Hey everybody, welcome back to friday's edition of the daily bible podcast. Hey. Hey, we are back and We are almost at the end of leviticus not quite there yet, but we are approaching the conclusion of What will be genesis exodus leviticus actually our fourth book because remember we got job in there as well So good job everybody. Oh, yeah good for you. Congratulations. Yeah Yeah, and then we get to turn the page to numbers in the not too distant future which You If you're wondering what numbers is about, it's about numbers, especially right at, off the, the outset. It is, yep. Yeah, Friday weekends coming up and we were just talking about this because both of us have young men in our family who are getting ready to turn 16 Josh is going to be just a little bit in front of Jacob there, but man, we're we're already dreading insurance and having to add them to our insurance and just the expense of, of all of that stuff going on. I'm just going to get him a skateboard. In a, in a stick, in a stick, push himself along, no stick even because that's that's, you know, that's for the prissy kids. He's just gonna have to deal with it himself and use his leg. There you go. Yeah, man, it's, it's crazy. It's, it's just an expensive time. It seems like everything is costing more money these days. And, yeah. Somebody brought that up to Trump. They were like, Hey, what are you doing about eggs? And he was like, I didn't do it. It was Biden. I just got into office three weeks ago, four weeks ago, whatever it's been. But yeah, it's a, it's crazy. It's crazy right now. It is. I think one of the things I was brainstorming with Kristen about is that I might go into the NFL for a few seasons and make several million dollars and then just come back to the pastorate so that I have something to fall back on. Yeah. What position are you going to play on that? Oh, quarterback, quarterback. Of course. Of course. Naturally. Yeah. Okay. I mean, was there another position you thought I was better suited for? No, I mean, offensive lineman comes to mind. Well, you know. But, you know, aside from that. I'm trying to avoid putting my body through too much. Okay. So. That's fair. I feel like a quarterback. Since I'm quick on my feet, I probably won't get tackled. Many times, if at all, that's fair. You know, you could also just go into coaching because the coaches make a decent amount of money as well. Not as much as the players, but then they still make a decent amount. I want to get in there and out of there as quickly as possible. So I need a really fat contract for the first two or three years and then I'll just be done. And then you'll be done. Then you'll walk away. Right. Okay. Fair. Yeah. Well if that works out great, more power to you and more power to the church, I guess, as a result. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna give off of that. All right. That's my plan. Hey, it is a Friday and we're coming into the last weekend here. Well, I guess not. We've got one more weekend in February, but don't forget about being intentional about what's coming up. We've got women's Bible study coming up their first weekend in March. I think we got men's Bible study the second weekend there in March. So start planning, making sure that you're aware of things that are going on, plan to be a part of these things that they're good. We want you there. They're, they're not really. Yeah. Offerings to say hey, we think this would be swell if you could show up. We think these are good and beneficial for you So ladies plan on on that first weekend in March being there for women's Bible study I'm pretty sure men's Bible study is the next weekend second. That's right. Yeah, I'm not a hundred percent. Sure. I just work here So you just work here? That's fair Let's, let's talk about the Bible. Let's talk about Leviticus 24 and 25 Leviticus 24. We get into more of the regulations for the tabernacle. The, the first one being the lamps and how the lamps sort of be cared for. And then we get into the bread of the presence, the bread for the tabernacle. This is an interesting one because in the old Testament, Era, the ancient deities would often have their worshipers now. I'm saying that as though they were the ones commanding this. Their worshipers, I should say, would often bring Bread and present it before their deities before these idols and they would leave them there in the temples And it was an expression of the worshiper caring for the deity. The worshiper was feeding the deity And so in this case we have israel doing something that from the surface looks Similar from the surface. It looks like, man, we're just borrowing from the regulations of these pagan deities that were in the area. And here's Israel now bringing their own bread and putting it before God. But a key difference here is that Israel was not doing this to feed God as though God had need of them bringing this bread before him. But this was an expression of Israel saying, God, you are the one feeding us. And so the loaves were reminder to the people, not a reminder to God. It was not. them saying, Hey God, here, take this. You need to eat this. It was them saying, God, we recognize these loaves as an expression of what you've already provided for us. And so they bring that bread and offer it before the Lord in a way to say, Hey, we see this as a, as a good thing that you've given to us. And there's a parallel there with our, our contemporary practice of giving in the church. We give in the church, not because God is sitting there saying, Hey, I need your, your money. I need your funds to do anything because he, he doesn't, he doesn't have any need but we bring our money, we bring our gifts, we bring our offerings to church as an expression of a, of a reminder to us and an act of worship saying, God, you have provided this to us. And so we're recognizing that we're thankful for that. And so here we were giving this back to you in, in an act of worship to you. From there we get into an interesting case study of a situation with blasphemy. And this is the first one I think that we see brought up here. And it's a situation where an Israelite woman's son ends up using the Lord's name in a curse. And there was around him who heard this, bring the charge. And those that heard it are the ones that need to participate in the execution because this one was to die for, for taking the Lord's name in vain for cursing, for using the Lord's name in a blasphemous way, which by the way, the word blasphemy means to bring low. And so it's taking something that is to be exalted and treating it as commonplace. And so those that heard this were the ones that were to participate in the execution in order that they may be even cleared and purged of their participation in hearing it. That's what, what Paul when him suggests there, he says, man, They were not complicit in the act, but complicit in hearing the name of Yahweh cursed. And so in order to, to vindicate even their own ears, they were to participate in the execution of the one who committed the blasphemous act to begin with. That's pretty serious. Yeah. Yeah. We don't do that today. No. We don't have those kinds of laws on the books anymore. Nope. There'd be maybe a lot less cursing and profanity if we did. There was a lot more on the line. Yeah. I suppose so. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Verses 17 through 23. Then we get into more laws of justice here. This is the old saying an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Where does that come from? That comes from the Bible. Actually, that comes here in this latter part of the law. Yeah. Yeah. As as it's being given here that there's an, an equitable justice that, that if something happened, if you broke somebody's arm, then your arm was going to be broken in exchange. And that was how justice was going to be satisfied there. Chapter 25, then we get into some of the laws and rules and regulations for the Sabbath and the Jubilee years. And this is significant beyond what it may appear because the Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee, these were to be kept by Israel and yet Israel would fail to keep these charges and that ends up being one of the main reasons for the amount of time that they're going to spend in captivity in Babylon. So second Chronicles chapter 36 verse 21. It says of their captivity that it was to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths all the days that lay desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. And so that's what we're talking about here. This was a command of God that that for six years they were to cultivate the land, but the seventh year they were to let the land lay fallow. And there was going to be enough provision from God to last, not just through the seventh year, but also through the eighth so that the next. Years plantings would have time to grow and mature. God was going to provide for them. It was a, an act of dependence upon him and Israel failed to do this. And so as a result, part of the reasons they were in captivity for 70 years was to allow for 70 years worth of Sabbaths to take place in the land there in Egypt that they were exiled from. Would that include the year of Jubilee, because I can't recall any place in scripture where you see them celebrating the year of Jubilee, which is the special, it's the Sabbath of Sabbaths, right? The 50th one or the 49th one, which is, is kind of a cool idea here. The 50th year, although again, you never see this practice by Israel. So it's a shame because this is a really cool idea. This is a really cool picture of God's giving freedom and giving back land. I mean, it's, it's just a really precious picture. Yeah. And it's integral to so much of the rest of Israelite society at the time. In fact, the rest of chapter 25 turns on this idea of the year of Jubilee, because the idea of redeeming a slave or redeeming a person or redeeming an animal or a plot of land. Was all based on how long it was between the, the time that you were wanting to redeem that person and when the next year of Jubilee was supposed to take place. And so the fact that they did not observe that was going to throw a wrench into everything as far as God's law is concerned. By the way, the year of Jubilee, if you're sitting there saying, what, what was the significance about that? You'll read about it in the DBR, but it's that time when, when all of the, the indentured servants, all those that had sold themselves into servitude to others. Were released, but then beyond that to any of the land that they had, had sold to somebody else in order to pay off a debt that was returned to them during that, that time. So if somebody was to try to redeem somebody who had been sold into slavery from the, the owner, the owner would basically say, Hey, let's calculate the number of years between today and the next year of Jubilee. And that's going to tell me how much I'm, I'm going to lose out by you redeeming this person. And that's going to be the price of the person. So obviously the closer. You were to that year of Jubilee, the less you would pay to redeem someone, the further away you were from it, the more you would have to pay to redeem someone or to redeem an animal or a plot of land or whatever. And because Israel said, Hey, we're not going to do this, or they just neglected to do it. There was no clear structure for how to do this in a way that, that God had Giving clear instructions for in Leviticus 25 here. It's interesting to wonder what it, what it might've looked like for them to practice something like this. Cause again, I don't even know that they did it once, much less every 50 years. I think it sounds to me as I read through the text, it doesn't look like they've ever practiced it, which would have been something to behold and at least read about what would have, it would have been like for them to experience this kind of. Widespread freedom and redistribution of wealth for lack of a better term real quick, though, before we move on. I forgot. I didn't forget to mention this. I didn't get a chance to throw myself in there, but chapter 24 here, I for an eye tooth for tooth, the the, the law of reciprocity. I just want to point out one thing here that's really important. We are pro death penalty people. Would you say the same for yourself? Yes. Okay. We're, we're pro death penalty people. Can you help us then identify why? It seems like God has a double standard here. You say, God says, whoever takes a life shall surely be put to death. Well, God says you can't take a life, but if you take a life, I'm gonna take your life. Respond to the critic who says Christianity is inconsistent. Yeah. I mean, it's the idea of. There are consequences for our actions, and the consequences for our actions are scalable to what is considered a just repayment. And that's, I think, what we're seeing here in Leviticus 24 is when a life is taken, God is against that. And yet the justice for that is that that life that took the other life is then going to be forfeit. It's going to be given up because that's the right path. Penalty for what you've done there in taking the life of another person. So I don't think God is condoning Murder in that sense. I don't think he's condoning the, the things that are, are just willfully going out and taking somebody's life just because you want to. But I do think that there is God saying justice needs to be done. This is what justice looks like. Right. And I think that's a big point here. Killing is not murder. Murder is the. Unjust unlawful taking of an innocent life where killing when it's practiced, rightly is the lawful taking of a guilty life that has earned that kind of response. So it's important for you to distinguish because you're going to see this also in the new testament. We're in Romans chapter 12. 13. Paul says the, the government doesn't bear the sword in vain. He's acknowledging the reality that governments possess the ability to take away human life. And that's not an accident. God enables them to possess that right. And ideally they practice it in a right way. They use it when they're supposed to use it. And an appropriate time to use it is when you take away an innocent life. So we are still very pro life, but that doesn't mean we're not pro death penalty. The death penalty should be applied in cases where there is. Evidence egregious syn at place. So even now, we distinguish first degree, second degree, third degree murder. Not every, not everybody's equally culpable, but there is culpability that must be dealt with even in 2025. I read about a, a story recently in our area where there was a pastor who was brutally taken out, let's put it nicely by a bad guy, a robber. And his congregation was pushing for the death penalty for this guy. And people were shocked by that and scandalized like, isn't this a church? What about, what about turn the other cheek and, you know, forgiveness of sin and all those things. And they appealed to the scriptures to say, look, the, the, the government doesn't bear the sword in vain. When you brutally kill somebody who's innocent, who didn't deserve to die, you deserve to lose your life. And so they fought for that. I think they successfully got this guy all the way through death penalty. Through death row to successfully be taken out. And I would say that's a good thing. That is justice applied. And in fact, if we apply that more valiantly, I think there'd be a lot less crimes. As we were talking about blasphemy a few minutes ago, where people would think twice before they kill somebody because they don't want to lose their own lives, but that would be the appropriate and just response. So we're still pro life. We're still about protecting babies. Innocent life should be protected and guilty life. If it's been forfeited because of their unlawful taking of human life, they deserve to lose it. That's Genesis chapter nine, all the way at the beginning, when when God was giving Moses, Noah, rather commandments about how to live after the flood had taken place. So just a couple of comments about that in numbers, excuse me, Leviticus 24. Yeah. I think. And this is probably a subject for another podcast, but It gets even trickier when we talk about christians in war and combat Oh, yeah, and just war and when is it okay to to use deadly force in that context? and how do we know for sure that this is just war when it's You know We don't have god telling america go to war and fight this war over here the way that ancient israel had god saying Hey, you're gonna go take out these people over here. So Man that that gets tricky too. I'm not a I'm not a pacifist personally And so i'm not against christians being involved in the armed forces, but I do think there's a weightiness to that And there's a lot that plays into that as far as conscience goes. Oh, yeah And even more so now where so much of of war is carried out by You know, you're sitting behind a computer thousands and thousands of miles away flying something that's firing a missile that's ending life I mean that that's a weighty weighty responsibility for any Christian to bear Yeah to make sure that that is done in a way that that again to your point It's not innocent life being taken out, but it's you can really truly sign off and say yes This person was guilty and deserved to die and I feel good about being the instrument of that execution, right? That's tough. It has a lot of complexities and in our world, I don't think that the speed of change is going to allow for any less degree of complexity. If anything, we're going to have bigger and greater challenges because of the interplay between our thinking and artificial intelligence, so called thinking. There's logic there, but we don't even fully understand how LLMs work, which ought to scare you. Because they get great answers, but how they arrive at their answers, they don't computers. Can't tell you. I've been reading a lot about AI lately. And the interplay between us and the machines is an exciting prospects, certainly, but it introduces so many questions about morality. And then at the end of the day, someone's morality is going to win. Just a matter of who's, who's programming the morality that the machine uses. And to what degree do we have control over those things? Artificial intelligence running a drone. What if a drone is able to positively identify in a terrorist, you know, because of certain, I don't know physical features and what have you. And then it does the job for us. What if it gets it wrong, you know, and then, and then at what point are we responsible or who's responsible if it's the drone that did it, according to AI, it's really complicated really quickly. But I think part of the problem for us is as Christians, we need to be really well versed in our Bibles. Otherwise we're not gonna be able to reason biblically. Yep. Yeah, man. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. That AI powered drone may identify the terrorist, but if the terrorist is holding an innocent victim, innocent, loosely used in front of it as a human shield, right. Is that drone going to identify the innocence there and say, I'm not going to fire because I don't want to take out that, that person. Or is the drone going to say terrorist dead? Boom. Yeah. What's the calculation. I mean, even think about the Tesla self driving thing. It's that whole classic, you know, the classic, Question that you get in school, like, okay, on the railroad track on the right hand is your mom. And on the left hand is, you know, five innocent people that you don't know. Who do you take out? Right. Okay. It's fun for humans to do that. But when a machine has to make the decision, what's the machine going to do? Right. That's fascinating. Yep. And terrifying and terrifying. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. So there you go, everybody have a great weekend with those thoughts in mind. Thanks for joining us today for another edition. Let me let me pray and we will be done. Yeah. We are mindful of all of these parameters that are out there in questions and in. Deep issues that we have to navigate as Christians and we have to make wise decisions and be discerning and so we pray that you Would help us to be discerning God, we we trust you. We trust your sovereignty. We trust that that we are not sitting here at the the At the the will of of AI and artificial intelligence But ultimately you are sovereign over those things and we trust that and we know that we pray that you would Enable this world to use these things in a way that is not damaging and not overly harmful You we want to help the church to be outspoken and on the front lines of helping us to think through how to navigate this brave new world in so many regards, but God, we ultimately want to trust in you. And so help us to trust in you and not machines, not technological advancements or anything else and help us to navigate waters that are quite honestly, just deep and difficult for us to understand. And we need your help. Your wisdom, your spirit to help us do that. And so we ask that you to enable that with us. And as pastor Rob was saying, enable us to be in the word, help us to be in the word on a regular basis so that we will be well equipped to handle whatever comes our way. So we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all, we'll keep her in your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the daily Bible podcast. See it. Bye.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the daily Bible podcast. We hope and pray this has been a blessing to you and your time in the word. If it has, if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a like, leave a comment and share it with some friends and family. That would be awesome. If you need more information about Compass Bible Church here in North Texas, you can go to compassntx. org. Again, that's compassntx. org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode of the daily Bible podcast.