We have seen that, in the Old Testament dispensation, the
tribe of Levi occupied a distinctive spiritual place.
They were different; they were marked off by certain very
important spiritual features and factors. In our last
study we were seeking to show what those factors were.
The first thing was in relation to the Cross - that, of
course, is using the New Testament counterpart of the
altar and the sacrifice of Levitical times - a deep work
of the Cross within themselves. And then they became
people in the power of another life, represented by the
blood shed and sprinkled. Another distinguishing feature
of those people was the oil of anointing - type of the
Holy Spirit - constituting them spiritual people.
What is a Spiritual
Person?
It
is always an exceedingly difficult thing to explain what
a spiritual person is. The mental reactions to that very
phrase are often strange and peculiar. The idea of a
spiritual person is that your feet are off the earth, you
are living somewhere up in the clouds, and you are very
unpractical as to the affairs of this world. You are too
'spiritual' really to be here at all - you ought to be in
Heaven! Of course that is an entirely false apprehension
of the meaning of being spiritual. Let us try a little
further to explain what it really means that by the Holy
Spirit we are constituted spiritual men and women.
But
let me first draw a distinction, because not all
Christians are very spiritual people. The New Testament
has a very great deal to say about Christians who are
carnal people, and that is a word which just means
fleshly people, and if you want to know what that means -
selfish people. You can be a Christian and be very
self-centred, self-occupied, self-interested. Self - who
can run to earth all the many aspects of what self means?
When you think you have compassed the whole thing, it
breaks out somewhere else in new forms. You just cannot
finally lay your hand upon the multiplicity of the
expressions of this deep root, with all its fibres, this
self life.
Now
a spiritual person is one who is not dominated and
governed and influenced by the self nature, but whose
thoughts, interests, actions are directed by the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in charge of the life. It is
not what I think - and how often Christians are talking
like that: 'I think', 'I
think', 'I think' - that does
not come into it with a spiritual person at all. There is
no asserting of what I think, it is, 'What does the Lord
think about this? What is the mind of the Lord about
this?' Not, 'I want', and 'I will', but, 'What does the
Lord want? Let us seek to know the Lord's mind, the
Lord's will about this. Let us put our own mind and will
and feelings out of the thing altogether, and let the
Holy Spirit tell us. We will not move until we have a
sense of what the mind of the Spirit is. At least we must
know that our own minds are not governing.' The
government of the Holy Spirit, the anointing, means that
spiritual people are like that. And of course it means a
great deal more. This complete, inward enthronement and
government of the Holy Spirit touches things in all
directions.
That
again is discriminating. You see, we can be governed, as
I said in an earlier meditation, by objective truth. It
can be 'the truth' - orthodox, sound, Bible truth. We can
be governed by that simply because it is taught; we do it
objectively. But there is something more than that. There
is such a thing as the Holy Spirit taking hold of the
truth of God and making it something that lives in us. As
I said previously, many Christians are just Christians:
that is, after they are saved, after they are born again,
their Christian life consists in doing as they are told
by the minister or the Christian leader or the Bible
class teacher, because it is presented to them as the
thing they should do. It is what is in the Bible, and
they do it so. But there is a very much higher level of
life than that. The thing is right, but it is altogether
transformed when the Holy Spirit brings it home to us in
an inward way, and adjusts us to it. We no longer do it
because it has got to be done: we do it because the Lord
has done something in us, and shown us that that is the
thing He wants done.
Do
you grasp that? We can illustrate it, of course. A little
child may obey what mother says because mother says it -
love, perhaps; perhaps a spirit of obedience; or perhaps
there is just no choice in the matter - mother says it!
But there is a lot of difference between that and
anticipating what mother would like, doing it without
mother having to lay down the law at all. It is a
difference of realm: one is law and the other is grace.
And grace is only another word for love. Different kinds
of Christians, you see; anticipating the will of God,
being very sensitive. The same in practice: the Church
teaches that certain things are rites of the Church, the
ordinances of the Church, and therefore those who belong
to the Church ought to do certain things, and so they go
to Holy Communion, because the Church says that is what
they ought to do, it is an ordinance of the Church, and
other things which we might mention. They do it because
that is the thing that is done. But oh, if the Lord has
spoken in the heart and revealed the meaning of these
things spiritually, how different the life is! It is no
longer mechanical - it is vital.
The Government of the
Word of God
Let
us return to the Levites, and consider some other
features of spirituality - things that were true in the
life of the Levites in a typical way, that is, they
pointed on to the spiritual truth of our own time. A
marked thing in the case of the priests, the Levites, the
sons of Aaron, was that, as anointed men under the
government of the Holy Spirit, they came in a very utter
and immediate way under the government of the Word of
God.
There
was a symbol of that, as you know, in the court of the
tabernacle. It is called the 'laver'. The laver, as we
know, was made from the mirrors of the women. They had metal mirrors, shining, bronze
mirrors, into which they looked, as women are wont to do,
and saw what they were like; and when they saw that there
was anything not right about them, they put it right in
the face of the mirror, they adjusted to what they
conceived to be the right kind of thing. They brought
those mirrors, and there was made of them this great
basin called the laver, and it was filled with water; and
the priests, the Levites, could not perform or fulfil
their ministry, could not enter upon the ministry of holy
things, except as they came to the laver and washed hands
and feet. They could never take a further step in the
fulfilment of their service to God without coming to the
laver to wash.
Now you can see quite
clearly that that is a very simple and easily understood
picture. This laver undoubtedly represents the Word of
God: that is the thing into which we look now and see
where we are wrong. If we look into the Word of God, we
see where things are out of the straight: if we look into
the Word of God, we see what God requires, what God's
picture is for us, and what we are in contrast. We look
in, and then, as we adjust to the Word of God, the Word
of God has this mighty power of putting us right,
cleansing us, and keeping on cleansing us, "by the
washing (or laver) of water with the word" (Eph.
5:26).
That is brief, but it
is very important. A spiritual person is first of all one
who seeks to know the revealed will of God in His Word.
You cannot be a spiritual person, after the kind of which
we are speaking, and neglect or be careless about the
Word of God. You will be one who is really diligent in
reading and searching the Word of God, with one object -
to know what God wants where you are concerned. If there
were more of that, there would be a different kind of
Christian, stronger, purer, and far more satisfying to
the Lord.
No
Violation of the Word of God
Moreover, a truly
spiritual person will never violate the Word of God.
Should they do so, they will know all about it inside of
themselves. The Holy Spirit will make it clear to a
spiritual person that they have gone contrary to the Word
of God. Under the government of the Spirit we shall never
be a contradiction to the Scriptures. It does not mean
that all at once we shall be a perfect expression of all
that is in the Word of God, but it does mean that the
Holy Spirit will be dealing with us in the light of what
is in the Scriptures. Have you not sometimes experienced
an inward, unaccountable sense of grief? You may not have
put it that way, but you had a strange sense of grief, of
distress. The Holy Spirit has been grieved about
something you have said or done, the way you have
behaved. You cannot explain it or put it into words, but
you just say to the Lord, 'Now, Lord, I am conscious that
something is not right. I put it into Your hands, and
trust You to show me, and make it clear.' Either sooner
or later, you come on something in the Word of God, which
exactly explains just where you failed, just where you
defaulted. There it is, and you did not know that it was
in the Word of God. You know, it is possible to get a
surprise over what is in the Word of God. I have been
reading and studying the Bible for quite a good many
years, but some eighteen months ago I came on a fragment
in the Bible that I never knew was there - I had never
seen it before! I expect there are plenty more. If you
told me that that was in the Bible, I should not have
known where to find it. But it just suited and fitted
into a position in which I was at that moment. I needed
something at that time for my deliverance - for my
salvation, in a sense - and I came on that something. I
opened my Bible, and there it was, right there. It amazed
me; it was so fitting to the whole situation. It
described my situation in one single sentence.
The
Holy Spirit knows the Bible, He knows what He has
written; and if the Spirit is in us, and we are seeking
to live in the Spirit, we shall live in the Word. The
Word is a living thing when that is so. Spiritual people
are people of the Word, and consciously or unconsciously
they are checked up by it. And I do say to you,
especially to young Christians (it may be necessary to
many others as well): Be very careful about your life in
the Word of God. Do not choose only the things that you
feel you can understand. Do not just pick out the things
that you like. How we like to take up our Bible, and find
out something so nice and helpful - perhaps a lovely
promise and just to live on that sort of thing, the
delicacies of the Word of God. It is just lovely! And all
the time there are whole sections that we pass over.
'Those are parts that we do not understand - we do not
read them.' Now, do not make any mistake like that. You
will find that there are treasures which come to light in
times of special need in the very parts that you would
never read. You do not like all those long lists of names
- that is all they are - difficult names at that. You
cannot pronounce them, so you quickly turn the page. You
will find some treasures there - hidden treasures!
But
how much more necessary it is for us to read this Word
first of all that it shall be there for the Holy Spirit
to work upon. It is just there, that is all. We read: for
the moment we do not realize what it means, or that it is
a message to us; but we have read it, and it is there.
Presently, the Holy Spirit begins to speak to us about
that very thing, and it becomes most valuable, and by it
we may be guided. I suggest to you that you read this
Word always with a view, first of all - What has God to
say to me here? It is going to touch everything.
And
do not accept any human reasonings about the Word. Paul
has a number of things to say, in his first letter to the
Corinthians, for instance - things that people do not
like, especially moderns - about dress and head coverings
and all sorts of things. The modern mind says, 'Oh, well,
Paul was old-fashioned, he was a woman hater', and so on.
If you listen to that, you will get out of harmony with
the Word of God. That Word is there to put you right and
keep you right with God. Violate those things, and you
will limit your own spiritual life. Conduct and behaviour
are governed by the Word of God, and there is nothing in
the whole range and realm of our human life that is not
touched by it. I say that thoughtfully: it is true. The
Word of God touches all our temperament; it touches our
dress, our behaviour, our talk; it touches everything
that you can think of. Somewhere in the Word of God there
is something about it. A spiritual person gives a large
place to the Word, and allows the Word to adjust them.
They do not argue at all. If the Word of God says that,
then that is all there is to it.
So
the laver is a very important thing in the matter of our
relationship with and service to God. A life in the
Spirit will never violate the Word. A life in the Spirit
will always mean adjustment to the Word, and that we
shall not allow other influences to affect us if they are
contrary to the Word of God. We can only be ministers -
that is, spiritual men and women who have to minister to
the Lord and to His people - in so far as we are governed
by the Word of God.
An Anointed Ear
And
that brings us to this matter of sensitiveness to the
Holy Spirit. For the priests, the Levites, the blood and
the oil were given a threefold application: to the ear,
to the thumb, and to the great toe. The blood and the oil
were applied first of all to the ear. As regards the
blood, that meant that the ear was opened and made alive
to God, vivified Godward, while the oil, as symbolic of
the Holy Spirit, meant that the ear was wholly and
completely under the government of the Holy Spirit. Now
hearing is a very, very important thing, it typifies
spiritual perception. When the Lord, in dealing with the
seven churches in Asia, in the Revelation, is trying to
check them up as to the faults, errors and failures that
are among them, the appeal at the end of every message
is: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith to the churches". The ear symbolizes
spiritual perception, discernment, detecting, sensing. A
spiritual person is one who is sensitive to the voice of
the Lord.
That
is the great contrast that is seen with Samuel. When
Samuel began his Levitical, priestly ministry in the
temple as a lad, it was just that. It was a day when even
the high priest himself had no ear for God: he had lost
his sensitiveness to God's voice, his ear was dull, and
the people therefore were not hearing the voice of God -
they were all dull of hearing. It was a bad state. And,
in the sanctuary that night, young Samuel heard the call
of the Lord, had an ear for the Lord; and it was through
his sensitiveness to the voice of the Lord that things
were so marvellously changed in Israel, and an entirely
new regime came into being. The situation was saved by a
sensitive ear, and that is something of great value to
the Lord's people.
Oh,
for men and women who have this anointed ear, who have
this sense of the Lord, who are not dull of hearing;
whose senses are not preoccupied and jaded by a multitude
of conflicting, clamant, distracting voices and
interests, but who have the quiet ear, and reap the
harvest of a quiet ear for God. Be careful about your
ear. In the physical realm, the purity of our hearing -
our sensing through this faculty - depends so much upon
what we listen to. If you listen constantly to jazz, you
will probably lose your appetite for the classics, if I
may illustrate it in that way. You will always be in a
jangle, and you will lose your fine sense of what is
good, what is pure, what is high and what is elevating in
music. If you and I listen to gossip, if we listen to
what is not good, not profitable, the Holy Spirit will
cease to have a place of speaking. If you want to be of
real value to the Lord, watch your hearing, have an
anointed ear alive unto God.
An Anointed Thumb
Then
the blood and the oil were placed upon the thumb of the
right hand of the priest, the Levite. Of course, the
thumb of the right hand is symbolic again. The hand is
very, very much at a discount if the thumb is not there.
We require that for everything, for all the rest. Some
people manage very wonderfully without thumbs, but the
thumb is really a very important factor. It stands for
the hand itself in fulness, and it applies to what we
handle.
Be
careful what you handle. Some people can handle all sorts
of things and still be Christians. Be careful what you
handle in your reading, young
Christians. Be quite sure that what you read can be
turned in some way to value for the Lord. Is that too
hard? Well, I think you will come to the time, if you go
on with the Lord in the life of the Spirit, when you pick
up something, and you will say, 'Oh, there is nothing in
that, that is no good, that does not lead anywhere'. You
begin to discriminate like that. On the other hand, with this
- 'Ah, now we are finding something, there is a lesson in
this'. Perhaps you are wondering about what I said in an
earlier message about a certain book - the story of
Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic. That was quite a
secular kind of book. But I got tremendous lessons out of
it, wonderful lessons, just as out of the Everest story.
I could turn it to real account. And you have to test
everything you handle by whether it can be turned to real
account for God.
Much
depends, too, in the Christian life, upon what you hold
on to and what you let go. You do that with your hands.
There may be a lot of manipulating of things, 'pulling of
strings' to our own advantage. Be careful: it is all just
a matter of our interests. We put our hands to our own
interests, our own occupation, and behind it all there is
a purely selfish motive and concern.
An Anointed Great Toe
Finally,
the same blood and oil were placed upon the great toe of
the right foot - full of significance. The tread of a
person very often betrays the character of the person.
There is the heavy tread of the heavy-handed - to confuse
the metaphors again. They come down, as we say, with a
heavy hand. They are not sensitive, they are not careful,
they are not sympathetic, they are not gentle; they are
brusque. We know the heavy tread of the heavy, hard kind
of nature, and the light tread of the sensitive,
sympathetic and careful. We do not stop to think about
this: it is just what we are - it happens. Our tread, our
walk, betrays our character, without our thinking about
it at all. And there is the uneven and unsteady step of
the indefinite life. If you are indefinite in your life,
it will come out in some way in your physical manner: an
unsteady, uneven walk so often betrays a similar
character. And there is the tread of the double soul -
furtive, stealthy, lacking in transparency, ulterior in
motive, betraying the character. And so we could go on.
But
how necessary that all this should be brought under the
government of the Holy Spirit, that our heaviness may be
turned into sympathy and sensitiveness, our
indefiniteness into steadiness, our self-interest and
furtiveness into singleness and transparency. I think you
see the point. A life in the Spirit means a certain kind
of walk, it produces a certain kind of character and
behaviour. How differently we walk when we become
Spirit-governed men and women from the way we walked
before! Where once we were so hard, so cruel, so
insensitive, so heavy-handed, now we have learned to be
sympathetic and understanding and sensitive, and so on.
It is the oil of the Spirit upon the great toe, bringing
our goings, our course, our movement, our response to the
Lord in obedience, all under the Spirit.
The Inheritance of the
Levites
In
closing, just a word about the privileges of the Levites.
They were very real. You know that the Levites were
eventually granted forty-eight cities of their own. They
had no inheritance themselves on the earth: God was their
portion and their inheritance. They were not allowed to
have what other people could have. In the same way, some
Christians can have many things that other Christians
cannot have. Whether you can do what some Christians can
do, and get away with it, depends very much upon how
utter you are for God, upon how much value you are going
to be to the Lord. Vocation is always governed by that.
But
the Levites were given these forty-eight cities, and that
came about when the wilderness journeys were over, and
they had no longer to carry the different parts of the
tabernacle through the wilderness. They came into the
land, and were given these forty-eight cities,
distributed amongst the Lord's people throughout the
whole of their territory. That is a very, very rich realm
of thought and truth, for cities are always figures or
types of governmental centres. The Lord's ultimate
thought is that He shall have those who govern
spiritually all the rest and all the others, who are
distributed amongst His people in a position of spiritual
government. There is much in the New Testament about
that. The Lord wants a heavenly people for a heavenly
government, in the day when the wilderness journeys are
finished and the kingdom is established, to be seated in
the midst of the nations in order to govern and rule with
Him. The word which, after all, so aptly applies to the
Levites is: "If we suffer with Him, we shall be
glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:17); "if we endure,
we shall also reign with Him" (2 Tim. 2:12).