In 'the Gospel according to Leviticus,' we come today to a section which is specifically addressed to priests, to Aaron the high priest and his sons. This family, as you know, was set aside in Israel to do a specific work of ministry for God. All the members of Aaron's family were priests by birth. They did not become priests by choice or by desire on their part, but by being born into the family of Aaron. There was no other way to become a priest. No other family was ever recognised as having valid membership in the priesthood.
But even though they were members of Aaron's family, they could serve as priests only if they met certain qualifications. So there is a difference between merely being a priest and serving as a priest. That is important and instructive to us because, as we have seen, this priesthood of the family of Aaron is a picture of the ministry that we have uniquely as believers in Jesus Christ. Every one of us who is born again, born into the family of our great high priest Jesus Christ, is by that fact inescapably a priest. But whether we can serve as a priest or not depends upon the qualifications in our life. Membership in the family is by birth; service in the family is by qualification.
This is highlighted in a quotation from a classic treatment of the first five books of the Bible called The Notes on the Pentateuch by a Plymouth Brethren author who uses only his initials, C.H.M. This is what he says:
Every child of God is a priest. He is enrolled as a member of Christ's priestly house. He may be very ignorant, but his position as a priest is not founded upon knowledge but upon life. His experience may be very shallow, but his place as a priest does not depend upon experience but upon life. His capacity may be very limited, but his relationship as a priest does not rest upon an enlarged capacity but upon life. He was born into the position and relationship of a priest. He did not work himself thereinto. It was not by any efforts of his own that he became a priest; he became a priest by birth. The spiritual priesthood, together with all the spiritual functions attaching thereunto, is the necessary appendage to spiritual birth. The capacity to enjoy the privileges and to discharge the functions of a position must not be confounded with the position itself. They must ever be kept distinct. Relationship is one thing; capacity is quite another.
That distinction was made regarding the sons of Aaron and it is true also of us. When you became a Christian by faith in Jesus Christ, you also became a priest, with great privileges and functions. But you cannot exercise that priesthood, and enjoy those privileges, and reap the benefit and excitement of the ministry, unless you fulfil certain qualifications which these chapters set before us. When the Old Testament pictures us here as priests, it is talking primarily about that aspect of our life which concerns ministry to others, our outreach -- either to other Christians or to non-believers. We are all priests by virtue of being Christians, but how good a priest we are, how much we enjoy the ministry committed to us, and how effective we are in it, depends upon our qualifications.
The ministry of a priest is summarized up for us in Lev.21:6:
"They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the Lord's food offerings, the bread of their God; therefore they shall be holy."
RELATE
Priests did two things: they offered the offerings, the sacrifices, and they offered the bread, the showbread, before God in the tabernacle. This is directly applicable to us and very significant, because we have exactly the same ministry on the spiritual level. As we learn from the New Testament, these Levitical practices are shadows, pictures, symbols, which speak of our own ministry: To offer the offerings is to deal with the effects of the death of Jesus. Those animal sacrifices represent the death of the Lord Jesus. Every lamb, every calf, every goat that was slain in the Old Testament was a picture of the work of Christ upon the cross in giving up His life on behalf of His own. And to offer these sacrifices was to apply this work, in type, to the individuals who brought them.
What does that mean to us? It is given to us, as believers in Jesus Christ, to apply the work of Christ to people who are in desperate trouble around us -- both other Christians and non-Christians as well. We are to do so by sharing the truth of the word of God with them, the facts that God has declared in the gospel, and thus to deliver them from the burden of guilt for their sins and to set them free from the power of evil in their lives, from habits that enslave them and blind them and inhibit them in so many ways, and to bring them forth into freedom and health and liberty. The death of Jesus, the blood of Christ, is what cuts off the hurtfulness and the sinfulness of human life. It is the only solution to the problem of human evil. Therefore every problem which stems from self-centredness, self-sufficiency, evil at work in your life and mine, is to be dealt with by the death of Christ -- the understanding of it, the belief in it, the acceptance of it personally, and the appropriation of it. Helping people in this is the job of a priest, and exciting work it is!
REST
Have you ever had the privilege of helping someone in this way -- someone you have come to know or to love but who is troubled, blinded, who is discouraged, depressed, defeated, who has fallen into a morass of evil thoughts and attitudes and activities which are destroying him or her? Have you had the privilege of setting them free with a word of release and helping them see what God has done for them? The lifting of guilt, the freeing from sin, the deliverance from the power of evil in human affairs, the healing touch, the freeing, delivering Word -- only this will help, and this is our ministry, yours as well as mine, to help people wherever we find them, whoever they are. That is the privilege given to us as priests. That is what we are here for -- to minister to others in this way.
TAN TEE KHOON
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