Slices
Prepare
Quieten your heart as you come to this devotional time. Ask God to centre your thoughts on him.
Bible passage
David builds an altar
18 On that day Gad went to David and said to him, ‘Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.’ 19 So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming towards him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Araunah said, ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’
‘To buy your threshing-floor,’ David answered, ‘so that I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.’
22 Araunah said to David, ‘Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing-sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 Your Majesty, 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 his prayer on behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
Explore
Here we see a very different David from yesterday. The arrogance has gone. Now there is genuine humility. David obeys the prophet’s command to build an altar so the plague may be stopped. How intriguing that the site is a threshing floor (v 18). John the Baptist will later use this symbol in his preaching: God the judge is sifting the chaff from the wheat (Matthew 3:12).
David refuses Araunah’s offer of the place as a gift (v 24). He realises that, while God’s mercy and grace are free, true worship can never be cheap (v 24).
Observe the final verse (v 25) and the way it bookends the whole of 1 and 2 Samuel. 1 Samuel begins with a woman at a temple begging God for a child, and God answers her prayer (1 Samuel 1:27,28). 2 Samuel concludes with a king at a place soon to be a temple begging God for his people, and God answers his prayer. What an encouragement to pray. What a powerful and gracious God we serve!
Respond
In Romans 12:1,2, Paul writes, ‘… offer your bodies as a living sacrifice … this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ What will this look like for you over the coming week?
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Jeremiah 29–31; Psalm 119:1–24
Pray for Scripture Union
Please pray for all the children who came to an SU holiday or event over the summer. Ask that they will have grown closer to God during that time and, particularly, that they will remain close to him now the holiday seems a distant memory.
