Real Hope: GivingSample

Giving That Costs Something

The back story of this passage is very interesting. King David has sinned against God but takes personal responsibility and is guided to make amends by building an altar in a certain place to remind him of the incident and recalibrate his relationship with God.

The prophet Gad instructs King David to go to the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite on Mount Moriah and buy the property from him and make the sacrifice there. As luck seemingly would have it, Araunah welcomed the king excitedly and offered to give the land and provide all the wood and beasts for the offering free of charge.

David declines the offer and says, ‘I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God [that which] cost me nothing’. By doing so David fulfilled the prophecy in Deuteronomy 12:5 – ‘But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go’ (NKJV). So David legally and fairly purchased the same site where Abraham had been called to offer his son, Isaac, to God and where both Solomon’s and Herod’s Temples were to be built.

Pastor Jack Hayford, the writer of ‘Majesty’, also wrote a version of David’s commitment in song in the 1970s. It changed our lives.

We determined that we, too, would have a heart like David, not allowing others to pay our way if God had called us to give or make sacrifice in our lives. It was and is so liberating and an exciting way to live.

Written by JOHN SCOTT