Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. We're in a section right now that probably won't be your favorite, but persevere. This is setting us up to understand a lot about God and His story. When we have passages like this, as we will from time to time, don't try to remember all these details. There isn't a quiz. Just try to come away from this with an overall idea of the function and purpose and meaning of it all.
Try seeing what ties all these details together and asking yourself what those details reveal to you about God. First of all, why would he pay this kind of attention to detail? And second of all, why would he include these things in a book that would long outlive the use of the things he's describing? Whatever these difficult passages show us about him is still in effect, even if the offerings and sacrifices and garments aren't.
By the way, if the idea of animal sacrifice bothers you, here's something that may be helpful to remember. God isn't the one causing it. Man's sin is. Hebrews 9.22 says, Before we unpack today's reading, let's back up a little bit.
Do you remember the 12 sons of Jacob? Not all of them. I'm not asking you to list them, but I'm just asking if you remember that there were 12 of them, the 12 tribes of Israel.
Back in Exodus 2, we learned that Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi. You may remember Levi as one of the two brothers who, along with Simeon, killed all the men of Shechem to avenge their sister Dinah's rape. And yet here we are with his descendants being appointed as priests unto the Lord. Talk about redemption! The descendants of Levi are called Levites, and guess what? The book we'll tackle next is all about their work, Leviticus.
Today we start out with God addressing his plans for Aaron, Moses' brother, and all Aaron's offspring and their roles as priests. God pays a lot of attention to their priestly attire, but it's really more than just clothes we're dealing with here. It was more like sacred equipment than garments.
This may be a bad illustration, but think of a police officer's bulletproof vest or a football player's pads. That's more like what we're dealing with here because these garments have a function. These clothes are listed along with the tabernacle details and equipment, and they are explicitly designed for use in the sanctuary when priests serve in this role. They didn't wear this stuff when they were posted up in their desert hammocks. If you want to see an image of what these may have looked like, do a quick web search and you'll get a pretty good idea.
In addition to function, these garments were also intended for glory and for beauty. They displayed God's splendor and attention to detail. And God specifically gifted the people who were assigned to make them. That's how seriously He took these things.
First, we read about the high priest's garments. Then we read about the garments for the other priests. But there are three things I want to highlight about the high priest's garments. First, the clothing is supposed to indicate the high priest's role as a mediator between God and man. His attire is supposed to symbolically represent the people before God—hence the names of the tribes on the shoulder pieces and the twelve stones on the ephod—and to symbolically represent God to the people. The priest is a foreshadowing of Christ, connecting God and man.
The second thing I want to highlight is the Urim and Thummim. We don't really know what these were, but here's my best guess based on all my research. We know they were a part of the ephod, and they seem to be tools used for discerning God's will. It's possible that the Urim, which seemed to be the primary device they used, gave off some kind of supernatural light because its name is closely related to the Hebrew word for light. We also know that David requested them from the priest in 1 Samuel 23 9 when Saul was coming to kill him.
I think if I could find any ancient relic apart from the Ark of the Covenant, I would be most interested in finding these. The last thing I want to highlight are the bells on the hem of the robe. The priest had a lot of duties to do, which meant all that movement would keep those bells ringing. If for any reason the priest fell dead while he was performing his tasks, the bells would go silent. Those served a function as well, because the priest was in the Holy of Holies where no one else was allowed to go.
Those priests have to go through an intense seven-day ordination and consecration ceremony, where one of the acts is to sprinkle blood on their right ear, right thumb, and right big toe. We know that blood symbolizes purification in these ceremonies, but why did they put it on those spots?
Since their priestly garments cover most of their skin, the blood was placed on some of the only exposed skin and at their furthest exposed extremities—head, finger, toe. By making these marks of purification on these three distant spots, it likely symbolized that their whole body had been purified.
As a part of this ceremony, they also had to make a lot of offerings, and these were costly animals without defect. They also had to eat unleavened bread as part of the ceremony. And anything they offered on the altar became holy, set apart for His glory. Our reading today ended with God making a statement that connects to my God shop for today. All of this ordination ceremony and all of the sacrificing points to God's holiness. Holy means set apart.
He establishes the priest to be set apart for sacred use by the divine. He establishes the altar and the sacrifices to be set apart for sacred use by the divine. And even though holiness by its nature indicates separation, God ends today's reading with these words.
There I will meet with you to speak to you. There I will meet with the people of Israel. I will dwell among the people of Israel and be their God. 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. In his holiness, in his set-apartness,
He made a way to draw near. Nothing is going to stop Him from being with His people. Not His holiness, not their sin, nothing. To be loved and pursued by Him reminds me all the time that He's where the joy is.
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