And now this is My commandment unto you - , not a commandment, which He gave them, but a commandment in regard to them. As God said of old, upon obedience, “I will command My blessing unto you,” so now He would command what should reach them, but a curse. “He returns from the people to the priests, as the fountain of the evil, whose carelessness about things sacred he had rebuked before. Let the priests of the new law hear this rebuke of God, and conceive it dictated to them by the Holy Spirit to hear, from whom God rightly requires greater holiness, and so will punish them more grievously, if careless or scandalous in their office.” All Christians are, in some sense 1 Peter 2:9, “a royal, holy priesthood,” over and above the special “Christian priesthood;” as the Jews, over and above the special priesthood of Aaron, were a Exodus 19:6, “kingdom of priests.” What follows then belongs, in their degree, to them and their duties.
Through disloyalty, God's chosen people developed a character exactly the opposite of the character He desired them to develop. They placed their own mold and superscription upon the truth. They forgot God, and lost sight of their high privilege as His representatives. The blessings they had received brought no blessing to the world. All their advantages were appropriated for their own glorification. They robbed God of the service He required of them, and they robbed their fellow men of religious guidance and a holy example. Like the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, they followed out every imagination of their evil hearts. Thus they made sacred things appear a farce, saying, “The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these,” while at the same time they were misrepresenting God's character, dishonoring His name, and polluting His sanctuary (The Southern Watchman, January 10, 1905). 4BC 1181.1
13. See EGW on Leviticus 1:3, Vol. 1, p. 1110. 4BC 1181.2
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