Exodus 30:1-38

Note: I doubt anyone who reads my blog here doesn't know what CIY is, but just in case there's someone out there I don't know, let me explain.  CIY, or Christ In Youth, is a massive youth conference held all over the country in various locations all summer every year.  It can be an intense experience of worship, teaching, challenging, but also good times.  Technically, their high school summer conference is called MOVE now as they have branched out to much more than a summer conference.  I think it's kind of silly.  The inertia of habit and doubt on the wisdom of changing the name (and the fact that every conference seems to become moored in the same habits due to its name change) has led me to continue calling it what it was since I started attending: CIY.

Last year at CIY, the theme was routed in the Exodus story (as in the 10 Plagues, the Passover, the Crossing of the Red Sea, Sinai...).  It was a good week.  Reading through Exodus now makes me wish that we would still find ourselves in the Old Testament at CIY this year.  We could truly learn a great deal from the Old Testament.  Not only is it the foundation for our faith today, but the statues and principles God taught to the Israelites are still applicable today as well.

This one struck me in particular: Exodus 30:11, "When you take a census of the people, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord..."  Seriously?  We call it the census tax, but the words of the text suggest it is so much more than that!  This "tax" is a ransom for our lives before the Lord.  We all know our lives belong to the Lord as the Creator God.  Have you ever considered that you should pay a ransom to God for your own life?  That's intense!  You don't find stuff like that in the New Testament.  Or maybe we've watered the New Testament down?  Paul does say we will either be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. 

I guess my simple thought process is that we spend little time in the Old Testament and we miss jewels like these types of details.  The relationship Israel had with God was supposed to be all or nothing: much like the church at Laodicea, where God says He would like to spit them out!  The blessings and cursings in Deuteronomy 28ff make it pretty clear: follow God, things will go well; don't follow God, things are going to be very, very bad.  Live fully for God, or don't.

I know we'll get that last basic message at CIY, whatever the theme (and this year it is Timothy, and I know it will be fairly good).  One thing that should be noted about this all-or-nothing way of living for God: it doesn't mean you have to sell all your possesions, say good-bye to friend and family, and haul yourself off to a misty jungle in some far away corner to fight massive mosquitoes, hazard snake bites, and the Shanghai Runs from local water in order to live for God.  Though, hey, if that's what He wants you to do, by all means do it!  But you can live all-or-nothing for Him, ransom your life to Him, living here at home by never straying.  Stay home, hold a normal job, have a family, raise your children, and live for God.  That's pretty radical today.

This post has ended up so far from where it started as a comment on my youth pastor's wall on Facebook.  I think perhaps it has suffered for the past 14 hours of being away from internet and computer.  But what have you?  It's now nearly midnight and one by one my brain cells are choosing to go to sleep rather than stay up.  I think I'll follow suit.

Tomorrow's Reading: Exodus 31:1-33:6