The cost of sacrifice

“But the king replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’ So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.” 2 Samuel 24:24
David had sinned against the Lord by counting the men in Israel’s army (this had been expressly forbidden, Ex. 30:12). So the Lord offered him three choices of judgement: three years of famine, three months of war, or three days of plague. David opted for the latter, and the destroying angel began to strike down the people. However, when he came to the city of Jerusalem, God had mercy and called to the angel to stop (2 Sam. 24:16). David saw this happening, and the exact place was at the threshing-floor of a man called Araunah. David then offered to buy the land in order to establish an altar. When Araunah offered to give it to him – no doubt he had seen the angel too – David refused.
I hope we can identify with David’s words here: ‘I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God [something] that cost me nothing.’ A sacrifice is only so if it costs us something. Cost is different from monetary value – we think of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1-4). It is not something that is judged by other people, but by God, because only He knows how much something is worth to us. And if we struggle to obey when He asks us to give up something to Him, we need to remember that everything we have belongs to God anyway.