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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 18 Duties
of the Priests And Levites (ch. 18:1 - 7)
In
this section God confirms a choice He had already made.
The Levites would be responsible for all aspects of the
tabernacle. No other tribe
could carry out any of these responsibilities.
Verse
5 says that the Levites were responsible for the tabernacle so that the
rest of In
verses 6 and 7 we see the word "gift" twice.
The Levites were a gift to the rest of Israel, and the priesthood was given to them as a gift.
Concerning
this idea of being a "gift".
In the New Testament it is clear that all true believers have
become priests to the Lord. Not
one particular group of believers are priests.
That means we are all gifts and the priesthood itself is a gift
to us. As the Levites had
their responsibilities for being priests, so does the Christian today.
In one real sense of the word, we are a gift to the rest of the
world. That should not make
us proud. It should humble
us because along with being a gift is a very large responsibility to do
the work of a priest in the way the Lord wants.
More often than not, we perform our priestly duties with our own
methods and not our Lord's. How
God felt in Old Testament times concerning abuse of the priesthood is
how He feels in New Testament times concerning abuse of the New
Testament priesthood. I
will not comment on the issues of law in the rest of this chapter.
I will only make one comment and that is concerning verse 20
where God tells Aaron that the Levites will not have any portion of land
once they enter I
think there is something for us to learn in this verse.
True Christians are all priests in New Testament times.
We don't have a special class of priests, or at least we
shouldn't. For the
non-Christian, the world right now is their inheritance, but for the
Christian our inheritance is God Himself.
As the writer of Hebrews states in Hebrews 13:14, we don't really
live in this world, but we seek a city yet to come.
We should not view this world as our home.
Our real home is in and with Jesus, which will be further
realized in the new earth that is seen at the end of the book of
Revelation. For
prosperity teachers who believe that this life is the abundant life
Jesus spoke of in John 10, I think this passages helps show that
thinking to be false. Our
inheritance will come in the next life.
This life is all about ministry, not about indulging in our
inheritance.
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