LEVITICAL POTENTIALITY

James Alex Gardiner

Numbers 3: 14-1 6; 4: 46-49; Luke 2: 41-49; 3: 21-23; Numbers 17: 6-11

There is great potentiality, beloved, amongst the brethren, for there is great potentiality in every Christian. I thought about these scriptures as relating to Levitical potentiality and how that potentiality is to be realised in its fulness. We are all sons of God, we are all the objects of sovereign choice. We have all been numbered from a month old and upwards, for that is the peculiar privilege of the Levites. They are taken, as the brethren know, instead of the firstborn, and the excess are redeemed; it puts an exceedingly great value upon every person. As numbered from a month old and upwards we are taken account of, in that sense, for what is in the future. Our lives, then, are to be marked out, to be trained, and in one sense we are to graduate, we are to go on a course and come through to the point when we are ready for service. It is not military service. The tribes in the previous verses are all numbered: Judah, Reuben, every one of them, are numbered for military service from twenty years old and upward. Well, that is true of you and me as well. But I want to speak about the peculiar privileges that belong to us, as of the family of Levi. Everyone, brothers and sisters, all, belong to it. It is typical of what we are as of the assembly of firstborn ones who are registered in heaven.

Now we should be greatly exultant in the wonder of the privilege that is ours. You pass people in the street and they have not been chosen. Why? You do not know; they have not been numbered from a month old and upwards. As far as you know they have not been amongst God's sovereign choice. It is not that we have to regard ourselves as the chosen few, as exceedingly privileged as men speak, but in reality that is the case. We are amongst God's chosen ones. The Lord Jesus is especially God's chosen: "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen", Matt 12: 18. We need to understand the greatness, beloved, of divine selection. God has chosen us. "Many are called ones"; on the other hand "but few chosen ones", Matt 20: 16. Here we have the tribe of Levi and they are taken account of from one month old and upward; that is all that is said about them. The little ones, young people, babes a month old, they all are registered, and their names would be put down. The Levites had to do with the service of the tent of meeting. They had to carry the burdens of the testimony, and I would like to say something about that.

The Lord Jesus has been the great burden bearer, and in seeking to follow up this impression, beloved, I came upon a word of Mr Taylor's on 'Burden Bearing' (see Vol.90, p.357). In Galatians 6 the scripture is, "Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfil the law of the Christ" (v 2). It was a very fine word, and out of curiosity I went and looked up where it had been given, and found it was given in Dundee. Now I thought that maybe that would be confirmation - that the brethren in Dundee were being helped to take up the burdens of the testimony. God would have every one put his shoulder to the burden. But training is needed, help is needed. You can understand these young people growing up in the tents of Levi, seeing what their fathers would be doing, how they would be under the hand of the priest, how the sons of Aaron would be taking things down and packaging them up, and then the Levites would be carrying them. They were bound to ask questions and query what it was, and it would be answered, One day you will have to do this; now you had better get ready for it; you do not have to do it until you are thirty years old, but then there is a training time. All your life you must be concerned that when the call comes for you, you will be ready for it, then you will be equal to it.

The best model, of course, is Jesus. Look at the Lord Jesus for everything. Learn to go to the gospels, beloved, and I am thinking here of young people especially. Learn to go to the gospels and find the answer to your problem is there. In Luke's gospel we have Jesus going up to the feasts with his parents. I believe they may perhaps have become a little orthodox for they went up yearly. They should really have gone up three times in the year, yet it seems they went up yearly to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, although they may have gone up at other times. But there is something here about them that is lacking, and it needs adjusting. But we are going to speak about the Lord Jesus as a boy, and where His interests lay and the great desire that He had in Jerusalem. You can understand the young people in Israel, young boys and girls about that age; when the time came to go up to Jerusalem it would be an event in their lives. They had heard so much about Jerusalem. They had heard about the place, that the Lord had placed his name to dwell there. They had looked forward to the time, no doubt. It would be a diversion. But then it had to be more than that, and it was more than that for Jesus. Think of Jesus, twelve years old, going up to Jerusalem, how He would be interested. Think of how He would have held Jerusalem in His heart, for what it was in God's heart and in God's mind. How interested He would be in the Scriptures! How thrilled He would be as He went through the book of Isaiah the prophet, as He read in Exodus about the deliverance out of Egypt, for His interest was there. We were saying on Tuesday night that it would not be unusual for young people to be interested and to question persons who can teach and help, but there is more than that about Christ here. It would be most unusual for some young person to be so engrossed in the holy things of God that he was prepared to stay behind, to tarry behind in Jerusalem. That was the intensity of His interest. It was beyond what was natural. It would be most unusual for a young person to say, "did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father's business?". But I would appeal to young people in this age group; when you are about twelve years old you are coming on to the years of responsibility and you are becoming responsible. You know what is right and what is wrong. You know what you should do and what you should not do. It is very interesting to see normal growth and development in young persons, when you begin to take an interest in the meetings. How perfectly it is set out in Jesus as He was there in Jerusalem. "And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers and hearing them and asking them questions". It was a great concern for His parents for they went a day's journey without Him. Have you ever done that? Have you ever gone a day's journey without Christ? Then they looked for Him in the company where they thought they had lost Him. He is not in the line of nature at all, and you will not find Him there; and then they spent three days looking for Him. Beloved, these things should speak to our hearts - or maybe it does not interest you. Would to God that it interested every soul here, in this room today, so that they would follow this teaching, see the flow, the current and the trend of the movements of the boy Jesus. His heart was in Jerusalem, He was set upon it. Later on in the gospels He was going to weep over it. O, Jerusalem, He is going to say, how I loved you; how My heart is moved for you; if you had only known the things that were for your peace. It was all in His heart here. The time of Jerusalem's visitation was upon them and yet they shut their ears to it, they shut their eyes to it. They had missed the time of their visitation. Beloved, let us be careful, young ones, that we do not miss the time of our visitation, because from twelve to thirty - that is the next time the Lord Jesus appears on the scene - is a very critical time. It is a basic need to progress in the truth, and we need application. We hear nothing about Him from twelve years old until thirty years old, but we get gleanings from the Scriptures. If we go to the types we can see how Jesus was at that age. Take Joseph when he was seventeen years old; he is feeding the flock with his brethren. Do you care for the brethren like that? You are not prominent, you are not supposed to be prominent, you are with the brethren, and you are feeding the flock. You are concerned that there should be food and care and help and nurture for the brethren, and that is how Jesus would have been. This needs application, young people; you need heart, you need to commit yourself to Christ, to the Scriptures and to the ministry with your heart. Maybe you will not fully understand it , but nobody is expecting you to. However, as you do that, something, some little thing, will come into your soul and that will remain. That will give you a little impetus to go a bit further, because you are to grow, to grow in the truth, and it is to be evident to all that there is life about you. There is the evidence of spiritual life. The brethren should not have to use a magnifying glass to see spiritual life in anybody. There should be the evidence of spiritual life and spiritual growth. Maybe you come to the meetings, but He who is our pattern in every thing said in the type: "I rejoiced when they said, unto me, Let us go into the house of Jehovah", Ps 122: 1.

The meeting night comes along, maybe we are going to the meeting, but if we can have an option what are we going to choose? The Lord knows these things; He would be absolutely honest with us, put the whole thing before us. Do you take the option or do you say, Well, I am committed to Christ, then I must go out to the meeting and be committed to the testimony. The Lord will bless that kind of movement. I know what I am speaking about; all of us have been over the course. Prayer meeting - well, I go out once a week. It is very important, very basic and very real, and very essential, and conducive to growth morally and spiritually because teaching is needed and teaching is found in the meetings. You go there, week after week, month after month; there is a period of development over those eighteen years.

There is another eighteen years in this gospel. There is a poor woman and she is a daughter of Abraham and she is bound up for eighteen years, cannot lift up her head. It is like persons who go to the meeting and their heart is not in it. They think the whole thing is legal, the whole thing is bound by order and commandment and principle, whereas it is a whole system of holy joy and liberty. The Lord says that is not proper to a daughter of Abraham. We are going to loose her on the sabbath day. She had not the gain of these secret eighteen years. You can maybe appear to carry the features of the brethren and in your heart the spring, the urge, and the force of the Spirit are absent. It does not matter how you dress or what you do, that does not mean much at all from this point of view. Get the force of the Spirit of Christ, of the Spirit of God acting in your soul, and all the things that relate to divine order will come into their proper place. If you begin from the inside, things will come out orderly and properly externally.

Well, I think this is very important. That is how you grow. Young brothers grow. They start praying in the prayer meeting, give out a hymn, come to the ministry meeting and they say, Week after week, still the same three or four that give the words. Take up that exercise. Say, I should like to give a word this week. I do not know if I will be able for it or not. Well, it does not matter; if you try it the Lord will support you. He is near. He will support you in it, and you will feel joy in your soul. He will put something into your soul: that is a joy especially for you. Get something for your own heart specially from Christ. If you sit all your life studying the carpet you will get nothing, but the older ones will carry on. They will break the bread every Lord's day even if there are only one or two of them. They will get up in the meeting and pray, they will give out the hymns and yes! they will preach, if nobody else is going to preach. These are the burdens of the testimony that are to be carried, beloved. If you do not carry your share somebody else is going to have to carry more than their share. They will gladly do it, because they are bighearted in love, but they want you to come into the joy and happiness of true Levitical service. That is what is needed in every place. There is no place different.

A very dear young friend of mine was telling me this week that the meetings are not what they used to be. He told me about them and went on to get himself tied up. He is a very dear brother, but then, if the meetings are not what they used to be, you, as an individual, have the responsibility to see that they are. It comes back to my own state and how I am myself. You say, It is a poor meeting, very dry. Well, what do you do to help? You might be in the morning meeting and say, I did not get on very well; and someone else may say, That was a great meeting today. You may feel they have not much discernment. Be careful! They are enjoying something perhaps because they are closer to Christ than you are. All this is in the course of that period of the eighteen years that persons have to commit themselves to secretly, that there should be growth. Do you ever think about looking at the Synopsis before you go out to the reading? You should check it up; you should check up what such brothers as Mr Taylor and Mr Coates say about the Scriptures and you will find that all these older brothers have been through it all, and their growth was because of this, and it is essential and necessary. That is sound teaching, that is an outline, what is called an "outline of sound words" (2 Tim 1: 13), and the meeting invariably will start on that line and into that will come something fresh from Christ. You find that the body is working. It is very practical. That is how it works and so persons are encouraged. Somebody comes and says, What you said really helped me. That is how the body works.

Well, beloved, if we do not apply ourselves, if we are not committed on this line of secret history (that is what it is, secret history, privately with God), it is going to be evident that we just do not have it. There is no need to try to pretend we have something when we do not. When asked in a reading, What do you say, about this? some just reply, I am enjoying what is being said. I said to a brother once, That is like a recorded announcement. Everybody should have something to say; communicate spiritual things by spiritual means. We have time for other things, but how much time do we give the Lord in our lives? How do we allocate our time? This applies to sisters as well as brothers. We have plenty of time - and rightly so - we use leisure time for leisure and exercise on that line is needed. Young people need exercise, and company. They need companionship. You cannot sit them in the house and push things at them. They need liberty; but then are we devoting the time to these things which we should be devoting to the things of God?

It all brings up the question, beloved, as to where our hearts really are. Is your heart really with Christ? He would love to draw your heart after Him. He has borne the burdens. He would appeal to you and me today in this hall in Dundee that we should put our shoulders a little more to the burden take a little more strain, take a little more weight, take a little burden off the older people, have the stress shared out a bit more. If the recovery, beloved, is to continue, and to continue substantially, this line must be pursued by every single person in fellowship. If there is to be quality and substance, this is how it is going to be secured, by private committal and holy industry in the things of God, the pursuit privately of the truth in what we call our spare time.

A brother once said to me, Mr Taylor said that his spare time was from eight till five. That is when he did his work. All the rest of his time he devoted to the Lord. I am not saying that you should do that. I am only appealing that we should give some time to Christ to acquire the knowledge of God and the holy things of God and the truth. If you follow up the scripture in Timothy when Paul says to him "be wholly in them" (1 Tim 4: 15) it relates back to this section in Luke 2. The Lord Jesus is wholly in the things of God.

That, beloved, is what He would have us to be. I trust the dear young brethren will suffer the word of exhortation. I would really appeal to your hearts, and to all our hearts, to assess soberly in the Lord's presence how much time we give Him, and how much time we use for other things. I think if we were more concerned that the Lord should have a little more time we would find that we were growing and developing in our souls and we would be more prepared to take up the practical responsibilities of burden bearing in the local meeting.

I come now to the Lord Jesus when He is thirty. He is ready for the great occasion when He is about to be sent. Perhaps the Lord has something special for you in mind. It will not be this, for this is unique. He is equal to the anointing. Jesus Christ, the man, is equal to the anointing. He is equal to the commission that God is giving Him. It says here: "all the people having been baptised, and Jesus having been baptised, and praying": how dependent He was! Think of His taking the last place. He did not want to be among the first. All the people were baptised. How beautiful the spirit of Christ is! How beautifully you can see the reflection of it in Philippi as you read this gospel! It says that the heaven was opened to Him, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove upon Him and a voice came out of heaven: "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight". He Himself is made conscious privately of heaven's approbation. Now I say again, this is unique and distinct to Christ, yet in the principle of it God would honour your committal by giving you something yourself privately, some private sense of divine approbation that you are on the right path and that you are going to be supported by Him.

Now it says that "Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old". That is the levitical age. He is ready to take up the burdens of the testimony, and how He took them up! It bows your heart in the presence of such devotion. Who can lift up their heads in the presence of the devotion of Christ in committal to the will of God in the outshining of divine grace? In the next chapter He is evidencing what is proper to persons who are numbered for warfare. He is meeting the devil and He is meeting him with the sword of the Spirit, which is God's word. But here, what is in mind primarily is the levitical position, because this gospel brings out the distinctiveness of priesthood and priestly grace in Christ.

Well, beloved, we should think about these things. He knows the Scriptures; He can meet the devil at any point with these verses of the word of God. Beloved, can you repeat the books of the Bible? Do you know them? Could you go from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers right through to Revelation? Think about it. If you do not know that, start learning. Then you will not have to say, What is the number of the page? Not that there is anything wrong with that, but Christians are expected at least to know their Bible and know where the scriptures are. You will not know it all. God has graciously and mercifully given us concordances and lots of reference books that are so essential in facilitating our understanding of the truth and of the word of God. There is no need for anyone to be stuck, or hard-come-by on that line. Everything is available. You think of what God has given us in the revival, the immensity of the provision that God has given us that we should know the truth and that we should come into the gain of our place before Him in sonship.

Now I just want to touch on the scripture in Numbers because this is something further. As we move on the line that I have tried to indicate we will get the gain of the Lord's support in priestly grace. There is one man out of death, beloved, and that is Christ. You may have an ideal. No doubt various persons in Israel - these other princes - were good men, great men, wonderful men, but God has used them to show that there was only one man that He had in mind to raise from amongst the dead and that is Jesus. We come through this exercise and begin to see that Christ alone is to be the object of our hearts. This service which He renders is for the whole house of Levi. The staff of Aaron it says, for the house of Levi had budded and blossomed, produced ripened almonds. There is the power and vitality of an indissoluble life and the power of that life is to sustain you all the way through the wilderness. You are sustained in life, you will live then in the power of that life, you will be saved in its power.

The previous chapter records the rebellion which came about through indiscrimination amongst other things. We need to discriminate and we need to be separate and be apart for God. All the people are holy, people say; you are not the only ones that are holy. It is ecumenical thinking. Christendom is full of it and divine principles go by the board. Our bond is the truth and the principles of the truth. The principles of the truth beloved, stand in whatever circumstances there may be. They remain as they always are and will be. They are the governing features of God's house, and the priesthood of Christ has in mind that persons who are seeking to be regulated by them are maintained in vitality and life. It is great encouragement and great comfort for us. From buds, from young people, right through to old people, bloomed and blossomed and ripened almonds He will sustain us right through to full maturity. Think of the underlying service of Christ to an assembly like Philippi: the power of His life is coming out in evidence, the wonderful graces and beauties of Christ coming through amongst the brethren, which are so delightful; there was the evidence that He was behind the whole matter.

Well, beloved, I trust we may be encouraged and helped. I do not want to make anybody depressed. I want to encourage your heart to proceed on this line of what is normal to Christianity. Forget about every other thing. They have their place, maybe, but if we put what is called 'first things first' then things will come into their proper place, and we will find that we are prospering and growing in our souls. It is the secret of true and lasting happiness. Somebody spoke in the reading about deep joy as over against what is superficial. I think this is the way to it.

May the Lord help us in it, for His Name's sake.

 

DUNDEE

12 November 1988