“A Royal Priesthood, pt.2 (Exodus 28-29)" | 7/2/23
Exodus 28-29 | 7/2/23 | Will DuVal
Well, the political season is back in full swing again already… and I learned the other day that a group of baboons is called a “Congress”;
I found it extremely insulting to the hard work and productivity of baboons. (https://upjoke.com/congress-jokes )
We get frustrated, don’t we, when our elected officials - those we have appointed as our REPRESENTATIVES - fail us.
It’s a big responsibility to REPRESENT the people. But as we saw last week in Exodus chs28 & 29, that was essentially the job description of the PRIESTS in ancient Israel: they represented the people before GOD. If a PROPHET, like MOSES, represented God to the people, then a priest, like Moses’ brother AARON, represented the people to God. But we also reminded ourselves that in a very real sense, that was the calling of the entire NATION of Israel - God had appointed them in ch19: “you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (v6). Moreover, we recognized that for all who belong to Jesus today, who’ve been saved by grace through faith in Him, we TOO have now become a “priesthood of all believers” unto the Lord; 1 Peter 2 declares: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (v9)
So in giving us this job description - this 12 point checklist we find in Exodus 28 & 29, outlining the ROLE of the priests - God is giving us underlying PRINCIPLES that apply not ONLY to Aaron and his descendants 3,500 years ago, the Levitical priesthood, but to ALL of us who now belong to the priesthood of believers today. That’s why these chapters - describing the priest’s GARMENTS… their ordination ceremony… seemingly outdated, irrelevant details; perhaps not a sermon you’d imagine NEEDING to split into a 2-parter! - why they’re actually so important for us: because they show us how to serve GOD. THAT is the PRIMARY function, we saw last week, of priests; God said, you will “serve ME as priests” (28:1). So how does God desire to be served? What does He REQUIRE of His servants? 12 things. Let’s recap the first SIX we examined last Sunday:
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#1- Priests must be CUSTODIANS (27:20-21) - The first thing God calls them to do is simply, humbly refill the oil in the tabernacle lamps. What makes our calling as “priests” so special isn’t who WE are - as servants - or even what we DO - our service - but rather, the One whom we SERVE. We’re just janitors. And yet, we are custodians for THE KING.
#2- Priests must be CALLED (28:1). Aaron and his sons didn’t APPLY for the job, and they certainly didn’t EARN it on MERIT. The only way to be MADE a priest was and still IS to be CALLED, by God Himself. You and I contributed NOTHING to our salvation; God gets 100% of the praise and the glory. So as priests, we remain humble, grateful, and PRAYERFUL, asking God to do what only HE can do, and call our lost loved ones to Himself in saving faith as well.
#3- Priests must be CONSECRATED (28:2-5; 29:31-44); we must be “set apart as HOLY unto the Lord”. Ch28 is all about the priest’s “holy garments” that “CONSECRATED him for the priesthood” (vv2-3); ch29 concerns their ordination, the process for “consecrating them to serve as priests” (v44). Serving the Lord starts with HOLINESS. You want to do great things for Christ and His Kingdom? “Be HOLY as I am holy,” declares the Lord. Only THEN will you be “useful… equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 2:21).
#4- Priests must be CARRIERS OF BURDENS (28:6-30) - We considered the priest’s EPHOD, with its SHOULDER pieces, and BREAST-piece, both containing 12 engraved jewels, representing God’s precious people, Israel, whom the priest was called to “bear before the Lord”, symbolically carrying Israel’s burdens not only on his BACK, practically, but on his HEART as well, emotionally. That’s OUR calling too - to “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2), his law of LOVE (Jn 13:34).
#5- Priests must be CAREFUL (28:31-35, 42-43). They wore a robe of blue to remind them of God’s heavenliness, embroidered with pomegranates of scarlet to remind them of their own SINFULNESS, with BELLS at the bottom to remind them of the CONSEQUENCES of entering God’s holy presence in a STATE of un-consecrated sinfulness - that high priest would surely DIE, and when the OTHER priests heard the loud crash of bells, they’d carefully pull his lifeless corpse out of the Holy of Holies. It is a DANGEROUS thing for sinful man to approach a holy God. And YET…
#6- Priests are also CONDUITS (28:36-38) - God used them to transmit or convey the people’s SIN (and their OWN sin!) onto the ANIMAL they’d brought as a sacrifice in their place, to make atonement for that sin by MEANS of the animal’s blood. And since we’re picking that idea back up in point #9 today, let’s go ahead and dive back IN, first, with point…
#7- Priests must be COMMUNAL (28:39-41). Priests need COMMUNITY. We pick up in ch28, v39; remember: this is God is talking to Moses, on Mt. Sinai, giving him instructions for the design of the priestly garments, and God says:
v39 “You shall weave the coat in checker work of fine linen, and you shall make a turban of fine linen, and you shall make a sash embroidered with needlework. [now watch v40…]
40 “For Aaron's sons you shall make coats [plural] and sashes and caps. You shall make them for glory and beauty. 41 And you shall put them on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests [plural].
I’m emphasizing the plural object of God’s directives here, because to this point - after the opening verse of the chapter anyway - ch28 has been almost exclusively focused on AARON, singularly, as HIGH priest: “make holy garments for Aaron” (2), “Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord” (12), “[the robe] shall be on Aaron when he ministers” (35), “[the turban] shall be on Aaron's forehead” (38). But now, God broadens His focus and clarifies that Aaron isn’t the ONLY one who gets special clothes; “For Aaron's sons you shall make coats and sashes and caps” as well.
And I think the point is that while Aaron may have a special role as high priest, it really takes a whole village to serve the entire nation of Israel, not to mention to serve GOD, in these important ways God had called them to. If priests are indeed called to bear the peoples’ BURDENS on their shoulders AND their hearts before the Lord, that was a burden FAR too heavy for one man to bear on his own. Some scholars estimate there might have been as many as 2 ½ MILLION Israelites already, by this point in their history. And I know I’m not an exceptional pastor, but I have a hard enough time bearing the burdens of the 225 members of this church; imagine poor Aaron trying to carry a load 10,000x that size! NO ONE’S shoulders… no one’s HEART is that big! (Well, ONE man’s was, but we’ll come back to him later… 🙂).
For NOW, the point is that Aaron needed HELP! A community of priests. And just like last week, all 6 points again THIS week have implications and applications for us still today, as priests; for those of us who have been called as leaders in the faith community, specifically, and for ALL of us in the church, as a “priesthood of ALL believers”.
First, for leaders - I recognized VERY early on in pastoring that there was no WAY I could do this on my own, but that thank God - He hasn’t ASKED me to. That in His love and MERCY, God has designed the burden of church leadership to be shared amongst a PLURALITY of elders. And I simply can’t say enough about Bryan and Steve and Thad and Kevin and Eric and Eli and Scott… and ALL the ways they serve this church. The same is true of the plurality of church STAFF - Ally and Brian and Lana. The plurality of DEACONS - Sallie and John and Jody and Mark and Terry and Bill and Ana… Brad and Paula, Sue, Bryan West… the list goes on, and time fails me to even mention everyone I could and should.
But that leads us to a second application point, concerning the priesthood of ALL believers: namely, that whether you’re a “leader” or NOT - officially - if you’re gonna have even a chance of living up to God’s calling on your life, to be an effective priest, then you have GOT to get yourself into COMMUNITY. Otherwise, the burden, the calling, is just too BIG; your shoulders… your heart… isn't BIG enough, on your own.
Some of you are trying to care for your aging parents… or your three kids under the age of three… without anyone ELSE around to help support YOU along the way.
Or you’re trying to be a “priest” in your workplace, in your school, and represent CHRIST (“Shine Jesus’ light!”) to your unsaved co-workers, your classmates - but you feel like you’re on an ISLAND, you’re the ONLY one; you’re all ALONE.
Or maybe you’re just trying to make it through the Major Prophets in your Bible-in-a-year reading plan, but on your OWN, you’re struggling to find ANY possible relevance that Ezekiel’s 4-faced cherubim might have to ANY part of your life today.
Friends: God has not CALLED us to serve others… to witness to others… to worship Him through the understanding and application of His word… God hasn’t called us to do ANY of it in ISOLATION. No, God calls us into COMMUNITY.
He says don’t “neglect to MEET together… but [rather, you need to GATHER, for the sake of] encouraging one another… [so you can] stir one another UP to love and good works” (Heb 10:24-25). God says “Two are better than one” (Ecc 4:9), cuz then you can pick each other up when you’re down, you can comfort and protect one another.
When Jesus sent his disciples out, to preach and heal and “be PRIESTS” - to be His ambassadors, his representatives, to shine his light - do you remember how He DID it? Luke 10 says He sent them out “Two by two” (v1). So they had each other’s BACKS.
Who’s got YOUR back? I hope you’ve got a long and growing LIST of folks who you could name in response. If NOT, we want to help you find them, find community. We will kick off a new year of small groups - both life groups and discipleship groups - in mid-August. But listen: you don’t have to WAIT until then to get connected. Come talk to ME, talk to Pastor THAD, go to our WEBSITE, click “Connect”, fill out the questionnaire, and we would LOVE to help get you plugged in.
Because YOU need it, and frankly - and I’ll tie both my application points together here - I need it, as your pastor; WE need it, as your elders; WE want you - NEED you - in community. Because one of the big takeaways, coming out of our Town Hall meeting last month - y’all don’t mind if I make this sermon extremely PRACTICAL this morning, do you? This isn’t a TANGENT; we are APPLYING God’s word, this principle of plurality, to our OWN context now - but 3 years ago, about a month into the Covid lockdown, trying to virtually wrangle sheep, I told the elders I needed HELP. So we launched our “Elder Shepherding Groups”, where every member of the church got assigned to an elder, who was charged with texting, calling, checking in on that member, praying for them, “keeping watch over their SOUL”, as Hebrews 13:17 puts it.
Well, 3 years ago, every elder had about 15 souls to watch over. TODAY, that number has almost DOUBLED. Now, we’re hoping to recruit a few additional elders here in the coming months, but the fact remains: that is STILL a LOT of shepherding for those 10 or 12 elders to handle.
So the new MODEL we’re shifting to - and you’ll hear more about this in the coming weeks, but I’m ANNOUNCING it this morning - we’re gonna be encouraging… really, ASKING… every member of West Hills (and NON-members: you are of course still encouraged as well; we just haven’t covenanted to you, to “keep watch over your SOUL”, but) we’re pushing everyone to get into a small group - they are gonna be the FRONT lines of shepherding for us, going forward (and in reality, they have been all along!). And then each of those small group LEADERS will be assigned to an elder, for oversight, support, prayer, etc.
But in summary: all priests need COMMUNITY. As shepherds… as sheep… Listen: JESUS “did life” with 12 guys.
You’re not stronger than JESUS!!
So if you’re not availing yourself of God’s GIFT to you of community, it’s NOT cuz you’re stronger; either you’re too PRIDEFUL (you think you don’t NEED others), or you’re too SCARED (you’re afraid to TRUST others), or you’re just being plain DISOBEDIENT (“I’m too busy; I’ve got other priorities that are more important to me than GOD’S priorities for me”).
But you can make a change TODAY - humble yourself, OPEN yourself, surrender yourself to GOD’S will for you, and get in community TODAY.
#8- Priests must be COMMISSIONED (29:1a). That’s really what ch29 IS: it’s an outline - an “order of worship”, you might say - for the priests’ commissioning ceremony, their ordination service, TO the priesthood. We read, in v1:
“Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.”
And I’m actually gonna pause there in v1, because after further study, I decided vv2-21 really all belong together, and fit BETTER, under point #9 below. But don’t miss point #8 here: COMMISSIONING. To “commission” is “to entrust with supervisory power” or in some cases, “to grant authority to act as an agent on another’s behalf” (dictionary.com).
That’s what God was giving AARON, and these PRIESTS - “supervisory POWER”, the “authority to REPRESENT” all of ISRAEL before Him.
That’s what we do when we commission new leaders HERE as well; when you voted to call ERIC as your elder last month, and we laid hands on him and COMMISSIONED him as such: we entrusted him with “supervisory POWER”, to “keep watch over souls”. You granted him “AUTHORITY to act as an AGENT on your behalf,” to represent you at our monthly elder meetings.
Do you realize - brother, sister - that as a PRIEST (remember: priesthood of ALL believers) that you are now an “authorized representative” of none other than Jesus Christ HIMSELF? Just listen to the COMMISSION that He’s given us - half of this should sound familiar to you, cuz we recite it every SUNDAY, at the end of our services; we CALL it a “benediction”, but really, it’s a COMMISSION, the GREAT Commission - but listen to how the passage STARTS, in Matthew 28; it says: “Now the eleven disciples [12 minus JUDAS] went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them… And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”
Did you CATCH that? Jesus’s COMMISSIONING - of Peter and James and John… of Will and ____ and ____, his calling on EACH of OUR lives “to go and make disciples” - did you catch what it was PREDICATED upon?
Jesus said, “All AUTHORITY… has been given to ME. Now YOU go and make disciples…”. In other words, “God’s given ME the authority to “act as an AGENT, on HIS behalf,” and now I’m sharing that SAME authority with YOU!”
Church, Jesus has COMMISSIONED us - as his priestly ambassadors, his earthly representatives, his “authorized agents” - with a nearly impossible task: to be his witnesses to the very ENDS of the earth (Acts 1:8), to make disciples of ALL the nations, panta ta ethne. There are 17,442 known “nations” / ethne / people groups on the planet; 7,385 of them are still considered “unreached”. That means of the 8 billion people on the planet, 42.5% of them, or approx. 3.4 billion people most likely do not even KNOW a single Christian, personally, and therefore, they have little or NO access whatsoever to the gospel (https://joshuaproject.net/). The Bible says that the gospel is the “power of salvation for all who BELIEVE” it (Rom 1:16). The gospel is a DECLARATION - an ANNOUNCEMENT… it’s NEWS… GOOD news (that’s what “gospel” means) - good news that brings SALVATION to all who BELIEVE it. Specifically, it’s the good news that there is a good and holy God who desires relationship with us, but our SIN has separated us from Him. And yet, God SO loved the world, that He sent His only Son JESUS - to come and live the life of perfect obedience that we failed to, and then die the death that WE deserved, sacrificially, in our place on the cross, in order to give us the eternal LIFE instead that only Jesus truly deserved - and all we’ve got to do to GET it - all we CAN do, to receive life and forgiveness and salvation - is simply trust in JESUS.
Friends: that is AMAZING news, news that EVERYONE desperately needs to hear, and believe. We can’t make ‘em BELIEVE it (only GOD can “call”) but we can at least make sure they HEAR it, and have the OPPORTUNITY to believe.
That is our COMMISSION. And there is no more important job on the PLANET that Jesus could have entrusted to us. It’s SO important, that he gave us his own AUTHORITY, God’s own POWER - the Holy Spirit - for this very purpose: to finish the work that Christ started.
What a high calling! What a responsibility! But what a PRIVILEGE! And what POWER for the task. May we be found faithful; devoted priests, who fulfill our commission.
#9- And this is the most important pre-requisite for the job, of all SIX that we are considering this morning: Priests must be CLEANSED (29:1b-25). We must be CLEANSED. How were the OT priests “commissioned”? We read on in v1 of ch29:
Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish, 2 and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them of fine wheat flour. 3 You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket, and bring the bull and the two rams. 4 You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. [They had to be CLEANSED, externally; God says: “Give them a BATH!” v5…] Then you shall take the garments, and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. 6 And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. 7 You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. 8 Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, 9 and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.
Well that seems straightforward enough: God wants these priests to be HOLY, consecrated, so make sure you BATH them, as a symbol of their cleansing, and then you put on all the special garments that we read about in ch28, that “set them apart”... and VOILA! Ordained!
Well, not so fast. What about the BULL, the two RAMS back in v1; what were THEY all about? We read on; v10:
10 “Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting. Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull. 11 Then you shall kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, 12 and shall take part of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and the rest of[e] the blood you shall pour out at the base of the altar. 13 And you shall take all the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and burn them on the altar. 14 But the flesh of the bull and its skin and its dung you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering.
15 “Then you shall take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 16 and you shall kill the ram and shall take its blood and throw it against the sides of the altar. 17 Then you shall cut the ram into pieces, and wash its entrails and its legs, and put them with its pieces and its head, 18 and burn the whole ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the Lord. It is a pleasing aroma, a food offering[f] to the Lord.
v19: “You shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of that ram, 20 and you shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet, and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar. 21 Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, and on his sons and his sons' garments with him. He and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons' garments with him. [Let’s read on, v22…]
v22: “You shall also take the fat from the ram and the fat tail and the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and the right thigh (for it is a ram of ordination), 23 and one loaf of bread and one cake of bread made with oil, and one wafer out of the basket of unleavened bread that is before the Lord. 24 You shall put all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. 25 Then you shall take them from their hands and burn them on the altar on top of the burnt offering, as a pleasing aroma before the Lord. It is a food offering to the Lord. You shall take the breast of the ram of Aaron's ordination and wave it for a wave offering before the Lord, and it shall be your portion. ”
What in the WORLD is going on here; “Pastor: you had me with the WATER for cleansing, but then you LOST me with all the BLOOD!”
Well, the problem is that water works really well for cleansing us EXTERNALLY - you can wash that grit and grime right off! - but it is wholly insufficient for cleansing us INTERNALLY; water can’t even TOUCH the kind of crud that clings to our SOULS; it can’t cleanse our SIN. Have you ever TRIED to sanitize your sin with a shower? I have, and let me tell ya: it doesn’t WORK. You still feel just as guilty, just as DIRTY - on the INSIDE - once you towel off. We need a more potent disinfectant, friends, to take care of SIN stain.
And God has PROVIDED one: BLOOD. Hebrews 9:22 explains that “under the law almost everything is purified [CLEANSED] with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Why? Is God just some blood-thirsty MONSTER?
No, the idea is that blood signifies and actually contains a creature’s LIFE. In Leviticus 17:11, God says, “the life of [a creature’s] flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” See, we owe God our whole LIVES. But we offer Him far LESS than that. So we have ALL incurred this “life DEBT” - the difference, the deficit - between what we OWE God and what we actually OFFER Him. But God, in His MERCY, allows us to PAY OFF that debt… on CREDIT! To charge it to someone else’s ACCOUNT: this ANIMAL - ITS blood, ITS “life”, in my place.
THAT’S what Aaron and his sons were conveying here, when they “laid their HANDS on the HEAD of the bull… the goats…”; they were effectively saying TWO things: first, they were transferring their sin, their guilt, onto the animal, to serve as their sacrifice; and second, they were symbolically identifying with the animal, reminding themselves that “But for the grace of God, that blood should be MY OWN!”
And we’ll have PLENTY of time once we get to LEVITICUS to talk all about the differences between the 3 types of sacrifices we find here - sin offering, burnt offering, and wave offering - but here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
A sin offering would atone for, make amends for, sin. It brought absolution, CLEANSING.
In a burnt offering, the entire animal was burned up on the altar, representing one’s total surrender to the Lord. CONSECRATION. That’s why they put some of the blood on Aaron’s EAR, his HAND, and his FEET; to consecrate - set apart - his ear to HEAR the word of God, his HANDS to do the WORK of God, and his feet to walk in the WAYS of God (David Guzik, “Exodus 29”). Hear the word, do the work, walk in the ways of God.
And then the wave offering is the most interesting of all; it was the portion of the sacrifice that God reserved for the PRIESTS. But before eating it, the priest would literally WAVE it before the Lord, as if to recognize who it TRULY belonged to, and express their THANKS to the Lord, for His PROVISION, his loving CARE.
So CLEANSING… CONSECRATION… CARE.
God FORGIVES our sin… we dedicate our LIVES to Him in response… and we gratefully acknowledge His PROVISION, all the ways God SUSTAINS us, CARES for us.
Friends: this is what it means to be a PRIEST. It means you’re CLEANSED, CONSECRATED, and CARED FOR. Is it true of YOU?
Have you been CLEANSED? What can wash away your sins? Nothing but the blood of JESUS! Have you APPLIED his blood, over the “doorpost” of your heart?
Have you CONSECRATED yourself to the Lord? Jesus said, “whoever would save his life [try and keep it BACK… for HIMSELF…] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will truly FIND it” (Lk 9:24). Have you surrendered your whole LIFE to Christ? It’s one thing to mentally assent to some doctrinal beliefs; it’s a very different thing to lose your LIFE - to DIE to yourself, in order to LIVE for CHRIST instead. But the life HE offers you is infinitely better; it’s the best trade, the best DECISION you could ever make!
And thirdly, do you recognize - regularly - the extent to which God CARES for you, provides for you? Not just your salvation (that would be enough), not just your sanctification (that’s MORE than enough), but every single good thing in your LIFE, is an undeserved GIFT from your good, loving heavenly Father.
#10- Priests are CONTINGENT (29:27-28). To be “contingent” means to be “dependent on for [one’s] existence”, to be RELIANT UPON.
v27 now; God says:
27 And you shall consecrate the breast of the wave offering that is waved and the thigh of the priests' portion that is contributed from the ram of ordination, from what was Aaron's and his sons'. 28 It shall be for Aaron and his sons as a perpetual due from the people of Israel, for it is a contribution. It shall be a contribution from the people of Israel from their peace offerings, their contribution to the Lord.
We covered it above, with the “wave offering”, but the idea here is to recognize one’s dependance on the Lord. And not only the Lord, but in the case of these priests, on the “people of ISRAEL” as well! God set the whole system up in such a way that if the people stopped sacrificing, the priests stopped EATING! I wonder if that’s another reason God had them WAVE the offering up high; remember, the fence around the tabernacle complex was 7 ½ ft tall, so it’s possible that this is the only part of the sacrificial liturgy that folks in the surrounding camp might have actually SEEN, and it functioned like the priest’s “Thank You” not ONLY to God, but to ISRAEL as well, for their “contribution” of his portion.
Likewise, MY livelihood is CONTINGENT not only on the LORD, but on Y’ALL! If the church stops GIVING, the pastors, and their families, stop EATING! So perhaps I should make it a habit to wave my PAYCHECK every other week, as a reminder both of GOD’S faithfulness, and of YOURS. I am so grateful to GOD, for you all.
How might YOU apply this principle, practically, in your OWN life? Maybe it means starting a GRATITUDE JOURNAL, a list of all the blessings God has brought into your life - the things we typically take for GRANTED, that if God stopped providing for even a DAY, a MINUTE, we’d all be in serious TROUBLE: the SUN (and its warmth), shelter (especially on a day like YESTERDAY, with all the STORMS!), food, water, AIR; we are SO contingent, aren’t we? utterly reliant on God for our very existence! And yet, He is such a faithful, GRACIOUS Provider.
#11- Priests must be CHILDING (29:29-30). Yes, I checked, and “childing” IS in fact an adjective (you can’t make it all the way to point #11 and then RUIN the alliteration!). It means, as you might expect: “bearing children”. And we read of Aaron, in vv29 & 30:
29 “The holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them. 30 The son who succeeds him as priest… shall wear them seven days.
The Levitical priesthood was HEREDITARY; the priest stops having KIDS, and the people stop having PRIESTS. Aaron must be CHILDING, planning ahead to “the son who will SUCCEED him as priest”.
And the same is true of the CHURCH, the priesthood of BELIEVERS. A lot of folks have sounded the alarm in recent years, because U.S. fertility rate dropped below the average that is required to replace the current population (2.1 children, per each woman in her reproductive years; we’re at something like 1.6 now and falling). In other words, if nothing changed, and American women kept having babies at the rate they are today (ignoring immigration), then eventually there would be no AMERICANS LEFT. We’d all DIE OUT!
Now, I know we’re doing our best to COMBAT that here at West Hills. 🙂 But here’s the serious question that I want to ask: are we fighting the trend SPIRITUALLY as well? If the fertility rate is a PROBLEM, then the spiritual “reproductive rate” of American CHRISTIANS is nothing short of a CRISIS. If every Christian needed to pass on the faith to just one additional, NEW believer at some point in their lifetime, in order for the Christian population to be replaced… I don’t have the numbers for you, but based on the Church’s continued STEEP decline for YEARS now, we can’t be anywhere NEAR that replacement rate. Friends: that means that most American Christians will live their entire lives and never make a single disciple. Forget “all the NATIONS”; WE feel like we were doing well if even ONE of our OWN KIDS makes it to adulthood still embracing some semblance of faith. The truth is: they’re being discipled FAR more at school, by their friends, by the culture, than they are in most of our “Christian” homes.
May that not be true of us, West Hills. May we be a CHILDING church. Making babies is wonderful. Making SPIRITUAL babies - converts, disciples - is even better, ETERNALLY better.
But lastly, #12 - not only must we be child-ING, but Priests must also be CHILDREN (29:45-46). More than ANYTHING else, being a priest is about belonging to God, having HIM as our Father! And in the final 2 verses of ch29 here, God declares:
45 I will dwell among the people of Israel and I will be their GOD. 46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.”
I’m out of time, but quickly, in CLOSING… why does God do ANY of this?
Why does God CALL us in the first place, CONSECRATE us, to SERVE him as “custodians”? Why does he COMMISSION us to be “childing” CONDUITS of his grace to others, burden-CARRIERS? Why does he GIVE us such good GIFTS, like CLEANSING - salvation - and COMMUNITY?
In short, because He is our FATHER. Our good, and loving FATHER. He does it ALL because he wants RELATIONSHIP with us. And friends, because of Jesus Christ, our “Great High Priest,” HIS priestly intercession for YOU, cleansing you, consecrating you, and reconciling you - calling you back into relationship with God your heavenly Father - you and I have been made the CHILDREN of God. “Behold what manner of LOVE the Father has given unto us: that we should be called the CHILDREN of God. And so we are.”
Amen and amen. Let’s pray…