February 10
Exodus 29:1-31:18
I’m enjoying a beautiful beach vacation with my wife. At around sunset every evening as my wife gets ready for dinner I take a stroll along the beach. It is a beautiful time, when surrounded by His creation, the lapping of the waves, etc. that I often sense Him surrounding me, and leading me. As I’m walking I make footprints in the sand. As I return, these footprints are already gone being covered over by the water. It made me realize that our walk with God is a continual moment by moment walk. It is about making each moment and each day count in our relationship with Him. We get a bit caught up at times about the “big“ things and our past, but just like my footprints which get washed away, God does not tell us to look backwards but to look forward to see what He will do through us today. Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12-14, “ I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”
As we go through the many regulations surrounding the priesthood, we would do well to remember that we, who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, are His modern day priests, as written in 1 Peter 2:9, “ But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” As part of the consecration of the priests, we read in Exodus 29:20, “Then slaughter it, and apply some of its blood to the right earlobes of Aaron and his sons. Also put it on the thumbs of their right hands and the big toes of their right feet...”. Consecration is to separate oneself from the world and for God, to be made holy. So the purpose for them and us is to have an ear consecrated to hear the voice of God, hands consecrated to do the service of God, and feet that are consecrated in order to walk the path of God. We see the bronze laver placed strategically between the altar and tabernacle. The priests were to prepare themselves before meeting with God, in this case by the washing of their hands and feet.
How about us? It doesn’t take long, and it doesn’t need to be formal, but do we prepare our hearts and minds as we serve and commune with God. Do we stumble into church or prepare ourselves? When someone asks for prayer, do we take a second to enter His presence, or do we let out with a couple of perfunctory, often used words? Just like our footprints in the sand, it is our daily path which we take with God. One day our lives will end, and many of those so called big events will be long forgotten. But did we touch other’s lives while we walked on that path? Did we walk with God daily as willing vessels so that one day we hear those words from God, “Well done, good and faithful servant;...” (Matthew 25:21)
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: