Garments of holiness, glory, and beauty Exodus 28

You shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful persons whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom, that they make Aaron's garments to consecrate him, that he may minister as priest to me. Exodus 28:2-3

Setting up the place of worship for God after the Exodus was a huge job that He assigned Moses. We have chapters of instruction about the tabernacle...how to make it, what to make it out of, and how it is to be handled. The word “skilled” comes up over and over again. God skilled certain people to work in cloth, in metals, and in spices, along with other things. The place was to look good, smell good, and work well as a portable place of worship and sacrifice. There was to be no flaw in the making of the items there. And that included the priestly garments.

Aaron was Moses' brother, and God tells Moses to find the weavers and sewers who could make these clothes, persons with wisdom...skill yes, but also wisdom. One translations says,”wisdom in such matters.” The word wisdom is there...not just skill, but wisdom. They needed both to be acceptable to make these garments. There were a lot of skilled people out there to choose from, I am sure. But having God's spirit resting on them was as important. These items were to be made by spiritual people for spiritual reasons. There were a few reasons listed here...

First, these garments were to be holy. They were to be used for one purpose, that that was ministering before the Lord Himself. They were to be separated out. We mistake holiness for shining and glowing and think of saints and halos. But holiness is being separated out for God. There was no other purpose for these particular clothes. This was worship material, nothing more, and definitely nothing less. Why would you want a common, ungodly person making them? No, says God, only the holy-minded man can make them.

They were to be made for God's glory. This is the public praise, renown, and honor and fame. These were to be a spectacular showing of the worthiness of God shown through the dressing of Aaron when He is before the congregation. This God he was ministering before was worth getting all dressed up for. No blue jeans for these priests!! To come before God and do His bidding, the priests were to reflect God's glory and beauty.

They were for beauty. These were not soldier uniforms, nor waiter suits, nor any other type of service clothes. These were supposed to be gorgeous. The colors, the designs, the textures, and the ornamentation were all supposed to be beyond pretty. The beauty of holiness that David describes years later is reflected in these special robes.

And they were to consecrate Aaron. They were to set him apart for dedicated service to the Lord. When wearing these garments, he only had one purpose. When he was not fulfilling this role, he was to change back into common garments. But in these, he was the priest, the servant of God.

So why did God ask for spiritual people to make this stuff? Isn't skill enough? Isn't beauty enough? Shouldn't they have just chosen the “best men for the job?” Ezekiel 28 answers that question in a sideways sort of way. God had given one entity the job of reflecting His beauty and holiness. He was a gorgeous creation. This passage from vs. 12 on speaks of Lucifer...the brilliant light, the gorgeous one. It says he was in Eden and was blameless until unrighteousness was found in him...and he was changed into what Adam and Eve saw, which was a serpent! In verse 17 it says his heart was corrupted because of his beauty, and his reason corrupted by his splendor! And isn't that what we see in mankind today? The more physically beautiful someone is, the harder it is for them not to think too highly of themselves. And the more skilled someone is, the more they want to toot their own horns. What they do, they do for themselves, and that is not what God wants. He wants people who desired to exhault God, to point to the things that God had them make and praise Him with them instead of glorying in their part in making them. They are those who know their own sinful tendencies and lay them aside so God can be glorified and worshiped in a worthy manner.

More and more unspiritual men and women are leading our churches, leading our worship or music, building our buildings, and not pointing the people to the God who is supposedly being worshiped there. How sad for us! How dangerous for the church! There is little that is declared holy, sacred, consecrated, or beautiful for God's glory, and His alone. We need to pray for the leaders in our churches to point us back to holiness, assigning spiritual leaders to work in all roles of church function, from the pastors to the nursery workers. Things done in the spirit with skill and wisdom given of God from the top down will revolutionize the church. It will change it because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3), freedom from sin and freedom to worship well. Let this be our prayer.