Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Dr. Douglas Peake discusses the lack of a strong foundation in modern society due to the Bible being removed from our core structure.
Just like Matthew 5:13 says, Christians are the salt of the earth so join us as we find our saltiness on our journey through life together. Listen as Dr. Douglas Peake dives deep into the topics of his sermons each week, breaking down content, discussing evidence, telling stories and speaking into current events using biblical truths and principals.
[00:00:00] We're using an absolute objective truth. Human beings do better when they fall in love. Right.
It's given to us through the Bible.
Is that if I fall in love and I'm in love, then I'm happier. My soul is fulfilled. My life is better. Well scientific materialism. Doesn't teach that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you learn and grow your critical thinking skills, as well as your faith. We're here to challenge you to bring new thought processes to light. Um, but ultimately we can't do the work for you. We can't tell you what to believe or,
how to think you have to do that hard work. All we can do is guide you and challenge you along the way. My name is Jesse Maher. I'll be your host and we can not do the Salty Pastor Podcast without the Salty Pastor himself. Dr. Douglas Peake.
Good to be with you every one today. And I like how you say that we're here to grow critical thinking skills that [00:01:00] grows your faith.
Uh, what we are doing is we are each and every week. We're challenging. A perception of what faith is that faith is irrational. It's belief in myth. And this is what atheist scientific materialists and secularists want people to define. That's what they want to define faith as meaning. But what we're saying here is that no faith is so much more.
It is rational. It is reasonable. It's based on revelation and truth. It's a, it's a hardcore pursuit of truth. It's being brutally honest. It's what birth it was faith at birth, the scientific revolution. It was faith that birth, the industrial revolution. It was faith that birth modern. Uh, medical science.
And so without that type of faith, our society is going to be lost in a lot of ways. We need that innovation. We need that, that inspiration. We need that. And so that's what Salty Pastor is about is not telling people what to think, but helping them learn how to think for themselves to bring. That [00:02:00] American spirit of innovation and inspiration and a desire to grow and push the boundaries.
And so that's what it's all about, and I'm glad to be here and I'm glad to be salty.
Well, we're glad to have you as well. We are in our final installment of our current series, Jesus Loves Me. Um, we're wrapping it all up. We've kind of talked about four different essentials before this. One, uh, Jesus, who is he?
He is God. Two, he loves us. Um, and that's what he does. Three, me, who are we? What is our nature? The, why are we wired to, you know, love and do the things we do. Right.
And why do we need God's love in our life? Right.
Absolutely. Why do we need that? Yes. And then, um, this I know is what we talked about last week, which is, you know, every person's invited into a personal relationship.
With God. And then today and this week is for the Bible tells me, so, yeah. Right? [00:03:00] Absolutely. So on Tuesday we discussed what Jesus, the apostles and the early church believed concerning the scriptures. And today let's discuss why their conviction about the Bible is critical for us still today, in these times.
Yeah.
Well, this is such an upstream concept that is so critically important and that is, is that. Uh, it has massive implications across the board. And what we're doing today is we're seeing a complete and utter, uh, denigration and removal of the Bible out of American society back in the fifties and sixties.
And, uh, it was then eliminated even as a scholarly book to study. Uh, in the sixties, when they removed prayer out of school, there was this notion that a secularists had that we have to eliminate and eradicate any mention of God or anything that they could label as religious. And what has happened is we have some massive, massive downstream [00:04:00] implications from that today. Because as a,
as a, as a historical document, the Bible is the foundation of our definition of human nature. By abandoning the Bible or leaving the Bible's definition of human nature. What we have created is a massive political instability in American society. And that's what we're seeing today, and why it is so a politics of personal destruction.
See, what has happened is no nation has ever been built, existed, or thrived on the foundation of moral relativism. And I know that's a philosophical term and a lot of people, you know, the average guy listening to this, you know, he might think, well, what in the Sam Hill is that so well, we got a series on that.
You can go listen to what in the Sam Hill is moral relativism. So it, now this is what's [00:05:00] important to understand this is not an issue of Republican, polo, politics, independent politics or Democrat politics. Doesn't matter if you're an R and I or a D or libertarian or green party or any of those types of things.
All of these positions, these political positions that you might have are built on a foundation of what is known as a representative Republic. America is not a pure a, democracy. And so basically what that means is a pure democracy is every decision everybody gets together and votes. Right. Okay.
Well that just is untenable. Right. You know, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time getting the seven people in my family to decide on where to go to dinner. Correct. Let's vote on it, you know? So, what we are is called a representative Republic. And that is, is that we elect a person, we vote for a person who then goes and represent us.
Right. And that brings us stability to the, the government. [00:06:00] Now what's really interesting is it was our, our nation was founded on, uh, this principle of not moral relativism, but a specific definition of human nature in that as human nature cannot be trusted with power. So we have checks and balances and we have elections and we have all of this kind of stuff in order to temper the irrationality of human behavior.
And once you get rid of that, then the whole system becomes untenable and starts to collapse. And that's kind of what we're starting to see happen here. And that's because we cannot exist. On a foundation of moral relativism, uh, and this isn't just unique to democracies. You know, USSR was founded in 1917, the communist party known as the Bolsheviks, uh, insecure, instituted a coo and took over.
This was led by Lennon. And so Russia, uh, USSR built their entire nation [00:07:00] on a specific singular. Communist ideology. There was nothing relativistic about it. It's very specific, but then it came to its fruition and we saw what it does. And then it collapsed in the eighties and fell apart. When Hitler came to power in the thirties, he had a very specific ideology.
There was nothing relativistic about it. Uh, what he had a very specific ideology that he built. He tried to build his empire on. He felt it was such a powerful ideology that it was going to last for a thousand years. Well, obviously it did not. Right. You look at after world war II, uh, there was a, a civil war in China between the constitutionalist.
It was the, uh, Kumonintang party, and the communist party at that time, it was called the CCP, which it's still known today. And it was led by a Mao Zedong and in 1949, just four years after the end of world war II the [00:08:00] communists won the civil war and the Kumonintang uh, retreated to the island of Taiwan.
And so the cultural revolution began pretty much in 1950, but it was built on a single ethic of communist ideology. There was no, it wasn't relativistic. It. Wasn't trying to, well, you can believe that. And you guys can believe that and you guys can believe that and we're all get along. It'll be just fine.
And that's what secularists say today is that if we just let everybody believe whatever they want, we can have a society. And this is a notion of, well, you can have whatever truth you want. Just make up your own truth and that's fine. And we can have assists, diverse society. Well, that's actually false. It doesn't work that way and it hasn't worked in any type of, whether it be communists socialists, uh, repo representative Republic, democracy, monarchies, uh, tear, radical dictatorships, like North Korea.
Uh, there's nowhere where moral [00:09:00] relativism on any scale. Has been able to maintain a nation or empire we could get, we could get going on and on and on Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And the reason why is because a philosopher by the name of John Locke, he talked about philosophically.
What has to happen is, uh, uh, what is known as a social contract. And we've talked about that quite a bit on the, Salty Pastor. So the underlying thing is, is that, well, if we have a definition of humanity that comes from the Bible, right? Can we all agree on that or not? And the difficulty today is that we don't agree on that anymore.
And that's where a lot of our division is coming from. And when you have a division like that, what it does is, is one side the side that doesn't want that definition. Uh, tries to impose their definition on everybody else through legal means. [00:10:00] And that, that there's where the D the deaf difficulty is. For instance, in John Locks, uh, uh, social contract, particularly when it came to America.
At the very beginning, we believed in the sovereignty of the individual. So. Today, we don't believe in that anymore in America. And if we practice abortion, which we do in our society, uh, the practice of abortion as a legal right, is a moral relativistic premise. You see, because what you're doing is you're saying that there are certain human beings that don't qualify as full human beings yet.
Okay. Well, that's a moral, relativistic position. You see. And so that's why the existence of it as a moral, right. You know, as it, it was instituted by the Supreme Court in Roe Vs. Wade, what that is going to be a point of division forever. It's never going to be resolved [00:11:00] just like slavery in the 1800 could not be resolved.
You know, it could not, you guys do what you want. We'll do what we want. It just didn't work. And it can't and have a unified nation. Do we believe in the freedom to determine one's own course in life? And this is the, you have the, you've been endowed by your creator with an alienable rights. Among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, meaning the, your own life, your own Liberty.
Meaning that you get to make decisions about your life, through the dictates of your own conscience and your pursuit of happiness. What you think is going to make you happy? Well, guess what this freedom to determines one course in life is not possible with moral relativism. You see, and that is a problem.
Do you believe it that you own your own labor? You see, and that was the life clause. You have a right to your own life. Well, socialism, [00:12:00] communism, monarchies, dictatorships, et cetera. Uh, military hunters are all the opposite of this. You don't own your own labor. The state does, or, or the monarchy does. You don't own it.
Okay. You're a Fife. Uh, there's no compromise or middle ground between these two ideologies, moral relativism in regards to this always leads to the stronger totalitarian ideology. Being forced on other people. Do we believe in justice for all? Well, moral relativism, certainly doesn't. It believes that, well, you know, this, this is what we're going to do is we're going to give these people a different type of justice.
Like for instance, social justice is when it comes to social justice in the area of economics. Well, these people are where they're at because society has created itself in a way that has caused this outcome. Now, part of that may be true. I'm not disputing whether those that can be made factually accurate or true or not.
That's [00:13:00] not the point. The point is, is okay. Well, what's the remedy to that? Is the remedy is if society is structured in a way that it's unfair to someone, our founding fathers would say, then remove the unfair obstical. Okay. Remove the unfair obstacle, but that's not what economic justice says today. Economics justice as well.
What we're going to do is we're going to take from these people and we're going to give to those people. Okay. So they're appealing to the moral, underlying subconscious moral principle of envy. You see, we're going to take from you to give to them because in that will equal the score. So basically the old adage, two wrongs don't make a right.
Well in economic social justice. You know, three wrongs do make it right. So they just perpetuate it. But the problem with that is that, of course, that never works, but that's what moral relativism does, is it allows you to act injustly towards whatever false [00:14:00] identifiable group that you create and put people in, uh, in order to, you can say, well, but this helps
this group over oppose that group. And so it pits people against each other on purpose. So it really appeals to the most, uh, basis basic, uh, drives of human nature, which, you know, we're trying to be more human, not less human. And so that's why moral relativism is so bad. And that's why the Bible is so important because the Bible preamps all of it.
It says, here it is, this is what it means to be human being. This is where you're at. It's really fascinating how Christianity is not a religion of, uh, uh, dietary habits, dress habits, musical habits, these types of things, ceremonial habits. It's not, it never has been, it's taken so many different forms over 2000 years.
And so I think when it really comes down to it, the whole issue, um, is that when you leave the Bible, you become [00:15:00] more relativistic. And so you're no longer grounded in any truth. And that actually complicates life. It doesn't make life more simple.
I mean, I, I, I think it's very similar to, I remember distinctly the impression after I finished college of not knowing what to do. Because,
up until that point, there was kind of a life plan involved, right? Like it was, you go and you graduate high school, then you go to college, you get a degree. And then after. It's up to you basically. And that was, you know, one of the hardest things, it's the same thing when it's like, you kind of get like all the channels on Direct TV or whatever.
You're like, well, now I have all the options. And so then you just kind of feel it drift and you end up scrolling forever and you don't ever make a decision. And I kind of watching it and I feel like that's kind of where, where, what it feels like, you know, quote unquote truth is now where it's constantly shifting and there's no real truth.
You're just of. Well, I don't know what I'm [00:16:00] doing anymore. Cause there's nothing to like grab onto there's nothing to purpose. And so you're just like kind of floating around. And I see this with a lot of, um, friends of mine that are not believers or, um, even students that I was coaching. Um, as they went off onto college, they're like, well, what am I supposed to do after this?
I mean, you got to figure that out for yourself. And it's like, it's a good thing and a bad thing to have options. I mean, depending on what narratives you listen to having those options means you're too privileged and you need to make a decision on how to give some of that up. But it's like, I just see this in so many different ways where it's like, there's so much.
Now that any truth can be truth. It's sort of like, well, it just means that my group is more important than your group. And we see that we see that in so many different ways. It's a, you know, it's Republican saying Democrat tears in a coffee mug and it's Democrats saying, oh, the, the victimized Republicans.
And then [00:17:00] it's this doing that? And this culture, you know, this. This, uh, you know, skin color saying that skin color is, or isn't deserving of whatever. And it's, so it's just like it's turning into all these little tribes and because only my truth matters and not an objective truth. There's nothing to like disprove or prove anything.
It's just like, you can say anything. I can, you know, I was joking about, you know, I was getting, I was at a gathering with some of my friends and, you know, there was that crazy thing where it was like, you could have an emotional support animal that was not a dog. So there was like emotional support peacocks. And,
right. And it's like, that was a thing on the airlines for awhile. And they were like, well, we can't say that's not a thing until they finally were like, no, really this needs to stop.
Because it bring your donkey on the plane.
It was
just getting out of control. And it's like, I feel like that's just like, these are all very.
These are like, you [00:18:00] know, kinda humorous examples, but that's, this is the downstream effects of not having any objective truth, because then it's like, you can't say that my emotional support peacock that screams at the top of its lungs, 24 /7 is not what the healthiest thing for me on this plane is.
Because it's my truth,
But, and it removes any capacity for us to have any type of society.
Well, and have any kind of conversation too. Like it's, it turns into you can't have a debate or you can't have a, a discussion anymore because it's no, my truth is my truth. And therefore it is ultimately correct. You can say whatever you want, you can believe whatever you want.
But it's not going to change my mind. Right. Because it's my truth. It's my truth. And so it's like,
And then you can't stop me from living my truth.
Yeah. And so it's like, I'm a cannibal. Yeah. And I'm going to eat my neighbor. There's no more grounds to have even a discussion. Cause it's like, well, we could have a discussion, but I have no
[00:19:00] objective need to change. So, absolutely. And so that's what it's kind of come down to like just the, you know, it's like, it's humorous, but it's like, these are, there's bigger ramifications from this right across the board. So with society becoming completely relativistic in its morality, what happens to us as individuals when that's occurring?
Well, I think it's extremely, um, devastating to us. When we become more relativistic in our personhood, it destroys you as a person. It dehumanizes you. It doesn't allow you to become the best version of anything, let alone the best version of yourself. And that's why the Bible is so critical. You see what, whether a person admits it or not, they govern and manage their own lives based on a definition of what it means to be a human being.
They really do. For instance, you know, you have a person who says, man, I want to fall in love. I want to get married. Maybe they're tired of being alone. Maybe they want sexual fulfillment. They want companionship. They want to have a partner to go [00:20:00] out and have fun with dance. With climb, hike, with, have adventures with, um, build a life with. Where in the world
do all of these drives and desires come from where does it come from? Well, it comes from a, a biblical definition of human nature. Doesn't come from atheism or secularism or scientific materialism at all. It doesn't come from Hinduism. Hinduism, teacher or practice at or Buddhism at all. It comes from the biblical definition of what it means to be a human.
And you know, that is an upstream principle. The downstream principle is the assumption that if I find someone and fall in love and build a life with this other person, I'm going to be happier and I'm going to enjoy my life. Right. But the unstress concept that that drive comes from is that human beings are created for love in their soul.
Well, and I think it's interesting. How hard it is for people to find loving, long lasting relationships and [00:21:00] at least in my generation. And I'm assuming going forward. Yeah. Um,
well maybe boomers struggled with that too.
I know. Right. But I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's it's, it goes back to these things that we're seeing, because it's like, even this, like, you look at some of these dating apps now and they want you to put whether you're vaccinated or not on it.
Right. And so I had a friend who. Well I'm was just in town the other day he was talking about, he was, he was talking to us, uh, a girl on this social or on this dating app. And the first question out of her mouth was, are you vaccinating or not? And he, he jokingly, he's like, I have a 50 /50 chance. Right. And he's like, so he's like, you know, I'm not vaccinated yet, but I'm, I have an appointment this coming weekend and she just completely cut them off.
And she didn't say which side she was on, but it's like the fact that we're getting to a point where your viewpoint on. You immediately eliminates your value in any other way. And she had no idea what his circumstances might've been, you know, maybe [00:22:00] he had already had COVID and wasn't allowed to get the vaccine.
Cause they tell you you're supposed to wait like six months, I think, to get the vaccine. If you've had COVID she didn't know if maybe, you know, there wasn't available. He's in a rural area. I mean, there's there, there was no discussion about why he had or had not already gotten it. And it was just immediatly
cutoff based on one single answer to one single question. It's like, where did these it's and it comes down to that deconstructionist ideology that we're dealing with in this postmodernism where it's like one thing immediately invalidates you as a dateable relationship, having person into people, eyes of people.
It's like, I just need to find that one thing that upsets me about you. And then I can just toss it all away. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. And of course, that's, you know, we're a relative. Uh, propagates more division, right. More unity.
And so it's just like, you know, he was kind of joking about it. He was like, you know, 1, 50/ 50 chance I might get it.
Right. You know, [00:23:00] hedging my bets, but it's just like, it's, it's funny. But it's also, again, the funny we laugh because it's sad.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think what's interesting is that in that particular situation is that, uh, this gal that he's talking to, she is basically approaching. Uh, relationships, you know, the th the reason why she wants one she's on the dating app is because she's using, or her foundation is a biblical definition of human
nature. If I find someone I'll be happier or that's the point of life. So I'm out searching and looking and doing all of these kinds of things. So I think one of the fascinating parts of it though, is that she's actually using a morally relativistic process to get to it. So that there's an incongruence there.
You see, and I think that's why it's so difficult for people to find love. And it's so difficult is because we're using an absolute objective truth. [00:24:00] Human beings do better when they fall in love. Right. Through the Bible is that if I fall in love and I'm in love, then I'm happier. And my soul is fulfilled.
My life is better. Well scientific materialism doesn't teach that. Hinduism doesn't teach that. Buddhism doesn't teach that. Paganism doesn't teach that. Only Biblical Christianity teaches that, and that's really important to understand you see, is that all of our dreams that we're pursuing, right. Have a tendency to be based on a biblical definition of human nature, which is very upstream, but we're using a morally relativistic process to get there.
Okay. Like, um, you know, I just. And the reason why this is happening, I think is because there are so many attacks against the Bible and the attacks come from our cultural elites, the people, the elites, the wealthiest among us [00:25:00] who are over media and TV and movies and magazines and news organizations, influencers, and things of that nature, you know, and the number one area, this is how we get in these little pickles.
These incongruous. Oh, well, I'm going to adopt an absolute objective definition of humanity. I do so much better when I fall in love and I find someone and I need to find someone that I am really compatible with and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm gonna use a morally relativistic, um, approach to get that. Well that in congruence puts you in a pickle and it makes it so difficult to ever find that. You're never going to fulfill that because you're, you're doing, you're like going in opposite directions at the same
time. And one of the reasons why there, uh, people struggle with this is because the number one attack against the Bible, uh, from our cultural elites have to do with human sexuality. You see now when you understand the biblical definition of human nature, and then [00:26:00] you understand sex and you understand the beauty of it, your sexuality, why you're driven towards it, why it's so powerful in your life and what a powerful drive it is.
But you also understand how, uh, because of your human nature, it can, it can, uh, influence you in ways that aren't good for you. It can dehumanize you. If you're not careful. So that's, that's an essence in a nutshell, that's what the teaching of the Bible is and why it is that way. But, um, the reason why they attack human sexuality is because first and foremost, Uh, you're going to get the broadest base of appeal.
Human beings love sex. We're driven by sex. The sex drive dominates our psyche. So, you know, just look at pornography. Pornography generates more economic, uh, influence than all professional sports combined. That's a big industry. That's a huge industry of how [00:27:00] big it is. And so, uh, since the sexual revolution in the sixties, no one wants to be told that anything they want sexually could possibly be
wrong or not good for them or good for those around them. Second, the reason why our cultural leads attack the Bible, when it comes to human sexuality, is it fits with postmodern thinking and moral relativism. And that is, well, whatever I want, we've talked about this before, and that is whatever I want sexually is my identity.
That's who I really am. And if you try to suppress that, and this is the risonian idea, that what you're doing is you're suppressing me and who. I really am. And that's the whole notion of people. It's like, well, I'm coming out, you know, I'm announcing to the world who I truly, truly am. And so, you know, I, you know, my opinion is if someone uses that phrasiology, they says I'm coming out of the closet.
You know, I'd be like, you go in there. Well, there's nothing in the closet, you know? I mean, there, the emperor has no clothes. That's not the point. Right. And yet that's how they [00:28:00] feel. Third. I think the reason why our cultural elites attack the Bible in regards to human sexuality is because many sexual moores, in society, were developed over time.
For instance, during the Victorian age. Okay. Queen Victoria, was it clean for a long, long time. All right. And in the Victorian age, there became this very prudish attitude towards sex, but the prudish attitude toward sex, in my opinion, what really drove it. Was this notion of bloodlines and keep bloodlines pure for the right to rule and for, to keep the monarchy pure.
And then that spills down into the culture. And so all that, and then what they would do is they'd try to use the body of the Bible to support their culturally created claim. It's exactly what a lot of people in the south did for awhile. Is they tried to use the Bible to support what is known as chattel slavery, which [00:29:00] is the importation of human beings,
and you treat them like chattel. Whereas the Bible never, ever talks about, I mean, actually the Bible in Leviticus, it Outlaws chattel slavery. So slavery was never legalized in the Old Testament or the New Testament, chattel, slavery wasn't, but bonded labor was, and that's the whole notion of servant or he was his slave or whatever that, that comes from this notion of being a bonded
servant. And we use bonded labor today. Is a matter of fact, if you sign a non-compete clause as a employee, guess what that is. That's rooted in the ancient law of bonded labor.
You can't go work for someone else.
You can't go work for somebody else for a period of time and do the exact same thing. You can't do that.
Do you know that every professional athlete who signs a contract in either MLB or in, uh, the NBA or the NFL or whatever, those are all bonded contracts. It's all bonded labor. You can play for us or not play at all. You can't, you [00:30:00] can't just go somewhere else. You can't do that. You see, um, if, if you actually are required to show up to work like an Amazon, you know, you work for Amazon and you have to clock in at nine o'clock in the morning and you can't leave until five o'clock in the afternoon.
Guess what that is? That is bonded labor. Right. And that's what the Bible talked about and regulated, all the time. And so, uh, I think these attacks that are really pernicious against the Bible deal with a misunderstanding of sexuality and our, you know, our whole definition of what it means to be a human being. And then it's misrepresented.
I, you know, there's this thing that's going around now. I see it a lot on the internet. Um, and it's a scene from the West Wing. And the West Wing was a really popular show and won all these Emmy's and all this stuff. And Martin Sheen played a president, right. And there's a scene in there where the president is, uh, challenging what they [00:31:00] perceive as a right wing fundamentalist on the issue of people practicing homosexuality.
And so what he does is they show him as being this really smart, intelligent guy. And he says, well, the Bible is inconsistent in his point is it's archaic. It's mythology. We shouldn't listen to today because what he does is he says, well, it says in love, they get a kiss that that's wrong, but it also says in Leviticus that eating
uh, shellfish is wrong as well. Well guess what it doesn't. And the Leviticus not only says that eating shellfish was wrong. It also says that you can't so two different types of material together. Right? So your pants that you're wearing would be illegal. Right in that culture at the time, you weren't allowed to plant two types of crop in the field.
You couldn't, you couldn't do wheat. And then do soybeans couldn't do that either. You couldn't cross breed any animals. So there were no like tigers and lions. No. So no ligers red light. Yeah, but the biggest thing is there's no mules. [00:32:00] You couldn't have a mule, you know, cause a mule is the offspring of a donkey and a horse, right.
They're highly intelligent. They're big and strong, but they're all sterile. So they, you know, so that's to get a meal, you always have to crossbreed. You couldn't do that either. And so, so that must mean that Christianity is wrong on all these, these, uh, sexual issues. This is such a misrepresentation of everything it's completely false.
And first and foremost, that the book of Leviticus is about Judaism. It's not about Christianity, right? The, the Christian teaching about finding our identity in our sexual preferences or sexual orientation. Is a New Testament principle that if you do that, you're not finding your identity in Christ, right.
And that is in congruent. And so that's going to hinder your growth in Christ. That's, that's the teaching of the New Testament. This, the second thing is this is that you might criticize Judaism for that. That's [00:33:00] fine. If you want to do that, but at least have some intellectual honesty and the West Wing and the writers of West Wing had zero intellect
honesty about it. You've been reading through the Bible in a year.
I'm actually in Leviticus right now. I wasn't reading. These were in all dues and do not sections.
Okay. Who are the Levites? Do you remember who the Levites were in the Old Testament?
The Levites are, while there one of the tribes of Israel.
They were one of the tribes of Israel.
And what is their primary job? The Levites it's where all of the priests, priests that's exactly right. And so this is a book written to the priests. Okay. And says, this is what you do. And as you read the Leviticus, what you'll notice is it switches? You know what, we'll talk about this, then we'll talk about something different.
It switches a lot, you know, it's kind of like reading a, uh, instruction manual.
It's very, it's, it's very like. So Moses went and talked to God, God told him how to do all these things. And then Moses goes and tells Erin how to do the things. And then he does the thing.
That's the thing. Yeah. It's just really, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And it doesn't take long [00:34:00] reading through it that you realize is that well, they're talking about three different things throughout the entire book. They're talking about a moral law. And the moral laws encapsulated early on in the 10 commandments. And that is, this is a more, these are moral laws that are wrong everywhere.
It's wrong to murder somebody, you know, it's wrong to steal your neighbor stuff, right. It's wrong to, you know, it's encapsulated that this is called the moral law, that's wrong everywhere. Right. Then there is civil law. And that is, well, how are we going to get along with each other? You know, you can't go. And if, if you do this and you wrong, your neighbor, you know, civilized, you know, if your, if your neighbor shoots your dog, you can't go kill his son, right.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. And so the whole notion of I for nine tooth for a tooth was, is that the punishment has to fit the crime. Right. You know, if you know, well, maybe you could go do something to their, your dog or whatever. But, you cant escalate it. It kept everything from escalating. So then you have this [00:35:00] whole chunk of civil law about how to treat one another, what you can do and you can't do and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then there was what is known as ceremonial law. And that is, this is why you have to go out and you have to quarantine yourself. You have to give a sacrifice.
I just finished that whole section. It was a bit of a slog.
Right? It was a bit of a slog. So, um, I know we're going to the long tape. It's really important that people understand this is that there's ceremonial law, civil law, moral law.
And so how is it that Jesus comes and says, I have fulfilled the law, right? And so the law is done, but at the same time, say I didn't come to replace the law. Well, you could get really confused really fast, unless you know that there is a ceremonial law, Jesus came and fulfilled it. All right. So anything that falls under ceremonial law,
Slaughter a cow and sprint and all that stuff, you don't have to do that anymore.
Cause you took care of it.
And then Paul talks about how we, there is no more dietary laws. There is no more sacrificial laws. There is no more new moon or feast day that we have to celebrate because [00:36:00] you know, they had to get together and celebrate all these feast, and
there was always the idea of ceremonially clean and unclean that you have to quarantine for.
If you touch this thing that happened to touch another thing and you're, you have to go and you have to rough your hair up. So everybody knows that you're unclean and. Yeah, it was a whole lot of things. I'm like, that's so many rules to remember all of these, all of these things.
So, so you had ceremonial law, Jesus Christ came to fulfill and that's all done away with, but the moral law of God has been unchanging.
And what's really interesting is when you read about sewing different types of materials together, or crops in a field or whatever, uh, that's all under the ceremonial law. You see, and some, and it spills over a little bit into the civil law. But Jesus came and replaced all of that. See the civil law under Judaism is no longer in, in play because there is no nation.
Uh, religious [00:37:00] nation theocracy known as Israel. The one in Israel now is a representative democracy or a Republic. Similar to us. It's a little different because it has a parliament, but the moral law is consistent. So What West wing did was completely dishonest is completely dishonest because Martin Sheen and his character is saying, well, these are he equivocated these things.
And that's the equivalent today of saying that. Murder under our criminal law is the same as a dispute on a right of way driveway in somebody's neighborhood, which is a civil law.
Or those like crazy rule, you know, yo see those crazy laws that have existed. Like you can't have an ostrich right down the street and Buckingham or whatever,
you know, there's one in Idaho that you cannot fish from the back of a camel.
What, you know, that occurred because somebody did it right. And he said, there's no law. And they're like, well, we'll fix it up
real quick.
Real quick. [00:38:00] He's fishing from the back of a camel. That's hilarious. But see that my point in all of this is simply that, uh, Uh, you know, this has been common. These attacks on the Bible from the beginning of time, the attempt to keep the Bible out of the hands of everyday people has a 2000 year history.
You know, political governments, uh, have gone so far as refusing to teach people how to read. They would hinder, uh, monks and, and, uh, nuns from teaching people how to read. They didn't want them to do that. As a matter of fact, the Roman Catholic church, there's a guy, who translated the Bible into the vernacular, meaning the language of the people so they could read it.
He just, in this, at this time, very few people could read. It was mostly Nobles could read it. They burned them at the stake for doing that. So, so there's always been a desire to keep the Bible out of hands. And today Western society, postmodernism, deconstruction, and. [00:39:00] Which leads to more relativism has tried to use the approach that the Bible is stupid.
So don't pay any attention to it. And that's been probably very effective and. And so I think the devil is used that strategy to keep the Bible out of people's hands. And so, cause if we lose the foundation of our social contract, then we become moral relativists. And this is the crazy influence of deconstructionism.
Deconstructionism only seeks to destroy. It never asks the question, what should rise in its place? What should rise up in its place? Well, I'll tell you what will happen. Because history is a very strict teacher. It never lets you depart from the gravity of true history. And what gravity of true history says over and over again.
And this is the old notion that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. And we will repeat it if we are not careful. And this is what deconstructionism and more relative than produces it produces injustice. [00:40:00] Moral relativism breeds and justice critical race theory. And its philosophy is unjust.
Communism is unjust. Socialism is unjust. Sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape incest is unjust. Abandoning children, child abuse, neglect of children, the dehumanization of children and other, uh, uh, the outright killing of children is simply unjust. It will never pass. The muster of an objective moral law.
However, our sexual moral relativism has produced all of these things. All of these things are increasing. They're not decreasing, in justice will grow in a moral role, morally relativistic society. Number two, it will create more division. It will create more division. It will create civil war. It will create a more hatred because more relativism as you pointed out earlier, creates a hatred of the other person, because my truth is right and yours is [00:41:00] wrong.
And that makes me morally righteous in my treatment of you. It creates war. This is where all war comes from and ultimately it destroys peace. You know, the capacity for us to just live side-by-side peace with one another, is eradicated. You know, everything's a litmus test. And if you don't have that vaccine, I won't even talk to you.
If you have an R or a D next to your name, I wont look at you.
And if you do this, I won't talk. You, you know, it's just, so all that does is Balkanize meaning. Get you in more people, tribal hating one another. And that's where war comes from and what that, what moral relativism produces, injustice, division, war, and a lack of peace is the history or the historical record of the human race over the last 7,000 years.
So what you're saying is the Bible's kind of important?
The Bible is super important.
Well. I'm excited to hear more [00:42:00] on Sunday as you kind of wrap up this whole series of Jesus loves me. We've had a lot of really positive comments about how, uh, amazing. This has been to just really solidify. People's understanding of what's important in their beliefs.
Um, and obviously the Bible is super important as part of that. So we're excited to wrap this all up on Sunday here at Foothills. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I know today was a little bit longer, but obviously you can't just skip on the Bible and skip on the Bible. So thank you guys so much for joining us and we'll see you on Sunday here at Foothills Church.
Blessings.