The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley Olson: Hey friends, Kaley here popping on before the show gets started to make a quick announcement about a very exciting opportunity to join our president, Lysa TerKeurst, on an Alaskan cruise from July 25 - August 1, 2022. Trust me, you do not want to miss your chance to sightsee, relax, worship and dive in to God’s Word with Lysa, one of my very favorite bible teachers. So find out more information about the Alaskan cruise by visiting the show notes for today’s episode at proverbs31.org/listen. We’ve got a link for you there. All right! Now, on to the show.

Well, hey friends, thanks so much for tuning in to the Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my co-host Meredith Brock.

Meredith Brock: Well, hey Kaley. Today on the show, we've got First 5 writer, Kayla Ferris, joining us to dive into a teaching called Eight Things You Might Be Surprised To Learn From Leviticus. Yes, I said Leviticus. I'm excited about this episode because I think maybe I don't want to assume that some of you might think that Leviticus is boring or maybe just not very interesting and just all of heavy stuff. But I am here to tell you, after recording this episode, you guys, Leviticus is anything but boring. That’s where so many little treasures are. Today, we are going to talk about how in Leviticus you discover that God is holy and why that is such good news for us. We are also going to talk about menstrual cycles. Yikes. There's actually a meaning behind them.

Kaley Olson: I knew.

Meredith Brock: It is so special and important and needed for us to hear. And at the end of the episode, you're actually going to hear a little bit of me reflecting on, I think a moment that the Lord taught me during this episode and a moment that I had with my daughter that showed me why learning the law and why seeing how God is so intentional in everything He does is such an important thing and can deepen your faith and just encourage your heart in such a special way. I really can't wait for you guys to listen.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. And before we jump in, I want to remind our listeners about our free First 5 mobile app, because we said Kayla's a First 5 writer, but if you just listen to this for the first time, you have no idea what that is. And so guys, this teaching on Leviticus we're about to dive into is based on what we are studying in the First 5 app. And when you download it for free on the app store, on your mobile phone, any kind of phone that you have, you can download it.
It is a daily app that you can jump into and receive a short teaching on the topic that we're studying that day, which is in this case coming up soon — the book of Leviticus — and it gives you context to the scripture that you read and helps you apply it to your life for that day. And so our upcoming study on Leviticus called The Hard And The Holy: What The Book Of Leviticus Means For Us Today, starts February 21, and so if you don't already have the First 5 app, go ahead and download it for free on your phone today. All right, friends, here is our conversation with Kayla.

Meredith Brock: Well, we are so excited to welcome our friend, Kayla Ferris, back to the show today.

Kaley Olson: Welcome, Kayla.

Kayla Ferris: Yes. Hi, friends. Oh, it is so good to be back. Thank you so much for having me.

Kaley Olson: Well, we're so glad that you are here, and for those of you who don't know who Kayla is, Kayla is a writer for our First 5 mobile app, and that means she's part of the team that dives deep into the books of the Bible we're studying and does the hard work of pulling together the daily teachings and helps write things like our study guides that we go through each year. And so Kayla, first of all, thank you for all the hard work that you do. But the First 5 team is actually gearing up for a study on the book of Leviticus right now. We're to talk about some things that we might be surprised to learn from a book that's often overlooked or misunderstood.

Meredith Brock: Yeah. OK. So before we even dive into talking about this book of Leviticus, Kaley, I love that you tripped over even saying the tiny —

Kaley Olson: I know we've been saying that and it feels like, no.

Meredith Brock: Yes. I think we all feel that way. When I hear the name of the book of Leviticus, it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I'm going to say the first thing that I think of is Levi. It's like Levis that you wear, or maybe a guy named Levi. I don't understand the origins or what does this mean. It sounds very intimidating and other worldly too, and I think we need to pause and recognize that we've got a lot of people on the podcast from different backgrounds who listen and the pendulum may swing from one direction to the other.

Some may be like, "Oh my gosh, I love the book of Leviticus." While others might be a little bit more like me and might be like, "Excuse me, Levita what? Like, Levita who?" And so with that being said, Kayla, help us out. Can you give us just a brief overview of the context of the book of Leviticus and get us started on this? What feels like maybe a very intimidating book to even think about?

Kayla Ferris: Yeah. Absolutely. So Leviticus is the third book in our Bibles. It's found in the Old Testament, right after Genesis and Exodus. Leviticus, we call it that because it is literally the book of the Levites and the Levites were the tribe of priests. So it is the book of the priests. And if we go back, maybe you're familiar with the story of Moses and he was given the 10 commandments. Well, these 10 commandments, they were the foundation of Jewish law. But building from that foundation, God also began to establish the Jewish people as set apart from other nations.

And so God gave them laws to follow that would set them apart. He made it very clear that they had a sin problem and He was a holy God and sin and holy, they are oil and water. They do not mix. So God established a sacrifice system and He did this so that it could atone for their sin. That way He, a holy God could be close to them again. But all the logistics for the sacrifices and all the laws that did set them apart, these were all recorded in a document for the priests to have, and that document was called Leviticus.

So just an easy way to remember, because they both start with the letter L, Leviticus is law. It was very important to the Jewish nation and we're going to see like, it actually teaches us a lot about Jesus' coming and His sacrifice as well. So there's a little context. Leviticus, a book of law.

Kaley Olson: I can remember the L’s and the L’s. We're off to a good start today. And guys, I wanted to have Kayla do that because we're talking about this book of Leviticus today, and everybody is, like Meredith said, at a different place with the book. There's some of you who might be listening to this and you've probably read it nine or 10 times or more than that. And then some of you don't want to open your Bible to it because you think law and think, "I don't want to read that." Because it doesn't sound like it's something that I'm going to understand.
And so when we were brainstorming, how do we approach a topic like the book of Leviticus that we want to dive deeper into? We were like, "Kayla, what if you just shared with us some things that we might be surprised to learn from this book?" That way, no matter where we are, if you've read it 100 times or if you've never read it, this is going to give us context. That will make us more excited to dive in on our own. And so I'm so excited to hear what you're going to share with us today, Kayla, and you can take it away.

Kayla Ferris: All right. Well, it is always a joy to get to share with you, what God has been teaching me through His Word. And yes, I do even mean the book of Leviticus. So I really appreciated what you guys shared with us about your own thoughts about Leviticus, just different perspectives. I actually want to start out today by asking all of you guys out there listening, when you heard the word Leviticus, what thoughts or emotions came to your mind? So just think on that for a minute, take a mental note.

All right. If any of you had negative thoughts on Leviticus, honestly, you are not alone. I took a little poll and many people find Leviticus to be a book that they don't know that they necessarily want to read or it's the book that mess them up on their read through the Bible in a year plan. However, after months of study, I can tell you that Leviticus is good stuff. And so my goal for today is that I just want to wet your appetite towards that. I want to share with you eight things that you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus so that by the end of our time together, your curiosity might be piqued just enough, "OK, I might like Leviticus after all. This could be interesting." And I know that if I can do that, then God's Word is going to take care of the rest.

So we're going to start with number eight and we're going to work our way down to number one. I think you're going to be surprised or at least I hope it's going to be more interesting than you thought. So top eight things you might be surprised to learn in Leviticus. Number eight, this is actually something I learned from Bible scholar, Jay Sklar. Dr. Sklar spent 10 years studying Leviticus. He said it completely changed his life, but one of the things that he says is that laws reflect the heart of the law giver. Super important when we're studying a book of laws.

So let's put this in an example that we could understand first. Last year, my family, we went over to a friend's house for Friendsgiving, which is like Thanksgiving, but with your friends, right? Anyway, at the end, when we were cleaning up, she reminded everyone that, hey, just to remember the recycling goes into the back trash bin. All right. Awesome. We all understood the "rule" of her house. She was asking us that we all recycle, but let's go deeper. Because what does this reveal to you about my friend?

Well, I can tell you she loves nature for one. She also always just wants to use her resources very wisely. So you can see how her law of recycling, it was her values. Her heart. Well, God's laws are the same and not all of these laws in Leviticus apply directly to us anymore. And we're going to see here in a minute why. But God's heart is still the same. So here's the tip. It's super interesting to read through Leviticus and ask yourself, "What is the heart of God behind this law? What does this show me that God values?" That really helps us then to see how it can have application for us today. All right. So once again, number eight laws reflect the heart of the law giver.

Number seven thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus — you realize you were actually so, so grateful that God is holy. Leviticus is all about God's holiness. And holiness, I know it sounds like this fancy religious word, but basically it just means perfect and set apart. And because God is so perfect, He has to be set apart from anything unperfect. In other words, He has to be set apart from you and me because we're not perfect. We have sin. And this is where God's holiness can seem scary, which let me just say, it is not wrong to have a healthy fear of God's holiness. But I'm also reminded that God's holiness is such a good thing because it's what makes Him good.

There's a quote from Jackie Hill Perry that I absolutely love. She says, "If God is holy, then He can't sin. If God can't sin, then He can't sin against me. And if He can't out sin against me, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is?" Don't you love that? God's holiness is what makes Him so very, very good to us. We can trust Him with everything. So here's my next tip. When we see in Leviticus that we don't really understand or that make us even uncomfortable, because let's be honest, as Bible scholar, Tim Keller points out, if your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.

That's not what we want. So we might have to realize that we might not always understand or feel comfortable with God's ways and that's OK. But the tip, like I mentioned, is to realize that God is holy and because God is holy, which means He's perfect, He's set apart, He sees what I can't. He understood that time period and those people and that culture in a way I cannot. He cannot sin. So I'm going to trust Him in the hard parts. That helps us so much when we read through Leviticus as well. So again, number seven, I am so grateful that God is holy because that is what makes Him good.

Number six thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus — there are three different types of laws found in Leviticus. There are ceremonial laws, civil laws and moral laws. Why is this important? Well, have you ever heard anyone say, "Hey, if you're going to follow one law in Leviticus, you better follow them all." So I think to some people, it looks like we're picking and choosing which parts of Leviticus still apply and which don't, but in reality, these three types of laws make a big difference.

So for example, the laws about washing y'all, there was so much washing going on back then. They even put our post-COVID world of washing to shame. They were washing all the time. And also no bacon, no pork chops. Certain meats were considered unclean. Well, all of these fall under ceremonial laws. So their purpose was to set Israel apart and to remind them they had a duty to represent a holy God. Now today, as Christians under Jesus, we are set apart by Him. We are cleansed by His blood. So it's not food or washing that cleanses our hearts, it's Christ. And so we don't follow those ceremonial laws under the new covenant.

The next type of laws were the civil laws. These were laws just given to the nation of Israel. It was to help them establish a type of government and judicial process. So the most famous one that I can think of is an eye for an eye. We find that in Leviticus and it was meant to establish this fair and balanced due process. If a person stole some fruit, you couldn't put them to death. So the price wasn't eye for an eye. If they stole fruit, they give you fruit or payment equal to fruit, not more. So civil laws, they were just the rules and the punishments that would just help keep the nation civil. Those laws and punishments, they no longer apply to us either. So they were just for ancient Israel.

Now, moral laws absolutely still apply to us today. Moral laws speak out against things like child sacrifice or sexual sense. Because of their moral nature, we do still follow those. A little tip. Often you can distinguish the moral laws because in Leviticus, their civil punishment for breaking these laws was often death, because it was to show the real severity of keeping the moral law. So three different types of laws that make a big difference on what we follow today. So number six, yes, we learned that there are three different types of law in Leviticus.
Number five thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus — studying Leviticus has given me an even greater appreciation for Bible scholars. I didn't know just on my own that there were three categories of law. I didn't know all the history and background information that creates the context, which context is a huge part in correctly interpreting Leviticus. I'm just so grateful for those people who give their minds and their gifts to researching this kind of thing.
Just one quick example here, when Leviticus is describing the different animal sacrifices that God wanted offered, it always says to take the liver and the kidneys and to completely burn them up on the altar. And just reading that by myself I'm like, "OK, did God just really love the smell of burnt liver?" You know, whatever, but get this, so fascinating. Historians have found ancient documents from Canaanite culture dating back to around this time period. And on them, there are depictions of a liver and a breakdown of how to use that liver to do fortune telling.

So pagans thought that they could tell your future from an animal's liver. So now what is this telling us? Well, God is saying, "Hey, you will have no part in that. I do not even want you to be tempted. So burn that liver on the altar to me because my people, I am the only one who knows your future." So now when you read that, you're going to be like, "Whoa, that means so much more." So my tip, Bible scholars are our friends. Find a good study Bible or commentary to help you walk through your study of Leviticus. So number five, yep, I have an even greater appreciation for Bible scholars.

Number four thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus — it is chock-full of nuggets of wisdom. We get to be like the miners that go down and unearth these treasures. So let me just give you one of my favorites. In Leviticus 2, the people receive instructions about giving a grain offering. And in the grain offering, a person would take some of their grain, grind it into this really fine flower and find some way then to offer that to the Lord. Awesome. God loves the smell of fresh baked bread as well, but now let's slow down and let's think about this for a moment.

So when this was given, God's people had just left Egypt. OK. They're in the wilderness. They are nomads living in tents traveling around. So there is no farmland. So where is the grain offering coming from? Well, they say more than likely this grain offering was coming out of their seed grain. So many Israelites probably grabbed some grain seed on their way out of Egypt thinking that, you know what, I can plant this in the new homeland and I can have crops and I can have a future.

So until they had crops, in order to fulfill the grain offering commanded by the Lord, they had to take from their seeds. These seeds that they were hoping to plant in the future. These little hopes and dreams that they had. And they had to put it in God's hands. Isn't that the most beautiful picture of surrender? I know I've had hopes and dreams that sometimes felt crushed or ground to a powder, but God says to us, "Hand them to me, trust me with your future. I will take care of you." So that's just one example of many… but my tip would be to keep your eyes open because number four, Leviticus is full of nuggets of wisdom.

Number three thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus — the gory details make us realize the true price of sin. So there is a lot of blood and pouring it and sprinkling it and even wiping it on a priest's ear lobe, which is super gross to me. But you know what, that's the thing. The sacrifice system was messy. Why? Because sin is messy and it's serious and it's costly. It cost thousands of animals, their lives every year. Leviticus 17:11 says, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood and the blood makes atonement by the life.” [paraphrased]

In other words, sin is death y'all. And to trade that death in for life took blood. So friends, how much more precious, more costly, more atoning was the blood and sacrifice of Jesus? So my tip here is to let Leviticus make you stop and think about the price of sin.

Number three, Leviticus it deals with a lot of blood which leads us into number two thing you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus and that has to do with menstrual cycles. Y'all this podcast just got real or for some of you real uncomfortable, right? But listen, we need to address the theology of periods. I actually read a book by that name, but look, Leviticus deals with blood and it talks about menstrual cycles. One very confusing section could be misinterpreted if we are not careful because in Leviticus 15, a woman is considered unclean for seven days of her cycle. What is this saying? Did God think women were dirty or gross? Well, no, of course not. He made us this way. Was a period sinful or shameful? Again, no. It all goes back to the three types of laws and the Hebrew word for unclean here, it was not a statement on hygiene or sin, but rather it was referring to a ceremonial law. So why all this attention on periods? Well, remember blood was a symbol for life and each menstrual cycle starts or ends depending on how you look at it with blood. Washing away, the old preparing the way for new life. Do you see the symbolism?

So as women with this unique role of ushering in new life to the world, we have in our bodies, a monthly reminder that there is a cost to bringing in new life. So let's apply this to what we learned here in Leviticus to another verse you might be familiar with in Isaiah. Isaiah 64:6 says, "… all of our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." The ESV is trying to be polite, but I really think in doing so. It isn't helping us because the Hebrew word that ESV translated as polluted really means menstrual. It's menstrual rags.

But when translations use filthy like the NIV or polluted rags here, I think sometimes it can make us think that this verse saying things like trying to earn our salvation by righteous deeds is gross. It's disgusting like a woman on her period, but I don't think that's what this is saying. Using what we learn in Leviticus, I think it's reminding us that when a woman is on her period, when she sees blood, it means that no life is growing inside of her. So Isaiah is saying, "Look, all of our righteous deeds are like a menstrual cloth." There is no life in them. Life is not found in our good works, but in Jesus Christ.

So Leviticus, it can help us see like this verse in Isaiah as well as other verses even dealing with periods with more clarity. So my tip here especially as a woman, don't misinterpret Leviticus 15 as period shaming. It is far from that. We have to use the entire scope of the book to help us get a really full understanding of what's going on. And that kind of helps lead us into our last and final thing for today. The number one thing that you might be surprised to learn from Leviticus is that knowing Leviticus will help us understand the rest of our Bibles better.

When Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, it helps to know the law so that you can understand how He does that. When you read the laws around bleeding women, it means even more when Jesus stops to see and heal a bleeding woman. And when you know the old laws towards leprosy, it means even more when Jesus touches the lepers. And when you know the old punishment laws, it means even more when Jesus does not throw that stone at an adulterous woman.

When you read about the temple setup, you see what it meant that the veil tore in the most holy place at Jesus' death. On and on, we could go, but probably the most important is when you study verses such as the day of atonement in Leviticus 16, immediately you see Jesus. You see what He had to do and the price that He paid for us. So that's the amazing thing about God's Word. It really is alive and active and all the parts go together to highlight and expound on the other parts so that it is like this never well of beauty and wisdom and insight that you and I can never reach the end of not now and not in eternity.

So yes, most of all, the best tip I have, study Leviticus because it will truly make you fall in love with Jesus even more. So let's take a quick circle back round to the beginning. We'll wrap this up. Do you remember those words or thoughts or emotions you had when you first heard the word Leviticus and are they maybe just ever so slightly changed now? Are you at least curious about what you might find in Leviticus? Maybe even a little excited to study this book? I so hope so because God's Word will never disappoint. It will never return void. So take a brave step friends, jump on into the Leviticus waters. You might just be surprised what you learn.

Kaley Olson: So good, Kayla. Thank you for doing the hard work of jumping into the book of Leviticus and pulling some things that are helpful for us to have context of as we approach a book. And as I was thinking through the eight points that you shared, number five, stuck out to me. The fact that you, as a Bible student yourself have a greater appreciation for Bible scholars after studying Leviticus. It reminded me that we're not supposed to study the Bible alone. When we open our Bibles, it's not something that I as Kaley Olson, an individual by myself am always supposed to start with myself.

I don't have to start with my knowledge and my limited view of scripture when God has given people the gift of understanding and pulling together things that are going to help me learn. And so that gives me a lot of comfort as I think about diving into a book like this, because I do know that 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness..." And so it's something that I want to understand, but when I open it up and I read a verse and I think to myself, "Oh goodness, I don't know what this means." I'm so tempted to shut down and not study anymore because I'm afraid I'm going to apply it wrong.

And so you said that when you don't understand things on your own, you go to a commentary or a study Bible. So I would love to know from you, Kayla, what resources do you use that you could recommend to our listeners when they're opening their Bibles? Is it a website that they can go to and type something in? Is it a specific Bible that you use? How can they study a little bit of this on their own too?

Kayla Ferris: Yeah. Absolutely. That's a great question. So I have what's called the ESV Study Bible. I think it's made from Crossway. It is a very thick volume to carry around indeed, but what I love about it is it gives so much information down in the bottom that I look at constantly. I said, a very good study Bible is going to have a lot of that background information, sometimes that history, that context, that's so important. Another thing that I really like, I know life application has an Old Testament and a New Testament commentary. That is one of my go-tos. I love looking up the scriptures through that.

A great story, actually, my daughter came home and she was like... I was talking about the parable of the persistent widow. She's like, "Mom, I don't understand what that meant." I was like, "I want to teach you when we are confused, how do we find this information?" So we went to the life application commentary, we opened it up. We read their notes and she was like, "Oh, OK. Now I get it." So I think it was important too. Let's teach our kids like, when we don't understand, what do we go to? Where can we find good information? So yes, those are just a couple of resources that I do like and use.

Kaley Olson: That's really helpful, especially knowing that we are thousands of years removed from that way of life too. We're not necessarily meant to understand it in our context too. And so thank you for sharing this. Meredith, I'd love to know what you, you think too.

Meredith Brock: Well, great resources for sure. I love the ESV Study Bible and it's interesting too, to get your hands on a couple different study Bibles, just to look at the different ways that they're explaining cultural context. So I love that, but I honestly was just sitting here reflecting on what you shared Kayla, and the thing that really stood out to me, and I hope that this is going to make sense, because this is real time processing for me, Kay. But your last point, which was knowing Leviticus will help us understand our Bibles better. And then you went on to say, when you know the law, you see God's grace and kindness so much more clearly because you see what He has done on our behalf.

And this is such a weird analogy, but it had me reflecting on, oftentimes we approach, I guess you would say complex or multi-layered dynamic subjects in a way that we stay at the surface and we have an appreciation for it, but we don't have an awe of it, if that makes sense. I was just sitting here reflecting on and like I said, hopefully this makes sense, because it was just an interesting analogy that popped into my mind. But my little girl who's six years old, when she was like two and a half or three, I can't remember. It was actually a snow day. She was home for the whole day.

She was eating a sandwich and I looked at her across the dining room table and I saw that her eye was starting to drift towards her nose and was very like, "Oh my gosh." Very striking to me. I obviously was afraid because I had never done that before. Long story short, we went to her pediatrician. Her pediatrician was like, "Yeah, she needs to go to a pediatric optometrist." So we went to the pediatric optometrist and I was sitting there in his office and he is showing me a map of an eyeball and all the systems surrounding the eyeball and everything that needed to work together perfectly for an eyeball to work perfectly.

I remember sitting in the office and being like, "Holy moly, I had no idea that it took all of that for my eye to be able to see how at the proper depths and in the proper color and to be able to move left and right and up and down." And then there's this whole other system that keeps it in place from drifting. I mean, it sounds so strange, but as I listened to you explain this, Kayla, my mind went to that moment where I've always had an appreciation for my eyeballs. I'm like, "Thank goodness I have those." I'm really glad that I can see every day. I'm glad that I have complete control over my eyeballs, but I don't really think about them very often. I just use them and I go on about my day.

But in that moment, when that optometrist was educating me on my daughter's eyeball and the challenges that it was having, I was blown away at how amazing and how intricate and how intentionally God designed us. I just think of the law as that. Sometimes we run away from it because we feel afraid. When you said, what do you think of when you think of the book of a Leviticus? I'm going to be honest. I think that's boring. I don't know. Not only does it sound weird, but it sounds uninteresting. Thank you very much. Please fast forward to a book where there's lots of cool stories. I like those stories.

But if we can be patient enough and diligent enough to take that moment and study the law, the
level of appreciation for who God is, and not only who God is, but His grace and kindness extended to us through His son is so much more. I appreciate the incredible way that God put our eyes together because I saw in my daughter's eye in that moment, one tiny thing that had gone wrong and thank goodness for science and the medical field that had a very easy fix for it. She wears glasses now. Her eye eyeball is straight. She can see perfectly but had that gone unattended to, she may have lost her eyesight in that eye.

And so as you shared that, I just couldn't help reflect on how intentional God is and how we have the opportunity to learn about the beauty of His intentionality or we can just go, "I sure am glad that I have eyeballs and that they work." And go on about our business or we can pause and go, "Wow, look at how intentionally He knit this world together, my heart together, my mind together, my body together. Everything works together for the glory of Him and you can participate in that or you can just walk away and go about your day and miss something so incredibly beautiful.

So I really hope [crosstalk 00:38:32] y'all that will join us in studying Leviticus. It is just a treasure trove of good things. Kayla, thank you so much for being on the show today and helping us see these eight things that we probably never would've seen. So thank you.

Kayla Ferris: Yes. Thank you. Absolutely.

Meredith Brock: Well, for our friends who are listening and are finding… maybe like first time, you're like, "Ooh, Leviticus does sound interesting." Well, we do want to help you. We want to help you understand more and we want to invite you to join us in our free First 5 mobile app. We're going to be studying Leviticus jumping right in starting February 21. This study is called, which I think it's so appropriate. It's called The Hard And The Holy. It will be seen in the book of Leviticus. All you have to do is go to your App Store, download that app on your phone. It's totally free. Create an account and then just jump right in with us and dive into learning about the intentionality of the goodness of God through the book of Leviticus.

Kaley Olson: Absolutely. If you want to take it a step further and dive even deeper into the book of Leviticus. Meredith, I keep getting that word mixed up. [crosstalk 00:39:46] Here we go. We're just taking a bite to the humble pie. We're going to leave it as is. Then guys, grab the study guide. It's titled the same thing as the study that you walk through in the First 5 app, The Hard And The Holy: What The Book Of Leviticus Means For Today. And if you've never gone through a study guide with us at the same time that we're doing a study in the First 5 app, I'm telling you, you're missing out on an opportunity to have this permanent and tangible record of what you are learning and what the Lord is teaching you.

They're only available through our bookstore at p31bookstore.com and I want you to grab yours today, but Kayla, I know that you were one of the writers for this study guide. I would love for you, in terms of talking about the context and the additional things that you'll learn, can you tell everybody maybe one or two things that's included in the study guide that they're not going to be able to find anywhere else that's going to help them?

Kayla Ferris: Yes, absolutely. So, when you open up your study guide, we're going to open up with some context. We're going to talk about the author, give you some background information to really get you started and grounded. And then as you go through, you'll find different charts and graphs we've really laid out well, all of the sacrifices, all the details of those to make it just super simple when you see it in that visual form of what's going on. But I think one of my favorite parts is that we don't shy away from the parts that are hard and there's some parts in Leviticus that feel hard.

So we're going to address and we're going to talk about some more on menstruation. We're going to talk about homosexuality, capital punishment, people with disabilities, slavery, prosperity gospel. So we're going to deal with the hard parts and we're going to address them and we're going to trust God's Word in those parts. We also have weekend reflections at the end of each week. When you're working through the study guide, it just really takes us deeper into how these tie in to other places in the Bible. Love making those connections. So we do that on those weekend wrap-ups. Those are really neat to see.

And then also, always in the back of a study guide, we have what we call in case you were wondering where we take the top 10 versus of Leviticus, ones you might be familiar with. And our team has, I'm just giving you just like little nuggets of what that means, breaking down that scripture into something that it's very tangible that you can take away with you so that the next time you come across that verse, you're like, "Oh, I remember. I know what this is talking about, what this means exactly." So all kinds of great things to be found in the study guide.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. Totally. I love that. Well, since you were here, I was like, "I'm just going to have Kayla jump in and give her own endorsement of this because she was of the ones who pulled it together." And so thank you for all of that hard work that you did and I'm excited to dive into that as well. And so guys, if you want to grab a copy, you can do that today at p31bookstore.com.

Meredith Brock: Well, that's all we have time for friends. Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode at Proverbs 31 Ministries. Our goal is to equip you to know the truth and live the truth because we know when you do, it really will change everything.