Welcome to the Love in Context podcast of Unscripted Conversation with Ben and Spencer.
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Welcome to the Love in Context podcast.
So glad that you could join us today.
We're going to be continuing on through the book of Leviticus.
Are you guys excited?
I'm excited.
Yeah, Leviticus.
Or as Ben likes to say, Leviticus.
Yeah.
If you listen to the bloopers at the end of last episode, I included a little nugget there
for you guys.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
We're pretty excited about this.
So last week we talked about the structure, overall structure of Leviticus.
Yeah.
And just what that looks like and what does this mean when you're going to be a kingdom
of priests.
As the Levitical priests, how are they going to teach the entire nation how to be a kingdom
of priests?
Yeah.
So today we're going to take a step back from that and we're going to take a look and talk
about offerings, sacrificial system specifically.
What is a sacrificial system?
Why does it matter?
And on a very broad level, I would say that if you don't understand the sacrificial system
in the Old Testament, you're really going to struggle with the imagery that continues
throughout the Bible and especially into the New Testament.
Yeah.
I think that a lot of our, let's just say wayward theology tends to come from a lack
of foundational strength.
I would agree with that.
So a couple of resources that we're going to recommend for you.
There is an episode of Baymah where they talk about, they're largely just talking overall
structure very similar to what we talked about last week.
Has some tidbits and things that we didn't talk about.
Additionally, there is a book called What About the Sacrifices?
D. Thomas Lancaster.
There is a Bible project video that is an overview of Leviticus and they also have a
lot on what is priesthood, what is atonement, all these different things we're going to
talk about today.
Bible project is going to be a great resource for you.
Tomeki is a great teacher.
I think that's where we're going to leave the resources.
They're going to be in the show notes so you can actually check out the links there.
Well, actually I'm going to be honest with you guys.
I'm going to be just brutally honest.
I haven't figured out how to create really good hyperlinks.
So the names of the things are there.
You're going to have to search for them.
Well, it did just take me like two minutes to figure out how to extend my screen time
lockout.
We're good to go now.
Bible project is a great resource if you're going through Leviticus.
It has a lot of content on Leviticus and Tim Mackey does an excellent job.
Yeah.
Two different ways to use Bible project.
One is a book overview and then the second one is as a deep dive on a specific subject.
He does a really good job with both of those.
Yeah.
All right.
So as we're talking about Leviticus and now we're going to be talking about the sacrificial
system, one of the first things that I think is really important to note is this word that
is translated as sacrifice or offering.
Typically, if we talk about a sacrifice, we say it's to appease God because God is mad,
right?
Even the system that the Israelites are familiar with, you bring a sacrifice so that the gods
don't get mad at you.
We talked about that in like worship of Melek, the worship of Ra and like a lot of these
gods in the surrounding areas of Israel and how they were worshiped.
It was a lot about bringing enough and maybe I won't hurt you.
Yeah.
It was essentially more of a survival so I can live longer thing goes on and be like,
okay, I need to appease the gods.
Yeah.
Ideally, you either wanted gods to put favor on you, blessing or know nothing about you.
Yeah.
Right?
Like that's like the ancient mentality is you either want the gods to look with favor
on you or to know nothing about you.
That's actually going to be a recurring thing all the way into Grecian mythology.
Yeah.
Like the Odyssey and with Homer and the Iliad, this is a reoccurring thing.
They would prefer that the gods don't even know who they are.
Yeah.
Unless they're going to look with favor.
Yep.
But that's actually not what Hebrew is we're offering.
The Hebrew word is actually korban.
I'm probably pronouncing that wrong so if somebody is a Hebrew scholar, just my apologies,
but understand I want to speak mostly phonetically.
But it's not so much of an atonement piece.
It comes from the root of korav, which actually is translated to come near.
To come near, join together if you will.
If I was going to come over to your house to give you a gift, the gift actually draws
us closer together.
The person bringing a korban does so to come closer to God.
Yes.
Okay.
So right off the bat, that is not the story they're used to.
This doesn't take a long time to show up in Leviticus.
It's in the first chapter.
Let's take a look at Leviticus 1.
So it says here, reading from the NIV, the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from
the tent of meeting.
He said, speak to the Israelites and say to them, when anyone among you brings an offering,
this is that korban, to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd
or the flock.
Okay.
Yeah.
So now let's sub in this idea of korban and let's read that again.
When any one of you wants to draw near with something brought near to the Lord, you shall
bring near your thing brought near of livestock from the herd or from the flock.
This whole thing is about together.
Yeah.
Have any of you ever been to a church potluck and have any of you ever attended a church
potluck and not brought anything?
Right.
Like when you're doing this as a family, when you're doing this together, the idea is, hey,
we are all going to get together.
We're all going to bring something to share, something to the table.
Right.
So that's kind of the idea that's going on here, just to put it in like real practical
terms.
It's not like the best analogy out there probably, but that's the idea we're working with.
Especially since if you, by the way, are coming to a potluck and you don't have anything to
bring, there's going to be more than enough food there.
Come anyways.
Yeah.
Because the people who do bring food, they bring a lot.
They do.
So, but the idea being that like, hey, you are bringing something to the table.
So this idea, this idea of sacrifice, this idea of offering is not meant to be about
appeasement, but it's actually meant to be about relationship.
Yeah.
It's pretty significant.
The sacrificial system, maybe it was different for you when you grew up, but a lot of what
I heard from the pulpit, from missionaries and very similarly, it's about restoring or
appeasing or paying the price or sin.
Right?
This is like a very frequent concept that we're going through.
So what I think that does is it makes us carry a lot of baggage into how we look at the redemption
through Christ.
Yeah.
Right?
Because we look at it as God was mad and Jesus came and he appeased God's anger.
But we've talked about what's the problem with that.
The problem with that, I mean, there's a couple of problems actually, but one of them that
comes to my mind is when you rewind back to Cain and Abel, God tells Cain, like sin is
waiting at your doorstep and you need to conquer it.
Right.
So he's telling Cain, this is before the time of Jesus, that you can conquer sin.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now that's a very unpopular belief because people will be like, well, Jesus came so that
forgiveness could happen, so that restoration to the father could happen through his life,
death and resurrection.
We're not refuting that.
We 100% believe that.
He came to do that.
More specifically, he came to change your nature.
Yeah.
Because in the fall, we talked about this, your nature changes from somebody who is naturally
prone to the righteousness of God to somebody who is now naturally prone to your own whims
and desires that are contrary to the way that the world is supposed to work, the way that
God set up the world to work.
And Jesus came to change our nature back to the natural desires of God.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but up to this point, we've actually not seen God get mad,
except when people fail to be part of his story.
When they're called to go in and bring freedom and relief and deliverance, I'll say Exodus
to another people, and they're refusing to do that.
Yeah.
The times that God has shown anger up until this point has been an example, Moses at the
burning bush where Moses, I just don't want to go.
Right.
In God's anger, he provided help.
Yeah.
Right.
So there are times where God has shown anger, but it has been in the context of people not
wanting to follow after him.
If you're struggling with this concept of God is not sitting here angry, we're trying
to dispel this.
Now I'm not saying God doesn't get angry in the Bible.
That's very clearly in there, but you also need to look around the circumstances of why
is he getting angry?
Yeah.
But God is not angry with humanity.
It says in John 3, the one of the most popular verses, it says, for God, the father, loved
the world so much he gave.
Okay.
So God can't be sitting here angry and ready to destroy humanity if he's also the one who
came wrapped in flesh to save us.
It can't be both of those things.
And I think where we get often confused with this is, and this is where I think we have
a little bit of contradictory doctrine and I'm going to try to spell this out best I
can.
Good luck.
I know.
Did God come to save the world because of his anger towards sin or did he come to save
the world because of his love for us?
And oftentimes what we do is we camp on one of those things and we're like, oh, it's because
he loves us.
Yes.
It's because he hates sin.
Yes, he does hate sin.
If you look at John 3, 16 and 17, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and
only son that we might be saved through him.
And then if you go 17, it talks about how he didn't come to condemn the world.
So we got to understand that, that he came because he loves us.
Right.
And he came to reverse our nature, to take us away from the ways of this world and into
the ways of God.
Yeah.
So you were talking and you said, did God come because he loved humanity or did he come
because he wanted to destroy sin?
And the answer is yes.
The primary motivation being love for his children that are not here.
Yeah.
Right.
We talked last week about this analogy of my chainsmoking son.
Uh-huh.
So if you don't know what that reference is, go back to the last episode.
But is my motivation that I hate cigarettes or that I love my son?
Yes, I hate cigarettes because I love my son.
Because I see what they're doing to my child, I hate them.
I don't hate sin and then love my son because I hate the sin.
Does that make sense?
Like one causes the other.
So my overwhelming love.
And there is in Rabbinic thought, they talk about four unstoppable forces and I'm not
going to go through all of them.
Rabbi David Forman has a great teaching on it.
But one of the ancient teachings is that God is one of these forces that God doesn't love
out of a lack of love.
He loves out over an abundance.
So if you imagine a jar that is pouring over with water, but it's being fed by a faucet
and it's just pouring over.
God loves because he is an abundance of love.
He can't do anything else but love because that's who he is.
Yeah.
And so the reason we receive love is yes, because we're children made in the image of
God, but also because of the nature of who God is.
So both of those things are true.
And so don't hear us say like theological ideas of you can't earn it and also you're
precious.
Like these are all true, but you have to understand who God is because it all flows from that.
And I'm coming back to the idea of a potluck in the sacrificial system.
The idea is that you're bringing something to the table, right?
Is that you're coming in together as a family, you're bringing something to the table.
Everybody in their family was bringing a unblemished goat or unblemished lamb or some doves or
whatever, whatever fit their budget.
And then you get to Jesus, Jesus came, he died on the cross, he laid dead for three
days, rose again.
And then, didn't you know what the Bible talks about?
Says the banquet table set.
The shift that you have is that, okay, we're all coming together, bringing something to
the table and now Jesus is like, all right, now I brought everything you need.
Just show up.
So coming back to this idea of offerings and sacrifice, this idea of korban, it's understood
as a gift as you come to commune with God in the tent of meeting.
Like coming back to your potluck analogy, like you're bringing the potato salad for
the potluck, right?
This is where heaven and earth meet because we've talked about the temple, right?
The temple is a place where the presence of God dwells on earth.
It's a place where heaven and earth literally meet, which is going to have massive implications
in the New Testament.
Spoiler alert, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Yeah.
Right?
And we're not going to talk about that a lot today because I could go off for a really long
time on that.
And maybe when we go through a gospel series, we'll talk about that.
Yeah.
But right now God is dwelling in the tent of meetings with his people.
This is the place where heaven and earth are meeting.
And so you are drawing near to God.
Now part of the nature of who God is, is that whenever you come into contact with things
that are right and you are on the outside, you have sin, you have brokenness, it happens
frequently throughout the Bible that when people encounter God, they recognize their
sinfulness.
Yeah.
So God is using a method to actually bring them back into communion with each other.
Yeah.
And he's using a method.
He's using a worldly method that they're familiar with.
Right.
And this is a conversation piece that I've actually had with a lot of people and they
say, well, why does God want animal sacrifice?
Does he just like the smell of burning flesh?
Which to be fair, we talk about a lot of weird things in church, so that's a fair question.
Yeah.
Right?
It is.
So does God actually need gifts?
No, he doesn't.
Consider Psalm 50.
All right.
And this is out of the NIV.
It says, I do not need a bowl from your stall or goats from your pen for every animal in
the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains and every insect in the fields are mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you for the whole world is mine and all that is in
it.
Do I eat the flesh of the bulls or drink the blood of the goats?
And of course, in rhetoric fashion, the answer of course is no.
Right?
Yeah.
And the chapter continues, God is talking to Israel through this Psalm.
The whole idea here is that God doesn't need your stuff.
No.
Right?
Now, I do think it's really funny how many times I've heard people quote, God has the
cattle on a thousand hills as this thing of he's got limitless resources.
Yeah.
Right?
And in the context of the Psalm, it's actually about, I don't need what you're bringing,
but I want you to participate with me.
And it's a crazy beautiful thing to be like where the Lord's, hey, I don't need what you
have to offer, but I want it.
Yeah.
So God doesn't need these gifts.
It's about restoring relationship between humanity and himself.
Right?
That's whole thing that Psalm 50 is talking about.
Now, the other thing that I think is really interesting and we have to understand about
the sacrificial system is people assume that the sacrificial system is about just atonement
or sin restoration, these types of things, right?
Yeah.
Well, here's the problem.
Most of the offerings aren't sin related.
I'm going to say that again, because I feel like Christian ease is getting in the way
of our ears.
Most of the offerings listed in the book of Leviticus are not sin related.
So there's five types of sacrifices that are listed in the book of Leviticus.
The first one is burnt offering and it's largely a offering of Thanksgiving.
If you're looking for the passages that deal with that, that's Leviticus 1, 1 through 17
and 6, 8 through 13.
The second type of offering is a grain offering, right?
This is an act of worship.
Leviticus 2, 1 through 16, 6 through 14 through 23.
Then you have a peace offering.
That's Leviticus 3, 1 through 17 and 7, 11 through 36.
Peace offering has to do with community, right?
Then you actually have a sin offering, which is the one we always want to talk about, which
by the way, where is that listed in the number of offerings?
That's the fourth offering listed.
I thought it was the most important one.
But it's the fourth one listed.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I have to think about that.
I wonder if that's going to be relevant at all.
We'll find out.
Yeah.
So this is about a guilt offering and that's in Leviticus 5, 14 through 6, 7 and then chapter
7 versus 1 through 7.
So the purpose of the sacrifice is there's three main reasons that you would have a sacrifice.
The largest one that is represented most frequently in scripture, okay?
This is the one that is referenced most frequently in scripture.
It's a voluntary act of worship and communion.
So do you think, you can tell me what you think on this, Reddy.
Well, I mean, you've said that Ben always has an opinion on something, whether you want
to hear it or not.
I have said that before.
I have, yeah.
So what do you think Paul is referring to in Romans 12 when he's talking about laying
down yourself as an act of worship?
Is he referring to sacrificing your life?
I'm curious on your opinion on this.
Or is he speaking to in a Jewish context and to Jews in Rome knowing that they'll probably
have the Levitical system pretty well known and saying, hey, this system, that's an act
of worship.
Now what you're called to do is do that with yourself.
Yeah.
I think, so you're talking about chapter 12 where he says, therefore brothers in view of
God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord for this is
your reasonable act of worship.
Right?
Reasonable.
Reasonable act of worship.
Yeah.
I have a couple of thoughts.
That's probably shocking to you.
The first is anytime you run into the passage and it says therefore.
Yeah, like before.
Yeah.
I remember growing up that I heard very frequently, if you see a therefore, you need to find out
what the therefore is therefore.
Prior to this, Paul has been making this really big argument in the book of Romans about,
how it doesn't, your justification doesn't come from being a Roman or being a Jew or
being a Gentile, but rather God spoke through Israel to tell his story.
And then Jesus came and he grafted in the Gentiles.
And then it talks about the loving nature of God because he's about restoring all the
world and about how amazing it is.
And then he says, therefore, in view of the mercy of God to work through Israel and restore
and engraft all the people from all over the world, you should offer your body as a living
sacrifice, a living sacrifice.
You're not dead.
You should offer your body as a method to come near to God, a conduit of grace and mercy
to the world because this is your reasonable act of worship.
Yeah.
We, the church, as a reasonable act of worship, we actually come near to God and we share
the grace of God to the world.
We become the hands and feet of Jesus into the world and we actually share the kingdom
every place that we go.
And we talked about, and I'm sorry, getting ahead of myself because you got me excited.
We talked about, now we are the temple of the Holy spirit and the spirit of God dwells
within us.
So everywhere that we go, the church, and we offer ourselves as a reasonable act of
worship, we bring the presence of God where we go.
Meaning there is an open heaven between heaven and earth, right wherever we go.
We bring the presence of God everywhere we go and yet we're often intimidated by the
kingdom of darkness.
Yep.
I've heard that passage talked about a couple of different ways, but like the most common
way I've heard it talked about is just as there was animal sacrifice killed, you have
to die to yourself, which I think there's an element to that.
But there's also tying it into this idea of korban where it's, hey, you know, you're bringing
something to the table to share.
You're bringing something to the table so you can enter into fellowship.
Oh, I love that.
And now God's now Paul saying, Hey, you're not bringing an animal.
You're bringing yourself, right?
You're bringing Jesus in you.
Right.
Well, and so speaking back into the sacrificial context, the Levitical context, okay.
You're a kingdom of priests.
Yeah.
Stop relying on the priesthood and go and be a priest.
Yep.
Go and put your body on the sacrificial altar.
Yeah.
Now, if you understand that it's about actually restoring communion with God, that makes it
a completely different story than what you're expecting, right?
Taking a step back, looking at purpose of sacrifice.
Most of the time when it's referenced in the Bible, it's going to be a voluntary act of
worship.
It's going to be people coming near to God in Thanksgiving and communion.
Yeah.
Community.
Yeah.
Right?
This is, it is mostly referring to this.
This is what happens most of the time and I'm stressing it over and over again.
You're probably getting sick of listening to me on the podcast saying this, but I'm
stressing it because that's not necessarily how we've portrayed the gospel.
Yeah.
The gospel and sacrifice restoration with God is about relationship and worship and
community and restoration, redemption, forgiveness.
Yeah.
Right?
It is not about depravity, sin, brokenness.
These are things that we were and we no longer are.
Yeah.
Now, don't mishear me.
I'm not saying that you can't have these things in your life because being fully formed
to the character of Christ takes time.
Yes.
But your nature is no longer drawn to these things.
Your nature is now drawn to the righteousness of God.
And as you lean into who Christ is, you're going to find that you are naturally inclined
to follow after the things Christ has for you.
And if you lean away from who Christ is, you're going to find you're naturally inclined to
follow the things Christ does not have for you.
Right.
Right?
And I oftentimes I've heard people complicate this and I'm like, no, no, if you are actively
spending time with Jesus, you are naturally going to want the things that he wants for
you.
Correct.
And if you're actively spending time away from Jesus, you're going to naturally want
the things he doesn't want for you.
Right.
It's very similar to what Paul says.
The things that I want to do are the things that I don't do, but the things I don't want
to do tend to be the things that I do.
Right.
He's talking about this internal debate.
Which side of yourself are you actually feeding?
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So there's voluntary acts of worship.
Another purpose of sacrifice is ritual surrogate.
Right.
So there is a fancy theological terminology called penal substitutionary atonement.
Now if you are a lawyer, you just got excited because it was definitely a theology penned
by lawyers.
Right.
And the idea of a surrogate, a ritual surrogate penal substitutionary atonement is that you
actually the animal is in place of a person.
Right.
And there's absolutely imagery of that in the Bible.
Now what I'm going to push against is I think that we carry penal substitutionary atonement
too far and we don't understand the root of what it is because if you actually understand
in the Levitical system, they place their hand on the animal.
Yeah.
Right.
The Hebrew implies leaning on the animal so that the weight of the man or woman is transferred
to the animal.
Now your identity, who you are, is transferred from you, your purpose has transferred into
this animal.
Now why is that important?
What's going to happen to this animal?
You're going to kill it.
Just FYI, I'm going to talk about the sacrifice and how you actually would prepare an animal.
So if you are squeamish, maybe just go two minutes ahead in the podcast.
So you're going to take the animal and you're going to take the neck and you actually slit
the neck to release the blood which is caught into a bowl.
Okay.
God has said the life is in the blood, right?
So now you've placed your identity on this animal and its lifeblood, its life is now
placed into this bowl.
This bowl is then taken to the throne room of God.
So what is, what visually has just happened?
Your identity was just transferred onto an animal and it was just taken to God.
Right.
This isn't a story of appeasement.
This is a story about restore relationship.
The surrogate isn't meant to appease God.
It's meant to bring you near to God.
Right?
Yeah.
You put your identity onto this animal.
Now this word, it's not even, this isn't the only place it shows up.
So we were talking about this and you were pointing out that it actually comes back up
again in Numbers 8.
Yeah, it does come back up in Numbers 8.
So the same word that's used to lay hands on the animals for the sacrifice is the same
word that is used to lay hands on the Levites to designate them for service.
This is also the same word that is used to place hands on someone so that they can receive
the Holy Spirit.
Right?
This is the language that's going on.
Right.
And that language is pretty, pretty stout throughout the Bible.
Yeah.
That language carries throughout all of scripture.
So the language, this isn't its own word.
Right.
Right?
This word that's being used is to say, Hey, we are laying hands on here to transfer your
identity to the blood.
Laying hands on these people to transfer their identity into the service of God.
Laying hands on these people to transfer their identity into the works of the Holy Spirit.
Right.
And you're kind of going to hear that with like when we commission people out, like we
lay hands on people to commission them because we want them to take the identity of who we
are with them.
Yeah.
And so this idea of this ritual surrogate, this penal substitutionary atonement, it's
not, it's not a bad image because it's correct.
You place something in place of you, but it's incomplete because the idea is not for the
animal to die.
No.
The idea is that the blood is taken to God.
Yes.
Because it's your blood taken to restore to God.
And more specifically, the idea is that your identity is being taken to God.
Exactly.
Right?
So when, when hands were laid on the Levites, their identity was taken to God.
Same when hands are laid on people for receiving the Holy Spirit, their identity is taken to
God.
Same when we lay hands on people just to pray for them, we're taking their identity to God.
That's the language that's being used.
Yeah.
Let's take this idea into the New Testament with the gospel with Jesus.
So Jesus is the Passover lamb, right?
He is the, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
Yeah.
So we cast our identity onto Christ.
Paul is going to say, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead.
You will be saved.
Now, what have we done?
We've actually cast our identity onto Jesus.
His blood from the cross carries all the way up to heaven.
He goes up as the sacrifice, as the temple, as the high priest, as the everything that
as God himself and he sits down at the right hand of God.
Where are we?
We're in Christ.
So Paul says you are seated in heavenly places.
Why?
Because your life is now bound up in the blood of Christ.
You have cast your identity onto him.
That is why it is through faith that we are now justified.
Are you all beginning to see that this book is not about judgment?
That's about restored relationship.
Yeah.
I'm hoping you can begin to see this as you are walking through Leviticus.
It's not about judgment.
It's about restored relationship with God.
And y'all might be understanding why I really like this book.
Like I'm really, I, the more I get into it, the more I'm like, Oh, I see what they're
doing in the New Testament.
Yeah.
It's so easy to read past this and read it out of context and have no idea what's going
on.
And just to, just to kind of reiterate this a little bit, I might be jumping ahead of
here, but that's okay.
But just to kind of reiterate this a little bit, Hebrews 10, four says for it is impossible
for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.
Now we need to stop here.
Who is the author of Hebrews writing to?
It's writing to Hebrews.
Hebrews, right?
People who understand this is a trick question, right?
He's writing to Hebrews.
He's writing to people who understand this terminology, people who are probably still
partaking in the sacrificial system.
There's a good argument for that.
And he's saying, Hey, it's impossible for these things to take away your sins.
Right.
There's other parts in Hebrews where it talks about some of that stuff too.
We'll jump there in a second, but you have to note that that the author of Hebrews is
reiterating the sacrificial system saying, Hey, it's not about taking away your sins.
Yeah.
And Hebrews especially is going to be in context of the third use of sacrifice, purpose of
sacrifice.
So it's voluntary act of worship, ritual surrogate, also known as penal substitutionary atonement.
And then the third one is also just atonement.
Yeah.
That's why I said that penal substitutionary atonement is not quite, it doesn't quite fall
into this.
Yeah.
So atonement very frequently in church history and through theology, people will say it's
forgiveness or removal of guilt.
Right.
And it can imply that, but it's much more than that.
Yeah.
The only place that this word that atonement in the book of Leviticus shows up is actually
in Genesis back in Noah's Ark.
He builds this Ark and then he coats it with pitch so that the water can't get in.
It's covered inside and out with pitch.
The word for covered is the same word that we get atonement from.
So in the sacrificial context, atonement is not about attainment of salvation.
Sorry, I got to say that again because I think some of you are really going to struggle with
what I'm about to say because there's going to be a ton of questions to follow this up.
And that's good because at the end of Leviticus, we have a Q&A session.
Yeah.
So send us your questions.
The sacrificial context does not mean attainment of salvation.
People didn't bring their sacrifices to attain salvation.
They brought it as a voluntary act of worship.
They brought it as a ritual surrogate or they brought it as atonement for what they did.
It was not about attaining salvation.
They were already God's chosen people.
So Hebrews 10, 4, which you quoted says, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and
goats to take away sins.
So the writer of Hebrews writing to Hebrews acknowledges what they all know, that the blood
of bulls and goats doesn't take away sins.
In fact, he says earlier in chapter 9, he says, this is the illustration for the present
time.
This is verse 9, 9 to 10.
This is an illustration for the present time indicating that the gifts and sacrifice being
offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.
They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings, external regulations
applying until the end of a new order.
This whole idea is not about attaining salvation.
They are already chosen.
Yeah.
They're already chosen.
This is about restored relationship with the person who chose them.
Yeah.
Jesus comes and changes our nature.
He takes away our sin and he takes away our sin nature.
It's why we say we are a new creation.
The old has passed away and the new has come.
Jesus fundamentally changed who we are.
Blood of bulls and goats can't do that.
That's why our identity has been cast on Jesus who has fundamentally changed our nature.
Please hear us loud and clear.
We are not discounting the work of Christ and his death and resurrection.
No, I'm amplifying it.
We're amplifying it.
We want to understand it in the context of the system that it was placed in.
NT Wright writes very frequently about the need to understand that Jesus is a Jewish
Messiah.
Yes.
We talked about as we were introducing this book about how John 3, they're having this
conversation and Jesus and Nicodemus are talking about Israel, but they're really talking about
Jesus.
Yeah.
God originally is doing this through Israel to put his story on display.
The goal of Israel is to actually redeem the entire world.
Spoiler alert, if you haven't read ahead in your Bible, I highly encourage it.
Read ahead of us all day.
Yeah.
There's lots of content.
They don't do a great job.
They struggle.
They struggle a lot, which to be fair, I've looked at church history.
So do we.
Yeah, we do.
God is gracious in the middle of it.
So then Jesus comes as a representative of Israel and fulfills what God was trying to
do the entire time.
And then he makes it about all nations.
He works within the chosen people to make it about all nations, which is the story from
the very beginning.
Jesus is not telling a new story.
He's telling the old story a new way.
Yeah.
It's the very reason Jesus in the book of Matthew says, Hey, I'm not here to abolish
the law, but rather to fulfill it.
So God is speaking into their context.
Yeah.
Helping them understand and helping them navigate the waters on how to be right, quote unquote,
with him.
And helping them understand that it's all about being in a relationship with God.
I think it's really important.
We've talked about this multiple times.
Moses has screwed up to this point.
Yeah.
Abraham screwed up.
Isaac screwed up.
All these guys are screwed up and God has grace with them in it.
He doesn't chastise them.
No.
I think that much more common in the Bible is the grace of God in the midst of people's
sin.
It's almost like sin isn't that big of a deal if he can get the story right inside of people.
Yes.
Now, I think what people may have just heard me say is sin is not a big deal.
Sin is a big deal, but here's the thing.
God has always had a way established for sin to be taken care of.
Correct.
And so we often forget that.
We're often like, oh, well, there's no way I can get out of the sin.
No, God for thousands of years has had established ways for you to get out of sin, for you to
leave that sin behind.
And what's in place right now is the work of Jesus.
And what's going to be in place for thousands of years to come is the work of Jesus.
We need forgiveness.
We need restoration.
Jesus is where we go.
God has always had the ability to forgive sin whenever he wanted to.
In fact, the writer of Hebrews, once again, we're going to reference back to Hebrews,
says that the reason people are stuck is that their conscience can't be washed clean.
Their nature is stuck in serving themselves, in defining good and evil on their own terms.
That's what actually has to be fundamentally changed.
Now you're talking about sin and you're like, oh, what does God do with sin?
Oh, well, there's the sacrificial system and it's all about sin.
The problem is it's not.
Number four is actually about sin.
Right?
There's three other purposes, four other purposes, and only one of them is about sin.
In Exodus 34, which we just got out of Exodus, God says this to Moses when he passes in front
of him.
He says, the Lord, the Lord, the compassion and gracious Lord, slow to anger, abounding
in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion
and sin.
Okay.
Is that only if they do the sacrifices?
Because they haven't talked about them yet.
That's pre-sacrificial system.
God says he forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin.
Yeah.
So you don't have to have the sacrificial system for God to forgive sin.
In fact, the sacrificial system has never been about forgiving sin per se.
It is a part of it, but the sacrificial system is about restoration of relationship between
God and man, about how they can worship God and serve the community, how they can be in
right relationship with God.
And so put the story on display.
Yeah.
It's interesting if you actually talk about eternal life, this is a very common phrase
that we have.
People think about that quantitatively.
In other words, it's a life that goes for thousands and thousands and thousands and
never ends, right?
But in a Jewish mindset, it's not a quantitative, it's a qualitative.
The sacrificial system is about a qualitative eternal life with God.
That life is meant to be lived with God.
And this is how life is supposed to be.
Connected to our creator, connected to our father, back in the arms of the loving parent
who has us.
Yeah.
Right?
This is eternal life.
In fact, John 17, three says, now this is eternal life that they know you, the only
true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
It's almost like it's always been about knowing God, loving God and living that out and loving
other people.
Yeah.
So we're going to take a minute and just talk about clean versus unclean animals and
why this is such a big deal.
Okay?
A lot of times what we hear is that God wants the unblemished, which there's passages that
allude to that.
There's also a very practical side to this, right?
They didn't have the health standards that we have, right?
When it comes to animals, right?
When the animal was sacrificed, the blood left the animal and then that animal was actually
used for food in a lot of cases for the Levites who were the priests.
Yeah.
Portions of it would be given to the priesthood.
That's kind of like their payment or their food allotment.
We'll actually talk a little bit about this next week when we're talking about roles of
priesthood.
Yeah.
Right?
One of the issues is when you look at clean and unclean animals, you're like, well, what's
wrong with these animals?
Well, we're looking at it in a 20th century context where we have these fantastic kitchens.
We got Gordon Ramsay cooking us food, right?
Usually with some bizarre language.
Yeah.
He's finding my house next week.
You know as well as I do that pig is a very difficult thing to cook.
Let's just take pig because that's one that people mention a lot, like why can't Jews
eat pig?
Right?
Well, think about wild nomadic roaming the desert people.
What's the problem with trying to cook pig out there?
There's a number of things.
So fancy word called botulism, right?
That comes up frequently with pig.
There's also a lot of intestinal bugs that you can get if you don't cook pork correctly.
Yeah.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
What about shellfish?
Right?
Certain fish are okay and certain aren't.
We live in a coastal community with a lot of fishing because it's Alaska.
There's a lot of fishing in Alaska.
There are some animals that are just fine to go and you could eat them raw.
And there are some that if you eat them raw, you will be real sick.
Yeah.
Right?
They have to be prepared a very specific way.
Yeah.
So when you look at this, part of this is just eating, like just making sure your food
and stuff's prepared the right way.
Right.
There's been some research done on this to where it actually showed that people back
in that day who actually followed this to the letter, they lived longer, healthier lives.
Correct.
And we talked a little bit about Levitical laws meant to make them into a more ethical,
healthy, diverse people.
Like that they're gonna have generations to span.
Yeah.
Right?
And then the poverty would have been significantly higher.
Yeah.
So let's just talk about the animals.
They listed clean and unclean.
It doesn't say you can't have pigs.
It says you can't eat pigs.
Yeah.
Because pigs are useful for a lot of things.
They're just not good for you to eat because you're going to prepare the meat poorly and
people are going to die.
Yep.
You can have all the crabs you want.
You can't eat them because if crab is prepared incorrectly, you can get sick and die.
There's a lot of these practical things in the law.
For example, you read about if there's a discharge from your body.
Yeah.
Right?
You vomited.
You're secluded from the population for seven days.
We just came out of COVID.
That shouldn't be a super big surprise to you guys.
Right?
Yeah.
And so a lot of these laws are really practical.
And backing up to the animals, the pigs, crabs, whatever food you want to talk about, shellfish,
all that, just backing up to that.
The other, you have to understand in modern day kitchens, we have ovens that are set at
specific temperatures for cooking.
We have meat thermometers.
So we can take a thermometer, stick it in a whole pig, see where the temperature is
at and see if it's done or not.
We have all of that stuff.
We have refrigeration.
So if we cook more than we can eat, we can refrigerate it and preserve the food.
Or if we need to preserve it longer, we can stick it in a freezer and freeze the food.
And these are not things that you have in the desert.
No.
And the desert, by the way, this is for Pastor Nick's wife because she commented that I said
this a bunch of times.
The desert's real hot.
Yes.
Real hot.
Right?
So your food is going to spoil quickly.
If you don't preserve it correctly.
Yeah.
And spoiler alert, see, that's funny.
That causes sickness.
In this era, you don't have doctors that can readily take care of you.
You get sick, you die.
So we look at it as an oppressive law.
And very frequently, we're going to point this out through, as we go through Leviticus
and as we cover a lot of these laws, they're not meant to oppress people.
They're actually meant to give them life.
These laws are meant to breathe life and goodness into the community of Israel.
And then we, 3,000 years later, in a completely different context, misread this as an oppressive,
patriarchal, misogynistic law.
Yeah.
Without realizing the grace and mercy that is inherent in the laws that God gave us people.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So that's kind of our hope is that we're going to pull that out for you, that you kind of
understand what's going on there.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And in closing, if we don't understand the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, we'll
misinterpret what Jesus did on Calvary.
What I mean by that is if we're pulling this into our own context and just trying to interpret
it through our own lens, what will happen is we can often get legalistic and be like,
hey, you're supposed to do things this way.
And if you don't do things this way, then you don't really love Jesus.
That's not what the Levitical law was for.
That's not what the sacrificial system was for.
Right?
So we need to understand the work of Jesus through the lens of the sacrificial system
because Jesus is the Passover lamb.
He is the ultimate sacrifice.
Understanding Torah is really important when you start interpreting the Torah made flesh.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
So you need to understand that and you need to understand that in its context.
And a couple of things I'm going to encourage you all to do is if you want to understand
the context of how the Israelites would have understood life at that time, as we've been
going through Exodus and Leviticus, you need to take some time to understand Egyptian culture.
Correct.
Okay.
So Egyptian culture has a very different spin on sacrifices.
Okay.
You need to understand the Egyptian culture, how their sacrificial system worked, how their
society worked, how their acts of worship worked, all of that.
Right?
And once you start to understand that, you'll realize that God's pulling from a context
they'll understand and reframe it in a way that glorifies Him.
Another recommendation on here, these ones I believe you're going to have to purchase
because I don't think they're available for free, but there is a guy by the name of Ray
Vanderlyn that did tours, or still does tours in Egypt and Israel, the Holy Land where he
does educational, but focused on the family.
He's worked for them for a really long time and he's done a bunch of video series.
There's an older video series called That the World May Know where he specifically goes
into Egypt and he actually does a bunch of these contextual pieces.
That might be a good place for you to start.
Yeah.
It's interesting that I was watching an interview with Ray Vanderlyn and he was talking about
the first time he went to Egypt, a lot of things in the Exodus and Torah started to
make a lot more sense because you start to see them in the context of what God is bringing
them out of.
Yeah.
Right?
Which is, to your point, what you're talking about.
That when we understand what God is bringing them out of, suddenly all these things start
to click, click, click, click, click right into place.
Yeah.
We've got to understand that because that's part of the story we're grafted into.
Yeah.
Right?
Think of your own personal testimony.
Right?
You know where you've been, the wrong that you've done.
You're not living in that anymore, but you know that part of your story.
Right?
Where you've been, you know the hurt you've experienced, all that stuff.
We're grafted into the story of Israel and so we need to know this story of the Exodus.
We need to know how the Levitical law works and we need to understand that in the context
of not just in the context of scripture, but in the context of the time and day and age
where it's placed.
Yeah.
So next week we are going to be talking about the priesthood, the priest share, the role
of priests, the equivalent of what we deal with today and what it is to be a good priest
and what it is to be a bad priest.
Yeah.
Are you actually putting the kingdom of God on display?
What happens when good priests go bad?
Right?
There's a lot of stories about that in the Bible.
Yeah.
So until then, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us.
Like we did say, we are having a Q and A at the end of the Leviticus.
So please send all of your questions to loveandcontext.gmail.com and until next time, we'll hear you later.
Yeah.
And to be clear, we'll be answering questions, not complaints.
Did I say complaints?
No.
Oh, you didn't.
Thank you so much for listening today.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast and we hope that you got something out of it.
If you have any questions, please contact us at loveandcontext.gmail.com.
You can also follow us on Instagram and message us through there.
Instagram is loveandcontext.
Again, loveandcontext.gmail.com or Instagram are the two ways to get ahold of us if you
would like.
Thank you once again.
We really appreciate you being here.
God bless.
Leviticus.
Are you smelling your mic?
Yeah.
It had an odor to it.
All right.
Pickles on pizza is disgusting.
I think that was too much.
That was too much?
Nah, I don't know what I'm saying.
Come on.
Puppy pants.
Puppy, puppy, puppy pants.
You know, it'd be better if you just used Apple in general.
Lies.
So, in closing, your dog is just like waiting for you to say something.
Oh, he's talking.