Welcome to the Love and Context podcast, engaging in unscripted conversations with your hosts,
Ben and Spencer.
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Welcome back to the Love and Context podcast.
We are continuing on on Leviticus.
Yes we are.
Yeah, and today we're actually going to talk about something that happens in the back half
of Leviticus.
We just got through this episode on the weird ones, some of the weirder or interpreted laws,
and I think by the end we discovered they're not as weird as we think.
Yes, but this part God actually goes through when he tells his people, his priesthood,
he's told them like, hey, this is how you're going to act with the world, this is how you're
going to put me on display, these are some things that are going to make you different
than everybody else.
And then he says, all right, I'm going to give you a list of parties that you got to
have.
Yeah, every year.
Yeah.
Uh huh.
Which kind of feels out of place.
Yes.
Like in a very broad sense, it just feels out of place.
So in chapter 23, God says that you're going to have these sacred assemblies.
Okay.
So if we look at what these sacred assemblies are, there's two different things that I think
we struggle with as a church that God addresses in Leviticus 23.
First thing is we don't know how to party.
You're correct.
We as believers in the context of a Christian church today, we have a hard time with this
idea of celebration.
And what I mean by that is I've seen people come to know Jesus, and then after they say
yes to Jesus, fellow believers like, okay, here's all the things you got to get rid of
now.
These things got changed right away.
And it's like, can we take a moment and just celebrate the fact that they said they decided
to give their life to Jesus?
Right.
Can we just take a moment and be like, Hey, they are making a life altering decision,
biggest decision of their lives, and they are coming to Jesus and they are now eternity
is secure in them.
And what we're going to do is be like, okay, now here's all the junk they got to get rid
of.
And it's especially weird because you know, as well as I do, the discipleship is a process.
Yes.
God does that with everybody.
He took his disciples, they took with him for three years and they still didn't recognize
who he was when he was crucified.
They recognize afterwards when he comes back from the life, they're like, Oh, I got you
here.
Yep.
Yeah.
But like they struggle with it.
And like, it's going to be it's an ongoing process.
Like discipleship is different than trying to get people to say a prayer.
Yes.
And I think it's telling that in Matthew 28, Jesus tells us to go and make disciples.
Huh?
But to your point, they say, yes, I want to be a disciple of Jesus.
And we're like, cool, here's the drudgery.
Uh huh.
And I don't want to pretend like there isn't any, like there is there's part of developing
discipline is actually being disciplined.
Yeah.
But developing discipline takes time and that that happens.
That doesn't happen overnight.
Can you imagine?
And maybe there are some people who are listening from a different country.
And so maybe your schools are like this.
Can you imagine your four year old, five year old, they go to school and all they do is
sit in a chair and listen all day and they never have recess.
That would be horrible for my five year old.
Horrible.
Also, does it not just stunt them?
Yeah.
Now I have some issues with the way that our education system is set up.
That's not anything against teachers.
I think teachers are great.
I think teachers are wonderful.
I have some issues that it doesn't necessarily meet children where they're at.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah.
But we have this idea in the church where we're like, oh, we're going to, we're going
to, we're going to disciple you.
So we're going to sit you down and have you look.
But discipleship is really like, you come and follow me.
You do life with me and together we're going to figure it out.
And so celebration is a natural part of that.
I remember when I was in grade school and recess came and I was like the first one out
the door going, woo, kickball, right?
Dodgeball, whatever it was we were going to play.
That's jubilation.
And the church struggles with that a lot.
And I think that sometimes we're so focused on, we're like, oh, the evil in the world
and all these different things.
We forget to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Yeah.
Here in Leviticus 23, God laying out these festivals.
Now one thing that's really important to note is these are festivals.
These are times of celebration.
There are times of remembrance.
There are times of lament tied into some of these, but majority of the bulk of it is to
celebrate what the Lord has done to celebrate that the Lord is good, to celebrate that he's
delivered to remember your history.
Yeah.
Right.
To remember who you were and who you are now and the change that has happened because of
the Lord.
There's a tendency to look at these festivals of Israel and forget that they're also for
us.
Yes.
That's not to say we go and we follow them religiously because I think that there is
a lot to say in Galatians when we talked about mix out a tour versus the moral law.
There's a lot to say about what Gentiles are supposed to do inside of the kingdom.
Yeah.
But there's also an invitation to live into the promise of these festivals.
Let's just do an overview here.
So the first thing I love in chapter 23, God starts talking about the Sabbath.
One day every week.
So there's one day a week that you have to stop and remember that your identity doesn't
come from your work.
Yes.
And that's such a good reminder for America.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine in town who he's not a follower of Jesus and
a younger guy, but it was just like, I was like, yeah, I don't know what I want to do
with my life.
And then he was asking me, how do you decide what you want to do with your life?
And I was like, honestly, I don't care what my day job is.
I was like, I'd rather my focus be my family and being able to be a good husband, being
able to be a good father, being able to raise my kid up.
Right.
And as far as earning a living, there's a thousand different ways I could do that.
Correct.
Right.
And so sometimes we often get our focus twisted on this.
And this is where this idea of Sabbath comes in.
Sometimes we often get our focus so caught up on what can we do for work for achievement,
which I'm not saying that's bad, but oftentimes we're looking at it in the wrong lens.
If I have to choose over a career or my family, the career will change.
Correct.
Yeah.
I've heard it said, so Henry Blackby did the Experiments of God series.
One of the things he said in there that I just loved when he was talking about setting
your mind up to actually hear from God, he says that oftentimes we're like, don't just
stand there, do something.
Uh-huh.
And God is instead saying to us, don't just do something, stand there.
Yep.
Because until you actually hear from God, you shouldn't be going anywhere.
Yeah.
Right off the bat, before God gets into anything about the festival, he says, remember, we
got a date night once a week.
Yep.
We're going to make sure that you understand where your story comes from.
Yes.
And this is the foundation for everything, guys.
So we're going to beat this drum until it breaks.
Yep.
Because understanding your identity comes from a rested place of security in Christ
inside of the God of the universe, inside of Yahweh.
Yeah.
And that's going to be crucial to everything that comes out of that.
Because if you don't live from that, you end up with some theology that's really damaging
to other people.
And I would say that's probably where a lot of the damaging theology of the day comes
from.
And we're not going to sit here and tell you how to Sabbath.
Correct.
That's not our goal.
What we are going to say is if you don't have a time of rest built into your schedule, you
should look at that.
Yeah.
Like just spend some time with God one day a week and ask him how he wants you to set
up beside that day.
Yeah.
That's super helpful.
So we're talking about jubilation, right?
Okay.
So how's the celebration once a week you're celebrating?
In fact, one of the things that I do with James, when we've talked about this on the
podcast before, is that the night before Sabbath, or really the day before Sabbath, because
technically Sabbath starts at night, I said, what's tomorrow?
He says it's Sabbath.
I said, what do we do on Sabbath?
He says, we rest, we play, we remember that God loves us.
I want to raise my son with this mentality that one day a week our identity doesn't come
from what we do.
Yeah.
So there is the Sabbath and then they celebrate the Passover and the Feast of the Son and
the Loved and Bred.
First you find your identity with God and then the Passover is celebrating their freedom
that they find in the Exodus.
This just happened for them.
You have your date night with God and then you experience deliverance.
Yeah.
That totally makes sense.
And if you're wondering, is there a reason that these are listed in order?
There actually is.
Yeah.
So funny you say that is that the next one, it's offering of the first fruits.
So where's my identity?
Now I have freedom.
Now I produce from a place of identity and freedom and the first of my production I give
to God.
Yep.
The Bible said this way for a reason.
The celebration of first roots is celebrating what you receive from the harvest.
You're giving back to God and appreciation because we recognize that no matter how much
effort we put into anything, all life is sustained by God.
That whether I produce a lot or a little, it's all contingent on the blessing of God
and His ability to hold the world together.
In fact, we're going to talk about this in Deuteronomy, but Moses is going to talk about
this.
He says, you're going to go live in buildings you didn't build and reap from fields that
you didn't plant.
And in that moment, you will be tempted to forget the Lord your God.
Yeah.
But you got to remember where your production comes from.
It comes from the blessing of God in your life.
Yeah.
So good.
Yeah.
So just to recap so far, you have Sabbath, you have deliverance, you have giving from
a place of rest and deliverance of God, giving your first roots.
And then you have the festival of the first harvest or the festival of wheat.
Yes.
And festival of weeks in Hebrew is Shavuot.
We actually have another word for it in the English.
We call it Pentecost because of what happens in Acts 2.
That happens on Shavuot.
By the way, sometime we'll touch on that, but we're not going to touch on it today.
And it happens on Shavuot.
It's the celebration of the harvest.
And it also commemorates when they are at Sinai and Moses receives the Ten Commandments
from God.
Yeah.
So this is the point where they find themselves actually betrothed as a nation to God and
they are receiving from him who he is and who he expects them to be.
They're actually receiving their identity from him on those days because the law is
meant to actually change something about you so you become something else.
Yeah.
So you pass the festival weeks and you get to the festival of trumpets.
Because everybody needs a good trumpet.
Everybody needs a good trumpet.
Let's just break this down a little bit more.
You have encountering God, being delivered, giving of your first fruits, the provision
of God and celebration so far and celebrating all of that.
Yeah.
And then you have the festival of trumpets, which if you actually read this, by the way,
if you're following along, we're in verse 23 of chapter 23.
The Lord said to Moses, say to the Israelites on the first day of the seventh month, you
are to have a day of Sabbath rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts.
Do no regular work, but present a food offering to the Lord.
Did we just come back to Sabbath again?
Yep.
Interesting.
Yep.
So it's almost like when we recognize our identity, our calling, everything that's going
on in us, we actually are invited back into this place where we recognize once again.
And when we give from our identity in Christ and the calling he's put on our lives, we're
invited back into a place of rest with God.
Yeah.
So one of the things that I have long maintained and we've talked about with sin and all these
different things that we don't actually change people.
God changes people, right?
Encountering God actually brings a knowledge of brokenness, which is why I find it interesting
that the next festival he actually talks about is a day of atonement.
Yes.
Where one day a year they offer this lamb for the entire nation and God says, you're
fine with me.
Let's get back to work.
Because you're guilty conscious when encountering God and remembering your identity sits with
him and that you're giving thanks.
And then you're once again remembering everything that God is and you were countered by his
holiness.
Now, if you're in a fallen nature, you're going to immediately be like, I don't belong
here.
And God says, you do.
Let's make it right for the entire nation.
We are, we are good.
Let's go do the work.
That's a powerful word.
It is.
Yeah.
And let's just jump back to sacrificial systems of the day.
There was no other culture that had that, that had a God that was like, once a year
this is going to happen and everybody's going to be made good and right with me.
That was not a thing.
And here you have God saying once a year this is going to happen and everyone's going
to be made right with me.
And this is actually, if you haven't caught this yet, this is a foreshadowing to Christ
coming as Passover lamb, which Christ as a Passover lamb doesn't make sense.
If this context hasn't been set up, the New Testament authors are assuming you understand
the sacrificial system when you step into it.
If you are unfamiliar with that, we do have an episode talking about the sacrificial system.
I'd go back and listen to that.
And also, once again, I recommend that book from D Thomas Limecaster.
What about the sacrifices?
I think it's fantastic in helping you get some handholds to understand this.
The last one that's mentioned here is actually Sukkot.
It's the festival of tabernacles and it's specifically commemorating their first day
when they were out of Egypt, they're in the desert and they build these little shanties
called Sukkots, right?
That they go and they live in and the cloud of God actually covers them.
And it's the first day out of freedom.
They don't know where they're going.
They don't know where their food is coming from.
They don't know where their provision comes from.
And so it's an act of faith and where they stepped out.
And God's actually going to talk about this later.
He's going to say, I led you like a bride in the wilderness.
Yeah.
And God is like the time where they actually gave something to him, which is their trust.
And it touches the heart of God and all of these festivals, like they're set up for us
to remember what God has done for us.
And so if you wanted to bullet point these in and understand these in a simple context
is you have, hey, I'm going to have an encounter with God through Sabbath.
I'm going to be delivered.
I'm going to give from a place of rest and deliverance, watch abundance happen through
a harvest, come back to it, which will lead me back into a place of rest, which will lead
to a place where everybody around me is transformed because of the work of Christ that's being
done in my life, which will then lead to a place to where we are trusting and fully reliant
on God for the provision of everything we need.
Or maybe finding our original first love.
Right?
Yeah.
Do you hear some remnants of that in Revelation?
Yeah.
Right.
So if you break down these festivals, like a lot of times we look at these like, oh,
these are chores.
I was like, you break down what these are.
This is God setting up a multiple times of celebration to remember who he is, what he's
done and how much he loves you.
These are celebrations to your point.
Yeah.
Right.
They're celebrations.
And I think about, so AA, right?
Adonaholics Anonymous.
Yeah.
They have these chips that you hold.
Yeah.
Right.
And when people go, there's one day chip and people rejoice over that.
Yeah.
And then one week, one month, you can tell I haven't been in AA because I don't actually
know like the intervals.
Uh huh.
But then there's one year, five year, 10 year, 15 year, like all these different years.
And every time somebody gets one, everybody in the group rejoices.
Yeah.
Like it is a cause for celebration.
They came from a place of brokenness, but they're actually having a cause for celebration
because of these things that they're remembering.
The commemoration is only important because they remember where they came from.
Yes.
So we were talking about the 10 words of God and we said, first one, I am the Lord your
God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, have no other gods before me.
And why is it important?
It's important because God is reiterating who he is.
He is Lord.
He is the Lord your God.
He is not a genie in the sky.
He's not a God simply over the land or simply over the water or simply over day or simply
overnight.
He is the Lord your God.
From a definitive point.
Yeah.
Of reference.
From a definitive point where God did something specific.
Yep.
The Exodus and they reference the Exodus over and over.
And in fact, we reference it quickly, but the Passover, when you do a Seder dinner,
they actually tell the story.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I think we can take from a lot of these festivals is one,
remembering the story that we're a part of and celebrating the different portions.
Yeah.
I would love to spend more time in like just all the festivals, but we just can't.
Maybe that'll be a series of episodes in the future, but we're just skimming a stone across.
So that's the side of jubilation and remembering to know how to party.
And God says it's really important because in Leviticus, he uses some of that language
we've talked about where it's very specific.
Like you really need to do this.
And he says, if you don't party, I'm going to kill you.
Now we read that in modern English and we're like, oh, that's really harsh.
But what it means is it's very serious.
This is life and death.
Knowing how to celebrate is a matter of life and death.
Yeah, completely.
And so we move into a place from a celebration to a place of lament in our conversation.
And here's something else that I think the church in general, there are churches who
know how to lament well with others, but in generally speaking, we don't know how to lament
well with others.
It's true.
And here's what I mean by that.
I've encountered so many people, at least in my life, where when there's an issue of
despair or depravity or something in my life, where someone steps into that context, they
don't try to lament with me.
They try to fix me.
Right.
And I walk away more broken than I started.
Right.
And then I realized, and what I realized in those times is, okay, I was more of an object
than an actual person.
And that's hurtful, right?
It doesn't help.
Actually, what it's done in my life is it has caused me to close up more doors that
are then harder to reopen when the time comes.
Yeah.
I think it's very difficult when people try to be friends at you.
Yes.
It's harder than with you.
There's one friend of mine who, when I was a younger man and I was having some struggles
in my life, what he was really good at was just being like, hey, I'm just going to show
up.
He would show up with coffee and be like, hey, you want to hang out?
Sure.
So then we would go for hikes or just go hang out and go do whatever.
He never forced the issues to come up.
He was like, I'm just going to be there for you.
And there's actually a biblical concept.
There's actually biblical grounds for this behind that, which is the idea of sitting
shiva, which is just the idea of that.
You are just going to show up and sit with someone in their lament, in their pain, in
their agony.
You're going to wail with them.
You're going to cry with them.
And this actually shows up in the Bible quite a few times.
So it's a Jewish practice.
So you're not necessarily going to see them say, sit shiva in the Bible, but you are going
to see in the time of Jesus when the daughter dies, right?
And there are people who are crying.
They're wailing.
Jesus says, stop wailing.
She's not dead.
And they laugh at him.
These people are there and they're lamenting with the parent who's lost a child.
If you think about when Lazarus dies and the disciples are like, if he's sleeping, we'll
just go wake him up.
Duh, duh, Jesus.
If he's sleeping, we'll just wake him up.
And he's no, Lazarus is dead.
And they say, well, let us go so that we may die with him.
That's because they're going to go and lament with the family.
You go and you actually just, you dwell with them.
You're just there.
You don't try to fix anything.
You just are present.
Just show up.
Speaking of just show up, there's actually a great book called just show up.
I forget the name of the author.
It's going to be in the show notes, but it's talking about learning how to sit with people
in their chaos.
Yeah.
And it's not just, it's not just when somebody dies.
Like sometimes there's just chaos.
Like somebody's marriage comes to an end.
Yeah.
And God's end result for marriage is not divorce.
We need to understand that.
One of the things marriage is designed to do is to show an image of the relationship
of the church to Christ.
That's what marriage is designed to do.
And I want to be really clear too on this.
Sometimes people are in a really bad, abusive relationships in their marriage.
And if you are listening and you're in that, I encourage you to figure out a way to get
out of that.
Correct.
I don't want you to hear that marriage isn't designed to be and then divorce and then know
that you're in physical danger.
And not just that.
You have a spouse that is just with every single person.
Yeah.
Like marriage is also about fidelity.
Both people have to be involved in it.
Yes.
So like, yeah, there is always nuance to every conversation.
Yes.
There is some harmful theology out there where we were so anti-divorce that we're okay with
letting people stay in other types of sin.
Yes.
And that's bad.
And that's bad too.
Like our heart would never be for anybody to divorce, but for reconciliation and redemption
to happen.
The problem is you have to have two parties for reconciliation.
And so just hear our hearts on that.
I thought that probably wasn't expressed perfectly, but just hear our hearts on that, that we
do hold to like marriage is not designed to end in divorce, but we also recognize that
it's a two way street.
Yeah.
Also, let's just throw one more caveat on there.
God is not angry at you if you've been divorced.
No, he is not.
He wants to work through you for redemptive purposes, regardless of your past.
Absolutely.
If you've been letting that hang over your head, don't let it go.
Jesus loves you.
Spirit is more than capable of working through you to the same extent he can work through
us.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So we got to learn how to sit with people in these chaos places.
Yes.
There is a death, there is a divorce, there is sometimes just like rift in a family.
There's a job loss or you just lost your house.
Something about people in especially like storm areas where they come through and they
lost everything.
And yes, we need to do something for them.
But the first thing we need to do is show up.
Show up.
A little caveat I like to put on just showing up is you don't have to do it perfectly.
Most likely you won't.
You won't.
But don't be concerned.
I don't know what I have to offer.
You have yourself.
Get your butt over there and show up.
You're a believer in Christ.
You carry the spirit inside of you.
That is more than enough.
Yeah.
You don't have to do it like you're going to mess up.
You're probably going to say something as a person is going to look at you and be like
what?
But just be there for them.
Just be there for them.
Yeah.
And that is going to mean the world to them.
There is a story that I've told from the platform about worship before about a family at a church
that we used to go to.
And they came in on a Sunday.
It was like two Sundays after their 17, 18-year-old had died in a car crash.
And they finally worked up and were able to come back to church.
And it was a fairly large church and people knew them.
They were really prominent in our church and people loved them.
And they're there on Sunday morning.
It's not that they don't want to be among God's people, but it's also incredibly difficult
because you have to relive it over and over again with people who love you.
During the worship time, we were singing the song, the Chris Tomlinson great song, How
Great Is Our God.
Those people absolutely believe that God is great.
But in the moment, it's really hard to feel it.
Yes.
And it becomes really important that we understand that we're a family.
And so sometimes what we do is when people cannot sing, we sing on their behalf because
sometimes it's going to be us and we're not going to be able to sing and we need our family
to sing on our behalf.
Yeah.
They just need us to be there and walk with them through the valley.
Yeah.
That is one of the greatest things you can do as a Christian is learn how to walk with
people through their chaos.
Don't try to fix them.
Nope.
Give them Jesus and He's the one who can fix things.
Yep.
Absolutely.
So we have these two things happen today.
We have this idea of celebration.
Let's learn how to party.
And we have this idea of let's learn how to be with each other in our pain.
Right.
The reason that I think it's important to bring these two things up is because generally
speaking, church in the US has not done a good job.
Correct.
With these things, with both of these things.
We've spent so much time trying to fix the issues that we see that we forget that we
are dealing with sons and daughters of God.
Yeah.
We see people who've just come to be in relationship with Jesus and then we start correcting them
on every turn being like, you shouldn't do this.
When reality, that's the Holy Spirit's job.
Our job is to be there for them.
Correct.
And walk with them.
And then we see people hurting.
And then we're like, well, if you would have just done this or this, you might be right
on that.
But I guarantee you it's probably not helpful in that moment.
What would be more helpful is if you just show up, just be there for.
It's interesting how often you can actually be correct and completely wrong.
Yeah, absolutely.
It doesn't matter if you technically say what's right.
In fact, I think John has something to say about that in first John.
He says, if you speak the truth, but don't have love, it's not truth.
Now I'm loosely saying that, so please go and read the actual quote.
Yeah.
But the truth isn't in you if you can't say it in love.
It's why understanding when we talked about Ephesians and understanding speaking truth
and love has to do with being in a place of unity, not uniformity, caring about each other
deeply and then being able to speak truth and love into each other.
Yeah.
Let's just jump over that first John passage real quick because it is a really good one.
But I'm just going to hit on a couple of verses.
This is first John four seven where it says, dear friends, let us continue to love one
another for love comes from God.
Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, but anyone who does not love does not
know God for God is love.
And then he goes into this big explanation of who God is, was how much God has shown
us his love to Christ on the cross.
And then you get down to these are the verses Ben was talking about.
And this is verse 20, John, first John four 20, where it says, if someone says I love
God, but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar for if we don't love people, we
can see how can we love a God who we cannot see?
Hmm.
Yeah.
It's actually even harsher than what I said.
Yeah.
And then 21, he closes a chapter with this says, and he has given us this command.
Those who love God also must also love their fellow believers.
Yeah.
And it's, it's one of those things is that I struggle with too, is because I have, um,
I've heard the same pastor's turn around and they say, if I love you, then that's means
blah, blah, blah.
And people make this dissertation about what it means to actually love people.
As the problem is we can't define love by our own terms.
We actually have to define love as how God loved us.
Yes.
And to the point of in the old Testament, all throughout scripture, we see God speaking
in Leviticus, speaking truth into something that they're doing.
That's going to cause them to be something different.
Right.
And then walking with them in their chaos, finding ways to redeem them over and over
again, teaching them to put the story on display.
Yeah.
And through the work of Christ, we see him bridging the gap of everything that was broken,
bringing the voice, reconnecting it back to us.
And just because you're extending love to someone does not necessarily mean they're
going to accept that and receive that love.
That's correct.
Yeah.
I have heard, I've heard a lot of people though, talk about how they love their, love their
enemies and I was like, it does not look anything like Jesus, which is the definition of love.
Yeah.
Like how God loves us.
And I was like, now to be fair, Jesus had harsh words.
Sometimes love has harsh words.
Sometimes at the time love is inviting you to a deeper walk.
Yes.
I'm actually just thinking about this because I'm looking at your bookshelf over here.
There's a book we're going to throw out for recommendation because I think it's really
good about practical ways to actually live a life of love.
And it's Bob Goff, Love Does.
I think it's just, I love Bob's personality.
I love his perspective.
Like I'm just going to find ways to love people.
Yeah.
At this point, some listeners are going to be like, you've quoted Rabbi David Foreman
and now you're saying go read Bob Goff.
We're like, yes we are.
Yeah.
I was like, I wouldn't necessarily build all of my theological concepts from Bob Goff,
but from an experientially loving people perspective, Bob has a great personality for it.
If we could learn to love like Bob, we would look a lot more like Jesus.
Yeah.
I know there's a couple of people in my life where I just tell people, I was like, yeah,
when you meet this person, I will give you a hundred dollars if you can hate them.
And the thing is because there's so flipping good at just like being loving and sharing
the love of Christ with people where I'm like, I will pay you if you hate them.
All right.
We got to stop talking about love because next week is actually about loving neighbor
as yourselves.
So we're going to definitely hit some of this content again.
Yeah.
So coming back to this idea, festivals, why are they important?
Because you got to have a rhythm in your life where you remember what God has done.
And for a good reason, we're dumb and we forget.
Yeah.
That's just the reality.
And that shows in the story of Israel.
Yeah.
They are delivered from Egypt and it's not very long after they're in front of a gold
calf.
Correct.
Yeah.
We forget.
When you think about, I'm just going to pull a few stories from Israel's history.
You think about in the time of Josiah King, they found the law.
Yeah.
And they're like, oh, hey, we found this book.
And he's like, okay, let's read it.
And they're like, oh, I didn't realize you're supposed to be doing those things.
And oh, he cleans house.
Yeah.
Because he doesn't realize that they're supposed to be doing something because the king isn't
doing what he's supposed to do.
There's very specific instructions given to a king so that the law doesn't ever depart
from them because you're supposed to be bringing this.
If you're a king, you got to actually implement it in society.
That's your responsibility.
You are the chief priest.
Yeah.
In a lot of ways.
So Josiah is a really interesting one.
And then in Nehemiah, they actually find the book of the law.
Some people talk about whether or not that's Deuteronomy or whether or not that's Torah.
There's a good argument for just Deuteronomy, but I actually like the argument of Torah
better because it connects you to the voice of God, right?
To the story of God.
And in Nehemiah, they go out and they read it.
And I love speaking of Rabbi David for what he talks about because it's the celebration
of Rosh Hashanah, right?
Which is the day of judgment.
And the people start weeping.
And Nehemiah is like, hey guys, stop crying.
This is actually a good day.
And he's like, personally, if I'm giving a message and people respond with weeping, that's
like a Rabbi's dream, right?
And like any pastor's dream is like you preach and like people are drawn to tears and repentance
that's conviction.
Yeah.
Oh, the spirit was moving heavy today.
Oof.
Which I mean, yeah, it is even like in the time of Jonathan Edwards with sinners in the
hand of your God, they talk about people groaning under the weight of sin and stuff like that.
So like that's a pastor's dream.
But Nehemiah is like, no, judgment is not about you being wrong, but recognizing that
Christ or God Yahweh is actually your God.
He's delivered you.
And you respond in worship and Thanksgiving.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
So good.
It's so good.
There is a place for lament over your sin and all these things, but God actually wants to
bring you into a place of jubilation and settled.
Yeah.
I think a lot of the issues that we run into is a lot of Christians aren't settled.
No, we're incredibly unsettled and a lot of Christian teachers and I would include myself
in this sometimes.
I try to make people unsettled so that they move and it's the wrong thing to do.
I think we misunderstand the idea of settled.
Correct.
Oftentimes we think of the idea of settled as in like knowing our theology and I'm like,
no, like God's going to work that out.
Correct.
He's going to work that out.
I want to be settled in the fact that I'm actually sitting with the Lord and spending
time with him.
He'll sort everything else out.
The most important thing we do as believers is learn to hear the voice of God.
Yeah.
Learn to hear the voice of God.
We need to understand our theology, all of our study, all of our context.
If it doesn't drive you to be able to hear the voice of God Yes, and respond and see
what he is doing and join him in the work.
It is all for not.
Yeah.
It is worthless time spent if it does not connect you to the creator.
Yeah, I had this conversation a while back, this couple years ago, there was a friend
of mine where I was like, yeah, I was like, maybe we just need to lean more into, are
we hearing maybe we just need to start asking questions more along the line of what has
God been speaking to you lately.
Yeah.
And he, like, I come from a little more Pentecostal, charismatic background, and he did not.
And he was like, not all of us connect that way.
And I was like, some of us just need to know what the Bible says and the information of
what's theologically true and what's not.
I was like, but isn't it theologically true that the Lord speaks to us?
Yeah.
Isn't that found in scripture?
I was like, I'm not even going to point out a specific spot because it's found all through
out.
But isn't that true?
So maybe we, maybe instead of focusing on maybe, oh man, I messed up because I fell
into this trap of sin or I did this.
Maybe we should focus more on like, hey, what's the Lord been teaching us?
Because the more we get to know who God is and spend time in fellowship with him, the
less we're going to even want those things that sin tempts us with, that the enemy tempts
us with.
And you might be tempted to hear us saying, oh, well, you just need to listen to God and
not read your Bible.
No, that's not what we're saying.
I'm saying by reading your Bible, you recognize when God is speaking.
Yes, absolutely.
Because we have the word of God that is transmitting the thoughts and heart and attitudes of God
to written page so that when you go out in the world and you hear those whispers, you
hear those inclinations, you hear those movements of God happening, you go, oh, I see what God
is doing.
Yeah.
I was having this conversation with another worship leader because you guys know that
I lead a lot of music at our church.
And I was having this conversation.
I say sometimes I just feel like there's some things that need to be said during Sunday
morning service.
I was like, yeah, what do you mean you feel?
They're like, I just have this reoccurring thought and thing.
I was like, yeah, God is speaking to you in the moment.
And I was like, now you have to figure out a way to do that.
That is not like, oh, thus saith the Lord.
Yes.
Because you're not making a declarative statement.
But I'll give an example from today.
We were doing music.
And one of the things that I was being impressed in my heart, like through all of our set,
is that God was dealing with people who are struggling with powers and dominions above
them, right?
That they are feeling shackled by specific things.
And so what I felt in my heart and in my mind and in my heart as I'm doing this music and
I feel God speaking is you need to bring this up and have people pray for each other right
now.
And I fought it because that is a very human thing to do.
And God was blessing what was going on, 100%.
But we finally got to this point and God was moving so strong, I had to stop.
And I'm like, okay, we're going to deal with this right now.
And it was an awkward transition, but it was a beautiful moment where God did something
good.
Now the crazy thing was right after that, the person who was getting up to speak, this
was like the first thing in their notes was talking about how the powers and dominions
over them had been moving and how God was doing some shifting some things in their testimonial
work.
Turns out God knows what he's doing.
And that I need to actually respond to those.
Part of knowing the word of God and internalizing the word of God and understanding the story
of God is that when these things happen, we now have a framework to put it inside.
The word of the Lord is set up to draw us closer into relationship with him.
It's not just set up as a informational textbook, which oftentimes, oftentimes we can treat
it that way under the guise of I just want to make sure I have good theology.
Yeah.
And it's okay, I was like, I okay, I love that journey for you, but we also want to
make sure we're in relationship with God.
Yeah, but we want that's the whole point of this.
Yeah.
So let's bring this back because I think this is actually going to make a lot of sense practically.
Yeah.
So let's talk about why are festivals important?
Yes.
Because you remember the story of what God did in your life and it causes you to live
from a place of Thanksgiving rather than obligation.
Yes.
And what causes you to live in a place of settled in Sabbath than a place of hurry and
creating.
Yes.
Living in these festivals where God is reminding us like, Hey, this is the story that you're
a part of.
This is my character.
We talked about throughout Leviticus, if you come to Leviticus and you assume that God
is mad with you, because you started the Bible in Genesis three and not Genesis one, then
you're going to read Leviticus completely different.
You're going to read the festivals different.
You're going to interpret God differently.
So good theology is important because it's going to help you interpret God correctly,
the way his heart is actually put on display.
Yeah.
Because if you're always looking for God to be angry with the people around you, you're
going to be sorely disappointed or you're going to come up with some really warped theology
that damages a lot of people.
Yeah.
But if you understand that God's passion is actually to redeem the lost and bring the
lost kids home, both those inside of the church and out, then you're going to approach life
completely differently.
Yes.
It's going to cause you to actually seek God.
What are you doing in this person?
And it's going to be able to enable you to forgive a lot of wrongs.
Yeah.
It's so true.
It's almost like it's going to enable you to love your neighbor as yourself, which we
will talk about next week.
So that concludes this week's episode and join us next week for sure.
Well, you're going to be having a Q and a in a few weeks.
So send us your questions.
Okay.
We're going to be talking preferably about theological topics.
If there's other questions in there too, we probably want to address those, but we have
actually received a few.
We have.
Yeah.
So send us your questions.
We do want to address any of those specifically if it's something we've been talking about.
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Thanks for listening and until next week.
Yep.
See you next week.
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