Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy marketing for our church. Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you, trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with church candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go. We're at the end of Leviticus. We made it. We made it. Okay, so if you have not done the reading for today, make sure you go do the reading. If you have done the reading, let's dive in. We're in. Leviticus chapters 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 5 chapters of. Of the book of Leviticus. Now, remember our chiasm, okay? Leviticus 23. I would say 23 to 25 really mirror the very, very, very first section of Leviticus. Okay? So the end and the beginning mirror each other. Okay? Yesterday I told you Leviticus 21 and 22, all about the priest mirror Leviticus 8 to 10, which is all about the priests. And then Leviticus 18 and 20 just a couple days ago, which were more purity laws, mirrored Leviticus 11 through 15, right? So in a chiasm Everything mirrors everything except what's in a center. And so the day of Atonement doesn't have a mirror because it is the center of the chiasm. It is the climax, it is the highlight of the book. So the three ways that Israel is going to remain pure are, number one through rituals, number two through purity laws, number three, through their priests. Okay? So rituals, purity laws and priests are the three ways that the people of Israel are going to be holy so they can dwell amongst a holy God. We are going to get rituals, okay? Leviticus chapters one through seven gave us a bunch of rituals. It gave us five kinds of offerings. And now on the mirrored side of the book, okay, or the mirrored version of those rituals at the end of the book are not offerings or sacrifices. They're not five offerings or sacrifices, but they are seven feasts and festivals. Okay? So let's kind of go through those seven feasts or festivals. The first one is the Sabbath that everyone celebrates every single week, okay? Every. You work for six days and you Sabbath for one day. That is a weekly rhythm. Number two is a Passover. Now, the Passover completely resets the calendar, okay? So for the Jewish person, the year starts with deliverance. Okay? Remember, the Passover marks God's power, willingness, ability to rescue his people out of Egypt and to set them free. And so it's going to now reset the year. So the year's going to start at Passover, Then they're going to get the first of the year's crops, which is going to be celebrated in the festival of first fruits. Seven Sabbaths or 50 days after the offering of first fruits, you're going to get the feast of weeks or Shavuot or Pentecost. Now Christians, we, we celebrate Pentecost because, well, really, I think it's cool to celebrate all of these, but we definitely celebrate Pentecost because that's the birth of the church. Okay? The early Christians are celebrating Pentecost and Jesus dies on the, on the Friday of Passover. Okay? So, so the, the celebration of Passover is really culminated in the person of Jesus, okay, In the Gospels. And then when you get to acts, we are seven Sabbaths or 50 days past the feast of weeks, and you get Pentecost. And that is when the Holy Spirit comes down to fire. Acts, chapter two. If you're Pentecostal, then you, you, you, you're with this, okay? Okay, so Sabbath, Passover, first fruits, Pentecost. And then you get the festival of trumpets or the blowing of the shofar, which is Rosh. Hashanah, okay? And then sixth, you're going to get the Day of Atonement. Now the Festival of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement both happen on the seventh month because seven is super, super important. You're going to get Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Atonement. So the Day of Atonement is nine days after the Feast of Trumpets and it's celebrated for one day. And then you're gonna get the Feast of Tabernacles, which is the seventh. And the Feast of Tabernacles is celebrated for seven days, okay? It's a, it's a week long festival. So you're gonna get a week long festival in Passover and a week long festival for the Feast of Tabernacles. And this is a complete recreation of time, a reorientation of time. Now, I'll say it this way. Part of what it means to have a national identity is that your time or your year is structured in a, in a particular way. So in America, okay, we celebrate Thanksgiving. Irish people don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Mexicans don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Ugandans don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is an American holiday. What it means to be an American is that we celebrate the 4th of July, okay? We celebrate our independence, the day that the, the moment that marks the birth of our country, of our nation. And if you go to Australia, if you go to Japan or if you go to Germany, they're going to be holidays that mark German people or Japanese people or Australian people. It's like very this idea that God would give them a calendar and say, hey, there's a liturgy for your year that here's the feasts, the holidays, the festivals that you're going to have. Why? Because feasts and holidays and festivals, these things hold values. The holidays that a nation commemorates, celebrates, says, is sacred is going to tell you the values of that nation, the values of that people group. I remember being just very proud as an American when Juneteenth became a national holiday. Remember thinking, that's a smart thing to do. We value the contribution of black people in this country and we value the heritage of all people. And that man, there were enslaved people in Texas. That man, even though the Emancipation Proclamation had already gone forward, they didn't receive it, man. The story behind this holiday is one I can get with. I like this, okay? The things that we celebrate as a culture, as a Christian, I'm uncomfortable with Pride Month. That makes me uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable that an entire month of the year is dedicated towards a lifestyle or an expression of a lifestyle that I don't think is biblical. Okay? So the things, the days that a society commemorates as sacred tell you a lot about what that society thinks is important. This is. This is like we're getting down into human nature. It is very, very natural for humans to go, yeah, Martin Luther King Day should be a thing. Black History Month should be a thing, okay? That is human nature. So God is essentially saying, hey, there are seven things about your year, about your calendar that I'm gonna mark. One of them, I'm gonna mark every single week. You're gonna have a weekly rhythm, and you're gonna have. And then you're gonna have six annual rhythms where I'm going to dictate to you what you are going to value. Now, we have a very, very interesting word here in Leviticus. Leviticus, chapter 23 is the word appointed times. And we're gonna get that same word in Genesis chapter one, verse 14, appointed times. That part of the way that God orders the cosmos, part of the way that God brings order to chaos is by saying that all time is not the same. When I was a rookie husband, you know, let's say our anniversary fell on a Tuesday. I'd be like, oh, we'll just celebrate it on the weekend, okay? Or let's say a birthday fell on a Thursday. It's like, ah, we'll just celebrate it on Saturday. And then the older I've gotten, the more I've been like, no, the day is holy. My anniversary, the day's holy, okay? My wife's birthday, my son's birthday, the day's holy. We're going to set it apart. It's going to be sacred. Part of the way that God orders life is by saying, hey, there should be seasons, appointed times. There should be a rhythm to the calendar that actually you don't just do whatever you want to do when you want to do it. You bring structure to life. Now, the American calendar is somewhat like that. I mean, we have Easter and Christmas, so you can see the remnants of, like, our Christian heritage. But then we also got a bunch of crazy stuff that's in our calendar as well. And calendars really do order people's lives. Time is a way in which life gets ordered. Now here's a massive theme. This will get be our nerdy nugget. So that's all context. Okay, let's get into some of our nerdy nuggets. Not only does God want to communicate to the people of Israel that your time belongs to me and that you're going to order your time according. You're going to orient and order your time based on the values that I want you to emphasize, okay? Not only is God going to demand that they order and orient their time, but then God is gonna say, and by the way, I own all the land, okay? So every. So we're gonna get festivals, okay? And then we're gonna get this, this riddle. Tim Mackey from the Bible Project calls this a riddle. I love that. I think this is a riddle. It's the law of the blasphemer. It's Leviticus, chapter 24, verse 10 to verse 23. And we may have time to talk about it at the end of this episode. We may not, but then Leviticus 25, you're going to get a Sabbath year, okay? So in the same way that you have a Sabbath day, you're going to get a Sabbath year. The people of Israel need to celebrate a Sabbath year. Work for six, give the land rest. Work for six, give the Land Rest. And then, okay, after seven Sabbaths, so you're going to give the 50th year as a jubilee year. So let's say your family fell into some hard times and you had to sell your family farm, okay? On the jubilee year, all the land goes back to the original tribal allotments that are found in the book of Joshua. Why? Because God essentially is saying, you don't own the land. I own the land. It's my land. Okay? When you invaded Canaan, you did not do anything. I am the one that gave you victory over all the people groups that were here. I'm the one that led you into victory to conquer this land. Okay? So don't get this twisted. This is not yours. You don't just get to own it and keep it. No, every 50 years we get a reset because not only does your time not belong to you, your land doesn't belong to you. You are not owners of anything, but stewards of everything. Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but that's a timeless truth. And honestly, as someone who owns property, I own property. And my heart posture towards God has always been God, whoever you want to live with us people can live with us. I'll be, I'll be open handed. I'll be generous because this is not my house. Yes, I paid for it, but you're the one that's provided opportunities for me to generate wealth. God, you, you. And, and since. And, and I don't want to get too far into the story, but I Was I was the thing that made me own property. I don't tell the story often, but there was a moment that made me own property. Okay. I was a youth pastor for 10 years, and I don't know, maybe it feels like probably 10 years ago I was a tenant and I had a landlady who, I don't know, I wasn't the biggest fan. And there was a. There was a teenager that we had mentored through high school. He had graduated high school, was a freshman in college, and his living situation was just terrible. And he wasn't a strong, strong, super strong Christian. And I just felt like the Lord was telling me, he needs to live with you. Like, take him in. He needs to live with you and Tia, you and your wife. And so I asked Tia, she was like, of course he can live with us. So we move him in with us. Well, our landlady finds out that this guy's living with us, and, man, she said it was. We were breaking the lease, and she swore up and down that we were sub leasing to him, that he was helping out with the rent. I was like, you can't even prove that that's not true. I'm actually just being super generous. And I mean, she just wouldn't let it go. And I remember saying to the Lord, like, I. I can't be as generous as I want to be because I'm poor. I'm operating out of poverty. And I remember saying to God, lord, if you give me the ability to, to create wealth and, And I own property, I will. I will actually have the, the authority and the power to be as generous as my heart desires. And so that was the day when, when we broke the lease and we moved out of that townhouse. And that high school student, well, he was in college at that point, but I'd known him since high school when, when he had to figure out he had to go live back with his parents. And it was a really, really chaotic situation. His parents weren't Christians, and actually it was his mom. He was living with his mom, and his mom wasn't a believer and his mom's boyfriend was living with her. And it was just chaos. And I felt so bad. My heart broke that I wanted to be generous, but I couldn't because I hadn't been a good steward. And that was the day that I decided, I'm going to own property so that nobody can limit my generosity. I'm going to own property and whoever I want to allow to live with me is. Is I. So my posture going into home ownership was God, this house is yours. And since the year we bought a home, people have always lived with us. People, people have always lived with us. My, my mantra has always been, man, I am going to be responsible and have the work ethic of the most conservative person you're ever going to meet. I'm going to have the work ethic and the drive and the responsible, like, just, I'm going to be responsible like, you know, a hardcore Republican, but man, I'm going to be generous and soft hearted and open handed and generous like, like, like the biggest liberal you've ever met. Like, that, that's my, that's my, the balance that I want to strike. I'm going to take responsibility over my home and I'm gonna, I'm gonna own this house and I'm going to be a good steward over everything that God's given me. And then I'm going to open the door and I'm going to say, man, God, if, if people need someplace to live, if, if there are people who, who, who you want to bless, you can bless them through me. And every, every year since we bought, we bought our first home in 2019, and ever since 2019, people have always lived in our property. Period. Like, and God is saying the very same thing. He's saying every 50 years, well, every 49 years, in the 50th year, you return all the property because it's not yours. And I think sometimes that's why we tithe, because we're saying, you know what? The tithe is actually reminding me that this is not my money, this is not mine. And there's something that gets into the human soul that convinces us that our time belongs to us and our property belongs to us and the land belongs to us and our money belongs to us. And God has to like, shake us and go, none of this is yours. You didn't cause fruit to come out of the ground. Like, you did your part, but come on, let's not get it twisted. You can't make it rain. If I shut up the heavens and there's no rain, there's gonna, there will be no crops. Then there'll be a famine. Like, you, you can, you can do your part. You can sow seed and you can harvest it. But don't, don't act like I'm not the one. Like, dude, please. I practice the skill of preaching. I practice the skill of communicating. I went and got my doctorate. There's all these things that I do, but I can't put supernatural favor on. On my preaching calendar. Like, I can't. There's things I cannot do. And I think that the more responsible you are in life, the more the enemy can kind of lie to you and tell you that it's all a meritocracy. Meritocracy means, you know, by merit. And I'm sorry, but this is by grace. Like, God owns everything. All of it is his. And he wants the people of Israel to live that way. He wants them to practice Sabbath in the sixth annual feast to remind them, your time belongs to me. And you're not going to celebrate stuff that I don't want you to celebrate. You're going to celebrate the stuff based on the values that I give you because your time belongs to me. And I'm going to orient your time based on the values that I'm instilling in you as a nation. Bible department family, it's Dr. Manny Arango. And first thing I want to say is that I'm proud of you for completing the New Testament. You did it. And now that we're in the Old Testament, I hope that looking at Genesis and Exodus from an ancient perspective and worldview has kind of like opened your eyes. Well, I got news for you. If you've enjoyed some of the interpretations that I've brought to the table from Genesis, then that's just the tip of the iceberg. This entire book, Crushing Chaos, was written from an ancient hermeneutic. I'm looking at stories like the Flood, Adam and Eve from the perspective of an ancient person. And we've got an event coming up on April 26th where I'll take a lot of the content from this book and I'll turn that content into live lectures. You don't want to miss it. You can actually register for that event right now. The link is in the description. And more than content, I think what you'll find as we gather together in Nashville are like minded believers and friends in a community of people that you don't just watch content with online, but you can get to know in person. I'd love to see you in Nashville. I'd love to hug you. High five you. And I'd love to nerd out together for one day as we come together in Nashville to learn about how to crush chaos. I'll see you in Nashville. Peace number two. Your land belongs to me. Now, here's the timeless truth, okay? The timeless truth here is that God cannot be robbed. So the people don't celebrate the Jubilee year, okay? They don't keep the Jubilee year And essentially they then get kicked out, into exile. And they are in exile. You can do the math. They are in exile for the exact number of years of Sabbath years that they missed. Because at the end of the day, God's going to get his. Like, you can't cheat God. God's going to get his. And not only is God going to get his, but God is going to be faithful to give you what belongs to you based on how faithful you've been to him. Remember one time, me and Sam, the guy who travels with me the most, we flew to London for speaking engagement, and we were going to get a flight reimbursement in an honorarium. And when we landed, the youth pastor let us know that there was not going to be a youth conference because he had cheated on his wife. And his pastor found out the day before there was a whole debacle. And I decided to be faithful to minister to him and his wife for the four or five days that I was there. And we were just. As a ministry, we just had to. We just had to eat it. We just. We just had to. There's no flight reimbursement. There's no honorarium. What. Whatever. A month later, we're in Tennessee, and I'm preaching at an event and always collects the check. And he sees that there's more money than we had agreed on on our speaking agreement form. So he comes to me and I said, hey, man, go check with the bishop. Make sure that that's the right amount. And Sam goes back and he. It's like, yeah, the. The Holy Spirit gave them an amount to give that was more than what they agreed upon. So they obeyed the Holy Spirit. We get back to the hotel room and to the dime. It was the money for the flight reimbursement and the honorarium that we should have gotten a month earlier in London. And I remember looking at Sam and going, yeah, man, God keeps account. Like, God's a better accountant than me. Like, I don't have to fend for myself. I don't have to. There's like, I don't have to get angry. I don't have to be mad at this youth pastor cheat on his wife. Who could have told me this information via Zoom or FaceTime? But, hey, the man let me fly all the way to England to give me this news. And that is what it is, what it is. I don't have to be mad in the same way that God's gonna get his God. God's gonna make sure that the Sabbaths that belong to him that he. That he's gonna. He's gonna take them in the same way. God's gonna give you the things that you're owed. He is. He. He's. You don't have to, like, get upset or get an attitude or get bitter or try to be vengeful or try to avenge yourself. You're good, and you can trust that God is good and he's for you. That's my Thomas. Truth is that in the exile, now, when you get to the end of Leviticus, chapters 26, I believe, are going to essentially predict the exile. Okay, yeah, chapter 26 is gonna predict the exile. But. And I love this, at the end of chapter 26, it's gonna say, but if they will confess their sins, the sins of their ancestors, their unfaithfulness, and their hostility towards me, which made me hostile towards them, so that I sent them into the land of their enemies, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. So in. Leviticus closes with a foreshadowing of exile, but it also closes with hope that if the people repent and come back to God, that they'll be able to come back into the land. And that is the entire book of Leviticus. Guys, we did it. All right, I'll see you tomorrow for day one. 16, we're going to get into the Book of Numbers. And the book of Numbers is going to start with Moses now being in the tent of meeting. Remember, the book of Leviticus is dictated to Moses and Aaron by God. But they can't get in the tent, okay, because of what Nadab and Abihu have done now because Leviticus has worked, the day of atonement has worked. Now they can actually get into the tent. Well, not they. Moses can get into the tent. So we know that Numbers, chapter one, verse one, tells us essentially, in a very, very subtle way, that Leviticus was successful because they go from being outside the tent, hearing the voice of God, to now being in the tent. Tent meaning tabernacle. All right, that's the entire book of Leviticus. I'll see you guys tomorrow as we start our trek into the Book of Numbers. I'm so proud of you. Good. Good job. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, how about we start one? The Bible's good for you. Let's read it every day. I love you. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.