The Weight and Wonder of the Holy Text: Numbers 18:1-7
Introduction: Authority and Accountability
We live in a generation that is allergic to authority and despises accountability. Every man wants to be his own pope, his own king, and his own god. The spirit of our age is the spirit of Korah, who in Numbers 16 gathered a company together against Moses and Aaron and said, "You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and Yahweh is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of Yahweh?" This is the perennial cry of democratic rebellion against the appointed order of God. It sounds pious, but it is rotten to the core. It is the lie of the serpent in the garden, whispering, "You shall be as gods."
In the previous chapters, God responded to this rebellion with seismic and fiery judgment. The earth swallowed Korah and his cronies, and fire from Yahweh consumed the 250 men offering incense. When the congregation grumbled the next day, a plague broke out and killed another 14,700. To cap it all off, God caused Aaron's rod to bud, blossom, and bear ripe almonds overnight, a miraculous sign to end all grumbling about who God had chosen for the priesthood. You would think the point was made. But our God is not just a God of judgment; He is a God of order. He does not just tear down rebellion; He builds up His kingdom with careful, glorious structure.
So, in our text today, God speaks directly to Aaron. The dust has settled, the judgment is complete, and the authority of the priesthood has been vindicated. And what is God's first word to the man who holds this high office? It is not a word of congratulation. It is not a word of privilege. It is a word of weight. It is a word of responsibility. God's message is this: with great authority comes great accountability. With high privilege comes heavy liability. This is a principle that runs like a steel cable through all of Scripture, and it is a principle our soft and effeminate generation has utterly forgotten. We want the privileges of office without the burdens, the honor without the liability, the crown without the cross. But God does not deal in such flimsy realities. He is building a house, a sanctuary, and it is a place of both glorious proximity and terrifying danger.
This passage lays out the divine architecture of ministry. It establishes concentric circles of holiness, responsibility, and service, all designed to do one thing: to protect the people from the consuming fire of God's holiness and to allow them to worship Him. It is about boundaries, duties, and gifts. And in all of it, we see a stunning picture of the work of our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone bears the ultimate guilt and who gives His people as a gift to the church.
The Text
So Yahweh said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your father’s household with you shall bear the guilt in connection with the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear the guilt in connection with your priesthood. But bring near with you also your brothers, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may be joined with you and minister to you, while you and your sons with you are before the tent of the testimony. And they shall thus keep your responsibility and the responsibility of all the tent, but they shall not come near to the furnishings of the sanctuary and the altar, so that neither they nor you will die. And they shall be joined with you and keep the responsibility of the tent of meeting, for all the service of the tent; but an outsider may not come near you. So you shall keep the responsibility of the sanctuary and the responsibility of the altar, so that there will no longer be wrath on the sons of Israel. And behold, I Myself have taken your brothers the Levites from among the sons of Israel; they are a gift to you, given to Yahweh, to perform the service for the tent of meeting. But you and your sons with you shall keep your priesthood in everything that concerns the altar and inside the veil, and you are to perform service. I am giving you the priesthood as a bestowed service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”
(Numbers 18:1-7 LSB)
The Burden of Headship (v. 1)
We begin with the sobering charge to Aaron.
"So Yahweh said to Aaron, 'You and your sons and your father’s household with you shall bear the guilt in connection with the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear the guilt in connection with your priesthood.'" (Numbers 18:1)
After the rebellion, the people were terrified. They cried out, "Behold, we are perishing, we are destroyed, we are all destroyed! Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of Yahweh, must die. Are we to perish completely?" God's answer in this chapter is, "No, because I have appointed a guilt-bearer." Notice the principle of headship. The guilt connected with the sanctuary falls on Aaron and his household. This is covenantal reality. God deals with us through representatives. Adam was our representative head in the garden, and when he sinned, he bore the guilt, and that guilt was imputed to all his posterity. In the same way, Aaron is the head of the priesthood, and he is responsible.
What does it mean to "bear the guilt"? It means to be liable for any and all profanation of the holy space. If a procedure is done incorrectly, if an unclean person stumbles into the court, if a sacrifice is tainted, the buck stops with Aaron. He is the firewall. He stands between the holy God and the sinful people. This is not a cushy job. This is not a corner office with a view. This is the most dangerous place in all of Israel. Proximity to God is a glorious thing, but it is also a hazardous thing. The sanctuary is like a spiritual nuclear reactor. It is the source of immense power and blessing for the nation, but if you handle it improperly, it will kill you. Aaron is the chief engineer, and he and his sons are responsible for any leaks, any contamination, any meltdowns.
This is the opposite of our modern leadership ethos, which is all about deflecting blame and "sharing responsibility" until no one is actually responsible for anything. In God's economy, leadership means taking the hit. It means when something goes wrong in your house, Dad, you bear the iniquity. When something goes wrong in the church, elders, you bear the iniquity. This is the weight of glory. You cannot have the authority of the office without the liability that comes with it.
The Gift of Assistance (v. 2-4)
Aaron bears the ultimate responsibility, but God graciously provides him with help.
"But bring near with you also your brothers, the tribe of Levi... that they may be joined with you and minister to you... And they shall thus keep your responsibility... but they shall not come near to the furnishings of the sanctuary and the altar, so that neither they nor you will die." (Numbers 18:2-3)
Here we see the distinction between the priests (Aaron's sons) and the Levites (the rest of the tribe). The Levites are brought near to "minister to you," Aaron. They are assistants to the priests. They are to handle the logistics of the tabernacle, the maintenance, the transport, the setup. They guard the perimeter. They keep the charge of the tent. But there is a hard boundary they cannot cross. They must "not come near to the furnishings of the sanctuary and the altar." That is the priests' domain. If a Levite, a man from the holy tribe, touches the altar, he dies. And not only him, but you, the priests, also die for failing to guard the holy things.
God's house is a house of order, with clear lines of authority and responsibility. This is not arbitrary bureaucracy. These boundaries are matters of life and death. The modern church has largely forgotten this. We have blurred the lines, erased the distinctions, and treated the worship of the holy God as a casual, informal affair where anyone can do anything. We have invited the "outsider" right up to the altar, not in the sense of welcoming unbelievers to hear the gospel, which we must do, but in the sense of letting unconsecrated principles and unqualified persons handle the sacred elements of worship. We think this makes us accessible and relevant, but it actually makes us contemptible and ripe for judgment.
Notice the purpose of these distinctions: "so that neither they nor you will die." God's laws are not to crush us; they are to protect us. The fence at the edge of the cliff is not to restrict your freedom; it is to save your life. God is holy, and His holiness is a consuming fire. These regulations are the divinely-ordained asbestos suits for those who work near the flames.
The Purpose of the Priesthood (v. 5)
God summarizes the high calling of the priests in verse 5.
"So you shall keep the responsibility of the sanctuary and the responsibility of the altar, so that there will no longer be wrath on the sons of Israel." (Genesis 18:5 LSB)
Here is the job description in a nutshell. Guard the sanctuary. Guard the altar. Why? To what end? "So that there will no longer be wrath on the sons of Israel." The priesthood is a ministry of wrath-aversion. They are the lightning rod for the entire nation. By meticulously and faithfully carrying out their duties, by bearing the guilt for any infractions, they absorb and deflect the righteous anger of God that would otherwise break out against the people for their sin. When Phinehas, a priest, rose up and executed judgment on the man of Israel and the Midianite woman in the midst of their flagrant sin, the plague against Israel was stopped. He turned back God's wrath. That is the essence of the priestly work.
This points us directly to the cross. Why did Jesus have to die? To turn aside the wrath of God against us. He is our great High Priest who did not just bear the guilt for minor infractions at a physical sanctuary, but who bore the full, unmitigated, white-hot wrath of God for all the sins of His people in His own body on the tree. He is the ultimate fulfillment of this verse. He kept the responsibility of the true sanctuary, heaven itself, so that the wrath of God would never fall on us who believe.
A Gift Given and a Service Bestowed (v. 6-7)
Finally, God frames the entire ministry in the language of grace and gift.
"And behold, I Myself have taken your brothers the Levites from among the sons of Israel; they are a gift to you, given to Yahweh... But you and your sons with you shall keep your priesthood... I am giving you the priesthood as a bestowed service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death." (Numbers 18:6-7)
This is a remarkable turn. The Levites, who are called to a life of hard service and strict obedience, are described as a "gift" to the priests. God gives people to His church. He gives men with particular skills and callings to serve and build up the body. Pastors, your elders are a gift to you. Your deacons are a gift to you. The faithful saints who serve in the nursery or balance the budget are a gift to you from God. They are not your employees. They are your brothers, given by God to help in the great work.
And the priesthood itself is a gift. "I am giving you the priesthood as a bestowed service." Aaron did not earn this. He did not apply for the position. He stumbled into it, grumbling and idolatrous, right out of the gate with the golden calf incident. This high and holy calling is pure grace. A "bestowed service" means it is a gift of grace that entails work. This is the paradigm for all Christian ministry. Our salvation is a free gift, and our service is a bestowed gift. We are saved by grace, and we are gifted for service by that same grace. It is not a burden to be endured, but a gift to be treasured.
But with the gift comes a final, stark warning: "the outsider who comes near shall be put to death." The word for outsider here is zar. It means a stranger, someone not authorized. This is anyone who is not a priest trying to do the priest's job, or anyone not a Levite trying to do the Levite's job. This is the sin of Korah, and the sin of King Uzziah who entered the temple to burn incense and was struck with leprosy. God takes the boundaries of His worship with deadly seriousness.
In the New Covenant, the veil has been torn. Through Christ, every believer is a priest with access to the holy of holies. But this does not mean the category of "outsider" has been abolished. The principle remains. We are not to approach God on our own terms. We must come through the one Mediator, Jesus Christ. To try and approach God through our own good works, through another religion, or through a Christless Christianity is to be an outsider. It is to touch the altar without authorization. And the wage for that sin is still death.
Conclusion: Our Great High Priest
This entire chapter is a beautiful, intricate shadow of a greater reality. We see the weight of responsibility, the danger of God's holiness, the clear lines of order, and the grace of divine gift-giving. And all of it finds its ultimate meaning in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Aaron was the head who bore the guilt for the sanctuary. Christ is the Head of the Church who bore the guilt for all our sins, once for all. Aaron's priesthood was a gift of service to turn away wrath. Christ's priesthood is the ultimate gift, and He Himself is the service, the offering that propitiates the wrath of God forever. The Levites were a gift to Aaron to help in the work. And Christ, after His ascension, gave gifts to men, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4:11-12).
The Old Covenant priesthood was a heavy burden, a dangerous task that could only point to the problem of sin and the holiness of God. But Christ, our great High Priest, has fulfilled it all. He bore the guilt so that we might be declared innocent. He entered the true sanctuary with His own blood, securing an eternal redemption. And He has made us a kingdom of priests to God His Father.
Therefore, let us not take this gift lightly. Let us not be "outsiders" who trample the grace of God. Let us come to Him through the blood of the Son, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. But let us also come with boldness, knowing that our High Priest has gone before us, bearing our guilt, and securing our welcome. He has taken the full weight, so that we might enjoy the full wonder.