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God’s Blueprint for Society: The Hidden Wisdom in Leviticus
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In this episode, Dan Sanchez and Pastor Ridley Barron dive into the book of Leviticus, unpacking its purpose, significance, and how it connects to the broader biblical narrative. Dan shares a humorous story about his first experience reading Leviticus as a camp counselor, leading to a deeper discussion on why the book exists and how it helped shape Israel as a nation. They explore why blood sacrifices were necessary, why modern Jews no longer practice them, and how God's laws served as a foundation for cultural and spiritual transformation. The conversation also touches on modern topics like tradition, immigration, and the role of holiness in today's world.
Timestamps:
00:11 – Dan’s story: Reading Leviticus to put kids to sleep
02:27 – Why is Leviticus even in the Bible?
06:45 – An eye for an eye: God's law as a limit on vengeance
12:26 – Why do Jews no longer offer sacrifices?
22:30 – Have we moved too far from tradition in modern Christianity?
28:28 – Why is blood so important in sacrifices?
32:29 – Immigration and how Christians should respond
37:14 – Selah’s question: Where did they get grain for offerings in the desert?
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Transcript
Introduction and Leviticus Anecdote
00:00:01
Dan Sanchez
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church Podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I am joined again by Ridley Barron, the senior pastor of Grove Hill. And this week we've been going through Leviticus.
00:00:11
Dan Sanchez
And so I thought there's an opportunity to share a story of the first time I'd actually read Leviticus by myself without being prompted by a Bible reading plan. I just opened a book. is i was I was a summer camp counselor.
00:00:25
Dan Sanchez
for the first time right after high school. I was fresh, didn't know anything about how to deal with kids. And I noticed one of the things was like, you got to get these kids to bed. It's a busy day. And the first group I had was a bunch of junior hires. And I found out real quick, like, if you just threaten them with running laps, they're good.
00:00:43
Dan Sanchez
They will go down. They you do not want to run laps. They do not want to do pushups. A couple weeks go by, get some more junior hires. And then I got a group of fourth and fifth graders. And I found out the hard way that if you threaten them with laps because they're not quieting down and going to bed, that is there is literally nothing more exciting.
00:01:01
Ridley
yeah
00:01:02
Dan Sanchez
So I've been out in the woods in the mountains of Colorado running around with a group of four and five-year-olds and up and down trails with headlamps on, and they're just as happy as can be. I make them do push-ups, make them jump up and down and do the craziest stuff, but they only get more excited the more they they run.
00:01:18
Dan Sanchez
And then a female counselor he finally pulled me aside. She's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm trying to tire them out, but they're not getting tired. She's like, just read to them.
00:01:29
Dan Sanchez
I'm like, oh.
Purpose and Significance of Leviticus
00:01:32
Dan Sanchez
So me being 18 and not knowing anything, I'm like, well, what's the most boring book I could possibly find? the book of Leviticus. I just turned to that and started reading.
00:01:42
Dan Sanchez
And even reading it to them, I started realizing that one it wasn't quite as boring as I thought. And they were actually interested in it as I'm reading through the first pages of Leviticus and talking about the sacrifices and the rules and the laws.
00:01:55
Dan Sanchez
Some of it was kind of interesting because it's it's a little gory. it's it's But it is still interesting.
00:01:58
Ridley
Yep.
00:02:00
Dan Sanchez
You're kind of like, huh. I did find out later in that summer camp, a couple days in after reading Leviticus, I found out it didn't matter what you read them. Like it, it put them to bed anyway. Like it could be highly entertaining.
00:02:10
Dan Sanchez
They're still going to go to bed because they're just holding steel long enough to calm down.
00:02:13
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:16
Dan Sanchez
Early lesson learned that I use with my kids all the time. If I can actually stay awake through the book, reading myself now. That's a fair. Yeah.
00:02:22
Ridley
Yeah. Let's just say the big challenge is keeping yourself awake while you're reading
00:02:26
Dan Sanchez
But I find a lot of people have that same thing with Leviticus. Like, ugh, it's such a drag. It's a hard book to go through. So Ridley, I have to ask the question to you. Like, why why is this even in the book? Like, why is this thing necessary?
00:02:42
Ridley
it's very much like the establishment of our constitution in the United States of America. This is a new nation. These are people who have never governed themselves. They've always been under the authority of a, the Egyptian power.
00:02:57
Ridley
They've been told when to eat, when to sleep, when to get up, when to go to bed, how to do their work, just about everything about their lives was controlled. So Now that they've been set free in this Exodus, there is instruction that needs to be given to teach them how to relate to God, how to relate to each other, how to build their communities, even the practice of their worship.
00:03:16
Ridley
In fact, the book Leviticus, the name means having to do with the Levites. And so it's the instructions for how to choose those people who will lead you in the Levitical practices, what they will look like, what your religious practices will look like. But it also gets into all these laws, very much the same kind of laws that you and I live with, but some of them just seem so elementary and rudimentary because they had had nothing to this point.
00:03:42
Ridley
Whereas people who came to the United States of America and established our country had come from another very civilized nation where something like that already existed.
Biblical Texts and Cultural Evolution
00:03:50
Ridley
So, yeah, the the second half of Exodus, all Leviticus, Numbers, and then Deuteronomy are all about, let's let's teach these people how to live together.
00:03:59
Dan Sanchez
So know a couple of people have expressed like, there's a lot of things in the Bible that just don't don't make sense, or at least it doesn't make sense to me to read them. There's not a lot of application. To me, I'm like, man, I wish there were more.
00:04:12
Ridley
Yeah.
00:04:12
Dan Sanchez
like I wish some of the books that were kind of like lost to antiquity, you know, because there's a lot of books we'll get into that, like in the, especially in 1st and 2nd Chronicles, they're mentioning other books that have been written that are just gone.
00:04:12
Ridley
Yeah.
00:04:21
Ridley
Right. Yeah. Yep.
00:04:24
Dan Sanchez
We don't have them anymore because many books written that are mentioned in the Bible that aren't around anymore. Like, I wish we had those books, but it's funny because like the Bible's long, the Bible's already ridiculously long.
00:04:31
Ridley
Mm
00:04:35
Dan Sanchez
Hence anything that's like a really long work of some kind is generally called like the Bible of, right?
00:04:41
Ridley
hmm. Right.
00:04:41
Dan Sanchez
Because the Bible is such a long book. So i think it sounds funny to some people to say like, well, why would you want it to be longer? Like, it's already like one of the longest books of like all time. I'm like, well, because there's so many more questions.
00:04:55
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:04:55
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's just some places where i would I'd love pieces of information to have some bridging between them, some connection needs to help us understand why this connects to this or whatever.
00:05:02
Dan Sanchez
Oh, yeah.
00:05:06
Ridley
So.
00:05:07
Dan Sanchez
So I'm glad there's details like this in here because I find that the law kind of sets up the culture, right?
00:05:12
Ridley
Mm
00:05:12
Dan Sanchez
This is the important thing. And then God like led them into the promised land so that they can not survive just for themselves. It's not like he's pulling away a people group just for himself. Be like, well, these ones will be mine. The rest, whatever, the devil can have them. These ones are mine.
00:05:26
Ridley
Right.
00:05:27
Dan Sanchez
It's like, it says throughout the, throughout the old Testament, it's like, no, I'm setting you up so that you can be a light to the nations. Right? This is like pre-Jesus. They're like, no, like the whole purpose of you guys doing and following me is that so my glory can be revealed to all the surrounding nations.
00:05:35
Ridley
Right.
00:05:37
Ridley
Yeah.
00:05:41
Ridley
Right. Yeah.
00:05:42
Dan Sanchez
And.
00:05:43
Ridley
You know, a perfect example of that is that we often quote it. I would say misquote it, misuse the verse, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Well, people go, why would God say that? Because it's not always the right way to handle it. Well, God wasn't establishing it pattern of justice.
00:05:58
Ridley
He was actually limiting a lot of injustice because in that day and age, it was very acceptable for somebody to go overkill with their revenge. You know, if you took out my tooth, could kill your whole family.
00:06:10
Ridley
And so when God said an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth, he was saying, we're not we're not giving you permission to go do this. We're limiting you so that you don't treat each other this way. And there is some kind of justification for the kind of revenge you take or punishment you hand out.
00:06:26
Dan Sanchez
That's right. Whose sons were it? Was it Jacob's sons?
00:06:28
Ridley
Yeah, Jacob's sons.
00:06:28
Dan Sanchez
Like when all ham, when their sister was defiled and they just go and slaughter the whole town.
00:06:32
Ridley
Yeah, and they did just kill the guy that did it.
00:06:33
Dan Sanchez
like, yeah, that ain't a hand for a hand.
00:06:36
Ridley
No, it didn't just kill the guy who did it or even his family. They killed the entire village. So yeah, that kind of stuff had to be brought to a halt.
00:06:45
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, I've heard it said that like God wasn't giving the the instructions of like the ultimate playbook as far as to how to be pure and holy. it was just kind of like a step towards what would be coming.
00:06:56
Dan Sanchez
Of course, it was coming to Jesus, right? So it was just a—I've heard some people call it like a systematic plan in order to get to the end goal, which was Jesus, right?
00:06:59
Ridley
Right.
00:07:05
Ridley
Yeah.
00:07:07
Dan Sanchez
And God was working that plan.
00:07:07
Ridley
yeah Right. And, you know, as hard as it is to imagine trying to step from being just completely ruthless and without laws to what he did establish for them. Imagine if he had tried to go straight up full New Testament kind of living with one another and said, this is the way it's going to be. for Most of them would have rebelled right out because they wouldn't have even even known how to handle that kind of change.
00:07:33
Ridley
It would have been such a leap from them from where they were to where holiness really looks like that many of them probably would not have accepted it and would have outright rejected it and walked away.
00:07:45
Ridley
So God, yeah, was moving them in a direction.
00:07:46
Dan Sanchez
i think we I think we take for granted like how how educated we are. Even if you're uneducated in this country, you're slowly being handed all kinds of cultural norms and systems of ways of thinking from all the different pieces, from people, from reading, even from just watching movies and TV.
00:08:00
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:08:06
Ridley
Right.
00:08:07
Dan Sanchez
like You're getting pieces of it from everywhere. i remember reading... Go watch his name. Really popular psychologist out there right now. george Jordan Peterson.
00:08:18
Ridley
Peterson?
00:08:20
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:08:20
Ridley
Yeah.
00:08:20
Dan Sanchez
He was talking about how the Bible was one of the most important books. Like whether you believe it or not, he said, like, it doesn't matter. It's one of the most important books of all time because it's the ultimate thing that almost all everything else in Western civilization to some point or another references.
00:08:26
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:08:33
Dan Sanchez
Like it's all stacked on this one thing and everything's referencing and then piled on it, including these laws.
00:08:36
Ridley
Right.
00:08:39
Dan Sanchez
And so even Western culture, even though it's lost its a lot of it's lost its way, they're still acting out of a lot of biblical principles.
00:08:46
Ridley
Yes.
00:08:47
Dan Sanchez
And it's almost like people had to be reprogrammed over generations with these laws in order to be able to even to accept the the real laws of the way Christ presented, right?
00:08:48
Ridley
Yep.
00:08:58
Ridley
Yep.
00:08:58
Dan Sanchez
It takes it takes almost like a societal level of intelligence in order to almost accept the new operating system. I'm kind of speaking geek to Bridget.
00:09:05
Ridley
You know, and you can see in the New Testament, what Jesus is teaching how this was being done incrementally, because when he comes along and he starts to do the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, you will hear him say the phrase, you have heard it said, but I say to you.
00:09:06
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:09:19
Ridley
And what he's saying is, Yeah, back then we set the law there, but I'm telling you, we're fixing to take it up a notch. We're we're fixing to make that law a little bit different and and show you how far it really needs to reach into your heart, not just the control of your physical activity, but we're talking about changing your heart and your way of thinking.
Cultural Norms and Biblical Foundations
00:09:37
Ridley
And to your point, in that day and age, it... The primary source of orientating and treating, training people was the the rabbi or the teacher.
00:09:48
Ridley
You know, you didn't have advertising. You didn't have marketing. You didn't have podcasts. didn't have any of those things. So whatever message your rabbi or your local synagogue leader was giving you was pretty much what you were going by.
00:10:01
Dan Sanchez
it makes me, i'm actually like, I don't know, I'm getting getting insights as we're talking. I'm like, huh. It's like, almost connected it back to, I loved art in high school. And so I did a lot of art classes, even went to did AP art in high school, thought about going to art school as a thing.
00:10:13
Ridley
Yep.
00:10:18
Dan Sanchez
But remember i I once did art in junior high, learned some stuff and then went to high school and I was, went to my teacher and she was showing me how to do perspective drawing, you know, how to make things look like they're further away and how the lines work and
00:10:27
Ridley
Yep. Hmm. ye
00:10:30
Dan Sanchez
all that stuff. I'm like, i already know how to do this. And she's like, uh-huh. And you will have to learn it again. And then if you go to college for this, you will do it again. Because every time you go up a level, you end up coming back to the basics in order to better understand, in order to really build on it. Because it's really at the foundational level, even in sports, right?
00:10:48
Dan Sanchez
You end up drilling the basics over and over again.
00:10:48
Ridley
Yeah. Yep.
00:10:52
Dan Sanchez
Because the more solid the foundation of the basic skills, the easier it is to build on top of. And if you're missing something up here, it's like, oh, probably because you didn't drill the basics and enough.
00:10:57
Ridley
Absolutely.
00:11:00
Ridley
Right.
00:11:00
Dan Sanchez
And I remember that in art specifically, she's like, yeah, and you're to have to learn the finer nuances of it this time. And then you'll have to do it again in college. I remember thinking that being like, huh. So we it's really back to basics a lot.
00:11:10
Dan Sanchez
And I kind of feel like this law is almost that foundational level that even today, it's still worth learning because it kind of was like the foundational level that what we believe on, what we believe now is still built on, right?
00:11:22
Ridley
hmm.
00:11:25
Dan Sanchez
Would you say that's true or-
00:11:26
Ridley
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting you brought up this idea that as athletics, you go back to the foundational stuff, you relearn those things over and over again, and you drill them. That's exactly the words that God gave to Moses in Deuteronomy when he says,
00:11:40
Ridley
From now on, you're going to teach your children these things. When you walk on the road, when you lie down, to he's saying you're going to drill your kids on this so that they don't ever forget. These are the foundations on which a relationship with God are built.
00:11:52
Ridley
And the Jewish people, to their credit, did a really good job with that. As far as teaching, it was the application of those teachings that many times got mis misconstrued.
00:12:03
Dan Sanchez
So it leads to an interesting conversation because I was reading these. I was remembering because, you know, you, you, I've like, you have been to Jerusalem. We've toured the place. We've been to the temples, been to some, I didn't get to go into any synagogues, but I saw people go into synagogue and I'm like, there ain't no sacrifices happening here.
00:12:21
Ridley
Right, right.
00:12:23
Dan Sanchez
These are practicing Jews, right? And some of them are like all the way to wearing like the long, hair tassels and the the row the black and the hats they're all oh actually a multiple sects of jews right it was one of the things that was surprising to me how many different types of jews there were kind of like christian denominations there were different types of jews they have different clothing laws and all kinds of weird stuff but none of them are offering sacrifices today so i thought about that this week and i went and found the answer
00:12:30
Ridley
Yep.
00:12:38
Ridley
Yes. Right.
00:12:51
Ridley
and glad I'm glad. I'm looking forward to hearing this answer because that's a question. Sadly, I've never researched it, but I've always asked. So where where along the way did the Jews decide, okay, the actual sacrifice of animals is no longer a requirement of our faith?
00:13:05
Dan Sanchez
So it happened shortly after the temple was destroyed. in what is it, 60 or 70 AD?
00:13:10
Ridley
70 AD. Yep. Yep.
00:13:12
Dan Sanchez
70 yeah.
00:13:13
Ridley
yeah
00:13:14
Dan Sanchez
that And for those for those who don't know, like not long after Jesus died, like the Romans came and just completely destroyed the temple. They got so mad at the Jews. They're just like, no, we're going to, fine.
00:13:25
Dan Sanchez
If you're going to be like this, they went and just destroyed the whole thing and took it all the way down to its foundation. Hence, the Temple Mount there today is like...
00:13:31
Ridley
Yep.
00:13:35
Dan Sanchez
literally just the foundation the railing wall is not the temple that is just the base of the foundation that the temple used to sit on they leveled the whole thing and then i think they probably desecrated it and poured like i don't know what they did but they they probably poured pork blood all over it or something like that because that's what they do stuff like that because they're romans
00:13:38
Ridley
No.
00:13:44
Ridley
Right.
00:13:50
Ridley
Yeah. Which, by the way, was the fulfillment of the prophecy where Jesus said there will come a point where there will be no stone on top of the other in this temple. And his disciples thought he was crazy.
00:13:59
Dan Sanchez
yep
00:14:01
Ridley
So.
00:14:02
Dan Sanchez
Nowadays, there's a big old mosque on top, right? And that's the Dome of the Rock.
00:14:04
Ridley
Yep. Yep.
00:14:05
Dan Sanchez
So that's fun. But the temple's gone. After that, they didn't have a place to sacrifice. In fact, there was another question I had is like, where do people offer sacrifices?
00:14:15
Ridley
Mm hmm.
00:14:15
Dan Sanchez
Do they only do it in Jerusalem? Do they have like, cause that's a long way to go. If you're all lot all the way out and see a Galilee, that's a, that's, i mean, it's, you know, it's like walking from, you know, across New Jersey.
00:14:26
Dan Sanchez
That's a long way to go. If you're walking like, but no, there, there is no alternative place for sacrifice.
00:14:28
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:32
Dan Sanchez
All the sacrifices happened in Jerusalem.
00:14:34
Ridley
That's right.
00:14:35
Dan Sanchez
And you, I did get a sense for reading it. It feels like they're giving sacrifices all the time. Not really. Like they give a sacrifice once a year and, if circumstance calls for it, they give other sacrifices if they've been wronged or have a guilt or Thanksgiving sacrifice of some kind.
00:14:48
Ridley
So they do still do a yearly sacrifice.
00:14:52
Dan Sanchez
I think past, I think it's the Passover. They do a sacrifice and maybe they knew they do the sacrifice of the whole, but I think they actually do come and offer something.
00:14:56
Ridley
Yeah.
00:15:01
Dan Sanchez
I have to dig a little bit more into that. But when I was digging into like how often they sacrifice, it seemed like there was one that they were coming in for somewhere regularly.
00:15:04
Ridley
I
00:15:08
Ridley
mean, I would imagine it's probably the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
00:15:11
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:15:12
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. So i'm i'm when we get done, I'm going to dig into it a little bit myself because I'm curious about this.
00:15:17
Dan Sanchez
I'll dig into it.
00:15:19
Ridley
Yeah.
00:15:19
Dan Sanchez
But after the temple was sacrificed, they didn't have a place to make her sacrifices. So they stopped making sacrifices. Later, the rabbis, the Pharisees, big like morphed into what became the rabbinical rabbi tradition that we have today.
00:15:29
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:15:35
Ridley
Okay.
00:15:35
Dan Sanchez
that That line or that that group of thinkers. And they started making justifications to not have to give sacrifices anymore because what replaced it was good works and acts of mercy.
00:15:50
Dan Sanchez
Because they're looking at Hosea saying, like, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
00:15:54
Ridley
Not sacrifice.
00:15:54
Dan Sanchez
Right.
00:15:55
Ridley
yep
00:15:55
Dan Sanchez
Which I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys are so close.
00:15:58
Ridley
Yep.
00:15:58
Dan Sanchez
You're so close.
00:15:58
Ridley
Yeah. yeah
00:16:00
Dan Sanchez
But God's put blinders on you, you know, like that that that passage in Romans that talks about God putting blinders on the Jews. Like they just, they can't see.
00:16:10
Ridley
Right.
00:16:10
Dan Sanchez
but until the the you know my eschatology says there will be a revival amongst jews at the very end but for now it's almost seemed like hey they got the right thing about the sacrifices like god desires mercy hence the messiah so
00:16:15
Ridley
Yep. Yep.
00:16:25
Ridley
Yes. Yeah, that's so frustrating because you, you know, if you have a love for God's people, The israels Israelis, the Jews, there you go. Man, you're so stinking close.
00:16:36
Ridley
You almost have it.
00:16:37
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:16:38
Ridley
How can you not see it?
00:16:40
Dan Sanchez
Yep. So that's why they do not practice sacrifices anymore. Now, some of the Orthodox Jews believe that once the temple is rebuilt, they will begin resuming sacrifices.
00:16:44
Ridley
Interesting.
00:16:50
Ridley
Interesting.
00:16:50
Dan Sanchez
So there is a group out there that believes that. They're just waiting for the temple to be rebuilt.
00:16:54
Ridley
Yeah, I've read all the stories about them collecting the red heifers for the purification of the altar again and all that kind of stuff.
00:17:00
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:17:00
Ridley
So, yeah.
00:17:01
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:17:02
Dan Sanchez
So that's a fun little tidbit.
00:17:02
Ridley
Interesting.
00:17:06
Dan Sanchez
Why the Jews aren't doing it either. Kind of for the same reasons we aren't.
00:17:09
Ridley
Yeah, if you're listening to your podcast, you learned something new today.
00:17:14
Dan Sanchez
So one of the questions that I heard from my my life group, and I thought it was a really good question as we're reading through all this stuff, like why, it becomes a lot. It becomes a lot to remember. There's lots of different sacrifices, systems. How do they remember it all?
00:17:28
Ridley
I think it kind of goes back to a couple of things. Number one, like we said earlier, just the rehearsing of these, these things over and over and over again. It's some of these are daily practices, so it would have been really easy to remember some of them.
00:17:45
Ridley
Others of them required obviously much more recall from long periods before you had to do it again or whatever. But I think, Quite simply, it goes back to their brains had more space to remember these things.
00:17:58
Ridley
Their brains were just as good as our brains are. They had the capability of remembering things, but they, I jokingly said this to my wife, they don't have to remember social security numbers or addresses or phone numbers or passwords.
00:18:09
Ridley
You know, they don't have to remember directions to the house down the street or whatever. They don't remember any of those things. of that's necessary. They really, their only requirements are to know how to carry out their livelihood, which for most of them is,
00:18:24
Ridley
something they've done since they were a child, raising sheep or tanning leather or, you know, whatever. Well, I don't guess it would tan leather because that would have been non-Jewish, but something like that, a carpenter, those kinds of things.
00:18:34
Ridley
That's one of the things they have to focus on. The other is the practice of their faith. And so this is really what they have been doing for generations and generations, and they have watched their dads and their granddads do it.
00:18:45
Ridley
And I think that probably attributes their ability to remember what's going on because, Unlike us today, where we may have families spread over seven different states, they all live right next to each other. And so literally generations were watching generation after generation before them carry out these practices and hear the teachings behind why they were necessary.
00:19:06
Dan Sanchez
think to a large degree, a lot of them didn't remember either.
00:19:08
Ridley
Well, that's true.
00:19:09
Dan Sanchez
hence so It gets forgotten and rediscovered and retaught and all kinds of things.
00:19:09
Ridley
That's true. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:14
Dan Sanchez
By the time Jesus is around, they're actually doing pretty good. They've had a few cycles.
00:19:17
Ridley
right.
00:19:18
Dan Sanchez
I always always feel bad because we go to picking on the Israelites in the Old Testament for not remembering. And then by the time we get the New the new Testament, I'm like, well, they're kind of remembering the thing we were mad at them for in the Old Testament.
00:19:30
Dan Sanchez
You should give them some, even though they're like off because they've added much to it and all that kind of stuff.
00:19:31
Ridley
yeah
00:19:33
Ridley
you You do also have to remember the reason we have the first five books of the Bible is because Moses wrote them down.
00:19:34
Dan Sanchez
But
00:19:40
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:19:41
Ridley
So at this point in Israel's history, we know that handwriting, I guess you call it handwriting, cuneiform, whatever form it was in, has now started to become more widely practiced. So If nothing else, at least the Levitical priesthood would probably have had written recordings of, okay, this is what God told us 50 years ago when we were entering the promised land or whatever. So there there's a little bit of help there in the form of written form, but for the most part, I just think it's, they had great memories with brains that weren't full of all kinds of junk that we fill our brains with today.
Tradition, Memory, and Religious Practices
00:20:11
Ridley
Okay.
00:20:12
Dan Sanchez
I feel like if it's something you embody too as a culture, it's easy to remember. Like I'm always reminded as a parent, like how many unspoken rules there are about living in society that I have to remind my kids of like, Hey, like,
00:20:24
Dan Sanchez
if if someone does something nice for you, look them in the eyes and say, thank you. You know, like, just all all the little tiny niceties, there's all these little unspoken rules.
00:20:28
Ridley
Yeah.
00:20:32
Dan Sanchez
and I'm having a hard time remembering some of them now, but it's like, you end up having to teach your kids all those things and you become, becomes really apparent. Like, Hey, like if you're out in public, like it's considered rude just to be singing out loud.
00:20:43
Dan Sanchez
If you're in a crowd of people and you're just belting it out, like it's, it's not considerate.
00:20:48
Ridley
Well, instead and instead of being amazed by the fact that the the Hebrew people remembered all this stuff, I think we should be amazed by what we remember nowadays.
00:20:49
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:20:56
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:57
Ridley
because even the smallest of things, if your wife tells you to go to the grocery store here in town and pick up a box of cereal, if you've been a couple of times, you remember where that box of cereal is because you've been in the store before.
00:21:09
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:21:10
Ridley
We remember little things like that that they would have never had cause to remember. pass, uh, rules of of driving. There are hundreds of rules for driving that you and I just secondhand know, uh, just from riding in the car with mom and dad, not because we had to take a class.
00:21:22
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:21:25
Ridley
We know that you turn on your blinker to turn. Those are little things that we remember that they would have never had any reason or cause to know that freed up their brain for other things.
00:21:33
Dan Sanchez
But because we grew up with it and we're associated, like we had an association with it, it became more intuitive once we did have to drive.
00:21:39
Ridley
Yes.
00:21:39
Dan Sanchez
If you pull someone out of the jungle and be like, here's the rules on driving, they'd be like, wait, what?
00:21:41
Ridley
Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. and hence the
00:21:44
Dan Sanchez
Kind of like us reading these laws. They're so foreign to us.
00:21:46
Ridley
right And hence the encouragement from God, hey, show this to your children as you're as you're doing it.
00:21:49
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:21:51
Ridley
Let them see you practice this.
00:21:52
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:21:53
Ridley
And this is, again, probably one of the reasons why, as a pastor, my great desire someday is to have us a building where we have space where our kids and our youth can worship with the parents in there.
00:22:05
Ridley
What better way for parents to teach their kids what faith looks like than to just practice it right there in front of them on a regular basis?
00:22:12
Ridley
so
00:22:12
Dan Sanchez
Makes me want to ask the question, like, do you think we've gotten a little bit too far away from traditions? remember early in my faith, the word tradition, there was a feeling about it. And I'm sure think the feeling came from not not the pastor particularly, but just Christianity in general, that like tradition was bad.
00:22:30
Dan Sanchez
Cartesian is Catholicism and Catholicism is equals bad, you know?
00:22:34
Ridley
Yeah, yeah. i think I think tradition... Tradition has a place, an incredibly important place in the practice of our faith.
00:22:46
Ridley
I think when it becomes traditionalism, it becomes more of a religion than it is a tradition. I think it kind of goes back to asking of every individual tradition, what is the spirit behind this?
00:22:59
Ridley
Sometimes the only way you can demonstrate that spirit is by the consistent ongoing practice of that particular tradition. Sometimes the spirit of that is best displayed by transitioning the tradition to a newer form of that or a different variety of that.
00:23:17
Ridley
A perfect example is that the tradition of marriage itself is absolutely essential for for communities and culture, for for humanity to continue to exist. It's been done at its core, been done since the beginning of time.
00:23:34
Ridley
A man and a woman meet and they commit to one another. That's the tradition of marriage. How it's been carried out has changed from culture to culture, from generation to generation. Do you jump over a broom? Do you break a glass? Do you, you know, what do you do? There's all kinds of things that we do as part of that.
00:23:50
Ridley
The spirit of that tradition though, is that a man and a woman will join together and become one flesh. And so there's a difference in how we, we practice some of these traditions. And you know, the, the worship of a tradition is just as bad as the worship of an idol.
00:24:05
Ridley
So yeah.
00:24:07
Dan Sanchez
I used to have some missionary friends that worked in Malaysia, and they found that they they found that there was a sense of tradition missing because they were getting people saved out of Malaysia, but they were plugged into their cultural traditions, celebrations, rhythms of their society, and it was really hard to pull them out of the spiritual part.
00:24:25
Ridley
yeah
00:24:28
Dan Sanchez
It's very spiritual in nature. And they're like, well, we got to get them into the Christian tradition. Well, what do we do? Well, we got, well, we got back to school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know, the American kind of system of celebrations.
00:24:44
Ridley
Yeah.
00:24:45
Dan Sanchez
And they're like, huh, well, Christmas and Easter are good, but what about the rest of the year?
00:24:49
Ridley
Yeah.
00:24:49
Dan Sanchez
And they so actually started like kind of almost going back to like the, the the kind of the the rest of the Catholic holidays. The Catholics have like a reason to celebrate for like every day, it seems like, but. There's usually something on their calendar. We pull two. We pull Christmas and Easter for that.
00:25:04
Ridley
Yeah. yeah
00:25:04
Dan Sanchez
But there's a lot more on there. So i thought it was kind of an interesting thing that's made me think about it since then. Like, huh. Part of me is like, do we go back to the feasts? That's kind of interesting because it ties gives us more context for the Bible.
00:25:16
Dan Sanchez
But then at the same time, the feasts aren't even celebrated the same way they used to be in Israel.
00:25:17
Ridley
yeah
00:25:21
Ridley
I think the place where we really have to start asking some hard questions about our practice of our faith versus the practice of the faith back then is, again, are we capturing the essence of what God desired in many of these practices?
Sacrifices in Leviticus and Modern Interpretations
00:25:34
Ridley
one One of the things that's very clear about all of these festivals that God gave to the Hebrew people was that our God god loves a good time, and he wants us to celebrate life.
00:25:45
Ridley
The drab, boring, depressed existence that some people walk through in their practice of their faith, I don't think honors God. There is a time for melancholy. There is a time for lament. I think those are all part of our practice.
00:25:59
Ridley
But by and large, God was always about a good celebration. He loved to bring his people together and say, let's remember this and let's celebrate this and let's be joyous and grateful for this. I think he understood that those things in in the nature of a human being's existence caused them to approach life with a much healthier outlook.
00:26:19
Ridley
And so those kinds of things I think are important. And then the yeah the whole idea, the whole concept of holiness being set apart, which is what we were kind of trying to touch on yesterday. i think I said this in all three services, but I feel like in many of our churches, we have become so...
00:26:36
Ridley
comfortable with God, we've lost the aspect of what holiness really means and that we have brought him or attempted to bring him down to our level to become more comfortable with him.
00:26:47
Ridley
Whereas I think that true religion says we can't bring God down to our level because that's where he belongs. You know, that keeps a proper and right perspective with us as followers of God.
00:26:59
Dan Sanchez
I have a audio Bible. It's a special recording.
00:27:04
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:27:05
Dan Sanchez
It's called the, I think it's called the Bible experience. In fact, let me pull it up to get it, make sure I get this right. case anybody goes looking for it afterwards. It is called inspired by the Bible experience is what it's called.
00:27:19
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:27:21
Dan Sanchez
great audio Bible. You get the whole Bible for one audible credit. But it is dramatically reenacted.
00:27:28
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:27:29
Dan Sanchez
Everything's read by actors and it's it's it's fully the word, but it's it's as dramatic as it possibly can be.
00:27:35
Dan Sanchez
Let's put it that way.
00:27:35
Ridley
Yeah.
00:27:36
Ridley
Yeah.
00:27:36
Dan Sanchez
And there is music set to it. There is sound effects set to it. a few months ago, i actually was listening to Leviticus in this audio Bible, and it becomes really apparent how much blood they're spilling on the ground.
00:27:49
Ridley
Yeah.
00:27:50
Dan Sanchez
because I mean, you're reading it, but it like it hits a whole new sense when you're listening to it, and like you just hear the goat...
00:27:57
Ridley
yeah
00:27:57
Dan Sanchez
going and the blood's just splattering and it's just over and over.
00:27:59
Ridley
yeah
00:28:01
Dan Sanchez
You're just like, Oh my gosh, this is a brutal book. But I have to ask the question, like with all this blood, like you kind of hit it in your sermon. I think that even the sermon before this one, like why is the blood so important?
00:28:15
Dan Sanchez
Why, why does it have to be blood? I want to revisit that a little bit and go a little bit deeper into that one topic because it's such such a high focus of Leviticus are these sacrifices.
00:28:28
Ridley
Well, I mean, plain and simple, blood blood is the life existence. If there is no blood, there is no life. And I think it also is a foreshadowing of the reality that it would be by blood that we would regain life, the shedding of Jesus Christ's blood on the cross. So blood was always a part of it.
00:28:48
Ridley
Even the laws, the cleanliness laws had special considerations for blood and the touching of blood and the loss of blood, everything from a woman's menstrual cycle all the way up to dead bodies. I mean, there's just all kinds of things connected to that.
00:29:04
Ridley
But, it yeah, it comes back to this idea that that the blood is the lifeline of a human being and that without the shedding of blood, there can't be forgiveness.
00:29:15
Dan Sanchez
remember thinking about the genetics of blood. You know where your genes come from for blood?
00:29:19
Ridley
Thank
00:29:22
Dan Sanchez
Right. I remember once hearing that like your genes come from your father's side, but it's actually, I looked it up and it's actually mix of both. Either way, you're like, well, the blood running through Jesus's veins You're like, well, where'd he get his genes from?
00:29:35
Dan Sanchez
Right.
00:29:36
Ridley
Yeah, absolutely. Straight from the father.
00:29:37
Dan Sanchez
Hence, straight from, you know, the big G God. So it's like, my goodness.
00:29:43
Ridley
Yep.
00:29:46
Dan Sanchez
puts It certainly puts a, I don't know, to me, it it hits different when you're like, God's blood's running through his son's veins when he goes down.
00:29:55
Ridley
and Just to give you a perspective on my wife and the way she thinks that the other day, as I was reading ahead and we were talking about some of this, you know, all this blood stuff, I said, man, I'm so thankful. I'm not a priest serving in that day and age and having to sacrifice all these animals and, you know, drain all this blood and stuff. She goes, huh. She said, I'm just glad you're not having to do the circumcisions anymore.
00:30:18
Ridley
I said, no, yeah, i I don't want to have to be doing circumcisions. I don't want to be doing circumcisions for sure. So, yeah, you know, those those practices, thank God they're not a part of it anymore. I mean, even even today, reading another part of it where he was he was talking about different sacrifices and different things that would be offered, that kind of stuff.
00:30:38
Ridley
You know, i touched on this a little bit yesterday, probably could have gone a little bit deeper. People talk about the tithe. that that God first required, you know, the first 10%. But if you go back and you look at what was required the Hebrews, it was way more than a tithe.
00:30:52
Dan Sanchez
There's more. Yeah.
00:30:53
Ridley
The tithe is where you started.
00:30:53
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:30:55
Ridley
But by the time you paid for temple tax and sacrifices and all these other things, you the census as you were a part of, I've seen estimates as high as 35 and 40% of your income was was given to the work of the temple and the work of the church and and things of that nature, which in turn,
00:31:14
Ridley
means that people were constantly being challenged. How much do you really depend on God for your livelihood? Or do you depend on your own ability to make money or raise crops or whatever?
00:31:27
Dan Sanchez
Right. I mean, the Pharisees were really diligent about it, right? They're like tithing. They're like picking leaves off and like rosemary and actually taking the needles off, you know, it's like ae make sure they got their tithe in for every little thing that they picked to give it to God.
00:31:34
Ridley
Right, exactly.
00:31:39
Ridley
Mm hmm.
00:31:40
Dan Sanchez
And then Jesus kind of slams them for It's like, oh, you're so careful with this, but.
00:31:44
Ridley
Right. Yeah, but you don't take care of your mom and dad.
00:31:48
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:48
Ridley
Yep.
00:31:50
Dan Sanchez
You talked about a touchy subject on Sunday.
00:31:54
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:31:54
Dan Sanchez
I thought we'd go a little bit deeper here, talking about the alien in the land, essentially talking to immigration and the current scenario that we have and in our country of illegal immigration.
00:31:56
Ridley
Okay.
00:31:58
Ridley
Mm-hmm.
00:32:05
Ridley
Yeah.
00:32:08
Dan Sanchez
I remember the room got a little tense when you got into it. I'm like, huh, wonder where he's to go with it. Is he to go into the welcoming or he's going to be like, like we love them, but.
00:32:14
Ridley
yeah
00:32:20
Dan Sanchez
So what do you think we can do about it practically here in Chapel Hill? The government's doing what it what it's doing.
Biblical Principles and Modern Issues
00:32:28
Dan Sanchez
And we've, a lot of us have voted in certain directions and that, I don't know that like it's already in motion.
00:32:33
Ridley
Right. So let me start there because I think that has implications for what we do here in Chapel Hill.
00:32:35
Dan Sanchez
But,
00:32:41
Ridley
I believe that very clearly in the Bible, nations are our nations because they have borders and they have a responsibility to protect the people within those borders. that's what That's what really Jesus says later on. He says, you know, that these authorities that are put over you, Paul echoed the same kind of sentiment, these authorities that are put over you should pray for them because one of their assignments is to take care of you, to protect you, right?
00:33:05
Ridley
So having laws that protect our borders, having people there to keep people from illegally crossing the borders, I think absolutely 100% is a necessity. protects the sanctity of a nation. But when people come in, however they get here, we should hold them to the same standards of citizenship that anybody else does.
00:33:23
Ridley
If that's why you're here, if you're wanting to be a part of this country, then let's make you a part of this country. You're going to find a job like everybody else is expected to do You're going to pay your part of taxes to be taken care of. You're You're not going to have free handouts so that you can just lay around and do nothing because the Bible clearly condemns that just as much.
00:33:41
Ridley
But I think the underlying message for every true follower of Jesus Christ is that all of us are made in the image of God. Every one of us, no matter where we came from, no matter how we got here, whether you crossed the border illegally or you were born as an illegitimate child out of wedlock or whatever the case may be, all of us have value because we reflect the image of God.
00:34:02
Ridley
And so while we may hold a man responsible for his unwillingness to live by the laws, we must do that in a loving way that is meant to restore him, not to condemn our or even destroy somebody like that.
00:34:16
Dan Sanchez
So that's a good general principle and helps me think about how to think about the topic overall. And I guess like even here in Chapel Hill, we have illegal illegal immigrants and that's fine.
00:34:35
Dan Sanchez
actually know some, love them actually. they're They're fantastic.
00:34:37
Ridley
Yeah.
00:34:40
Dan Sanchez
I almost wonder, though, if like you want to try to help be be a help to them in helping them. I don't know, find a path to citizenship.
00:34:50
Dan Sanchez
I don't I don't I don't we really even know what that looks like or how that process would go or or if I just continue to look the other way and bless them as much as I can.
00:34:52
Ridley
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:57
Ridley
Right.
00:34:59
Ridley
Well, I think that there's a responsibility to try to help them and encourage them towards doing the right thing. You know, lets let's help you find a job. Let's help you get in contact with the federal government so we can start you on the process of citizenship. Let's let's do all the right things that we need to do here.
00:35:17
Ridley
but if If your neighbor is an illegal alien, he's part of one of these cartel gangs across our border. He needs to be in prison, right?
00:35:24
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:35:25
Ridley
yeah we're We're not talking about those kind of people. We're talking about the the grandmother, the husband, the wife who've traveled here together because they live in a country where obviously they are being persecuted or things like that.
00:35:36
Ridley
And they're just trying to escape for freedom. Those are the kind of people I feel like we can do something to help them. One of the things I love about what our current administration is doing, and this is to me is not a Republican versus a Democrat thing. It just makes sense.
00:35:49
Ridley
If I was elected president tomorrow, I'd do exactly what they're doing. I would shrink the IRS. I would do away with the federal Department of Education, and I would take every one of those workers and I'd put them on the border trying to to help people with immigration, speed up that process.
00:36:05
Ridley
I have no problem with the United States being a place where the world comes to to find freedom and safety. That's what we're supposed to be, a beacon on a hill. But there's a right way for that to be done As believers in Jesus Christ, our job is not to play the role that the federal government's supposed to play for us.
00:36:21
Ridley
Our job is to be good neighbors to the ones who who cross our paths.
Grain Offerings in Context
00:36:26
Dan Sanchez
Fantastic. I have one last question for you. It was one that was asked by my daughter in our life group, and I didn't have the answer.
00:36:28
Ridley
Okay.
00:36:32
Dan Sanchez
And nobody else in the life group had the answer.
00:36:32
Ridley
Okay.
00:36:34
Dan Sanchez
So i'm going to ask you here for Selah's sake.
00:36:35
Ridley
Uh-oh.
00:36:38
Dan Sanchez
And she was reading in Leviticus that they have grain offerings. And to give, you know, there i think even a tithe a certain amount of grain as an offering.
00:36:49
Dan Sanchez
And she, like the rest of us, had just been reading in Exodus and like, these people are in the desert. Where the heck are they getting grain from? They're eating manna.
00:36:59
Ridley
Outstanding question, Selah, and proud of you for reading and paying close attention these kinds of things. So couple of things that may be going here. Number one, even though we describe it as the wilderness where the the nation was wandering, you also have to remember that wandering was within the close vicinity of three major trade routes.
00:37:19
Ridley
So there is the possibility that there was still some trading going on with caravans that came by, maybe some who had grain or or things of that nature. I think that's probably the least likely possibility, but it is at least still a possibility.
00:37:33
Ridley
I think the greater possibility or reality is that most of what God was giving to the people was for when they entered the promised land, when there is a time when you can set up the tabernacle and of course, eventually the temple, you can set up the practice of religion and there'll be a place for you to come to.
00:37:49
Ridley
those kinds of things. I don't think that God's expectation would have been, hey, in the middle of the wilderness, I expect you to come up with enough grain for 2 million people to offer grain offerings. I just, I don't know that that's realistic at all.
00:38:02
Ridley
So I think, yeah, I think most of it was God saying, this is what's going to happen when you enter the land. Don't forget this. When you get there, he was putting everything in place preemptively so that when they got there, he didn't have to try to help them figure it out while they were trying to conquer a land that was full of enemies.
00:38:18
Dan Sanchez
Fantastic. Ridley, thank you so much for joining me to talk about Leviticus. I am looking forward to diving into the next book. And i I even have more questions that I would have saved for today, but oh my god I'm I'm going to save it for the next book because they're still going to be relevant then.
00:38:30
Ridley
Yes. Awesome.
00:38:31
Dan Sanchez
All right.