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The Lord is Your Inheritance
The Lord is Your Inheritance Deuteronomy 18:1-22 Key Verse 18:2 “They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.” Two weeks ago we thought about how God wanted to set the Israelites apart from the other nations by having them establish honest judges and courts of law, by not allowing them to worship other god’s and by telling them how they should select the king that God knew the people would ask for. In all of these things, we saw that God was trying to establish a people who would be set aside for him as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. A people that would be different from the people around them. A people that would reflect or reveal the glory of the one true God. We have been learning that God’s people cannot be like the people living around them because God’s people must reveal who God is to the people around them. The message today is no different. Today we learn about how God wanted to set His people apart through their worship of Him. This passage is made of three sections. The first section deals with the Levites who were to be set apart strictly for the work of the Lord; that is the work of taking care of the tent of meeting and ministering to the people. The second section is a warning against detestable practices in worshiping God. And finally, we learn about God’s plan for communicating with His people in the future. Once again, this passage is all about the Israelites being set apart as a special people who would reveal the glory of God to the people around them – they were to be for Him a kingdom of priest and a holy nation. May God bless our study of this passage and open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can see ourselves as His special chosen people for this generation. First, the Levites are set aside for the work of the Lord (1-8). Look at verse 1.” The Levitical priests—indeed, the whole tribe of Levi—are to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the food offerings presented to the Lord, for that is their inheritance.” Moses begins this chapter by talking about the Levitical priests and the tribe of Levi in general. We need to know who these people were and why they were so special in God’s plan. The Levites were all the people who were descended from Jacob’s third son from his wife Leah, Levi. The Levites were by far the smallest tribe of Israel, with every male a month old or more counted in the first census taken when the Israelites were at Mt, Sinai numbering just 22,000 (see Numbers 1-3 were the tribes of Israel were counted). God chose this tribe to be set apart especially for work that was to be done for God. They were also set apart as a substitution for all the other first born males of Israel. Following the Passover, when God’s angel of death went through Egypt killing all the first born males of the land of both man and animals, God told the Israelites that they were to dedicate all of their first born males to Him. However, when they got to Mt. Sinai, God told Moses that the Levites were to be taken and set apart as a substitute for the first born males of the other Israelites. Numbers 3:12-13 say, “I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites in place of the first male offspring of every Israelite woman. The Levites are mine, for all the firstborn are mine. When I struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, I set apart for myself every firstborn in Israel, whether human or animal. They are to be mine. I am the Lord.” In the book of Numbers, we also learn that they were set aside for a very specific task. Numbers 3:6-8 say, “Bring the tribe of Levi and present them to Aaron the priest to assist him. They are to perform duties for him and for the whole community at the tent of meeting by doing the work of the tabernacle. They are to take care of all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, fulfilling the obligations of the Israelites by doing the work of the tabernacle.” In their travels through the wilderness, Aaron and his sons needed help in taking care of and moving the things in the Tent of Meeting. This was the specific job that God set them aside for. Later when they entered the promised land, their role would change slightly, but they were still to be set aside for the Lord’s work. As God’s special workers they were not to be treated as the other Israelites. Every other Israelite family was to receive a portion of land as their family inheritance. The Levite families were not to receive any inheritance of land. They were given certain walled cities among the Israelites that they could collectively share, but no individual Levite family was to receive a permanent piece of land that they could call their own. Why did God want this. Look at our key verse, verse 2. “They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them.” They were to do God’s work and God was to be their inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is wealth that is passed down from one generation to the next. Each Israelite family was given a piece of land that they could call their own for all generations. Even if they sold it, at the end of 49 years that land had to be returned to the family it originally belonged to. In this way, every Israelite family was to have an inheritance that would last for all their generations. With this inheritance, they could grow their own food, raise their own livestock and they could earn money by selling these things. This was not the case with the Levites. God wanted the Levites to completely depend on Him in everything they did. He didn’t want them being like ordinary people just working hard to survive, He want them to serve Him wholeheartedly day and night to help the other Israelites to maintain their relationship with Him. God did not provide the Levites with the things they needed to get rich from a worldly point of view. If you think about it didn’t appear that God even provided the Levites with what they needed to survive – after all, they had no land to call their own and so they had no land to grow their own food on. But God did provide for the Levites, and He provided for them abundantly. Verses 3 & 4 show us how god provided for them. “This is the share due the priests from the people who sacrifice a bull or a sheep: the shoulder, the internal organs and the meat from the head. You are to give them the first fruits of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the first wool from the shearing of your sheep.” This is actually a very abundant provision for the Levites and it would ensure that none of them would go hungry or be lacking in anything that they needed. God provided for the Levites in other ways as well. As I briefly mentioned before, He did give them some walled cities among the Israelites. He also gave them some pasture land surrounding these cities that they could use for any cattle that they might acquire. But according to verse 6-8, God also permitted the Levites to sell their possessions in those cities and move to a different location and continue serving God there. At their new location, if they had gone there to sincerely serve God and the people, they were to enjoy all the benefits provided to the other Levites of that area, even though they had money from selling their property in their former city. God truly provided for them in every way. God is the best inheritance that anyone could ever hope for. In the world today, people work and work and work, just to build up a little inheritance that they can pass along to their children. Unfortunately, more and more families are not able to pass on much of anything except debt to their children. This is a tragic situation in today’s society, but I think it has come about because people have lost focus on what our true inheritance should be. Our true inheritance should be in God – kept in heaven for us. We should be working to store up treasure in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy that treasure. Yet most people don’t ever think about true treasure in heaven because they are too focused on trying to build up treasure here on earth. As Solomon says, this is just chasing after the wind. Even if you get some treasure here and are able to pass it along to your children, it will do you absolutely no good when you are standing before the judgement seat of Christ. Our true treasure, our true inheritance must be in God. Jesus said that where your treasure is there your heart will be also. Where is your treasure? Where is your true inheritance? As I’ve said over and over again throughout the study of this book, I believe we are God’s chosen people for this generation. We must live our lives like the Levites – like we are set apart for the work of God. Like them we must learn to depend on God for everything. If we do learn this, I believe that God will provide all things in abundance for us just as He provided for the Levites. So, let’s set our hearts on Jesus and know that our true inheritance is kept with Him in heaven and can never be taken from us or given to someone else. Second, avoid detestable practices (9-13). Look at verse 9. “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.” The people living in the land that God was going to give to the Israelites, all had their own ways of worshiping their gods. The ways that they worshiped their gods were detestable to God. The King James Version and the ESV use the word abominable. These words are both very strong words to use in English. It makes it very clear that God hates those practices and He did not want His people to have anything to do with them. If you look at verse 10, the first of these practices is something that we cannot even imagine doing today. That is some of the people living in the land of Canaan were sacrificing their own children in fire to their God. It is hard to imagine that God’s chosen people would do this, but if you carefully read the Old Testament they did indeed imitate those people and do this very thing. Jeremiah 19:5 says, “They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” This is just one of many practices that God said He hated and warned the Israelites about, yet they did them anyway. Let’s look at verses 10 & 11. “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.” God says that anyone who does any of these things is detestable to Him, but many of the Israelites did them anyway. A good example of this is Saul in 1 Samuel 28. When Saul was confronted by a Philistine army he became afraid and he tried to consult God using the Urim and prophets, but God did not answer him. He asked that a woman medium be found so that he could enquire of her. He was told there was a witch in Endore, so he disguised himself and went to her. He had the woman summon Samuel from the dead, but instead of encouraging Saul, Samuel rebuked him harshly and confirmed that God had torn the kingdom out of his hands and given it to David. God tore the kingdom out of Saul’s hands because Saul did things like this, things that were detestable to God. In today’s world, there are still many of these detestable practices going on. Here in Korea, if you look in any crowded place you are sure to find someone around who will read your future for you. The same is true in America and across Europe. Occult practices are thriving all over the world. One seemingly harmless example of this can be found in any major US newspaper. Almost every paper I have ever seen has a section that has horoscopes in it. This is where some tries to divine what will happen to you today by the alignment of “your stars.” It is so common in America, that many Christians read their horoscopes every day and they don’t think there is anything wrong with it. As Christians, we must not under estimate the bad influence of these seemingly harmless practices. God’s hates these things – they are abominations and detestable to Him and anyone who practices them are detestable to Him. Not only should we avoid these things at all costs, but we must constantly tell other of the dangers of these practices. Third, God will send a prophet like Moses (14-22). Verse 14 says again that God does not want his people to practice sorcery or divination to try and determine the will of God. Yet in Exodus 20:19 and Deuteronomy 5:23-27l, the people had told Moses that they no longer wanted to hear God’s voice directly for fear that they would die. So they asked Moses to go to God, listen to what he had to say and come back and report to them what He had said. They promised Moses that if He did this they would obey everything that he told them. Well, Moses was just a man and he was going to die soon. So then how were the Israelites to get God’s word? God heard the people when they spoke to Moses, and He thought that what they said was good, so He promised to raise up other men like Moses to give His words to them so that they could pass them on to the people. According to verses 15 & 18, the only real requirement for God’s prophet was that they were a fellow Israelite. God’s prophet had to come from God’s chosen people, because God was using them to bring His message to His people. If the prophet came from outside, who knows what god this person might be speaking for. Again, according to verses 15 and 19, the people also were required to do something – they must listen to that prophet and obey his words. If they didn’t listen to God’s prophet, God himself would call them to account. In other words, they would appear before the judgment seat of God to be punished. If there was a prophet who simply presumed to speak in God’s name or who spoke in the name of another God, the people were to put that person to death immediately. If they did not the bad influence of that person could quickly spread through the people and lead to some of the detestable practices we studied about in verses 9-13. The Israelites had to be very careful to keep bad influences out of their assembly. The test of whether someone was really a prophet was that if that person spoke in the name of the Lord and said something was about to happen, if that thing happened then the person was really speaking the words of God, he was a prophet and the people must listen to him. If what he said didn’t take place, the people didn’t have to be concerned about whatever he said. Today people wonder if there are still prophets among us. I simply don’t know, but I do know two things. First, the New Testament speaks about the gift of prophecy and says that some people do have it. I also know that there are a lot of false prophets out there who are deceiving many people. We must be on our guard against such false prophets and warn people when we see them. Today we learned three ways in which God set apart His people, Israel. It is easy to think that these three things don’t have anything to do with us as God’s chosen people today, but they really do because our true inheritance must be with God in heaven, many of the same detestable practices that the Israelites encountered are still going on in the world today and there are many false prophets out their trying to deceive many. May God open our spiritual eyes and hearts to clearly see ourselves as His chosen people in today’s generation and to live lives set apart, that reflect His glory to the world. |
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