Word of Salvation – Vol.47 No.6 – February 2002

The Cost of Serving the Lord

Sermon by Rev A Esselbrugge

on 2 Samuel 24:24

Scripture Readings: 2 Samuel 24:1-25; Hebrews 12:1-3

Suggested Hymns: BoW: 170; 217; 1a; 215; 57a; 499:1,2

Brothers and sisters, young people, boys and girls.

Let me begin by asking you if you have ever thought about setting out on an extended journey without first determining whether your car would get you to your destination and back, and whether you had enough money to pay for that journey?  I doubt very much there would be anyone here who would do that.  No one ever goes out to buy a house without first deciding if they can afford it, either to pay cash for it or the most likely thing to make the loan repayments.  No country ever goes to war without first estimating if they think they have a good chance of success.

But do we do that sort of exercise when it comes to our religion, to our spiritual standing, and to our expectation of what is to come after we have died?  There is a certain cost to everything, a certain price to pay.  I'm not suggesting for a moment that a person can earn peace with God – salvation is a gift of the love of God, the price having been paid by His Son upon the cross.  But there is a cost to serving the Lord or choosing not to serve Him, and that's what we see here with king David.

David was a mighty man of God, and the Lord blessed him, and his love and service to the Lord are wonderful to behold.  But in this chapter of 2 Samuel 24 before us today is one of the dark periods of David's life, but one that ends on a brighter note than some other episodes in his life.

David decided to do a head count of the people of the Lord, especially those old enough to fight and to go to war.  There is no doubt at all from what we're told here that this was a terrible sin before the Lord.  Just why, is something we're not told.  Most people seem to agree that what motivated David to do this was pride and ambition.  A little like us comparing the size of our congregation to that of another.  We somehow may feel a little bigger or better than others if our membership numbers are higher than theirs are.

The thing is that this desire of David to conduct a census of his troops in itself was apparently quite innocent.  There's no indication here of why the Lord regarded it as a terrible sin when on at least two previous occasions He had Moses do this very same thing.  Perhaps it was because the Lord hadn't commanded David to do this.  Perhaps there was pride and ambition in David, perhaps David had come to think Israel had finally overcome her enemies, and she was now in a position of permanent stability and power, and the nation belonged to him.  But whatever the fault, the Lord regarded it as a great evil.

When the numbers were finally brought to the king, David was suddenly struck in his conscience that he'd committed a terrible sin, and even as he prayed for forgiveness, the Word of the Lord came to him by the prophet Gad, giving him three options.  The Lord said he could choose:

1.  Three years of famine,
2.  Three months of fleeing from his enemies, or
3.  Three days of plague on the land.

What would you have chosen in that situation?  David was brought down to reality, to realise all over again that there is but One Lord, One sovereign God, and before Him people are but ants upon the earth.  Everyone must bow before the great, only and true God.

David must choose, and whatever he does it will bring great distress.  If he should choose famine, the people will look at him and say he chose something that will affect them and not the king, because he'd be well supplied with food.  If he chose war, they would again say that the king is well protected.

But hadn't the people always believed and experienced the mercy of God?  Better by far then to fall into the hands of a merciful God than the hands of men.  It had to be the plague then; all people are equal before such a thing.

No sooner had David chosen, and a plague burst out on the land.  For three days it swept across the nation, and seventy thousand people died.  We can't comprehend such a mass of death in such a short space of time, but at the end of the third day the Lord said to the angel of death, “Enough”.  And we read here that the angel was visible to David's eyes.  He had been stopped at the threshing floor of Araunah, and when David saw the angel he said, “I am the one who has sinned and done wrong.  These are but sheep.  What have they done?  Let your hand fall upon me and my family.  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?” (vss.17-18)

Araunah's response was to offer the threshing floor as a gift to David.  It included the floor, the oxen for the sacrifice and the threshing sled for the fire of the sacrifice.  But David refused the generosity of the man saying that he could not offer God something that cost him nothing.

This is our point this morning.  There is always a cost in full surrender.  David had sinned.  The Lord had shown him his sin and the seriousness of that sin, and David was required to surrender entirely before the sovereign Lord, and he had received specific and clear instructions on where and how that surrender was to take place.  The place nor the means of the sacrifice were his to give.  They had to be acquired first.

Congregation, we are in precisely the same position as David.  We are a people who are His very own, who are blessed through the salvation work of Jesus the Son of God, and who will be brought into the glorious realms of His heavenly kingdom.  Therefore, the Lord's desire and requirement of us are to make a sacrifice of worship before Him.  This is the cost of discipleship.  We have His Word, His specific and clear instructions, on where and how that surrender and sacrifice are to take place.

Consider with me the cost of a Christ-centred life.  And the first thing we would do well to take note of is that a Christ-centred life will cost us our favourite sins.  Favourite sins are those sins that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews speaks about in chapter 12, "the sin that so easily entangles” us.  You know what I'm talking about here.  I don't need to give graphic examples.  Just think of that favourite fantasy, that forbidden thought, those words which fall out of the mouth before we've thought about them, that temper, or as we've suggested it might have been with David, that pride and arrogant ambition.

What sins are there in your life that you knowingly tolerate and excuse?  Sometimes we say, that's the way I am, that's my character.  But it's an excuse for something we want to tolerate instead of casting off those things that hinder, and running the race God has marked out for us as His way and path for us.  What sins are there which are keeping you in chains and are the cause of grief to your Lord?  What do you keep secret from others?  Full surrender demands that we deal with those favourite sins.

A second cost of Christian discipleship, of a Christ-centred life, is the favour of the world.  Isn't that such a hard thing to overcome?  The approval and admiration of the people around us.  No one wants to appear different, or be called "nerdish", or stand out from the crowd in a non-approved way.  And yet, that is exactly what the gospel calls us to do.

The apostle John, in his first letter, under the authority of the Holy Spirit, instructs us in this way, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world – the craving of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1Jn.2:15-17)

What we're to do, as our Lord taught us in His Sermon on the Mount, is this, "You are the light of the world, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (Mt 5:16).  Never hide the fact that you are a Christian, if indeed you are and you love the Lord Jesus.  It will bring rejection and in some cases hardship and stress, but it's the cost of loving and serving the Lord Jesus with Him in the centre of our living.

We only need to think here about our Lord Himself.  The world rejected Him.  He offered no threat to anyone.  But there was from the world forthright outspoken rejection of all that was contrary to the will and glory of God.  Yet our Lord never raised a rebellion or set out to create division among the people.  He taught the anger of God against sin and the love of the Father to all who come to Him in faith, believing that Jesus is the Christ of God.

He offered eternal peace and pardon, and joys that this earth has never seen in the presence of God.  And yet the world rejected Him and crucified Him.  His followers throughout history have always been rejected, or, as John tells us in his gospel, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.  As it is you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.  That is why the world hates you." (Jn.15:19).  And as bishop Ryle once wrote, “You must be content to be ill thought of by man if you please God.”

The cost of a Christ-centred life also touches us in our wallets.  King David there in 2Samuel 24 insisted on buying the threshing floor on which he was to build an altar and offer a sacrifice to the Lord.  Not only did he buy the floor, but also the threshing sled and the oxen used to pull the heavy sled.  It cost him around 0.6 kilograms of silver, and he was insistent that he could not offer a sacrifice for which he had made no sacrifice.  Actually, 1 Chronicles 21 tells us David ended up buying the whole site, the entire hill where the threshing floor was, and it ended up costing him 600 shekels of gold.

Serving the Lord costs us financially.  It's easy to overlook and look down on the offering bag as it comes past as some kind of worldly thing.  It's not hard to switch off to the poor in the world whom the Lord has commanded us to care for.  But serving Christ costs money.  It may be that we haven't considered how much it costs to run a church.  Each time the bag comes by, to make sure it looks like we're doing our bit, we put in a couple of dollars.

The Bible makes no apology to us when it speaks boldly to us about money.  In the Old Testament the people were required by law from God, to tithe (ten percent) of their income to the service of the Lord.  Ten percent of what they earned before taxes or loans or food had been deducted.  And the poor, the welfare of the individual, rested as first responsibility with the family.

There were also laws about caring for your neighbours in need.  There were also temple taxes and redemption taxes, which people were required to pay whenever the Lord ordered a census.  The New Testament highlighted and emphasised the Old Testament principle when it teaches that the earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord.  Nothing here belongs to us, and yet we may enjoy the benefits of the earth.  Our trust, however, is to be fixed on the Lord and not in money.

The fact is that we here in this country know very little about financial sacrifice for Christ.  Not many of us have given up a well-paying job, or lost a contract, because of our faith.  How many here have put the Lord to the test when it comes to trusting in Him in making financial decisions, and choosing to put Him and honour to Him before all else?  Some people will even use the Lord's Day, the day of rest and worship, as an opportunity to earn some extra income.

The cost of discipleship includes our finance, and we have to ask ourselves what it's costing us now?  Are we making decisions on the basis of trust in the Lord and on biblical principles, or on worldly financial expediency?

A fourth cost of a Christ-centred life is giving God the first place in our hearts.  Some people want to draw a line between salvation and discipleship.  Some have the idea that suggests salvation and walking with the Lord can be separated into two distinct compartments.  You can be saved and a Christian without being a disciple.

Well, congregation, salvation is a free gift.  Salvation is by faith in Christ alone.  Salvation is believing Jesus is the Son of God who entered this world by being born to a virgin.  Salvation is believing that He has been crucified in order to pay the price and secure the forgiveness of all our sin.  Salvation is knowing that Jesus rose from death to life again, ascended into heaven and shall come again just as He went.  Do you believe this?

Then don't stop there.  Test and prove your salvation.  Are you at the very least wrestling with these things we've noted?  We've pointed to four things:

1.  overcoming favourite sins;
2.  not being concerned about the favour of the world;
3.  addressing your financial commitment; and
4.  a willingness to see that discipleship is living those things out
     in service, in sacrifice and in worship to the Lord.

  If you're not at the very least seeking to serve the Lord in these ways, you will need to ask whether your salvation is genuine.  Discipleship is costly, but thanks be to God – His promise is that if we seek His kingdom first, seeking to serve Him in all our living, being prepared to do as Christ prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “not as I will but as you will”, then all these other things will be added to us.

Congregation, have we been offering Christ that which costs us nothing?  Consider the cross.  Salvation cost the Lord God the life of His only begotten Son.  Choose the Christ-centred life, let us walk with Him.

Amen.