Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Promise God? | Torah | Leviticus 27

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Do you give God everything you have? What does it mean to make promises to God? Can we even make promises to God? In today's episode, Patrick looks at the guidelines for making vows in Leviticus 27 and connects them to the vows we make in our own lives. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Leviticus 27

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. The other day, I was talking to my daughter, Iris, and she said that she promised that something was true. The problem was that, as her dad and being someone who was a little bit more aware of the situation, I knew that she was lying to me. And so I said, hey, Iris, I know that's not true.

Don't promise things that you can't promise. Don't promise things that aren't true. And so she kind of frowned at me and then told me the truth. And I said, is that really the truth? And she smiled and said, I pinky promise that's the case. Now, I said, look, we don't pinky promise about things. Just let your yes be your yes and your no be or no. But you said, no, seriously, I pinky promise. It's the most serious promise. It's true. And so I took her pinky promise. Now, that might have been a mistake.

Because since then, she has continued to use pinky promises to try and convince me that whatever she is saying is absolutely true. It is to her the most serious kind of promise. Now, it's easy for me to joke about a little kid pinky promising and not letting their yes be their yes, but I can't help but see myself in it. How often do we find ourselves caught in a sin? And we say, God, I'll never do this again. I promise I'll never gossip. I promise I'll never lust. I promise I'll never drink too much. And oftentimes when we make those promises, we even cut deals with God. God, if you'll just forgive me, then I promise I'll never do X. Or God, if you'll just give me what I want in this scenario, I promise I'll give you why.

It's really easy for us to make promises, vows to God. And Jesus, he talked about this in the sermon on the mound. He's the one who first said, let your yes be or yes and your no be or no. And he was warning against making oaths, owes on your mother's grave. You know, by my mother's grave, I swear that X is true. Now, in those passages, Jesus is telling us to just be honest. And yet, there's still a place for vows in the Christian life. We know this in part because the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts, when he comes back to Jerusalem,

Jerusalem, he takes on a vow before he goes into the temple. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, when he's doing that, he's doing something that's old and very, very Levitical. In Leviticus chapter 27, the very last chapter of Leviticus, it talks about vows. And in some ways, it's kind of a strange way to end this book. People often wonder, why end talking about vows? And I'm not sure I really have any answer to that exact question. But as we read about the vows in Leviticus, we begin to realize that there's something different in view here. Back in the Old Testament times, you could vow your entire life to God. And this didn't look like saying, God, I'll give you my whole life. This looked literally like saying, God, I will give my life to you, which meant I will go into the

tabernacle and serve you for the rest of my life. You could vow your land to God by giving it to the priest. You could vow animals to God by giving those to the priests. And yet, Leviticus shows that often we do make rash vows. We promise things that we don't really want to give away. And sometimes we do it, because we think God's a vending machine who's going to give us something back. And that's why Leviticus 27 explains in detail how we can reclaim, redeem the vows that we make. Maybe you sell a piece of land and you realize, I need that back to make a living. Or maybe you sell an animal and you realize, gosh, we need that so that we can feed the family. And there's ways to get those things back from the Levitical priest. But here's the broader picture I want to paint for us today. The New

Testament doesn't spend a lot of time talking about vows for a very simple reason. Because the idea of a vow, consecrating your life or your possessions or your stuff to God, it's right at the core of following Jesus. When we follow Jesus in a very real sense, we are vowing our whole selves to him, him as our king, him as our Lord, him as our Savior. We're giving everything to him. This explains why in Romans chapter 12, verse 1, Paul uses very Levitical language to talk about our relationship with Jesus. He says, therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your body. as a living sacrifice. This is sacrificial language. He's saying, give your whole lives to God,

vow the entirety of yourself to him. He says, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your proper worship. How do you worship God by vowing your entire self to him? You see, back in Old Testament times, there was very particular ways of vowing your life to God, but now in New Testament times, we all say my entire life, my entire self is vowed and given over to him. All this makes me think of a very old hymn. It was written in 1874 by Francis R. Havergau. I'm not sure if I said that right.

And later, it was popularized by Chris Tomlin in the song, Take My Life and Let It Be. But as I read these words, I realize that as I read Leviticus 27, it's calling me as a follower of Jesus to vow everything I own and everything I am to him. Listen to the words of this hymn. And just ask yourself, is this true of me? Is this true of how I see my life?

Or in a lot of ways, are you like my daughter, who promises things and then tries to take them back, who says, look, if Pinky promises really for real God, or if we really given our entire selves to Him? This is what the hymn says. Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in endless praise. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of their love. take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee take my voice and let me sing always only for my king take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee take my silver and my gold not a might what i withhold take my intellect and use every power as you choose take my will and make it thine it shall be no longer mine take my heart it is thine own it shall be thy royal throne take my love my lord i

I pour at thy feet its treasure store, take myself and I will be ever only all for thee. That hymn sums up what a true vow is. It's coming before Jesus and saying, everything I have, everything I own, everything I do, everything I say, it is all holy and consecrated, holy for you. And Paul says that laying down our whole lives as a living sacrifice, everything we do, everything we say, all of it, that is. our proper worship. It is exactly the thing that Jesus calls us to do. And so in your life, again, is that true? Or again, are you like my daughter making deals with God, trying to get things out of God, trying to get God to forgive you? Look, Paul says, in light of his mercy, we give him everything. There's nothing that you can give God to earn his forgiveness. There's nothing you can give God to

earn his love. And in light of his mercy, that he has loved you and forgiven you no matter what, no matter what you've done, in light of that mercy, that is precisely the reason why we lay down, why we vow our entire lives is consecrated to him. This is supposed to be a really practical reality. Sometimes I think about it when I'm mowing my lawn. I know that sounds a little bit weird, but as I take care of my yard, as I mow my grass, I realize, you know what, this grass is not my grass. This is God's grass. This house is not my house. This is God's house. And how I take care of it is a reflection of my love for God. When I speak to people who are made in God's image, I think the words that I'm using, these are not my words. These are supposed to be God's words. My mouth is his. And so if I honor that

person with my language, if I speak words of kindness and goodness and generosity, I've vowed my words to God. I'm speaking my words in the way that he would have me speak them. If my words are full of gossip or anger or malice or slander or churlishness or childishness or foolish talk, again, if I vowed my words to him, When you think about what you do at your job, maybe it's a business that you own, maybe it's a business that you work for, do you see the work that you do as your work? Or have you consecrated it? Have you vowed it to the Lord and said everything I do with my hands, everywhere I go with my feet? All that I do, it is yours. It is for your glory and for your sake. Leviticus 27 is realistic. It understands that sometimes we make promises to God that we can't keep. And it talks about how you get out of those promises in a legitimate way. But in a real way, as New Testament,

Christian, we're not called to make on and off promises with God. We're called to promise the whole of our being to Him. So today, I want you to pray. I want you to look to God and say, my whole life is yours. I don't do it perfectly, but in view of your mercy, in view of your forgiveness and kindness, would you take this small offering of myself and make it into so much more? Your life is consecrated. Your life is Jesus is. You do not serve in the temple or tavernacle, but everything you do happens before the face of God for the sake of His glory. Live your life like that. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter.

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