The Meaningless Man’s Threshing Floor

Have you ever felt like your life is meaningless? Totally insignificant? Like you can’t seem to see the purpose in your life? A man called Ornan only appears in two places in all of the Bible, and his job was nothing more than to thresh wheat. How many hours, and days, and years, he must have wondered if his life would ever amount to anything more than the threshing floor. Then God called King David to repent for his sin and thereby prevent Him from punishing the people any further for King David’s sin by setting up an altar on Ornan’s threshing floor. Imagine how surprised Ornan must have been at King David’s request to use his threshing floor as an altar to God. But Ornan did not show surprise. He showed instead utter humility and complete surrender. He told King David he would give literally all that he had – the threshing floor, the instruments, and the meat to become an altar to God and as a sacrifice for not a penny.

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King David refused to take it for free, but Ornan’s heart was to give all that he had as a sacrifice and offering to the Lord. The story of Ornan’s threshing floor that he must have worked so tirelessly over does not end there. For that threshing floor later became the location of the house of the Lord that King Solomon would one day build in Jerusalem. Little did Ornan know how God would ultimately use his heart, his life, his trade, and his very threshing floor to become the temple King Solomon built for the Lord God almighty. Ornan’s life wasn’t so meaningless after all, was it? In the world’s eyes, and his own eyes, Ornan might have looked like an ordinary man living an ordinary life with no great purpose. But in the eyes, and in the hands, of the Lord, Ornan’s heart and his life and his livelihood would be used for so very much more. For the glory of the Lord!

What is your threshing floor? Is there something in your life that you do, or that you have, or both, that seems so very ordinary and maybe even meaningless? Is it possible that with a humble heart and your decision to place it in the hands of the Lord, that it will become so very much more – something to bring glory to the Lord? Place your heart, and your life, and all that you have, in His hands, and trust God to do as He desires. 

1Ch 21:16  And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. 
1Ch 21:17  And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on thy people, that they should be plagued. 
1Ch 21:18  Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. 
1Ch 21:19  And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the name of the LORD. 
1Ch 21:20  And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. 
1Ch 21:21  And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. 
1Ch 21:22  Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto the LORD: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed from the people. 
1Ch 21:23  And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen also for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meat offering; I give it all. 
1Ch 21:24  And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. 
1Ch 21:25  So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. 
1Ch 21:26  And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. 
1Ch 21:27  And the LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof. 

1Ch 21:28  At that time when David saw that the LORD had answered him in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. 

2Ch_3:1  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 threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. 

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