I would like to read a few Scriptures to begin with. They will be very familiar—the same things that you have been hearing these past few times.
Exodus 19:6 says:
And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.
These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
Then in 1 Peter 2:4:
Coming unto Him, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Then, in 1 Peter 2:9:
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light:
who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
And then in Revelation 1:4:
John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him Who is and Who was and Who is to come; and from the seven Spirits that are before His throne;
and from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father; to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
And then one other verse, Acts 13:2. The Holy Spirit says:
Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
Father, we want to thank You this morning for the table, and how good it was to remember our Lord Jesus and all that He has done. We want to thank You, Lord, for the worship that went up to You. We want to proclaim You as being the eternal God, the Almighty One with Whom we have to do.
Father, we thank You this morning that You have called us into a priesthood to minister to You forever. This is what You have done for us. Lord, we do want to respond.
So this morning, as we come to Your Word, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would make it not just light, or not just life, but, Lord, that we would hear in it Your calling us to this ministry. You are calling us to Yourself, to please You—not to satisfy You. We ask this in Jesus’ name.
This morning, I would like to finish up. I did not expect to be here this morning, but I am. I think this is probably the hardest of the messages.
My prayer always, when I am doing this, is that I could be an encouragement, and that the Word the Lord gives me would encourage you. That is my prayer today: that we would all be encouraged by His Word.
This is a hard one today because it has a word in it that I think we fear. We have ideas about it that, if we take our own ideas, we are going to put ourselves under some strict regimen that will squeeze the life out of us. That is not my purpose.
The word is consecration.
We have already heard about our being called—actually, even being born again—for this purpose: to be priests. We looked at Samuel and Hannah. We looked at what priests do, how their ministry brings in the King, how they carry the ark, and how they carry the testimony. We talked about a number of things last week concerning their ministry to our God and Father and to His house.
All those things are before us, but before we can go into this ministry, we have to be consecrated.
Now, to set our minds at ease about this word consecration, because it drums up all sorts of fear—especially when we think of Old Testament things—we may think, “Oh, I am under the thumb now.”
But consecration, actually—the Hebrew word, I think, is qadash—just means this: to be set apart for a purpose, or to set yourself apart for a purpose.
We want to look at consecration from two sides: from God’s side and then from our side, because there are two sides. This consecration is all of grace. It is all through grace, as we will see.
Grace has two sides. First, it has the side of unmerited favor: the unmerited favor of God that brings us into His kingdom. That is one side of grace.
But the second side of grace is the effect it has on our heart. That is the other side of consecration.
As we look at these things, we are going to be in Exodus 29 for most of this morning. We want to look at consecration this way: if I were a math teacher—which I am not; you should be thankful—it is like doing reciprocals.
A reciprocal fraction: if you have six-sevenths, what is its reciprocal? You guys are smart. We look at it one way, and then we are going to look at it from the other side.
We get the word reciprocate from reciprocal. When somebody gives something to you, you act back; you respond back. You reciprocate.
The Lord loves us. He is looking for that reciprocal flow: our reciprocating that love back to Him.
So, as we look at consecration, we want to see that it is a work of grace. It is not that we get our list up and say, “I have to do this, this, and this.” That is not what we are talking about.
Consecration first comes from God consecrating us. Then there is our response to the consecration with which He has consecrated us.
I am a very negative person, in that sense. I always look for things that will disqualify me. “Okay, I cannot do this because…” I use that trick on my wife. “I am no good with my hands. I cannot nail that board.” But she has gotten wiser.
I always look for ways to disqualify myself, especially in spiritual things. “Lord, I cannot do that. Look at what You have got.”
The first thing I want to say is this: who was consecrated as priests in the Old Testament? The sons of Levi. Do you know anything about Levi?
Jacob, in blessing the twelve brothers, rebuked Levi. Remember, Levi and Simeon went into Shechem. They had the men circumcised, and then, a couple of days later, they came in and murdered everybody.
That is the family that became priests. You see, it is a work of grace. It does not matter how bad you are. It all depends on the Lord, because it is the Lord Who does the consecrating.
We cannot disqualify ourselves because we have a bad temper or something like that. The Lord has chosen you. He knows everything about you. He knows who you are, and it has not made Him say, “I do not want you.”
He has chosen you for this, and He has made provision for it.
Let us look at the consecration in Exodus 29. First, verse 1:
This is the thing that thou shalt do unto them to hallow them, to minister unto Me in the priest’s office: take one young bullock and two rams without blemish.
Then, in Exodus 29:10:
And thou shalt bring the bullock before the tent of meeting: and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock.
And thou shalt kill the bullock before the Lord, at the door of the tent of meeting.
And thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it upon the horns of the altar with thy finger, and thou shalt pour out all the blood at the base of the altar.
And thou shalt take all the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul upon the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar.
But the flesh of the bullock, and his skin, and his dung, shalt thou burn with fire without the camp: it is a sin-offering.
The bull was the largest animal offering of all the Levitical offerings—the biggest thing you could offer to God. It is symbolic of Christ for us.
This is the greatest apprehension of the worth of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament: this sacrifice. Many of us may stop here and say, “Well, I do not have that apprehension of the Lord. My apprehension is like a turtle dove. Maybe it is even smaller than that; maybe it is a finch. Therefore, I am disqualified. I cannot offer this.”
Well, if you think that way, your reasoning is faulty, because it is not you who bring this offering. God told Moses to bring this offering, and Moses brought the offering from God for the priests.
In other words, this is God’s offering. This is what He offers for you, to make you acceptable to Him.
We may not have that great apprehension of Christ and all that He is for us, but God chose this offering. He did not choose it to say, “Well, it is unattainable for you people. I am sorry; you have to have this thing.” He did not do it for that purpose.
He did it to satisfy Himself. The whole reason for His offering is to satisfy Him, to fulfill Him, so that He could accept us.
We might never be able to offer a bull in the sense of apprehending Christ to that degree, but a bull has been offered. That is what we need to realize. The bull has been offered.
It is His provision to consecrate us to Himself and for this work as priests, because this is what sets us apart. Everything in the priesthood starts with Christ and Christ offered for us.
This bull has been offered for us on our behalf. It is God’s offering for us, and it satisfies Him.
Secondly, Exodus 29:4 says:
And Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the tent of meeting, and shalt wash them with water.
The second thing in consecrating us is that God does some washing. This washing is not merely a washing away of dead works or sin. The sacrifice has taken care of that. They had already had the Passover and had already come through the Red Sea.
Let us go to Titus 3:4:
But when the kindness of God our Savior, and His love toward man, appeared,
not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
which He poured out upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior;
that, being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
This is a washing of regeneration. We become new creatures. Regeneration means we are made wholly new. The old has passed away, and the new has come into play.
The best picture I know of regeneration is Naaman the leper in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a Syrian general who attacked Israel. He had everything going for him: he was a star in his country, wealthy, and he had the king’s ear. But the one problem was that he was a leper, and he knew it.
A little girl said, “If only you were in Israel, there is a prophet there who could heal you.” Naaman went to Israel, and Elisha the prophet told him what to do.
The regeneration of Naaman is shown in two ways. First, he went down into the Jordan River, dipped seven times, and came up with skin like a baby. For a macho general, that might not be the greatest thing, but he had skin like a baby.
But the other thing is that, in 2 Kings 5:15 and 17, he says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.” Then he says, “When I go back home, let me take some earth, because I am only going to worship this God.”
Naaman’s regeneration was not just that his skin was made clean. His whole heart changed. He was no longer a pagan; he was now a son of God. That is the regeneration we are talking about here.
What is the instrument for this washing of regeneration? Ephesians 5:25 says:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
The instrument that accomplishes the washing of regeneration is the Word of God ministered to us by the Holy Spirit.
What do I mean by “ministered”? We have these nice Christian words. All I mean is that the Holy Spirit makes it real to us. You are reading the Word, and the Holy Spirit says, “This is for you,” or, “Do this.” That is what I mean.
The instrument of this washing is the Word of God in the hands of the Holy Spirit for us.
Notice that the verb in these verses—washing—is not merely past tense. It is present tense. It has the idea of something going on daily.
I hope all of us wash every day in some way or another, because if we do not, people will not want to be around us. But this is a washing for every day.
Jesus said, “Ye are already clean: only your feet need to be washed.” This washing with the water of the Word brings about this regeneration.
A third part of consecration is found in Exodus 29:5:
And thou shalt take the garments, and put upon Aaron the coat, and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastplate, and gird him with the skilfully woven band of the ephod:
and thou shalt set the mitre upon his head, and put the holy crown upon the mitre.
Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head, and anoint him.
And thou shalt bring his sons, and put coats upon them.
And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and bind head-tires on them: and they shall have the priesthood by a perpetual statute.
The next thing the Lord does to consecrate us is give us clothes to wear for this ministry. In Exodus 28, we learn something about these garments.
First of all, there is the ephod and the outer garments. The garment is blue and purple, with gold woven into it. It speaks of Christ. As we minister before the Lord, He sees Christ. He has put Christ upon us. These garments are all Christ.
But it does not stop with an outer garment. Exodus 28:40-42 says:
And for Aaron’s sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make girdles for them, and head-tires shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty.
And thou shalt put them upon Aaron thy brother, and upon his sons with him, and shalt anoint them, and consecrate them, and sanctify them, that they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office.
And thou shalt make them linen breeches to cover the flesh of their nakedness; from the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach.
These garments and hats and sashes are for glory and beauty. When the Lord looks upon us, He sees the Son, and He rejoices to see His Son ministering before Him.
But we have not only been given outer garments; we have been given undergarments also. The Lord is not satisfied merely with an outward garment. He wants us to be inwardly pure.
He has given us an inner man, an inner garment, to wear before Him in ministry. It covers our nakedness. It is this inner life, this inner man, through which we serve God. He has provided this.
Exodus 29:7 says:
Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head, and anoint him.
And Exodus 29:21 says:
And thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons with him: and he and his garments shall be hallowed, and his sons and his sons’ garments with him.
Another thing the Lord has done to consecrate us and make us fit for this service is that He has anointed us.
What does it mean that we have an anointing? Very simply, this anointing enables us and empowers us. It is done by God so that we may do His will.
We are enabled and empowered by God Himself to do His will and to do what He has asked us to do. That is what anointing is. It is part of our consecration.
Exodus 29:19-20 says:
Thou shalt take the other ram; and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the ram.
Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of its blood, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron, and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.
That seems like the weirdest thing of all, does it not? But the Lord is applying the blood to us for service. Notice the order. This order is not to be reversed. It starts with the ear and goes to the toe. It does not start with the toe first.
That is where we would like it to be: “If I walk with the Lord, if I have a good walk with the Lord, then all these things will happen.” No, no, no—you have it backward. It starts with the ear.
An open ear leads to service. Remember Samuel. When Samuel was ministering before the Lord, how did the Lord get his attention? He called him at night: “Samuel, Samuel.”
Out of that open ear comes all the service to God, because that is how God tells you what He wants you to do in serving Him. We do not run away with a little code and say, “This is how we serve God. These are the steps.” That is not it. It is a living service.
You have to be alive to God. He has made provision for us and applied blood to our ear so that it can be open, and so that we can hear what He has to say to us.
He does not always speak in King James English. He speaks so that you can understand. You need to understand that. It is not religious stuff. He is very practical. He is very real. He is holy, yes, but He is practical and real.
Then there is the thumb, so that we can serve and do those things He asks us to do. Finally, there is the toe, which speaks of our walk.
Do you remember that song from back in the seventies? “He has shown you, O man, what is good.” It comes from Micah 6:8:
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?
God has made it so that all these things can be done. He has consecrated us. He has made provision for all these things.
We cannot say, “Lord, I cannot do this because this is wrong, or that is wrong.” He would say, “But look, I have done everything for you.”
What is the end of all this? Exodus 29:43 says:
And there I will meet with the children of Israel; and the Tent shall be sanctified by My glory.
And I will sanctify the tent of meeting, and the altar: Aaron also and his sons will I sanctify, to minister to Me in the priest’s office.
And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God.
And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them: I am the Lord their God.
The whole purpose of these things is that we might know Him. In New Testament language, John 17:3 says:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
That is eternal life. This is what the Lord is after, and this is what the Lord has provided. This is His consecration. He has consecrated us.
Knowing this, how do we respond? We can respond in a whole bunch of ways. We can say, “Oh, no, I cannot do that.” That is the way I often respond.
But what is the Lord looking for? The Lord looks for a response to what He is doing and to what He is after. If the Lord has done all these things for us, how should I respond? Where is my part in consecration?
It starts here: if God has done these things for me, the first thing I am supposed to do is stand in the good of that offering of the bull.
That is the first part of my consecration to Him. I have to stand in the good of that offering, and I have to come to Him as a person who stands in the good of His offering.
By doing that, we are free. We are free from all our sin and from all the things that hold us back. We are free.
Quite a concept, huh? But it is the truth. It is not merely a concept. We are now free to serve God. If we stand in the good of this offering, we are free to serve Him. We are free to be in His presence.
He will not turn us away, because we are standing in the good of what He has provided.
We often wrongly feel that what we offer makes us acceptable. But that is not so. It is what He has offered that makes us acceptable.
Then, it says, they put their hands on the offering. Actually, the word is that they were to lean upon it. They were to put all their weight upon that offering.
I notice that all of you are leaning right now. You might think, “No, we are not leaning; we are sitting.” No, you are leaning. You are putting all your weight on those chairs.
Is it not funny how none of you seem anxious about that? You are not afraid that your chair is not going to hold you. Some of you are very comfortable.
We are to lean on that offering and put all our weight on it, because it is able to support us and more. The bull offering is more than we can imagine—much more than we can imagine.
It is there for us. Our first work is to step into what God has offered on our behalf. God will provide Himself a lamb, and He did.
It will always be that way. What He has offered for us stands eternally. We never have to look for something else. We never say, “Well, that was for me before, but now I am past that stage.” You never pass that stage.
That offering is good for eternity—always. You never have to say, “Well, I have done this since I believed in Christ.” It does not matter. It is an eternal offering. It is good forever.
Secondly, we talked about washing and anointing. This all has to do with our responding to the Word of God. We are to be in the Word of God.
I cannot put it any more strongly. This is nothing new, but it is vital. We have to be in the Word of God. We have to read it. We have to read it daily.
I do not mean to put a trip on you, but look at this: how often do we eat? Some of us eat three meals a day. Some of us, if you are a true dietitian, say you are supposed to eat lots of little meals as you go.
You can see I have eaten one thing. But if we care for our body like this, what about the new life that God has put in us? What about caring for the new life?
We have to read the Word. Romans 12:2 says:
Be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
How does your mind get renewed? By reading the Word. When you read the Word, first, you see God. Remember last time we talked about the Where’s Waldo? books? You look for God, and you find Him. You see what He is like.
Secondly, just as importantly, we see what God says about us. We are almost always in agreement with the bad things.
We hardly ever come to God and say, “Thank You that You say this about me. You say I am a new creation. Lord, You said I am a new creation. I am a new creation.”
We say, “Oh yes, I am a sinner.” How many of us go around saying, “I am a new creation”? That is in the Word of God, is it not?
Our minds have to be transformed. We have to start seeing what God has done for us and what He is beginning to do with us. We have to believe it, trust it, and thank Him for it.
But we will not find those things out unless we are in the Word of God. It needs to be studied. It needs to be looked at in its context. You cannot just pull things out and say, “This is what it is saying.”
I think I have done this one before. You open your Bible and say, “Oh, there is a verse for me.” Then you read, “Judas went away and hanged himself.” You turn the page and read, “What thou doest, do quickly.”
You cannot do it like that. But it is almost natural: we get in trouble, and we start looking for a little verse, thinking, “Okay, I need help in this.”
We need to have a life in the Word where we see what the Word is saying in its context. There are times the Holy Spirit brings a word to you that may not be in its immediate context but is something for you at that moment. But you have to study the Word in context for the truth to be brought out to you.
The key to being changed into His likeness is reading the Word.
Naaman dipped seven times before he was restored. I think we are a lot like Naaman. When it came time for him to dip in the Jordan, he did not want to dip there. He said, “That is a crummy river. Can I not go to the rivers in Syria? They are clearer and nicer.”
Many times, instead of reading the Word, we want to go to a book that explains the Word because it is clearer. But if we do not exercise our minds, hearts, and spirits to read the Word of God, we will forever need someone else to explain it to us.
I am not knocking the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I am not saying do not read books. I am not saying do not listen to tapes. What I am saying is: do not neglect the Word of God.
This is the Word. This is where there is life. This is what the Holy Spirit takes and makes real to you.
Naaman dipped seven times. It is something you have to do over and over. You are never going to finish with the Bible.
I remember when I first got saved, I got one of those Good News for Modern Man Bibles. I read it in about a week, and I thought, “Okay, now what do I read?”
I was not young; I was naïve. I did not know any different. But some of us think, “I have read that before.” Or we have underlined our Bibles. There is nothing wrong with underlining your Bible, but sometimes when we start reading those verses again, all we remember is what we underlined the first time.
Sometimes you need to get a new Bible, open it up, and look at it fresh. That is how we are transformed.
If the inner man is to be strengthened—we talked about the inner garment—you have to feed him. You feed him on the Word of God.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
And 1 Peter 2:2 says:
As newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.
You grow into your salvation. All those garments we discussed in consecration can seem so big. It is almost like seeing little kids play dress-up.
Remember how your mother bought your clothes before school? She always bought them too big. That used to bother me. You had those big cuffs the first few days of school.
But my mother was smart, because she knew I was a growing boy. By the end of the school year, those pants were getting a little short.
We have these things that we are to grow into. The only way we can grow into them is by doing the things that make us grow. We need to read the Word, feed on the Word, take it in, and think about it.
“What does it mean to me? How does this apply to me?” When you read the Word, it makes you pray. It leads you to prayer, and it leads you to worship, which are functions of a priest.
The other thing is that we need to exercise. This goes along with anointing too. We cannot simply be people who soak up the Word.
God did not mean us to be merely receptacles. He meant us for service. He does not speak a word to you without some purpose in it.
His purpose for speaking His Word to you is not merely that you hear it. How many times did the Lord Jesus say, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear”?
Everyone listening to Him had ears. What was He talking about? He was talking about responding to what was spoken.
He does not speak merely for you to gather knowledge. He speaks so that you will serve Him. There is service in speaking.
You can gather so much stuff, but if you do not use it, you are nothing but a big ball. At garage sales, almost every garage sale has a big ball. Why? Nobody uses them.
Once the kids grow up, Mom and Dad in their forties are not saying, “Hey, let’s all play catch.” Do not do that. Your youth is gone.
Brothers and sisters, we need to think harder. If the Lord is speaking things to us, He is speaking to us to do them. He wants service from us—service to Him and service to His people.
In the dress of the priest, in Exodus 28, the high priest wore something on his turban that said:
HOLY TO THE LORD.
Another part of our consecration is being holy. Now, this can conjure up all sorts of ideas in our heads, just like consecration: “Oh no, I have to do this, and I have to do that, and I cannot do this.”
But you have it all wrong. Yes, there is something to do with holiness, but let us be simple and start with the root of holiness. The word holy, like the word consecrate, means to set apart.
Let us start with the root: setting ourselves apart to have fellowship with God. That is where it starts.
Out of that fellowship—where you have set time aside or made yourself available—come the things that make you want to keep that relationship with God.
God does not say, “Okay, I have got you now. Do not do this. Do not do that. Do not do the other thing, and you had better not do this, because I am watching. It is going to hurt if you do.” Some of us have that idea.
But holiness starts like this: when you first meet your wife—or the person who becomes your wife—you become interested in that person. How do you get to know that person? You start meeting with that person.
On my first few dates with my wife, we just went for walks. Some of you may say, “That is because you are cheap, Jim.” There was a part of truth to that.
But if you go to a movie, you cannot talk to each other. You have to sit and watch the movie. Afterwards, you may talk about the movie. Well, what does that matter?
What matters is what that person is like, and what they perceive you to be. That is what really matters.
The only way you find out what God is like, and He reveals more about you, is through fellowship. You have to set time apart. You have to converse. You have to be with each other.
You do not go into a relationship—or come out of a relationship—unchanged. You come out changed.
That is the wonderful thing about having a relationship with God. You are transformed because you are with Him.
You find yourself constrained by the love of God. Matt gave a word about that. There is something in you that does not want to disappoint the Lord, and so you constrain yourself.
You find yourself not wanting to do things that would wreck the relationship or interfere with that relationship. You also find that you begin to love Him.
Is that not strange? We talk a lot about the love of God for us, but He wants us to love Him. That is the first commandment:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
The number one thing God is after is your love for Him, because He will lavish His love upon you, and He wants it reciprocated.
So, in holiness, let us not get into the do’s and don’ts. Let us get into the relationship. Out of the relationship, you will see the do’s and the don’ts.
I cannot go out with other girls now that I am married. You know something? I do not want to either, because over the years I have built up a relationship with my wife that I cherish.
It is the same with the Lord. We get into that relationship with the Lord, and we do not want to spoil it. We do not want it ruined. We want to keep it.
So we find ourselves doing the things that please Him and staying away from the things that do not please Him. It is a supernatural reaction.
Finally, the last part of our consecration to Him is that we let the Lord bring us to a place where we give Him our ear.
I know you have always thought the Lord is after our hearts, right? He is after our ears. You may think that is pretty weird, but look at this. Go to Deuteronomy 15.
This is what the Lord is really after in our consecration. This is the end of our consecration. Deuteronomy 15:12 says:
If thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
And when thou lettest him go free from thee, thou shalt not let him go empty:
thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy threshing-floor, and out of thy winepress: as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.
And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to-day.
Then it says:
And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go out from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee;
then thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever.
What is this? What the Lord is really after is that you sell out to Him, that you simply say, “Lord, You are too good. I do not want anything else.”
That is really what the Lord is after. Yes, all these things lead to it. You can have all these things without this last part, but I will tell you: this is what is on the Lord’s heart.
To be a priest is not simply to do a bunch of stuff. It is to have a relationship and, out of that relationship, to serve Him Whom you love. That is what the Lord is after.
Your consecration really hinges upon standing in the offering He has provided for you and setting yourself apart for Him in this relationship. That is where your consecration hinges.
What He is really after through that consecration is not merely Christian jargon about a bondservant. Let us call it a servant who loves his master and says, “I like You so much. I love You so much. I want to stay here.”
This is an end. This is not where you start. We do not start by saying, “I am going to be Yours.” We do not start out doing that.
This choice is made only after experiencing the love, character, and benefits of the Master you serve. You cannot make this choice without knowing Him.
When you see this and experience this, when you know the benefits, you come to the place where you say, “I want this for the rest of my life.” That is what God is aiming for.
But it starts simply here: let us walk with Him. Let us open the door a little bit to Him. Let us give Him that little bit of time.
Give Him that little bit of ourselves—that little bit of holiness—without which no man will see God. You will not see Him unless you open up.
You have to walk with Him. You have to make yourself available to Him. If you make yourself available to Him, He says, “I will make Myself available to you. I will reveal Myself to you. You will see Me, and you will know Me, so that you may serve Me as a priest.”
He calls us to be this.
We come to this place and say, “Oh, Lord, I have really blown it. Lord, I have wasted so many years. Is it still there for me?”
There is a wonderful verse in Romans 11. Paul, speaking about the Jews, says:
For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of.
You know what that means? It cannot be taken away. Better yet, it will not be taken away.
God will not take away His plan for you, because His provision is always there for you. He wants you to step into it.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that You have made all these provisions for us. Yet we say, “Lord, You did not look hard enough when You looked at me, because You missed some things in me that disqualify me.”
Lord, I pray that You would open our eyes to this: we have not been disqualified. This place before You is forever open if we will but have it.
Lord, that is where our weakness lies. We are so weak. It says, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Lord, I think the flesh is strong sometimes—not weak enough.
I pray, Lord, that You will give grace. Give grace to overcome what I am, so that I might be what You have wanted me to be: Your priest forever.
And yes, for all those like me here, the same, Lord: that we might be Your priests, knowing You, being about Your business, and in love with You.
Lord, this is something that You want. I thank You that You do not come here condemning us, but saying, “This is what I have for you. This is open for you. Please come in.”
Lord, give us grace to deny ourselves and come in, and enter into this relationship that You have for us. We ask this in Jesus’ name.