If he was a beggar, it would be very low. How much did you get this week? You know, what do you got on you? And you work with him to determine what he could reasonably offer and still. Feel the pinch.
of sacrifice. Offerings to God should have feeling attached to it. Feelings are wonderful so long as they don't run the ship. Once they run the ship, you're gonna run aground. or you're going to run over somebody.
This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Leviticus. Please stay tuned. Stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio.
specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick as he continues his message called To the Lord. as he teaches in Leviticus chapter 27. Verse 4. If it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels.
Well, why is a man Nearly twice as much than for the woman of the same in the same age bracket. Because of the manual labor in that economy. The men generated More value. It was an agrarian economy. The farming The war, the men for war.
Uh this is what part of making that distinction. This does not reduce the value of the women. This has nothing to do with the value of their soul. It has to do with their contribution to the society And if you took away the men, then other men would come along and take away the women. It's a fact of life.
So, the value of a woman is not thirty shekels. The value of a woman. Is the cross of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus Christ? It is equal for the man. It is equal for the adolescent.
For the toddler. or for those on Medicare. And we'll come to that. in a moment. Those of you who are on Medicare, you should appreciate that more.
with a little louder. Anyway, coming back to this. And verse 5, and if from five years old up to 20 years old, then your valuation for a male shall be 20 shekels, and for a female, 10 shekels. God is shaping how they handle their economy. Verse six.
And if from a month old up to five years old, then your valuation for a male shall be five shekels of silver, and for a female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver. Verse seven. And if from sixty years old and above, If it is a male, then your evaluation shall be 15 shekels and for a female 10.
So at retirement age in that society, the temple value decreased. But again, it has nothing to do with the value. of the soul. Moses himself. Would have been in this 15 shekel category.
It wouldn't be complain. Wait, that's all I'm worth.
Well, it's not about the worth. And so it was never an issue. It had everything to do with supporting the temple. and refining the views Of the society as far as our roles are concerned. Verse eight.
But if he is too poor to pay your valuation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall set a value on him according to the ability of him who vowed. The priest shall value him. We're going to read a lot about the priest putting. the value on things throughout this chapter. Here, if the person is just too poor, a man comes up, I want a gift to God.
How much can I give based on who I am? And the priest would say, well, let's determine your budget. and if he was a beggar it would be very low. How much did you get this week? You know, what do you got on you?
And he worked with him to determine what he could reasonably offer and still. Feel the pinch. of sacrifice. Offerings to God should have feeling attached to it. Feelings are wonderful so long as they don't run the ship.
Once they run the ship, are you going to run aground? or you're going to run over somebody. Verse 9, if it is an animal, Then this might help us understand what's going on as we get into these non-human offerings. If it is an animal, That men may bring as an offering to Yahweh, all that anyone gives to Yahweh shall be holy. He shall not, verse 10, substitute it or exchange it good for bad or bad for good.
And if he at all exchanges animal for animal, then both it and the one exchanged for it shall be holy. All pledges were final. No substitutions. Rash vowels, afterthoughts. They would be discouraged.
Once you made the commitment, you were in for it. And if you try to Real and deal, then you'd give both, you'd lose double.
So I don't think anybody We have no record of anybody.
Well, Sapphire and Ananias did some wheeling and dealing, but not identical. But the idea is that these were safeguards, these commandments.
So if you vowed. If you brought a clean animal, ritual clean, one that could be offered on an altar, which this is not. Because This verse, and there are others, I think verse 31, make it clear whether the animal is good or bad. It will be received.
Well, you don't do that with a blood sacrifice. If it has a spot or a blemish or something wrong with it, it's rejected.
So, this is not that offering. This offering is all about the money. Not in a negative way. You bring your Sheep. And you say I want to donate this sheep as a vow to the Lord.
And the priest says, well, the sheep is worth ten shekels. And so you, oh, I don't want to pay the shekels, I just want you to take the sheep. That's your offering. But If you say, I want to donate. The value of my sheep.
And the priest says, ten shekels. And you say, but I need this sheep. I don't want to part with it, but I still want to give to the Lord. Then he'd say 10 shekels plus 20%. Then you give him the cash.
And so is established based on your Possession. what you can offer. And you'll see that as we go through this, because when you bring the unclean, you can bring an unclean animal. I say, I want to give my donkey to the ministry, to the sanctuary.
Well, the donkey is worth a hundred shekel.
Okay, I need the donkey though. All right, then you have to give. Uh a hundred shekels plus that twenty percent surcharge if it's just monetary.
So either leave the donkey or give the value plus. And it was a very good system. It was all voluntary. Nobody had to do this.
So you couldn't, him and Hall was not fair. and it's put in writing so you know what's happening before you get there.
So there's no bait and switch or markup or anything like that. It was a good system so long as the people. behave themselves. You couldn't get there and say, yeah, but this one's damaged, but I like that one you got over there. There's no bargaining, no haggling.
What you brought is what was going to be the way it goes or else you'll end up The priest would say, Sure, you could buy that one, but you're going to pay them both now. And everybody would know that, and it's likely never happened.
So Apparently, as I look at this and look at Numbers 18, 14, where it says, all that is given to the priests shall belong to them.
Well, that's in relation to food. Uh 2 Kings 12, 4, we see the priests had constituents. People would offer to the Lord, they'd benefit from that. And you wonder how much of this money went to the priests and how much to the treasuries? I don't think you can find the answer to that.
I think it's a mixture. I think they knew what they were doing, and I think they did the right thing by it, but just Moses didn't. didn't give us all all of the details. Um and they're really not necessary unless you have. Unless you just don't trust, you know, like I don't trust anybody.
I need to know. Uh Well, you you better get used to faith. Or being faithless. Verse 11: If it is an unclean animal which they do not offer as a sacrifice to Yahweh, then he shall present the animal before the priest. And there's one of the indicators of what's going on here.
And this type of offering. you could bring a camel, You could bring a donkey, you could bring a mule, any of the unclean ones. I'm sure they had. you know, there was y y you couldn't bring like I don't know. An iguana.
So what are we going to do with that?
Well, this one knows how to pull a cart. Anyway. I'm sure they were just unspoken rules that they all knew about. We're glad they're not put in print. It would be more reading for us in Leviticus.
Anyway, so he brings his donkey or camel, and the priest says, you know, we can use that camel.
Alright, here you go, is my offering to God. He's supporting that ministry. But again, if he needs the donkey, But he still wants to give to the Lord. And you know, he probably went there with an idea what the donkey was worth. He knew it'd be 20% on top of that.
And be an offering to the Lord.
So you go to the church, you say, I want to donate, I'm just going to stay with $10. Let's do $100. You bring your $100 car. and we all help you push it in front of the church. Yeah.
Yeah. And you say, okay, that car's worth $100.
Well, I want to donate it to the Lord, but I need it. Good, because He doesn't want that car. Yeah. So You'd say, I want to donate this to the Lord. He says, Well, it's $100.
And he said, okay, good. Here's the $100, and here's the $20 other dollars to go with it, $120. just out of my heart. I want nothing back. May God rebuke that blasphemous seed offering nonsense that the prosperity teachers have come up with, and we'll probably get to that evil thing.
With you, you just put a seed there, now God owes you something. It's an investment on your end, it's not the same Jesus. We'll come back to that. Uh let's Verse 12, and the priest shall set a value for it, whether it is good or bad, as you the priests value it, so it shall be. Verse 13, but if he wants.
At all to redeem it, then he must add one-fifth to your valuation.
So the redemption part. is here's my donkey Keep it, no redemption. You made your vow, you gave to the Lord. Everybody benefits. Or you say, here's my donkey, but I need that donkey, but I want to still pay.
And here's 20% more on top of that. I know I'm kind of repeating it. But I don't want to be misunderstood.
So there you go. New Testament lesson. From all of this, is giving cost Redemption costs more. You catch that. Hundred dollars for the donkey.
That's giving. But to redeem that donkey I got to pay even more. Jesus Christ redeemed us voluntarily. He paid with his own life the redemption price for sinners. And we ain't worth it.
But he did it anyway. Any sacrifice we make for him is nothing compared to the sacrifice he made for us. We get that. It's our message to the world. And when they're full of the flesh and they're full of pride and they're full of themselves and they're full of unbelief, they don't get the message.
They don't benefit. All humanity is redeemed. They're just not saved. You have to come get it. The price has been paid.
By faith, we receive it. If You don't uh believe it? You don't receive it? And then you don't benefit from the redemption. Easy way to point to that: if you win the lottery, you still got to go cash in the card.
I'm just going to keep it in my wallet.
Well, you won't benefit from it then. Verse 14. And when a man dedicates his house to be holy, to be To Yahweh, then the priest shall set a value on it, whether it is good or bad, as the priest values it.
So it shall stand.
So I mentioned earlier the priests have a lot of authority in this. And the people There was no Court of Appeal. It was a system that was either upheld by righteous people or failed because of unrighteous people. And when we get to the sons of Eli and the sons of Samuel, we see the system fall apart. Verse fifteen, if he who dedicated it wants to redeem his house, Then he must add one-fifth of the money.
of your valuation to it, and it shall be his. And so once the house or the land pastor the priesthood. They could do with it as they wish. If they sold the house. Then it could not be redeemed.
And we'll get to that at some point. If a man gave the house and then came back, or if he said, I want to dedicate my house. Same as the other ones. Here's what it's worth. You've given it to the Church, it's ours now.
If you want it back, 20% more. And again, everybody knew this going in. We're no loan sharking going on here. It was the idea. As the title is.
It's to the Lord. The whole motivation behind the whole thing. And if you can't stand the heat, don't go down there with your vow. Don't make the vow.
So if you were somebody who Well, the Joneses made a vow I'm going to top them.
Well, I don't think your vow would be accepted in heaven. It might be accepted at the tabernacle and would help pay it, but. That's carnality. This is one of the reasons why we want our youth or anyone to be baptized, water baptized, of their own volition, their own free will. Because they love the Lord, not because their buddies are getting, their friends are getting baptized.
Let's get baptized together.
Well, okay, that's fine if. You both have your heart in it. But if you're just doing it because your friends did it, that cheapens the whole thing, the integrity of the whole thing is gone. And so integrity still means something.
Well, verse 16: if a man dedicates to Yahweh part of a field. of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it. A homer of barley seed shall be valued. at fifty shekels of silver.
Well, we don't know what the value of a homer is because we don't know how many people are on base. That was a good one. All right. The land calculating the value based on how much seed it's going to require to work it, they had their system of calculation.
Now we come back to that seed offering scam. Giving money directly to the minister. Or the church. And the higher the value of what you give, that seed offering, The more likely God's going to answer your prayer. Chi-Ching.
to the church and to that pastor.
So you get these deathbed donations. These things are documented. Deathbed donations trying to get a healing. And you drop dead and stand before Jesus and have to give an account for that. Expecting a specific answer to health or wealth or romance.
People like Kenneth Copeland, T D fakes, Jake's really. Benny Hinn, Joel Olstein, Joyce Myers, these people. Um They're not preaching a Jesus of the Bible. They are counterfeits. and they live high up on the hog.
And it is the proverbial carrot before the cart. And they're all about, you know, in the old days, it used to be when you went into a bank, a bank. spoke money. When I grew up, they all had marble floors and marble columns and just everything. I used to love to go to the bank on Fridays with my dad because it was like there was no place like this.
maybe Grand Central Station. But It was so nice. And the banks wanted to sell people. We have money. Therefore Your money is safe with us.
We know what to do with it. We are the money brokers.
Well, that Prosperity movement does the same thing. And so you can see them. boasting about their money. changing their name to dollar. Because they're saying psychological games If you want to know how I got rich.
Then you need to give me money. to plant these seeds, and you too can be rich. That's how the whole scam works. It's a pyramid scheme. And they go following after it.
Why? Because they put Jesus' name on it. Oh, well, let me just sign up then. All right, verse 17. If he dedicates his field from the year of Jubilee according to your valuation, it shall stand.
But if he dedicates his field After the Jubilee. Then the priest shall reckon to him the money due according to the years that remain till the year of Jubilee, and it shall be deducted. from your valuation.
Well, the Jubilee, we covered it in chapter 25, it impacted real estate transactions.
So, if I'm going to obtain your property, and it's all leasing, well, if I do it in the 49th year, the property value is higher because I get to have 50 years of that. But if I do it Right before the Jubilee, market's low. and proportionally lower value, and the priest would calculate that. And it was a very good system. For them.
Verse 19. And remember, you cannot superimpose the Jewish economy on a capitalist economy. It won't work. This is for a theocracy. Verse 19, and if He who dedicates the field ever wishes to redeem it, then he must add one-fifth of the money of your valuation to it.
and it shall belong to him. Love being our single motivation for dedicating anything to the Lord, whether it's time. Or property, whatever it is. Love is the motivation.
So, again, if I'm the mom and I want to dedicate my child to the Lord and I'm not a Levite. Then I go down to the temple with my Five-year-old, and knowing the value, I don't remember what it was, I think it was five shekels, ten shekels, whatever it was for him. And I say, I want to dedicate my child.
Well, they don't snatch the kid, put him, you know, your job is emptying dishwashers. It's like, we don't want the kid. Love it. But Here's what you have to give.
So it was between you and God. where the priests were just The middlemen. The um And the intercessors. And remember, the priests mainly worked, they represented the people to God, whereas the prophet represented God to the people primarily. There were some crossovers, and they were all well balanced.
Well, there was never a material investment. If I just sow this seed for $10, I'll get back $50. Like that keeping God in debt. What kind of nonsense is that?
Well, it works. for one lifetime. And then the judgment. Verse 20, and I don't want to sound like I'm gleeful about that. We do want to see justice.
But we know a lot about mercy too. But if, verse 20, but if he does not want to redeem the field, Or if he has sold a field to another man, it is It shall not be redeemed anymore.
So, if that land passed to somebody else, there's no more redemption possible. I don't know how this. Really work. The antecedents would point to the man who. Donated the land to the sanctuary.
But it doesn't make as much sense if you see it That once he donated it to the sanctuary, the priests sell the land and take the money for the sanctuary. Then the man comes back and says, Okay, I want to redeem that land. No, you can't. It's been sold.
So there were risks involved in actually releasing your property. And it does read as though If you wanted to redeem things, you had to do it with the exception of the land. And maybe the house, he had to do it then. Verse 21: But the field, when it is released in the Jubilee, shall be holy to Yahweh as a devoted field. It shall be the possession of the priest.
See, that's where it gets a little confusing because that just says the priest will own it. That will be part of their pay. But we know that there were other offerings, for example. The tithes of the nation And there were three, at least three, They went to the Levites. The Levites then took a tenth of that tenth and gave it to the priest.
This is how they did it.
So again, it looks like it passes to the priest. There was a benefit there. I don't know, you know. You know, was it the priest on duty? Did they have a A pool, and they would divide it out because you don't want the priest who's going to get.
the profit from your donation to put the value on it. How much How much do you say this land is that I want to donate to God? $50 million. Uh like anything else. There's going to have to be integrity or else everything falls apart.
And I think, knowing what I know of the Jewish people, they would have rioted if those priests tried to abuse them. They just wouldn't stand for it. I have had quite a few Jewish friends and I miss all of them.
Well, just in passing, one of them was Dave the Jew. And that was his name, I'm Dave the Jew, and he drove a hearse. And Is this old beat-up hearse? He was just a great guy. And yet he didn't know when to shut up.
You know, and there was something to protest on the job site. It's like, Dave, but just shut up.
So he wouldn't stand for things if he felt He could, you know, protest.
So he borrowed from me The works of Josephus. I asked Josephus about it. He was fine. Anyway. So we moved to Virginia, living in those apartments, and Dave the Jew.
You know, I don't remember how he got my address and he mailed it back to me a long time later. But I just, you know, I just, and I've had other Jewish friends, I wish I had more. They're just a remarkable people.
Some of them can be a handful, but those aren't the ones that I'm talking about. Anyway. I hope they're saying some way, you know what, I wish I had a Gentile friend.
Some of them are a handful, but there are some out there that are just great. My whole point is, my experiences with them, and there have been quite a few, they are different people. And that doesn't mean it's bad. Verse 22: And if a man dedicates to Yahweh a field which he has bought, which is not the field of his possession, then the priest shall reckon to him the worth. of your evaluation up to the year of Jubilee.
And he shall give your valuation on that day as a holy offering.
So if you have leased a land from somebody else, and you have it, you could donate it to the Lord. but it would revert back to the original owner in the Jubilee.
So this was how their economy worked. Verse 24, in the year of Jubilee, the field shall return to him from whom it was bought. To the one who owed the land as a possession. In verse 25, And all your valuations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary, twenty giras to the shekel.
Well coins Discovered in Israel, marked a gira have been found and they all weigh just over half a gram.
Now you know. You drive home thinking about that one. Sure.
So that matches what was happening earlier when you wanted to give a shekel. Uh I think twenty girls to a shekel. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is currently going through the book of Leviticus. We're glad you joined us.
We trust that you're gaining some valuable insights into God's Word as we go through this Old Testament book. Cross-reference radio comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite app store. and downloading from there. For any additional information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreference radio.com.
Make sure to come back again for the upcoming edition in the book of Leviticus, as Pastor Rick has much more to share. We thank you for being with us right here on Cross Reference Radio.
