Leviticus Briefing 21

Message Title: The Law of the Meal Offering

Lev. 6:18 Every male among the children of Aaron shall eat of it; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations from Jehovah's offerings by fire; whoever touches them shall be holy.

one of the point of the meal offering is that it is food for the priests, as well as the portion offered to Jehovah for His satisfaction. but the common people are not allowed to eat this holy food. 

God's intention is to have a kingdom of priests. God wants all His people to be priests to serve Him. but because of the failure of Israel, only one tribe was willing to stand with God, which made God reward this tribe, the tribe of Levi with the priesthood. but this definitely is not God's original intention. so when we talk about priests, we are not talking about a special class of people, but every believer, every child of God. 

Every believer is a priest

as the New Testament believers, we are all priests of God. we become priests of God be regeneration. this does not mean that we all must quit our jobs and go to serve the Lord as full timers. we can be a priest of God while we are a doctor, a school teacher, or a business man. we can still be full time serving the Lord with a job. we all have received the heavenly calling to be the priest of God. the first aspect of the priesthood is to bring sinners back to God. but in reality, we always excuse oursevels with busying and occupied by our occupation, and leave all the things to the so-called "priests" to do. but all these should be our excuses. no matter what kind of job we have, the real profession of us is to serve God, and we should do this 24 hours a day, this should be our priority. 

Every Male among the children of Aaron

this typifies the enjoyment of Christ is given to the stronger ones among the believers. does this mean that we have no portion of the enjoyment, if we think ourselves as weak ones?? No. this means that everyday, we should offer strong petition to the Lord, "Lord, have mercy on me!" our situation is so disappointing to us, which is only suitable for the mercy of God. we have no way to think that we are strong enough in our life to be qualified to receive the portion of the meal offering. we may think we have much daily enjoyment. but no matter how much we enjoy Christ daily, we are still short of the enjoyment. we have so many problems in daily life, because our enjoyment of Christ is short. so everyda, we need to cry out to the Lord. "have mercy on me, Lord!"

we need to see, need to be brought into the enlightment, be brought into the shining. no matter how long we have been saved, as the children of light, we must be brought into the divine light, to see God's economy, the universal priesthood. 

the conditions for us to enjoy Christ as the meal offering

1. we would serve God as priests.

2. we need to be the stronger ones in life

if we check with our experience, we do have some enjoyment of Christ. but we do not enjoy that much. the reason why we do not have that much enjoyment is that we do not serve God that much. this exposes our shortage and lack in the enjoyment of Christ. this is a sobering word to warn us, since we all need to give our account to the Lord at the day of judgement. so it is better that we ask for and receive His mercy today, and we endeavor to enjoy more Christ today.