Building a New Culture: Holy Days in Leviticus

Show Notes

Episode 466: 
In this episode, we dove into a detailed discussion on Leviticus 23, which outlines various religious festivals and holy days that God commanded the Israelites to observe. These include the Sabbath, Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Harvest, the Festival of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Festival of Shelters. We explore the significance of these festivals, how they shaped the Jewish calendar, and their relevance to modern believers.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible guys. And guess what, Jeff's back. Yes, yes, Jeff was traveling across the world. The adventures of Marco Polo have been ended. And yes, so we're back in town. Back in town. Yes, and so you are back and you're glad to be back. It's so good to be back. Yeah, I bet you. The highlight of returning to the United States is the Bible. Guys. Well, so we were scheduled the very first thing to come back into studio, and yes, so very excit. You were like, I can't wait to get back to Chris. You said to your admin the first thing I thing I want, I demanded, demanded. And then does everybody know that your admin is your wife? Yes, that's well, that's it, so there's no demanding. Yeah, my wife and I were on a romantic vacation in your and then I couldn't wait to get back to studio. Yes, as fast as possible. Well, hey, if you're tuning in, we are very excited because we're diving into perhaps passages of scripture that you may not necessarily hear about on a normal sermon or a typical sermon for a lot of people reading, this is like the flyover zone right here, right going from the coast to west coast, just fly over the Midwest. This is kind of some well Viticus. It could be some tough reading sometime every once while, yeah, yeah so, or sort of skipping over some things. And we're hitting the religious festivals today. Yeah so. But before we do that, we have a segment that Desire has planned just for your and a lie. And this is a brutally difficult one. She said, Jeff, we know that you're a big fan of grilling for others. Yes, and so for today's edition of Two Truths in a Lie, I have to recount three different grilling stories, and I have to challenge you to figure out which one isn't true. And by the way, do you have three grilling stories? I have thousands of grilling stories. Okay, all right, but are they all good? Though? I mean, I know once upon a time I made burgers. Yeah, I made burgers, having made some talking ate them the end. Okay, Well, you got to figure out which one was a lie. Okay. So one time I bought a smokeless grill, but actually it was given to me. The smokeless grill was given to me. I was very excited about it. I'd never seen a smokeless girl before. This is rt after we get married, and so my wife and I in the middle of the winter, we wanted to do some grilling, and so I thought, well, we have this smokeless grill. So I set it up in the kitchen. We grilled and just about killed ourselves because of the so much smoke in the house for quite a while. So that's one smokeless girls aren't truly smokeless. Two. I the very first gas grill that I ever bought for my my home. I put on a patio and very excited about it and did not realize the closeness of how close it was to the wall, and I broke a five and a half foot plate glass window in our front front window. Then from the heat, and then the last one was the first time that I got somebody gave me a replacement propane tank. The hookup was wrong and I started a fire from the from the grill all the way down to the tank and almost exploded. The tank. So those first first, let me first of all say that all three of those were told very convincingly. And also I believe that your first story is true because you immediately and instinctively said it was given to you the smokeless grill, and everybody in ministry when they first started out are given things, so that one has to be true. So I'm going to say that one's true, and then you broke it was true. It was true, by the way, oh yes, okay, so I'm down to two. Okay, so I'm going to say that the thing that is false is you started to fire down the hose to the connector. And the reason why is because I can believe the heat thing escaping your knowledge perhaps, but I just don't see you. Well, you're not necessarily the handy guy. Why do you say that just because I have scars all over my body from power tools. Yeah, I'm still going to go with that. With that, that's the false one that I accidentally started a fire with with the with the connected Okay, well you're correct, Yes, you're correct. Yes. So the very first house we ever owned, we were so proud of it, and we the one thing was there wasn't like a deck or anywhere. And so there was a little slab of concrete out front, and so I got made railings and the little you know, slats and all that kind stuff. Was really nice. We made this little sitting area. Was so proud of ourselves. And I put my grill right in front of the the big plate last window because I thought, that's great. It's so easy, easy access into the house. And fired up the first time and destroyed a thousand dollars window. Wow. And then which which was one fortieth of the value of our house. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, how much money did you say? Now? And they're a little patio exactly. You could have expanded your patio. I think it was I think I think we paid forty five thousand dollars for that house. Wow, I'd love to have that back. Well yeah, no kidding. And the window was a thousand bucks so yeah, wow, that's a that's an expensive window today. It was huge. It was a huge window. Yeah yeah, yeah, wow. Well, I I am glad that you didn't hook up a propane tank wrong, because actually that's the scariest of all the scenarios, right, I have had big fires but never, never from approach. So before we move on, Jeff, I do have a question. When you almost killed yourself with a smokeless girl that wasn't smokeless, did your fire alarm go off? No, there were no fire alarms in our apartment. Nice. Nice, It was the eighties, man or nineties in nineteen ninety ninety one, Yeah, ninety two, was it nineteen ninety two? It is what happened. So, yeah, that's hilarious. Back then, back then, they just figured you need to be smart enough to figure out how to get out of the house, right if it's smoking in your coffee, get out if you're sleep well. So somebody hit Bonnie's dad actually was one who gave us that little grill. And then somebody down the street. We move into this apartment and somebody knew us, and so they were a married couple and they came over because we don't have been married for just a few weeks. They came over. The two steaks. Wow, So, I mean, these are first steaks I'd had in quite a while as a college kid, you know, all excited about it, got my grilling salts out and all this kind of stuff, and fired that bad boy up right on my kitchen table. Next, you know, we can't breathe in the house. We got all the windows open. It's January and northwest Indiana. It's like five degrees outside. We got the windows out. We're sitting on the floor eating our steaks. Wow, that's great. That's a great that's a great visual right there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So actually for like a month afterwards, the whole house smelled like steak every time we open the door. You're like, man, I'm hungry. Yeah, that's funny. Yep, steaks embedded into your furniture. It really was. Yeah, it was horrible. Okay, well, hey, as you mentioned, we are looking at festivals and seasons, and this really drives and still does even to this day. These festivals still drive the Jewish calendar, right, it drives so much of their society, and so I think that they're really important for us to understand what God was thinking and why he did these things. And so it's kind of a long chapter, but it goes kind of in a pretty quick fashion. So we'll try to get through it. See what happens Leviticus, chapter two, twenty three, and we'll start with verse one. It said the Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to the people of Israel. These are the Lord's appointed festivals, which you are to proclaim as official days for Holy Assembly. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of complete rest, an official day for Holy Assembly. It's the Lord's Sabbath Day, and it must be observed wherever you live. In addition to the Sabbath, these are the Lord's appointed festivals, the official days for Holy Assembly that are to be celebrated at their proper times each year. The Lord's Passover begins at sundown on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the next day, the fifteenth day of the month, you must begin celebrating the Festival of Unleavened Bread. This festival to the Lord continues for seven days, and during that time the bread you eat must be made without yeast. On the first day of the festival, all the people must stop their ordinary work and absorb beneficial observe an official holy day for assembly. For seven days, you must present special gifts to the Lord. On the seventh day, the people must again stop all their ordinary work to observe an official day for Holy Assembly. Then the Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to people of Israel. When you enter the land that I'm giving you, and you harvest its first crops, bring the priest a bundle of grain from the first cutting of your grain harvest. On the day after the Sabbath. The priest will lift it up before the Lord so it may be accepted on your behalf. On that same day, you must sacrifice a one year old male lamb with no defects as a burnt offering to the Lord. With it, you must present a grain offering consisting of four quarts of choice flour moistened with olive oil. It'll be a special gift of pleasing aroma to the Lord. Must also offer one quart of wine as a liquid offering. Do not eat any bread or roasted grain or fresh kernels on that day until you bring this offering to your God. This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation wherever you live. From the day after the Sabbath, the day you bring the bundle of grain to be lifted up as a special offering, count off seven full weeks. Keep counting until the day of the seventh Sabbath fifty days later. Then present an offering a new grain to the Lord from wherever you live. Bring two loaves of bread to be lifted up before the Lord is a special offering. Make these loaves from your fore courts of choice, flour and bake them with yeast, and there'll be an offering to the Lord from the first of your crops. Along with the bread, present seven one year old male lambs with no defects, one young bull, two rams as burnt offerings to the Lord. These burnt offerings, together with grain offerings and liquid offerings, will be a special gift of pleasing aroma to the Lord. And then you must offer one male goat as a sin offering and two one year old male lambs as a peace offering. Priests to lift up the two lambs as a special offering to the Lord, together with the loaves representing the first of your crops. These offerings, which are holy to the Lord, belong to the priests. That same day would be proclaimed an official day of Holy Assembly, a day on which you should do no ordinary work. Supermanent law for you. It must be observed from generation to generation wherever you live when you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your field. Do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I'm the Lord your God. Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to people of Israel. On the first day of the appointed month in early autumn, you are to observe a day of complete rest. It will be an official day for holy assembly, a day commemorated with loud blasts of a trumpet. You must do no ordinary work on that day. Instead, you to present special gifts to the Lord. Then, the Lord said to Moses, be careful to celebrate the day of Atonement on the tenth day of that same month, nine days after the festival of trumpets. You must observe it as an official day for holy Assembly, a day to deny yourselves and present special gifts to the Lord. Do no work during that entire day, because it's the day of Atonement, when offerings of purification are made for you, making you right with the Lord your God. All who do not deny themselves that day will be cut off from God's people. I will destroy anyone among you who does any work on that day. You must not do any work at all. This supermanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation wherever you live. This will be a Sabbath day of complete rest for you, and on that day you must deny yourselves. This day of rest will begin at sundown on the ninth day of the month and extend until sundown in the tenth day. The Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to people of Israel. Begin celebrating the Festival of Shelters on the fifteenth day of the appointed month, five days after the day of Atonement. This festival to the Lord will last for seven days. On the first day of the festival, you must proclaim an official day for Holy Assembly when you must do no ordinary work, and for seven days you must present special gifts to the Lord. The eighth day is another holy day on which you present your special gifts to the Lord, and this will be a solemn occasion. No ordinary work may be done that day. These are the Lord's appointed festivals. Celebrate them each year's official days for the Holy Assembly by presenting special gifts to the Lord. Burnt offerings grain offerings, sacrifices, and liquid offerings, each on its proper day. These festivals must be observed in addition to the Lord's regular sabbath days, and the offerings are in addition to your personal gifts and the offerings you give to fulfill your vows. No voluntary offerings you present to the Lord. Remember that the seven day Festival to the Lord, the Festival of Shelters, begins on the fifteenth day of the appointed month, after you've harvested all the produce of the land. The first day and the eighth day of the festival will be days of complete rest. On the first day, I gather branches from magnificent trees, palm fronds, bows from leafy trees, and willows that grow by the streams, that celebrate with joy before the Lord, your God, for seven days. You must observe this festival to the Lord for seven days every year. This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed in the appointed month from generations generation. For seven days you must live outside and little shelters. All native born Israelites must live in shelters. And this remind each new generation of Israelites that I made their ancestors live in shelters when I rescued them from the land of Egypt. I'm the Lord, your God. So Moses gave to Israel sees instructions regarding the annual festivals of the Lord. All right, let's pray and go. Okay, yeah it was a lot. She is that was like five minutes of solid reading. Well, I like the last one where God makes them have an annual camp out. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was great. That's good for Jeff. So you have the religious festivals. So you have the Festival of number one on leaven bread is what we talked about. Then celebration of the first harvest. There's the Festival of the Harvest. There's the Festival of Trumpets, there's the Day of Atonement, and then the Festival of Shelters. So a lot of festivals, yes, and in fact it is it's crazy almost right, But I guess if you think about it, we have more in our culture. We have more in our culture, don'tly. So I struggle with this when I'm sure, I'm sure I think most people do, actually, which is sort of like knowledge versus relevance, right, So I'm more of you know, attracted to relevance and not necessarily like attracted for knowledge for knowledge sake. And don't get me wrong, all of God's word is important. I do believe that all of God's word is you know, symbolic, and it means something, and it's reflects nature. I mean, there's something to learn from every verse of the Bible, right, right, So I do believe that. But you know, sometimes it's hard to translate, and you know, you read something like this and you're like, okay, all right, God, what do we do with this? What does it mean for me? Well, especially for a show like this where it's basically two guys we open the Bible, no prep and just go what's God telling us today? Right? And you go, well, yeah, right, yeah, right, Well, I think there's several things. There's several things in here. One. You know, first of all, he re ups the one of the ten commandments with regard to the Sabbath day. He's like, don't mess with the Sabbath day. A matter of fact, ignoring the Sabbath causes a lot of trouble throughout the rest of the Bible. You read most of the minor prophets, he's pretty ticked off about them. Skipping the Sabbath day. Jesus later on reups that when it says, hey, man isn't for the sabbath. The sabbath is for man. It's a gift to you to rest. And a lot of our problems, and I think physical problems and emotional relational problems are that we don't ever take our foot off the gas, right, and then we just wander. God rescue my marriage. Guys, Like I've been giving you a day off every year, every week for you to invest in your family. Oh God, you know, lower my blood pressure. I've been giving you a whole day off every week, and we refuse it. Right, So a lot of these we know the health benefits, we know the mental benefits, we know the relational benefits of taking one twenty four hour period off every every week. We just don't want to do it or we feel like we can't do it, like somehow we know something God doesn't know. Right, My life's really hir and so he's re upp in that he and we know that Jesus said that the Sabbath is a gift. Then you see the rest of these, and he tends to build these these festivals around sabbaths, he wants you to count one time, count seven Sabbaths out and then you know, kick off this new thing. And so he wants the Sabbath to be the center of their lives because that day is supposed to be for them, for their families, and for assembly, gathering together as believers in God. And it sets them apart as a culture from all the other cultures around them. And if you think about it, I was in I was in Vienna, Austria on fourth of July, and my cab driver goes, hey, today's a special day for you, right, I see. Yeah. He said, it must be amazing to be fourth of July in America, right, isn't that funny? He has this picture how great it is to be an American on fourth of July, and he was like, you know, is it hard? Is it hard for you not be home for Fourth of July? Right now? Yeah? And you know, so he had this understanding that there is something very unique and very special for Americans on that day, and there was we kind of had a sense of loss that we you know, there's no fireworks going off, there wasn't any you know, parades happening, none of that kind of stuff. Did I tell you what I did. No, what did you do? I went and saw the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Greenfield Villains fabulous and they were playing as the fireworks were going off. Yeah, and it was like it was the most amazing fabulous. It was fabulous. This is this is the first year in probably ten years that we missed it because we're out of the country. Did you know I played fifteen of those concerts, did you Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Well I told Liz that you were in it. Yeah, yeah, that way saying that that's what you go to every year. Every year you do a Greenfield Village. Yeah, I had no idea. In fact, I didn't even know it went on. Yeah, it's fantastic. If you don't know. Greenfield Village is a place that Henry Ford built as an outdoor museum where he brought in some of the you know, Thomas Edison's workshops and where the Wright brothers invent in the airplane, the actual buildings he moved them there. Yes, and Noah Webster's home where he wrote the English Dictionary. But it's just a really great place for fireworks. And the Detroit Symphony is one of the top five symphonies in the world. So yeah, it was amazing, great experience. So that's what these are. These are building their culture. So when you have the passover, obviously we know what that is. We just talked about the passover, right, So the passover, Hey, there wasn't something that happened back then. This is something I want you to relive and re enact every year, right, I want you to. So he takes them through the unleavened bread again, the sacrifice with the animal, the way that you're cooking your food. I want you to tell your children these things, right, And he's trying to drive this culture. They were slaves that were embedded in the Egyptian culture for four hundred years, and he said, now listen, you're out of that culture. You need a new culture for you and your family. And I would say for people moms and dads that listen to this podcast, you lived forty years in slavery and God sets you free, and now you need to have new celebrations for your family. Where you drive home. The meaning of Easter, you drive home, the meaning of Christmas, you drive home, the meaning of faith. Right, the fact that we take one day off because we honor God and God's laws are important, right, all these things. You notice, he says, if you skip these things, you're going to be cut off from the people, right, So it's a big issue for him. And I think it's important for us as Christians to have holy days. That's what a holiday is. Holy days set apart for re educating our family, reminding ourselves, celebrating what God did. And so that's the whole idea behind the camp out with the festival shelters. They traveled and wandered in the wilderness for forty years and these little these little shelters. So that's what that is, all those things. But I think the most important one is you know, for us, it's going to be the day of atonement. But yeah, well it's it's an incredible overview there where you were talking about we all need a new culture once you realize that we're set free from the bondage. You said slavery, right, Slavery is sin, right, Yeah, And there's a lot of people who, you know, they try to get the benefits of God in their lives without changing the culture. Right. So they're just like, oh, yeah, we'll just sprinkle a little God in, you know, and and you know, I saw I saw a comedian trying to defend atheism versus you know, creationism with a god. And then and he's and he's dropping f bombs as he's doing it, and I thought, this is the most like juxtaposed. It was just really weird. It's like, it's like, well, this is a great argument if you just clean it up, because otherwise, you know, anyway, it's just weird to have the two cultures mixed. Where whereas God's saying, hey, man, I have saved you, but I have saved you from your life in order to give you a new one, right right. What God's not doing is saying, hey, when you guys celebrate the festival of Osiris or when you celebrate the festival of raw Right, you know, He's saying, no, get rid of your old belief system and culture, and I want you to have a new belief system and a new culture, and I want you to build it around the reminding yourself of all that I did for you. Well, the Bible tells us that he is making us more and more like his son, that's right. So so our goal is to you know, we're we're transitioning from glory to glory. The stripture says, so we are to you know, become never sinless. But you know we can sin less, right absolutely, and we can work toward you know, these reflections in place. And so I was thinking, you know, at the very beginning I mentioned about relevance, and I started thinking about you know, you said, we have more in our culture. So we have Fourth of July to remind us of something, right, we have Labor Day to remind us of something. We have Memorial Day to remind us of something. In the church. I think that the two big ordinances in the church. It's not that much different than baptism or communion. So baptism is a perfect symbol and none of that, but like every bit of baptism is the symbol. Right. So you know, Paul talks about, you know what it means to you know, just the water itself. You know, Jesus even said, you know, baptized with water. You know you're talking about In John three, Paul says, when you go under, you're you go under just as if Jesus went under the earth in the same likeness when he was buried, and you're raised to walk just like the resurrection and so it's all completely symbolic to remind us that we have new life and communion reminds us of the price that was paid for us. And so you know, we observe those things, and God commands us and says, hey, the purpose of this is to you know, connect to something that happened a long time ago. Of course, you know this, this reflects my nature, This reflects my goodness, This reflects my love and the price and the sacrifice that was paid for you. And it's really not that much different than these festivals, right. And then it builds community, It builds family, and it builds community, it gives it gave them something to really build around. A lot of times I think, are you know, God does a transformative work in our lives, and then we wonder what happens. How come it didn't transferred our children, our teenagers or whatever. It's because we've let them live their entire life in the Egyptian culture or in the worldly culture, right, and not reminding them and pulling them into these these reminders within you know, the Christian worldview. And so that's why he sets these up. And I think it's important for every one of us to go all right, God, I'm going to set aside a weekly time with you, a daily time with you. That's that's that's one of those things Communion and baptisms I'm going to celebrate. And then throughout the year when it comes to Christmas and Easter and some of these other significant religious holidays, I'm going to make sure I'm going to speak up about it. I'm going to talk about it, Thanksgiving being another one. So that's great. Well, hey, that's a lot that we impact there, just in in in those festival versus. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Yeah, really fun. So that is our time and so hopefully we will see you again next time. All the bibble guys, h m hm m h