02.23. THE PRIEST
THE PRIEST
“AND take thou 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, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazer and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.” (Exodus 28:1.) There is a difference between a prophet and a priest. A prophet tells out God to man. A priest tells out man to God. A prophet acts for God before men. A priest acts for men before God. The Apostle gives us the definition of a priest:
He is taken from among men. He is ordained for men.
He is ordained, set apart, for men, in the things of God.
He is to offer gifts and sacrifices for men.
He is to be full of compassion for the ignorant and those who have fallen by the way. (Hebrews 5:12.) Aaron was high priest.
Aaron’s sons were priests under, and in association with, him.
Aaron and his sons constituted a ‘priestly family. Aaron was a figure of Christ.
“Now of the things we have spoken this is the sum: we have such an high priest, who is set at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” (Hebrews 8:1.) Aaron is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ by contrast.
Aaron was of the tribe of Levi. Christ was of the tribe of Judah.
Aaron was a priest after the order of a mortal man.
Christ was a priest after the order of Melchisedec, the deathless, immortal man.
Melchisedec was king of righteousness and king of peace.
He was without father or mother and had neither beginning of days nor end of life. (Hebrews 7:1-4.) Aaron was a priest on earth of an earthly Tabernacle.
Christ was never a priest on earth; as it is written: “For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law.” (Hebrews 8:4.) Aaron ceased to be a priest when he died. Christ became a priest only after He died.
He became a priest by and through resurrection; as it is written:
“Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee.” The Apostle is quoting from the Second Psalm and applies it to the resurrection of Christ.
He says:
“God hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” (Acts 13:33.).
If our Lord was made a high priest the day He was begotten, and He was begotten the day He rose from the dead, begotten by and through resurrection, then He became a high priest the day of, and by and through the fact of, His resurrection. This fact is typified by the action of Aaron on the Day of Atonement. Not till after the death of the victim did he leave the place of death, take the blood in the bason, put aside the Vail and go into the Holy Place to act as priest there.
It is a complete picture of our Lord Jesus Christ after He had offered Himself as a sacrifice leaving the place of death, rising from the dead, and entering Heaven as a priest in resurrection.
Just as Aaron entered the Holy Place with the blood of bulls and of goats our Lord with His own blood entered Heaven; as it is written:
“Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” (Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:24.) Consider the office work of our Lord Jesus Christ as a priest in Heaven.
He acts for us (believers) in Heaven. As Aaron went into the Most Holy Place with sacrificial blood on behalf of Israel to bear witness that the sacrifice had been made for them, so our Lord entered within the Vail into Heaven itself, with His own blood as witness that He had offered Himself in death as our sin offering, as our atonement; that He had met every issue and settled every claim on our behalf. As the Brazen Altar responded to the claims of the Ark of the Covenant and gave it the blood of the victim it demanded, so the Cross of Christ answered to the throne of God with the blood of sacrifice offered on it.
Christ as priest is our righteousness in Heaven.
“This is the name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness.” (Jeremiah 23:6.)
He is such by His act of obedience unto death, and this obedience has been charged to our account as believers; so that the righteousness of God as essential justice has no claims against us.
He is the perfect and holy one in whom God the Father sees us. He is our reputation and character in that Court where holiness is always the fashion. In Him we are no less than the very righteousness of God Himself; as it is written:
“He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21.)
God the Father sees us even while we are down here covered with the dust of the way just as He is in His beauty and holiness and perfection up there; as it is written:
“As he is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17.) That is His work, His wondrous work, to live for us just as though it were we who were in the glory already perfected as’ He is perfect.
What a dynamic rebuke it is to sin and failure on the part of any Christian, this fact that Christ is before God the Father continually representing us to be as holy as Himself, representing us as perfect sons of God.
What an inspiration, impulsion and exhortation that is to bring our daily life and experience up to the plane of this reputation; to try and make our character and reputation on earth as Christians as good and perfect as it is reckoned in Heaven.
He is our Advocate in Heaven.
“And if any man (any Christian) sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1.) An Advocate for us includes the idea of a Prosecutor against us.
There is such an one and that one is Satan.
He has his headquarters in the atmospheric heavens surrounding this earth, from thence he has access to the throne of God.
He is seen in the Heavens under the symbol of a dragon.
“And there appeared another wonder in Heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his head.” (Revelation 12:3.) The identity of the dragon is revealed; as it is written:
“That old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” (Revelation 12:9.) Since time began he has filled the role of accuser against the followers of God.
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also.” (Job 1:6.) When the Lord drew the Devil’s attention to Job and spoke of the righteousness of his character, he brought an accusation against him, slandered him, impugned his motives for being righteous and exhorted the Lord to send trials on him and prove him and test him and see how much his professed righteousness was really worth. This is the Devil’s occupation now, seeking to accuse and bring the follower of God into disrepute with God; as it is written:
“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” (Revelation 12:10.) This particular scene in Heaven is yet future and looks on to that moment when the Church having been translated from earth to Heaven at the Lord’s Coming for her will be assembled at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and when Satan will make his last great effort to tarnish the glory of the Church of the first born (the first risen from the dead) by bringing the record of defaulting Christians into the light. But while Satan may act the part of prosecutor, as he will claim, for righteousness, the Lord will meet his accusation and fill for us the part of Advocate; or, as the word really means—Our Stand-by.
Others may profess to be for us and in the hour of test fall down, He abides for us through evil and through good report. He is faithful and cannot deny Himself, nor the office He has assumed for us-Our Advocate, Our Friend in Heaven.
He is our Confessor. The Roman Catholic priest is a Confessor.
He listens to the confessions of his parishioners. They are exhorted to go to him and confess their sins down to the most minute detail, not only of deed, of word, but thought and impulse. The Christian can sin. He can sin because in regeneration he does not get rid of the old nature of sin. He gets a new and holy nature from the risen Son of God, but the nature of the first man remains, and thus the Christian has two natures, the nature of the first Adam and the nature of the Second, a nature of flesh and a nature of spirit. But while the Christian has two natures he has but one responsibility. When that responsibility is not exercised against the motions of sin, the Christian will stumble and fall, dishonor the Lord and wound his own soul. The Christian who denies there is sin in him after regeneration makes God a liar; as it is written:
“If we (Christians) say that we have not sinned, we make him (God) a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:10.) (Self-evidently not in us, because the Word of God is light, it is a revelator.)
You may be sitting in a dimly lighted room. Presently the full light is turned on. You discover at once things you had not observed before. The light did not put them there, the light just revealed they were there. That is the manner of the Word of God, in proportion as it is allowed to shine in the heart it will make manifest what is in the heart. The more you allow the light to shine, the more you seek to walk in the light as Christ is in the light, the more you endeavor to be obedient to the will of God as the Word sets it before you, the more you will awake to the fact that the old nature is in you and exceedingly and unchangeably sinful.
Get on the heights where the light shines in unhindered power, try to keep pace with Christ as He walks in that upper region and you will have a revelation of yourself that will make you to cry out with anguish, with heartache and bitterness of soul. But sin in a Christian when not judged and repudiated is a dangerous thing; not that a true child of God even though he stumble and continue to walk in the way of unrighteousness, ceases to be a child of God, the fixed relation between a father and a son disproves that. A son may be openly disobedient to his father and walk in a way that dishonors that father, he does not cease to be a son; how much more true is this of the relation between a child of God and his infinite Father. The earthly father may set his son aside, he may refuse to hold communion with him, he may cause him to suffer loss in many directions, but the fact of sonship remains.
All this is so in our relation with God the Father. We shall not cease to be His children, but He will refuse to hold communion with us. He will withdraw His manifested presence from us. The Spirit will not leave us, but will refuse to make Himself known to us, we shall be as though He did not dwell in us, as though He never had been in us. We shall be without any consciousness of divine life in us. Alas! there are multitudes of real Christians who are today practically disjuncted from the living God and seem to the world as those who have nothing better to recommend them than lip service, and are in fact stumbling-blocks to the unbeliever.
They have yielded to sin in o.ne form or another. The sin may be slight. It may be a wrong word spoken, a false judgment entertained. It may be a secret violation of the will of God, a secret sin indulged in, whatever it may be it is enough to cut the Christian off from the steady supply of the Heaven life, leaving him in blackness of spiritual darkness and to all intents and purposes as dead as the dead world about him.
What shall he do to get back to the consciousness of God in his soul?
What shall he do to have communion with God and the Spirit restored? Do what the Roman Catholic does.
Go to the Priest and confess the sin or sins, make a clean breast of it.
Go to your Priest, not to a poor, pretentious priest set up by the hand of man and the deceiving, subtle inspiration of the Devil, but to your Priest in Heaven and confess to Him. That is what He is there for—to listen to your confession and to act as your—Confessor. And behold what He does:
He will take your confession and present it to the Father, not as the confession of an alien and unregenerate, but as the confession of one of His own dear children, one who has stumbled and fallen by the way, one who has been grievously hurt by the failure and is full of genuine and sore repentance, one who desires to get back and into touch of the divine presence and the comfort of the Holy Ghost in the soul.
Make this confession and the Great High Priest will give you complete and perfect absolution and in the name of the Father cleanse and restore you; as it is written:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9.) The Father does this because He is faithful and just.
Faithful to the covenant relationship between Himself and the Son. The Son appeals to the Father and says this confessing Christian is one whom the Father gave Him before the foundation of the world; and the Father because He is faithful will own and restore that child of God to His personal favor. But the Father does this because He is just as well as faithful. The Son testifies to the Father that this confessing Christian is one for whom He died and the Father had agreed to accept His death for this covenant given Christian through all the experiences of his earthly and pilgrim way and He claims the permanent application of that blood now and in this particular case. Because the Father has respect to that blood and the relation of the Lord to the believer as his surety, He will not demand payment twice, once from the Believer’s Surety and then from the believer too. He is both faithful and just, He both forgives and cleanses and the confessing Christian feels suddenly as though Heaven’s gates had been opened and a breath from the throne of God was sweeping with its celestial cleansing through his soul.
O there is no act in the Christian life that can so fill the soul with the music of redemption as full and sincere confession to our Great High Priest.
It is a gracious and measureless privilege given to believers. Nor need we hesitate to come even though again and again we have stumbled. • Has he not said man should forgive his brother man not seven times but seventy times seven; and does He not mean the Court of Heaven is open, the Confessor ever on the throne, His ear ever bent to listen to the most hesitating and trembling confession that shall carry in it the accent of genuine contrition and a yearning desire once more for the embracing arms of a Saviour’s love? The beauty and the value of confession is set before us in the wonder and pathos of the Last Supper when our Lord at the close of it takes a towel, girds Himself, pours water into a bason and washes the feet of His disciples; (John 13:1-7.)
Peter demurs, he will not allow the Lord to wash his feet; but when the Lord assures him that if He do not wash his feet he shall have no part with him, the impulsive Apostle goes to the other extreme and would have the Lord not only to wash his feet, but his hands and his head as well.
Then the Lord says to him:
“He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” This is what the Lord says literally:
“He that is bathed (that is, has had his body bathed) needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” The body having been bathed is protected by the clothing, but the feet having only sandals are exposed and in walking contract more or less defilement by the way.
It was not necessary to take a fresh bath.
It was simply necessary to have the feet washed. As believers we have been redeemed by the blood and are in Christ the very righteousness of God; as our Lord said to Peter, we are—
“Clean every whit.” But in our daily life even when we do not commit outbreaking sin we contract more or less defilement in our pilgrim way, the sense of communion is lost, there is an estrangement between our spirit and the Spirit of the Lord, we are out of touch, that thing, whatever it may be, is between us and Him, we have neither peace nor power.
What shall we do? Do what Peter did at last.
He submitted his feet to the inspection of the Lord.
That.is what we must do:
Show our feet to the Lord.
Expose our walk before Him, let Him have the complete detail of deed, word and thought, and all the environing circumstances. When Peter submitted His feet to the Lord, the Lord applied the water to them and washed them. The water is a symbol of the Word and truth of God. When we confess our sins to the Lord He presents this confession to the Father, the Father, as already stated, owns His covenant relation to the Son and to the cross and the justness of the Son’s demands that the believer’s confession shall be accepted; then it is the Lord applies the forgiveness and the cleansing to the believer, applies the truth to his heart and conscience, the Word takes its rightful place in his heart, it becomes in him, indeed, as a well of water springing up and cleansing every thought, gives purity to every word, making the walk a walk of holiness and separation unto the Lord.
He is our Intercessor.
“He is able also to save to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25.) Intercede means to present a petition, to pray.
He prays for those who are His.
(This has been fully set forth in the chapter on the Golden Incense Altar.) A Christ in Heaven praying for us! What grace, what assurance is that.
Again and again when the believer is on the edge where it seems the next step would make him slip, plunge and fall into the black abyss of unbelief, there comes as directly out of Heaven itself a touch of power that ‘repudiates even the thought of doubt or question and gives him a vigor of faith such as he never dreamed ever could be his.
Yonder at the throne He has seen our special need and prayed for us. As already shown He takes our prayers, presents them and makes them acceptable before the Father’s throne.
He is in Heaven as our life.
He is the Second Man.
He stands in contrast to the First Man. The First Man has been and is-our Death.
Moral, spiritual and organic death. The Lord as the Second Man is our-Life. The source of moral, spiritual and immortal life.
He is such to all who believe in Him.
All life is by environment.
He is our environment.
We live in Him. He is, actually, our life; as it is written:
“Christ who is our life.” (Colossians 3:4.) He is our Forerunner in Heaven.
“Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.” (Hebrews 6:20.) A Forerunner is one who goes ahead of others.
He goes ahead as a sample of those who are to follow. The presence of Christ in Heaven is a pledge to the believer of four great things:
1. We shall enter Heaven the moment of death.
“I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.” (Php 1:23.) To die, according to Scripture, is to depart.
Let us remember that, it is the action of a traveler: we depart, we go just as we do here from one locality to another.
Listen to this still further detailed announcement:
“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from our home out of the body, and to be immediately present at our home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8.) As the Lord is in Heaven at the right hand of God, it follows, when the Christian dies he is immediately at the right hand of God, with the Lord.
2. We shall enter Heaven someday in our body. This will be when the Lord comes for the Church; as it is written:
“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.)
Between us and this Coming of the Lord there is not a single predicted event. It will be at an hour when we “think not.” It may be any moment.
According to the word of the Lord Himself we are always standing on the threshold of it. It is the “next thing” solemnly promised to the Church.
It is not necessary for us to die to go to Heaven.
It may be at morning or noon or evening the “door” in Heaven will open and He will say: “Come up hither.” And lo, we shall be with Him.
3. We shall be where He is in Heaven.
He is at the” right hand of God.”
He has said we shall be where He is:
Listen to His words:
“I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:3.) In His wonderful prayer He said:
“Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” (John 17:24.) He said:
“I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2.) When He comes He will take us into the “place prepared.”
4. We shall be like Him.
“It doth not yet appear (is not yet made manifest to the world) what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2.)
Until that hour of mutual glory He is in Heaven as the sympathizing priest who makes the throne of God the infinite Dispensary of the mercy and grace which help in time of need.
“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16.)
If Aaron contrastively and yet in certain details is a direct type of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Great High Priest, Aaron’s sons, the priestly family, set forth the Church as such; as it is written:
“Ye also, as lively (living) stones, (Peter is thinking of himself as the first living stone built on Christ the living Rock) are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. ‘
Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood.” (1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9.)
“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks in his name.” (Hebrews 13:15.) There is no warrant for any high priest on earth today.
Priesthood on earth can be exercised only in Israel, in the tribe of Levi and by the house of Aaron. The nation of Israel has been rent in twain. Ten tribes are nationally lost to view. The Jews have been set aside as the people of God in this age; they are Lo Ammi—”Not my People.” The Church has been brought in in the stead of the .law system. With the setting aside of the Jew is the setting aside of priesthood on earth. • The only High Priest is our Lord Jesus Christ and He exercises His office as such only in Heaven. There is no warrant for any special class of priests in the Church.
All Christians are priests. They are spiritual priests. As priests all Christians are on a level with each other; no one Christian has a right to special preeminence as a priest.
Christians are a family of priests, each having the same’ function as the other, and that is:
“To offer- up spiritual sacrifices.”