Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. It is me, pastor Rod, but I'm not alone. Don't get scared. Pastor Peach is here. I just wanna jump into the question. I'm here because there's so much to talk about, so thank you. And you're not being held hostage. Can you confirm this? I am not being held hostage. Well, let me reread the question that we had yesterday and then I'll. Jump you guys into question two of this text this is from a friend in California whose coworker is a Muslim, and he writes this, he says in the middle of the podcast that he's importing New Testament theology onto the Old Testament, which is very odd to me, he says, but more importantly, he talks about understanding people's culture in colloquial language of the times, et cetera. When referencing Jesus saying, you have said so, but. Does he forget to apply those same values to Son of God? The title that Jesus so often uses, which was also a metaphor or a term of respect used at the time. Why so picky choosy about what fits their narrative. If he's gonna be honest about understanding of past people and how they presented and understood things, why is it so hard for him to be consistent? Okay, so yesterday we picked up on the first part of this. By the way, thanks for sending us in. Man, I am. Right. We love people, we love Christians most 'cause those are our people. But we also love the loss and we love that, that she is interacting with her Muslim coworker, and she's pursuing him with a love of Christ. This is commendable. But we also wanted to deal with some of the questions that, that he sent in. Yesterday we talked a little bit about the tone that we sensed in the conversation today, we're gonna talk a little more of the content. So let's go to paragraph two, where he says, more importantly, he talks about understanding people's culture and colloquial language of the time when referencing Jesus saying, you have said so, but does he forget to apply those same values to Son of God? So. Is it the same when Jesus says, you have said so, and we say, well, that's the way that they said, you bet. Or, you know, whatever we said the last time. Is it the same when we go to the term son of God? Are you being inconsistent? I think that's really the idea here you're being inconsistent with the way that you apply. The cultural lens and where you make concessions or where you're more generous to say, well, that's probably not what he means. It's not meant to be literal. He's meaning to be metaphorical. No I think those two statements are apples and oranges. When you look at Son of God, and I tried to talk about this yesterday you're dealing with a term and a phrase that to the Jewish people, and that's what's important for us to understand here. This is a book, the Bible is, that's about the his, the people of Israel. So we have to read it through the lens of the people of Israel. We have to understand the people of Israel and the Jewish people, not just Middle Eastern people in general at the time, but for the Jewish people, the term his son of God held. Extreme messianic significance to say you have said so. There's nothing laden to that other than saying this is the normal way that people would say, yes, I'm affirming what you just said, but for Jesus to embrace the term son of God, and again, contextually in the midst of everything else that he was doing with regards to his claims to deity this was a massive thing that he was doing. And so it's a hermeneutical thing. When we look at it and we look at the context and we look at everything else to go, no there's good reason for us to say son of God held weight versus, yeah, you're right. You said. So that's what it's, so if we were looking at these two terms on an island, you have said so and son of God. I think he has a point, right? Because you would say, well, yeah, you're picking this one versus that one, and I would a hundred percent agree. I think the most important thing that you're saying here is context, yes. Is king when it comes to understanding what is being meant by a certain phrase or term. For sure. Okay. That said, then, when you look at the Old Testament and it uses Son of God, you said it often conveys Messianic significance. Mm-hmm. Are we doing damage? Are we in, are we inconsistent When we look at a term like that from the Old Testament or even son of man, Daniel chapter seven, are we inconsistent? Do you see any inconsistency between using the Old Testament to inform the new or vice versa? No, because again, our conviction as Christians is that the. Old Testament the author of the Old Testament is the same author as the author of the New Testament, and that is the Spirit of God. And so as we read it, we read it, understanding what's known as progressive revelation, that God is revealing more and more about who he is and his plan for redemptive history over the course of time. And that means as we read the New Testament, that's going to help us understand more of what God was indicating in. And talking about in some of these Old Testament text. And so when we see Jesus step into things, you even referenced something a few days ago when it said that the scriptures might be fulfilled, Jesus said this Jesus is doing this on purpose, and we need to understand that and see that is part and parcel because this is one narrative. We break it down into two testaments. But this is one story from beginning to end. When he says, why are you being so picky, choosy about what fits your narrative? Yeah. How do you respond to something like that? Do you feel like there's any sense in where, oh, I could see why you think that is there a charitable way to hear that and say, come on, you're just not being fair here. Yeah. And let me go back to a conversation again that I had with a Muslim a couple weeks ago. At the end of the day, we both looked at each other and he said, you know, this is what the Quran says. And I said that, that's great, but I don't believe in the Quran. I don't believe it's authoritative. Yeah. And I said, this is what the Bible says. And he said, okay, but I don't. That's great. I don't believe what the Bible says. I don't believe it. Right. So at the end of the day, he's right in that it is our narrative. But the question is which narrative's? Right. Okay. And the law of non-contradiction would say that both of our narratives can't be right. One is right, one is wrong. And so then it's a matter of our convictions, which we would, as Christians maybe say, are our faith. Informing how we understand the scriptures and we're going to interpret the scriptures through our understanding that is guided by our faith in God, our faith, that God has revealed himself through these 66 books and that there's a continuity in them. It is the narrative. It is the narrative of Christianity, and it's the narrative that we have embraced as followers of Christ, and it's gonna be different than the narrative that he has as a Muslim because we are, we have competing truth claims. And again, I would say both of those truth claims can't be true. One's right, one's wrong. I would add to that too, that when Christians read the Bible we don't get to say, I like this verse, I want this one to be the one that we build our life upon. Right? We're not free to do that. I know some people give evidence to the contrary, and they're not good teachers, they're not good students of the word. Anyone who approaches any book, if you're gonna be honest, you're gonna say, what does the author intend to say by what they're saying? We call this method, the grammatical historical approach. Yep. Christianity. Banks on this, but we're not the only ones. A good literary reader, a good, someone who teaches English is gonna use a similar method when they approach John Steinbeck's East of Eden. They're gonna look at the grammatical, historical nature of the book and say, what is he saying by the grammar? And historically, what did it mean at that point in time? You're looking at culture and you're saying, how did he intend to be understood? We do the same thing with scripture, and so when we interpret it we're not trying to say, I like this one better. I, this is a better verse to me. I like John three 16, we're gonna, let's just build a church on that one if we're being honest. And I, and to the ex furthest extent that we can do that. Mm-hmm. I grant that we, none of us know ourselves well enough to say, I'm being perfectly objective here. Mm-hmm. But we do intend to do that. Our hardest to be honest and authentic before the text to say, what does this say? And how do I know? I'm looking at grammar, I'm looking at history, and I'm putting those two pieces together to inform my understanding of what the original author meant to the original audience. So I would say we're not being. Picky choosy friend. We are being faithful to what he's saying and we're saying, how do we best understand the text based on what's said here? And that is the art and science of hermeneutics, right? That's ex of Jesus. We're drawing information out of the text, and that's why we bank on Son of God, right? And son of man, Daniel chapter seven gives us reason to do that. Daniel seven. 13, 14. Yeah. 14, I believe. Yeah. That's what son of man's a loaded term as well, just like son of God. So we take scripture at face value and we take it authoritatively and absolutely according to it, genre. And that's why we focus on some of these things. Amen. Anything you'd add to that? No, I would say I agree. I appreciate that the explanation of some of the science of hermeneutics that you were just given too. That's a big part of what informs our, again, our narrative as well is the way that we interpret the scriptures is not unique to Christianity. To your point, that's the way everybody interprets anything that they're gonna come to. Right. Unless you wanna be. Postmodern. Right. In which case it means whatever you want it to mean. Well, before we jump into the text, would you do us a favor of praying for our friend and her friend? Yep. God, we do pray right now that you would help our sister in Christ to be a light and to be a clear evidence of somebody who loves. Well and loves the lost Well, and somebody who is convinced in her heart of her faith in Christ. We know that she is, but that you'd give her the wisdom and the words to say in these conversations. And God, we do pray for her friend, her coworker here. We pray that you would grant him. Lord, just a patience to be able to. Truly interact with the gospel, the good news that you would enable him to read the text and that you would even grant him faith in, in repentance, that you would lead him to a place of wanting to follow Jesus. Truly. Follow Jesus. The Jesus that we find in the scriptures, the Jesus that we know of in the Bible. And so God, we trust that you're able to do that, and we ask that you would, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. We love you guys. Let's jump in from there to Leviticus 24 and 25, Leviticus 24 and 25. More instructions for the tabernacle initially with the lamp stands, which again, I just love that the lampstands are there for what purpose, to give light. Because God is a God of light. And I think there's significance there as to why the lampstands are gonna be present in the tabernacle, because it reminds us that God is a God of light. The bread that's gonna be listed there is going to be 12 loaves because there's one representative from each of the tribes of Israel and his communion with each of them. Yes. I love that. Yes. So special. Yeah. Yeah. And so the 12 loaves are gonna be there on the the. Table four. The bread that he le leaves and it's prohibited. It says they shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place. And yet we're gonna find out a little bit later on in the story that. David, you're not gonna address that right now. I'll just wet the appetites. Oh, okay. Unless you feel like we need to address it right now. I, well, I, all you need to know is first Samuel 21 and Matthew 12. There it is. 'cause there's some issues here. Yep. And we're gonna have to deal with those. We'll get there. Here we go. We'll get there. Punishments for blasphemy the stoning. This is, by the way, the charge that's gonna be brought against Jesus because of his claim to being God, by the way, that's an apologetic. For why we hold to the fact that Jesus didn't indeed claim to be God, because that's why he was crucified. That's why his enemies nailed him to the cross. That's why his enemies brought him to Pilate, is because of his claim to be God. And so the charge of blasphemy resulted in death. And that's what we see in chapter 24. And then we get into a lot of, here's the, here's what justice looks like. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Whoever takes a human life by their life shall be forfeit. Whoever takes an animal's life. There's all these rules and regulations that are given here. Which we're gonna talk a little bit, well, I guess this is retroactive. We did talk on Sunday a little bit about the fact that it's okay for us to seek justice as Christians, that there are. Times where it's appropriate for us to seek justice because it's upholding what God would say is good. So just because we read Peter's saying we can't repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, or just because we read about wanting to suffer in such a way that people ask us for a reason, for the hope that's in us, doesn't mean that at the same time we can't pursue means of earthly justice, even as God here is prescribing means of earthly justice to his people. Speaking of earthly justice, a few questions come to mind that I would love for you to interact with here First. The death penalty is prescribed for blasphemy. We don't do that today, at least not to my knowledge. Are you doing this in your office? No. Okay. Okay, so the first question is, why don't we, this is clearly a moral issue. This is a moral law. You don't say bad things about the Lord, and yet we haven't put anyone to death yet. Maybe we start this Sunday. Secondly. Speaking of the death penalty. Yeah. It seems here in verses 17 to 23 that Moses talks about both. He uses the word kill but it seems like he's speaking about murder in some sense, and that he's talking about killing in another. I'd like for you to talk not only about the death penalty for blasphemy, but also the death penalty as we understand it today, whether and when there's a difference between killing and murder. Sure. Let's talk about blasphemy when we get into the New Testament. Again, Jesus is gonna say something interesting. He's gonna say, all sins may be forgiven, man, except for one. And that is the blasphemy of the Spirit, that one cannot be forgiven. But in the New Testament, there is not a continuation of the. Call for that Jesus doesn't say and take the person that blasphemes and take them out and stone them to death. Yeah. In fact, even when Jesus blasphemes, they don't turn around and stone him right away in the eyes of the Jews. They don't now they're gonna do it with Stephen later on. And so it's not completely unheard of. Right. But it seems like even by the New Testament times, they weren't doing it as regularly as they were back in the Old Testament. And then when we get into the era of the church age, we're dealing with a. A different relationship with God the name Yahweh, for example. The Jews couldn't pronounce the name Yahweh. They had to pronounce the name as Jehovah. There was a different austerity about it, and there was a different level, of accessibility. And so the idea of what was blasphemy, even the Old Testament versus what is blasphemy today because of our relationship with Christ, we have a much of different relationship with God than the Jewish people ever had. So our closeness our proximity, the forgiveness the spirit dwelling within us, I think is a lot of what even prevents and protects us as Christians from even committing blasphemy to begin with. So blasphemy is still a level 10, clearly. Here it's a level 10 sin. Yes. We would still say you should not do that. Yes. Define blasphemy as. We should understand it today clearly for them. Yeah. Back then, they all had an agreed upon understanding. Mm-hmm. They just knew when it was taking place. Mm-hmm. Today our language is often so filthy and so coarse. When are we crossing the line? Are we allowed to use. Euphemisms instead of God. So if you say, gosh, yeah. And instead of saying, oh my, whatever. Yeah. Or something like that. Is that blasphemy? Is blasphemy something technical? Yeah. Right. Have to say a certain phrase? Or is it more flexible in language? How would you talk about that? So blasphemy. The concept behind the word is to take that which is exalted and make it lowly to make it common. And that is what the problem at the heart of blasphemy is it's taking God who is to be exalted and held in an exalted state and treating him as common, treating him as something that's not God. Dragging his name through the mud, dragging his name through the mud, when it comes to our words, can we blaspheme with our words? I sure you can blaspheme with your words. It's is it saying gosh or darn in place of another word? I would go to what Jesus says, man. The heart of the issue is a heart issue. It's what's going on in your heart when you're saying these things. If the heart problem. If you're expressing the same thoughts with your heart as you are, if you use the actual profan profane words, then you probably shouldn't use the, those profane words is all cussing blasphemy? I don't think I would go so far as to say all cussing is blasphemy, but I think we can still blaspheme God with our words. I still think we can treat God who is high and exalted. We one of our distinctives, we have a high view of God. We wanna maintain a high view of God, we can speak about God in a way that demeans him. If we use his name in vain, I would say that that is a form of blasphemy. If we turn the name of God into a curse word I'd say that's a form of blasphemy and we need to be on guard against that because it is a level temp thing. Okay. When Moses here, thank you for that. When Moses here talks about killing, and he, I think he's talking about murder for sure, at least in one of these here. But he doesn't use murder. He seems to equate the terminology. Would you distinguish between killing and murder? Whe when and whether they're appropriate or different. Yeah, I think wartime is gonna be one form of killing that takes place. You've got a soldier that's going out and representing his country and fighting in a battle if he kills somebody. I wouldn't qualify that as murder within the rules of war, so to speak. If somebody comes in and breaks into your home and you kill that person in defense of your. Your family. I don't think that's murder. I think that's different. I would qualify that as killing not murder. So I do think there's a difference there. I think murder is the intentional taking of another's life without the ne, without unlawful being necessary. Un yeah. Unlawfully. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really helpful clarification because we're dealing with this even today. People who encourage the death penalty for, I think sometimes seemingly good reasons, they'll say, well, the scripture says you shall not murder. And we would say, well, hold on a second here. Let's define that. And I think you're right, unlawful taking of human life. So many complexities here. And I just wanna point you guys to the attention how Leviticus is still relevant. Yeah. We're talking about things that are really relevant for today. Yeah. And yet we're, we're reading from an ancient book. Leviticus has a lot to tell us. Thanks for indulging me on some of those things. Let's hit to chapter 25. Yeah. Chapter 25 a really cool chapter talking about the, something that Israel actually never did, and that is to observe what's known as the Sabbath year and even the year jubilee. So the Sabbath year was every six years they were to let the land rest. They weren't to farm the land, cultivate the land, and God was gonna provide enough food the year before to last three years. Why three years? Well, because if they were gonna let the land lay fallow for a year, it was probably gonna take another two years after that for them to get food, to be able to have. Produce that was gonna bear fruit for them to survive. So this is what they were commanded to do. Now, they weren't gonna do this, and the reason we know they weren't gonna do this is because during the exile they were gonna be exiled for 70 years because they were gonna be exiled for the number of Sabbath years that they had neglected. And the land was gonna lie. Re lie at rest or lie fall fallow for those times. The Sabbath year though, every seven of them, you would have what's called the Year of Jubilee. And this was meant to be a time when all of those that were enslaved or all of the property that had been exchanged was gonna be returned. They were gonna be set free or they were gonna be returned. There was exceptions to that rule, but generally speaking you were gonna return things to those who originally held the property and held the ownership of it. Part of that, I think as we get into the promised land is God wanted tribal land. Stay within tribes. He didn't want the people to lose their allotment, their inheritance in the land. And so God is gonna provide for this. But again, I don't know that we have any examples of this taking place in Israel's history. Yeah, I was gonna bring that up. There's no evidence that they've ever done this. Yeah. Which is a shame because this seems like a really cool thing. I'd love to have seen or at least written or heard about it taking place and what, how it worked out. 'cause it seems so. I don't know. Idealistic. I love that God at least set this vision for them. That doesn't seem like they've ever carried it out. Ever The year of Jubilee or the Sabbath year. Yeah. Which is a shame, a shame for them. 'cause God gives it to them for their good. He, it's a blessing that's meant to serve them, and yet they probably never did it. Yeah. What a bummer. Yeah. Later on in chapter 25, there's more on loving our neighbor loving their brother even in how they give loans that they're not supposed to exact interest, but they're supposed to fear God. How they interact with those that they hire into their service. They're not supposed to treat their employees ruthlessly, it says there in verse 43, but you shall fear the Lord. And so the fear of God was supposed to overflow into how they treated one another. And that goes back to Jesus saying, the greatest commandment is love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself. And so the. Law Leviticus is reinforcing those things for us there. Yeah. The chapter closes with something spectacular here or interesting, maybe not spectacular. It says, for it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. And you'll see a number there next to your ESV. It says slaves. Yeah. Israel was slave to God. They were his subjects, they were his servants. And I appreciate that because it doesn't change in the New Testament here. Right. We are too formerly slaves us in and now we're slaves to Christ, slaves to righteousness. So interesting language, and I know that's laden with. Connotations that we're not trying to communicate. Right, but it suffice it to say, we are, we belong to another. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Roman six uses that language. If you're wondering where does it say I'm a slave to God, Roman six does. It says we've been set free from sin in order to become slaves of God. So Mark chapter one, verses. 23 through 45. Jesus is gonna continue his ministry here. He's teaching, he is healing. There's a situation with somebody in the Sabbath. Jesus is going to cast demons out. And then Jesus is gonna end up with a long night. He's gonna be at Peter's mother-in-law's house and he's gonna be healing people that are. Coming to him because people are recognizing something significant about Jesus and he's up late into the night. He's healing all of these people. And then he gets up and I think we point this out every year, but it's so significant. He gets up early in the morning because he needs to spend time with the Father. And that's such a good reminder to us. It's an example to us that if our Savior needed that time with his father, then we need that time with the Lord as well. And so Jesus does this in the morning. Doesn't have to be in the morning whenever it is that you've got your quiet time, you've got your time for daily Bible reading prayer. Spending time there that's something that you are doing because your savior has done it too. And so if, again, if Christ needed it, we needed it as well. And this is where Jesus says to his disciples, you know what? We need to go on from here because I have been called to preach. That's why I've come out. So a lot of times we think of all the reasons why Jesus was sent. And yet here he says very explicitly that part of the reason he was sent for these three years of earthly ministry was to proclaim the good news of the gospel of the kingdom. Yeah, that section about his prayer time. I just wanna note here what you see in that little section is that Jesus gained clarity about his priority, clarity, about his mission and conviction to go forward. He knew what he was doing. He knew where he was going, all because he prayed. That convicts me all the time. Every time I read that, I'm like, oh, okay. I need to pray more. I need to pray better. Yeah. I wanna get better at this. So if you're gonna pray for your pastors, pray that we pray better. Yes. Hm, yes. And then chapter one ends here with the cleansing of a leper, which we've spent some time in Leviticus. One of the benefits, I know we're not doing the chronological plan anymore as much as we love that, but one benefit to spending time in the Old Testament and now the New Testament, is you've got some background here that I think gives some extra weight to what we see. Jesus goes to this leper, and if you'll notice, he reaches out and touches him in order to clean him. Or to heal him. And remember, we, we've read about it in Leviticus, that the lepers were not to be touched. The lepers were contagious. They were to be outcast from society. And so Jesus touches this man to heal him. He didn't have to do that. He could have spoken it. He could have done whatever he wanted to do. He could have danced a jig and the guy could have been cleansed of his leprosy. But Jesus reached out and touches him because he's compassionate and he's loving. And he shows that he's got the power over disease. Disease, doesn't have the power over him. Yeah, I like the way that one author put this. He says that Jesus has a contagious cleanliness. Hmm. Which is unlike anyone else in all human history. Obviously Jesus is unique because he is Son of God, son of man. But notice also Jesus effectively trades places with the leper. The leper, as you just read, would have to be unclean sitting outside of the city. But we see here in verse 45 that because his leper went out and told everybody about his healing, Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but he went out. In desolate places. Yeah, that's, and so Jesus cool changes places with the leper all because he touched him. Ugh. Who could not love that savior? That's a good observation. For sure. Let's pray. God, that is the question. Who could not love Christ? And we certainly wanna be those that love him and love him well. And so we pray that we would be a church that's known for our love for Jesus, and that would show up in how we live, how we read your word and how we pray. God, we wanna be a praying church. We wanna be a church that is committed to that. That doesn't just outsource our relationship with you to our reading time or our study time, or whatever it is. But we wanna be a church that communicates with you. And so help us to do that faithfully. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well guys, we hope you're having a great week. Keep you in your Bibles. It'll make it even better if you do, and we'll catch you again tomorrow for another edition in the Daily Bible Podcast. See you then. Bye.

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