Exodus 29--Consecration of the Priests

Consecration of the Priests
29 “Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish, 2 and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them of fine wheat flour. 3 You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket, and bring the bull and the two rams. 4 You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. 5 Then you shall take the garments, and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. 6 And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. 7 You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. 8 Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, 9 and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.

10 “Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting. Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull. 11 Then you shall kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, 12 and shall take part of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and the rest of the blood you shall pour out at the base of the altar. 13 And you shall take all the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and burn them on the altar. 14 But the flesh of the bull and its skin and its dung you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering.

15 “Then you shall take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 16 and you shall kill the ram and shall take its blood and throw it against the sides of the altar. 17 Then you shall cut the ram into pieces, and wash its entrails and its legs, and put them with its pieces and its head, 18 and 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.

19 “You shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 20 and you shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet, and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar. 21 Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, and on his sons and his sons' garments with him. He and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons' garments with him.

22 “You shall also take the fat from the ram and the fat tail and the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and the right thigh (for it is a ram of ordination), 23 and one loaf of bread and one cake of bread made with oil, and one wafer out of the basket of unleavened bread that is before the Lord. 24 You shall put all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. 25 Then you shall take them from their hands and burn them on the altar on top of the burnt offering, as a pleasing aroma before the Lord. It is a food offering to the Lord.

26 “You shall take the breast of the ram of Aaron's ordination and wave it for a wave offering before the Lord, and it shall be your portion. 27 And you shall consecrate the breast of the wave offering that is waved and the thigh of the priests' portion that is contributed from the ram of ordination, from what was Aaron's and his sons'. 28 It shall be for Aaron and his sons as a perpetual due from the people of Israel, for it is a contribution. It shall be a contribution from the people of Israel from their peace offerings, their contribution to the Lord.

29 “The holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them. 30 The son who succeeds him as priest, who comes into the tent of meeting to minister in the Holy Place, shall wear them seven days.

31 “You shall take the ram of ordination and boil its flesh in a holy place. 32 And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram and the bread that is in the basket in the entrance of the tent of meeting. 33 They shall eat those things with which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration, but an outsider shall not eat of them, because they are holy. 34 And if any of the flesh for the ordination or of the bread remain until the morning, then you shall burn the remainder with fire. It shall not be eaten, because it is holy.

35 “Thus you shall do to Aaron and to his sons, according to all that I have commanded you. Through seven days shall you ordain them, 36 and every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement. Also you shall purify the altar, when you make atonement for it, and shall anoint it to consecrate it. 37 Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar shall become holy.

​38 “Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs a year old day by day regularly. 39 One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. 40 And with the first lamb a tenth measure of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering. 41 The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer with it a grain offering and its drink offering, as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. 42 It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, to speak to you there. 43 There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. 44 I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests. 45 I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.

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First, I want to thank everyone for bearing with me as are studying through this rich book that tells us so much about the kind of nation and people and priesthood that God was calling out unto Himself.  It is amazing to me how similar the Old Covenant and New Covenant are and they are not that different in the sense that the same God with the same nature and character was the author of both covenants.  As Hebrews says though, everything about the New Covenant was "better" and "more excellent," including what we're going to be studying today--the consecration of the priests (that's all of us in the New Covenant that are Christians as you recall from my previous blogs--all of those who have our citizenship in the New Heaven and the New Earth).

"Consecrate" isn't a word used very often.  The word means, "dedicated to a sacred purpose,"  While not used much in our everyday speech today, it's already been used a few times in the book of Exodus, so here's a reminder of the few times we've seen the word so far and a glimpse of some other times it will be used in the Bible to give you a flavor of what God means when He uses the word in reference to us.

In Exodus 13 we read of the consecration of the firstborn to the LORD--all offspring that opened the womb of their mother, whether human or animal, belonged to the LORD and was holy.  Certain firstborn offspring of animals were to be killed as a reminder of this where others were allowed to be bought with a price.  Human sacrifice was never commanded, but there was a price set when the firstborn was a male that opened his mother's womb.

In Exodus 19, God commanded Moses to tell the people to consecrate themselves and to wash themselves and put on new clothes and to destroy all their idols because He was going to be showing up in a mighty way and their sin could lead to their destruction if they did not follow his instructions.  Then Moses sprinkled them with blood--an idea of being washed with the blood that should not be so unfamiliar to us as Christians.

In Exodus 28 God calls all of His people to be consecrated to Him as he commands them to never eat any animal that they find dead.  This was different than what other cultures did.  "Want not, waste not" seemed to be a way of life for most and if something appeared to be freshly dead, other people would be happy to eat it, but God knew that this was dangerous for His people because they could be exposing themselves to all kinds of diseases that could have killed the animals.  If you didn't kill the animal, you don't know how it died and it's not safe to eat.  They were to leave those dead animals for food for the dogs and the vultures.

In Exodus 28-30, we have seen the word used quite often as we studied the garments of the priesthood and now the people of the priesthood.  Everything about the Levitical priesthood is to be consecrated to the LORD.  Similarly in chapter 40, we will see that the Tabernacle itself and all of the furniture and instruments used in its service will be consecrated to the LORD for the LORD's service.

I think that's enough context for now, so let's return to today's text and see if we can see any specific ways like we've been doing in the past where the story of God's people in the book of Exodus is also the story of Christ and/or the story of the Church.  We see another word here that we do use quite a bit in our local churches today and that is to "ordain" someone--typically this has to do with someone becoming a pastor, deacon or elder in our local congregations, but it may also have to do with someone giving their lives in service to God to be a missionary or chaplain or some other kind of special work that the Lord has called them to devote themselves do. Since we are now all part of a royal priesthood in the service of God through the order of our Great High Priest and King, Jesus, then it would seem that some of this applies to us--though maybe not the exact ceremony.

Let's see what the ceremony entailed though as these people were called out and set apart for God's service.  First we see it was probably going to require a blood sacrifice.  Yep, that happened for us in the person of Jesus.  Next comes unleavened bread which we know from the Last Supper was a symbol of the sinless body of Christ that was going to be broken for us.  They were also washed with water--we'll be told in Hebrews that we've received a better cleansing by being washed by the blood, but we also have gone through the waters of baptism that symbolizes our sins being washed away as we are buried in the likeness of His death and raised to walk in newness of life.  They were given new and special garments that were themselves set apart for a special purpose .  As Christians, we are currently clothed in the righteousness of Christ, but we're also look forward to receiving some special garments to be allowed to enter the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (we studied the Parable of the Wedding Feast in the Gospel of Matthew earlier).  We too are told that one day we will receive a crown of salvation and maybe some other crowns, but all these crowns will be laid at Jesus' feet and He as the Great High Priest (like Aaron here) will be the only one wearing a crown when all is said and done.  And of course we've already talked about how the garments of the High Priest match the garments that we see Jesus wearing in heaven in the book of Revelation.

I'll let you read the rest of the ceremony here with only a couple more notes.  First is that we see the offering of a bull only for the most serious of offenses in the Old Testament or for the sins of the priests which makes the offense very serious to God.  As God's representatives to the people, their offenses required an even greater sacrifice than that of a the common man--the greatest price that could ever be paid was paid for our sins so that we could become members of a royal priesthood through Christ.

There was then a sin offering, a food offering, and a peace offering.  Jesus was the fulfillment of all these offerings if you read carefully.  We'll talk more about that probably when we get to each of these offerings in the book of Leviticus.  Since we'll be covering them later (hopefully), I will not take a deep-dive into them now.

Last, but not least, we see a system of sacrifices that must be made morning and evening to continually make atonement for the Tabernacle and all who served in it.  This did not include the sacrifices that the people made continually for their own sin offerings, guilt offerings, fellowship offerings, and other offerings required by the Law.  Yet, in all of this, we can clearly see the gospel as the cross and the need for Sacrifice to end all sacrifices was made obvious.  Surely even early on the need for a better cleansing, a better priesthood and a better atonement was realized early on.  If I were the people of that time, living under the Law, I would be concerned that all of our animals would need to be used to atone for our sins--and even then it may not be enough--and the people would be right that it was never meant to be enough.  It was always meant to point people in faith towards a greater fulfillment in and through Christ.