A Lot of Cash

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together, we have a little bit of coffee, we get into God's Word, and we grow. And I love the Lord together. And this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis through Leviticus. I'm so glad to be with you today.
Why don't we have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll get into some nerdy math section. I hope it will amaze us. Let's pray. Our hot coffee first, and then pray. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You so much for this day. It's a blessing to worship You. It's a joy to read Your Word. It's a discipline, Lord, but it is a grace. It's an ordinary grace. And so we pray that Your Spirit and Your Holy Spirit would make it extraordinary in our lives. In Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, so this morning we are at Exodus chapter 38. verses 21 through 31. By the way, if you know where my glasses are, could you please tell me? I don't know. Maybe I'll find them in the next couple hours or days. I don't know.
Okay, Exodus chapter 38, verse 21. This is the inventory of the tabernacle, the tabernacle of the testimony which was counted according to the commandment of Moses. for the service of the Levites by the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. So, let's just get at this. I'm going to do things a little bit differently. We're going to talk about things as we move through. This is all the stuff that was used to make the tabernacle. It's going to give us lots of information and lots of weights and measures and stuff. It was given. Moses is the one who commanded all of it to be counted, right? He wants to make sure there's accurate books. And Ithamar, the son of Aaron, one of the priests, is the one who's going to be counting it. So, Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made All that the Lord had commanded Moses. And with him was Aholiub the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan, an engraver and designer, a weaver of purple, blue, and scarlet thread, and of fine linen. All the gold that was used in all the work of the holy place, that is, the gold of the offering, was 29 talents and 730 shekels according to the shekel of the sanctuary. So, people gave gold.
The 29 talents, 730 shekels. I want to put this into a little bit of perspective for you. That's 1,931 pounds of gold. So 1,929 talents is 1,930.8 pounds of gold, plus 730 shekels is an additional 18.5 pounds of gold. So almost 1,950, 1,950-ish pounds of gold. Now, if you want to do some real math, Go plug that into a calculator. See how many ounces that is. So take that $1,950 or so and then put that into ounces. Last time I checked, which was a long time ago, gold was over $1,300 an ounce. This is big money people are donating. This is not some small thing.
But it wasn't just gold, verse 25, and the silver from those who were numbered of the congregation was 100 talents and 1,775 shekels according to the shekel of the sanctuary. So, here's the silver part. They didn't just give gold, they also gave silver. 6,658 pounds is 100 talents. And 1,775 shekels is just about 30 more pounds. So just shy of 6,670 pounds of gold. Or of silver. Sorry, this is of silver. So 1950 of silver. just something like almost 6,700 pounds of silver, right?
This is massive amounts of gold, massive amounts of silver that people are donating to the tabernacle. This is not just saying, God, we love you, we want to worship you, and oh yeah, by the way, we're going to give you a shanty on the outskirts of town. They are building him a costly royal home.
Verse 26, a becka for each man that is half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary for everyone included in the numbering from twenty years old and above for six hundred and thirty, six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty men. Alright, so let's just go over that. 683,550 men 20 years and older. That's how many fighting men there are for Israel.
And of the 100 talents of silver was cast sockets of the sanctuary and the bases of the veil, 100 sockets for the 100 talents, 100 for each socket. Then from the 1,765 shekels he made hooks for the pillars, overlaid their capitals, and made bands for them.
This is a distribution list of what everything took to make it. Verse 29, the offering of bronze, now whoo, this is a bunch. The offering of bronze with 70 talents and 2,400 shekels. So just over 4,700 pounds, 4,700 pounds of bronze was given to make this tabernacle. Can you imagine how heavy this is? People have to move this. This is a movable tent. But this thing is massive. The very first thing you would have seen as you were entering into the Israelite camp, if you were to come in from a higher elevation down, you would immediately see this tabernacle. It was huge compared to everything else around it.
There's no doubt what was most precious, who was most important in the camp of Israel. And with it he made the sockets for the door of the tabernacle of meeting, the bronze altar, the bronze grating for it, and all the utensils for the altar, the sockets for the court all around, the bases for the court gate, all the pegs for the tabernacle, and all the pegs for the court all around.
So Bezalel and Aholia listen to Moses, Ithamar is keeping track of everything, that's commanded to write all of this down, know how much is going where because this is a huge undertaking. This was meant to write down and give to posterity, give to you, give to me, give to the children of Israel for decades and centuries to come.
God plundered the Egyptians. The people willingly, freely offered it up to God. And he had a royal domicile. God was in their midst. God was important. God was the central focus piece, the heartbeat, the glue that kept this congregation together, kept this people together. It was God in their midst. He was the royal one. Any opulence was to be given their royal covenant king. Well, I don't know what the best verse is to summarize that. I'll let you tell me down in the comments what stuck out to you as the best verse to summarize this.
That last seat, calling, what are we called to do? Well, you know, if I was a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel preacher, I'd say, so send in your money right now. Sow your seed of a thousand dollars. I'm not going to tell you that type of stuff. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. You give whatever you want to God's work. But what I'm getting to you today is it's not about the silver or the gold. If any pastor is about the silver and the gold, they're missing the point. I would be missing the point. Is God the central piece of our heart? Is the Lord the one who is gripping the souls of the heart of His people?
Is His presence longed for, loved for, and cherished by His people? We want Him in our midst. We want to honor Him in our midst. We want to bring Him the glory in our midst. We want Him to be first and foremost in our midst. Is He so in your life? Do you love Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? That's what Jesus has called us to do. To love Him and to love others. He's still our Covenant King. He's still the one that we live for His glory. So go to Christ and live for Christ.
I'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. we'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.