The Raising of Kingly Priests (12)
Reading:
Job 1:
5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered
burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be
that my sons have cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually.
Reading:
I chose him to be my priest to
offer upon mine altar, to burn incense, to wear the ephod…
Number 18
20b ….I am thy part and
inheritance among the children of Israel.
Revelation 1:
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father…
We are continuing
with our meditation on the fifth verse of the first chapter of Job. This verse
reveals the man Job as a priest, such man ordained to reconcile man to God and
God to man: to laying whole offerings before God and having his hand full of
incense to be burnt before Him. The Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual with the
spiritual and scripture with scripture
has been unearthing some hard nuggets of truths. We pray that we will be
further helped to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God.
Carbuncle.
The
carbuncle is not a well defined precious stone either in the bible or out of
it. But it is a precious stone in its own right. It has a reputation of
glistening. As a matter of fact, it has root-word derivative associated with
lightening. In the book of revelation, carbuncle does not appear again among
the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem.
Carbuncle : The Gem Character of Levi.
Genesis
29, verse 34: And she conceived again,
and bare a son; and said, Now will my husband be joined unto me, because I have
born him three sons: therefore was his name called Levi. The eyes of Leah, Jacob’s not much loved
first wife, must have glistened like lightening when she discovered that she
was giving Jacob his third son. Now, she
rightly surmised, My husband has finally been won over to my side. And she
called the boy, Levi which expressed her heart-longing cry in her home. Levi
means joined. O that we see the throbbing motions and hear the beats of the
heart of God ever longing for us, His beloved and o that we see the hard
beating heart as it suffers blows of rejection from man. Yet, this Heart yearns
for fulfillment as it longs to be joined.
This, the Lord would have us know, is the purpose of man: to be married truly
to Him in love.
Carbuncle represents Levi; it is a heart-uttered joy of being joined and
it is the cry of a great lover. This is the strain of priesthood the Lord is
raising for His Father. It constitutes men and women who bow with joyous love
for God. They are of the hearts panting after God like the heart of love-filled
and love-overwhelmed woman longs for her husband. My husband will join me, she,
Leah, says to herself. This is a dove-devotion. It is said that the dove is the
most faithful mate in the animal kingdom; if the two are outside the immediate contact
with each other, they will both wait until they come together again. They keep
their faithfulness where ever they are. The heart of one yearns for the other
wherever they may be until they are joined again.
Levi is
carbuncle which is a hard substance, as hard as diamond. In the natural, Levi
was repugnant to his father as he was, along with his brother Simeon,
ruthlessly passionate and would murder for the cause of his personally defined
‘injustice.’ “Oh my soul, exclaimed
Jacob, their father, ”come not thou into their secrets… for in
their anger they slew a man and in their self-will they digged down a wall.”
It was Levi that treacherously killed their hosts for the rape of their sister
Dinah. For this Jacob prophetically scattered them in Israel. In other words,
it would be said that the two were cursed to a vain life. Yet in the days of
wilderness, the tribe of Levi or the descendants of Levi shook off the supposed
curse and rose up to a new dimention of its prophetic destiny as indicated in
the word joined.
God raised
the whole of Israel as a priestly kingdom or, what in NAV, is rendered as
kingdom of priests to Himself. On a day, God made an arrangement to introduce
Himself to them. No one, not a single individual, could stand in the
terror-filled, heaven-earth-shaking voice of God. Even Moses was to later say, I exceedingly fear and quake. The
people told Moses to hear God for them and assured him that whatever God said
would be the driving force of their life. God had to make another arrangement: it
was the lot of Levi to be raised up to the priesthood to which, if it had not
been rejected by the people out of fear, they were all entitled to be; to be priests
to God and constitute the kingdom of priests to God was their birthright,
except that they thought it was asking for too much to be ’perilously’ close to
or near to God. They thought of the awesomeness of God’s presence, the demand
of the righteousness of His presence and they took fright. Who, they must have
reasoned, could stay in the presene of this most gloriousand God? Who was holy
and righteous enough to stand in His holy mountain? Of course, this has been
the question of man since the world began. This was especially the problem of
Africa where Satan and his spirits took the advantage and substituted
themselves for the god the heart of man yearns for. The African reasoned that
this God was too awesome and powerful to get close to and so he made some gods
or created some gods, lesser gods that he felt would be able to relate to him and to God; a cluster of messenger-match-makers between them both; some beings through whom he could contact God. Like the people of Israel
in the wilderness, the African was not in the position to know of the abundance
of His grace He is ever ministering to
man for He would wont to be joined to man.
God
therefore, because He understood their sense of unworthiness of Him, made for
the people of Israel other arrangements by which they could keep in
love-relation with Him. He chose a tribe out of the twelve which was that of
Levi; He also made safety valves of righteousness by which the Levites could
approach Him without the formidable appearance.
Levi as
carbuncle is the epitome of priestly character and life – a life utterly separated
and given to over to God without - as Billy Graham said in the early 1980s at
the induction of Franklin his son into the ministry – reserve, without retreat
and without regret. Levi is carbuncle and would kill his own mother, sisters,
brothers and fathers for the cause of God. In Nigeria, there were such
characters in the early 1970s. These
persons were disowned by family members and peers and, in some extreme cases,
the community for the sake of Christ Jesus. They were dubbed as mad and useless
in the community. Those who were children were refused their filial obligations
to them; some had to drop out of school for example. Jesus said, Who is my mother? And who are my sisters… are they not those who
hear and listen to the word of God? Down the line, He said, “If any man come to me, and hate not his
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my disciples.” In the making of the
priestly king, there is utter forsaking of filial connections and old
relationships. This is the denying of self and carrying of the cross to follow
the Lord Jesus. Sometimes, this could be physical, but often it is spiritual.
The Emmanuel church in Tulsa, Oklahoma gave several examples of ‘selfs’:
self-ambition, self-reliance, sel-assertion, self-centredness,
self-realisation, self-defence, self confidence, self-satisfaction, self-determination,
self-importance, self-interest, self-esteem, self-pity, self-conceit, self-love….
They will
be dealt with as they were dealt with in Levi.for Levi got to the point where
the self did not matter; this is the dealing of the cross. On a day of God’s anger in the wilderness,
Moses cried, Who is on the Lord’s side?
And all the sons of Levi rose to be on the Lord’s side. And Moses said, “…slay everyman his brother, and everyman
his companion, and everyman his neighbour.” The Levites did exactly that.
In another instance in the wilderness of Shittim Israel went into idolatory
that involved prostitution with daughters of Moab. While there was a call for
repentance and penitence and the people were being genuily sorry for their
sins, a hardcore sinner who had no stomach for repentance openly defied the
sobering moment and went into his tent with his ‘catch’ of the day. And he [Phineahs] went after the man of
Israel into the tent [where the two, a man of Israel and a woman of Moab, where
‘enjoying’ their fornication], and thrust both of them through, the man of
Israel, and the woman through her belly… Then God said, Phinehas, … the son
of Aaron the priest, hast turned my wrath away… Such is the union of heart
of man and God!
Carbuncle is Levi. This
is one that has gone through Massah and
Merribah. It is priesthood. Moses said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst
prove at Messah [temptation or trial] and with whom thou didst strive at the
water of Merribah[strife]. This individual has been proved and found to be
worthy to become a priest unto God and unto the Lamb. Levi was called the holy
one of God. Moses commended further: Who
said to his to his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did
he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed
thy word, and kept thy covenant. This is the honey-comb of priestly
existence: observed and kept the revealed heart of the Father.
Oh! This is so great, this next
prophecy of Moses: They shall teach
Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law; they shall put incense before thee and
whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar. This speaks of the priest of God, ‘the
holy one of God’; this was the figure Jesus took up and perfected – the holy
one of God, not ritually, but in reality. Carbuncle means joined. This carbuncle-gem
character of the High-priestly Christ shows in Him who - in perfect union with
God - said as represented in the Son of
God, I and my Father are one. Paraphrased: My father is joined to me! This union
is like the gluing of two sheets of paper; tearing one is tearing the other. Such
beauty of perfection of union with the Father! Now will my husband be joined to
me. The wisdom of God oversees the raising of these
priestly kings of His to be joined to Him.
We must
be proved at Massah. Massah means to be judicially proved (The New Strong’s). We
must be proved at the water of Merribah. Merribah and Massah come from the same
derivative to prove. As in the days of wilderness, Exodus, 17, the people
wondered if God was with and among them. If He were there among them, then He
would provide water for their thirst and table for their hunger. They chided
Moses and strived. But it was also a period when a tribe, Levi, perhaps, as
represented by Moses and Aaron, was being proved, was being assessed and
judged. The whole Israel, apart from Levi, drew condemnation for their
unbelief. While they were being cantankerous, there must have been a
heart-attitude exhibited by the Levites that judicially proved them before God.
The Lord
instructed Moses to go ahead of the congregation with some elders of Israel,
not forgetting to go along with his rod. Behold,
said the Lord, I will stand before thee
upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shall smite the rock, and there shall come
water out of it… Just as well for Christ is the rock that followed them. And Moses called the name of the place Massah
and Merribah, because of the chiding of Israel, and because they tempted the
Lord, saying, Is the Lord with us or not? Is the Lord with us or not when
those miracles of blessing do not come fast enough or do not come at all? Is
the Lord among us or not when we fail to achieve our goals even when we have
fasted and prayed? Is the Lord among us when the healing delays or does not
come? Is the Lord among us or not when we have ‘invested’ so much seed-faith
and we fail to harvest the millions? Is the Lord among us or not when the right
man or sister refuse to turn up even though we have fasted and prayed? Is the
Lord even among us when we go to bed hungry, is He really?
Oh, we
have raised questions that will make many faith-claiming brethren doubt our
spiritual sanity. Have we departed from the general trend of the faith-life? I
do not think that we have. But we maintain that even when our faith fails to
lay hold on the physical realities of our cares, it does not mean we do not
have faith nor does it mean that God is not among us. We are saying in effect
that to keep believing Go’s word in the face of un-realised dreams and promises
is a type of faith; it is a heart-position faith that says, Though I am thirsty
and not assuaged, yet I believe God is among us; though, I am hungry and stomach
unfilled, God is with us. Who knows this may be the type of heart-attitude
faith God spotted in the tribe of Levi and so “proved them.” May the Lord say
to Himself of us, This is the heart that is ready to be joined with me. Levi
means joined.
Which is
the wisdom of the ministers of the gospel. The main purpose of the gospel is to
bring immortality to light. Only the immortal can be joined to God. The movements
of the gospel all from the days of the Lord Jesus Christ have been to join the
church to her husband. Of course, the heart of God is set upon this and will
bring it to pass. Any minister who does any other things or have any other
motives other than joining the church to Christ is on the smooth course to
depravity and perdition. This was what all the first-fruit apostles and
disciples and all of them who first believed lived for. We do not have
instruction to hope for any other thing. Here is what Paul said to the
Corinthian church: For I am jealous over
you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may
present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Then in Colossians, he continues,
Whom we preach, warning everyman, and teaching everyman in all wisdom, that we
may present everyman perfect in Christ Jesus.
Carbuncle represents Levi; it is
to be joined. The apostle went further, discussing marital relationship: “…even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of
water of the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious church not
having spot, or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and
without blemish.” And if we should take the liberty to paraphrase, it will
be that the Lord is working into his church and people in making kings and
priests the carbuncle character which is what makes it possible to be joined
with Him.
Father,
we pray that there will be the perfection of us being joined to you, to be
completely yours. You gave yourself to us that you may sanctify us and cleanse
us with the washing of the word. We say thank you Father for we are sanctified
and cleansed. We are being made spotless and without wrinkle that we may be
presentable to the Groom, the Lord Jesus. We will go all the way with your
Spirit to come to the place of proving as the divine character is being worked
into us. Thank you, Our Father.
Hebrew 12: 21
Exodus
32: 26
Number
25: 8, 11
Deuteronomy 33: 8
Exodus
17: 7
2
Corinthians 11:2
Ephasians 5: 27
No comments:
Post a Comment