Wildwood Assembly

Blessings, Curses, and a God Who Remembers

The final chapters of Leviticus lay out the starkest choice in Scripture: obedience or disobedience, blessing or curse. The blessings are magnificent—rain in season, harvests so abundant they overlap, peace in the land, God walking among His people. ‘I will live among you and I will not despise you.’ It is the garden of Eden restored, God and humanity dwelling together without shame. But the curses are terrifying in their escalation: disease, defeat, famine, exile, and the worst horror of all—eating the flesh of your own children. Seven times the phrase ‘seven times over’ appears, as God describes the consequences of persistent rebellion. This is not the tantrum of an angry deity; it is the anguish of a lover watching the beloved walk into destruction. And then, buried at the bottom of the darkest passage, comes the most remarkable promise: ‘Despite all this, I will not utterly reject or despise them while they are in exile. I will not cancel my covenant with them.’ Even in judgment, God remembers. He remembers Abraham. He remembers Isaac. He remembers Jacob. The covenant is older than Israel’s sin, and it will outlast it. Leviticus ends not with threat but with hope: the God who disciplines is also the God who redeems.

00:00 Care for the Poor
01:00 Rules About Slavery
03:00 No Idols
04:00 Blessings for Obedience
06:00 Curses for Disobedience
08:00 Desolation and Exile
10:00 God Remembers His Covenant
11:00 Vows and Dedications
14:00 Valuation of Dedicated Property
16:00 Tithes and Final Instructions

Buy Immerse Beginnings today!

4 Questions to get your conversations started:
1.    What stood out to you this week?
2.    Was there anything confusing or troubling?
3.    Did anything make you think differently about God?
4.    How might this change the way we live?

QUICK START GUIDE
3 ways to get the most out of your experience

1.    Use Immerse: Beginnings instead of your regular chapter and verse Bible. This special reader’s edition restores the Bible to its natural simplicity and beauty by removing chapter and verse numbers and other historical additions. Letters look like letters, songs look like songs, and the original literary structures are visible in each book.

2.    Commit to making this a community experience. Immerse is designed for groups to encounter large portions of the Bible together for 8 weeks–more like a book club, less like a Bible study. By meeting every week in small groups and discussing what you read in open, honest conversations, you and your community can come together to be transformed through an authentic experience with the Scriptures.

3.    Aim to understand the big story. Read through “The Stories and the Story” (p. 329) to see how the books of the Bible work together to tell God’s story of his creation’s restoration. As you read through Immerse: Beginnings, rather than ask, “How do I fit God into my busy life?” begin asking, “How can I join in God’s great plan by living out my part in his story?”

And for more great Bible podcasts for Christians and small groups, check out https://lumivoz.com or search for Lumivoz in your podcast app of choice.

Marriage is not two people living in perfect harmony. Marriage is two imperfect people sharing the same house and the same thermostat! In this upbeat presentation, Pastor Doug Fields encourages us to resist the cultural concept of cutting difficult people out of our lives, especially when it comes to our marriage.

Both husbands and wives will learn easy habits that can transform a marriage into a thriving, enjoyable relationship! Guests include Dr. Greg Smalley, Shaunti Feldhahn, Kathi Lipp, Dan Seaborn, Dr. Ken Wilgus, Doug Fields, Patricia Ashley, and Jay Payleitner!

Get More Episode Resources 

If you enjoyed listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, please give us your feedback.

People longed for the compassionate touch of Jesus. Each one who came was touched, and each one touched was changed. But none was touched or changed more than the unnamed leper described in the first four verses of Matthew chapter 8. “He bowed before Jesus and said, ‘Lord, you can heal me if you will.’ And Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man and said, ‘I will. Be healed!’ And immediately the man was healed from his disease.”

In New Testament times, leprosy was the most dreaded disease. In Scripture, the leper is symbolic of the ultimate outcast. A person doesn’t have to have leprosy to feel quarantined. The divorced, handicapped, unemployed, depressed, and terminally ill know this feeling. Jesus touched the untouchables of the world. Will you do the same?

Read more Just Like Jesus

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

The Rhythm of the Year: Festivals, Sabbath, and Jubilee

God gives Israel a calendar, and it is built on rhythms of rest and celebration. The Sabbath comes first—every seven days, a complete stop. Then the annual festivals unfold like acts in a play: Passover remembers deliverance, Unleavened Bread recalls the haste of departure, Firstfruits acknowledges that every harvest belongs to God. The Festival of Weeks (Pentecost) celebrates the completed grain harvest. The Festival of Trumpets sounds a wake-up call in autumn. The Day of Atonement strips away a year’s accumulated guilt. And the Festival of Shelters sends the people outside to live in temporary structures for a week, remembering that they were once homeless wanderers whom God sustained. It is a brilliant system—designed to keep memory alive, to punctuate the year with gratitude, and to prevent the slow spiritual amnesia that prosperity always brings. Then comes the Sabbath year, when the land itself rests, and finally the Jubilee—every fiftieth year, debts are canceled, slaves are freed, and ancestral land returns to its original owners. It is the most radical economic legislation in the ancient world. ‘The land must never be sold permanently,’ God says, ‘for the land belongs to me.’ No one truly owns anything. We are all tenant farmers working for the Creator.

00:00 The Sabbath
01:00 Passover and Unleavened Bread
02:00 Firstfruits
03:00 The Festival of Weeks
04:00 The Festival of Trumpets
05:00 The Day of Atonement
06:00 The Festival of Shelters
08:00 The Lampstand and Showbread
10:00 The Blasphemer Stoned
12:00 The Sabbath Year
13:00 The Year of Jubilee
16:00 Redemption of Property

Buy Immerse Beginnings today!

4 Questions to get your conversations started:
1.    What stood out to you this week?
2.    Was there anything confusing or troubling?
3.    Did anything make you think differently about God?
4.    How might this change the way we live?

QUICK START GUIDE
3 ways to get the most out of your experience

1.    Use Immerse: Beginnings instead of your regular chapter and verse Bible. This special reader’s edition restores the Bible to its natural simplicity and beauty by removing chapter and verse numbers and other historical additions. Letters look like letters, songs look like songs, and the original literary structures are visible in each book.

2.    Commit to making this a community experience. Immerse is designed for groups to encounter large portions of the Bible together for 8 weeks–more like a book club, less like a Bible study. By meeting every week in small groups and discussing what you read in open, honest conversations, you and your community can come together to be transformed through an authentic experience with the Scriptures.

3.    Aim to understand the big story. Read through “The Stories and the Story” (p. 329) to see how the books of the Bible work together to tell God’s story of his creation’s restoration. As you read through Immerse: Beginnings, rather than ask, “How do I fit God into my busy life?” begin asking, “How can I join in God’s great plan by living out my part in his story?”

And for more great Bible podcasts for Christians and small groups, check out https://lumivoz.com or search for Lumivoz in your podcast app of choice.

Set Apart: The Holiness of Priests and Offerings

The penalties prescribed in Leviticus 20 are severe, and they are meant to be. A society that sacrifices its children to Molech, that consults mediums, that violates the fundamental structures of family—such a society is destroying itself from the inside. The punishments are not arbitrary cruelty; they are the desperate measures of a God trying to build something different in a world that keeps reverting to chaos. Then the text turns to the priests, and the standards become even higher. The high priest may not leave his hair uncombed in mourning. He may not go near a dead body, not even for his own parents. His wife must be a virgin from his own clan. The nearer you stand to God’s presence, the more your life must reflect His holiness. Even the offerings brought to the altar must be without defect—no blind animals, no lame ones, no castrated ones. This is not because God is fastidious; it is because the offering represents the giver. To bring your worst to God is to say He deserves your least. The chapter closes with a phrase that has echoed through every regulation since Sinai: ‘I am the Lord who makes you holy.’ Holiness is not self-improvement. It is a gift from the God who claims you.

00:00 Penalties for Molech Worship
01:00 Penalties for Sexual Sins
04:00 Be Holy and Set Apart
05:00 Holiness Standards for Priests
07:00 The High Priest’s Restrictions
08:00 Physical Requirements for Priests
09:00 Who May Eat Sacred Offerings
12:00 Requirements for Acceptable Offerings
13:00 Newborn Animals
14:00 I Am the Lord Who Makes You Holy

Buy Immerse Beginnings today!

4 Questions to get your conversations started:
1.    What stood out to you this week?
2.    Was there anything confusing or troubling?
3.    Did anything make you think differently about God?
4.    How might this change the way we live?

QUICK START GUIDE
3 ways to get the most out of your experience

1.    Use Immerse: Beginnings instead of your regular chapter and verse Bible. This special reader’s edition restores the Bible to its natural simplicity and beauty by removing chapter and verse numbers and other historical additions. Letters look like letters, songs look like songs, and the original literary structures are visible in each book.

2.    Commit to making this a community experience. Immerse is designed for groups to encounter large portions of the Bible together for 8 weeks–more like a book club, less like a Bible study. By meeting every week in small groups and discussing what you read in open, honest conversations, you and your community can come together to be transformed through an authentic experience with the Scriptures.

3.    Aim to understand the big story. Read through “The Stories and the Story” (p. 329) to see how the books of the Bible work together to tell God’s story of his creation’s restoration. As you read through Immerse: Beginnings, rather than ask, “How do I fit God into my busy life?” begin asking, “How can I join in God’s great plan by living out my part in his story?”

And for more great Bible podcasts for Christians and small groups, check out https://lumivoz.com or search for Lumivoz in your podcast app of choice.

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

The prohibition against eating blood carries a reason that goes deeper than ritual: ‘The life of the body is in its blood.’ Blood is sacred because life is sacred, and life belongs to God alone. The sexual morality laws that follow draw a boundary around the family—protecting it from the distortions that plagued the cultures surrounding Israel. These are not arbitrary rules; they are the architecture of a society where the vulnerable are shielded and the powerful are restrained. But the heart of today’s reading is the holiness code of Leviticus 19—a chapter so luminous it could stand on its own as a summary of everything God wants from His people. Leave the edges of your field unharvested for the poor. Do not steal. Do not lie. Pay your workers on time. Do not insult the deaf or trip the blind. Do not twist justice. Do not nurse hatred. And then, buried like a diamond in the middle of practical legislation, comes the command that Jesus would one day call the second greatest: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.’ The phrase ‘I am the Lord’ punctuates nearly every instruction—a constant reminder that these ethical demands are not suggestions from a philosopher but commands from the God who rescued them from Egypt.

00:00 Centralized Sacrifice
01:00 The Prohibition Against Blood
03:00 Forbidden Sexual Relations
07:00 The Land’s Judgment
08:00 Be Holy as I Am Holy
09:00 Leave the Edges for the Poor
10:00 Do Not Steal or Lie
11:00 Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
12:00 Respect the Elderly and the Foreigner
13:00 Honest Scales and Measures

Buy Immerse Beginnings today!

4 Questions to get your conversations started:
1.    What stood out to you this week?
2.    Was there anything confusing or troubling?
3.    Did anything make you think differently about God?
4.    How might this change the way we live?

QUICK START GUIDE
3 ways to get the most out of your experience

1.    Use Immerse: Beginnings instead of your regular chapter and verse Bible. This special reader’s edition restores the Bible to its natural simplicity and beauty by removing chapter and verse numbers and other historical additions. Letters look like letters, songs look like songs, and the original literary structures are visible in each book.

2.    Commit to making this a community experience. Immerse is designed for groups to encounter large portions of the Bible together for 8 weeks–more like a book club, less like a Bible study. By meeting every week in small groups and discussing what you read in open, honest conversations, you and your community can come together to be transformed through an authentic experience with the Scriptures.

3.    Aim to understand the big story. Read through “The Stories and the Story” (p. 329) to see how the books of the Bible work together to tell God’s story of his creation’s restoration. As you read through Immerse: Beginnings, rather than ask, “How do I fit God into my busy life?” begin asking, “How can I join in God’s great plan by living out my part in his story?”

And for more great Bible podcasts for Christians and small groups, check out https://lumivoz.com or search for Lumivoz in your podcast app of choice.

Rhonda Stoppe wants to motivate godly moms to “step up” to be a powerful influence on their children and their children’s faith. She shares examples of “fearless, flawed, and faithful” moms in the Bible, whose stories can encourage mothers and families today.

Receive a copy of Moms of the Bible and an audio download of "Parenting Wisdom from the Bible's Most Influential Mothers" for your donation of any amount! Plus, receive member-exclusive benefits when you make a recurring gift today. Your monthly support helps families thrive.

Get More Episode Resources 

If you enjoyed listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, please give us your feedback.

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ.”

Because Jesus has forgiven us, we can forgive others. Because he lives in us, you and I can do the same. Oh, I could never do that, you object. The hurt is so deep. Just seeing the person makes me cringe. Perhaps that’s the problem: you’re seeing too much of the wrong person. Try shifting your glance away from the one who hurt you and setting your eyes on the One who has saved you.

Please understand. Relationships don’t thrive because the guilty are punished but because the innocent are merciful. Are there any relationships in your world thirsty for mercy? Is there anyone who needs to be assured of your grace? Jesus made sure his disciples had no reason to doubt his love. Why don’t you do the same?

Read more Just Like Jesus

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.