In Christ Alone
Numbers 18:20
And the LORD said to Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel.”
Why is it of utmost importance that a priest who represents God to the people, who seeks to judge between disputes with discernment, who treats all members of the commonwealth with the same severity in justice and humility in mercy, who wears the crown and breastplate of a monarch while carrying the towel and wash basin of a servant, finds his portion alone in the Father’s favor? Why can’t the priest own a dairy farm in Canaan or a cabin by the rippling brook or a hundred acres in the valley as a just reward for his faithful service? Why should a priest be in the commonwealth, but not of it; chief among the tribes of his kin but with no inheritance to show for it? Why must he roam the earth as a phantom, with no real place to call home, a stranger among his own people, an outlier in the center of society, a spiritual nomad in the city hub—a paradox?
So that he can never be tempted by anything the earth has to offer, even if the devil himself were to take him up to a high ridge and offer him all the kingdoms of the world as a prize. So that wealthy landowners can’t quietly pay off their sins with an offer of acreage, and insider traders can’t lure him into falsehood with investments, and vinedressers can’t tempt him into drunkenness with their choice wines, and real estate moguls can’t distract him from tabernacle ministry with riverfront properties. He can’t be bought or sold or bribed or tempted or lobbied or dissuaded or deterred from his God-given vocation as priest by anything the world has to offer. Only the man whose portion is God and nothing else is the one whose wisdom we can trust and whose word we can follow and whose atonement we can accept without fail.
Thank God we have a Priest like that among us! But oh, that we would be more like Him! Friend, as priests who’ve been fashioned in Christ’s image, may God alone be our portion and our inheritance today!