Exodus 30:17-21--The Bronze Basin

The Bronze Basin​
17 The Lord said to Moses, 18 “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, 19 with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet. 20 When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die. 21 They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”

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Back to the furniture in the courtyard.  We now talk about the washing and cleansing that needed to happen each and every time before one of the priests went into the Tent of Meeting to minister before God and the people.  Specifically, they were to wash their hands and feet every time they would go enter the Tent as ministers of God's covenant.  It was a specific cleaning on a regular, more than daily basis, that was only meant for the mediators of God's covenant, the priests.  I think the closest thing for us is I John 1:9 and James 4:8.  We might also be able to make some connections here to John 13 where Jesus washed His disciples' feet, but that might be a bit of a stretch.  The part of John 13 that I would say though is that Jesus says that they had already had a bath and been made clean (justification), but they needed to have their feet washed because their feet would continue to get dirty all day, every day (the same for the hands of the priests here).

Our feet need to be clean as our "walk" before God is lived out before others and our "hands" need to be clean so that the works that we do, especially the acts of worship that we perform in service to the LORD, are pure and not tainted with the corruption of things like the shedding of innocent blood, theft, or other acts of wickedness that would have tainted and corrupted the sacrifices that were being offered to the LORD--remember anything "unclean" that touched that which was "clean" would make the "clean" thing "unclean."  So, imagine a priest coming in with "unclean" hands and touching all the "clean" animals they were using for sacrifices and now all the animals were "unclean" and no longer worthy sacrifices.  Our sin infects and contaminates everything that we come in contact with and the only answer for that is for us to continually go before God in a spirit of confession and ask Him to wash our hands and feet so that we can be ministers of the gospel and members of His holy priesthood with clean hands, clean feet, and clean hearts.