Thoughtful Things

In our text, we see that David was trying to purchase a threshing floor. A threshing floor was a place of separation! The place where the separation takes place! The removal of the chaff from the seed.

This is what John the Baptist was preaching about in Matthew 3:12, as he would let a call for repentance go forth!

John said that He was going to come with a fan in His hand and purge his floor and gather the wheat and the chaff he would burn with unquenchable fire!

I must pause for a moment and tell you the importance of an altar! There is no greater place on this earth!

So much greatness that we read of in the Bible was centered around the altar! Elijah called down the fire at the repaired altar; Abraham had his altars, Issacs life was spared at the altar; king David was even anointed at the altar!

And you are going to be built as a Christian in only one place….at an altar!

Worship is powerful, praise is inhabited, the shout and dance is worthy of pulling walls down, but NOTHING separates chaff from you the seed, like an altar!

David had angered God! He numbered the people, and this was not his place to do so!

So God sent a prophet and gave David three choices:

1 seven years famine

2 run from your enemies three months

3 three days of pestilence

David decided that he would rather be in the hands of God, so 70,000 men died and David could see the angel stretching out his hand over Jerusalem, the angel was standing by the threshing floor of Araunah and David went there….

David went there to altar what he could altar!

So what could he alter? What could he possible do to change the very mind of God?

David came to the threshing floor of Araunah and said i want to but this place (v.16),David told the angel to stop! For i am going to repent ……. And now David is instructed to build an alter.

So David tells Arauanah what is happening and that he wants to buy his threshing floor to build an alter to stop the plague. David said “name your price, I will pay it!”

Aruanah would tell David if this is what it takes you can have it!!!

David said no, I am putting my entitlement away and i will pay full price! We must be willing to do that to make an atonement for our sins! And we can see that David did that many times in his life.

The first thing that strikes me about Araunah is two part; he is at the place of separation and is busy with the separation process(how many knows that living for God is a process?).

And two, he is seemingly unaware of the plague that is raging and I guess it is three part,….there is an angel standing there!(he was a Jebusite, maybe this would have never affected him).

I want to focus on Araunah and his reply: i will give it all! My threshing floor, my livestock for sacrifice, and the wood instruments to burn it with……i will give it all!

I feel very strongly that is what God is trying to push us into! Not just a life of sacrifice for ourselves but a life of sacrifice for a lost and dying world!

An attitude of a man or woman that would say as Araunah, I will give it all!

This wasn’t just his place, it was his life’s work and his present and future , it was the hope of his family!and existence!

What will it take for us to alter our selves to the point that we begin to chisel away ourself to become what God has allied us to be! For us to get so consumed for a lost and dying world that we say, “I will give it all!”

There is a kingdom call! Can you hear it, will you hear it?