 Good morning We're gonna continue now in a time of worship by giving and we're gonna be looking at Numbers 18 verses 25 to 32. So if you would turn there After our offer Tory, our brother Lee is gonna come and pray Numbers 18 25 to 32 Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak thus to the Levites and say to them When you take from the children of Israel all The children of Israel the tithes which I have given you from them as your inheritance Then you shall offer up a heave offering of it to the Lord a tenth of the tithe and Your heave offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were a grain It were the grain of the threshing floor and as the fullness of the wine press thus You shall also offer a heave offering to the Lord from all your tithes which you receive from the children of Israel and You shall give the Lord's heave offering from it to Aaron the priest Of all your gifts you shall offer up every heave offering due to the Lord from all the best of them The consecrated part of them Therefore you shall say to them when you have lifted up the best of it Then the rest shall be accounted to the Levites as the produce of the threshing floor and as the produce of the wine press You may eat it in any place you and your households for it is your reward for your work in the tabernacle of meeting And you shall bear no sin because of it when you have lifted up the best of it But you shall not profane the holy gifts of the children of Israel lest you die As we look for this passage for guidance and how we worship through giving First let's just deal with the definition The heave offering it's mentioned five times in these verses And it simply means lifting up or separating a portion of the sacrifice from the rest and That was what Moses was instructing the Levites to do here The Levites the entire tribe which was the smallest of the 12 Received by God's command in this very chapter a tithe from all the rest of Israel God set apart this tribe for ministry All priests came from the tribe of the Levites including Moses and Aaron and later Ezra and even Zechariah the father of John the Baptist And the Levites who are not priests serve God and his tabernacle in other ways They were set aside for the work of the ministry Underscoring the importance to God of his worship All of Israel was commanded to provide for the needs of this one tribe Set aside for this work And while it was a privilege and an honor it also carried with it Grave responsibilities It was a death penalty offense for the worship to be tainted or profaned In any way And it was up to the Levitical priesthood to ensure no such thing happened But the particular focus of this section of this chapter has to do with the tithes that were to be paid by the Levites themselves From the income and offerings they received from other tribes this tithe Was for God and given to the high priest At this time Aaron the older brother of moses If you look at verse versus 27 and then 30 you see this phrase that forms An inclusio In 27 it says is and your heave offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were the grain of the threshing floor And as the fullness of the wine press And we see that repeated in 30 The text brackets there Again, it says the produce of the threshing floor and as the produce of the wine press and in the middle We have these instructions on how to present This best of the best offering from verse 29 of all your gifts You shall offer up every heave offering due to the lord from all the best of them And we see that repeated later in this passage So Aaron The high priest was the only one who could enter the holy of holies Which he did once a year on the day of atonement. He was the mediator between god and man these priests Aaron and others were were a gift to this to this congregation as it were in the wilderness And so what does this have to do with how we worship by giving today? First Let's recognize that those who minister the word of god to us are god's gifts to us To his church as we're told in Ephesians 4 And just as the nation of israel's worship was to be led by the levitical priests So we are to be led in worship by those who minister the word to us And those who minister the word to us are to be supported by us That's a principle established in this chapter But the heart of the matter here in this section Has to do with the high priest And our high priest is jesus christ And he has entered the holy of holies and Gives all of us access personally to the throne of god And to our high priest we should offer our very best Just as the levit priests did for their high priest And what we offer usually is money How can we offer our best money? I believe the application here is that we are to Consider giving to the ministry Our first and highest priority The most important thing we can do with our money It's never to be to you a casual thing An afterthought Something you'll do if there's anything left over The jews would have been in sin if they had If they were to have chosen an offering of a lame animal That was to be put to death anyway In the same way we're in sin when we consider giving As anything less than an act of worship worthy of careful and sacrificial consideration Let's pray Father in heaven, we know that everything we have is from you Help us to understand why you gave it to us in the first place For your glory and not our own amen