“For Aaron’s sons you shall make coats and sashes and caps. You shall make them for glory and beauty. And you shall put them on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs; and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the Holy Place, lest they bear guilt and die. This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him.
This entire section is about the design, materials and construction of the Tabernacle and all the related furnishings. It also, as we can read above, contains a description of the very clothes the priest (Aaron) would wear and even his sons. To say that God had an attention to detail would be a grave understatement. The offering of a sacrifice in the Holy Place was to be treated with the awe you would expect when meeting with God and seeing His glory over the Ark of the Covenant. You don’t wear a swimsuit and flip-flops to a wedding and you don’t wear causal every-day-clothes to meet with God. Notice that God states that Aaron’s son’s clothes are first to be made for glory and beauty. This is significant for us to meditate upon. God is not to be a causal experience for us. That does not mean today that we have to wear a suit to church. It means that in our approach to God we are to recognize the awesomeness of God and have a heart appropriate to who God is. Remember, today it is about the inside, not the outside. Aaron’s clothes (and his son’s clothes) are simply an outward manifestation of what God demands from us today on the inside. We are not to approach Him with tattered and torn hearts. We are to confess our sins to Him and allow Him to cleanse our hearts as we approach Him. King David said it this way:
Psalms 51:10 (ESV)
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
The Apostle Paul said it this way:
Ephesians 4:20-24 (ESV)
But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
The clothes that Aaron’s boys wore were to reflect the importance of the moment and the sincerity of their hearts and minds. The outside is always a reflection of the inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment