Ep 166: Loving Leviticus - And Why Most People Hate It (Part 1)

"Have you ever tried to read Leviticus and found yourself stuck and lost? Well, today we talk with Pastor Dan Shunk about his new book that will absolutely get you unstuck."

We sit down with Pastor Daniel Shunk to talk about his new book, Loving Leviticus and Why Most People Hate It, and why so many readers stall when they reach this part of the Bible. We walk through the laws, feasts, and offerings to show how Leviticus points to Jesus Christ and why it still matters under the New Covenant.

• Why Leviticus feels confusing to modern readers
• Why Pastor Daniel writes a book defending Leviticus
• The “Ted and Joe” argument and the common Leviticus gotcha
• Separating civil law from ceremonial law from moral law
• Reading Old Testament rituals as types and shadows of Christ
• Passover and the feasts as a timeline of Jesus’ work
• Why God delights when we dig for meaning
• The five main offerings and the many facets of the cross
• Covering versus true atonement and Christ as the final High Priest

Please click on the underlined links throughout.

Dan's new Book: Loving Leviticus: And Why Most People Hate It

Dan's 1st book: Ezekiel's Clock: And The Key To Unlock The 430-Year Prophecy Of Modern Israel

Church Website: Calvary Chapel Chambersburg, PA

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Leviticus Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Lord, you know.

SPEAKER_02 0:01

You're now less in a place is the best.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Plays on the word of the radio. Play on the word of God. Thank you for joining us on the experience today. Let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Freddie David Keddy Jr., the founder of Plays on the Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Let me welcome Daniel Schunk. Welcome to Plays on Word Radio. Or I should say welcome back to Plays on Word Radio. You are a uh longtime friend of the Plays on Word Ministry, and we're grateful to have a relationship with Calvary Chapel Chambersburg and you, their pastor. And uh the main reason why I wanted to interview you again, uh besides the fact that we always we always have great conversations, but to my great surprise, I found out that my my man has a new book out. Yes, and uh my my man came out, he dropped a new book this year, and it's I mean it's hot off the presses. I actually have the Kindle version and I'm waiting to see him in person. I'll I'll get a hard copy and get him to sign it for me. Um but the the name of the book is Loving Leviticus and Why Most People Hate It.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

And uh I think this is this is a you know, this is I would I would recommend this for any believer, man. Every believer. This is a um this is a must read. A lot of times people, and I say this all the time, I say, you know, people make their their new year's resolutions and they're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna read through the Bible, man. And they they read Genesis and there's narrative. Then you read Exodus, there's narrative. They get to Leviticus and they're like, What the heck is happening here? What is going on here? Whoa, I'm in the mud. And a lot of well-meaning people have stalled in Leviticus, in part because they they don't see Christ in it, first of all. When I saw Christ when I saw when I saw how it relates to Christ, I was like, Oh, oh, wait a minute, hold on. So, can you tell us why you wrote this book? Let me stop talking. Tell us why you wrote this book, then we'll dive into some of the book.

The Story Behind The Book

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah, well, hey, great, great to be back. Thanks for having me back. And and uh you're you're a blessing to us too. That your ministry, you're it's not your ministry, it's your life. You're you're um contagious. That's what you are. You're contagious. So uh praise to God for the work that you're doing for him as well. So, you know, to explain the the book loving Leviticus and and why most people hate it, I I actually have to mention one of the first books I did there. Uh I did a book on Ezekiel called Ezekiel's Clock. And as I was wrapping up that book, um, I was talking to a good friend of mine, Will Cass, about the book, and and he actually was uh helping uh write you know the forward and different things for that book. And uh Will said, Um, you need to write more. And I thought, Oh, do you do you think the Ezekiel book isn't isn't big enough or isn't long enough? And he said, No, no, no. He said, I think you need to write more books. And up to that point, I hadn't even thought about writing books. And and it sounds, I mean, it's kind of weird to say it this way, but just running through my my mind, the way I thought about it is that it I just for whatever reason I looked at it as some form of arrogance to write a book, you know, like, oh, I got something the whole world needs to hear. And it just it never it never, you know, for me, it just wasn't something I had ever thought to do. And and you know, how wrong was I to think that way? But um, so when Will challenged me to to write more, it was like the first time it had ever rattled around in my brain, like, well, if I wrote a book, what would it be about? And so I thought of all well, there's something I always come back to through all these years of ministry. Something I always come back to is that the the book of Leviticus that the Lord gave us is so underrated of all the books in the scripture that you know there's this difference between the value of the book versus what people think about the book. Of all books in the scripture, it's Leviticus. And like you already alluded to, that it's just that book that you know, people read Genesis, they read Exodus, and then they get to Leviticus and they stall it out, you know, and and they because you have to see it through a different paradigm. So when Will challenged me to write more, I thought, well, if I'm gonna write a book, what would it be? And I thought, well, there's I'm I want to write about something the Lord gave us, not just my own subject or anything. And I thought, man, it's gotta be Leviticus. It's so needed to see Leviticus for what the Lord wanted us to have it for, and not just you know, not just for the ritual of of what's in there, but what is it really all about? There's I gotta there has to be a way that we can portray to the whole world the actual value of what Leviticus is and why the Lord gave it to us. And and I believe that's what the Lord allowed me to do in this book.

Ted And Joe On Leviticus Arguments

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Amen. Amen. I I mean I I love how it's laid out. And the thing is, it's not even a it's not a super long book. Somebody could read this in in one sitting, they sit down, they could blast through this. It's like 120 pages, at least on the Kindle. Yeah, I don't know about the I don't know about the hard copy, but the the click the Kindle copy, man, you can you can get through that, you know. You can get through it, and uh so let's take a look. Let's just take a look at a little bit of so the first uh beside well actually the introduction, which has a story that's kind of important. The um tell us about Joe and Ted and Joe. They were talking during a lunch break, right? Yeah, right. So, you know, just because you taught you actually tied the book up with this, also. It's it's you it you intro the book with this, and then you mentioned it at the end, also.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, exactly. So I this is the classic situation, what I wrote in the introduction. This idea, you know, that there's this conversation between two people, and in which you know, uh, because so much of Leviticus is the laws that the Lord gave to Israel, and then well, how are they going to use those laws during the time period uh of the nation of Israel? And then the follow-on question is how are we supposed to use these rituals and these laws for today under the cut new covenant that Christ gave us? And that story between Ted and Joe in the book, the the idea is you know that one is challenging the other to say, you know, well, why aren't you why aren't we doing certain things today? You know, and the moment somebody tries to quote from the book of Leviticus, yeah, you know, if we whether we want to talk about the Lord's standards for marriage or whether we want to talk about the Lord's standards for uh you know diet or anything else in life, and we and somebody tries to draw that from those principles from Leviticus, the the scoffer's response is so immediate and so quick to say, Well, we're not doing all of those rituals in Leviticus. So unless you're gonna keep all of those rituals, then I don't want to hear you tell me anything about Leviticus.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

I heard Barney Frank on uh the old the the retired congressman on the news, excuse me, uh 15 years ago, 20 years, probably 20 years ago, using Leviticus, jumping into that and say, Well, do you eat shellfish? You know, do you eat you know the same type of argument? Well, do you you're not eating shellfish and you're a hypocrite because you you're eating shellfish and it says don't eat it there. I don't mean to cut you. I didn't mean to cut you off, but it's it's a very it's a very used tactic by particularly unbelievers that have just just a just a surface level understanding, if that, a microscopic understanding of scripture, and they almost pull it out of their utility belt like Batman with a batarang, and they try to throw it at Christians. Well, you Christians, you're not keeping the law, blah, blah, blah.

Sorting The Law And Finding Christ

SPEAKER_01 8:54

That's right. Yeah. So that's the we set that up in the introduction of the book, that classic situation where the they there's this misunderstanding, this misinterpretation that, well, every single form of the law, every so every single type of law that God ever gave us, well, that is supposed to be for us still today. And we get into that in the book, even after the introduction, we start to dispel that. We but and and the way to do that is you have to walk through the law and you have to understand what God's purpose for the law given to Israel was for in the first place. And so there's different types of law. And so we we spend the first two chapters in the book talking about uh the right the right paradigm by which to see the law in these rituals in the book of Leviticus, the right angle. How are you supposed to look at the law and how is it supposed to be used for today? That's so important to get our minds shifted around the right way to view these rituals and these laws. And there are there are many types of laws that God gave to Israel in the old testament, yeah, and we have to divide between them. But the the first principle is that when we're applying these old testament laws, the first reason I think people misunderstand the law is because they they take these rituals and they try to apply the rituals to people today, and they say, Well, the people today have to keep these rituals, yeah. Whereas the right way to see it is actually different than that. These rituals are what Christ did for us. That's the first shift that has to happen. The moment we see that all of these, everything about the old testament law, not Leviticus, was intended to show us how Christ was gonna come and do perfect, how he was gonna come and live perfect. And so when we start to apply these rituals and these laws in Leviticus to the God man Christ Jesus, instead of to ourselves, all of a sudden start to see how Christ is the center of it all. He did these things for us.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

He's the he's the fulfillment of the shadows of what the law was. I like how you I like how you break and explain how you break it into the um the civil, ceremonial, and moral law. And a lot of people don't realize that, man. They don't look at the this the civil and ceremonial, and they don't even see Christ in that, they just see the ritualistic stuff, but they don't even see how it represents Christ or his work, and then the moral law, which is still in effect, you know. You you we're supposed to love the Lord, we're not supposed, you know, we're not supposed to be murdering nobody, you know what I mean? That kind of stuff, yeah. Not supposed to be stealing from anybody, yeah.

Feasts That Forecast Jesus

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Right. It doesn't that make sense? Shouldn't that make sense to everybody that when the Lord lays down moral law and says, hey, here's how you treat each other, here's how you you you don't covet other people's property and wives and everything else, doesn't it make sense that those things, those principles would endure for all time? That's something that needs to change. Whereas in the law, and certainly in the book of Leviticus, there's many other laws in the which the Lord gave them for how to establish the nation of Israel and their government. Yeah, you know, that's that's civil law that was for a nation. How you know the the laws in there for how they're going to have a king. When the king comes, here's how the king should govern himself. Well, that was for them, that was for the nation of Israel. We could separate that out and say that is for the nation of Israel in those days when they had the when God's covenant was on them, working through them to fulfill his promises to bring about the messiah. Yeah, and so those civil laws were for the nation. And then certainly it's the same with the ceremonial laws in in the old testament and in Leviticus, those ceremony or ritual laws for religious purposes were given um to show to show Israel how to properly worship the law in ritual for the time of that nation of Israel. Well, those rituals and those ceremonies were the image of what Christ would come to do. Yeah, I often put you one example of that. Yeah, hit me with it. Let's hear it. Well, you know, it's just maybe one of the easier ones that we that we naturally understand from sort of the big picture of the scripture. One of the things that people come to learn uh early on is is the uh the Passover and how the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt during the Passover and they put the blood on the doors, yeah. And uh that was the mark. Hey, we believe that if we put this blood, God, you will spare us, you will pass over, and we will be set free uh to life. And and then of sorts, of course, that was even before the law was given, but we can easily look at that picture and we can say, Well, okay, they did that ritual there in Egypt with Moses all those years ago, but that was always intended to be about what Christ would do. The lamb, you know, John the Baptist comes and says, when he sees Jesus, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and we so easily see that oh, okay, well, this this Passover that they did in the days of Moses, though it was implemented with a lamb, yeah, it was Jesus, yes, all the way implemented with the blood of the lamb. No, that was the blood of Christ on the cross, and we and we see that.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yeah, in fact, you know, if even on the on the doorposts and the the basin at the door that is filled with that has the blood in it of the lamb, when you when you mark this part of your door, the right side of your doorposts, the left side of your doorpost, and the top of your doorpost, it actually forms a cross.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

That blood from the top's gonna run right down.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

It forms a cross. You can't escape the the types and shadows, you know. One of my favorites is Leviticus 23 because it he outlines the feasts of the Lord and it it talks about on the 14th day, the the Passover, and that's you know, that's when the Lord, he's the Lamb of God, but then the next day is is the feast of unleavened bread that starts, that's a Sabbath. Then the day after that, the first day of the week is the day the feast of first fruits, right? That's when Christ, Christ is our first fruits, and this is how the you know, and then 50 days from that we have Pentecost that happens, the the Holy Spirit falling on the church, and then the the last three happen in the fall. That's a feast of trumpets, yom, kippur, uh day of atonement, and the feast of tabernacles, man. That and all of them point to Christ or his work, right? And his work, I should say.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

And and and Ted, there's so there's so much variety, there's so much detail in in all of those feasts. You know, you see these spring feasts that represent the first coming of Christ, and then, like you said, you look at those three fall feasts, different time period, and they represent the second coming of Christ, and in every part of these, you get into that detail, and you know, you look at like the the uh feast of Pentecost, you know, feast of weeks, same thing, and you realize it's the only feast in the entirety of the scripture that has an offering with leaven, with leaven in it, right? And it's a picture of of sin, it's this idea of the Jew, the Gentile were all coming together to Christ, and of course, that was all fulfilled there at the day of Pentecost when 3,000 get saved. Yeah, you know, when when uh Pentecost was um originally established, it it commemorated the giving of the law. And you know what happened at the giving of the law? There was um great darkness, and and in fact, in tradition, it says that God spoke from the mountain in all languages. That's just a truth, but uh but yet 3,000 people die that day, the day of the giving of the law. And here we have the day of Pentecost and the fulfillment of Pentecost with Peter in Acts chapter two, and 3,000 get saved. And of course, there's the the speaking in tongues that come from the Holy Spirit, and yeah, the absolute fulfillment of what Christ did there on the day of Pentecost in the New Testament, and so it gives you Leviticus and all of these rituals and shadows that the Lord gave us in the Old Testament, it's veiled, but it's it has all of these details, all of these deep individual, meaningful parts that are designed for us to press into them and see more about what Christ did for us, he put that there in the law all these years before for us to mine it out and search it out. And you know, that's God's great delight when we take something that's not at surface value and we dig into it. Did you know he's he actually said that in Matthew 13 that he gave the parable of the sower and the seed? And then when he was done giving the parable, um, he virtually he virtually dismissed them and said, You know, thanks for listening, bye-bye. You know, he says, you know, in the King James, I think it says, To him who has ears to hear, let him hear. Yeah, and they go to leave. And the disciples, some of the disciples come back to him, yeah, and they say to him, Hey, that whole farming thing you did there with the with the seed and the soil, what was that all about? Are you still so dull? His response to them was he said, he says, Ah, to you, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others, it'll be in parables because they're not digging in, they're not interested to ask him to come to Christ and say, What is that all about? There's gotta be more meaning there, and I'm asking you, Lord, to teach me. And so he delights when we dig into these rituals to see the true meaning that's always been there of what Christ means to us through these rituals, how he is the very fulfillment of why this ritual was even created in the first place.

Offerings Atonement And High Priest

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Yeah, yeah. I I love how you talk about the um the offerings as well, the you know, the peace offering and the the burnt offering and the um the sin offering. And I I when I when I first started, when the Lord really got a hold of my heart and really uh had me reading this, he got me interested in reading the scripture. I remember reading Leviticus and just I actually Leviticus and and uh Exodus too. I remember reading and there it seemed like they were always barbecuing, man. It was like a sweet smell, oh, a sweet smelling aroma, a sweet smelling aroma. Oh, what a what a sweet, you know, the fellowship offering and the grain, all these different offerings made by fire, a sweet smelling aroma. The only one that's not a sweet smelling aroma, it's a sin offering, though.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Sin and trespass offering, right? Those two, right? The five. So it's so the you're making the exact point that I was really trying to get at. And you you brought it up so well by but by mentioning these five main offerings. Yeah, the burnt offering, like you said, the burnt offering, the meat offering, and then the the um fellowship offering, and then the sin and the trespass offerings. And what what is so fascinating about these, these are the five main offerings that Israel did in many different forms through many different special days and holy days. Um, and each time they did these, each one of these represented something that Christ would do on the cross. Yeah, it's it's this awesome opportunity to look at the depth of meaning of what that singular sacrifice on the cross was all about, right? Just to give you one idea, it's multifaceted, exactly. It's it the cross is the diamond, and you can look at it from so many angles to understand those different facets of the diamond. How that singular event of the cross it covered everything, it paid for everything. So the burnt offering was the one in which it demonstrated that we want complete complete dedication. Yeah, we're coming and we're offering ourselves holy to God, fully consumed, man.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

The whole thing consumed. That's right, and and and that's the the whole thing. There was no meat left over. It was the whole thing to God, man. The whole give it all or nothing, bro.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

And it's only after the burnt offering that you can have right then like the great offering and and the peace offerings in which you're showing fellowship and real communion and peace with God. Yes, you can't have those unless you first have the burnt offering in which you're showing your dedication to God. Yeah, so they all show a facet of what we now have in Christ once we've come to the cross and we've experienced forgiveness by what he did on the cross. And so, and that's just the first seven chapters of Leviticus. Yeah, are these are these five main offerings?

SPEAKER_02 21:34

It's it's what uh what I really like about um the the type and shadow aspect is that in the old test the old testament, you know, these um sins were were covered, but they weren't they weren't propitiated, they weren't removed, they weren't expunged, they weren't like completely disintegrated, whereas at the cross. He he he propitiated the wrath of the sin and and and and satisfied the wrath of God. Whereas the old testament, it's covered that the day of uh Yom Kippur, it's the day of covering, it's a covering, man. Okay, it's covered over. Yeah, but they're still kind of there. But Jesus takes our sin as far as the east is from the west, that's why he is greater than any of the Levitical priesthood. He is greater than the book of Hebrews, he's greater than the temple, he's greater than Moses, he is greater than drop the mic. That's the book of Hebrews.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Exactly. And we actually get into that in chapter four of the book, in which it's talks so much about how through the high priestly system of the old testament, but no, no, no, Christ is the ultimate high priest, and he's so much better than the priests of the old testament. They role modeled what it was to be this mediator between God and man, right? But they but they always died. Yeah, they they had to have their own sin atoned for before they could atone for the sin of anyone else. And yet, you know, in the New Testament, then we get to we get to the scripture in which it tells us that Christ ever liveth to make intercession for us. And that alone, that he ever liveth, that alone tells us that there's no more need for any sacrifice. Right. Because his sacrifice still stands and it will stand forever because he ever liveth. Amen. Amen today. He will never die.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

He will never stop interceating his blood on our behalf.org.