02.28. THE MITRE AND THE GOLDEN PLATE

THE MITRE AND THE GOLDEN PLATE “THOU shalt make the mitre of fine linen.” (Exodus 28:39.) The word “mitre” comes from the Hebrew and signifies “to wrap,” “to roll around.” The fine linen was wrapped or folded in folds around the head of the high priest in the form of a turban. In the New Testament Christian women are commanded when in the public assembly to cover their head; they are commanded to do so because while Christ is the head of the man, the man in the public assembly as the representative of Christ in office bearing and teaching is over the woman and considered as her head there, and the covered head is the sign of the woman’s obedience to this ordinance of the Lord. The woman is also the symbol of the Church as a Body and in covering her head she symbolizes the Church surrendering to and owning the headship of Christ. It is the symbol of absolute subjection and obedience. The Mitre, the head covering of the priest, is therefore a symbol of our Lord as- The Obedient One.

Although in His preexistent state our Lord was coeval and coequal with the Father, He laid aside the” form of God,” and took upon Himself the form and function of a servant.

He took the place of a servant, called Himself the “Sent” of the Father, said continually He did not come to do His own will but the will of Him who sent Him and reached the climax of obedience in the death of the cross so that it is written of Him:

“He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” So perfectly did He fulfill the role of a servant of God that the Father looking forward to that splendid display of subjection and service anticipatively draws attention to Him as such,

He says:

“Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighteth.” (Isaiah 42:1.) In all this unfaltering obedience to the will of God He stands in contrast to the First Man who walked exclusively after the counsel of his own will, begetting a race whose daily and consistent aim is to dethrone God, enthrone self and the full, unbridled exercise of the human will.

Walking every day in delighted recognition of the will of God and every day making it supreme, setting aside self for the glory of the Father, trampling all selfishness beneath His feet, enthroning God in the perfection of His words and deeds, and breathing out His subjection to the will of God in the slightest accent of His thought, Jesus Christ demonstrates that He is not an evolution of the First Man, that He is not of his humanity and that no human father could have begotten the humanity in which He lived; that God and God alone could (as He Himself anticipatively says in the Twenty-second Psalm) have taken Him, “out of the womb,” and made Him to hope when He was upon His” mother’s breasts.” As the Obedient One He stands in sharp, sword-like contrast to the” Coming Man “-the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition. The distinctive feature of the Antichrist is that he will come to do his own will; as it is written:

“And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god and shall speak ‘marvellous things against the God of gods.” (Daniel 11:36.) The Apostle Paul gives a full description of him: “That man of sin, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:4.)

He is coming to be the climacteric expression of that which is now manifesting itself everywhere in the mass, the breakdown of respect for law, the indifference to the standards of righteousness, the almost wild-beast determination to gratify human desire, the setting of individuality and individual will against any possible restraint from God, or the idea of God, the multiplying evidence that man is rapidly reaching the place where he will consider himself his own God, his own wish and will determining his final action, boasting concerning his own limitless innate powers, glorifying himself in the belief that he did not originate by the fiat of a personal God, but that he arose out of impersonal slime and has fought his way up through brute forms to his present state, that the urge in him is divine energy and that the day is coming when enthroned on the laws and forces of nature by reason of attained scientific knowledge and invention, he shall reveal himself as the very and only true God in the world—this man is coming to gather into himself all this spirit and set himself up as the authoritative exponent of it, as the” God of the whole earth.”

Six thousand years of sin, sickness, war, woe, anguish, bloodshed, misery and the graveyard tell the story of the First Man’s disobedience and coming end –the extermination of Adam’s race from the earth and sending them forth as discarnate rebels to wander eternally through the limitless spaces, “seeking rest and finding -none “as the fitting finale of the disobedience and self-exaltation that would, if it could, repudiate and cast down God from His own throne.

Perfect obedience to the will of God by the Second Man, even unto death, has obtained the right of redemption from the hand of justice and is the real matrix out of which is to be formed a new and perfect race, being formed now, as sons of God in embryo, but in the birth hour, the birth hour of resurrection and transfiguration, of immortality at His Coming, to be made the dwellers and possessors of a renewed and sinless earth; all this is the reward of one man’s obedience and the inspiration to those who call themselves by His name to walk His path, seeking to do, not their own will, but the will of Him who has called them to be the sharers of His glory. THE GOLDEN PLATE

“And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. And thou shalt put it on a blue lace, that it may be upon the mitre; upon the forefront of the mitre it shall be. And it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.” (Exodus 28:36-38.) The golden plate was the crowning piece in the garments of glory and beauty. When Aaron stood before the Lord clothed in his magnificently glorious and beautiful garments, the Lord looked at that plate flashing forth holiness unto His name and accepted the people in their priest in all the moral beauty and ceremonial righteousness which he displayed and represented.

He stood before God as the holiness of the Children of Israel. In all this he is a wondrous picture of the Lord Jesus Christ as the righteousness and holiness of those who have confessed His name; 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.) “He hath made us accepted in the beloved.” (Ephesians 1:4.)

Literally:

“He hath graced us, or made us acceptable, in the beloved.”

Just as God saw the Children of Israel in all the glory and beauty and graciousness of Aaron’s high priestly garments, saw them in the light of the golden plate and the signet of holiness, so He sees the weakest of us who believes in Him who is our Great High Priest, sees us in all the wealth of His grace, His holiness and matchless perfections.

Listen to these wondrous words which tell us how perfect we are before God in our Priest even in relation to this world:

“As he is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17.) A Summary Of The Teaching Of The Garments Of Glory And Beauty.

Linen Coat and Breeches—The Sinless One.

Linen Girdle—The Serving One.

Robe of the Ephod—The Heavenly and Gracious One. The Ephod—The Human and Divine One.

Shoulderpieces—The Strengthening and Sustaining One.

Breastplate—The Loving One.

Mitre—The Obedient One. The Golden Plate—The Holy One.