Category: devotional

Fear and Obedience

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Deuteronomy 6:1-2 – 1 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

In Deuteronomy 5, when God spoke to the people from the mountain, they feared God. The people were simply terrified that the mighty and holy God would destroy them. His holiness is something they could not match. His power is something they could not resist. And they were afraid that they would rightly be destroyed.

Here in Deuteronomy 6, we see another reference to fearing God. This time, the concept is not terror. This time the concept is broader. This time we see how the people are to properly fear God. They were right to tremble at God’s holiness and might. But here we see more.

Look up at Deuteronomy 6:2 and ask, “How do I fear the Lord?” The answer given in that verse is that we fear God by doing his commands. Obedience to God is an expression of proper fear of the Lord.

Fear of God is not popular in many a Christian circle. We do not know what to do with a command to fear God when we also know that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). We have Jesus. Jesus died to save us from the judgment we deserve. And if we know God, we no longer fear that the Lord will destroy us with his holy wrath. But we are still commanded to rightly fear the Lord.

Once we trust that God’s wrath against us is satisfied in Christ, we still fear the Lord in a sense of awe and respect. We should tremble at the notion that we would dishonor such a glorious God, the one who saved our very souls. We should respect the Lord, fearing him in the way that children were taught to honor their parents (sometimes fear language was used for that respect years ago). We should treat God with proper reverence the way one ought to respond to a king or a venerated leader.

But how do we fear God? Is it all emotion? No, not at all. We fear God, according to this passage, by actively obeying his commands. One who will not obey the Lord does not fear the Lord. One who obeys the Lord out of a sense of awe and respect, out of a desire to please him, out of a desire not to dishonor him, that person fears God.

Do you fear God? The Bible says you should. Ask it another way: Do you respect God? Do you obey his commands? Do you reverence him? Do you tremble at being in a relationship with one so mighty and so holy?

If your fear of the Lord is not strong, start here in Deuteronomy 6. Obey the commands of God. Understand that the only command you can obey, if you are not yet a Christian, is the command to turn from sin and cry out to Jesus in faith for salvation. Then, do his word out of true and genuine respect for his leadership. Open your Bible. Learn who God is. Learn what God tells us to do. Learn what God forbids. Fear God in obedience to his holy word.

Sovereignty and Responsibility in a Physical Salvation

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In Acts 27, we read the account of a shipwreck that Paul experienced as he was traveling to his first trial in Rome. As we read through the account, we see an interesting mix of God’s sovereign promises and human responsibility. And I believe that these promises and responsibility can shine a helpful light for us on how we think about bigger issues of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.

First, let’s see a promise from God.

Acts 27:21-24 – 21 Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. 22 Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. 23 For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, 24 and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’

Paul is clear here that God has promised that no person abord that ship will lose his life in what is to come. Every soul aboard will survive. This is promised, decreed by the sovereign God. Thus, we know that nothing can change it.

However, during the night, before the ship runs aground, the professional sailors aboard the ship determine to try to make a break for it in the ship’s boat. They do not want to risk their own lives to save their passengers.

Acts 27:30-32 – 30 And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, 31 Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” 32 Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go.

Notice what Paul tells the soldiers. Unless those sailors stay aboard the ship, the soldiers will die. But God promised that nobody would die. How can this statement be a true one?

The Lord decreed what would be the outcome—all people aboard ship will live. The Lord also decreed the means whereby this outcome would be achieved—the sailors would remain aboard to steer the ship toward shore. And God accomplished the decreed outcome.

Acts 27:43b-44 – He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, 44 and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.

All survived. God’s promise was perfectly fulfilled.

Were there genuine options here? Were the men free or were they under the sovereign decree of God. The answer is that the men aboard the ship were both free and under God’s decree. Had the sailors in fact chosen to escape the ship, had the soldiers not stopped the men from escaping, people would have died. Did God violate the will of the soldiers when he made them prevent the sailors’ escape? No, there is nothing in the text that says so. Did God sovereignly accomplish his decree? Absolutely.

What should we draw from this? God is sovereign. No freedom of mankind has ever or will ever override God’s sovereign decree. If we can override God’s decree, God is no longer the true God over the universe. God’s plans are always perfectly accomplished.

What about human freedom? It is real, just under God’s decree. Were the choices that Paul, the soldiers, and the sailors made real choices? Yes, without question they were real choices with real consequences. Paul, the soldiers, and the sailors were totally morally responsible for their choices in every way.

How then can we say that the choices were real if also the decree of God would stand? We can talk like this because this is exactly how God speaks to us in his word. Had the soldiers let the sailors escape, the soldiers would have died. God saw to it that the soldiers would not let the sailors escape. The soldiers made genuine choices. And God, in his mighty sovereignty, accomplished his decree exactly as he planned.

God is sovereign. Mankind is responsible for what we choose. Our choices are real, and they matter. And God’s decree will always be fully and perfectly accomplished.

If you ask me what is greater, God’s sovereignty or man’s freedom, I will have to tell you that God’s sovereignty has to be ultimate. But God is also so glorious and mighty that he can be fully sovereign while decreeing that our choices matter even as our choices will never prevent his perfect will and divine good pleasure from being accomplished. God has the right to reach into our hearts and change our very desires; and he does so. We are still always perfectly responsible, as we still choose our actions in accord with our desires. And in the end, the mighty God who made us all shows that he rules over all things.

Fearing Rightly

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Deuteronomy 5:28-29 – 28 “And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!

In Deuteronomy 5:23-ff, Moses recounts the way that the people of Israel responded to the voice of God at Mt. Horeb when God gave the Ten Commandments. The people of Israel were afraid. They had born witness to the power and the holiness of God. They knew that they would be utterly destroyed should they get too close to the God who spoke atop the mountain. And so they pleaded with Moses to serve as a go-between.

Many today might think that God would say to Moses that these people need no go-between. But that is not at all what God said. Instead, God affirms the fear of the people. God affirms that all they said was right. And God makes it very plain that the best thing for Israel would be for them to continue to have that holy fear of God so that they might keep his commandments without rebelling against him and his ways.

For us today, the fear of God is often neglected. We focus much on the love of God, and rightly so. We focus on our new status as children of God under the protection of Christ, and rightly so. But, if we are not careful, we will belittle our God and belittle his grace if we fail to grasp the reason behind a holy and right fear of the Lord.

In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel understood that God is so good, so clean, so perfect, with such high and holy standards that, should the people draw near to God in their sinfulness, they would be destroyed. They rightly trembled at the concept of being near God. They understood that he is both so holy as to punish their sin and so mighty as to easily be able to wipe them out. Thus, they trembled, begged for someone to intercede for them before God, and agreed to follow God’s ways.

Here is what I need to remember: God has not changed. God is still just as holy as Israel saw. God’s wrath for my sin is still as destructive. I deserve to be consumed by the holy fire of God as a creature who has rebelled against his Creator. And without a go-between, I’m dead.

Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ came as a true intercessor, one far greater than Moses and the priesthood in the Old Testament. Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus lived the perfection I need to be in the presence of God. Jesus died to pay for my sins so that I can be cleansed before God. And Jesus, who is God in flesh, welcomes me into the family of God.

Now I need not fear destruction because of the holiness of God. Jesus already took upon himself the right wrath of God for my sin. But I should fear God as holy, mighty, and glorious. I should tremble at the possibility that I might dishonor the One who saved my soul. I should fear that I might miss out on the joy of honoring the God who made me. I should understand that the Lord, in his love, has covered me from the wrath I earned. God is still as mighty, as holy, and as utterly terrifying as before.

May we all learn to fear God. First fear him by crying out to Jesus for mercy. Second, fear him by respecting and honoring his power and his all-consuming holiness. Fear him by obeying his commands, not because you fear destruction, but because you fear dishonoring the Savior and losing out on the joy of his glory in this life. Fear the consequences present in God’s creation of trying to live against God’s perfect standard. Have fear mixed with a grateful love of Jesus who bore the wrath of God that you might be brought into the family of God.

Accusing God of being Hateful

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Deuteronomy 1:26-27 – 26 “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. 27 And you murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.

In Deuteronomy 1, the Lord, through Moses, is recounting the history of his relationship with national Israel from the days at Horeb until their then present moment at the borders of the promised land. Here, Moses is particularly recounting the rebellion of the people when they feared the Amorites more than the Lord. The people refused to trust that God could give them the land, they rejected the counsel of Joshua and Caleb, believed the negative counsel of the 10 spies, and would not go in to take possession of the land.

Moses tells us that, when the people feared the Amorites, , they murmured against the Lord, saying, “Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.” Instead of taking the glorious victory that the Lord had promised them, instead of receiving his gracious promise of blessing, the people refused. But beyond their refusal, because they did not understand, because they were afraid, the people actually accused God of treating them hatefully. How terrible! The one true God, the Holy One, the One who led the people out of Egypt, the One who parted the Red Sea, the One who loved Israel time and time again did not hate his people.

I wonder how easy this mistake is for us to make. It is surely a failing of those who do not know God. When the lost read of the commands of God, they always accuse God of being hateful. They say that God’s standard for marriage, for sex, for gender, for justice, for salvation, and for many other things is hateful instead of glorious, good, and loving. This makes sense, as a sin-darkened mind cannot grasp the goodness of God.

But I wonder even more how often we do this. As a Christian, how do you react when God does things you do not understand? When God does not give you the job you want, the money you want, or the family you want, do you grumble? When God commands painful obedience, do you complain? Do you begin to read God’s commands as hating you instead of loving you simply because you cannot see his rationale?

Remember, we are finite. We cannot see the end from the beginning. And God is infinite, holy, knowing not only all the details of your life but of the lives of all forever. God has a plan. God accomplishes his will for his good pleasure. And God is good. He does not hate his own. He loves and shows mercy to us, even when we cannot grasp it in our finitude.

May we be wiser than the grumblers at the borders of Canaan. May we know that God loves us when we understand his ways and when we do not. Let us remember that God is always good and trustworthy, even when we fear and even when we hurt. God has proved his love with utter perfection in the sacrifice of Jesus. Now may we trust him.

Internal Dangers

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Numbers 25:1–3 – 1 While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. 2 These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3 So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.

I have sometimes wondered, why does the Lord give us several chapters of Balaam in the book of Numbers? It’s strange. God focuses the lens of the camera on a prophet who is not devoted to him and to the scheming of a foreign king. Yes, Balaam gives us a sweet prophecy of the Christ to some, a star rising from Judah, but is that what all that text is there to give us?

As I read through Numbers this time, I see a contrast that I think is supremely telling and extremely helpful for the modern church. In the Balaam narrative, we see God protecting his people from outside threats. A foreign king wants to curse and kill the people of God. But God will protect them.

However, the people of God scheme at their own destruction. When a threat from outside cannot do damage to the people of God, the devil schemes with a pagan prophet and a foreign king to tempt the nation to be complicit in its own destruction. Balaam advises the king to tempt the Israelite men with sexual immorality, leading to idolatry, leading to the judgment of God.

Think well, church, about how we might do the same thing. God will protect his people from outside attack. This is not to say that we will always avoid persecution—we will not. But it is to say that God would never let persecution wipe his church off the map. The government will not be able to stop the spread of Christianity. Enemies of the cross will not be able to stop us from worshipping and obeying the Lord.

But I wonder, where might we contribute to our own disaster? Of course, we must not pretend that we are greater than these people who fell. We must not suggest that we are so personally good that we could never be tempted and fail as they did. Thank God for his Holy Spirit who sanctifies us and holds us back from the evil we would naturally do.

But, I think we should examine ourselves beyond the issues related to immorality here. What might come before our eyes to tempt us to compromise? What social issue or popular hot button might make us set aside the Scripture to embrace what God forbids? Looking around the landscape, it’s not hard to see it happening time and time again. And we must see, even here in Numbers, that such compromise is deadly.

May we, the people of God, those who know and worship Jesus, be fully confident in the Lord. May we also be fully committed to God’s ways. The Lord will not let us be conquered from outside. May we not compromise to our own destruction from within.

Atonement or Destruction

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Numbers 8:19 – And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and his sons from among the people of Israel, to do the service for the people of Israel at the tent of meeting and to make atonement for the people of Israel, that there may be no plague among the people of Israel when the people of Israel come near the sanctuary.”

Worship is central to the lives of all people. Everybody worships. Everybody, physically or symbolically, bows down to declare a thing worthy. Informally, that act of worship might be obedience to the word of God. It might be a person elevating his job above his family. It might be a mom honoring the Lord in caring for her family. It might be a person chanting a political slogan. Not all worship is good. But all people worship.

God created us to worship him. When we honor him rightly, we do the very thing for which we exist. But we must not allow ourselves to miss the fact that God is the Creator, he is the Lord, and he has every right to determine what is right in worship. God has given us standards as to what formal worship he will accept.

I pondered this in a read through the book of Numbers. In chapter 8, God gives the instructions for how the Levites were to be set apart for service. We read of how they were to be ceremonially cleansed (a set of requirements that was interestingly similar to the cleansing process for a person recovering from leprosy in Leviticus 14). The Levites were presented as a wave offering, symbolically given over to the Lord. And eventually, once the cleansing ceremonies as required by God were complete, the Levites were able to serve in the tabernacle.

If you look at the verse above, the Levites were given to the priestly line. Why? They were to do the service in the tabernacle and later the temple. That means they were to simply do the work required to make the ministry happen. Of course, a major part of that ministry is that the Levites were to make atonement for the sins of others. They sacrificed animals in accord with the covenant law of God.

What caught my attention in this read through is the reason why atonement needed to be made. At the end of the verse, we read, “that there may be no plague among the people of Israel when the people of Israel come near the sanctuary.” Catch the implication. If the people of Israel, in their natural state of sinful uncleanness, were to approach the place of the presence of God, a plague would break out among the people. Translate that. If we, in our sinfulness, enter the presence of God without atonement made for us, we die.

Of course, this has gospel implications. Jesus made the atoning sacrifice for all that God will welcome into his presence. And without Jesus’ sacrifice, we will die eternally.

But what grabbed my attention this time is the connection to worship. Worship is an act where a person, physically or symbolically, bows before the Lord to give him homage, where a person participates in commanded acts of obedience. Thus, the work at the tabernacle is worship. And this passage, requiring particular acts of atonement for people to approach the Lord, reminds us that God has standards for what worship he will accept. Formal worship of the lord is not a thing that we are allowed to simply make up as we go along. We are to approach the Lord in his way, according to his word, under the atoning grace of Jesus Christ.

Pentecost and the Anti-Babel

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Acts 2:5-6 – 5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

Genesis 11:7-9 – 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The scene on the Day of Pentecost when the disciples spoke in many languages is one of those well-known passages of Scripture. Many a strange doctrine has been built from it. Many a fascinated Christian has wondered what that day must have looked and felt like.

What grabs my attention as I read Acts 2 in my daily reading plan is the reversal taking place here. This is sort of the anti-Babel. In Genesis 11, God confused human speech. In Acts 2, God grants unity in speech now that Christ has come.

Think of the Genesis context. In Genesis, God promised one to come who would rescue his people. But humanity became so rebellious that God destroyed the world with the flood. In Genesis 9, God promised he would preserve the world, never flooding it again because of human sin. But, by chapter 11, humanity is sinning to such a degree that we once again deserve destruction.

God, instead of destroying the world, in keeping with his covenant, chose to scatter the people at Babel. God confused the language of the people so that there would not be a unified rebellion against him as at the tower. God mercifully made it so that one evil idea would not so easily spread through all people that something like the flood would be the only possible ending.

All through the rest of the Old Testament, God continues to promise the coming one who will rescue. Many nations, people groups, are formed and separated at Babel, and God selects one man, Abram, to be the father of one nation, Israel. And God says that the Rescuer will come through that singular nation. And all the Old Testament keeps making that promise and shows God keeping that promise.

Then, once Jesus comes, God’s promise is fulfilled. Once Jesus died, rose, and ascended, connecting to God no longer has anything to do with any particular nation. Now the good news of Jesus needs to go to all nations. And here, at the moment of the arrival of the indwelling Holy Spirit, God gifts the apostles with a sign of his fulfilled promise. God gives the disciples a gift of being able to speak the message of Jesus in languages they did not previously know. Where God jumbled and confused the languages at Babel, at Pentecost, God united languages so that we might see that people from any nation can be saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus.

Sovereignty and Responsibility in Judas

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Acts 1:15-16 – 15 In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.

Acts 1:24-25 – 24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen 25 to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”

In Acts 1, we see the response of the disciples to the death of Judas. Once the risen Lord Jesus had ascended into heaven, and the disciples were awaiting the arrival of the Holy Spirit, they needed to deal with the fact that there were 11 and not 12 apostles. Peter broaches the topic and the group prays before casting lots to choose Judas’ replacement.

As Peter speaks, he first tells us that the Scripture had to be fulfilled regarding Judas. Peter shows us here how we should be thinking about Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled. God’s word is solid and sure. God will always fulfill what he promised. And this is true of what happened with Judas.

Looking at what Peter said about Scripture, we see the sovereignty of God in play. What God had predicted regarding Judas had to happen. There was no way that this would not take place. God is fully sovereign.

But later, when the group prays, they point out that Judas, by his own will, turned aside to go his own way, to his own place. Judas was free to choose his path. The Lord did not force Judas away. Judas did what Judas wanted to do. And in doing so, Judas did what God sovereignly decreed would happen in the word.

Grasp, friends, that God is sovereign. The Lord will always, absolutely always, accomplish his will for his glory. At the same time, know that we are fully responsible for the choices that we make. The only exception that I would make to this is the good and glorious choice that we make to trust in Jesus. After all, we are dead in sins before our salvation, and only God can make us alive. That good decision we must credit to the Lord. But in all other areas of life, we must own the proper responsibility for what we do.

Sacrifice and Scapegoat

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Leviticus 16:7-10 – 7 Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

I recently worked on learning to play a new song for our church’s worship service. It sounded fairly simple when I first heard it. But as I picked it up, and as I tried to translate what was happening on the piano to the guitar, I discovered that a lot more was happening than I first heard. The song was more complicated and more beautiful than I realized.

Similarly, the concept of forgiveness in Scripture is both far more beautiful and more complicated than we often realize. Looking at Leviticus 16, we see a couple of things taking place when the sins of the people are forgiven. In neither instance is the depiction one of God just letting go or choosing to ignore sin. We see a sacrifice and a scapegoat. Both are needed. Both depict biblical forgiveness. Both point to Jesus.

The sacrifice is the more familiar picture for us. A goat dies, paying with its blood the price that the sinners should have had to pay. The wages of sin is truly death (Rom. 6:23), and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (Heb. 9:22). This is the issue of a substitutionary atonement. One dies and pays the price of the penalty for sin so that another might live.

Of course, the sacrificial goat genuinely brought the people forgiveness, but not because it actually paid the price for sin. After all, the blood of goats can never be worthy enough to pay the price for our sin against God (Heb. 10:4). Instead, the sacrifice pointed toward the coming of Jesus. God forgave the sins of the people for real, but he did so with the clear understanding that the blood of Jesus Christ would in fact be the payment for all the sins that God would forgive. Thus, the sacrifice of Jesus includes in its purpose the proof of God’s righteousness as it actually paid the price for sins that God had passed over without receiving payment of infinite worth in the Old Covenant days (Rom. 3:24-26). God really forgave the folks in the Old Testament, but the sacrifice was not a payment of the price of sin, but an act of faith on the part of the people as they trusted God’s promise of forgiveness. The sacrifice was also, on God’s part, a sort of placeholder or IOU for himself as he awaited the day when Jesus would make the only actual acceptable payment for sin.

The scapegoat, that second goat sent off into the desert, is a second picture of forgiveness. The idea here is that the goat will carry away on itself the guilt of the sins of the people. The removal of sin is here depicted. After all, having your sin’s penalty paid for, if you are still covered in your sin, would not make you acceptable to enter into the presence of God. Only if your sin is removed from you so that you are made clean can you enter the presence of the Lord (Psa. 24:3-5). We need the price of sin to be paid and our sin to be carried away from us.

The two goats together point us beautifully to Jesus. We are sinners. We need to have the price of our sins paid for, and if we try to pay that price ourselves, we will spend eternity in hell trying to pay the just and infinite penalty for sinning against an infinitely holy God. But not only do we need the penalty to be paid, we also need the dirtiness and guilt of our sin to be lifted from us. We need to stand before the Lord as people made clean enough to enter his presence without a trace of our former sins clinging to us. And no matter how much we improve ourselves in this life, we will never be that clean.

Thanks be to God for the gift of his Son! Jesus lived the only perfect human life in history, completely satisfying all the demands of perfection that we could never meet. Jesus died to pay the just and infinite penalty we could never pay. Like the two goats, Jesus both pays our penalty and bears away our sins. Jesus swaps our record of rebellion with his perfect righteousness so that we might enter the presence of God both with the penalty for sin paid and with ourselves declared righteous. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Even better than merely carrying our sin away from us, Jesus imputes to us his perfect righteousness.

Had Jesus not performed the work only pointed to by the two goats—sacrifice and scapegoat—we would have no chance to be forgiven. But, since the ceremony here is a shadow, a foreshadowing, of Christ and his work, because Jesus has actually paid for our sins and will lift them from us, we may have life. And we cannot gain that life through any good works of our own. We come to Jesus in faith, entrusting him with our very souls, and we know that, because of his perfect life, finished work, and glorious grace, we are saved. We have the price paid and the righteousness of God to cover us. Jesus lifts our sin and its guilt off of us and bears it away from us. Jesus is our only hope and our glorious Savior.

Holy to the Lord

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Exodus 28:36-38 – 36 “You shall make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet, ‘Holy to the Lord.’ 37 And you shall fasten it on the turban by a cord of blue. It shall be on the front of the turban. 38 It shall be on Aaron’s forehead, and Aaron shall bear any guilt from the holy things that the people of Israel consecrate as their holy gifts. It shall regularly be on his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.

In Exodus 28, we see the instructions for the crafting of the clothing of the high priest, Aaron. God tells the people through Moses how to make the priest’s robe, how to add the bells at the hem, how to make the ephod and the precious stones with the names of the 12 tribes. And here we see instructions for the headpiece.

What grabs my attention is that the priest wears a label on the forehead of his turban, An engraved medallion of gold. This piece reads, “Holy to the Lord.” And that label is necessary for the high priest to be able to enter into the holy place and make offerings on behalf of the people.

Aaron, while I’m sure a godly man, was not able to call himself holy. He was a sinner who needed to have sacrifice made for his own shortcomings. But God placed upon Aaron a label declaring that his actions as high priest were holy to the Lord.

This is a beautiful picture for us of something that the Lord Jesus would be and that he would do. In his identity, the Lord Jesus is what Aaron’s label could only declare. Jesus is holy, utterly and perfectly holy. While Aaron needed a label to shield him from having his sinful identity stand out. Jesus brought genuine holiness into the mix as God the Son. When Jesus entered the heavenly holy of holies, he entered worthy.

The label also reminds me of what Jesus would do. Jesus hangs a label of holy on all he forgives. The Savior’s righteousness is imputed to all who come to him for grace through faith. Jesus is the only holy one. Jesus calls all who are his, “Holy to the Lord.” Thus, though we do not wear Aaron’s outfit, we are under the sign of the holiness of Christ.

I know, not all of us love to read about the garments of the priest or the curtains in the tabernacle. But, dear friends, these things point us to Jesus. And this is no symbolic stretch. Jesus is holy. Jesus declares those who come to him for forgiveness as holy. And that holiness is the only way we will ever enter the presence of the Lord. May we let this call us to praise our Lord as we give him thanks for the label, “Holy to the Lord.”