40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 119 (Leviticus 15:1-32)

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

God has some things to say about sex in relation to idolatry. At the heart of everything is the day of atonement. What is going on in the use of two different goats? How does God send sins away? What is at the heart of forgiveness? How does vertical forgiveness result in horizontal forgiveness? Chad and Daniel discuss it all. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF North Dakota The Sinner/Saint Devotional

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Emery Price, and 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. What that means is that you can go over to 1517legacy.com slash podcast and check out all the podcasts that we are associated. Our brothers in podcasting, as it were, and all the things that you would want to put in your ears, they have them. If you want some stuff about the New Testament, well, you know we got that. If you just want some theology, if you want to hear some fellows think, they've got that if you want to hear about culture and virtue want to hear about band books anything

that you can think of history all of it uh you could they've got a podcast for it for you so you should go over to 1517legacy.com slash podcast and check it out and see if uh one or two of those interest you chad welcome back from new york yeah yeah man so yeah we were uh we were both in new york city from arkansas and texas we brought a little little uh little of the west uh with us to new york city this past week i feel like i'm still coming down like off a high from the mockingbird conference that was so awesome it was pretty it was pretty great you know what i realized about new york city i've been there a couple times now um go there i go go there a couple times a year and uh this is what i've realized the new york city has most things they got most

of the things chad that you could want all in one city but there is something that they don't have what do they not have there's something that new york city i'm sorry new york city you're not good at that is barbecue oh you don't you don't know what the heck you're doing when it comes to barbecuing meat yeah i saw some barbecue joints and i thought uh no i'll wait till i get back to texas it's my you know my my uh my buddy eric from 30 minutes in the new testament fame uh he told me straight up he came here and one of the first things he wanted to do was go to a barbecue place because he was in the south and uh and he's he said as he was eating it he's like yeah there's this doesn't exist in the city it's like they try to do it but there's just it doesn't exist

yeah yeah there's there's typically two kinds of restaurants that i don't choose to go to if i'm out of texas barbecue is one and mexican food's the other right yeah if you're if you're in new york you can get some pizza you're gonna you're gonna get some you know yeah you're gonna go to Awesome Italian food. Chinese food. Yeah. Anything under the sun. Except you got to wait on barbecue and Mexican food until you get back south.

Yeah. Sorry, New York City. Sorry. Sorry. We love you. Well, there was this barbecue. I saw this restaurant. There was this barbecue restaurant there.

And I was looking around, but they don't have a smoker anywhere. It's like this little hole in the wall at barbecue. i'm like you can't you can't run a barbecue joint like in a strip mall because you got to have a smoker to do this right like like real barbecue places that you got to go to are like a building and then there's a smaller building off to the side with smoke pouring out of it that's the only if it doesn't have that don't go there something something weird going on yeah it's not legit no yeah you know what i'm talking about oh man i know exactly yeah i mean that's the south we got smoke boiling out of all kinds of barbecue places but besides that very very small exception yeah

it was cool it was an awesome time great great presentations met a lot of great people some of which are probably listening to us right now because i know they're they're uh they're 40 events in the old testament people so thanks for hosting us over there yeah good time good time you know speaking of events by the time this releases and we will be right up on on the north dakota event minot north dakota why not go to minot if you're around the north dakota area you should probably do it you should probably come here me and chad and eric and a whole host of other people talk about the psalms we're going to do that it's also the release of uh the sinner saint devotional which is a 60-day devotional in the psalms which by the way you can pre-order

right now if you're not going to be in north dakota if you're going to be in north dakota wait you just pick it up on the release date at a massively reduced conference price but if you are not going to be able to make it out to my not you can pre-order it right now just go over to amazon search sinner saint devotional it'll pop right up and you can order it me and chad uh both wrote for that along with a whole bunch of other people so check that out and if you want to come to the the city event in minot go over to christvillefast.org uh go to the events page and you can you can get all the information all right enough with the housekeeping where we at in the in the gospel according to leviticus yeah i i'm trying to think of a little segue here between

what we're talking about and what we're trying to think of a segue between barbecued pork and yeah yeah i i really think we're just gonna have to like draw a line and then say okay we're jumping over this to a completely different subject as you'll as you'll realize here in just a second so we are uh we talked last time about a lot about uh leprosy or at least what is usually translated as leprosy. There's a whole bunch of material in Leviticus about that. I mean, you have these two long chapters, chapter 13 and chapter 14 of Leviticus are all about whatever this thing is, a skin disease on people that forms on houses too, is sort of a moldy kind of substance. And anyway, we spent quite a bit of time talking about that. So

we're not going to go back to leprosy. I know many of you are disappointed, but we're going to move on. So that was 13 and 14. That then finds us here at the beginning of chapter 15, which is another sort of strange chapter, at least strange to us. And we're just going to spend a few minutes there before we jump into the very heart of Leviticus and talk about Yom Kippur, or the Day of atonement. So we'll get to that in just a few minutes. Chapter 15 then. Chapter 15 discusses two or three different bodily situations that people find themselves in, both men and women. Men on occasion, women on a monthly basis. So the first part of the chapter starts out with talking about uh it's just really no other way than just kind of come out and say it

uh kind of bluntly with with seminal emissions uh both those that a man might have when he's having sex with a woman as well as sort of if there's a if there's a problem if there's maybe an infection uh and things are happening down there that that shouldn't that shouldn't be happening. So you got that in the first part of the chapter. So these are bodily concerns and as well as health concerns, but they're couched, they're discussed in a ritual context. And that's the first part of the chapter. The second part of the chapter shifts its attention from men to women. And the focus there is on a woman's monthly period. And again, it's not so much a health concern in that in that situation as it is a as it's set within a ritual ritual

context so the uh just to kind of simplify it uh with regard to both of these both of these situations with men and with women when things like this are happening to your body either irregularly if a man is having issues that he doesn't ordinarily have or if he has sex with his wife uh and things happen there just like they always happen then he enters into a temporary state of ritual uncleanness uh and that is that is taken care of by washing his clothes as well is by bathing his body, and after that, then he is in a state once more of ritual cleanness. And basically, what the state of ritual cleanness means in practical terms is that he is now, once he's back in that state of being clean, he is allowed to enter into the sanctuary. He's allowed

to participate in, for example, a peace offering, whereby some of the sacrifice is given back to him and he eats it in a ceremonial meal with his family and it's pretty much the same with with a woman during the days of her cycle she is considered ritually unclean and then after that she goes through the the ritual cleansing through washing her clothes washing her body and then once more she is restored to state of ritual ritual cleanness now uh i i think that part of this might this might kind of seem strange to us uh in fact it really does because this is not the way that this is not uh culturally the way that we think and act uh it seems to us just very weird that this would even be included in in the scriptures and be part of the the life of israel but i think

one thing that you have to keep in mind uh if you want to i guess you could say that a lot of this chapter has to do with with sex and what you have to keep in mind is that in this culture not in ours but in this culture a sex was often seen as a as a ritual act so in a lot of pagan cultures the uh the sex between a man and woman imitated as it were the the actions of the gods because the gods were understood to provide fertility to the earth so the the gods as it were were putting their seed in the earth and as a result of that the earth would bring forth uh whatever it was they were whatever was they were growing and so you had in in some cultures and many cultures actually at that time, you had ritual acts of sex, which were intended

not just to imitate the activity of the gods, but also to serve as a means of pleasing the gods so that they would actually provide seed for the earth. So it wasn't just imitation, but it was almost to use language that might sort of fit. It was almost sacramental for them in the sense that this was the means through which God blessed the crops and the sowing and the reaping and the harvesting and everything else that went on with agriculture. So in those pagan cultures, not only could sex happen within the sanctuary, it actually did happen. It was like part of the worship. so one of the reasons we have chapters like leviticus 15 is god's way of saying to israel you are not to be like that so you if if you're unclean ritually unclean because of sexual

intercourse then you you can't enter the sanctuary for worship until you have performed a cleansing act and this was god's way of making sure that israel understood that they are not to behave like the pagans do that uh rather than sex being acceptable in the sanctuary it was absolutely not you had to be cleansed if you had had intercourse before you came to the sanctuary so this was you can kind of see leviticus 15 as as god's way of trying to keep israel away from pagan worship practices because even though it might not seem like it was a temptation temptation to us it was a big temptation in ancient Israel because they were bordered by cultures and religions where this was exactly what went on. And Israel was always being tempted to copycat the pagan ways of the

peoples around them. And so this was one more barrier that God erected between his people and the pagan peoples in the area of worship to try and prevent them from polluting the sanctuary by doing that which god had forbidden them so that's that in a in a nutshell uh is what chapter 15 is is all about i don't know dan if you uh want to add want to add anything to that well i think maybe that i mean this is a a little bit of an aside but uh not not to the point of actually having sex be some kind of uh thing that takes place in temples or something like that well there's even a little bit of that that goes on but in uh even in modern uh religions uh like mormonism they sort of have this the same idea that procreation is sort of i mean they have

like the spirit babies kind of doctrine where all life sort of exists in heaven and God is like planting these seeds in the wombs and that kind of thing. And then you're out here doing whatever it is you're doing. You're on some kind of test, you know, test journey. But they also, they do tie those things very much into the being married in the temple and this is tied to procreation and all this kind of stuff. I know all this stuff because I tried to marry a Mormon once, and it didn't work out, mostly because I was like, yeah, I'm not getting married in your temple. And the argument was, well, then our souls won't be knit forever, and our children won't be what they need to be, and all this kind of thing.

But it's very tied to that So it is still this idea And of course we would say that Children are a gift from God Of course But it's a little bit different than saying That God is sort of Taking these things

And placing them Sex is not the It's not like one of the reasons That sex exists It is the Only reason that sex exists um which i would say is not the case but um but yeah so that it's not it's not a completely it's not like this these ideas have completely evaporated like well this is just some old pagan

stuff but you know nobody thinks like that anymore there's there's already there's there's versions of that that that still exist yeah yeah that's that's a great point these uh kind of a contemporary nature, at least of some aspects of Leviticus 15. And so this is one of those chapters that even though on the surface, it might seem to have really little, if nothing to do with us, when you view it within the broader cultural context and religious context in which we find ourselves. And who knows, in some other countries, it might even be more pronounced, this link between the sacred and sex. And so these

chapters continue to have a voice to speak to us today. Alright, so that's Leviticus 15. That was fast. That was pretty quick. Now we need like a drumroll. That's what we need at this point.

We are on the verge of something big here. This is the 16th chapter of Leviticus. is the heart and center of Leviticus. In fact, I tweeted this out this morning when I was looking through some material. I realized this, I think, for the first time. Remember, I'd known it before and forgot it. But think about this. When I say it's the heart of Leviticus, I mean that literally. So Leviticus is the third book of the Torah. There's five books

of the Torah, and so Leviticus is the center book of the Pentateuch of the Torah. Leviticus itself is comprised of 36 speeches, and this, the Day of Atonement, chapter 16, is the 18th of those 36 speeches. That means that at the very heart and center of Leviticus is the day of atonement. And since Leviticus itself is at the heart and center of the Torah, we could rightly say that the chapter that we're about to start now is really the beating heart of the Torah, the day on which uh god provides atonement for all the sins of of his people so the very the very structure tells you how important uh this chapter is then the day of atonement becomes the the beating heart of the of the jewish life going forward i mean it's it is it is the day i mean it's the day that

every everyone gathers together for i mean this is uh not something you're like oh uh i guess it's the day of atonement again huh yeah it's not it's not like that this becomes the the the central day for for the the life of a of a jewish person yeah it's kind of the holy of holies of their of their calendar uh so i mean uh we uh when you look at it in the broader biblical context you could say that this is this is the good friday of the old testament so at uh but the the structure of the Pentateuch tells us that, but not just that. Everything that happens on this day tells us how central it is to the life of God's people back then, as well as laying out very clearly through everything that happens, the blueprint for how God is going to bring about the ultimate

Day of Atonement in the death of his son. So it's pretty hard to overestimate the importance of Leviticus 16. And of course, if you're familiar with Hebrews, you know that Hebrews throughout that book first makes allusions to it, and then finally has this full-blown explanation of the of the connection between the day of atonement and the day of our of our lord's sacrifice so without further ado let's let's jump right in so i there's a lot to the kind of discuss here just as far as what what takes place so uh we'll just kind of work our way gradually through it and stop along the way and talk about some of the significance of what happens here so first of all Date-wise, this is the seventh month and the tenth day, so it's not a movable feast.

It doesn't shift around to different days. It's always the seventh month and the tenth day. It is a—oh, how would you render it? Something like the Sabbathist Sabbath or something like that, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. So it's a day of complete and utter rest for the people. Also a day on which it's the only, if I remember correctly, it's the only day in the Jewish calendar in which all the people are commanded to fast all day long. So it has a kind of a penitential character as well to it. And there's lots of things that happen on this day that don't happen on any other day.

And some of those involve the sacrifices, which we'll be looking at in a minute. so the we have uh two or three central characters in the day of atonement the the first and the primary person doing everything is aaron or whoever was high priest after aaron so this couldn't be done by just an ordinary priest it was always and only whoever the high priest was he was the only one who was permitted to perform the main parts of this ritual but there were a couple of other people that are involved, one of whom is the guy that takes the scapegoat, which we'll get to in a second, he takes the scapegoat out into the wilderness, and other people were involved in helping out with a disposal and burning of some of the sacrifices. But as far as

the main thing that happens, it was Aaron, and only Aaron. The way this day begins is by Aaron taking a ritual bath, which was not very unusual for the priests. You may remember they bathed before their ordination. Aaron bathes, and then he puts on different vestments. That, I think, is interesting. There's a switch, in fact. So most of the time, when Aaron was serving around the altar, he was wearing his full regalia. I mean, he had the whole costume on. And if you remember from our earlier discussion of that it was it was a lot it would have been these vestments these holy holy garments that he wore it would have been heavy because they had gold that were interwoven into them so there's he would have had to have somebody else help dress him and one of

the reasons he wore all this is because he was representing the king of kings to the people so he was dressed out in kingly fashion because he was the face of of yahweh he was the one who represented yahweh to the people now what's different about this day is is that aaron doesn't wear all of that he wears very simple vestments he has a linen he has these linen underwear on and a linen tunic and he's got a a belt a belt on but there's not a whole lot more any words besides this. And the reason is on this particular day, he's not so much representing God to the people, the king to the people, as he is representing the people to God. And so he dresses down for the occasion. He dresses in more of an ordinary person's sort of way in order that

he might appear for the people before the Lord. So even his dress is indicative of the ritual theology that's going on here. He is dressing to imitate the people whom he is representing in the ceremony that takes place. So you've got him, you've got him dressed like that, And you've got multiple sacrifices that take place. You've got a bull and you've got a ram. Now, these are the sin offerings. So those are two of the sacrifices that take place. But the one that we're more familiar with when we think about the Day of Atonement are two male goats.

And different things happen with each one of these. One of these is called the goat for Yahweh, and the other one is what we usually translate as the goat, as the scapegoat. I want to come, I will come back to that in just a second, but let me kind of describe to you what happens. First of all, Aaron is going to go into the Holy of Holies three different times, not just once, but three different times this day. It's the only day of the year he goes inside there, and he goes in three different times. He goes in first with a pan of coals and incense, and he burns this incense inside the Holy of Holies. And the idea is this smoke is sort of a screen for God. Of course, God is enthroned upon the mercy seat between the cherubim, and the smoke acts as sort of a screen inside there, a smoke screen, as it were, to hide the presence of Yahweh.

Then he enters with the blood of the bull, and he enters with the blood of the goat, and he sprinkles this blood, he sprinkles this blood towards the mercy seat in a couple of different places, so the blood from the sacrifice is cast directly on and directly in front of the throne of God. So this happens with the sacrificial blood, and then we have the other goat, which, as I said, is usually translated as scapegoat. Let's talk about him for a second. The particular Hebrew word that is translated as scapegoat is azazel. And there's several different ways that this has been interpreted throughout the centuries. I mean, going way back, there was discussion and debate about how we should understand this particular goat. The word scapegoat is a shortened form of escape goat, the goat that escapes. And that's based upon the Greek translation of the Hebrew from way back and what's called the Septuagint.

they were trying to think of how to translate this and so they they read that as two different hebrew words stuck together which when you separate them could be translated as the goat for escape so when we when we hear the scapegoat think escape goat that is the the goat that escapes this isn't the way that we ordinarily think of scapegoat today but originally that's what they meant by that. Now, the other main explanation of a scapegoat is actually the one that is accepted by the majority of scholarship today, and actually the one that, to me anyway, makes the most sense. So you have two different goats. You have one that's called the goat for the Lord, and you had the other one that could be called the goat for Azazel. Now, who is Azazel?

Well, the way this is explained is that this is very similar to some of the names that are associated with a demon or a devil or an evil force that is connected with the wasteland, with the wilderness and so the idea is you've got two goats one of these goats is going to be sacrificed and its blood carried into the holy place as an atonement the other goat which we're going to have aaron confessing the sins over the sins of the people over is going to be sent out into the wasteland into the wilderness where which is the haunt of whoever this azazel might be we can just think of him as the devil. So you got sins being atoned for and the blood carried into the holy place. And then you have sins confessed over the head of the goat, which are being carried

out into the wasteland, away from Israel, into no man's land as a testimony to Azazel or as a testimony to the devil that they no longer belong to Israel, that God has taken them away from Israel and sent them out into the haunt of Azazel, into the wasteland of the devil, as it were, as a witness to him that he can no longer accuse Israel of these sins because they have been sent away from Israel by the hand of the Lord. So I find that particularly appealing. I think it fits with the Hebrew. I think it fits with the theology.

And I love how it fits with the Christology because this is the way I think of it. And, Dan, you can kind of add whatever your action you might have to it. But but the way I think of it is like you've got two goats here and they both in different ways represent what Christ has done. So you've got the sacrificial goat. You have the goat that dies. You have the goat whose blood is shed and have the goat whose blood is taken into the very throne room of God and sprinkled there as an atonement for the people of Israel. But joined to that, you've got this other goat who is bearing witness that these sins that have been confessed over his head no longer belong to Israel. They've been taken away, they've been sent away, and they will no longer be the source of accusation for Israel. Both these together represent the work of Christ, this idea that we are atoned for, our sins are atoned for, and that they are sent away from us.

They've been taken away from us as a witness that the accuser no longer can hold them over our heads because they've been placed on the head of the one who bears them away. Yeah, yeah, I agree. The goat being sent away shows this picture of your sins no longer being associated with you. This is the same kind of stuff where the psalmist talks about them being as far as the east is from the west, this kind of thing, right? Which is, you know, a pretty powerful thing because what forgiveness ultimately is, true forgiveness, if somebody is forgiven, if you forgive somebody, what you should be doing is telling them when you say, I forgive you. What you're saying is that I am no longer going to treat you according to your sins or to this act that you're asking forgiveness for.

And when you extend forgiveness to someone and say, I forgive you, what you are saying is that I'm removing that from you. That's why when people ask you to forgive them, you should never tell them that it's no big deal or whatever. Like, oh, don't worry about it. Like, they're obviously worried about it. They wouldn't be asking you for forgiveness. What they're asking you to do is to not regard them according to their transgression.

and when you say i forgive you what you are doing is saying that you are not going to that that no longer that you are no longer going to associate that thing with them and that's what happens here is that all the sins are placed here and then it's sent away it's sent it's it did uh it is removed from the presence of israel so that then god no longer looks at israel according to their iniquity. I mean, we see this language like all over the prophets where it talks about that God will not treat his people according to their iniquity.

That's kind of thing that he will take it away. And so, yeah, I think that's exactly what's going on. And I think that's what's going on with, obviously, with Christ and the atonement and what the heart of the christian faith is is christ um his blood being shed and also the removal of our of our sin and that we are no longer regarded according to our sin but then uh you know it's funny chad we talked about this earlier but there's there's horizontal effects to that that um when we we see over and over and over again the the association between god's forgiveness of his people

and his people's forgiveness one of one to another these things are intrinsically tied to one another so for example in the lord's prayer we say things like forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us that what that's saying is that the forgiveness that we receive from god That all forgiveness belongs to him so that we are then able to tell other people that we also forgive them because God has forgiven us and because God has forgiven them. On the tail end, I mean, after we finish the Lord's Prayer, Jesus makes a pretty radical statement about unless you forgive one another, neither will my Father in heaven forgive you. And that's not the sort of condition of salvation, but it is about as emphatic of a necessary thing that you could possibly have. This happens over and over and over. There might be nothing that Jesus says that is more clear and says more often that one who is unforgiving will not be forgiven.

And what this tells us is that people who actually believe that God has forgiven them for the sake of Christ and only for the sake of Christ, that what that produces in them is a desire to extend that same forgiveness to other people. And so the visual of the sins, because this is how sin works, sin is not just merely against God. Sin is, if you look at the way, most of the commandments, most of the sins you commit have to do with your neighbor. There's only a few that have to do with God. Of course, all sin is against God because it's his law, but almost no sin is only against God. and so the visual that you have then of of the sins being removed and sent away not only tells you that god is no longer going to regard you to according to those sins but how you couldn't possibly regard one another according to those sins that the sins themselves are gone so i yeah

i think it's a pretty a pretty striking image and and this of course brings about what god ultimately desires for his people then and his people now that that we dwell in unity and that we love one another and of course that we don't regard one another according to the our misdeeds and our sins against one another yeah and uh and that that's completely inclusive to uh one of the one of the things that i highlight i have got i i highlight various things in my in my bibles you know especially certain words that that recur in one one context and as i'm looking here at verse 21, I've got multiple occurrences of the word all highlighted. Verse 21 says, Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, that is the scapegoat, the goat for Azazel, and confess

over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins. He shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land, and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. So you got four occurrences there in two verses of the word all. So nothing is left out. That's one of the things that is so significant about the Day of Atonement is this isn't just for select sins. This isn't just for minor sins this isn't for 99 of the sins that israel might commit what the day of atonement drives home is that everything that's been committed all of it is confessed by the high

priest as the representative of the people on the head of this goat so it's not like just you know breaking of nine of the commandments is confessed over him but not this particular other one everything is confessed over him and he then bears all of this out into the wilderness so that as I picture it, here's Israel. They're gathered around the tabernacle, and they watch this man get this goat and lead him out into the wilderness. And as you watch that goat walk away, you're watching every single one of your sins being carried away from you. Not most, not almost everything, but all of it is being borne out into the wilderness. Now, when you when you take that and you transpose it over Good Friday and you realize what was happening

at the crucifixion of Christ, that all of the sins of all of humanity of all time, no matter what they are, are being placed on his head and him taking it away, then there is no greater comfort. We cannot out-sin the grace of God. We can't find some sin tucked away somewhere that hasn't been atoned for, no matter how small, no matter how big, no matter how many times it's been repeated, no matter how much harm it's caused, no matter how just horrific it might be. It has all been placed on the head of Christ. And he then is that scapegoat who bears on himself our sins into that distant country, into that faraway place of they're no longer, no longer ours. They belong completely to, to him. Amen. And that is all the time we have. It's a good

way to end it. Guys, if this podcast is helpful to you, if you enjoy it, go ahead and go over to iTunes and rate and review and maybe give it a share on the social media. That, that stuff helps us out uh chad hopefully we'll see a bunch of people in north dakota uh hope so i'm excited about the book center saint devotional go check it out you can pre-order it it is available and chad we will see you next week all right man we'll see you then thanks © transcript Emily Beynon