40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 144 (Numbers 18:1-19:22)

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

Chad and Daniel discuss why God commands a certain sacrifice involving an unblemished red heifer. Why does the color matter? Why do the ashes matter? What does all of this have to do with sin and death? How does the new testament connect all this to Jesus and a sacramental application of His work? Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Here We Still Stand Conference Become A Supporter

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 over to 1517.org check out all the things that are going on over there under the tab podcast you know the year is coming to an end and that means two things are going on as the year draws to an end it also means that you know this would be a good time for you to support 1517 christ old fast 40 minutes the whole thing be a good time to do it if you got a year-end gift it is tax deductible and you could become a supporter or you could just do it one time one-time dump you could do that too you could do that over at 1517.org or christ so fast people

like you making everything possible or helping us get the gospel out to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible the other thing though that is happening as the year comes to an end is that january 1 the remaining here we still stand tickets which is not many the price does go up january 1 so maybe you need to be buying that as a christmas present to yourself maybe you need to be buying that for a christmas present for you and someone else but you want to do it now because you don't want the price increase you want that early chad bird special and it's only here till january 1 so get on it get on it you want to get and plus there's not there's not that there's like we're like 75 sold out so uh if the price is not uh motivation enough because maybe you just

have so much money you're like oh i don't i don't i don't bother myself with things like price increases well you should bother yourself with things like all the tickets being sold out so uh get on it uh because we want to hang out with you when we're talking about the uh the apostles creed you know chad that apostles creed's been the news lately it's been an interesting thing you know uh we had the funeral of george h oh yes yes yes the creed was uh was front and center it was i have not seen the creed get so much publicity which here's the thing it was fairly discouraging i mean so our current president did not recite the creed i think that's kind of here nor there i don't know that that matters one way or the other if you ask me

do you suspect that he knows the apostles creed i would have said no what is shocking is certain responses to it so there's actual pastors out there protestant pastors that say i wouldn't recite that creed either it's catholic now that's this is it's one thing when you know someone who's you know devotion to the church is we'll say ambiguous uh it's another thing when people in the church that are preaching are saying things like i wouldn't i'm good on you i wouldn't recite that creed either i'm like whoa dude like the apostle's creed is a like catholic little c bud and uh so i it just reinforced that it's something that maybe we need to talk about a little bit yeah absolutely i mean it's it has been around for almost all of the church's life

so it is it is kind of a big deal yeah i mean one of the one of the things i saw uh was a pastor actually say as a born-again christian i wouldn't recite it and i was like i would say that if you if you cannot recite it you may not be a christian man like the point of the apostles creed is to say like hey can you agree with these things that means you're a christian if you can't you're kind of not like it's this is the bare minimum it's the lowest hurdle right right yeah i mean this is like this is the condensation this is the summary of the faith that the church has recited well yeah i'm like every every since almost the beginning i mean you had the the rule of faith as it was called and the second century church fathers already talked about that and that's what

became the apostles creed so this is not an innovation that came about in the middle ages it's nothing that the the reformation came up with it's uh it's something that has been on the church's lips yeah just almost since the beginning so it's and you're right i mean this is the bare bones if you if you if you can't confess the creed if you can't confess this like summary of what the christian faith is all about then there's some bigger issues there well it's it's actually developed to figure out if you're a christian or not that's that's the point of it there's there's no non-heretics that can't confirm it it's i mean the reason we designed the conference this year around it is because it's it is a unifying force i mean the name of the conference this year is

here we still stand but the theme is the common faith this is the most the common faith we hold I mean, this is Lutherans and Catholics and Presbyterians and Anglicans and non-denominations. Everybody can agree with this. And I was mistaken, Chad. I was mistaken. So anyway, you should come out. It's all a big aside. You should come out and explore that with us.

Chad, enough about that. We are still trudging through the desert in the Book of Numbers. Yeah, we're still in the desert. We're getting closer, but we're not there to the promised land yet. Well, we've been there, but we had to turn back. Yeah, we are. We finished up chapter 17 last time, and I think, I've slept a few times since then, but I think that we talked a little bit about chapter 18.

But I'm going to quickly summarize what 18 is all about, and then we're going to jump into chapter 19, which is extremely interesting. It's the section where Moses talks about one of the strangest sacrifices of the Old Testament. It's the only sacrifice where the victim has to be a certain color and the ashes of that victim are used in a very specific way. So we will we will be there momentarily. So chapter 17 of Numbers, well, 16 and 17, if you recall, 16 was all about the Korah rebellion. And then 17 was where God made it abundantly clear that he had chosen the tribe of Levi, and then specifically the family of Aaron, to serve him and to serve in his tabernacle. And that was brought about by, if you remember, every leader had a staff or a rod that was placed inside the holy place.

And in the morning when these were brought out, only the staff of Aaron had sprouted and put forth these blossoms and it bore ripe almonds. And so that was God's way of making it very clear, without a doubt, that Aaron's tribe was a tribe that he had chosen. So this follows on the heels of the whole controversy around the Levites and Korah and the other rebels who were giving Moses and Aaron all kinds of trouble. So chapter 18 logically follows from that whole controversy because it's in chapter 18 that we have delineated once more that the various responsibilities of the Levites and and the priest. So you, of course, you have the tribe of Levites. When we talk about the Levites, we could mean one of two things. We could just be simply talking about those who belong to the Levitical tribe. So all male and female descendants of Levi are Levites.

But usually when the scriptures talk about the Levites, they're talking about the male Levites who are the assistants to the priest in the tabernacle and then later in the temple. So these Levites are not priests, but they are of the tribe of Levi, but they're not of the family of Aaron. And so each tribe had different families, and all those who were not of the family of Aaron, but who were in the tribe of Levi of a certain age, would serve as helpers, assistants, workers at the tabernacle. And what chapter 18 does is basically break down what we have. We've talked about this before in Leviticus as well as in Exodus, the various duties of the Levites. Remember, the Levites would carry things from location to location when they broke up the camp and they had to take down the tabernacle. The Levites were the ones who were in charge of carrying the sacred utensils of the tabernacle. They also did various other kinds of service around the tent of meeting.

And then later, later in Israel's history, when the temple was built under Solomon and it expanded in importance and significance and became really kind of the economic heart of the nation of Israel, you had even more going on. You can imagine how much, how many duties the priests and Levites had when you had literally millions of people streaming into Jerusalem for the festival of Passover and the other festivals. So they needed a lot of manpower to make sure that everything got done that needed to be done. You know, Chad, what this reminds me of is there's two times a year where I see pastors get a little complainy on social media. Only two times? Yeah, only two times. But specifically two times. Advent and during Holy Week, so leading up to Easter.

And it's because there's additional services and whatnot. There's all these things going on. And they're like, oh, man, got to preach three sermons this week. You know, this sort of thing. Talk about how busy they are. I've never liked that. You've served as a pastor. I've served as a pastor.

I read about, like, what the original pastors, the original guys did. And I'm like, these Levites, man, they're working. I mean, these guys are hauling stuff, carrying stuff, tearing stuff down, setting stuff up, just slaughtering things all day long. You know, I mean, you want to talk about a full-time gig. I mean, these guys have got a lot of duties to perform. It's a lot of physical labor. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. I mean, this is back-breaking, exhausting work. So, yeah, it kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? Yeah, we're a little spoiled. Yeah, we are. We are. Yeah, so what Chapter 18 does is break down some of those duties. And it also describes kind of something interesting because it says that one of the—it's not necessarily like an actual duty, but it's more like a purpose.

So the purpose of the priest and the purpose of the Levites is, in the language of chapter 18, to bear the guilt in connection with the sanctuary and to bear the guilt in connection with the priesthood. And what that means is that the priest and the Levites, one of their purposes was basically to be a shield between the sanctuary and the people. So if a non-Levite or a non-Aaron person, just what we today would call a layman, decided that he was going to walk into the tabernacle forecourt and bring his lamb and slaughter it and start putting its blood on the altar and offering it as a sacrifice, then taking some blood and walking into the holy place and maybe even into the holy of holies that would not have been good in fact we have a couple of occasions where things similar to that happened and the outcome was often deadly if if not deadly at least the person who did it was stricken stricken struck by leprosy on the site so one of the responsibilities one the purposes of the Levites and the priest, the Aaronic priest, was to be a shield to actually,

literally, they were guards of the sanctuary to make sure that the only people who were doing what God had given Israel to do were either the Levites or the priests themselves. So that way, they bore the guilt. They bore the responsibility for making sure that God's worship happened in the way that God had decreed it to happen. So that's also what this particular chapter talks about. But most of the material in here we've covered before in Exodus and Leviticus, so that's about all that I'm going to say about that chapter. I think if you read through it yourself, you'll hear a lot of familiar language from our earlier studies. So that's chapter 18. And I think with that, we'll just jump right into chapter 19, which, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, is a pretty fascinating chapter.

So chapter 19 in its entirety, actually, is about a sacrifice that was was very unique because this is the only sacrifice in which not only the animal was specified and not only the sex of the animal was specified, but even the color of the animal was specified. So we have a lot of sacrifices in those first few chapters of Leviticus where it can be a male or it can be a male or a female, or sometimes it has to be a female. Sometimes it can be a lamb or a goat or an ox or even a turtle dove. But this particular sacrifice has to be a heifer, and it has to be an unblemished heifer. And not only does it have to be unblemished and a heifer, but it also has to be the color red. So that is what makes this particular sacrifice unique. now this unblemished red heifer the color is significant i think and i've checked out the commentators and they largely agree with this because it's as if okay every sacrifice every

animal sacrifice is a bloody sacrifice right i mean that's that's part of what happens and the blood of course is very significant but it's as if the color of this particular heifer is chosen in order to make the sacrifice uh even bloodier i guess would be the would be the way to put it uh to to uh not only are you going to have the blood of the sacrifice but even the animal herself even her the the color of her of her hide is indicative of the the central aspect of the sacrifice and that is the the shedding of blood so you have a you have this extra bloody sacrifice if you will denoted by the color of the heifer but there's other weird things about this sacrifice as well of course most of the most of the sacrifices in fact almost all of them took place in in front

of the altar there in the in the forecourt of the tabernacle but not this one in this particular case, this unblemished red heifer is taken outside the camp, and it's outside the camp where the animal is slaughtered in front of the priest. In this particular case, it's Aaron's son Eleazar, who is the named priest. So this unblemished red heifer taken outside the camp, it's slaughtered in the presence of Eleazar the priest, and then he does kind of a strange thing. he takes some of the blood of the sacrifice, and facing the tabernacle, facing the front of the tabernacle, he sprinkles that blood kind of in the direction of the tabernacle seven times. So it's kind of like the blood, even though he's far away, he's way outside the camp. It's like the blood is

aimed at the mercy seat. It's sprinkled in that particular direction. Then after that happens, the uh the animal that's in its entirety is is burned so it's hide it's flesh it's blood i mean everything there's nothing left over everything is burned and not only that so this is this keeps getting stranger not only that but while the animal is being burned there's some ingredients that are also also added to the fire and these are are three you've got cedar wood and you've got hyssop which was a hyssop was like a i guess you could call it like a spongy plant it was used for uh almost like a paintbrush to dip into something that's what hyssop was used for instance to to dab the blood of the passover lamb onto the the lentil and the doorpost of the

israelite homes during the the 10th plague and then you add so so uh cedarwood and hyssop and what's called scarlet material uh scarlet material was was made from the uh particular worm that was was crushed up and used to make uh this scarlet uh used to put the color scarlet into into various kinds of cloth so you've got the sacrifice outside the camp you have the fire and you have all this stuff that is this added to the fire while it's being burned and then once everything is burned up you take uh all of these ashes and they keep them in this special place outside the camp and what happens why okay why was all this done what was done not to atone for like a a particular sin that that someone committed but instead this was all done in order to to cleanse

anyone who came into contact with with death so if if a if a person had a family member who died and the corpse had to be cared for or even if they were like inside a tent in which there was a dead body you know everybody wakes up in the morning and maybe you know grandma has passed away during the night and so they are by virtue of their enclosed vicinity to a corpse they are rendered richly unclean so anytime you have contact with uh with with the corpse we've talked about this before then you are deemed richly unclean so what has to happen is that you enter into a seven day period of uncleanness meaning you can't go to the tabernacle you can't offer sacrifices you can't join with the rest of israel in the worship of in the worship of god there at the at the holy place

so they the ashes of the red heifer and everything that was burned with that red heifer are kept in this clean place and then if a person becomes ritually unclean some of those ashes are mixed with water and placed upon the unclean person on day three of their uncleanness and then day seven of their uncleanness and it was as a result of these this ashy water from the sacrifice mixed with water sprinkled on the person on day three and on day seven afterward they they're clean their their their contact with death has been has been cleansed purified and they're once more able to enter into the worship of god at the at the tabernacle and they are no longer in this state of state of ritual uncleanness so that's the that's the purpose of of this

particular sacrifice that's what sets it apart from all the other sacrifices and i think the reason that the color of the heifer is significant is because the situation itself is so significant. You know, we tend to think in terms of guilt being the main issue. We've done something wrong, or we haven't done what we should have done, and so we feel guilty, and so we desire forgiveness. We want to be cleansed of our guilt. But for most of the Old Testament, and I think you could say the New Testament as well. The primary problem that humanity faces is not sin in the sense of wrongdoing, but the primary problem we face is death. And so God is not concerned merely with forgiving us, taking away our guilt, but he's mainly concerned with taking away our death

and the stain, the uncleanness that we have from death itself. And this is God's ritual detergent, as it's often called in the Old Testament, to cleanse his people of their contact with death and then to make them ready and fit to enter into his presence again. Yeah, I mean, death is, most certainly, it's the main part of the curse. I mean, the original promise is, you know, the day you eat of the fruit, you shall surely die, right? This is the main thing. Everything else that is part of the fall is just leading up to the ultimate ramification, which is death.

And Paul especially talks about it this way. Death is this enemy. Death is at enmity with God. God is not a fan of death. I mean, we see in the life of Jesus when he comes in contact with death. He's, I mean, he's at war with it. He comes to defeat death by dying, but that is the enemy. That is, I mean, so, I mean, you have sin, death, and the devil.

That's sort of the unholy trinity, right, of things that God has come to make war against, sin, death, and the devil. And death is a huge deal and something that I don't think it's a stretch to say that God hates it. God hates death. yeah he he did not he did not create life so that it would die yeah it's not like our bodies were created with an expiration date right right yeah thus thus far shall you live and no and no further and so death is is never natural even though we we speak that way in in kind of everyday everyday uh discussions about you know somebody passed away somebody died and we say well what happen and they say oh it was just old age or just you know just died a natural death as opposed to

like a car wreck or cancer or something like that and i know we all know what we mean by that but at the same time we ought to know that we're wrong because to speak of death as natural is to speak of death as if as if it's built into nature itself it's not it's a it's an enemy that's infiltrated nature and it's death is death is in fact the most unnatural thing to ever happen to a person yeah i mean all the time we'll be like you know you might hear like well circle of life chad and i'm like no circle of the fall yeah circle of the consequences of sin but it's yeah that's the only circle there is it's not circle of life though no no so death is uh death is an enemy that has invaded creation and therefore should never ever be treated as if it's

just god's way of taking care of uh taking care of of us and taking us out of this world well no death was this is the enemy that the christ has defeated and will be defeated finally and fully in the in the resurrection of the of the body on the last day but i mean this is this is what's interesting uh you know in revelation it speaks about death in ways you just aren't natural to speak about death i mean think about throwing death into the pit so this is what revelation says that death and hades uh it's a death and the grave are are cast into hell that hell what hell is really about is the destruction of the grave about the destruction of death itself the destruction of the devil that's that's that's why it's a thing yeah it's it's you know it's

personified maybe we should talk more about the grim reaper but you know we don't really talk that way anymore uh but the grim reaper is death personified yeah and that's that's when you when you cast death into the lake of fire that's a personification of of death and and the slaying of death is what we all is what we all wait for yeah it's a weird thing to think about talking about death in terms of that you could take it and then cast it like you're talking about you're you're talking about death as a person as an entity in that point i'm going to take this and i'm going to throw it over there uh that's that's a weird way to talk about death because death for us it's just something that happens but but to god it's not like that at all no absolutely not

i mean we've kind of done the same thing with death that we have with evil we kind of make evil something abstract but well for instance at the end of the lord's prayer i think a a more literal way to render the uh deliver us from evil at the lord's prayer is actually deliver us from the evil one so deliver us not just from evil as some sort of abstract thing out there but rather deliver us from the evil one so satan is a personification of evil and just like death is personified so i think that that helps to to make evil and death more tangible more concrete it's not just something kind of floating out there in the abstract but it's something that is that is real like an enemy that's that's stalking you yeah i mean if you were to say deliver us from

you know deliver us from chad bird you would know that you were talking about an individual something specific yeah well if your name wasn't chad and your name was evil and we said deliver us from evil you would know that we were talking about someone all right and so when we say deliver us from evil we're not just talking about some uh force or so or some uh something that happens it's it's a it's the name of someone that we need to be delivered from yeah and that's why for instance in the psalms if you pray through the psalms uh evil is is usually not talked about in any sort of abstract way it's it's it's actually named evil people who are doing evil evil things and so that's kind of in line with this personification of of evil yeah or or uh

you'll they'll use the phrase the wicked but we think about we think about wickedness the same way wickedness is is sort of you know that's not a person but when when when the psalms does it It talks about the fate of the wicked or the plans of the wicked, right? That's just another way of saying of the evil. Yeah, yeah. What's kind of strange about getting back to the sacrifice, what's kind of strange about it is the way that God deals with death. Yesterday, when I was—my wife was getting ready,

and I was talking to her about what we were going to discuss in the podcast, and I was describing the sacrifice of the red heifer, And she said, you know, it's kind of a strange way, isn't it, to deal with death, you know, by using the ashes of something that's dead? And I told her, actually, you've hit on the great irony. I mean, that's kind of the core message that's behind this. So how does God deal with death? By death. That's the way he deals with it.

So he takes an animal, a red heifer, unblemished red heifer, and he sacrifices this heifer, adds this other stuff to it. And then from those ashes of death, he adds water, sprinkles that ash and water on people. And in that way, by like putting death on those defiled by death, they are cleansed. and it's the uh it's it's one of these old testament uh old testament sacrifices that is just pregnant with gospel i mean the ashes of the red heifer preach beforehand the the gospel of christ because this is exactly the same way that god continues to to deal with with our defilement by death. So he, in the ultimate way, because how is death defeated? Well, death is defeated by a death. Christ buries death in his own tomb. So by the death of Christ, death itself is defeated.

And then, well, how does he, how does he apply that victory over death to us? Well, he takes himself the sacrifice, and he mixes that with water, and then he applies that to us. And in that way, we are rescued from death. So he puts himself into the water of baptism. He, the sacrifice. He, the fulfillment of the prophetic red heifer. He puts himself into the water of baptism, and that is sprinkled on us. And it's not just that we are cleansed from some sort of outward defilement, but we are cleansed from death itself. We are rescued from the bondage to sin and the bondage to death, and we're transferred into the kingdom of liberty and of life. And this is what is actually made quite explicit in the book of Hebrews. So one of the

central chapters in the book of Hebrews is chapter 9. And in that particular chapter, a lot is a lot of sacrificial language is used where he's talking about the the contrast between the old covenant and the new covenant but listen to uh listen to this see if i can i can find it here yeah uh so i'm gonna i'll start reading here at verse 11 of chapter 9 of hebrews he says when christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come he entered to the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands that is to say not of his creation and not through the blood of goats and calves but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption now here's the two key verses coming up for if the blood of goats

and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Now, notice what he does there. He's, of course, contrasting the high priest entrance into the earthly tabernacle with Christ the high priest entrance into the heavenly tabernacle. And he's saying that a high priest enters with the blood of goats and bulls, but Christ enters with his own blood and then he makes this uh this comparison with a from a lesser to a greater he says listen if if animal blood and the ashes of a heifer if that could could cleanse outward

defiled flesh then how much more will the blood of the son of god this the blood of the high priest himself who is the sacrifice and who offered himself through the eternal spirit without blemish to God. How much more will that cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? So this animal blood and the ashes of a heifer, it doesn't get inside you. It might cleanse you ritually on the outside, but it can't get inside you. But the blood of Christ does. The blood of Christ gets all the way inside you, and it cleanses you right down to your conscience itself. It cleanses you of dead works, of the works of death, the works that lead to nothing more than the grave, in order that you might be made alive in Christ and thus be able to serve and to worship God himself, who is the living God.

You can see how the author of Hebrews is using Numbers 19 and the sacrifice of the red heifer. as a foreshadowing, a gospel foreshadowing of the greater sacrifice that is to come that will work a greater and more everlasting and inward transformation because it puts the blood of Christ and the ashes of his sacrifice into our very conscience to cleanse us there. Yeah, as you talk about the way that you defeat death is through death, uh you know paul says that that everyone who is baptized into christ is baptized into his death and so in this crazy way that the way that you uh defeat death is to be crucified with christ

that you die with him that's how you obtain life through his death and that death is applied to you via paul says explicitly if you're baptized into christ you are baptized into his dying and in his dying is where death is destroyed uh and if you have shared in his dying paul continues then you will surely share in his living and his rising and his resurrection christ defeats death by dying and rising we are baptized into that same death his death is our death and if we've been given his death we're also given the guarantee of his resurrection and as you talk about uh the blood getting all the way inside of you well this is exactly the sort of thing that jesus says when he says hey eat my body drink my blood and you will live forever you'll have eternal life i'll

raise you up on the last day uh i'll cleanse you all the way down and uh and the grave won't hold you it's pretty it's pretty great so it all ends up being sacramental and being sacramental i'll The ties that we have now in baptism and the Lord's Supper are all tied to the Old Testament sacrificial system that God has not divorced himself from means. So we had sacrifices pointing forward to the person and work of Christ, and then the personal work of Christ is applied to us via the institution of new sacraments, which would be baptism in the Lord's Supper.

He says, here's how I'm going to wash you, unite you to my death, unite you to my resurrection, and here's how I'm going to get myself into you. I'm going to do it in these ways. It's not just floating out there somewhere and we don't know how this happens. you know like oh it just it just does just happens no that's not that's not how he works uh he does these he uses these tangible things the connection points are are all over the place and an author of hebrews makes them and paul makes them over and over and over again yeah i mean that's that's why it's so crucial that we're we're encouraging people to do what we're doing and that

is to to read the bible in its entirety and to read it both from the through the old testament to the new and through the new testament back to the old because they're all they're all all the scriptures are hyperlinked they're all joined one to one to another and you can't really understand the new testament without the old and you you can't really understand the fullness of the old testament without the news so they have to be read in tandem and what you were saying but it is is a great illustration of what you could call the the continuity of of god's ways of dealing with his people throughout the ages, as well as the escalation, if you will. So there's a continuity that God always works through physical means because we're physical creatures. But when you

get to Christ, there's an escalation too, where you go from the lesser to the greater, from the imperfect to the perfect, which is really what the book of Hebrews is all about. Just kind of wrap up this discussion. I want to point us to one more text that is building off Numbers 19, and that's Zechariah, the end of Zechariah 12 and the beginning of Zechariah 13. So Zechariah 12, verse 10, ends by saying that in the days of the Messiah, God is going to pour out his spirit upon the people of Jerusalem, and it says that they will look on him, look on me, whom they have pierced. Now, you know, that's quoted two different times in the New Testament, in the book of John, and then in, I think it's chapter 1 of Revelation, Zechariah is quoted

there in reference to the pierced one is the Messiah. And then Zechariah goes on to say that with the result of this death, there'll be great mourning. Mourning is for a firstborn son. So this is Israel mourning for the firstborn son, the Messiah, the one whom they have seen pierced, the one that they've looked upon. And then this leads right into chapter 13, verse 1, where it says, in that day, so the day of the Messiah, the day when he is pierced, a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity. So this word for impurity, which is nidah in the Hebrew, same word that's used in reference to the defilement that people get as a result of death,

that's going to be taken care of when a fountain opens in jerusalem when the people look upon the one they've pierced this one that they mourn for like a firstborn son and i think what zechariah is doing he's he's building off of numbers 19 and this fountain that opens up is christ himself as he becomes the one who's pierced out of his side flows blood and water and this blood and water is for is for cleansing cleansing of sin and cleansing of of impurity so you got numbers 19 zechariah builds on this and the new testament builds even more on it to give us this beautiful picture of how the ashes of the red heifer preach the the gospel of the lamb of god who finally takes away the sin of the world and takes away our death as well yeah and it turns out that

Christ's death is the end of death. Not only, obviously, for us who are brought into it, but it's the doing away with the animal sacrifice as well. No more red heifers need die.

No more sheep or goats or turtle doves. It's all done. That would all be for naught. It is the finished work and we don't even need to do things that represent it anymore. All of that's done. Amen.

Ah, man, that's it, guys. Hey, next week. Join us next week because next week will be the special Christmas episode. That's what we'll be doing next week. We'll be joined by Eric, and we're going to look at something. We won't give it away, but we're going to get a little Christmassy on the podcast. It's always fun, so we'll be doing that next week. Chad, I will see you then.

All right, see you then. Thanks. We'll see you next time.