40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 108, An Introduction to Leviticus and Sacrifice

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

It's time to move on to the book of Leviticus but before they dig in, Chad and Daniel spend some time talking about the themes of Leviticus and why they matter more than many people think and how the concept of sacrifice is nothing new to us. It's probably far more interesting than you think. Have a listen!

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Emery Price, joined by Chad Bird, and we are about to journey into uncharted waters, Chad. That's what I was about to say. This is not just another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. This is like we're starting a new chapter, right? Yep, new book, literally. Yeah, literally. That's right. I mean, we have two books under our belt, and now we're about to start number three.

and uh i i think people probably have not been able to sleep for the last few days waiting for us to start leviticus i i agree you know i do you know it's weird chad i uh i was thinking about this and realized that it was that we've been doing this for about two and a half years wow which is yeah we've been doing this which uh it doesn't seem like it's been that long it does not seem like it was uh like two and a half years ago that i called you up and and pitched pitch the idea of this and it's not no it does not it does not it's been a good two and a half years though i mean since uh since the whole the website launched uh the conferences started podcast uh it's been a it's been a heck of a ride yeah it's been all good yeah i think that we can uh feel

pretty good about about uh the way things unfolded and it uh i i couldn't have imagined actually i mean this is one of the first things we did you know i mean uh initially we i did a little bit of writing you know a little bit of blogging uh and then uh pretty straight away like pitch the idea for this so this is one of the first things we did and uh i i honestly could not have imagined and did not imagine uh doing a lot of the stuff that we've done all the events that we've done and all that and just it being as well received as it is uh couldn't have imagined that so that that part of it's pretty cool and i think like it when you're in the the hectic motion of it when things are just kind of going along and you're working and and time like just moves the next

thing you know is two and a half years later and you haven't really taken uh the time to kind of look back at it and and see what all has happened uh which i just kind of did yesterday partially because i was snowed in but yeah i think i think it's it's pretty it's pretty awesome and pretty humbling and i so i appreciate everybody listening and coming out to the events and reading stuff and i couldn't have imagined it it being as uh as cool of a thing as it is right now yeah yeah same here I mean, it's been great to be able to work our way through as many scriptures as we have, but also in conjunction with that to actually get to meet a lot of people that listen to podcasts, that read the material on Christ So Fast, that go to the conferences. I made a lot of really good friends. Just nice to see the unity that we have there in the gospel that's out there all over the church.

I mean, all over various denominations within the church. So it's really been a great blessing for me and for all of us. Yeah. Amen. And so our gift to you is Leviticus. Yes. All right. brightly wrapped package of leviticus it's soaked in blood it is it's definitely crimson this is this this is probably uh well there's no probably to it this is the most crimson

book not just in the old testament but in the the entire scriptures and i wonder sometimes i could be wrong here but i wonder sometimes if that's actually not why it tends to be avoided so much in uh in the life of the modern church uh well blood blood makes people squeamish man does it does it makes people squeamish uh it uh i think it tends to to seem almost outdated to a lot of people yeah you know whether they think of uh oh yeah those you know that ancient stuff that involved blood and gore well we've we've moved beyond that and it's sort of this kind of a uh ultra spiritual approach to to christianity where all the the physicality of worship all the the actual tangible stuff of worship doesn't seem

quite as as important anymore and and that's really a a tremendous loss for the church i mean i've uh i've written somewhere i can't remember where i wrote this but i was talking about how the church modern church is by and large anemic and what we need is a is a large dose of what we find in Leviticus. Kind of the tangible, visible, tasteable, tangible physicality of how God interacts with us. So we're going to have a lot of that in Leviticus. I think another reason that Leviticus tends to be just kind of put on the shelf in the congregation's life is is because and maybe this is just kind of a protestant thing i don't i don't know uh but there's this perception that leviticus is all about ritual and ritual not in any kind of positive

sense but in a very negative sense a lot of people equate ritual with just kind of you know lifeless rote dead actions that don't have any any real meaning uh but uh i i'll begin today and hopefully as we work our way through these chapters uh bring out the very very positive side of ritual because that's that's what leviticus is all about it's it's about ritual but ritual that is uh that is filled with God's activity. So this isn't just kind of dead, rote, mindless activity, doing this, doing that, putting this here, putting that there. But instead, these are ritual actions, which are commanded by God, which are blessed by God, in which God is active in order to draw his people close to him, to sanctify them, to cleanse them, to forgive them,

actually to do all the same stuff that he still does when his people gather around his gifts in worship today. So we'll be talking about ritual quite a bit, the various kinds of rituals as we work our way through Leviticus. Yeah, I think that there's something about people, and this is true, where they say, oh, well, Leviticus, it's all sacrifice and ritual, and Jesus came and fulfilled all that, and that's certainly true.

uh and so i don't need to pay much attention to it because to the to the shadow i've got i've got the real thing you know uh so i've and again uh yeah nothing wrong with paying special attention to jesus who fulfills all the things that the sacrificial system points to that's true but uh i would argue that you can understand the fulfillment a whole lot better if you understand what it was that was fulfilled uh it's uh and maybe this isn't the perfect analogy but sometimes i will uh do you do this ever chad with sporting events i don't be a game uh that i want to watch but i'll have something else going on so big basketball fan and so i'm a big college basketball fan so like when when arkansas is playing someone especially if it's if it's an

important game uh i'll take i'll i'll record it if i'm gonna miss it if i have to be out doing something or whatever i will you know dvr that thing and then uh try to stay away from finding out what the score was and then i get home and i watch the whole thing now i could just like look up the score just know who won that would be accurate i mean i'd know who won but i i kind of i want to know how the whole game went i want to know i want to get a feel for how how it went down I want to see the ups and downs and the momentum shifts and all of these things and then see the final outcome. But I don't want to just see the final outcome as a final outcome.

I want to see how it became that, how that outcome came to be. And I think that there's, it's not a perfect, you know, illustration, but I think that there is something like that where if I go to somebody, then after I've watched the game and see the final outcome, and I go to somebody else who didn't do that, they just looked at the score and then say man did you see that game they're like yeah i saw arkansas won and i'll be like man that was crazy when and they don't know that's the end of our conversation they they don't have a whole lot more to say other than like i saw that they won

i can't go and be like man it was nuts when this guy did this and did you see this this part of it that no they can't that conversation can't exist uh because they didn't study the entire timeline of how that final outcome came to be uh so it's it's something like that that by looking at types and shadows you do understand the final score a whole lot better i yeah i love that analogy actually i hadn't i never thought of that but it's a i think it's it's a it's a it's a very fitting illustration for how this all works and one of the things that you brought out as you were as you were developing the analogy is how knowing that knowing that not just the final score but the game allows you to to really to enter the story of the game with other people if you know

what I mean so yeah we can talk about how this team won or that team lost talk about the final score and all that all that kind of stuff but that's a very limited conversation but if you watch the whole game you can talk about this play and that play and this mistake and that mistake and this player and all of the various details that go into the story or the narrative of the game itself. And that, I think, is to jump from analogy to the scriptures themselves, that I think is one of the most disappointing aspects of the modern avoidance of the Old Testament that bothers me so much is because we are missing out on the story, on the narrative that allows us to talk to each other and in a very worshipful, churchly sense about who we are

and where we came from. I mean, if all we know is the final score, that is, if all we know is basically the New Testament, then we're missing out on so much of the narrative that shapes the final outcome and also that really is the our identity you know to to use another analogy just just imagine if uh you had amnesia and you you didn't know your past i mean you're always going to be wondering well they where did you know where did i come from what's my family like what have i experienced before who are my friends all of this past would be would be forgotten and yet it was that past that shaped your current identity. You might know from the present forward, but you don't know from the present backward. And that's, unfortunately, that's

where a lot of Christians kind of jump into the scriptures. It's like they don't know everything that shaped who they are as Christians, who they are as the church that comes in the Old Testament scriptures. And Leviticus is a huge part of that story, because this was at the, this was the beating heart of God's interaction with Israel. So everything that happens in Leviticus is how God establishes and maintains his relationship of law and gospel, of grace and forgiveness with his people. This is where they come together. This is where they interact. This is where God cleanses and renews and sanctifies the people. So, we really need to know Leviticus if we are to know our own story, the church's story, and in particular, then, the story of why Jesus is

called the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, you know, why John says the Word became flesh and tabernacle among us, why the book of Hebrews makes so much about Jesus as our as our great high priest. All of that is really nonsensical apart from knowledge of the Old Testament and specifically of Leviticus. Amen. Amen. Well, what do you say we dip our toe in? Yeah, let's do that. So what we're going to see right away in these first, about first seven chapters is a lot of talk about various kinds of sacrifices. Of course, there's going to be plenty of sacrifices covered in Leviticus. And we've encountered some of these even already back in Genesis. We had sacrifices. Genesis 4, for instance, the whole story of Cain and Abel

revolves around altars and sacrifices. So sacrifices is nothing new. We saw it also, of course in in exodus but what's going to happen in in beginning of leviticus 1 is god is going to become very specific very detailed about what kind of sacrifices that that he wants his people to offer in order that through those he might give gifts to his people and these are going to be a lot of them are going to be animal sacrifices of very various kinds of animals some are going to be grain offerings. Some are going to be more oil or wine, kind of basic elements of Israelite home life are also part of these sacrifices. And there's sacrifices for different things too. There's kind of a general sacrifices that we're going to kind of right away called a burnt

offering or a whole burnt offering. But there's also very more kind of more specifically oriented sacrifices like a sin offering or a guilt offering or a peace offering and as we go through each of these we'll we'll try and and uh delineate the particular purpose of each of the sacrifices because they're not all the same uh the elements are sometimes different the people involved are different some of the actions are different and some of the benefits that are bestowed are are unique as well to each of each of the sacrifices so we're going to start out in this first chapter with uh what's called the burnt offering or or the whole burnt offering and i'll read up i'll read i'm gonna read the whole chapter even though it's not very long

it's only 17 verses but uh the uh the opening uh the opening words are going to kind of set the stage and unpack a little bit of the uh of the theology that we have we have present here so let me get started here uh let me set the context first of all if you remember how exodus ended i need to read the the last verse of exodus it says throughout all their journeys the cloud of the lord was on the tabernacle by day and there was fire in it by night in the sight of all the the house of israel so in the last chapter of exodus the the tabernacle was finished it was dedicated and the glory of the lord filled the tabernacle it was firing it by night and there was this glory clouded by day so that's that's the way it starts that's the way that it ends

now when we get to the beginning of leviticus it says that god called to moses he he summoned him This is a very specific verb that's only used, I think, about four times for God calling Moses. So this is like a this isn't just like, hey, Moses, come over here. This is this is a very official kind of summons. Like it's the same verb that's used, for instance, when God called to Moses at the burning bush. Or when he called Moses to establish the covenant there at the foot of Mount Sinai. So he's going to call Moses because he's going to be giving him a whole lot of instructions, details about the worship life of Israel. And he's going to do this from the tabernacle.

Here it's called the tent of meeting, which basically means that this is the place where God meets with his people and where his people meet with him. So when you hear tent of meeting, I think sometimes that phrase gets lost on us. When you hear tent of meeting, think of this is this is the specific location of the divine and human encounter. This is where God has said, I will meet with you and you will meet with me in this particular tent. So God calls Moses there and then he begins to give him these words. here's uh the first two the the first uh uh the two verses after that first verse verse two and three speak to the sons of israel and say to them when any one of you brings an offering to the lord you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock if this offering is a burnt

offering from the herd, he shall offer it a male without defect. He shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. Let me actually read one more verse. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. Now we could probably spend the next three weeks talking about all of the details in this verse. And in some ways we will, because what you have in these opening verses is going to be unpacked in the rest of Leviticus. He's like squeezed a whole bunch of theology into these opening verses. Yeah, essentially there's a whole lot of commentary on what exactly he just said following that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, let me tell

you everything in two verses and then i'm going to kind of you know spell out everything in the next 27 chapters yeah that's the yeah and i i think i think sacrifice is just it's a i think we think about sacrifice theologically uh and obviously and it's right there in that that text you have this this atonement language you you have this um you're gonna we're gonna this thing's gonna die uh on your behalf in in your place in your stead right there there is there is that's that's how we understand sacrifice or the sacrificial system and atonement and rightfully so that's that's what's going on and he's going to explain a ton of that i think that there is there is something going on with the idea of sacrifice

you know like why is that the case you know i mean like why why is it that god set it up that way what is this about and I think that part of it is just sort of this simple thing that there's not a lot of good things that come about with zero sacrifice

just in general and so I think there's a there is this sort of psychology underlying this that and we see this with God himself that like he brings good things about, uh, at, at cost. Uh, and, and this is, and this is the way

that we know that this is how life works in, in every way, right. That, uh, we don't, we don't usually, uh, acquire good things without, without, uh, without giving up anything without, without It was zero – I mean, if you take maybe the best thing you can think of, which in my mind would be children. So, like, the best thing I have, the best work I've ever done, the thing I'm most proud of is my daughter. Like, that's – I can look at nothing in my life as a greater good than that. and the decision to bring her into the world is a decision that you make knowing that like certain sacrifices must be made that the initial sacrifice is you have to somebody has to give birth to her that's no small thing no yeah if if mothers are listening right now they're nodding

their head like yeah that's that's right and that and that and that involves blood too right you know uh and then and then like children raising children is is sacrifice uh it means that you are uh you are you are going to have to work and and make money to like house this person and feed this person and raise this person you have to it's an investment of time now now is that do you is there this massive, uh, reward? Uh, is there, is, are you, do you get something great and good, uh, in return for it? Of course you do. Uh, do you get the best thing? Uh, but it's not, it's not, uh, all together. So we, when we think about Christianity and we think about the grace of God is free, uh, salvation is free, but it wasn't, it cost somebody something. It's free for us,

but it's not free. You can't look at the cross and say that salvation objectively is free. Well, that didn't cost anybody anything. Well, no, it cost someone a whole lot. Yeah, it happened to cost God his life. Right. And so the idea of sacrifice and the language of sacrifice necessitates there is a giving up. There's a cost associated with this good thing, this thing that you need, that this thing that you, that is, uh, that you desire. And then, and the, and what we see in the sacrificial system then is we see these people taking things that one that are valuable to them, which would be animals and sacrificing them. And obviously the animal is giving up its life. And we, and we do see this propitiation. We do see this on behalf of, and so the people themselves

pay a very minimal price, but, uh, but still something is being, is being given up by someone in this case animals, but I think that this just works. I think we know this intuitively about the way God has set up existence, that good things cost, that they're not – while a lot of the good things that reigns on the just and the unjust are free to us, but essentially good things cost somebody something. and and god is usually the one that it's costing yeah yeah so we we see kind of uh to piggyback off of that we see in this in this human reality the way that god has made us to be the way we

understand sacrifice to work uh we see in that the the shadow of really what all this is pointing toward right ultimately god will will not just simply you know send an angel which would be a an amazing sacrifice uh will not create a perfect human being to be the sacrifice although that too would be would be amazing but instead he he takes that which is the most valuable thing ever himself and it is that that he offers as a as a sacrifice so all of this like you know these animals without blemish and the best of the of the wine or the best of the oil or the best of the flower all the best of all these sacrifices all that in one way or another is is intended to be a uh in miniature a picture of what this is all then leading us toward and that is the

sacrifice of the perfect and pure and sinless and spotless and divine lamb of god right and all and i say all of those things not to say that you know somehow that children is uh you know anywhere having to have deciding to have children or something like that is is anywhere in the in the same realm as uh god giving up his son which actually it is a little bit in the same realm but uh i say all that to say because some people like yeah like we were talking about they have this like sort of ick reaction to the idea of sacrifice. So people would say like, I don't, I don't like, you might be talking to even, even maybe an unbeliever and they're like,

I don't like this. And isn't the Bible like full of sacrifice and this kind of stuff? Like, I don't really, I don't like that stuff. I don't believe in that sort of thing. Like this God that, this God that demands sacrifice. And I think that you can push back on that and say, yes, you do. Yeah. You totally believe in sacrifice. you do it like that's how you live your you do that all the time like you don't you don't like

it taken to you don't like what all that sacrifice is pointing you to you don't like the way that you don't like that god has set it up to show you that all these little sacrifices that you make to get to get good things are really just pointing you to like the ultimate sacrifice that has to be made for your redemption but you absolutely believe in sacrifice it dictates how you live your life it's why you go to work in the morning you totally believe like you might you might not like it but you live it that's right that's exactly right yeah that's why you work as much as you do so that you can sacrifice that income for the acquisition of the nice car or the nice home or whatever it might be right that car and that home didn't didn't cost you money it cost you

life it costs you time but yeah we're paying on a 30-year mortgage at the moment that's that's a lot of sacrifice to make yes it is over our head yes it is every everyone believes in sacrifice they they just don't like one of the assault of the gospel is not necessary i don't think it's the sacrificial nature of it uh i think that we really we all believe in sacrifice what we don't like and what is offensive is when somebody else sacrifices and then we reap the benefits see so like the uh i don't mind so much when i sacrifice and then i get the thing so like i have i have sacrificed and done this difficult thing and then here's my reward because there's a lot of me in there so like so then when i get that thing i get to go to you and say man i had to i had to work a

lot of overtime and stuff but look at this thing look at what i have done uh it's like it's like the movie castaway when the guy builds when he builds fire finally and he's like and it's like the best moment of his entire life because he has done it right like i have made fire it's a it's an incredible thing well the assault like the problem but the people want to act like they're offended by by the blood and the and the idea of sacrifice when they're absolutely not offended by the idea of sacrifice. They live a life of sacrifice. Psychologically, they're just swimming in sacrifice. What they don't like is the idea of this person sacrificed all of these things, everything, and you did nothing. In fact, not only because you're a good person,

but because you're a bad person and didn't have the appropriate things to sacrifice in the first place this other person did god and did do it for you that they don't like people don't like i don't like i mean me too i i them i'm offended because it says that like i i didn't have anything of uh that of great enough worth to sacrifice to accrue that to myself yeah because when that happens we we lose we lose control we lose ownership of what what we're given right right and that's so Leviticus will be an assault on all your self-worth yeah yeah I don't think people often think of Leviticus this way but in every single one of these sacrifices whether it's an animal or oil or grain or whatever it is because every single

sacrifice is not me it's something outside me it's something external it's uh it's indicative of the fact that i can't give enough or i can't give pure enough of myself to take care of my offenses right right it has to be so uh if if god had wanted to then i suppose he could have established a a ritual system whereby it's kind of like our penal system you know if i uh if i shoplift then you know and i get caught well there's you know a relatively minor penalty that's imposed upon me but if i if i take my gun and murder my neighbor then of course there's a much heavier penalty imposed upon me but in each of these cases i am the one who's who's punished because of the offense so god could have imposed sort of a a sacrificial penal system whereby you

If you committed, if you broke this commandment, well, then your punishment would be blank. You could atone for your actions. You know, you have your hand chopped off or you receive some of your lashes or whatever it might be so that you, the shedding of your blood or the punishment inflicted upon your body is the means of atonement. But he didn't do that. he didn't say you know if you if you get angry then go to the altar and and cut your hand open and let your blood drip on the altar that's not the way it works because the sacrifice has to be external to you it has to be something else someone else that atones for your sins and then i think it's it's all over leviticus but i don't think it's always something that we that we sit

there in grasp is the external nature of all of these sacrifices are pointing toward the external nature of the sacrifice that is to come. So every time that another, whether it's a lamb or a bull or whatever it is, every time another dies, sheds its blood on my behalf, it's an indication of my inability as an Israelite to atone for my sins and an indication of God's gracious gift of something else to take care of that sin. So over and over in Leviticus, we actually are seeing nothing more than kind of the trailer of Good Friday, right? This is the preview of what's going to happen on on good friday when someone outside ourselves someone external to us someone who has the purity necessary for an atoning sacrifice steps into our place and atones for atones for our sins

yeah you know true story i had somebody one time tell me um that they that obviously they didn't know the bible well um they were they're not a christian but they they're like i i could never believe in a a god who demands that you like sacrifice virgins and stuff and uh and i laughed and said well that first of all it's wrong religion uh there's no virgin sacrificing going on in the bible uh but but that's in second opinions chapter three yeah but i mean we've all seen we've all heard about these i mean that is a thing that happened in many cultures and in religions where you would like you'd you'd find the uh and it's the same the the idea here is that they take like what they saw as the best and the purest thing uh which so they take a young

virgin and then they sacrifice her to their deity or whatever uh so but i said i was like no well there is no sacrificing of virgins uh the reason for that is that uh the super offensive christian doctrine that like virgin's blood isn't really worth much uh it's uh so that's not good enough that's why we don't do it uh we don't we don't we can't go i can't sacrifice myself or the best person i know like the the the super offensive anthropology of christianity is that no man you can't sacrifice any people like people like they're not gonna they're all they're they're all not they're all defiled like they're none none of them are none of them is gonna work uh and so it's we don't we don't not sacrifice people uh because it's well one is yes we're

in the image of god and it's murder and there's all of those reasons uh but an underlining offensive reason is that like even if those reasons weren't in play that they just won't cut it yeah that that really is the that's the offensiveness of of the cross right yeah that no other human it doesn't matter how good they seem to us was able to be on the be on the cross to make that a total sacrifice right yeah that's what sets christianity apart in its view of sacrifice from all other religions i mean all other religions up until modern times every single religion offered sacrifices i mean this was it was in the ancient world for to have a religion that didn't offer sacrifices would be just unheard of that's like a religion without a god to have a

religion without sacrifice everybody sacrificed it's just a question of what they sacrificed and what they thought the sacrifice accomplished uh and the kind of the the the imperfection that's built into the the old testament sacrificial system is that all of this stuff is is okay for now but it's still it's going to have to be superseded eventually it's all i mean the whole old testament uh sacrificial worship is is fine for the time being it's okay to to kind of fill in the in in the gap for now but there's this built-in imperfection to leviticus because it's waiting for that perfection that's going to come when you you finally have the perfect priest and the perfect tabernacle and the perfect sacrifice that comes in christ but what's interesting is

this person also said well like is they're like well isn't jesus a human sacrifice and i said well he's a he's a he's a god man sacrifice uh that he that he sacrifices himself for others which is something by the way you already esteem as good or at least uh admirable uh that's why that's why memorial day is the thing that's why like like society itself recognizes that this that the self-sacrifice of other people, uh, on the, for the good of other people or for the defense or in the stead of other people is not only, uh, good as far as, uh, as far as a, um, it's, it's, it speaks to the character and the morality of the person, uh, but worth remembering, uh, and, and holding onto. And so there's all kinds of things. I just think there's all kinds

of things within within culture and society that we see that says now you already believe you already have an under you have a foundation for all of these things you have a foundation for sacrifice knowing that like good things cost somebody something you have a foundation for selfless giving unto the point of death is is commendable and worth remembering and it's it's hollowed in some sense you already have all of these things and this is this is just the the leviticus and then ultimately christ is just the concrete uh it is the it is the it is the the largest example of this i mean it's it's what all of these things are ultimately pointing to i hope this discussion has helped uh has helped people realize how

even though it's it's such an old old book it's also extremely modern because because all of the the kind of the psychological anthropological underpinnings that you see reflected the book are still the way we think and act today and just to throw one more thing in there and then i think we're out of time this whole idea of of uncleanness that is also so much a part of of leviticus that is still the way that we that we that we think and that we that we are affected psychologically today i mean people still talk about they feel dirty you know this isn't just kind of a uh a mental thing this is that's what shame does to us when we've been defiled or abused we feel dirty uh physically dirty and that is we see that same kind of

understanding of self and of others reflected in the book of leviticus 2 and the means whereby god makes us clean and not just clean but he actually goes one step further and makes us holy makes us like him so there's going to be uh we've just kind of put our toe in the water so far in leviticus but there's going to be a lot more of this to come but anyway what we're going to see is uh is the the biblical understanding of the same kind of ideas that we actually have in society today but but explained and enacted in ritual and really given by god as the means whereby he atones for us he cleanses us he makes us his own by sanctifying us yeah yeah and sorry we didn't get into too many verses i this is i suppose more of an introduction podcast based on

three verses but uh but i think uh i hope anyway we'll see people be like hey i thought this podcast was about the bible but uh but i think that all that foundation will is is necessary you know and will be helpful uh i think it's good to to lay the track as it were so we could so we could uh go more smoothly down it and so i'm sure that chad had tons of things to say and then like i started jumping in with all with basketball analogies but uh hopefully that was perfect Actually, that was a great lead-in to why Leviticus is as important as it is. It's a whole lot better than the analogy I was going to use. Well, all right.

So next week, I promise, we're not going to tell you how you already believe all these things and all that. We're going to get right in and see what exactly it is that God says and establishes about these things. All right, Chad, next week it's on, introduction complete. All right, very good. Can't wait. All right, we'll see you then. All right, thanks. © transcript Emily Beynon