What God has priests for

So first of all, God started with “Melchizedek, priest of God Most High” (Genesis 14:18). Then a gap of 500 years or so to the time when God designated Aaron and his descendants from the tribe of Levi as priests (Exodus 28:1) and the rest of the Levite tribe as their assistants (Numbers 3:6-7). The Melchizedek priesthood then took over from the Levitical priesthood when Jesus “became a high priest in the order of Melchizedek” in Hebrews 6:20, and since “Jesus lives forever, his priesthood is permanent” (7:24).  

But what did God have all these priests for? There’s a clue in Hebrews 7:18-19 in the author’s explanation of why the Levitical priesthood ended when Jesus arrived; it’s because in the Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus “a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.”

So the Melchizedek priesthood offers something “better” than the Levitical priesthood, but the underlying purpose of both the Levitical and Melchizedek priesthoods is exactly the same, to “draw us near to God.” This is what God has priests for.  

Which takes us back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were near to God, but God banished them from the Garden for disobeying him (Genesis 3:11 and 23). Which could’ve been the end of it, no more being near to God at all. But when “Abel offered choice cuts of meat to God from the firstborn animals of his flock (4:4), God very much accepted Abel for what he’d done.” Through animal sacrifice, then, God had provided a way of maintaining a connection with him.

Following the Flood, Noah also sacrificed animals, to which God again responded favourably, that “Never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done – despite the ingrained human leaning to evil” (8:20). Sacrifices again had kept God and humanity connected, and would do so in future too, when God formally set up the Levitical sacrificial system in Old Testament Israel as “an aroma pleasing to him” (Numbers 28:2), so that, even though the Israelites continually fell far short of trusting and obeying him, they could still interact with him and draw near to him. 

And the priests were the ones God put in place to make all this possible. But here we are now with no such system in place, so “How do we draw near to God today?”….(next blog)