Welcome to the Love and Context Podcast, unscripted conversation with Ben and Spencer.
We're so glad that you could join us today, whether that's from your car, office, home,
church or wherever you're at.
If you want to contact us, you can email us at lovingcontext at gmail.com.
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Welcome to the Love and Context Podcast.
This is a unscripted conversation with me, I'm Ben.
And I am Spencer.
And we are so happy that you're here with us today because we're entering one of my
favorite books in the Bible.
Yes, you heard me right.
One of my favorite books in the Bible, Leviticus.
He's not using sarcasm.
He's not joking.
He's not playing with you.
He likes Leviticus.
Yeah, it's actually been transformative for me.
I was actually just talking to Spencer before we clicked on the recording that I recently
blogged all the way through Leviticus.
And spending time on each chapter pulling one thought and talking about the heart of
God throughout the entire book has just been incredible.
Yeah.
Is there a way for us to take a poll?
Maybe yeah, I think we can add a poll.
We're going to try to add a poll.
So we're going to try to add a poll.
If not, if we can't add a poll, just email us.
When was the last time your church did a study on Leviticus?
One of those is going to be never.
And I bet you that's most of the answer.
But I'm just curious.
I just curious.
And if your church was like, oh, we went through that last year, I'm like, props to you, man.
That's awesome.
But yeah, in this episode, we're actually not going to get into Leviticus.
We're actually going to be talking about what Leviticus is before we actually get into talking
about specific sections.
As opposed to the Exodus story, we're not necessarily going to go through in a linear
fashion.
We're actually going to cover concepts that are covered inside of Leviticus.
And if any of you are wondering, yes, we are going to talk about the highly controversial
laws that exist in Leviticus as well.
Yes.
And Leviticus, we need to understand it not in the context of a linear book.
The whole book, correct me if I'm wrong Ben, but the whole book's a chiasm.
Correct.
There is actually a full chiasm inside of Leviticus.
In fact, that actually comes up in our notes later.
So we'll talk about that in just a few minutes.
Spoiler alert.
Yes, spoiler alert.
He got you like 10 minutes ahead of where we're supposed to be.
If you think Spencer sounds weird, he's definitely eating cheese right now too.
This is going to be a thing is like, I'm just going to be snacking because I snack all the
time.
They're going to have no idea what your normal voice sounds like because you're always like
speaking of which I might leave this in here, but the other one of the other episodes, I'm
so glad that we run this through a filter before we actually publish it because I breathe
so loud.
Like when I was going through an editing, I could hear and it pulled it all out by the
time we actually published the episode, but I was definitely, my nose was way too close
to the mic.
You mean not all the words I had to say.
Yeah, exactly.
The first thing I want to specify in Leviticus is it's probably not the kind of book you
expect it is.
I think we get lulled into this idea when we read Genesis and Exodus because it's a
lot of narrative, right?
Telling this story of where God is going.
If you remember at the end of the book of Exodus, God has given his people their instruction.
He's told them who they are.
He's given them instructions on how to build the temple.
He said his presence is still going to go with them even though they had failed with
a golden calf.
And so there's a pause here before the book of Numbers where they actually leave Sinai
where there is this book that explains how they are supposed to be a kingdom of priests.
Because if you've never been a priest, you're like, what?
How do I do that?
Like, what does that mean to be a priest?
Because to your point last week, what do they think priesthood is?
Royalty.
It's a place thing that you jockey for position.
It's a place where you make a lot of money.
It's all those different things.
So this isn't this book isn't largely it's not a story of Israel.
It's rather instructions for the priesthood on how they're going to lead and how the entire
nation is going to be a kingdom of priests.
This is a how to manual, if you will.
So there's a how to manual here in Leviticus as Ben was just talking about.
And it's not just a how to manual of, okay, how do you become wealthy?
That's not what we're talking about.
It's just a how to manual of, okay, we're going to take people who were slaves lowest
of the low and give them the title of priest.
Correct.
And in a very real way, even though it's not the royalty, they understand they are going
to be a royal people because they're representing the king.
So let's talk about the overall structure of Leviticus.
So section one deals with atonement.
It's chapters one through seven.
We're going to be talking about that next week.
Now atonement is a fancy way of saying how to be right with God.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, before we even get into next week, I think that it's important to point out how
crazy it is that God just tells them how to be right with him.
Yeah.
Because contextually in Egypt and in the surrounding nations, if you want your God to not be mad
at you, you give them anything you can to appease their anger.
And you're trying to figure out how can I be made right with you?
Correct.
And we've talked about like the worship of a molek and the sacrificing of children and,
oh, I got to figure out how do I make sure this God isn't mad with me and that he's not
going to punish me?
Yeah.
God immediately does away with this and he says, hey, if you do this, do this.
We're good.
So I think it's interesting that in our modern context, a lot of times we look at the laws
of Leviticus and we're like, oh, these are burdensome.
They're putting weights on their shoulders.
But in reality, what it is, it's showing them a very clear picture of I want to be right
with you.
Yeah.
Let's be right with each other.
And we've mentioned this before, but there's 613 or so laws.
There's not a lot of laws.
It's whatever state or country that you live in.
I guarantee you there's more laws than that.
I guarantee you.
In the city that we live in, there's at least like 10,000.
Yeah.
Especially when you start factoring in local, state and federal.
Yeah.
And so to be like, oh, you have to live under 613 laws.
It's actually not a lot.
Yeah.
We're going to try to reframe Leviticus for you guys as we're going along.
Not in the first section, he says, hey, by the way, you know this thing that you're worried
about not being right with me?
If you think you're not right, do this.
If you're thankful, do this.
If you have a lot of extra and you want to be thankful for what I've done for you, then
do this.
This is how you bless me.
And this is how you bless each other.
Yeah.
And it's not about, it's not a complicated procedure.
And the picture we want you to understand, we're going to really emphasize this next
week to the point that you're going to get sick of hearing me say this.
It is not about appeasement.
It's about relationship.
Yep.
It's about restoration of relationship because everything that's happening in Levitical law
is meant to bring you back to the garden.
Yeah.
To a connection that was lost.
Yes.
So you get into section two where he talks about the priesthood.
Now section two is kind of interesting because you're like, okay, we're moving in a linear
fashion.
No, we're not.
Chapter two actually consists of chapters eight through 10 and then 21 and 22.
These are the sections that talk about the priesthood, specifically their roles.
And again, this book is a giant chiasm.
So it's not written in a linear fashion.
Stop jumping ahead.
No, just kidding.
I know.
We'll get to it again.
All right.
Ben, Ben keeps looking at me every time I say that he's like, is that the only thing
you have to say on this episode?
No, I got more.
I got more.
Leviticus is one of my favorite books.
It is definitely not one of Spencer's favorite books.
No, I'm actually studying this one as we go through it because I haven't spent as much
time in this one, but there is that element to it.
So he talks about the priesthood and what it means to be a priesthood.
And specifically the priesthood is the subset inside of the kingdom of priests that are
meant to teach the entire nation how to be a kingdom of priests.
So they're the ones who are going to be responsible for actually facilitating worship between
God and the rest of the kingdom.
And that's really important for us to understand.
The priest, their job is to actually equip the entire nation to be a kingdom of priests,
to put you a conduit between God and humanity, to be a conduit for atonement between God
and humanity because God wants all of his kids back home.
It's always about all nations.
Yeah.
Hence why they're actually going to be put where Israel is.
It's at the crossroads of the ancient world.
And if some of you are listening to this, you're like, man, this actually sounds like
the role of a pastor in a church.
You would be right.
You'd be right because guess where we get some of this stuff from?
Leviticus.
In fact, Paul's going to say in Ephesians, some of you are given to be pastors and apostles
and teachers and prophets and teachers and all of these different things and evangelists
to equip the body for service so that the body of Christ might be built up.
This is the exact same idea of priesthood.
It's meant to initiate and teach how to be these things.
Now, I think it's really important because I think in our modern context, we're like,
oh, the pastor is the evangelist.
The pastor is the teacher.
The pastor is the prophet.
The pastor is the apostle.
Whatever your denomination might view those titles as.
No, the job of those people is to equip the entire body to go and be those things.
And so you might have somebody who is very apostolic and their job is to bring the apostolic
into the church.
You might have somebody who's very prophetic and their job is to make sure that the church
is equipped to be prophetic, to speak the truth of God into the world.
You might have somebody who is gifted in evangelism and their job is to speak that into the church
so that wherever you go, you tell the story of who God is.
That's so good.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the job of those people.
Now, on their level, they're also going to do that, but their main job is to equip you
to do that.
Yeah.
And when Paul's talking about this in Ephesians, and the author of Hebrews actually talks about
it a little bit too, but when Paul's talking about it in Ephesians, guess where he's getting
this information from?
Yeah.
Spoiler alert, Paul's a Jew.
Yeah.
He's getting his information from Leviticus.
And I think it's really important to note, I actually want to talk about a church that
I think does this especially well.
So in Portland, Oregon, there's a church called Bridgetown.
It was led for a long time by John Mark Comer.
And I can't remember the name of the guy who is now the senior pastor there because John
Mark Comer has been associated with them for so long.
But he does a really good job and they've done a really good job over the last couple
of decades of not building the church, but equipping the church to go and be the church.
And John Mark Comer, as you and I have talked about, just a phenomenal teacher, good man.
He talks a lot about just this idea of calling and gifting in his book.
And we're going to reference it in the show notes because I think that it's a good read
for everybody, but it's called Garden City, about understanding the call on your life.
But there are churches in America who do this really well.
And so we want to point out who are doing good jobs of equipping and going and being
and loving people well.
Doesn't mean that everybody in their church does well, but they're doing a good job messaging
from the top down that this is who we're supposed to be.
And by the way, when you message from the top down, this is who we're supposed to be,
do you know what happens?
A lot of the little petty things just fade away.
Well, we talked about that for sure when Clint was here.
Pastor Clint was here.
He talked about if you set a precedent on how we're going to lead.
Speaking of spoiler alerts and looking forward in the book of numbers, when we cover that,
we're going to talk about what it looks like when from the top down, the messaging is different
because it leads to chaos in the congregation, which is something we want to warn against
because there are churches who struggle with that today.
We got to get the messaging right.
And speaking of which, if you're in one of those churches and you're like, oh, I got
to wait for that podcast episode to come out.
The best thing you can do right now is pray for them, love them, encourage them.
Yep.
And bear with them because they're probably going to make mistakes.
It's okay.
We all will.
Yep.
We all will.
So in this section three, then it widens out to the entire nation and says, how are you
going to live as a kingdom of frees?
This is in chapters 11 through 20, this is going to be the bulk of the laws that are
given that are meant to put on display who God is.
And a lot of these laws are actually deeply rooted in counteracting something that's going
on culturally around them.
There's a huge section where they talk about sexuality and everything that's being brought
up there.
I've had people read that and they go, why is this even written in the Bible?
It's because he's speaking into a context of what is happening then in that area.
So this outlook is how does the entire nation actually live this out?
What are the practical day-to-day things you do to put God on display?
Yeah.
That are countercultural.
Yeah.
Which by the way, can we just take a step back?
It would not be a terrible idea for us to think about the exact same thing.
Yeah.
What things can we do today to put God on display that are countercultural?
I actually, I have for myself every Friday night to Saturday, we don't work.
Yeah.
We don't work.
We observe Sabbath, not religiously because I'm not an Orthodox Jew, but relationally,
I realize the importance of once a week pausing and seeing my worth and whose image I'm made
in and not what I can do.
Because then the other six days, my production is fueled by my identity and not by my ability.
Yeah.
This idea of setting ourselves apart, oftentimes what we do is we get in the heart of, okay,
what's the to dos and to don'ts?
That's actually not what that's about.
The idea of setting yourself apart is so that you can be focused on your relationship with
Christ first and foremost, your relationship with God first and foremost.
And when you do that, everything else flows from that.
So good.
A lot of times I've had people be like, well, what about the to dos, to don'ts?
I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm like, I don't even focus on that anymore.
Right.
What I want to focus on is, okay, who is Christ in my life and how am I entering into
relationship with Him?
And I want everything else to flow from that.
My earthly reputation doesn't matter because who I am and who Christ is in my life is what
matters.
My quote unquote production doesn't matter because who I am and who Christ is in my life
matters.
And when I get that right, everything else flows from that in such a good way that I
can't even explain.
There's a story in the Gospel of John where Jesus makes a statement.
He says, I am the true vine and you are the branches.
If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.
Apart from me, you can do nothing.
Okay.
So here's the thing.
If you are connected to Christ, that is the only criteria to producing fruit.
If you connect to Christ, fruit will come out.
Yes.
Now you can definitely prune those branches and produce more fruit, get better fruit,
all those different things.
A hundred percent.
If you connect to Christ, you'll produce fruit.
Often we have this list of to dos and to don'ts.
I have two analogies that I like to use when describing this.
If you are a sports person and you play basketball, if you are always focusing on what you shouldn't
do, you very rarely focus on what you should do.
Most good coaches are going to teach you how to do the right behavior.
They're going to acknowledge what the wrong behavior is.
But what is more effective at keeping you in bounds?
Only focusing on where out of bounds is or trying to get to the hoop.
And then the second thing is as a musician, I'm going to use your instrument of choice,
the drums.
If you are focused on what not to do on the drum kit, you are going to mess up everything
that you're supposed to do.
You need to be aware of it and train those things out.
Absolutely.
But most of your focus needs to be focused on what I am supposed to do, not what I'm
not supposed to do.
Otherwise it ends up just being a lot of chaos or as I like to call it, high school drumming.
Yep.
Sorry.
If you're a high school drummer and you're great, you're the exception.
Which Ben laughs at me because I constantly mix in high school drumming just to mess with
him during church worship.
It's true.
Sometimes I'm weird going doing something and he's, hey, did you notice?
Oh yeah, I did.
Trust me, I did.
It has become especially more prominent since I started wearing both in-ears so I can hear
your drum kick and your high hat really.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
So how to live as a kingdom of peace is going to be section three.
Section four is actually the festivals.
God makes it very clear that his people need to know how to party.
He plans in festivals for them to remember their past, to be excited about where they've
come and be excited about where they're going.
And he says that if you don't observe these, it's going to be bad news bears for you.
Celebration is such a huge thing in scripture.
Not just in Leviticus, but throughout the whole of the Bible.
And we miss that so easily sometimes.
There's some churches who have it down.
Don't get me wrong.
Especially like churches that do those big old potluck like after church feeds.
Man, those guys know how to party.
Yeah.
I can't tell you how many baptisms I've been to where like the person gets baptized.
Okay, we're done.
Now we're going to go preach.
Scripture talk about how like when someone comes to know who Jesus is, like a party is
going off in heaven.
How about when Jesus says all of heaven rejoices when one sinner repents?
Yes.
They're like dancing.
Celebration is so important.
How many baptisms have you been to where like they baptize someone and then you they're
like, all right, great.
Now I'm going to preach a sermon.
No, let's party after that.
Let's have a potluck.
Let's have whatever is acceptable in your church.
At the very least cake.
Very least cake.
Let's party after that.
Let's celebrate that they came to Jesus.
Their life is on a new trajectory.
They've had the forgiveness of sin.
They're living into the righteousness of God.
That is a cause of celebration.
If that's not a cause of celebration, I don't know what is.
It's super important because learning how to celebrate and I think sometimes when we
say holy solemn and there's occasion for solemnness, 100%.
By the way, somebody commented to me that they are like, you guys say 100% a lot.
I was like, 100% we do.
We only say 95% of the time.
Yeah, like 95% of the time we say 100%.
But holiness doesn't mean solemn.
It means set apart.
And we've talked about how God has a sense of humor.
God has a sense of joy.
He does a lot of kind of funny things throughout the Bible.
And honestly, one of the things that is very rampant and brings a lot of joy in people
throughout the church and the world is laughter.
That came from somewhere.
The reason the laughter is so good is because it came from somewhere.
Have you ever met somebody who just has such a great laugh?
I want to be around them because they have such a great laugh and like they just enjoy
life.
Have you met those people?
I have met those people.
I remember there was this guy when I was growing up.
I don't know his name, but I remember he was the guy who delivered the best.
What's that?
It's probably for the best.
Yeah.
I was a kid and so it was a friend of my parents, but I remember he delivered Pepsi everywhere.
He was like the Pepsi guy.
He went and refilled machines.
That guy had the biggest smile on his face all the time.
And I guarantee if that guy never said a word about Jesus, he was spreading the joy of the
Lord everywhere, but he was saying things about Jesus.
And so learning how to party, learning how to remember and learning how to rejoice in
the things that happen are a really big deal.
There is a place for solemnness.
I think on the other side, sometimes churches forget that it's okay to lament.
It's okay to be sad.
You can have the joy of the Lord and still be sad.
I think about Corey Tim Boone or about Diedrich Bonhoeffer.
They have the joy of the Lord in the middle of these World War II concentration camps,
but it's not like they're happy.
They're not just sitting there being like, woohoo, it's a dark situation.
But that's the beauty of the joy of the Lord is that in chaos, in sadness, in lament, you're
still filled with hope.
And Paul lived this out.
You can see that in his writings where he wrote a lot of his letters from prison expressing
how joyful he was for the people.
Then I want to talk about the last section of Leviticus and it's caring for the oppressed,
which is just the bomb that is dropped on Israel at the end.
Because the oppressed, the outside, the weak, those are people that you just leave to fend
for themselves and you just push them to the outside.
But God's like, nope, these are the people that you put right in the middle of everything
that you're doing.
These are the people you protect.
And he specifically says you need to take care of widow orphans and foreigners because
that's what you were when you were in Egypt.
When I brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, I the Lord your God
who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
When you were a widow, an orphan and a foreigner, it's important that you remember where you
came from because otherwise you're going to forget the people that God actually puts in
your path.
So end of James when James says true religion is this to care for the widow and orphaned.
Yeah.
A lot of people don't realize, but he's actually pulling that from Leviticus.
Correct.
And many other places, but definitely Leviticus.
Yeah.
I mean, this idea of caring for an orphan and widow isn't just in Leviticus and James.
It's all throughout scripture.
That's one of the places James does get this from.
And it's crazy when you look at this text because God is giving them this law.
We look at it today and we're like, oh, it's oppressive and it's patriarchal and it's blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, everywhere that you can think of it's racist.
It's misogynistic.
It's sexist.
It is just choose the word that you're going to put in here.
I've heard them all.
Yeah.
Which is not true at all because you contrast those with the laws of the day.
It's incredibly progressive.
Yeah.
And not progressive in like, stop thinking in political terms.
Yes.
We're not talking about politics.
It is progressive in that it is treating people with love and compassion and dignity.
Yeah.
It's not progressive in pushing an agenda except that the heart of God is being put
on display.
Yep.
And it's difficult for us because we read Leviticus in a vacuum in our 21st century
life in another language, in a different culture, in a different time.
You can't even take Leviticus now and go read it in Hebrew in Israel and really understand
the context.
You've got to understand the context of when it was actually written.
And that's going to take up a whole nother like four podcast episodes someday.
Yeah.
Because there's so much to that.
So much to that.
I'm actually going to recommend a mini series here on context.
So Brad Gray, who runs walkingthetext.com, has a series that he talks about the six lenses
of context.
If you're listening to us talking about context, you're like, how do you even get into this?
That is a really good entry point.
Brad is a very patient, gentle teacher as he goes through that.
And it's incredibly helpful to just hear what he has to say about how you can have these
lenses and how it actually breathes life into what's going on in scripture.
Yeah.
And we are also going to continue to recommend the Bible Project.
Yes.
And there's actually a new book recommendation for me because we're going to be getting into
the sacrificial system.
There is a book by a messianic Jewish teacher called What About the Sacrifices by D. Thomas
Lancaster.
Yeah.
And you're not going to like everything in that book, but I think you're going to find
a lot of helpful tidbits on what does the sacrificial system actually represent.
So when Jesus comes and steps into it, how are we supposed to see that?
And we're going to talk about that in a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
All right.
So we made it to the chiasm.
We made it there.
I refrained.
I bit my tongue, but we're here now.
You refrained.
You talked about it like four times.
Yeah.
I could have talked about it eight times.
Yeah.
Like we said, the book of Leviticus is one giant chiasm, meaning you don't read it in
a linear fashion.
You have to understand it as a whole.
Yeah.
And before you kind of go through it, let's remind them what a chiasm is.
So it's a Middle Eastern writing style where instead of putting the points, we would do
intro, exit, points in the middle.
The way they would actually do it is mirror text.
Think of it as section A, section B, section C, section B, section A. And the point of
the story is actually, and what's driving all of it is placed in the middle.
That's not to say other parts aren't important, but the crux of the argument, the crux of
the importance is actually in the middle of the story.
That's the goal that's buried.
Yeah.
So in Leviticus, you kind of have it running like this.
Chapters one through seven talks about rituals of redemption.
Chapters eight through 10 talks about the priesthood.
Eleven through 15 talks about the holiness code.
Okay.
And then chapter 16 talks about the day of atonement.
So you have A, B, C, D right there.
Okay.
And then 17 through 20 talks about the holiness code.
So we're back to C. Okay.
21, 22, priesthood, we're back to B. Rituals and redemption, 23 through 27, we're back
to A.
So if you noticed, your bookends are going to be these rituals of redemption.
One, how do you make sure you're right with God?
And then how do you make sure you're right with everybody?
Yeah.
The interesting thing about chiasms, this is actually a teaching by Rabbi David Foreman,
who we're also going to recommend at alethbeta.org.
He talks about how the sections of the chiasm, both of the sides, yes, they mirror each other,
but they also speak into each other.
Yes.
And so a lot of times if you don't understand one side of the chiasm, look for the other
side and you may actually have some context that helps you connect those ideas.
There's a really fascinating teachings that we talked about in Genesis one, right?
So the connection is you'd be like, okay, I see that there is the sky, but how does
that connect to later in the chiasm?
Because the sun, moon and stars are placed in the sky that's been separated.
So you have this whole idea of separation and filling and they connect directly.
So in this case, you have the rituals of redemption.
How are we right with God?
How are we right with other people?
What does it look like for the priesthood here?
What does it look like for the priesthood as they then reach out, right?
What is the holiness code amongst ourselves?
What is the holiness code as we interact with other people coming down to this point of
the day of atonement, right?
So the day of atonement, once again, atonement is a fancy word that means being right with
God.
And by the way, I can just hear somebody getting on their keyboard.
They're like, that's not like atonement is so much bigger.
Okay.
I'm trying to simplify it here.
Atonement is simply about being right with God.
And so this story, this book of Leviticus, it centers on atonement before God and being
made right.
The whole point of this book and everything in it is God is saying it's possible to be
right with me and it's not difficult.
Yeah.
He is looking for a restoration of relationship, not for you to just obey a bunch of rules.
Yeah.
So you got to read it in that lens.
Look at it in that lens.
Understand it from that lens.
Take time to know it from that lens.
And you're going to find that this book is vastly different than you realized.
I suspect that even in our poll, if people have talked to Leviticus, that their main
takeaway isn't that God wants relationship with humanity.
Growing up in the church, and I'm not talking about my pastors, but growing up in the church,
the idea of the law of the Old Testament was God says, do this or else.
This is what was beat into my head, like through various teachings over and over again.
And I want to have a ton of patience with the people who spoke because I believe that
they were trying to speak the words of God.
Yeah.
Just like we want to have patience with the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, because they're
trying really hard to bring the kingdom.
They're just missing the point.
And Jesus has tons of patience with them.
We worked with them for three years.
Yeah.
This idea that God is angry with you is going to color everything that you read, everything.
Like we've already seen this multiple times in Torah.
If you assume that God is mad, you're going to come away with the wrong conclusions.
And oftentimes we mix up the fact that God is angry with sin.
Absolutely.
That he's because he's angry with sin, he's angry with you.
Those are two different things actually.
Like God's hatred of sin is different than his anger spilled out towards us individually.
He hates sin so much that he created a way for that to be forgiven, be done with and
dealt with.
And it makes a ton of sense.
Let's just take that analogy from God to humanity, from parents to children.
If I see my kids doing things that are going to hurt them over and over again, let's pick
something that's known to cause health problems.
Cigarettes.
You kids smoke?
No.
My four year old, he's just chaining them up.
But let's just talk about like cigarettes, right?
And I was like, so if my kid smokes cigarettes and I see the effects on his health, I'm going
to hate cigarettes.
I don't hate my kid.
I hate what cigarettes are doing to my kid because I know what they're doing like health
wise and like addiction wise to his body.
I understand what they're doing to him.
And I'm like, I need to get these cigarettes away from him.
You might even hate the choices he's making.
He's making poor choices.
You might even hate that, but it doesn't change the fact that you love your kid.
Oh, I love my kid desperately, but I got to get those cigarettes away from him.
Yeah.
At least if I want him to have a healthy life.
Yeah.
And so like, we're not unfamiliar with this concept as parents.
Like we love our kids and we want the best for them.
Guess what?
God loves you and he wants the best for you.
And that's why we have to talk about this because I think a lot of people, maybe you
listener think that God is mad with you and he's not.
You think that God hates you and he doesn't.
No.
I think that sometimes we've bungled the presentation of Jesus that we say God was so mad, but Jesus
came and saved us.
But that's not what the Bible tells us.
It says God so loved the world that he gave.
First he gave Israel.
Yeah.
And then Jesus as a representative of Israel, who is God made flesh, comes down to take
all sin, all shame, all abuse and take it to the grave and forever change our nature
if we just trust him.
And he doesn't do this because he hates you.
He does this because he hates what's killing you.
Correct.
There's a distinction there that we have to get right.
He is going to crush the serpent.
Yeah.
He's not going to crush you.
Yeah.
But at the same time, we've talked about this.
There is a table you're being invited to.
Yeah.
He will not force you to come to this table.
Nope.
Because I think we've talked about this, but when you don't come of your own volition,
then it's not love.
No.
And God is saying, I have everything you need here, but you got to come to the table.
Yeah.
I've made a great feast, but if you don't pull up to the table, you can't eat.
Yeah.
So circling back to Leviticus here, but you need to understand the culture Israelites
were living in.
Okay.
You need to understand the surrounding cultures.
You don't need to go into a super deep dive on that, but you want to understand some bullet
points.
Yeah.
Because there's actually a section in here when he's talking about in the holiness code
where he talks about what is going to happen to somebody that's part of their community
who passes their kid through the fire.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, if you are unfamiliar with that terminology, that means that you sacrifice...
I'm going to go ahead and just explain it because I think it's important for us.
Yeah.
Okay.
If you're unfamiliar with that terminology, I'm going to explain to you what the worship
of Molech entailed really quickly.
So I'm going to just forewarn anybody who struggles with descriptions.
Just go ahead and end the podcast here.
We don't have that much more and just go read up on it.
The worship of Molech involved a statue that they would build of metal and they would put
a bunch of fire inside of the statue until it was so hot.
And then there were hands that were out in front, like two hands together that were like
for receiving an altar.
Now normal worship of Molech is you would just put your sacrifices in, the hot metal
would cause smoke to rise up, all those different things.
But the worship of Molech passing through the fire that they're talking about is they
would actually take children and they would place them in the hands of Molech alive.
They would burn them and they would actually come down and eventually come into the fire.
This is called passing your children through the fire.
And the scream of the child as they were screaming in agony is called the smile of Molech.
I shouldn't have to explain to you that God hates that.
All we have to say is God hates that.
I hate that.
Yeah, me too.
But God loves even those people.
And so he is sending Israel to be a story to put it on display because I think that
you can probably draw the modern parallel of what we deal with the worship of Molech.
And your job is not to break down the altars of Molech.
Your job is to put a different story on display of the redemption of Jesus Christ through
mankind and through our example, through our life, through the way that we are counter-cultural,
we put the moral law and the goodness of God on display for a world that is desperate for
something that actually brings life.
Yeah.
No more worship of Molech, but we are still called to minister to those who are caught
up in Molech worship.
And so the interesting thing about Leviticus is what a lot of what's happening here is
God saying, Hey, you don't need to cause pain, harm, hurt, death to those around you.
Here's a way of life.
That's what's going on in Leviticus.
He's let me show you a way to live that produces life.
Who wouldn't want to hear that message in that day and age?
Yeah.
The law is meant to speak to their current circumstance and bring them to a place where
they can be healthier, more ethical, and people who put the story of God on display.
There's a lot of research that has been done that if you actually followed the laws put
in Leviticus in the nomadic culture of the Israelites, so not in modern context, but
in their context, your people would have lived longer, they would have grown stronger, and
they would have been transformative to their area because their laws would have been so
different.
It's almost like God knows what he's doing.
Yeah.
So next week, we're going to be jumping into the sacrificial system offerings.
Why does it matter to us?
We're actually going to be talking a lot about the sacrificial system as it's currently set
up.
If you want to get ahead of me on that, check out that book, D Thomas Lancaster, What About
the Sacrifices?
It's a short 80 page read.
It's good.
We're going to reference some of that and it's going to be a lot of fun.
Hopefully you guys are already getting excited.
I love Leviticus because as soon as I understood what it was, I started finding gold left and
right.
Yeah.
So you can find us, you've heard us say this a number of times, but here we go again.
You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and a lot of other places, but those are the
main three.
You can email us, loveincontext at gmail.com.
That's a good song.
Also, you can find us on YouTube now at loveincontext.
We have a channel.
Yep.
We'd love to hear from you.
At the end of Leviticus, we are going to do a Q&A, so please send us any questions you
have.
You can send those in at any point as we're going through Leviticus.
And so just send us those questions and we would love to answer those as best we can.
All right.
God bless.
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 loveincontext at gmail.com.
You can also follow us on Instagram and message us through there.
Instagram is love and context.
And loveincontext at 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.
Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
So like we said, the Book of Leviticus, like we said.
I remember he delivered pizza or pizza.
Sorry.
I remember he delivered Pepsi.
Is that sharp cheddar?
Extra sharp white, extra sharp white cheddar.
Yeah.
That is a flavor, Nick.
It is a flavor.
When he said that cheese is not a flavor, I was like, I think you're just eating the
wrong kind of cheese.
You have some extra sharp white cheddar.
You're like, I don't need any other cheese.
I don't need to put this with anything.