Exodus chapter 28. I just want to look at two verses.
The first two verses. Here God is speaking to Moses.
And He says, And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his
sons with him from among the children of Israel, that he may
minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons. And thou shalt make holy
garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty." Let
me point out a few things to you from this verse. These will
make up our points. Notice it was God who separated
Aaron to be the high priest and his sons to be the priests. It
was God who did it. God told him to take unto thee
Aaron thy brother and his sons with him. And then notice what
the sons were to the high priest. Or what they were to the high
priest. They were sons. They were sons
to the high priest. And then notice from where God
chose the priests. From among the children of Israel. He chose them from among a particular
people. And then notice why God separated
Aaron to be his high priest. That he may minister unto me,
God says. That he may minister unto me
in the priest's office. And notice this too. God speaks
here of choosing Aaron and all his sons. But then God speaks
and says only Aaron would be ministering to him. Look at this. that he may minister unto me
in the priest's office. He talked about all those priests
and then he said that he, talking about Aaron, that he may minister
to me in the priest's office. He's the only one that could
go into the holiest of holies and meet God in the holiest of
holies. The only one that could do that
was Aaron, the high priest. And so that's what we have pictured
there, pictured Christ who alone could make intercession. Now
notice what they had to wear in order to approach God. Thou
shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and
for beauty. They had to come in holy garments. Now the best commentary on these
verses is found in Hebrews chapter 5. Let's go to Hebrews 5. This is where we'll spend the
rest of our time. Hebrews chapter 5. Verse 1 says, For every high
priest taken from among men, see that taken from among men
is ordained for men. I've titled this of men, for
men. They're taken from men and ordained
for men. In things pertaining to God that
He may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. who can have compassion
on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for that
he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason
hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer
for sins. And no man taketh this honor
unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not
himself to be made an high priest. But he that said unto him, Thou
art my son, today have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another
place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Who in the days of his flesh,
when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death,
and was heard in that he feared. Though he were a son, yet learned
he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect,
He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that
obey Him. Now there are many religious
groups today who still hold to a priestly structure in their
denominations. And that exposes their ignorance
of the Scriptures. Because there is no more priesthood.
Christ came and accomplished everything that was pictured
in all of those Old Testament types. He's the fulfillment of
them. Some will say, well, we just
use these to help us see the picture. No, God says don't use
them at all. They were types until the time
of Reformation came. That's all they were. If we who
are sinners, if we who are sinners would approach a holy God, we
have to come through faith in Christ our High Priest. He has
to represent us to God. We cannot represent ourselves
before God. I urge you to believe on Christ
and continue believing on Christ to the end. He alone can make
intercession for His people in the holy throne room of God.
He alone. So our subject is of men for
men. Now first of all, get this, it
was God, it was God who ordained, or who chose, who ordained, who
separated, and who called His high priests and His priests. God chose them, He ordained them
to the priesthood, He separated them out, and He called them.
It was God that did it. God's high priest as well as
his priest were set apart by God. It was not of men. It was not of men. And these
men didn't one day just decide they would take up the priesthood
as a profession. That wasn't how it operated.
It was of God. It was of God. God our Father
chose Christ before the foundation of the world. He chose Christ
before the foundation of the world and ordained Him to be
the high priest of His people. He separated Him and called Him
to be the high priest of His people. Now, even God's own Son,
God's own Son did not make this choice by His will to become
a priest. God separated Him. God separated
Him. God's will chose Him and made
Him a priest. Jesus answered, if I honor myself,
my honor is nothing. It's my Father that honoreth
me. His Father honored him by making
him a priest. Of whom you say that he's your
God? He said, he that speaketh of himself seeks his own glory.
He said, but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the
same is true and no unrighteousness is in him. So, just as it was
God who chose His high priest, Christ Jesus, it's God who chose
His people in His high priest to be priests unto God. He chose,
He ordained, He separated, He calls His people to be His priests. It's not of men. We don't make
the choice of ourselves, of our fleshly will to become sons of
God and priests of God. We don't do that. Our Lord has
to come and create us anew and give us a new heart and give
us a new will. But He's already made us priests.
He chose us to be His priests. He ordained it. He set us apart
and He called us. When I was preaching the ordination
service out in San Diego for Brother Kevin, I quoted that
verse out of Jeremiah. God said before, I formed you
in the belly, I knew you. I separated you from your mother's
womb and I ordained you to be a prophet before the nations.
That's so of all God's pastors. It's not of men that they're
made... I'm talking about faithful pastors now. It's of God that
they were separated from before the foundation of the world.
And it's true of sinners saved by grace. Scripture says here
in His love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin. You're a chosen
generation, chosen of God. royal priesthood, kings and priests
unto God. You're a holy nation, a nation
set apart by God. You're a peculiar people, a special
people, a chosen special particular people unto God. And here's why
He did it. That you should show forth the
praises of Him. They called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light. We can't glory in ourselves.
The whole purpose of salvation is to give God all the glory.
You ask King Uzziah. You ask him if it's safe to take
this honor to yourself. You remember when he had conquered
all those enemies and God had given him those enemies into
His hand and Uzziah got lifted up in pride. He decided he didn't
need a priest. He'd just go into the tabernacle
and he'd make an offering himself. And God made him instantly, they
told him when he went in there, the priest said, this doesn't
pertain to you. And God made him a leper right then. Cast
him out. No man takes this honor to himself.
God does it. Secondly, Exodus 28 tells us
that these priests were Aaron's sons. I think it's so instructive
that God, He chose Aaron to be His high priest and He didn't
just choose random men to be the priests. He chose Aaron's
sons to be the priests. And there's a picture there.
Remember now, Aaron typifies Christ, our high priest. And
his sons typify all those that Christ makes priests. God's elect,
who Christ died for, who He makes priest unto God. Christ Jesus
is our everlasting Father. Isaiah says that. He's our everlasting
Father. Adam was our first father, but
Adam plunged us into sin and death and he ceased being our
father. He left us as orphans, dead and
trespassers and in sin. But Christ came forth as our
everlasting Father, and He fulfilled the law for us, He put away sin
for us, He made us righteous, and He ascended to the Father
where He ever lives. He's our everlasting Father.
That relationship will never end. And by the same token, He's
our everlasting High Priest. He's our everlasting high priest. Verse 6, he says also in another
place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
It says a few pages over that Melchizedek was made a priest
without mother, without father, without origin, and it says he
was made like unto Christ. He was made to picture Christ.
Christ is eternal. That's why He's God and man. And He's eternal. And everything
He accomplished is eternal. He lives forever as our High
Priest because He's righteous. He perfected the law. So sin
and death has no hold on Him. Sin and death cannot demand He
die. And those that He died for did
everything He did in Him so that death has no claim on us either.
You're alive. Do you know that? You're alive
forevermore. You that believe on Christ, you're
everlastingly alive right now where you sit. Oh, you're going
to drop this body of death. That's just going to be a good
thing. But you're alive. You're going to be with the Father
immediately. So sinner, Christ is the only Father. He's the
only high priest who can save. Christ did. Come to Christ today. Believe on Him today. You need
Christ to represent you to God. Listen to this, He's able to
save them to the uttermost that cometh to God by Him, seeing
ye ever liveth to make intercession for them. Now thirdly, God chose
His high priest and He chose His priest from among a particular
people. He chose His high priest and
His priest from a particular people. Now God didn't choose
Christ and He didn't choose His people from just the order of
mankind. I guess there's a sense in which
He did, but what I'm getting at is this, He chose us as His
particular people. And you know when Christ came,
Christ didn't come, the scripture doesn't say He came and took
on Him the nature of all mankind. No. He came and took on Him the
nature of Abraham's seed. What does that mean? That's God's
elect. He came and took the nature of
God's elect that He might redeem us from all iniquity. Now the
reason God chose Christ to be our high priest is twofold. Look
back in verse 1, Hebrews 5, 1. For every high priest taken from
among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God that
he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin. Now, you and I can't
make a sacrifice to God that God will accept. It has to be
perfect to be accepted. We were born in sin. So everything
we try to do for God is sinful and God won't receive it. Not
of ourselves. But Christ is the only man other
than Adam who was born into this world sinless. And so he was
fit to live under the law and to die under the law. And the
reason he died under it is He took our sin. He made the necessary
offerings to God to make us accepted of God. That's what He did when
He laid down His life on the cross. He perfected His people
by perfecting the law for us. And so, that's first reason. He did this for men. He did it
for His elect. He made the offerings and the
gifts to God on our behalf. And then the second reason he
chose Christ from among men and the reason Christ became the
God-man, our high priest, is so that he would know our infirmities
and be able to comfort us. Verse 2 says, who can have compassion
on the ignorant. Who's the ignorant? That's me
and you. That's me and you. And on them that are out of the
way. for that he himself also is compassed
with infirmities. Christ became a man and tempted
so that he could experience just how weak our flesh really is. You remember in the Garden of
Gethsemane when he said, the spirit is strong but the flesh
is weak? He was experiencing that himself.
Our text says here, though he were a son, yet learned he obedience
by the things which he suffered. It means he experienced it. He
experienced obedience. And he learned, he experienced
what it is to have flesh and to be so weak in flesh. And remember
God sent an angel and strengthened And then on the cross when he
was bearing the sin of his people and God poured out judgment on
him, he was touched, he felt every infirmity that our sins
cause us to feel. Everything that our sins cause
us, the pains and suffering our sins cause us to feel from shame
and guilt to hatred of it to just all the things that it causes
us. He experienced it. He was tempted
in all points, but he never sinned. And so now he's able to comfort
you and me because he knows these infirmities that we face. Hebrews 4.15 says, We have not
a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities. but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin. And so Hebrews 2.18 says this,
in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he's able to succor
them that are tempted. He's able to comfort them that
are tempted. That's why he became a man. That's
why we needed a high priest to be a man. Now fourthly, We saw
that God chose His High Priest to minister unto Him. That's
why He chose Him to minister unto Him. He chose His High Priest
to do that. Only the High Priest entered
the Holy of Holies. He entered once a year. And He
didn't enter without blood. He went into that Holiest of
Holies with the blood of that Lamb that had died for the sake
of Israel. Now be sure you get the picture
of the Old Testament covenant. He didn't take that lamb when
it had the sin ceremonially put on it. It became spotted by the
sins of the people before God. And so it deserved to die and
it died. But the high priest didn't take
that spotted body of that lamb into the Holy of Holies. It's
a holy place. It couldn't go in there. No,
the high priest took its blood and went into the Holiest of
Holies and sprinkled that blood seven times on the mercy seat
over the law so that it's picturing Christ, our mercy seat, our propitiation
who fulfilled the law for us through His blood. And so the
scriptures tell us right here, verse 7, He was representing
His people. We can't save ourselves by our
good works. We can't save ourselves by our
law keeping. We can't save ourselves by our
will. We have to have Christ represent us. And that's what
He was doing. Who in the days of His flesh, when He offered
up prayers and supplication with strong crying and tears unto
Him that was able to save Him from death, He was heard in that
He feared. What does that mean? That means,
though he was made sin for us, though he bore our sin, though
he was made justly guilty before the holy law of God so that God
was just to pour out wrath on him, though that was true, in
his nature, in his heart, he was perfectly holy before God. In the Garden of Gethsemane,
we see him praying to the Father who could save him from death.
And he prayed, Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass
from me. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as I will. We've been going through the
Psalms and we've heard him praying in the Psalms and when he prayed
to the Father. He never stopped looking to the
Father. That's what holiness does. Even
when he was separated from God, he never stopped looking to the
Father. You see, our sins had to be not
only paid for and the law be fulfilled, it had to be done
from a holy heart. And Christ did it all from a
holy heart. And so He's learned obedience. He's experienced obedience. He
came and He was obedient to His Father for us, for His elect. And so now He's the author of
eternal salvation to all them that obey Him. And our obeying
Him is easy. His obeying the Father was hard. He came into a world of sin and
had to be perfect and had to bear the sin of His people and
had to be perfect while He did that in His heart and never sin. That's how He had to obey the
Father to fulfill the law for His people. You and I obey Him
simply by believing on Him. Isn't that a lot easier? That's
what Paul meant when he said he's taken the law out of the
way for us. And he abides in us. He's even
the strength we have to cast our care on him. And he does
it so that we can now, we can live under God through faith. The just shall live by faith. You know what that means? That
means the justified, those Christ justified, shall live by faith
in Christ. And that's how we live under
God. Look over at Hebrews 9. I want
to show you all of this in the scripture. Hebrews 9 verse 24. Here's what I'm saying to you.
For Hebrews 9.24, Christ does not enter to the holy places
made with hands, which were the figures of the true, but into
heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.
Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest
entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of
others. For then must he often have suffered since the foundation
of the world. But now once in the end of the
world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself. As it's appointed unto men once
to die and after this to judgment." You see, he didn't have to die
multiple times. It's only appointed unto men
to die one time and suffer judgment one time. So he just died one
time. So Christ was once offered to
bear the sins of many and unto them that look for Him shall
He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. He won't
have any sin when He comes back. He won't be bearing our sin.
He bore it away. And He'll come back and take
us to Himself. Now lastly, Exodus 28.2 tells
us this. It says, Thou shalt make holy
garments for Aaron thy brother, for glory and for beauty. You see, Christ Jesus, He is
the one represented by these holy garments. Christ our High
Priest is the one represented by these holy garments. He made
these holy garments. Christ did. It's His glory. It's His beauty. as a man, as
a God-man mediator. It's His glory and His beauty
by which we're saved. And Christ comes to us and He
puts His glory and His beauty upon us. This is why we needed
a high priest. Listen, for such a high priest
became us. It was becoming. We had to have
a high priest such as this who's holy, and harmless, and undefiled,
and separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.
We had to have this high priest. And through faith in Christ,
He's put His glory upon us. He's put His beauty upon His
people. He really accomplished this.
He's not just pretending and treating you as if. He's really
put His glory on you and treated and made you beautiful before
God. It says in Revelation 19, speaking
of his bride, it says, to her was granted that she should be
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen
is the righteousness of the saints. Some will preach that and they'll
say, oh, so you got to do right so you can have this righteousness.
That ain't what it's talking about. This is the righteousness
of Christ. It said this fine linen was granted
to her. It was given to her. She didn't
have it. We didn't have this righteousness.
It was given to us. Listen to this, I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for
He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered
me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself
with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
Do you know why I tell you every now and then how important it
is for us to dress in our best when we come to the house of
God? The reason I tell you that is because our whole gospel is
about how we have to be dressed in the very best garments to
come before God. And to come before God in His
house with just the nicest clothes we have, that's picturing the
fact that we have to come in the best garment and that's Christ's
righteousness. Now turn with me to Revelation
5 and verse 9 and we'll end with this. This is what Christ has
done right here, being our high priest. He alone served the Father. He
alone entered into the holy place and He did this for His priests,
His elect people. And it says here in Hebrews 5
and verse 9, they sung a new song saying thou art worthy to
take the book and to open the seals thereof for thou was slain
and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred
and tongue and people and nation. When you read in the scriptures
where it says God loved the world or it says God's going to save
all men. It's talking about all kinds
of men out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. It doesn't mean He's going to
save every kindred, tongue and people and nation. He's going
to save His elect out of them. And that's the world He's talking
about. And it says, and you have made us unto our God kings and
priests. He's made us a royal priesthood
unto God. You know what the priest could
do? The priest could go into the holy place. They didn't go
into the holiest of holy, they went to the holy place. And they
could serve God on that foundation of redemption accomplished, that
silver foundation. And they went in there and served
God. You know what we do as royal priests unto God? He's given
us access into His holy, of holies through prayer, through the name
of Christ. And now, in this earth, we can
serve our God. And He accepts us. You know what
it says? And we shall reign on the earth. We're reigning right now. And
this reign is just going to get better and better. Because one
day we're going to reign without sin. But we're a royal priesthood
by Christ's blood. I pray that's a blessing to you.
Let's stand together. Our gracious Father, we thank
you for your blessings. Thank you for sending your Son
to be our high priest, to be holy and righteous on our behalf.
who made us holy and righteous. Lord, make us to glory only in
Him. And Father, we ask You to subdue
us, subdue our sin nature, turn us from our sins, make us to
honor You in our life, and make us, Lord, to love one
another. We ask this in the name of Christ
Jesus, our great high priest. Amen.