Exodus 30

¹⁷ The Lord said to Moses, ¹⁸ “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, ¹⁹ with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet. ²⁰ When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die. ²¹ They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”

Timothy George and John Woodbridge have written of the low view that many people have of ministers.

Most non-Christians are convinced that Christians are inveterate hypocrites. One cartoon in The New Yorker (January 26, 2004) cleverly exploits this widespread sentiment. The cartoon shows a prisoner in a cell turning to another who is sitting on a cot. The first prisoner has apparently just asked the second man why he is in jail. The second responds cryptically: “I’m between congregations.” With a deft touch, the cartoonist had scored Christians – in this instance, a hypocritical clergy member – for not practicing what they preach. What’s worse, the cartoonist assumed that the readers of The New Yorker, so aware of Christians’ flawed reputations, would not need a lengthy explanation to reveal the cartoon’s barb.[1]

It is indeed a damning indictment, and one that should give the church pause. Of course, we might allege that this is simply anti-Christian bias, and that would work if the history books and newspapers were not filled with enough examples of hypocritical and failed ministers to make us blush until kingdom come. No, in point of fact, ministers have usually not needed much help in discrediting themselves.

It is therefore interesting to note that the scriptures call for holy ministers from the very beginning of such a classification of people. Exodus 30:17-21 gives us one more example of how the need for holy ministers was communicated in the arrangement of the tabernacle.

The basin of water speaks to the importance of purity for God’s ministers and the sacredness of worship.

We begin by considering what the bronze basin meant for the priests in the tabernacle.

¹⁷ The Lord said to Moses, ¹⁸ “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, ¹⁹ with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet. ²⁰ When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die. ²¹ They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”

Simply put, before the priests stood before the Lord, they were to wash their hands and feet in a bronze basin. Why? “Its function was ceremonial,” writes Roy Honeycutt, “and symbolized the purification of the priests prior to participation in their ministry.”[2]

It was, we might say, an acknowledgment on the priest’s part both of their need for forgiveness and of the holiness of God. Old Testament scholar William Propp offers some further helpful reflections on why they were to wash.

The Tabernacle Basin enables priests to wash their hands and feet before entering the Tabernacle proper. Because these body parts most frequently contact the world, they must not, on pain of death, bring impurity upon the Tabernacle or sacred vessels or even its earthen floor; cf. Ps 24:4, where the one who enters Yahweh’s abode must be not only pure-hearted but also naqi kappayim “pure of hands/feet.” Because the Basin stands by the door (30:18), the priests cannot miss it. Perhaps for the same reason, it is made of highly reflective bronze…[3]

In other words, both the location and the design of the basin were intended to draw attention to itself as well as to what it signified: the need for God’s ministers to be holy as they stood before the Lord on behalf of the people. If we seek to apply this to our day we might say that one application would be to the Christian clergy. That is, God’s ministers are to be holy both then and now!

James points to this in James 3.

¹ Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

This means that greater understanding brings greater accountability, that those who would stand before the people of God and speak of and point to Him must be in right relationship with Him themselves. Their hearts must be right before the Lord.

The bronze basin does not mean that ministers must be morally perfect. None of us are. The basin, we note, was there for continuous use. This assumes that the minister will need renewal time and time again. Yet the bronze basin is there. This assumes that holiness in God’s ministers is expected.

The basin and its continuous use keep us therefore from two extremes: scandalously low expectations for ministers and unrealistically high expectations for ministers or, put another way, libertinism or legalism. Ministers are not perfectly holy, but the perfect holiness of God must be their goal and heart’s desire.

Holiness in God’s ministers does matter. Dallas Willard has insightfully commented:

The “sudden” failures that appear in the lives of some ministers and others are never really sudden but are the surfacing of long-standing deficiencies in the “hidden person of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4)…The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them. But they will never forget the kind of persons we are.[4]

They certainly will not forget the kind of persons we are. But even this cannot be our main motivation. Rather, ministers of God must be aware of the holiness of God Himself, even more than they are aware of the people and their needs. We must strive for holiness because God is holy! John Brown, a Scottish theologian of yesteryear, wrote, “Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.”[5]

This must be the currency and passion of ministers. Ministers must return time and time again to the basin, inward renewal that will manifest in holy lives.

This is forever true, but what is the basin for us today? Should we put large bronze basins at the door of the sanctuary for the pastors to wash in before entering? This misses the point. Today, for us, on this side of the cross, the basin is the blood of Christ shed for the remission of sins. We turn time and time again to the cross seeing therein the faithful love and forgiveness of God which prompts us to call upon His name day and night and to confess our sins when confession is due.

The basin is the cross.

In the Old Testament the basin was a type of the cross, it pointed to and anticipated the cross.

For us, it is the cross.

The basin of water speaks to the importance of purity for all of God’s people…all of whom are ministers.

I suppose that some might hear all of this and think, “Yes! Down with the hypocritical clergy!” But if followers of Jesus say such they do so only by misunderstanding and then selectively applying the call for holiness, for in 1 Peter 2 we read this:

⁴ As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, ⁵ you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

We used to talk more of “the priesthood of the believer.” We need to reclaim this crucial and beautiful belief today. “The priesthood of the believer” refers to the truth that Peter proclaimed: in Christ we are all priests. What this means is (1) like the Old Testament priest we too can now, through the blood of Christ our great mediator, come into the presence of God without needing any human mediator and (2) we can now be priests to one another, serving one another and helping to bring one another to Jesus.

In other words, the basin is needed by us all! We must all strive for holiness! We all need the cleansing of the blood of Christ as well as consistent renewal through the power of the indwelling Spirit. We all need the basin of holiness for we are all priests!

The19th century Bible commentator, Charles Henry Mackintosh, understood the significance of the bronze basin (or, to use the older term Mackintosh employs, “laver”) and powerfully described what our neglect of the pursuit of holiness means for our lives.

Our constant failure in priestly ministry may be accounted for by our neglecting the due use of the laver. If our ways are not submitted to the purgative action of the Word—if we continue in the pursuit or practice of that which, according to the testimony of our own consciences, the Word distinctly condemns, the energy of our priestly character will assuredly be lacking. Deliberate continuance in evil and true priestly worship are wholly incompatible. “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.” If we have any uncleanness upon us, we cannot enjoy the presence of God. The effect of His presence would then be to convict us by its holy light. But when we are enabled, through grace, to cleanse our way, by taking heed thereto according to God’s Word, we are then morally capacitated for the enjoyment of His presence.[6]

We must realize and embrace the full implications of the radical truth that, as priests, we all must go time and time again to the laver, to the basin, the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. What this will look like, specifically, is hatred of sin. Once we grasp the viciousness of sin and the devastating impact of sin we can then learn to hate our sin. In Jerry Bridges’ The Pursuit of Holiness, he makes this point powerfully.

Hatred is a legitimate emotion when it comes to sin. In fact, the more we ourselves grow in holiness, the more we hate sin…As we grow in holiness, we grow in hatred of sin; and God, being infinitely holy, has an infinite hatred of sin…We need to cultivate in our own hearts the same hatred of sin God has.[7]

Love God. Hate that which God hates.

On the one hand, we must not reduce the gospel to mere morality, as if the whole point is to “be good boys and girls.” The goal is being one with and looking more and more like Jesus. But this does indeed entail our moral characters and our behavior. To this end, the bronze basin is a powerful reminder that when we approach God either in a Sunday church service or on a Monday morning drive to work—that is, anywhere and everywhere—we must recognize His utter and complete holiness and what that means for our own lives.

The basin symbolizes renewal in holiness, but, on this side of the cross, there is something more, something that helps us understand it in the full light of God’s revealed truth. There is Jesus. There is His finished work on the cross. There is His empty tomb.

What we must not do is turn the basin into a soul-crushing symbol of mere moral self-effort and self-exertion. I agree with Dallas Willard’s famous statement that “the gospel is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning,” but that effort rests in an assurance of the triumph of the perfect righteousness of Christ. We come to the basin, then, not because we think if we can wash our hands enough God will be pleased. We come to the basin understanding that we can wash our hands now because the hands of Christ have been pierced for us. We come to the basin understanding that we can wash our feet now because the feet of Christ were pierced for us.

In other words, the basin does mean renewal in holiness, and it does remind us of the need to strive towards holiness through efforts and good works, but standing at the basin with us is Christ Jesus the Lord. It is He who washes our hands with His own. He shows us the way of holiness. He sets us free for right living and Godward behavior. We are never alone!

If the symbol of the basin drags us merely to our own best efforts, then we are doomed to hopelessness. But if we approach the basin with Christ, in Christ, for Christ, by the power of the name of Christ, then we can avoid the siren songs of indifference on the one hand and presumptuous legalism on the other. We can see that our best efforts are still frail efforts. But we can also see that Christ is with us and for us and that, through Him, we can now approach a holy God as His grateful priests.

Come to the basin! Come to Christ!

 

[1] Timothy George and John Woodbridge, The Mark of Jesus (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2005), p.15.

[2] Roy L. Honeycutt, Jr. “Exodus.” General Articles, Genesis-Exodus. The Broadman Bible Commentary. Vol.1. Revised (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1969), p.431.

[3] William H.C. Propp, Exodus 19-40. The Anchor Bible. Vol.2A. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006), p.421.

[4] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 124.

[5] Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2003), 63.

[6] Charles Henry Mackintosh, Notes on the Book of Exodus. (New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1862), p.341.

[7] Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2003), 38-39 and 40.