In this video, Scott Brown and Mark Tuso discuss the books of Leviticus and Mark. Every sacrifice and detail consistently communicate the same core truth -- the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the high cost of forgiveness. We also learn that God takes very seriously how we are to worship Him.

Romans 6:23 (NKJV) - "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Okay, hello, Mark Toussaint. Good to see you. Hey, Scott, how are you doing, man? I'm doing really well. So I really appreciate you joining us.

Mark Toussaint is the pastor at First Baptist Church in western Florida and so it's it's what we've we bumped into each other many times over the years It's been a real blessing. So here we are again Amen, my pleasure brother. I appreciate the opportunity Yeah, so we're going to talk about a really remarkable section. We're going to talk about the last half of Leviticus and the first part of the Book of Numbers, and then drop into Mark 4, 22, chapter 7, verse 23. So it's a big spectrum, isn't it, to cover.

But just a couple of comments about Leviticus. We're talking about the second half of Leviticus. The first half really is about the purification, the cleansing of God's people, and the second half is really how they live it out in life. And then as we go into the book of Numbers, you have this season of disobedience. What is wilderness wanderings?

That's the really the theme of numbers. So just a couple of things about this part of Leviticus. There are, you walk through the Feasts of Israel, you walk through the different ways that God brought his people together. God has always brought his people together. I mean, Mark, he's bringing his people together every week on Sunday at our church.

God has always brought his people together. It's what the people of God do. In 23 through 25 it's the Feast of Trumpets, in chapter 26 through 32 it's the Day of Atonement and that celebration and then in chapters 33 through 44 it's the Feast of Tabernacles. So this section of Leviticus talks about various ways that God brought his people together to celebrate particular manifestations of his glory in redemption. So, there are these different times that God gets his people together.

What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, so much here. In fact, I love Leviticus. In reading Leviticus and sharing it with my kids and with folks in the church. Oftentimes folks will look at Leviticus and think that this is, you know, such a, so far off and distant from the old covenant, it's not very helpful, And yet every sacrifice given in detail, every law given in detail, every festival and feast, all of those details consistently communicate the same core truths, the holiness of God, the incredible sinfulness of man, and the high cost of forgiveness.

All of this are consistently, you know, on display there. And then of course comes to this crescendo with the Day of Atonement. We actually in South Florida, our church parking lot, we share a parking lot with a synagogue. There are three large synagogues in our city. Every year during the High Holy Days, literally thousands of people, literally thousands of people come for Yom Kippur, the Rosh Hashanah, the High Holy Days, and what they're doing is enacting sort of a spiritual version of what we see, chapter 23 and following of the day of atonement.

And then for us as believers in the new covenant, we recognize they're looking as Kurt said last week, they're looking at shadow And we have reality as Hebrews 10 makes just painfully clear in the first 18 verses. And really in that way, Leviticus, especially the Day of Atonement, becomes such an easy tool to share the gospel with children, with our grandchildren, with people as you see this incredible contrast from shadow to reality. So I did not know that your church was right there at a synagogue. So that's fascinating. Yeah.

Tell us more about that. What have you learned about the gospel through that whole experience and just seeing that face to face. I've never seen it. Yeah, so we're in a town about 70, 75, 000 people and we're the only evangelical church with a building. Think about that.

Wow, that ain't like North Carolina. We large synagogues, but you know, the amount of strictly religious Jewish people in our areas, it's not a very high percentage. A lot of them are more probably culturally connected to their shoulder, their little center of worship as it were. But it has been instructive, especially in looking at the shadow reality contrast in the Gospel and showing how, as the author of Hebrews points out, There is no life there. There is something physical there.

There is a temple, there is an altar, there is in many ways a version of a priest, a rabbi. There's something tangible, but there's no gospel. The once for all sacrifice made by Christ, who was both priest and sacrifice, has been offered. And so to continue to reject that is to reject God. And of course, that's what we see moving forward.

In chapter 26 and following, we come to the conditions of obedience and then the cursings that will come upon their disobedience those that Continue to reject Christ and continue in their sin whether they be pursuing God in this in a false religion or not They're going to experience the full weight of the curses of rejecting God And all of this at least in in the context of Leviticus it has to do with coming together in worship in the tabernacle. Yeah. You know, and then you have the temple later on and then you have the Lord Jesus Christ coming and cleansing the temple twice. Amen. Yeah.

I'm preaching on his first cleansing in the temple a week from Sunday So I'm thinking a lot about worship in the temple. Why was the most violent act in Jesus' ministry to do such a thing? I mean, there must have been at least a million people in the city when he did that. Yeah. The place was jammed.

It was a miracle. And he drove everyone out of the temple. Why? Perverted worship, yeah, that's a wonderful theme. And why was, why?

Because this was the place of God's presence. This was the place of God's mercy. This is the place where God communicated with his people and helped them know how to live in this world. And it had been so corrupted that he was not there. And so Jesus drives them out.

Because I think, as I've been thinking about this, I think it's just because of the tragedy of having to live life without God as your guide. And so Jesus does this remarkable thing, but these feasts are reflective and the corruption of those feasts and everything is reflective of why Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple. Yeah, if you think about it, I'm just thinking about this now, Malachi rounds out the 39 books of the Old Testament by condemning the false worship of Israel, as it were, the prostitution and the corruption of these feasts and festivals. And to think of all of those generations that did not heed the prophet's word and continued in that false worship, and then it's Christ in the purification of the temple coming, really being that final condemnation of that ultimate rejection of all the prophets who came before it. It's really amazing.

God ordained worship, does he not? He's serious about it. Yeah. And it's these inventions and violations of the express will of God, for the worship of God, that He actually condemns this nation. So the worship of God is the central matter of life.

What happens when the people of God gather together to worship is the most important thing that happens in the world today. Amen. Nations are judged by that. But anyway, Leviticus just gives us all this imagery and remarkable array of types and shadows. And you have oil, you have altars and all these things that really, they point to some element of the glory of the gospel.

In their lives, that's one interesting thing too. The Old Testament worshippers life was, at least by God's design, more intrinsically connected to worship in general, and not so much, you know, this set-apart time, this set-apart place where they would go, but there were so many of these laws that overlapped into life in general, really just saying what we know today as believers in the New Covenant, that all of life is worship, in so many ways was lost on them. Yeah, And the Levitical laws all demonstrate this, like in our section here that we're discussing today, Leviticus 22 and 23, you have a number of these ritual sacrifices. Like, for example, if there's an admission of semen and things like that. There's a sacrifice for that.

Not because that's sinful, but because every single part of life is designed to be holy. Everything we do is designed to be under the holiness of God. And so anyway, that's Leviticus. Hey, let's go to Numbers and discuss that here for a few minutes. So the theme of Numbers is wilderness wanderings.

And you have this picture of what happens to you when you turn away from the Lord, you end up really in a wilderness, which is what the people did. And it's interesting, you know, the first several chapters of numbers are numberings of the people. Yeah. These really long genealogies. I mean, we've read this over and over in our family year after year.

We try to stay on, you know, keep reading these chapter after chapter. But here's what I tell my children about that first of all there are two things you want to learn from the genealogies first of all that this is real history yeah these are real people mythology doesn't read like this. Pick up the Greek mythology. It's not like this. They weren't real people.

These are real people. They lived in a real time. They had real moms and dads and they were on this earth, this earth for generations. Okay, So we should just be comforted that the Bible is history. And the second thing is that God preserves his people from one generation to another.

God is preserving a people to the end of time. Nothing crushes the church. You cannot wipe out the gospel. At the end of the day, Jesus Christ as Lord will be the only standing authority and so we should we should bow to his authority now. He will sustain his church And while the church looks little and harassed, you know, from time to time, that's not the whole story.

Yeah, bro, what a good word. Yeah, in these first four chapters in the genealogies, one of the ways that I like to look at it and to teach people, because you're right, is numbering all of the warriors that are going to be able to battle as they conquest this land or supposed to conquest the land. And what we are reading in many ways is a fulfillment of Genesis 12 through 15. That he would make them a nation. And so in many ways, while we have other examples of numbering, but in many ways when we come even here to Numbers, we're looking again at more proof of the faithfulness of God.

He keeps his word. He can be trusted. He's completely committed to his promises. Not one promise of the Lord will fail. And what application does that have to our children who in their teen years are gripped by fear, what will my life be like?

What will my family be like? Will I find the right spouse? Will my children know the Lord? Where will I go to college? All these, fear is such a present potential temptation for us in rehearsing the faithfulness of God, the fulfillment of His promises, wherever they're found, it provides to us such hope and such grace.

And I can see that in these and also in chapter 26 when we get another evaluation. You know, you mentioned Genesis 12, you know, in you all the families, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. These family, it's really striking. They're called armies. In the first future, you notice there are several times these families are called armies.

Your family isn't like an army. It's there to do battle. There's an enemy and family should gather together in the same way armies do in order to take dominion to take ground. The whole family should do that. And so it's a great picture of that.

Well, there's so much to talk about in numbers. You know, the rebellion of Aaron and Miriam, and then the sons of Korah. Yeah. I mean, We could talk the whole rest of the time about that, but there are just some amazing things that happened. The refusal to enter the promised land, the spots.

Just give us, there's too much for us to talk about on these areas, but just what are some things that really stuck out to you? So for me, numbers 13 is so significant. And again, if we're bringing this back to the context of the family and really training our spouses, our children, grandchildren, and then of course, as shepherds, you know, training the church, Numbers 13 is going to stand out as a high watermark because yes, they're preparing to enter into this conquest to fulfill God's desire to His promises really. So much happens there with their failure, with their grumbling, et cetera. But when we get to chapter 13, it's so instructive of the Christian life.

It's so instructive of life in a Genesis 3 fallen world, because here you have these 12 men that go and they all see the exact same information. They all see the giant and the walled cities. They all have the exact same information. Yet when they return, they give two distinctly different reports. And it's so striking because the difference had nothing to do with the details and had everything to do with whether or not God was in the report.

And we do this, our kids do this. We hear the news from the doctor, there's probably no chance you have cancer, but we have to do this test just in case." And our response is, I might have cancer. And now we start, God's not in the report. We're living life really through a non-biblical worldview in an atheistic sense in a way. And in that way, we're like the 10.

We want to be like David, which is what Joshua and Caleb were like. David comes out as this runt, as it were, and sees this giant, and when he sees him, he sees him through the eyes of a faithful Jewish worshiper, as they all should have. And so numbers 13, it really reveals to us what it's like to live as God's children in the church, as people who have received salvation and these promises and have a God that can be trusted. This kind of a Joshua and Caleb outlook, that's what I want my kids to have. It's what I want to have and to model to my spouse and my kids and to my church.

He glorifies Christ when we see the world through his eyes, as it were. Amen. And just one parting shot in numbers. One of the most remarkable scenes is the gathering of the families around the tabernacle. Oh, yeah.

Also the North, some to the south, east and west. And, you know, the family should have the center of their life focused on the Church of Jesus Christ. It's so hard to convince families in this generation to build their life around the church. Mark, don't you wish there would be more of that in our land, in your church, in all of our churches, they would see the church as so central, these gatherings as so pivotal that their focus would be toward the center there of the tabernacle. Amen.

Their labors would be exerted to be a blessing to fortify that tabernacle. That's the picture you get. Amen. Okay so let's go to Mark 5, or actually we begin in Mark 4 21 and go to Mark chapter 7. What are the big points that families need to pick up from this section?

So honestly, Scott, this section and as well as in the other Gospels, has been so helpful for me in training my children and in training other people, and I'll tell you why. As you walk through specifically in this section to chapter 4 beginning in verse 35 all the way through chapter 6, you see Jesus demonstrating His sovereign control and His divinity. We see in 35 through 41, His power over creation, the winds and the seas, they obey Him. Chapter 5, we open up with his power over the spiritual world, the demons obey him. Chapter 5, 21 through 43 with Jairus' daughter and the woman with the issue of blood, sicknesses obey him, the physical body obeys him.

He has the power in chapter six to create, to provide in the miracle of the feeding of the 5, 000. And I have found that when I walk through these narrative passages in these gospels and I bring those out to my children, I'm able to help them have a clearer picture of what was being demonstrated by the Lord. Complete and total sovereignty and dominion, complete power. And that same Christ is the one who invites us to come unto Him. And for those that know Him, He is the one who abides with us and dwells with us.

It's just, it's a staggering section of scripture. So helpful. Yeah, it really is beautiful. You know, I've always been struck by the narrative of the Gadarene demoniac. I know, I love that story.

He was so violent, he was so terrifying. And his problem was, of course, he had given himself over to the devil, he was demonized. And then, but then you find him clothed and in his right mind. And it's, you know, I found it interesting to reflect on that based on what just happened in Florida, just with this shooting at the high school with 17 people being murdered there and you know what the press is saying about this young man who has now been captured and they're attributing this to various psychological conditions and deprivations and things like that, this is demonic, okay? This is what happens when the gathering demoniac doesn't find himself at the feet of Jesus, that's the issue.

Yeah, brother, you know that school is 15 miles from my home. Oh, my, oh, my. We drive past it almost every day, taking my son to soccer practice. I have a good friend who pastors the church where the first large vigil was held. Well, actually, this Sunday I was going to be preaching, I'm in Hebrews 10 right now, but I'm gonna be actually going to Hebrews 12 26 and talk about what the author says.

We're going to inherit a kingdom that cannot be shaken because the world and especially in our area is so significantly shaken and we use these outbursts of sin or wickedness or evil, we're reminded absolutely of the power of the principalities and the prints of darkness. And we're reminded of the effects of the fall. We're in a world that's shakable and it's shaking because of the fall. Romans 8, the whole creation is groaning, eagerly anticipating the return of Christ. It's a time that I'm praying for our area and I'd ask you and anyone watching to pray for us in our church in our area that God would give us because where we live almost the percentage of people that are believers in Christ is incredibly low But I'm praying that God would use this as Christ did.

When they came to Christ with news of terrible tragedies, what does he say? If you don't repent you'll all likewise perish. Christ's response was, this is the reality of this world, allow this to motivate you to turn to me for hope. All hope is found in Christ and that's my prayer is that through this God will receive glory through saving many. Amen.

And you know things like this happen because somewhere along the line somebody rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ, whether it was parents or people who were around. And so you have a gospel-free education system, and you have gospel-free media, you have gospel-free entertainment where you just can't really speak about the gospel, it's illegal, and this is what you get. It's not rocket science. And it's tragic. The greatest tragedy in the world is to reject Jesus Christ as Lord.

Yeah, yeah. Mark Porter, What's going on down there? Help us process this. You're right down in the middle of it. Yeah, so it is very much a dark area.

It's a godless area in many ways. The percentages of people that attend a church, a mosque or synagogue are incredibly low. I think it's less than 7%, I'm not exactly sure on the latest numbers, but it's incredibly low. The good part about that is is that a lot of people are open to the gospel because they've never heard it. The bad news is there is a lot of Catholicism, there is a lot of charismatic false teaching, but by and large folks are open to it.

And right now folks are, you know, it's being highly politicized as you're aware, and a lot of folks getting sucked into that. But the reality is, is that the pastors, the brothers that I know, the faithful brothers that I know are praying that God would give us open doors of opportunity for the gospel, this on the Lord's day, this Sunday, and then leading up to that as the Lord provides opportunities, But again, it's a tough place. Now this place is so densely populated. There are large schools all over the place. So even though it's only 15 miles from my house, there are schools in between my house and that house.

And it almost seems like generations away just being that short distance, but it's a tough time. And of course, there's lots of media coverage and a lot of influence and things in this area right now. But pray for us and pray, especially this Lord's day, as we in our church go to Hebrews 12 and hopefully point people to the gospel of hope in the midst of all of us. And a lot of fear too, by the way, a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety. Sure, sure.

You know, the last chapter in the range of our discussion today is Mark 7, And Jesus says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Maybe that should be our prayer for your church and the other churches there is that hearts would not be far from him. The routines of religion would drop away and the heart toward him would rise up as a result of these kind of tragedies. God brings tragedy to drive us to him. It happens all the time.

How many times does that happen in your life? But anyway, Mark, thank you so much for joining in here and I'm just stunned that we're doing this and this incident just happened right now in your area. It's amazing. Yeah, well thanks for the opportunity brother. I appreciate it and praise God.

Hey thanks, we'll see you later. Take it easy brother, we'll see you. Bye.