Lev 21:8, 'You shall consecrate him, therefore, for he offers the bread of your God; he shall be holy to you; for I the Lord, who sanctifies you, am holy. The Lord is being very precise, as He always is in our study of His Word. We considered, last time, that the Lord is the One Who has sanctified us and how utterly imperative that truth is. It does not depend upon us to make ourselves somehow worthy of His working Power and Grace and mercy. He chooses to do that which He, Alone will accomplish, in the manner in which He so decides will be the perfect and unquestionably effective methodology. Because it does not depend upon us, we are assured of His ruling and overruling in the very smallest detail of our lives. 
In this morning’s readings, The Lord continues with His instruction to His people, specifically dealing with the priestly order and the manner in which they were to present a most clear and undefiled testimony of His holiness. They were held to a higher standard than the rest of the nation because they were the representation of the Most Holy God. Their lives and their demeanor and their behavior had to be above reproach because they were the representation of the Christ to come. There could be no doubt of their paternity as the priestly order proceeded from father to son, therefore the stipulations of priests having to marry virgins from their own people. 
They were not permitted to mourn their dead, except for immediate family. If they were the High Priest, they were not even able to mourn those close family relations because they were to present the holiness of God 24/7, without exception. Never could they act as the rest of the nations, with all the outward manifestations of grief and loss. 
The family of the priestly order was as well under the greater scrutiny and the most severe penalties for failure to abide by the stipulated ordinances of the Lord God. This was not a trivial matter in the eyes of the Lord, to be a priest with all the responsibility and the significance as His witness to the rest of the nation. There was the necessity to live their lives in a manner that would directly indicate the holiness and the sovereignty and the majesty of service unto God. 
Because the priests reflected the perfection of the Christ to come, they could not serve in the presence of the Lord if they had any defect. Just as the sacrifices had to be perfect and without blemish, so too the priests, to serve within the tent of the Tabernacle, had to be free of any physical malformation. Those priests with physical deformities were still given the provisions of the priesthood and were still to be held in esteem, but they could not serve in the presence of God within the interior of the holy place.
While these were such severe regulations regarding the priestly order, this in no wise meant that the rest of the nation could choose to live in any form or fashion of their vile desires. All were to be holy unto the Lord as so indicated throughout the Old Testament scriptures. The priestly order was to show before man what the heart of God was for all His people. Consider what we read in Ex 19:5+6. Ex 19:5+6, 'Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel." 
The whole nation was to be a witness and a living testimony to the entire world of the truth that Jehovah was their God and Lord. They were called to be a Holy nation, a nation of priests who served the Lord God Almighty in the reality of His Righteousness and His Provision and His Sovereignty and His Holiness. 
This was reinforced to the entire nation in our readings in Lev 11:44+45. Lev 11:44+45, 'For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. 'For I am the Lord, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; thus you shall be holy for I am holy.'" 
This was an admonishment to the entire nation of Israel to recognize Who God was and what He had done. That was to have its supreme effects within the course of how they were living their lives on this earth before all the other nations of the world. As we discussed last time, this was the work of God to make His people unique among all the nations, sanctified and holy, abstaining from all the perversion and the filth that infested all the other peoples. 
Again as we read in Lev 19:2, over and over again, the holiness of God was to be the witness and the daily course of the walk of His people, whether they were of the priestly order or not. Lev 19:2, "Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, 'You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
There was to be this abiding knowledge and commitment within the people that they were a special people, called out from the midst of all the other nations of the earth for this specific purpose. As with the priests in their midst, they were to be a people of holy consecration unto Yahweh, the I Am. Again, it was to be with the full understanding and awareness that it was all the choice of God and not based in any measure on their supposed superiority or worthiness or supremacy in any form or fashion. Who they were was fully by the working Power and Grace and Mercy of God. 
    	As such, as indicated in Lev 20:7+8, they were to honor and to reverence God in the way they dealt with each other and with the nations around them. There was to be that consecrated respect and veneration for all the things of God and His Ways and His Honor and His Glory. They were to consider Him as they proceeded to do anything in the terms of their daily walk. How they approached their work, their family, their neighbors, their worship, their time, and their hope for the future was all to be governed in the consideration of what would please God, day in and day out. 
Lev 20:7+8, 'You shall consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. 'And you shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 
    	The nation and the priesthood, however, did not follow through with their hearts after the Lord. They chose, rather, to be like the other nations with a human king to guide them. They rejected the plan and the purpose of God and decided that they would rather live as the other nations than abide by the holy guidelines of the Lord. 
They continually returned to the ways of fallen humanity and were eventually swallowed up within the bowels of the conquering nations, much like the peoples whom they dispossessed in entering the Promised Land. Rather than holding to the Lord God as their source of life, they decided to divest themselves of His blessing and sought after the facades and smokescreens of the age which caused them to practice all the abominations of those nations who did not know God or His ways. 
	The double portion of their misery was due to the fact that they knew better. They had the presence of the Lord in their midst, and decided to lord it over others. The priests lorded it over the flock that they were supposed to guide and instruct. The rich lorded it over the poor. The nation lorded it over their neighbors until their neighbors rose up and destroyed all the things that set Israel apart. 
Everything was devastated because the Lord God Almighty would not allow His name to be sullied at the hands of those who deliberately chose to use it as a means of self-elevation and self-exaltation. He moved other nations to destroy and to enslave this detestable people who had spurned Him and His Holiness and His Blessings.
	However, through the Prophet Ezekiel in Ezek 37:26-28, The Lord proclaimed that He was still at work, bringing forth more than a political entity that would bear His name. While the nation of Israel had made a mockery of His Love and Grace and Mercy, there would come that time when a people would bear His name in the perfection of His sanctification. 
Ezek 37:26-28, "And I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. "My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. "And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever."'" 
	All that work of humanity was shown for the truth that fallen man could never sufficiently offer to God the adoration and the worship and the reverence that He was due. It would take the work of God, Himself, to bring into place a completely new man, with a heart made of flesh that would desire to have God make Himself his everything. It would be a new humanity who would desire to know God in the perfection of His Glory and Honor and Praise. 
This was done with the sending of God’s Own Son, Jesus Christ. In Him, the full measure of all that the priesthood was to illustrate was accomplished forevermore. The peace and the abiding presence of God with man was eternally set in the full and faultless service of the Son.  
    	In John 10:36-38, when the Pharisees questioned Jesus as to His declaration that He was the Son of God, He responded with the following truth. John 10:36-38, do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,' You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'? "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father." 
    	He testified of the glory of God as no other man could. His priestly service was perfect and it was fully honoring to the Lord God Almighty, the Father from Whom He had been sent. There was nothing about Jesus or His life that could be in question. Everything testified to the reality that He was the Christ, the perfect expression of the Grace and the Mercy and the Love of God sent forth unto humanity to give life everlasting to all who would call upon Him.
	Christ further detailed this in John 17:18-21, in what we call His High Priestly prayer. John 17:18-21, "As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. "I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. 
	Again, within this passage, we have the fact that it is God Who sanctifies us, and not we ourselves. He is the One by Whom our lives and our testimonies and our surety of salvation is fully assured. Nothing depends upon us or our efforts or our worthiness. It is all by the work of God, through Jesus Christ that we have been born anew into this relationship of unity with Christ for the witness of God’s so great love.
    	In Heb 7:25-28, the Writer to the Hebrews details the magnificence of the priestly ministry of Jesus Christ, the ministry that was imperfectly represented by all those priests of the Old Testament. Heb 7:25-28, Hence, also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the Law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath, which came after the Law, appoints a Son, made perfect forever. 
    	The standard of perfection that was demanded as a servant before the very presence of God could never be attained by humanity lost in sin and death. The countless sacrifices of animals could only serve to be a temporary bridge between the holiness of God and the corruptness of fallen man. It would take the perfect sacrifice of the sinless One Who would willingly lay down His life for the sake of such as you and me to set aside, forever, the requirements and the stipulations of the Law by fulfilling them to the utmost. Then, through the power of His resurrection, we are now made to be the nation of God, the holy priesthood who serve Him constantly in the course of how we live our lives on this earth. He now has that nation of believers who are the testimony of Who He is and how He establishes and maintains all the aspects of His creation.
	As a final statement of consideration, concerning the priestly service of Jesus Christ, the Writer to the Hebrews sets before us, in Heb 10:28+29, just how much Our Lord and Savior is to be esteemed by us for the work which He has accomplished once and for always. Heb 10:28+29, Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? 
Our consideration of Jesus is of paramount urgency! If we know Him as Our Lord and Savior, we have life. If we refuse Him, if we set Him aside and think that we can make it on our own, we are dead. There is no gray area. There are no extenuating circumstances. There is no other option! Either we are covered by His atoning work before the throne of God’s righteousness and holiness, or we are forever lost in our sin and trespass, doomed to eternal damnation. So be it!
	'You shall consecrate him, therefore, for he offers the bread of your God; he shall be holy to you; for I the Lord, who sanctifies you, am holy. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Rom 14:7+8. For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. Amen.