The Spiritual Meaning of Service # 7

The Belovedness of Christ (continued)

There are things to which God has not committed Himself. There are those things which God has left, from which He has withdrawn; but there is that concerning His Son to which he has committed Himself, which He will never give up, no matter what happens. If we ask what that is - in a phrase, it is priestly ministry. We have to learn what priestly ministry is.

The Chastening of the Sons of Levi

There is chastening connected with it. "He will purify the sons of Levi." Yes, chastening. But let us always keep a broad line between judgment and chastening. The devil always tries to wipe out that difference, and interpret all chastening as judgment. Judgment is the rejectors of the Lord; chastening is for the acceptors of the Lord. The form of the judgment may seem to be exactly alike for unsaved and saved: you cannot see any outward difference. The unsaved may suffer physical judgment for sin. The saved too may suffer physically - yet this is not judgment, but chastening. One is destructive, the other is constructive, and God's dealings with Levites are always on the constructive principle. Remember that. There may be suffering, there may be the fire purging and purifying, but it is always constructive. God is just using these ways to secure that upon which His heart is set.

satan's Hatred of Levitical Ministry

This has been but an introductory word, but note one thing before we close: the hatred, the satanic hatred, of this Levitical ministry. When Jesus began He was, as we have seen, about thirty years old,that is, of Levitical age, indicating that the ministry He was beginning was priestly ministry - the open Heaven attesting that this Person and this ministry were peculiarly precious to the Lord, beloved of God. What came next? The wilderness and satan. And what was the point of the assault? The very point upon which God had focused everything - the "belovedness." "My Son, My Beloved." "If thou be the Son ---" He might just as well have said, "If Thou be the Beloved" for that was the point of the whole thing. "If you are beloved, if you are so precious to the Father ..." "If Thou be the Son ..." satan hates not only this Person, but this thing, satan is not only against the Person, but he is against the ministry; and the one thing that he will always try to do, in order to cripple, destroy or nullify that ministry which is so precious to God, is, if we may put it this way, to becloud the belovedness.

Do you realize how satan is all the time trying to make you believe otherwise than that God loves you, that you are beloved of God? It is often the last thing that we can believe, is it not, that we are beloved of God? satan is always busy from every angle to try to becloud our belovedness. If he cannot do it by direct assault, he does it by suggestion, by insinuation. Or he will do it by trying to cause us to slip up, make mistakes, go wrong, and then bringing upon us accusation, saying, "You are no longer beloved of God." His devices and his efforts are countless and unsearchable, with the one object, as with the Lord Jesus, so with those who are with the Lord Jesus as the sons of Aaron, as Levites, of somehow bringing a cloud, raising a question, over this preciousness to the Lord.

I use the word  again because it is a good word and gets us a bit off our beaten track - the belovedness of Christ transferred to His fellow-priests or His Levite sons, the beloved. Let satan get in there and he has destroyed everything. If there should be one reading these lines who has lost the assurance that God loves him, you not only know the unspeakable misery of it, but, what is more, you know how you are put out of service - you know quite well that you would not attempt to serve the Lord. It is no use - you are paralyzed until you know and are assured that the Lord loves you. If you have lost that assurance, you have lost your testimony, you have lost your ministry, you have lost everything, and that is the chief work of the devil. Paul says: "He hath made us accepted in the beloved" (Ephesians 1:6). That is the belovedness of Christ transferred to those who are in Him. Do not believe the devil. "Evil company doth corrupt good manners" (1 Corinthians 15:33), and if you have a talk with the devil, and listen to him, your whole conduct will be affected and colored by that. The one object the devil has in view is to raise a question, nay, to establish in you a question, as to God's love and your belovedness to God - that is, personally.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 8)