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Good morning friends, I hope you are each well today, as we together read Exodus chapter 28. As we begin I have just prayed for all of you…asking God to touch each of you, right at the point where HE knows you need His touch today.
Here is a YouTube video I found which, even though using the King James version of English, does an excellent job of showing the details of the priestly garments which we see described in Exodus 28.
You’ll remember Exodus 28 is Moses’ record from the 40 day visit God had with him in the cloud on Mount Sinai, which began in Ex. 24:15. This is Moses’ 6th trip up Sinai, and he is receiving instructions from God on the unique, holy, worship that God desires from His people.
Ex. 28 begins “Have Aaron your brother brought to you from among the Israelites, along with his sons Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, so they may serve me as priests. Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron, to give him dignity and honor.“ This is another defining moment. God is selecting Aaron and his sons to a unique calling among men. They are to be His “priests”. For their entire adult lives, their purpose will be “mediators” between God and the people. It is what the people had asked for.
In Exodus 20:18-20 they backed away from God at Mount Sinai, after He spoke His 10 commandments to them, and they asked Moses to stand between God and them. “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” In response to this, God is establishing here a ‘priestly line’. From this day forward in Israel, the priesthood is not a job a man applies for, nor a position one earns through effort, nor an elected role. The Priesthood was inherited from father to son, beginning with Aaron and his four sons.
But, was it God’s original plan?
You’ll recall that God had told all the people that “…if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant then out of all the nations you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is Mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.“ (Ex. 19:5,6) Was it God’s desire that each person have direct access to God, without any priest? And that His Hebrew people would be ‘priests’ for all the rest of the world, drawing them to God..‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’?
But the people refused, they declined, they backed away, and asked Moses to step in between them and God. The people asked for a mediator.
Remember what Paul wrote to his friend Timothy: “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men.” (1 Tim. 2:5). But that would be 1500 years future from this Exodus 28 moment when God responded to the back-pedaling people, and established the human priesthood.
One of the central themes of the Bible book of Hebrews is that Jesus Christ now fills that role, for all humanity and all time. HE is our great High Priest. He stands between us and Holy, Majestic God.
Listen:
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess…Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Heb. 4:14,16)
“…Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant…because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood . Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them.” (Heb. 7:22,24,25)
“Such a high priest meets our need – One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, Jesus does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people. Jesus sacrificed for their sins once for all when He offered Himself…” (Heb. 7:26,27)
But here in the desert, 1500 years before Jesus came, Moses is meeting with God, and God is describing the establishment of something which had never before existed. God selected men who would represent HIM to the people, and represent the people to Him…priests. And they would be led by one man, a High Priest. And this was to be a life-long, high and holy calling.
Their work would be first of all to live in very close relationship with Holy God. A living example to the rest of the people. They were to spend vast amounts of time in God’s presence, bringing the needs of the people to God, and hearing from God what He wanted to tell His people through them. They were to teach the people about God, help them worship Him, help them live lives that would honor God, help them teach their children about the One and Only God.
The priests were responsible to make sure the people did not forget God, or all He had done, and was doing for them. The priests were responsible to foster the spiritual culture of Israel. They were responsible to care for the Tabernacle and all the activities in and around the “Tent of Meeting”. It was a high and holy calling.
While Exodus 26 & 27 are an architectural plan for the Tabernacle and some of it’s furnishings, Exodus 28 is a fashion designers dream. A detailed description of the garments the priest, and especially the High Priest, was to wear. But as you’ll see, it was far more than just a fashion statement or even a uniform. When you have time, I urge you to Google Biblical High Priest Garments, or something similar, and I think you’ll be fascinated to see the extravagant detail of what God designed for the High Priest to wear in the holy Presence of God.
May I point out two or three things in Exodus 28?
First.. the High Priest’s mediator role. He represented the 12 tribes of Israel, when he came into God’s Presence. He also bore the weight of them on his heart. Two large onyx stones, each with the names of 6 of the sons of Jacob, the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel, engraved on each stone, were set into shoulder portions of the ephod, which the High Priest wore, one stone on each shoulder.
But also, the ‘breastpiece’ had 12 gem stones, each one with the name of one tribe engraved on it. Israel, the people of God, were a unique nation of people. All descendants of one man, Abraham and his wife Sarah, through their miracle son Isaac, and his miracle son Jacob, and Jacob’s 12 sons. Every true Hebrew person could trace his lineage to one of those tribes. As the High Priest stood in the Holy Place in the Tabernacle with God, every living Hebrew, anywhere in the world, was in that Holy Place, through the mediation of the High Priest.
Now expand that to the present. As Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, every living Christian, anywhere in the world, is represented in the throne room of God, as Jesus is our mediator there! Or what about this, you and I have the privilege of representing any person we know, anywhere in the world, when we step into the throne room of God in prayer!
The second thing I’d like us to notice is vs 36 “Make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as on a seal, ‘HOLY TO THE LORD’…It will be on Aaron’s forehead continually so that they (the people) will be acceptable to the LORD.” Have you noticed that from the first burning bush encounter with Moses on the mountain, God keeps coming back to the word “HOLY” as a descriptor of Himself and the expectations He has of His people. So what do you think of when you hear that word? What emotions rise up in you when you think of ‘Holy’.
This gold plate on Aaron’s forehead sash was not declaring Aaron to be a holy man, he was far from that, and he knew it. Rather, it was declaring that in his High Priest role, he was representing an unholy people, a sinful people, before a Holy God, and the result was a clash, a conflict, a confrontation which needed to be resolved in order for there to be any relationship, even any communication, between Holy God and sinful people. That resolution was a sacrifice… so the people brought animals, as we will see later in our reading. Innocent animals, which, as they were slain, represented the seriousness of sin and holy justice.
Jesus, of course, became the ultimate sacrifice, and holy justice, was horribly poured out upon Him, on the cross, by God His Father. But that horrific sacrifice made it possible for God to declare as “Holy to the LORD”, you and me, and anyone who will trust fully in Jesus.
That’s what 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, remember “God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin, to bear our sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.”
“He was delivered over to death for our sin and raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)
Stand for a moment in front of your mirror, and imagine if God gave you spiritual eyes, do you see what is engraved on your forehead? The very same words Aaron had on the gold forehead piece “HOLY TO THE LORD”! And, my friends, you and I have the holiness of Jesus upon us, because God has applied His holiness to our lives in response to our repentance and His Holy Spirit living in us!
So what will that look like today, where-ever your footsteps take you… a man or woman walking round in our world, with “HOLY TO THE LORD” engraved on your forehead!? What impact should that have in our broken, evil world? And as Aaron represented the sinful people to God, how will you and I represent to God, the needs of our world as we see them today?
That’s part of why Paul urges us to ‘pray continually’.
What if you and I walked through our day alert to the fact that God declares over us us “Therefore if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come… You are therefore, ambassadors of Christ, as though God is making His appeal through us.” (2 Cor. 5:17,20)
What if, in every conversation, we brought a sense of God’s Holy Presence?
What if every time we heard something dishonoring to God, or saw something that is the result of sin in our world, we quietly lifted up a prayer for that person or situation…everywhere we went today?
What if 1 Billion people who claim to be Christians, walked around in our world like that today?
I think that’s part of our ‘high and holy calling’ as followers of Jesus…what do you think? And do you see this little phrase in vs. 41: “Consecrate them so they may serve me as priests”? Has Jesus consecrated you, set you apart, and anointed you by His Holy Spirit, so this day, and for the rest of our lives, we ALL serve Him as His priests in our world, as I described earlier?
I wonder as Moses heard Exodus 28 from God, if he shook his head thinking “I don’t know anyone, much less my brother Aaron, who is qualified for this role of priest. Only if God were somehow able to live inside a person could this be possible. But, if somehow the Spirit of God could live in a person, and if there were lots of those people all around the world, they could in fact change our world. They would be the light our dark world needs. They could be the help the broken people of our world need.”
Is it you and me my friends? When God spoke Exodus 28 to Moses, was He thinking about you and me in 2019?
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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