Priesthood and Life

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - Through Priesthood to the Throne

Reading: Gen. 37:5-11,18-19; 41:37-44; 42:3-6,10; 43:20,26,28; 44:16,18-19; Heb. 2:9-11,15,17; Rev. 3:19,21-22.

We are being led at this time to the matter of priesthood and life. In this meditation one other of the particular phases of this matter will occupy us - that is: Through Priesthood to the Throne.

Priesthood and Kingship a Spiritual Matter

Before we come immediately to speak about that, may I just say this one further introductory word. It becomes very necessary for us to make an effort to free our minds, our mentalities, from an impression made by words and phrases which would just rob us of the real meaning and value of such. This applies to so many matters and it can be seen particularly or peculiarly in the two words which I have just used: priesthood, and the throne.

Now, our mentality would give a certain complexion to the term 'priesthood', and then in the same way to the term 'the throne'. The thing can immediately become very objective and be framed by our minds into something which is an object outside of ourselves to which we may come as a thing. To correct that, we have got to seriously take our mentality in hand with a view to becoming perfectly clear and aware that, whatever may be literal in an objective sense at any time or eternity, that we occupy a position literally which is called the position of priests unto our God, that we come to a place called 'the throne' or a position which we might call reigning, sitting together with our Lord in His throne, whatever that may mean in that literal and objective sense, that is quite a secondary matter. And it will have a greater or lesser appeal to us, perhaps it will have little appeal to some people and become something very optional; it might be that there are some natures who would find the thing making an appeal to them to be in such a position, such a place of advantage and power, but I repeat, such a mentality and such an outlook is entirely secondary.

A change of mind about these things is necessary with us, and I say we have got to take ourselves in hand very deliberately over this matter of our mentality. The change of mind which is necessary in this matter is to come to realize quite definitely and clearly that priesthood is a function long before it is an office, and the throne is an inward spiritual position long before it can ever be outward in any literal way.

More than that, you and I, if we have really come into the hand of God, into the grip of the Holy Spirit, are every day of our lives being made priests and kings. We are spiritually coming to the throne every day if we are in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And any reigning with Christ or sitting down with Him in His throne will but be the consummation of a spiritual process and not some sudden act by appointment. Beloved, that which you and I are going through under the hand of God in these lives of ours on this earth is explained by these two words: priesthood and the throne.

We were seeing in a previous meditation that priesthood can be and should be interpreted as the ministration of Life, which now, in view of the present conditions through the fall, through sin, means the overcoming of death, and that is a tremendous business. It is the business of a lifetime and that is doing business in deep waters. They that go down to the sea know something about that sort of thing. You have got to go down into deep sea life to understand this matter, and those who are really in the hand of God do know something about doing business in deep waters, this business of meeting death in the power, the mighty power, of an overcoming Life.

We up in the North come very closely into touch with the earthly counterpart of this. You see there all the ships are coming in and going out, the great ships and the little ships, and they have come in and they have gone out and they will never come in again. We can tick them off. We know ships and men have gone down in a few minutes, many of them to the eternal abyss. Thousands, thousands - two million tons of shipping in five months, and large percentages of their crew. We see these men come in and we see them go out and we say, "Maybe they will never be back again!" You are going out to do business in great waters and meet death in all its terrible force as it is today, death which has been drawn out, extended to its full effect in the natural realm of man.

Beloved, I believe that the children of God who really do come into the testimony of Jesus are in something which is even more terrific than that. It is the encounter with the forces of spiritual death and the question is: is that going to be overcome? Why, the Battle of the Atlantic is child's play compared with this thing that has gone on from Adam's day till now. Is it going to be overcome? Is Life going to quench that death once and for all to destroy it? Of course it is! We have the assurance, the guarantee of it in Him who ever lives, who said, "I became dead and I am alive unto the ages of the ages!"

But the point is, the carrying on of that testimony is committed to believers, and the carrying out of that testimony is the work of priests, or is priestliness, and the victory through the priest is the reigning in Life, is the throne. This, in the first place, is essentially a spiritual matter, and it is essentially an inward matter. Do not let us get these objective ideas about priests and thrones. This is inside of you and me every day, this dual issue: the throne through priesthood.

You know how satan has ever sought to defeat that divine end of the throne, the universal throne of His Son with the church in company with Him. How has he done it? By corrupting the Church. That is the appeal here to Laodicea: corrupted, tainted, defiled, and "he that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne". Corruption is the basis of death, and corruption is the thing with which the priest has to do always throughout the Word of God, because it is not corruption as something in itself, nor an end in itself, but as satan's way of defeating God's end of a universal reign of a holy Lord with a holy Church at His side, and that thing is going on inside us.

Let us get very near to this matter. It explains everything in our experience. It is quite impossible for people who are livingly bound up with the testimony of Jesus to live a normal life. You may say goodbye to a normal life if you are going to be bound up with the testimony of Jesus, and oh, how we long for a normal life! If only we could have our home and our family and just sit down quietly and live a proper, normal, home family life in a very simple way, love the Lord, serve the Lord, and go on on an even keel (to change the metaphor). When will things become more straightened out and more normal? Since we came right into a living line with the Lord and His full thought, everything has got out of the normal. We cannot live a normal family life.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not talking about quarrels in family life, I am not talking about order. You cannot have just what you would have if you were a man in this world. Your family life is interrupted, very often broken up, scattered. Your home is assailed and your home life assailed by things which are not natural at all, but spiritual, always causing things to be - well, not just as you would like them to be. It cannot be accounted for by the ordinary things of man's life, the interruption of business, sicknesses, etc.. It is more than that - extra factors breaking in - and in every other sphere of life. All the time if only we could get away from this present situation, somehow get away, have a bungalow in the country, and get settled down to a nice, even life, love the Lord, serve the Lord, be out for the Lord. But that is a part of the price.

I want to be very practical, I know what I am talking about. I have had a good many years of this sort of thing. By far the greater percentage of it is not what you would have met in the ordinary way of life by one who was not the Lord's servant. Let us face it quite frankly.

I marvel at some of these seamen. Some of these men who give their lives to the sea, they amaze me and they shame me. They come home, go home to their families, yes, they feel it when they say goodbye and go away. They cannot stay at home, they have given themselves to that life and back they go. That is their realm. Now, any seaman who goes to sea but all the time lives at home, lives in mind and heart back there with his family, he is finished as a seaman, he will have to give it up. It is part of the business. You and I have got to face this quite definitely that when we come into the way of the testimony of Jesus, we have got to bring our families, our homes, our normal lives here on earth, and just hand them up. And if the Lord seems to disrupt, to scatter, to make the thing something altogether unnatural, in a sense, and impossible of normal procedure, that has got to be accepted and recognized as a part of the business, and not until we have got through on that and settled over that, shall we come into any inward rest, and not until then will the Lord be able to do anything in those matters at all.

What are we committed to? What is our business? We are by calling priests, and as such, by calling, our business is in deep waters, it is with all the power of death. And the issue bound up with priesthood is the conquest of death in the power of a Life which has already conquered death, and that conquest, that victory, is the throne, without ever having any chair to sit on. It is not something objective and external to ourselves, it is that in an inward way, that is what the Lord is doing with us every day. Now, you and I may not be making a very good - may I use the word? - fist of this business. We may not be making a good hand of it. We may not think that we are doing very well in this overcoming business, in this "Life triumphant" business. But let us comfort our hearts, not to take it easy, not to let ourselves off lightly, but let us remember that it is a matter of the direction of our hearts and the wholeness of our hearts as set upon God's end. That is all. The rest remains with the sovereignty of God. I am so glad of that.

Joseph as Priest and King

You can have faults to find with young Joseph of seventeen years of age (and older people can always find plenty of faults with the seventeen year old, talking about dreams of exaltation over everybody else) that is all right, but there is something more than that about Joseph. You have got to see that the Holy Spirit is not writing fiction or pretty stories. He is writing eternal truths and there is something more behind. And there is no doubt that Joseph had a heart towards the Lord. That comes out very clearly in the position into which he found himself thrown; different from his brethren whose disposition was altogether other than his, an evil disposition. And the test as to whether the root of the matter is in a man is not when he is at home with the comforts of home, loved by those there, it is when he is far away from home in very adverse circumstances.

You can think of alternatives to the course that Joseph took, say in the house of Potiphar. Potiphar made him ruler over all his house, and put everything he had in Joseph's hand. Here is a young man of seventeen years of age in that position, and then the temptation comes to resist, which jeopardizes his whole position, his whole future. What course might he have taken? Well, if he had been disposed to, he could have said, "Well, I have had a pretty hard time, I have lost everything: home, parents, sold as a slave. Here I am in a foreign country, an exile! God has not cared for me very much in the past! Why should I jeopardize all my prospects?" He could have taken that line. But oh, what another line he took, a strong line for God, and his appeal was, "Should I do this great sin in the sight of God?" God governs in this man's heart.

And then in the dungeon, prison, and afterward, it is God, God is in all his thoughts. And the Psalmist tells us about that time, that long time in prison: "The word of the Lord tried him" (Ps. 105:19). We know perhaps just a little of that. What does that mean? Well, I can only understand that to mean that these dreams that Joseph had had were to him the word of the Lord. To him it was the Lord saying, "I am going to bring you to a place, a place of power, a place of usefulness, I have a great destiny for you!" And a man who had dreams like that, a man who had suffered the loss of everything because of his dreams, which dreams had become to him the very voice of God, the very purpose of God, here he is for a second time. He has lost everything. First his dreams and now he is in a dungeon - long drawn-out adversity, waiting, waiting. A king? One destined for the throne?! Oh, might not Joseph have said, "I was a fool; they were only dreams after all... fancy banking everything on those dreams! Look where the dreams have landed me! I have been all wrong!" No, it says that through that time the word of the Lord tried him. That simply means this: that God had said, and everything went in the opposite direction, and faith decided to live on in adversity, in deep trial, over something that had come to him as God's will.

But I am quite sure there was a thrill in your soul when we read those passages this afternoon. When I first went from passage to passage like that I felt something inside me just thrilled, "Shall we indeed come to bow down ourselves to the earth to thee?" And then again and again, "and they bowed down their faces to the earth and they made obeisance" - again, and again, and again! They said to him, "My lord..." - "thy servants". Here they are, abjectly bowing down before him, and that is the sovereignty of God. And that sovereignty relates to one who in himself may have had many faults and weaknesses, but whose heart was right towards God; that is all. He believed God in adversity. The sovereignty of God did the rest. That is great.

The Fellowship of His Sufferings

You notice that Joseph went by the priestly course, the priestly course of the Lord Jesus, to the throne. First of all, the priest has to stand against iniquity. "Separate from sinners" (Heb. 7:26) is the word concerning the Lord Jesus, and Joseph fled from the sin in Potiphar's house. He stood and maintained his position as one wholly under the Lord; separation unto God, sanctified.

But then a priest has to suffer over sin and not his own sin. There is another factor in priestly ministry, you suffer because of sin, not necessarily because of your own sin. You are the sufferer because there is sin about, and you come into a living fellowship with your Lord in this matter. "That I may know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil. 3:10). This is not in the same sense of the vicarious sufferings of the Lord, the atoning sufferings of the Lord, but it is the fellowship of His sufferings because there is sin; fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. Joseph knew something of that. The sufferings of Joseph were not, at least in the first place, because of evil in himself, wrong within, but his sufferings were because there was sin and an enemy about, and he was standing for God and for right. He went through that way as in fellowship with his divine Master, even through death, in death and in resurrection.

The Principle of the Throne

And then to the throne. But what I want to point out is this: what was the nature of the throne? What was the principle, the essence, of that throne life of his? Was it simply that he was raised to high office, appointed to be a great personage? Not at all. The very nature of that high position was because he was a minister of Life, because he had come into the place where he had the secret of life, could deal in the matter of life at a time when death was threatening all around.

You see, life was the law of his reigning, life was the strength of his throne. He said to his brethren, "God sent me before you to preserve life, to preserve you alive!" And when those brethren came and bowed down and made obeisance to him, in principle their position and his position was brought about because he had come into the place where he was able to minister life to them. Here are those who needed something, they needed life above all things, the sustenance of life, and God who is sovereign, in the long run makes those who need that life to come to the place where that life is found, unwontedly to acknowledge that life is there for them. And God has a surprise in store for them. However, you see the point is that his position as in the throne had its strength in the fact that he was in the way of Life for others. That is priesthood leading to the throne.

Beloved, that can be immediate in measure, that can be now in measure, in the case of every one of us. Have you got the secret of divine Life? Have you got that measure of divine Life, the Life of the Lord, that can meet the need of another? Are you really a minister of Life to another? Then you are a priest and a king right away. In the measure in which that is true, you are a priest and a king now. We look on to the day when that will come into realization in its fulness, but it is only that same thing developed, and we were saying that the Levite is one who has had a deep inward history of suffering, adversity, and brokenness, of soul travail, and it is that that makes us Levites, that makes us priests, that brings us into the way of testimony. And again, the testimony is not some truth or system of truth, some interpretation of Scripture, some teaching. The testimony of Jesus is that He lives, and all that that means - all that that means to hell, to men, to heaven. Jesus lives! That is the testimony, the one thing that satan has ever sought to nullify.

I am not going to say any more now. I want you to take this word and see in the unnormal life (I am not going to say the abnormal life) the cost to your family life, to your home life, to your life here on earth. In all that, God is working priesthood through suffering, through travail, through trial, and it is true; it has almost become commonplace. It is a thing we do not like to think, to accept, and I tell you I do not like saying it, but it is true that they who have suffered most, have most to give. They who have the most terrible conflicts with death and come to know the power of His Life in such conflicts, are those through whom He can minister most livingly to others. That is priesthood in the making. Priesthood leads to the throne.

The Church is a priestly people, it is a priestly City. The last picture of the Church in the Bible is of a metropolis in the capacity of a priest. There is a city; out from that city issues a river, and from the Life in that river, all the nations derive their life. It is a ministration of Life out to the bounds of God's universe from that City, that Church, with Christ the Life at its centre. Again let us adjust our mentality and see after all, whatever the figures of the Bible are, that the spiritual truths remain the same, and God's end is Christ with the Church, His body, at the centre of His universe fulfilling the full meaning of His priestly ministry, sending out Life. Now, blessed be God, at that time not to conquer death, for death is conquered, vanquished and vanished, but the Life goes on. It is deathless Life in the fulness of His victory. That City has gates of pearl, and pearl is made through suffering.

Well now, you see the spiritual truths. Forget the figures, do not let them turn you aside from the great realities. See what God is doing. He is constituting us priests unto Himself, and priesthood in this sense leads to the throne, and that is something for everyday life. The sufferings of everyday are intended to lead to Life being made possible for others, and that is the throne.