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Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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Contents|| Preface || 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || 10 || 11 ||12 ||13 || 14 ||

 

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Christ on Earth Again


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CHAPTER VI
A NEW CONSTITUTION


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THOUGH rebuilt "as in the days of old", the fallen house of David will not be built upon the same plan. It will be a new and more glorious edifice in every way. There will be a change in the law and a change in the administrators thereof, though certain elements in the old law and certain features in the old administration will be retained. This is the testimony: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of ]udah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jer. 31 : 31).
Jesus identifies himself and his work with this new covenant, in saying at the breaking of bread, " This cup is the new covenant (R.V.) in my blood which is shed for you" (Luke 22: 20). Paul places Jesus right in the kernel of it in saying: "He is the mediator of a better covenant which was established on better
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promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant ... " (Heb. 8 : 6-8).
The setting aside of the old covenant for this new covenant involves the introduction of a new priesthood. This is Paul's argument in Heb.
7 : 15: "After the similitude of Melchizedek there ariseth another priest, who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life . . . There is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof." "The priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.;' Christ is the high priest of the new covenant, as Aaron was of the old. His office is first employed in the development of "his own house", "whose house are we if we hold fast ... " (Heb. 3: 6). When they are developed, they are changed to his glorious state, and incorporated in his priesthood as the sons of Aaron were under the law of Moses. They become "kings and priests unto God", in which capacity they are to "reign on the earth H (Rev. 5 : 10). They are a royal priesthood now in a preliminary sense, offering the incense of praise and the sacrifices of a spiritual service (1 Pet. 2: 9) : but their " ma~ifestation " as kings and priests unto God (Rom. 8: 19; Rev. 1: 6) is reserved for the day of power and glory when they shall, with Christ, judge the world (1 Cor. 6: 2) and reign with him (2 Tim. 2 : 12).
God Himself says to them: " Ye shall be named the priests of the Lord: men shall call you the ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves" (Isa. 61 : 6). This language is not addressed to Israel after the flesh except in so far as they form
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the outer fringe of the true Israel "to whom the promises are made". The words are addressed to the true Israel who, in all their generations, wait for the consolation of Israel, and arise from death at the Lord's coming to see and share it (Isa. 66 : 10, 13; Mal. 3 : 16, 18). This is evident from the introductory verses. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me" (that is, Christ, as Jesus declared in the Nazareth synagogue-Luke 4: 18, 21) "because the Lord hath anointed me to . . . comfort all that mourn . . . to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Jesus settled the application of these promises in his words to the disciples:
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Blessed are ye that mourn, for ye shall be comforted. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh" (Matt. 5: 4; Luke 6: 21).
It is the saints at the resurrection, therefore, of whom it is written :Ye shall be named the priests of
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the Lord, and men shall call you the ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves ". Why are they to be named "priests", and called "ministers"? Because they are to be so: "priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years" (Rev. 20: 6). Here, then, is an immortal order of priests having to do with men. As it is added,
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Their seed (that is, their sort, their kind, even the seed of Abraham which they are-Gal. 3: 29), shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people. All that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed" (Isa. 61 : 9).
But as Aaron and his sons had the tribe of Levi placed at their disposal for the service of the tabernacle (Num. 8: 19), so the mortal Levitical order are placed at the disposal of the Melchizedek kingpriest of the new constitution and his sons (for the
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brethren of Christ a~·e also considered as his children _If I and the children which God hath given me ").
This is a feature made visible in 11 the ordinances of the house ", shewn to Ezekiel in vision. In this vision there are two orders of priests. The one-the lower order-is described (chap. 40: 45) as 11 the keepers of the charge of the house ", and the other as 11 the keepers of the charge of the altar" (verse 46). That there is a much greater difference between them than would at first sight appear from this description is manifest from the definition of their duties, and the explanatory comment with which the definition is accompanied. Of the one-the lower order-it is said, They shall not come near unto me
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to do the office of a priest unto me, nor to come near to any of my holy things in the most holy" (Ezek.
44 : 13). Of the other, the first order, it is said,
THEY SHALL COME NEAR TO ME to minister unto me : and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord God. They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge" (verses 15, 16).
Here is a complete contrast. The reason given is still more indicative of a great difference between the two orders. In brief, this reason may be said to be: The reward of obedience in the one case, the punishment of disobedience in the other. In the one case, it is thus defined: "The priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near". In the other it is thus given: If The Levites that are gone away far from me when Israel went astray, which went astray from me after their idols, they shall even bear their iniquity".
The full nature of the difference is not apparent in Ezekiel. We are indebted to the further revelation by Jesus and the apostles for a knowledge of
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details indicated, though not clearly disclosed, to the prophets. That one order of priests is immortal and the other mortal, is not stated in so many words, but it is involved in what is said, and it is necessitated by the revela.tion elsewhere that the High Priest of the new order is the righteous Son of David, who is to bear the glory, and sit and rule as priest on his throne (Zech. 6 : 13), and that the glorified brethren of "that Righteous One" are to rule with him as kings and priests.
The idea that Ezekiel's statements concerning the sons of Zadok are inconsistent with the fact of their being immortal, is based upon a misleading appearance in the wording of this part of the vision. It is supposed that they are referred to in the regulations concerning marriage (44: 22), which are rightly held to be inapplicable to those who shall "neither marry nor be given in marriage" (Luke
20: 35). The supposition appears to be favoured by the absence of a distinctly marked transition from one order to the other in the discourse concerning the priests, after the introduction of the parenthetic allusion to the sons of Zadok. Verse 17, by the use of the pronoun " they", appears to speak of the sons of Zadok, who are spoken of in verse 15; but that it is not the sons of Zadok but the Levites that are spoken of in verse 17 and after, is manifest from verse 19, that they shall "go forth into the outer court to the people", which is the office of the Levites, and not of the sons of Zadok, as is plainly stated in verse 11: "They (the Levites) shall slay the burnt offering, and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before them to minister unto them, because they ministered unto them before their idols". But as for the sons of Zadok, "They shall -come near to me to minister unto me" (verse 15).
Consequently, we are compelled to understand the Levites to be spoken of in the verses in question,
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which describe duties applicable only to them. That these verses should appear to apply to the sons of Zadok is due to the introduction of a parenthesis at verse 15, which is not formally indicated. Verses 14 and 17 must be read consecutively to get the true sense: "But I will make them (the Levites) keepers of the charge of the house for all the service thereof, and for all that shall be done therein ... And it shall come to pass that when they enter in at the gates of the inner court (for they shall have charge at the gates of the house, see verse 11) they shall be clothed in linen garments . . . They shall not gird themselves with anything causing sweat, ... neither shall they take for wives a widow . . ."
The second (mortal) grade of priests being in question in these verses, there is none of the difficulty of sweat and marriage that many naturally feel on the first reading. If the question be asked why the distinction was not more clearly indicated, we can only say it is not the only case where the pronoun is employed with reference to.sense merely, and not as the equivalent of a grammatical antecedent. In a similar case in Matthew, it has been contended that it was Simon the Cyrenian that was crucified and not Jesus (see Matt. 27: 32, 35). This was, of course, a perverse contention, because the context entirely excludes such an absurdity. Still it had the same ground-the absence of a clear association of the pronoun. In this other case, the context shows the right application of the pronoun, and relieves the subject of a difficulty that is only apparent.
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