This whole chapter is God's instruction to Moses about how to fill the hands of the priests, as in the expression "You've got your hands full." To ordain a priest is to fill his hands — to give him plenty and more than enough to do. My wife and I have five children, and we hear it all the time: "You've got your hands full." Presumably when people saw Aaron trying to wrestle yet another bull into the sacrificial position, they would say "You've got your hands full." In short, the core idea of ordination as summarized in the Hebrew name for it is that ordination means you're commissioned to do a lot of work. The ordained priest is a hard-working man. Doing everything necessary to maintain the presence of God among His people is not a sinecure. Aaron did not work merely one hour per week; the junior priests did not spend most of their time watching TV or dusting the sanctuary furniture.
In our polity, it is axiomatic that there is no ordination without call to a definite work. Unless a church or mission society or school has called you to pastoral work in their midst, you cannot be ordained. This is not only a very wise principle; it is a very biblical principle. Indeed, as we will see the chapter emphasizes the ordination to a definite work by closing with a list of the priests' main tasks — and indeed, as we saw last Sunday evening, the previous chapter also implies quite a bit about the priests' tasks. The priests don't play. They work.
This chapter shows us that both priests and altar were set apart — ordained — for the religious work of maintaining God's presence among His people.
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Caleb Nelson grew up in Ft. Collins, CO. Born into a Christian home, where he eventually became the eldest of 11 children, he has been a lifelong Presbyterian. He professed faith at the age of six, and was homeschooled through high school. He then attended Patrick Henry College...
