Trinitas, we are over two-thirds of the way through Leviticus. We have been expounding this book on and off in 2020, took a little break, a little hiatus as things changed when we started live streaming and then worshiping outside, and then picked it up again here in 2021. So we're in chapter 21 now of Leviticus. And this particular chapter has a lot to say about the formal officers of the Old Testament church in Israel. Namely, the priests. It has all sorts of requirements and qualifications for how they can mourn, for how they can marry, and even for their physical health. This raises all sorts of questions for us. How do the calling and the commission of Israelite priests, how does that have anything to do with New Testament officers today? Moreover, what is the difference between the calling of a lay believer and an officer? both in the Old Testament economy and in the New Testament church. And this is particularly relevant for us because as we've been announcing for weeks and weeks, next Sunday after our service, we will have a congregational meeting with one item of business. Namely, to vote to formally receive one of our elder candidates who has been nominated and then vetted and trained, Mr. Ben Vanderhoef. So given, given what is right around the corner for us, the things in this passage are more relevant than they may at first seem. But let's go to this passage in prayer, asking the Lord to open our minds, to illuminate our hearts that we might understand and give our understanding to the word of God. So please bow your heads with me. Mighty God, we thank you that you have spoken with such clarity in your word as to always have meat for us to chew on as believers, which at the same time can be milk, which nourishes the newest believers among us. We pray, Lord God, that you would open our hearts and minds so that we would be able to receive this word as food, not only when it is read, but when it is preached, and that we can rightly follow this exposition of the word with the Lord's Supper, acknowledging that we really do have communion with you, Lord God, when we gather as one body around your word. We pray these things for your glory. We pray these things for the good of your people. We pray these things so that we can celebrate the more the teaching of your word, not carry about in darkness. In Jesus' name we pray, by your Holy Spirit, amen. Leviticus chapter 21, we're gonna read the entire chapter, that's 24 verses, and when we're finished, I'll say this is God's word, and you can respond, thanks be to God, and we'll sing a short verse together as we rise to our feet, the glory of Padre. Leviticus 21. Then the Lord said to Moses, speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron and say to them, no one shall defile himself for a dead person among his people, except for his relatives who are nearest to him, his mother and his father and his son and his daughter and his brother. Also for his virgin sister who is near to him because she has had no husband. For her, he may defile himself. He shall not defile himself as a relative by marriage among his people, and so profane himself. They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they present the offerings by fire to the Lord, the food of their God. So they shall be holy. They shall not take a woman who is profane by harlotry, nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband, for he is holy to his God. You shall consecrate him, therefore, for he offers the food of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctifies you and holy. Also, the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father, she shall be burned with fire. The priest who is the highest among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured, and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor tear his clothes, nor shall he approach any dead person, nor defile himself even for his father or his mother. Nor shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God, for the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him. I am the Lord. He shall take a wife in her virginity, a widow or a divorced woman, or one who is profaned by harlotry. These he may not take, but rather he is to marry a virgin of his own people, so that he will not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron saying, no man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God. No one who has a defect shall approach, a blind man or a lame man or he who has a disfigured face or any deformed limb or a man who has a broken foot or broken hand or a hunchback or a dwarf or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles. No man among the descendants of Aaron, the priest, who has a defect, is to come near to offer the Lord's offerings by fire, since he has a defect. He shall not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the food of his God, both of the Most Holy and of the Holy. only he shall not go into the veil or come near the altar because he has a defect so that he will not profane my sanctuaries for I am the Lord who sanctifies them. So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the sons of Israel. This is God's word. Now Trinitas Church, you might have noticed, and it might have occurred to you throughout our exposition of Leviticus, that the land of Israel and the Old Testament church was marked by certain gradations in society, gradations of holiness. This chapter lays before us the same concept. I'm going to briefly talk about where this chapter lies in Leviticus. The center of Leviticus, we have argued, was in chapter 16. In the day of atonement ritual, when but one man of all of the Israelites was allowed once a year to walk into God's most holy place. bringing to him sacrificial blood to make atonement for the sins of Israel. Well, flanking this central chapter on the left and the right, that is before and after, we have a code for personal cleanliness and holiness that was to be followed by all of the people of Israel. And so we had all sorts of laws about different things that could render an Israelite unclean in chapters 11 to 15. And in chapters 17 to 20, we had all sorts of laws dealing with personal morality, ethics, and therefore holiness. Flanking these laws in the structure of Leviticus, on the left and the right, that's before and after, we have a set of laws especially for priests. That's what we saw in chapters eight through 10, where we saw the ceremony under which the priest had to go to be ordained. And in the chapters before us, in chapters 21 to 22, we have laws especially directed to the priests. Finally, the book begins and ends. These are the far extremities of the book. With laws pertaining to the sanctuary. How one could approach God, what sorts of sacrifices they would bring. And that we will see in chapters 23 and following at the end of this book. So right now, we're looking at special requirements for the priests. And you notice a gradation. There's a different set of rules for who the high priest can marry. and who a regular priest can marry, how the high priest can mourn for the loss of a loved one, and how a regular priest might do the same. This is just one distinction in holiness, one gradation in society. Beyond the high priests and the regular priests, you would then have the deformed priests. Priests who suffer in some way, some bodily harm or disfigurement, and different laws and rules regulated their conduct. And beyond that, you would have the tribe of Levi from whom the priests come, one tribe of the 12. Beyond that, you would have the 12 tribes of Israel, a priestly nation with certain prerogatives that didn't belong to Gentiles beyond that. And of course, outside of Israel, you would have a Gentile people, those who were not in this special circumcised relationship to God. Even beyond these distinctions, we could name even more. Number six tells us about a person called the Nazarite, who would have been a normal Israelite, but would undergo a certain consecration to serve or to function as sort of a halfway Levite or priest for a while. Likewise, you would have female doorway attendants around the tabernacle who could come from any one of the tribes of Israel. They would have a slightly higher degree of access to God than would a normal Israelite. Even more, among the Gentiles, you would have a distinction between Gentiles who believed in Israel's God and those who did not. They would be called God-fearing Gentiles. And even beyond that, you had lepers who could be born of the tribes of Israel, but were at the farthest extremity from God's house who could come nowhere near it. You see these gradations. The Psalms even reference these different levels of holiness that people could have. In Psalm 135, verses 19 to 21, it says, O house of Israel, that's all 12 tribes, bless the Lord. Then it says, oh, house of Aaron, that's the special priestly family, bless the Lord. Oh, house of Levi, that's the special priestly tribe, bless the Lord. And finally, it says, you who fear the Lord, that could be anyone and everyone, Gentile or Israelite who believed in Israel's God, bless the Lord. How many of you find these gradations a bit perplexing? Why did God ever organize his people in such a way that some people had greater access to him than did others? Why this ladder of holiness? See, in our society, we debate things like whether or not people should have equality of opportunity or whether we should have equality of outcome. How many of you have heard about this debate in our society? It's very apparent from passages like this one that Israel was concerned for neither equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. You simply didn't have such a quality in such a society. And this is for many of us. And ask yourself if you were inclined even in the reading of this passage or the beginning of this sermon to say this. Well, that sounds like something mean that God did in the Old Testament. I'm glad we don't do it anymore. And that's also why I don't read Leviticus. Anybody? Anyone? Maybe you've been there in the course of your life. That's how you've thought or reason. But we can't do this with God's word. All scripture is God-breathed and profitable for instruction, and we've got to ask why God did this. I'll tell you some of the biblical reasons for why. Israel's structure as a people was a visible proclamation of mankind's actual place in reality. Let me explain what I mean. Mankind was created a little bit lower than the angels. That is to say between man and God, there did reside a vast angelic host. We were created lowest of the sentient reasoning beings. If you're not aware of this, the Bible regularly tells us that there are gradations of angelic authorities. Angels have gradations, some of whom are closer to God inherently, others of whom have lesser access. Paul will frequently refer to angels as thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. And when we have pictures of heaven, we actually see that certain angelic beings are closer to God than others. There are, for example, four living creatures about whom we read in Leviticus, excuse me, Ezekiel chapter 1 and 10 in Revelation 4, who reside around God's throne and daily and nightly at all times cry out, holy, holy, holy. These beings are the closest to God's throne. Beyond that, we read about other angelic beings. In fact, we read about a host of angels, warrior angels who go about effecting his will all over creation. Man resides from creation at the exterior. of this vast personal fellowship that God has with his creatures, of which angels are the closest and man initially was the farthest. Notably, after mankind fell into sin, all of these holy angels, you might say these layers of holiness, are rightly hostile to mankind. We've become God's enemies, and so what happens when man sins, but that in the Garden of Eden, it says, two cherubim guarded the entrance with a flaming sword. Angels then became like walls, closing mankind off to entering into the presence of God, which would be very dangerous as sinners and only create for us more swift destruction. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, as we'll see, that mankind was structured in such a way to communicate that there are layers of distance between people and God. What we're told in Galatians chapters three and four is that man, in the Old Testament, was under angelic tutorship. That is to say that the angels in a certain respect had a hand in the deliverance of God's law and we resided under the angels as children do in a household reside not only under parents, but under any maids and under any servants that the parents might have. So Galatians 3 and Galatians 4 says, under guardians and managers. Mankind was set until the day set by the Father. When the giving of the law came about on Mount Sinai, we see this vast gradation of angels between man and God. Listen to how Deuteronomy 33 describes the disclosure of God's law. It says, the Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from Syre. He shone forth from Mount Paran and he came in the midst of 10,000 holy ones. Many of you know that God often shows up in a glory cloud in the Old Testament. I'll have you know that this cloud in which God often appears is not a cloud of watery vapor. The biblical picture is that this cloud in which God often appears is rather a swarm of angelic beings. It is a piece of heaven that's mobile. It's an entourage that follows the king of all creation wherever he goes. And when God showed up on Mount Sinai, He showed up in the midst of thousands of angelic hosts at the top of that mountain. And the majority of the people of Israel resided at the base, separated from God by many angels. Israel, therefore, in this very same passage, after God mentions these thousands of holy ones in which he appeared in the midst of, it says, indeed, he loves all his people, all your holy ones, speaking of Israel, are in your hand. This correlates Israel herself as a mass of holy people next to and mirroring the holy angels. When you look at how Israel was organized around her God as a war camp, it is not hard to see that she was supposed to look like a cloud of warriors surrounding her great king, not unlike the angelic host. Let me describe for you for a moment how Israel, as she went through the wilderness, was organized. God's house would sit in the center of his people as a rectangle, that's what it was, a rectangular home, and it would be facing with its doorway to the east. And what would happen is that God arranges in Numbers chapter 3, He arranges the four clans of the tribe of Israel, or excuse me, tribe of Levi, around his house immediately on the exterior. How many angelic beings constantly say holy, holy, holy? Four. Well, we read that the house of Aaron, who had direct access to God from the doorway, was placed on the east side of God's house. And then the three other Levite households, Kohath, Merari, and Gershon would be on the north and the west and the south. Outside of that layer of priestly surroundings of God's structure, you would then have the 12 tribes of Israel. And guess which tribe resided directly on the east side of that house outside of the entrance? It was the tribe of Judah. Think about this picture. You've got God's house. Immediately at the doorway, you have the house of Aaron, who would be the ecclesiastical authorities. And then immediately outside that, you have the tribe of Judah, which would be the civil authorities from whom the king would come. Then surrounding the house, you would have the other 12 tribes all around it on the South and the West and the North. You can't miss it. God wants the people of Israel to look like an angel nation surrounding him, just like his angelic hosts. In fact, Israel's priests are even called angels in Malachi chapter two, verse seven. When we understand all this, friends, God was declaring in the very structure of the people of Israel, the nature of reality. There is a gradation of access to God. Different levels of access to Him that separate the majority of mankind from God. This whole picture might seem, might seem like a burdensome sort of thing, but it was also married to privilege. On the one hand, these different layers of access would speak restriction and seem a little bit scary because if you crossed over the proper lines for your level of holiness, there would be consequences. On the other hand, it is a privilege to know and to proclaim the actual structure of reality rather than to not know it at all, isn't it? It's a privilege. that even though only one man could enter that house, to know that you could vicariously enter with him into God's presence, and that there could be real fellowship between God and man. In fact, it was a privilege to realize that this whole structure pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ, who would be the true high priest, reconciling man to God. When we look at the New Testament, many of you know we don't have this same set of gradations of access to God anymore. And let me explain why not. Rather than go and use my own words to explain it, I'm going to read a protracted reading of Revelation chapter four and five. and you'll see why there is no longer any set of gradations of access to God any longer. We see a picture of heaven in Revelation 4, and listen to what it says. Immediately, I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and one sitting on the throne, and he who was sitting was like jasper stone, and sardius in appearance, and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. And day and night they do not cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the almighty who was and who is and who is to come. John the apostle is allowed to see God's heavenly throne. He sees those four heavenly creatures. He sees beyond that 24 other elders, angelic rulers, and beyond that, the host of heaven. What John is actually seeing is the moment before Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. And we are about to read in chapter five, John's vision of Jesus Christ's ascension to the right hand of God. Listen to how it is described. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming in a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and break its seals? Who is worthy in other words, to execute God's plan for humanity? And it says, and no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the book or to look into it. No one in all three of these gradations between God's highest heaven and the lowest creation was worthy. Then I began to weep greatly, because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, stop weeping. Behold, the lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals. And I saw between the throne with the four living creatures and the elders a lamb standing as if slain. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood, men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom, a priest to our God, and they will reign upon the earth forever. Do you know what just happened right there? A man of flesh and blood, who was also the eternal son of God, walked in between all of those layers of angelic hosts and took his place next to God himself to receive all worship, not only from angels, But from all of mankind and the very prayers of the saints offered before him, if you missed it, a man passed through every gradation and layer of angelic authority and now is right there face to face in the presence of God. And this changed all of human history. We do not have layers of access to God anymore in the New Testament because man has skipped over every single gradation and barrier between God and man and in Christ Jesus. Our great high priest, our true high priest, who effected a true day of atonement, every single one of us has total access to God through Christ. There's no special room where I as a minister can go that you can't. There's no special meal to which I have access that you don't. Because as this passage says, we were made more truly than ever into one kingdom and nation of priests. And there is only one mediator between man and God, not a gradation of angels, not a gradation of high priests, priests, Levites, Nazarites, down to the lowest tribe and Gentiles. There's just one people, just one priestly nation. I'm gonna note in passing before we expound this passage, therefore, there is a real danger in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologies, which divert our prayerful attention away from the one mediator between man and God, and lays between us and that creator, a gradation of saints, Mary, a Pope, and a clergy, which is alleged to have a certain special access that we do not. There is a danger when Christians redirect their focus to relics, icons, and places of pilgrimage as if any of those things brought us closer inherently to God. There's only one mediator between man and God. There are not steps or rungs of a ladder between us and God. This is part of what makes the new covenant so delightfully new. There is nevertheless a formal ministry. The difference between the officers of the church and laymen is functional. It is not, again, due to the fact that we have special access to some room or holy place or some meal that the rest of us don't. But there is the need. There is the need for formal ministers. to execute the work of ministry regularly and with an attention and a care not becoming to every member of the church. With that in mind, we're gonna look at three qualifications of an Old Testament priest and see the degree to which in the manner in which it still has bearing on a New Testament officer. And here they are. Old Testament priests had very specific physical requirements. You can't miss it. I'll read it for you again in verse 17 and following. It says, no man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a defect shall approach, a blind man or a lame man or he who has a disfigured face or any deformed limb or a man who has a broken foot or broken hand or a hunchback or a dwarf or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles. Now this range of requirements, these physical conditions, they range from pragmatic to ceremonial. There's some very practical reasons why an Old Testament priest especially couldn't be blind. Think about what we've read so far in Leviticus. How would a blind man inspect your animal to make sure that it was an animal without defect? How would a blind man check to see if you have spots that match up with the biblical description of leprosy. It would be impossible. The Old Testament priest duties had a lot more to do with what you would have to see. The same we could say for a lame man. How could a lame man daily enter the holy place and offer the appropriate offerings in the incense on the incense altar? if he were not able to get around by himself. Much less, how could a high priest who on the day of atonement had to enter the holy place alone with no one else there, how would he be able to do that unaccompanied if he were lame and capable of walking? The same is true even of impaired growth. One would maybe have an inability to carry the larger portions of meat or to access the different parts of the tabernacle, not having perhaps the same reach. But nevertheless, there's also a downright ceremonial element to this. Deformations of any kind do not reflect heavenly life, life back in Eden, which is what the priest was supposed to reflect. The priest was supposed to be like a new Adam who got to go into God's presence like only Adam did back before there was a fall. He was supposed to be a prophetic representation of a resurrected humanity. And I'll tell you something, our heavenly life, our eternity will not be marked by any sort of disfigurement and that is good news. It was important that his reproductive organs were functioning properly because the priestly family had to perpetuate itself so that there would always be another high priest, another family of priests to represent heavenly Edenic life. Notably, this passage really says that any ailment whatsoever that was overt and obvious, stark, would prevent a man from functioning as a priest despite his lineage. This passage mentions 12 different ways that you could go about being disfigured, but we can imagine many others. Someone, for example, who had jaundiced skin, bright yellowish green skin due to liver failure, most certainly would not be allowed to represent a redeemed man or a new Adam or resurrected humanity and wouldn't be able to carry out his task. Just so you're most clear that this isn't cruel, the passage is outspoken. That even if you suffered from such things, you still got to enjoy access to the holy meals that all the priesthood would. After all, in many of the offerings, a priest would take one third of the meat home and eat it that night with his family. And the passage is clear, that even if you had any form of deformation, you could still eat from the tithes, the offerings, and the holy food. You're still a priest. There's grace involved in all of it. So what does this have to do with New Testament officers? Well, I'll let you know the good news first. We don't have vast physical requirements for a New Testament office. We didn't require Ben, for example, to do a mile run and make sure he could do it under eight minutes or count how many pushups he could do. We didn't do any of that, just so you know, in case you were wondering. And there's a reason for this. The New Testament people of God do not need so visible a representation of resurrected, restored life because we know of the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ. We can read about it with such clarity that we don't need these signs and shadows anymore. We see the bright, shining, resurrected Jesus in all four of the Gospels and throughout the New Testament. Notably, therefore, New Testament ministers and some of the most influential in the New Testament had overt physical ailments and problems. Paul the Apostle, perhaps the most influential apostle in the authorship of the New Testament, speaks about having a thorn in his flesh. What was that thorn in his flesh? It had something to do with his eyes. Paul's eyes, it would appear, had some damage to them. It's noteworthy when Paul gets knocked off of the horse in the Damascus Road event, he goes blind for three days. Maybe for the rest of his life he suffered in his eyes as a result of that. We read in Galatians 4, therefore, about Paul's thorn in the flesh. Paul says to that congregation, you know that it was because of bodily illness that I preached the gospel to you the first time, and that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition. You did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. Where then is the sense of blessing you had? For I bear witness that if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, suggesting Again, that his bodily ailment was in his eyes. The New Testament couldn't be more clear. Ministers, due to deformation, any sort of bodily ailment or illness, are not thereby disqualified from holding an office. Many of you guys will remember Pastor Craig Vick from Bellwood. How many of you remember when we did a joint service with them five years ago on Christmas Eve? You know, Pastor Vic from Bellwood, he has amputated his arms from his elbows on and his legs from his knees down. I don't know the exact illness that he suffered from requiring that. But I do remember what a remarkable thing it was when he served us communion at that Christmas Eve service. It was one of those times when Christmas Eve fell on the 24th and we worshiped with our friends and brothers and sisters at Bellwood because at the time we had to use other churches and no one would let us use it on Christmas Eve. This was a picture of a man. who knew the redemption of Christ well and anticipated a resurrection to come, and it was a beautiful thing. I'll have you know, many of you probably didn't know, Pastor Vic actually passed away in 2020. I got to glean from his old library, take some of his books, but I was forced to reflect on this wonderful truth that Paul himself speaks, that God's power and the power of the resurrection is magnified in the weakness of a Christian minister. hence this discontinuity. I will say nevertheless, there's still some degree of practical relevance, even for New Testament ministers at this point. If one of our elders, or if myself, or one of our deacons suffered truly debilitating illness, we would have the kindness and sense to say, it's time to no longer carry on in the responsibilities of your office. And that would be a gracious and wise thing The man I did my PhD thesis on, Cornelius Van Til, great Presbyterian. By the end of his life, he suffered from dementia. Appropriately, he would not carry on with the same sort of responsibilities he once did. And so I'll have you know, we do do five-year reevaluations for all of our ruling elders to see if they want to carry on and continue in the office because there is wisdom in evaluating one's physical health and the burden of life and carrying on in their office. Otherwise, ordination is perpetual, friends. And I'll have you know, because Ben Vanderhoff was ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. If he is voted in as an elder, we will not reordain him, but we will install him in his office, reflecting the fact that there is no additional ordination to be had. With that said, we'll move on to a second observation about Israel's priests and see how it comes to bear on ministers, and it has to do with the family of the priestly ministers. We are told specifically that a normal priest must not marry a woman who had once been a harlot or even a divorcee. This is set before us as an important aspect of the priesthood, and we're told of the high priest that he cannot even marry a widow. Even if chaste, even if a holy woman otherwise, he must marry a woman in her virginity. Now there is a legitimate rationale to this. The priesthood could not produce illegitimate children. An illegitimate child could not enter, could not enter God's house for 10 generations. And you can't have priests who officiate between men and God who can't enter God's house. But there is a ceremonial element to this as well. The priest and his bride were to represent Jesus Christ and his resurrected bride, who we are told in 1 Corinthians 11, 22 and Ephesians 5, 27, will be resurrected a pure virgin without spot. We are told, we are told that Jesus has a certain spiritual offspring, that we are that offspring. We are saints who have the nature of our savior. And so it was that the priest had to be this living representation of the Christ to come. So when we turn then to New Testament situation, as we are in, we will note that there is continuity. Every single marriage has this Christ-church relationship imagery tied to it, we're told in Ephesians 5. That much is true. But it is not necessary, again, for there to be this same sort of symbolism that once accompanied the people of God, because we know the resurrected Savior, we know of the resurrection to come of His bride. It's more important that priests, or rather pastors, are capable of proclaiming that truth than being a visible representation of it. That said, there is obvious relevance continuing into our day about practical requirements. When we look at the requirements for a biblical officer, there are requirements for the women that they are married to. This is still the case. Wives of elders, we are told, are to be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate and faithful in all things. A wife, just like her husband, must be above reproach because they are one flesh together. And a man, no matter how above reproach he may be, if his wife is not, cannot serve in the capacity of a New Testament officer. This is as true now as it ever was. And to be frank, if a man has married a newly divorced woman, especially without biblical grounds, or a woman who's been engaged in overt sexual improprieties. That man cannot be ordained to an office quickly. 1 Timothy 5.22 says this, don't lay hands on any man quickly, and that extends to the one with whom he's one flesh. There has to be a season wherein it's evident that they've carried on in Christian holiness. There are also requirements for children An elder must be a man who has managed his own household well, especially when his children are in that household, they need to manifest the faithfulness of believing children. And it's even relevant how they should grow up after that time. These things we have to consider when it comes to electing a man to an office of elder. And I hope that you prayerfully will for the next six days. And the rationale, frankly, is very practical. Being an officer in a church is like having two families. It's hard enough to rule one household well, but the church will suffer terribly if her officers are suffering from incredible dysfunction at home and then attempting to come to a church and engage in practical management there. This much is as true as it was today as it was from the beginning. So with that in mind, be prayerful. Consider how you will vote in the coming week if you are a member. And I have one final observation about a minister's calling, an officer's calling, whether Old Testament or new, and it has to do with how we mourn. And this one maybe stings the most of all. Did you know that God regulates how his people are allowed to mourn in the Old Testament? And I'll let the cat out of the bag now, the same is equally true in the New. In the Old Testament, God tells Israel it's acceptable for the average Israelite to tear their clothes, to throw dust and ashes on their head. But it's not acceptable for them to cut their skin as an act of mourning. or to assuage even gods of the dead, to brand themselves or to tattoo themselves for the same purposes. They're not even allowed to have hairstyles associated with mourning in homage to gods of the dead. Priests had an even stricter rule. A priest, we are told, cannot even attend a funeral or enter the home where there was a dead person, except in the case of his own mother, father, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried sister. That's it. And the high priest, the high priest of Israel could not attend any funeral at all. You get that? As the passage puts it, the priest who is highest among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured, and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor tear his clothes, nor shall he approach any dead person, nor defile himself, even for his father or mother. You're not going to the funeral if you're a high priest. This is a remarkable thing. The prophet Ezekiel, who was a priest himself, He is even told by the Lord that his wife will die and he is not to mourn for her. I'm gonna tell you right now in our culture today, this sort of regulation, nothing could be more anathema than this. Because in the world in which we live, your feelings are king. But the rationale in these passages is that the priest in the Old Testament is to represent mankind in restored relationship to God. Mankind with heavenly access to their creator. And there is no death or mourning in heaven. And the priest therefore was never to be associated with such things. In fact, the priest is to be thought of as like a waiter at God's table. So pleased to be waiting on his king. that he has nothing to mourn about at all. In the old world, those who would wait on kings would be very worried if they ever shed a tear or showed sadness in the presence of a king. We see that in Nehemiah, who waited on the king of Persia. The practical picture was rather clear. Israel's priests were to exude and to exemplify in their very countenance redeemed life. There were practical reasons for this as well. They had just been redeemed from Egypt, where the religion that prevailed, the biggest religion in that land was a religion that worshiped the dead, that had homage paid to the dead. And the largest structures in the world at that time, and even to this day, are dedicated to dead people. You know that, right? About the pyramids. Other religions do the same. The indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto. is essentially a religion that pays homage to the dead. It's been practiced for 3,000 years. God wanted it to be clear that his priests were not priests of the dead, they were priests of the living God, and they were glad and joyful in it. And ask yourself what our society would say about this. You can't regulate or mandate what people can feel or should feel. It's untrue to yourself, it's unhealthy. How many of you are inclined to say this? The Bible says something different. To be slaved or rather enslaved to your feelings is the closest picture to death that you could ever come. Did you know God in the Bible commands us to be joyful? Did you know that? How many of you feel like that sounds insane? God is demanding that I be happy. How many of you go, I'm not happy and that's just the way it is? God demands that you be joyful, and how many of you just say, well, I'm sad, not feeling it. James, the brother of Jesus says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. That's a command. The Bible is not telling us to suppress our feelings, but I'll tell you what it is telling us to do in the Old Testament as well as the New. It is to regulate our feelings on the basis of inspired knowledge. Everyone in this room, we are a nation of priests. We have a higher calling than the world. We're not slaves to our feelings, to death, or to the devil. We have a higher calling. Yes, we may attend funerals. Good news, friends. The great high priest Jesus attended funerals. He made close contact with the dead, but we must not mourn like the world does. We live in a world where if someone close to you dies, it can be counted as good grounds. Maybe if you've lost your child to divorce, good grounds for a total loss of the ambition grounds for neglecting other loved ones. Although our priests, our pastors, our officers can attend funerals, we can never mourn like the world. 1 Thessalonians 4.13 says this, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep so that you will not grieve as do the rest of the world. That goes for all of you. If there's anything that you can imagine a grown man, whether a high priest or a common citizen mourning for, it is the loss of a loved one. It's the loss of a loved one. But we don't mourn like the world. I wanna ask you all something right now, and I hope you take this home with you today. Whose death could destroy you? I'll bet you there's someone on planet Earth that if they died, you, you would feel yourself to be destroyed. I just want you to ask yourself today, have you considered that whoever that person is whose death could destroy you, have you considered that that person has already been a divine gift to you such that if they died tomorrow, God would have been good to you? for the influence that they have had on you in your life up until this point. And instead of turning around and chiding him for having taken that person away, you would have something rather to reflect on as being one of the most wonderful gifts in your life. And the only reason it stings is because they were a gift. The problem, friends, and the reason why we tend to mourn like the world is because we are mistaken, that this world is supposed to be our heaven, and we rarely say it to ourselves, much less to our family members, that this is not our heaven. I'm not looking for heaven here. I know it can be close to hell. Those who've been attending are historical roots of the PCA class. Many of you know that Jonathan Edwards sent his 10-year-old boy who knew the Mohawk language because he played with Mohawk Indians. He sent him with a missionary deeper into Mohawk lands to be a translator so that those missionaries could get their work done. And he sent his 10-year-old boy a letter that said, be prepared to die. How many of us could imagine ever saying such a thing? See, Edwards knew that this place is not our home. I hope if you're in a family right now, today, you would consider sitting down and saying, you know what? To every member in this household, I want every member of the household to say what you have meant to me and what effect you would have had on me if you died tomorrow. The Bossermans did this last week. To many of you, that might sound morbid. But I'll tell you what's really morbid. What's morbid is not discussing death at all in your household, so that when it comes, you're blindsided by it. So that your household grows up mistaking this deathly existence for the only life that there is, so that we mourn without hope when we lose people to it. That is morbid. That's dark. I'll tell you this, for the people who are called to any office of the ministry, yes, there is a heightened degree to which you have got to be studied at what Richard Sibbes, the great Puritan, called the art of mourning. One of the most impactful books I ever read was a book called Josiah's Reformation, one chapter of which was the art of mourning. It talks about how we must train ourselves to mourn for things that matter. Otherwise, we will grow inclined to mourning for things that don't, and we will be badly confused. And let me tell you, one of the most inspiring ministers I have ever known is none other than Andrew Allen, a minister for whom he prayed for years, who was a church planter in Soldotna, Alaska, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Let me tell you why this minister was so inspiring to me. This minister never missed in the one and a half year period that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he never missed a Presbytery. If you ever needed a pass to miss this highly dry and otherwise incredibly tedious thing that goes on three times a year in Presbyterianism, having terminal cancer would be the easiest card to play for why you're not showing up This minister not only would never miss a presbytery, but he would never miss a Sunday worship. Do you know what this would have communicated to his kids? My dad already has one foot in heaven and he knows where to go to find heaven. I'm never gonna miss this meeting of the saints myself. Andrew Allen knew the art of mourning. One presbytery evening, we were talking about how we would get more people on our credentials committee, and Andrew Allen, this had to be three weeks before he passed away. I think, no, it probably was more like two months. Andrew Allen was in the committee, he was shrunken down, and he said, I can't believe we can't get more people on this committee. As I understand, some people are dying to be on this committee. There is a man who knew something about the art of mourning. At Andrew's funeral, Pastor Rob preached the sermon Rob preached to us two weeks ago. And he told us how he had asked Andrew when he died and went to heaven to thank a man named Alexander Wyatt, who wrote sermons and expositions of the gospel of John to thank him for his deep and wise expositions of it. Think about these two wise ministers communicating, and they had this deep sense that there is real commerce between heaven and earth. It is not entirely closed off in Christ. It was a perfectly reasonable request as regards a saint who is in heaven with God right now. I'll tell you the insight that Pastor Rob shared that he wanted Andrew Allen to thank Alexander Wyatt for. And on this note, I'll close. In John 11, 25, it says that Jesus wept. Anybody remember what he wept for? He had recently been informed that Lazarus, his friend, had passed away. Most of us in reading that verse, we assume that he was weeping and crying because a good friend died. It was Alexander Wyatt who gave Pastor Rob the insight that Jesus wasn't weeping because Lazarus had died. He wept because he knew it was God's plan to bring him back to this life of living pain and suffering and death. He had the insight that Jesus understood that death is not, for a believer, this sort of life-destroying thing that we assume it to be. Many of you right now have sadness at the idea that your children might precede you in death. You have this idea that they're gonna be missing out on life. If we take Alexander Wyatt's perspective, then these kids who might precede us in death are not missing out on anything but more death. They're actually in the presence of God's citizens of heaven who have no sense of having been slighted. Friends, we are all priests, we're a priestly nation. We must never leave God's sanctuary as regards the home of our heart. We must have a different perspective on all things. The Old Testament priests, they manifested it in a very outward display. We must continue to manifest it in the disposition of our heart. Bow your heads with me. Mighty God, I pray that we would leave this place with a sense of our higher calling. Unlike ages of believers before us, who lived in a society with vast intricacies of a social structure of distance and access and holiness, we, we have direct access to you through Jesus Christ, our great and mighty Savior and high priest. May we therefore never, ever, ever leave your sanctuary. May we carry about as people who know that in Jesus Christ, our high priest, we have ascended to the very throne of God. May we not mourn like the world. May the officers of our church especially cultivate this perspective that we may share it with others. Sanctify us, your bride, that we would be that holy virgin wed to you for eternity. a bride without spot, in Jesus' name we pray, by your Holy Spirit, amen.