DEUTERONOMY 18
We have seen in chapters 16 and 17 that God sets up amongst His people ability for spiritual judgment, and that He has also in mind that kingly rule and leadership should be found amongst them. Chapter 18 brings before us the portion of “the priests, the Levites”,
[p. 244] and speaks of the Prophet whom God would raise up to Israel. All these features have been seen perfectly in Christ, and they are presented here as characteristic features of the people of God viewed as in the land.
“The priests, the Levites, and the whole tribe of Levi”, represent the saints as occupied in ministering to God in a priestly way, or as engaged in furthering His service amongst His people. As such they have their part with God; they share in God’s inheritance, and, indeed, God Himself becomes their inheritance.
We do not see here the official service of the priest or Levite — there is hardly anything of that in Deuteronomy — but their personal portion; that which as food gives them constitution and strength. There are no official garments here, but the nourishment that will give personal vigour for holy service. A well nourished priesthood is essential if the service of God is to be carried on in suitability to Him. And the sustenance of the priests depends on offerings, tithes, and first-fruits being brought by the people. We have previously considered the import of this. Have we cultivated and gathered the produce of the land so as to be able to contribute spiritually to the nourishment of what is priestly? I do not mean the priest as another person, but what is priestly in ourselves. If I minister to what is priestly in myself I shall minister to what is priestly amongst the brethren.
The holy service of God must not be allowed to get feeble. The decline of priestly vigour led to the setting up of a formal order of service in Christendom. A formal order can be carried on without spiritual power, but true priestly or levitical service cannot. The maintenance of vitality and freshness in that which ministers to the pleasure of God should be our chief concern.
“Inheritance with Israel” would be to have part in what, God has given to men in Christ. Life eternal is truly blessed as God’s gift to men, but this scripture calls our attention to the fact that as a result of men enjoying their God-given portion in Christ there is a portion for God, which He can speak of as His inheritance. What was given to the priests and Levites was in a distinct way God’s portion. It indicates that out of the wealth of their inheritance the people were able to minister to the pleasure of God. The priests and Levites lived on that. The saints, viewed as the priestly tribe, are privileged to have what is for God as their portion. They share it with Him; they have ability to appreciate and appropriate what is for God. As “the people of the land” we live upon what the love of God has given to men; as priests we live upon what is for God. We feed on Christ in relation to the delight which God has in Him. All His perfections have come out as a sweet odour to God in “Jehovah’s offerings by fire”; and the tithes are God’s inheritance as expressive of what He has reserved to Himself while bestowing upon men with a bounteous hand His wondrous gifts. Priests are nourished on what is for God; their very constitution is formed by the appropriation of Christ from that stand-point. How such food would make it characteristic of us to consider for God! This distinguishes the priestly tribe.
Then “the priest’s due from the people” in regard to a sacrifice of ox or sheep is “the shoulder, and the jaw-bones, and the maw”. The priest is to be nourished on the strength of Christ’s walk for the pleasure of God — the unswerving and unfaltering character of that blessed pathway in which He moved steadily and undeviatingly on in entire devotion to God. What a firm and unwavering step was His! Never halting between two opinions; never turning to the right hand or the left; going straight on; never slipping or faltering. “I have set Jehovah continually before me; because he [p. 246] is at my right hand I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16: 8). Man, from innocence onward, had been marked by weakness, his steps always sliding; but One came in with divine strength, who never deviated from the pleasure of God. “I do always the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8: 29). The strength of the shoulder was there.
It is the function of the jaw-bones to masticate food, so that it is not swallowed whole, but broken up by a chewing process, so as to be prepared to be digested in the maw. However rich the pasture in which an ox or sheep may be, it is only by the action of its jaw-bones that it obtains food or nourishment. There is much food available in ministry, but it is only what we appropriate that nourishes us. There is a spiritual process which answers to eating and chewing our food. We must not be content to hear things, or to memorise them, but we must be concerned to understand spiritually what they mean. The Lord has given us a word which applies to other parts of Scripture as well as the one He was referring to. “He that reads let him consider it” (Mark 13: 14). “Consider” is explained in the note to the New Translation as being to “weigh with intelligence so as to understand”. Divine things have to be “apprehended by the mind” (Romans 1: 20), and this involves a masticating process. It is said of the blessed man that “his delight is in Jehovah’s law, and in his law doth he meditate day and night”. Jesus as a boy of twelve heard the teachers and asked them questions. He was not a passive listener; there was active interest in what He heard. Every word of God was food for Him, passing into His moral being through intense personal interest. Many scriptures speak of intense interest in the word, and personal appropriation of it. “Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy words were unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jeremiah 15: 16). There needs [p. 247] to be an active and intelligent exercise on our part to masticate what is put before us as teaching. There is an abundant supply of food, but how much of it have we eaten?
Eating is the first essential in view of spiritual food being digested and assimilated. The “jaw-bones” would refer to that part of the process which lies in our responsibility. I think the Bereans were using their jaw-bones; they were deeply interested in what they heard and received, and they daily searched the Scriptures to see if these things were so; they diligently applied their minds to the understanding of what they heard.
Then the priest has before him in “the maw” the thought of digestion and assimilation. It is important that this should have place with us. No doubt all believers appreciate the features of Christ, in some measure, but many of us would have to admit that we are not what we appreciate. It has not been assimilated so as to become part of us. But as saints we must accept that things which are true in Christ are to become true in us, and our prayers should be to this end. “The shoulder, and the jaw-bones and the maw” are nourishment for the priestly constitution; they are essential for the discharge of priestly service in vigour. If we are to be “nourished with the words of the faith and of the good teaching” (1 Timothy 4: 6) it must be the result of God’s word working in us who believe. There is an inward process of assimilation, the activity of which depends on spiritual health being maintained. Then God gives the increase, and fulfils “all the good pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith with power” (2 Thessalonians 1: 11).
“The first-fruits of thy corn, of thy new wine, and of thine oil, and the first-fruits of the shearing of thy sheep” would indicate that the priest is to be nourished [p. 248] upon that which is new and fresh in the soul. The things which we enjoyed twenty years ago could hardly be “the priest’s due” now. Each succeeding year is to bring new stores of spiritual wealth, and the first-fruits of them are for the support of what is priestly. I suppose we can all remember when we had some first-fruits! Spiritual things came freshly to us, precious thoughts of Christ and products of the Spirit such as we never had before! Things came into our souls in holy freshness. What joy they kindled in our hearts! But is that long ago? Such is not God’s thought for us; first-fruits are to come in “all the days” (verse 5 margin). One likes to hear people say that they have had thoughts of Christ such as they never had before. Every fresh spiritual apprehension of Christ is a bit of first-fruits; it is something to nourish the priest and to promote the service of God.
The first-fruits of the new wine and the oil would refer to the Spirit as known in fresh and living activity, giving joy and power. To accept the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one thing; to have first-fruits of His presence and indwelling is another. It is the latter which invigorates what is priestly. “The first-fruits of the shearing of thy sheep” would have reference, I think, to the product of the divine nature in the saints. Shearing suggests that it might be yielded at personal cost. Wool formed no part of the official priestly garments, but it might be warming and comforting to the priest personally, and it is from this point of view that “the priest’s due” is presented here. It is the nourishment and comfort of what is priestly rather than its official exercise that is before us. The first-fruits of every apprehension of Christ, of everything acquired of the Spirit, and of all that is the outcome of the divine nature in saints, go to make up “the priest’s due”. If the first-fruits are not there the priest cannot have [p. 249] his due; there will not be support for the service which is especially for the pleasure of God.
We are apt to think that first-fruits belong to early days, when things are first apprehended and appreciated, and that we must not expect to find that they will ever be quite like that again, and we do not, perhaps, look for fresh crops every year! But first-fruits are to be ministered to the priest “all the days”. Diligence in the land will result in first-fruits coming in continually. It is encouraging and stimulating to know that this will be the sure accompaniment of spiritual prosperity.
Then (verses 6 - 8) we see that the Levite has the privilege of coming “according to all the desire of his soul unto the place which Jehovah will choose”. This contemplates a movement in the liberty of spiritual affections. The coming up of the Levite is not a matter of obligation like the keeping of the feasts in chapter 16; it is the movement of “a willing spirit” (Psalm 2: 12). I think it suggests a way of coming to assembly conditions and service which is peculiarly characteristic of the present time. Assembly obligations exist, and always have existed, but that does not secure an answer to them. The answer is secured through the promptings of individual exercise and desire. All the truth and principles of the assembly remain as at the beginning, but they are reached now through desires of soul. The Levite seen here is a man whose soul gets a great sense of the holy privilege attaching to the place chosen by Jehovah, and to the service carried on in His Name. Spiritual desire brings him to that place. It is a principle which could always operate, but it is admirably suited to a day of general departure.
If the truth of the assembly is generally departed from, or practically ignored, as it is today, we shall only come to its privilege and service through personal desire. Whatever privilege is enjoyed by the brethren who serve [p. 250] in the Name of Jehovah is open to any Levite whose soul desires it. He can have “like portions to eat” with them, he can serve as they serve; there is a precious and holy fellowship open to him. The circumstances imply that he has come there at some personal sacrifice, because “he hath sold of his patrimony”. He has given up something which he might have retained without reproach in order to serve in the most privileged way possible, and he gets ample compensation. This is how assembly privileges and service can be taken up today. Have we got desire of soul in that direction? It is there to be taken up by every one who desires it. The Lord in John 14: 21 - 23 reserves most wondrous privilege for the individual lover, and it is by personal love and obedience, and keeping His word, that all can be secured now that answers to the place which Jehovah chose.
There is personal desire and movement, but if two or more move with like desires of soul they will find themselves in a real and blessed fellowship in which divine Persons will be honoured and served according to divine pleasure. We have often been told that we can have as much of Christ as we want, and I believe it is also true that we can have as much assembly privilege as we have desire for. There is an opened door set before us to devote ourselves to assembly service according to the desire of our soul. Assembly conditions and privileges are available, through the grace of the Lord, for every one whose soul desires to take them up. The Levite coming may serve and eat “as all his brethren”; he may have the gain of all that is there.
From verse 9 to the end of the chapter God’s Prophet is introduced in contrast with all the abominations which have come in through men listening to communications from beneath. The eight things mentioned in verses 10, 11 refer to communications from the unseen world. There are many avenues through which Satan influences [p. 251] men. All these things are coming in again under new names, and people hearken to them, but they are all opposed to God. “Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God” (verse 13) means that we are not to listen for a moment to any communication which is not from Him.
God ever had before Him to communicate with men. He spoke to Adam and Eve in innocence (Genesis 1: 28 - 30), and afterwards they “heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3: 8). It was His pleasure to be near to man and to communicate with him, and it grieved Him to find that distrust and distance had come in on man’s part. Another communication had been listened to, a communication from beneath. Every abomination has come in that way, but deliverance is found in listening to God’s Prophet. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1: 1) is a statement which carries us farther back than any other statement in Scripture. It tells us plainly that from the beginning God had in mind to speak to men. But the serpent has been speaking also, so that there are two kinds of speaking, as we see in the verses before us — the first in verses 10 - 14, the second in verses 16 - 19. Men have opened their ears to communications from the power of darkness, but it is blessed to know that God has not left men without communications from Himself. Man is God’s intelligent creature, and God speaks to him intelligibly. All darkening influences in the world have come from beneath, but all illuminating influences are from above, they come down from “the Father of lights”.
Divination, auguries, enchantments, sorcery, charms, a spirit of Python, soothsaying, consulting the dead, are all found today in Christendom. But they neither convict men of sin, nor give the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins. They darken men as to the true knowledge of God. The communications which [p. 252] come from God are not dark and mysterious; they are light, and they make known that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and that He is now in the light as having fully revealed Himself in a Man, His own beloved Son.
“Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee ... like unto me” (verse 15). That this refers directly to Christ is proved by Peter’s quotation of it in Acts 3. It declares unmistakably the true humanity of Him whom God has sent, and who has spoken the words of God. He is “from the midst of thee, of thy brethren”. The full communication of God’s words, of all that He would have made known to men, has come in One who is truly Man. The One who was “over all, God blessed for ever”, came of Israel as according to flesh. (Romans 9: 4). He took part in blood and flesh, He took hold of the seed of Abraham; “it behoved him in all things to be made like to his brethren” (Hebrews 2: 14 - 17). He was not an angel or a spirit, but a Man; God speaks to men by a Man. He was so truly Man that the Samaritan woman could say, “How dost thou, being a Jew”, and on His part He did not refuse to speak as one of the Jews in saying, “We worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4: 9, 22). Yet was He the true Prophet of God, of whom the woman could say, “I know that Messias is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes he will tell us all things”.
God has come near to men, and put Himself into communication with them, by Christ. To receive His communications is the greatest privilege and favour. It means that God is known, and if He is known He is loved, and if He is loved He is worshipped.
“Like unto me” emphasises the mediatorial character of God’s speaking. Moses was great as having features which made it possible for Jehovah to say that Christ [p. 253] as the Prophet would be like him. God invested Moses with extraordinary dignity in view of Christ being like him. “If there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak to him in a dream. Not so my servant Moses: he is faithful in all my house. Mouth to mouth do I speak to him openly, and not in riddles; and the form of Jehovah doth he behold” (Numbers 12: 6 - 8). “And Jehovah spoke with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exodus 33: 11). God would have us to consider Moses, not merely as representing the dispensation of law, but as having features such as pertain in the fullest way to Christ. Moses had a unique place, and he could speak as one with whom God was on terms of peculiar intimacy. And the “like unto thee” suggests that the promised Prophet would speak as One with whom God was known directly and personally, and not by dreams or visions. But the fact that God spoke to Moses, and Moses spoke to the people, of Another Prophet yet to be raised up clearly intimated that the speaking of Moses was not final. Indeed, as we know, Christ as Son is contrasted with Moses as a servant. When the truth came fully out what marked the speaking of the Prophet was that it was the speaking of the Son. See Hebrews 1: 1, 2. It is the speaking of One of whom the Father could say, “This is my beloved Son; hear him” (Luke 9: 35). It has been well said, Who can speak after the Son? The speaking of Christ, of the beloved Son in the bosom of the Father, is final.
Christ was like unto Moses as being the true Deliverer and Mediator. He inaugurated in grace and truth all that was typically set forth in Moses. The covenant, the service of God, and all that is suitable to the inheritance, were made known by Moses, and Christ is like unto him in relation to all these blessed things, giving the fulness of them according to all that is in the mind [p. 254] of God. What a Prophet we have! “Unto him shall ye hearken”.
All this was in the minds of the disciples, and it was in the light of it that they hearkened to Jesus. As the Prophet God’s words were put in the mouth of Christ, and He spoke what God commanded Him to speak. Hence He could say, “My doctrine is not mine, but that of him that has sent me” (John 7: 16). And again, “The words (the divine communications) which thou hast given me, I have given them, and they have received them, and have known truly that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou sentest me” (John 17: 8). The One who was raised up “of thy brethren” so near to men as being truly Man, was “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father;” it was He who “came down out of heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 1: 18; John 3: 13). He was therefore able to declare God in a way of unmeasured fulness, and to speak of heavenly things as knowing them and having seen them. All has been told out now; there is no reserve in the divine communications; “all things which I have beard of my Father I have made known to you” (John 15: 15).
Not everything that the Lord said and did has been recorded in the Scriptures. The Gospels are a divine selection by the Holy Spirit, and they are fully adequate to set forth all that was spoken by the Son of God when here. His works spoke volumes as well as His words. Every utterance of the Lord has a fulness which is immeasurable. There are some verses of which Christians have been speaking and writing for nearly two thousand years, and fresh beauties and glories are being disclosed in them every day. The Holy Scriptures are the greatest marvel in the world, and the Gospels are the greatest marvel of the Scriptures. The four Gospels are a little book which could be read in a day, but there is concentrated there what will fill eternity with its blessedness.
[p. 255] John supposes that if all the things which Jesus did were written one by one, “not even the world itself would contain the books written”. If men had written these narratives in their own ability they would never have known when to stop. But the Holy Spirit has given all that was necessary for us in words marked by simplicity and dignity. As we read we are in presence of the ineffable majesty, and yet infinite grace, of the Word. There is fulness of divine communication, constraining the soul to worship as it is realised that God has made known in His beloved Son all that was in His heart and mind manward.
The assembly of God is to be characterised by speaking which is of God as to its origin and its power. See 1 Corinthians 14. The speaking there is to take character from Christ’s speaking; indeed He is now speaking from heaven in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit speaks in the house of God, bringing out in detail what God has communicated by Christ, and giving it application to the needs of souls and of the assembly. Such prophetic speaking has peculiar value in a day of departure, as reviving in spiritual power that which was from the beginning, and exposing the departure by bringing out the mind of God as it was originally made known. The assembly is God’s house; it is the pillar and base of the truth, and the way to speak in it is “as oracles of God” (1 Peter 4: 11). Such speaking would be the speaking of Christ continued in intelligent communications from God. Not new revelations, but every word in accord with what God has spoken by Christ. In presence of difficulties the prophetic word would exercise consciences so that the moral state might be put right. Whatever matter occasions difficulty the real question is the moral state of saints, and if this is judged in the light of communications from God, difficulties melt away.
I “will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him”. Nothing is held in reserve now, save judgment. The Spirit has come in witness to the fact that all the mind of God is out; there is nothing further to be looked for. “As for you let that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you; if what ye have heard from the beginning abides in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father”. There can be no advance upon this; any going forward from it must be apostasy (2 John 9).
It is a serious thing not to hearken to Christ. “And it shall come to pass that the man who hearkeneth not unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (verse 19).
With reference to the closing verses of the chapter we may note that God is sometimes pleased to demonstrate that what is professedly spoken in His Name is not really His word at all. Many prophets have fixed dates for the Lord’s return, but some of us have lived long enough to see many such prophecies falsified. They were really spoken presumptuously (verse 22). Fifty years ago people told us that the great pyramid made known that the Lord was coming some time between 1880 and 1890, and many are still measuring its dark passages and prophesying. Certain minds are attracted by this kind of thing, but it is not the speaking of Christ. The word from the excellent glory is “Hear him”.