Your Life is Not a Sacrifice if it Doesn't Cost You Anything


2 Samuel 24:24 says, “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."

The background of this verse is that David had sinned against the Lord by not trusting the LORD, and also of becoming proud of the numbers he had counted in his armies of 800,000 men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah.  God’s judgment upon David resulted in a plague that killed 70,000.  David felt extremely remorseful and realized how much devastation was caused by his sin.  The prophet Gad told him to build an altar and make sacrifices unto God.  So David went to Araunah the Jebusite and said he wanted to buy his threshing floor to build an altar there.  Araunah offered to just give David the threshing floor and the animals to sacrifice to which David replied “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."

Note that David’s decision to make a sacrifice was not an effort by David to appease the God he had sinned against.  He was making the sacrifice because the prophet of God instructed him to do so, and he was just being obedient to God’s word. 

So, what is the message here for all who have made their lives a living sacrifice to God and are seeking to serve Him in some capacity as a minister or a Sunday School teacher or a choir member or a crisis center volunteer?  May your motivation certainly not be an attempt to earn some kind of favor from God or make some kind of restitution to God because that is just an impossibility as we could never pay enough to do that.   May it be that the sacrifice of your life for God’s use is out of pure obedience to a call of God upon your life.

But let’s go beyond your obedience of going through motions to make your life a sacrifice to God.  Do you share that desire like David to not let your sacrifice be something that costs you very little or next to nothing?  

I pose this question because you can offer a lot to God just sort-of going along for the ride as long as it is comfortable, you have no criticism, you are not asked to give up personal pursuits and hobbies, or other people are providing the means to make your “sacrifice” not very costly. 

I guess the bottom line of all this is to say to God, “Father, I want to truly offer you my life, my desires, my preferences, my rights, and any pain or consequence or inconvenience that may come as a result of my putting my life on a sacrificial altar to You.  I don’t want to offer my life to you and it really not cost me anything.”

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