The Former Ones #2

This morning, we're going to be returning to Deuteronomy chapter 10. We're going to read the same passage we read two weeks ago, which is verses 1 through 8. Last time I preached on this text, we focused on Moses remaking the tablets for the Ten Commandments. But toward the end of this passage, it records Aaron's death and also the Levites' appointment as priests to be those who carry the ark and all of the other sanctuary stuff. And so as we study this text, we're going to spend quite a bit of time talking about Aaron's death. In our text, it just says, then Aaron died. But we're going to talk about Aaron's death, why he died, what the circumstances were of it, and what we can learn from it. And then we're going to look at the Levites. Why were the Levites appointed as priests? We all know that they were appointed as the priests, but we're going to ask the question, why were the Levites appointed as priests? Did they draw straws? Did they cast lots? Did they flip a coin? Did they volunteer?

What happened? What I think we're going to find in both our study of Aaron's death and the appointment of the Levites is a need for humility amongst God's people. A humility that receives discipline just the way you'd want your kids to receive discipline, which is not freaking out and crying and running and putting their hands back there and saying, no, no, no. My hope is that God will help us and humble us to receive his discipline as well as his appointments in our lives with faith. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 1 through 8. At this time the Lord said to me, cut out for yourselves two tablets of stone like the former ones and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood for yourself. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered and you shall put them in the ark.

So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone like the former ones and went up on the mountain with the two tablets in hand. He wrote on the tablets like the former writing, the Ten Commandments which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made, and there they are as the Lord commanded me. Now the sons of Israel set out from Beroth, Benajikon to Masra.

There Aaron died, and there he was buried, and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his place. From there they set out to Gudgotha, and from Gudgotha to Jobatha, a land of brooks and water. And at that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to serve him, and to bless his name until this day. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now one of the things we have to straighten out here at the beginning is that Moses puts together things that look like they happened back to back, but actually happened 40 years apart. The remaking of the tablets was something that happened at the Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb shortly after the first tablets were broken. But Aaron's death was just a few months prior, maybe, maybe even less, to the retelling of the law that Moses is doing at this time in Deuteronomy.

And so at the beginning of the 40 years, the tablets were remade. And at the end of the 40 years, as they were making their way toward the promised land, Aaron passes away. And so those things did not happen back to back. They happened with quite a bit of time in between. And so we come to Aaron's death. Aaron died in Edom. and they were on their way up to the promised land. They had been wandering in the wilderness and wandering, and eventually the Lord says, okay, take this route. And earlier in Deuteronomy, he leads them through these foreign lands. And some of them they pass through peacefully, and some of them they fight, and some of them they pay for all the stuff that they use. But the Lord's bringing them up sort of the east side of Israel.

the land of Canaan, to where they'll eventually cross over. And it's on that trip that Aaron died. Aaron's death was not a unknown. It was coming. It's like Moses' death. You have to think of Moses knowing that the closer they get to the promised land, the sooner his death was coming. It became imminent. Because Moses was not allowed to go into the promised land. He was told because of having struck the rock bringing forth the water at Meribah, that he was not going to enter the promised land. What we may not remember is that that judgment also applied to Aaron. In Numbers 20, verse 12, it says, But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you have not believed me to treat me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them. He's speaking to both Aaron and Moses. And then just a few verses later in Numbers 20,

Verses 23 and 24, it says, Now, what do you think about that? Knowing the context that Moses got angry at the second request, if we can call it a request for water. The people are thirsty and they're grumbling and they're complaining. And previously, Moses had been told to strike the rock with the staff and water would come forth. But this time he strikes the rock in anger and water comes forth. And Aaron, Moses is told, it makes sense to us. Well, Moses, because of this, you can't go into the promised land. But that same judgment is leveled against Aaron. Have you ever gotten in trouble for something somebody else did? It doesn't seem appropriate, does it?

Does there ever seem to be a context in which you being judged or penalized or punished for something someone else did? We just never think that's right. The whole class is skipping recess today. What does the whole class do? They bellyache. Oh, that's not, what do you mean? I didn't do anything wrong. Maybe at the dinner table you say, no dessert. No dessert for anybody. I ate my food. We all have this hardwired into us, this idea that I will only be dealt with for my, My behavior. And there is some merit in that. But the thing that we often neglect to see is our own failures. What we want to do here is say, Aaron is being judged for Moses' sin. But I don't think that's actually the case. I think Aaron's being judged for Aaron's sin. What was Aaron's sin? We think, oh, well, he made the golden calf. And I go, right, he did make that golden calf. Though, as we read scripture,

that's not the reason given as to why he can't go into the promised land. In Numbers, it says, Aaron will be gathered to his people, which means he'll die. For he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel. So we're given a timeframe. He's going to die before they go into the land of Israel because you rebelled against my command at the waters of Meribah. And this is spoken to both Moses and to Aaron so that you, applies to both of them because you both rebelled against my command at the waters of Meribah. Now, what did Aaron do? Someone venture a guess. What did Aaron do? Say what you're actually thinking right this second. He did, he said he didn't speak up. What? Nothing. That was actually the problem. Aaron did nothing. That was his sin. Have you ever sinned by doing nothing? Why is it a sin?

To do nothing. Olivia, say it louder. Because you're not paying attention to God. And sometimes God doesn't tell us just not to do things. Many, many of his commands are actually to positively go do things. And when we fail to go do those things, we do nothing when we should have done something. Sin is often put into two different, there's two general categories of sin. One is a sin of commission. And the other is a sin of omission, okay? A sin of commission means you did something you weren't supposed to do, okay? The kids are in the house, they're playing, and they take the ball and they throw it. It bounces off their sibling's head, right? They did something they were told not to do. At my house, you're not supposed to throw things in the house. It happens, but you're not supposed to do it.

That's a sin of commission. You're doing something you ought not to have done. What's a sin of omission? Honey, clean your room before I get home. Set the table for dinner. You come home, no balls were thrown, no hair was pulled, no nothing was broken, but the thing that was supposed to have been done wasn't done. That's a sin of omission. You didn't do what you were supposed to do. So what was Aaron's responsibility at Meribah? He's just supposed to stand there or sit there on his hands and just go along. And whenever Moses wanted to say something to the people, Aaron was, okay, I'll say the thing. Didn't he have more responsibility than that? Wasn't it his job to support Moses in his work? What does a good helper do?

What did Aaron, what did, we'll use Aaron and Moses as an example. What did Aaron do when there was, no, I got this backwards. I'm thinking of Joshua. I'm mixing up the arms being held up. Aaron's job was to help Moses to speak for him. And I think at times when he was supposed to speak for Moses, do you ever think he said, Moses, we aren't going to say that. Be a good editor, right? That's what a good editor is. They say, no, no, we're not going to say it like that. So at Meribah, what should he have done with Moses? He saw that his brother, remember they're brothers. He saw that his brother was angry, frustrated with the people. Should he have just sat there and went, well, Moses is the leader. I guess we'll just see what Moses does. What should he have done? He should have said, no, Moses, don't do it. He should have restrained his brother. He should have kept Moses from sinning.

Now, they didn't know the consequence of this action. And that's most of the time when we fall into sin. We don't think that there's ever consequences for our actions. We just think, I'm upset. And so we act on being upset. And we strike rocks like Moses struck rocks. But oftentimes there's people who love us and who are our brother, who are our keeper, who just sit idly by and watch us. And they have sin too in it. You see? Aaron's sin was he didn't do what he should have done. He should have stopped Moses. We see this example, an example of this with Abigail and David. Remember David's out, got his men, they're keeping the shepherds and they're out there caring for the sheep. And eventually he comes to Nabal and he says, hey, we've been working on your behalf for quite a while. Would you feed us? Would you take care of us? You owe us, basically. And Nabal says, I'm not doing a doggone thing for you. And what's David say he's going to go do? Well, my sword can be used to protect and my sword can also be used to judge. And now we're going to move to judgment. I'm going to come kill your butt. And so David and his men set off to go take Nabal out. Abigail heard about it. Nabal's wife, what'd she do? She just sat on her hands and says, well, this is the men's world and the men will just do what the men do.

Now, I'm saying that on purpose to you guys because you wives think that it's not your job to get in the way of your husband sinning, and it is. Nabal was a fool, and David was about to act corruptly. And Abigail said, no, this isn't good. And so she quickly, she gathers up all kinds of food, takes it to David and says, here, think better of your actions. Don't do what you are about to do. So would it have been a sin of Abigail's if she had done nothing? Well, we don't want to say it would have been because then all of a sudden we're like, wait a minute. There's a whole new category of things that I have to be aware of and I have to initiate, not just respond to. But it was sin for Aaron not to restrain Moses. He should have stopped him and he didn't do it. And that's why he was judged.

And so when we read these simple words, then there Aaron died, we should go look and see, well, what did Aaron do? Why did Aaron have to die? The answer is Aaron was passive when he should have been active. I think a lot of the Christian life today is thought of in terms of, I just need to not do bad stuff. And we think being a good Christian is just not doing all the bad stuff that the world does. And even if that was the full definition of what being a Christian is, we fall short of it, but we've left so much work undone that is only for Christians to do. And so as I was preparing and then just thinking about my own life and about you guys and your families and our church, and I think we have, this is an area I think we're very weak. I think many of us...

consider our Christian lives just to be making sure we don't do the wrong thing, but we don't give any thought to doing the right thing. Unless it's forced upon us, then we hope that we'll do the right thing in the moment. But to positively go and engage in doing a good thing, a right thing, a Christian thing, we do nothing. It doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be that way. And what I'm saying is not that all of us have only ever failed in this and have never done anything. that we ought to have done. But this is something we have to give real consideration to. Our lives are not just supposed to be free of the most egregious, blatant sins that our world loves. Our lives are actually supposed to be, it's like if you were to think of it as a house, it's like the whole goal is to have a house that has nothing in it. No, no.

No nothing in it. No furniture and no people and no life and no smells and nothing. We're just going to make sure none of that stuff gets in it. And all we do is go around washing and cleaning and taking our shoes off and just making sure we don't leave any mark anywhere on the walls or the mirrors and the doorknobs and the floors. Everything's just like, no one is here. Sterile. Do you want to live in that house? Well, if you move into it, you want it to be that way in the beginning, right? But then you want to move in and you want to like put all your stuff in it and you want to paint it and you want to decorate it and you want to organize it and you want to fill it with things that you appreciate and that you love and that they're meaningful. But when we go outside of our homes, I think that we are just completely hands off. You see an argument in real life, not on social media,

In real life, and we're like, see a kid misbehaving? See a husband being selfish? See him staring at a woman? See a wife complaining about her kids? We don't have anything to say. We don't say anything. We just keep to ourselves. Just like Aaron did. We teach our kids to do that. If they go to school, their job is to just not be bad. And as long as they're not bad, and they don't get in trouble, then they're doing a good job. But we've only done half of it. And I'd venture to say we've probably done the easier half. Part of the reasons our phones and social media are so tempting to us is because you don't have to do anything. How many of us think of our phones or the internet as a place to work, a place to produce? Now, I know some of you work on computers, and so you have, at least for part of your day, a tool.

But for most of the time, it's just a toy. You just have a really cool toy. And you can talk about how many hours. I mean, you wouldn't talk about it because there's some idea of it being shameful. But how many hours a day you're on your phone? How many hours of podcasts you listen to? Or music or whatever it is you listen to? Maybe you listen to books. Good, that's better. But in a real, tangible, practical, flesh and blood world, what do you do? Do we live like Aaron? Aaron's a warning to us. Aaron was judged severely for doing nothing when he should have done something. And who knows if Moses would have listened to him. David listens to Abigail, right? He says, you saved me from thank you. But sometimes I think that when we're young, we might venture out into positive Christian behavior. And I don't give any credit for doing it online. In real life, I might actually talk to somebody about Jesus or about their sins or something like that. And we get pushed back and we're like, oh, that's not the way to do it. And so we learn from a very young age, that's not how we ought to behave. Those aren't the things we should do. We'll pray for them, but we won't.

talk to them. And so we do half our work and leave the other half undone. Our school, our kids' school, is looking for a head administrator. The school's like 800 kids, and they're doing a construction project, and the person who's going to be hired is going to have to have considerable experience and skills to take on those work, right? And so one of the things the board did was they sent out a survey, and I haven't finalized it, but my wife and I are Filling out the survey. What do you, what, you know, there's five or six questions. It's not much. Take these different character traits and rank them from highest to lowest. Did you guys get it? Dow's, Barnard's? Maybe your wives got it. My wife got it. I didn't get it. And then there's these questions about what is, what is, what does the school do well that they need to capitalize on? And then there's this question, what does the school do? I mean, they didn't say poorly because.

We would never speak that simple clearly. Yes, in what areas could we redouble our efforts and improve? And then there's, and so you answer, those are all the easy questions, right? And then there's this one at the bottom that says, is there any other things you think we should consider with regard to fulfilling this position? What would you write? I mean, it's like nothing, right? Just submit, we're done. But there is this thought in my head, and I've actually said it to one of the board members. And I thought, am I going to write that? Because if I write that, I'm marking myself as a what? A what? Sexist troublemaker. Because what do I think? I think he needs to be a man. I think he needs to be a man. The amount of authority that that person is going to have to exercise over many men in that school and teenage boys and the amount of fortitude they're going to have to have to say no.

If they're to have any leadership and the schools to grow, that person's going to have to have their forehead set like Flint because they're coming into an unstable situation. And so I'm like, do I write it? I could do nothing. I could write nothing. And we were looking at it and Canaan, I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, I jokingly, I didn't say what I thought. I just said, what do you guys think I should write? And Canaan says, how'd you say it? A man. He's like, just say a man. And he just laughs and says, because he wants me to take the heat. Right? It's an example of how easy and how often we just do nothing when we should say something. I actually already had a thought in my head that I should write that. And I was like, how can I write it in such a way that I won't be just a stench to people? And maybe there's nicer ways to say it.

There's no way I'm going to say that and escape being accused of being a sexist, a misogynist. So I could just write nothing. I could just forget to submit the survey, right? How often do you do nothing? How often do you see the something and you go, no, no. How often do you go, kids, do you go tell your parents there's a problem with one of your siblings instead of dealing with it yourself? How often do you wives? Complain to your husbands about the kids instead of dealing with the issue yourself. How often do you husbands see a weakness in the home and tell your wife to take care of it so you don't have to? How often do you say in your heart, it's not my job? Remember that sterile house? It's not how our lives ought to be. Aaron, who knows what he would have had to say to Moses. And you can even sympathize with Moses' anger.

And you can sympathize with Aaron's fear of the people. God really does care that his people build something, that they try. Paul tells us, he says, I planted it and Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. Our lives ought to be marked by planting and watering. How many of you have planted a garden and then it like, and so what do you do the next year? You just don't plant a garden. Dan and Wendy, they... They work hard at it, and they fight the fall every year, like the fall of man, not the fall of a season, like the bugs and the bacteria and the rabbits and the deer, all of that. They just fight it. But many of us are like, no, it's just, it's not economically prudent to do all of this work.

And so we have many responsibilities and duties we choose to leave undone. It marks our lives that we leave the work undone. In the hymn, We Have Not Known Thee As We Ought, in verse 4, it says, We have not served thee as we ought. Alas, the duties left undone. The work with little fervor wrought. The battles lost are scarcely won. It's just a minimalist mentality. I will only do what's required of me under pressure. Not even what's required of me generally, but like what will be checked up on to see if I did it. That is all I'll do. That is not how Christians ought to live. And so Aaron was not allowed to go into the promised land. He was judged severely. And so in Numbers 20, we read a little bit earlier.

We're going to read the account numbers of his death. It says, this is verses 25 through 29. It says, take Aaron and his son Eliezer and bring them up to Mount Hor and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eliezer. So Aaron will be gathered to his people and will die there. So Moses is just as the Lord had commanded. And they went up to Mount Hor and the site of all the congregation after Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eliezer. Aaron died there on the mountaintop. Then Moses and Eliezer came down from the mountain. When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron 30 days. Was Aaron's death an honorable death? I mean, he wasn't left to be with his body exposed, but he was like on death row, right? Like knowing that his day was coming.

And now we come to the mountain and the Lord says to Moses, take him up there and strip him of his garments, which was all of his honor and his respect. He was the high priest, right? And it's stripped away from him and given to his son. And then he dies. And he was done publicly. All of the nation knew what was going on. All the congregation, it says of Israel, was watching the judgment of God being executed against Aaron. And so when they saw that it had happened, that he had died, they all wept. God publicly judged Aaron for his sins. He stripped him of his priestly attire, was given to his son. So here's another question for you. When sin is to be dealt with, why do we demand that it be dealt with privately? Or not at all, really. A lot of times we think it'll be dealt with privately, but really it's just not dealt with at all. Aaron's sin was not dealt with privately.

He was silent when he should have acted, and then the judgment against him was done in the sight of all of the people. Why do we think that all discipline should be done where no one can benefit from it? Is that a weird thing to say? People would benefit from it? So Paul tells us in the pastoral epistles to rebuke the elders, those who are disobedient publicly, so that the others might see and fear. But we have an aversion to that. We ignore the sins. We excuse them. We justify it. And then when judgment finally comes, we get offended instead of warned, thinking that something bad is happening, something wrong is taking place. We do this because we don't want to see our sins dealt with publicly or really at all. And we think, if I don't pay attention to you, then I'll be left alone. It's why we don't speak up when we should. Who knows what Aaron was thinking when Moses was angry? Maybe he was afraid of the people.

Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was not paying attention. Who knows? What he should have done was restrained his brother, and so he suffered for keeping quiet. So here's the next question. Did Aaron go to heaven? When we're dealing with sin, and we're dealing with someone not allowed to go into the promised land, and we're dealing with their sin being judged publicly, it's a reasonable question to ask, right? The Bible doesn't actually tell us definitively he goes to heaven or hell. And we have a couple of other Well, many, but a few I'll mention. Cases where surprising things are said about people are done or we're left with cliffhangers. Adam, we're left with a cliffhanger. In the garden, did Adam and Eve go to heaven? Well, yes, they went to heaven. Like, well, it doesn't say they went to heaven. But we infer from God killing the animal and making a covering for their nakedness that God was covering over their sins and their nakedness and that they were saved.

There are people that we think they would never go to heaven, and yet there they are, Samson, Lot. And so with Aaron, we read that his sins were public, his judgment was public, that he was gathered to his people, but that's inconclusive. He was not allowed to go into the promised land because of his sin at Meribah. But we also know that Moses was under the same judgment and suffered it just a little while later. But we know that Moses went to heaven. How do we know that Moses went to heaven? Because of the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah come down and converse with Jesus. And we're like, well, he's come down. We're told God buried Moses, his body himself. And so we're like, so Moses is under the same judgment. Moses went to heaven, but we're not given the same confirmation with Aaron. Some of the good things that went along with Aaron were that his son continued in his place. He wasn't stripped of his priesthood.

I mean, he was stripped of his priesthood, but his house wasn't stripped of his priesthood. You think of King Saul. His house, the kingdom was stripped from his house and was given to another. That didn't happen with Aaron. And so we have to learn. I'm going through all of these details, not just to fill up time. I'm going through all of these details to say, you have to be a student of scripture and you have to think about all of these types of things that are going on. Because we just want to deal quickly and say, oh, well, I'm sure he went to heaven. He was a priest and, you know.

Yeah, but there's more to it than that. How is it that God would take someone and put them into a position of great authority and responsibility, then they fail with the golden calf, which if we were to say, which was the greater sin, the golden calf or the silence at Meribah, we'd probably say the golden calf seems to be the bigger failure in Aaron's life, but it's not the one that's cited as the reason for him not being able to enter the promised land. And then God judges him, and then he dies publicly, and then we have to go, well, okay, so it seems like you could go either way. You're like, well, God seems to be just pulling all the things away from Aaron that he gave him because of his sins. But then there's these things that Eliezer gets to keep, and he was Moses' brother, and Moses went to heaven, and God doesn't do things the way we do them. In our lives, everything's neat and tidy and linear.

And it just flows from one end to the other, or at least we want it to work that way. But here's a severe judgment on a man for an apparently minor, as we would consider it, sin. We have to get down to this level of scrutiny because we need to be this way with our own hearts. If someone asks you, do you believe in Jesus? Well, yep. But if you actually think about the question, like, do you fully believe in Jesus? Or in what areas is your faith in Jesus deficient? Which you could interpret the question, do you believe in Jesus in those ways? We want big questions, big simple questions with big simple answers, but we don't grow in holiness that way. We don't grow by just saying, oh yeah, no, it's fine. It's good. I'm good. We have to drill down into our own hearts and examine our own motives and see what's in there and watch how how we're inclined and where our temptations lie and where God's been merciful to us and where we're weak and where we're strong and where we're fearful and where we're tired. I think Aaron went to heaven. I think God was exceedingly merciful to him. I think Aaron was raised up as a lesson, along with the many people that we didn't read about at Meribah who were struck down in that moment. Paul tells us that they were all given to us as an example.

that we might learn from them and not be like them. And he gives this example where Aaron was failed as the evidence, as the story to teach us not to be foolish. And so to be a Christian is to live a life where you're building something. Build your home, build your marriage, build your family. And as much beyond that as you're capable of doing without neglecting those other things. I don't think you men should be content simply to be a husband and a father. I also don't think you should neglect being a husband and a father to build something else. So live in that tension for the next 50 years with me and everyone else. That's the difficulty, is figuring out how to be a faithful husband, how to be a faithful father, and how to do something else too, as much as you can. To work to the best of your ability to put into the into the world every talent that was given to you, but not to neglect your wife and kids for that other one. It's a lifetime of work. If you throw your hands up in the air and you go, I'll just do what's comfortable to me. I'll just do what's easy to me. I'll just do what everyone else is doing. It may not go well for you when you stand before the Lord. So that's Aaron. How about the Levites? It says at that time also, the time where Aaron was

The Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant to the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to serve him and to bless him, bless his name until this day. I asked earlier in the intro, why the Levites? They had already been appointed, but here they're given the particular task of carrying all of the furniture and the temple and all of this, not the temple, the tabernacle, and all this stuff, and everything's got these rings and these poles, and they have to carry it on their shoulder. And this is their particular job. Why were they chosen? Were the Levites, it seems to be of all of the work to be done, it seems like honorable work compared to what all the rest of the Israelites got to do. All the rest of them just kind of took care of themselves, but the Levites were given this other task, an honorable task. Were the Levites better than their brothers? They really weren't. Though they do commend themselves when the tablets were broken.

It says in Exodus 32, when Moses broke the tablets the first time, this is Exodus 32 verses 25 to 29, it says, Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Whoever is for the Lord, come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him. He said to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Every man of you, put his sword upon his thigh and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp and kill every man his brother and every man his friend and every man his neighbor. So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed and about 3,000 men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, dedicate yourselves today to the Lord for every man has been against his son and against his brother in order that he may bestow a blessing upon you today. And so after Moses came down and he saw all of the idolatry,

there's a judgment coming and he calls, raises an army basically. And it's the sons of Levi who answer the call. And they come and they take their sword and there's, I don't have time to go into the details of it, but he says, go through the whole camp and basically call out all of the troublemakers, all of the ones who initiated and instigated this idolatry. And there's about 3,000 of them that they killed with a sword hand to hand, their relatives. And at the end, he tells them, to dedicate themselves to the Lord in order that the Lord might bestow a blessing upon them. So they killed their brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, those who were wicked, and the Lord blessed them for it. Blessed them with, in this text anyway, with carrying the ark and the other things in the tabernacle. We'll read next week about the other things that pertain to the way of life for the Levites. They weren't given any land. We'll talk about that next week. But these were seen as a blessing.

a kindness of God to the Levites. Not because they were better, not because they hadn't given themselves to sin or weren't sinners themselves. God chose them the same way he chose Abraham. God chose them the same way he chose you or me. Not because they're better, not because they were more obedient or less sinful. You wonder if any of the other tribes were jealous. They probably weren't because they got land. They said, do we want to serve the Lord and not have a land and an inheritance, or do we want to carry the holy things? I think most of us, at least fleshly, in our flesh would say, I'd rather have land. I'd rather have the wealth. I'm very thankful for those who do that other more holy work, but I'll have the money. So why were the Levites singled out? I think they were singled out to teach them, being Israel, very simple obedience. God just put a boundary up. There was nothing special about the Levites. He just put a boundary up and he says, you,

Do this. Do you ever do that with your kids? They're all sitting there. Maybe you can say, you clean up. They're like, why me? Why do your parents? Parents, why do you do that? Is it just because you have it out for that kid? It's because they're the lazy one? It's because they're the most competent one? Why do you do it? You were going to say it, Abram. Why do you do it? Somebody's got to do it. And what does that lesson teach that child in that moment? It gives them an opportunity. To obey. It helps them to learn obedience. And isn't it amazing how quickly they're like, I did it last night. And you did a good job last night. It was a relief to me. And you get to do it again. And all the rest of the kids are like, yeah, see, if I just don't wash the dishes very well, then I won't. And then the parents are like, no, you gotta go wash the dishes for a week because you don't know how to wash dishes. And it's like, parents are always just making these arbitrary declarations. Seemingly arbitrary, right?

But it's to teach lessons. It's to teach obedience. And so that's what God's doing with the Levites. Levites, you're going to carry this stuff. What's that mean? It means it's your job. What's it mean? None of the rest of you can touch this stuff. You know how hard it is to obey when someone tells you something really simple? Like Paul describes it as like, I didn't know what sin was until the law came in. And then the law came in and I just was like, I don't want to do anything I'm told. And so the Levites, if you want to know why the Levites were given this work, it was simply to teach everyone to obey and do what they were told. You're to do this and you're to do that. You may not do this and you may not do that. The Levites weren't able to go to the Simeonites and say, hey, you want to carry the stuff today? It's really cool how kids do with their chores to their younger siblings, you know. It's just meant to teach obedience. That each one would do the thing that was taught.

are given to them. I'm not going to talk about the ceremonial law or meat and being unclean. I'm out of time. It takes humility to study Aaron. It takes humility to carry the Ark of the Covenant. And that's the lesson for us today is humility. To examine ourselves, to look at what God's called us to do, and then to do it. To not excuse it and not make excuses about it and not talk and talk and talk and talk while we do nothing. It's a call to action. Humility that you might act. That's it. Let's pray.