“…you are to say, in the presence of Adonai your God, ‘I have rid my house of the things set aside for God and given them to the Levi, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, in keeping with every one of the mitzvot you gave me. I haven’t disobeyed any of your mitzvot or forgotten them.”-Deuteronomy 26:13
Alrighty, take a look at the part from the above verse that I have bolded and underlined:
“I have rid my house of the things set aside for God.”
Believe it or not, that little phrase is jam-packed with profound theological implications that only the most astute and well-trained Torah scholar anywhere in the world will be able to catch.
However, if you’ve been following this blog from day one, consider yourself in that category.
Let’s jump into our text study.
We’re told that when a Hebrew farmer offers up the poor-tithe to the Lord, he is to utter a declaration in the form of a vow.
What does he declare?
The farmer declares that he has indeed held nothing back and has offered up the portion of his produce set aside for the Lord.
Understand this proclamation is far from some harmless formality or nicety.
Through this proclamation, the farmer is actually placing himself in a situation fraught with incredible danger.
Why?
Well, let’s test your knowledge a little bit here.
If something has been set aside for the Lord (even before it is officially handed over to Him via a ritual or ceremony), what is it considered to be?
This is a non-negotiable God-principle that was established early in Torah.
The answer is…
…it is considered to be God’s HOLY property.
And it becomes HOLY property the very instant the worshipper purposes in his mind an animal to sacrifice.
Once a worshipper makes a decision to dedicate something to the Lord, the ownership of that thing transfers over to the Lord and is considered HOLY property from that point onwards.
Got it?
Next, do you recall what you’ve learned about God’s HOLY property?
This is a VERY sensitive matter to the Lord and those who would dare misappropriate the Lord’s HOLY property more often than not suffer the death penalty.
And this has not ended with the advent of Messiah.
The New Testament story of Ananias and Sapphire, a believing husband and wife, is a perfect case in point.
Ananias and Sapphira inwardly made a decision to sell a piece of property they owned and donate the proceeds to the Messianic Community.
However, instead of doing what they had originally purposed to do, they decided to “secretly” hold back some of the money for themselves.
They should have studied the Torah a little better (obviously I’m being sarcastic here).
Because if they had, they would have realized that…
…from the very instant they made a decision to dedicate the profits from the sale of their property, the money would have been considered HOLY property from the Lord’s perspective.
Well, we all know know the tragic ending of this story.
When questioned by the leadership whether they had given ALL the money from the transaction, they lied and then paid for their lives for messing with God’s HOLY property (NOT because they lied as the Christians teach. While lying is a sin, it is NOT a death penalty offense unless it causes the unfair loss of life.).
If you look carefully at how Ananias and Sapphira were questioned, you can see it matches precisely the declaration in Deuteronomy 26:13 (go ahead and check it out if you don’t believe me).
Bottomline, to hold back that which has been dedicated to or promised to the Lord is to trample on HOLY property, the results of which are more often than not…TOTAL DESTRUCTION!
Thank you very educating.wao
Glad you found this educational.
Hello. Gentile here. Good lesson, but one thing. We don’t teach that their lives were taken simply because they lied. If that were the case, then the earth would be a whole lot less populated. They were also guilty of trying to impress the other people in the church and trying to appear to be more than they were. You simply should not try to use the Holy Spirit for personal advancement. There is a lot more to what is taught about that passage, but no we don’t teach that is was strictly because they lied. Thanks.
Well, of course, I can’t make a blanket statement covering every church in the world. But usually, the general consensus is that they were killed because they lied AND that combined with the fact that this occurred during the earliest beginnings of the Messianic community was a double whammy that resulted in the death of Ananias and Sapphire. I have yet to meet a gentile Pastor who understands this was a misappropriation of HOLY property.