Priestly Ordination for a Nation of Priests

Priestly Ordination for a Nation of Priests

by Lonnie Lane 

We know that God doesn’t
interact with unholiness. It’s not just because He has an aversion to sin. He
doesn’t directly interact with unholy humankind because we would be destroyed
by the power of His holiness. Holiness has innate energy – the kind that speaks
universes into being and they suddenly “are.” Being directly confronted with
God’s holy power, even His unbridled love, is beyond our ability to endure it.
It would destroy us. I have experienced
a bit of the joy of heaven in an open vision. It was the most glorious moment
of my life, but it was also unbearable. We cannot bear in our fallen bodies the
power and energy of even God’s joy. I am sure I would have exploded into pieces
if He did not lift it off of me after a few seconds. That we are unable to
endure looking directly at the sun, a mere created thing, is but a small
example of our inability to endure the power of God’s presence. This gives us
some further insight into what Adam and Eve may have experienced when they
“fell from glory” and were suddenly terrified of God’s presence and hid from
Him after they sinned and lost their own God-endowed glory.

So what was God to do if it’s
relationship He’s wanting with unholy people? When God wants to do something
big He always starts small. To change the world He begins with one man. First
He chose Abraham. When He chose this man, it was as good as done in God’s
Mind. He, being outside of time
and space, isn’t daunted by either time or space. Now or forever, it’s all the
same to God. That’s why He can meet us in the moment but prophesy what will be
to the end of the age. And large or small, it too is all the same.

That He began with just one man, Abraham,
with the intent of bringing salvation to the universe, ought to encourage us to think big with God and not “despise the day of small things” (Zech.
4:10). What could be too hard for
God? Through Abraham, God sets apart his family unto Himself for His purposes,
one small family among millions of other families, “…saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth
shall be blessed’” (Acts 3:25). We know the story. Eventually Abraham’s family is big enough to become a
nation, having been rescued by God from the most powerful demonic influence in
the world at the time, manifested in Egypt. He did it again through one man,
Moses, through whom God also gave the people a constitution, that is
commandments and laws by which they should live as the people of God. You could
sum the laws up this way: “You shall be holy, for I the
LORD your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). 

But what about if they fail to keep God’s
laws? What happens when they are not being holy? Will God be angry? Will He
cause them to die? Is there a way back to God if they are not holy? What about
that relationship Holy God wants with the unholy people? God must make a way for transgressors
to be restored, or surely there will be no one left for who can maintain
holiness before Him adequately? Again, God sets apart a man, Moses’ brother
Aaron, and like with Abraham, God decrees that his sons will carry out the
calling God put upon their father. God sets Aaron apart as a priest unto
Himself, one who is to enter into God’s holy presence and be a mediator between
God and the people. Aaron is to be the head priest, or high priest, over his
priestly sons, all of whom are set apart as holy.

Now, I ask you, do you think Aaron was a good
candidate for holiness? It wasn’t as though Aaron was spotless and pure. Was
this a man you would trust with this kind of leadership? Wasn’t he the guy who
was involved with that whole golden calf incident? Remember this? “Now
when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the
people assembled about Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make us a god who will go
before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
we do not know what has become of him.’ Aaron said to them, ‘Tear off the gold
rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and
bring them to me.’ Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in
their ears and brought them to Aaron” (Exodus 32:1-3).

Evidently neither Aaron nor the people
believed Moses would ever be seen again. After all, forty days is a long time.
What were they to think? That God had abandoned them after all? So now they
needed a new god. They were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not out of them. The story tells us Moses’ reaction to
their idolatry and unholy actions, but it doesn’t tell us what must have gone
on inside of Aaron. How ashamed must he have been to see his brother reflecting
the glory of God and he having led the people into giving their gold to produce
the idolatrous calf? Was he ashamed before Moses, or before God? Both? The people had been left in his charge and he had failed
miserably. Was he horrified at how easily he had lost any and all sense of what
He had come to know of God’s power and presence while witnessing Him deliver
Israel from Egypt? I can’t even imagine what Moses must have had to say to
Aaron in his rage at how he had turned from God and used his God-given
leadership to organize their idolatry.  

But maybe that’s what made Aaron the right
man for the job. We see enough in the Bible, and know from our own lives, that
God is looking for people who know their own sinfulness, who are aware they are
not holy and that apart from God’s mercy and forgiveness, they would be
destroyed. Moral failures, if they bring us to true repentance and deep
humility before God, are the very things that may protect us against further
sin against God, and prepare us for ministry. Yeshua, in His sermon on the
mount declared, “Blessed are the poor in
spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). “Poor” in Hebrew,
according to a footnote in The Power New
Testament, means repentant. It is the repentant to whom the Kingdom of
heaven belongs. Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God are both Hebrew ways of
saying the same thing. So that statement is consistent with the whole of the Bible.
Perhaps it is Aaron’s repentance upon seeing how he led Israel into such
apostasy and error that changed him into someone God could trust. Perhaps Aaron
was so impacted by how he deserved to die, but God had mercy upon him, that he
would have compassion upon those who would be in need of God’s forgiveness.
Perhaps Aaron was so devastated by his own weakness of character and how swayed
he was by the people in order to stay in their favor rather than believing God,
that it put a holy fear of God upon him so that never again would he violate
God’s holiness.

When we too are confronted with the depth of
our own sin, so that we see ourselves as we really are, desperately in need of
God’s love and mercy, we can never again take lightly His forgiveness. It changes
us. We walk tenderly before Him, careful not to dishonor Him in any way. Not
only do we wish to avoid bringing Him any displeasure, but we become aware that
we who are His represent Him to the world around us, causing us to want only to
be “vessels of honor” (see 2 Tim 2:20) for His name’s sake. Only He is holy,
only He is righteous. When we know our own self-righteousness, the fear of ever
offending God again like we have reigns in our hearts, then God can begin to
trust us with His power and authority. Such was presumably the case with Aaron.

In order to set Aaron in place as high
priest, God tells Moses how to officiate at his ordination. The entire
congregation of Israel was to witness what is about to take place. Somehow more
than one million people were able to see the goings-on as the priesthood is
instituted and Aaron is installed as God’s high priest. First he needs to be
washed with water. At this time they’re in a desert and water is hard to come
by. Years later, when priests were ordained they would enter the waters of a mikveh, or what we would call a baptism.
Yeshua, upon entering His own priestly ministry, entered the waters of mikveh with John the Immerser
officiating, thought it is highly unlikely he thought of it that way. So, “Moses had Aaron and his sons come near, and washed them with water”
(Lev. 8:6). Then he proceeded to dress Aaron in the clothing that God had
ordered be prepared for him, the “uniform” of priesthood. “Then he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron’s head and anointed
him, to consecrate him. Next, Moses
had Aaron’s sons come near and
clothed them” as God had commanded. (See Lev. 8:7-13).

This was followed by much slaughtering of
sacrificial animals, with attention to different bodily parts of the animals
handled specifically, with the blood placed upon the altar. The meat was put
upon the altar to be burned, with the exception of the flesh (skin) which was
taken outside the camp to be burned there. “Flesh” can never be offered as
atonement. (In the spiritual sense, flesh is exactly what it is that needs to
be atoned for.) This all took hours to accomplish. And had to have been very
messy. Blood and guts messy. Slaughter isn’t a very tidy word, is it? Blood has
its own unique smell, which was coupled with the burning meat on the altar and
all the smoke. An unforgettable occasion, without a doubt, for those who
witnessed it.

Some of the blood was put on Aaron’s right
ear, thumb and big toe. This was to sanctify what he would hear, what he would
hold with his hands and how he would walk before the Lord. To ordain in Hebrew
means “to fill the hands.” Aaron and his sons hands’ would now be filled with
carrying out the sacrificial atonement for the forgiveness of sins. Their hands
would be laid (pressed) upon the animals to transfer the sins of the people to
the animal. Their left hands (palms) would be filled with oil while their right
hand fingers would dip into the oil and anoint the people and the sacrifices.
Their hands would be hands of blessings as they held them up to bless the
people. And they would be hands of praise to act as mediators between the
people and God. There was more to the ceremony which you can read in Leviticus
8 regarding the ordination, but it culminated with God saying to Aaron, “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 (lit. fill your hands) you through
seven days… You shall remain day and night for seven days… that you may not die”
(:33-35).

Imagine, they’re alone with God in the tent
for a week, just Aaron and his sons. They were to “keep the charge of the Lord” so possibly they had the sacrifices to
eat, because sacrifices were to be eaten by the priests in the holy place. The
sacrifices they ate were holy unto the Lord. We can see here a prototype of
“eating” the body and blood of the Lord in remembrance of His atoning sacrifice
in communion.

What does one experience being alone for a
week with God? As Moses and Aaron had experienced the presence of the Lord in
the “tent of meeting” before, it’s possible that His presence was with them. It
would seem that as God commanded this as a part of the ordination to be alone
with Him, no doubt it was a time of consecration, of God doing a work in their
hearts. How changed do you expect you would be if you were alone with God for a
week? What was it like for Aaron to have all his social interactions to be
completely cut off, except for his sons who are experiencing the same thing?
Did he become aware of the demands of his flesh, of how much he looked
everywhere but to God for his needs? Is it a given that being in that
circumstance would inevitably do the sanctifying work God intended? What do you
think?

I used to take three days each year to go
away and be alone with God in a cabin in the woods. It often took a day or more
to just unwind from the world to get quiet enough to turn off everything else
that makes its demands in my soul. Alone like that, the distractions in life are gone. Just you and your
Bible. No CDs, no books, no props. I hear His still small voice every day, but
this getting away entirely away with God is different. This enables God to
strip away what keeps you distracted and otherwise occupied so that you begin
to see God for Who He is, as paramount, not sidelined in the issues of your
life. I usually found myself sleeping a lot when I first got there – a coming
into His rest, with a realization of how ‘unrested’ I generally am, despite
what I might say is being in His rest. Time changes when you’re alone with God.
You’re awake in the night hours as He nudges you to come be with Him. It may
not be an easy time, but it’s a precious time and one in which you feel closer
to God, you and the Lord sharing an intimate time together. Like being with Him
is….well, like you were “home.”

Perhaps it was like that for Aaron. But we
have reason to believe something was amiss with his sons, Nadab and Abihu. These two men were given the highest
privilege of being in the Lord’s presence on the mountain when God called them:
“Then He said to Moses, “Come up to
the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab
and Abihu and seventy of the
elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance… Then Moses went up with
Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel and they saw the God of
Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as
clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles
of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank” (Exodus
24:1, 9-11). Since God is a Spirit and wouldn’t have feet, we can
assume they saw Yeshua as God!! 

They went through the same ordination process
as their father, including being alone with God in the tent. Following their
ordination experience there was an extensive preparation and sacrificing of sin
and burnt offerings on the altar, just as had been commanded while all the
congregation was in attendance. “Then
Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them…. And Moses and Aaron
went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the
glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before
the Lord and consumed the burnt offering…and when all the people saw it, they
shouted and fell on their faces” (Lev. 9:22-24). Wow, can you imagine seeing that? Fire appears from heaven and devours the sacrifice! But it’s
not just visual; there is a sense of God’s holy presence that causes every
single person – over a million of them – to shout and fall prostrate before
God! 

But what did Nadab and Abihu
do when this happened? First we need to know what their names mean, which
always gives some insight into people in the Bible. Nadab means to “offer
freely, spontaneously,” while Abihu’s name means “He, God, is my father.”
Nothing ungodly about those names. But what did they do? “Now
Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after
putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the
LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of
the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD” (Lev. 10:1,2) What a shock! This happened while the
entire congregation of Israel, including Moses and Aaron saw what
happened. If there wasn’t a fear
of God among the people before, there would be one now. Did they even
understand what had happened? Aaron must have been in agony of so great a loss, terrified of God and very confused.
Everything had been so glorious in God’s presence. What had happened? Moses,
who has spent considerable time in God’s immediate presence, gives the
explanation: “Moses said to Aaron,
“It is what the LORD spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will
be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored'”
(Lev 10:3). Aaron is so submitted to God at this point that he says nothing out
of the reverential fear of the Lord and submits to God’s holy judgment. Can you
see why God chose him to be the prototype high priest?  

What are we to learn from
this? We can have a calling directly from God Himself, we can experience God’s
glory, we can spend time in His presence, we can even go through ordination,
but ultimately it is a matter of our hearts. What was Nadab and Abihu’s motive
for offering what God called “Strange fire?” Was it a spontaneous thought as Nadab’s name suggests? What
we do spontaneously, without thinking it through, often exposes what’s in our
hearts. Or did they see God as their Father but with the high priest as their
own father, did they not recognize the responsibility or submission to God it involved?
Were they just too familiar having seen their own father as high priest that
they didn’t realize the holiness of the calling. There is some possibility that
the incense they offered was something that they knew of a past religious
experience. God is a jealous God and will not allow that. It may be that they were trying to
induce God to do something else spectacular. That would be testing God, and it
would be witchcraft. Whatever the reason, they did not honor God as God. For
all their experiences with God, their hearts were not right with Him and it was
their hearts that God judged.

Had they known about it, this
is just the kind of episode that would have protected the church from
irreverence and apostasy from Constantine forward had the church leaders taken
the Old Testament Scriptures as seriously and as essential to knowing God as
they did the New Testament. As the New Testament is written primarily to
believers, it does not have in it that which would bring acute correction to a
wayward, and misinformed church that was lost in apostasy. Where there is a
lack of awareness of the holiness of God, there’s a good chance the Old
Testament is neglected as being relevant for living a godly life. 

By doing away with the Torah
in particular as valid for the church, incidents like this one were missing to
their understanding of God. Would church history have read differently if those
who deemed to come near to God treated Him as holy in their personal
relationships with Him? There are two relationships in the Leviticus 10:3 verse
(above), one private and one social. Those who come near to God can only do so
personally and alone. We can be in a crowd but it is only individually that we
draw near to God. This story confronts us with whether we are “treating Him as
holy.” Perhaps this is an opportunity to ask Him to show you what it means to
Him, and to align your heart anew with His holiness at a greater depth. None of
us wants to be found in the ultimate place of Nadab or Abihu, so this may be an
opportunity for some to examine their heart attitude toward God. The other relationship is to honor Him
before “all the people” with whom you
interact. Both private and social are heart issues.

What is in our hearts will be
revealed in how we honor Him in our speech, in what we value, and in the way we
represent Him with our lives. God may have given us a picture with Nadab and
Abihu to warn us against our religion being outward without a sanctified heart.
It’s true that Yeshua died for our sins, but the Bible tells us “In
repentance…you will be saved” (Isaiah 30:15).  Might we need to repent for not treating Him as holy in our
most private lives with Him? Or
outwardly in our interactions with others? Do we take Him for granted or treat
Him too familiarly? Being intimate does not mean we can be casual with Him. An
example comes to mind: “Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and
you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened
by any fear” (1 Peter 5:6).
Yeshua is our Husband and Lord. He does not call us to a fear that drives us
from Him, but a fear of the Lord that wants at all costs to avoid offending Him
because we love Him. That kind of
love honors Him as is His due.

Yeshua has made us priests
unto our God. But we’re not all living as priests unto Him, being mediators to
bring others to Him, or using our hands to bless and lay healing hands on
others, or to bring them before the Lord for His forgiveness. Perhaps some time alone with God,
asking Him to change you and to make you wholly His, asking Him to show you His
holiness, and to make you a vessel for His honor might just be something He is
looking to share with you. 

 Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2010. 

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.