David’s Sacrifice

Read 2 Samuel 24:18-25
 
2 Samuel 24:22-25 Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 O king, Araunah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.” 24 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. 25 David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
 
THIS is our final glimpse at David’s life. This sacrifice on a Jerusalem threshing floor is more than one offering to stop God’s judgment. In fact, this site points to God’s entire covenant of salvation from Abraham to Jesus Christ and to you.
    We begin to see this when David has a personal encounter with the angel of the Lord. The angel, sent to strike Jerusalem, is stopped at the LORD’s command. David has sacrificially offered himself to God’s judgment. And in response to David’s humility and confession, the judgment ends.
    This threshing floor is believed to be Mount Moriah, the same place God sent Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. When Abraham submitted to God’s judgment to even sacrifice his own son, God held back Abraham’s hand to offer a substitute for Isaac. 
      Abraham and David learned the high cost of sin and the expansive mercy of God.
    There is much more. This threshing floor is the site of the temple David’s son Solomon will soon build. In this temple will be the priestly sacrifices to hold back the LORD’s judgment hand. Then one day to this same mountain came the great sacrifice of our High Priest, Jesus Christ. The Son of God, rich in mercy, laid down his life to pay the high cost of sin. God’s has mercifully holds back his judgment hand to wrap you in his arms of grace when you humbly confess Jesus Christ as Lord.
    Time and again, God’s Word teaches us the justice of God’s judgment and the grace of God’s mercy. There is no greater wisdom than to know this.
 
Ephesians 2:3-5 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions –  it is by grace you have been saved.