Saturday, July 28, 2012

Assigning the Duties of the Priests (Num. 3:1-4)


12/2/2008 9:55 AM



SPIRITUAL DIARY



My Worship Time                              Focus:           Assigning the duties of the priests



Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Numbers 3:1-4



            Message of the verses:  “1 ¶ now these are the records of the generations of Aaron and Moses at the time when the LORD spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai. 2 These then are the names of the sons of Aaron: Nadab the firstborn, and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.  3 These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the anointed priests, whom he ordained to serve as priests.  4 But Nadab and Abihu died before the LORD when they offered strange fire before the LORD in the wilderness of Sinai; and they had no children. So Eleazar and Ithamar served as priests in the lifetime of their father Aaron.”

            This begins a new section in Dr. Wiersbe’s book that will take me through chapters three and four which are chapters that are dedicated to the Levites, the men who served the Lord by assisting the priests in their ministry at the tabernacle.

            The first reference is the assigning of the priests and is verses one through four.  While studying in the book of Leviticus and in chapter ten I read about the untimely death of Aaron’s sons Nadad and Abihu who were killed by the Lord when they were offering strange fire in the tabernacle.  There is a possibility that these two were drunk and that is why they got the fire from the wrong place in the tabernacle and that is why the Lord had killed them, for they knew exactly what it was that they were suppose to do and did not do it.  In Acts chapter five there is a story of a couple who lied to the Lord and were killed.  The point is that both of these stories took place at the beginning of a dispensation and so people could get the point that God wanted He children to follow the rules that He had given them to follow. 

            Dr. Wiersbe points out that Eleazar was the chief priest over the Levites and would eventually replace his father as high priest and that Ithamar had received the offerings for the building of the tabernacle and was in charge of the Gershonites and Merarites.  These would be the assignments of these two priests.



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  “I began my Bible reading in the book of Revelations this morning and was reminded that I too am a priest and that means that I too have duties to perform before the Lord and one of those duties is to make intersession to the Lord on behalf of others, including my family and my church family along with the praises and requests that I have for myself.  These are important functions that all believers have as were the functions that the priests in the OT had to do.  In many ways there jobs were a lot harder than the one that I have and that is because they had to slay all of the sacrifices that pointed to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ when He died on the cross.  I can look back at His sacrifice and am thankful beyond anything that He did that for me.





My Steps of Faith for Today:



1.    Give myself to the Lord as a living sacrifice to worship Him and to serve Him today.

2.    Trust the Lord to guide my path today.

3.    Trust the Lord to teach me and for me to learn contentment.

4.    Put on my Spiritual Armor this morning.

5.    Ask the Lord to search my heart for hidden sin so that I may confess it to Him.



Memory verses for the week:                                  Romans 6:1-9



  1. What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
  2. May it never be!  How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
  3. Or do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
  4. Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
  5. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, so we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
  6. knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin,
  7. for he who has died is freed from sin.
  8. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
  9. knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.



12/2/2008 10:30 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment