After the tabernacle was set up, Moses did not need to climb Mount Sinai any more to talk with God. Now he could enter the tabernacle, where God lived among the people, and hear the words of the Lord.
Before this time, whenever any one wished to worship God, that one would build an altar and burn his offering upon it, calling on the Lord to forgive his sins. And the Lord would hear him. But now Moses told the people that whenever they wished to worship God and pray for the forgiveness of their sins they should bring their sacrifice to the men at the door of the court, whose duty it should be to tend the altar of burnt offering. Those men, Loses said, would be called priests. And the priests would offer the sacrifice of the people before the Lord, and God would accept them.
God chose Aaron to be the high priest, and to him he gave the most important work in the tabernacle worship. Aaron’s sons God chose to be priests also, and they were to be Aaron’s helpers.
On the morning when the tabernacle worship first began, God told Moses to call the people together before the door of the court, and there, in the presence of them all, to anoint both Aaron and his sons with oil and to put on them the beautiful priestly robes: which they should wear. God wanted the people to see that he had chosen these men to do his work in the court and in the tabernacle, where no one else except Moses was allowed to enter.
After Aaron was made high priest he offered a lamb on the altar of burnt offering as a sacrifice for the sins of the people. He did not put any fire on the altar, but God sent fire, which burned up the lamb. When the people saw this they shouted with joy and fell down on their faces, because now they knew God was pleased with their offering and with their priests. From that time the priests offered two sacrifices for sin upon the altar of burnt offering every day—in the morning and in the evening. God reminded the people by these sacrifices that sin is an awful thing.
And the fire which God sent on the great altar was never allowed to die out. Every morning at sun-rise the priests’ raked the coals and placed fresh wood upon them, to keep the fire burning brightly. Even when the tabernacle Was moved to another camping-place on their journey to Canaan, the priests would carry burning coals from the altar in a covered pan. God had lighted this fire, and they wished to keep it always burning.
Inside the holy place, you remember, was a second altar, called the altar of incense, upon which sweet perfumes were burned before the Lord. It was the duty of the priests every morning and every evening to carry a fire-shovelful of burning coals from the great altar to light the fire on the altar of incense. They carried these coals in a bowl which hung on chains. Such a bowl was called a censer. God commanded that the altar of incense should never be lighted by any other fire except from the one which he had kindled upon the great altar.
Another duty of the priests’ was to keep twelve loaves of bread upon the golden table in the holy place. Each Sabbath morning they were to bring fresh loaves, and remove the stale ones. These loaves were called shewbread. No ona except a priest was permitted to eat this bread.
The priests also tended the seven lamps that burned on the golden candlestick. Every day they filled the lamp-bowls with fresh oil, and they kept the lights always burning.
One day not long after the tabernacle worship had begun, a sad thing happened. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, were preparing to light the fire on the altar of incense. They disobeyed God, and did not carry burning coals from the great altar but took other fire. And while they stood before the altar of incense in the holy place suddenly they fell down dead. Thus God punished them because they had dared to disobey his word.
Moses would not allow Aaron nor his other sons to touch the bodies of Nadab and Abihu. He called two men who were Levites, and cousins of the dead men, to carry the bodies away and bury them in the desert sand outside the camp.
This was a great lesson to Aaron and to his other sons. They saw that God expected them carefully to obey all of his words.