In 1 Chronicles 21, David and his escort had been on their way to the high place in Gibeon to offer sacrifices, when the Angel of the Lord commanded Gad to explain a detour to David.

A punishing plague had fallen upon Israel, causing David great distress and 70,000 men to die. Then “the Lord looked and relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who was destroying, ‘It is enough’” (15). The angel happened to be standing by the threshing floor of a farmer named Ornan and the will of God was that David should erect there an altar to the Lord. He told the stunned farmer, “You shall grant it to me at the full price, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people” (22). Ornan, still flustered from receiving a visitation from the King and a sighting of the Angel of the Lord, sword in hand and death in his wake, simply offered to give the threshing floor to David, “Take it to yourself … I also give you the oxen for burnt offerings, the threshing implements for wood, and the wheat for the grain offering; I give it all” (23).

Sounds good doesn’t it? And Ornan certainly meant well, but David refused his generous offer. “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price, for I will not take what is yours for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings with that which costs me nothing” (24).

Ornan’s offer, while kind, would have had the effect of draining away all the sacrifice from David’s offering. David gave him 600 hundred shekels of silver for the place and built his altar and worshiped. He worshiped, however, through sacrifice.

Sacrifice is the part of worship and service at which many people stumble. Notice that David’s sacrifice and worship are his response to God’s mercy—a divine expression of unmerited favor in declaring an end to the plague David earned with sin (1 Chron. 21:1-13, Rom. 6:23). When we contemplate worship, it should be couched in the same terms—sacrificial worship as a grateful response for divine mercy and unmerited favor.

It costs me nothing, however, to sing thoughtlessly in worship. I can mouth all the words without sacrificing my focus on lunch. It costs me nothing to follow prayer just as carelessly as I bow my head in a pious pose while my mind drifts to the fact that my socks are mismatched or my laces are untied. The Lord’s Supper should be a bittersweet communion with Christ because it is a proclamation of His death; it costs me nothing if I eat and drink without discerning the Lord’s body (1 Cor. 11:29).

And, most obviously, the temptation to remove the sacrifice from my weekly financial offering turns it into something that—relatively—costs me nothing. When my children ask me for a quarter to drop into a vending machine that sells plastic frogs, seriously, it costs me nothing to hand it to them. You see, I have plenty of quarters and will hardly miss the one they put in the machine. It costs me nothing because there is no sacrifice. Thankfully—because to sacrifice in the name of plastic frogs is a little silly.

Sacrificing in the name of God, however, is serious and far from optional. The mercies of God demand a personal and full sacrifice as a response. It is a lifestyle of sacrifice that defines our giving, our praise, our individual benevolence and our willingness to put God and other people ahead of ourselves (Phil. 2:1-4, Rom. 12:10). I need to sacrifice my focus on material matters in order to concentrate on the spiritual (2 Cor. 4:16-5:8).

Paul wrote, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:1-2).

I cannot present myself to God as a living sacrifice—persistent and continual—if my service costs me nothing. If my mind is elsewhere during communion, prayer, singing and teaching. If my weekly offering and willingness to share with others are starved by my own greed and repulsion at the idea of sacrifice for such things. “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Eph. 5:2). “Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Heb. 13:15-16).