The Life History Of The Priest Of God (07).

           Long before the institution of the priesthood, God had always had His priests who appeared and functioned in various forms. One of the priests was Job who was fond of making all forms of sacrifices for his children ( Job 1:5).

          We are continuing with our meditation of this special breed of mankind who is so important to God. As a matter of fact, God is doing everything within the confine of His justice to raise this specie of man and He has been at at it, raising so many all through the millennial and He is still at it in our age.

     Leveticus 8

  30 And Moses took of the anointing oil, and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments . . .

31 And Moses said to Aaron…, Boil the flesh at the door of the tabernacle…:and there with the bread that is the basket of consecrations…

           32 And that which remaineth of the flesh and of the bread shall ye burn with fire.

33 And ye shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle in seven days…: for seven days shall he consecrate you.

 The anointing oil in our passage is a type of the Holy Spirit.

   The blood on the altar is the type of the blood shed from the foundation of the world, the blood of the Lamb that took away the sin of the world; it is the blood of the Lord Jesus.

 The history this far of the priest is about the consecration or the ordination of the priest.

 The oil-sprinkled garments of the priest are the inwrought divine characters into the priest by the Lord. This consecration in its grand finalis is done indoors of the tabernacle.

  The sprinkling of the garments with the anointing and the blood on the altar ass well as eating of the cooked meat and bread in the tabernacle and remaining indoors of the consecrated priest for for seven days are interwoven in significance. The eating of cooked meat and bread signifies eating the flesh and body of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is done in the place of listening and prayers. The tabernacle – this place of waiting and eating for seven days – is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He once said, upon the confession made by Peter, that He would build His Church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Remaining behind in the tabernacle speaks of absolute commitment to only the heart of God; it means being shut away from other altars of other gods; it speaks of of our having lost grips of other desires, other meat, other life or offerings and other services to any other gods.

             Seven, in scriptures, means  completion or perfection. Perfection, in this instance means that no further improvement can be done on the perfected thing. Nothing supersedes this completion. The Church is it that completes Christ ( the fullness of Christ);it is the place of completion. There we eat and eat without being gorged, but ably convert the meat to life. What we eat in the church is the word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word from the mouth of God. We eat the word of life… until we come to completion, to perfection. Then the history of the life of the priest has just started.

           The church is where the Lord meets with His people, or with a person. It is the place of operation of them that are coming to or have come to fullness of the knowledge of Christ. There are children as well as kids in this church, but the house is so ordered that the priests or sons are able, by the virtue of their priestly ministration and life, to carry or move the whole house forward – the same way the priests in the wilderness were able to sustain the tempo of the sound of the music of the presence of  God though majority of the members were children and kids who could not defferentiate their right hand from their left. Yet, no one was feeble among them.  

            The church is not an organisation superbly done to attract us; it is, first the person, the place of the expression of the kingdom of God; it is of the Lord Jesus reigning, right now, not in the future or after escaping to heaven through the rapture, in  the midst of His enemies.  Unrighteousness is His enemy. Unbelieve is. Death is His is enemy and so is flesh, the living according to the principles of self. Everything anti-divine in nature is His is enemy. The love of other life other than God’s is an enemy.

           Now, whatever is it that can respond to human intelligence and knowledge, cannot be described as God’s enemy. Actually, God’s enemies are bunched up in the soul of man. If a thing or situation or problem can be ruled over or overcome by the exercise of the will or intelligence of the ordinary man – ordinary, in this sense as not being helped by supernatural ability of God in His Son – then it is not God’s enemy.

         “ ….and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled upon…” verse 30. The writer of Hebrew, in chapter 12, speaks of how the church has come to spiritual Mount Zion…. And in verse 24: And to Jesus…, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. The first human blood to be shed was Abel’s; the blood that was shed from the eternal, Christ’s. the sprinkling of the blood from the altar is a type of the blood of the Lord Jesus that covers sins, satisfies divine justice of the mind of God and brings to fellowship with God. The blood is continually offered and ministered today in the church of Christ for remission for sins, satisfaction of divine justice and healing. As the church perfects her fellowship with God through the sprinkling blood, the members have fellowship with one another, “and the blood of Jesus [speaking, appealing] Christ, His Son cleanseth us from all sins” (1 John 1:8).

             The cleansing here is different from the first cleansing  at the point of believing. This comes from being in fellowship with the church in hearing, feasting upon the Word of God. In the fellowship, there are revelations from the throne of mercy; the heart is exposed for what it is. Rather than bring despair, this brings us to a place of confessing our exposed sins, thus receiving cleansing. The revelations are forms of sprinkling blood from the altar. As we are being cleansed, the course of the history of our life as the priests of God is deepened.

      This is the path and part of the history of God’s priest.

Lord, once again we give you praise and thanks for your wisdom in making the Christ the head of the Church,  the pillar and ground of Truth. By the Church, the Lord reigns on the earth; the Church is the Body, His fullness on the earth by which the whole world and the heaven are being ruled today. The Church is Christ on earth in all His glory which He had with the Father before the world began. We pray that You will raise Your Church again and bring her to fullness. The Church is in fullness when all of Christ can be seen in her; the believers were called Christians first in Antioch. Lord, beyond the supernatural interventions, the people observed that these people, the believers, were living by another Spirit different from the one the world had always known. May You revive your Church in so much so that this generation will see and say , Of a truth, this is the Christ on earth.

                         The Life History Of The Priest Of God (06)

Job 1: 5 gives us the thought of the priest of God. The man Jod had a measure of the fullness of the priest of God.

              We continue our meditations on this from Leveticus 8,

           verse 27: He put these on the hands of Aaron…. As wave offering…        

                                

                                      Wave Offering

                       

               "Moses removed the vital organs of the liver, fat tail, the kidneys. Out of the basket of bread before the Lord, he took cake of bread made with oil, and a wafer and put these on the fat portion and the right thigh of the ram in the hands of Aaron…. Who waved them before the Lord “as wave offering.”

            In the course of ministration of peace or fellowship offering before the Lord, the offerer by himself removed and brought the fat and breast to the priest. The offerer waved these before the Lord as wave offering. The priest would then burn the fat before the Lord, but the breast belonged to him as the officiating priest. It was the Lord offering this potion to the priest by Himself. “From the fellowship offerings of Israelites I have taken the breast that is waved and the thigh that is presented and have given them to Aaron the priest…” (Leveticus 7: 34).

             As the priest ministers to God on the behalf of the people, God’s nature begins to rob off on him in turn; parts of the glory of the offering returns to him. No one knows this better than our High Priest, Jesus Christ. He knew and was able to shift through all degrees and shades of glories. Satan offered him his best, but the Lord would not fall for it. He desired the ultimate. Certainly, the Lord did not dispute what the devil showed him as  not being glorious. but He knew it as the glory which the devil has control of. It has its own measure of glory (Mathew 4: 9). Of degrees of glory, let us tick off some: political power, super-intellectual prowess, material wealth, modern inventions, gift and grace of having children, spirit-gifts, military exploits and fame.

          The church is not left out of the glory-pursuit. The present glory is the definition of glory to the church. In many Pentecostal mega-churches, the pastors have ways of making the overhead human boss to send them to the branches where the elite worship, where you can impress the worshipers with erudity and where there is all the possibility that you will be financially blessed. This reminds one of Simon, the sorcerer of Samaria who, after conversion to Christ tried to bribe Peter into giving him the power to bless others with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

             There is a vast practice, today, another form of simony in the church. A member is well-behaved so that he may be recommended to become a pastor or to become the minister of the gospel; pastor or minister of the gospel in the church is well-behaved so as to be sent to a money-spinning branch of the ministry. Being  called into the ministry is so rash and rampant; it is now a vocation that anybody can go into. We study for the ministry as we do for this or that profession in school. And my, are we not in the days when ministry “is a soft sell”! Many go into the ministry because it is a mean of self-glorification. Even when we pray that God will honour Himself by using us to perform wonders and signs, we know who we desire to be honoured; it is not truly God but us. The gospel preaching is a fast lane to fame.

                Both the first Adam and the last saw the glory prepared for them. Both saw immortality in the promise laid before them. But, the first would rather choose the one that was able to gratify his immediate desires, the glory that was even later denied him. Jesus deliberate chose the path of sufferings to get to the true glory; Adam sighted a quick path that offered no suffering of tutelage under God. Adam failed to link to the eternal thought of God in creation; Jesus saw the very heart of the Father in creation and went on to satisfy that longing.

          Christ is the wave offering to God; God is the wave offering to Christ. This looks awkward but true. The wave offering means dedication, a given of self; it comes of what is called fellowship or peace offering; it is fellowship-seeking offering. And the Lord Jesus was so conscious of this. He knew the eternal mind of God in creation and knew the glory God designed for man to walk into. He was aware of how th heart of the Father yearned for fellowship with like nature. Angels? Sorry, angels are not for immortality! But man!

              The successful offering of God to man is glory; the offering of man to God is the glory of fellowship. In John 17: 4, Jesus began to say, “I have glorified thee on the earth…. And, now, O Father , glorify thou me  with thine self with the glory which I have with thee before the world was.” What is the purpose of this system of sacrifices and tabernacles and the rules? I t is to achieve glory. Friends, God is the glory. Glorify thou me, said the Lord, with thineself… it is called the inheritance of God. The heaven is not as glorious as God Himself; He has made man this glory to inherit, to live in, with and by; He has offered to dwell among men in fellowship. This, friend is the glory of God.

           We write this in a moment of excruciating pains and, as it would seem to our natural self, crushing defeat. But we have by faith link up with those things that cannot be seen; they are said to be eternal. We desire to have the testimony of them who are dead, despising, the glory of this world. We will rather go through the strait life for the inheritance of God – the wave offering; the offering God waves back or gives back to man; the offering  man waves to God.

         This is the eternal historical path of the priest of God.

Lord, we thank you for the Lord Jesus who has made the eternal thought of the Father to come to fullness through the Body of Christ, the Church. The Church, as His body, is the testimony of the Lord on the earth today and forever. We are the offering unto God through our Lord Jesus, the wave offering. Of course Lord, you were offered for us and we acknowledge this. We pray that more of you will rub off on us, Lord; may this consciousness of the fullness of your thought realisable in your Son continue to be with us and in us.            

     The Life History Of God’s Priest (05)

Job 1: 5 is our point of meditation. Job was a kind of priest before God; he knew certain principles of pleasing the LORD. We continue our meditation on the life history of God’s priest. Our text is still Leveticus 8.

25: He took the fat [of the ram of ordination], the fat tail, all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver…

26: Then from the basket of bread made without yeast… took a cake of bread, and one made with oil, and a wafer; he put these in the fat potions and the right thigh

27: He put these in the hands of Aaron… as a wave offering.

30: Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood from the altar and sprinkled them on Aaron and his garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments.

   In our meditation, we consider the underlined phrases in out text.

                                 

                                                 Bread made without yeast.

     Bread is made or baked with yeast or what is called leaven. Such bread is sweet and tickles the taste buds of the tongue. This is the bread the world is in love with. But, here, as shown to us,this is without leaven or yeast. My pastor, Rev Olabode aways gives the children snack called cheeseball as an examlple of the big lie and falsehood that man calls life. Throw that ball into the mouth and see it melt without giving you any satisfaction of being full.

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the type of bread. He is the bread which “my Father sent.” Again, “I am the bread that come from heaven.” Further down the gospel, He identifies His body as the bread (Luke 22: 19).

 And He took [unleavened bread for it was during the feast of unleavened bread, verse 7] and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them [the disciples], saying, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.. . . .”   “. . . [The] bread which we brake,” says Paul, the apostle in First Corinthians 10: 16, “is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” The following verse continues, “For we being many are one bread, and one body…”

      Now this bread is without yeast. Yeast causes bread to rise. It gives the bread a false size. It signifies corruption and falsehood. In the gospel it always means false religious doctrines – leaven or yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod. In the Pauline writings, it stands for insincerity, deceit, malice, falsehood and wickedness (1 Corinthians 5: 8). And my, these are violently against the nature of the living God.

                              Bread processing

       Processing of bread starts from harvesting of wheat, beating it to remove chaff; grinding it to fine powder in the mill [remember that milling machine had not been invented; it was a slow, tedious but thorough job]. The powder is made into dough after taking much pounding and is baked in the oven. These speak of spiritual grooming and journey that may take hard and mysterious routes. It shows the patience required to make a son, a priest. The Lord Jesus went through the gruesome processing from one stage to another, until, He, the bread was baked and given to the church also called His Body.

                                                         The Bread of life

          There are many types of bread, but we are concerned here with the bread from heaven, free of corruption and,  it is bread that gives the eater energy of the eternal. Eternal life is a spark gained through eating of the heavenly bread, this bread of life; it has the ability to permeate the soul and the body, bringing or creating immortality.

                                                   Immortality that comes from the Bread

              The entire purpose of the gospel is this – immortality. All  the miracles of Christ, His wise and witty sayings and His out-of-the-ordinary life would all be without purpose if He had not lived to fulfill and accomplish this singular purpose: to abolish death and bring immortality to light. He came for this – to overcome death and show immortality as attainable through Him, through eating Him (1 Timothy 1: 10). God has His own nature which is eternal and His dwelling place - which is in and among mankind – must have the same life which is immortality. God is the only one that has immortality; He is the only one that is not dependent. In Him all things cohere. Even angels are not immortal. This makes man born from heaven, the one that has partaken in eating the body of Christ to come to immortality, a nature foreign to angels though they covet it. Immortality is not only of perpetual existence, but it is a life that cannot diminish in intensity of expression [that fadeth not away], a life foreign and strange to decay and disintegration [incorruptible]. It is God’s own nature being ministered to man.

                                                     Oil of preservation

         One other phrase in our text is bread made with oil. It signifies the presence of the Holy Spirit. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them. . . anoint him with oil…( James s: 14). The presence ensures the flow of gladness like “oil” [oil of gladness] in the righteous as represented in the Lord Jesus (Hebrew 1: 8).

                                                 The Body, the Church and the Bread

       The Body is the Bread. The body of Christ is bread broken for us. Every partaker of the bread has become part of the body of Christ. This body is the church of Christ. We here think about the mystical body of the Lord and not of the accretion and conglomerates that call themselves church – mystical because it belongs to only the initiates [brought or co=opted in by the Spirit of Christ]. Any initiate, any part of this Body has learned to recognise and give due honour to the Body, especially in spirit as oppose to geographical locations. As we learn to “discern” the body, we remain in spiritual ascendancy. This is done by staying away from hurting, spiritually, the body. Achan failed to discern the body and put the entire church in the wilderness in trouble. The church is the supreme council of God on earth. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Mathew 18: 20). it speaks of men and women that have grown to wear or represent His name. This body has the power to forgive sins, to release from sin or hold up to sin; it has the power of the attorney. It has the ability to do the mind of the Father. In its strong expression on earth, the ``heavenlies`` are cleared of the rulers of darkness and the wicked spirits in high places. We talk of the Body which is not only praying but whose glorious and holy representation of the presence of the Lord on earth sets the ``heavenlies`` in commotion. Again, we are not thinking about the gifted individuals in the Body, but of the Living Body, the church of God whose mere existence on earth sets the heavenlies in commotion and activities. This takes place when the Body is full of the Head, “unto the measure of the stature of Christ.” (Ephesians 4: 13).                

   Lord, we thank you for the gift of life, the gift of righteousness and the leading of your Holy Spirit. We are submitted fully to the Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, that He may lead us more and more towards You, that we may grow up to be that Body, the church, which is the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all. Amen.