Priesthood and Life

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - The Levite Principle

Reading: 1 Chron. 15:12-15, 25-27; 16:1.

"And David made him houses in the city of David, and prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched for it a tent. Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites: for them hath the Lord chosen to carry the ark of God, and to minister unto Him for ever" (1 Chron. 15:1-2).

In this meditation we shall, as the Lord enables us, just focus our attention upon one aspect of the great matter which we more comprehensively or generally considered in our previous meditation, namely that of priesthood and Life. We saw how these two things are kept together and given very much prominence right through the Word of God from its beginning to its end, noting again that the great matter of time and of eternity is this question of Life, divine Life, eternal Life. Upon it all the purposes of God rest; with it all the movements of God are bound up. It is the big question. Right through the ages, the world is divided into two - those who have this Life and those who have it not; the living and the dead.

I am not going back to link up with the previous message, but probably we shall get a fair idea of what is meant as we come to this particular fragment which is brought into view with this fifteenth chapter of the first book of the Chronicles. You note that here David makes a reference to what had happened - "Because ye bare it not... the Lord made a breach upon us".

Most of you are familiar with the story which is gathered up into that statement, how, three months earlier David, in consultation with the leaders of the people, devised a plan for bringing up the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem, decided upon doing this thing, and how they would do it. They made a new cart and put the ark thereupon and put the cart and the ark in the charge of two men. And when the cart came to a certain uneven part of the road and the oxen stumbled, one of the men, Uzza, put forth his hand to steady the ark, and it was then that God made His breach upon them and upon the whole proceeding, and smote Uzza so that he died there before the Lord. David was grieved with the Lord that day, and turned aside to put the ark into the house of Obed-Edom and there it was for three months, nothing doing, everything at a standstill, excepting what was going on inside David himself. And that was a very salutary and profitable thing from which we might learn very vital lessons.

David started by being offended with, or grieved with, the Lord, but you know, when we get into that frame of mind or state of heart, one of two things is going to happen, and which of those two things depends upon what sort of people we are. On the one hand, we can become bitter, sour, awkward and nurse our grievance and hold our offence against the Lord and really sulk. If we pursue that course, we find that that is the way of death and the way of deepening darkness. There is no way through there, and we shall stay there for ever unless we change our minds and our attitude. Well, if that is the kind of person we are, that is the way we shall take and that will be the end of everything. There are a lot of people like that on the earth today. They have become upset with the Lord, offended with the Lord, grieved with the Lord, and, being disposed that way, they nurse their grievance and they just get into a backwater, into a cul-de-sac, and there they stay, many of them, for a long time - months or years, and some go to the end of their lives bitter and sour. It all dates back to some offence with the Lord.

Or, if we should be like David, not incapable of being grieved with the Lord, not incapable of being distressed because of the way in which the Lord deals with us, even being offended, but having something other in us which, once we get over the worst patch, the immediate disappointment and perplexity, begins to take this attitude: well now, the Lord did that, what kind of person is the Lord? Is He arbitrary, is He spiteful, is He peevish? Does the Lord do this sort of thing just to gratify some whim of His, just to hurt us? What sort of person is the Lord? Surely the Lord does things on principle and right principle; the Lord has a very good reason for what He does. And although for the moment I do not see where I was wrong, I cannot see where my mistake lay, while for the moment I am convinced that I was perfectly sincere and honest and very devoted in what I sought and it was for the Lord, if these two things: my way and the Lord's way come into conflict, then it is for me to give the Lord the benefit of the doubt and suspend my own conclusions and begin to enquire as to whether, after all, I may have been wrong; at least admitting the possibility of my being wrong!

It depends on what kind of person we are whether we will admit the possibility of being wrong, even when we feel so deeply and strongly that the course we have taken was in devotion to the Lord, for there is no doubt about it that David was devoted to the Lord. There is no doubt that David put his devotion into a most thorough-going enterprise. There is no doubt about it that David wanted the glory of God. There is no doubt about it that David's heart was set upon God having that upon which His heart was set, that His ark, His testimony, should be in a certain place, a certain place of advancement and attaining. And yet with all, David was wrong; with all, he was wrong, and being the man that he was, he was ready to open the matter, though in the darkness, bewilderment and perplexity, and under arrest. He gave God the benefit of the doubt, and said, "I must enquire anew, I must go back over this way to take it up afresh and find out where I was wrong, because I am quite certain the Lord is not wrong".

See what had happened. Here was something which, so far as the ultimate issue was concerned, was very dear to the Lord's own heart. It had to do with the Lord's own testimony, the Lord's own interest, and to have that furthered, to have that reach its ultimate consummation, was a right, proper and good thing. And yet, with all that perception of God's purpose and with all that sincere devotion to the realisation of that purpose, the whole thing came right under arrest, into death, and was turned aside and held up under a pall of death, or, what was said here in another part in recounting the story - "the time was long". For a long time, a wearisome time, delay, delay, delay; no movement, no development, no progress, all held up. Why? Well, David was wrong after all, but David, being the man that he was, was ready to take the attitude, "After all, I may have been wrong; if God has done this, God must be right, and inasmuch as God and I are not one in this, I must be wrong".

Beloved, I pause to make much of this on the way, because it is a tremendous thing to be adjustable. Everything may hang upon our willingness to be adjustable, and everything of divine purpose, divine intention, all that the Lord's heart is set upon, the ultimate glorious satisfaction of the Lord to which we may be honestly devoted, the whole thing may be held up for months or for years. Not because our motive was wrong, not because our perception of God's purpose was wrong, but because we were wrong in the way in what we did in order to reach that end, in the situation in which we brought ourselves, because we came into the picture. That is the point. We came into the picture somewhere, somehow. We were in this thing after all. That is going to be proved before we are through, I think. Because a hand which was not the hand of God, but which was, though indirectly, David's hand, came upon that testimony, that ark, indirectly - for Uzza's hand, after all, was David's hand, for David put him in charge. David was the responsible one for this whole thing, and he knew it. Because the hand of man came in into a divine thing, all was stayed - a very solemn reflection.

Government by the Word of God

Well, this exercise went on in David's heart, and what happened? Being the man that he was before God, and being adjustable (and may I say again here in parenthesis, how often in his life was it necessary for David to adjust himself. How often did he make that adjustment with glorious ends, glorious issues). I think David is one of the outstanding people in the Bible in whom the great virtue of adjustableness is found. Probably that is why he came to the throne, and that is our great lesson.

What did David do once he had got away from the initial bitterness of his position? He went to the Word of God, such as it was in his day, for there was no more than the beginnings, the first books of the Bible, but they were enough. He went to the Word of God, he went to see exactly what the Word of God said about it. I am going to press these points.

We can get a kind of general idea about the Word of God. We can be carried along by a superficial impression of what the Lord wants done, and when we come to investigate closely, the Word of God is very particular and very precise, not only as to what the Lord wants, but as to how He wants it and exactly the means to be used in its realisation. David had got his heart full of divine purpose and then went ahead to devote himself to it and made this tremendous mistake, and when he came back to investigate, he found the purpose not enough. God prescribes how that purpose is to be reached and prescribes it in great detail.

And so, in reading back in the Word of God, he discovered this: "Oh, God here says the Levites, the Levites alone, are to bear the ark, them hath God appointed to bear the ark forever!" Oh, that was not something just for the days of Moses, that was not just something for New Testament times. When God prescribes, He prescribes on the basis of eternal principles, not temporary measures. Within any prescription of God, you will find a principle which goes outside of time and has its home right in the very moral nature of God. "None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites; for them hath God chosen to carry the ark of God... forever." "Because ye bare it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us." Death intervened where the Levites were left out. Death came in when the priests were set aside. Death triumphed when God's principle of priesthood was not recognised, was not honoured. Priesthood and Life always go together. Leave out what is represented by priesthood, and you will have death every time.

The Levites 

Then we must know what these Levites are. Who are they? What are they? What is this principle in the very moral nature of God which is embodied in Levites, for Levites are living spiritual principles right out of God's heart. Those principles may be in persons, but the persons can never be priests or Levites without the principle being rooted in their very being. Then what are they? Where and when did the Levites first come in? Do you remember?

Moses had gone up into the mount. He was there forty days and forty nights, and the people got weary of waiting and, before the expiration of the time, they turned to Aaron and said, "Make us gods, for as for this Moses, we know not what is become of him!" And so Aaron took all their golden earrings and made this image and they worshipped. "These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (Ex. 32:4), and at that moment, at that moment, Moses began to descend the mount. The Lord said to him, "Get thee down, for the people have broken loose!" He came down, saw and heard, dashed the stones of commandment to the ground, came down to the people and into the camp, took account of the whole situation, took the tent right outside the camp and pitched it, stood before that tent of the Lord (not the tabernacle now, but the prior tent, something evidently recognised, a sort of interim meeting place), and standing there, cried to the whole company, "Who is on the Lord's side, let him come unto me!" And all the sons of Levi came. And Moses said, "Gird every man his sword upon his thigh and go in and out, slay every man his brother, every man the friend that is in his heart, every man his neighbour!" I like that way of it being put - "every man the friend that is in his heart" - and they did it, went through the camp slaying their own kith and kin, their own brothers, their own neighbours and the friends that were in their heart, the bosom friend slain. Then, it was then, that the Lord said, "The Levites from now are chosen, are appointed, to bear the ark". That is how they came in first of all.

What is the principle? Inside of the Israelites, there was that of their own souls which, rising up and taking possession of them, caused there to come about a link with that whole system of spiritual iniquity lying behind idolatry, lying behind paganism, lying behind all heathen worship, lying behind the very Egyptian priesthood which had been smitten already by God with death in Egypt, for the firstborn in Egypt belonged to the gods and were the priestly company. And God had smitten the firstborn with death in Egypt, because of the link with that whole system of spiritual iniquity in the heavenlies lying behind the expression of it in idolatry, paganism, and heathenism. And in the hearts of Israel, in the soul of Israel, there was that which, rising up, asserting itself and getting the mastery, led them again into that association with the spiritual system set against God, to draw worship away from God. Now, that is what it amounts to, and the Levites had slain with the sword everyone who became, by their own souls, associated with that system of spiritual iniquity. Death, you see.

But, you say, you cannot speak of that sort of thing today, and especially to a company of Christians; that is very extreme! But I want to say to you that is not so extreme as you may think. What is it that is inside every one of us which, once it gets up, asserts itself, gets into a place of dominion over us, leads into a position where satan has an advantage, where God is at a disadvantage, and where spiritual death comes in and there is arrest to the great divine purposes in our lives? What is it? It is very much more simple than you may think from what I have been saying. It is what the New Testament calls 'the flesh', that is all, but it is a terrible all: the flesh.

"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death" (Romans 8:2). What follows? "They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit" (verse 5).

Uzza is the principle of what is of man as apart from God, rising up to touch God's things. Another word for flesh is self. Our selves as not under the government of the Holy Spirit: uncrucified, unslain flesh, flesh that influences us, ourselves taking charge, causing us, yes, blindly, to do right things in a wrong way, blindly to go out after the Lord's purpose in a way in which the Lord cannot support us and stand by us.

You notice the change-over. "Because ye bare it not at first, the Lord made a breach upon us"; "God helped the Levites that bare the ark", and the difference is that the Levites are here. Or, in other words, here you have those who have known in their own souls the cutting work of the Cross which severs them from that which in their own natures, in their own souls, would rise up and influence their course, even though they may be thinking that they are doing the will of God.

You and I do not know our own motives really. We do not know our own hearts. We do not know what it is that is actuating us very often. You say, "Then we ought not to be judged!" Oh, but the Lord has prescribed, beloved, and that is the point. The Lord has prescribed. It is in the Word of the Lord.

Some of us know quite well exactly what Uzza knew and what the Levites came to know in experience: for years serving the Lord in our own energy. With what result? Very little spiritual result, very hard going, the testimony not making much progress, with very little fruit, feeling all the time that the Lord was not really in this, not with us - no Life here, no liberty here; hard going. What a grind! And yet no one dare challenge our sincerity, our earnestness, and our zeal. Why, if David danced before the Lord with all his might, well, we were in this work of the Lord with all our might! And yet, and yet, after so long, coming to the place where it had to be confessed that this did not bear the mark of God being in it. Coming to the Word of God finds out what is wrong.

Read Romans 6. The whole prescription is there. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death".

Crucified with Christ! "Oh, I thought that meant that our sins were taken away, were forgiven, we were saved from hell". No, that meant that we were taken away, away from the realm of nature's dominion as well as of satan's dominion; nature's dominion. We died. The prescription is there. Well, in the case of some of us, the prescription worked, never a prescription worked like it. It was a change-over from death to Life, from bondage to liberty, from a closed heaven to an opened heaven.

The Death of the Cross

We must be careful that we do not take anything for granted. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. What is necessary for God to commit Himself, to go on with His work? What is necessary unto Life? The Cross, the death of the Cross: the position of the Levites.

Do you think that it was easy for those Levites to do that work that day? Don't you think that with every stroke of the sword upon the bosom friend, that it was not a stroke upon their own heart? The Levite suffered as much as anyone that day. It was costly work. The thing first of all entered into their own soul.

Is it not an impressive thing that when you come to the fourth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, which is recounting Israel's wandering in the wilderness and saying that we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief, that this oft-repeated quotation is used, "Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness". They could not enter in.

Is it not very merciful that right at that point there comes in this - "The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit". What was the trouble with Israel? Mixing up what was soul and spirit, confusing what was soul and spirit, having no clearly defined mark or demarcation between soul and spirit. The Psalmist, in explaining Israel's trouble in the wilderness, said, "Their spirit was not steadfast with the Lord" (Ps. 78:8). Why? Because their souls led them about: their feelings, their emotions, their desires, their likes, their dislikes, their preferences. It was what was themselves governing all the time. If things went well, they were happy. If things were not so easy, they were unhappy - just governed by their own natures instead of by a spirit linked with God in steadfastness. The sword of the Levites cuts in between soul and spirit, to the dearest thing of our own souls and, insofar as that is going to actuate or influence, it must be cut off; but it is the sword of the Spirit.

If this sounds difficult and complicated, let me say that you can have a very definite transaction with the Holy Spirit in which you lay it reverently, but definitely, upon the Holy Spirit as a charge and a responsibility that He sees to it that this life of nature is dealt with so that you are not actuated or governed by it, but know what it is to be governed by the Spirit.

Do you know what the Levites are now? Do you just get a glimpse of what a Levite is? That is how Levites came in and that is how they came into relation to God's testimony. You see, death, the ground of death, meant Life because there was the ground of Life: priesthood and Life.

Well, Uzza, David, and God making a breach. You can see quite clearly that this does not apply just to people of the world, carnal, worldly people, unsaved people. Here are people very devoted to the Lord caught this way, the very testimony to which they are devoted was brought to a standstill. Why? Because of this mixture: undiscerned, unperceived mixture. It is the mixture in us and the false elements, the wrong elements: God-denied elements having some influence over us, after all. We cannot deal with them, and I do not ask you to turn inside to begin analysis or introspective occupation.

All I ask is that you will recognise what are obvious facts set forth in the Word of God, that all this is possible and this may be the explanation of a great deal of delay, lost time, a life purpose under arrest, and a divine intention being held up. All that, simply because we were not willing to take the position, "I may be wrong, after all! In this or in that, or in some other way, I may be wrong! At least I will open the question with God and ask the Spirit that. As I go to the Word, He will open my eyes, He will cause me to see that the Word of God says this and means this, that I have no general conclusions about things or general impressions, but that my position is exactly as prescribed by the Lord. And if I find it is not, then I will at least seek grace, whatever the cost of shame to me, to say I have been wrong, mistaken. I confess it." David was such a man of humility that he could come out and say, in effect, "Look here, we were all wrong, not in what we desired and intended, not in our purpose and in our motive, but there was sufficient wrong about how we did it and what we did at that time, for God to break in and bring the whole thing under His smiting hand, under death! Now we must put this right and have it according to God's prescribed ordinance." And what is it? Priesthood and Life!

We will get nowhere unless we are Levites, with all our soul influences and dominations smitten out of the way of government, not our souls put to death so that we are soulless people, but where nature and what we are by nature now since Adam's fall, that where that governs us and influences us (we do not know that until we come under the hand of God) is put out of the way.

What does all this amount to? Well, let me just say this brief word in closing which might be enlarged upon. The Levite is one who has had a history with God which has resulted in very deep brokenness - that is a Levite, that is a priest - a history which has resulted in deep, inward brokenness. Brokenness perhaps in the natural will, brokenness in the natural mind, brokenness in the natural affections; where the soul has been broken, the strength of soul, and the sword has cut deep. That is a Levite and that is one who can bear the testimony, who can go on in Life, who can, as we were saying in our previous meditation, be a minister of Life, for that is the priest's work - a minister of Life.

Well, there are some good Levites in the Bible. The Lord Jesus was a Levite. But if you are not prepared to take Him as an example, if you feel that is much too high, you may pass on to His great servant, Paul. And I think, apart from the Lord Jesus, there was no greater Levite than Paul in all the Bible; oh, a Levite indeed! Why, he is fulfilling his priestly ministry today on a tremendous scale. I ask you, how much Life have you got through Paul? Oh, the Life, the vitality, the eternal, divine energy and vitality that has come into this universe through Paul is a tremendous thing to reckon with! What it has meant to the Church and what it has meant to the enemies of the Church! You cannot handle Paul, you cannot shut Paul down; such Life! Ah, but remember how it came about.

Read again the first six chapters of his second letter to the Corinthians, and you have the whole story. "I would have you know what great afflictions befell us in Asia... we despaired of life, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead, who delivered us out of so great a death."

"We have this treasure in a vessel of fragile clay that the exceeding greatness of the power might be of God and not of ourselves; we are persecuted, pursued... cast down... always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus" - and so on, yet with a catalogue of adversities and sufferings in all spheres and connections, here is a broken Levite, here is one who knows the working of the Cross. Here is one whose strong, natural soul-life has been broken, that is what we find in Saul of Tarsus. Oh, what a breaking! Saul of Tarsus would never have said that "we should not trust in ourselves". No, just the opposite! He is broken and he is a Levite and he has the right to take the sword to us. He has the right to take the sword to the Corinthians and he did it. But he did it with a very sad and soft heart. It hurt him just as much to write that first letter as it hurt them; probably more so. A true Levite with a deep history of inward breaking, the sword working against his own soul, but Life the issue - Life, ever going on. And if ever there was a fulfilment of the figure of Ezekiel's vision, the river deepening and broadening all the way and everything living wherever the river cometh, Paul is that fulfilment: deepening, broadening and being more and more vital as the years go on. I think Paul is far more vital today than he was in his own day.

Well, it is the Lord Jesus after all, it is not Paul. It is the Lord Jesus having His way and He never gets His way until we have got out of the way, and that is a Levite who gives the Lord a way by the deep inworking of the Cross.

There we stop just now, beloved, but big issues may hang upon the Lord's word, tremendous things, whole life purposes, and divine intentions. It does behove us to get before the Lord. And can we do this very least thing? Say, "Lord, I have never been ready to think that I was wrong, that I was mistaken. I have been so convinced my way has been right, but if You are limited because, after all, though I cannot see it, I am mistaken in anything, and while my heart is set upon Your end, my way is not according to Your mind, reveal it, and I will seek grace to admit it, whatever it costs". Confess and say, "I have been wrong wherever I have said I have been right!" That will give the Lord a clear way, and even the years that the locusts have eaten may be restored. The Lord can do more in a very short time when He gets a clear way, than He can do in many years without that way.