And they say that it's a pleasure to me to be here. It's the first opportunity I've had to be with this assembly. It's always a pleasure to meet the Lord's people and to share it together in the precious things of Christ. I should like tonight to read a portion of the last chapter of Second Samuel. Second Samuel, chapter twenty-four. Verse one, and again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go number Israel and Judah. Verse ten, And David's heart smote him after that he had numbered the people, and David said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly in that I have done, and now I beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. For when David was up in the morning, the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and say unto David, Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things, choose one of them, that I may do it unto thee. And Gad came to David, and told him and said, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land, or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee, or that there be three days' pestilence in thy land. Now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait. Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great. And let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, from the morning even to the time appointed, and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men. And when the angel of the Lord stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough. Stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord was at the threshing place of Arana the Jebusite. And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, And said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray, thee, be against me, and against my father's house. And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord, in the threshing floor of Aron of the Chabdysite. And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. And Arona looked and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Arona went out and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the ground. And Arona said, Wherefore is my Lord the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Arana said unto David, Let my Lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him. Behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood. All these things did Arana, as a king, give unto the king. And Arana said unto the king, The Lord thy God accept thee. And the king said unto Arana, Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord was entreated for the land and the plague were stayed from Israel. Now I would like again to ask the Lord's blessing. Gracious God and Father, again we come to thee through the Lord Jesus, acknowledging our dependence upon thee. We realize that we have no wisdom or power in ourselves. We realize that thou dost know the heart and mind of each of us And we ask our Father that thou wilt work in all of us, speaker and hearer alike, that we may hear thy voice, and we pray that our souls may be blessed, and that our lives may be conformed to the image of thy Son. For we pray in his name. Amen. What I should like to speak of, especially tonight, is the history of this man, Arana the Chedgesite. But before I speak of Arana, I would like to say a few words about David. David was a man after God's own heart. David trusted in the Lord when he was a boy. And the Lord blessed him. And David was the youngest of eight sons in a poor family in the tribe of Judah. when a man of the tribe of Benjamin was on the throne of Israel. And there wasn't any thought in David's mind that he would ever be king. In those days everybody thought that if Saul died, Jonathan would be his successor. And nobody at that time had any idea that God had David in mind as the one whom he was going to put on the throne of Israel and make him one of the great men of all time and all history. Nobody had any idea of that, least of all David. And David was not doing what he did with the idea of being great. David simply was in the condition that he describes in Psalm one hundred and sixteen, which opens with these words, and I love the simplicity of it. He says, I love the Lord. I like the simplicity of that. I love the Lord. And that's what was in David's heart as a boy. I love the Lord. And David learned to walk by faith and not by sight. And because he loved the Lord, he tried to please God in all that he did. And David learned to sling a stone. He knew that in order to care for his father's sheep properly, he had to be able to drive off the animals. And he learned to sling a stone so that he could hit the mark and never miss. David didn't know anything about Goliath. He never heard of Goliath. He didn't do that with the idea that someday I'm going to kill Goliath that way. He didn't know anything about Goliath. David simply did that because this was his job. He was there to care for the sheep. And in order to care for the sheep, he had to be a good marksman with a sling. And David practiced, you know, I'm sure that it wasn't so that the first time David put a stone in a sling and whirled it around. that he was able to hit the target. I don't believe that. I believe that David had to practice that by the hour, as you and I would. Oh, people say, why waste your time at that? You know, after all, what happens if you come somewhere near the animal, you can frighten him away, don't they? Get him in the heart or in the eye and kill him, just drive him away. You don't have to waste your time on that. Well, it wasn't wasted time. David was doing his best, and he did it as unto God. You know, you might have said, well, David, your father isn't around. Your brothers aren't here. Who's going to know? God's going to know. The first thing you learn from David is he loved the Lord, and because he loved the Lord, he put himself into everything that he did, and the history of David is a wonderful history. And he not only... learn to sling a stone, but David apparently learned to manufacture musical instruments. And he fashioned some kind of a lyre and learned to play it. And he learned to sing. He didn't know he was going to be the sweet psalmist of Israel. He didn't know anything about that. But he loved the Lord and he had joy in his soul. And he thought I'd like to express this joy in praise to God. And he says, you know, thou art my God from my youth. And he says, I have trusted thee from my youth. And from the time David was a boy, he loved the Lord, and he let the Lord have all that was in him. Now when you do that, God is able to mold your life so that God can fulfill plans for you that you never dreamed of, but he does. God has wonderful plans for the life of every one of us, if we will let God have his way. But most of us don't start till pretty late. And when we do start, we go pretty slowly. And by the time we get around to being in God's hands, most of our lives are gone. We spend our years as a tale that is told, and we have most of the story written before we ever turn it over to God and say, you direct it. You bring it out the way you want it. Well, David started when he was young. And he became a man of God. Nobody knew it. But God knew it. And there came a time when King Saul came into God's disfavor. And God said to Samuel, I have rejected Saul from being king. And I have chosen a man. And he calls him a man. He was only a boy. But he calls him a man. He says, I've chosen a man after my own heart. And I want you to go and anoint it. And Samuel said, who is he? Well, the Lord said, you go to the house of Jesse and ask, show him to you. And so Samuel came to the house of Jesse, and when he got there, well, the first son came. Samuel said to Jesse, where are your sons? Well, here's he live, the firstborn. And he came, and he was a fine, manly-looking fellow. And Samuel said, my, this is the man. The Lord said, no. No, this isn't me. Well, Samuel was a bit disappointed. He said, do you have another son? Oh, you've got seven of them, eight actually. The youngest boy was out with a sheep. And one after another, seven came and went. The Lord said, this is not he. Finally, Samuel said, do you have another one? Yes, he said, yes, the boy out with a sheep. Bring him in. And as soon as he came in, the Lord said, Arise, anoint him. This is he. Now that was the beginning of David's public life. We're not going to go through it. It's a lovely story of how David came to be Israel's deliverer and savior and how he slew the giants and later on fought their battles and became their leader. And in due time God made him king. First over the two and a half tribes and then for the two tribes and then for seven and a half years he reigned over them and finally over the whole twelve tribes. Then there came a block in David's life. David, like many other people, became careless. And I think one of the great lessons that we as Christians need to learn is that you can never afford to be careless. It's a wonderful thing to be on the mountaintop with God. But J.N. Darby makes the remark in one of his writings, he says it's a terrible thing to have been there. and to be boasting of that and not mindful of our present need. The dangerous thing. Well, David had done great things for God by his grace and by his power, and David became careless. And in that carelessness, Satan gained an entrance into David's life. Now it's a tragedy. when a child of God gets out of communion with the Lord and Satan gains an entrance. Doesn't happen all at once. We open to Satan here and there and eventually Satan gets in and David had a very serious fall into sin. And after that David had a checkered career. And God recovered him. David went into a state of very deep and profound and genuine repentance, and God recovered him, but he never got back to the place of the steadfast power of God in his life. He never got back to that. He won some victories after that, but he had some great defeats too. One of the notable ones was when one of the giants nearly killed him. And David had to be rescued. This is the man that had fought the battles of Israel. This is the man who had killed the great giant Goliath. Now he had to be rescued. And he was rescued by one of his mighty men. And then they said to David, Now from here on, you don't go out and fight anymore. We'll do the fighting. You stay home. And so, as we say, David was put on the shelf. David was from here on in a back number. He was not used in fighting again. They said, we don't want the light of Israel quenched. You stay home. We'll go out and fight. Now, David was no longer the warrior. So what does he do but begin to dwell on his greatness without actually being in the conflict? And so he said to Joab, you go out and number Israel. I want to see how great an army I have. I want to see the great power that we have. You go out and number Israel. Now, if God had told him to do that, it would have been all right. But God didn't tell him to do that. It was Satan who stirred his heart to do that. And while we read here... that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. It says he moved David without saying who the he was. We would naturally think it was the Lord. But you learn from Chronicles it was Satan. It says definitely that Satan moved the heart of David to number Israel. And he did this in pride. He wanted to know how great a host he had under his command. Not able to fight, but the commander of a great host of people. It was glory by proxy. We often do that, you know. We boast in the old brethren. Those that are in their graves, we think how wonderful they were. Well, they were, but that doesn't help us, you know. It's a poor thing for me to boast in what somebody else has done. When I'm not in the conflict, but I'm boasting in others who are or have been. Well, that was David. Well, now the anger of the Lord was kindled against David. And David sent the prophet Gad to David, or the Lord sent the prophet Gad to David, and he said, I'm going to give you a choice. This is a difficult thing to choose. The Lord says, I'm going to give you a choice. You can have one of three things, either seven years of famine. That would be enough to destroy the land. Or you can flee for three months before your enemies. Or you can suffer pestilence in the land for three days. Well, it was a difficult choice to make. And David didn't actually choose any one of the three. He simply said, Don't let me fall into the hand of man. I know what happens when you fall into the hand of man. There's something about the human heart that is inherently cruel. And when you fall into the hands of man, you're in a bad case. David said, don't let me fall into the hand of man. Let me fall into the hands of God, because God's mercies are very great. Let me fall into the hand of God. I'd like to suggest this, that whenever we get into trouble, the very best thing you can do is to come to the Lord and acknowledge all that is involved in the trouble and cast yourself on the mercy of God. That's the best thing you can do. Make a clean breast of whatever your trouble is and cast yourself on the mercy of God. That's the best thing that anybody can do when he's in trouble. Well, David did that. And so the Lord said, well, I'll send the pestilence. And so on the first day, Seventy thousand people died. And David, of course, was deeply distressed. And David said to the Lord, This isn't right. Seventy thousand people have died, and they didn't sin. It was I who sinned, and my half that have sinned. Let the judgment fall on me. I'm sure... that when the angel of the Lord took seventy thousand people away, that God had a reason for it, you can be very sure that there wasn't any injustice with God. God had a reason for it. But at the same time, David realized it wasn't these people who sinned, it was I who sinned, and my father's heart, let the judgment fall on me. But somehow, that wasn't what stayed the judgment of God. This is what stayed the judgment of God. It says when the angel of the Lord stretched forth his hand against Jerusalem, God said, It is enough. Stop. Stop right here. Don't destroy this beloved city. Now, it wasn't yet the place where God put his name. It became that. And it became that through this incident. But God foreknew that it was the place where he was going to put his name. And when the angel stretched forth his hand against Jerusalem, the Lord said it is enough. Stop here. Now the thing that strikes me is this. The place where he stopped was the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite. It wasn't an Israelite. It was a Jebusite. You'll find a very striking thing as you run through the Bible. Wherever there's an outstanding man of God, almost invariably, he's a stranger and not one of the people. There were many lepers in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet, but none of them were cleansed, saving Nehemiah and the Syrian. There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, but to none of them was Elijah sent, but to the widow of Syriac. And when the Gentile centurion told the Lord, you don't need to come, just speak the word, the Lord says, I haven't found faith like that in all Israel. Here's a Gentile, a centurion who has more faith than any Israelite I've ever met. And when the Syrophoenician woman said, let the crumbs fall, and the dogs will eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table, and the Lord said to her, O woman, great is thy faith, and he never said that to a single Israelite. It says of the Israelites, he marveled at their unbelief. And these Gentiles showed faith. It's an amazing thing as you run through the Bible that the great examples of faith are not among the people of God. They're the stranger. I think there's a reason for that. The reason is that the people of God take God for granted. And the strangers don't. The strangers, I believe, when they come to Christ, they realize the value and the preciousness of God's grace and God's salvation. And they are the ones who stand up in the response of faith and obedience to him. Well, now here was Arana, the Jebusite. And it was Arana who caused the judgment of God to stop. And the next man in line would have been he. And God stopped there. Now, I believe there was a reason for that. And the reason, so far as I can see, is that Arana was a saved man, a man who had come out of this heathen Jebusite family, nation, and had become a child of God by Satan, Jehovah. I'd like to go back over the history of Arana a little bit. If you'll turn with me to Deuteronomy twenty. You read a very striking thing here in verses sixteen and seventeen. God is telling Moses that when you go into the land, when you fight against your enemies, you make them an offer of peace, but not the people of Canaan, he says. Verses sixteen and seventeen of Deuteronomy twenty. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Parasites, the Heivites, the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God has commanded thee. Did you notice that the Jebusites were people that should have been destroyed? and they were to save alive nothing that breathed? Well, there were some of them that weren't destroyed, and one of them was an ancestor of Ornan. He didn't know anything about Ornan. But here at the time that Joshua went into the land of Canaan, they were intended to destroy the nations of the Canaanites, and one of them was the Jebusite, and some of them were destroyed, and some were not. Now if you come back to second Samuel chapter five, I'd like to show you another point in the history of these Jebusites. Beginning at verse six. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites. The inhabitants of the land. Now these were the people that should have been destroyed by Joshua, and they were not. And they were still in the land, and they were right here in Jerusalem. And it says that the king and his men went to Jerusalem to the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither, thinking David cannot come in hither. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, the same as the city of David. And David said on that day, Whosoever geteth up to the gutter, and smite at the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. So David dwelt in the fort, and called at the city of David, And David built roundabout from Milo and inward and so on. Now here. First of all, the Jebusites should have been destroyed by Joshua. Secondly, of those that remained on Mount Zion, they became the hated of David's soul because they scorned David. They said to David, you couldn't even take away the lame and the blind. We're so established in this fortress of Zion that we could defend it with lame men and blind men. Where are your great men? And David says, these people are hated of my soul, and the man that goes up and takes Zion is going to be captain of the host. And it turns out that Joab did it, and they destroyed them. But somehow, Ornan escaped again. How do you think he escaped? Well, this is a little bit of speculation, but I think that Ornan was something like Rahab. There is a story that somebody told Joab how to get up into Mount Zion. And I wouldn't be sure that it wasn't true and that it wasn't Ornan who did it. Whether that's the fact or not, it seems to me very plausible that it may have been. The scripture doesn't say that it was so, but it says this, that these were the hated of David's soul, and yet when they were destroyed, Ornan was left. So here's a man whose life had been spared twice. Now it's spared a third time. Now God is judging Israel. Seventy thousand Israelites died, and God came to the very threshing floor of Ornan, and he said, Stop! I'm not going to destroy Ornan. Now, you know, this man must have been a chosen vessel of God. This man was an unusual character, because it was his faith, evidently, that God honored, and God stopped the plague at the door of Ornan, at the very threshing floor of Ornan. Now God said to David, you go up to the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite, and you build an altar there, and I'm going to stop the plague, and the judgment is over. Well, we read in the book of Chronicles... that Orman was fish and wheat with three of his sons. And it says, when they saw David the king, the three sons fled and they hid. Why do you think they did that? Well, I have an idea that the three sons thought, this is the end. We escaped before when Joab took the rock and destroyed these Jebusites. We escaped before. But now that the plague has come, evidently David has decided that we're the cause of it, and no doubt David has come to destroy us. The three sons fled and they hid. They wouldn't dare to face David. Not so with Ornan. Not so with Ornan. It says of Ornan that he went out and he bowed to the king. And he says, Wherefore does my Lord the King come to me? You see, here's a man who evidently has faith in God. And here's a man who has the consciousness that his life is in God's hand. And he says, Whatever God permits, I'm ready to take. And I'm sure that Ornan had the idea. If God spared his family in the days of Joshua, and God spurred his family at the hand of Joab, and God spurred him the plague from the angel, Ornan was pretty sure that God wasn't going to let him die now by the hand of David. No, he didn't run. And he didn't hide, but he came out and he bowed to the king, and he says, Wherefore is my Lord the king come to me? Well, David says, the Lord has told me to build a threshing floor here, to build an altar here, in your threshing floor. The Lord then says, that's wonderful. You know, all that I have and am I owe to God. If it weren't for the grace of God, my family would have been destroyed centuries ago. If it weren't for the grace of God, I would have died at the hand of John. If it weren't for the grace of God, I would have died in the plague. Everything that I have is God. It's only by God's mercy that I'm not the sure. You want to build an altar here? Fine. The threshing floor is yours. You want to build an altar? And you want a sacrifice? Take the oxen. You need wood for the sacrifice? Take the instrument. Take the yoke. Take the threshing instrument. And you want a meat offering? We don't read it here in Samuel, but you do in Chronicles. He said, take the whole harvest for a meat offering. It's all yours. Everything is yours. And it says, all these as a king, did Arana the Jebusite give unto the king? Arana, who was simply an escaped Jebusite, had within him the consciousness that he was the child of the king. And he says, it says, all these as a king, did Arana give unto the king. let my Lord the King take everything I have, it belongs to God. You're welcome to it all. And David says, nay, hold up. He says, do you think that I would offer to God that which cost me nothing? I won't do it. He says, anything that I offer to God, I'm going to pay for it. When I make a sacrifice to God, it has to take something out of me. I can never offer to God what makes something out of somebody else. Now look, what I learned from this lesson, and I think that it's a very important point in Christian experience, is this, that the value of anything that I do for God lies in how much it takes out of me to do. I'm not just speaking of money, it might be money. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it isn't money. Sometimes it's a matter of comfort or convenience. Sometimes it's a question of turning my house inside out. I've had people say, have a meeting in my house and have those people walk on my carpet, not me. Okay, it would cost you too much. Don't do it. It'll cost you too much. But the value of what you do is what it costs. Somebody say, take these missionaries in my house and we have to sleep on the living room floor or else put them on the living room floor or whatever. Don't do it. It'll cost you too much. The value of anything you do for God is in how much it takes out of you to do it. Anything you can do without taking something out of you to do it isn't worth any more to God than it costs you to do it. Everything you do for God has a price tag on it. And the price tag is how much it took out of you to do it. And if it didn't take anything out of you to do it, the price tag is pretty cheap. Now the thing itself might be expensive. You may put a lot of money into something, and it may not take a lot out of you. You may not have to sacrifice anything. The value of anything we do for God is the sacrificial element in it. And if there isn't a sacrificial element in it, it isn't worth very much. We expect a missionary to sacrifice his life. We expect him to give up his prospects in the world. We expect him to live in conditions oftentimes that are something less than standard in our country. And we expect the person to put up with hardship. And if you've ever been on a mission field and you've been in their homes and out with them on the trails and in the native huts where they stay, if you've ever slept on those filthy floors and on those solid board beds and you've eaten food that you can hardly get down, and you travel arduous journeys and all that kind of thing, you will know that a missionary's life is a sacrifice over to say he's a missionary. Somehow a missionary ought to do it. Well, God says the value of anything that we do is how much it takes out of us to do it. You don't have to be a missionary to live a life of sacrifice. Every one of us ought to be planning our lives so that we are sacrificing for God. That's the value of our life that goes out to him. If there isn't sacrifice in it, it isn't worth very much. David said, I won't offer to God that which cost me nothing. If I make an offering to God, it has to cost me something. So he says, I'll buy it at you for a price. And I think it's in Chronicles that says for the full price. And that means in our language at the top price. He said, I not only won't take your goods to make an offering to God, but he said, I won't even take it at a bargain. I won't take it at a reduced rate. You can't sell it to me for half price, so I can give it to God. I'll pay the top price. I'll give you all what you could possibly get if you sold it under the most advantageous circumstances, and I'll offer that to God. I'll put into it everything I can put into it and give it to God. Here were two men that had the spirit of the king. There were two men that had the consciousness that they were children of the king. the saved Jebusite, the spared Jebusite, he was there in the consciousness that as a king he could take all that he had and he would give it to God. It's his. He says, as David said later on, when he was amassing a fortune to be used in the building of the temple. And he got together a sum that has been estimated to be worth about five billion dollars. say, where did they get it? Well, most of it was the spoils of conflict. You know, those kings in those days had crown jewels and royals, very much as the Queen of England has today. And every time David overcame a king, he would take all the treasures and the jewels and the gold and the whatever they had. And he amassed that. And the record of Scripture is that he amassed a sum that is believed to have been worth five billion dollars. And when David turned that over to Solomon and he made a prayer to God, this is what David said. Who am I and what is this people? that we should be able to give so willingly after this sort for all things come of thee, O God. And of thine own have we given thee? Five billion dollars? But it came from God. David says, I was a shepherd boy on the hill. How did I get five billion dollars? God gave it to me. When I give it back to God, I'm not giving anything to God. I'm only giving to God what God gave to me. It's his. That was the spirit of David in his giving. That was the spirit of our man and his giving. That's the kind of giving that God loves. God loves a cheerful giver. And it doesn't apply only to giving. It applies to everything you do. People say, do I have to do it? No, you don't have to do it. In fact, God probably would be just as pleased if he didn't. With that attitude of souls, no. But if I consider that it's a privilege to serve the Lord, that whatever I do, I can do it because by the grace of God he enables me to do it. And it's the joy of one's soul to do it. God is pleased with that. God loves a cheerful giver. A person who does whatever he can and all that he can and does it with a glad heart. The privilege to serve God. God is pleased with that. Well, that's what the king did. He brought this. Now there was a sequel to this. If you turn to Second Chronicles chapter three, you find a very interesting fact. Second Chronicles chapter three and verse one. It says, Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem. in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Arana the Jebusite. Where was Ornan? He calls him here, but it's the same person. It's a different form of the same name. Sometimes called Arana, sometimes called Ornan. Where was the temple built? In the place of the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite, God says, this is where I want my temple built. Here were these two men, the one man, the object of God's absolute grace, who says everything that I have and am belongs to God. Take it. And the other man who said, I wouldn't think of offering but somebody else gives. I want to make an offering on my own behalf, and I want to put all that I have into it. God says, that's the place where I want to build my house. Now if you turn to chapter seven, And verse sixteen of this epistle, and you read this, for now I have chosen and sanctified this house that my name may be there forever, and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually. There is a place where God put his name And God says, my eyes and my heart are going to be there perpetually. Where? At the threshing floor of a Jebusite in the midst of the land of Israel. Here's a man who was the object of God's grace and who responded to that grace with his whole hardened soul and gave himself up completely to God. He says, all that I have and that belongs to him. God says, I'll take that kind of an offering. I'll put my house there. I'll put my name there and my eyes and my heart will be there because here was one who worshiped God and offered to God all that he had. as a recognition that he was a sinner saved by grace. I believe that that's the kind of offering that serves the Lord and glorifies him. I'll take just a minute, if I may, to give you a New Testament example of the same kind. And in this case, it's a woman, and this may have been an Israelite so far as I know she was, in the twelfth chapter of Mark. But I just want you to see how an obscure person can have the same spirit and win the same commendation. You know, when we read a story like that of Ornan, we say, well, if I had lived in those days and if I had had dealings with a great man like David, Maybe I would have done the same thing. Well, here's a woman who didn't live in those days, and she didn't meet a great king like David, but I'd like just to go over briefly the record and to see how this woman showed exactly the same spirit that David and Ornan showed and how the Lord answered to us in her case. You say, what can I do? I'm just a poor person. Well, let's read the story. The twelfth of Mark, beginning at verse forty-one, just four verses. And Jesus sat over against the treasury and beheld how the people cashed money into the treasury, and money that were rich cashed in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mints, which make a farther. And he called unto him his disciples, and says unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow has cashed more in than all they that have cashed into the treasury. For all they did cast in of their abundance, but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. Now there's more than meets the eye, I think here. This woman was a widow. The term that is used in the Gospel of Luke indicates that she was a working woman, a woman who worked for her living. She worked for her living at a daily wage that was so low that she made two mites, which the Bible says make a farthing. But you know, in the original text there are two different words used for farthing. When it says, are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, the coin that is mentioned is worth twice as much as this widow's farthing. She cast in two mites which make a farthing, but the word that is used is only half as much as the farthing that would buy a sparrow. Wasn't enough to buy a sparrow. Only half as much. Now that was the woman's living for the day. You know, in those days, those that were in a position such as this widow, they were in poverty that is unspeakable, that is almost beyond our comprehension. He made these two mites day by day which were half enough to buy a sparrow. What she lived on, I do not know. It says it was her living. Whatever she could get for those two mites, I suppose she could get something, a handful of meal or something like that, and that was her living. Now what can a woman like that do for the Lord? A poor, obscure, nobody was nothing, or at least the nearest thing to nothing, that a person could have. Two mice that make a farthing that she was to live on for that day. That was her living. The Lord says that. What could she do? Well, she went over to the treasury, and it says she cast in the two months. Now, I think that one of the greatest insults you can offer... to the memory of this woman is to speak of the widow's mite. Because the whole point of the story is that it was the widow's mite. She cast them both of them. You often hear people talk about the widow's mite, but she didn't cast in a mite. She cast in two mites. And that was all that she had. Now, had she cast in one, it would have been a tremendous sacrifice. It is in all likelihood she could have got a small handful of barley meal for those two might. She might well have passed in one and have got a few grains anyway of meal to live on. No. She put in two. And she didn't do it for the Lord's sight. She didn't know that he was there. She dropped the two mites into the treasury and the Lord was watching that treasury. She didn't know that. She didn't do it for publicity. She didn't do it for the eyes of the disciples. They didn't know it till the Lord told them. She didn't know that anybody knew it. Well, what are two mites worth? What can you do with them? As we say, these two mites were only half enough to buy a sparrow. What was it worth? This is what it's worth. The Lord called his disciple. You see that woman going down the street? Now look, he didn't say she has put in more than anybody else. This is what he said. She has put in more than all the rest put together. If you study the language of this prophet, what the Lord says is not she has put in more than anybody else. He says, do you see that woman going down there? She has put in more than all they that have put into the treasury. Take them all together. She had put in more. Because taking the whole group of them, they hadn't as much sacrifice in the entire group that had put into the treasury as that woman had in a single gift. There's the woman whose gift had a very high price and a very high value in the sight of God. Now, this woman... cast in all or little. The Lord says of the others, they of their abundance are cast into the treasury. There's a little sideline to this that may be of interest. It says, The Lord watched how they cast money into the treasury, and they that were rich cast in much. Now ordinarily the word for money is silver, but the word here is copper. And I wonder if there isn't a little sideline to that, that they made it look like more by casting in copper instead of silver. And that's to give it the aspect of having a greater gift. Isn't it amazing how people will do things for show? These people were doing this for show. This woman wasn't doing it for show. She was doing it out of the love of God. And this would indicate to me that the most obscure person, a person who has practically nothing in this world, can honor God not only equally with the greatest, but more than the greatest. If you have ever read the story of Borden of Yale O'Nine, written by Mrs. Howard Taylor, she relates the fact that J.P. Morgan and Gordon died in the same year. And they were both Christians. And I don't remember the proportion, but Gordon left many times more for the Lord's work than JP Morgan did. They were both Christians. And J.P. Morgan gave a noble testimony to his faith in the atoning blood of Christ in his will, and he left something for the Lord's work in his will, but Gordon left many times more than J.P. Morgan. Now J.P. Morgan was worth many times more than Gordon. But Gordon left many times more for the Lord's work than J.P. Morgan. It isn't a question of how great you are, what you can do for God. It's a question of what is in your heart. and whether you're really committed to him. And it is my conviction that the power of God is manifest in the lives that are completely yielded up to God. And may the Lord grant with all of us that it may be our habit of life to say with David, I will not give to the Lord that would cost me nothing. Let us pray.