“The holy garments that belong to Aaron are to belong to his sons after him, so that they can be anointed and ordained in them. Any priest who is one of his sons and who succeeds him and enters the tent of meeting to minister in the sanctuary must wear them for seven days. You are to take the ram of ordination and boil its flesh in a holy place. Aaron and his sons are to eat the meat of the ram and the bread that is in the basket at the entrance to the tent of meeting They must eat those things by which atonement was made at the time of their ordination and consecration. An unauthorized person must not eat them, for these things are holy. If any of the meat of ordination or any of the bread is left until morning, burn what is left over. It must not be eaten because it is holy.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you want people to think of something as different and special, you have to treat it as different and special. Our default is to engage with things around us like they are common. Different requires extra effort, and extra effort is not something life’s inertial pull allows for naturally. Even once we get used to something’s being special and treating it differently in light of that, still we can get so used to the special that it becomes common in our minds. This fact of life is what lies behind much of what we see going on in the ordination process for the priests of Israel. Let’s talk about what we see going on in this next part.

What we see here in the next part of the text amounts to two different ideas. The priests were to wear the special clothes in order to serve, and they were to eat a special meal. The clothes they were making for the priests were to be worn only by the priests. If this costume was something that people other than the priests wore, because of their symbolism, the significance of the various parts and pieces would be diluted some. Also, if people associated certain behaviors and expectations with the priests (which was exactly what God wanted them to do), and saw people dressed like priests behaving in ways that were not consistent with the expectations they developed, their willingness to trust the priests such that they could do their work effectively would be diminished.

The same basic kind of thinking here applies to the meal they were to eat. This was food that had been part of the sacrifices and offerings made to the Lord. Because of those rituals, it was to be considered sacred. It reflected and represented His holiness. If they ate it in a common place that didn’t support that thinking, or if they treated it like any other food, they were going to begin thinking about it as less holy and more common. As with the clothes, this shift in thinking would result in a shift in doing.

One of the ideas underling all of this is the fact that belief affects behavior. If you want to know what someone really believes, don’t listen to the things they say so much as observe the things they do. We can say whatever we want, but our real beliefs are always borne out by our behavior. The reverse of this, however, can also become true. What I mean is that when we do something enough times, if that thing happens to be inconsistent with a belief we hold, our belief can start to change over time. God understood all of this, and so everything He was doing here was about reinforcing both. The people were to believe certain things, but He regulated their behavior in ways that would reinforce those beliefs.

More to the point, He wanted them thinking about Him in a certain way. This certain way corresponded with His character and nature. He was holy. He was (and is) morally perfect and utterly set apart from the rest of His creation. The people couldn’t be in His presence if they had sin in their lives. As we have talked about before, His holiness wouldn’t allow for that. If He was going to show up and be among them, then they couldn’t forget about this. They couldn’t begin thinking about Him as common. Thus all the ritual. It wasn’t the only reason for it and we have talked about others, but it was an important one.

We still serve that same God today. He is just as holy today as He was then. The difference between now and then is that we don’t need all the sacrifices and offerings to purify ourselves in order to enter into His presence. Jesus took care of all that for us. We can enjoy a closeness to God through Jesus that the Israelites could not have even imagined. All we have to do is to go to Jesus and we can get to Him. It’s that simple. Having such easy access to Him, though, while a blessing of the highest order, also brings with it a risk.

When something is easy, we begin to think of it as common. It was the very difficulty of getting to God for the Israelites that helped to reinforce their understanding of His holiness. Of course, they gradually drifted from that anyway because of sin and because they didn’t practice the rituals very carefully, but that just underscores how easy it is to think of God in ways other than He is. We have a greater access to God than they did, but it comes without all the hoops and rigmarole. That just means we have to be all the more diligent to regard Christ the Lord as holy as the apostle Peter put it.

If we treat God as common, we will eventually think of HIm as common. If we think of Him as common, we’ll be far less likely to follow Him with the kind of faithfulness He deserves and we need. The solution here, while far from easy because of the inertial pull of our lingering sin nature, is very simple. We need to be intentional about building rhythms and practices into our daily lives that reinforce our understanding of God as holy. We need to set aside specific times and places that we intentionally treat as different from the norm that will remind us of the fact that He is different, and that because He is different, we need to be different too.

This can take all kinds of different forms. Have specific times set during the day when you pause for prayer (and not just mealtimes). Have one meal each week with your family that you intentionally make different from all the rest. Light candles. Have a special menu. Do it in a different place in the house. Dress a little fancier than normal. And on that night, keep the conversation focused around spiritual things. Make sure you engage at least once a week with the body of Christ. More if possible. Incorporate engaging with the Scriptures into your regular, daily rhythm. These kinds of things and more will help keep your mind focused on who it is that you worship and what He is like. Remember: He is not common and you were not made to be common either. Keep that in mind, and you’ll more easily stay on the right track.