These are notes, summarizing
the discussion in our noon Bible study from 4/17/18.
DEUTERONOMY 26
I. Context
·
The book of Deuteronomy is a long review.
·
The children of Israel are at the end of their 40 years of wandering in
the wilderness and are about to cross the Jordan River and begin their conquest
of the Promised Land, aka Canaan, aka Palestine. Moses knows that he will die before they cross
over, so he gives them this “let me go over this one more time” final exam
review of the Law, their history, and the parameters for organizing their
community once they have taken possession of Canaan.
·
Much of Deuteronomy is word-for-word or paraphrased recall of Exodus,
Leviticus, or Numbers. But some of the
rules in Deuteronomy aren’t in the earlier law.
The new rules represent unique situations that arose during the 40 years
where the people needed a new ruling.
II. The offering of very first
fruits (verses 1-11)
A. 1 “And it shall be, when you come into the land which the Lord your God
is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and dwell in it,
·
This is one of many commandments the Israelites could not keep when they
were given. They were homeless nomads with
no national lands.
·
This was God’s way of saying, “You have nothing now. This is how you’re supposed to act when you
get your blessing.”
B. 2 that you shall take some of the first of
all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land that the Lord
your God is giving you, and put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord
your God chooses to make His name abide.
·
and go to the place where the Lord your
God chooses to make His name abide = Refers to the center of national worship. That ended up being Jerusalem, but not for
about 500 more years. In the interim,
the site of national worship was in the Tabernacle or around the ark of the
covenant and those moved from city to city.
·
The offering of the very first fruits was a national offering, a one-time
nationwide celebration that God had done it.
C. 3 And you shall go to the one who is
priest in those days, and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God
that I have come to the country which the Lord swore to our fathers to give
us.’4 “Then the priest shall take the basket out of your hand
and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.
·
Once the Israelites had entered, conquered, divided, settled, and begun
to cultivate Canaan, they were to make a special sacrificial offering of their
very first harvest(s).
·
This is like when you finally get that good job and you go to the church
and contribute because God has been good to you and you just want to bless the
Lord back.
·
This one time, 1st time offering of the very first fruits of
their harvest as homeowners was separate from every other type of tithe,
offering, and sacrifice and festival.
D. and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name
abide
E. 5 And you shall answer and say before the Lord
your God:
·
There was a ritual, like a liturgy or responsive reading, that accompanied
the offering of the very first fruits carried out by each landowner or head of household.
·
In those days there was no separation of church and state, no compartmentalization
between legal and municipal issues and personal, communal, or religious issues.
God and community were a single set.
·
The Levites (clergy) were spiritual guides, heads of the local education system,
municipal judges, doctors, and internal ambassadors who (because they were
neutral and owned no territory of their own) arbitrated disagreements across
tribal territories.
·
The responsive reading before the Levite was an act of worship, a social
ritual to recall the people’s history. It was like having a notary public certify that you had pain the tax/ tithe.
F. ‘My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and
dwelt there, few in number;
and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
·
The ritual oath/ responsive reading began by reminding the Jews that they
were the descendants of immigrants.
Abraham was an ethnic Syrian/ Aramaean who entered Canaan with no
property, dependent on the kindness of the natives.
·
Each generation of patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) experienced
famine and had to flee to Egypt and survive on the welfare provided by friendly
Pharaohs.
·
It was “Remember where you came from.
You ain’t always had what you have.”
G. 6 But the Egyptians mistreated us,
afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. 7 Then we cried out
to the Lord God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and looked on our
affliction and our labor and our oppression. 8 So the Lord
brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with
great terror and with signs and wonders.
·
Reminder that the landowners, kings, and masters of the Promised Land are
the children of slaves who did not have the power to free themselves. But God . . . .
H. 9 He has brought us to this place and has
given us this land, “a land flowing with milk and honey”; 10 and
now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O Lord, have
given me.’
·
Their possessions and prosperity cannot be attributed solely or primarily
to hard work and superior intellect.
God set them free. God brought
them through. God made them the nation
that they are. Not their weapons or
their ingenuity.
·
Before the Israelites had a land of Israel to live in, God wanted them to
have a proper sense of national humility.
I.
“Then you shall set it before the Lord
your God, and worship before the Lord your God. 11 So
you shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given to you
and your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.
·
Through ritual the Levite (clergy) certified each offering.
·
Notice verse 11. The blessing to
the landowner and the blessings to support the church (Levites) and the
charitable blessing to the stranger (homeless and immigrant) aren’t considered separate
funds.
III. The 3rd year tithe (verses 12-15)
A. 12 “When you have finished laying aside all
the tithe of your increase in the third year—the year of tithing—and have given
it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may
eat within your gates and be filled,
·
The 3rd year tithe is separate from the offering of very first
fruits.
·
Every 3 years, a special offering was taken up consisting of 10% of the harvests,
livestock, or equivalent income earned that year.
·
The 3rd year tithe was administered locally.
·
After they settled in the Promised Land, the Levites scattered across the
nation. Every village/ community had a Levite
to serve in all the ways mentioned above.
Some villages shared a Levite.
·
The 3rd year tithe was brought to the local Levite.
B. 13 then you shall say before the Lord your
God: ‘I have removed the holy tithe from my house, and also have given them to
the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all Your
commandments which You have commanded me; I have not transgressed Your
commandments, nor have I forgotten them. 14 I have not eaten
any of it when in mourning, nor have I removed any of it for an unclean use,
nor given any of it for the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God,
and have done according to all that You have commanded me.
·
By ritual, the Levite certified that each individual had fulfilled his
obligation to contribute 10% of income to the community.
·
The 3rd year tithe was the endowment that provided ongoing
support for: Levite, the stranger, the
fatherless, and the widow = church/ clergy, homeless and immigrant, children
without active fathers, and single mothers
·
Again, when these rules were given, the Israelites owned no land. They didn’t have any harvests in the
wilderness. God was laying down the
rules for how a community is SUPPOSED to work.
·
In God’s idea of community, EVERYONE contributes proportionately to support
the church and charity.
·
In God’s community, there isn’t a division between church and “ministry.” The pastor eats and the poor eat. The homeless have housing and the church building
is maintained.
C. 15 Look down from Your holy habitation,
from heaven, and bless Your people Israel and the land which You have given us,
just as You swore to our fathers, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’
·
The ritual of the 3rd year tithe moves from talking ABOUT God in
the 3rd person to talking TO
God in the 1st person.
·
It’s a testimony service. Like
when some body is talking ABOUT what God has done for them and after a while
they get caught up and start talking directly TO God, praising Him “for all He’s
done for me!”
IV. Moses
reminds them
A. 16 “This day the Lord your God commands you
to observe these statutes and judgments; therefore you shall be careful to
observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. 17 Today
you have proclaimed the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways
and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will
obey His voice.
·
After going over the two future offerings and rituals, Moses reminds the
people (again) that these activities are part of the obligations of the covenant
that they have agreed to.
B. 18 Also today the Lord has proclaimed you
to be His special people, just as He promised you, that you should keep all His
commandments, 19 and that He will set you high above all
nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may
be a holy people to the Lord your God, just as He has spoken.”
·
See 1 Peter 2:9. Notice the
similarities in language.
·
The early NT church was led by Jewish men. Peter was a fisherman. He didn’t read Greek philosophy. His only exposure to grand ideas about
leadership and organizing where from the law and the prophets (the Old
Testament). So, when Peter explains the
nature of Christians’ relationship to God and to one another, he doesn’t invent
something new. He draws on the same idea
of community that Moses articulated.
·
When we today look back and say, “We should be more like the NT church,” we
need to remember that the NT church was looking back saying, “We need to be
like the Kingdom community God described through Moses.”
V. Other Thoughts.
·
Why did God choose these people in this part of the world to receive His
OT and NT revelations? Why not tribes in
the Americas? Why not Europeans? Why did God speak to Ezekiel and Jeremiah and
Daniel and NOT to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle?
·
I think that part of the reason is that the Middle-East-and-Africa
centered peoples had a particular cultural mindset that God wanted to come out
through His Scriptures.
·
In the Western mentality, the individual is the most important unit. Individuals want a community that supports
them. When we don’t have it, we declare
the community to be a bunch of haters and we shop for a more amenable job,
group, church, etc.
·
In the mentality of the Biblical world (Middle-East and Africa), the
community is the most important unit. The
individual is part of the community but he/she isn’t ever the center of the
community. God is the center.
·
Each individual’s highest good is to contribute to the prosperity and
holiness of their people, to continue and expand the legacy and history of
their people. It is a cultural mindset
more easily bent toward loving your neighbor to the same degree that you love
yourself.
·
American culture is built on a Western mentality. The Western mindset is still defined by the
ideas of ancient pagan Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle).
·
So, there are lots of things in Scripture that contradict our Western
mentality. That’s why we cherry-pick
scripture. That’s why we read Divine
commands to do justice and to care for the poor and the stranger but ignore them
and instead only seem to remember verses that talk about how great and special
I (Individual) am.
·
We treat prosperity as a command but compassion as an option.
·
We compartmentalize community and charity and worship and economics and
declare each to be a separate thing. That’s Plato, not Jesus.
·
I think this is why Western Christians are so often and accurately accused
of hypocrisy. This is why we can’t find
common ground even though we have a common text.
·
This is why African souls are troubled by trying to live out Middle
Eastern Scripture with an American mindset.
