Priests, Ordination, Strange Fire

[0:00] All right, hey, we are working our way through the book of Leviticus together. And so we'll take about a half hour to do that. We'll have some question time and then we'll pray, as always.

[0:11] So I have a few things to say tonight for prayer, especially to, so we'll get into that. There's handouts going around. So grab a handout, Flynn and Malachi with Havan. Should be enough for everybody tonight, I think.

[0:24] While these guys are walking around passing this out, I'm going to pray. So that's no problem at all. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for this time and we ask now that You would give us the Holy Spirit to help us understand the beauty, the greatness of Your Word.

[0:38] And we pray for that in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So you'll have a handout in front of you in just a minute, if you don't yet. And try to move through this quickly.

[0:51] We're talking about Leviticus 8, 9, and 10 tonight. And if there's just a quick catch up from the last couple sessions, we've basically just said that Leviticus is the heart of the Torah, right in the middle, the third book of five, which is the middle, and that in it, the day of Atonement Leviticus 16 is the heart of the heart of the Torah.

[1:18] And we'll see that tonight, actually, in advance of actually getting to Leviticus 16. And what Leviticus says is that we were all made for God's presence.

[1:29] And so Leviticus is asking the question, how can the dust of the earth, human beings, and people who are made of the dust and also sinners, enter into God's presence the very thing we were made for?

[1:42] So that's what Leviticus is all about. The temporary answer is sacrifice and the mediatorial role of the priest. So we're adding that tonight. Last time we talked about sacrifices, tonight we say the answer is not only sacrifices, but also the mediatorial role of a priest.

[1:59] And so three things let's look at. First is what is a priest? What does it mean, two-priest? Priesting, as I've put it, on the handout. And then we'll ask about ordination.

[2:10] What is ordination? And then finally, about the strange fire that shows up in chapter 10. So we'll look at each of those briefly. But as you can see on the handout, overwhelmingly, the first one is the main thing to look at tonight.

[2:21] So what's a priest? Big question. You can have a tabernacle. You can have a template. You can have a Levitical system. You can have all the five sacrifices we talked about last time.

[2:34] But if you don't have a priest, none of it works. So right after Leviticus 1-7, which is all about the sacrifices we talked about, Leviticus 8 then transfers to, now we need priests.

[2:47] So you need a priest and a sacrifice in order to enter into God's presence. And so in some sense, Leviticus so far is that simple. That you've got to have a sacrifice, you've got to have a priest.

[2:58] And so we've come to the priest section. Priests are mediators. They are go-betweens. Between God and people. That's one of the most basic ways to say it. And they are the ones that have to actually do the work of the sacrificial system for you to enter into God's presence.

[3:14] In fact, more specifically, you don't enter into God's presence in the Levitical system. The priest does it for you. The priest represents you and carries you into the presence of God.

[3:28] And so we'll see that in just a minute. So let me read chapter 9, just the first seven verses. We'll just get a flavor of each chapter. On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel.

[3:41] And he said to Aaron, take for yourself a bull, calf, for a sin offering and a ram for a burn offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the Lord. And say to the people of Israel, take a male goat for a sin offering, offering a calf and a lamb, both a year old without blemish, for a burn offering, and an ox and a ram for a peace offering to sacrifice before the Lord.

[4:04] And a grain offering mixed with oil. For today the Lord will appear to you. And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting. And all the congregations were near and stood before the Lord.

[4:15] And Moses said, this is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of the Lord may appear to you. Then Moses said to Aaron, draw near to the altar, offer your sin offering and your burn offering, and make atonement for yourself and for the people.

[4:29] And bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them as the Lord has commanded. All right, we'll stop there. We looked at the instructions for all these different offerings last time.

[4:41] And remember we talked about the different words that they actually mean. We can't go through that again tonight, but that's on the podcast if you'd like to listen back to it. Here we see the priest are actually doing it for the first time.

[4:54] So it's not until you get to Leviticus 9 that the priests are preasting, they're doing this work of actually offering all five of these sacrifices. And the text says, do it for you priest, and do it for the people.

[5:06] So you're representing, the priest is representing the people as they do it. And the key word is in verse 7, and we've mentioned it already, but it's the word that says, now priest, what you are doing for the people is atonement.

[5:19] And it's a word, atonement, that in Hebrew is kafar, and it's got this sense of covering, clothing.

[5:30] And so in the most basic sense what the priest does is he clothes, he covers you. When he does this sacrifice, he is covering your guilt, and representing you by throwing a sheet over what's impure.

[5:47] That's what the word atonement connotes in the language underneath it. And he does that all on your behalf. You're reclothed in the sacrifice is the idea, and therefore made acceptable. Now to really understand what a priest is and what a priest does though, that's the most basic sense of it.

[6:03] But let's take a step back and really try to dig a little deeper of what a priest is, and let me see if we can get some shouting, not shouting, but some response, you know, maybe shouting.

[6:16] Who is the first priest? Aaron is the first ordained priest in the Levitical system after the fall.

[6:28] Maybe Moses though, that's to be debated, but before them. Adam, Adam is the first priest. So the very first time we see a priest, we see the priest is in the Garden of Eden.

[6:41] And Adam is placed in the beginning in the Garden Sanctuary, and this is following the handout here.

[6:52] He's sat on a mountain, and we've talked about this already, where the waters flow down from Eden, down from the Garden of God. And so I've just listed the text there.

[7:04] The first temple, Isaiah 51 verse 3, Ezekiel 28, 13 in particular, and 31 verse 9, refer to Eden as a holy sanctuary, a temple, a tabernacle.

[7:16] Particularly the Garden of Eden was the first holy temple in the Bible. And what do we learn? What are some things, let's see if we can get conversation going again, what are some things you could say about the first temple?

[7:29] When you think about a temple, and I said the Garden of Eden is the first temple, what does the Garden of Eden convey in terms of what a temple is? Just what's some of the first things that strikes you about saying the Garden of Eden is the first temple?

[7:46] It's a beautiful place, okay? It's a garden, right? It's gorgeous, full of plant life. What else? It's a place of shalom and peace, yeah.

[7:58] The presence of God, right? So in some sense, all we're saying is, what is a temple? A temple is not a structure, doesn't have to be a structure that's got columns and pillars and all this.

[8:11] A temple in the Bible is just wherever God decides to be. That's a temple. And the Garden of Eden is the first temple in that way. It's the presence of God. It's called home throughout Scripture.

[8:22] And in Leviticus, the tabernacle is called the house of the Lord. And we've already said that when you look at the tabernacle in detail, it's full of garden imagery, right?

[8:34] And it's full of furniture that looks like a garden. And we talked last time about how, in the way Ezekiel describes the mountain of God in the beginning, where the Garden of Eden is located. It describes it in three parts, remember?

[8:46] And those three parts are the Holy of Holies, the Holy Place in the outer court, tabernacle, corresponding to the mountain of God. The Garden of Eden is the Holy of Holies. Eden, which is separate from the Garden, is the Holy Place.

[9:00] And the mountain outside Eden is the court. And so that means again that what is the tabernacle reading about here? It is a microcosm, a recapitulated, to put it in the proper language, form of the original mountain of God.

[9:21] Right? So this is here to mimic Eden. That is the point of the tabernacle. It's to look like Eden. It's to be like Eden. And that means that the priests in some sense are second Adams, small S, right? Not capital S.

[9:37] But they are like second Adams. Adam was the original priest. So the temple is a home. The temple is garden-like. The temple is a palace. The Holy of Holies is described as a throne room with the mercy seat of God is there on the ark, right?

[9:52] All right. And so what did Adam do? The temple, the garden is a temple. What did Adam do in that temple as a priest? And you can see, I think, in the handout that he is given in Genesis 2.15 two verbal commands.

[10:09] And those two verbal commands in Genesis 2.15 are God set Adam apart and said, I want you to work and keep the garden. And then you can see in the handout that in Numbers 3, 8, and 18, those two verbs in particular in Hebrew are the exact two verbs given to the priests and their commission and commandment to do their work in the tabernacle.

[10:35] So in other words, Adam is given the first priestly instruction and the priestly instruction is mimicked in the tabernacle ceremony in Leviticus.

[10:46] It's the same verbs, to work and to keep. That's how the ESV translates them. But what do they mean? And it's pretty well established and taken by almost everybody that those two verbs mean to work, means to curate, to organize, to make beautiful, and to keep is the word for guardianship.

[11:08] So it's the verb of a watchman on a watchtower. And so Adam is told the first priestly task in the first temple, guard this place and keep it clean.

[11:20] Make it nice. So that's the first task that he was given, and that is exactly what priests are told to do in the Levitical system. What can we say about Adam's guardianship? What was he supposed to guard the first temple from?

[11:43] Just think about Genesis 3 for a moment. What was he meant to guard it from? Evil intrusion, right? The serpent is exactly as soon as God says guard it, the very next story is that now evil is in the midst of it.

[11:59] He's completely failed. He was a priest meant to guard God's holy presence. So the priestly task first, you can see on your outline, is guardians, priests are guardians. They are meant to guard and protect the one place that has been purified for God's presence, the sacred space.

[12:17] Adam was originally given that task and he completely failed, and the priests are being given that task again in the Levitical system. The second thing in the verb to work is that he's being told he's the housekeeper of the Garden of God, of the temple.

[12:32] That means he was literally, very literally, to work it, to organize it, to keep it clean, to garden, to be a gardener. And when you see most of what priests do in the Levitical system, they are just keeping the furniture clean.

[12:45] They are carrying the furniture. They are putting it in the right place. They are organizing it. They are pouring blood on it and then cleaning it before the day is over. The same thing that you do in your home, well, some of the same things.

[12:59] That's exactly what the priests did. They are the housekeepers of the Garden of God. And this is the exact replica of the Garden of Eden. And then the third thing that if you were to summarize it all, the priestly task is as a mediator.

[13:15] And this is my big thesis for you today, if you will. And that's simply this. That being a priest is just the task of being made in God's image.

[13:26] So humanity was made in the image of God and then said in your priests, work, keep clean, treat well, beautify the holy presence of God in this world.

[13:40] All the places God wants to be, you are there to make beautiful. And protect it. Protect it. That's priesting. It's just what it means to be made in God's image.

[13:52] And so Adam was the high priest in the Garden of Eden. And just like we see all throughout the Bible, the priesthood of all believers, right? The whole nation was called the priest in Exodus.

[14:04] So there were the priests, the Levites, Aaron and his sons. But then God said, but all of you Israel are priests. Because that's just what it means to be a Mago Dei, the image of God. And that means that Adam was the high priest like Aaron would be later.

[14:18] But Eve was his helper, meaning part of the priesthood of all believers. She was there to priest with him. Right? And that means to keep the place clean, multiply, and protect the presence of God.

[14:30] Right? Now, priesting is just image bearing. When you get to Leviticus, the big difference in what comes before is that sin has come into the world.

[14:41] And Adam and Eve completely failed at that. And so what we just read in chapter 9 verses 1 to 7 is one shift from the Garden of Eden.

[14:52] And that's that now the mediatorial role that are given the priests in the Levitical system is to represent God's people because they cannot enter because of their sin.

[15:06] And the second aspect of their new mediatorial role is that they have taken on this role of sacrifice to be able to step through the symbolic East Gate.

[15:17] Something has to die for the sake of justice in our place for the priest as our mediator on our behalf to be able to enter through the East Gate of the Temple. Because Adam and Eve were kicked out of the East Gate of Eden.

[15:31] And to represent you. And so the priest will come to this in just a moment, but on his clothing, his breastplate, he had 12 stones. Because he's making that sacrifice for himself on your behalf for him and you.

[15:45] And then he goes in carrying you on his breastplate as a stone, the 12 tribes. Each person in Israel he carries into God's presence. So it's mediatorial, it's representative.

[15:57] You don't actually ever enter the Holy Place. And certainly not the Holy Follies. But your mediator does that for you. And the mediator himself does not deserve it, not at all.

[16:08] And that's why in just a second we'll see what ordination is so necessary. Now, before we move to that and wrapping up this first point.

[16:19] This is all throughout the Old Testament. But do we have priests in the New Covenant? And the answer is absolutely yes. Because the priesthood has always been for everybody who believes in the Lord.

[16:33] Always. That's never changed. If you're made in the image of God and you follow the Lord, you're a priest. That's the case in the Old Testament. And that's the case in the New Testament. The priesthood of all believers.

[16:45] In the Old Testament after sin, an ordained priest was there to do one thing. And that's mediate for you by way of holy sacrifice to step into God's presence on your behalf.

[16:58] You would die, he could stay and live. That's the one task that's added to priests. That designates an ordained priest from a non-ordained priest. The priesthood of all believers.

[17:09] And so do we have priests in the New Testament, in the New Covenant, that are ordained priests? No. Well, there's one. Hebrews 10 tells us that there is only one priest.

[17:23] There is a great high priest who has stepped into the heavenly temple, the Holy of Holies, with his blood in his hands before the Lord and represented you. And therefore, you don't need an ordained priest.

[17:36] Why is there no ordained priest in the New Covenant? Because no human being can mediate for you in the presence of God by bearing your sin. That's what a priest does.

[17:47] Through the sacrifice, he bears your sin and he takes you with him into the presence of the Lord. Jesus did that. You don't have a priest. You don't need a priest.

[17:58] And so, priesting is something that we all do. It's not something that a distinguished ordained priest with a capital P does, because Jesus is doing it. Jesus has fulfilled every single role that the priest in the Levitical system did.

[18:12] And so, that's the status of the priesthood. Now, that does mean to apply this a little bit, is that we are priests, all of us together tonight. So, I just want to ask you tonight, a little bit of application in the midst of a thick Bible study.

[18:27] Do you know yourself as a priest of God? Because you are. And as a priest of God, you take on the same exact role that Adam and Eve had, basically.

[18:40] But through the lens of Christ. And what we see here is that you are now a guardian. So, how does the New Testament talk about it? You, as a priest, exist to guard the deposit of the faith, the gospel.

[18:52] That's the language of 1 Timothy, for example. Guard the deposit of faith. That's priesting language. You guard other people in the church as a priest.

[19:03] How do you do that? How do you guard other people in the church? Protect them as a priest. Somebody shout something out. You pray for them. Yeah, that's priesting. What else?

[19:16] You guide them. You disciple them. So, discipleship is priestly activity. So, whenever you guard your neighbor's heart, your friend's heart in this church, you're priestly for them, in the sense of the New Covenant idea of the priesthood.

[19:30] The elders priestly when they discipline, one of the priestly activities that the church has been given is excommunication. When a person is unrepentant of their sin and is potentially corrupting the body of Christ, they can be excommunicated. And that's a priestly activity.

[19:51] Because it's been the under shepherd's charge to guard the flock. And that's priestly. Not only are we guardians, we're housekeepers, the New Testament word that Jesus uses is stewards of the household of God.

[20:04] That's priestly language. The diaconal role that all of us have together, led by the deacons, is to care for the afflicted, the poor in any situation of poverty, whether that's mental poverty, psychological poverty, any of it, deep grief. When you care for somebody, that's priestly.

[20:23] You have been the housekeeper of the faith in that way. How so? You're stewarding the people of God. In other words, let me put it in better metaphors. What does it mean to be a housekeeper by caring for people in the church?

[20:38] Well, where's the temple in the New Testament? This is why we don't need ordain and priest. Where's the temple? It's people. People are the temple. You don't need an ordain priest because every single human being in the church is the temple of God.

[20:52] And then collectively, we are all the temple as we gather. And so, how do you keep the furniture like the priest metaphorically? You care for one another. That's priestly. That's housekeeping in the household of faith.

[21:05] Lastly, mediators. We are mediators for this cosmos. That's how the New Testament puts it. And so, just quickly, Hebrews 13 says that we offer a sacrifice of praise.

[21:18] Do you offer sacrifices like a priest? The mediatorial role of the priest is to sacrifice on behalf of another, toward God. Yes, you do. So you are charged in 1 Timothy 2 to pray for the whole world. That's priestly.

[21:33] You are the mediator from the world to God, from the city to God. You pray for the city? That is your mediatorial duty as a priest in God's household.

[21:45] Do you pray for the city government? For everything that's going to the teachers, the schools, that is priestly. So that's part of our duty. So we offer the sacrifice of praise.

[21:58] Priestly is also worship. You come to worship, that's priestly. That's coming into the household of faith. And so I'll just leave you with Philippians 4, 18 and 1 Corinthians 6, 19.

[22:10] Just a couple of Levitical fulfillments in our lives right here. Priestly fulfillments in our lives. Philippians 4, 18, Paul says, I've received full pavement and more. I am well supplied having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent.

[22:26] That's money, by the way. He's talking about real money. Real money. The gifts that you sent. And what does he say? How does he talk about the money that was given?

[22:38] A fragrant offering. That word offering. Straight from Leviticus. It's incense. A sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. So what is this saying? When do you priest relative to this verse? When you give money to the ministry?

[22:55] When you tithe in Old Testament terms and New Testament terms? When you're generous? That is priestly agency. That's how Paul puts it here. 1 Corinthians 6, 19. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?

[23:08] You are a temple. Jesus is your priest. Whom you have from God. You are not your own. So this is all priestly language that's being fulfilled. Alright, we'll help you quick here. The ordination of priests. Jump back a chapter with me just very quickly to 8, chapter 8 verse 33.

[23:29] I'll just highlight a couple things and leave you to look for yourself later. From verse 33, and you shall not go outside the entrance of the Ten of Meeting for seven days. This is the ordination of priests until the days of your ordination are completed.

[23:45] It will take seven days to ordain you as has been done today. The Lord has commanded to be done to make atonement for you. At the entrance of the Ten of Meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days performing what the Lord has charged so that you do not die for so I've been commanded.

[24:02] And Aaron and his sons did all the things the Lord commanded my Moses. And then verse 1, on the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel. Alright, so the ordination process is pretty lengthy. They have to have their clothes consecrated. They have to have an oil poured upon them.

[24:20] They have to have a sacrifice, an ordination sacrifice done. And then the end of the ordination process is they have to stay outside for seven days. And then on the eighth day they're allowed to enter and begin the sacrificial process.

[24:32] And just quickly, if you look at all that together, if we were to do a very thorough work in chapter eight, which would be wonderful but we don't have time. You would see that in chapter eight everything is given in sets of seven. There are seven principal pieces of clothing. There are seven steps to ordination.

[24:51] There are seven days away from the tabernacle in order for the ordination to work, to count as true cleansing. All is in the seven. And then chapter nine verse one, forget about the chapters.

[25:04] They're not there in the original Bible. The next verse is, and then on the eighth day they stepped in. They were able. They were set apart. They were consecrated. Why?

[25:15] This eighth day movement is a theme all throughout the Bible. Seven days God created the world. And creation so far has been pretty broken, pretty bad, full of sin.

[25:35] And in this ordination ceremony what is being enacted is that the seven days of creation are being set behind them. And on the eighth day the new order is setting in.

[25:50] So the eighth day movement in the Bible is the movement of new creation. So if you pull up John's Gospel you will find seven sets of sevens. And the eighth moment in John's Gospel is John chapter 20 on the first day of the next week.

[26:09] And so the scholars will talk about how in John's Gospel everything Christ does is seven sevens until you get to John 20. And that's the new creation. That's the eighth day.

[26:20] And that's exactly the ordination ceremony that the priests undergo. And that means that this ordination is saying that we're re-instituting creation through the little biblical system. It's a new creation that's moving forward.

[26:33] So ordination is simply this. If we were to go through it a little longer, it's to be invested with the clothing of new creation. That's in some sense what the priestly ordination is. And so the priest wear a beautiful breastplate with stones all over it.

[26:51] And then you flip over to Revelation 19 and most of those stones are to the book of Revelation I say, and you find lots of those stones listed in the imagery of the new heavens and the new earth.

[27:02] And you know where you find those stones implicitly as well in the Garden of Eden, right? And they also put a crown. There's a crown placed on the priest head, a golden crown.

[27:14] Why? Because the Imago dei is the crown, the image bearer of creation. And so they're being set apart for new creation and re-imaged as if it's almost like Genesis went all over again.

[27:27] That's the point here of this ordination. And in the New Testament, it's quite different. We don't have any of that. We don't have in the New Covenant vestments. That's why in our tradition we don't. Lots of traditions do. But that's over-realized continuity that in Christ has been fulfilled.

[27:46] You don't crown a person in the New Covenant era as a priest set apart from the people because we're all priests and we're all restored in Christ to the full image of God.

[27:58] So all of this has been fulfilled in Jesus. And that means in our New Covenant system we have shepherds who are set apart as just examples amongst the priesthood of all believers.

[28:09] And we don't crown them. We don't crown them. We just lay hands on them as an act of prayer. That's what the New Testament commands. And so you can see in all that long list, Acts 6 and 13 and 1 Timothy 4 and 2 Timothy 1 and Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 5 and every single one of those passages, ordination is laid out and it said three things you can do in ordination. Fast, pray, lay hands and one fourth sometimes give the right hand to fellowship.

[28:39] It's so explicit in the New Testament. We're told exactly what to do. And we don't do this anymore because Jesus did all this for us. This ordination ceremony. Lastly, chapter 10, just one verse to read in chapter 10. And that's, now, Nadav and Abaihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censor and he put fire in his censor from the offering that had just been given. And he laid fire in his incense bowl.

[29:11] And he offered unauthorized or strange as the Hebrew word fire before the Lord. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed Nadav and Abaihu. And they died. So this section on priesthood ends with that. That's the full section in the Levitical system or the Levitical Leviticus.

[29:31] Let me ask you if you were to map out a story from creation Genesis one, two and three. And in Genesis one, you had the image of God made and you said the image of God, that's a priest.

[29:48] And that image of God is crowned and then Eve is made and the true crown of humanity is made in Eve, right? And then you were to say, now, if I were to tell you that story again in a different part of the Bible, what would you guess is the next thing that would happen?

[30:03] Image of God, Eve, the crown of creation made like mimicking this ordination ceremony or reconstituting this ordination ceremony. What's the next thing you expect?

[30:14] Okay, what comes after Genesis one, Genesis two, then you have what? Genesis three, you have a fall, right? And what you have here is the fall story of the Levitical Tabernacle, right? That's what you have. So new creation has been reconstituted.

[30:31] The eighth day has come. Could this be salvation? And they'd have an abahu mess it all up. Right, this is a fall story. And so we completely expect this. Now, in just 30 seconds, what is this strange fire?

[30:46] The best guess we have is that they tried to take a censor of fire to burn incense smoke and step into the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go once a year. So they tried to do what only the high priest can do on the day of atonement.

[31:02] And that's the best guess. Why? Because in Leviticus 16, we'll see this two times from now. When the day of atonement ritual was enacted, it preludes the day of atonement ritual in Leviticus 16 with the story of Nadab and Abahu again.

[31:16] So it's repeated in Leviticus 16. So it must be that that's what they tried to do. They tried to go into the Holy of Holies. And so they were consumed by the glory and presence of God and killed. And that means what do we learn? We learn this, that you can't approach God any way you want to.

[31:32] You don't get free will when it comes to how you approach God. The Bible, God comes and tells us what to do. In our worship space, you don't get to do whatever you want.

[31:46] We don't get to do the things we like and make us feel good. That's not the approach. Though great worship does make us feel good, right? But that's not how it works. We're told what to do. God tells us. He gives us the instructions on how to approach Him.

[32:01] And that's true in the New Covenant as well as the Old Covenant. And then the last thing we'll say and we'll be finished is, well, I've already said it. The Biblical theology of creation and fall. That's what we have here.

[32:13] A creation story, a new creation story and a fall story. So let me say this then rather. When you go to Hebrews chapter 9, verse 11 and 12 to give the New Testament the last word, one writer says this, Nate Abinabai who showed what happens when corrupt human flesh comes face to face with God's burning holiness.

[32:38] If the Lord is to live amid His people, there must be some means of dealing with human corruption, defilement and trespass. The measure will be the day of atonement.

[32:50] This is what Leviticus introduced at this pivotal moment. The Levitical system corrupted. How could it be restored? The day of atonement is the answer.

[33:01] And you flip over to Hebrews chapter 9, verses 11 and 12 and it says, In Jesus Christ, the way of the most holy place has now been opened. The day of atonement has now been fulfilled in Jesus. The curtain was torn in two.

[33:16] Alright, we're going to pray in a minute, but we've got four minutes. If there are any questions or thoughts or reflections, I know that that's a big thing that may be a big question and a big group to do.

[33:33] But can I ask if there are any from the past few weeks or anything from Leviticus? Yeah, day's spring. Another talking about the kind of threefold structure of the in and of the temple, the question that occurred to me, maybe you just have a thought for it, that the answer, or maybe it's, is there that kind of structure in heaven that these earthly beings kind of, or heaven?

[33:55] Yeah, so, well, actually, I think that what we have is in the threefold structure of the mountain of God that's recapitulated or fashion symbolized in the Tabernacle, is actually what you have is a symbol of the whole cosmos, the whole creaturely realm.

[34:14] So not just heaven, which is part of the creaturely realm, but earth and that which is under the earth. And so the Bible puts that in three domains typically. The heavens, the sky and the heavens, which is both what you see above and also an invisible realm, right?

[34:30] And then the land, that's how the Old Testament puts it, and then that which is under, or the water. And so there's a threefold structure to the way a Hebraic Hebrew mind sees everything phenomenologically through the lens of their just empirical experience.

[34:47] And so the temple of God is both a symbol of the Edenic mountain and the whole cosmos simultaneously.

[35:00] And so in this temple, what you have in the purification rights is a symbol that in new creation, God will purify the whole cosmos and make it His temple.

[35:13] That's the idea, which was the very goal of Eden, the very goal of Eden if Adam and Eve would have failed. So is that helpful? All right, we've got two minutes.

[35:27] We're down to two. We still have two full minutes. You can say a lot in two minutes. Any... No more? That's okay.

[35:39] We do need a priest. We have a priest. Yeah, we have a priest. But we have a priest whose work of sacrifice is finished.

[35:50] Right? So if we had 30 more minutes, you know, which we're not going to do, don't worry. We would talk about how the Lord's Supper is not a sacrifice.

[36:02] The Lord's Supper is not the breaking of Christ's body all over again. Hebrews 10 makes that so clear. Jesus has been sacrificed once.

[36:13] You don't continue to sacrifice Him in the Lord's Supper. Instead, the Lord's Supper is the meal where God says, now come and eat with me. The work has been done. It's a table, not an altar.

[36:24] Right? So we need a priest. Our priest, the High Priest intercedes for us at all moments because we still sin. Yeah, but His blood has been poured. Right? It's done.