Leviticus 10:12-20

Priests and Laws

Lev 10:12-20

"And Moses spake unto Aaron," the people speaking unto the priest! That is the eternal law in the true Church. The priest has no existence apart from the people. The people were represented by Moses; the divine element was represented by Aaron; but Aaron was only a representative living under criticism and judgment, and living only so far as he lived truly for the benefit and culture and elevation of the people. The Bible is the people's Bible; it is not the Bible of a class, a priest, a man-made and man-ruled Church of a mechanical and formal type, separating itself from the universal instinct, and the universal need of the world. A grand chapter is opened in these words! the people speaking unto the priest: the great-heart speaking to the momentary officer: the instinct of a world sitting, as it were, in judgment and righteous and generous criticism upon ceremonies and mediums and momentary arrangements, even though they were divine in their origin and most beneficent in their purpose. The people are always more than the priests. The people are always more than the princes. Kings are nothing but the blossomings of the social tree. Princes have no existence but for nations. This is a law not to be taught in one lecture, or to be brought home to the human mind in all its fulness and generous intent in violent harangue. Knowledge will secure this end; the spread of wisdom will bring in "the parliament of man." Meanwhile, no priest must dictate; no prince must rule despotically. The people are the strength and the reality, the pith and the whole core of the nations. Moses must always speak unto Aaron. The pew must always speak to the pulpit, saying what its need is, telling the man how far he is speaking to immediate wants and to present necessities, or how far he is spending eloquent discourse upon people who are not in existence. Aaron must go down if he pray not mightily for the people. We cannot have any man continued amongst us simply because of his office. Office is nothing except it be associated with noble character, generous impulse, and divine vocation, and express the eternal thought of God. But this is an issue not to be hastened. Mechanical operation can do little or nothing here. Men must grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; and not knowing how the kingdom of the Son of man shall come in the infinite theocracy when no man shall be dragged down but every man shall be lifted up, and without fire or tempest or high wind rending the rocks, there shall be heard a still small voice saying, "He is come whose right it is." Meanwhile, one sign of progress is that the people shall take an interest in their priests, correcting them, rebuking them, cheering them, responding to them; when their prayers are offered, all the people shall say, Amen; then prayer will be not merely official; then prayer will be unanimous; then prayer will mightily prevail.

"And Moses spake unto Aaron.... Take the meat offering," and he adds, "for so I am commanded." Moses was not the fountain of authority. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. This was not a clamorous interference with Aaron, an interference merely for the sake of tumult or the assertion of endangered right; it was the representation of a divine purpose and a holy command. This is an instance which shows how the law was looked after. Men make laws and forget them; they refer to statutes three hundred years old, venerable with the dust of four centuries, and they surprise current opinion by exhumations which show the cleverness and the perseverance of the lawyer. Men are fond of making laws; when they have ignoble leisure, they "improve" it (to use an ironical expression) by adding to the bye-laws, by multiplying mechanical stipulations and regulations, and forgetting the existence of such laws in the very act of their multiplication. God has no dead-letters in his law-book. The law is alive tingling, throbbing in every letter and at every point. The commandment is exceeding broad; it never slumbers, never passes into obsoleteness, but stands in perpetual claim of right and insistance of decree. It is convenient to forget laws; but God will not allow any one of his laws to be forgotten. Every inquiry which Moses put to Israel was justified by a statute; he said, "I do but represent the law; there is nothing hypocritical in my examination; there is nothing super-refined in my judgment; I am simply asking as the representative of law how obedience is keeping up step with the march of judgment?" We need such constables to watch the law and to be jealous for its observance and maintenance. Every age needs a grand constabulary force. The time will come when every man will be his own watch, his own critic and judge, and will require no external appeal; man shall not have occasion to say to man, "Know the Lord," for every one shall know him from the least to the greatest; universality of knowledge shall report itself in unanimity of obedience. God's laws are still alive, we have said; they are alive in nature; even could we sponge them out wherever they are written with ink, we cannot obliterate them as they form part of the very life and economy of creation. Fire still stings; the great sea will drown the vastest navy that ever trespassed on its waves if the laws which govern the ocean be not diligently obeyed ay, almost to the point of idolatry; men who can use profane language to an invisible God must be up early and sit up late to watch the way of the sea. Thus, at some altar we are always bent: if not at this particular one, then at that. The profanest man is shamed into occasional reverence bound like a coward at some altar which he would gladly escape. Nature looks after the execution of her own laws; she says to Moses and she says to Aaron and to all the children of men, I am not mocked; you may mock my Creator, but I am not mocked; you cannot shorten one of my days, you cannot lengthen one of my sunsets, you cannot change the wind from the east to the west, you cannot drive on the procession of the seasons, or substitute one position for another in that serene and glorious march; you may mock my Creator; you may profane your speech by a misuse of his name; you may never look upward in pious wonder, not to say affectionate prayer; but I will not be mocked. So then, this boasted liberty, this magnificent freedom, is itself a caged bird, and the bars of the cage are of no flexible wand but of stiff and stubborn iron. We know we can blaspheme God, and we know that we cannot substitute spring for winter; we will be free and not pray, and we who thus spread paper wings fall down in stupid servitude before laws of ploughing, and sowing, and reaping as obedient as the oxen that open the furrow. Every inquiry, therefore, which Moses made was founded upon a statute. The commandment of the Lord is everywhere.

"And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron which were left alive" ( Lev 10:16 ).

But the flesh ought to have been eaten; a ceremonial law ought to have been observed. The two elder sons of the pontiff had been burnt, and the flesh of the goat of the sin offering had not been eaten, and Moses was angry. He does not name Aaron: there is a gentle considerateness even in the "meek man's" anger; he will not have the pontiff abased in the sight of the people; he will blame the juniors. But there is an indirect blame that comes back with tremendous recoil upon men nameless who are involved in the responsibility. "And Aaron said unto Moses " The younger men said nothing; they did not like the fire that burned in the face of Moses, a face soon made radiant either by communion divine, or by indignation because of violated law. So Aaron, recognising his own responsibility, made speech unto Moses. What is the answer to this ceremonial sin? A grand one! A perpetual one! Said Aaron, "Behold, this day have they offered their [the people's] sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord; and such things have befallen me": and there he sobbed. His two sons had been taken from him by fire: having the anointing oil of the Lord upon him, he was not permitted to go with the dead bodies, to see them buried outside the camp: he remained at his post; but his old heart was sore. We know the experience: still ploughing in the field, whilst a keener plough is ripping up the field of the heart! "... and such things have befallen me," I will not complain of the judgment: the young men were wrong: God was right: God's holy will be done! But I am a man; we could not eat the flesh to-day, our hearts were sore; if we had eaten the flesh, "should it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord?" The Lord knoweth our frame: he remembereth that we are dust; we know the law, the flesh would under ordinary circumstances have been eaten; but "such things have befallen me," my heart has been torn, my life has been emptied, a great judgment has stretched its black wings over my house-roof, and therefore the law has not been obeyed in the letter. It was a sublime answer; it was a father's explanation; it was a plea of instinct; it was old nature rising against temporary law, a larger law subordinating and for the moment suspending a smaller one. This is God's permission. This is the government under which we live. Instinct has its place in human education as well as ceremonial law, mechanical appointment, and transient stipulations. Aaron here supplies the "one touch of nature" which "makes the whole world kin." His plea holds good to-day. It holds good even in matters purely bodily. The sufferer "ought" to eat; "But," he says, "such things have befallen me. I ought to partake of food, you are quite right in reminding me of the law; but such things have befallen me: I have just buried my dearest one; I have looked into the grave where my only child lies." Another says, excusing himself, "My child is twice dead he is gone away, I know not where; I ought to eat and drink and sleep; but such things have befallen me." Thus one law modifies another. The deeper laws assert themselves against the more superficial statutes and ordinances. This plea operates in all social relations. Why was the wedding put off? "such things have befallen me." Why was the feast postponed? "such things have befallen me." The hands of the men were upon the bell-ropes, and in a moment more the metal in the belfry would have clashed out in song that would have made the city glad. Why was the belfry dumb? "such things have befallen me." There are events in life which suspend the feast, which forbid the clash of the joy-bells, hung high in the air, almost eager to swing that they may speak their metallic music to the wondering town. We recall the card of invitation, and substitute it by a card black-edged, eloquent of grief, and in the presence of that dark margin explanation is unnecessary. God is not unpitiful: God is tender; he knows our frame; he says, "They are but children of the dust; their life is but as a vapour, which cometh for a little time and then vanisheth away; and their days are as a post: they fly quicker than a weaver's shuttle; their breath is in their nostrils." "His mercy endureth for ever." If our very prayer is choked in the throat by ungovernable sorrow, it may in its very off-breaking in its very interruption be a mightier prayer than if its eloquence had been rounded in the most resonant periods. We live under a merciful heaven. The sceptre is not of iron, and the hand that holds it is a gentle hand.

There is more in the twentieth verse than the mere letter: "And when Moses heard that, he was content." Some explanations carry their own conviction. We know the voice of honesty when we hear it; there is a frankness about it that can hardly be mistaken. But the meaning lies deeper: there can be no contentment in the presence of violated law. Where a law is violated wantonly, nature can have no rest; she says, "I cannot sleep to-night." Thank God she cannot! When she can forget her Maker, the end will have come in darkness, and there will in very deed, in spirit and effect, be no more any God. Law must be satisfied in one of two ways. Law can rest upon the ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying, "Judgment has been inflicted, righteousness has been vindicated, and the seal of condemnation has been attached to the testimony of evil"; and mighty, imperial, inexorable law sits on the desolated cities "content." That is not the way in which the Lord would bring about his own contentment; still, there is the law: fall upon this stone and be broken, or the stone will fall upon you and you will be ground to powder. The Gospel is a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. God would have law obeyed: all his ordinances carried out in simple obedience, every statute turned into conduct, every appointment represented in obedience and praise. Then the universe, faithful to her Creator, the stars never disloyal to their Creator-King, the whole creation, will say, CONTENT.