READING: Lev. 8; Heb. 1:1-2,5,8; 2:1;
3:1; 4:14; 5; 6.
Coming back to chapter 8 of the book of Leviticus,
we have presented to us a priestly company, a company
that belonged to the sanctuary. That is represented by
the passage in the chapter which says that this priestly
company was not to depart from the sanctuary, not to
go out of the door of the sanctuary for seven days, the
whole period of their consecration. "Seven" stands for
spiritual completeness, and here we have spiritual
completeness as governing a whole period, or as
represented in a whole period, and it says to us that this
separating, this consecrating, this binding to the
sanctuary was to extend over a perfect period, and thus
they belonged to, and were, so to speak, part of the
sanctuary unto a full period. What that period is we need
not say for the moment.
Another thing that is said is that their ministry is to the
Lord. There is an aspect of ministry which is to the
world, and to the people, but the specific or principal
aspect of the ministry of this priestly company is to the
Lord.
Before we go more fully into the chapter before us,
let us say one or two general things which are brought
out quite clearly in the Word of God.
A Priestly People
The first is this, that the Lord's thought for all His
people is that they shall be a priestly company. You will
look in vain in the Word of God for anything that will
indicate that God has a certain level for some people and
a higher level for others. The thought of God, the calling
of God, and the provision of God, is full, complete, for
all His people, and He has made no provision, given no
instructions concerning a people who will not come to
His full thought. There are levels recognised, there are
differences
taken account of, as we shall see, but the Lord has not
so ordered it; and any one who will say, Well that high
level is not for me, something less than that is for me, I
am not called to such high things, I am one of the simple
kind and must be satisfied with something less! has
altogether misconceived the mind of God. God always
regards His people as though they were going to attain
unto the fulness of His thought. That is to say, you may
find the people in anything but a satisfactory spiritual
condition as you read the Word of God, but the Lord
never comes down to that level to accommodate Himself
to it. He always speaks as though these very people
were destined to come to something fuller. It is an
important thing to recognise. We must get it settled in
our minds very clearly that, although there are differences
amongst the Lord's people, and although there are
ranges of light and knowledge and understanding and
truth, and some have a smaller, and some a very much
greater measure than others, the Lord never arranged it
to be like that. The Lord does not intend it to be like
that. That does not represent what the Lord wants. The
Lord's thought for His people is His fulness, and this
priestly company, while it looks to be a very solid
company, something that is right on the inside of things in
a particularly honoured, privileged position, does not
represent God's thought as an arrangement for any
special number or class of His children. That can be
proved from the Word of God.
A great and all-embracing statement about the Lord's
people is that they are chosen to be a kingdom of priests
unto God. That is to say, not some few of His people
but all of them are called to be a kingdom of priests unto
God. That is how God regarded Israel from the
beginning, as a priestly kingdom, an entire people in a
priestly position. That is why the firstborn in every house
took the place of the priest in the
house. This in turn was taken up in the tribe of Levi,
representing the firstborn in all Israel, and brought before
the Lord, and separated unto ministry in the sanctuary.
In the Lord's thought this was the bringing of all Israel
into that position in representation. Yet at the same time
you cannot fail to recognise that there are differences.
There are the Levites, and there are the priests. There
are the Levites, and there are the sons of Aaron. They
are not the same, they are different; but the difference is
not because the Lord intended that there should be a
difference.
We will make that plain in a moment, but first of all
we must get this settled, that the highest and fullest that
God has is for all His people, and not just for some. If at
any time you feel that some things are beyond you, and
the Lord never intended you to attain unto them, will you
remember this. The thought that His fulness is for some
alone must be dismissed from your mind completely.
Differences because of Failure in God's People
Yet, while that is true, there is this second thing, which
is equally a fact, that there are differences; not because
God appointed it, determined that it should be so, but
because it is so by reason of the people themselves.
There will be in the innermost place a priestly company.
Then you will have in a more outward place another
company which is not a priestly company, but which may
be termed a Levitical company. Then more outward still
you will have the great mass of what we might call the
common people. That latter is not necessarily a term of
reproach, but simply means a general mass of the Lord's
people who are not in any special way standing in
relation to His testimony, and yet they are His people,
called by His Name. That is how it works out, and that is
how you see it in this book of Leviticus.
God to Obtain a Priestly Company
Our concern at the moment is with the priestly
company, for that is where God's full thought for His
people is realised and represented. God must have such
a company. With all that He will have - and He will have a
great multitude, a great Levitical company in general
service - He must nevertheless have a priestly company,
or His whole intention and thought breaks down, and He
is defeated.
So then, what is in view with us at this time is this,
that God in all that He has, and is set upon having, must
have that which is represented by the sons of Aaron, a
priestly company. You can work back from that
position to all kinds of true service for the Lord. The
priests will work through the Levites, but, mark you,
the Levites can never do the work of the priests. The
Levites will work to the general mass, but the general
mass can never do the work of a Levite. You have to
be a Levite to do a Levite's work, and you have to be a
priest to do a priest's work, but when you are a priest
you can equally do the work of a Levite, and can serve
all the Lord's people. Do not think that you are going to
be cut off from the service of the Lord if you go right on
to that which is specifically the Lord's thought for His
people.
Now have you got the point? The Lord's heart is set
primarily, ultimately, supremely upon a priesthood, and
He is for such. To possess such He will work in the
midst of His people, in the midst of the Levites, who are
doing more or less general service for Him, though
valuable. The Levites do all sorts of necessary things for
the Lord, but He will work in the midst of the Levites,
who are the doers of general service for Him, to get a
priestly company, who represent something more than
that.
We must note the relatedness of these things again,
because the Levites cannot function without the priests.
It is true that the priests must have the Levites, but let us
note that God can never really fulfil all His purpose until
He has this priestly company, and special pains, special
provisions, special undertakings, are made for the
securing of that company. To a detail it was all "as the
Lord commanded Moses".
The Truth as Presented in the New Testament
The language of the New Testament is very similar in
its terms with regard to this matter. You cannot fail to
see the first thing that we said, that God is always
dealing with, and speaking to, His people in the light of
His full thought, and has never made any provision for
anything less, and can never be satisfied with anything
less. There will be less, but it never satisfies Him.
Then you can see in the New Testament perfectly
clearly that the Lord, recognising quite well that many
will not come to His full thought, is taking pains,
nevertheless, to get a company there. Where shall we
look for that? Take the
Apostle Paul himself, and all that he has to say in this
connection. Take, for example, the first chapter of the
letter to the Colossians. In that chapter, as well as in
others, the utterness of the Lord's mind is set forth in
such urgent words as these: "Christ... whom we
preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in
all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in
Christ Jesus: whereunto I also labour, striving according
to his working, which worketh in me mightily." Or again,
take the great third chapter of the letter to the
Philippians. Here you have Paul, who is the Lord's, and
has served the Lord, who, though he has reached such a
point of spirituality and life and development, in the
depths of his being is yet conscious that the Lord does
not want any man to stop there, but that He has called to
something higher than that. The Apostle puts it in this
way: "If by any means I may attain"; or, again: "That I
may apprehend that for which I have been apprehended
of Christ Jesus". He says these things as an example,
and is urgent upon other believers to come that way.
Take the letters to the churches in the first
chapters of the Revelation. I am not one who
believes that those churches are not such as consist of the Lord's people, but represent just
general, formal, nominal and professing Christendom. I believe that they are the churches
such as the Lord holds in His hand; they are
stars, and the Lord is in the midst of them. I do
not believe such a thing to be true of a merely
professing church that has never been the Lord's
at all. Here they are on a lower level than His
desire for them. He takes account of them, and the
things which are good the Lord takes account of - the history of the true child of God - what they
have passed through, what they have endured,
what they have been, what they have done, what
they are that still remains commendable, but He
can never settle down and accept a measure, a part;
He can never be content with their just reaching
a point. To them all He addresses straight and
strong words about overcomers, and when you
begin to consider the matter, the word "overcomer" - in the light of what is said about the
churches, and especially about those who have
not gone into apostasy but simply lost out on
the way, not maintaining their high level
- means something utter, something more than
ordinary. But it requires a going on beyond
much. "I know thy labour and thy patience".
What more do you want? What more can God expect? "...thou canst not bear them which say they are Jews
and are not..." What more do you want? The Lord is
standing for His full thought, and He is not satisfied with
anything less than that, and has made provision for it. It
is perfectly clear that the New Testament takes up the
fact that there is a difference, but never allows the
thought that the Lord has arranged that difference, nor
that that difference represents what He intended.
So we are confronted with this, that ultimately the
Lord is out for a priestly company, whatever that may
mean. Chapter 8 of the book of Leviticus makes it clear
what that is. We cannot deal with all the details of the
chapter, it is so comprehensive, but we can touch on one
or two things which will make clear to us what a priestly
company is.
We have seen that it is a company wholly separated
unto the Lord, shut up to the sanctuary, and whose main
ministry is to the Lord. This ministry is entirely governed
by one thought. It is not so much the ministry of the
Levites, which is that of a more general ministry; the first
consideration of the priests is the satisfaction of the Lord.
There is a lot of difference there. The priest is not
governed by the thought that he is going to work for the
Lord, and do all sorts of things for the Lord, but he
concentrates upon that which answers to the Lord's own
need and desire, that which satisfies the Lord. It is
ministry unto the Lord.
God's Good Pleasure
Now you see in the chapter in question what that
meant. You notice that Moses filled the hands of Aaron's
sons with that which represented both sides of Christ's
work; that is, the side of Christ's work which had to do
with the putting away of sin, the utter putting away of sin,
by atonement, so that the way is absolutely clear and free
from that which is the old creation and man by nature,
the death side; then representing the other side, he took
out of the basket the unleavened bread, which speaks of
the perfect sinless human nature of the Lord Jesus. The
old man put away, the sinful man, and the new man
brought in, the Christ, the perfect humanity. These priests
have both hands full, full of that with which God is
satisfied. That is not the nature of general service for the
Lord. In general service for the Lord there is a good
deal that is of the old man by nature. That does not
satisfy the Lord. The Lord does not want the old man
going into His service, in his own energies of mind, of
will, and body, his zeal, enthusiasm, enterprise, judgment
and ideas. If the truth were known, the proportion of real
satisfaction to the Lord in that is very small.
The priest comes on to much higher ground. It is a
spiritual position that is taken. On the one hand, that
spiritual position rules out by the Cross all that is of man
by nature from the service of God, and, on the other
hand, brings in the Man who can serve God. It is simple,
but these are laws which are underlying the Divine
revelation, and it is for us to recognise them. A priest
does not belong to a certain class of people called
priests. A priest is one who has come to a spiritual
position, and anybody who has come to this spiritual
position can fulfil priestly ministry. The spiritual position is
where it is recognised, on the one hand, that by the
Cross man in nature has been put away from the service
of God. Whatever God may get by sovereignty is quite
another matter. The Lord does get something in a
sovereign way, even when a sinning man is doing work
for Him. But that never comes to the Lord's satisfaction
so far as the man is concerned, so far as the state is
concerned, and in the long run the man will find that he
was never pleasing to the Lord while in that state. On the
other hand, the priest is one who has come to the place
where Christ is the basis of all service, and where His
resources alone are adequate. He is the Man of God's
right hand. That is a priest spiritually set forth.
A Further Figure of the Same Truth
That this is a spiritual state can be seen by regarding it
from another standpoint, or in the light of other words. Sonship and priesthood are synonymous in the Word of
God. It is Aaron and his sons who are the priests. It
was the firstborn son in Israel who was the priest, and
the Levites took up the firstborn's place, and then the
principle was carried right through to its highest form of
expression in Aaron's sons. That is sonship governing
priesthood all the way through. Priesthood is one with
sonship. When you come to the New Testament, apart
from the types and symbols, you know that there is this
distinction between children and sons of God.
Unfortunately in the Authorised Version these terms are
confused, and the distinction is not
made. In the Revised Version you get the distinction.
Why use two different words? They represent two different things. A child,
according to the usage of the
Greek word, is an infant, whilst a son is one who has
come to maturity, grown up in the family, and come to a
place of responsibility. The Lord employs the two
words. Now that is the point underlying Hebrews 3 and
4 and when you go on to chapter 5 you are still dealing
with priesthood. You have reached Melchizedek as the
highest type and expression of priesthood, and the
Apostle says: "Of whom we have many things to say,
but..."! They cannot be said. Why? Because they are
still infants, and not sons; they are still immature, babes.
Then, in order to go on with this matter of priesthood, to
bring the real meaning of priesthood to them, he has to
bring this word right upon them: "Let us go on to full
growth". It is like a tremendous parenthesis. He is
talking about priesthood, and reaches a point where he is
still about to say something more, but is arrested, and the
things are never said. He has met a hindrance in the
immaturity of these believers. It is not that there is
anything wrong with being a babe, but there is something
wrong with being a babe when it is time you were a man.
The Apostle, therefore, breaks off to bring in this urgent
appeal to press on, and having given expression to it, he
goes on to talk about priesthood again. So that to come
to the priestly company we must come to spiritual
maturity. We must get further away from infancy every
day. That is according to nature, and it is according to
grace. We should be coming progressively into the
priestly position.
Right at the end of chapter 3 of the letter to the
Ephesians we get what is really expressive of a priestly
condition: "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named... (here you come
to the Father, and have the priestly family in view) that he
would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to
be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
that Christ may dwell (the word here is "settle down",
make His home) in your hearts by faith; that ye, being
rooted and grounded in love (love is always a priestly
feature; the first thing said about Aaron was something
about his heart - the Lord said to Moses: "When he shall
see thee, he shall be glad in his heart"), may be able to
comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height (spiritual intelligence is the mark of a
priest), and to know the love of Christ, which passeth
knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of
God." What does all this lead to? Let us read on. "Now
unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above
all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the Church..." Surely
that is fulness! When is there glory in the Church? When
the priests are in their place, when the priests have come
to their measure, when the priests are functioning.
Really that speaks to us of the Lord's thought for all
His people. You will look in vain in the letter to the
Ephesians, which is the great Church letter, for any
discrimination between the Lord's people, and you will
look in vain in the New Testament and in all Paul's
writings for anything which suggests such a thing as this:
'Now some of you are called to that and others are not'.
The Lord's thought is that all saints should come to His fulness. The Lord knows they will not all come,
nevertheless He does not change His thought, and say,
'All ,right, I will excuse some of you, and I will make
provision for some of you just to go so far'. Priesthood
is a spiritual thing. It is the value to the Lord of a
company who are moving into His full thought for His
people.
The Lord is seeking to bring His people, wherever
they will respond to Him, on to the
highest and fullest ground of His desire. That makes
possible a ministry of peculiar value and richness in all
directions. Please do not think that if you are going on
this way it means you are going to have to give up some
service for the Lord. I have heard it said that some men
react to this sort of thing in this way: 'Well, the Lord
has called me to be an evangelist, and all this teaching
about the Church does not interest me at all. It is not my
job, it has nothing to do with me; I do not understand it,
and I do not want to; the Lord has made perfectly clear
to me what my job is'. Well, you have nothing like that in
the New Testament. If you are a priest in the full spiritual
sense you will do very much better evangelistic work, if
you are going to call it that. If you have a fulness of
Christ to bring, those to whom you bring it can be
brought into that at once. Do we not need to bring the
greater fulnesses of Christ to men right at the beginning
of their life with the Lord? Multitudes of Christian
people, who have been born again ten, twenty, thirty,
forty years, are no further on today than when they
were born again, because there was nothing more
brought to them at the first. So many say, Oh, if only it
had been presented to us at the beginning!
Please do not think this is to take you from useful
service of some kind. It is to strengthen, and deepen,
and enrich all kinds of service that is really valuable to
the Lord. The Lord give us understanding.