Have you ever read about crime fails? You can get into a whole web of videos if you google it. Would-be burglars getting stuck in the window they are trying to crawl through and having to be rescued; a robber trying to bust back out of the store he just broke into, only to find out the door is made of unbreakable plexiglass. I read about a bank robber who was deaf. Once the staff realized that, they set off the security alarm and he was caught. Ironically, he tried to sue them for abusing his disabilty. On a much smaller scale, I've even been caught in a crime fail of sorts. I tried to stack the deck in UNO once, and I epically failed by miscalculating and stacking the deck against myself. I couldn't really confess why I was losing so badly because it was my own blankety-blank fault.
God flagged the disobedience of the priests in chapter 1. They are not treating Him with honor due a Father; they are not in awe of Him as their Master. They are bored, lazy, annoyed. The punishment? God promises if they do not take His commands to heart, and to teach the people to do likewise, He will smear the poop of their animal sacrifices on their faces. This seems extremely harsh from a loving God, right? But this is the ultimate crime fail. In their laziness, the priests have taken shortcuts with the sacred tasks God has given them. As men trained in the law from God, they would have KNOWN Leviticus 4:11-12 "But the hide of the bull and all its flesh, with sits head and legs, and its entrails and waste--all the rest of the bull--he {the priest} must bring to a ceremonially clean place outside the camp to the ash heap and must burn it on a wood fire. It is to be burned at the ash heap." There is animal waste to spread on their faces because they brought it into God's presence themselves!!! This punishment is their own fault. Paul says it perfectly in Romans 2:3 "Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself ..."
If these priests are failing so terribly, why did God set them apart in the first place? The answer is found in Numbers 25 The Levites are the priestly tribe and Phinehas is a descendant. When the Israelites are in the wilderness, they started patterning their worship after the people they encountered. They prostituted themselves with women who served foreign gods, and Israel ate and bowed in worship to them. God was rightly angry--they are HIS rescued people, He has LOVED them. God instructs Moses to kill all the leaders who have worshiped Baal. A bold, brazen Israelite man brought an ungodly woman right into the camp, to the sounds of his family and friends weeping. When Phinehas the priest saw this, he executed the man and the woman. Then the plague that had killed 24,000 Israelites stopped. This intervention by Phinehas turned back the wrath the people brought on themselves, and God entered into a covenant of peace with His royal, chosen priesthood. 1,000ish years later, the priests have broken covenant by failing to follow their ancestor's lead and intervene for the people. They have one job....intervene on behalf of the people.
The lack we see in these priests was always intended to make us long for something better. The covenant of peace required reverence, awe, true instruction, integrity. It was meant to turn people away from sin. The priests were to guard the truth of God's Word with everything in them, and the people should be waiting on the edge of their seats for their next instruction. But according to God's famous last words to His people, this was not happening. Not even close. They are bawling their eyes out because God isn't granting their wishes. When God says "I'm tired of it", they act like an innocent child by saying "Why? What did we do?"
We can come as we are to God, He invites us because He loves us. But the poop needs to be left behind; not as in "I need to clean myself up before I can come into God's presence"; but because we are coming in reverence and awe before the Holy God. The waste is your sin. Leave it behind and come to God with a repentant heart.
O come, O King of Nations, bind, in one the hearts of all mankind. Bid all our sad divisions cease, and be Yourself our King of peace.
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