Keep Your Word to the Lord

Introduction:

Nothing drives me mad like someone who doesn’t keep their word! How about you? I cannot stand it when someone says that they will meet me at a certain time and they never show up, never call, never text.

I also cannot stand it when you go to a restaurant and expect a certain level of service and they barely serve you at all. I consider this to be a way of not keeping your word. When you advertise something that you don’t provide, that is a lie and not keeping your word.

We recently had a bad experience with this on vacation where the condo we stayed in failed to let us know that the balconies were going to be painted and that the pool and hot tub would not be available and then later on in the week, we had the furniture from our balcony put into our living room for a couple of days making it unusable. We also had one of our two elevators taken down for maintenance.

All of these are examples of people not keeping their word. We can all go on and on about our experiences with people like this in our society, and it certainly seems to be getting worse by the day!

No one values honesty and integrity. Our culture is a “me-first” culture and only seems to care to do things when it directly benefits the individual person. We don’t work hard because we value our name and reputation.

Proverbs 22:1 says,

Proverbs 22:1 ESV

1 A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

You and I represent Jesus and our families and should value our word. We need to get back to the times where a good word and a handshake were all you needed.

But what about all of the times that we fail to keep our OWN word, especially to the Lord? How many times have we made promises to God only to renege on them? How many times have we lied to God about what we will do if God will only bless us?

Well, the Bible has a lot to say about that. We also see a lot about generosity in this last chapter of the Book of Leviticus.

Can you believe it? We are almost through the book and you have done something that so many people will never do in their lifetimes in church!

Let’s take a look at few verses that the Bible says about our vows.

Leviticus 27:1–8 ESV

1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, If anyone makes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, 3 then the valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 If the person is a female, the valuation shall be thirty shekels. 5 If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, the valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 6 If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female the valuation shall be three shekels of silver. 7 And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 8 And if someone is too poor to pay the valuation, then he shall be made to stand before the priest, and the priest shall value him; the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford.

We are going to look at vows that were special vows to the Lord. These vows consisted of valuing people, animals, homes, crops, and even tithes. None of these vows are required. They are all voluntary vows to God for some special purpose that the person wanted to give.

Now, one of the first things we should note is.. that

1. There are different levels of service to the Lord (v.1)

You see, all of us should serve the Lord. We all live for the King and are His subjects and so there is a minimum level of service that each of us should give to the Lord. We call these spiritual disciplines. Let me give you an example of a few of these.

We should all read our Bibles.

We should all pray.

We should all share our faith.

We should all tithe and be generous to other people.

All of these are examples of some of the basic things that we should do in serving the Lord.

However, we might want to promise to do even more than the bare minimum for the Lord. Why might we want to do that?

Why not! Think of all the things God has done for us. He has saved our souls from Hell. He helps us in our time of need. He helps with everything we need in our life and is far more worthy of our time, energy, and possessions than the markets of this world in order that we might satisfy our own desires.

In these verses, there are different valuations that were given for different people. There were men, women, young children, old people. All of them had different values.

This value was not based on the worth of the person’s soul, but rather it was based on what they could do in serving the Lord. In other words, what about of work can they do for the Lord.

I think the principle that we should take away from this passage is that our work has value and also we all can contribute in different ways at different levels. Our service to God has value.

Now another aspect of this passage that we should bring out is that these people are ones who want to serve the Lord, but for some reason cannot in person serve the Lord. Maybe they are not Levites and the Law required that only the Levites could serve the Lord. So in the Old Testament, if someone wanted to serve the Lord in the Temple that wasn’t a Levite, they might choose to give money in the place of the work that they could have performed.

Now, that brings up another point of application. Today, there is not restriction of only a certain group of people serving the Lord in the church. Anyone could serve depending on the task. Of course some offices are restricted, but general service can and should be done. We should have a whole church teaming with people that want to use their gifts to give back to God. And yet the reality is that we don’t! We usually have to beg people just to come to church, much less to serve.

Would you join me in praying for God to change our hearts concerning this?

But there may be times where we legitimately cannot serve ourselves and so we give money to help others serve. We do this with extra giving to our church on top of our tithe, which I will get to in a minute. But we also do this with missions giving.

Missions giving is never to be a substitute for our service and sharing the gospel, but sometimes we don’t have the ability to go to a certain place, and so we give so that others can go in our place.

One last thing about this point is that notice in verse 8 that there is never someone too poor to give something. The priest was to estimate the ability of the person and make a valuation, even if they seemed far to poor to give the normal amount.

We all have value that we can add to God’s kingdom and should serve as God has blessed and give in order that other also may serve.

2. We can give of our blessings to the Lord (vv.9-25)

In these verses we have animals that could be given to the Lord, both clean and unclean. We also have houses and finally crops. Remember that God actually owned the land, so the Israelites couldn’t give the land, but they could give what the land yielded.

All of these were things that carried value and were counted as blessings for the Lord.

It is also interesting that some of these things might be given to the Lord, but perhaps redeemed if the person changed their mind.

Think about this scenario. Let’s say that you pray to the Lord and somehow say, “Lord, if you will give me a big house, I will use it to serve you by hosting a missionary in one of the rooms.”

Now suppose God does this and you decide you don’t think you can host anyone or something changes in your life. You could actually change your vow to the Lord by buying back what you gave for it’s value and adding 1/5 to the price.

This was done for two reasons.

2a. We should take seriously our commitments and what we give to the Lord.

Once we give something to the Lord, be it through the church or some other means, it is not ours anymore. Have you ever seen someone give something and then they stipulate how and when and where it can be used? If you are going to give like that, don’t give! That’s not biblical giving!

We should also not be careless in our vows to God.

Deuteronomy 23:21–23 ESV

21 “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. 22 But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin. 23 You shall be careful to do what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth.

2b. We should not give in such a way that it ruins our families.

Sometimes we can get a little overzealous in what we promise to God. God always gives a way out for those times. However, we should not take things lightly when we make a promise to God, so the extra 20% was a way to prevent someone from being careless in their promises.

Now there are two examples of this to take note of in the Bible.

The first is Jephtha’s foolish vow were he promises to give whatever comes out of his door first to greet him after his victory to the Lord. It is his daughter that comes out first. Jephtha could have redeemed her if he knew the Law, but the people were in such a state of affairs having forsaken and forgotten the Law of God that it seems that Jephtha goes ahead and offers his daughter to God, possibly even as a human sacrifice (which obviously is not what God would have expected him to do!)

The second exampe is Hannah and Samuel. Remember that Hannah was barren and prayed to God for a son and said she would give him to serve God if God would grant her request. Well, God does and Hannah does not choose to redeem Samuel, but instead lets him serve Eli in the Tabernacle.

So all of these examples simply reveal that sometimes we over-promise and under-deliver, and when we do it is a serious matter that should be taken to the Lord.

Remember Annanias and Sapphira in the New Testament. They didn’t have to give anything of the property that they sold to the Lord but they chose to anyways and also chose to lie about it. God took that lie so seriously that he took their lives when they continued in the lie.

You and I should treat God as the sovereign that He is and give Him our very best. That leads to the last thing we should remember.

3. We should faithfully give our tithe to the Lord because it belong to Him (vv. 26-34)

Moses tells the people that they could not count what already belonged to God as extra giving or service. God already owned the first born of man and beast. He already owned the firstfruits and the tithes.

Did you get that? Pay careful attention! This is for you and me. When we give to God in church our tithes, we are not giving of our money. We aren’t giving to God from our possessions. These things are already the Lord. God is really telling us, you can keep 90% of what is mine, and I will just keep 10%. That is why in the Book of Malachi, God said that the people were robbing God by not giving their tithes. Let me ask you, are you robbing God? If you are, God takes that very seriously!

God said that He had cursed their money bags with holes in them because the people were robbing God of the tithes and firstfruits. Maybe the reason that your car broke down is because you are robbing God. Maybe that maintenance on your home that you have to do now that cannot be put off is a result of holes in your money bags from not being faithful in your giving.

The practice of tithing sheep was intersting. The shepherd would have the sheep come into a pin that had a narrow door. It was only big enough for one sheep at a time to pass through. The shepherd would hold a rod and have paint on it. He would then count every sheep that came in and every tenth would lower the rod on its back and it would be the Lords.

Now think about this for a minute. That means that the shepherd didn’t get to look the sheep over and give God whatever he wanted. Maybe this one that is a little limp is better for God. We will talk a little about this on Sunday, but again that’s what the people were doing in the Book of Malachi. They were giving God the lame and the sick.

What does this say about our giving? We should not hold back the best for ourselves. We should give to God what is due and even give beyond that!

The passage speaks also about dedicated things to God. These are those cities that were to be completely devoted to God like Jericho was. No one was to take from God or they might be robbing God and bring upon themseves and their families His judgment like Achan did.

Conclusion

As we wrap up our study tonight, we should take away from this chapter three things.

-Take seriously your vows to the Lord

-Fulfill your vows to the Lord

-Give your best to the Lord

We sing a hymn all the time that reflect all that this chapter teaches us about God. Remember that this is the holiness code of God. We need to view our giving and our serving as a part of our holiness unto the Lord.

The hymn that we sing has a chorus that goes like this.

Take my life and let it be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days;

Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

(Frances Ridley Havergal)

Is that your prayer tonight? Are you thankful to God for what He has given you and how He has blessed you? Then give to God and give praise to God and count it a blessing to do so!

Closing Prayer