11/21/2008 7:32 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: The redeemable things
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Leviticus 27:1-25
Message of the verses: “1 ¶
Again, the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
2 "Speak to the
sons of Israel
3 ‘If your valuation
is of the male from twenty years even to sixty years old, then your valuation
shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 ‘Or
if it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels. 5 ‘If
it be from five years even to twenty years old then your valuation for the male
shall be twenty shekels and for the female ten shekels. 6 ‘But
if they are from a month even up to five years old, then your valuation shall
be five shekels of silver for the male, and for the female your valuation shall
be three shekels of silver. 7 ‘If they are from sixty years old and upward,
if it is a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the
female ten shekels. 8 ‘But if he is poorer than your valuation,
then he shall be placed before the priest and the priest shall value him;
according to the means of the one who vowed, the priest shall value him. 9 ‘Now
if it is an animal of the kind which men can present as an offering to the
LORD, any such that one gives to the LORD shall be holy. 10 ‘He
shall not replace it or exchange it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; or
if he does exchange animal for animal, then both it and its substitute shall
become holy. 11 ‘If, however, it is any unclean animal of the
kind which men do not present as an offering to the LORD, then he shall place
the animal before the priest. 12 ‘The priest shall value it as either good or
bad; as you, the priest, value it, so it shall be. 13
‘But if he should ever wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of
it to your valuation.
“14 ¶ ‘Now if a man consecrates his house as holy
to the LORD, then the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the
priest values it, so it shall stand.
15 ‘Yet if the one
who consecrates it should wish to redeem his house, then he shall add one-fifth
of your valuation price to it, so that it may be his. 16
‘Again, if a man consecrates to the LORD part of the fields of his own
property, then your valuation shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it:
a homer of barley seed at fifty shekels of silver. 17 ‘If
he consecrates his field as of the year of jubilee, according to your valuation
it shall stand. 18 ‘If he consecrates his field after the
jubilee, however, then the priest shall calculate the price for him
proportionate to the years that are left until the year of jubilee; and it
shall be deducted from your valuation.
19 ‘If the one who consecrates it
should ever wish to redeem the field, then he shall add one-fifth of your
valuation price to it, so that it may pass to him. 20
‘Yet if he will not redeem the field, but has sold the field to another
man, it may no longer be redeemed; 21
and when it reverts in the jubilee, the field shall be holy to the LORD,
like a field set apart; it shall be for the priest as his property. 22 ‘Or
if he consecrates to the LORD a field which he has bought, which is not a part
of the field of his own property,
23 then the priest shall
calculate for him the amount of your valuation up to the year of jubilee; and
he shall on that day give your valuation as holy to the LORD. 24 ‘In
the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom he bought it,
to whom the possession of the land belongs.
25 ‘Every valuation of yours,
moreover, shall be after the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel shall be
twenty gerahs.”
This begins
the last chapter in Leviticus and the main division in Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary
is called “Keeping our commitments to God.”
Now if I go back to the beginning of Dr. Wiersbe’s book and look up what
it was he was revealing in this chapter he writes, “The statutes and
instructions God gave Israel
This chapter
speaks of vows that are made to the Lord and the first section speaks of vowing
redeemable things to the Lord and they are divided up between people, animals
and property. Now when a person gave a
vow to the Lord and would give a person to the Lord most of the time they would
give money instead of giving the person and in this section of Scripture the
values are given as to how much each person was worth. In the case of Samuel his mother actually
gave him to the Lord as she had promised and did not give money instead. If a person did give another person to the
Lord and decided that they wanted that person back they would have to pay the
price plus 20% to get the person returned to them. The price for a man between ages 20 to 60 was
evaluated at four years worth of labor, so this would take much thought and
dedication to the Lord to do this.
Animals
could also be given and if the person wanted the animal back they too would
have to pay an extra 20% to get their animal back. Land could be given to the Lord or money to
cover the price of the land which depended on how may bushels of barley it
could produce and also how close it was to the Year of Jubilee.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: What does all of this have to do with me in
today’s life as a Christian in the year 2008?
One thing it means is that vows are a serious thing to think about
doing? I have made two vows to the Lord
and one of them I have kept much better than the other. I made a vow to read at least for five
minutes a day in my Bible to the Lord in October of 1980 and I think that I
have missed less than ten days during those 28 years. I have made a vow to pray at least five
minutes to the Lord each day sometime a little later in 1980 and have missed
more days doing this, especially this year as prayer seems most difficult for
me to do.
The point in all of this is that if I want to make a vow to
the Lord I had better be willing to keep it.
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
- Keep the vows that I have made to the Lord.
Memory verses for the week: Romans
6:1-6
- What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
- May it never be! How shall we who died to sin continue to live in it?
- Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
- Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
- For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
- knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
- for he who has died has been freed from sin.
11/21/2008 8:14 AM
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