All For His Glory

Leviticus 9:1-11:47, Sh’mini, “Eighth”

This week’s parsha picks up at the end of Moses taking Aaron and his sons through the process of being ordained into their role as priests for the nation.  In last week’s parsha we read about how detailed Moses was in following all that the Lord had commanded him in this process.  In this, Moses was acting as a priest as he conducted all of the priestly duties associated with the very first sacrifice service conducted in harmony with what Hashem had provided.  The purpose of this service was to ordain Aaron and his sons into their place as priests for the nation. 

The reading ends with the following verses:

“You shall not go outside the doorway of the tent of meeting for seven days, until the day that the period of your ordination is fulfilled; for He will ordain you through seven days.  The LORD has commanded to do as has been done this day, to make atonement on your behalf.  At the doorway of the tent of meeting, moreover, you shall remain day and night for seven days and keep the charge of the LORD, so that you will not die, for so I have been commanded.”  Thus, Aaron and his sons did all the things which the LORD had commanded through Moses.  (Leviticus 8:33-36 NASB)

This week’s parsha picks up on the 8^th day, the day after “Aaron and his sons did” what the Lord commanded through Moses.  The first chapter, chapter 9, of this week’s reading moves along beautifully with Moses guiding Aaron and his sons as they performed the same sacrifices for the people as Moses had done for them.  Moving into chapter 10 we find things suddenly going completely astray.  It is here where we read about two of Aaron’s sons presenting “strange fire” before the Lord and the Lord responding by consuming them with fire whereabout they died.

From there Moses calls two of Aaron’s sons along with Aaron’s uncle to “come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp” (Leviticus 10:4 NASB).  After the bodies have been taken away, Moses says to “Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the LORD has brought about.  You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting, or you will die; for the LORD’S anointing oil is upon you.””

It is from these sections of the parsha that I am feeling compelled to share.  This scene led me to thinking about Lot and his family leaving Sodom and Lot’s wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.  I was also led into contemplating the blessing and curse as outlined in Deuteronomy 28 & 29 as it relates to the nation as a whole.  It is stories such as these that can lead us into seeing Hashem as unforgiving, ruthless, demanding perfection, and intolerant to Sin.  The question is, do these situations properly represent His entire nature and the nature by which He interacts with sinful man and/or His people?

On deeper examination, I would argue, that these stories do not represent the fullness of who He is or the fulness of how He interacts with us.  Afterall, the entire sacrificial ceremony begins with offering a sin offering on behalf of the priests and the people.  This, unto itself should tell us that Hashem understands that even the priest will continue in sin and that through the sacrificial system that He has put into place, their sin would be atoned for just as is the case for the nation.  So, then what is it about these particular stories, and ones like these, that make them different.

I believe that as we fully grasp the concept of “guilt”, “rebellion”, “repentance”, and even "innocence", we can gain a better understanding on what makes these particular situations different.  In this situation, Aaron and his sons had just spent seven days in the tent of meeting.  How is it possible that after spending seven days with the Lord, immediately after the very first sacrifice ceremony, and in a place of what should have been complete awe, that they would emerge from the tent and offer a “strange fire”?  This strange fire is reconned to some form of incense that may have been offered to the Egyptian gods and something that the people of the nation may have been exposed to while living in Egypt.  With this in mind I think it is reasonable to ask just how seriously these two sons took the ordination process, the sacrifices, and the magnificent robes they had been dressed in.  Did they really believe that what was going on was really that special?  Did they really believe something different was happening?  Did they really distinguish between Hashem and the Egyptian gods?  Not only had they just spent seven days in the tent of meeting presumably to get right with God, but just prior to presenting this “strange fire” they had witnessed Hashem sending fire down from heaven to consume the sin offerings that had just been offered in behalf of themselves and the people.  If they hadn’t taken the last 7 days seriously, certainly Hashem was providing them with one last opportunity to see His glory and get their hearts right before Him.

Moving into the story of Lot, his family, and his wife leads me into the same kind of thing.  In this case, Lot and his family were living in a land of horrific sin.  Not just a little sin, but really bad sin.  Sin so bad that Hashem had decided it was time to wipe everyone out and to destroy the cities.  The night before this all took place, two angles visited Lot and his family.  It was a horrific experience.  Any person in their right mind would want nothing more than to escape such a place.  As the story unfolds, after a night of the city men attempting to abduct the two angles so that they could sexually assault them, lot offering the men his virgin daughters to assault instead, the city men refusing the girls and insisting on the angles, and the angles blinding the men so that all were safe, the angles told Lot and his family to get out because they were about to destroy the city.  In this process, the angles told Lot and his family not to look back because if they did, they would be “swept away”.  Ultimately lot, his wife, and his two daughters are given enough time to escape all the way to another city.  It is form here that Lot’s wife “looked back” when the cities behind them were being destroyed.

There are a couple things I see in common about these stories.  When Lot, his wife, and their two daughters left Sodom, they left behind the two daughters’ prospective husbands.  The night before the cities were destroyed, Lot attempted to warn his future sons-in-law.  But they did not heed the warning and as such were destroyed by the fire sent down by God upon the cities.  I’m not sure exactly why Lot’s wife looked back.  Maybe she was mourning the loss of the cities, her past life, old friends, and the sinful life she, Lot, and their daughters were to leave behind.  Maybe she was just mourning the loss of the two future sons-in-law.  Maybe she was just looking back to see the awesome power of the Lord being released on the cities.  I don’t see anything in scripture that tells us exactly why she looked back, but very simply, they were told not to.  In the case of Aaron and his sons, we are given a similar picture.  Through Moses, Hashem instructs Aaron and his family to not enter into any form of mourning, but to simply dispose of the bodies and move forward with the sacrificial ceremony as if nothing had happened. They are warned, that if they would enter into mourning from within the tent of meeting or even leave the tent of meeting they too would die and bring wrath upon the congregation.

Both of these stories seem to imply that Hashem simply has no concern for our human response to pain, suffering, and loss.  This led me back to Deuteronomy 28-29 where Hashem appears so matter affect about the explicit details of the curses that would befall the nation should they not live in harmony with all the statutes and commandments that He was putting before them.  As I read these chapters of Deuteronomy and progress into chapter 30 it hits me that this is not an “if/then” statement on Hashem’s part.  By the time we get to Deuteronomy 30:1 we come to see that the entire structure has become that of a prophetic statement.  Here we read “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you…”  (Deuteronomy 30:1 NASB)

Ultimately, this reality did befall the nation in approximately 70AD when the temple was destroyed and the last of the nation were killed, captured, sold into slavery, or exiled.  The horrific details of the siege upon Jerusalem are exactly as Hashem foretold in Deuteronomy 29.

When I think about how Hashem responds in these moments of apparent coldness, I like to think of the story from John 11 when Lazarus died and Yeshua brought him back to life.  By verse 11 we know that Yeshua already knew the basics of what Hashem was calling Him to do.  He knew that ultimately Lazarus was going to die, that He was going to raise him from the dead, and that in the process Hashem would be glorified.  Yeshua made no effort to return to Lazarus and heal him before he died.  After a two day wait, He informed His disciples that “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, that I may awaken him out of sleep.” (John 11:11 NASB).  In verses 13 & 14 we discover that, when speaking of sleeping, Yeshua was using a heavenly perspective of what we would consider death.

There are two aspects of this that are really important to understand.  The first is that from Hashem’s and Yeshua’s perspectives, death is nothing more than sleeping. They have an eternal perspective.  For us to understand how they interact in our lives and for us to reconcile the pain, suffering, and loss, we must be able to see things from that perspective.  The second is explained in the next few verses.

As the story unfolds, Yeshua returns toward Bethany where He is met by Martha (Lazarus sister).  They talk and she sends for Mary her sister.  Mary, and several of those who had been with her in her home, come to where Martha and Yeshua are meeting.  Mary falls at Yeshua’s feet.  Mary and those that followed her were all weeping.  In verses 33-35 we see that Yeshua was “deeply moved in spirit and was troubled” and that He “wept”.

When I read this, I ponder what was He troubled about, and why was He weeping?  Ultimately, we must recognize that He already knew that Lazarus would live.  As such, for me, the only thing that makes sense is that He was deeply moved by the simplicity of the pain, suffering, and loss that these people were all experiencing as the result of their perceived loss of their dear friend and brother.  Taking this one step further, it must have been very hard on Him to know that He could have protected them from this grief if He would have immediately returned or even healed Lazarus from afar as He had already proven He was capable.  In the end, we must accept that Yeshua understood that Hashem knew that using this situation to bring Himself glory outweighed the temporary pain and suffering of these people.  Simply put, it gives me comfort to know that in these moments, He does feel our pain, He does sympathize, and in this, He is troubled and weeps.

In contemplating the last 2,000 years of the history of the Jewish people and the gross persecution that we have been subjected, I only find peace in the understandings put forth in the preceding discussion.  As I read Isaiah 54:5-8 I find the same kind of heavenly perspective being used that Yeshua used when talking to the disciples in John 11.  Here Hashem is explaining through Isaiah, at what I would argue is a time in the future looking back at “the time of the gentiles”, that He had “hidden His face from us for a moment”.  I believe this conversation will take place between Hashem and His people right before He re-gathers us from exile and establishes His kingdom here on earth.  I believe this is the fulfillment to Deuteronomy 30.  In short, from a heavenly perspective, He looks back at the past two thousand years as a “moment” just as Yeshua looks at death as sleep.  And the purpose I believe is again the same.  All for His glory.

Ultimately, His word tells us how to understand Him from this heavenly perspective while at the same time helping us to see that He understands us from our human perspectives.  As we walk out this life and become more and more like Him, we can fall into a tendency of becoming so heavenly minded that we lose contact with the reality of the pain, suffering, and loss of this world.  In this we lose contact with our fellow human beings and actually become less like Him in the process.  The point is to be able to comprehend things from an eternal and heavenly perspective so that we can remain in peace, while at the same time never losing the flesh perspective that leads to our ability to remain compassionate, empathetic, and sorrowful when the pain and suffering of this world is revealed.  In and through this this we remain powerful examples of what it is to be in unity with Him, trusting that He knows best, while allowing ourselves to experience the longsuffering associated with a fallen world.

I pray that this has been a blessing to you, that you have come to know Him in a new way, and that in and through this, you will grow in your relationship with Him.  Amen Amen