Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of the daily Bible podcast featuring me and Well, just me. Yeah, Pastor Rod's still not feeling great, so continue to pray for him. Not sure if he's going to be there at church this morning or not. Uh, he's hopefully on the way up, but still struggling with his voice in particular. And just, uh, just pray that God will bring him back to full health, as well as his family, and that he will be back with us sooner than later. I know he's excited to get back with us. He wants to get back in the office, get back recording, back on the podcast. And so he laments not being able to be here. I'm sure, especially to, uh, to keep me on track because he does a good job with that and make sure that I stay focused on the task at hand, because you know, me, I'm, I'm prone to, to wander off into rabbit trails and talk about random things and everything. So without me here, you just never know what you're going to get. So I try to do my best to stay on point and to address the issues at hand. Speaking of, we had somebody write in and ask a good question, insightful question to us about the time period that we find between the end of the Patriarchs and Moses arrival, the 430 years of Israel being in Egypt, so to speak. I'm always hesitant to press significance on numerology in scripture. And part of that is I grew up in the timeframe and era of the Bible code. If you were familiar with that, it was a book that was put out that basically alluded to this idea that there are, codes within the Bible that are hidden, concealed within the numbers that are used in the Bible. And when we look at the numerical numbers, we can decipher what God's really trying to say to us. And that's not what this person who asked the question is implying, but it, it, it opens the door to that. And really what that is, is it's a veiled form of Gnosticism, which is. This idea that there is a secret wisdom reserved for the uber intellectual or the uber elite or the uber spiritual, uh, within the pages of the word of God. And that's what Paul was writing against in Colossians though Gnosticism wasn't really a thing at that point in time. It was a third century. Uh, concept and philosophy that emerged. So Paul is writing against the seeds of Gnosticism in Colossians chapter three, when he's saying, look, Jesus is everything that you need. You don't need the visions. And Annie warns against being puffed up about these visions and having a secret knowledge and so forth and so on. So that's why when I, I, whenever anyone's like, Hey, is there significance in the numerology here? Look, there's things in patterns for us to observe, you know, the number. 40 is significant. The number 12 is significant. Um, seven, obviously the number of God, six being the number of man. There are things that the Bible makes plain and clear to us, but when the Bible doesn't make anything plain or clear, and the person that wrote this question admitted that they said the Bible doesn't say anything specifically about the significance between the 400 years, I find it to be. Uh, thin ice for us to, to tread out there and try to make a point about, uh, things that the Bible doesn't make a clear point about. So um, is there significance in the fact that Israel was enslaved in Egypt for 400 years and then came Moses, the type of Christ, and then, uh, there were 400 years from the end of the old Testament to the arrival of Jesus. I, I, I see what you're, you're noting there, but I don't think I would press it. I think it's an interesting observation, but I would kind of leave it at that and, and move on from there. Only because again, I just, I get really uncomfortable when we ever, we want to press things that the Bible doesn't make clear to us, especially in areas of like numerology and things like that. It's been abused by so many people in the past that I think we need to say, Oh, interesting. Huh. Maybe there is something there. If there's something significant there, I think, you know, you'll have an opportunity to learn about that in eternity. Uh, but I don't think there's a major point to be made on our end. So hopefully that answers the question. He also wrote in and said, uh, we probably shouldn't be too excited about all fat is the Lord's because the next verse says that the fat belongs to the Lord and we can't have any of it. Valid point. Yeah. Fair. Um, so yeah. I get that we, we want fat, fat is good. We enjoy fat. And so we, we should want to, uh, be careful about sitting here and quoting that verse too much and saying that this is something that we want to embrace because then we would have to give up Hutchins and other good barbecue out there. None of us want to do that. So good points there. Thanks for writing in the question. If you've got questions, you can write into podcasts at compass, ntx. org again, podcast. At compass N T X dot o R G. And we would be happy to answer them on one of our upcoming episodes. All right. Speaking of good food, uh, we are jumping in and Leviticus chapters 11, 12, and 13 with chapter 11, we're dealing with just that concept, the clean and unclean animals. This is the dietary restrictions for the nation of Israel. Uh, he says right away in verse two, these are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth. So. God is going to lay out here. These are the animals that are good for you to eat. These are the animals that I'm telling you, you cannot eat. Now, why some animals and not other animals? That's a good question. And we don't have specific information given on that. Other than again, remember God is. Telling Israel, you're, you're going to worship me the way I want to be worshiped. You are going to be my people. You are a people from my possession. And so I'm going to dictate the terms here, and that's going to come all the way down into literally your kitchen. I'm going to get in your kitchen and tell you what you can cook, what you can't cook, what you can eat, what you can't eat. And so he's going to go through and say, these are the animals that are clean. These are the animals that are unclean. And so he begins in verses one through eight with the land animals. Uh, these are the animals that were, were found amongst the. The, the desert there. And then also in the promised land, here's the animals that are okay for you to eat. These are the animals that you should abstain from because they are unclean. Uh, what made the pig unclean versus the, the, the, the cow? Well, I, at the end of the day, God said, this is clean and this is unclean. That's, that's the answer there. Uh, versus nine through 12. Then we get into the aquatic animals or the, the, the animals in the water. What, what can you eat from the sea or the, the, uh, The rivers there, what do you have to abstain from what's unclean and then you get the birds in verses 13 through 23 These are the unclean birds and then beyond that you've also got the unclean insects in verses 20 through 23 there. So God is giving them strict instructions as far as this is what it's okay for you to do and in what you should eat And these are the things that you need to abstain from what you cannot eat. What are Out of bounds for you, From here, he continues to talk about what do you do when you're defiled by these animals? When you come into contact with an unclean animal, uh, how do you go about addressing that? And really, again, all of this, I want you to remember, I want you to keep in mind as you read through so much of Leviticus, it boils down to this idea of holiness, godliness. This is what God desires from us. He wants us to be holy. He wanted Israel to be holy. to him, set apart, consecrated for him. And this is culminated in verses 44 through 45. Now this is going to hopefully sound familiar to you because this is picked up even by Peter in the new Testament. And Peter applies this to the church. So this is for us too. Uh, when it's, it's written here from the Lord, he says in Leviticus 11, 44 through 45, for I am the Lord, your God, consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy for. I am holy. That's the standard. That's the reason. At the end of the day, uh, why does God want us, church, to be godly? To be holy as a church? It is because He is holy and He is, uh, the, the definition of purity and godliness and He's the standard of perfection. And he desires us to look like him and he says in verse 45 to the Israelites, look, I brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy for I am holy for us. He's going to say, look, I redeemed you from the curse of sin and I gave my son for you. Therefore you shall be holy for I am holy. And so. Leviticus 11 is we're in the midst of all of the what parts the hoof, what doesn't part the hoof, what has scales, what doesn't have scales, what is we're in all of the weeds as far as what we're allowed to eat, what we're not allowed to eat. It's important to remember that at the foundation, it was about holiness. It wasn't about, well, was this healthy for me? Was this unhealthy for me? No, that's not it. It's about what made them distinct. What made them stand out? What made people go? Hey, Israel, what's the deal? Why won't you eat these things? The answer, because God told us not to, and we are his people and he is holy. So we are called to be set apart for him. And this is how he is defined that we should be set apart. And because he's God, he gets to define that. Uh, Leviticus chapter 12, then we get into more about, uh, ceremonial. Cleanliness, and this pertains to the issue of childbirth. And so these are written to women in particular, uh, in, in what the laws were there for women after they had given birth to a baby, there were different laws for giving birth to a male child versus giving birth to a female child, but the woman was to go through a process of cleansing so that then she would be able to return to worship and return to society with the rest of the people of Israel here. Now it's important to note here. That this is not a moral defilement. Okay. This is not about a sin. And that's important for us to make clear because obviously, uh, procreation is a good thing. God has commended it. God has commanded it. Even he says, be fruitful and multiply. This is the creation mandate. So if, lest we think that somehow God is punishing. The, the female for the birth process, um, she is not being morally defiled. This is about ceremonial cleanliness. And again, this is about God saying to his people, I want you to be different. You're going to be different than I am. And so there's this built in timeframe here for her purification before she then jumps back in and rejoins the nation of Israel there and the rest of the people in the group there. But this is not that she is morally. Unclean, but ceremonially there were stipulations for worship and there were laws that applied to that for men too, as we're going to get into the fun chapters about bodily discharges and everything. Uh, but needless to say here, this was about the act of childbirth here. Chapter 13, then we get into standards for determining whether or not a person has leprosy. Again, this is the fun part of the law, where we talk about the spots and the diseases in the skin and shaving the hair. When was a person clean from leprosy? When was a person not clean from leprosy? And there was a lot that went into this, and there's going to be even more in tomorrow's episode. And so we might. Sit back and say, okay, um, so what are we, what are we supposed to do here? What do we do with this? And why is there so much about leprosy and about putting them outside the camp and everything else? And I think at the end of the day, it's because this was a nomadic people who lived in extremely close quarters. And so because of that, Uh, this was necessary for the overall wellbeing of the people. Leprosy was a contagious disease that could spread through contact. And so for Israel, they needed in order for them to be able to survive, they needed some laws in place for these things. So this was more than just ceremonial. This was for the well being of the people at large and that's a good reminder to us is that sometimes the laws that God gives Are not just there to speak to our need for being ceremonially clean or Pure but but also for our own well being our our health our overall Well being as individuals and even corporately as as a body of believers And so that's a good reminder here when we think about leprosy in chapter 13 here All right. Well, that's our DBR for today. Let me pray for us. And then we will be done with another episode. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your kindness to us. We do pray for Pastor Rod that he would recover quickly and even be, uh, as we're listening to this on Sunday, uh, be back to full strength. We would love for that. That would be great. Or at least on his way back to full strength. We thank you for the laws that you've given to us. Help us to understand them as we're getting into some deep territory here, some. Issues that are going to raise some questions. I pray that we would either seek out the answers to them through this podcast or through resources that you've given to us, like study Bibles and commentaries, and that we would be able to just appreciate even more the richness of a book like Leviticus and in one of the greatest takeaways we can walk away with is God, thank you for Jesus, because Leviticus reminds us that the law cannot justify us and that we can't be obedient by the law, but all of us. Would would fall short in that quest and instead we have a better high priest than the levitical priesthood We have the the priest after the order of melchizedek jesus himself who is Our faithful high priest and so we are so thankful for that and we pray this all in jesus name. Amen Hey, keep reading your bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the daily bible podcast. Bye y'all