Exodus 30:15 The rich are not to give more than a half shekel and the poor are not to give less when you make the offering to the LORD to atone for your lives.
We hear so much today about equality. People want equal outcomes for unequal input. They want not only a level playing field, which isn’t reality, and they want everyone to get the same score at the end of the game.They want the person who does nothing and the person who works eighty hours a week of hard physical labor to get the same income.
I know I have simplified the argument, but the principle is correct. But life isn’t equal. We don’t all have the same physical strengths, mental abilities, family backgrounds, social support networks, or even equal access to the upward ladder. It certainly hasn’t happened in the socialist utopias of the world. And we can’t do it any better than they did!
In the world where the LORD reigns as King, a very different system was proposed. There were mechanisms inherent in the system that brought about a much fairer system. Every seven years debt was forgiven. And every fifty years, real estate was returned to the original owners. There was a leveling of the field, but even then, not everyone had the same wealth.
Our text tells us about a periodic census that would take place. We aren’t given the specifics of when that census was to be taken, but only the fact of the census and what it would cost them. Whenever is twenty years and older is to pay a specific amount of money as a way to purchase their life. Just as the LORD purchased them out of Egypt, so they must pay a price for their lives.
And the price is the same, regardless of the level of wealth or depth of poverty. It is a fairly small about of money, a weight of about one fifth of an ounce of metal. Our text doesn’t tell us which metal, gold, silver, bronze. We are just told the weight of the money.
Whose money was it? Where did they get it? Egyptian money. They had asked their Egyptian neighbors for it as they were exiting the country in the middle of the plagues. The Egyptians had given them their wealth. And Israel had not earned it. But it served as a payment for the hard labor.
Think of this. They were all slaves, without wealth of their own. As they exit their captivity, their captors give them wealth. They were slaves. They didn’t earn it. They had no right to the wealth. It wasn’t their wealth. It was a gift, a grace given to them.
And as a way to remember this fact, the grace of that moment became a way to remember their deliverance and a means to support the ongoing ministry of the Tabernacle. And this was to continue into the future, forever.
After a few generations in the Promised Land, the wealth they had received would have been completely used up. They would have to use that wealth to generate more. They would combine their efforts to work with the wealth they had received to become even more prosperous. But not everyone used their wealth to equal success.
Even today, we in the United States have great wealth. But are we using it wisely? How are we blessing the world? I know we don’t have this LORD centered census tax. But how can we recognize the grace and mercy we have received, even in the realm of wealth, and choose to bless the LORD and His people in the process?
The Arnold Journey 