Grammar for the Gospel
Exodus 28:1–14,
“Then bring near to you Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the people of Israel, to serve me as priests—Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. 2 And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. 3 You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. 4 These are the garments that they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checker work, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons to serve me as priests. 5 They shall receive gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen.
6 “And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and of fine twined linen, skillfully worked. 7 It shall have two shoulder pieces attached to its two edges, so that it may be joined together. 8 And the skillfully woven band on it shall be made like it and be of one piece with it, of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen. 9 You shall take two onyx stones, and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, 10 six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth. 11 As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with the names of the sons of Israel. You shall enclose them in settings of gold filigree. 12 And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders for remembrance. 13 You shall make settings of gold filigree, 14 and two chains of pure gold, twisted like cords; and you shall attach the corded chains to the settings.
So when we read a passage like this in the Old Testament, it can really make us feel the distance between ourselves and the ancient people of Israel. Exodus 28 describes for us how Aaron, the high priest, was supposed to dress, and when we read this description and try to imagine how he looked we can think: “Man, this guy was from another world!”
We read this and think that way — and I just want you to know that our thinking that way about the high priest is actually not a difference we have with the ancient people of Israel — it’s something we have in common.
Here’s what I mean: imagine the high priest, dressed this way in Exodus 28, walks into this room. Imagine that he comes in over here from the north transept. You happen to glance over and you see a man wearing a …
long-sleeved oatmeal-colored tunic (or coat), finely woven in a checkered pattern;
and then over the tunic he has a robe that’s completely blue, and at its bottom, towards the feet, there are blue, purple and red pomegranates sown into the hem, and in between the pomegranates there are golden bells;
And then above the robe he has on an ephod (or a vest), and it’s gold and blue and purple and red, and it’s beautifully woven together; and on the shoulders of this vest he has two onyx stones, one on each side, and engraved in these stones are the names of the 12 tribes of Israel;
And then over the vest (which is over the robe, which is over the tunic) he’s wearing this square breast-piece that has four rows of precious stones — and these are stones that shine; emerald, sapphire, diamond — these are stones that we to this day know about but few of us (if any) have ever seen them this big in real life — and he’s got them right here over his heart, and on each of the stones, again, is a name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel; and this whole thing is attached to the onyx stones on his shoulders with a chain of pure gold;
And then on his head he has a turban, and right at his forehead, attached to the turban with a blue cord, there is a plate of pure gold, and on the gold plate the words are engraved: “Holy to Yahweh.”
If a guy dressed like that walks into this room [over here], guess what we’re all doing?
But get this: thousands of years ago in Israel’s history, people would have done the same thing.
Exodus 28 is not describing how people dressed in the ancient world. You can take any time period you want, or any culture you want — it doesn’t matter, we could be anywhere, and if we see a man dressed like what’s described in Exodus 28 walk into this room, he gets our attention — and that’s the point.
Now I know the heading in your Bible above Chapter 28 says “The Priests’ Garments” and we’re gonna talk about that, but we’re also gonna talk about a lot more than that. God willing, this morning, in Exodus 28, we’re gonna see three things and how they’re connected:
The presence of God
The meaning of dress
The purpose of the priesthood
And I believe that in this chapter, through these three things, we find a fresh vantage into the glory of Jesus and our calling as his people, and I can’t wait to show you. Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, thank you for your Holy Spirit who speaks through your word. By his ministry, we ask, teach us now in Jesus’s name, amen.
1. The presence of God
First, we’re gonna look at the presence of God. And the reason we’re starting with the presence of God is because that’s the theme of the context of Exodus 28. Remember that in chapters 25–31 Moses has been up on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (see 24:18), and God is now telling him the instructions for the tabernacle — and the tabernacle, as we saw last week, is simply the provisional place where God will dwell with his people as they journey to the land God promised Abraham.
And I think that really in order understand all of this, it could help if we take a few more steps back and try to locate this whole thing within the Bible’s storyline. So we’re gonna zoom way out for a minute, and we’re going to start with God.
Within the Storyline
Yahweh is God.
Yahweh is the one true God — the one who was, and is, and will always be. He is the great I AM, the God who will be who he will be, the God of infinite, immeasurable glory, and the God who creates —
who by his creating shares the experience of his glory outside himself. God reflects his glory in the things he has made for the things he has made, and why he does this is inexplicable other than that he is good. God is, in his nature, generous.
That’s why he made humans. Yahweh intends for us to be his image-bearers, uniquely created to resemble and reflect his glory as we live in the joy of his presence in the Garden of Eden that expands as we are fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Yahweh’s glory gets magnified; our joy gets maximized. That’s the plan.
The Problem of Sin
But the problem, remember, is that through Adam’s sin, the world fell under the curse of sin and everything has been broken ever since. Humans, by nature, under sin, rebel against God. We are bent to turn away from him and to worship other things instead of him. And that’s not just an ancient problem, that’s the biggest problem in this room right now.
All of us, left to ourselves, are doomed — and only the foolish ignore that, right? Because we know by now, by Genesis 11, we know that we need to be saved and that self-salvation projects don’t work. Adam, Noah, Babel — it is all failure until GOD steps in and makes a promise to Abraham.
That’s when the failure of a holy creation gave way to the building of a holy people. The children of Abraham, the people of Israel, were the people God chose for himself. He set them free from their slavery in Egypt so that they would be his treasured possession, his holy nation, his kingdom of priests in the place he provides.
That’s where we’re headed after we cross the Red Sea, we’re going to the Promised Land, but there are some roadblocks. In Exodus 19, on Mount Sinai, God calls the whole people of Israel to himself — all of Israel was supposed go up on the mountain as God’s people, but they were too afraid and so they begged for Moses to be their mediator. That’s when God established the priesthood.
The people lacked the faith to be a kingdom of priests, and so God graciously set apart one tribe, the tribe of Levi, Aaron and his sons, to be the priests for them. Exodus 28 talks about that, in the context of the tabernacle.
The Purpose of the Tabernacle
Remember the tabernacle, again, as Pastor Joe explained last week, was meant to be God’s provisional dwelling place among his people. And even in just the Old Testament, the tabernacle points both forwards and backwards.
Pointing forward in the Old Testament, the tabernacle is what matures into the temple — that was God’s dwelling place built later in Jerusalem.
Pointing backwards, the tabernacle was a reminder of the Garden of Eden.
And this part is especially fascinating, because the connections in the text are undeniable:
the pure gold in the tabernacle alludes to the pure gold of Eden in Genesis 2:11;
the precious stones in the tabernacle are the same stones we read about in Eden.
The blue, purple, and red curtains in the tabernacle were meant to look like the sky above Eden, and of course the lampstand in the tabernacle was made to look like a tree.
As readers, we’re supposed to read about the tabernacle and hear echoes from the Garden of Eden, which was the original place of God’s presence. The tabernacle was meant to be an echo of Eden that Israel takes with them. This is how God would dwell with his people:
Ch. 25, verse 8, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst”
25, verse 22, “There I will meet with you…”
29, verse 42, “I will meet with you, to speak to you…”
29, verse 45: “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God…”
The tabernacle, then, reminded Israel of God’s presence in the past;
it provided Israel a way to God’s presence in the current; and
it pointed Israel to the hope of God’s presence forever in the future.
The theme here is the presence of God! That’s what the tabernacle is about!
And that’s what we see as we’re tracking with the storyline of Scripture! God, in his mercy, is making a way to be with his people. He has not given up on Eden.
That’s the context, see, and then in Exodus 28, suddenly, we read about clothes.
And so now we’re at #2, the meaning of dress.
2. The meaning of dress
Now, I wanna get to the priesthood as soon as I can, but it’s interesting that in Exodus 28, up to this point in Scripture, we don’t know a whole lot about priests.
Most of the details about the priesthood come later in Leviticus and Numbers. Exodus 28 is the first time priests are introduced, and all we’re really told is how they look — in particular, we’re told how the high priest is supposed to look. We are introduced to the high priest by what he wears, and that only makes sense if we understand the meaning of dress in general.
Now, when I say the word “dress,” just to be clear, I’m not talking about an actual dress. By dress I mean the stuff that a person dresses in — it’s clothes and adornments. It’s a tunic, a turban, and bells, or a sweater, a hat, and a watch — it’s all the pieces that a person puts on. That’s what makes up our dress, and the meaning of dress in the Bible is to communicate the person.
Office or Occasion
Now look, there’s no doubt that sinful humans distort this meaning. The use of dress gets distorted in the Bible; it gets distorted today; but the intended meaning is still there. The meaning of dress is a nonverbal communication system to convey the dignity of office or occasion. That means that dress is not meant for profane suggestiveness or status symbol competition — those are distortions. The intended meaning is to show the dignity of office or occasion.
And that’s not just the case in the Bible, but that’s been the case all throughout history and in all different kinds of cultures, and we still see this meaning today, even in our modern, egalitarian society.
For example, when it comes to office, your mailman does not dress the same way as your commercial airline pilot. … And we tend to be helped by that. (My guess is that if you’re boarding a plane, and you see your pilot wearing a safari hat and satchel, you’re not getting on that plane. I’m not. I want my pilot to wear a captain’s hat, and have those patch-things on his shoulders.) Dress conveys office.
Now when it comes to occasion, we do this all the time. When we go to wedding we don’t dress like we’re going to the pool. Or, when we go to funerals we don’t dress like we’re going to the Twins game. See! We all get this.
The meaning of dress is to communicate office or occasion. Our dress either says “this is what I do” or “this is how I think about where I am.”
What His Clothes Say
And because that’s true, when we read about how the high priest dresses in Exodus 28, we’re supposed to get the idea of his purpose, even before it’s explained. The way the high priest dresses communicates. And so then, what does it tell us?
Well if we just examine the pieces mentioned, we can see: His garments, first, were for glory and beauty — that’s repeated in verses 2 and 40. In the details we read …
that the gold on his ephod, or his vest, was just like the gold in the tabernacle.
The precious stones on his breast-piece were just like the precious stones in the tabernacle.
His blue, purple, and red robe was just like the curtains in the tabernacle.
Therefore, it’s safe to assume that whatever the tabernacle pointed to, the high priests’ garments pointed to the same thing. And as we’ve already seen, it’s the Garden of Eden.
All of this, the tabernacle and the high priest, pointed to Garden of Eden, which was the original presence of God. But whereas the tabernacle was the place to minister God’s presence, the high priest was the person to minister God’s presence.
And so far we can say this just by looking at what he’s wearing, which is what Chapter 28 wants us to do.
But now, let’s take what we have in Exodus 28 and let’s add to it what we learn about the priesthood later in Leviticus and Numbers. This is #3, the purpose of the priesthood.
3. The purpose of the priesthood.
Again, already, because his clothes, we see that the high priest pointed to the presence of God. He was a reminder of God’s presence. And this goes for the whole priesthood. Overall, the essence of the priesthood was to help others draw near to God.
That’s the main purpose of priests we see laid out in Leviticus and Numbers, and so here’s my definition: Priests, on behalf of God, in service to others, help others draw near to God by guarding the right worship of God and by making sacrifices. Priests defend and atone, which was violent work.
And as we’ve seen, there were two types of priests:
There were the normal priests (from the tribe of Levi), and
There was the one High Priest who was chosen among them.
And while all the priests were charged to keep and guard the right worship of God and make daily sacrifices, in Leviticus we read that it’s only the High Priest who can enter the Holy of Holies, which he does only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for the sins of the whole people.
In this way, the High Priest represented all of Israel, which connects back to the names of the 12 tribes engraved on his shoulders and breast-piece:
Chapter 28, verse 12, “And Aaron shall bear their names before Yahweh on his two shoulders for remembrance.”
28, verse 29, “So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breast piece of judgment on his heart, when he goes into the Holy Place, to bring them to regular remembrance before Yahweh.”
So the high priest, dressed as he was, symbolized all of Israel. When he approached Yahweh, in the Holy of Holies, in the center of “the Garden of Eden,” he went there for the whole people.
And again, this can make us feel the distance between ourselves and the ancient people of Israel. This mediation with its stipulations and specifications — what Israel experienced can seem so different from what we experience … and it was … but not completely.
Grammar to Understand the Gospel
See, all of this that we’re reading about in Exodus — the tabernacle and the priesthood — it’s like grammar that God has given us to understand the gospel.
Because we have a high priest too.
Going back to the storyline of Scripture, the failure of a holy creation gave way to the failure of a holy people. We’re gonna see this in Chapter 32, but the cats outta the bag, okay: Israel is faithless. They cannot be the holy people that God has called them to be.
The failure of a holy creation gave way to the failure of a holy people, so God sent a Holy Man. He sent us a high priest.
His name is Jesus — and how can we even begin to understand what he has done for us without Exodus, without the Old Testament?
The Book of Hebrews in the New Testament is the book that makes this the clearest. At least 17 times in the Book of Hebrews, we’re told that Jesus is our great High Priest, and the writer makes that case with one Old Testament quote after another.
Thank God for the Old Testament Scriptures! Trying to read the New Testament without the Old Testament in mind is like watching a movie in black and white. The reason we have the Book of Exodus — the reason we have Exodus Chapter 28 — is so that we know more about Jesus. It’s so that we see him in his colorful glory.
High Priest Come to Save
The Book of Hebrews is the only New Testament book that explicitly calls Jesus our High Priest, but if we have the Old Testament in mind, we can see Jesus acting as our High Priest right away.
In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 9, at the Transfiguration, remember Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, and he goes up on a mountain to pray. And when Jesus was transfigured, guess what Luke tells us? His clothes changed.
His garments became dazzling white, and then glory appeared, and there was Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus about his departure, or the word is, his exodus. And when Peter sees this, do you remember what he wants to do? He wants to build some tents, some tabernacles. That’s because this was an encounter with the Most Holy place. Peter, James, and John saw the glory of God on that mountain, and Jesus was right at the center.
See, Jesus is the High Priest of God’s heavenly sanctuary — the one that Eden copied, that the tabernacle pointed to and then later the temple. This means that Jesus did not happen to become our High Priest later in the story, but he was actually sent here as our High Priest.
And after the Transfiguration, when Jesus comes off the mountain, Luke tells us Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), and when he gets there in Chapter 19, what does he do?
He cleanses the temple, his priestly duty. He goes in and guards the right worship of God (Luke 19:45–46). And then, the goes to make sacrifice.
But it’s not just any sacrifice. This is the moment when the Great High Priest himself became the sacrifice. The High Priest offered himself as the once-for-all atonement. He didn’t just bear our guilt and shame, but he paid for it.
Jesus sacrificed himself for you, and because he is raised from the dead and ascended to the Father, Jesus is in the Most Holy place for us right now, not with our names engraved on his garments, but our names are written in his wounds. Jesus as our High Priest means that in the heavenly sanctuary of God, there is not a moment that passes by where you are not remembered. Praise him!
We have access to the Most Holy place, and one day that will be this entire world.
Remember the storyline: the failure of a holy creation gave way to the failure of a holy people, so God sent the Holy Man to make a new holy people for a new holy creation.
In the Book of Revelation, Chapter 21, when the new Jerusalem is described, we’re told it’s full of pure gold and precious stones — the same ones named in the tabernacle, the same ones in the Garden of Eden.
In the new Jerusalem we will be in the presence of God forever, and we will see Jesus our High Priest.
Now in the Book of Revelation, John doesn’t say explicitly that Jesus is our high priest, but that’s because he doesn’t have to. John just tells us what he wears:
Rev 1:12-16
… on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
And if we see a man dressed like that walk into this room, he gets our attention. Or how about, our eternal worship. Jesus, our great High Priest, praise him! Praise him!
The Table
Jesus is our great High Priest who now invites us to his Table.
And this is where we serve together as a priestly people. Under Jesus our High Priest, we as believers are a priesthood. And now that’s not an individualistic thing that means we don’t need anyone — “just me and God” — that’s not what it means. Our priesthood as believers means that we help one another in drawing near to God by pointing to Jesus. We as a priesthood should constantly be giving Jesus to one another.
That’s what this Table is about.
As the pastors come to serve you, we are servant-priests who serve you, the priesthood. And when we eat and drink the bread and cup, it reminds us that none of us goes this alone. We do it together.
And so, this morning, this meal is only for those who are in Christ. It’s for the priesthood that points to Jesus our Great High Priest …
His body is the true bread.
His blood is the true drink.
Let us serve you.
