When we moved to our current house several years ago, we loaded up an entire trailer worth of boxes and furniture. Three, actually, because it took several trips there and back to move our entire life.
Few things in our life were sacred. Most of our furniture was either hand-me-downs and our dishes were the latest Walmart special, so it wasn’t a huge deal if one of them broke.
There was one item though that we carried in our laps as we made the last drive from our old rental house: My wife’s late grandmother’s glass candlestick holders. She passed away before my wife was born, so to her, those candlesticks represented a tangible link to a past she didn’t get to experience.
Some things in life are just more precious than others. As Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 2:20, in every house there are “vessels of honor” and “vessels of dishonor.” Some things are replaceable, while some are priceless.
Numbers seven shows this type of distinction. Once again, the three non-priestly tribes of Aaron are mentioned—the Kohathites, the Merarites, and the Gershonites. All three of them are given instructions on how to transport their respective items.
Because they’re tasked with carrying the Tabernacle structure itself, the Gershonites and the Merarites are given carts to carry their items. The Kohathites, on the other hand, are told to carry the holy objects from place to place.
(As a side note, this gives us the backdrop for the sin of Uzzah from 2 Samuel 6. Because it is a “holy item”, the Ark of the Covenant was never supposed to be on an ox cart. The reason Uzzah died was because he touched the Ark, to be sure, but the real sin was putting it on the cart to begin with.)
To make matters even more difficult for these people, the Kohathites weren’t even allowed to actually look at these items (Numbers 4:20). Instead, the holy objects were covered by the priests, and then the Kohathites could transport them. I imagine more than one Levite suffered severe anxiety every time it got a little windy.
It’s difficult not to make too much of this section. The easy connection to make is that of us bearing God on our shoulders, or more accurately, God bearing us. You could even connect it to the robes of the High Priests that have the names of the tribes on individual stones on the breastplate.
But let’s go deeper. What’s the real point of having the Kohathites carry the holy items?
There is no question that the primary reason for this type of care was due to the reverence of the objects. These weren’t just religious knick-knacks—these were the very items that created the bridge between man and God.
To me, this connection is at the heart of the instructions.
Think about it. When God wanted man to make an altar, God specified it had to be of uncut stones. No iron tools were to be used (Deut. 27:6), because it wasn’t up to man to make it beautiful. God’s creation honors God, whether you’re talking about the stones or the human who organized the stones.
Is this what we see in our modern worship? Are we so enamored with the how of worship that we forget it’s all about simply praising God with our heart and our voices? God doesn’t need a backing track and stage lighting and pyrotechnics. Humans want all that nonsense. It does nothing for Jehovah.
In fact, it takes so much away. The Kohathites carried the holy items close to their chest and bore them on their shoulders. They kept God close; they didn’t throw Him on a cart to make it more convenient for themselves.
Our worship should not be about convenience or human ingenuity, but about drawing closer to the reverence due His name. Is that my attitude?
