Welcome back in the next two episodes. We're talking about personal suffering.

Suffering so often feels meaningless. Suffering feels pointless.

It feels, feels being the key word there.

But no matter how our suffering feels to us,

it's not meaningless and not for the Christian.

That's our topic up next time on Monday but today if you're reading your Bible

along with us using the navigator's Bible reading plan I I'm glad you are. But for the second half of February,

we're in the thick of it. Reading through Leviticus, it's a hard book, a notorious book that

ends a lot of well-meaning Bible readers at this point in the year, but stick with it is worth it and as you stick with it in our reading tomorrow I think it is we read Leviticus 21 versus 16 to 24 a difficult text that makes

any Bible reader scratch their head and wonder why did God shun the disabled in the

Old Testament.

One such a Bible reader is a listener named Gina.

Hello, Pastor John.

I'm reading through Leviticus in my Bible reading plan.

One thing that has confused me is why God would not allow people with physical defects

to approach the altar in Leviticus 21 versus 16 to 21.

The tone changes drastically in the Gospels.

There Jesus, the true temple, welcomes the blind, the lame, and the diseased right into his very presence.

So why would God in the Old Testament not allow them near the altar? It seems

sad to me and compounds their suffering. Those people would have felt worse for it and likely

experienced heightened social alienation too.

I'm thankful for the New Testament because there are so many of us with physical defects,

...