The Holy Congregation

Leviticus 10:8-11 ESV

8 And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, 9 “Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. 10 You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, 11 and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.”

Have you ever heard the saying, “Why try to stand out when you can just blend in”? You know, it usually makes things more difficult for someone when they try to stand out and be different than everyone else, so, for a lot of people, they’d prefer to just blend in like everyone else and just go with the flow.

I remember a friend of mine once saying that to me. He had been going to a small church for several years and after going there for a year or two, the pastor approached him and asked him if he would mind helping out with a certain ministry at the church, to which my friend said that he would be happy to help.

Well, it turned out that my friend ended up revealing some leadership qualities that his pastor noticed. And noticing these qualities within my friend, his pastor put them to good use, using him in a leadership role at the church.

But my friend complained to me, he said that he didn’t want all of this responsibility at church. Then I explained to him that his pastor was doing the right thing here. He recognized his leadership potential and was utilizing it. To which he responded that he didn’t want to use his God-given gifts and that if he was apart of a larger church, he could just kind of blend in and no one would notice him or ask anything of him.

God had graciously given him what was necessary to stand out for the glory of God, but he wanted to just blend in and not be noticed and thus not let God’s glory shine through the gifts that God had given to him.

I also know another guy who wanted to blend in. But he wanted to blend in in order to take get ahead himself and take advantage of others.

Now this guy that I knew was a somewhat successful businessman in Decatur. He was doing pretty well for himself and thus lived a pretty comfortable life. Furthermore, he never went hungry… but not because he was doing pretty well for himself, but because he was taking advantage of others.

You see, those this man that I knew was doing pretty well for himself, he would go to people that he knew who had food stamps who were looking to make some money and he would offer them, let’s say $50 in cash for $100 in food stamps.

I remember saying to him, “$50 is nothing to a guy like you! But you’re out here illegally purchasing and using food stamps in order to save 50 bucks?!” and do you know what he said to me? He said, “Well if I don’t do it, someone else will. They’ll just sell them to someone else, so it might as well be me who they sell them to.”

I said, “Do you think that makes what you’re doing right?! Do you think that because someone else will just do it anyway that it makes it right for you to do it?”

But you know, that is how a lot of people reason. Even a lot of people in the church, a lot of people who claim to be born again Christians have this attitude of, “Well, you know, everyone else is doing it, so I might as well do it too.”

But is that what the God Who has called us out of the darkness and into the light has called us to do? Has He called us who are Christians out of this world, who He has given a new heart to, who He has given a completely new nature to, to simply blend in with the world that He called us out of?

God forbid! We are new creations, set apart from the world, therefore we are to live as those who have been set apart from the world.

And because we are new creations, set apart from the world, chosen by God to love Him and serve Him, there is then to be a clear distinction between those whom God has set apart for Himself and those who are still among the unsaved mass in the world.

This means that contrary to what many modern churches would like to tell you, when God saves us, we are not only to be different, but we are to act different to such a degree that we are considered strange to the world due to the fact that we evidently and manifestly love and serve the God that it naturally hates so very much.

Or if we want to go even more extreme, and I think we should, our Christianity should be so evident, should be so manifest that it would cause those in the church and those visiting the church who are not Christians to be so overwhelmed by our Christianity that they feel as though they need to be legitimately converted to the faith or stop coming to this church.

But as it stands today, in the vast majority of the churches in our nation today, there are such parallels to the world system, the faith and devotion found in these churches mirrors the faith and devotion that the unsaved mass of humanity has for God to such a degree that it is hard to differentiate the two.

And rather than joining in with these mistaken congregations, we need to learn from their fatal mistakes and be reminded as to why we exist, what purpose that we as the Church are to serve, and to then act accordingly.

As we finish out our series of messages this morning from Leviticus, chapter 1, verses 1-11, we see the charge from God Himself to Aaron the High Priest of Israel to do the very things that I just spoke of in his own cultural context and in light of the events that had just recently taken place in his setting.

As we have worked through this narrative, we have seen the fatal mistake that Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron had committed in offering unauthorized fire to the Lord, how they had gone to great lengths to mirror the ways of the world and the consequences that they had suffered because of it.

And now, in verse 8-11 we see the exact charge that God had given to Aaron the High Priest in light of everything that had happened to his sons.

And when we look to verses 8 and 9 specifically, we see what might be further hints in connection to the crime that Nadab and Abihu had committed when it says:

Leviticus 10:8-9 ESV

8 And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, 9 “Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.

The Lord tells Aaron that neither he nor his sons, that is the priests who present sacrifices and offerings before the Lord are to drink no wine or strong drink when they go into the tent of meeting.

This means that when the High Priest and the other priests performed their service to God, they were to not be under the influence of alcohol.

Now to us today, living thousands of years after this narrative, this seems pretty obvious. It should seem pretty obvious that in the day in which we live a church would not expect their minister to perform his service to God while drunk. In fact, they should have the expectation that their minister never be under the influence of alcohol, but especially when he leads the congregation in worship.

But in the cultural context of this narrative that was not entirely unusual.

The people of Israel as they traveled through the wilderness had recently been set from their bondage in Egypt. And in the pagan religious services in Egypt, those who led the services were typically under the influence of alcohol as they led the service. So, the example that Israel had for religious services in Egypt was that the one leading the service would be drunk.

And in light of what God says to Aaron here, we can safely assume that there is a good chance that when Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu did what they did, they were drunk.

But God has repeatedly commanded the people of Israel to be unlike those of the world, and that includes the Egyptians that He had recently freed them from.

Therefore, God tells Aaron that unlike the pagan religion that they left behind in Egypt, those who worship Him are to do so not under the influence of alcohol, but completely sober.

And furthermore, God warns Aaron that if they do perform their service to Him under the influence of alcohol, they he and any other priest will die just like his sons did.

In fact, in verse 10, we read of where God specifically commands Aaron to do the opposite of what he has seen in the world, when He commands him:

Leviticus 10:10 ESV

10 You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean,

Distinguish between the holy and the common, the unclean and the clean… in other words, God commands Aaron to contemplate on what is good and evil, on what is acceptable in God’s sight and what is deplorable in God’s sight based on what God has revealed to him and then to consciously and devoutly choose that which God commends and live in accordance with what God commends.

Of all people, Aaron the High Priest of God is to live a life of holiness and purity, unlike his now deceased sons.

So, do you see the process here? God reveals what is good to Aaron and Aaron then lives in accordance with the good that God reveals to him.

But that isn’t all. For after God reveals what is good to Aaron and as Aaron lives in accordance with what is good, Aaron is to then pass along what God has revealed to him to others.

We see this in verse 11, the last verse of our text for this morning, where it says:

Leviticus 10:11 ESV

11 and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.”

The ministry of Aaron and the priests was not simply to offering sacrifices and offerings on behalf of the people, it was also to teach the people of Israel the ways of the Lord, continuously revealing to them those inspired words that He had revealed to Moses and teaching them, both in word and in deed how it is that they are live their lives in service to God.

And as we finish our series this morning, what we need to recognize is that God was not speaking these words to Aaron and the priests alone. Take a look back there at the very end of verse 9, “It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.”

What shall be a statute? Differentiating the difference between the holy and the common, the clean and the unclean, learning more and more about God and how we are to properly worship Him and serve Him through the consistent, everyday study of His Word.

As we delve more into His holy Scriptures, the more we know of Him and the more we know what He commands of us. And the more that we know of what He commands us, the more we see how the Christian is to stand out as peculiar and different in the world, not paralleled with it. And the more that we see this, the more we must obey it and submit to it, recognizing it as the very Word and command of God Almighty.

But it doesn’t stop there, for the more that God reveals to us and the more that we obey what He reveals to us, more and more is it our responsibility to reveal these things to other Christians so that we all may be mutually edified.

That is not just my job as the pastor, that is every Christian’s job. When you discover something in the Scriptures, when God graciously reveals to you more of Himself, that is not just something that you keep to yourself, no, God gave that to you not only for your own edification, but for mine as well, and for every other Christian whom you worship with on a regular basis.

Beloved, we are a body and a body survives only when it is properly cared for and nourished. So let us all do our own part to contribute to the health of the body.

Amen?