repentance | Grandma's Ramblings
Last week I looked at the bronze altar where the sacrifices were made in the tabernacle.
Today I look at the bronze laver.
After you passed the bronze altar where the sacrifices were made there was still one more piece of furniture stationed before the entrance to the Holy Place. It was the bronze laver.
Exodus 38:8 tells us that the laver was made from the mirrors of the women. Moses was told in Exodus 30, “You are to make a bronze basin with a bronze stand for washing. Set it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and put water into it, with which Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet. Whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting or approach the altar to minister by presenting an offering made by fire to the LORD, they must wash with water so that they will not die. Thus they are to wash their hands and feet so that they will not die; this shall be a permanent statute for Aaron and his descendants for the generations to come.”
The Bible does not tell us the dimensions of this laver. Later, when Solomon built the Temple he made a huge laver called the Sea. It was 7 1/2 feet deep and 45 feet around. He rested it on a base 15 feet from rim to rim with figures of oxen beneath it. It could hold 16,500 gallons of water. It must have been quite impressive.
How does the laver relate to our worship today?
First, I suggest the idea since it was made from the women’s mirrors, perhaps we need to take time to reflect on our own life and our own attitudes as we approach God in worship. A time of self-examination.
“For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.” James 1: 22-25
Second, the priests were to wash their hands and feet before they approached the Holy Place or offered any sacrifices on the bronze altar.
In Biblical times, the priests would have washed at home. But walking through the dirty, dusty streets their feet could easily become dirty again. Perhaps this is a reminder to us that although we are saved by faith in Jesus and are clean, we are surrounded by a world that is far from God. Perhaps a reminder that while we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, it can be easy for us to pick up pollution from the world around. Things we see, words we hear, actions we encounter with others.
P Douglas Small asks an important question.
“How do you clean up a polluted world and yet keep your heart pure? How do you get deeply involved with sinners who need salvation without becoming involved in their sin? How do you embrace the holy and live in a polluted world? You must keep stopping the laver.”
“For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.” Ephesians 5:25-26
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
“How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word.” Psalm 119:9
“Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Psalm 119:11
Let us keep going back to the Word of God. “Dusty Bibles equal dirty hearts.”
My husband and I finished reading the book of 2 Samuel this morning. Growing up I loved the stories of King David:
- the young man who killed the giant Goliath with a sling and a stone
- the shepherd boy writing beautiful Psalms
- the mighty warrior king
- the man who wanted to build a temple for God
One of the best known stories is his great sin when he coveted the wife of another man. Psalm 51 is believed to have been the psalm he wrote after repenting of his terrible sins.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
Reading this I cannot help but think of al the people David sinned against.
- Bathsheba who he seduced into betraying her husband
- Her husband, Uriah, whose wife he stole and then had killed
- His own family for who he set such a bad example
- His military commander, Joab, who was forced into a compromising position in having Uriah killed
Yet David said he had sinned against God and God only.
Understanding how David must have felt when the full sense of what he had done hit him helps explain this I believe. David had from his youth depended on God and reading the Psalms he wrote you can see the love he had for God. When he fully realized how he had betrayed, not only Uriah and Bathsheba, but the very basis of his faith, he was devastated.
So when David says, “Against you and you only have I sinned,” I don’t think he means, “I didn’t wrong Uriah by killing him, and I didn’t wrong Bathsheba by raping her, and I didn’t wrong the baby by being the cause of its death.” He meant, “The horrible thing here, ultimately, is that I rebelled against God. I rejected God as my treasure. I scorned the word of God.” This is what Nathan said to him when he came and pointed the finger at him: “Why have you despised the word of God?” That’s what Nathan said. Nathan didn’t say, “Why have you killed a man, and why have you raped a woman?” He said, “Why have you despised the word of God?”
So David knows from the prophet that the worst thing that has happened here is that he has despised God. And so I think that’s what he means. He is simply drawing attention, not to the minimization of rape and murder, but to the maximization of the assault on God that happened in those acts.
They are not less horrible because he says this: they are more horrible because he says this….John Piper
When Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife he resisted her by saying.
“My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”
Of course such a sin would have been against Potiphar but Joseph placed his greater loyalty to God and God’s laws. It was God he did not want to offend.
So, I ask myself – When I offend someone, when I harm someone, when I sin against someone, how do I sorry for that?
Do I just apologize to that person and move on? Do I think that takes care of everything? Or, do I realize that my sin is also rejecting the word of God? Do I realize how I have counted my desire to “do my own thing” more important than my desire to remain true to my faith, my God?
Lord, help me to value my relationship with you and my loyalty to your Word that I will not regard my sins so ightly, but reconize my sins are against You and repent accordingly.