The Principle Task of the Christian Priesthood (Part I)
How modern believers are bringing sin into the Church by failing to discern the clean from the unclean
This newsletter is part I of a two-part series on the modern Church’s failure to represent God aright by discerning clean from unclean practices. Part II can be found here.
Laboring in Leviticus
When reading through the Bible, particularly the Torah (i.e., the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), one often encounters dense, repetitive, and seemingly impenetrable sections on minutiae of the Law and its various applications to the lives of the ancient Israelites. The writing before you now may at times feel like this sort of literature. There is a saying that many that set sail in Genesis to read the whole Bible through make shipwreck of their voyage somewhere in Leviticus, which is the book we will be focusing on in this post and the next. Some way to gain an enthusiastic audience for our fledgling newsletter, right? You can imagine our fevered pitch meetings: “I’m telling you, folks, this lengthy two-part post on Leviticus is gonna go viral! Ooh, maybe we’ll land an interview on that Tick Talk program the youngsters are always talking about!”
Hey, we never claimed to be in touch with the current pop culture trends.
Regardless, the questions remain: “Why are we going into exhaustive detail on such obscure, archaic matters of the Law?” As we mentioned in the preamble to the previous post, our answer is “Because we are convinced that the principles that underlie these matters are as important and neglected today as they have ever been.”
It is our contention that believers today are so deficient in their understanding of God’s holiness that they commonly approve of practices that God not only disapproves of, but that would never have even occurred to Him as an option worth considering (Jeremiah 19:5, emphasis mine):
“They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I never commanded or mentioned, nor did it even enter My mind.”
Because our failure to discern clean from unclean practices, our Christians witness has been neutered, diluted and drowned out by a sea of worldly compromise. By adopting sanitized versions of the same wicked practices that we condemn in unbelievers, we render ourselves both powerless and utterly irrelevant. Can one think of two better descriptors for the contemporary American Church?
We all sense this. We all know this.
So while we don’t want to lose a single one of you by delving too deeply into what many would consider outdated, arcane topics from the Old Testament, we are willing to risk alienating our readership from the get go with this demanding content because we believe it is so desperately lacking from the modern Christian mindset. We have to jettison juvenile dodges like “Legalism! That’s legalism!” or “Judging! You’re judging me!” We must abandon facile go-to retorts such as “Grace! We’re under grace!” and “Old covenant! That was only in the Old Covenant!”
Right.
In order to move beyond empty, second-hand slogans, and engage in productive, worthwhile dialog on the “weightier matters of the Law” (Matthew 23:23), we have to grow up and do some heavy lifting in the scriptures. And that is just what we intend to do with content like this—the subject matter and current circumstances simply demand it.
In our next post, we are going to go there. We are going to name the often unnamed plagues that are besetting the Church, the ones that we see without really perceiving, that we speak of without really identifying. Some, you will have already put your finger on, like a flesh-eating disease that is obvious to even the untrained eye (Leviticus 13:1-46). Others may come as a complete surprise to you, like an insidious mildew that has quietly infiltrated the cracks and shady undersides of everything you own (Leviticus 13:47-59). On more than a few you may find yourself disagreeing with us, perhaps even ardently so, as a matter of principle. Fair enough. We are imperfect and do not pretend to have all knowledge. We welcome correction if we are in error, but we have to start somewhere.
Please keep in mind that by identifying unclean practices in the Church we are not attacking any one person or group. Rather, we have simply been taking a long, hard look in the mirror, as well as at the people and institutions we love the most, and are trying to figure out whether those rashes, bumps, and splotches we see are harmless, or are indicative of something far more serious, even deadly going on beneath the surface (Leviticus 13). We believe we have spotted some very troubling conditions. If there is any truth to our concerns, then raising awareness of these maladies will enable us all to seek proper Biblical treatment and receive cleansing from their defiling effects (Leviticus 14). Like the priest-physicians of Israel, armed with a scroll in one hand and a scalpel in the other, so to speak, we are preparing to give our diagnoses, and we will dare to offer the tough medicine they require.
For now, we continue to preach patience. This one’s another long one, as is the next installment, but we are getting to the punchlines soon. Thanks for hanging with us.
“Be holy, for I am holy”
The most important thing about a person’s life is what it communicates to others about God.
God is an eternal, infinite Spirit (John 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17), the source of all created things, whether visible or invisible (Genesis 1:1; John 1:3, 10; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16; etc.). In fact, God Himself is invisible, not because He isn’t there, but because that is who He is by His very nature as God—as the uncreated Creator of all things, He transcends them all (Acts 17:22-31). Although He can visibly manifest Himself to man in many ways (Exodus 3:2, 33:23, 40:34; John 1:14; 1 John 1:1; etc.), in His essential being He’s simply too great for us to take in (Exodus 33:20; Deuteronomy 4:12; 1 Timothy 6:15–17; 1 John 4:12).
This is partly why God made mankind in His image in the beginning (Genesis 1:26-28), to be His visible representatives on earth. And it is in part why God sent His Son into the world after mankind abdicated its duty as God’s representatives in the fall (Genesis 3). As the second person of the holy Trinity in the flesh (John 1:14), “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3a), Jesus Christ came to earth as a man to show us God (John 1:18):
“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known.”
And John 14:8, 9a:
“Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.’”
As followers of Jesus, our highest calling is to likewise show the world who God is and what He is like by living as He lives according to His rule of life as it is revealed to us in His word (Matthew 4:4; John 17:17), particularly in the Law as it is encapsulated in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17). As we will see, this is our most holy calling as creatures and as Christians, and it is not to be taken lightly. It is why we exist.
We must rightly represent the holiness of God to others by revealing His holy character through how we live, and we can only do this by accepting what He accepts, and rejecting what He rejects.
God has told us in His word, the Bible, what pleases and displeases Him. If we approve of things that God disapproves of, or disapprove of things that God approves of, we are sending the world the wrong message about God: “He’s not all that holy after all.”
Our lives were never meant to be an end in themselves (Romans 14:7-9, 8; 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20), but rather to point, accurately, to the One who made us for Himself (Matthew 5:16; Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:16; Revelation 4:11). We as Christians do this by walking as Jesus walked: “Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).
The principle is simple: If God is holy, then we too must be holy. As the Apostle Peter reminds us (1 Peter 1:16): “for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’ And what work was Peter quoting from there? Leviticus, a book primarily about the duties and regulations of the priesthood, which states this command verbatim three times for emphasis (Leviticus 11:44, 11:45, 19:2; see also Leviticus 20:7, 8, 20:24-26, 22:31, 32, etc. for similarly worded commands). So this charge, though originating in the Law revealed in the Old Testament, is no thing of the past; as Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
This is why Moses’ misrepresentation of the holiness of God through his unbelief and disobedience at Meribah was so serious. Moses and Aaron were God’s leading representatives to the people, and they had just told a whopper of a lie about Him: “The rules don’t fully apply to us at the top. We’re too big to fail. We can fudge God’s instructions, and He is totally cool with it. He’s holy, but He’s not that holy.” Of course, God would have none of it. He set the record straight by standing up for His holiness, even when they didn’t.
So whether it has fully dawned on us or not, we as followers of Christ have been given the awesome responsibility of serving as God’s flesh and blood representatives on earth (2 Corinthians 5:20). In other words, we are all priests. And as priests, we are called to faithfully communicate, through our words and actions, the knowledge of God to the world around us.
If we misrepresent God’s holiness by blessing what He condemns or condemning what He blesses, then we are failing at the principle task of the Christian priesthood. Truly, a Christian priest who is nothing like Christ should hang up his robes immediately and resign from his order: better to retire than to be unceremoniously defrocked. And better still to repent, before it’s too late.
A bloody business
In Israel’s redemptive economy, the main representative of God to the people and of the people to God was the “Levitical” priest, so called because all priests of this order were Levites, that is, men who traced their heritage back to a man named, you guessed it, Levi, one of the twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob (aka, Israel; Genesis 32:28, 35:23-26). Basically, priests served as mediators between the holy God of Israel and the oft unholy Israelites.
Here was how it typically worked: the priest, through his rendering of judgments and the unique ceremonial duties of his office, conveyed to the people the will and ways of God; in return, being one of the people himself, the priest then pivoted to God as a representative, appeasing Him by offering sacrifices both for himself and for the people (Leviticus 9:7). In this arrangement, to go to God was to go to the priest, and to go to the priest was to go to God (Leviticus 6:6, 17:5, etc.), so closely intertwined was the priesthood with the One whom it represented.
Because they were set apart for unique priestly functions, these men (and they were all men, without exception) were to remain distinct and separate from the everyday people in many respects, so as to protect the sanctity of their office and to ensure their readiness to serve in their various capacities at the holy temple of God. As alluded to above, although the Levites served many functions, their chief responsibilities were to mediate the sacrificial system of atonement (i.e., forgiveness of sins) and instruct the people in Torah (i.e., the Law of God), applying its precepts to their everyday life.
Although this sounds quite impressive, and it truly was an awesome enterprise, what these tasks amounted to in real-world terms was a lot of butchering, blessing, blemish examining, and Bible studying. Despite its finer points, the work of a priest was, for the most part, anything but glamourous—it was a gritty, dirty, and above all, a bloody business. Think dismembered animal parts, and lots of them (see Leviticus 1-7).
The origin story of the Levitical priesthood is no exception, only it involved sacrifices far more costly than the blood of bulls and goats (Hebrews 10:4). Moses had just descended from the Mountain of God with the Ten Commandments in hand only to find the people in the middle of a raucous, idolatrous rave surrounding a certain golden calf, fashioned courtesy of the high priest himself (Exodus 32:25-29):
“Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.’ And all the Levites rallied to him.
Then he said to them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’’ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, ‘You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and He has blessed you this day.’”
If you find this story and others like it in the scriptures offensive, that’s not a dealbreaker for God; He wants to help you see them as He sees them. Remember, He’s not the one who is off, we are. He’s the standard, not us.
And He’s reeeaaalllyyy holy.
Like many leaders in the church today, Aaron had allowed the people to run all over him and run wild in their sin. This is what fallen men demand of their leaders: lax rules, no restraint, zero correction, and total affirmation from start to finish. When we in the Church act this way, the world around us observes what we’re doing and bursts out laughing, both at us and at God.
This account shows us that the Levites won favor from the Lord because they alone, among all their brothers, stood up for the honor of God, even at the cost of their most cherished earthly relationships (Deuteronomy 33:9). In doing so, they were exhibiting the same kind of preeminent loyalty that Jesus demands of His followers (Matthew 10:37; Luke 14:26). Out of an allegiance to God that trumped all other allegiances, the Levites meted out God’s righteous judgment on a corrupt people, near and dear though they were (Exodus 32:7, 8). Unlike Aaron, who sided with the people against God, the Levites sided with God against the people, and this moved God. It moves Him to this day.
Yes, it was a costly, bloody business being a priest, but someone had to man up and do it. The lives of God’s people depended on it. The lives of the priests depended on it.
Playing with fire
When God’s people become complacent, growing overly familiar with Him and His holy possessions, we are like lackadaisical safety officers skimping on compliance inspections at a nuclear power plant: We are just asking for trouble.
When this occurred in Israel’s history, it was only a matter of time before God showed up in an unforgettable display of holy judgment to send the clear message: Don’t mess with God and the things that matter most to Him.
Aaron learned this lesson the hard way, and boy didn't he, for it came to him at the cost of his two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu.
Here is that gripping story, from Leviticus 9:22-24, 10:1-11:
“Then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them. And having sacrificed the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the fellowship offering, he stepped down.
Moses and Aaron then went into the tent of meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.
Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to His command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Moses then said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord spoke of when He said: ‘Among those who approach Me I will be proved holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.’’
Aaron remained silent.
Moses summoned Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, ‘Come here; carry your cousins outside the camp, away from the front of the sanctuary.’ So they came and carried them, still in their tunics, outside the camp, as Moses ordered.
Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, ‘Do not let your hair become unkempt and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the Lord will be angry with the whole community. But your relatives, all the Israelites, may mourn for those the Lord has destroyed by fire. Do not leave the entrance to the tent of meeting or you will die, because the Lord’s anointing oil is on you.’ So they did as Moses said.
Then the Lord said to Aaron, ‘You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean, and so you can teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses.”
…
Although it is difficult to dwell on this shocking account, we have to press in to lay hold of the crucial point here.
Aaron’s sons had played fast and loose with the holy things of God and paid for it with their lives. The did not take the sacred ministry they had been entrusted with seriously enough to avoid mixing it with profane elements.
It is our contention that this is precisely what we modern believers are doing in living lives characterized by a mixture of both the things of God and the things of the world. If we refuse to “distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean” and repent of our many compromises, then we too will be consumed by God’s righteous judgments.
“Can a man embrace fire and his clothes not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27).
As mentioned above, God’s judgment of Nadab and Abihu occurred immediately on the heels of a much anticipated, highly celebrated day of pomp, circumstance, and joy: the grand opening of the Aaronic priesthood. Aaron and his sons had just been officially installed as priests over a lengthy seven-day ordination ceremony conducted by Moses himself. On the eighth and climactic day of the proceedings, Aaron offers sacrifices for himself and the people, decked out in his brilliant, sparkling new priestly vestments, still glistening with anointing oil.
The sequence that followed was a sight to behold. Aaron with hands outstretched blesses the people, enters the tent of meeting with Moses, and the two emerge with the blessing and glory of God round about them. And then, the grand finale and ultimate vindication of the newly inaugurated high priest: fire emanates from the presence of God, consuming the sacrifices on the altar to the people’s fear and delight.
The gathered sea of witnesses undulate by their tens of thousands, first in bowing adoration and then in rising shouts of acclamation. The ceremony having closed, the people sit to engage in hearty feasting and drinking, with some apparently doing so to excess. Although the text does not say it as explicitly as before in the incident of the golden calf (Exodus 32:6), the Lord’s words to Aaron after his sons’ deaths are suggestive: “You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die.” God’s concern here, as elsewhere with leaders (Proverbs 31:4), is that the priests not engage in any activity that runs the risk of impairing their judgment, given the seriousness of their tasks.
Whatever the underlying causes, Nadab and Abihu played with holy fire that day, and they got burned.
From the perspective of those assembled, it could not have come at a worse time. The lively party screeched to a sudden, painfully awkward halt. In an instant, the oxygen was sucked out of the atmosphere. The buzz was killed. Aaron stood in stunned silence. The people covered their mouths in disbelief. One could not imagine a more jarring turn of events.
Of all the moments to make His point, why did God choose then? Didn’t He understand what a special day it was?
He did, but the people didn’t—that was the point.
Today, now, is always the right time for God to set us straight (2 Corinthians 6:2; Hebrews 3:13). We must feel this urgency, brothers and sisters. Delay no more. Don’t even take the time to mourn the loved ones you have lost in service to God, as Moses warned Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar, and as Christ warned his disciples: “Follow Me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60).
“To obey is better than sacrifice”
Through a neglect of proper judgment, Nadab and Abihu brought judgment on themselves by offering unauthorized, “strange fire” on God’s holy altar, in direct contradiction to His explicit instructions (Exodus 30:9, 34-38, emphasis mine):
“You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it [i.e., the the altar of incense], or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it.
[…]
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy. You shall beat some of it very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.’”
The people learned from Korah’s rebellion that only authorized personnel chosen by God could offer incense to Him from their censers: all others would be consumed by the judgment fire of the Lord (Numbers 16). What we learn from Nadab and Abihu is that even authorized incense offerers have to offer the right incense. Not just any old home-spun concoction would do.
This is not impossible for us to relate to. Have you ever offended someone you love by inadvertently denigrating someone or something that meant the world to them, because you simply did not appreciate how much that person or thing meant to them? That’s similar to what happened here with God, only on a profoundly more significant scale. Although we might look at these instructions and think “It’s just a recipe! What’s the big deal?” there is a backstory here that we are not appreciating.
We know that in the five books of Moses, mentions of God smelling the “pleasing,” “soothing,” “sweet smelling aromas” of sacrifices, including incense offerings, are ubiquitous, especially in Leviticus and Numbers (Genesis 8:21; Exodus 29:18, 29:25; Leviticus 1:9, 1:13, 1:17, 3:5, 2:12, 2:9, 3:16, 2:2, 26:31, 4:31, 6:15, 23:13, 17:6, 8:28, 6:21; Numbers 15:3, 28:2, 29:2, 15:14, 15:10, 29:8, 29:36, 29:13, 28:27, 28:24, 28:13, 28:8, 28:6, 15:13, 15:7, 29:6, 18:17). When God tells you over and over that He loves something, you know it must be extremely important to Him.
But there is more to this story still. Much more. Again, Hebrews 8:5 has insight into this (emphasis mine):
They [i.e., the priests] serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’”
Moses had ascended Mount Sinai at God’s behest (Exodus 24:12-18). Then, over a span of forty days and forty nights, God told Moses exactly how to make the tabernacle (Exodus 26) and its furnishings (Exodus 25, 27, 30), including the incense altar (Exodus 30:1-10) and the incense to be offered on it (Exodus 30:34-38), along with many other things. Moses was then commanded to write all these things down (Exodus 34:27), as he had with God’s earlier instructions (Exodus 24:4). After this, Moses carefully conveyed each and every detail to the people (again, as before; Exodus 24:7), including “Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation” (Exodus 34:31, 32). Yes, that would have included Nadab and Abihu.
In fact, after the Law, including the Ten Commandments, was initially given at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-23) and the covenant was confirmed (Exodus 24:3-8), these leading men were specifically invited by God to join Him on the Mountain for a traditional covenant ratification meal (Exodus 24:1, 2, 9-11, emphasis mine):
“Then He said to Moses, ‘Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”
[…]
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And He did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.”
Mind boggling.
So when Aaron’s sons offered illicit fire, they should have known better, to put it mildly.
And since we have the privilege some three-and-a-half millennia later of having John’s visions at Patmos in our Bibles, we now have additional detailed descriptions of the very throne room of God that served as the basis for the tabernacle blueprints that God revealed to Moses (Revelation 8:1-5, emphasis mine):
“When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.”
What the Israelites were constructing the the wilderness was an earthly replica of God’s heavenly temple, complete with His throne, that is, the mercy seat which sat on the ark of the covenant (cf. Exodus 25:10-22; Psalm 99:1; Hebrews 4:16), as well as the incense altar which stood before it.
These were the heavenly realities that these men had distorted. Nadab and Abihu had offered scents foreign to their heavenly analogs. There is a saying that “fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” and that is just what these foolhardy priests did. As when Moses desecrated a clear portrait of Christ by disobeying God’s instruction to speak to the rock, what Nadab and Abihu did by offering unlawful incense to God turns out on closer examination to be a really big deal.
And this leads us to a profound truth. What was it about sacrifices that God found pleasing, at the end of the day? Though the various sacrificial offerings differed wildly in their aromatic compositions, I think the key common ingredient was obedience. Listen to the words of the prophet Samuel to the disobedient king Saul (1 Samuel 15:22, 23a):
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.”
Though they knew God’s will, Nadab and Abihu did not carefully heed God’s instructions, likely because they underestimated the gravity of doing so. God had shown man from the beginning that some sacrifices just wouldn’t cut it with Him (Genesis 4:3-7). As the Lord would later say through Moses (Leviticus 22:2, 9):
“Tell Aaron and his sons to treat with respect the sacred offerings the Israelites consecrate to Me, so they will not profane My holy name. I am the Lord. […] The priests are to perform My service in such a way that they do not become guilty and die for treating it with contempt. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.”
So when we ask “What’s with all these specific laws and regulations, and why does God take our obedience to them so seriously?” we see that there are many answers. Here is a by no means exhaustive list:
God’s regulations ensure that the earthly pictures of heavenly realities that He wants to paint through us and for us remain true to their sources.
God’s rules test our love for Him expressed through our obedience, to see whether we take Him seriously enough to actually listen to His instructions, no matter how simple (Exodus 16:4) or difficult (Genesis 22:1-18) they may be.
God is instilling in us righteous principles that are applicable to all of life and that will safeguard our conduct by keeping us in the paths of blessing (Proverbs 2).
God is showing us our sinfulness (Romans 3:20, 5:20), as we fall short of keeping His many statues time and again, as well as our need of atonement for our sin and guilt through an acceptable blood sacrifice (Leviticus 4, 5:1–13, 5:14–19, 6:1–7, 6:24–30, 7:1–6, 8:14–17, 16:3–22).
Through obedience to the loving, painstaking details of His regulations, God is making His people holy so that we can stand out as a distinct, attractive witness to our surrounding pagan neighbors (Deuteronomy 4:5-8).
God is seeking to make a great name for Himself through ruling justly over us as His peculiar people who reflect His perfections through the beauty of holy worship (Genesis 12:2-3; Exodus 19:5, 6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8; Psalm 96:9; 1 Peter 2:9) and thus enjoy His covenant blessings for obedience and avoid his curses for disobedience (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28).
Lastly, and most importantly of all, these rules revealed God’s holy, righteous, and good character (Romans 7:12), and thus serve as a means to the ultimate end of keeping God’s laws: knowing Him experientially by seeing Him as He is, living according to His ways (Deuteronomy 5:33), and becoming more like Him as a result (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 Peter 1:14-16).
As Christians, we must offer right sacrifices to God (Romans 12:1-2), and we must do so out of a heart of loving obedience to his commandments (1 John 5:2, 3). As the Lord said to His people through the prophet Malachi (Malachi 1:10, 11):
“Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on My altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the LORD of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to My name, and a pure offering. For My name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.”
We must repent and do the work of a faithful priest, rightly representing the holiness of God by distinguishing between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the clean and the unclean, so that we can teach our people, as well as the nations, all that the Lord has commanded us to obey (Leviticus 10:10, 11; Matthew 28:20a).
If we continue to offer God a stream of polluted incense, then He will become incensed with us.
It’s time to cleanse the temple
We will never rid the Church of its sinful defilements if we neglect to discern the clean from the unclean. Next week, in part II of this series, we will discuss how this can be accomplished, as well as outline the what we believe to be the unclean practices that the church in our day has sinfully accepted as clean.
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Thanks for highlighting these truths! Wanted to share some verses about repentance and sacrifice I’ve been reflecting on that I felt belonged here: Psalm 32:5-7, Psalm 50:14,23, Hebrews 13:15-16. I would love to see a post delving more into “the sacrifices of God” at some point!