Exodus 30:17–21

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis through Leviticus. So glad to be with you today. We are at Exodus chapter 30, middle of the chapter. Why don't we have some coffee?
We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray. Father, you are an amazing God, generous and loving, gracious and kind. Lord, we pray that you would please help us to follow after you. We pray that your Holy Spirit would teach us this morning. and that we would walk before you in holiness in Jesus's name. Amen. All right, so we are at Exodus chapter 30, verses 17 through 21. So kind of a shorter passage for us to look at today. Exodus chapter 30, verses 17 through 21. Let's get into it.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base also of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it. For Aaron and his son shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. When they go into the tabernacle of meeting or when they come out near the altar to minister to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, they shall wash with water, lest they die. So they shall wash their hands and their feet, lest they die. And it shall be a statute forever to them, to him and his descendants throughout their generations.
Well, we need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what do we call it to do, right? So what's this about? Well, this is this bronze, our translation says a basin, right? Or a laver, it's in other translations called a basin. You might think of it as like a sink, a bath, right?
There's an area before the holies, right? So in the courtyard of the tabernacle, You have the altar, and then you have the basin. And the high priests, every time before they're supposed to go into the holies, when they're making sacrifice, they are to go to the basin and wash. They're to wash their hands, and they're to wash their feet.
Now, one commentator on this talks about this being for hygiene and holiness, and that's fine, right? So yeah, could there be practical benefits from this? Maybe, maybe, right? They need to wash their hands to get the dirt off and wash off any microbes in their feet, right? They're ministering barefoot in the tabernacle, and so in God's palace, Tabernacle, they're not to have any type of, you know, any type of dirt, contamination of the food. And people go on and on about this, you know, hepe and all this other stuff. That might be the case. But nothing about hygiene is actually mentioned here. What is mentioned is holiness. This idea of purity.
This idea that the priests were not allowed to come to them. They come to God, not them, come to God however they wanted. But the priests had to be ritually pure. Every time they brought a sacrifice, they had to realize and recognize that they were unclean. They were not holy in and of themselves. In their being, they are not intrinsically holy. They're not intrinsically pure.
But God is. And you don't just stroll into God's presence. You don't just walk into the president's, you know, the Oval Office with dirty hands and mud on your boots. I know you're going to go see the sovereign of the universe. You're going to be clean. The push and the pressure of this is that it is God who is holy and to approach him means you must need to you need to be pure. And so. What does this teach us, right? Well, it teaches us that God takes His holiness seriously. Two times, whenever there's a repetition in Hebrew, it means emphasis, right? And it's emphasized twice.
This is not just a little command for Aaron and his sons, but what does God say? When they go into the tabernacle at meeting, or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, they shall wash with water, lest they die. And then in the same breath, so they shall wash their hands and their feet, lest they die. Two times, two times in two sentences back to back, lest they die, lest they die.
God takes this seriously if they're going to come into his presence they must come with purity now that's fine that's great and I'm gonna just go ahead and say in my Bible at verse 20 and verse 21 underlined But how does that impact our lives? What's the covenant truth of this? What are we called to do? How does this point us to Christ? That's a big thing in the Old Testament. Whenever we're reading the Old Testament, how does this point us to Christ?
Well, none of us are intrinsically holy. We need the washing of the spirit. We need the waters of regeneration. We need to be clean. We need to be baptized. We need to be those who are cleansed not just outwardly but inwardly. We need to be those who have the blood of Jesus Christ wash away our sins. We need to be those who recognize that we, by and of ourselves, are not pure.
But God is gracious and He gives us, He gives us cleansing. He does it by His Holy Spirit, not just outwardly, right? Not just washing of hands and washing of feet. That never made anybody holy truly, but He washes our hearts. He cares for us to bring us into his presence. To love him forever. And he provides the cleansing. He provides the purity. He does it for us. Now, we are to live holy lives, right? This is part of what he does, right? If he purifies our hearts, then we live more pure lives. But in our lives, we're never going to be perfect. But Jesus is. And Jesus purifies your conscience. Jesus purifies your life. The Holy Spirit washes you and renews your spirit. So thank God this morning.
What are you called to do? All of this with a whole sacrificial system was meant to point us to Jesus Christ, to a finished work. That we could trust God. That we could love Him. that we can know we have fellowship with him through his son and by his spirit. Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much that you are holy, but you are also gracious. Father, we can't just stroll into your presence, but you have sent your son. Lord, we pray that we would not take that lightly. that we would love you and look to you. Thank you, Father, for all you have done in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may you trust in Jesus Christ. May you be washed by the water of regeneration, renewed by the Holy Spirit. And may you walk in his ways because he loves you. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.