Taking The Ministry Seriously vs Antics In Contemporary Churches

The Bells, the Holy Place, and the Threat of Death

Verse 35, and it shall be upon Aaron when he ministers, and its sound will be heard, the bell, when he goes into the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out that he may not die. That's kind of strange, what's that about?

All right, so the pomegranates were just decorative. This is for beauty, right? Glory and beauty. The bells actually serve a purpose. Basically, as long as the high priest was in the holy place and the most holy place, as he moved around ministering, the people could hear him and kind of track his movements and tell, okay, he's still alive in there.

Now, why would that be an issue? Well, because if he did anything wrong, which we're gonna see when we get to Aaron's two sons, Nadab and Abihu, oh, the Lord won't mind if we'll just change the liturgy a little bit and just change, no.

If the high priest did something wrong, God would strike him dead. So as long as they heard the bells, they know Aaron's still alive. And there's this, and I don't know if this is a legend. I don't think this is in the scripture.

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but yeah, there's this idea that they would tie a rope to his leg so when he was in the most holy place, if he did something wrong and the bell stopped ringing, Aaron's dead and no one's allowed in there, right?

So they had to, let's drag his body out. I don't, yeah, I think we've all heard that. It's not actually in the Bible, but it does seem to hint at least that there's the, yeah, there's the possibility that he would drop dead if he did something wrong.

Matthew Henry on the Priestly Garments

The threat was there and it's all, hey, God is holy. God demands obedience. And it got the point across. So Matthew Henry writes about the robe. He said the robe of the ephod was under the ephod and reached down to the knees without sleeves.

Aaron must minister in the garments appointed. We must serve the Lord with holy fear. So you hear about that and think about our service to God. We must also serve the Lord with holy fear as those who know they deserve to die.

A gold plate was fixed over Aaron's forehead, engraven with the words, holiness to the Lord. Aaron was hereby reminded that God is holy and that his priests must be holy and devoted to the Lord. And I didn't plan on mentioning this, but there are some things, you've probably seen some of this online, where like the new contemporary churches and the pastors trying to be cool and just the shenanigans and the antics that go on in some churches today.

I would be afraid to do, I saw one pastor, he preached a Sunday morning sermon from a dumpster. Brought a dumpster right up on the stage and the guy in the dumpster, I do not know his name. I'm just thinking, Matthew Henry wouldn't have thought too highly of that.

No, no, no, he was preaching garbage.

He was preaching garbage, yes, very good.