As a brother in Christ, the saints in the church in Lamka arranged an evening meeting where a brother from Aizawl and I fellowshipped with the saints. The church life is full of fellowship and blending for the building up of the Body of Christ.
After two brothers shared briefly on how the Lord raised up the church in Lamka as well as in Aizawl, I was given the time to fellowship on whatever burden the Lord burdened me with. In fact, in my morning Bible reading on Exodus, the Lord told me to share the practical experiences of the sanctification of the serving priests.
“And this is what you shall do to them to sanctify them to serve Me as priests: take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish,” (Exodus 29:1, RecVer)
Footnotes from the Recovery Version
To be qualified to serve God as priests, Aaron and his sons had to be sanctified, to be set apart by being marked out. The mark that set apart, sanctified, Aaron and his sons to be the priests was the filling of their hands with the offerings, signifying the filling of the believers with the riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8) through their subjective experience of Him as the reality of the offerings (Heb. 10:5-10). The steps in sanctifying Aaron and his sons included the washing away of their uncleanness (v. 4), the covering of their nakedness by the priestly garments (vv. 5-9), the dealing with their sinful nature through the sin offering (vv. 10-14), and the feeding of God with the burnt offering (vv. 15-18) and God and the priests with the peace offering (vv. 19-28). This was not merely a consecration or ordination of Aaron and his sons.“Then you shall slaughter the ram and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the lobe of the right ear of his sons and on the thumb of their right hand and on the big toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the rest of the blood on and around the altar.” (Exodus 29:20, RecVer)To serve God as priests, our hearing (ears), our working (hands), and our walking (feet) must be cleansed and sanctified by Christ’s redeeming blood. We must learn how to listen to the word of God (cf. 21:2-6; Isa. 50:4-5; Luke 10:38-42), to do what is required by Him, and to walk according to His way in serving Him. In Lev. 14:14 the same procedure was used in the cleansing of a leper, indicating that in the eyes of God we sinners who have been ordained to be His priests are unclean, like lepers.
Based on these truths, I ministered on the practical steps to be sanctified to serve the living God as priests. In the washing by the word of God, I released my burden on helping the saints to love the word and read it daily to be reconstituted with the truths. In fact, I challenged them to take a pledge before the Lord to read through the Bible at least once in a year, to which many saints said amen. Then, I shared on the need to not trust our self and natural man and the need to be covered with Christ as our clothing, then I shared on the need to deal with our flesh by taking Christ as the sin offering, meal offering, and peace offering. Finally, I also gave examples and practical help how our ears need to be cleansed, filtering all worldly noises but listening to the word of God; how our hands need to be cleansed by working righteously, especially in money matters, of not bribing nor borrowing but being clean, faithful, and righteous; and how our daily living should be proper before God and man, in morality and being a living testimony of Jesus.
Having ministered thus, I also showed the way how we can be practically cleansed. The truths may be high but the ways are simple; being revived everyday through prayer, calling upon the Lord’s name, morning revival, and the enjoyment of the word of God; and by being in the church life in fellowship with the saints.
The Lord anointed the ministry of the word and the saints responded after the speaking by sharing the portions they were convicted of and enlightened by. Many of them offered prayer for grace to be sanctified and, indeed, serve as priest.
May the Lord's hand follow His words, and may He bless the saints in the church in Lamka to be a glorious golden lampstand.
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