Numbers 18 is the instruction for how the Tent of Meeting was to be managed. It is interesting that this chapter starts with “God spoke to Aaron”. This is one of the few times that God speaks directly to Aaron himself. Normally it is through Moses, or He spoke to Moses and Aaron together. Only a few times in scripture is it directly to Aaron. But this chapter is all about how Aaron is to manage God’s Tent. He has several assignements: “responsible for taking care of sins having to do with the Sanctuary…..responsible for sins involving the priesthood”. God provided a tribe to assist him in the work – the Levites – and Aaron was to “enlist your brothers….they report to you”. So God is setting up the leadership of His ministry to the people and Aaron is the CEO/President if you will. The service was very strict in it rules – those who violate it – well scripture says “both they and you will die” as God spoke to Aaron. That is pretty high stakes to say the least. It is also interesting that “outsiders are not allowed to help”. This task was assigned to Aaron and the Levites and that was it. No one else could be involved. It was he and the boys and his Levite brethren period.
There was one other aspect of this job – Aaron and team were in “charge of my contributions”. They handled all the offerings and tithes. That is in fact how they were compensated for their efforts – through receiving a portion of what came into the storehouse. There were very strict rules on what and how much and how it all happened, but they were totally at the mercy of people doing what they were supposed to in terms of tithes and offerings. “All the firstfruits are yours….you get the redemption price”. Aaron’s team received much as people brought in their firstfruits, but they were not allowed to own any land. God told them “I am your plot of ground” and they were admonished to never own ground. My guess is this was a pretty high stress job with all the sacrifices and rules to follow. They were on call and required to be there all the time. Only Aaron and his sons could enter the holy of holies. It was a pretty small group that had to do the most important stuff. But God obviously takes this area of sacrifice and tithes seriously – He speaks directly to Aaron about it and the stakes are high in regard to how it is to be handled. God knows the way the human heart is regarding money and stuff. And He left no room to wonder how it was to be managed and handled here by Aaron and the Levites. Is your heart right regarding money and stuff? Do you recognize that is all belongs to God and He chooses to let us be stewards of some of it? We need to get that right!
