By Brenda Cannon Henley
If you follow this column from week to week, you will remember that in our last edition, I mentioned Ornan, the Jebusite, and invited you to read 1 Chronicles 21:18-30 and 2 Samuel 24:18-24 to learn more about this man and about the visit from David to the threshing floor. To recap the content for you, we read in Chronicles that the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to say to David, “Go up and build an altar unto the Lord in the threshing floor of Ornan.” If you are familiar with Scripture, you will recognize that the building of an altar is a special command and one that God gave several times in the Bible. Men built altars in order to worship or thank God for what He had done for them.

Ornan and his four sons were busy threshing wheat as they heard David approach. Ornan and his sons also saw the angel according to Verse 20. The men were fearful of the angel. David called out to Ornan and the businessman bowed himself to the visitor. David, a very powerful man, asked Ornan if he would sell him the threshing floor so that he could follow God’s command and build an altar as he was instructed. “I will pay you full price,” said David. In other words, David wasn’t there looking for a deal. He wanted to pay what the threshing floor and the land was worth. Ornan recognized David and wanted to give him the threshing floor and the land. He further offered to give him the oxen for burnt offerings, the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat he had.

Ornan said words that God is often eager to hear, “I give it all.” How many times in our lives are we really willing to “give it all” for our families, for those we love, or for a stranger that might approach us in our busy daily lives? Ornan was a good man. He quickly said, “I give it all.” He offered David whatever he needed, but moreover, whatever he wanted. Verse 24 tells us a lot about David. And King David said to Ornan, “Nay, I will buy it for the full price. I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.” The story goes on to say that David gave Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the threshing floor, the land on which it sat, and the entire place.

David built his altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings and he called upon the Lord.

Translated or modernized a bit, David said to Ornan who was offering to give him the threshing floor and all that abided around it, “I will not give a gift that costs me nothing.” In other words, if I am to have this place to build my altar unto God, I want to pay for it. I don’t want it to come easy. I don’t want you to give it to me. It would require little of me to simply take it from you and build my altar.

The true sacrifices in our lives that only you and I know about are the ones that God honors. I do not know what God has asked of you, or how He has asked you to give your gift, but I do know this — and I have lived long enough to see it proved over and over — when and if we give our gifts from a pure heart, He honors them and uses our little to become much in our lives and in the lives of others. I want to live in such a way that I can join King David in saying, “I will not give a gift that costs me nothing.”

Brenda Cannon Henley can be reached at (409) 781-8788 or at [email protected].

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