40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 121 (Leviticus 17:10-18:30)

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

"The life is in the blood." Chad and Daniel spend a bunch of time discussing this crucial verse. What does it say about the physicality of redemption and atonement, the gift nature of blood itself and why does location matter? They then move on and begin discussing the rules for sexual engagement and the nature and harmfulness of sin. It's an interesting episode. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network The Sinner/Saint Devotional 

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517legacy.com slash podcast. See the whole family of podcasts. There's a little bit of everything there. Apologetics, history. There's the New Testament over there. Culture, virtue, preaching, all of it.

So if you haven't gone over there and checked out the whole host of other podcasts, find one that looks interesting and give it a shot. Chad, I am back from North Dakota from a very successful city event. It was a great time. That's what the word in the street is. It was a good thing. It was an awesome weekend. I'm sorry I missed it.

Yeah, it was a good one. You had unexpected deaths in the family. Getting better? Yeah, we're getting there. It was a tough week, but rejoice in the resurrection, the eternal life that is hers. So, yeah, it's going through the process, but we're glad to have family and friends and church around

to encourage us and glad to hear that things went well up there yeah yeah i hear i hear nothing but good nothing but good there was a there was a a lot of prayers said for the for the birds uh while we were up there too so yeah we uh we deeply appreciate it yeah well uh we are we are we did not get as far as we thought we were going to get last time we did this i seem like that's happened once or twice which is that's our custom yeah we seem to have established somewhat of a pattern in that regard we just you know it's hard to just run through some of these scriptures you gotta walk right gotta sit down in the midst of some of them yeah especially if you have me with you like you know always uh diverting off the off the trajectory with stories of leprosy phobia and

all kinds of other things always entertaining though always always entertaining yeah we're uh we're sort of in the middle of leviticus 17 i guess you could say we started talking about this chapter last time and the the significance that it has for really not not just for the rest of leviticus but for the whole what you might call the the blood theology of the rest of the scriptures. So we'll pick up there. About Leviticus 17.10, I guess, is where we could start at, although most of our focus is going to be on verse 11, because that is really the heart of this particular chapter. So the first half, just to do a brief recap, is more or less about the importance of making sure that any time an animal is ritually slaughtered that is sacrificed

that it is done in only one place it's done there at the tabernacle in front of the uh in front of the the holy place there at the altar of god so location is extremely significant for the sacrifice and that's for a couple of reasons one is because god has said that this altar is the place of his saving activity not out in the field not at your house not some other place but he's he's he's anchored his word of forgiveness and atonement to the altar so if an animal is to be sacrificed then it's not going to be sacrificed anywhere else but at this particular altar so that's one of the reasons that location is so significant. And another reason is to prevent any kind of pagan ideas, any kind of non-Israelite, non-divine ideas to begin to infiltrate the hearts and minds

of God's people, as it was common back then and really is so common today. There's sacrifices that are offered in all kinds of places to all different kinds of gods, and God wants to make sure by locating the sacrifice at his altar that all those pagan ideas are kept at bay. So that's more or less what the first half of the chapter is about. The second half is where we really get to why not just the altar, not just that location, but why the blood that is offered at that altar is so important. So I'm just going to read verse 11, because that is the one that I want to spend just a couple minutes focusing on. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood by reason of the life

that makes atonement. Now, on occasion, we'll come across one of these verses where you just want to almost savor every single word or every single phrase in it and break it apart and contemplate the weightiness, the gravity of what's being said. And this is certainly one of those verses. So just to kind of focus on the elements that are in this, starting out here, it says the life of the flesh is in the blood. So what he's saying is more or less when you see blood, you see life. so the literally in the hebrew it's the soul of the flesh but soul often means simply simply life so the soul of the life of the flesh is in the blood so in in the old testament mind life itself is tangible it's visible it's this it's this physical stuff that flows through our

veins so the life itself is connected with the blood i mean we we see this very early in the biblical witness because you remember when when cain kills abel when his blood is shed uh god talks about how the the blood of the brother is is crying from the ground so it's this idea that the blood has a voice that this living blood it continues to speak and in that case speaking about the the shedding of the shedding of blood so there is this idea that that blood is is not just a bodily fluid like it is in in our in our modern mindset but that blood is life itself blood has a voice and blood blood speaks so that's the first thing the life of the flesh is in the blood and the second is that he says i have given it to you that's i think that's

The second important thing about this verse is that blood itself is a gift. God's gift to us is the blood. That is God's gift of life is to us in the blood. So the life is in the blood, and that blood, that life, that life blood is God's gift. And then the third thing is once more the location. He's given it to you specifically, exclusively on the altar. So that's where he wants this lifeblood, which he's given to us, to be placed there on his altar where heaven and earth meet. And then the last thing I think that's most significant about this verse is that, and this is where we finally get to the reason.

He says he's given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is a blood by reason of the life that makes atonement. So it's the blood that has the life, that is life, that is God's gift, that is placed upon the altar. All of this is given and done and located for the express purpose of making atonement for us. and you see so you see here uh the reason for all the sacrifices in the old testament and then you see here also good friday built built into this verse so it was necessary if if the whole world was to be atoned for and yet there was no sufficient sacrifice there was no perfect sacrifice there was no unblemished perfectly unblemished sacrifice that could be offered, then the only option was for God himself to become flesh, for him to have

the life in the blood circulating through his veins, and for him then to shed that on a wholly different kind of altar on the cross, in order that there, God might make atonement for our souls by the blood of Christ. So there's a whole theology of sacred location and of divine gift and of the life quality of this physical stuff

and the purpose of it all that is to provide atonement. There's a whole theology that's built into this verse. So really, without this verse, there's a whole lot of things in the scriptures themselves it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense uh so if you if you want to know why why christ was crucified then go back to leviticus 17 11 because it really all traces

itself back back there yeah i mean it's interesting that you can i mean light blood is so connected with life that murder can be referred to in the bibles in the in the bible as the shedding of blood the it's a that's a that's synonymous with the saying murder yeah right so uh whoever's they do not shed blood or whoever sheds blood or whoever's blood is shed right this is um it's so connected with uh the gift of life that to to shed blood someone's blood is to uh is to steal a gift that they've been given so that that's how that's how connected they are yeah yeah yeah exactly it's i it's a very i mean i guess there's elements of this that we still think of today uh but it's it's i don't think we are as immersed in the biblical mindset regarding blood uh as much

as as much as the israelites were i mean we we understand the significance the physical significance of blood, but I really don't think that we get the theological significance of blood as much as they did. So yeah, it's pretty hard to overestimate the significance of verse 11 for the entirety of the biblical witness. There's a verse in Hebrews, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. So Hebrews itself articulates how significant and how important it is that blood be shed in order that atonement might be made. And that's because when blood is shed, life is shed. Life is poured out, so a life is given for life. Blood is shed for blood. There's this idea of a substitution that takes place when an animal is sacrificed,

and then especially when the Lamb of God himself is sacrificed. Right, well, I mean, since the wages of sin is death, the promise that God makes, the day you eat of the fruit of the tree, you will surely die, this is the first, this is the initial wages of sin is death verse. What blood represents then is that something has died. If you walk into a room and there's blood everywhere, you think there's a good chance that's that someone has expired yeah you know you're like

that's that's not supposed to be out there like that you know the israel has already experienced this and the when they had to put blood above the door you know the doorposts you know is uh to get passed over so they already have this way of connecting blood with forgiveness um but um that blood was represented uh the death of something something um so obviously you have all that this is also uh it's verses like this that make some of the things that jesus says later just utterly incomprehensible to to people i mean uh the way that jesus thins out his followers is by what sounds like to them absolutely contradicting this verse are telling them to violate this entire passage uh when when in john 6 when he says uh if you want to if you want to live forever

uh you gotta you gotta eat my flesh and drink my blood yeah and he's talking to a bunch of jews uh that thins it out man no one's they're like that's okay that that can't happen there are a number of instances where i'm surprised jesus was not uh uh assaulted with stones that's one of them you know they didn't try and kill him more than once but i am really surprised at that particular point they didn't pick up stones and stone him because yeah i mean to their ears that sounded utterly blasphemous absolutely i mean if if he says this yeah all these people are thinking this guy's a heretic even and even the disciples i mean peter says like that's a really difficult saying and i don't think uh we understand it

it's probably probably one of the few times that peter was not just really blunt no he sounds super confused yeah what he was really saying is hey you probably need to hold back on all the blood talk yeah man but but it makes sense though too because i mean so for the longest time you have the instruction that don't drink the blood the reason for this is that the life is in the blood but then you have christ come along who is sinless he says you got to drink the blood because eternal life is in the blood he doesn't contradict himself it's just that his blood is not exactly like our blood i mean it is like our blood is in the sense that it's typable it's it's physical it's blood but it's not stained by sin he didn't get that uh our our blood has uh

has something else uh in it court we have something else coursing through our veins but it's been passed to us uh by our father adam but but christ is the second adam with uh god the father as his father does not and uh and so yeah drink that blood uh there's almost like that you almost need this uh this blood transfusion yeah to inherit eternal life yeah life life transfusion or as uh or as uh rod rosenblatt likes to say that uh jesus is a universal donor that's good works for everyone yeah i'm gonna steal that i gotta use that sometime yeah one of the many great rod quotes yep universal donor man drink the blood it's good for everyone like whatever whatever type you are his

work yeah you know as much as i love the old testament uh that is that is definitely one of the ways the new testament is much superior because uh that is that is one of the gifts that we receive that the israelites could not receive yeah we uh this this tangible drinkable grace that is God's life itself. I mean, that's something no Israelite had. They can only look forward to the day which we now live in when we can actually take into our bodies life itself. I mean, that's one of the reasons at most churches I attend,

at my home congregation, I love the fact that we have the Lord's Supper every Sunday because there's not a Sunday when I'm not thirsty there's not a Sunday when I'm not full of sin what about those your sinless weeks what do you do then well those happen so infrequently

that I don't even count those I was wondering what about those weeks where you really do a good job yeah I have a lot of those you just abstain you know it's been pretty good this week I think I'm good

yeah yeah if i'm right if i if i just don't go to church if i'm if i'm sinless that week i just skip yeah stay home and revel in my righteousness yeah it's good go and thank god that i'm not like other people yeah i just stay home and intercede for all the other people that had to go right yeah yeah the prayer of a righteous man avails much chad exactly exactly sharing my sharing my righteousness with everyone yeah i mean to to go to the altar and to to receive the blood of christ to to taste and see that the lord is good and there's there's just nothing nothing like that uh that's uh that is one of the one of the greatest things about living in the new testament times is that we have this uh this tangible gift of god's life itself and the blood that he gives

Yeah, I mean, so what you have in Leviticus is that blood represents a life that has been taken. But what you have at the Lord's Supper is you have blood that is not there saying that a life has been taken, but it's saying that a life has been given, and not just given, but given for you, so that you may have life. Yeah. In the Old Testament, you have, oh, well, there's blood, somebody shed it. you know you have all the you have things like whoever whoever sheds blood then their blood will have to be shed and this sort of thing um but not so with jesus he's the one who no one took it from me i gave it and he gives life he gives he gives of he gives his blood yes he has been murdered

but he has uh volunteered for it his blood his blood is a gift so uh yeah these things actually work quite beautifully together yeah yeah so uh just kind of wrap up wrap up this discussion uh we could sort of to put this verse in new testament terms uh this 11th verse we can say something like uh for for the life of the life of god is in the blood of christ and he's given it to us on the altar of the cross to make atonement for our for our souls that's ultimately where this verse where this verse leads us amen so a lot of a lot of richness there well that's that's chapter 17 uh now on to uh a completely different subject taking a hard left here yeah i don't i was trying to think of a segue here between 17 and 18 but uh

I really, I'm having a hard time finding one. Maybe as we talk, something will come to mind. Yeah, there's a, let me back up a second. 17 could almost be viewed as sort of a theological addendum, if you will, to chapter 16, because chapter 16, if you remember, was all about the Day of Atonement, which, of course, is focused on blood. so the position of 17 right after 16 makes sense so you have the day of atonement you have all of this blood placed in different parts of the the sacred area and you say well why is blood so

significant well chapter 17 tells you why so now moving on from there to chapter 18 and actually for the next few chapters we're going to uh have a different focus so chapter 18 if you if you want to kind of summarize chapter 18 it's all about it's all about sex uh of various various kinds that are prohibited and the impact that this prohibited sex has on people on families and on the land itself. That's pretty much what the chapter is about. Chapter 19 is going to shift the focus a little bit to basically all sorts of regulations regarding how we interact with our neighbors. So you could sort of say that chapter 18 is a sixth commandment kind of chapter that is it has to deal with with with sex and fidelity and family marriage and then chapter

19 is uh is really how you how do you how do you love your neighbor how do you love your neighbor as your as yourself so kind of the whole second table of the law kind of chapter so uh jumping right in here to to chapter chapter 18 uh there are there are in the in the first oh about the first half of the chapter something like that there's a there's there's a list of all the various kinds of sexual relationships sexual acts that are prohibited especially in regard to relations to family relations so various kinds of of incest uh that are that are prohibited there and then the the second part deals with some of these same matters but it also broadens the scope uh to where the discussion of everything from homosexuality to even bestiality

as well as uh sacrifices that are made to this god called moloch which we will which we will get to in whatever that verse is, verse 21. So we'll get to that in a minute. I want to start out though with, we're talking a little bit about kind of some bigger issues that are embedded within these prohibitions. I think, I don't know if everyone would agree with this or not, but I think a distinction that we could make between the way we usually think and the way that the Bible often speaks is that we tend to think of actions in terms of right and wrong. Okay, so this is right and that is wrong. So marital fidelity is right and marital fidelity of every kind is wrong. And that, of course, that's true. I'm not spitting, but that tends to be the way I think that we kind of divide actions.

This is right. This is wrong. What the scriptures in lots of different ways focus on is not so much right or wrong as they do life and death. So this is the way of life and this is the way of death. Now, again, it is a right and wrong issue, but it's deeper than that. It's not just simply something that has to do with ethical decisions, but it has to do with how our actions impact our life itself and our life with God and our life with other people, too. I think when we think in terms of, maybe this is a way to put it, when we think in terms of right and wrong, we often think in very individualistic terms. so this action is right for me a right thing to do for me and this action is a wrong thing for me to do and we intend to stop there and think I shouldn't do

this because it's not I would not be doing a right action or I I shouldn't do this because it's a wrong action for me whereas in the biblical witness there's a much broader concern it's not just if something is right for an individual to do. The vision is that what people do impacts those around them, impacts life itself, impacts their life with God. So there's much more of this idea of a deeply interconnected web of relationships that we are always in, not by choice necessarily, but simply by the fact that we are human beings. So we're born in a relationship already because all of us are born of a mother. So the moment that we come into existence, we are in a relationship and that never

ceases. There are no isolated individuals who have no relationship whatsoever with any other human being. All of us exist in these web of relationships. And so what we do or what we refrain from doing has an impact that goes outside of our own lives. So what I do impacts other people, and what they do impacts me. So you could say that all sins are societal in that sense, because all sins in some way are going to leave my little bubble of me and impact other people. So when I talk about the difference between right and wrong, that's really what I'm getting at. When we talk about in the biblical image of life and death, we're talking about our actions having an impact that spreads either life or spreads death, not just to ourself, but in ways that can impact other people. I don't know, Dan, do you think that is on target with your reading of the biblical?

yeah well i think it's pretty tough to commit sins that only affect you at least any sins that move from your heart to your hand um so i mean there's there's obviously sins of the heart and sins of the sins of the mind um so maybe i could desire to do something but then not do it uh and and that's obviously not as bad for my neighbor to you know as if i did it um so you know you have like the words of jesus where he says uh if you have hatred for someone you're you've murdered them so in the as far as god's concerned uh these are these are the same uh as far as you're the person you were thinking about killing they're they're very different uh so if i really don't like you but i refrain from murdering you that's that's certainly better for the for the

person right and so uh but once once the sins uh and i would certainly say that the desire to do sinful you know to do things that you ought not do is sin so don't don't not don't think that it's not uh the the very fact that uh i mean luther would say the concupiscence or which is uh or the the lower appetite even the desire for sin is sin uh however these are talking about actions that we're doing here. And when sin becomes actions, it's impossible for them to just affect you. If you lie, you have affected someone else.

You cannot steal, and it only affects you. At the very least, it has to affect the person that you've stolen from. If you gossip about someone, obviously, this is not just a sin that you committed in isolation. You have damaged someone else's reputation, potentially, or whatever it is. if you uh you know you can't if you commit adultery the spider web effect of that is huge

and so they it's not you can't all sins um are against god yes um and most sins affect many many other people uh most sins i mean most of the most of the law has to do with your neighbor so uh yeah so it's very i would it's very very difficult to actually commit sins and actually do them in fact i would say it's impossible to do any to do sins that don't have uh an impact on the people around you yeah yeah i would agree fully with that and just to uh to add to it, the thing about these inner desires that we experience, whether it's lust or anger or the unwillingness to forgive or whatever it is that's going on inside us, I think for most people, and I certainly can say this for myself, it's impossible, or at least almost

impossible, there might be rare occasions when I can get away with it, but almost impossible for those desires not to affect my actions yeah well i mean even the desires affect your relationships i mean like if i i'm i am supposed to love my neighbor if i hate my neighbor even though i might not go physically assault my neighbor uh my relationship with my neighbor is obviously not what it should be it's impossible for me hating for me for for me to hating someone not to affect them yeah of course it does it's i hate them so uh yeah i'm not there by hating them i'm not loving them right yeah that's kind of what i was getting at i guess uh maybe we could say something like this that these these inner desires which maybe don't

express themselves in outward actions in the sense that if i'm angry and i and i still don't uh assault my neighbor uh chances are it's at least going to lead to what we call the sin of omission so it might not be a sin of commission i might not commit an attack against him but i certainly might omit doing works of love uh for him so yeah there's there are these inner desires that uh maybe no one ever ever sees or realizes they're there but uh being human beings you know what what happens in our hearts and minds is going to bear fruit uh and so it's there's there's this always this idea of our connection to other people being either positively or adversely affected by what's going on by what's going inside us and i think this uh this is is runs completely

contrary to to the way that we that we think in at least in in our society in western society in general we we tend we tend to think in a lot of individualized uh individualized terms so it is you know is this right or wrong for me well that's that's really not the point the point is not whether it's right or wrong for you the point is how is this going to affect your relationship with your neighbor as well as as well as with god so there is always this that's one of the unique things about the ten commandments is there every single one of them is other directed so they're not they're not really individual directed they're directed the first first ones are directed between toward god so this is how you are to believe in him use his name act toward him

and then the other ones are directed toward your neighbor this is how you are to act toward your parents and your spouse and and other other people other people around you so the concern of the law is always other directed how am i to interact toward god with god and how am i to interact with with other people uh so there's no there's no individualized sense where it's just all about me and my little personal life that I'm living, but rather it's me in a community, how I'm going to live with my neighbor and how I'm going to believe in and worship God. So we talk about individual rights and freedoms in our Western societies, but there's a much broader and deeper, and I think a much more human concern in biblical witness, and that is

how is this going to as you said earlier how is this going to have a spider web effect with the people that are around me especially with my own family and my immediate neighbors but even in in this chapter for instance how's it going to affect even the land so there's a there's a there's a even a non-human concern with how our actions affect everything all of creation that are around us so i i wanted to bring that out at the beginning because i think that's important when you read chapters like this because of what what happens a lot of times when we look at uh sections like leviticus 18 is we go through this list and say oh okay so that's wrong that's wrong that's wrong that's wrong and i'm supposed to have sex with this person or that person or

or that person or that person and and so you come away with the impression that there's nothing more than just this string of prohibitions. And when we do that, we really miss the point here. Certainly these are prohibitions, but the concern is a whole lot deeper than that. It's with preserving relationships, preserving family, and preserving the sanctity of the divine name that has been placed upon the people of God. So that's the deeper concern when you get to sections like this yeah i i think that i mean obviously there's there's text in here that can be like isolated and then used to just just beat people to death with uh and you know but they're they're in they're in a flow of thought and and so you have like there's a lot of of sexual

instruction here uh there's a lot of prohibition here and it's all and it's all together um and And so you can't, it's not good to take one thing out and decide that that's what you're going to make the thing, right? I mean, you just say it. I mean, people do that with the homosexuality verse here a ton. I mean, I can't tell you how many atheists that I've had to talk to or listen to that this is a massive tripwire for them, you know? but what this is ultimately about is what's best for your neighbor and what's best for human flourishing this is not just simply of god putting together some rules because you know this is this way he wants it and so just do it i mean this is about what's best for the people

around you and so if you take it all if you take it all together then you will hopefully keep yourself from demonizing one sin and saying like well this is the one you know um all of this uh is that all of this is stated so that that the human family uh and just humans in general even if you don't have a family can run smoothly and and can continue to exist uh yeah so and i think we're gonna have to wait for the details till next week is that there's your there's your cliffhanger right there can't wait for can't wait for next week to be the most popular episode ever yeah well hopefully we uh we're able to kind of set the lay the groundwork here for for why these things are are significant uh you know i i think a lot of times people focus upon just the laws

and the prohibitions and and forget the reason behind them the reason behind them is always that god desires what is best for marriages and families and and societies and so he yeah certain things are prohibited for that reason because his love leads him to that because he desires what is best for his for his people what ultimately is going to conform them to the life that he knows is best for us yeah what's a crazy idea that we would make sexual decisions for our neighbor it really is i mean like that's not that's counter to everything that we that we think in this in our current society we make all our sexual choices based on us exclusively and god doesn't think like that it's it's a rare thing to think uh how should i how should i be

not because of like how I how I want to be or how I desire to be um but what's the best way for me to be for those around me um I'm it's not a good idea for me to determine that um that I should go be with someone else other than my wife that's not a good it's not good uh might think it'd be good for me maybe I'd like it but the reason I shouldn't do it is because it'd be terrible for a whole lot of other people and so there's um out like it's a weird thing when you think of sexuality um as something that is uh that's your sexuality and what the decisions you make should have uh all of society in mind your your family in mind the broader society in mind and all creation in mind um it's a it's a very that's a very selfless thing and and by the way i think

an incredibly difficult thing to grapple with yeah yeah and that's it we'll grapple with it more next week we will guys you know what uh the sinner saint devotional you don't have to pre-order it sinners ain't devotional is straight up available you can go over to amazon or the 1517 uh shop and you can order it you should probably get that me and chad both wrote for that thing 60 days in the psalms get your hands on it um chad we will see you next week all right we'll See you then. Thanks.