CONSECRATION AND THE EFFECT
[p. 196] CONSECRATION AND THE EFFECT
Leviticus 8: 18 - 36; 2 Corinthians 3: 18
Every believer now is a son of Aaron, of the house of Aaron. It is Aaron and his house now. That really typifies the church. The congregation of Israel outside is not a type of the church. It is the heavenly company (Aaron and his house) who belong to the place inside. The blood of the bullock settled their place inside. Taking a place historically upon earth, they had the good of the scape-goat. When you look at the type, Christ and His own are the antitype of Aaron and his house. That is the figure you get in Hebrews. It gives a character to the present dispensation. Noah was also a type, he “prepared an ark for the saving of his house”. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house”. It is all of the same order; not a nation now, but a house. The house is a sphere of blessing. Consequently a man could not be an overseer if his children were not faithful, his house must be a sort of sample of the church. Keep the type before you, Aaron and his house.
What I get here is how do we appear in the presence of God? I do not go into the question of how we get in. I take it for granted that you understand that; but what am I, now that I am in? What is the effect of consecration? What is our actual sense in coming near to God? I turn to Hebrews 10:19 - 22. That is entrance, “boldness to enter”. It does not say what you are inside, but that you have the right to enter. That is the first thing you have to learn: “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus”. It alludes to the sin-offering. The blood of the bullock established a ground for God to receive Aaron and his house, his family is expressed by his [p. 197] presence there; he is there for himself and his house. Hence the carcase of the sin-offering is burned outside the camp. Christ established a base for God to act on, so the Father can come out to meet the prodigal. God has His estimate of the blood; that is our comfort, and He approaches me on that estimate. I have a very poor estimate of it. God comes out consistent with all His holiness and meets the sinner. As in the case of the prodigal, He runs and kisses him. There is a reluctance on the part of the prodigal to go in. He had not the enjoyment of the nature and the life that would enable him to go in without embarrassment. You come in with the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and the body washed with pure water. That takes in the two aspects of Christ’s death; expiation and purification. As soon as the prodigal gets the new clothes on, he is in; he is “made meet”. If you have not the right of entrance, it is no good to talk of how you appear there. You enter the holiest where there is not a spot.
“His presence is our home”.
It is not properly heaven here. The tabernacle came down to be a travelling companion with Israel here. You do not go to heaven to reach the presence of God. It is in “the holiest”. It is a condition rather than a place, so is glory. If you are not at home in holiness and glory, you will never know what it is to enjoy the heavenly place. You do not get a place till you come to Ephesians. You get condition, suitability for the place, what belongs to the place, as the Holy Spirit; but place is another thing. My heart rejoices that Christ is there and that everything there is according to His pleasure.
How do we come in? A consecrated company. What I want you to understand is what you actually enjoy in His presence. If you have entered into “the holiest of all”, you cannot talk of sin there;
[p. 198] you could not give out a hymn connected with sin. There is not a spot there; if you are occupied with sin, you are out of it. You may say you belong to it, to the consecrated company. True, you can never lose your title, but you may lose your enjoyment. I do not think we have sufficient sense of what a wonderful thing it is to be in His presence!
Hebrews 10 is not so high as John 4. No worshipping the Father there; it is only the right to go in, elementary in that sense. I am going a step beyond it now, when I speak of when one is in. I have looked for an antitype of Leviticus 8, and I find it in that verse in Corinthians which I read; 2 Corinthians 3:18.
But first look at the type in Leviticus 8. You have, in verses 1 - 17, what gives you right. The heart sprinkled and the body washed according to Hebrews. In the first seventeen verses you have the right established, the sin-offering and the washing. In verse 18 you come to the consecration. There are two rams connected with the consecration. It is important to bear in mind these two rams. It was immaterial which ram he took, but each was taken for a different purpose. One ram went up whole to God. The antitype to that is Christ in glory, Christ now, the glorified One, in God’s presence; and that is the true ark, the only thing in the holiest of all, and which contained Aaron’s rod that budded and the pot of manna. That was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. The top was the mercy-seat, there the blood was sprinkled. The Lord Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of it. What meets you in God’s presence now? Christ glorified; all the glory converges now in Him. In Him all the glory has found its centre, is established. It is a wonderful thought for the heart. In a Man, the glory is established. I say established, because it is not that God had not all the qualities of His nature before; of course He had them all, but He could not express [p. 199] them. How could He express love without righteousness? Christ established righteousness, and now God says, I can let out My love. Therefore “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us”. Glory really was never expressed till now. The glory has been established by a Man. God said to Moses, “Thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen”. He does not say that to me. Now it is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. Not merely that it exists, but it can be revealed: “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God”.
There were two rams; one ram, as we have seen, typifies Christ glorifying God in death and now glorified in heaven itself, the actual fulfilment of the ark of the covenant. It is very interesting to trace the ark of the covenant through Scripture; on it all the glory of God rested, the cherubim of glory turned their faces downwards toward the mercy-seat. The antitype of it is the Lord Jesus Christ. The one ram completely goes up to God. Christ is the real burnt-offering; He glorified God in death. You remember what He says in John 13: 31: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”. Glorified in Him, a Man! “If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him”. He was “raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father”.
We are so limited in our apprehension. We are often exclusively occupied with what Christ did for us. The beginning is more before our souls than the finish of His work. It is from the finish that the Holy Spirit came down. That is a most important point. “The Holy Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified”. Until the Holy Spirit came there could be no free-will offering. The descent of the Holy Spirit marked the day of Pentecost. Pious divines never saw the church, because they [p. 200] never saw that the Holy Spirit had come down to the earth. The feast of weeks is fulfilled; the Holy Spirit has come down to the earth. Hence it is not only the wave-sheaf, Christ risen (see Leviticus 23: 11, 12), but the two loaves of verse 17, a kind of first-fruits of His creatures, which we are; that is, the church.
Now we are clear, I hope, that in the holiest of all we have the antitype of the ark of the covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is there the glorified One, He glorified God in death. There He is the first ram. Now comes the other. The two rams are like one another. What it really means is this, one is Christ gone up to God, the other is Christ with us. The second you find is connected with Aaron and his sons. It is not your own works at all: it is your hands filled with Christ. What consecrates me? Is it something I get from God, or something I give to Him? It is what Christ is that consecrates me: not what I give, but what I get.
There is no second consecration. You never can lose the value of it nor the right, though you may lose the enjoyment of it. “And he brought Aaron’s sons, and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their right ear, and upon the thumbs of their right hands, and upon the great toes of their right feet: and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about”, Leviticus 8: 24. Nothing can pass in, but through that blood. The blood has removed everything contrary to God. There were two things, the blood and the oil. The blood removed everything contrary to God, and the oil brings us into communion with all that is of God.
“And he took the fat, and the rump, and all the fat that was upon the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat, and the right shoulder” (verse 25). The right shoulder and the fat of the ram properly marked the peace-offering. The fat speaks of the internal motive, and all the [p. 201] principles that worked inwardly in our blessed Lord, which we could never eat, because we could never come up to it. Ordinarily the right shoulder belonged to the priest that offered it. That was in the peace-offering, but not here. The right shoulder is the excellency of power. That was burnt on the altar, it went up to God. They ate of the left shoulder. Though we partake of the strength of Christ, we never do things in the supreme settled way in which He did them. Peter walked on the water, but not in the same dignity as Christ. Christ has the supremacy. Christ had the right shoulder, speaking figuratively, and Peter the left.
“And out of the basket of unleavened bread, that was before the LORD, he took one unleavened cake, and a cake of oiled bread, and one wafer, and put them on the fat, and upon the right shoulder; and he put all upon Aaron’s hands, and upon his sons’ hands, and waved them for a wave-offering before the LORD”, (verses 26, 27). It was all put upon their hands and waved. The meat-offering was what He was in life; the burnt-offering what He was in death, it is gone up to God from death. That was the most wonderful thing. The lowest point became the brightest point. The darkest, blackest, most terrible spot was the very spot where the brightest ray of divine glory shone. An immense comfort to us! When once He takes our case upon Him, everything He acquires in it is ours: the glory acquired as Man, He gives to us. Who acquired it? My Saviour! Therefore John says, “As he is, so are we in this world”. Not only in heaven, but here in this world. What your Saviour acquired, He acquired not for Himself, but for you. You have the benefit, a wonderful thing, surely, He went down to the lowest place and He has not only paid my debt, but He paid it in such a way that He acquired glory for me. “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them”.
[p. 202] What then is consecration? What is the sense a person has, as consecrated? In one sense everything is ours; but the question is, Do you enjoy it? You never can speak of a thing truly until you enjoy it; you cannot know a thing until you enjoy it; and as has been said, You never understand anything until you are in it. You must get inside to know what it is. You never can make another understand what you have not tasted yourself. You cannot go beyond what you know yourself. You may explain a scripture, every word of it as clearly as possible, but there will be no power in it if you have not made it your own. The apostle says to Timothy, “whereunto thou hast attained”, or, as it should be, “fully followed up”; otherwise he would be like a man pressing a thing that he did not know the virtue of.
There are two things here: the fat speaking of all the internal motives of Christ; and the unleavened bread, His life and walk down here. This latter belonged to the priesthood. The filling the hands is what is called consecration. As consecrated your hands are full of Christ, not of what you do yourself, and therefore what was put in their hands was waved - nothing else was consecration. Their hands were filled with the fat, the excellence of the life of Christ on earth; and, after being waved, it was taken and burnt as a sweet-smelling savour to God; Christ already being the first ram gone up to God. It is the same Christ, thank God. We are not up to the first ram. We are not up to the measure of it, but what we have is some of what is gone up to God. I have the very same Christ. Thus in Colossians: “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body, and be ye thankful”.
Now I will try to explain a little. In consecration how do you come into His presence? With all the sense of what He is, and then you have had it in your hands. How do you explain that? I believe that word in John’s epistle explains it: “Which we have looked upon and our hands have handled”. I come into His presence, not thinking of what I am, but of what He is, the wonderful nature of what He is to God. Thus I come in, in all His fragrance. I come in to feed on Him, actually to acquire the strength of Christ Himself.
Now if you turn to 2 Corinthians 3: 18, you get a clear idea of the antitype. A person might say, I do not understand the type; very likely, but here you have a plain statement made; you can easily see whether you have really been in the glory or not. The argument of the chapter is, the law came from glory, but that there is a better thing now (verses 9 - 11). It is not a ministration of condemnation; it is the greatest moral revolution ever accomplished. Our blessed Lord, the perfectly righteous One, went down under the judgment. He magnified the law, made it honourable, bore the judgment upon us who never kept it: then He was glorified. He not only discharged everything according to the claim of God, but He glorified God under the judgment. Righteousness is established now. “Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father”.
Now what the apostle presents is: Beholding the glory of the Lord. Israel could not look at the glory in the face of Moses. It repelled them, they could not look at it, could not meet it. The sight of glory brought God so near, they could not look at it. Now it is all a wonderful contrast. I go in now to the holiest, and gaze at Him in glory; I get now the glory of God. It is all around; nothing wanting now. All the qualities of God’s nature are equipoised by my Saviour; and I look at my Saviour. What a wonderful thing! “Raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father”. The glory rests upon Him. I come into God’s presence, the holiest, and what do I find? Is it glory that makes me shrink? Is it [p. 204] like Isaiah, a man of God, who when he saw the glory, says, “I am undone”? The glory cleared him, and clearance is all we get in Old Testament times. Now in glory I get more than clearance, I get what is of my Saviour. I am fit for the glory. I know nothing more blessed. The greatest sovereign might say to me, You may come into my presence; but could he make me one of the royal family? He could not. He might be very gracious in his manner so as to make me feel at home with him, but he could not make me sensible that I was by nature fit for the glory of his kingdom. That is a poor illustration of what we have here.
There are two conditions, as I said before; the condition of the holiest is holiness. There I am without a spot; I come in through the veil, His flesh. My flesh cannot come in there. If it is through Christ’s flesh I am let in, how can anything of my flesh come in? I come in, in all the beauty and fragrance of Christ, and find I am in this wonderful place where the glory is, and I behold the Lord’s glory. It is not only looking at the Lord; it is not looking at the glory; it is looking at the Lord’s glory. There is a great deal in that expression. What is the Lord’s glory? It is the expression of the divine satisfaction in that blessed One according to God’s nature. Could He find it in all creation? No; but He does find it in that blessed One who was “raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father”. It is at this One that I am looking. What is the effect? We have seen in the type that you get all from Christ, so in the antitype. Not a single thing there that I do not get from Christ. What consecrated them was not anything of their own, nothing that they had acquired; and so now, what I get from Christ is what I derive from His glory.
Let me try and explain this a little more. The Holy Spirit comes down from the glorified Christ, He comes down from the finish of the gospels; we begin properly with the cross. It meets our sins [p. 205] and the judgment of God; but what are we placed in now? “There is no more offering for sin”, but the burnt-offering has gone up whole. We have Christ in the presence of God. “Beholding the glory of the Lord “. Does it repel you as it did Isaiah? No; on the contrary, it says, Come on, I must make you correspond. That is what you get in the second ram; it corresponds to the first ram. You are “changed into the same image”.
You are now altered, entirely changed; it is the strongest word in the language; metamorphosed into the same image by the Spirit. Some of you may think this is quite beyond you. If you say, It is impossible, it is because you have not grasped the burnt-offering. If you do not understand the burnt-offering you never can understand consecration. I understand by the burnt-offering, Christ glorified in heaven. If you have not grasped Him there, you cannot understand consecration, because it is in correspondence to that blessed One you have come in.
I want to explain the effect of beholding the Lord’s glory. In the holiest of all there is not a shade of sin; thank God, “not a cloud above”; but when you get in, what happens? You are wonderfully changed. I often try to test myself about a thing, that I have a judgment about. I go to God about it; not once only, but more than once, until I find out whether it is confirmed there or reversed there. Very often it is reversed there. That is the effect of the glory; you are brought into a correspondence with it, “changed into the same image”.
I give you an illustration in the Old Testament. In Psalm 73 there is a man who went into the sanctuary, and was quite changed. What changed him? He was changed by going into the sanctuary. It was not that he modified his views, but they were completely reversed. Now I will give you a plainer illustration in the New Testament, but no illustration will do [p. 206] any good until you try it. Turn to Philippians 4: 6. Philippians is the experience of a heavenly man. What I get in this passage is how a man is freed of care. He goes into the presence of God to state all his cares. It is often quoted, but I have not seen many examples of it. A man goes in with his cares, perhaps about a sick child, or a sick cow; he comes out, but his child is as sick as ever, his cow as sick as ever; what has happened? Is the thing altered? No; just the same as ever, but he has been to God; he is a changed man; he was perturbed, distressed because of the troubles; now he has the peace of God; I cannot explain it to you, it “passeth all understanding”. I think I have tasted a little of it, the edge of it. Think of having the peace of God Himself! I come back, not untroubled, but unruffled. It is like the difference between a land-bird and a water-bird. A water-bird oils his feathers before he goes into the water; not a feather is disturbed. I come out unruffled. I have been with God, and the most marvellous alteration has taken place in me, not in the circumstances, but in me, thank God! It was a simple verse that first gave me a taste of it. The waters of Marah were bitter. That was what I felt, that everything was bitter in this poor world. I felt it would be a positive relief if I were to die, but I was struck with that verse. I saw there was something put into the bitter waters that made them sweet. A tree was put into it. That was the beginning of a great deal to me. Here is more than the waters sweetened; God does not say, I will change anything for you, but I will change you by the glory of Christ. You will see how things look then. I know the trouble, but instead of getting the trouble altered, I get altered myself. To what extent? To an inconceivable extent. It passes all understanding. What a condition! But it is within the reach of the poorest, most suffering person in this world.
[p. 207] I have no doubt all the wonderful prayer in Ephesians 3 flows out of this. You have come in consecrated, come in, in the fragrance of Christ. How do you know? What is the effect? you are “changed into the same image”. The glory that once refused you can claim you now instead of refusing you, for it changes you into correspondence with itself.
One example more, and then I close. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, was he merely received? He was received as one of the most intimate friends; it is exquisite! The man who had been the “chief of sinners”, when he comes into paradise is received there as one of the most familiar friends. It is a very rare person to whom I would say, Come, I must tell you all my family interests. Here is a man like me, and in the glory he is told secrets which it is not lawful to tell any mortal. Think of walking about the earth with the secrets of God in his heart. But what I want to show you is the wonderful nature of the reception he got. Many a man is received at court; he walks in at one door and out at another. That is not much of a reception. Here I am “changed into the same image”. Would to God, we all knew something more of it! Do you say, How can I? You must enter first; you must behold the Lord’s glory. Let me press that again, it is beholding ... the glory of the Lord. The glory is not a blaze of light, it is that everything of God is balanced there, His righteousness is there; His love is there; every single quality is seen in that blessed Person. It is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. Why is a sinner lost now? Because Satan closes his heart to the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. I look at Him where He is, in the glory, in the display of all God is; the One who has expressed the nature of God in completeness, the One who has done that is my Saviour! As I behold that, I [p. 208] am brought into correspondence with it. I have the sense that I am there as one of a consecrated company, and so I am not only at home there, but the glory brings me into correspondence with it; I am made to be actually part of the thing itself.
Of course there is a great deal more I do not touch on, but we get in as the priesthood - the holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices; the royal priesthood, to show forth the virtues of Him who has called us. You can never be a royal priest unless you are a holy priest. Holy is what you are to God, royal is what you are to man. You must come from God to man; you cannot go to man beyond what you are to God. The lack of this is the cause of the weakness in a great deal of ministry. A man who is growing in ministry begins by praying. He must begin with God. What does he come to man with, if he has not got something from God? The blessed Lord could say, “I proceeded forth and came from God”.
Well, beloved friends, I do not feel I have fully unfolded this wonderful subject. Who can? But I trust it may awaken an interest in your hearts. The more you study it, the more you will be repaid, and find the exceeding blessedness of being of the consecrated company in His presence.