The Life History of the Priest of God

    Life History of The Priest Of God (04)

             Job 1:5 sets us considering the priestly life. 

                                          Priesthood is Sonship

Leveticus 8:

                  22: He then presented the other ram, the ram of ordination…

                 23: Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of the blood and put on the lobe of

                      Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of the right foot.

            The blood-of-Christ regenerated-soul is consecrated or chosen or ordained or called or “vocationed” or foreknown of God…to be conformed to the image of his Son of God (Romans8:29), the Lord Jesus Christ. This requires the engaging of all that the man is. He is a new man; he is re-oriented, and able to see the expected path and direction. Christ is our vocation, our heavenly calling and He is the star lode by which we have to set and readjust our compass of life.

           The blood of the offering of ordination is put on the lobe of the right ear. It means the priest will have to be able to hear right and, that, with dawning insight and understanding. The people of Israel heard the prophets, yet they were just hearing sound with no meaning just like a child will hear speech but will never hold any meaning to it. A child learns over the years to distinguish, to judge, to assess and evaluate what each note of sound represents and means. Of man’s invented language is mathematics which has a precision that can only have an engaging meaning and truth to only the initiates of that discipline. For what one mathematician says is what the others say on the same matter. This is the path of the the life of the ordained of God. They hear God with the utmost accuracy like their forebear who has gone ahead of them. It is rightly pointed out that of all men God ever dealt with in biblical history, only the Lord Jesus got it all right. He did not for once miss a single note of the sound of His Father’s voice and heart beat in all of His life journey. Yet, this is the life expected of the priest of God. That blood which is Christ’s blood represented applied to the lobe of the right ear means to hear as accurately as the Lord. We will not hear words and the leading of the Spirit as meaningless sounds.

            Oh Lord that this blood-on-the-right-lobe-of-the-ear will be so activated that we know or hear no other word other than the Lord’s.  This  goes beyond knowing the right thing with respect to choice of career, who to marry and where to live. It means being Christ-centric. Our will is lost n His will. In this path, we come to a place we loose the ability to be “decisive” and do things for ourselves. Sometimes, in this mode of life, we will look as certain fools to others; and sometimes, not the least, to ourselves. We are not trying to push away the virtue of a sound mind that easily takes decisions, but this may have to be put aside sometimes in order “to hear aright.”

          Jesus said, My sheep heareth my voice (John 10: 27). It means that there may be many voices all over the earth and the Church, but the sheep of the Lord recognises the distinct notes of His lips; and, continues the Lord, I know them, and they follow me. 

    

                                           The Thumb of the Right Hand.

             The thumb of the hand is strategically placed among the four fingers. It faces all the others. It depicts creative intelligence. Imagine that there is no thumb. We will not be able to pick or use tools as we do today; try to hold something with the fingers without the thumb and see the soreness of it all. Definitely, all creativity would be impossible, even man’s scientific and technological breakthroughs would be virtually impossible. A man holds, handles and picks things, uses tools…because of the all pervading presence of his thumb among the fingers. What we do is what we handle. Paul says, We handle not the work of God deceitfully, meaning the word of God can be creatively handled, and deceitfully too. Whatever we handle has, first of all, been processed in our hearts. The right hand therefore speaks of handling things aright, coming from the right heart, from the right motive, from the Spirit. It tells also about things we must not try to handle. In other words, apart from handling the right things and handling things aright, there are also things we should not even bother to handle. There are secular works we cannot engage in; there are relationships we cannot be found involved in, no matter how beneficial; there are businesses we cannot go into; there are associations we cannot be part of. There are things we can be involved in but must be “handled the right way”; the imprimatur of the Lord must be on it. Revelation 9: 20 comments on the rest of the men not killed of these plagues yet repenteth not of the works of their hands…,

                                                              The Right Big Toe

This signifies our walk with the Lord – how straight and how crooked. Is our walk God-seeking or ambition-oriented? Where do our feet carry us to? Walk before me, said the Lord to Abraham, and be thou perfect. The right big toe stained with the blood of dedication speaks of perfect walk with God. This priest cannot walk away from the things of God; he finds it impossible to discountenance the things of God. Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart (Psalm15: 1- 2). our walk, therefore, spells righteousness.

 

                                                                 Making of Sons.

The son is one in whom the spirit of the Lord has gained ascendancy and mastery (Austin T. Spark). The son is he that grows to Christ in all things. He has dissolved in the clear solution that is called Christ. He has lost his self identity and has clearly merged into another; he is another being, a spirit being. He hears what the Spirit says to the Church, handles not the word of God deceitfully but sincerely and walks in the Spirit and therefore fulfills not the work of the flesh. The blood on the lobe of the right ear, on the right thumb of the hand and on the right big toe of the foot sums up the tools for Sonship, for pleasing God. It is the life history of the priest of God.

      Lord, we appreciate the blood that was shed from the foundation of the world that creates for us the path of the life of sons. We thank You for the blood, as it were, on the right lobe of the ear, the right thumb of the hand and the right big toe of the foot. We stand on the ground of this Truth who is the Lord Jesus; we stand on the ground of the Cross of Christ and declare that we run the Divine intentions to sonship to hear aright, handle aright and walk aright. Thank you our Lord.                             

The Life History of The Priest of God

   The Life History Of The Priest Of God (03)

                        Job 1:5 has been the root of our meditation on the priest of God.

               We come to burnt offering. Leveticus 8:

                                    18: He then presented the ram of burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons…laid

                                       their hands on its head.

                                    19Then Moses slaughter the ram and sprinkled the

                                    blood against the altar on all sides.

                                   20 He cut the ram into pieces and burned the

                                    head, the pieces and the fat. He washed the  inner parts and the legs with

                                water and burned the whole ram on the altar as burnt offering, a pleasing         

                              offering made by fire.

                                                                                         

                                                    Burnt Offering and Its Meaning

                  This sacrifice takes place in the outer-court of the tabernacle. We are here considering the burnt offering.  It signifies the putting away of man from God for his sin nature as completely opposite that of the Lord. This offering portrays a complete annihilation of the the man or the man in the ram. We are seeing the extermination of Aaron and his sons [represented in man] in this ram of burnt offering. This is the same way the Lord Jesus was completely removed from the presence of His Father, not because of His own sin, but for the sin of the world, for the sins of each of us; past, present and future sins – all have been answered in the  death (Christ as burnt offering) of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Psalmist prayed, May He remember all your sacrifices and accept all your burnt offerings (Psalm20: 3). It was, to the bible people,  an awesome experience to have one’s burnt offering accepted of the Lord; it means we are of a life dedicated and given completely over to God. But just as then, even so now, we do not put much by this because it is not a physical and emotional thing. The people of old did not know the significance of the burnt offering in the eternal thought of God. They thought it was just to bring the ram and so that would be all and that would qualify them to be intimate with God. We too do think that all we need to do is to accept the Lord Jesus as our burnt offering and that will offer us the right to the heart of the Father. Yes, this action does ensure the turning of the heart of God towards us; yet, it is just part of a whole; the journey still lies ahead.

                                                    The Blood that Speaks and Moves God

                   The blood is sprinkled against the altar. This blood has a clear message. It is said to speak. Whether of man who is a friend of God or enemy, his blood speaks. It is written of the blood of the Lord Jesus in Hebrew 12: 22 -24, But ye are come to …Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better thing than that of Abel. This, we should note in passing, is because the perfect offering – as in other offerings represented in Leveticus and the law – Jesus Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God (Hebrew 9:14).

               This is the clearly delineated path of the priest. In his identification with Christ, he comes to the altar of burnt offering. The altar knows two things: blood and fire. This is where the life of the priest begins and goes on in a cycle whose end and completion can only be pronounced by God. It is Him that knows when a cycle of death has been accomplished and the purpose fulfilled; it is only Him who knows when to invite His servant to come up hither. It is only Him who knows when the fire has done its work of trying and proving thoroughly. God is He who does the upgrading to the higher grounds inherent in Him for each of His saints, the priests.

             Romans 12 begins to say in verse 1, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye  that ye present yourself a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. This does not mean that we take the first available flight to ISIS to go for martyrdom. But it does mean that our lives as defined by flesh should be taken from us, completely tore from us or we from it.

                                        Annihilation to the Self

                The priest treads this path of lively self-sacrifice; he has lost his life, his self-hood. He has no will of his own left. The life of the priest is in a covenant relationship with God. In covenant relationship, each party has to commit his own life, his very existence and resources to the relationship. This can be clearly seen in the relationship between Abraham and God. God always stand back to keep this covenant to the descendants of His friend. But we are talking of priestly covenant with God. God gave Abraham a son on request based on the strength of the covenant between them; then, based on the same principle, God required that Abraham give himself to Him without reserve. This meant death to himself and being alive to Christ. The first thing was to take away Isaac his son, given to him by God, who he loved so much – his very life, his very existence and the ultimate enduring limit of his resources. In eventually agreeing to offer the son as sacrifice to God, he certainly died many times over. He came to a place that he lost his own life and offered to follow the Lord and accept him for what He said He was to him – your exceedingly great reward. Just as with the holocaust, there will always be struggles at the point of being slain, of being offered to death. That is why we find ourselves crying and weeping.

            Yes, in the process of being the living sacrifice, the priest may shed tears. At the end when heaven must have achieved its purpose, the tears are wiped away and joy of the Lord supervenes. …You are a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. In the days of His flesh [Jesus] offered definite, special petitions, …and supplications with strong crying and tears…(Hebrew 5: 6 - 7).

           Complete annihilation of the flesh that resides in the soul requires drastic measures as being killed, slaughtered or destroying the self-principle. There is nothing wrong for Abraham to love Isaac with all his heart, soul, power, mind and might; but that was infringing into the sacred domain of the place of God in the Temple, the heart.

    

              Lord, come and take your place within us and constantly have your way. Let struggles with your will die; let it be completely annihilated in us. Let your love grow in us so much so that we have no room for any other entity, even if as precious to us as Isaac to Abraham. Father, we pray that your love will be the driving force in our lives. As the knife of separation and tearing away from the self rips through us, we receive the grace to bear up under such drastic measures of the Holy Spirit who must do His work to secure us as sons and priests. Thank you, our Father.  

The Life History of The Priest of God

    The Life History Of The Priest Of God (02)

 

       We submitted that long before Moses, God had priests if only rudimentary in nature as seen in Job 1:5. Here we continue with our meditations on the life of the priest of God.

            Leveticus 8:

                       12: And he poured of the anointing oil upon Aaron’s head and anointed him

                               to sanctify him.

        The priest of God is an anointed one, chosen and singled out for certain assignments by God; he is a consecrated one. To be consecrated is to be set apart or separated for holy use (life). The priest is consecrated to approach God, to fellowship with Him. The goal of the life history of the priest is so scripted so that he will inherit God.

         The anointing oil is strictly special. No one was allowed to compound anything similar to it. It should not or must not come upon any one other than the priest of God. Exodus31: 32:

                        32: Upon no man’s flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make other like it,

                              After the composition of it: it is holy and it shall be holy unto you.

                        33:Whosoever compounded like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon stranger shall

                             even be cut off from his people.  

            This oil is compounded from five principal spices of myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia and olive oil. the oil signifies the Holy Spirit. As the oil cannot and must not come on strangers to the priestly life, so cannot the Holy Spirit come upon and fill any one that has not come to the washing of regeneration and, therefore, a stranger to the priestly calling. He does not sanctify any one outside the priestly caste. He may use this or that person or that thing; He took hold of king Saul who had a murderous intention; many were "slain in the spirit" at the garden in the night to arrest Jesus Christ. In its compounded wholeness, it signifies the Holy Spirit in His multidimentional, multifaceted, multifarious and multitasking divine activities in calling, enduing, energising, accomplishing and perfecting what He sets His heart upon. He performs one thousand and one activities, but He lays hold only on one who is on the way to the life history to the priesthood of God. It does not matter that men are manufacturing and simulating His acts and presence nowadays when they will like Him to move in certain way. On Christ, He came “in bodily shape like a dove” (Luke 3: 22); on the day of Pentecost, He came like cloven tongues of fire on the disciples (Acts 2: 3).

                          The Pathway of Taking Away of One’s Life

 

                 Leveticus 8:

                       14 And he brought the bullock for the sin offering: and Aaron and his sons laid their  

                               hands upon the bullock for the sin offering. 

                        Then, Moses did to the bullock according to the law of sin offering:  slaughtered it, collected the blood to sprinkle on the altar with his fingers and poured the rest at the base of the altar; after which he burned the vital life organs as liver, kidneys and the fat covering them on the altar. The carcass of the bullock he burned outside of the gate. This process says one thing: the taking away and removing of one life out of God’s sight; the answering of a life to the justice and judgment of God.

                    The priest in the journey of his life towards God experiences the taking away of his own life. The altar is the place of constant death; it is a complete annihilation of the old man that must be removed to give God the chance to have His place in us. 

                                                       Sin offering frees from Serving or “doing” Sin 

                 In this meditation, the first death here is called sin offering which we shall call, for ease of reference, the sin-death. This means being completely removed out of the presence of God. It means that the old man had been judged because he is an abhorrent to God. The life of the priest, typed out here, is of the bullock vicariously judged and dying instead of the man. The bullock is Christ here as the victim in this instance. A man who knew no sin was made, note the word, made, sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, Christ Jesus. This offering was not done 2000+ years ago; it was actually shed, in eternity, before the world began. The bullocks for sin offering here was just to represent the eternal until the Lord came to the scene Himself about 2000+ years ago. With the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we can now continue our interrupted life journey to the God of righteousness.  

                  Romans 6:

                         5: for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also

                                     Be in the likeness of his resurrection.

                        6: knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might   

                                      be destroyed, that henceforth, we should not serve sin.  

       

 Here it means we have no business serving the life of sin.

                Verse 14: For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under ….but under grace. 

          In effect, we have died on the altar, nay on the cross with Christ and have also resurrected with Him. We are dead to sin and resurrected, alive, to righteousness.   

                                              Practical Apprroach to Sharing the Identity of Christ

                 One form of this death is bearing the reproach of Christ. The Lord Jesus was the bullock for sin-death and burned outside of the camp. Vers 13 of Hebrew 13 encourages us to go forth to him without the camp bearing his reproach. We were “made” him; he “was made” us. Identifying with Him in the face of the antagonism of the world against Him is bearing His reproaches and going on to meet Him outside the gate. To look away from what we can gain from the world system and esteem the shame of the cross of Christ greater riches than the treasures in the world amount to bearing His reproaches. The Hebrew writer says of Moses in the 11^th chapter, verse25: Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season; verse 26: Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had resect unto the recompence of the reward.

            We also identify with Him in His victory over death. In this faith-life, in this faith-rest let us be confident that we are absolutely without sin, that Satan or any one for that matter, can point to. It is easy to accept the suggestion of Satan that we are sinners. If we are able to overcome this lie, he returns more vehemently to point out to us the sins of our parents and forebears. These are putrid carcasses that must be completely buried and be well-buried. We do not need to exhume them nor do we need allow preachers to open up again the buried dead. They do not exist no matter how Satan harps on them.

               One can understand this theology and from where it is coming from. Our flesh that refuses to die with the Lord has the same values as the world. The treasures of Egypt which are glorious in their own ways and world can be very alluring in splendour. Ask from Achan of the Israelite-journey-in-the-wilderness fame and he will tell you that the garment of Shinar he stole was irresistible. The premium the world puts upon certain things in its judgment is the same the Christ-oriented one, in imitation of the world, is putting lifting up as things to look on to and to desire. The Christian has discovered that Faith in Christ only makes it easier to achieve these same values. When we pray and fail to apprehend what we desire, these world-defined values of life, these glorious treasures off this world, it is easy for Satan to tell us that our situation remains and persists so long because of our sins; the sins or ancient evil deeds of our ancestors, if we, by faith overcome his accusation of being sinners. Prophets will call us and ask us to carry out a thorough research into our family history to exhume the dead corpses of the sins of parents or forebears or other hidden sins, unknown.  But oh to know that, as surely as the Lord lived, died and resurrected, these things, these allegations do not exist either on the side of God or on the side of Satan. The sprinkling blood mightily speaks and the devil cannot counter the speeches.

                  As we come to the place of counting all things lost for Christ, being devoid of ambitions to be “somebody,” or being reckoned in life as “nobody,” completely immune to the threats of being less in influence and called “strange,” we are only just beginning the life of faith. It takes God’s kind of faith to live above the values of this life. The world has its own measure of glory and Paul acknowledges this. He writes: “If only in this world we have hope, we are men most miserable.” But, no, our hope goes beyond this life and is centred on another that is seen and lived only with the eyes of faith. Yes, it takes the God’s kind of faith to lose grip of the present values of man and not know it. It is the path of redemption of the human soul. The people of the New Testament history were driven by this faith in the face of perils,infirmity, reproaches, unmet needs,distresses, persecutions, being regarded as scum of life and killing. When we arrive at this point, it will be hard for a prophet to convince us that some ancestral spirit is responsible for our not measuring up in the scale of this life.

          The faith-life which means to esteem the reproaches of Christ as greater riches than the treasures of the world is the path of the history of the priest of God. He is called to this.

        Father, thank you for the death of your Son Jesus as our sin offering. Our hearts pant after you like the hart pant after the water brook. As the very essence of life, we crave after you; we hunger and thirst after your presence. Most times, though, we are bound by our other cravings of the beautiful things of this world. We do not want to be seen as strangers, as “religion people." We love to blend more with the visible things of this world than with the values that only faith can see and put value upon. Lord, we receive the grace today to identify with You in all points, including the cross, victory over flesh or the self. May our values be Your values and may our love be utterly to You alone. Thank, you ourFather.