Leviticus 8-10: Coram Deo: Life in God’s Sight

Isaac Newton once conducted an experiment in which he set himself to gaze at the image of the sun reflected in a mirror. The sun was so bright, even in reflection that it burned his retina and he was temporarily struck blind. A few moments longer and he’d be blind forever! For days he hid himself from the sun behind shuttered windows. Nevertheless the bright spot would not fade from his vision. He said, “ I used all means to divert my imagination from the sun. But if I thought upon him I presently saw his picture though I was in the dark.”  Our eyes, as Newton discovered to his cost, are not built to withstand that much unfiltered sunlight.

And there’s a parable here for us. The Holiness of God burns so hotly and brightly that without a filter, in our natural, sinful condition, not one of us would escape its deadly impact.

If we are to approach a holy God and live, we need a filter, we need, what the Bible calls a mediator.

Last week we began the first in a series of 6 studies of the Book of Leviticus, and we were thinking about the need for sacrifice and atonement. Sinners, in order to have their sin addressed before this Holy God, must have a sin bearing substitute who will carry their guilt and bear away their punishment. That’s what the sacrificial system of Levicus 1-7 is all about.

This week we move on to the second division of the book of Leviticus, in chapter 8-10, that deals with the appointment and roles of the priesthood. And fundamental to the message of this part of Leviticus is the idea of mediation. Leviticus 8-10 supplements the discussion of our need for sacrifice in chapters 1-7, with a discussion of filters, of  mediators for the holiness of God.

So in these two sections Leviticus sets before us two basic principles. The first is the principle of substitution, in Chapters 1-7, and  the second is the principle of mediation, which is our subject for this week, in chapter 8-10.

Now these three chapters form a neat thematic progression. Beginning in Chapter 8, we have the role of the priesthood, and then in chapter 9 we have the ministry of the priesthood, and then finally in chapter 10 we have the inadequacy of the priesthood.

And I want to look at each in order with you this morning. So turn please to Leviticus chapter 8 and think with me about the Role of the Priesthood.

Now already we have said that the function of these chapters set before us the idea of mediation, of a go between, of a filter, standing between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of his people. And that is something that Chapter 8 brings out in verses 1-3, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Bring Aaron and his sons…..and (vs.3) gather the entire assembly at the entrance to the tent of Meeting.

Notice is the location of the ceremony that ordained Aaron and his sons to the priesthood. They are standing at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Between the people, outside the tent of Meeting, and the Presence of God, inside the tent of meeting, stand the priests. The location of the ceremony itself was a job description acted out, for all to see. The people and the priests were in no doubt of the priest’s role. They stood between God and His people.

And that’s a message still further emphasized in verse 7. After washing Aaron and his sons, to signify their sacred status, Moses robes Aaron, the new High Priest, with a tunic, and then ties onto his tunic something called the Ephod. The Ephod was a square breastplate that was inlaid with 12 precious stones. Three stones were inlaid in a row on each side, with each stone bearing the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.  And the Ephod reflected the layout of the whole encampment of Israel. In the center of the ephod were placed what vs. 8 calls the Urim and Thumim. Now we don’t really know how these worked exactly, but they were a device for discerning God’s will and providing guidance for Israel. Just as the twelve tribes were given specific places and encamped in those locations, with the tabernacle in their exact geographical center, so the Ephod, the High Priest’s breastplate, reflected that same pattern. The names of the twelve tribes surrounded the Urim and Thumim, symbolically reaffirming the rule of God in the midst of His people.

Now the High Priest was to wear this garment in God’s sight whenever he went into the Tent of Meeting. He carried before the Lord the whole encampment of Israel upon his breast in a brilliant symbolic act of mediation. He was the representative of the people before the Lord.

And when Israel needed guidance from God in years to come, they could ask the High Priest who would use the Urim and Thumim and give God’s judgments, and so he would mediate the will of God to the nation. Mediation went two ways. The Priests stood before God for the people and before the people for God.

Hebrews 5:1 give us the classic Biblical definition of the role of the Priesthood when it says, “Every High priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”

That is what priests did. They stood before the Lord representing the people in matters related to God. Priests had a horizontal role, ‘representing men’, and a vertical role, ‘matters relating to God’. They mediated, filtered, God to Israel and they mediated, or filtered, Israel’s needs to God.

Sometimes we hear of people who will say that they believe that God will accept them into His eternal presence because they are basically good. “I’m a nice guy,” they say.  “I don’t do what some people do. I’m a lot better then she is! No, I have nothing to fear. I can stand assured that God will accept me because of who and what I am.”

But the God to whom you will answer says to you today, ‘no-one comes into my heaven without a mediator. If you rest in your own achievements before me you will be lost. You need a mediator who will carry your sin before me and carry my grace back to you.”

We need a mediator because God is so holy. His holiness is like the power of electricity. It has enormous potential to warm us and benefit us, but touches an exposed, hot, live wire through which mains electricity is traveling and we may not live to tell of the destructive power it carries.

God is a live wire carrying enormous power. He is utterly holy. We need a priest, a mediator, to make the power of God’s holiness flow safely to sinners in need of Grace.

In scripture, the holiness of God conveyed through a mediator to sinners is called Grace.

But the Holiness of God conveyed without a mediator to sinners is called wrath.

If you want grace, and  not wrath, you must find yourself a mediator to go between God and your soul, to stand at the entrance of the tent of Meeting, to intercede between you and your Maker, to lift you up to Him and bring Him down to you. We urgently need a Mediator.

So that was the priest’s role. They were to be Mediators of the grace of God and the needs of Israel.

Then secondly there is the ministry of the priests. What did these mediators do to bring grace to sinners and sinners to God?

Well, chapter 9 details the beginning of the ministry of the Priesthood .

It was not enough for Israel to bring sacrifices if they could not carry their sacrifices into the presence of God. Priests were needed who were authorized by the Lord to offer up the sacrifices of His people and Chapter 9 recounts the very first priestly offerings.

And the significance of the priest’s role is given a remarkable emphasis. Look at chapter 9 vs. 2-4. In vs. 2 Moses tells Aaron to make some sacrifices for himself. When this was done, Aaron was to command the congregation of Israel to bring their offerings (vss.3-4) then he tells them what will result from the inauguration of sacrifices at the tabernacle, “today the LORD will appear to you.”

The people obeyed and in vs.6 Moses repeats Aaron’s instruction again saying, “This is what the Lord has commanded you to do, so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.”

Now that’s remarkable because until now the Lord appeared only to Moses, and according to the law of God given to Moses for Israel’s worship, the glory of God was also accessible only to the priesthood, and then only within the sacred precincts of the Tent of Meeting. Yet here God is saying to Israel, ‘what you could not bear before will now be possible for you. I will appear to you after you make sacrifice to me.’

In verses 7-22 Aaron offers the ritual sacrifices.  Then he and Moses entered the Tent of Meeting, came out again and blessed the people. As the High Priest pronounced the benediction the glory of God appeared to Israel in vs 23. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord, that is, from the Tent of Meeting itself, and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar, vs. 24.

Picture the scene! The whole nation of Israel is encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai with the Tent of Meeting at the heart of the camp. They have sought the forgiveness of God and made sacrifice to Him through this new order of priests God had created. Moses and Aaron eventually finish their sacrifices and enter the tent of Meeting. Everyone holds their breath. Then the tent flap opens and they come out. In a loud voice Aaron cries “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn His face towards you and give you peace.” And just as these great words of benediction echo in their ears suddenly the glory of the Lord shines all around them, and fire from within the Tent of Meeting, from the very presence of God himself, bursts forth and consumes their sacrifices.

No more graphic display could signal to Israel that the ministry of these new priests would, in fact, fulfill the role of mediators effectively. Israel needed a go between and now God himself had provided one in the persons of Aaron and his sons. God accepted their offerings; His glory appeared to all his people because of the work of their Go-betweens, their mediators, the priests.  And the result, vs. 24, is that the people of God can no longer contain themselves. They burst into shouts of joy at the grace and mercy of God. 

Communion with God is the result when our mediator steps between our sinful hearts and our God, and makes atonement for sin. Our mediator presents our atoning sacrifice to God and then comes from God to us pronouncing a word of benediction that is accompanied by the presence and glory and acceptance of God himself.

As we’ll see shortly we have a mediator, a greater High Priest than Aaron could ever be in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ we have access to God the Father. We have the privilege of communion with God.

Some of us have known the riches of communion with the Lord in our own experience, but if we are honest with ourselves, we  must confess that the felt presence of the Lord is something we know little of these days. And might it not the case that we know so little of the felt presence of the Lord because we have not been before the High Priest of our souls, Jesus Christ, confessing our sin, and appealing to His self sacrifice for our sins as often as we ought? When were you last engaged in detailed specific confession of sin? How much is it a part of your daily Christian life to cling to the priesthood of Christ confessing daily your sins, and eyeing only the blood of the Cross as your sacrifice of atonement? Repentance is the duty of sinners. But let’s not forget that until Christ returns we are all sinners still.

And if we have no place for repentance, and the mediation of Christ on our behalf as Christians, then we can have no confidence in our own eternal security before a Holy God. Without a mediator there is no possibility of communion with God, here or hereafter. Without a mediator we are shut out, left in the dark and the cold of our sin and misery. We neglect Christ’s mediation to the great detriment of our spiritual progress. We refuse it at our eternal peril.

So there is the role of the priests, they were mediators. There is the ministry of the priests, to make atonement and convey the grace of God to sinners. Then finally look at Chapter 10 and notice the inadequacy of these mediators.

Aaron’s two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu were God ordained priests, but in Chapter 10 1&2 things go horribly wrong.

Almost everything in the book of Leviticus has underlined the central fact of the Holiness of God. God is a dangerous Person. He cannot and will endure sin in his creatures. The tent of meeting, the sacrificial system, the clothes the priests wore, the ritual of their ordination; it all reinforced the point that standing in the Tent of Meeting, standing in the presence of God, was an awesome and sacred thing. And the regulations that governed what the priests were to do and how they were to do it, served both to reinforce that point and to protect them from transgression.

But Nadab and Abihu took matters into their own hands. They offered to God ‘unauthorized fire’, vs. 1. Probably this means that they failed to use fire taken from the altar of burnt offering. It has also been suggested that the phrase, “before the Lord” in verse 1 means that  they offered this unauthorized fire in the Holy of Holies, the inner precincts of the Tent of Meeting where only the High Priest was allowed to go.

Whatever the specific nature of their transgression, the fact is they sinned, and the consequences were immediate and deadly. Vs.2, “fire came out from the Presence of the Lord and consumed them”

Clearly the language  of verse 2 is intended to make us back up to the end of chapter 9. The same language is used to show us that God accepted the work of the priests. Fire consumed their sacrifices. But here is the fire of God’s holiness consuming, not the priest’s sacrifices, but the priests themselves! 

Now what is the message?

Well first of all, there is only one route to God.

No doubt you’ve had the experience of being in the car with someone else driving and you get lost. They assure you however that they can find the correct route. And so off you go. They have a vague idea of the direction in which they want to be heading and so they simply turn this way and that in a vain attempt to find the way. The last resort is the map. In the end you pull over and consult the street map, and that gets you where you want to go.

Now it’s obvious that when we are lost, simply attempting to find our way without any knowledge of where we are in relation to where we want to be, or of the roads that intervene, is futile if not just plain foolish. But why are we just like this when it comes to our spiritual condition. We are really lost. We are stuck in sin’s darkness and we simply cannot find our way to God alone. We only get ourselves more lost. We need to pull over and consult the road map of holy scripture and ask which direction does the map say I should go? What is the God appointed route into his presence?

Here were priests seeking access to God in a manner He had not prescribed, but God decides how we may come to him! He opens the only route into His presence. And we  must learn from Him alone what the unique way of access to the Father is. Trying to come to God by any other route except the one route he has revealed in scripture, coming to God apart from a God given mediator, is not only foolish, it is, as Nadab and Abihu learned ultimately fatal.

And secondly the story of Nadab and Abihu reminds us that these mediators sinned! They were imperfect. They could disobey and fall and fail. That’s the point of Moses instructions to Aaron at the beginning of chapter 9, “Take a bull calf for your sin offering and a ram for your burnt offering”. There was a fundamental deficiency with this priesthood. They were sinners themselves! They could not make atonement for the people without first making atonement for themselves. These mediators needed a mediator!

They were unable to make perfect atonement and be perfect mediators for sinners. At best all these priests could do is symbolically act out the atonement and mediation of another High Priest to come that would make full and perfect atonement for sin.

The psalmist, David, recognized the need for another Priest to come. This priest was not a descendant of Aaron, he was not a Levite, he would be a priest, he said, in the order of Melchizedek. As you may know Melchizedek was king of Salem, and priest of God most high at the time of the patriarch Abraham, and you can read about him in Genesis 14:18.

Now, in Psalm 110:4 David spoke of a priest who would be a “priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”. Now look with me for a moment at Hebrews chapter 5: 6-8 (pg. 1204). The writer to the Hebrews quotes psalm 110:4 and he sees it as a reference to Jesus Christ, who was “designated by God to be high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”. Now look at chapter 7 verses 23-28, where the writer goes on, “Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but 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. 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, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once and for all when he offered himself.”

The priests of the Levitical law were mere sinners. The offerings they presented first had to be made for themselves. They were inadequate to deal with their own sin, let alone the sin of the people of God. What we need is the One to whom they pointed, Jesus Christ, the priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

He is able to save completely all who come to God through him. He is the true and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

Now here is the issue with which we must reckon. We need a mediator and only Jesus Christ can fill the job description. He lives forever and is able to save completely. His self sacrifice takes sin away once and for all.

And when we come to Jesus Christ by faith, and take His self-sacrifice as our sin offering, what happens? How did The Lord signal His acceptance of the sacrifices and ministry of Aaron and his sons in Leviticus 9:23-4?

He showed the people for whom the priest made atonement His own glory, fire consumed the sacrifices, and joy filled their hearts so that they shouted about it! Fire, the presence of God and joy all marked the beginning of the ministry of the Levitical priesthood.

And one commentator has suggested that in Acts chapter 2 these same elements mark the commencement of the new covenant era with Jesus Christ as the Great High Priest over the house of God. This time tongues of fire rested, not on animal sacrifices, but on human lives given up to the service of the Lord as living sacrifices, the presence of God by His Spirit filled the place where the church assembled, and they were all full of joy and boldness in proclaiming the mighty works of God for sinners in Jesus Christ.

When you come to the great High Priest, the only Mediator between God and your soul, our Lord Jesus Christ, you will come to the presence of God, his acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf, and great joy in your own soul, as you receive from Jesus Christ himself the reality to which Aaron’s High Priestly benediction pointed. For then the Lord will bless you and keep you. In Christ he will make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. Through Jesus the Lord will tunr his face towards you and give you peace.

May the Lord grant that we all come to know the blessing of Christ’s High Priestly work for our souls,

Amen.