We’ve encouraged everybody in the church to choose a fast, choose a prayer meeting, and bring an offering and so, we’re receiving the breakthrough offering, opening it up on June the 12th which is in 2 weeks’ time. It’ll be open for over a month because it is a tax-deductible offering and so if people want tax deductibility, if they want it for next year, then, they can give after June 30 and that sort of thing and we honour all our missions commitments from it. We give close to 10% of our income away.
So we have a number of missions that we support and partner with that we honour and give this offering to. But it’s not purely a missions offering. It’s more about giving, and believing for breakthrough. So we’re really encouraging people. Seek God about what he would have you to give. Seek the Lord about a particular breakthrough that he’s got for you and so I encourage you to do that.
So, with that in mind, I just want to share with you today from 2 Samuel 24 verses eighteen to fifteen. it says this,
2 Samuel 24:18-25 NKJV18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David, according to the word of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. 20 Now Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So Araunah went out and bowed before the king with his face to the ground. 21 Then Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.” 22 Now Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up whatever seems good to him. Look, here are oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing implements and the yokes of the oxen for wood. 23 All these, O king, Araunah has given to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” 24 Then the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25 And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.
This is a very well known story. It was actually in two parts of the Bible. There are two accounts of it. Where basically David commanded to take a census of the people of Israel. Now that doesn’t sound like a big deal but the issue was that God didn’t want him to do it. What happened was he realised that he had been disobedient in doing that.
And then the Lord spoke to him and said, right, because of your disobedience, there’s, you got three results, okay? You can choose. You can decide the results. And number 1, you can have 7 years of famine. Number 2, you can have 3 months at the hands of your enemies. Or number 3, you can have 3 days of a plague. David said, well, I’ll rather have my hand in the hand in your hands. So, I’ll do three days of the plague. And on the first day, 70, 000 people were killed by this interestingly enough, after the first day, it’s almost like God in his own nature relented and so the angel of the Lord which had gone around and was killing all the people actually stopped over this place at the threshing floor, Araunah’s place and then, the prophet Gad came back to David and he said to him, this is what you need to do.
If you want to see the plague permanently stopped, this is what you have to do and within it, we can see in this entire story, we can see some common principles that are all throughout scripture of how people actually received a breakthrough. There are a number of stories where literally we can see that people received a breakthrough and there are common elements in this story as in others. I want to talk to you today about the anatomy of a breakthrough.
I want to talk to you about three components of a breakthrough. Because I believe that God has breakthroughs for people’s lives as a result of these few weeks. Now you some of some people going to see it straight away. Sometimes that’s what happens. Sometimes you see it soon after or sometimes you see a partial breakthrough but it’s a sign of something that’s going to come later. But either way, I believe over the course of these three weeks, things are going to happen.
They’re going to shift in the spirit that people are going to experience some breakthroughs in their lives as a result and so, here in this passage, I just want to talk to you about the three components of a breakthrough that we can find it here. The first one is in 2 Samuel chapter 24 verses 18 and 21.
2 Samuel 24:18-21 NKJV18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David, according to the word of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. 20 Now Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So Araunah went out and bowed before the king with his face to the ground. 21 Then Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.”
1. Promise
The first component of a breakthrough is actually a promise. A promise when God’s going to when it comes to breakthrough, breakthroughs are things that we’re actually believing for. Sometimes in scripture, you can get unexpected miracles. The things just happen that are a blessing that you don’t see coming. That’s why the Bible says that he actually chases, that surely goodness and mercy follow us. Sometimes, God’s got good things for you that you don’t even see until it comes upon you but there are some things that we can actually, he tells us ahead of time of what he’s going to do. That’s a breakthrough.
It is possible God to speak to you ahead of time for a breakthrough that is going to actually produce in your life. This is exactly what happened here. The whole reason why David did this was because God had already spoken to him ahead of time about the breakthrough he’s going to receive. This has happened many times in scripture. A classic example is in 1 Kings chapter 17. In 1 Kings chapter 17, we see the prophet Elijah had commanded a drought and then at the after and then towards the end of that and it was you know famine throughout the land. He had felt God tell him to go to a town called Zerephath, there a widow would take care of him and so, he goes to Zerephath looking for this widow.
If it was me and God told me about a widow that’s going to look after me, I’m thinking of a rich elderly woman sitting in a limousine with a poodle named Fifi on her lap but that is not what he found. What he found was a lady there just picking up a couple of sticks. So, he goes up to her and he says to her, oh, can you get me a drink? And she said, sure, no worries. So, she goes off to get him a drink and then, he says to her, oh, could you get me a morsel of bread as well?
At that, she stopped. She turned around and looked at him and said, no. I’ve only got enough flour and oil to bake my two small cakes for me and my son and we’re going to eat it and then, we’re going to die. So, no, I’m not making you the bread and because Elijah was a prophet, not a pastor. He said to her, yeah, whatever. In fact, you can make cake. Good. Make me a cake. You look it up in the scripture. He asked for a morsel of bread. He upped it He said go make me a cake.
And then he said to her this, the word of the Lord to you is this, the barrel of flour will not run out. And the jar of oil will not run dry. Did you see that? he gave her, he told her ahead of time Yeah. Of the breakthrough that God was going to do. It is possible that over this season of prayer and fasting, God’s going to speak to you about what he’s going to do. It is actually that’s why the prayer component of this is so important. You know, a lot of us are fasting but when you’re fasting, instead of doing what you would normally do, then, spend time in prayer in that time because you’re going to find God’s going to speak to you about some things.
He’s going to show you some things and when God makes you a promise, that actually now means that the breakthrough is available. If you need a miracle, the only way you can have it is when God declares it because when God speaks, things actually come to pass. That’s why the Bible, you’ve heard me say many times it says in the book of Titus, that God cannot lie. It doesn’t mean he’s got so much integrity. He can’t bring himself to lie. No, he can’t lie. Why? Because when he says something, it’s gotta come to pass.
If God was here today and said, oh holy cow, there’d be a holy cow because when he says something, it’s gotta come to pass. So, when God gives you a promise, it opens up the possibility abilities. When God gives you a promise, no matter how impossible it looks, it means that God has an agenda for that thing to come to pass and so we need to understand something that when God gives you a promise, he’s saying, now, this is going to happen. It may not have happened if he hadn’t have said it but now that he said it, it’s actually going to come to pass.
It’s the same God who could speak to a storm and say, be still. It’s the same God who can speak to someone who’s got a withered, crippled hand and say, be healed. When he makes a promise and when he says something, it going to come to pass. Amen. And all through scripture you can see that when he makes that promise it’s the moment where it’s like now this breakthrough is available. Yes. To you.
2. Price
The second component then found in verses 22-24.
2 Samuel 24:22-24 NKJV22 Now Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up whatever seems good to him. Look, here are oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing implements and the yokes of the oxen for wood. 23 All these, O king, Araunah has given to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” 24 Then the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
The second component of a breakthrough is a price. Is a price. All through scripture we see it. God makes a promise and now we pay a price. To God is actually a sacrifice. That’s why even in these moments in church right now, across our church right now, the presence of God is coming in stronger. Why? Because we’ve been sacrificing because we’ve been fast. He responds to sacrifice. I told you in 1 King 17 about Elijah.
Well, after he was with the widow of Zerephath, then, he actually had a dual with the prophets of Baal and the prophet basically, the whole nation had been given over to idolatry and so, Elijah had to deal with him and basically to see who served the true God? And so what they did was they both prepared a sacrifice and they laid out the wood and the bull and Elijah said we’re not going to light it. We’re going to call down fire from our God and the God who answers by fire is the true God.
So, the prophets of Baal, they set up their altar, they set up their sacrifice, and then they were calling down to their God to answer by fire. In fact, they were cutting themselves, beseeching themselves but nothing happened and then eventually, Elijah said, okay, my turn and he had altar set up. But he did something a little bit different. He had the wood and he had the oxen on it. But he added something else.
He dug a trench around it. And then he said I want you to go get me four water jugs and bring them to me. So they grabbed four water jugs and he poured it out and then he said go do it again. And they did it again. And he said don’t go do it a third time. 12 water jugs. Now it’s hard to know exactly how much water was but the Bible says that the trench was filled with water. So, it’s not like your little jug that you go and get. It must have been more than that. Think about it. He pours it over the altar. It soaks that and it fills the trench. Remember, this is a drought. They’ve had a drought for three and a half years.
So, who knows that when you pour water on drought on dry land, it soaks it up straight away. So, there was clearly enough water to soak it up, to cover the whole altar, and completely fill the trench. That’s a of water And they haven’t had rain for three and a half years. So then he called down fire from heaven and fire came. All the water was dissolved out of the trench. All the people that had turned away from the Lord. All the people in the whole nation said the Lord He is God.
The Lord is God. That revival in a day friends. Yeah. Overnight. People say oh could God bring revival in a day? 100%. He’s already done it. Revival in a day. But notice this. The fire fell on the sacrifice. What did they sacrifice, a whole lot of water, in a drought. The very thing they needed was the very thing they poured out. Have you ever found that? The very thing you need is the very thing God tells you to sow. The very thing that you’re believing for, God is telling you, I want you to sow.
Have you ever found that very often just before a breakthrough, you gotta pay a price? And there’s an element of sacrifice to it. I’ve seen that happen many many times in my life. Remember one time, I was in a meeting and it was in Mackay and we were receiving an offering for the for a guest speaker at something and found out after all this at this actually had major medical issue and some big bills coming up later.
None of us knew that at the time and I remember that he was ministering that time and we’re going to receive the love offering and my typical thing for a love offering was I’ll just chip in you know twenty bucks something like that. Just tip it in and that sort of thing and I was going to put on the credit card and as was getting the credit cards about I just thought the Lord speak to me and he said how big do you want your youth group to be? We were believing for our youth group to double. That year we’re believing for it to get to 250 kids and I said I want 250. He said, well, I thought, oh, okay. So, I wrote 250 on the credit card slip and you know, it was a little bit of pain, not much but you know, a little bit and as we’re about to come to pass with the buckets, He goes, put a zero on it.
Before or after the decimal point? He said before and you just kind of know in moments like that, it’s not your flesh telling you to do that. You know, it’s the Lord telling you to do that. Just like we did in that offering message. You know, God used people to pour in the lamp of others and so I thought, oh gosh. Now, that’s a price. But I couldn’t shake it. I just knew. So I put that zero on the front of it. The front of the decimal point. And it ended up being 2500 and put in the offering. That person who gave the offering to found out the next week they had cancer.
And I was thinking oh well they probably needed some medical bills and that sort of thing and within six months our youth group had doubled. Wow. And it grew to 250 kids. What I found is this at any time God tells me he’s going to give me a breakthrough. He says now there’s a us. Every single time. All through scripture, we can see examples of that. That so often that when there’s a promise, sometimes there’s a price and a sacrifice.
That’s why we’re encouraging people at this time to ask the Lord about what you would sow. It’s just between you and God. There are no pledges. I don’t have a faith target that we’re trying to reach or anything like that. It’s between you and the Lord. Whatever the Lord tells you, sow into that offering. Believing for the breakthrough that he’s promising you about. There’s a promise and then there’s a price.
3. Prayer
The third thing is this, says in verse 25 of 2 Samuel 24.
2 Samuel 24:25 NKJV25 And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.
So not only did he make a sacrifice but he actually also prayed. See it says the Lord heeded the prayers for the land and the plague was they stopped a pandemic. Through by paying a price. But also through prayer Prayer is the third component. Prayer and giving together are incredibly powerful. All through scripture when you see people praying and giving at the same time. Nothing but the miraculous happens.
A classic example we would know the stories of Acts chapter 10. Talks about a man by the name of Cornelius. Cornelius was a soldier in the Italian regiment so he was a Gentile. He was not a Jew. And one day as he was praying the Lord came the Lord sent an angel to come and visit him. And once he angel came and basically told him to go and get Simon Peter and he got Simon Peter and Peter was one of Jesus’ disciples.
Simon Peter came, preached the gospel to him and then his whole family got saved. His whole family got saved and the Bible said, the Holy Spirit fell upon him. They started speaking in other tongues and the spirit of God fell upon them. This was the moment actually in the story that was used by the New Testament Church in Jerusalem to finally allow Gentiles in. Even though that they were supposed to let Gentiles in. They just didn’t have the mindset. This was the moment where they knew.
I think Gentiles are supposed to join us. And thank God because every one of us here is a Gentile. And the thing is that it was a significant moment. It was a significant breakthrough. I remember thinking to myself for what? Do you know how come that happened? But you read the scripture and it tells us that when the angel came and he saw Cornelius, he said to Cornelius, God has heard your prayers and seen your arms. It’s like, oh, does that mean you gotta have big arms? Like, you know, Noa Folau or something and in order for an angel to appear. No, no, no. Alms. Gifts of generosity. Generosity to the poor. So, watch this. His prayer and his giving resulted in a breakthrough. There’s power in our prayer and in our giving.
In second Chronicles chapter 1 verse 7, it talks about King Solomon. The Bible says that night, God came to Solomon asking and said, ask me whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. That’s a pretty impressive night. That’s an important moment. and then Solomon said to him, I want wisdom and knowledge. God said to him, well, because you’ve asked for the right thing, not only we have wisdom and knowledge but you’re actually going to have financial abundance as well and peace from your enemies.
That’s a pretty good night but we see what happened the day of that night. Bible tells us in Second Chronicles 1 verse 6, that that day, he offered a thousand burnt offerings on the altar before the Lord. That wasn’t an offering of you know, the forgiveness of sin or ritual purity. He’s a king. He can’t offer that. That’s actually the job of a priest. It was an outstanding act of generosity and because of his outstanding and he was also praying that day as well.
He was leading a prayer meeting with the people. His prayer and giving produced an incredible breakthrough. I believe for people in the life of our church over the next season. That as we pray and as we give and as we fast God is going to release breakthroughs into our lives. That God’s going to release things into your world as well. So that that prayer and giving together is powerful. This is not the only example of scripture where a promise and then a prayer resulted in a breakthrough.
There are a number of examples in scripture. A promise, we need a promise from God because it makes it available. A price because God is attracted to sacrifice and a prayer because God says in Second Chronicles that if you humble yourselves and pray and seek his face, then he will hear from heaven and he will heal our land. We do all those things together. You’ll be amazed at what can happen in your life as a result of it and I believe God has breakthroughs for every single one of us.
So, my encouragement for you is this, that over even though we’ve already been going for 7 days, my encouragement for you is this, to consider what kind of fast you might do. To also pray, choose a prayer meeting. We’ve got one online on a Tuesday night as well. with Pastor Matt Treagus. It’s on the Kings Australia Facebook page.
You can join that one as well and also, to consider what you might bring. Yes, it’s going to go. We pretty well give away most of it. It will go to it will go and honour all our missions commitments and that sort of thing. But that’s not even the point. Because sometimes the Lord will ask us to offer a sacrifice in order to receive a breakthrough. And I believe that God has breakthroughs for every single one of us in this place. Amen.
