Being a priest is hard work.
First, there’s the physical side of it: slaughtering animals, moving pieces of the tabernacle, shoveling ash and procuring olive oil for lamp that is burning nonstop.
Then, there’s the emotional side. Since the priests were to intercede on behalf of the people, they would’ve been intimately aware of the failings of over a million people. Ask any elder how much they think about the people in their church, and the answer will most likely be “all the time.” It’s so intense that Paul listed it as one of his main points of anguish (2 Corinthians 11:28).
Lastly, there’s the spiritual side. As the intermediary between all those people and an all-powerful God, how the priests ministered to God impacted the spiritual health of the Israelites. If the priesthood was crooked, the people wouldn’t learn or sacrifice as they should.
All that pressure is bound to weigh on someone after a while. Exodus 28 underscores the seriousness of the priestly obligations by giving such detailed instructions for the garments. Three times in this chapter, Aaron is instructed to make the garments in such a way “so he will not die” (Exodus 28:35, 38, 43).
If that sounds extreme, it’s because the nature of salvation is extreme. To cover the sins of the people, things had to die every day. And, of course, to cover our sins, Jesus Himself had to die. Sin is expensive.
The burden that the priests bore every day wasn’t just in preserving their own sanctification, but that of the people, too. In Exodus 28:38, the purity of the garments carried over to the purification of the offerings. Once the people have “consecrated” their offerings, then Aaron’s ritual purity would present the sacrifice as pure before God.
We are not responsible for the sins of other people—especially not in the sense that Aaron was as a high priest. But we still carry the weight of others’ situations on our back. If we are truly a “holy priesthood” unto God (1 Peter 2:5, 9), then there’s an innate responsibility to help people get closer to God, as the priests did.
To do that, we have to make sure we’re standing right before God. Some of the harshest rebukes from Jesus to the Pharisees came due to their inability to lead and teach others. To Him, they were “blind leaders of the blind” (Matthew 15:14), unable to know how to stand before God themselves, much less help anyone else.
