NIV Application Bible Podcast: Episode 4 (Leviticus 7)

• So as we communicate with him, it actually encourages real community with other people. He is such a good God. Welcome back to the NIV Application Bible podcast. Okay, I want you to hang with me when I tell you that this one’s going to be on Leviticus. Some of you, I know you’re going to be like, uhuh, I’m going to get a snack. Stay with us.
• When I used to hear Leviticus, I also would recoil a bit internally. I thought, Leviticus, it’s about the law and scabs and legalistic ritual. Y’all, it’s so not about legalistic ritual. If you actually read the context of Leviticus, you’ll see it’s actually about having a love relationship with God. It it’s about this lifegiving real relationship.
• It’s not about ritual. Um I’m going to read you about uh ritual from chapter 7 to prove it to you. Okay, this is Leviticus chapter 7 beginning with verse 11. These are the regulations for the fellowship offering anyone may present to the Lord. If they offer it as an expression of thankfulness, then along with this thank offering, they are to offer thick loaves made without yeast and with olive oil mixed in.
• Thin loaves made without yeast and brushed with oil. I’m sorry, I got to take a rabbit trail there. Anything that talks about bread, hot bread and olive oil, how can that be boring? You got to love the little carb. Uh it that I mean, I’m sorry. I’m hungry now. and thick loaves of the finest flour, well kneaded, and with oil mixed in.
• Along with their fellowship offering of thanksgiving, they are to present an offering with thick loaves of bread made with yeast. They are to bring one of each kind as an offering, a contribution to the Lord. It belongs to the priest who splashes the blood of the fellowship offering against the altar. The meat of their fellowship offering of thanksgiving must be eaten on the day it is offered.
• They must leave none of it until morning. So, here’s the deal. Um, and I’m taking just a little liberty with the Hebrew here. If if you lived in this era and you loved God and you had something to say thank you to God for, so let’s just say, uh, you got a job promotion, uh, you had a healthy baby, you had a harvest and and it had rained and so you had something to eat, then you would go and and give God a thank offering. It involves bread.
• Bread made with yeast. So you’d have, you know, just think ficacia bread, bread made without yeast. So, just think pa. You had thick bread. You had thin bread. You’d bring that as an offering. You also brought meat along with the carbs. Um, if you didn’t have a lot of money, you might bring a sheep or a goat. If you had a lot of bank, you would bring a cow.
• All you have to do is Google how much meat, edible meat, you get from a sheep or a goat, somewhere between 30 and 40 pounds, or a cow up to 500 pounds. And you’ll see what they brought to the Lord is a thank offering, all that bread and at least 30 pounds of meat. So the the priests that were officiating at wherever you brought the thank offering, they would butcher the animal.