The Spiritual Meaning of Serviceby T. Austin-SparksChapter 2 - Levitical Priesthood"Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be mine own possession from among all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.", (Exodus 19:5,6, A.R.V.) "And bring thou near unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office.", (Exodus 28:1) "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ... But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession.", (1 Peter 2:5,9)"And he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father." (Revelation 1:6) "...and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests.", (Revelation 5:10) "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ.", (Revelation 20:6) When we come to look into the Word of God, from the beginning to the end, to discover what the service of God really is, we find that it is always set forth in terms of priesthood, or what priesthood means. We are not concerned specifically with the priests or Levites of the Old Testament as a class or system or order in themselves. They are there to set forth spiritual meanings, and we are using them - that is, we are using the Word of God - to discover the spiritual meaning of service. I say that because these words - 'priest', 'Levite', and so on - suggest a subject, and they can be very technical. There is a great deal of what is technical connected with the priests and the Levites, and I am not attempting to deal with it. There are many technicalities to which we make little or no reference - for instance, the question as to where the priests end and the Levites begin. Sometimes they are put together and are called "the priests, the Levites": at other times the priests are put in one category and the Levites in another. But such technicalities are not concerning us just now. All God's People Called to be a Serving People What we want to get at is this: What is the service of God, and what are the principles and laws of that service? And so we approach this matter by way of looking inside the framework to secure the spiritual meaning. So, taking up this matter of the Levites, we begin with the fact that they represent or set forth the service of God. They set it forth in this way, that the Lord's people as a whole are called to be a serving people. This is quite clear from the passages which we have read, right through the Old Testament and right through the New Testament to the end. There is a very trite and hackneyed phrase, which has lost its edge by familiarity and constant use - 'We are saved to serve' - but that does mean what it says! It may perhaps seem unnecessary, and yet perhaps it may have a reviving or refreshing value, if I emphasize this point at the outset - that it is made abundantly clear by the whole Word of God, in both Testaments, right on to the end of the Bible, that the Lord's Church is called pre-eminently to be a serving Church. But of course, this can only be true of the whole as it is true of all its parts - which just means that there is no such thing, in the thought and purpose of God, as an inactive, unserving member of the Church. If ever the Levites were not functioning, everything was wrong, and that means that, if you and I claim to be in the Church of God, we are, according to the very thought of God about His Church, supposed to be serving Levites. You will not take that name on yourself, I am quite sure. You will not go out into the world and tell people you are a Levite. You might perhaps tell them you were a missionary, or something like that. But it means that you are supposed to be a Levite, and if you look at the Levites and their history, you will see what God means you should be. In the full unveiling and revelation of this truth, it comes out at last that priests and Levites were not, in the thought of God, a separate, detached, isolated body of people, but the whole nation, in the thought of God, was meant to be what they were. We will return to that presently, but just begin with this: that the nation - which is the Church, which is God's own possession - is, in God's thought, meant to be in active, Levitical service, in all that that means. We begin very low when we begin there. But let us begin right at the beginning, and challenge our hearts, and say, 'Now then, what does my Levitical priesthood, my Levitical service, amount to?' You ask your heart that before the Lord. What does it amount to? That is a very, very important question. We will not stay with it, but we begin with it. The Levites, and their priesthood, bring right into view the fact that God's primary thought for a redeemed people is service. The service may be many-sided and varied, as we shall see, but service is the characteristic of the people of God, if His own thought for them is realized. Bringing God and Man Together in One But what is this service? When you ask, 'Now, what did the priests and Levites set forth as to the matter of service?', you have to say: It was nothing less than the bringing of God and man together in one. There had come about a rift between God and man. We know about that, we know where it took place, we know just what happened; but there it is. God and man are apart, there is a big gap between. And it is not only a gap, not merely distance, but there is a condition of positive conflict - conflict of natures, conflict of interests, conflict of realms - in short, enmity. Enmity is that which makes a distance. It is called 'alienation' (Eph. 2:12). God and man are at variance in their natures. And the whole service of the people of God, as set forth in the Levites and the priests, was to stand in the gap and put the hand of man into the hand of God, and the hand of God into the hand of man; to come between and to bring about union - of course, in virtue of sacrifice, in virtue of shed blood, but that is another aspect. The service was thus to represent, to set forth, the fact that God does not accept this state of division. God never intended it, He does not accept it, and He has provided against it; and here are those who know in themselves, in their own history, in their own experience, what it means to have peace with God, to be united with God in life (as we were saying in our last study); to be there themselves, and so to set forth God's mind in this matter of union in a practical way. That is service - not to talk about the doctrine of atonement and redemption and reconciliation, but to be that. The Church can have all the fundamental doctrines of atonement, and so on, and still not be a unifying factor itself, still be divided, still maintain divisions. The important thing about service is to unify, not to talk about it; to set forth the ground of oneness, and to live on that ground. We shall probably have more to say about that at another point. Preserving the Ground of God's Presence with ManAnd then, as consequent upon that, the further object of service was to set forth and preserve the ground of God's presence with man. The whole issue of the Bible is just that - God's presence. The last thing in the Bible is the declaration: "The tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples" (Rev. 21:3). That is the end finally reached. It was always God's desire from the beginning to dwell with man, to be present. So the real service of God is to set that forth actually. If the Church were fulfilling its priestly ministry, wherever men and women came into it they would meet God. They would say: 'God is here. These people are not only concerned with correct doctrine and teaching and with proper practice and form. You meet God when you meet them.' We are failing of our service to God unless, as the effect of our being here, God is found in the midst of us - unless God is found in us first of all individually, and then, when a few individuals are together, He is all the more found. That is the importance of relatedness in Christian life and fellowship, and that is the thing that Satan hates and is against - the gathering and abiding together, in life, in fellowship, in the Spirit, of the Lord's people. It is something very great. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I..." (Matt. 18:20). The real ministry, so to speak, is to provide a ground for God, and to bring God in so that He is found there. May the Lord save us as a people from ever being an empty shell! The Lord save us unto this - that men know where to find God: if they want to find God, they know where to find Him. That is so very largely not true. Many go round, searching for God, wanting God. They try this place and they try that place - and go away disappointed. 'No, He is not there. The form may be all right, and much may be quite good, but I have not met God.' Do let us always, wherever we are, hold strongly to that, that when we come together, people are to find God amongst us. We are bent upon that - the presencing of God. This is a principle so clearly set forth in the early books of the Old Testament - of course in the first place in relation to Israel - the presencing of God. Service in Relation to the Testimony of God In the third place, the service of the priests and the Levites was in relation to the Testimony of God. The central object of their service, their work, their ministry, was the Ark of the Testimony. That was at the heart of everything; they gathered round that ultimately. It was the final thing, the ultimate thing. They were gathered round that, and they ministered in relation to that. The Ark was entrusted to them on their journeyings. There is much of detail - and very, very important detail - connected therewith, but we state again the simple truth, the simple inclusive fact, that their service was related to the testimony of God: and the testimony of God is the testimony of Jesus, just as that Ark was in type and figure the Lord Jesus in His inclusive, essential, mediatorial Person. It is the Lord Jesus, it is the testimony of Jesus. And what a testimony that Ark bore! Let that Ark come up against anything, and see what happens. Let it come up against the Philistines or the Philistines come up against it, and see what happens. Let Uzzah put forth his hand and touch that Ark, and see what happens. The testimony of Jesus is not something in word alone. It is not a theory, it is not a type, it is not a figure. It is an impact, and the service of the Lord is to register the impact of Jesus Christ. We fail altogether, if, with all that we may do and say, that impact is missing. Oh, let us pray for a recovery of the impact of Christ, that by our presence there may be a registration of Him. The Lord Jesus, when He was here in Person on the earth, could be nowhere without registering His presence. Demons cried out at once before He had said anything. All the evil forces were stirred. Men governed by those evil forces could not keep silent: they found that they had to do something about Him - anything to get rid of Him, to quench Him. On the other hand, people in need sensed that their need would be met in Him. He just could not be present and be hid. Service, then, means bringing Christ in as a registration upon situations. That is what the Church is here for, and what you and I are here for: we are here in relation to "the testimony of Jesus". When John used that phrase, as he did so often, especially in the book of the Revelation - he said he was in Patmos "for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus" - he simply meant that he had been sent there because he stood for the testimony of Jesus. It would be far better to be sent to Patmos than to be ignored. If men can be indifferent, if they can just leave us alone, and not send us either to Patmos or to 'Coventry', there is something wrong with us. If we are really doing the work of God in a priestly way, something has got to happen, even if it is cruel opposition. A Representation of God's Full ThoughtA further thing about this service so far as the Levites were concerned was that they embodied and set forth in representation God's full thought concerning all His people. Let me remind you of the events in Exodus 32, which we were speaking of in our first study in this series. There we see a crisis, a crisis through and by which the Levites came into their place. What had happened was that God had said beforehand (Exod. 19:5,6) that Israel should be to Him a kingdom of priests. That was the Divine thought. And then He followed by saying: 'Bring near Aaron and his sons' (Exod. 28:1) - the Divine thought taking shape. And then Moses goes into the mount, and is with God forty days and forty nights. Toward the end of that time the people weary of his absence, and there then follow the events of which we read in chapter 32. The people call Aaron and ask him to make them gods that should go before them - 'for what has happened to this Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we know not.' And Aaron gives way, weakly, very weakly, and has to cover it up with a lie. If you compromise, you will always have to add a lie presently. And he makes them a calf of gold. (You notice the lie. It says definitely that he worked it: he wrought it with a chisel (vs. 4). When he described what happened to Moses, he said he threw the gold into the fire and, as though by magic, a calf came out (vs. 24). You always have to resort to magic, if you get yourself into a tight corner by prevarication and lies and so on. That is by the way.) Moses came down, heard as he came down, saw, was very wroth, and challenged Aaron, as to why - why - why he should have let the people in for this sin, with its inevitable judgment. And then Moses went and stood in the gate, and threw out an uncompromising challenge. (Notice the form of his challenge: 'Whoso is on Jehovah's side, to me!' (vs. 26). So there is another side that is not Jehovah's. That is very discriminating at this point. Whose side is this? Well, that touches very, very vitally upon the whole matter of service. However, let us go on.) At that point the sons of Levi went over to Moses in the gate. Moses said: 'Put every man his sword on his side, and go throughout the whole camp, and slay every man his brother, his friend, his neighbour'. And the Levites did so, and they did it thoroughly, and at that point the tribe of Levi was set apart for this ministry. Now, God's thought was that all the people should be like that. He had said so (Exod. 19:5,6). But the people as a whole failed - failed God and failed of their calling, their vocation - and so God raised up, so to speak, this 'Israel within an Israel', and thus the tribe of Levi became the embodiment or representation of God's full thought for all His people. Representation: that is what is true of them in more senses than one. You know that it was the firstborn in all the houses, the homes, the families of Israel, who were the priests. Now the tribe of Levi takes the place of the firstborn in all Israel. The half shekel of silver (Exod. 30:13) becomes the symbol that they have taken the place of the firstborn. So they become in representation 'the Church of the firstborn ones' (Heb. 12:23). The very number of the tribe is also significant in this matter. It means representation, if you look at it. We will not dwell upon that, or go further with it; it is one of those details, but it is significant. The point is that it was when the nation as a whole failed that the Levites were taken, to become those who set forth - by embodying in themselves - God's full thought for His people, that they should be serving priests. Now, this is a very delicate point, but we have to face facts: and the fact is this - that the whole of the Lord's people, although redeemed, although His by redemption and by atoning Blood, are not fulfilling this priesthood. The people of God as a whole are not living up to their calling, are not fulfilling their heavenly vocation. That was true in Paul's time. The ministry of Paul was so largely - we might say mainly - to get Christians to live up to their calling. His prayers for believers were that they might apprehend their calling, 'the hope of His calling'. So the fact has been, from so soon after the beginning, that, as a whole, the Lord's people do not express His full thought. But God reacts to that failure, and sets to work to get those who will. The peril has always been, and it is a peril into which many have fallen, to say, 'Well, things are as they are, everything has broken down, it is a state of failure: we had better make the best of a bad job, accept the situation, and do the best we can.' God has never so compromised, and He never will. He did not just patch up that situation at Sinai. He definitely and concretely reacted to it in the Levites. Now, do not interpret that necessarily as a separate body of people. That is our peril - to think that here are the general people of God, and here is another class of people who are on a pedestal, very much better than the general. Beware of that. But, while we say that with great emphasis, we also say, with equal emphasis, that God's heart is set upon finding amongst His people those who do answer to His full thought. So that the Levites represented what God meant, and not what God found later on, or what came about in a general way; and that is service to God. And it is a very costly form of service. While God really seeks to have 'all men saved and come to a knowledge of the truth', His heart is really set upon a people who satisfy Him as to the fullest thought that He has ever expressed, and that is priestly service: representation, in the midst of failure, in the midst of departure, in the midst of weakness, in the midst of tragedy, of that which satisfies God. Take that to heart. That is service - service on the highest plane, service in the fullest realm. Service, in the most essential sense, is not to be doing a lot of things for God, but to be sure of what God wants most, and then bend everything to that.
