Leviticus 26-27

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Leviticus 26-27

Leviticus 26-27 contains warnings and promises from God to the Israelites, including curses for disobedience and blessings for obedience. It emphasizes the importance of keeping God's commandments and the consequences of breaking them. The chapter also discusses tithing and vows made to God, outlining specific guidelines for their redemption. The speaker, Steve Gregg, provides insights into the meaning behind these ancient biblical texts and their relevance to modern-day Christians.

Transcript

In Leviticus chapter 26, we have a chapter that's a lot like another chapter in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 28 is a chapter that covers similar kinds of thoughts as this one. And that is, God promises that if Israel is faithful to the covenant, that they will be blessed in many ways which are enumerated.

But he tells them that if they are not faithful to covenant, that they will be cursed in many ways which are enumerated. Now, in Leviticus, he doesn't go into as much detail as in Deuteronomy. The chapters are very similar.

In Deuteronomy, he specifically says, if you obey my covenant, blessed will you be in this, and blessed in this, and blessed in this, and blessed in this, and blessed in this, and blessed in this. And then in Deuteronomy 28-15, it turns around and says, but if you're disobedient, then you'll be cursed in this, and cursed in this, and cursed in this, and cursed in this. So, it mentions specifically the word blessed and cursed in contrast to each other in Deuteronomy.

Here we have the same information without the mention of blessed and cursed. I mean, those words are not used, but the same ideas are given. And so, he begins by insisting that they keep the basic holiness of God in view by not worshipping other gods, by keeping the holy Sabbath, and by keeping his sanctuary holy.

In verses 1 and 2, and then he gives a big if in verse 3. If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them. If you do that, then a bunch of other things are said will happen. All good.

But in verse 14, he says, but if you do not obey me and do not observe all these commandments, etc. Verse 16, I will also do this to you. And the rest of the chapter is taken up with the bad things that God will do to them.

Now, just so you'd appreciate the similarity, if you look over at Deuteronomy 28. Deuteronomy 28, it's very similar. Now, it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord, your God, to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today.

That the Lord, your God, will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord, your God. Blessed shall you be in the city.

Blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

Blessed shall be you when you come in. And blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face.

They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways, etc. But then in verse 15, Deuteronomy 28, 15. But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord, your God, to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today.

That all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the land, in the city. And cursed shall you be in the country.

Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, and the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in.

And cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send on you cursing, confusing, etc., etc., etc. And it goes on and on very long.

All the things that God will bring upon them, including exile, including starvation, and so forth. Now, we have all of that in chapter 26 of Leviticus also. But without, as I say, the words blessing and cursing being repeated so often.

It says in Deuteronomy 26, 3, If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season. The land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last until the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing.

And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in the land safely. That is, the harvesting or the threshing of what you've harvested will be so abundant that it'll take you until vintage time, months later, to finish it. You'll just have so much grain to thresh, you'll be busy until vintage time.

And then when your vintage time comes, that will last until the time that you sow your crops again. It's just talking about how much there will be given to you, how much abundance. And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid.

I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight.

Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you, for I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you, confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat of the old harvest and clear out the old because of the new. That is, you'll still have grain left over from the previous harvest when the new harvest comes.

You'll have to clear out the granaries of the old harvest because you will not have been able to eat it all before the new harvest comes. You have to make room for the new harvest by getting rid of old grain. You have too much of it.

I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves.

I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright. Now, the promise he makes is that he'll give rain, which is very important in the Middle East and anywhere. But especially in the Middle East, there were many droughts.

And he says, I'll give you rain in your season if you're faithful to me. You'll have abundant crops. You'll have safety from wild beasts.

You know, we who live in cities don't think about the danger of wild beasts very much. Every once in a while you hear in the news about, you know, a cougar that's seen walking through a city park. Or coyotes downtown L.A. raiding the, you know, the trash cans of people.

Or a black bear that comes into, you know, somebody's yard or something in town. And suddenly when you realize, whoa, we live in a world with carnivores, wild carnivores, that could come right into our towns and sometimes do, but not very often. It's rare, so that when it happens, it's startling to us.

But in ancient times, their towns were not as well protected from carnivores. I mean, the walled cities were. The walled cities wouldn't have lions strolling on in.

But they did have lions back then in the Jordan jungle. In those days, around the Jordan River, it was all jungle. And there were lions, there were bears, there were wolves.

David had to protect his sheep from all those things. And these animals, when they get hungry, they just come wandering into a village. In India, it's not unheard of for, you know, an older tiger who can't hunt as well because he's slow, he'll just go into a village and start eating people, you know.

And we're so immune to that in our modern urban and suburban life that we can't even think of that as a danger. We don't go outside thinking of that. Now, maybe around here we do.

Maybe when you go out walking, if you're at night, you think, I wonder if there's any black bear around here. Because there could be. But I live in a city and I don't think about those things very much.

But he said, you know, you've got to beware of those things unless you're on my side. If you're on my side, I'll get rid of the beasts from your land. You'll have safety in your land.

And from enemies, they'll run away from you. And I'll put my tabernacle in your midst and I will live among you. That's the greatest privilege he would give them if they are faithful.

But notice that's an if. And we have to remember that everything God promised to Israel was if. It was conditional.

There are no unconditional promises made to the land of Israel, to the people of Israel, I should say, about the land or about their status with God. And this is something Christians forget in some circles. They seem to think that just because someone has a bloodline that runs all the way back to Abraham, that makes them special to God.

But that wasn't true in the Old Testament. Why would it be true in the New Testament? Why would it be true at any time? It wasn't true in Moses' day. If you're descended from Abraham, it doesn't matter at all.

If you're unfaithful to God, he's going to lay into you. You know, and that's what he says in verse 14. But if you do not obey me and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise my statutes or if your soul abhors my judgments so that you do not perform all my commandments but break my covenant, I also will do this to you.

Here's what he says he'll do, and that's going to take up pretty much the rest of the chapter. His blessings are multiple, but he dwells longer on the curses that will come upon him and the troubles if they are disobedient. He says, I will even appoint terror over you.

Or terrorists, maybe. Wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. So God sees himself as the author of this disease and this fever.

I will appoint it. God causes sickness sometimes, and this is on his people. But it's because of their disobedience in this case.

And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. You know, it's not that it'll be famine. The seed will grow, but your enemies will come and take it from you.

This happened again and again in the period of the judges. As the people became disobedient to God, enemies came in, and the Jews would go out and they'd sow and they'd cultivate their land. And then around harvest time, the enemies would come in, and they'd take all the crops and eat them because they could.

Because Israel was defenseless from them. So this is what is threatened. You'll sow your crops, you'll work hard to get the grain, but you won't get to eat it, your enemies will eat it.

I will set my face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you. When you run away and no one's chasing you, you're paranoid.

And their paranoia is spoken of even a little further on in verse 36 where he says, As for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. This is when they're exiled. He says, The sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee.

They shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues. It even says they'll be stumbling over each other. In verse 37, you'll stumble over one another as it were before a sword when no one pursues.

Now this is probably, well this is clearly a hyperbole. But it's, I mean there's a sense in which it's true. I mean, he's saying that the Jews will be so secure if they're obedient.

That they won't have to worry about enemies, they won't have to worry about food, they won't have to worry about wild beasts. But if they're disobedient, they're going to be totally insecure. Because God will not defend them.

In fact, God will send on them troubles. Send enemies against them. Send fever and sickness upon them.

He will appoint terror over them. And so that they will not just be lacking in his protection, they will be delivered over to an insecure life. So much so that they will be afraid when there's not even anyone chasing.

They'll just get used to there being danger so much that everything scares them. The shaking of a leaf startles them and they run as if someone's chasing them with a sword. They'll be stumbling over each other trying to get away from a shaking leaf.

And when he says in verse 17, you will flee when no one pursues you. That phrase is used in Proverbs 28, verse 1. Which says in Proverbs chapter 28, verse 1, it says the wicked flee when no one pursues. But the righteous are bold as a lion.

Now Solomon was writing at a time when God was protecting Israel. And therefore, if they were righteous, they could be bold as a lion. But he knew that when people are wicked and God is not on their side, then they have reason to be paranoid.

Actually, reason to be paranoid is a misnomer. It's like an oxymoron. You never have reason to be paranoid because paranoia is by definition being afraid when there's no reason to be.

But in a sense, they will have reason to be paranoid. It'll be reasonable for them to be unreasonably afraid because they're used to it. They're in danger all the time.

And even when no one's chasing them, they'll still be startled and run. And after this, verse 18, if you do not obey me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. Now this, I will punish you seven times more.

He says it again and again. He'll say it again in verse 21. He'll say it again in verse 24.

He'll say it again in verse 28. And I think that's about it. But four times, he says, I will punish you seven times more.

And yet I don't think that's a literal seven. Some people have actually taken that and taken certain numbers from the history of Israel and multiplied them by seven. So they've calculated how Israel would be re-established in the year 1948.

Anyone ever heard someone do that? I know John Corson has done that and some other dispensational teachers. They go into all these elaborate calculations that lead up to May 14th, 1948, when Israel was re-established as a nation. And they go back and they talk about the length of the Babylonian captivity.

And they talk about these years and that and the seven times more, which is from this chapter. I'll punish you. And they work it out.

So they take a number from here and a number from there and a number from there, kind of almost at random. And they managed to come up with 1948. And this is part of their reasoning rests on taking this quite literally.

That God says, and after I've done that, I'll punish you seven times more. And what they do is they say, we've got to take that number and multiply it by seven. But actually, that's not really a reasonable way to see it.

He doesn't say I will multiply the judgments by seven. He just says, I'll punish you seven times more, which seven being a number of completeness means I'll bring even more complete punishment upon you. And he's not talking about the length of years and so forth before the reestablishment of the nation or something.

That's a very artificial and unjustified use of this information. But he does say again, again, I'm going to punish you seven times more. It's sort of like in Isaiah, there's a section where God says, I have done this.

I've judged you in this way. I brought this disaster on you and this calamity upon you. He says, but for all this, Isaiah says, his anger is not turned back, but his hand is outstretched still.

Then he gives more disasters. And he says, and for all this, his anger is not turned back, but his hand is outstretched still, still outstretched in judgment. Then he gives more.

And it says again, for all this, his anger is not turned back. It's like it goes over, you know, it's a poetic way of talking. As this is in poetry, as you can see by the way it's set in the type, it's a poetic thing.

It's like a stanza, then followed by a refrain. The refrain is here, I'll punish you seven more times. In Isaiah, the refrain is for this, his anger is not turned back, but his hand is stretched out still.

And the stanzas have to do with individual calamities he says he'll bring. And that's what's going on here. He says, and it's verse 18, he says, I'll punish you seven times more for your sins.

He says, I'll break the pride of your power. I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. That means no rain.

The heavens won't give any more rain than an iron canopy would. And the earth will be so hard from dryness. It'll be like bronze.

You can't even break it up with your plow. It's talking about drought. And your strength should be spent in vain for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.

Then, if you walk contrary to me and are not willing to obey me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number. And your highways shall be desolate because the population will be so decimated by wild animals eating them.

And if by these things you are not reformed by me, but walk contrary to me, then I also will walk contrary to you and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins. And I will bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of my covenant. Now, that's the thing.

When God brings great harsh treatment on Jews more than on other nations, we think, well, why pick on them so much? They're not worse than other people. And it's probably true. I don't suppose they are worse than other people.

But there is something in which they have offended God more than other people. That is that they had a covenant relationship which they violated. It is the vengeance of his covenant.

It's like if a man's wife is just, you know, sleeping with all his friends and just rubbing it in his face and being defiant and immoral and so forth. He's going to be really upset about that because she's his wife. Now, if the neighbor's wife is doing that to her husband, then the guy who's not not her husband is not going to have the same reaction.

He's going to think it's bad behavior. He's going to think it's a shameful thing, but he's not going to have the same personal offense he takes because it's not his wife. It's someone else.

When it's your own spouse, when it's one that's in covenant with you, one who promised to be faithful to you and they're doing that. It's a it's an entirely different thing. Jealousy of a husband is spoken of in the scripture as being a seemingly legitimate natural reaction to his wife's unfaithfulness.

And so this is the vengeance of God's covenant. When God destroyed Jerusalem in 87, Jesus had these are the days of vengeance. God bringing vengeance on them for breaking the covenant.

Now, God has judged other nations, too, and very severely. But the meaning of his judgment on them has simply been that he's a judge bringing about justice in the world in general. When he has judged Israel, it's it's basically vengeance of the covenant, as he calls it here.

Avenging the covenant that's been broken. He says, I will, in verse 25, I'll bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of my covenant. When you are gathered together in your cities, I will send pestilence among you and you should be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

When I have cut off your supply of bread, 10 women shall bake your bread in one oven and they should bring back to you your bread by weight and you shall eat and not be satisfied. The idea of 10 women baking in one oven means there'll be so little bread to bake that the bread for 10 households could be all baked together in one oven. As opposed to what normally would be everyone has their own oven to bake their family's bread.

Why waste them? Why waste the fire? Why waste the fuel? Just 10 families can share one oven because they have so little bread among themselves, they can all fit it into one oven. After this, if you do not obey me, but walk contrary to me, verse 28, then I will also walk contrary to you in fury. And I even I will chastise you seven times for your sins.

You shall eat the flesh of your sons and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. Now, this actually did happen on various occasions. It's also threatened in Deuteronomy 28.

The passage, I said, is very much like this passage in Deuteronomy 28, 53. It is predicted that they will end up eating their own children. We know of a case like this recorded in 2nd Kings, Chapter six.

When the city of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, was under siege and they were running out of food. This is the circumstances under which people would eat their children when their enemies are surrounding them. Now, we have to remember the farmlands were all outside the city walls.

They didn't have enough room inside the city walls for their farmland. So people would farm and have their have their lands outside the walled cities. But when an enemy would come, people would flee into the walled city and the gates would be shut.

So the people, the populace would be protected behind the walls. But their farms were outside. They couldn't go out there and harvest if the enemy was out there.

They had to just wait until the enemy went away. Or the enemy would eat their harvests. And then they'd be stuck in their city with a limited amount of food and couldn't come out because the enemy is surrounding them.

And therefore, they would get so hungry at times they'd eat their children. And we read about an actual case of this in 2nd Kings 6. During a siege. It says, verse 26, Then as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him saying, Help, O Lord, King, my Lord, O King.

Excuse me. And he said, If the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor, from the winepress? There was no food anywhere. Then the king said to her, What is troubling you? And she answered, This woman said to me, Give your son that we may eat him today and we will eat my son tomorrow.

So we boiled my son and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, Give your son that we may eat him. But she has hidden her son.

Now, it happened when the king heard the words of the woman that he tore his clothes. He didn't realize the famine had been that severe. He grieved to hear that people were eating their children.

But that's what was threatened under the judgment of God. They apparently did so during the Babylonian captivity or the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem when the Babylonians came and besieged them. And also Josephus records a case when the Romans besieged Jerusalem of someone eating their children.

Actually said a band of bandits within the city who were marauding in the streets. They broke into a house because they were hungry and they smelled meat. And when they got into the house, they saw that someone was roasting their child to eat.

And these brigands actually left nauseated by the sight. But when people get hungry enough, they'll eat people. The Donner party did.

I don't think I would. I think I'd rather stop, frankly, but again, I've never been starving. So it's easy to say.

But what God is saying here is that you will get so hungry. I'll put you in such severe conditions that you will be dying of starvation to the point where you'll even eat your flesh of your sons and your daughters. That did happen.

Now, Leviticus 2630, I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols. This is the form of disobedience that he presupposes. They're worshiping idols and they have their incense altars and their high places where they worship their idols.

So I'm going to destroy all those and throw your carcasses on them. And my soul shall abhor you. I will lay your city's waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation.

The sanctuaries is not the temple or the tabernacle. It's plural. It's not about sanctuaries.

They will erect to worship the idols and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas. I will bring the land to desolation and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. So the enemies will inhabit their land instead of them.

I will scatter you among the nations. This happened when they went into Babylon. It happened again in 80, 70 and draw out a sword after you.

That means that even after you're in exile, you'll not be secure. There will still be persecution that comes against you in the foreign lands where you live. The Jews certainly have found that to be true.

By the way, it suggests that God is the one who draws the sword out after them. But it could be more or less a poetic way of speaking. If he just leaves them to the mercy of their enemies and doesn't help them, it could be said that he's attacking them, so to speak, less than actively himself.

Others are doing it, but he's not protecting them. He says, I will scatter you among the nations, verse 33, and draw out a sword after you, and the land shall be desolate and your cities waste. Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemy's land.

Then the land shall rest and enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate. It shall rest for the time it did not rest on your Sabbath when you dwelt in it. And as for those of you who are left, that is when those who are not taken into exile or those who survive that, I will send faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies.

The sound of a shaken leaf should cause them to flee. They shall flee as though fleeing from a sword and they shall fall when no one pursues. They shall stumble over one another as it were before a sword.

When no one pursues, then you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. He says, you shall perish among the nations and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. What does that mean? Israel has been scattered throughout the nations for hundreds of years now.

Has this happened? Has their race been consumed? In other words, has it ceased to exist? They have intermarried quite extensively with the Gentiles. And the more they intermarry with Gentiles, the more the bloodline of the Jew is diluted with Gentile blood. There are many people today who call themselves Jewish, but they've got more Gentile in their ancestry than Jew.

Because their ancestors, though considered Jewish, were married to non-Jewish people. You see, a person could be called Jewish if they just kept the Jewish traditions. If they circumcised, if they get Passover, they're Jewish.

They might be somebody whose parents were both Gentiles, but they have themselves converted to Judaism. They're Gentiles themselves, but they become Jews, proselytes. Or they might be somebody whose mother married a Gentile, but the mother was a Jew.

If you have a Jewish mother, you're considered a Jew. But if you have a Jewish mother and a Gentile father, you're only half Jewish by blood, but you're still a Jew. If you happen to be a woman and you're called a Jew on that basis, and you marry a Gentile man, and then your children are only one quarter Jewish, because your husband and your father are both Gentiles, then your children are one quarter Jewish, but they're still called Jews because you're a Jewish mom.

If one of your daughters, who's a Jewish girl, who's only one quarter Jewish, marries a Gentile man, and they have children, their children are only one-eighth or one-sixteenth Jewish. But they're called Jews. You see, it doesn't matter how little Jewish blood they have in them, if they maintain Jewish traditions and Jewish identity, it's something that can go... You can get down to your one-sixty-fourth Jewish and sixty-three, sixty-fourth Gentile, and you're still a Jew because of that progression continuing down for several generations.

It's arguable that this has happened, that they have, as a race, perished among the nations, and the land of their enemies ate them up. He says, and that those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in their enemies' lands, also in their fathers' iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away. But then it turns it around.

If they confess their iniquity, it says, in verse forty, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness, in which they were unfaithful to me, and that they also have walked contrary to me. Now, he's saying you, you, you, you, you, all the way down here, but now it's they. Because he's talking about a later generation.

If you people disobey, then I'll bring these problems on you. But if your descendants, if they turn around, then they, I will hear what they say. I will hear their sins.

I'll accept their repentance. It says, if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt, verse forty-one, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abram, and I will remember, I will remember the land. The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them.

Which suggests, of course, it would be a long time exile before they would be coming back. It says, but they will accept their, if they will accept their guilt, because they despise my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them, and to break my covenant with them.

For I am the Lord, your God. But for their sake, I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.

These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the Lord made between himself and the children of Israel on the Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses. Now, he's talking here about the Babylonian exile. He talks about how they will be exiled in foreign land.

They'll waste away there and so forth. But if they turn back to me, I will bring them back. I'll remember the covenant I made at Sinai.

Not the Abrahamic covenant, but the Sinaitic covenant. Now, this cannot happen today, because the Sinaitic covenant is gone. It has been eclipsed.

It has been preempted. There's a new covenant. Hebrews 8.13 tells us that where there's a new covenant, the old covenant is null and void.

The old covenant is obsolete. If a Jew wants to come back to God today, he can. But he has to come in terms of the new covenant, not the old covenant.

The Sinaitic covenant is not available anymore. It was, though, when they were in Babylon. In Babylon, in the exile, which was the fulfillment of these threats, some of them did remember God, and he did turn around, and the land did observe its Sabbath for those 70 years.

We're told that in 2 Chronicles. This is talking about that time. And the ones who did turn back, he did bring them back to the land.

And he did remember, and he did restore the covenant that he'd made at Sinai with them. Okay? But a lot of people want to apply this to modern times. Because the Jews have been again exiled into all the world, But if they turn back to God now, they don't come back to the old covenant that he made with their fathers who came out of Egypt, as he says in verse 45.

That wouldn't be true now. The predictions in this chapter came true in pre-Christian times before Jesus came. When Jesus came, that brought an end to all legitimacy to the old covenant because a better covenant has come instead.

And therefore, it's not possible for the Jews to come back and say, Okay, we'll keep that old covenant at Mount Sinai again. Why? God's not in it. God's not honoring it.

God said it's obsolete. If you come back to God now, you've come to Christ in the new covenant. A Jew can come to Christ just as before.

All the Jews can come to Christ if they want to. There's nothing to forbid it. If they do not remain in unbelief, they can be grafted back into the olive tree, Paul said in Romans 11.

But there's no prediction that they all will. But if they do, it will not be as Jews. It'll be as followers of Christ.

It'll be as Christians. The covenant made at Sinai that he refers to in verse 45 was made to them as Israelites. But the covenant made with Jesus is for all nations, including Israelites.

And therefore, they do not come back as Jews. There's no Jew or Gentile in Christ. They just become Christians like the rest of us.

Verse 46 says, These are the statutes and judgments and laws which the Lord made between himself and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses. Now, chapter 27, it's kind of hard to understand chapter 27. I don't know if you've read it recently, but it presupposes certain things that we're not very acquainted with, mainly the taking of vows and the redemption of vows.

These practices are not really described in detail in the scripture, and they aren't practiced in the modern world. And therefore, we have to kind of read between the lines and see what it is that it's talking about. But what it is talking about is this.

An Israelite was able. There were two things that they would offer the Lord besides their sacrifices. One was their tithes.

The tithes belong to the Lord and also things they would vow. Now, the tithes were involuntary. They had to give their tithes, but vows were voluntary.

You didn't have to make a vow. You could live your whole life and never make a vow to God. But people who wanted to show their piety, their enthusiasm about God, who wanted to make a deal with God, you do this for me and I'll do this for you, they would make these vows.

We know, for example, that Hannah vowed to God that if she gave him a child, that if he gave her a child, the child would be given to the Lord, consecrated to the Lord. That was a vow she made. Samuel was born, and she kept her vow by causing Samuel to go belong to the tabernacle and spend his life working there.

Jephthah is famous for having made a vow. He vowed to God that if in the heat of battle, if God would give him the victory over his enemies, that he would sacrifice to God whatever came to meet him out of his house when he returned home. It turned out it was his daughter.

And so there are many who believe that he sacrificed his daughter. Now, he might not have, because this chapter tells that if you make a vow of something to the Lord, you could redeem it. If you have regrets about it, it can be redeemed.

That is, you can buy it back. And this goes through various circumstances related to that. Let me read some of it to you.

Now, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When a man consecrates by a vow certain persons to the Lord, like Hannah consecrated Samuel to the Lord, or Jephthah, in this case, his daughter, according to your valuation, if your valuation is of a male from 20 years old up to 60 years old, that is, the man presumably in his prime, then your valuation shall be 50 shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. If it is a female, then your valuation shall be 30 shekels. Now, what does this mean? Apparently, people who own servants might vow to give God one of their servants, maybe someone who is between 20 and 60 years old, they would offer to the Lord as a vow.

And that would mean that servant would have to go and work at the tabernacle, would have to go and work as a free servant in God's house. But there might be reasons not to fulfill that vow. One is maybe the tabernacle didn't need that many servants.

Most of the work was done by the priests and the Levites. I imagine they would have a hard time finding very much work to keep a lot of the other servants busy, since the Levites were busy about everything. It may be that there's a limited number of persons that the tabernacle could really accommodate.

And therefore, not everyone who dedicated one could really end up giving it to the tabernacle, would have to redeem it. That means they'd have to give the tabernacle money, give the priest money instead. The value of the person.

The person, if it was a male, between age 20 and 60, would be valued at 50 shekels. If it was a female that aged 30 shekels, probably because it would be considered that a man could do heavier labor and would be therefore able to be worth more in terms of what he could produce in work for the priest and so forth as a servant to them. A male servant was more valuable than a female servant, just because they had a stronger back and could usually do harder work and carry more load.

And so, if somebody had said, I'm going to vow to give this my servant to the Lord, and then the priest said, we can't use him. Well, then I'll give you 50 shekels instead, because that's what he's worth. Or, if I vowed to give him to the Lord, and I changed my mind, and I wanted to redeem him back, then the value that I have to pay would be 50 shekels, plus 20% actually.

But it says in verse 5, if it's someone from 5 years old up to 20 years old, then your evaluation for a male should be 20 shekels, and for a female, 10 shekels. And if from a month old up to 5 years old, then your valuation should be for a male, 5 shekels of silver. For a female, your valuation should be 3 shekels of silver.

Samuel was probably of that category. He was probably between 1 month and 5 years old when he was weaned and taken to the tabernacle. If it's from 60 years old and above, if it is a male, then your valuation should be 15 shekels, and for a female, 10 shekels.

Less valuable as a worker after age 60. 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 for him according to the ability of him who vowed, and the priest shall value him. So, if someone vows to give something to the temple, and then for some reason the vow is not kept, but the person who made the vow is so poor they can't pay 50 shekels, if that's what he would have vowed, or 20 or 15 even, then the priest can make special hardship cases, can evaluate something according to the ability of the person to pay.

So this would not oppress people who are too poor and who made rash vows that couldn't be fulfilled. And if it is a beast, in other words, you might vow an animal to the Lord, not a servant, not a human. If it is a beast such as men may bring as an offering to the Lord, in other words, a clean beast, all such that any man gives to the Lord shall be holy.

He shall not substitute it or exchange it, good for bad or bad for good. And if he at all exchanges beast for beast, then both it and the one exchanged shall be holy. Now, if what you dedicate is an animal, it's holy, you can't really redeem it.

You can't even exchange it for another one. If you try to exchange it for another one, then the one you the original one still has to be the Lord's. And so does the other one.

You have to give two beasts for it. But there's not going to be any redemption of that one. But if it is an unclean beast, verse 11, like a donkey or camel, perhaps, which are useful but can't be used for sacrifices or eaten, which they do not offer as a sacrifice to the Lord, then he should present the beast before the priest and the priest shall set a value for it, whether it is good or bad.

As as you, the priest value it, so it shall be. Clearly, this was addressed to the priests about them being the ones who make this evaluation of things. They're the ones who are receiving the vowed item or or receiving the money in payment instead of the vowed item.

Verse 13, but if he wants at all to redeem it, then he must add one fifth to your valuation. So an unclean beast could be redeemed, but a clean beast couldn't. The clean beast is offered to become holy to the Lord, offered as a sacrifice.

An unclean animal can't be offered as a sacrifice. It can't be holy. So once you've dedicated, it could be redeemed with a 20 percent penalty over its value.

Verse 16, if a man sanctifies to the Lord some part of a field of his possession, then your valuation should be according to the seed for it. A Homer of barley seed should be valued at 50 shekels of silver. Apparently, the amount of seed it would take to plant that field determines the size of the field and therefore the value of the field.

So if it's a field that you normally plant a Homer, a barley seed in, then there's a certain price for it. If it's a different amount of seed, then the price is different. If he sanctifies his field from the year of Jubilee, according to your valuation, it shall stand.

But if he sanctifies it, 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 value. Now, when it says if he sanctifies it from the year of Jubilee, meaning starting at the year of Jubilee, I have a field, this year is Jubilee, I'm going to make a declaration of vow that as soon as Jubilee is over, this field belongs to the Lord. And so its full value is the price of its redemption.

But if it's sometime after the Jubilee, some period of time later, so there's been some crops and so forth perhaps produced by this field, and it's a short period of time, less than 50 years to the Jubilee, then the valuation will be deducted from it. And if he who sanctifies the field ever wishes to redeem it, then he must add one fifth to the money of your valuation to it, and it should belong to him. But if he does not want to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore.

But the field, when it is released in the Jubilee, shall be holy to the Lord. It is a devoted field. It shall be the possession of the priest.

So there are things, if the man doesn't redeem the field, if it's dedicated to the Lord, it's not one of those fields that goes back to the owner. If you sold your field to a neighbor, it comes back to you in Jubilee. But if you dedicate it to the Lord, it doesn't come back to you in the Jubilee in most cases.

And if a man sanctifies, unless he redeems it first. And if a man sanctifies to the Lord a field which he has bought, which is not the field of his possession, that is, it's not it's not his ancestral property, so it's not his permanently. It's only his until Jubilee.

He bought the field. He's got to return it to the original owner at Jubilee. Then the priest shall reckon to him the worth of your valuation up to the year of Jubilee, and he should give your valuation on that day as a holy offering to the Lord.

In the year of Jubilee, the field shall return to him from whom it was bought to the one who owned the land as a possession. So the distinction here is this. If it is your land by inheritance and you dedicate it to the Lord, that's permanent.

Jubilee won't give it back to you. But if it's not your land permanently, because you bought it from someone else and you have to give it back to him in the year of Jubilee. But you dedicate it for the rest of the years until Julie to the Lord, then the priest has to give it back to the original owner at Jubilee.

These things are technical and perhaps not as interesting to us because we don't practice them. Verse 25, all your valuation shall be according to the shackle of the sanctuary, 20 giras to the shackle. But the firstling of the beast, which should be the Lord's first thing, no man shall sanctify whether it is an ox or a sheep.

It is the Lord. It already belongs to God. The first the firstborn is already God's by right, by law.

So you can't make a vow to give the firstborn to God and count that as some kind of a special deal you're giving to God. It's not. It's the Lord's already given him what he already owns.

No person under the ban who may become doomed to destruction among men shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death. This would be people usually who have committed practice, idolatry or cities can be put under the ban to under the ban means they have to be destroyed. And it's usually because of idolatry.

You can't redeem those. If a man wants at all to be to redeem any of his tithes, he shall add one tenth to it. Now, I'm not sure why he would redeem his tithes.

Perhaps I really can't even think of why they want to redeem their tithes. It's like you give your tithe and you want to buy it back. Well, you can buy it back at 20 percent penalty.

Well, why would you do that? You know, why would you want to get your tithe back and take 20 percent? I don't understand why that provision would be made. There may be some circumstances that where it would be what someone would desire, in which case perhaps what it's saying is that you can't redeem your tithe back because no one would redeem it back at a 20 percent penalty. So once you've given your tithe, don't even think about redeeming it back.

If you want to, it's going to cost you more than you're going to want to pay. And concerning the tithe of the herd and the flock, see, most tithes would be ingrained. But there's also animal tithes or whatever passes under the rod.

The tenth one should be holy to the Lord. What passes under the rod usually refers to a sheep. The shepherd would use a rod to count the sheep coming and going through the gate of the sheepfold.

And he'd make them go under a rod so they couldn't go running in and, you know, several at a time. He'd make them go one at a time. He put his rod down.

So it slowed the process for counting. And he shall not inquire whether it is good or bad, nor shall he exchange it. For if he exchanges it at all, then both it and the one exchange for it shall be holy.

It shall not be redeemed. These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel on Mount Sinai. Again, these ideas of redemption, it's hard to even imagine any way that this has a corollary in our own modern society.

Since we don't have the practice they had of vowing to give things to the Lord and then offering them as a sacrifice like an animal or sending off one of our children or one of our servants to belong to God to work in the temple. These practices just don't fit in the modern world. And therefore, we're just reading what they had to do in their situation.

And it does seem, though, that under these laws, Jephthah could have redeemed his daughter. However, he lived during the period of the judges when they didn't know very much about the law. The law was very poorly communicated during the period of the judges.

Often people were ignorant of it. He might not have known that he could redeem her. I'm not sure.

What he actually did with her, we'll have to consider another time when we study the book of Judges. But now we're finished with the book of Leviticus.