Exodus chapter 29. And I hope you maybe had a chance to read this this week. And I want to confess that this was a challenging chapter for me. It was challenging for me because so much of it is foreign and because I know My presupposition, my assumption every time I open the page is that this is beautiful. I don't come, you know, trying to convince myself it is. I know by faith it is, and then I'm just praying that God will help me to see. That's why my prayer all week for each one of us this morning, this is a chapter whose significance is likely more easily missed than any other chapter in Exodus. And I'm praying I don't muddy the waters this morning, but that they might become crystal clear. We've seen the tabernacle with its rooms, its courtyard, its furniture. Hopefully you can bring that now before your mind's eye and see it all. In connection with all of that, we've learned this idea of sacred or holy space. We have the most holy place, which is literally the holy of holies. Then we have the holy place, and then outside that we have the courtyard, and in fact, the tabernacle as a whole is described as a sanctuary, which is the same word for the holy place. It's holy, the holy place. When we think of holiness, when you think of holiness, what do you think of? I think we often think of being morally pure, right? Of being righteous. We might say that a holy person is a devout person. Someone who faithfully seeks the Lord, who obeys his commandments, who is humble, that's a holy person. And that is true as far as it goes. It just doesn't go nearly far enough. It's missing the bigger picture. It's not in your handout. It's not what really what holiness is. We want to go down deep to the roots of this idea. If holiness was about being morally pure and righteous, how could you say the place is holy? How could we say that there are holy things? To answer that question, and really this is kind of the key to unlocking Chapter 29, is understanding this. God's holiness, we have to understand first of all, and God's holiness is His otherness. Let's write that down. It's His otherness. God is not like you in any way, ultimately. God is other than, He is separate from, He is apart from everything outside of Himself. And that doesn't negate the fact that He came into this world in the person of His Son and became like us. That's His imminence. That's His nearness. And yet at the same time, God is other. He is not like us. He is different from His creation. He is the Creator. The only Creator. Everything else was made. Everything else was created. This is what the Bible means by God's holiness. It's more than that He is morally pure. It's that He is Now, God was holy before there was anything for Him to be distinct from, to be other than, or separate from. So, think about God. Was God holy before He created the world? Yeah. And yet, He wasn't other than anything then. He was just all there was. So, how was He holy then, before He made us? God's holiness is not just who He is in comparison with you and me. In the end, God's holiness is simply His greatness. And we could say that someone in the world is a great man or a great woman or, well, that's a great building or that's great, whatever, this is great. But only of God can we say that He is so great that He's holy. In the end, God's holiness is the sum total. of all the perfections of who He is. Holiness is who God is. God is holy. So when we talk about God's glory, think about His glory. What is His glory? His glory is the radiance and the splendor, and I had the word and then I took it out. I'm just going to use it because it's the effulgence. It is the effulgence, the radiance, the splendor of His holiness. Now, if that is what God's holiness is, then how can we say that a place is holy? The answer is this. A place is holy never in and of itself. That's impossible. That should be clear from God's holiness. It's holy insofar only as it is set apart only to God's use. Only to God's service to the use and the service of a God who is alone holy. When we think like that, we can understand how special times can be holy. Those are not just special places. They're special times, holy times. Exodus 31 says, you shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. The seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord." You'll see that phrase a lot in the Bible, holy to the Lord. How was the seventh day holy? Because it was set apart from all common secular use and pursuits, and it was set apart only to God's use. to the use and service of the God who is holy. When that happens, when the day comes to be set apart for His use, what happens to the day? It becomes holy by association. There can also then be holy people. Isaiah 13 says, I myself have commanded my consecrated ones. My holy ones is literally what it is. And I have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger, my proudly exulting ones." You know who these people are? They're the Persians. They're the Persian pagan ungodly army and God calls the Persians His holy ones. Because they have been set apart to His use. Whether they like it or not, whether they understand that or not, He has set them apart to His use, to His service. In this task, therefore, they are His holy ones, His consecrated ones. Jeremiah 1 says, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you, I made you holy. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. So Jeremiah holy even from before his birth because he was set apart to the use and the service of the God who is what? Holy. See, it all starts with who he is. We're beginning to get the picture? So often we think of holiness as something I, and there is that other side to it, but it's secondary, it comes after. I think of holiness as that which I am working at. And I hope we are. I pray that we are. Something I'm growing in. But before all that, holiness is something that God does in setting someone or something or some time apart to himself. So, think about this. Any place becomes holy automatically. by the simple fact that God's there in his special presence. So if God were to come down in all of the radiance and glory of his holiness and stand on this platform, what has he just done? He has just commandeered the platform to his use and service. There is no other use and service for it anymore. Therefore, the platform is holy. That's what's happened. Exodus chapter 3 says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. What does that mean? That means that it's my ground now. I've come and endeared it. I have taken it for my use. It's mine to my service. I'm standing on it. Therefore, it's holy. Joshua 5 says the same thing. It's in your handout. Let's skip to 2 Peter chapter 1. Peter says, We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven. This is my beloved son. As Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. For we were with him on the holy mountain. I tell you, that mountain wasn't holy before Jesus stood on it and revealed His holy glory on it. But as soon as He did that, as soon as Jesus did that, the mountain became that property that was holy. The mountain becomes the holy mountain. Now, it's one thing for a place to become holy automatically. because it's connection with the presence of God. It's kind of explaining it. This is the negative example, but we know how sickness is spread. If someone has the flu, it's contagious. I can get the flu, right? Holiness is contagious. If you touch, if you are around something holy, you get holy. You become holy automatically. It's quite one thing for a place to become holy like that. It's another thing for a person to become holy, because he's come into contact with the holiness of God. See, if I set foot inside the holy place, or if I touch any of the most holy pieces of furniture, then I become holy. And that is not a good thing. We think of being holy as always a good thing. This is not a good thing. Because once I've become holy through contact with holy things or places, the problem now is, here's the problem, I can't just go back out to my common everyday life. That's out of the question. I have just become holy. I've just come into that presence. Now all the common and the profane out there, I can't go back to. That's off the table. What does that leave the other option? staying in the presence of the Holy God, in the midst specifically of the fact that He is above and beyond me in His moral perfections, and I am sinful and filthy and imperfect. So neither can I continue on living in the presence of God. I can't go out. I can't stay. What does that leave then? My life is forfeit. I must die. It helps us to understand a passage like this one in Ezekiel chapter 44. When the priests go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering and lay them in the holy chambers, and they shall put on other garments, lest they transmit holiness. to the people with their garments. In your handout, any holiness contagiously transferred by contact is by default deadly. Now we have to be careful, the point here Again, it's not some magical properties of holiness, of holy objects. The point isn't magic at all. That's not what's happening here. The point is God's loving purpose. His loving purpose to teach you and me the lesson of His holiness for our welfare and our good. After all, think about this, it's only when we come to understand His holiness that we can truly understand our own calling. Think about that. Because, in fact, God has called us to be holy. Exodus 19, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, Now that is one aspect of holiness, but God says it's bigger than that. If you will do that, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me, I will make you a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Sounds good, doesn't it? But how is that possible? Because this holiness of the people can only be a holiness by association. It has to be all tied up, okay? If Israel's gonna be holy, it has to be tied up with their fellowship with God at His tent, with their worship of God at His sanctuary, His holy, in your handout, His holy place. And yet we know that if Israel walks into the holy place, they become holy. Yes, they do, but it's the wrong way to become holy. They get holy, which is God's purpose for them, but they get holy in a way that leads to them automatically forfeiting their lives. How are we to be holy? How are we to be His holy people? How is that even possible? Here's the question. How can any people ever be set apart to the exclusive use and service of the holy God? The answer to that question is all tied up with the priesthood. And here's the beginning of the solution. The priests, remember they embody and they represent all the people. Their names are written on their shoulders, on their breast piece. The priests represent the people and so it's in and through the priests. And their service in God's holy place, among God's holy things. They go in. I don't. It's through their service that all the people become holy. So the priest goes in, through his worship, through his activity in the holy places, among the holy things, I then become holy, set apart to the use and service of the holy God. But you see the obvious problem, don't you? All we've done is move things back a step. We've just postponed the problem. Now we have to ask, what about the priests? Won't the contagion of God's holiness be just as dangerous for them as it would be for anyone else? How is it possible that any people could ever be called holy people, of the holy God. It's in Exodus 29 that God provides the solution to this question. It's in Exodus 29 that God answers the question, what makes a priest a priest? Now I spent all that time prepping us because I know we have 46 verses. But in the end, as long as we get that, we can run through 46 verses. We'll start a little slower, then we'll speed up. Exodus 29 verse 1 says, Now this is what you shall do to Aaron and his sons, to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. See, weren't we ready now for that? Weren't we ready? The word for consecrate means, this is what you shall do to Aaron and his sons to make them holy. The Hebrew word for the noun holy is kovesh. The verb or the adjective for holy is kavosh. And the verb is kavosh. You see the connection between all three of them, I'm sure. And every time, you just know, it's either kadosh, kodesh, or kadosh. Those are the words we're dealing with this morning in the Hebrew text. We could translate then, and in fact, the verb to make holy, that appears no less than ten times in this chapter. Ten times. And the first is right here in verse one. So we translate like this. Now this is what you shall do to Aaron and his sons, to make them holy, that they may serve me as priest. Aaron and his sons, you see, representing all the people, they are not to become holy, first of all, by contagious contact. That would have been deadly to them, just as well as to anyone else. They are, first of all, to be made holy through a very purposeful and careful process of being consecrated, kavosh, to the exclusive use and service of the Holy God. in His holy dwelling, among His holy things. That's what this chapter is all about. And I just want to say this, if we never understand all the details of this chapter, and we're not going to attempt trying that this morning, it is enough for us to understand why what is happening in this chapter is all of the utmost absolute importance. So we read in verses 1 to 3, Take one bowl of the herd and two rams without blemish. This is what you shall do, okay? Take one bowl of the herd, two rams without blemish and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them of fine wheat flour. You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket and bring the bowl and the two rams. Already we have a gravity, a seriousness. It's explicit, the instructions are, even down to bringing the bread and the cakes and the wafers in a basket. But in the midst of all the seriousness, okay, this is serious business. We've got to assume a deep, deep joy as well. So when you read in Exodus 29, you need to know that joy. Because after all, let me say it again, the purpose of all these things, the bull and the rams and the wafers and the cakes and the bread, The purpose is in some way to consecrate Aaron and his sons that they might serve as priests of the Holy God so that in and through their service in God's holy tent the whole people of Israel might then be holy. That's what's going on here. Set apart to God's exclusive use in your handout and service. I think sometimes we think of God's use and God's service as, oh yeah, I'm his servant and I have to do and I have to obey and I have to go. But I mean, the fact that you could be set aside to his exclusive use and service is a miracle in and of itself. We go on to verse 4. You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Obviously this washing of Aaron and his sons isn't just like anyone else taking a bath. This is this is something special Notice where they're to be washed just outside the entrance to God's house You know when we take our showers or whatever We're not like going to wherever God is and taking it right outside the entrance to his house Aaron and his sons are going right outside and being washed. In other words, they're to be washed in God's presence, but here's the key, not yet so near to His presence that they become holy by contagious contact. The ceremonial washing in God's presence is an outward picture of their being consecrated so they can serve as priests in God's holy presence. After the washing comes the clothing. And so we have step number two. Versus five, verse five will start. Then you shall take the garments and put on Aaron the coat. Now we've learned in chapter 28, we've learned all about these garments, so you can picture it now. and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breast piece and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod and you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. Once again, this isn't just like you and I when we got out of bed this morning and got dressed, is it? This is a special getting dressed. Look where they're being clothed. They're still at the entrance of God's house. They're being clothed in God's presence. They're getting dressed in God's presence, and yet not so near to His presence that they become holy by contagious contact. Of course, these aren't your ordinary, everyday clothes either. We know that from the last several weeks. When the high priest's clothes were introduced in chapter 28, this is what we read, verse 3, you shall speak to all the skillful whom I have filled with the spirit of skill that they make Aaron's garments to kavosh him, to make him holy for my priesthood. After the washing and the clothing, we come to the anointing, verse 7. You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on Aaron's head and anoint him. So far, Aaron's sons have also been washed. Aaron's sons have also been clothed. But now, it's only the high priest who is anointed with oil. We see in chapter 30, when we get there, we'll see even the anointing oil has its own very special story. I want us to read about that story. Verse 22 of chapter 30, the Lord said to Moses, you shall make a sacred, that's the word kovash, a holy anointing oil, blended as by the perfumer. It shall be a holy anointing oil. With it, you shall anoint Aaron and his sons and kovash them, make them holy, that they may serve me as priests. And you shall say to the people of Israel, this shall be, and see here's what makes it holy. This shall be, what's the next word? My. This shall be my holy anointing oil. It's holy because it's the oil of the holy God. It's only his. And as we'll see here, not to be poured on anyone else. It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person. and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy and it shall be holy to you. And so we have after the washing and the clothing, now the anointing, this third outward picture of Aaron being made holy so he can serve as high priest. That's the only way. So he can serve as high priest in God's holy place among God's holy things in God's holy presence. We see the weight of this, don't we? We see the weight of it, the gravity. But the psalmist celebrates, he rejoices in the beauty and the power of this anointing. Psalm 133, behold, How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. And then he thinks, let me think, what's an analogy, what's a theological picture of this? Oh, it is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. And I love this because it's like, wait a minute, whenever we read Exodus 29 and we saw this thing about the anointing of Aaron, none of us got that excited. But now, perhaps we can. Because for the psalmist, he understood that the key to his own status as a holy member of a holy people set apart to the exclusive use and service of the God who is holy. The key to all of that was in the anointing of the high priest and his being made holy so he could serve in God's place. After the washing, the clothing, the anointing, we come to this pronouncement in verse 9. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons. And yet it's not complete yet because we know there's still 37 verses left. So we go on to read in verses 10 to 14. Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting. Aaron and his son shall lay their hands on the head of the bull. Then you shall kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 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, and you shall take all the fat that covers the entrails." When we think of fat, we think of gross stuff that you cut off and don't eat. When we see about fat in the Bible, it's talking about the fatty portions of the meat, the meat that's more flavorful, the meat that's the most desirable. And this is to be offered up to the Lord. You shall take all the fat that covers the entrails, the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and burn them on the altar. But the flesh of the bull, the rest of the meat, and its skin, and its dung, you shall burn with fire outside the camp. It is a sin offering. When we talked about the altar, we talked about sin offerings. So we're not going to go into a lot of this this morning. I just want us to see this. before Aaron and his sons can be consecrated, any sinful defilement attaching to them. See, there's this picture of pollution. So Aaron and his sons would come to the tent, and they're being consecrated and made holy, but see, they've got defilement attaching to them, and that too is contagious. it must be atoned for and forgiven. That's what's pictured when they lay their hands on the head of the bull and then it is killed. In the same way, before they can be consecrated, any pollution of the holy altar by their defilement has to be cleansed. So, they've come near to the altar. with defilement attaching to them. So when the blood is taken from the bowl and smeared on the horns of the altar, that defilement is being atoned for and cleansed and washed away. You see the vividness of the imagery. We get hung up over it all because it seems so primitive, because it seems so long ago. And then we miss the vividness and the power of what this teaches us about holiness. So now that atonement has been made, we're ready for the next offering. After the sin offering comes the burnt offering. Verses 15 to 18. Then you shall take one of the rams, and Aaron and his son shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, and you shall kill the ram, and shall take its blood, and throw it against the sides of the altar. Then you shall cut the ram into pieces and wash its entrails and its legs and put them with its pieces and its head and burn the whole ram, the whole animal on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the Lord. It is a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. There's so much again that could be said about burnt offerings. We talked about them more before. My point is not the offerings themselves now, but the ceremony of consecration. As the whole ram is burned up on the altar and we see the smoke rising, it says, as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. This is a picture of the offering up of Aaron and his sons to the service of God and of God's willingness to receive their service. Only now, after the sin offering and the burnt offering, we're ready for the third offering. And this third offering is the only one of the offerings unique to this day. We read in verses 19 to 21. You shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 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. Which, by the way, the priests were almost certainly barefoot as they served in God's holy place. We remember what God said to Moses, remove your sandals for the place in which you're standing is holy ground. Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar and of the anointing oil. So take part of the blood on the altar and then take the anointing oil that's already been used to anoint Aaron. And then we assume, mix it together and then sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, on his sons and his son's garments with him. We may think that's strange, but as soon as you realize what's trying to be accomplished, it doesn't feel so strange anymore. Walk into God's presence to become holiness by contagious contact. You can't go out. You can't stay in. Your life is forfeit. This is all for the consecration and the making holy of Aaron and his sons, that they might serve in God's holy presence. And what's in your handout? Applying it to the right ear, to the right thumb, and to the right big toe symbolizes the cleansing and the purifying of the whole person. In fact, this is the only time, apart from one other time, that the blood of a sacrifice is applied to the person who offers it. It shows you the bigness of what's happening in this moment. What's the purpose? of all this ceremony. What is the purpose? And again, I just want to encourage you, brothers and sisters, when you read this chapter, don't get hung up on what you don't understand. I don't want to get hung up on what I don't understand. Ask yourself, what's the purpose? And it's this. Verse 21, He and His garments shall be made holy. and his sons and his son's garments with him. I ask you this then, are you seeing the solution to our problem? You see, being set apart to God's exclusive use and service is not some burden, it is a privilege. An impossible privilege apart from God's provision. So Aaron and his sons, they are to become holy, yes, but not automatically by contagious contact. with holy places and holy things, else they die. Instead, God, in His grace, in His mercy, in His infinite wisdom, will make them holy through this special ceremony of consecration. That they might serve in God's holy place, among God's holy things, in the presence of God who is alone. Alone. Holy. We're going to read in verses 22 to 28. You shall also take the fat from the ram, this is the ram of ordination, the second 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. 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. You shall put all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, maybe just small representative portions of them, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. It's a symbolic offering it up to the Lord. 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. You shall take the breast of the ram of Aaron's ordination and wave it. Now here, watch this closely. Wave it for a wave offering before the Lord and it shall be your portion and you shall make it holy. consecrate the breast of the wave offering that is waved in the thigh of the priest's portion, that is contributed from the ram of ordination from what was Aaron's and his sons. 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. In the midst of all the additional ritual, and solemn ceremony that much of it we don't understand, one part especially jumps out, and it's this. The breast and the right thigh of the people's peace offerings. After it's been symbolically waved before the Lord and offered up to Him, what happened the first time they waved something before the Lord? After they waved it, it was put on the altar and burned up. With the breast and the right thigh, after they wave it, It's not put on the altar and burned up. It's given to the priests. It's offered up to Him as His food, to God as His food. It's then set aside for the priests as their food. We say, this is God's food. But now it's the priest's food. In fact, because it's God's food, it's now the priest's food. It's been consecrated for the priest's use. Maybe now, Well, here is the miracle. Here is the miracle of consecration. Because at any time before, if someone had come and offered a sacrifice, first of all, they would have become holy by contact and forfeited their life. Second of all, if the priests or if anyone else had dared then to eat that food themselves, which was God's food, They would have died, but now through this ceremony of consecration of making the priests holy, they can now eat and participate in the food of God's holy offerings. Showing you the miracle of what has just happened in Exodus 29. Maybe then now, we have learned maybe to read to the end of the chapter with awe. Verses 29 to 46, the holy kovesh, the holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him. They shall be anointed in them and ordained in them. The son who succeeds him as priest who comes into the tent of meeting to minister in the kovesh, the holy place, shall wear them seven days. You shall take the ram of ordination and boil its flesh in a holy place. And Aaron and his son shall eat the flesh of the ram and the bread that is in the basket in the entrance to the tent of meeting. Miracle of miracles is that. They shall eat those things with which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration, Kedosh. But an outsider shall not eat of them. because they are holy. And if any of the flesh for the ordination or of the bread remains until the morning, then you shall burn the remainder with fire. It shall not be eaten because it is holy. 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 and every day you shall offer a bowl 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, to make it holy. Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it, Kodosh, and the altar shall be most holy. Kodesh, kodesh, holy of holies. Whatever touches the altar shall become holy. Now this is what you shall offer on the altar. Two lambs, a year old. This is the daily work of the priests. Day by day, regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. And with the first lamb, a tenth measure of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hen of beaten oil and a fourth of a hen of wine for a drink offering. We talked about some of those things earlier. 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. Now here, here's the conclusion. 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. There I will meet with who? the people of Israel. And there, that place, it shall be sanctified. It's the same word as make holy, consecrate, kavosh. It shall be made holy by my glory. I will make holy the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons. I will consecrate Kavosh to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 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. And so the chapter ends almost exactly as it began in verse one. Only here at the end, we see clearly that in the consecration of Aaron and his sons to serve as priests of the Holy God, that is all for the sake of the whole people of Israel, that they too, that they too as a whole, as all of them might be, what, holy, holy, set apart exclusively, here is the miracle, here is the privilege, look what it took to accomplish this, that they should even get to say, that they're set apart. I am set apart, I could say, if I lived in the people of Israel. I am set apart to the exclusive use and service of the only holy God. Kavosh, Kovesh, Kovash. To be holy. So the question that I've been asking myself this week is this, and I've just been asking myself without reference to any of you at one level, and then I think of it for all of us. Have I ever really understood the miracle, the joy, the privilege, and the responsibility of being holy? Because there is indeed a very real sense in which we all need to be able to say with confidence and certainty, I am holy by association. Of course, the only kind of holiness you and I can ever have is holiness by association, but we know the problem. Again, think of the problem. To become holy through contact with God, which is highly contagious, leaves us with the only option of death. And so in the end, when the priesthood of Aaron and his sons had served its purpose, and here's the beauty, it did serve its purpose, didn't it? And what was its purpose? What was the purpose of the priesthood of Aaron and his sons? It was to prepare the way And so when it had prepared the way, when the fullness of time had come, when it had served its purpose, God consecrated, in your handout, God consecrated His own Son and sent Him into the world to be our High Priest. And why did God do that? So that in Him, we might be a holy priesthood. So that in Him, we might be set apart exclusively to this miracle, to serve, to minister, and to worship. Always before Him, always in His holy presence. You know what the Reformers called this miracle? They called it the priesthood of all believers. So as I think about holiness, I especially think this morning about priests, which is who you are and who I am. It was as our great high priest. Think about who your high priest is, Jesus. Hebrews says, consider Jesus as our great high priest. It was as our great high priest that Jesus prayed these words in John 17, for their sake, for your sake, he says, I consecrate myself that they also may be made holy in truth, consecrated. And so Peter can write in 1 Peter 2, As you come to Jesus, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house. That's like the temple of holy places. Do you not know that your bodies, even your own bodies, are a temple of the Holy Spirit to be a holy priesthood? And what is the point of being a holy priesthood? It is to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, which is holy ones. And so I just think again of that verse in 1 Corinthians that says, do you not know that your bodies are a temple of who? of the Holy Spirit. And so much of what's said in the New Testament is going back for its background to chapters like Exodus 29 when we come to understand maybe for the first time what holiness really is and what it really means. You are holy. What does that mean? It means that through the work of your High Priest in whom you stand, you have been set apart to priestly service. Consecrated. Set apart to the exclusive use and service of who? Of the God who is holy. This is who you are. So the Old Testament, in every way, painted the picture, prepared the way, so that now, even as we talked about in prayer meeting this morning, now, and to some extent last week, all of life is a going about God's holy tabernacle. All of our life is a living within the curtains No longer becoming contagious simply by contact and forfeiting our lives, but having been already consecrated and made holy that we might live there, work there, serve there, play there, have recreation there. It is all in the context of His holiness and of what He has made us to be in Christ. We are holy. Why? Because we've been consecrated. When you hear that word consecrated and you think to yourself, you have been consecrated. Does that make you get nervous? That's not a bad thing. It could be a good thing. But I hope that it also gives you a sense of awe and wonder and joy at the miracle God has performed. and bringing you into his holy presence, to live there every day of your life, exclusively set apart to his use, to his use, to his service. And so it's this awesome miracle we come now then to the not yet, after the already. I am holy in my standing and position by God's grace. We come then to this that we ought to tremble and rejoice at at the same time in 2 Timothy 2. Now in a great house, you can picture the imagery, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also wood and clay. Some for honorable use. Some for dishonorable, therefore. I want to ask you, are you living as a vessel for honorable use or dishonorable? Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house. ready for every good work. We're gonna pray together in unison by singing the song, Take My Life and Let It Be What? Consecrated, consecrated Lord to Thee. So would you stand with me and pray with me? And maybe, Maybe this isn't how you've been living. Maybe you are not yet even wholly set apart, sanctified to God's exclusive use and service. If this is not you this morning, I call you. I call you to repent, to believe. and to know that only in Christ we have a great high priest who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints, of the holy ones in light. And maybe you are holy, maybe you have been made holy, and yet there are some ways that your life has not been fully lived out in His holy presence. Let us humble ourselves this morning surrender ourselves and submit ourselves with joy, with humility to our King. So let's pray together. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of Thy love. at the impulse of thy love. Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee. Take my voice and let me sing Always, only for my King Always, only for my King Take my silver and my gold Not a mite would I withhold. Take my moments and my days, Let them flow in ceaseless praise. Let them flow in ceaseless praise. Take my will and make it thine. It shall be no longer mine. Take my heart, it is thine. It shall be thy royal throne. It shall be thy royal throne. And now to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father. To Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. You're dismissed.