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.