The History of The Life of God’s Priest (08)

The history of the life of the priest of God is inexhaustible. It is a life better lived than imagined or learned about. The priestly acts were encountered in Job. He was a man in love with God and was, as in a living priest, very sensitive to the possibilities of his many children going into a life of disobedience. He was a priest to the family (Job1:5).

             God as the priest’s possession

      Ezekiel 44:28 I am to be the only inheritance the priests have. You are to give them no possession in Israel; i will be their possession.

                 The priest knows one thing which the people – the others not in the priesthood – are not privy to. He is aware that the raison d'etre of life is possessing God. He knows God as the centre of his desire and pursuit. He shares the same vision with Abraham. The history of the life of the priest of God, therefore, is full of irresistible movements from one place to the other. When he thinks he has finally arrived and come to rest, he sees that there is still much of God left to possess. So off he goes again. The priest has come to know that there is no finality in the matter of possessing God. He has come to find out that in all eternity he will still be learning God through his High Priest, the Lord Jesus, through whom he came into the priestly life.

            The people’s life is centred around pursuing things just like the world; the priest’s is centred around the nature of God and pleasing Him. While the people are busy throwing up “visions” to run after, the priest is moving towards God.

                  Found faithful

            The priest's walk towards God has a full effect of making him to be faithful and incapacitating him from going away from God. This can be seen in Zadok, the priest of God. Zadok was found faithful and he found it impossible to follow the general run of  people, Israel, to go away from God (Ezekiel 44: 15 - 16). It is expected, Paul writes, in steward that he should be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4: 1).  It is the faithfulness of the priests that brings him constantly forward to the holy of holies for fellowship and ministration to God. This is not talking of standing behind a pulpit. It is about minding the heart of God, being concerned that the will of God is fulfilled. This revelation of the mind of God comes through possessive ministering to God.  “….while they ministered to God…” (Acts13: 1). The faithful heart is it that ministers to God. He cannot depart from God like the others; he simply does not have the ability. As a matter of fact it does not cross his mind to depart from God, no matter how justifiable.

Such degree of commitment is found today in the Orient where an organisation violently against Christ and those that belong to Him carves a kingdom for itself which it calls Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS. It slaughters and kills and dehumanises everyone that has the Testimony of Christ. A new dimension to this in the recent time is to slitter the throats of their victims and drain the blood into a basin. They are thrilled to see this. They are gone beyond the human grace to consider a child or a woman. Yet, these great people, the saints, these priests of God, hold on to their faith in Christ.

           The priests as teachers and judges

                By the trajectory of the course of the history of their lives, the priests teach “my people the difference between the holy and the profane, and cause them to discern between the the unclean and the clean” (Ezekiel 44:23). The priest has travelled far with God and so has come to be partaker of divine nature ; he has come to the knowledge of “very great and precious promises” (1 Peter 1: 3 – 4). He has tread the path of the High Priest of his soul Who, after living before God for thirty years, had the divine approval as God testified of Him: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Three years down the course of this life, God spoke again: “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.” The meaning of these is that this one has come to fully represent God and God is directing our attention to this representative of His. He has the capacity to teach the very life of God, not necessarily by the words of mouth, but by his life; he has the capacity to deliver the true judgment of God. He has become, not only a teacher, but a judge. Now a judge is a product of experiences and wisdom acquired over ages.

             That was Jesus Christ; that is the priest of God today.

Lord, in this season, we receive grace and find mercy and favour to come to the full possession of the Godhead. We pray the Holy Spirit inspired prayer as we bow our knees before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name and pray that out of your glorious riches you he may strengthen us with power through your Spirit in our inner being or man, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And we pray that we, being rooted and established or grounded in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ, and to know his love that surpasses knowledge – that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.