40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 173 (Deuteronomy 19:1-21:9)

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

God instructs Israel to set up cities of refuge to protect people from revenge killings. Clever land stealing is prohibited and rules for witnesses in trials are set up. God has some things to say about warfare, fear, and Chaplains. And what does Israel do in the case of unsolved murders? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conference Donate

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 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that we got going over there for you to listen to. I'm sure you'll find something else you enjoy. Also, if you want to come out and hang out with Chad and myself, we're going to be out there in San Diego. There's about 40 or so tickets left to that event.

It's in October in San Diego. We already got the earthquakes out of the way. I was part of that, so you don't have to worry about that. And yeah, come hang out with us. We're going to be talking about a bunch of things pertaining to the Apostles' Creed, the common faith. As a podcast listener, you can get $25 off your ticket by typing in the promo code PNET19 in the promo code box.

Come hang out with me and Chad and a whole bunch of other people. We'd love to see you there. Also, we've got some good stuff going on, namely that we have a new site coming out. Now, 1517 has a new site coming out now. You might be saying, oh, cool, 1517 has a new site. And that would be cool, just them having a new site, a nice, big, beautiful new site. But here's the thing that's cool about it.

It's actually sites with insights. So CHF is moving all their stuff over to this new site, so there will be a section that is all Christ Hold Fast stuff. Don't worry, ChristSoldFast.org will still get you there and all that. But all of our stuff is moving there. Now, that would be pretty cool, right? I mean, it is cool. Also, all of Chad Bird's stuff is moving there, and he will have his section.

So what this means is you have one site with all the 1517 stuff, all the ChristSoldFast stuff, all the Chad Bird stuff, and it becomes all searchable as one giant library. And so, you know, maybe you type in Lord's Supper or maybe you type in Exodus 5 in that search box. Well, guess what? Everything that Chad has, that Christ Will Fast has, that 1517 has in the way of articles, podcasts, videos, conference talks, all of it comes up. And you end up with this huge, you know, encyclopedia of theological stuff. It's going to be great.

I mean, I've seen it. I've been working on it for the last month, and it is pretty fantastic. So, you know, maybe on Tuesday, see if it happened. Go over there, check it out, and I think you're going to like it. I know Chad has seen it, and it's pretty great. Yeah, I've been snooping around in it. I got one of the secret links to check me there. So it's super impressive.

yeah i mean i've uh i've been delving into uh all of the various uh parts of the site and it's it's it's really a phenomenal resource and i'm and personally i'm very very excited about having all my stuff moved over there and and the same with my side if i mean if you if you happen to be someone who goes to chadbird.com that's still going to get you there yeah so it's but it's all all the material all my articles are have been moved over to this new site so uh in the future We're all going to be one big, happy family, one big, happy resource right there at 1570. Yeah, I mean, and the goal is not to diminish any part of it or anything like that, but the goal is to put everything in one place so that searchability of stuff that you're looking for,

you won't have to bounce around from site to site. It just becomes this huge, massive resource hub, which is what we really wanted to build. And so hopefully it'll serve people really well. Well, Chad, we are in Deuteronomy still. We are. We are. We're starting 19 today. So for anyone out there who is looking for a safe haven, Deuteronomy 19 is what you need to read. So it tells you where you need to go if you're in trouble.

This is similar to the next to last chapter in Numbers, which we didn't cover that terribly long ago, Numbers chapter 35. So a lot of this material, if you're a long-time listener, then some of this or all of this material is going to be relatively fresh in your mind. So we're going to move over this pretty quickly, just kind of sum up exactly what's going on here and the intent behind it. So basically, there's sort of a growth of understanding or teaching about this as you read through the Torah.

For instance, when you get to Exodus 21, verses 13 and 14, that's the first time where there's a distinction made between intentional and unintentional killing. Because, of course, accidents happen. One of those potential accidents, it's actually stated here in Deuteronomy 19, as you know, say two buddies go out to chop some firewood or cut down some trees, and they're using an axe. and one of them begins to swing the axe and the axe head flies off and hits his buddy in the head and he ends up dying. Well, what's this guy going to do? Well, it's different in their culture than it would be in our culture. I mean, in our culture, there'd be an investigation and if it looked like an accident, well, nothing happens. The guy's free. There's no penalty imposed upon him.

But in this particular culture, it was still very prominent for a member of a family who had another family member killed for him to seek vengeance. So this kind of kinship killing was very, very prominent, not only in the Israelite culture, but a lot of cultures of that day. So if this happened back then, then chances are the guy who'd accidentally killed his friend would be his life, his own life would be in danger. So what's he going to do? Well, the scriptures, while not endorsing this kind of revenge, certainly understood its reality. And as with a lot of other situations in the Old Testament, rather than simply forbidding this, it tried to limit it. So the way that it limited this is by establishing these cities of refuge, safe havens, to which a person who had killed someone else accidentally could flee so that he would not be cut down by the brother or the child or another relative of the deceased. So we first hear about this distinction between unintentional and intentional killing in the book of Exodus.

And then, as I said earlier, in that next to last chapter of Numbers, it's spelled out in more detail as to exactly what's to happen. So there's six cities. They're set up three in the land of Israel itself and then three others in the Transjordan. So in the area east, east of the Jordan, where, of course, two and a half of the tribes had settled. The reason they had a total of six and spread out is so that if an accident like this did happen, a guy wouldn't have to run 150 miles to get to the nearest city and risk this revenge seeker catching up with him. So they spread him out. They tried to make him relatively proximate to where the people were living. So he would go there, and if indeed he was innocent, he was fine.

And as the book of Numbers says, he would he would safely remain in that city of refuge until the death of the high priest when he could leave and would be safe. Now, there, of course, you could have situations where an actual murderer fled to one of these cities. In that particular case, there would be a trial. And if he was found guilty, then he would actually be taken from that city of refuge because he deserved to be punished. and he would be he would be punished so they had this they had this system set up to where if a person was innocent and was found innocent and fled to one of these cities he was okay but if he was guilty it didn't matter if he fled to one of the cities of refuge he could be taken he could be taken from there so the guilt uh was to be investigated the guilt of the innocence was

to be investigated and a verdict rendered and the person was dealt with according to according to that either they stayed in the city of refuge or where they were they were taken from that so we have uh we have these cities they're just i'll throw this out there as just another one of these one of these uh places where one sought refuge we do have instances in the old testament at least two that i know of where someone sought refuge at the very altar if you remember those stories so there was a there are two incidents right after solomon became became king in which people who thought their life was in danger actually ran to the altar of God and grabbed a hold of one of the four horns which were on the corners of the altar and claimed refuge there.

And so this was another way in the Old Testament in which a person could claim a safe haven. Now, one of those people was spared, and one of those people was actually struck down right there at the altar because he himself was guilty. So that was not like a perfect place of refuge because guilt could not even protect you there. So anyway, we have these examples in the Old Testament of these cities and other places where a person could flee for refuge. And God set these up in order that the innocent could be protected because of the cultural prevalence at that time of those who sought revenge. So that's a quick run through the first 13 verses. The rest of the chapter, 14 through 21, deals with a couple

different issues. Verse 14 is a single issue. It basically says that you shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark. Of course, this is before the advent of fences and other ways in which we demarcate our property. So it was coming back then for various stones to be used to mark the boundaries of one's territory. And of course, stones can be moved. So there were cases where someone would try and move stones so as to expand their own land. And this is a prohibition against that because the land that you inherited from your father and he from his father and he from his father, all of this was to be preserved in the family because, of course, the land was sacred. The land was God's gift, and this gift was to be taken care of, was to be used properly,

and was to be passed down from generation to generation. That's why, if you remember the story of Naboth and the protection of his vineyard, that's why he wouldn't sell his vineyard to the king, because it was part of his family heritage. You know, it sounds like neither Moses nor God thinks that these people are going to be sinless. Yeah, he knows. He knows what's in their heart, as Moses has himself said very often. And so we have all these laws that govern particular aspects of the community life and the individual life because he knows that there's going to be situations where people kill and steal and move boundary markers and do all other sorts of things against the law. And so there's no ideal here of sort of a perfect society

that's being established in israel yeah the uh these are two kind of pretty pretty shady things i mean one is killing a guy before trial which is pretty terrible uh and then the other is like stealing his land in a very sneaky way where you're like i'm just gonna move your your property back some see it see if i and i may imagine if uh there was there was a video a long time ago where these guys who were like all about their their county would move the sign where the county started they would move it uh they moved it two feet every week they would uproot it and move it two feet and and nobody that's a lot over the course of a year yeah and nobody found this out for like a long time and next thing you knew they had expanded the the county line like a half a

mile you know as before they got caught they you could do something like that where you're like i'm gonna do every day i'm just gonna move those stones one foot right right and you could you could totally see somebody doing that yeah you know they're doing the calculation in their mind let's see how far do i have to move it every week to gain a few acres over the course of a decade yes yes i mean because you can't move it you can't all of a sudden just give yourself five more acres but if you just move it a couple feet every day you know there you go so you gotta have some laws in place man because i mean that's exactly something a sinner would come up with yeah yeah i mean this is one more instance among the countless instances of the low

anthropology of the old testament exactly yeah this this idea that you sometimes hear that people are just basically good uh yeah try looking for that in the scriptures it's uh try looking for that anywhere but certainly try looking back in the scriptures and you you won't find it you'll find the exact opposite. And implicit in the implementation of all of these laws is the awareness of low anthropology, that people are expected to sin. People are expected to act in selfish ways, in deceitful ways, in very malicious ways. And so you have these laws set up in order to act as somewhat of a guard against that particular activity. And as often happened, the very implementation of the laws actually worked as an incentive

for those who wanted to oppose the laws to actually engage in the very activities that were prohibited. So the law had that double effect. I mean, it did prohibit some of these, but it also actually worked because of the center's opposition to the law it actually worked as sort of an incentive for people to break the laws all right so that's 14 15 through uh 21 is talking about uh the uh the witness that one gives in court so when we hear the commandment you shall not bear false false testimony against your neighbor i don't think we actually most at least in my experience we don't usually think of that in in

terms strictly in terms of testifying in court but that's part of what's being what what's being uh commanded there that when you when you give testimony when you bear witness in in some kind of trial and in a courtroom that you speak the truth and so it says here that if you have something going on like that to give a trial if someone is uh being accused of something then you can't have just a single witness because of course here we go more more low anthropology because you know people people will lie people will do something will tell a lie in order to get back at someone else. And so if you have just a single witness, what if this witness is testifying against someone and he has something against this person? He's making something up

or he's twisting the facts in order that he might seek revenge by getting this guy found guilty of whatever the crime might be. So you have to have a testimony of two or three witnesses if someone is going to be confirmed as either guilty or innocent. But then, of course, you have the instances in 16 and following where you do have malicious witnesses that rise up and accuse someone of wrongdoing, but they accuse them for false reasons. And in that particular case, it says that whatever the false witness accuses the innocent of, then the punishment that he desired to inflict upon this person with whom he was at odds should actually be inflicted upon him and so that's when we have once more this uh lex talionis brought up about you know

eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth and a hand for hand and a foot for foot so this this kind of reciprocal justice that goes on here yeah which yeah you see this sometimes uh you know in our culture where someone will falsely accuse somebody of something and then there's this huge ordeal just like ruins this person's life for a while um and it turns out that this thing was false uh and but there's there is actually an ongoing debate uh which they didn't have in israel apparently because they had the law that said what exactly what happened if you did that sort of thing uh but even in our culture it actually is a debate i'm like well what happens then like what's what is the what is the punishment because you want to

as much as possible de-incentivize that. And one of the things you'll see come up as an option, now we don't have this law, but people will actually say this, like, well, if you accuse someone of, you know, whatever it is, stealing something

from you, and not that you're just mistaken, but you're out to get them and you're lying, then whatever the punishment would have been if they had been found guilty is what you get well that's going to give you pause before you say this person did this thing or this person did that other thing or exaggerating what they did or whatever it will it will make it well do you really want to do that because if it finds if it turns out that

you're lying on purpose that's what you're going to get well from the biblical perspective of course that mean that that's that's explicitly what's being talked about here so from the biblical perspective words matter as much as deeds right i think that's kind of the point here is that if you if you use false words to accuse someone then you're basically guilty of the very deed of which you falsely accuse them so we have we have this uh this interconnection here between words and deeds so that i mean and you have this of course throughout the scriptures about the necessity of of speaking the truth of of not in any way being deceitful or or lying that that that your words need to be words of words of truth because

words and well in fact the the hebrew of this actually kind of supports that the word for the hebrew word for word davar is is also the word for deed so you can see even in that word The Hebrew word davar, I mean, so it's like both. It means word, and it means action, because these two are so closely interconnected. I mean, this goes all the way back to God speaking everything into existence. So when God speaks, he acts. His very speech brings about action. And then this is reflected also in the human life, because our words and our deeds are inextricably connected to each other.

Yeah, Luther says something really, really interesting about, in reference to actually the commandment not to bear false witness, and he says the reason why it's so terrible is that it is, in fact, murder. And he says, and in some ways worse than murder, because you murder someone or you murder their reputation, and they have to go on living. Yeah, and the Psalms back up that particular idea because it often will compare the lips or the tongue to a sword.

and we all know this i mean we have all either experienced this happening to ourselves or we've experienced actually acting in an evil way and doing this doing this to other people but we all know what words can do and we all know that that words can can often have much more long-lasting negative impact on someone than than a deed you know i can recover if somebody beats me up but if someone completely trashes my reputation then there's a good chance that i actually might not be able to fully recover from that so because words just have this ongoing life of their own and and as as luther says i think it's in the large catechism we're all much more prone to believe evil about our neighbor than good so you know if someone at the at the office is talking trash

about somebody gossip about somebody then our ears perk up it's it's human nature if they're giving them a compliment we easily just ignore it but if they're if they're bringing up some kind of accusation then we're just our our ears are like prone to pick that up and prone not only to pick it up but to believe it as well so yeah that's why there's such caution about our language yeah for sure i mean if somebody's if you walk into a conversation and you and it starts like this you know who's a really great guy i mean you might stick around and it'll tell you and you're like, oh. But if you walk into a congregation and you're like, you know who's a real piece

of trash? Do you tell? Yeah. Because, and the reason that is, is because you're like, I would like to know who's a piece of trash, because I would love to feel better about me. Yeah. And I think that's what most of this goes back to. It's this kind of, this comparative righteousness

that we engage in. If I can find somebody that is supposedly worse than I am, then I can feel better about myself. Absolutely. When I do something wrong, when I see that yeah i'm i'm not i'm not the best person i can always say yeah but you know look at these other people you know at least i didn't like sacrifice my child to malek or something there's always somebody we could find that's worse than ourselves

so that's a chapter 19 uh chapter 20 then moving on we're we're switching subjects here and this is looking forward to what happens when Israel enters in the promised land and not only when they enter and conquer the promised land but in forthcoming battles or wars in which they will be they will be engaged so it starts out this way verse one when you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you do not be afraid of them for the Lord your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt is with you. So it's kind of a general statement, and we've heard things like this many other times, particularly in the context of Israel approaching the boundary of the Promised Land.

We know that there were giants in the land. We know that they're going to be facing some pretty superior forces, not only numerically, but also just in their military advantage, because they have superior weaponry. And so the constant refrain is basically, well, don't be afraid. So this ultimately is not your battle. All you are are the instruments of God to bring about this victory. So just like at the Red Sea, God is one who fights for you. He fought against the Egyptians. He put their horses and chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea. So also, he's going to do the same for you here. so the crossing the red sea and the defeat of the pharaoh and his his army there was a paradigm for how god was going to continue to bring about victory for for the israelites and i mean we

we know from the book of joshua that this is exactly what happened to israel they they did not themselves have horses and chariots so they weren't going to battle with these you know the ancient equivalent of tanks they were just they were more or less an armed militia armed with their spears and their slings and their and their bows and arrows i mean they had the weapons but they didn't have horses and chariots and so we know we know for instance in in joshua i can't think of the chapter but in one like joshua 11 maybe that when they go out to battle they see this army that's it says it's as vast as the sand on the seashore and they have horses and chariots And so you can imagine the Israelites looking at this and shaking in their boots because they're obviously outnumbered and outgunned.

And God knows this is going to happen. And so he says, don't fear, don't be afraid, because this ultimately isn't your battle. It's mine. I'm going to be the one who fights for you and brings about victory, just like I've proven time and time again that I will do. So that's the way the chapter starts out. Then he goes on to talk about what we would refer to today as basically a military chaplain. So we have chaplains, of course, that attend our soldiers when they're either going to war or when they're just training. The chaplains are with them to be their pastors.

So in this particular case, it says that there's a priest who's going to go out to battle with these Israelite soldiers. and here's what he used to say here's like a summary of the sermon that he's going to preach to the troops that day verses three and four hear oh israel you are approaching the battle against your enemies today don't be faint-hearted don't be afraid or panic or tremble before them for the lord your god is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you So they're getting ready for battle, and the priest goes out there as the mouthpiece of God to give them this encouragement and to once more impress upon them the promise that God is the one who is their true general, the one who fights for them. And then the discussion shifts a little bit, and we have three situations where soldiers might be excused from duty. So the first of these is that if a guy has just built a house and he hadn't dedicated it yet, then he's free from military service.

He can go back to his house and live there for a while before he serves his duty. It says in verse six, you know, there might be a man who's planted a vineyard and he hasn't begun to use its fruit. It says, well, let him depart and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man begin to use its fruit. Or, verse 7, suppose there's a man who's engaged, but he hasn't married his fiancée yet. Well, let him depart and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man marry her. So we have these three situations where a soldier could be excused from duty. If he's built a house but hasn't dedicated it, if he's planted a vineyard but not enjoyed its fruits, If he's engaged, but he hasn't married his fiance yet.

So there was this idea that soldiers might have external situations back at home that would give them a legitimate excuse for opting out of military service for a time. So those are those three situations. But verse 8 says there might be another situation too. And this one isn't as complimentary. This one isn't external, but internal. It says, who is the man that is afraid and faint-hearted? Let him depart and return to his house so that he might not make his brother's hearts melt like his heart.

So this particular, I wonder how many guys left for this excuse. I mean, this isn't an excuse that you want to use when you get back home. Why didn't you fight? Oh, I was scared. I was weak-hearted. I was a coward, and so I decided to come on home. But anyway, it's put forth there anyway for those who might be that way because the motivation here is that they don't want troops that are scared to death and obviously scared to death that are going to demoralize the other soldiers. And so they'd rather not even have them there than have them fighting alongside the other troops.

Yeah, that's a weird thing if you think about warfare anytime after this where there's no provision made for like if you want dessert, you can dessert. That's not a thing anywhere else. Yeah. If you want to go AWOL, it's fine. You want to dessert, you want to go back home. It doesn't work that way. But I think it kind of underneath this is an affirmation

that even if you have soldiers returning home for those three legitimate reasons or soldiers returning home because they're scared, that everything is still going to be fine because ultimately God is the one who is engaging in the battle for them. So there's sort of an implicit affirmation that the victory is the Lord's and it doesn't matter if you got a bunch of guys returning home for these other reasons, everything is still going to be okay, because ultimately, if God is on your side, then you've got a majority. You outnumber everyone else, because you have the Lord of heaven and earth who is going to be fighting the battle for you. Then he goes on to describe a situation where if Israel approaches

a city and offers terms of peace to that city, and the people agree to that, then they are not to attack and destroy the city. But if they do not agree to the terms of peace, then they are actually to be laid siege to and eventually, of course, defeated. Now, this is describing a situation outside the borders of the promised land. So this is looking forward to a time when maybe Israel is doing battle outside of its territory for some reason. The same terms of peace do not apply to the Canaanite cities within the borders of the promised land. As we've heard many times and as we'll see in the book of joshua they were offered no terms of peace uh there was there was there were no prisoners of war instead there was a total total destruction

because of the way in which these inhabitants of the land had polluted the land and saved up for themselves the wrath of god which was poured out upon them by joshua and his and his soldiers so that's uh that's chapter 20 we're we're just like we're moving along man we're just we're killing the these chapters i'm suddenly just like pause for a second and take this in we just covered two chapters and we're not even through with the podcast i think we've done that before but we've not done it in a while it's been a while it has been a while all right well lest we uh lest we slow down too much let's just keep moving we got a few more minutes left so chapter 21 chapter 21 introduces something we uh that is new material a lot of this we in one

way or another have covered before but this is this is another another kind of situation kind of kind of unique so the situation is this somebody finds a corpse out in the open out in the open country and this person is obviously not like died of a heart attack they've been they've been killed by someone so what what are you supposed to do well it says that first the first thing they do is they measure the distance from where the body is located to the nearest to the nearest town so they're trying to establish okay what what's the the highest likelihood of the town that this person might be associated with all right so they they figure that out and then they gather the elders of that city and they take a heifer who belongs to someone in that city a heifer that hasn't

yet been so it's a young it's a young young heifer she hasn't been worked never a yoke has never been placed upon her so she's never been used for what a heifer would ordinarily be used for so the elders of that city that's closest to the corpse they take that heifer down to a valley that has water running in it this is all very very specific and they break the heifer's neck in the valley so elders in the near city get the heifer that's never been worked bring it down to this valley with water and they don't sacrifice this is not like i don't even know if we should call this a sacrifice because this is not the typical way in which sacrifice would be uh would be conducted. In a sacrifice, you cut the animal's neck. There's bloodshed. This is the

kind of death that would be inflicted upon the firstborn of animals that were considered to be unclean. So this is not your typical kind of sacrificial death. So they break the heifer's neck. And then the priest there, the sons of Levi, and they gather together with the elders of the city and they washed their hands over the neck of the heifer that was broken whose neck was broken in the valley so you got you got ritual going on here and now you're about to have speech going on as well so they have this they had this heifer near the water neck is broken they wash their hands over it and here's what they say verses seven through nine our hands have not shed this blood nor did our eyes see it forgive your people israel whom you have redeemed oh lord and do not

place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people israel so that's the end of the prayer and then it goes on and the blood guiltiness shall be forgiven them so you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst when you do what is right in the eyes of the lord so as i understand this particular, these particular nine verses, here's what's going on. Blood has obviously been shed, and any time that you have blood shed, it pollutes the land. So this is a deep-seated Old Testament idea, that innocent blood that is shed pollutes the land. And as we heard all the way back in Genesis chapter 4, that blood has a voice, that blood cries out to God, and that voice of blood is heard by God.

So blood has been shed, but they don't know who shed the blood. So something has to be done. So presumably then the heifer is the one who suffers what the perpetrator should have suffered. A death does take place, but it's not the death of the actual criminal, but it's the death of this victim, of the heifer instead. And the reason that the priests and the elders wash their hands over it is a ritual declaration of their their own innocence that they don't know who did this

they didn't do it and they don't have any idea who did it so they themselves are innocent this is the way of ritually confessing this before god and then they have this prayer in which they confess that they don't know who shed the blood and they but they still interestingly they still pray that god would forgive his people israel whom he has redeemed and the reason is Because unlike our individualistic society today in Israel, things were understood to be communal. And so if there's a death, then that affects the entire community. If blood has been shed onto the land of Israel, that affects the whole people of the land and something has to be done about it. And this is the way that an unsolved crime, an unsolved murder was dealt with through the prayer, through the death of the heifer.

and through the washing of the hands of the elders over this this particular animal so i mean if anything else what this what this story oppresses upon me is that in one way or another sin has to be dealt with so you can't just simply uh you know file this away as a cold case and say well we don't know who did it something has to be done and that something is a death and a confession and a prayer for God to forgive. If only there was, you know, throughout the scope of Scripture, there was another instance where someone dies for sins that he didn't commit. It'd be easy to say, like, man, God is super violent.

But we see all that violence culminate at the cross, and you also see that God is in no way in favor of blood being shed. Now, there is a lot of bloodshed in the Bible, but it all has to do with sin, because this is how God deals with sin. But ultimately, God deals with sin at the cross. And there at the cross, you don't just have Christ dying for the unsolved murder that nobody knows who did it. You have Christ dying for people who he knows are guilty.

And so you still have this substitution thing going on. And it's even in the Old Testament, where it's like, here's the sin, something has to be done about this sin. And in this case, you have something completely unaffiliated with the sin, paying the penalty for it, which, you know, pretty obviously points forward to a substitution. Yeah, I mean, that is one of the most important theological elements of what we usually call the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, is that there is a substitutionary death, right? I mean, there's a lot of theology that's embedded in the sacrificial liturgy of Israel, but chief among those is the fact that one dies for the sake of someone else. There is a substitute. We first encountered this in Genesis 22, where the ram caught in the thicket dies in the stead of Isaac. So there's a death that one dies to take the place of another.

And that's exactly what is scattered throughout the sacrificial system of Israel. And it's what's going on here, too. There's a death that takes place as a substitute for someone else. And all of this is the Old Testament's way of preparing us for the crucifixion in which one dies for the sake not just of another person, but for the sake of the entire, entire world. He is humanity reduced down to one, the innocent victim who takes on the punishment for the guilty. Amen. Once more, yeah, once more we encounter some rich Christology here in the Old Testament. Absolutely.

And we covered two and a half chapters. Two and a half chapters, man. That is it. That's a good place to end it, too. Guys, if you have enjoyed the podcast and it's been helpful to you, you can become a supporter of it by going over to any of the sites. and even that new site starting on Tuesday. Go over to the Donate page, and you can become a supporter. Thank you so much to those of you who do that.

You make all this stuff possible. Chad, we'll see you next week. See you then. We'll be right back.