Of Priests and High Priests (Part 1 of 3)

1.  Frequency and Value

Is value commensurate with frequency of use?  Can we determine the worth of something based on how often it is used?  Sometimes, in our minds, that is how it works. If a kitchen knife is used more often than a butcher’s knife, it must be more important; since the AK-47 is handier, more popular, and its voice is heard more often on the battlefield than the dumb atomic bomb, it must be superior to the less deployed.  In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, I find a model that might suitably address this mystery of the relationship between service and value, between quantity and quality, between frequency of activities and divine significance.

6 … the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God.

7 But into the second went the high priest alone once every year … (Hebrews 9:6-7).

Two kinds of ministries and ministers are contrasted: “the priests … BUT the high priest …” – the many priests who served “always” (daily), and the one high priest who served only “once every year.”  The service of one category involved many activities, the service of the other, apparently, less.  One group had multiple members, the other had only one man.  One group engaged more frequently with the people, the other more with the Holy. May I ask, between the daily and yearly ministers, who served God better?  Who served God more?  With whom was God more pleased?

Twice a day, morning and evening, the priests entered into the holy place (the “first” apartment in the Lord’s House) to burn incense and attend to the lamps of the candlestick.  Weekly, they also took in fresh bread to replace the old ones on the table of shewbread.  By those frequent activities, the Scripture attests, they were “accomplishing the service of God.”  Note: what they did was the “service of God.”

While the priests apparently did so much work and every day in their “service of God,” one man, the high priest, comparatively, did nothing all year round, until the ‘annual convention’ when the whole nation gathered, when he officiated for just one day.  Between those whose “service of God” demanded their presence in the house of God twice a day for every day of the year, and the one whose “service of God” needed him there only once a year, who served God more?  Whose service was greater?

As the priests served in the house of God twice daily, without break, for the entire year, we may compute their total annual service as 2 x 365 days of active service in the year, which comes to a total of 730 ministry sessions in the House of God every year.  Unlike them, the high priest served in that same House for only one day.  Mathematically, the equation between their relative services would be 1/730 = 0.14%.  In other words, the high priest’s input, compared to the other ministers of God in the same House, was less than 1%; in fact, it was less than half percent.  Which of the two categories served God more?  Who was ‘putting in’ more into the ‘ministry’?  In an open vote among today’s media-prone congregations, there is little doubt about who would get the trophy for serving God more.  Certainly, the ‘busier’ group.

Considerations like that, which base spiritual importance on the frequency of religious activities, have caused some concerns.  By such considerations, some disciples have not only rated certain priests either as special or ineffective servants of God but also commended or condemned themselves and their peculiar form of “service of God.”   From such perspectives, a high-priestly calling is sometimes seen as ‘doing nothing’ while others are ‘doing so much,’ all year round,’ in the same House of God.

Merely because one ministry demands less visible and measurable physical activity does not make it less valuable or less effective.  There will be no world left if atomic and nuclear bombs were deployed as commonly as assault rifles, and there would have been endless careless wars if there were no nuclear bombs, the fear of which enforces many a restraint from war.

2.  Nearer God, Farther from the Crowd

From the model of the Old Testament tabernacle and the worship therein, it will appear that the closer one draws to God (represented by the Ark in the Holy of Holies), the farther one gets from the crowd, the fewer one’s outward activities, and the less visible and available one becomes to people.  The crowd and the Ark are two extremes.  Like Jesus, however, it is sometimes possible, though, to be with the multitude yet not be lost in it; to hear the Father’s voice as clearly in the midst of the multitude as in the solitude and solemnity of a Transfiguration Mount; to ever feel His presence despite the noonday noisiness of the multitude, as in the quiet night on the mount of seclusion (John 12:28-30; Matthew 17:1-5).

There were three main sections of the Old Testament tabernacle.  The first place where one landed, upon passing through the gates of the enclosing fence, was the outer court, the open courtyard.   Inside that fence, within the courtyard, was a structure called the tabernacle, or sanctuary.  That tabernacle had two sections, or rooms.  The first was the Holy Place, where the priests went in daily to serve at the altars of incense, shewbread, and the candlestick.  Beyond that room, separated by a thick curtain, was the Holy of Holies (or Holiest Place), where the Ark of God was kept.  There, only the high priest entered once a year to perform his services.  The priests who served in the Holy Place never went beyond the limit defined by the curtain separating the two rooms.

In the outer court, or courtyard, the many Levites received animals, killed the animals, and dressed them for sacrifice.  They interfaced more directly and more often with the population.  Their “service of God” involved the most frequent, most visible, and most laborious activities.  Everyone who came to the sanctuary saw how busy they were, their garments sometimes stained with the bloody evidence of their very hard labour.  Popular as they were with the people, their service for God never took them beyond the courtyard.  They dared not proceed into the Holy Place, let alone the Holy of Holies.  Only the priests could go beyond the courtyard into the Holy Place, but no further; and only the high priest could go beyond the courtyard into the holy Place, and further still through the dividing curtain into the Holiest Place.

3.  Protocols of Approach

Every priest was a Levite, but not every Levite was a priest.  Every high priest was a Levite and a priest (Exodus 28:1), but every priest was not a high priest.  The Levitical birthright alone was no visa into the Holiest Place.  One could die for profanity and trespass trying to do so, killed by the Lord the protocols of whose approach have been breached (Leviticus 8:35; 16:2).

The priestly “service of God” in the Holy Place carried an exclusive aromatic incense fragrance, with bountiful bread, but it ended there.  Beyond that was the Holy of Holies, where the high priest entered for his annual duties.  In the Holy of Holies, there was no congregation, no spectacle, no applause, no noise, except the high priest’s silent motions.  His only ‘congregation’ was God.  The camera crew and news reporters dared not follow him there.  As there was no photography there, there were no photos of his “great services” for the news headlines.  All the people who might have done so reached their limits in the outer court.

Again, I ask: between the busiest Levites in the outer court, the fragrant priests in the Holy Place, and the annual high priest in the solitary Holy of Holies, who was the most preferred by God, and who did the most “service of God”?  Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard will appear to answer the many puzzles (Matthew 20:1-16).  We all enter the Vineyard at different times, with different levels of assignment, and each one is rewarded in the end not for how long they served or ‘how much’ they did, but for faithfulness to each one’s respective assignment, great or small in the eyes of mortals.

From The Preacher’s diary,

October 24, 2025.