Growing up my friends and I would trade baseball cards and it might have been more fun than actually playing baseball at times. Sometimes the trades were even, occasionally it was a favorite player swap, and sometimes we would try to trick the other person into making a horrible trade. We would dangle their favorite player (knowing their card was not valuable) so we could get something of higher value. Then we would feel cheated, get mad at each other, and say some unkind things to one another. Of course, we expected baseball to be super valuable now. Really we were deceiving each other to try to get what we really wanted, and I am pretty sure at times it broke the rules of Leviticus 6.
As I thought about deceit and how things in our society work, a line in Leviticus 6 stood out. Verse 5 has a simple phrase that I pondered for a while, “restore it in full”. The goal was not just apologizing, but actually restoring the wrong. In fact, an extra 5th of value was added to the amount. If I followed that practice, I would not have boxes of baseball cards with little value now. In life, we act like this principle is not important, but it is vital to keeping our community healthy and following the Lord. The goal was to make sure people were right with the Lord, but also right with one another. Bitterness from being wronged would lead to division, anger, and separation of God’s people, but that is not God’s plan. He leads with restoration and in this way we should follow his lead!
So here is the point of the devotional where I have to ask, is there anything you need to bring to Jesus? Is there somewhere in these verses where your life and your actions cross the line? If the answer is yes, talk to Jesus today, he loves you. The second part is there someone you need to restore in full and maybe add a 5th? Can you do that as well?
PS- Casey if you are reading this sorry about the Ken Griffey Jr. trade, you can have it back and I will throw in a Nolan Ryan card too.
Pastor Jeremy