Pride and Sacrifice

I had two takeaways from 2 Samuel 24.

1) Pride is ultimately not trusting in God but something else. 

Conducting of the census was seen as something inappropriate here. Was there a need to know the number of soldiers as a king? Perhaps. But commentaries stated that it was the pride in David's heart that prompted him to push for the census. A trust in numbers rather than God. It might seem that he learnt his lesson as he wrote Psalm 20 that "some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God". Back then David had his wars to fight and now we have ours to fight. We might not rely on the amount of resource we have but we can end up relying on something else that is not God. 

2) Sacrifice means we give up something of value to God

verse 24 : But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

David bought a piece of land (threshing floor), setup an altar and offered burnt offering. The essence of sacrifice is that we give up something which does not cost us nothing. 

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:7-8)

The reason we can sense Paul's desire for God is because we can understand that that there is some worth in the "everything" he counts as lost. Many times we think that we are sacrificing in our course of service, but perhaps we need to assess if anything of value is given up? Are we deceiving ourselves? If we value the things we are given more than God, we will be inclined not to give them up to serve the Lord and avoid sacrifice/service. 

May the Lord help us to guard our heart against pride and be willing to offer sacrifices with the right heart and mind.