(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Hey, you're listening to Cut For Time, a podcast from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. And I'm Dan Breitwieser. 

Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message. Cut For Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening.

All right. Hey, Nick, thanks for launching our Lent series in Leviticus this weekend, and thanks for being on the podcast today. Yeah, I'm super excited for it.

What made you think Leviticus? This is what our church needs. Oh, man. Well, so this gets into one of the questions of the chiastic structure, right? I had been studying Leviticus on my own last summer, and I came across this, and it just really spoke to me, and it was kind of a big aha moment. 

And at that time, we were starting to plan out sermon series. We were in Ephesians, and we didn't have anything after that. And I said, hey, what about this idea in Leviticus? And nobody said no, and that's how we're here.

Perfect. Perfect. So, Nick, why don't you summarize your sermon from Sunday for us? Well, it was both a kickoff of an entire series, which took some kind of structural discussion, and then I had my own text that was the sermon itself. 

So, the kickoff was, like you said, this metaphor of a hike. We're looking at Leviticus chiastically, which we should probably define for any listeners who weren't there. Chiasm is this ancient Eastern literature style where the main point is the center, the climax doesn't come at the end, it comes in the middle, and everything is in a ring structure outside of that. 

And I explained that in the sermon, and then used some wayfinding images and a metaphor of a hike, where we're going to find that climax, that centerpiece at the summit. So, if you picture going up one side of a mountain and down the other, and if there are strata in your elevation levels that mark off a difference and an experience there, that's what we're going to see as we go through these different chiastic rings leading into the center. So, I had to do that first, and then the text that I had, the chiastic pair that I had, was the first seven chapters, which are, they define the sacrifices at the tabernacle, and specifically where I focused was in grace and forgiveness that's available there. 

And then you flip all the way to the back of the book, and you find this pairing, this correlating text that goes into feasts and celebrations. And even within that, there's a really neat tie to the sacrifice system. And then ultimately, in chapter 25, it's just this radical forgiveness, which is, it's shown in Year of Jubilee, releasing of prisoners, releasing of debt, giving back land. 

And the application that I drew from that was in forgiveness, the same kind of grace that God offers his people in the first seven chapters. He's then asking his people to do the same thing for one another. And so, that's where we're ending.

And I'm going to come back to that at the end of our podcast, because something that you said also in our sermon on Sunday is, this wasn't written to us, but it was written for us. And so, we can draw application from our study of her text on Sunday. All right. 

So, let's jump in. We've got some texted in questions, which is always my favorite. So, first question, this person says, I've never heard of Leviticus being a chiastic book.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? And I want to add my own note to that or question, which is just, what were you studying in the summer that pointed this out to you? Or was this something that you figured out on your own? Well, so I'm really glad to hear the reader say that they had never heard of this before either, because it makes me feel better. And that'll make sense when I tell this story. So, if you recall, a couple of years ago, we had our first Grow Weekend. 

And I led the study, and it centered on justice, on the Ten Commandments, but then just the righteousness and justice of God. And I realized coming out of that study, I mean, it was impactful for me. I loved it. 

I always learn more by teaching than anything else. I realized that justice, I get, I think, man, I could eat those words in the next 10 years or so as I mature. But I feel like I understand that. 

Holiness, I didn't really understand. And so, that study was in Leviticus, sorry, that study was in Exodus. And I just knew looking ahead at Leviticus, there's a huge gap in my understanding of how the holiness and ritual purity laws really worked and why those were important. 

So, I decided when I had the time, I would set aside to study that on my own. So, it was last summer, I opened up Leviticus, and I was just going to start powering through it. I was going to study it like I study any other book of the Bible. 

Jeez, I mean, it really, it's so hard to study. So, I was muscling through it. But I've been kind of trained maybe to think of Scripture.

When I see something repeat, and it shouldn't, or you're wondering why it does, that's when my brain goes, wait a second, there's something structural going on here. I was in chapter 20. So, I had muscled through a lot of it and was still questioning a lot of life choices. 

Like, why am I studying this? And I read a text, which I'll, unfortunately, I'll get to preach on this in a couple of weeks, that it mentioned the dietary laws again. But the chapter on dietary laws had been like seven chapters prior. And a flag went off in my head. 

I was like, wait a second. And so, then I looked at the chapters immediately after. And those correlated with the chapters before the dietary laws. 

I'm like, no way. And I started getting excited and writing it. I still have a hand-sketched notepad of paper where I sketched out this chiastic structure that I had found. 

All that to say, I'm so excited. I was talking to another friend of mine about it. Like, you're not going to believe what I found. 

And he looked at me like I was an idiot. Like, have you read a single commentary on Leviticus? Like, that's intro to Leviticus, bro. I'm like, you mean everybody else already knew this? He's like, yes, everybody else who's like all the scholars. 

I'm not saying every few Christians should have known this, but he's like, if you want to call yourself a teacher of the Bible and you think you found something new there, I was really humbled by that. Yeah, there was a 1999 book by Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature. And she did probably the most detailed work to work out almost the exact same structure that I sketched out on my little notepad, like I was doing something special. 

And now since then, most commentaries that have been published acknowledge that there's a chiastic structure to it, how detailed they get into it or how much they lean on it, give or take. But that's where that came from. And still, it was really fun to have found it on my own and then validating that I wasn't crazy. 

Yeah. Yes. And then just shows you what a way to honor your time, like in your study and for then to get something you did not expect out of that book, which is really cool. 

All right. So can you specifically talk about the verses in chapter 24 verses 10 to 23 and how those fit into the chiastic structure? Yeah, there's going to be, this is going to be your cut for time for the next seven weeks, right? I mean, we preached on 10 chapters in total. So clearly there's going to be a lot that gets cut for time. 

Chapter 24, I spoke directly on 23 and on 25. 24 definitely fits. It just had to be cut for time. 

It takes a lot of effort to understand that. So how's it fit? Well, what's going on in 24 is actually one of the very few narratives that's in Leviticus. So it starts off with this, I believe it's a Hebrew woman, but a non Hebrew father. 

So it's a blended family or mixed marriage. And the son of that marriage commits blasphemy. And the question comes up, okay, so how do we apply these laws? Is he under the law, right? Is he under our laws or not? It's a really interesting question. 

And so that's the narrative. Then it breaks and it goes into what you're familiar with, which is an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth, a bone for bone, right? Life to life. And it's this equitable repercussions. 

And then at the end of that, it says, you shall have the same law for the stranger and the sojourner as you do for native norms. So narrative, hey, what do we do with this case? And then a little bit of law. And then he says, so in conclusion, it should be the big picture. 

This is about equitable justice. And just in the broader picture, it's the same laws. Treat the foreigners the same way that you do native born. 

So you don't need to be judged by the same laws. So that's the bigger picture. So maybe what the asker of this question is trying to get at is, yeah, but Nick, you talked about radical grace and forgiveness from chapter 25.

But in chapter 24, it looks like it's tit for tat. It's this eye for an eye, right? And tooth for tooth. And so exactly the right punishment from somebody. 

Well, two things. One, context matters. So yes, that's written there. 

And then the author goes directly on to talk about completely forgiving all of these things. So you can divorce those two. And second, what is this tit for tat? Why is it there? We think of it as, hey, if somebody gouged your eye out, go get theirs.

But what it's actually saying is it's a non-escalation. If you think about how clan or tribal warfare might work, hey, you killed one of our cows, we're going to kill 10 of yours. You hit me, I'm going to hit you back, and it's going to be harder. 

That is sort of the way of man. And what God is saying is no escalation. If there needs to be a punishment, that punishment needs to not escalate. 

So if there's going to be a judicial punishment for somebody in civil law, don't escalate anything. Just go as far as is needed and is fair and be done. And then chapter 25 follows, oh, and by the way, every seven years, you're going to completely forgive these stats, and you're going to release people. 

So I think it does follow in the progression. I can see why contrasted with where I landed on the Sermon of Radical Grace, people would go, well, how does that fit in there? But I think it definitely does in that context. That's really helpful. 

Thank you. So would you consider that your cut for time content? That was definitely one of them, yeah. What else do you have that you wish you could have covered? Oh, I mean, nearly all of the texts that I read were chiastic in their own structure.

Like the description at the end of Exodus 40 about Moses not being able to go in is structured diastically. The excerpt from 25, it's just it's all over the place. What are those little dolls that fit inside other dolls? So it's just like a chiasm within a chiasm.

Yeah, they're Russian nesting dolls. Yeah. There you go. 

That's how I feel. All over the place. Yeah.

Okay, so if you had time, you could have helped us see that structure a little bit more and draw out and then obviously talk about all of the texts that we didn't actually get to read, right? Right, right, right. The other one would be breaking down, actually one of the questioners asked about this, the various types of sacrifices in 1 through 7. I just sort of generalized and focused in on the guilt sacrifices because I think that that's probably the more poignant to preach. I mean, the job of preaching is, yes, to study scripture, but it's also to proclaim the gospel.

So to proclaim the gospel, I zeroed in on the forgiveness or guilt offerings, but there's peace offerings as well. And I know that was one of the questions that came in. Yeah. 

And I'm wondering if she got that because she did that pre-reading that we're encouraging people to do. We're asking people to read the text, these complete chapters before they come to the sermon on Sunday. And you probably might be wondering, how would I know what to read for the sermon on Sunday? And we are giving that to you in the sermon journals and in Faith News every week, we're trying to encourage you to read. 

And so she did ask, yeah, what's about, tell me about that peace offering that she probably read about in her personal reading. So it was subtle, but I did reference it. I was kind of half joking around how the Israelites may have had the mentality, well, me and God will be neighbors. 

We'll just head over to his house, we'll drink some wine and eat some bread. And we're just kind of chuckling at that image. Actually, that's kind of the picture of a peace offering. 

And they could have been meat, or this was one of the offerings that you could just show up and it could be bread or it could be wine poured out. And it's also called a fellowship offering. It really, it was literally, it's just a freewill offering. 

I'm just so happy that you're my God, that if for whatever he may have done for somebody, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's a good crop, whether he's just feeling God's smile on you. And so you can show up. And what's interesting then is that God is still saying, when you're going to do that, here's how to do it. 

There are prescribed ways that really kind of, I don't know, maybe this is a stretch, but it's sort of like the five love languages books. So I'm trying to figure out how somebody likes to be loved. And God's saying, hey, if you want to show your gratitude and just a peace offering or have fellowship with me, here's how I enjoy doing that. 

Okay, great. Whereas the sin and guilt offerings had to do with something that someone knows that they did wrong and they owe a price, a penalty. And even as I discussed in the sermon, there's a sliding scale on that.

All right. So we had somebody text in a question. Do you think that Paul knew all of these rules that you've been talking about from Leviticus one through seven? Did he know them? And how do we know that? In all likelihood, yes. 

Now, one of the interesting things is actually that our next sermon next week is going to get into is Leviticus was written as an instruction manual. The people who really needed to know it were the priests. So the priest's job was to work and keep, to guard and keep the tabernacle and make sure that all of the proceedings that went on in there were to spec, up to code. 

Paul was not a priest. So Paul was not a Levite. He wasn't a priest. 

He didn't serve as a priest. He was a Pharisee. So he probably had studied it, but he didn't ever really need to apply it. 

He was not the person doing, performing these rites at the temple that existed, Herod's temple in the first century. But it's really easy to assume that yes, he would have been familiar with these, would have understood them. I'm wondering, and it's kind of hard to know a question that's texted in, why they're asking that. 

And they may be asking, I might assume, well, then can we find in Paul who talks about Jesus as the fulfillment or specific exact fulfillments? And not really. Well, for one, I mean, Jesus' death and resurrection, I mean, it didn't happen anywhere near the day of atonement. So it certainly didn't happen on the horns of the altar, inside the court of Gentiles, or sorry, inside the court of the temple.

So what Paul sees in all of this is what we call typological, which is basically like a pattern or these establish a pattern of how God works with his people. And then those patterns all point to their shadows for, as the author Pebers says, what Christ ultimately did. And so that's a better way of understanding how Paul understood God in his requirements for sacrifice for blood to pay the penalty, but knew that it wasn't literally and exactly that Christ would be sacrificed according to the rules of the guilt offering in Leviticus chapter five. 

That makes sense. Thank you. All right. 

So I want to end our time going back to the application that you drew from Leviticus 2535. So this verse says, if any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would help a foreigner and a sojourner so that they can continue to live among you. And so I think that you painted a picture of what this could look like in our day to day of being someone who's approachable to receive and like hear that you've hurt somebody and how to respond and ask for forgiveness and how to repair within community. 

You said that community for community's sake is pointless. So then can you finish this sentence? We should pursue community that or community should look like. We should pursue community that reminds one another and it derives its commonality by a shared forgiveness. 

And we know that we're forgiven by Christ and then that works its way out into those relationships. So I chose to talk relationally. That was an intentional decision. 

These laws are actually tangible that money and this was not a sermon on money. And I do think that it's justifiable to connect these monetary forgivenesses in Leviticus 25 to the relationship forgivenesses in the first seven chapters. But even then we talk about community. 

This has been something that has come up in my life in different directions. If the way that you form community actually creates socioeconomic barriers. But if you're in a small group, this could, I don't know, this is risky. 

But if you're in a small group that once a week you guys all get together and that's your Christian community. You get together for community with fellow believers by going out to eat. You may not know it. 

Some people just they're oblivious to this because their household budgets are very different. But that might exclude somebody from being a part of your small group. And so just being sensitive and realizing those things and creating community that doesn't have those kinds of barriers. 

I think it's something that we should be really conscious of in all kinds of ways. It doesn't mean that it's wrong to go out to eat with friends. It doesn't mean that it's wrong that one person can or can't afford to do that on a weekly basis. 

Or it could even just be a stewardship decision. It could be how somebody decides to steward what God's given them. And those are all fine. 

But being conscious of that is really important. So what I hear you say here in the sermon is just forgiveness is at the ready. It's at the forefront of these relationships. 

But I will say that this is a different idea of peace because for the conflict-averse type person, maybe like me, we might wish for being at peace to mean avoiding or let's just move on. Let's forgive and forget. So would you say that that's not true peace without first having the confrontation of our sin with one another? At a high level, yeah. 

I think there's probably a lot of caveats to that. There are areas of damaging abuse that I wouldn't put it on the victim. Well, Matthew 18 says you're supposed to go to them one-on-one first. 

Yeah, probably not a good idea. But in general, what you're describing is to just, oh, we'll just forget about it. We won't talk about it. 

And then it'll be fine. Well, it won't be. And that's not the model that's with us and God either. 

I think the tabernacle with clouds settled on it and flame coming up out of it probably was an intimidating place. And yet God is still saying, hey, I want you to come here and we're going to talk about what you've done. And you're going to hear that you're forgiven, but we're going to do this. 

And that's a really easy thing for me to say because I'm not the conflict-averse type. I knew what I was setting you up for. I knew the answer, but I thought I should just ask it. 

We all need it. No, well, but I will say one of the points that I made as I was closing is, and this is for me too. I mean, this is actually speaking to myself in the mirror. 

How do you exist in your community? So we can laugh about this, but everybody knows that I'm not conflict-averse. Is that good? Does that let other people know that they can come to me with whatever? And I hold an assurance for them that I want to restore and I can be gentle and I can be meek. And that's a convicting thought for me. 

And I think that's an area that God's been growing me in. And so for all of us out there who are Engram 8s, ENTJs, but strong personalities, there's a lot of gift for God's kingdom coming from strong personalities, but it also makes you one of the most difficult people to approach when you've hurt someone. And I'm deeply aware of that and trying to figure out for my own self, what did it look like to make sure that I'm existing in this community in such a way that when I step on toes, not if, man, do I step on toes, that someone knows they can come to me and be like, hey, I don't think you knew or meant to do this, but here's what happened. 

And it's not going to be responded with, you know, I didn't do anything wrong. Right. Yeah. 

Yeah. I appreciated that side of the application. It surprised me just being like, usually we just hear like the typical seek forgiveness for those you've hurt or pursue right relationship with one another. 

But then you turned it on, this turned it a little bit enough to be like reflect in of, yeah, how do I posture myself so that people know when they do need to come to me, they can know what to expect. Right. Yeah. 

So I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah. 

I think I've, I've heard many people say, you know what, how they think of me, that's their problem or they're not willing to talk to me. That's their problem. Yeah. 

No, it's not. Honestly, it's not, it's not a hundred percent their problem. And, and thankfully God didn't see it that way. 

You know, he didn't see, well, if they're just scared of me, that's their problem. You know, he humbled himself, took on flesh, walked around like a carpenter and said this, you know, you can come to me. All right. 

Thanks, Nick. Thanks for your time today. No problem. 

Appreciate it. Looking forward to the rest of the series. Me too.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of cut for time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast at faith church indie.com or text them into our faith church texting number. And we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode. 

If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. We'll be back again next week.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)