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Ageless Wisdom and Discovering Divine Order · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Music.
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  To be just sufficient to flavor, to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  How are we doing, Don? I don't know. We'll see what your question's like today.
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  We got a little wordy that last time. That was a long episode.
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  I hope you folks didn't fall asleep in that one. Yeah.
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  Well, we're back with more questions for Don, and I'm just as excited as you guys are.
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  You're probably more excited than I am right now.
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  Probably is good reason for that, though. You've got some hard questions.
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  That was, yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. All right.
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  We'll start with, I've always been interested in how people in Old Testament
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  times could live till there was Methuselah 969.
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  Yeah, how they could live that long. So I was wondering what aging was like.
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  Do we know? Oh, man. I hope it was slower than the way it is going right now, because it's 67.
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  I'm sort of feeling, oh, no. Noah built the ark at 500 years old. Noah built the ark.
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  Can you imagine being that agile and working with gopher wood,
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  which is sort of like hedge, and putting together an ark?
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  No wonder it took him 100 years working with that kind of wood.
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  What we do know is that something happened back in verse 6.
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  Okay.
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  In chapter 6, then the Lord said in my spirit, I will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal.
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  His days will be 120 years.
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  And so we know that as part of the flood,
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  God had changed his mind on how long people would live We know that people died
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  I mean, even at 900 years That sounds long to us But people died,
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  every one of them Except Enoch, of course, was taken by the Lord,
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  And so death was part of the lifespan Just like now They weren't having kids
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  till their hundreds Yeah Okay,
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  And I guarantee you I'm not really thinking about kids right now Having kids,
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  I was going to say picture that,
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  but don't picture that. Let's not picture that. We're not going there.
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  So obviously the lifespan and say maturity was different in that period of time.
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  I don't know whether at 17, 17, 16, 17, 17, you were getting married or what
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  you were doing, or if you were still in diapers. I don't know.
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  And when you can put it into a 900 year lifespan, right?
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  I think probably maturity was much like it was now, but that adult and the age
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  and the things that take away our vitality and health towards the end of life,
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  it seems like what happened was all of a sudden it was crunched up.
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  And if you look at timeline of the people who lived during that time,
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  Noah had a long lifespan.
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  And he would have lived to Tara's time, which would have been,
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  you know, Tara would be Abraham's dad.
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  So he lived all through that period post-flood.
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  So see, it was 500 years, built the ark, that's 600 years.
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  And then he built, you can study in the next few chapters, between chapter nine
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  and chapter 12 of Genesis.
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  And you see that all that stuff that went on with the tower and Babel and all
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  that, Noah would have been alive for.
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  He would have witnessed that. Wow.
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  So then Tara, you know, Tara decides to move and Abraham with him and they go
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  to Ur and Tara would, Tara could have actually done business with Noah.
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  I mean, think about it. Yeah. They could have had business, been in business.
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  They obviously were related.
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  And when you get that in your mind and then realize that Terah was,
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  he died, and then Abram went on to the promised land.
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  It starts to put it in perspective that it was very sudden that the lifespan changed.
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  And it was post-flood. So Noah would have been known as a real old man.
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  Yeah. Because people were getting old and dying before he actually died.
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  I mean, Terran would be one of those individuals who would have been born after
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  the flood, but still didn't die that much farther after Noah.
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  So, yeah. Interesting. It's something that God ordained that,
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  you know, 120 years, that's got to be the max.
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  And I think we've seen it then dialed down from there. Yeah.
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  Yeah. All right. I'd like to have this vitality at 100, then I'd be all right. Yeah.
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  Okay. Staying in the Old Testament, what was the purpose of clean and unclean animals?
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  Well, I think it had more to do with the biology involved.
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  So clean animals and unclean animals, it had to do with what they ate.
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  And so if you look in the Old Testament, you'll see a theme start to emerge,
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  especially after the exodus. that had to do with how God would keep his people free of disease.
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  And, okay, so a pig was considered unclean.
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  And it was considered unclean because of what it ate, because it could pick
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  up microbial kinds of things that would be transferred to humans through what it ate.
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  Trichinosis, is it? Yeah, I think it's trichinosis. Somebody can... Something.
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  And so it seemed like God was taking those things that would transmit disease
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  to his people and saying, you're not supposed to eat those.
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  And it was a culture that didn't have the things that we have today that could fight those things.
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  So then, and they didn't cook things like we do.
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  The preparation was different. You'll also notice that in the Old Testament,
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  already at the time of the exodus, they're talking about hand washing,
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  and other cultures weren't doing those kind of things.
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  There was no stipulations in their religious laws as to whether you washed your hands or didn't.
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  But the Jews had it, and because the Jews had it, they were a stronger group of people.
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  So several of those stipulations, like clean and unclean, had to do with God's
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  way of protecting his people and keeping them strong. Thank you.
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  All right. So, it's like a father knowing what's best.
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  It really is. It falls into that category. Daddy knows best.
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  Listen to the father. He has got this plan.
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  And then it's interesting how that changes then in the New Testament and why.
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  Okay. Easy enough. So, I imagine I can just see it out there.
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  Somebody's going to bring the rest of that question all these times. Yeah.
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  All right. We'll just wait for it, okay?
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  What do we learn from God based on his creation? If we look at creation,
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  what can we learn from God?
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  Learn from God and about God in his creation.
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  I think it's really neat because you look at all the science that went into
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  creation, Even the days and their order,
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  how intricate even our biblical text, those who call it myth,
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  I don't think realize how intricate those days are in the science behind what happened.
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  So we have a very organized, calculated God who has thought through a lot of
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  things that we never even calculate.
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  Like the disease and how long can plants go without the atmosphere being created
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  and without getting rain, all those pieces that are part of the creation narrative.
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  And then when you see that creator God, know full well that the tree that he
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  puts in the garden of the knowledge of good and evil,
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  even though he desperately says, don't eat of it, They will.
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  And eventually then he would send his son to break that curse.
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  That's still a creative God. And it's a loving God. And it's a God who's got all the angles covered.
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  Even the angles we don't even know need covered at the time. God's got them covered.
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  So it's a God that has all those angles taken care of probably more angles taken
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  care of for us than we even realize so can we put our lives in the hands of
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  a god like that yeah i can do that i can handle that yeah,
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  You're knocking these off. I'm knocking these off. Good. I'm glad to hear that.
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  I was going, wow, these questions are getting hard.
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  All right. Yeah. Go for it. Do you have more to say? No. Okay.
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  How can we use some of these seem to be worthless Old Testament books like Leviticus
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  and Numbers and Deuteronomy?
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  How can we apply those to our lives, if anything, or learn from them,
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  or are they relevant at all?
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  Well, I think you sort of covered these in your first two questions because
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  I'll use your question as an answer.
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  In other words, when you think about Leviticus, first consider its context and
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  how God was hoping to bring this people out of Israel, Exodus,
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  Egypt, through the Exodus, and have them alive at the other end.
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  You know, you take a bunch of people and you roll them across the desert and,
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  you know, the object of getting them to the other side of life is sort of high.
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  How do you do that? Well, you give them something that guidelines to go by.
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  And Leviticus is one of those, those books that has a lot of rules in it. Lots of rules.
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  But if you look at those rules as to how it saved them.
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  Maybe not spiritually. There's some of that. But it saved them physically from
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  death, from illness by some of the Levitical law, you know,
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  because washing your hands. Levitical law.
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  Don't eat raw meat. Don't eat meat with blood in it.
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  And why don't you do that? Well, because you can get sick with that kind of
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  treating meat that way and cooking it all the way through.
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  That's all in that book of Leviticus because God wanted to deliver his people
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  to the other side live, not dead. That would not have served him well at all.
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  And so if you look at the book of Leviticus as God's plan to get them through
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  and to the other side, then you can read it in 2025 and say,
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  well you know some of that still has some precedent
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  for us today but you know we do
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  have microwaves we cook things some of
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  us have ovens convection ovens you know you really cook it fast and so you can
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  use those things to cook and of course then there's those people that eat sushi
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  oh my gracious sakes you say well you got sick for a reason no anyway god bless
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  you if you like sushi Sushi,
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  we'll let you eat it anyway. I'm on your side on this one.
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  Hey, good deal. But the book of Leviticus was basically given to the people
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  as a way of saying, hey, God loves you.
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  God's going to, he knows more about creation than you do.
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  And this is how he says to eat.
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  Now, granted, the Pharisees would take it to a high level and say,
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  well, you're out of our communion.
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  You're out of our faith. We're going to stone you to death if you don't know
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  such and such and such and such.
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  But it was really God's way of saying, hey, I care for you as a people.
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  And I'd like for you to get to the other side alive and to be a strong people and a healthy people.
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  So that's the way I see the book
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  of Leviticus. It still has that kind of application in our world today.
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  Is it similar for some of the following books, like Numbers and Deuteronomy?
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  Yeah, because they both have to do with certain laws and how you treat things and do things.
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  I would treat it—the difference in some of that is Deuteronomy has more to do
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  with the temple and temple objects.
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  Numbers also has some of that as well.
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  And so it talks about worship and separating a space for God.
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  And that still speaks to us today. Let's make a separate place for God,
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  separate place of honor for our Lord.
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  Some of us call it church buildings, but the church is actually us assembled.
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  Yeah. Community of believers. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Make sure God has a special place in your life. Yeah.
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  Well. That's her taking broad stroke to Deuteronomy. That's a broad stroke. Yeah.
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  Yeah, like a big paintbrush. Well, thank you as always, Don.
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  Good to have these discussions, Rowan. Yeah.
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  Good questions. And I hope they're good questions to talk about at your house.
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  And maybe it'll spice up the conversation at your house.
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  And you can even go in the comments and add to the comments,
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  if you will. and we'll talk more about those things. We will.
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  Yeah, throw some questions down there.
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  Let us know. That's right.
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  Yeah, we'll see you guys next time. Lord willing.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing it with others.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.