I shall not take time to turn
you again to all those passages which formed the foundation of
our meditation yesterday and which will be behind our continuance
this morning. But I will just take those which were in the
prophecies of Malachi, if you will kindly look at them and then
at one extra passage from the New Testament. Malachi chapter 3:
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the
way before me: and the Lord whom ye seek, will suddenly come to
His temple; and the messenger of the covenant whom ye desire,
behold he cometh, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who can abide the
day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for He
is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap: and
he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will
purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver.”
And now just a fragment from
Paul’s letter to Titus, Titus chapter 2 and verse 11: “For
the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and
worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly
in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and appearing
of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who
gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity,
and purify unto himself a people for his own possession, zealous
of good works.”
This has been a year of many and
far-reaching ministries to Formosa, the Philippines, Hong Kong,
India, Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland, and others. And we come
with this time here to the end of that particular series and
programme and some of us are occupied with the big question: what
next? What does the future hold? As you have heard, quite a
number will be going from us in the course of the next two to
three weeks to many parts of the world. And I feel this morning
constrained to say something to you about the nature and the
purpose of this ministry. Not with a desire to draw attention to,
or speak about ourselves or about anything that we are doing, but
as to what we feel the Lord wants and the Lord is seeking to do.
And I do feel that at this terminal point it is very necessary
for all of us who have any fellowship and association in this
ministry to be very clear as to what it is, that it should be
redefined as to its nature and its purpose.
Within the compass of the few
minutes that I have, it is that with which I want to be occupied
and want to occupy you. Let me begin by saying what it is not, or
some of the things that it is not. It is not a particular ‘teaching’
as such. That is, we are not concerned with some particular
interpretation of truth. It may sometimes sound like that and I
think many people have the idea that that is what it is. And I
want to say that it is not that, as such and I underline
that governing clause ‘as such.’ There is teaching, it
may be in some respects different, it may be in some respects
particular, but it is not a teaching, it is not
a peculiar or separate fellowship of the people of God, a body of
Christians gathered into some special association; it is not
that, in any earthly sense. If it is an association, quite
spiritual, and I trust of a heavenly character, but not something
to be set up on this earth as distinct from other true people of
God.
Further, it is not a generally
good or better level or standard of ministry and teaching and
practice. There may be different levels of ministry and of
teaching amongst the Lord’s people but our conception of
this ministry is not just to be an improvement upon others –
a little different and a little better, or a lot better –
that is not the thought at all. The answer to the question on the
positive side could not be better found than in the spiritual
meaning of the Levites. The answer is there. If we could
understand the meaning of the Levites in the Old Testament - see
that they are but a representation or embodiment of a spiritual
law or principle - then we would have the answer to our inquiry.
Let us try, in a very broad way, to comprehend that.
We begin by noting that God has
always had a very clear and a very positive mind as to what He
wants and what He must have for His satisfaction and pleasure in
His people. God is not just moving forward without a very clearly
defined mind as to what He is after. The Word of God makes it
abundantly clear that from eternity God has moved with His plan,
His purpose very clearly defined in His own mind and counsel. He
knows what He wants, and He knows what He must have if He is to
find His full satisfaction and pleasure in His own people. And
that is where we begin: to recognize that. God is not just
stumbling on things as He goes along and then adjusting to the
situation and raising up something to meet it, something that was
not anticipated or in the plan. God knows from the beginning. We
could quote the Scripture and much of it to bear that out. He
knows exactly what He wants and how and by what
means He will reach it and realize it. From the beginning...
known unto God are all His works, from the foundation of the
world. Now that is where it all began. But when the race as a
whole turned aside from God and His intention, His purpose, His
mind, as it did, God moved to take out of the race a
nation, a part of the race in which He would recover and begin
again to secure that first purpose, intention and mind. So, He
looked into the nations and began to take out of the nations a
people for His Name. Even in the old dispensation that was true:
a nation in the midst of the nations in which nation He would
realize what was ever in His heart and His mind.
This part of the race, this
chosen nation, had various features. First of all, of course, the
great law had to be strictly enforced: the law of separation or
sanctification. That part had to be hallowed indeed, unto God,
set apart unto God, a separated, a sanctified people. The law of spiritual
separation was the primary and foundation law of the
existence of such a people. They had to be separated or
sanctified (the same thing) firstly in an inward way, in spirit.
They had to have a consciousness born in them. Their whole
existence had to be constituted upon the consciousness that they
were different. They were different; they were not of a
piece with the other nations, spiritually and morally. They
were different! They had that consciousness. That
consciousness, of course, gave rise to trouble within and
without. Sometimes it went wrong, but there it was; you cannot
fail to see that sense of being different by the very work that
God had done, the act of God in their calling, in their
separation, in their sanctification... they knew that they were
different from all other people. It was in their very
consciousness. You cannot account for many things apart from that
fact, things that I have no time even to mention. But it is quite
clear that even when out of the way and mixed up with other
nations they never lost that distinctiveness, they never have.
And the consciousness of being different is a part of this very
thing that we have to speak about.
And, of course, what was true in
an inward way in the old dispensation was made true in an outward
way, that is, in their very appearance in the world, and in their
conduct in the world; they were different. These are, in the old
dispensation, ways of indicating spiritual things.
The next thing about them was
that they were a people whose heart had to be wholly for the
Lord. Their history on this earth in a typical and symbolic way
was all pointing to this: that they were not a people who could
have one foot in the world and one foot in the things of God but
that God required of them that they have both feet and every part
of their heart over in relation to His things and His end.
Then they were brought into
being to be a testimony to the nations in the midst of the
nations. A light unto the nations to show God’s mind to the
nations, to let all men know what God requires and has
set Himself to have.
Further, that nation was called
to be a priestly nation or people, that is, to stand between God
on one side and the needy peoples of the earth on the other side,
and mediate in a priestly way, to bring men into touch with God
and God into touch with men. That is the content of priesthood as
a spiritual thing.
And then finally, for the
moment, they were there in the midst of the nations to show the
authority of God over the earth. There is one God, He is God
alone, He is over all gods and over all peoples; He is the Lord,
the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and they were there with His
authority over all creation resting upon them and deposited with
them, that they should secure for Him His rights in the nations.
And, we can go further, because although this is only brought out
in the New Testament in fulness it is so clearly seen all the
time right through the Old, that this authority extended beyond
the earth. It extended into the realm of spiritual intelligences
who were constantly seeking to break in and take away from God
His rights in the earth. This was God’s great corporate act
in relation to His original purpose.
But then, that people as a
whole, that nation as a whole, in general, came short... failed
Him, disappointed Him. And then He moved again within
that nation and we have that which has been occupying us so far
and still is at this time: God’s movement in relation to the
Levites. In the place of all the firstborn in Israel He took the
Levites, and they became within the nation the
embodiment of God’s thought concerning the nation, both as to
its own nature and constitution and as to its vocation and
service in the midst of the nations. They were taken to supply
the Lord with what His people as a whole had failed to give Him,
in which they were a disappointment to Him.
God moves ever more inwardly, as
you see. And so, within the compass of the nation, He took one
out of every family and constituted that Tribe of Levi - the
centre of His interests and His service. Certain things come out
in relation to the Levites, firstly of course, their
representative character and position. They were not separate
from Israel. While spiritually separate from the wrongs in
Israel, they represented all Israel. Their very constitution as
being the tribe of the firstborn ones, the spiritual principle,
they represented all the families in Israel and stood therefore
representatively as God’s thought concerning all His people.
They were there to serve the Lord in this particular thing.
Again, I emphasize what I said
last night: the necessity for our understanding what the service
of God is. Dear Friends, you and I need to be very clear about
this thing, what the service of God is. The service of God has
become all sorts of things. It's an omnibus thing with people
today, the service of God. But the essence of the service of God,
as made perfectly clear by the whole Word of God is this: that it
really does minister to the realization of the full purpose of
His heart. It is only service of God as it does that. Only that
which does that is the service of God. It is the service of God,
more or less, according to how that end is served, but the whole
idea of the service of God is this: God has, from the beginning, a full,
complete, clearly-defined and rounded out purpose and intention
concerning His people and service to God requires that we
know what that is, and that we are in line with that, and that
that is being realized by what we do. We must be very clear on
that matter.
So the Levites were taken from
the midst of the nation in order to be a concentration of the
Lord’s full thought in the nation. Their ministry, though it
had various aspects, was mainly to do with the altar. Such
ministry, such service, such a purpose, always brings us very
closely into relation with the sufferings of Christ. There will
be no mistake about it, when you really get right on the line of
God’s full purpose, you are precipitated into a
life in which you are going to know the fellowship of His
sufferings. It is a part of such a ministry.
Another thing for the moment,
the Levites were the spearhead in battle. They were a warring
tribe, strangely enough. A peculiar phrase, even in their
relationship to the altar and the sacrifice, it says that they
were to serve in the warfare of the sanctuary. Strange isn’t
it? If any place and anything ought to be out of touch with
warfare, it ought to be the sanctuary, but no, “the warfare
of the sanctuary.” To carry that further, it’s not
scriptural but it means this: the warfare of the sacrifice, of
the Cross, the altar. You are precipitated into peculiar conflict
when you come into line with God’s full purpose. These were
the Levites and they embodied this word that I have read from
Titus, “to purify unto Himself a people for His own
possession.”
Now what was true in the old
dispensation is ever true in God’s thought, God’s mind,
and in spiritual principle. We may have passed from the time of
the types, the figures, the symbols and the outward systems
embodying the principles and coming to the pure, clear realm of
spiritual reality; we have not passed out of the time or the
realm of the principle of these things. And so we find in the New
Testament God still moving on this same line. The Levites now are
a spiritual company, a heavenly people and not an earthly and not
a temporal; they are the people that God must have, even
though it be in the midst of His people generally, who really do
know what God’s full purpose is and are committed to that
and nothing less, whatever the cost may be.
Have I answered our first
question? I am not saying, mark you, that we are the
Levites. Don’t misunderstand me. But I am saying this: that
God is ever seeking for a people here in whom He can find the
fullest response to what is in His own mind from eternity. He is
ever seeking that and He will never be satisfied with anything
other or less than that.
If I may be allowed to go so
far, I would say that He has called into being this ministry
– I don’t mean my ministry – this
ministry, to serve Him in that way; to, in a small way as a part
of something very much larger, perhaps larger than we know in the
earth, nevertheless to serve Him in this way of seeking
to keep alive a testimony as to the fulness of God’s
intention for His own people. The phrase “the fulness
of Christ” is a common phrase amongst us, but that is what
it is. The fulness of Christ... that is the true Levitical
function and ministry.
And I want to say to you, dear
friends this morning, that the Lord wants that where you are
concerned. He does want and will take pains to have, where you
are concerned (if I say “where we are concerned” you
might misunderstand that, you might think that I’m talking
about Honor Oak or something that is called “this fellowship”,
something like that), but I mean you, as the Lord’s people.
The Lord wants you to stand in that relationship to Himself, not
as something superior or a kind of spiritual autocracy, certainly
not a spiritual aristocracy, but just as a people here amongst
His own people in this world. Not looking down on anybody, not
feeling or thinking that anybody else is less - oh God forbid
anything like that - but in a true heart way to
represent for the Lord all that He would have in His people; an
utterness for God and giving God a position and an opportunity
for showing in you all His counsel and all His will, and
all His purpose, and all His character.
It is a very holy calling. That
is why we began yesterday in our first two sessions with the
tremendous emphasis upon holiness. This cannot be, only by
holiness of life. You see, holiness is not just a state which
ends with itself; holiness in the Bible is vocational, always.
It's vocational always. It always relates to God’s work:
“Be ye holy, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord” -
for His work! The work of which we are speaking, this
work... holiness is vocational. Sooner or later, I repeat: sooner
or later our work will be brought up short on the point of
holiness.
If we are the Lord’s
servants, if we are joined to the Lord for His purpose and if
anything comes in that is unholy the Lord may bear, He may speak,
He may exercise, He may for a time do nothing. But there will
come a point in which He will say, ‘I have spoken about
that, I have spoken to you about that more than once, I have
waited, I have been very patient. Look here, we are not going any
further.’ And some terrible crisis will arise which involves
the whole question of our usefulness to the Lord; nothing less,
if the Lord's going to do any more or go any further with us. I
have to be serious again and solemn about that because, you see,
the very governing principle of Levitical service to God is holiness.
The whole dimension of the house is to be holiness unto the Lord
because it is a priestly house, in the spiritual sense.
Holiness... a people separated unto God in an inward way.
It is impressive when you stop
to think about it, really sit down and think a little about it:
all this all the way through the Bible about separation, about
sanctification, about holiness. What does it imply? Well surely
the implication of it all is that it runs right through the
Bible. From beginning to end it is the, the golden
thread through the Bible. What does it imply? Well, it must imply
that this whole realm of things is a corrupt realm, is corrupted,
is defiled, is unclean; it's contrary to the nature of God. We
are born into it; the realm of earth and the lower heavens:
tainted and polluted it's been touched by unclean hands, being
energized by unclean spirits; it is unclean. The very heavens in
the sight of God are not clean the Bible says; shot through with
uncleanness... the warfare against God of unholiness.
So it is quite clear that there
can be no association with God and no real work for God, only on
this ground of true holiness and practical holiness. God wants a
holy people. I think that is the note of this weekend, the note
in my heart: God wants, He must have a holy people and then see
what He'll do! See what He'll do!
But oh, it is a suffering way
because it brings us so deeply into the meaning of the Cross. The
Cross ceases to be a teaching and a doctrine. It becomes almost
an awful reality; terrible to the flesh is the Cross. We have got
too cheap a Cross perhaps. We sing about it, talk about it, teach
about it, think we know all about the Cross; but the Cross is a devastating
thing in the realm of the flesh. You will find that sooner or
later, the most awful thing is really to come into touch with the
Cross in the flesh.
On the other hand, what a
mighty, mighty power the Cross is, objectively, when you are in
line with it, in tune with it, in fellowship with it, when it has
nothing against you, when you are on its ground! What a tremendous
power it is in this universe against the evil forces and in this
world. Do you not agree with me dear friends, that that's the
position we want to be in? On both its sides: holiness, holiness
and power. Those two things always go hand in hand. Holiness and
power. You cannot have the power; you know the power only by the
holiness. But if we have the holiness, the power will
spontaneously work. It will! You will not have to ask for power
if the holiness is there.
So, to sum up this whole matter
of Levites in all dispensations, it is a spiritual thought, it's
a spiritual conception. It is the embodiment in the creation of
the holiness, and therefore the power, of God. We read again and
again last night from this prophecy of Malachi: “That My
Name may be great among the nations... My Name shall be great
among the nations,” repeated by the Lord and leading
straight to this: “He shall purify the sons of Levi and sit
as a Refiner.” The two things go together. The greatness
of His Name among the nations and a people purified unto
the Lord.
I close by reminding you of
those other words, “My covenant was with Levi, My covenant
of Life and Peace.” I think we have got to know more of that
divine Life, don’t you? We have got to know more of that
divine Life, the mighty power of that risen Life of the Lord
Jesus. We need to know it, every one of us, and as a people we
need to know it where we are. “My covenant of life”...
victory over death in a spiritual way and, until the Lord has
finished with us here, in a physical way. I still stand on that
ground, the lifelong ground until He has finished with us, divine
Life even for the body, we want to know more about that. And
peace, where God is not against us, He has no controversy with
us. The conflicts between us and the Lord and the Lord and us are
settled. His covenant of life and peace is with Levi, Levi,
mark you, these two things: God’s full purpose for His
people and absolute sanctification, holiness, separation unto the
Lord. Now you must ask the Lord how that applies, because it
touches so many practical points. It may come into the family
life, the domestic life, it may come into your business life
– challenge and search out and judge all your business
methods and transactions. Yes, you have got to be a Levite in
business as well as in the assembly of the Lord’s people. Holy
unto the Lord. Be careful how you are involved in the devil’s
system of running this world, to take from the Lord; in your
social life, in every department of life.
We are in a terrific business,
no less than whether this great kingdom of darkness is going to
hold its ground or whether the Lord is going to oust it. And that
issue is going to be settled in the Church, make no doubt about
it, make no mistake about it. That issue is going to be settled
in the Church. It is going to be glory in the Church and by Christ
Jesus in the Church. Now I must stop there.