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Lost Tribes, Ancient Laws, and Biblical Mysteries—Unpacking Leviticus and Numbers
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In this episode, Dan Sanchez and Pastor Ridley Barron dive into the books of Leviticus and Numbers, exploring what these ancient laws reveal about the character of God. They discuss topics like dietary and cleanliness laws, the role of slavery in biblical times, and how God's laws served as steps toward shaping His people. The conversation also touches on challenging questions about poverty, justice, and how the church can best serve those in need today. If you've ever wrestled with the complexities of Old Testament laws and how they apply to modern faith, this discussion is for you.
Timestamps
01:22 – What can we learn about God from the dietary laws?
03:37 – Why did God change the dietary laws in the New Testament?
07:30 – The purpose behind Old Testament cleanliness laws
11:08 – Wrestling with slavery in the Bible
14:27 – Why do some Old Testament laws seem unfair toward women?
19:26 – How should Christians respond to poverty today?
29:16 – Why is Judah so significant in Jewish history?
31:04 – What happened to the tribe of Joseph?
Tune in next week as we continue our journey through the Bible!
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Transcript
Introduction to Grove Hill Church Podcast
00:00:00
Dan Sanchez
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church Podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm joined by Ridley Barron, our senior pastor at Grove Hill. And we are continuing this series into the bible Bible. I believe we call it the Immersed Series, actually.
00:00:12
Dan Sanchez
It took me a while to figure that out.
00:00:13
Ridley
Yes.
00:00:15
Dan Sanchez
The Bible series, where we're going deep. I guess we're not going deep. That's actually the opposite of deep. We're going wide going broad across the whole Bible, right?
00:00:21
Ridley
Yes. you Very broad.
00:00:22
Dan Sanchez
This ain't a deep dive into Exodus, where we're spending two years on one book, right?
00:00:26
Ridley
Yeah.
Exploring Leviticus and Numbers
00:00:27
Dan Sanchez
But today we're actually talking about Leviticus and a little bit into numbers is what our reading sections were. And there's always interesting things that come up, even in Leviticus and numbers. and previous weeks, Ridley, we talked about how few different ways we can look at these books of laws and regulations and ways for the Israelites to live. And we could ask ou ourselves, like, what does this mean for me?
00:00:50
Dan Sanchez
Or we can ask ourselves, what do we learn about God the
00:00:53
Ridley
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:00:55
Dan Sanchez
in in in this book, in this passage, or in this verse? Like, what does this say about God, and what can we learn about him through through what he's saying here to the Israelite people?
00:01:05
Dan Sanchez
So I'd like to dive into a few different things as far as what can we learn about God regarding some of these passages, but then also some other questions that have just kind of come up through a variety of interactions, my own personal reflections, questions other people have asked in my life group,
00:01:08
Ridley
yeah
00:01:20
Dan Sanchez
So, but first
Understanding Dietary Laws and God's Holiness
00:01:21
Dan Sanchez
let's kick it off. What can we learn about God? And I'd like to start off with the dietary laws, right?
00:01:26
Ridley
on
00:01:27
Dan Sanchez
It's a big thing Leviticus is known for, and the Jewish people are still known for, is they eat different and they eat more, even more different today than they used to eat back then.
00:01:31
Ridley
Right.
00:01:35
Ridley
Yes.
00:01:36
Dan Sanchez
But that gets kicked off in the book of Leviticus. So I'm going to kick it to you. These are kind of curve balls. Like, what can we learn about God from the dietary laws?
00:01:46
Ridley
So, well, the dietary laws, I think, are conflagration.
00:01:46
Dan Sanchez
Right.
00:01:50
Ridley
Is that the right word? things coming together of of different concerns for God. Number one, there's obviously the holiness factor of God's character, the purity side of things. And so this, from very early on, we establish, according to God, that the blood is the lifeline of every creature.
00:02:10
Ridley
And so parts of the dietary law relate specifically to that. You know, the draining of the blood, you're not allowed to eat blood, those kinds of things. There are other areas of it that I think God in his kindness, knowing that science, our science as human beings was not there yet, that he did some things to protect us against things we didn't know yet, like germs and bacterias and molds and funguses and those kinds of things. I didn't know this until just recently that one of the reasons why pigs are not usually typically part of a lot of religion's diets, especially and primitive parts of the world, is that pigs carry some of
00:02:47
Ridley
the widest range of parasites that can get into a human. And so it's only because we process it so well here in America that we are able to eat stuff like that. But of course, back in that day, they didn't even know parasites existed.
00:02:59
Ridley
So a lot of it has to do with those kinds of things. I think by and large, most of it is just that we can we can figure out we can learn from this that God's character is that he loves us even to the smallest details of who we are as human beings and because he created us he's doing some things to help bring some structure some safety some guidelines to our lives so he's a God of order he's a God of compassion he's a God of tenderness and then of course overall arching all that is that he's this God
Why Did Dietary Laws Change in the New Testament?
00:03:29
Ridley
of holiness
00:03:31
Dan Sanchez
i mean, it kind of makes sense. He wants the Israelites to be the light of the world.
00:03:36
Ridley
right
00:03:36
Dan Sanchez
He wants to be made known to all the other nations through this one nation.
00:03:39
Ridley
him
00:03:42
Dan Sanchez
And it's hard to be the light if you're sick all the time or if things aren't going well for your people, right?
00:03:45
Ridley
Right. Right.
00:03:47
Dan Sanchez
But if everyone's like, man, those people are rigorous.
00:03:47
Ridley
Yeah.
00:03:49
Dan Sanchez
They get stuff done. They're always healthy. like they seem Things didn seem to be going well for them. you know It's kind of like, huh, I wonder what they got going on.
00:03:55
Ridley
Yeah.
00:03:57
Dan Sanchez
It makes you wonder, right? And I think that's part of being in the light.
00:03:59
Ridley
Yeah. Chosen people don't do you much good if they're decimated by disease.
00:04:03
Ridley
That's for sure. Yeah.
00:04:06
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, because have to go like, oh, their God's mad at them is what it is. And sometimes he is.
00:04:08
Ridley
Right, right. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:11
Dan Sanchez
Right. one, I used to run a blog and we were trying to get a lot of search engine traffic to market a university and I'd maxed out all the missionary keywords.
00:04:21
Dan Sanchez
So I started going after search phrases around all of Christianity, which was really interesting when you're creating 500 plus blog posts to target one per phrase that people are searching for.
00:04:31
Dan Sanchez
it's how many we've created over time. You start to figure out like, what are the questions people ask about Christianity?
00:04:36
Ridley
yeah
00:04:38
Dan Sanchez
Cause some are from non-Christians, some are from Christians. And one of the most popular searches is, can Christians eat pork or bacon?
00:04:45
Ridley
really you
00:04:47
Dan Sanchez
Or what are Christians not allowed to eat? these are very These are very common questions asked on Google about Christians is, can Christians eat this or that? Which begs, I mean, we answered it in the blog post, but it begs the question, like, why why did that change in Acts? Like, why did God all of a sudden, actually God, i can't say that God actually said that you can't eat pork because a lot of people will will
Shift from External Practices to Heart Matters
00:05:10
Dan Sanchez
reference that Bible passage where Peter has the vision, but that vision was purely...
00:05:13
Ridley
you you
00:05:16
Dan Sanchez
metaphorical about the Gentiles, right?
00:05:18
Ridley
yeah
00:05:18
Dan Sanchez
Not about the dietary. But then it's it's it was decided in the council, right, when they're asking, I think Paul's asking if Gentiles can become Christians, and and they they decide, like, yes, they can become Christians, and they don't have to do all the things Jews do, but they they give a short list of things that Gentiles are required to do.
00:05:36
Dan Sanchez
The dietary laws, i think I think the only dietary laws you can't eat meat sacrificed to idols is the one.
00:05:41
Ridley
Right, right.
00:05:42
Dan Sanchez
Otherwise,
00:05:43
Ridley
Which is which is truthfully not even a dietary issue as much as it is a religious practice, yeah you know, you know, the sacrificing those idols.
00:05:48
Dan Sanchez
an idol yeah yeah yeah
00:05:52
Ridley
So, yeah, the division in Acts does, you know, God's command is to Peter, get up and eat, you know, so clearly he's changing the menu right there and saying, not only are you going to be allowed to eat this stuff, but you're also now going to be allowed to associate with Gentiles in a way that you've never been. So there is a practical meaning. There is a metaphorical meaning.
00:06:14
Ridley
And this is one of those areas where i' I don't know that I can give a solid answer as to why God suddenly said pigs are going to be okay or why suddenly you can eat eels out of the sea or whatever.
00:06:27
Ridley
Other than just to say that it may be at this point because of the new covenant, God was taking away the emphasis on performance and and moving it back or moving it towards grace, which it had not had much of.
00:06:41
Ridley
you know, up until this point, until Jesus' death. And so maybe symbolically that was part of it to
Old vs. New Covenant: Focus on Holiness
00:06:46
Ridley
say, this isn't about what you eat anymore. This is about your heart for pursuing me.
00:06:52
Dan Sanchez
I had a big unlock the last week when we were talking about God essentially training the Israelite people because they probably weren't ready for some of the things that they he wanted them to do or here he was taking them eventually when Jesus came and said, like, i'm I'm the completion of all these things.
00:07:09
Dan Sanchez
I am the end to where we're going with these.
00:07:10
Ridley
Right?
00:07:12
Dan Sanchez
Like they were only ready to go so far.
00:07:12
Ridley
Yep.
00:07:13
Dan Sanchez
So I like to think about it now as like, like God had a plan, a systematic plan to get to where we're at today. And he's got a plan that he's still working and into the future. Right.
00:07:23
Ridley
yep
00:07:23
Dan Sanchez
So it even makes me think about the dietary laws, kind of like, well, this was a step. this was a step a nation could take to be the light to other nations. A step for systematically, like they're not, it's, we know it's more about the inside than it is about the outside, but he's like, well, like since we can only take so many inside steps, I'm going to put some outside steps to make it a little easier for him. Those are easier to control and watch and monitor.
00:07:46
Dan Sanchez
But if at the end game is to actually watch what is on the inside.
00:07:49
Ridley
Right.
00:07:49
Dan Sanchez
And i I kind of think about it like that. What do you think? Yeah.
00:07:52
Ridley
I think you're right. I mean, the end goal for God has always been to develop a people who are holy. I mean, Old Testament, New Testament, he says over and again, be holy as I am holy. In other words, to be set apart.
00:08:03
Ridley
Part of that being set apart in the Old Testament was that Israel was about to insert itself in a place where now they were going to be surrounded by all these pagan nations who did things differently. And so dietary
Symbolism of Cleanliness Laws
00:08:14
Ridley
law, again, was just another way for them to be unique and different.
00:08:18
Ridley
But now Israel has been around for a couple thousand years. Jesus has paid the ultimate price. The new covenant is established. Now Jesus's last words to his people are, now I want you to go intermingle with the rest of the world.
00:08:31
Ridley
I want you to be a part of them. So are we still supposed to be holy? Yes, but it's a heart matter at this point. It's not about the way you dress. It's not about your diet. It's not about your religious performances.
00:08:42
Ridley
It's about your heart. And I want you to go amongst the people that we have kept you separate from, because how else will they know the good news of the gospel? And so I think that's probably what we're seeing at play here is that God's kind of released some of the restrictions there so that we can be all things to all people, as Paul put it.
00:09:02
Dan Sanchez
And truth be told, it's actually harder, right?
00:09:05
Ridley
Yeah.
00:09:06
Dan Sanchez
The internal things are way harder. Like it's way harder to not get angry at somebody versus not murdering somebody, right?
00:09:07
Ridley
No.
00:09:11
Dan Sanchez
Or beating someone over the head.
00:09:11
Ridley
Absolutely. Absolutely. excuse me
00:09:13
Dan Sanchez
You're like, gosh, dang it.
00:09:14
Ridley
Yeah.
00:09:14
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:09:15
Ridley
Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I can honor my marriage physically much easier than I can with my thoughts, you know, thoughts are, they're more hidden. They're more private. du You can, pretend you can pretend like nothing's going on there, but the physical, just like you said with murder, yeah, I can, I can desire to kill somebody and I can hide that thing, but I can't kill somebody and get away with it most of the time.
00:09:38
Ridley
So yeah, it's good stuff.
00:09:40
Dan Sanchez
So what can we learn about God from the cleanliness laws? Is there anything unique about cleanliness that we're like, huh, what does it say about God? I mean, you kind of mentioned it in the last part about God being separate holy, but is there anything more to that?
00:09:54
Dan Sanchez
Or is it just practical advice for the time?
00:09:56
Ridley
i I do think most of it was practical. also do think though there's a large portion of it is that symbolic. Thinking about the things that contaminate your physical being compared to things that contaminate your heart, you know?
00:10:13
Ridley
I mean, God started the commandment solved with you shall have no other God before me. So this was we're We're talking about your head, your heart, your thinking, your brain, your emotions, those kinds of things.
00:10:23
Ridley
But then when he gets into the rest of the law, he starts to expand on that and talk about it in some other capacities about, you know, keep your keep your house clean, keep your clothes clean, keep your hands clean, those kinds of things.
00:10:37
Ridley
Clearly, that was not the main focus because when Jesus comes along, you know, he says, whether or not my disciples wash their hands is not the big issue. It's their hearts that we're worried about.
Context of Slavery in the Bible
00:10:46
Dan Sanchez
One of the controversial things in the Old Testament that the world loves to point at today, and peoplee very few people actually like to talk about, is this idea of slavery in the Old Testament.
00:10:57
Ridley
Yeah.
00:10:58
Dan Sanchez
Now, there's a man named Joe Rigney, who i respect a lot. He was a
00:11:07
Dan Sanchez
He was the president of John Piper's some seminary for a hot second, and i I'm not sure what he's doing.
00:11:12
Ridley
yeah yeah
00:11:14
Dan Sanchez
But great, great theologian, great Christian thinker. And he i remember hearing him saying that like not all forms of slavery are outright condemned in the Bible because not all because we tend to take slavery right to its very end, which is like the kind of slavery that happened in America, right?
00:11:29
Ridley
Yes.
00:11:30
Dan Sanchez
And there's a lot of shades of gray when it comes to slavery and the Bible doesn't outright condemn all of them.
00:11:30
Ridley
Right.
00:11:35
Dan Sanchez
At least it didn't in the Old Testament.
00:11:37
Ridley
Right.
00:11:38
Dan Sanchez
Neither does it straight up condemn them in the New Testament sometimes too.
00:11:41
Ridley
Correct.
00:11:42
Dan Sanchez
So you're like, wait a second, what's going on here?
00:11:42
Ridley
Correct.
00:11:45
Dan Sanchez
So you have to say about slavery in the Bible?
00:11:47
Ridley
Much of what God was doing from the time, Yeah.
00:11:55
Ridley
was that he was he was putting up some guardrails of safety for their character and for their relationships and how they operated as a nation and in some of those instances it was not about giving permission to do things it was pulling them back from where they had had excesses in certain areas For instance, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was not saying this is how you get even. He was saying that's where you should limit revenge because in that day and age, if you killed somebody's cow, it was okay for them to come burn down your house and kill your family.
00:12:26
Ridley
So he's saying no it's got to be more just. It's got to be more fair than that. Similarly, in the area of slavery, I think what we saw was a world where if I could overpower you in any way, financially, physically, then yeah I could control you. You could be my slave. And I think what God starts to do is he starts to pull back on that and say, there's there's a kind of slavery, which is not anything near what we had here, the chattel type slavery we had in the United States.
00:12:54
Ridley
There's a kind of slavery where people can work off debt, which is beneficial. There's a kind of, yeah, yeah, kind of a slavery too, obviously, where if you have been you have been taken over in a military conquest, the options were you die or you give yourself up and you become a slave.
00:12:59
Dan Sanchez
like an indentured servant system.
00:13:12
Ridley
Well, slavery was a better option there. So there were some places where I think slavery was the better option than what had been expressed in that culture. And so he was trying to pull in the reins on some of that stuff.
00:13:24
Ridley
Because he's very quick after giving some rules for slavery to say, here's how you can bring slavery to an end. Every seven years, you let your slaves go. you know, you give them their freedom. If some guy gets that point of freedom and he chooses to stay with you as a family member and serve as a servant, he can do that.
00:13:41
Ridley
So this was not anything like what we picture in our minds. And this is why we have to be real careful about reading the 21st century culture into the first century culture or even the pre-Jesus culture that we read about in the Bible.
Gender Standards in Leviticus
00:13:54
Dan Sanchez
one of the things that came up in our life group was it seems like Leviticus ends with kind of an unfair or double standard between men and women, especially when it came to adultery. It talks about adultery, like if a woman's caught in adultery, but it talk a lot about the men. It talks a lot about the consequences for woman.
00:14:12
Dan Sanchez
And it just seems to be
00:14:15
Dan Sanchez
and unfair towards women, even though we're both created equal.
00:14:16
Ridley
Yeah, it seems that way. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:19
Dan Sanchez
And I had some thoughts that night, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on why, why is it that way?
00:14:26
Ridley
That's a great question. First and foremost, the the main reason I can tell you is because women were just looked down on in that culture. they were They were material things for men.
00:14:36
Ridley
They owned them. They traded them sometimes from from person to person. I really haven't dug into this. i would I'd be interested to know what you know there, but I have not dug into this subject very much other than to say that I don't think God let men off the hook. they There was still some kind of accountability, but i I'm not sure i' not sure why the differences in how they were handled there.
00:15:01
Ridley
So what what are your thoughts? What do you you heard? Yeah.
00:15:04
Dan Sanchez
you just seem to be more strict towards women and its consequences and the things to look for and all these things you're like again to me it just came back to like what we had talked about the week before you're like well maybe maybe this is a step towards where god wants to go but he knows they can't handle going all the way where they'd like to go where it's
00:15:06
Ridley
Yeah.
00:15:20
Ridley
Yeah. I know.
00:15:20
Dan Sanchez
more of a coat, like where they're both serving each other, right? Where he starts to lay out a very clear framework in the New Testament for how to treat women and for how that woman can treat men, you know?
00:15:24
Ridley
yeah
00:15:30
Dan Sanchez
Especially husband, it talks a lot about husbands and wives. We kind of pull from that to know how to treat women and men respectfully. So that's kind of my thinking on it now, but it's just based on our conversation from last week. Though my one concern is like, does this turn, are we are we applying a really pragmatic view to God?
00:15:46
Dan Sanchez
Like, is God the kind of, being who's like well this is a substandard but let's just be practical and work them through the program i'm like uh is he is he lowering his standards or is he is he thinking about it in a practical way and building a staircase for them to get to i mean we've talked about it multiple times and here it seems like
00:15:56
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:12
Ridley
yeah It's a great question. And I think there is some concern that we could do that. I wonder if maybe sometimes, though, the the problem is that we think we we start asking these questions by going, if I were God, well, that's the problem. We're not.
00:16:29
Ridley
we're nowhere we're nowhere night guy where our character isn't remotely his uh even the best of christ followers still has sin and old nature that they struggle with that they have to fight uh desires that come from being fallen people so it's hard for us even in an imaginary world to put ourselves in the position of who god is knowing what he knows and understanding human character like he does so i would i would say that This kind of falls in that area, and I know this is some people will say this is an easy answer or an easy way out, but it kind of falls in that area of I just trust that God knew what he was doing and that this is the best way to to start this approach towards adultery is wrong for everybody, and this is how we deal with it.
Cultural Growth and Societal Changes
00:17:12
Ridley
All
00:17:13
Dan Sanchez
It's funny, I think about psychology. And so it it just seems reasonable that that might be what God's doing. We'll never know until maybe he reveals it to us someday in heaven. Do you know they've done studies of color or at least of people in like really remote parts of the world?
00:17:22
Ridley
right.
00:17:29
Ridley
Yeah.
00:17:29
Dan Sanchez
And they try to, they've done studies trying to introduce them to different colors. It's not that they don't have colors wherever they're at. It's just that if you didn't grow up being educated on color and seeing a wide palette, then you really can't tell the difference between red and magenta.
00:17:45
Ridley
Yeah. yeah
00:17:46
Dan Sanchez
you could be like, you could literally have magenta right next to red. Now they're kind of similar hues. They're, they're kind of close to each other in the color wheel, but you ain't get to see it. And they don't see it. Not until you take, they, their babies grow up in a totally different environment where they can grow up and be educated on color.
00:18:01
Dan Sanchez
But I think about that a lot in regards to like how societies grow up and how long it takes a people to kind of grow and learn about something. It's why I've been still thinking about that conversation. Yeah. from last week, because some people, especially from one generation, will have a completely different, will just have a very difficult time seeing something some way. They might be not completely incapable, but at very, at great cost to actually have a, even a basic revelation about something. Like if people can't see colors, you're like, well that's pretty straightforward. Even a baby can look at colors. They know the difference.
00:18:31
Ridley
a
00:18:31
Dan Sanchez
Right. Or at least a toddler cam, but until you have the vocabulary for it and have a X expanded, a different experience around it's like, well, if you can't tell the difference between red and magenta, then, uh, that's, that's just interesting.
00:18:38
Ridley
yeah
00:18:44
Dan Sanchez
probably carries over to other parts of our lives too.
00:18:46
Ridley
and probably Probably so, for sure. i would think so.
00:18:50
Dan Sanchez
another one that came up and man, this one, this one's a hard one and this is
God's Guidance on Poverty and Church's Role
00:18:54
Dan Sanchez
a hard one. I've wrestled with this one many times, but it kind of comes up in Leviticus with what did we do about the poor? Leviticus makes it really clear, like, or gives some very practical guidance to the Israelites around the time.
00:19:07
Dan Sanchez
It's like don't harvest the, you know, the weed on the edge of your field, the kind of idea, like leave some open for the the travelers and the wanderers and the aliens in the land.
00:19:09
Ridley
Right.
00:19:15
Dan Sanchez
It's like, I've got, it's got these kinds of ideas in it. And so the conversation i mean inevitably came up in our life group. its like, well, well, like, how do we do that?
00:19:22
Ridley
Yeah.
00:19:22
Dan Sanchez
Because it seems like the poor are just kind of a different, different, it's a different animal today. It's a different kind of thing today. It's kind of like, well, like most people who are really, really poor, homeless are like either struggling with mental illness, substance abuse, or, or they actually like being out there.
00:19:29
Ridley
Yeah.
00:19:35
Ridley
Yeah.
00:19:40
Dan Sanchez
Like, what do you do?
00:19:41
Ridley
So God alluded to this, and then Jesus was more direct in saying this, that the poor would always be with us. And I don't think for a second that that was some kind of admission of defeat in this area for God and Jesus, that there's just nothing we can do about it.
00:19:59
Ridley
I think what they were saying is we live in a fallen world and poverty is probably going to be one of those things that we always deal with just because there's inequality, there's greed, there's selfishness, those kinds of things.
00:20:11
Ridley
So I think the encouragement and the instruction from God and and Jesus in the New Testament was do what you can to take care of those poor people, but don't let it become the only thing you focus on because there's just no way you're going to be able to eradicate it.
00:20:27
Ridley
I think probably the issues we see today and that we become overwhelmed by are in part because the church did not do a good job of loving poor people in the past. And so when the government started stepping in and taking that role from the church, government did what governments do and they screwed it up really bad.
00:20:46
Ridley
And so now we have abuses of the system. We have people who fall through the cracks. We have monies that are embezzled and misused and fraud and all those kinds of things. And so sadly, large chunks of our culture, speaking specifically here in America, large chunks of our culture get missed out on, like the mentally ill, veterans who get lost in and a gigantic system that's way beyond what can and handle, people who just in corners of our culture that are not in the limelight, who don't get seen.
00:21:22
Ridley
So I think that the best encouragement that we have from from God in the very beginning is start with your own house. Try to take, and by house, I don't mean our houses. I mean the church.
00:21:33
Ridley
Start your own house. Love those people.
00:21:34
Dan Sanchez
Thank you.
00:21:35
Ridley
Encourage them because the the more you can lift those people up, the larger the army grows that has the ability to minister beyond the church. If I can win 10 brothers to Christ or strengthen 10 brothers in Christ by helping them meet their and financial obligation to feed their families, then that's 10 more brothers who can help, you know, with with meeting the needs materialistically in other places.
00:22:01
Ridley
So short answer to that question, which is really, going to boil it way down and you're gonna think I'm stupid. Give to your church. Give to your church because the church is the most effective tool at ministering to people who are in poverty.
00:22:14
Ridley
And man people are to hate me for this probably, but when you go and give $1,000 to United Way, you don't know that $1,000 is making it to those people who have help and needs of any kind.
00:22:28
Ridley
You give $1,000 to your church, there's a great likelihood that that's going to make it into the hands of a family that has desperate needs, whether that's addictions or poverty or health issues or whatever.
00:22:39
Ridley
So give, give, give of yourself.
00:22:43
Dan Sanchez
it's It's good. It's challenging. But at the same time, it's it's kind of clicking in my head because I've spent a significant part of my adult life working for parachurch ministries that do the nonprofit fundraising thing.
00:22:52
Ridley
Right. Yeah.
00:22:55
Dan Sanchez
And I've been part of the fundraising campaigns. But I think once I started becoming more of a senior leader in those systems, you start to see... And and not in nonprofit ministries aren't...
00:23:05
Dan Sanchez
I'm not against nonprofit ministries.
00:23:07
Ridley
now No, no.
00:23:08
Dan Sanchez
Though I've certainly, my my taste for them has soured a little bit. Because you start to see a nonprofit, even even a biblical one, even one that's got great godly people running it.
00:23:21
Dan Sanchez
The problem is they can't replace the local church. And that's the problem with parachurch ministries. It's like, yes, like they can feed the hungry and they could do lots of things. They're usually very specialized, right?
00:23:31
Dan Sanchez
They they help women in sex trafficking. They they feed hungry.
00:23:34
Ridley
Right.
00:23:35
Dan Sanchez
like they Like they specialize in a thing and that's what they fundraise around. The problem is those problems are not singular problems. Right? They're multifaceted, complex problems, which is why they're huge problems.
00:23:47
Ridley
Yep. Yep.
00:23:50
Dan Sanchez
And the only organization that God's created in order to so order to actually touch on not just the immediate problem, but the full problem is the local church.
00:23:50
Ridley
yeah
00:24:01
Dan Sanchez
but of course, you know, the first parachurch ministry started the, from what I know, i can't remember which missionary it is, but it's the one he was in England, tried to fundraise to go to China and they wouldn't send him as the choler church.
00:24:14
Dan Sanchez
So he just created nonprofit ministry went over to China.
00:24:15
Ridley
no Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about.
00:24:19
Dan Sanchez
Is it Carrie? No, was it, but it's not William Carey.
00:24:20
Ridley
Was it Livingston? Livingston was Africa. It might have been Carrie.
00:24:24
Dan Sanchez
I think it was, yeah, it might've been William Carey. I think William Carey was the first nonprofit or the first parachurch ministry because he kind of went despite his church saying no, which was bum a bummer from from that church's perspective.
00:24:29
Ridley
Yeah. and Yep.
00:24:36
Ridley
Yep.
00:24:37
Dan Sanchez
But I see what
Church vs. Parachurch in Addressing Societal Issues
00:24:38
Dan Sanchez
you're saying. Like the local church has the ability to meet the need and actually wrap around all the other issues that might be might be going on.
00:24:41
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:24:47
Dan Sanchez
So I've swung a lot farther back to being local church oriented.
00:24:50
Ridley
You might expect a pastor to say this, but I'm going to say this. If every Christian devoted follower of Christ would give their time and their money to their local church, there would be no need for parachurch organizations.
00:25:05
Dan Sanchez
no
00:25:06
Ridley
ah ah we We could do away with the Salvation Armies. We could do away with the missions organizations because we'd be sending people from our churches to go do missions, and we could underwrite their cost ourselves because we had all the money we needed in our churches today.
00:25:16
Dan Sanchez
ye
00:25:19
Ridley
But you've got churches, people who obviously are spending too much on ourselves. mean, we got to have the latest iPhone or the latest whatever, latest car, latest house, that kind of stuff. We're spending too much on our ourselves first.
00:25:30
Ridley
But we're also spending too much supporting parachurch organizations that are just duplicating what the church is supposed to be doing. And I feel like if the manpower and the resources were given to the local churches, and that's a double-sided coin.
00:25:45
Ridley
one of the reasons that people stopped doing that is because churches lost trust because, you know, leaders in churches abuse those things. If we could get honest church leaders to pair up with honest church members and give those resources together, we'd be doing what Christ asked us to Yeah.
00:25:59
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, yeah, for sure. there's There's been fallings of many kinds from churches and parachurches alike.
00:26:06
Ridley
Yeah.
00:26:06
Dan Sanchez
And gosh, that man, it seems like they've been falling rapidly over the last couple of years. It's been sad thing to see.
00:26:10
Ridley
Yeah.
00:26:12
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:26:12
Ridley
You know, and of course the church obviously supposed to be of a different ilk, a different character altogether. But it always frustrates me when people go, well, won't give to that church because like those people are dishonest. and I'm like, yeah, but you give to every other organization in the world and they're dishonest too. It's the same kind of people.
00:26:28
Ridley
we're We're broken people. Our government wastes our money. Our organizations waste our money. So why do you pick on the church like it's supposed to be made of something different? Well, the truth is it's supposed to, but anyway,
Nonprofit Challenges vs. Church Support
00:26:40
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. The thing about, the one thing that got irked to me about nonprofit nonprofits in general, but it's certainly true of nonprofit ministries, is that only a fraction of your donation actually goes towards the work.
00:26:40
Ridley
that's a sermon.
00:26:52
Dan Sanchez
You'd be surprised what percentage actually goes to admin.
00:26:56
Ridley
yes yes yep
00:26:56
Dan Sanchez
And back to fundraising, it's a lot. Like if you sponsor a compassion child, your money doesn't actually go to any children for months, probably like six months.
00:27:06
Dan Sanchez
Your first six months of payments goes right back to admin before it ever makes it to the field. You're just like, oh,
00:27:11
Ridley
yep yeah and if you've ever looked it and it's out there gotta do is research i don't remember what the organizations you look at but You look at organizations like Red Cross, United Way, even Salvation Army, their CEOs make six figures.
00:27:25
Ridley
I mean, astronomical amounts. Red Cross, the guy's a millionaire.
00:27:30
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:27:32
Ridley
Oh,
00:27:35
Dan Sanchez
Depends.
00:27:36
Ridley
yeah.
00:27:37
Dan Sanchez
Depends. i The problem with nonprofits, I think I have less of be beef with the CEO. I'm actually pro CEO is getting paid a lot because I know what it's it's freaking hard to be number one.
00:27:45
Ridley
so yeah Right. It is.
00:27:48
Dan Sanchez
the the pressure The pressure on the number one person versus the number two or three is is substantial. So like I get why CEOs get paid a lot, even of nonprofits. I just think, I don't know what it is about nonprofits, especially Christian nonprofits. There's like a stagnation that happens in nonprofits a lot.
00:28:03
Dan Sanchez
Almost like it's not quite as bad as like government bureaucracy, but it's not too far.
00:28:03
Ridley
Yeah.
00:28:08
Dan Sanchez
I know because I've worked to them.
00:28:08
Ridley
Right.
00:28:09
Dan Sanchez
just like, my gosh, can we actually work around here?
00:28:12
Ridley
yeah
00:28:12
Dan Sanchez
How can we? Some people need to be let go. Some new people need to be brought on. Like we're not rewarding performance.
00:28:16
Ridley
yeah
00:28:17
Dan Sanchez
We're just kind of hanging out. Anyway, that's my beef with some ministries.
00:28:19
Ridley
I don't disagree with you, friend.
00:28:21
Dan Sanchez
Clearly, you can tell I've been burned on a few.
00:28:25
Ridley
Yeah, yeah, no kidding.
00:28:26
Dan Sanchez
But local church.
00:28:26
Ridley
Yeah.
00:28:27
Dan Sanchez
I have an interesting thing that I learned that I just want wanted to say, because I asked myself the question, like, in in doing the reading on Leviticus and hearing about just Judah, as it's it's kind of like this prominent tribe within there.
Fate of Israel's Tribes and Judah's Prominence
00:28:43
Dan Sanchez
And I asked, I did read some some digging into, like, why what's the Jewish perspective on Judah?
00:28:49
Dan Sanchez
And I know why it's an important perspective for Christians, but what's the Jewish perspective on student?
00:28:53
Dan Sanchez
I learned some things in asking that question that I thought I'd i'd share here. But maybe maybe this is wild widely known, but I didn't really understand that Judah's, like Judah, or that the other tribes, like 10 of the tribes, the northern tribes, they never came back.
00:28:55
Ridley
Yeah.
00:29:11
Ridley
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:29:14
Dan Sanchez
after they went into captivity. I thought they had, but I found out, no, only the ones who were captive to Babylon actually came back.
00:29:21
Ridley
Yeah.
00:29:21
Dan Sanchez
So they call them the 10 lost tribes, which means all almost all Jews today come from Judah. Some of them from, think it was Benjamin.
00:29:32
Ridley
Yeah.
00:29:33
Dan Sanchez
Judah's, that's why they're called Jews.
00:29:36
Ridley
Right.
00:29:36
Dan Sanchez
Because they're all they're all from Judah.
00:29:38
Ridley
Yeah.
00:29:39
Dan Sanchez
that's That's why it's Judaism, right?
00:29:39
Ridley
And that's, yeah.
00:29:41
Dan Sanchez
Because it's it's all from Judah. I was like, i those two, it didn't connect in my mind until that moment.
00:29:43
Ridley
That's primarily the ones that make it, you know, That's primarily the the makeup of the nation of Israel is Judah and Benjamin, the ones that came back from Babylon.
00:29:50
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:29:51
Ridley
If you go around the world, there's there's Judah and Benjamites all over the world that were dispersed who never made it home. But also, if you track down, you could track some of those lost tribes.
00:30:04
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:30:04
Ridley
They're interspersed, but there's there's no way to know who they are.
00:30:08
Dan Sanchez
That was kind of a fun fact. I think I always got Ezra and Nehemiah confused because I thought one brought back the Babylonians and I thought the other brought back some northern tribes because there's this crossover of Assyria and Babylon and all this different stuff.
00:30:17
Ridley
They were all just different waves. Yep.
00:30:21
Dan Sanchez
But I did find out. I'm like, no, all only the southern sunder kingdom came back and the other one was kind dispersed.
00:30:23
Ridley
Yep.
00:30:26
Ridley
Just different waves of Jews coming back from Babylon. yeah
00:30:29
Dan Sanchez
And that's why they're called Jews and not Israelites today. So fun fact.
00:30:33
Ridley
That's a tasty trivia tidbit for the day.
Lineage of Ephraim and Manasseh
00:30:36
Dan Sanchez
The last thing wanted to talk about, and this is another Selah question. She always finds the hard ones.
00:30:41
Ridley
That a girl said that.
00:30:45
Ridley
had to have to start calling them Selah specials.
00:30:47
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, Selah specials right here. She's like, why? why i think it's in the book of Numbers. In the very beginning, it starts counting off the tribe. She's like, where's Joseph?
00:30:58
Dan Sanchez
Right?
00:30:59
Ridley
to Yep. So Joseph, Joseph at the end of Jacob's life, you remember his two sons were brought Ephraim and Manasseh.
00:31:00
Dan Sanchez
where's Where's the Joseph tribe?
00:31:12
Ridley
And they were giving given the blessings of Joseph. So Joseph is actually represented by two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh.
00:31:20
Dan Sanchez
So wouldn't that make for 13 then?
00:31:21
Ridley
So Joseph.
00:31:22
Dan Sanchez
How could, how do we get back to 12?
00:31:24
Ridley
The Levites were not counted among them anymore. They were they were pulled out to serve just in the tabernacle. So when they talk about the twelve tribes of Israel, what they're referring to is the way the lands were dispersed. Once they entered into conquer the land, the Levites were not given land.
00:31:39
Ridley
They were given towns amongst the other 12 tribes. But Ephraim and Manasseh, both are the sons of Joseph. So that's, that's his descendants in those two tribes.
00:31:51
Dan Sanchez
And that's why the Old Testament is kind of confusing sometimes.
00:31:53
Ridley
It is, it is, it very much is.
00:31:53
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:31:55
Ridley
And then they, They always used to confuse me. I'm finally starting to get it down, but it used to confuse me. What happened to Esau? Well, he's called Edom. Why is he called Edom? And where is he? you know Well, he shows up later over on the other side of the Jordan River doing his thing.
00:32:10
Ridley
Yeah, the changing of multiple uses of names. Sometimes he's Jacob. Sometimes he's Israel. Sometimes she's Sarah. Sometimes she's Sarai. that That can lend to a lot of confusion, too, as you're reading through the word.
00:32:18
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:32:21
Dan Sanchez
Right. And they're the Hebrew people. You're like, where did that name come from?
00:32:25
Ridley
Yep.
00:32:26
Dan Sanchez
I still actually don't remember where the Hebrew one comes from. I looked it up once and forgot. Yeah.
00:32:30
Ridley
Yeah. So are they Hebrews or Israelites or jedah Jews or what you know what are they?
00:32:33
Dan Sanchez
or Jews or what?
00:32:34
Ridley
Yeah.
00:32:35
Dan Sanchez
It's been thousands of years. Things change, right?
00:32:37
Ridley
Yeah.
00:32:38
Dan Sanchez
we i mean, Gen Z's changing language all the time over on TikTok.
00:32:38
Ridley
Right.
00:32:41
Ridley
That's right.
00:32:41
Dan Sanchez
So just imagine you' giving it thousands a year.
00:32:44
Ridley
Good question, Selah.
00:32:46
Ridley
Mm
00:32:47
Dan Sanchez
I'd almost think it'd be an interesting study just looking at the 12 tribes throughout the Old Testament and kind of where they landed because there is changes.
00:32:50
Ridley
hmm.
00:32:55
Dan Sanchez
And I find, and maybe this will just be a theme we come back to because we've talked about it before and we've talked about Manasseh and Ephraim before and why and the blessing and when we talked about blessing but I think this will just be one where I'll have to revisit it and put a put an earmark on the tribes as we go through it because there is something interesting going through there because things change about the tribes I think over time hence later on it's only two tribes left ish you know so and we'll have to revisit this one
00:33:02
Ridley
e Yeah.
00:33:10
Ridley
Yeah.
00:33:20
Ridley
Right. Yeah.
Conclusion and Reflections
00:33:23
Dan Sanchez
But Ridley, thank you so much for joining me today and going through these questions with me.
00:33:23
Ridley
It's good.
00:33:26
Ridley
Yep.
00:33:27
Dan Sanchez
It's been a fascinating dive into Leviticus and Numbers, and I'm looking forward to doing it again next week.
00:33:33
Ridley
Awesome.