Paying the price
1 Chronicles Chapter 19 – 22:1
Today’s reading has one of the rare stories of David being disobedient to God, though even in this story he comes out as nobly repentant.
First, though, an omission.
Chapter 20 of 1 Chronicles starts off almost identical to 2 Samuel 11, which recounts the story of David and Bathsheba.
While the surrounding battle stories are the same, 1 Chronicles does not speak of David’s sins with Bathsheba and Uriah.
In Chapter 22, though, we see Satan instigating David to take a census, which can be seen as a lack of faith in God to provide adequate forces to do whatever is needed and to quantify his assets.
When David repents for this action, God gives him three choices on what the punishment will be. David chooses the briefest of the punishments, a three-day plague that kills 70,000 men.
David again goes to God, this time on behalf of his people, and pleads that the guilt was his, so the punishment should fall on him and his family, not on the people.
God then tells David to go build an altar on a particular threshing floor. As a large, flat area, probably paved, a threshing floor would be an ideal place for an altar. The owner of the threshing floor offers to give him not only the threshing floor, but even animals, grain and wood for the sacrifice.
“No,” David said, “I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”

Monday meditation

Proverbs 27:1-2
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips.

Prayer focus
Lord, remove the temptation to offer sacrifices only of that which is free or easy to give.

-Rev. Mark Fleming