Thursday 30 April 2015

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 11th 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.

No comments:

Post a Comment