Holy, Holy

Introduction

Last week as we gathered we looked at the fellowship meal that concluded the ordination and consecration ceremony of Aaron and his sons, the final act that served to certify, if you will, that these men were now prepared to minister before God in the Tabernacle on behalf of the people. As we looked at this particular fellowship meal we looked at how our understanding of that meal helps inform us about what it looks like for us to prepare to come to the Lord’s Table and participate in His Supper. Just as the consummation of the flesh of the sacrifice reminded these priests of the blood that had been spilled and the sacrifice that had been made by their substitute, so too are we reminded that the cup and the bread of the Lord’s Supper help us to think about the reality of Christ’s, our substitute’s, Sacrifice. We also talked about how they were vigorously prepared for the consummation of this meal and that it took place in the presence of God, a place that by that very presence had been deemed holy.

As we closed last week I told each of you that we now had a week to properly prepare before we came together again and would observe the ordinance of communion. As a reminder, Paul writing to the church at Corinth, dealing with their mishandling of the this ordinance, among other things, wrote these words in 1 Corinthians 11:27–30 “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must test himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.” So it is my prayer that you have taken this time to prepare, to truly examine your hearts as we prepare to observe this blessed fellowship meal together in just a few minutes, before then however, let us return to the book of Exodus.

Our text for this morning is one that has been the source of a little bit of confusion in the theological world because of the structure of the writing and how it is to be interpreted. We have touched on this a little earlier when we began looking at Chapter 29. Although there is some confusion about how these verses actually occurred, there is certainty around the overall understanding of how these verses impacted the priests and how they should impact us here today. Once again we will be reading from Exodus 29 and Leviticus 8. Take a moment to mark chapter 8 of Leviticus and flip over to Exodus 29.

Text

Stand for the reading of God’s Holy, Inerrant, Infallible, Complete, Authoritative and Sufficient Word:

Exodus 29:35–37 LSB

“Thus you shall do to Aaron and to his sons, according to all that I have commanded you; you shall ordain them through seven days. “Each day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement, and you shall purify the altar when you make atonement for it, and you shall anoint it to set it apart as holy. “For seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and set it apart as holy; then the altar shall be most holy, and whatever touches the altar shall be holy.

Leviticus 8:33–36 LSB

“And you shall not go outside the doorway of the tent of meeting for seven days, until the day that the period of your ordination is fulfilled; for he will ordain you through seven days. “Yahweh has commanded to do as has been done this day, to make atonement on your behalf. “At the doorway of the tent of meeting, moreover, you shall remain day and night for seven days and keep the charge of Yahweh, so that you will not die, for so I have been commanded.” Thus Aaron and his sons did all the things which Yahweh had commanded through Moses.

Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the One true God who is Holy, Holy, Holy, we thank You for Your Word, the truth that is contained within and the way in which it directs our lives. We pray that as we come to Your word together this morning that Your Spirit would illuminate Your words to our hearts and minds, that it would change us according to its truths, that it would bring about a response of obedience in our lives. We are thankful that You are so merciful and gracious to us that by the work of Christ on the cross, His defeat of the grave, His ascension to the throne room of the Father and His constant intercession on our behalf that we can boldly enter into your presence and make our petitions known. Lord we pray that as we are a people transformed by Your word that we would be a people of the Word, not only in personal obedience, but in public proclamation, making You known to the ends of the earth. We rest in the fulfillment of this promise knowing that Your Spirit goes before us. Give us courage to stand firm, eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mouth with which to rightly proclaim your truth. We ask all of these things in the name of our Blessed Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, Amen.

Keep the Charge

As we begin our examination of the text this morning I would like to draw your attention to a short phrase that we find in Leviticus 8:35. Like all of the verses that we have been reading in parallel with Exodus 29 this verse is part of the obedience text, in other words, this is the record of what occurred when the commands of Exodus 29 were put into practice by the Israelites. The phrase to which I am referring are the words “keep the charge of Yahweh”.

As I mentioned earlier and we shall elaborate on a little later there is some confusion for us today regarding exactly how this ritual or ceremony was to be carried out, but for Moses and the people there was no confusion and the reason that there was no confusion was that they had received the commands of Yahweh and were to keep them, not just in part, but in the totality of what has been commanded. Here, in this particular verse, this statement refers specifically to the keeping of the commands regarding this particular ceremony, but in the broader scope of scripture this is a timeless biblical principle that carries with it a command for God’s people throughout all of past, continues in the present, and remains for all of time.

There is an old hymn that some of us here may know by Charles Wesley, it is hymn 391 in our hymnal, listen to the words:

A charge to keep I have, a God to glorify, a never dying soul to save, and fit it for the sky. To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill, O may it all my pow’rs engage to do my Master’s will! Arm me with watchful care as in Thy sight to live, and now Thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give! Help me watch and pray, and still on Thee rely, O let me not my trust betray, but press to realms on high.

A charge to keep we have… the charge to be obedient to the commands of God. Of course, the problem is that we, humanity, apart from a life altering change, lack not only the ability but the desire to obey these commands. For a moment, I want you to think back over the two text we have been looking at from Exodus 29 and Leviticus 8, as you think over these passages think about the places where Aaron and his sons are commanded to take an active part in the work that has been done to prepare them for the priesthood. In all of the pomp and circumstance that is occurring there are only four things which Aaron and his sons do:

Come when brought - this is truly a passive action in that the command God gives is for Moses to bring them to the doorway, to present them before God. In fact, they could not come before they were brought, just as we cannot and will not come to God before we are called or brought by the Holy Spirit into the presence of God, regenerated so that we desire to come

Lay their hands on the head of the sacrifices - as we walked through this work we saw that this represented the acknowledgement of their sins and that this sacrifice was taking their place in the punishment for sin, receiving atonement by having the blood applied to them and demonstrating their full submission to God. Just as they had to lay their hands on their substitute demonstrating faith that God will accept this sacrifice on their behalf, so too must we place our faith in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. That His full work as prophet, priest and king is acceptable to God in our stead and to bring us fully and completely into His presence.

Prepare and consume the fellowship meal - the preparation and consumption of this meal served not only as a certification that they had accepted the terms of the covenant but as a reminder of the high price that was paid affording them to be at peace with God and minister in His presence in the tabernacle for God’s purpose of bringing His people into His presence so that He might dwell with them. The fellowship meal that we will celebrate here this morning serves the same purpose in our lives, demonstrating not only full and complete submission to God through faith in the finished work of Christ, but also reminds us of the high price that was paid on Calvary’s cross… one that was paid for us.

Finally the last command that they were to obey - abide in Me, in My presence. Although this was a command for the priest to abide in His presence for seven days, which we will elaborate on here in a few minutes, it again contains a principle that is found throughout scripture, that we, as God’s people, abide in Him, which is where we will turn our attention to the remainder of the text for this morning.

Confusion

I mentioned earlier, both earlier today and earlier in our study through chapter 29, that there is some confusion, today, about this ceremony. I say today, because we again should absolutely understand that Moses knew exactly what God’s commands meant and how they were to be obeyed. This is another reminder to us that although there are principles demonstrated in this text that we are to obey, the entirety of the writing is not a prescriptive text, in other words there is nothing in this text that is calling us to repeat these actions in the same way that Moses and the people were commanded to keep them, and any teaching contrary to this is actually contrary to the gospel. It may seem obvious to many, if not all of us seated here today, that this is the truth, but there are many in this world who would disagree with that statement in one of two ways. They will either

Make the claim that if we believe that we are to be obedient to the Law of God it includes not only the moral law, but also the judicial and ceremonial laws, both of which only served a purpose for the people Israel. The judicial law was for both the purpose of expounding and understanding the moral law and the provision of punishment in the event that those laws were broken under the theocratic form of government of the nation of Israel. The ceremonial laws (or sacrificial system) existed to expiate the sins of the people and keep them in right relationship with God.

We need to unhitch the Old Testament and therefore any principles taught in the Old Testament from our New Testament Christianity, which is not Christianity at all but rather a self serving Gospel that allows us to feel good about ourselves while demanding nothing from us, no change, no obedience, etc.

There are variations on each of these, but these are the root denials that we see.

There are two main confusions that we have surrounding this text. The first of those revolves around the entire ceremony and boils down to exactly what was done during that seven day period. This is the one that I touched on earlier as we worked through chapter 29. The two primary school of thoughts on this are, was the entire ceremony repeated daily or was the ceremony spread out over a seven day period. The second of those also deals with were different sacrifices and offering performed on different days or was everything accomplished on the first day. There are different reasons for supporting both of these schools of thought although I fall into the train of thought that the entire ceremony was repeated. I do so because I believe that this underscored the importance of what was happening in this moment.

The second confusion that comes into play is regarding verses 36 and 37 of chapter 29. The disagreement here is whether this is a second set of seven days and therefore a second set of 7 bulls offered to atone for the altar or was this completed during the original seven day period and these were the same seven bulls that were sacrificed on behalf of the sins of the priests. Now, I did not bring all of this up to confuse you, but rather to make a couple of points, one of which I have already made regarding our lack of full knowledge of every specific step in the process, which is not necessary in any case, but secondly, to demonstrate that there are places in scripture where we may disagree on the interpretation of exactly how God accomplished His work, but within those events there are principles defined for us that we should be able to see and come to full agreement regarding. As an example the principle that we talked about earlier surrounding obedience to God.

Most Holy

In the past as we have studied through different texts in scripture we have talked about the things that we should be looking for as we read. Of those different things that we should be looking for, one of them is repetition. In other words, as we read a passage of scripture are there words, phrases or themes that we see being repeated and in this particular passage, hopefully, there was something that grabbed your attention as we read… in fact this is not only a word, but also a theme, not just of this passage, but of the whole of chapter 29, and that is the word or idea or theme of being holy, being set apart.

In fact in these three verses we see either the idea conveyed or specifically mentioned no less than seven times. It begins in verse 35 with the priests and the seven day period to ordain them. While the words holy or set apart are not mentioned, we see what has been occurring up to this point in the text, these men are being set apart, being consecrated, being declared holy to God. Regardless of the confusion that I mentioned a few moments ago, what we absolutely see happening in the text is this progression of these men towards holiness. Notice that not one of the specific steps, by themselves, brought these men to the place where they were declared holy, it took the entire ceremony and the seven day period to get them to the place where they were declared holy, or set apart, for God, till they were acceptable to enter into His presence and minister to and before Him. We also note, that as we have discussed several times, that to maintain this came at the price of a daily sacrifice for their sins.

We, as a royal priesthood, also need to be made holy to enter into the presence of God the Father but thanks be to God that we have the true sacrifice, the Lord Jesus, so that there is not this continual need for sacrifices. As the people of God, whom the blood of Christ has cleansed from every sin, we still have a responsibility to abide in Him. I mentioned earlier that this command regarding the seven days has to do with abiding in the presence of God. Dwelling in His presence allows us to draw near to Him and as we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us and the relationship deepens. We do not bear the responsibility of bringing the sins of the people into the presence of God in the same since that the high priests did but we do bear the responsibility of repenting for our own sin. Somehow in Christianity today we have developed the idea that repentance is a one time thing, that in a moment of emotional high, we come forward, tears stream down our face, we profess sorrow and repent of our sins, sign a membership card, get baptized and go about our life as if nothing has changed is acceptable. This is false gospel and a lie. In fact, this is specifically the thing that Paul was addressing in his letter to the church at Galatia when he writes in Galatians 1:6-10

Galatians 1:6–10 LSB

I marvel that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the gospel we have proclaimed to you, let him be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.

We see a continual call in scripture for us to repent, examine ourselves, be obedient. Think for a moment about the situation these priests are in as they have witnessed this elaborate ceremony. This is why I believe that the ceremony is repeated daily. As humans we tend to have this response towards sin, we are very slow to forgive others and very quick to forgive ourselves, to justify our actions, to make what we are doing seem ok and acceptable. But if we abide in Him, like the priests had to do, continually being confronted with our sins, how does that affect the way that we live. We have talked at length before about how people in scripture react to the presence of God and of course my favorite is Isaiah when he proclaims “woe is me for I am undone” and we have mentioned why these people have this reaction, but I wonder how often we have the same reaction when we are abiding in the presence of God in the study of His word. These men, these priests had to remain in the doorway, as Leviticus 8:35 ““At the doorway of the tent of meeting, moreover, you shall remain day and night for seven days...””

I wonder, if we took seven days and seven nights and just simply abided in His presence, how bitterly sweet would that be… bitter because of the continual reminder of just who we truly are, sweet, because all the time we see who we are, we are reminded even more of who He is, of what He has done.

Conclusion

In closing our time in God’s Word this morning and as we prepare our hearts for the Lord’s Table, let us hear and heed this charge. Just as Aaron and his sons were commanded to keep the charge of Yahweh, so too are we charged to keep the trust that has been delivered to us. Paul writes with solemn gravity to Timothy, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.”

Church, hear this: you are not a passive observer in your faith. You have been consecrated by the blood of Christ, set apart as a royal priesthood. Therefore, you are called to abide in Him—day by day, moment by moment. You are called to proclaim Him—to your children, your neighbors, to a world that will not endure sound doctrine but instead accumulates teachers to suit its own passions.

This means we must test ourselves before the Table, not simply to avoid hypocrisy, but to remember the holiness of the One who has called us. It means rejecting a cheap grace that excuses sin rather than confessing it. It means living lives that demonstrate we truly have been brought near by His blood, that we know the cost of this fellowship meal we are about to share.

So let us examine ourselves. Let us truly repent and continue to do so daily. Let us abide in His presence—not just in this hour, but through His Word in our homes, through prayer without ceasing, through obedient lives and inn our love for one another. Let us keep His charge, not turning aside to myths or comforts that dull our spiritual senses, but standing firm on the truth delivered once for all to the saints.

I ask you now: Will you keep the charge of the Lord? Will you remain at the doorway of His presence, refusing to wander away into complacency, into half-hearted faith, into a Christianity that costs nothing and demands nothing; will you, by His grace, abide in Him, proclaim Him faithfully, and present your life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God?

As we come to His Table, let that question search your heart. For He is worthy of nothing less than our whole-hearted, obedient, abiding love. May we keep the charge He has given us, until the day we see Him face to face. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Gracious and Holy God,

We thank You for Your Word, which pierces our hearts and calls us to holiness. Help us, Lord, to keep the charge You have given us—to abide in You daily, to proclaim Your truth boldly, and to live lives worthy of the calling we have received. Cleanse us from hidden sins, renew our minds, and strengthen our resolve to follow You with undivided hearts. As we come now to Your Table, grant that we would do so with reverence and gratitude, remembering the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ who made atonement for us once for all. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may walk in obedience, love one another deeply, and make Your glory known to the ends of the earth. We ask all of this in the precious and holy name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.