READING: Leviticus 8:22-24; Romans 12:1-2; John 17:19.
Referring to this passage in chapter 8 of the book of
Leviticus, it is important to note what happened in the
consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood at
that particular point. The ram of consecration was
brought, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon it,
and then it was slain, its blood was shed. That blood
was then taken and sprinkled upon them at different
points of their beings.
There we have two sides of consecration. The
shedding of the blood is the death side, and the
sprinkling of the blood is the life side. The blood poured
out is the life poured out, delivered up, let go or taken
away. Sprinkling is the making active and energetic of
the ministry in a living power. When you recognise that,
you understand what consecration is, and also the
meaning of the act of identification through the laying on
of hands with a life poured out, a life yielded up, a life let
go, a life taken away unto death. In the act of sprinkling
a new position is represented, which implies that now
there is no longer anything of the self life, but all is
livingly of God, active by God, and unto God alone.
That is consecration.
Chapter 17 of the Gospel by John is known to us
familiarly as the High Priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus.
He is pictured therein as advancing to the altar in an act
of consecration of Himself in the behalf of His sons
whom He is seeking to bring to glory, that they may
behold His glory, and that the glory which He had might
be theirs. Here is undoubtedly that which is represented
by Aaron and his sons. The High Priest is consecrating
Himself, as He says, that they also may be consecrated.
The rest of the prayer is a wonderful exposition of the
inner meaning of this part of Leviticus 8. In the little while
at our disposal we shall seek to understand it more
clearly.
The whole man has come into that realm of
consecration on both its sides; the death side, and the
life side; the life poured out, and the life taken again; the life let go, and the life resumed, but
on another basis; the whole man, represented by his ear,
his hand, his foot. That has a simple and direct message
to our hearts.
The Government of the Ear
We begin with the ear: "...upon the tip of Aaron's right
ear." That means that the Lord is to have supreme
control of the ear, that we must come on to the ground
where the ear is dead to every other controlling voice,
every other governing suggestion, and alive unto God,
and unto God alone. It is quite clear that the governing
faculty of every life is the ear in some way; not
necessarily the outward organ, but that by which we
listen to suggestions, that, as we say, to which we "give
ear." The suggestions may arise from our own
temperament and makeup; the constraining things in our
life may be our natural inclination, the pull and the draw
of our constitution, deep-seated ambitions, inclinations,
interests, which are not cultivated nor acquired, but
which are simply in us because we are made that way.
To listen to these is to have our lives governed by our
own interests. Or it may be other things, such as the
suggestions, the desires, the ambitions of others for us,
the call of the world, the call of human affections,
consideration for the likes of others. Oh, how many
things may come to us like the activity of a voice to
which, if we listen, we shall become slaves and servants,
and the ear, and the life with it, be so governed.
This illustrative truth in Leviticus 8 says definitely and
emphatically to you and to me that that shedding, that
slaying, was the slaying of our ear and our hearing in
respect of all such voices, and that sprinkling meant that
we now have an ear only for the Lord, and He is to have
the controlling voice in our life. The right ear, as the right
hand, is the place of honour and power so far as the
hearing and the speaking are concerned. Then you and
I, if we say that we are consecrated men and women,
mean that we have brought the death of Christ to bear
upon
all the governments and domination of voices which
arise from any quarter save from the Lord Himself. We
are not to consult the voice of our own interests, our
own ambitions, our own inclinations, or the voice of
anyone else's desires for us. We must have an ear only
for the Lord. That is consecration.
It is a solemn and direct word for everyone, and
perhaps especially for the younger men and women,
whose lives are more open now to be governed by other
considerations, because life lies before them. It may
happily be that the sense of responsibility about life is
uppermost; the feeling is that it might be disastrous to
make a mistake, and along with it there is a strong
ambition to succeed and not to have a wasted life. Here
is your law for life, and although the course of things may
be strange, and the Lord's ways ofttimes perplexing, and
you may be called upon in a very deep way to give ear
to the exhortation addressed to us in the book of
Proverbs, "trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean
not unto thine own understanding," nevertheless in the
outworking you will find that God's success has been
achieved, and, after all, what matters more than that, or
as much as that. The course may be very different from
what you expected, or thought, or judged would be the
reasonable way for your life, but that does not matter
so long as God is successful in your life, and your life has
been a success from God's standpoint. This is the secret,
an ear alive only unto Him and dead to everything that
comes from any quarter other than the Lord Himself.
Chapter 17 of John's Gospel is an exposition of that. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."
If we were of the world we should take the judgments of
the world for our lives, what the world would suggest to
be the course of greatest success, prosperity, advantage.
The spirit of the world does sometimes get into our own
hearts and suggests to us that it would be fatal for us to
take this course or that. To give heed to that voice is to
become conformed to this age. "I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service": and from the outset the
point of supreme government is the ear. Put your ear
under the blood, to be God's vehicle of government. It
means that we must have a spiritual ear. As
children of God we have, by reason of our new birth, a
spiritual faculty of hearing, and we must take heed to
develop it as the Lord would have us.
It means that the ear must be a listening ear. Many
people hear, and yet do not hear; they have ears and
they hear, but yet they hear not because they do not
listen. The Lord says many things to us, and we do not
hear what He is saying, although we know He is saying
something. There must be a quiet place for the Lord
in our lives. The enemy will fill our lives with
the voices of other claims, and duties, and
pressures, to make it impossible for us to have
the harvest of the quiet ear for the Lord. That
ear must be an ear that is growing in capacity.
The child has an ear, and it hears, but it does
not always understand what it hears. A babe
hears sounds and you notice the signs of the babe
having heard a sound, but that babe does not
understand the sound that it hears. As it, grows
it begins to know the meaning of those sounds.
In the same way there must be a spiritual ear, a
consecrated ear, marked by the same features of
growth and progress. Then, further, this ear
must be an obedient ear, so that hearing we
obey. Thus God governs the life from the outset.
The Work of our Hands
Then we come to the thumb: "...and upon the thumb
of his right hand..." The order is quite right, the ear first
and the hand next. The Lord must have the place of honour and strength in the activities of our life, in the
work of our life. Now this all sounds very elementary,
but we must listen for the Lord's voice in it. The point is
that in whatever we are doing, or about to do, in all our
service, there must be death to self; no self serving, no
world serving, no serving for our own gratification,
pleasure, advantage, honour, glory, position, exaltation,
reputation. In the death of our offering we died to all
that, and now our hand, in whatever it does - and it
may have to work in this world's business, to do a
multitude of uninteresting things of a very ordinary
character - whatever activity of life it has to engage in, is,
on the one side, to be dead to self, and, on the other
side, to work with the Lord's interests in view.
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might..." (Ecclesiastes 9:10). You will remember how
much the Apostle warned about service being done to
men, as by men pleasers, and not as unto the Lord. He was speaking largely to the slave of
those days. When the slave system obtained, and the slaves had to do
many, many things that must have gone much against the grain, he said to the slaves: Fulfil your service, not as unto those men who are your masters, but as unto
the Lord. We must question ourselves as to why we are in any given
place, or what it is that moves us to desire any particular place or work. What is the governing motive of our ambition for service? Before God we must be able
to say that any personal or worldly consideration is dead, and that our
service now is not only not a reluctant, nor resigned,
giving of ourselves to do what we have to do, but there
is a ready applying of ourselves to even difficult, hard,
unpleasant and uninteresting things for the Lord's
pleasure.
Do write this word in your heart, that the Lord will
not, indeed cannot, exalt you and give you something
else, something more fruitful, more profitable, more
glorious for Himself, until in that least, that mean, that
despised, that irksome, maybe even revolting place
and work you have rendered your service utterly as
unto Him, even if it has meant a continual self-crucifixion.
That is the way of promotion. This is the way in which
we come into a position where the Lord gets more out
of our lives than we imagine He is getting. There is a
priestly ministry in doing that difficult and unpleasant
thing as unto the Lord, but we do not see that we are
priests at the time. The idea of being girded with a linen
ephod at the time when you are scrubbing floors and
washing dishes, and other like things, is altogether
remote from your imagination. Yet there is a testimony
which is being borne which is effective, of which maybe you have no consciousness. It may come to light one
day. Someone may say: I proved that Jesus Christ is a
reality simply by seeing the way in which you did what I
knew you naturally hated doing; it was wholly distasteful
to you, you had no heart for it, but you did it in such a
way that it convinced me that Christ is a living reality.
That is no imagination and sentiment, it is true to life.
The Lord has His eye upon us.
The Directed Walk
Next we consider the toe, "...and upon the great toe
of his right foot." That means that the Lord is to have the
direction of our lives, that all our outgoings and our stayings are to be
controlled alone by the Lord's interests. We are not always being bidden to go.
Sometimes the going is a relief, but it is staying which is so difficult. We are
so eager to go, and yet often the Lord has a difficulty to get us to go in His
way. However the case may be, it is a simple point, it is a direct word. Our
going has been rendered dead to all but the Lord, and our staying also. Our life
has been poured out, has been let go, has been taken away, that is, the life
which is for ourselves, of ourselves. Life has been taken up on another level.
The Supreme
Ensample
Apply that to the great High Priest. Had He ever an
ear for Himself or for the world? Had He not an ear for
the Father alone? Trace His life through again. Satan
came to Him in the wilderness, and began to speak. We
do not know how this took place. We know that the
Lord must have spoken of the matter secretly and
confidentially to some, for no one had been with Him,
He had been alone. We do not know whether Satan
appeared in physical form, and spoke with an audible
voice, but the probability is that it was not so and that he
wrought rather by inward suggestion, the strong bearing
down upon the Lord Jesus of certain other
considerations, every one of which was in His Own
interest. There was no doubt whatever that Satan spoke
to Him in some way, and He heard what Satan said, but
His ear was crucified, and the power of that voice was paralysed by His consecration to the Father. In effect
He
triumphed on this ground: I have no ear for you,
My ear is for the Father alone!
Satan came in other forms, not always openly, but
under cover. Thus a beloved disciple would sometimes
serve him for a tool: "Be it far from thee Lord: this shall
never be unto thee" (Matt. 16:22). The Lord turned
and said, "Get thee behind me, Satan"; that is the
voice of self-consideration, self-preservation; I am dead
to that; this is the Father's way for Me; I have an ear for
Him only. And so it was all the way through.
Was it true of His service? Did He for a moment seek His Own ends by His works, His Own glory by what He did? No! Even in tiredness and weariness and
exhaustion, if there were interests of the Father to be
served He was alive to those interests, never consulting
His
Own glory, or His Own feelings; and I have no doubt
that His feelings were sometimes those of acute
suffering. We read of Him as "being wearied." We
know what that is, and how in weariness we would not
only sit on the well, but remain sitting on the well, even
though some demand were being made upon us. If we
are the Lord's we must be governed by the Lord's
interests, and brush aside all the rising suggestions of
looking after ourselves. So it was with Him in all His
goings. He submitted His going or His staying to the
Father. His brethren would argue that He should go up
to the feast, but He does not yield to their persuasions
and arguments. His one criterion is, What does the
Father say about this? His mother entreats Him at the
marriage in Cana, and says they have no wine. His
unlooked for reply is, "What have I to do with thee." In
other words, What does the Father say about this? So
His whole life was, on the one hand, dead to self, to the
world, and, on the other hand, alive only to God. And what a fruitful life, what
a God-satisfying life!
There is a oneness with Christ in consecration. "For their sakes I consecrate myself, that they may be
consecrated in truth." "I beseech you therefore...
present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your spiritual
worship..." That is our priesthood.
Will you listen to that word? Will you take that word
to the Lord in prayer? Will you get down before Him
with it? Perhaps it is a word to bring about an end to a
struggle, a fight, a conflict, an end to restlessness,
chafing, lack of peace, lack of joy. You may have been
fretted, you may have been thinking of your life as being
wasted, and you are all in a ferment. Are you reaching
out for something? Are you being governed by your
own conception of things, by what other people think of
you, by what the world would do, or what others would
do if they were in your place? These are not the voices
for you to heed. What does the Lord say? Wait in that;
rest in that. You may not understand, but be sure a life
on this basis is going to be God's success. Do you want
God's success? God may do something through you for
which you are temperamentally, constitutionally,
altogether unfit, and for your part you have thought that
because you are made in a certain way that must govern
your direction in life. Not at all! Come, then, let us get
down before Him on this matter, to deal with
consecration, if needs be, all anew.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Jan-Feb 1937, Vol 15-1