined as “a giving up of something valuable or important for somebody”. David understood the cost of things in that moment. He understood the cost of him living, becoming king and his sin. We need to understand the cost. The cost God paid for our living, for our becoming all He has called us to be, for our sin. See God doesn’t ask us to do things He Himself is unwilling to do. He sacrificed (gave up something of value for somebody) His own son, Jesus, on our behalf, to take away our sin so we could live in good standing with Him forever. God understands cost. Every time you go before the Lord, ask yourself what it cost you. Every time you serve Him in whatever capacity, ask yourself what it cost you. Every time ask yourself. Set your mind to say, “I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing”. We cost God a great sacrifice. We cost Jesus everything. I pray that we may be called worthy because we remember the cost.
Matt's Anthology 