Welcome to the Love and Context podcast, engaging in unscripted conversations with your hosts,
Ben and Spencer.
Whether you're tuning in from your car, your office, your home, or anywhere in between,
we are so happy to have you join us today.
Our mission is simple, to explore the Bible through a powerful lens of love.
Together we'll uncover fresh insights and gain deeper understandings of how we can love
God and love the people in our everyday lives.
So buckle up and join us on this spiritual journey as we discover timeless wisdom that
is just as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Welcome back to the Love and Context podcast, a casual conversation with Benjamin and Spencer.
I used my full name that time, huh?
Yes.
Not for you guys, but for us it's been a while since we recorded because if anybody does
podcasts they know that you record in advance.
Yeah.
We're not actually recording the week of and editing and trying to post because real life.
Real life and let's be real, we also live in Alaska and summertime in Alaska is really
busy.
Yeah, I hear from most people that the fishing is really good right now, so they're real
excited about this.
We're actually recording at our church today after service because it's a very quiet place
where your dogs aren't barking.
Hey now, my dogs are green with everything we're saying.
Yes, they're like, praise the Lord.
I'm 100% in this.
Yeah, that's what's going on.
Yeah.
So we have been in the book of Leviticus every time.
So the first week we just talked about the purpose of Leviticus, the chiasmus, some of
the things that were going on in there.
And then last week we talked about the offerings and we talked about how the offerings are
really meant to bring you to God.
Because I think a lot of the time in the Christian existence we spend too much time talking about
the offerings as a atonement for sin, not realizing that God is the one who forgives
sin and the gifts are meant to bring us into relationship with God.
Yes.
So that's a good point to understand moving into the New Testament and the picture of
Jesus.
Hopefully you've caught that.
Once again, we're going to list some resources.
The Bible Project has some great resources on Leviticus.
Additionally, Rabbi David Foreman at LFBeta.org has some fantastic videos understanding the
Hebrew and the laws and what do these actually mean.
And then the last one is D. Thomas Lancaster, what about the sacrifices, which is going
to have a lot of content for you to digest.
Yeah.
So moving into this week, we're going to be talking about the priests because this book
is an instruction for the priesthood on how to be the priesthood.
And on a broad level, all of Israel is a priesthood.
Yeah.
That's what God says.
That's what he says in Exodus.
He says, you will be for me, a cherished possession, a chosen people, a royal priesthood.
You're going to be a royal priesthood.
And he's talking to all of Israel, not just the one 12th that are going to actually be
the priests.
What is interesting and what we're going to start talking about today is God actually
does have a segment of them be the priesthoods.
Even inside of a kingdom of priests, you have people inside of that one 12th of the nation
that actually instructs the rest of the nation on how to be a priesthood.
It's almost like the equipping of the saints.
Right.
Yeah.
It's going to be very similar because you mentioned this, like Paul talks about in Ephesians.
He talks about how some are gifted to be this and some are gifted to be this and some are
gifted to be this.
And the reality is they're all in their gifts when they're exercising them properly.
It's to equip the saints.
Yeah.
Think of the priesthood the same way.
The priesthood is actually meant to equip the nation to be a priest or a conduit of
heaven to earth to all of the world.
They're going to put on display God in such a way that everybody, when they look at them,
they're like, hey, look at God.
He's really cool.
Yeah.
It's just like your pastors today.
They're up there not to do all the work for you, but to equip you to be Christ in your
community.
That whole concept in the New Testament was actually stolen from Leviticus and Exodus.
Thevery.
Right.
Thevery.
They actually took that from Leviticus and Exodus to prove the point that this is a fulfillment
of Torah, not an addition to.
And I think the temptation is we forget the audience that Paul was writing to.
He's writing to a conglomeration of Jews and Gentiles.
And so the Jews would have informed them, hey, this is what the priesthood does.
And so now our pastoral roles, you guys actually function in this capacity.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And with Jesus as a high priest in the order of Melchizedek, right?
You're supposed to function in this role to actually help the entire body, equip the
entire body to be priest to the entire world.
Because Peter, in 1st or 2nd Peter, I can't remember which book, he's actually going to
say that we are a chosen people of royal priesthood, calling back to this idea of Exodus.
Yeah, absolutely.
So good.
The priesthood becomes really important.
The first high priest set up in the book of Leviticus and Exodus is Aaron, which one of
the things that I love about Aaron actually being appointed to this is we're not that
far removed from the golden calf incident, where he's all these people, they're stiff
necked and whatever.
And I took this gold and I threw it in the fire.
Woof.
How came this calf?
Because that's how golden calves are born.
Yeah.
You throw something in the fire, then poof, it turns into a well sculpted golden calf.
Have you ever done any metalworking?
A little bit.
It's not easy work.
Yeah, it's not like you just throw it in there and just, no.
Makes itself, right?
No.
Actually, one of the, there was one metal project I had to do and this will, you'll
laugh at this since we're Alaskans and we deal with, and a lot of people around here
deal with boats, is I was working on a boat with a friend and he took a grinder just like
straight through the bottom of the hole of the boat.
And so, so huge gash in there.
And so we had to do some welding and riveting.
I'm assuming you weren't on the water at the moment.
No, we were not.
Because that would have been hilarious addition to that story.
And then we started swimming.
I had a bucket, we were shoveling out water.
And so we had to do some metalwork, some riveting, some welding, all this stuff.
It was a whole project because he did quite the number on this, but it was not easy work.
It turned into a day and a half project.
I feel like in metalworking or precious metal, whatever you want to call it, that the only
thing that you can do easily is destroy.
Oh yeah.
Creating is actually an act of intention.
Yeah.
Which maybe there's a reason why that's the analogy used very often.
Right?
Because creating is actually a role of intention.
But one of the things I love about, so Aaron is being used again, is that God is actually
using Aaron in a capacity and something that we would never qualify for people.
Can you imagine, okay, can you imagine in a church today, somebody coming to be like
a senior pastor of a church or the associate pastor, worship pastor, whatever you want
to call it.
A year earlier, they had been telling another church that they should worship all.
Has it even been a year though?
No, it hasn't.
No, we're talking like days, weeks, maybe.
Yeah.
We're like not talking a very long time between Leviticus 9 and the Golden Calf.
Yeah.
Leviticus 8, sorry.
Yeah, exactly.
God comes and he takes Aaron and he says, yeah, I know you messed up.
So did the entire nation and I'm still using you.
You're still my bride and we're still going to move forward with my plan.
So you're going to be the high priest.
So you're saying God is a gracious, loving, compassionate, giving God.
Yeah.
That his compassion is a thousand to three of his anger.
So one of the things that I find interesting about the priesthood is a lot of the things
that got commissions on the priesthood, actually, if you take a look in the book of Numbers,
which we're going to get to, but I was going to pull something forward backwards.
God actually says to Aaron, he says, when you go and you talk to the Israelites, you're
to bless them like this.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Countenance being face.
Yeah.
Right.
And so the whole thing about the blessing that the priesthood is supposed to be bestowing
on Israel on a regular basis is actually about God moving in a relational, connected way
in their life.
Yeah.
And it feels like you were saying that the priesthood, their designation, their idea is
actually to connect God and humanity.
Yeah.
And so one of the best ways to teach people how to do that is to connect them first.
Yep.
Okay.
It becomes really important that the priesthood have a lot of humbleness towards their position
because you are being charged with leading God's people that are in turn going to lead
people who are outside of the kingdom to the kingdom.
Right.
And you have to put his story on display so that other people put the story on display
so that God is glorified.
Yeah.
And let's pause right there because I do want to touch on in Deuteronomy, there's actually
a whole section of Deuteronomy that talks about welcoming the outsiders in.
And let's not get the illusion that this is just for the Jewish people or just for the
heepers.
There's a whole section on how do we welcome the outsiders in?
What does that look like?
Correct.
Because God has always been a God for all nations, not just the Hebrew people.
That's going all the way back to Genesis 12.
Yep.
I'm going all the way back to Genesis 12.
So let's keep that in mind as we're reading through this.
As we're talking about the ordination of priests who are then going to teach the rest of the
nation how to be a priest to the rest of the world.
Right.
Let's keep that in mind that God is for the whole world and this isn't an exclusive club.
Right.
The purpose of this is actually everybody else.
Yes.
You are blessed so that.
Yes.
It's the only reason that like Ben and I can actually sit here and talk to you about this
is because we have been welcomed in as outsiders through the work of Jesus Christ.
Correct.
This is always the intention of God.
And I'm going to digress here just for a second, but we're going to talk about this a bunch
of times, but it's really important we understand that Jesus was a Hebrew Messiah.
Yeah.
Because God had a role for Israel that they were going to put his name on display.
They were going to be a holy nation and that they were going to step in the gap for everybody
else and they were going to be the way that heaven touches earth and God interacts with
the rest of the world for redemption.
And he chose them because they were no good at it.
He says, in fact, you're a stiff necked and stubborn people.
Right.
And he's not choosing them because they're the greatest.
He's choosing them because they're the least, which by the way should tell you what you
should do with your weaknesses.
Yeah.
Put God on display.
We're so tempted to hide our weaknesses, but God wants to use those to show his favor.
Yeah.
God's favor plus my weakness is awesome.
We've talked about that more than a few times.
So Jesus is a Hebrew Messiah.
And so he actually fulfills the role of Israel to actually save the entire world.
Jesus steps into the identity of Israel and actually fulfills their calling into the world,
which then opens the entire gospel, the entire truth that God has had up to this point to
the entire world.
Hence why Gentiles are now welcomed in.
Yeah.
So good.
One of these times we're going to have to spend some real time understanding what is
the sacrifice of Jesus and placing our faith in Jesus actually talking about.
In fact, we may actually talk about that next week when we talk about the works of the law
versus the moral law.
Yeah.
So it becomes incredibly important that the priesthood is in it for the right reason.
Now, we talked about this in Egypt, priesthood is power, it's wealth, it's influence.
That's not so much the case in Leviticus.
In this book, the priest, it's not like they're mistreated, but they actually exist by the
charity and the offerings of the entire nation.
They can't hold power if the entire nation doesn't support them.
And by the way, that's probably how it should be in general.
Because when people have a taste of power and they can exploit that power, they typically
do.
And if you're looking for an example, I have one, it's called history.
Lip open a history book, point at a random page and you're probably pretty close.
Yeah.
So there is a call on the priest to put the story of God on display.
Are they going to trust what God is doing and put it on display?
Are they going to help the people of Israel understand what the rules and regulations
are actually helping to tell them about God?
Or are they going to use these means for self-promotion, selfishness, power?
Now I will tell you that in the time of Jesus, you get the Jewish mafia down in Jerusalem
who has completely messed up the temple.
It's become a money-making scheme where they've gotten rich off the back of people who actually
love God.
That is not the intention.
No.
And there is a lot of woes that are said throughout the New Testament and with Jesus about the
religious leadership.
Now I want to specify leadership because I think we have a tendency to try to throw every
Jew under the bus.
When they're talking about somebody specific, I was actually talking to a friend of mine
and he was like, the gospel of John says that the Jews did blah, blah, blah, blah.
I said, just made that quote.
And I said, okay, but John was a Jew and Jesus was a Jew and Mary was a Jew and Peter was
a Jew.
So which Jews is he talking about?
He's like the nation.
I was like, so all of the disciples also participated in Christ's crucifixion.
He's like, no.
And I was like, okay, so the people who were in Capernaum, they participated in Christ's
crucifixion.
No.
I was like, okay, so then who do you think they might be talking about?
And I tried to ask questions because I try not to tell people things, but I ask them
because I want them to discover it themselves.
But in the gospel of John, a lot of the times who is opposing Jesus, it's when he's in
Jerusalem and it's the Jewish leadership.
Yeah.
Specifically, the Jerusalem Jewish leadership.
I think it's interesting that Jesus spends like three and a half years with the Pharisees
in Capernaum in the triangle.
He spends a week with the leadership and they crucify him.
Yeah.
And Jesus, like a lot of times, like when we read into the New Testament, we read it
as Jesus was picking fights with them.
He wasn't picking fights with the Pharisees.
He did stand strong when they tried to trap him or trick him.
Jesus wasn't actually going out of his way to fight them.
Even that piece where he says, you worship your father who is the devil, it's actually
in response to something they said.
Yeah.
And I think there's some to be noted there for us because a lot of times we can go on
and be like, we got to stand up for the truth.
Yes, we got to stand up for the truth, but we don't need to go out of our way to beat
other people up about it with it.
I guess it depends on what you mean by stand up for the truth.
Because I think sometimes this question, they say we have to stand for truth.
And I was like, okay.
So are you standing for truth in the way that you love your neighbor?
Uh huh.
Are you going to stand for the truth in the way that you take care of the outcast, the
widow, the foreigner?
Are you going to stand for the truth when you sit next to the homeless person on the
street and have a conversation with them?
I think standing for the truth is incredibly important, but if your life doesn't demonstrate
that you stand for truth, why suddenly this one piece?
And I think that you can boil a lot of it down to politics.
Oh yeah.
Which is wildly uncomfortable people.
And I get that.
I get that.
A lot of times we're using the Bible to back up our political or personal ideology rather
than letting the Bible speak and respond to the truth that's presented.
Yeah.
And to be clear, Ben and I don't care what side of the political aisle you sit on.
Oh no.
No, we don't.
We really don't care on that.
But we do care about those.
We hope that this conversation is spurring you into a spot where you are better in a
better relationship with God, loving him with everything you have, and then loving your
community with all that you have.
I am not concerned or whether you're a Republican, independent, or a Democrat.
Yeah, me neither.
I am much more concerned that you have the presence of Jesus inside of you.
Yep.
Because that's going to override.
We're not part of a democracy in Christianity.
We're part of a monarchy.
So we follow King Jesus.
So it's really important that we understand what he's saying.
And he's speaking into a context, hence why we're in Leviticus.
Yeah.
Which ties us back into this whole priest idea where I've had this conversation one
time where I had someone come up to me and they're like, Jesus was like the original
Democrat.
I was like, actually he wasn't.
He's the heir to the kingdom and we are his priests.
So he wasn't the original.
He didn't even operate in the same political system we have.
He is the heir to the kingdom of heaven and we are his priests seated at his right hand.
Yeah.
He is our high priest and we operate underneath him.
Yep.
Yeah.
So the role of priesthood becomes really important that you actually speak only what God says.
Right?
You actually repeat the message of God.
Throughout the Bible though, there are multiple instances, especially in the prophets.
You're going to see a lot of this in the prophets where God really goes after the leadership,
specifically the priesthood.
One of my favorite quotes is actually from Isaiah.
It's one that people misquote all the time, but it talks about the righteousness being
as filthy rags.
Yeah.
So you read that section of Isaiah, what he said, he's talking about, they're doing these
offerings.
Now, remember, we talked about offerings.
They're meant to bring you into relationship with God.
Yeah.
They're supposed to be a thing that brings you, it's a noun, it's a noun thing that you
bring, you cast your identity onto it and it draws you verb wise to God.
Right?
It's about relationship and they're doing all of these sacrifices, but he says that
their hearts are far from him and he says, so it's disgusting because you're pretending
like you want to be around me.
You're doing things to say you want to be around me, but you don't want to be there.
Yeah.
It's when my son comes in and he's, dad, I love you.
Sits on the opposite side of the room and doesn't engage with you the rest of the time.
And then he's done and he says, all right, can I be out of time out now?
Dude, you're not even anywhere near me.
You know what I mean?
We're not connecting here.
This is not about, we have not come together in any sort of relationship fashion.
Your heart is far from me.
I am not a vending machine that you can punch a bunch of buttons to get stuff.
Yeah.
Which by the way, is a bad theology.
And I think the tendency with that, I'm going to pick on this a little bit.
We're going to talk sometime about people who abuse the promises of God.
Yeah.
But I want to say one, you need to have grace with people who do that because sometimes
they're operating in faith, just trying to engage God.
Yeah.
And God has patience with them.
Yeah.
But God is not a vending machine, but he does want to pour out blessing.
And so there's two different things that we run into when we're coming to God.
One we run into people who think that they can manipulate God to do what they want.
That's bad.
Yeah.
The other side is that there are people who never ask God for anything because they don't
trust him to do it.
That's bad too.
So you have to view this in the eyes and context of relationship.
Imagine if you invited somebody to coffee.
Okay.
And then you sat them one corner of the coffee shop, and then you went and sat in the other
corner of the coffee shop and didn't talk to them the whole time.
And I've heard that analogy before.
I had someone share that with me.
Okay, now imagine that's how you treated your relationship with God.
That is how we treat our relationship.
Oh, it is.
It is.
I suspect a lot of Sunday mornings that people go into their churches and that God never actually
is present.
Now obviously he's omnipresent.
Yeah.
But we're never awake to God's presence.
And people think it was a great service.
Yeah.
I would say that if we don't waken to the reality of God in the room, that it wasn't
a church service at all.
It was a social gathering.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oftentimes this is how we treat our relationship with God is we're like, okay, I spent time
with God, okay, on opposite ends of the room with 30 people in between you.
Did you really spend time with him or was he just in the same room with you?
Did you actually sit down and have a conversation with him?
Did you actually sit down and enjoy that cup of coffee with him?
When you get into the priesthood, this is what they're talking about is we're going
to establish an order that helps us draw closer to God into better relationship with God.
And you see this through Leviticus 8 when one of the first things that God does is he
commands Moses to do a series of offerings to ordain the priesthood.
And so Moses goes through and he does these offerings and towards the end of it, Aaron's
garments get sprinkled with oil and blood to purify, to cleanse so that he could then
serve as his role.
Because up to this point, the people themselves have said, we don't want God to speak directly
to us.
We want him to speak to God and then bring his word.
So Moses is saying is speaking with the authority of God.
So now they see him purifying Aaron with the blood and stepping into his role as high priest.
Yeah.
And what he's doing is he's passing on this authority from himself to someone else.
By the way, someone else who has messed up.
Yep.
Someone else who has screwed up, someone else who is not perfect.
Yeah.
By any means, someone else who arguably, if you look at Aaron's life, is probably not
the best father.
And we can get into that later.
But man, are we going to talk about Nate having to buy him?
Because that is an interesting story.
Are we?
Yeah.
I wasn't going to go, I wasn't going to fully go there.
I was just going to-
I was just going to go to the movies maybe next week.
I was just getting a little teaser.
But that's what's going on here is you have the authority being passed down from God to
Moses and then Moses saying, okay, I'm passing it from myself to Aaron and his priesthood.
Yeah.
And I hope you can see the similarity there of God passing the authority down through
Jesus and Jesus passing it to us.
In fact, in the Gospel of John, I believe it's in the Gospel of John, there's two guys
by the name of James and John, sons of Zebedee.
They're called sons of thunder.
Because they often had a lot of sound and not a lot of action behind it.
Yeah.
No, I don't know.
That's why.
But I'm just- so when they're in Samaria, there are some people who don't treat them
particularly well.
And so they come to Jesus and they're like, ah, you know what, Jesus, let's just call
it out.
Fire from heaven.
Now first-
Burn it to the ground.
Now first of all, they're actually quoting scripture.
10 points to anybody who can find that.
But I'm not going to give it to you.
You got to go-
Are we starting a point system?
Sure.
Okay.
Yeah.
Tell you what, if you email us and we give you 10 points, if you get a hundred points,
we're going to give you a shout out on the podcast.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
Anyways, 10 points if you can tell me the verse that they're actually quoting about
fire down from heaven.
Without Googling it.
Honestly, I don't even care.
How you Google it, it's totally fine.
And Jesus goes, no, that's not what we're doing.
And he takes them.
But then you know what happens almost immediately after?
He sends them out to heal people, drive out demons, and proclaim the gospel.
Wait, he sent messed up people who just called violence on a whole town?
Yes.
Oh.
It seems like Jesus knows something else about leadership that we do not.
Uh huh.
Now, please don't mishear me.
What I am not saying is that if you have somebody who's trying to burn a city down, you should
send them out on a mission trip.
Okay.
That is, I think also maybe foolhardy, right?
But it seems like Jesus is concerned about different things than we are.
And he's also not concerned about the mess.
He's looking for the passion.
Yeah.
And he says, we can correct the mess, but we can't create passion.
Yeah.
So the priesthood is supposed to like, like you said, they get it from Moses.
It goes to Aaron.
It goes out to his people.
They're teaching the entire nation how to be different.
Now next week, we're going to talk about the works of the law.
That is called mixate altura.
Yeah.
So that just flows off your tongue, right?
The works of the law.
And looking ahead, you probably want to read the book of Galatians because it's going to
reference a lot of the things we're going to talk about next week.
And the works of the law are the things that make you Jewish.
Yeah.
Not wearing circumcision, not wearing blended fabrics, not cutting the corners of your field,
having tassels on the end of your robe, like a lot of these types of things, right?
These are the works of the law.
And these are things that are meant to put God on display because they're supposed to
put God on display.
And so the priesthood is not helping people navigate atonement.
It's helping them navigate relationship with God.
And it's also teaching them how to put God on display for everybody else around them.
Yeah.
One of the main issues that Israel keeps running into all throughout the Bible is they want
to look like everybody else.
And God's like, no, I want you to look different than everybody else.
Think about like when they want Saul as a king, they're like, we need a king who will
go before us and fight just like everybody else.
How does that work out for them?
Not so great.
Yeah.
There is a lot of words in the Old and New Testament about shepherds, priests, leadership,
people who lead and don't put the heart of God on display.
What happens when you actually abuse your authority?
Yeah.
Okay.
And I want to be really careful here because I don't want to minimize anybody's past experience.
There has been people, probably people in your life in leadership or otherwise, who
have fallen significantly.
Yeah.
In significant ways.
There are two things that I think that we need to know here.
So first thing I'm saying is that every leader has a responsibility to obey God and that
you should never sweep abuse or any of those things under the rug.
No, they need to be addressed.
Yes.
We also believe God is bigger than the abuse, but he's not going to take away the consequences
of sin, right?
And so like we need to hold leadership accountable.
The other side of it, and this is just coming from 36 years of watching people in ministry
and leadership, we put our leaders on such a high platform that it's not surprising that
they fall off and break their leg.
Yeah.
It's very true.
That is so true.
One of the things that we often do in church, and this is just really sad and just kind
of just play off what you said, is what we'll do is we'll put a leader in place and we'll
be like, okay, now you do everything for me.
Correct.
That's not their job.
That's not their role.
Their role is to empower you to partner with you, partner with me.
That's what they're called to do.
They're not called to do it all for you.
Right?
And so what we do is we get, we put leaders in places, we're like, hey, you do everything
for me, and then when they start doing things that don't quite line up with how you thought
it was going to be, get done, you send the wonderful pastoral email out and you're like,
hey, pastor, we need to talk.
And it's no wonder we have people who step out of ministry who get burnt out because
they're trying to partner with you.
And that's what the priesthood is trying to do in Leviticus as well as they're trying
to partner with the people.
Paul referencing this idea, we talked about it earlier in Ephesians, makes this statement.
I'm going to read it straight from the NIV.
It's chapter four verse 11.
So Christ himself, Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
pastors, and the teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ
may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son
of God and become mature, attending to the whole measure of the fullness of God.
And you think it stops there, but it doesn't.
Then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and
there by every wind of teaching and by cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful
scheming.
Instead speaking the truth and love, we will grow to become in every respect, the mature
body of him who is the head that is Christ.
Yeah.
Okay.
How many times have you heard talking about speaking truth in love?
Well, understanding it's from the context of when you have a bunch of children that
aren't actually recognizing that they're being equipped for ministry, then you're not able
to speak truth and love.
Can we point out something in that little passage right there?
When it talks about actually theology and knowledge, that is actually in the part of
that passage where it's talking about being tossed by the wind and the waves.
When it talks about being unified, it talks about service, being equipped and serving
one another.
Yeah.
So modern church, including us at times, right?
Stop fighting about dumb things.
Find ways to have real conversations.
The reason we have the Love in Context podcast is to have unscripted real conversations about
following God.
Yes, we want to add context to the Bible, all of these different things.
We want to correct some things that are probably unbiblical theologies.
If you still hold them, I'm going to love you anyways.
And if we're able to come together in unity of love for each other, then I may be able
to speak truth and love to you and help fix some of those things.
And you may be able to speak truth and love to me.
And if some of those things are very minor, like small minuscule things that have nothing
to do with our salvation or nothing to do with our walk with Jesus, nothing to do with
our relationship with him, okay, then why are we talking about it?
Other than the fact that I'm going to email the pastors right now and say, we have to
have dark roast coffee in church on Sundays.
Medium and light roast is a no-go 100%.
But that's actually a passage from the book of Second Opinion.
The best thing is our pastoral staff actually listen to this.
So they're going to hear that and they're going to be like, really Spencer?
Come on.
There are so many things that we just get bent out of shape over that really don't matter.
And really when we get bent out of shape over it, who are we serving?
So the priesthood in the Old Testament is meant to teach the entire nation how to be
priests.
Yeah.
Pastoral leadership, prophets, apostles, evangelists, all of them are meant to equip the body to
be those things to the world.
One of the things we can pull from Leviticus is God is very concerned, not about you, but
how are you being a conduit?
And to give you an example of that, Leviticus 9 verse 7 says, Moses said to Aaron, come
to the altar, sacrifice your sin offering and your burn offering to purify yourself
and the people.
Okay.
Then present the offerings of the people to purify them, making them right with God just
as he has commanded.
Right?
Like the idea of the priesthood is not just for the priest to say, all right, here's the
list of things that you're supposed to do, not do all that.
It's actually so that they can come help stand in the gap for you, stand in the gap with
you.
Yeah.
It's always interesting to me when I hear people talk about the law, man, they're like,
the law is oppressive and law is this and we're now free from the laws.
Like, first of all, that's actually not what Jesus says, but we'll talk about that some
other time.
Because like second of all, the Jews thought of the law as their wedding gifts.
Yeah.
It's precious.
It's precious to them.
God has told you exactly who he is with his law.
Now, I think it's really possible to read it as a 20th century American and completely
misunderstand what God is saying.
In fact, we're going to talk about that in an episode we're going to call the weird ones.
Yeah.
God is putting his character on display and he's speaking into a context and telling them
how to be completely different and his people are supposed to be different and his priesthood
is to teach his people how to be different so that they can go be different for the nations
so that all people, every nation, every tongue would bow and see that Yahweh is God.
It's almost like they're supposed to love in context.
Hence the name.
Yeah.
It's trademark.
That's how you trademark things.
You just say trademark.
Just say trademark.
So yeah, that's how this is supposed to be.
Yeah.
So when you are a leader and you take on the responsibility to equip the saints and you
don't actually step into your role, you actually use it to promote self, that is a very dangerous
position to be because it's not just you, but it's the people who are supposed to be
touched by you that are being affected.
And I guarantee you it would be better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck
and chucked into the sea than to lead one of the little ones astray.
You're teaching people to behave in such a way they don't put God on display.
I wasn't sure if I was going to bring this up, but I think this is a good place to close
it.
All right.
Jesus made a comment about false prophets.
He says that, beware of false prophets for they are wolves in sheep's clothing.
And people quote that all the time.
You will know them by their fruit.
Okay.
Jesus talks about fruit in a number of different places.
One of the most famous is in John 15.
He says, I am the true vine.
You are the branches.
If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit because apart from me, you
can do nothing.
One of the reasons people get upset with me very often is because I'm not willing to say
somebody is outside of the faith when I see fruit.
Yeah.
Now I want to really specify here.
There are some people who there's very little fruit in their life, but it's clear that they're
connected to the vine because it is definitely fruit of Jesus.
A lot of what they teach doesn't produce fruit.
Now this is both conservative and liberal.
You're paying with a broad stroke.
It's a broad stroke.
There's a lot of people all over the spectrum.
There's not one particular teacher.
What I do is I look to see where is the fruit?
What produces love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, knowledge, gentleness, self-control?
What produces the righteousness of God in the world?
What helps put the story of Jesus and the fact that the kingdom of heaven is here and
ready to be interacted with on display?
Yeah.
And if I see that in a person, then I know that they're connected to Jesus.
And then everything from that point is how can I get together with them to expand that
to other parts of their life?
Yeah.
And so I'm not looking for the bad things that people do.
I'm looking for where are they connected to Jesus and how do we grow that?
Absolutely.
It's almost like you should look at the good and pull that out of people's life.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think the tendency that we have had, especially over the last 200 years in American Christianity,
and this is broad strokes once again, because there are some churches that are fantastic
at this.
They're fantastic at finding the fruit in people and harvesting it.
A lot of times in the last 200 years, a lot of theologians, a lot of historians, a lot
of especially denominational theology has been about, let me tell you about this denominations
bad branch and this person's bad fruit.
Let me tell you about how wrong you are, how fallen you are.
Yeah.
The things that you're doing horrible.
How do we fix that?
And I'm not saying that there's no concern about that.
Those concerns, those theological concerns are addressed with truth and love when you
are unified in the spirit.
When you have a brand of compassion for one another, you're walking in love and unity
with each other, then you're able to speak truth and love.
You cannot speak truth before love.
Absolutely.
So, everybody who has a job, there's parts of your job that you're really good at.
There's parts of your job that you probably need improvement on.
If my boss came to me and only hounded me about the parts of my job that I was not good
at, what do you think I would do?
Probably quit.
Probably.
Yeah.
Because it's not a place where I'm being valued.
If my boss came to me and actually pulled out the things that were good and then helped
me work on the things that I need improvement on, I'm more likely to stay.
We as a church, we've often flipped that and we've been like, okay, I see all the bad you're
doing over here.
Let's fix that.
Or bad from my perspective.
Yeah.
Let's fix that.
Okay.
Versus being like, oh, here's all the good things these people are doing.
Yeah.
They have some rough edges.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Spoiler alert, we all do.
And I will say that you all can hold us accountable.
If you ever hear us talking about somebody in the faith in a negative way on the podcast,
you are more than welcome to call us out and we will apologize.
Absolutely.
Because our goal is never to tear anybody else down.
If somebody is going to remove them from the position, it's going to be God and not us.
Yes.
We are going to display Jesus and allow his presence and his spirit to change the world
around us.
Yes.
It's probably a good place for us to stop understanding like the role of priest is to
actually be a conduit of heaven to earth.
Yeah.
To equip the people around you, the people that are part of your community, the chosen
people to actually put it on display for the world so that God's grace doesn't stay just
in the church but flows from the church to the world.
Yes.
Yeah.
So good.
Thank you for joining us today.
Lots of places you can find us nowadays.
So yeah, let's see.
Amazon, YouTube, Apple, Spotify.
We have a TikTok.
We have Instagram.
We have Facebook.
We got a little bit of everything and a little bit of nothing.
If you guys have questions as you're listening, we do have an episode coming up as a Q&A at
the end of Leviticus.
But if you're listening to this episode, it might be too late to submit questions.
But do keep submitting questions because we're going to do a Q&A every three or four months.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
Thanks for joining us and until next time.
That's a wrap for today's episode.
We want to extend a heartfelt thank you for tuning in and spending your valuable time
with us.
We hope that you found today's conversation insightful and that you take something meaningful
from it.
If you have questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
Reach out to us at loveandcontext.gmail.com and we will be sure to get back to you.
Remember you can always engage with our content on all your favorite listening platforms,
including Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube and more.
Don't forget to follow us on social media at loveandcontext on Instagram and Facebook
for updates.
Hey, do you think we should bring Roman numerals back?
I was like, because I'm for one.
Oh no, it's I see what's going on here.
It's talking to you.
I'm not making.
No, I had the microphone on and it was voice texting words in here.
I was like, what in the world is going on?
What's happening?