Worship at the Tabernacle Begins: Leviticus 8-10

How do you worship God?

When we think of worshiping God, we think of going to church, singing songs together with the body of Christ, reading God’s Word, praying (including praising, confessing, thanking, and asking), listening to the Word of God being taught and preached. We might think of gathering with our family around the dinner table to read the Bible and pray together.

These are some of the things we think of when we think about how we worship the Lord.

Worship in ancient Israel looked very different than the worship we participate in today.

Worship in ancient Israel involved some of the things we are familiar with: prayer, asking for God’s blessing, confessing our sin, listening to the law of God preached. But it also involved things that are completely foreign to us today. Worship required the blood of animal sacrifices in order to atone for the worshiper’s sins. Worship involved priests to represent the people to God. Worship involved being in an appropriate ritual state in order to come before the Lord, meaning you must be ritually clean in order to participate in worship.

Although some of these ceremonies and rituals are unfamiliar to us, the law regarding these things remains the same. Our sins must be atoned for (by the means of blood) in order to for us to come into the presence of God in worship. A priest must be present in order to represent us before God as we worship him. And we must be ritually clean in order to participate in worship.

So why does our worship look so different today than it did in ancient Israel?

Because we have a Great High Priest who goes before God praying for us and representing us. We have the perfect lamb of God who laid himself down willingly as a sacrifice so that our sins might be atoned for through his blood. And we have the Son of the Living God who perfectly followed the law on our behalf and gave us his own righteousness so that we might come before our King in a state of permanent ritual cleanness.

Hebrews 9:26 tells us

But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Doesn’t this truth make you thankful that we are living on this side of the resurrection?

Today we are looking at Leviticus chapters 8-10. In these chapters, public worship at the tabernacle begins. Aaron and his sons are ordained as priests and they make their very first offerings to the Lord and receive the Lord’s approval as a result. But it’s not long before tragedy strikes and we are reminded that an earthly priest will never be able to represent us perfectly before the Lord. Chapters 8-10 point us to the necessity of a better, perfect priest who can atone for our sins once and for all to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

Leviticus Chapter 8 – Ordination Day

The day of ordination is here. Aaron and his sons will be made the first priests of Israel. God had given Moses instructions about how this day would go (you can read them in Exodus 28 and 29). And now Moses is to follow God’s instructions exactly in order to consecrate the priests and make them fit to lead public worship at the tabernacle.

Chapter 8 is broken up into seven sections. Each section ends with the words and Moses did as the Lord commanded (Sklar, 2014). This is what we see happening in each of the seven sections:

1. Moses gathers all the materials and people he will need in order to ordain the priests. He also gathers the entire congregation around the tent of meeting (yes, all 2 million of them – I have no idea how they worked out the logistics of this!) (vs. 1-4).
2. Moses washes Aaron and his sons (they are to be set apart as Holy so they must be made clean) and dresses Aaron in the special attire of the High Priest (vs. 5-9). This website has a good visual and explanations of the High Priest’s garments (I am not familiar with the rest of the site and only wish to call your attention to the visual).
3. Moses anoints Aaron and everything in the tabernacle with the specially made anointing oil (see Exodus 30:22-33). He then dresses Aaron’s sons (vs. 10-13).
4. Then Moses follows the instructions for the purification offering (or sin offering see Leviticus 4) and offers it to atone for the sins of Aaron and his sons (he also purifies the altar of burnt offering) (vs. 14-17).
5. Moses then offers a burnt offering on behalf of Aaron and his sons (see Leviticus 5:14-6:7) (vs. 18-21).
6. Moses then presents the ram as an ordination offering (a type of fellowship or peace offering see Leviticus 3) (Sklar, 2014). He then consecrates Aaron and his sons from head to toe by putting the blood of the ordination offering on their right ears, thumbs, and toes. Moses then offers the fat of the ordination offering and the bread as a wave offering to the Lord before burning it (vs. 22-29).
7. Moses takes some of the anointing oil and some of the blood and sprinkles it on Aaron and his sons’ clothing to further consecrate them (it would also serve as a visual reminder to the Israelites that their sins were paid for with blood). Then Moses gives instructions for eating the ordination offering. He also gives the priests instructions for the completion of their ordination (stay in front of the tent of meeting for 7 days) (vs.30-36).

Leviticus Chapter 9 – The Lord Accepts Aaron’s Offering

Chapter 9 opens on the eighth day after the day of ordination (when the priests’ consecration would have been complete). Moses gives instructions to Aaron and his sons for offering their first sacrifices to the Lord. They are to offer a sin offering and a burnt offering for themselves and a sin offering, a burnt offering, and a fellowship offering for the people (you can read more about the offerings in this post here). The elders participated on behalf of the people of Israel.

So Aaron and his sons perform the offerings as the Lord (and Moses) commanded. Then Aaron lifts up his hands and blesses the people (a prayer asking the Lord’s blessing for them) (Sklar, 2014). Then he and Moses enter the tent of meeting for the first time. When they come out, the glory of the Lord appears in a burst of fire and consumes the offerings showing the Lord’s approval of the offerings. The people shout for joy and fall on their faces in worship.

Leviticus Chapter 10 – Nadab and Abihu’s Costly Mistake

Chapter 9 ends with the people sharing in the joy of their covenant King. Chapter 10 opens only moments later, with the death of Nadab and Abihu (Aaron’s oldest sons) for failing to revere the holiness of God.

Nadab and Abihu offered “unauthorized fire” before the Lord and are immediately killed. Jay Sklar (2014) points out that in verse 4, Nadab and Abihu’s bodies are removed from before the sanctuary. The word translated sanctuary here means “the holy place” indicating that Nadab and Abihu had entered the Holy of Holies, a place no one was permitted to enter (except the High Priest once a year on the Day of Atonement). Sklar also points out that the beginning verses of chapter 16 seem to indicate this as well.

The Lord then speaks through Moses saying,

Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all people I will be glorified (Leviticus 10:3)

God is warning Aaron. He is reminding him that if Aaron and his sons (those who are near to the Lord) do not treat him with the reverence that He deserves, then God will use their deaths to glorify himself (Sklar, 2014). He will receive due reverence one way or another. Aaron wisely decides not to protest.

The story of Nadab and Abihu’s death is followed by instructions given to Aaron and his sons on how they are to proceed.

They are not to go into traditional mourning for Nadab and Abihu’s deaths. They have been set apart as Holy and can therefore not show the traditional signs of mourning lest they die.

The Lord also warns them that they are not to drink alcohol while they perform their priestly duties (including distinguishing between holy and common, clean and unclean, and teaching the people the Lord’s statutes). This warning could possibly indicate that Nadab and Abihu had been drinking when they offered their unauthorized fire (Sklar, 2014).

Moses then reminds Aaron and his surviving sons about the rules regarding the food offerings and who is and is not permitted to eat of them.

The chapter ends with an interesting interaction between Moses and Aaron. Moses begins scolding Aaron and his sons for not eating their portion of the sin offering (which was supposed to be eaten by the priests and not entirely burned up). Sklar (2014) points out that Aaron’s response indicates that Aaron’s sons had offered the sin offering on behalf of themselves as well as the people and had therefore not eaten it (as per the law regarding sin offerings). The whole interaction turns out to be just a misunderstanding and Moses approves of what Aaron and his sons have done.

Application – How Should This Change Me?

What can we learn from the story of Nadab and Abihu?

Nadab and Abihu failed to show God reverence by disobeying his commands.

Whenever we see someone sin in the Scriptures the question we need to ask ourselves is: Do I do this same thing?

And the answer is always yes.

Every time we disobey God, we are failing to show him the reverence he deserves.

Not only that, but every time we disobey God, in pursuit of something which we think will make us happy, we are actually forsaking joy.

In chapters 8 and 9, Moses, Aaron, and his sons did everything as the Lord commanded. The result was a fantastic display of God’s glory in the form of a fiery cloud. The people’s joy was so full at this glorious display that they shouted and fell on their faces in worship. Obedience to God results in joy.

But that very same day, perhaps just moments later, Nadab and Abihu failed to do as the Lord commanded. And the result was their immediate death. This was a just punishment for their disobedience (and the punishment we deserve for our disobedience). Disobedience results in death and destruction. Disobedience never leads to joy.

It is imperative that we see our tendency to forsake the joy that God has for us by disobeying his commands.

What chapters 8-10 show us is that God desires to make our joy complete by being in relationship with us. No one desires our joy more than God does. And he knows that this only comes in relationship with him. Leviticus describes to us the gracious ways God provided for his people to be in relationship with him.

But we know, on this side of the resurrection, that God went to even greater lengths to secure our joy, by sending his one and only Son to receive the punishment for our sins and to rise victorious over them on the third day. We have a Great High Priest who perfectly obeyed the law on our behalf to secure our joy and bring us into the very throne room of God to have an eternal relationship with him.

Out of our thankfulness for what Christ has done, we are compelled to obey him.

And to obey him is to find joy.

We were created to live lives of obedience to God. We can’t experience true joy until we do what we were created to do: live in relationship with God through obedience to him.

So let us strive, each and every day to obey the commands of the Lord.

We do this when we read God’s Word to understand what it is that he has commanded us to do.

We do this when we ask God to show us how we are to obey in every decision we make.

We do this when we ask God daily, moment-by-moment, to give us an overwhelming desire to obey him (because we know that this desire does not come naturally to us).

We do this when we ask God daily to convict us of our disobedience and then repent when he does.

To have full, joyful lives we must live in obedience to God’s commands. It’s what we were created for. And when we do, we are a shining example to the world of how great our God truly is.

Homework

In part 4 of this study, we’ll be taking a look at Chapters 11-16. Chapters 11-15 talk about all the things that can make one ritually unclean and how to deal with the uncleanness. Chapter 16 describes the events that took place on the Day of Atonement. 

Your homework is below. Happy Studying!