Category: Morning Musings

Morning Musing: Exodus 29:35-38, 44-46

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“This is what you are to do for Aaron and his sons based on all I have commanded you. Take seven days to ordain them. Sacrifice a bull as a sin offering each day for atonement. Purify the altar when you make atonement for it, and anoint it in order to consecrate it. For seven days you must make atonement for the altar and consecrate it. The altar will be especially holy. Whatever touches the altar will be consecrated. This is what you are to offer regularly on the altar every day: two year-old lambs. . .I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar; I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. And they will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, so that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The old covenant was complicated. There were all kinds of rules and regulations to keep. If you touched the wrong thing at the wrong time or in the wrong way, you had to be made clean which required time and sacrifices to deal with. If you sinned, that required more sacrifices which meant more time and money lost. It was all just a lot. No one could have remembered it all. The average person was reliant on the priests to help them know what to do and when which gave the priests a ton of power. And everybody knows how well priests with lots of power tend to do. It worked for what it was, but it wasn’t ever intended to be God’s final plan. It did point to it, though. As we finish up our discussion of the ordination process, let’s talk about where it was pointing, and what we have today.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 29:29-34

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“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.

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Morning Musing: 1 Samuel 18:5-9

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David marched out with the army and was successful in everything Saul sent him to do. Saul put him in command of the fighting men, which pleased all the people and Saul’s servants as well. As the troops were coming back, when David was returning from killing the Philistine, the women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet King Saul, singing and dancing with tambourines, with shouts of joy, and with three-stringed instruments. As they danced, the women sang, ‘Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.’ Saul was furious and resented this song. ‘They credited tens of thousands to David,’ he complained, ‘but they only credited me with thousands. What more can he have but the kingdom?’ So Saul watched David jealously from that day forward.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you are a professional “God-botherer,” as I am sometimes called, you never know when God is going to bother back with a message that needs to be shared. Sometimes it’s just for one person. Sometimes it’s for a whole community. Sometimes it’s for a specific group in a community. This one fits in that last category. Still, though, give this one a read because there just might be something in this you need to hear too. There is a group of individuals in my community who have been through the wringer lately. This post is just a reminder to them that what they do matters. I won’t pull back the curtain on who they are, but when they read this, I suspect they’ll know. Let’s talk about David and work that nobody appreciates.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 29:15-21

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“Take one ram, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands on the ram’s head. You are to slaughter the ram, take its blood, and splatter it on all sides of the altar. Cut the ram into pieces. Wash its entrails and legs, and place them with its head and its pieces on the altar. Then burn the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord. It is a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. You are to take the second ram, and Aaron and his sons must lay their hands on the ram’s head. Slaughter the ram, take some of its blood, and put it on Aaron’s right earlobe, on his sons’ right earlobes, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Splatter the remaining blood on all sides of the altar. Take some of the blood that is on the altar and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle them on Aaron and his garments, as well as on his sons and their garments. So he and his garments will be holy, as well as his sons and their garments.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Not many people experience the kind of dedication to something that allows for incredible things to happen. It takes a lot to reach that point. Whenever someone does reach this point, the results are pretty consistently extraordinary. How do you reach such a place of total dedication? It starts with a decision. At that point, there’s usually a ceremony of some sort. It could be formal. It could be very informal. But from there, the rest is just follow through. This next set of sacrifices we see are all about dedication. Let’s explore what’s happening here.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 29:1-9

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“This is what you are to do for them to consecrate them to serve me as priests. Take a young bull and two unblemished rams, with unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers coated with oil. Make them out of fine wheat flour, put them in a basket, and bring them in the basket, along with the bull and two rams. Bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance to the tent of meeting and wash them with water. THen take the garments and clothe Aaron with the tunic, the robe for the ephod, the ephod itself, and the breastpiece; fasten the ephod on him with its woven waistband. Put the turban on his head and place the holy diadem on the turban. Take the anointing oil, pour it on his head, and anoint him. You must also bring his sons and cloth them with tunics. Tie the sashes on Aaron and his sons and fasten headbands on them. The priesthood is to be theirs by a permanent statute. This is the way you will ordain Aaron and his sons.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I remember attending my uncle’s graduation from med school when I was growing up. It was actually a pretty cool deal. The speaker was a guy who had climbed Mount Everest and barely survived about whose experience they later made a movie. What really stood out to me, though, was that toward the end of the affair, they had all the graduates say the Hippocratic Oath together. Then, whoever was leading the ceremony pronounced them all doctors. Their schooling was absolutely necessary, of course, but the ceremony was the key to their being officially considered doctors. We have always made things official with ceremonies. The next part of the tabernacle cycle in our Exodus journey describes the ceremony by which Aaron and his sons would officially be made the priests of Israel. There is once again a lot of detail here, so let’s take it a bit at a time and see what kind of positive sense we can make out of it.

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