True Christian Community is the Place to Grow Up in Christ
~ by Pastor Rob Krause
Recently, I was doing a study on the Old Testament Priest in relation to the New Testament Believer-Priest. The study was thoroughly fascinating. One of my regular conclusions was that the ancient Tabernacle designs have so much to teach us about a pleasing walk before God! You might ask, “So what does this have to do with True Christian Community?” What a brilliant question and let me compliment you for thinking of it.
Setting the Scene
Each Levite priest was born and raised to serve God in that capacity. It took them thirty years to be developed and that included five years of formal training from a retired priest. Every Levite male was required to go through this training. However, not every man was selected for the priesthood. Some were rejected from service. Each candidate was given an arduous physical inspection by the chief priest and had to meet twelve qualifications for service. In Leviticus 21:18-23 you can read the qualifications.
More Specifically
My focus for this article is the 8th qualification. A man was to be set-aside from service if he was a dwarf ( Lev. 21:20). The priesthood couldn’t be accomplished by children or by men of unfulfilled stature. A dwarfed person had a fully capable & reasoning mind, but they could not stand tall enough to balance the work with the other priests. They didn’t have the height to serve in a pleasing or non-distracting manner before the Lord. Instead of fulfilling service to God, they would always be a person who needed to receive ministry. Now how many of today’s pews hold intellectually religious people who are service-less wonders and whose feet never touch the ground?
