Lastly, a priest is a person who builds up the dwelling place of God. The priesthood was necessary for the building up of the tabernacle and later for the building of the temple and the recovery of the temple. Christ is the Builder of the temple with the priesthood. Zechariah 6:12 and 13 say, “And speak to him, saying, Thus speaks Jehovah of hosts, saying, Here is a man, whose name is the Shoot; and He will shoot forth from His place and will build the temple of Jehovah. Indeed, it is He who will build the temple of Jehovah; and He will bear majesty and will sit and rule on His throne; and He will be a priest on His throne; and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them.” The man whose name is the Shoot is Christ. As the Builder of God’s temple, He needed to be the Priest. This shows us that it is the priesthood that builds up the temple of God.
Christ is also the life of the priests. The tree of life signifies that God is our enjoyment in Christ as the Holy Spirit (Gen. 2:9; John 10:10b). The person who enjoys Christ the most is the priest. What the priests are and what the priests put on is Christ. Their clothing is Christ, and their dwelling place is Christ. In those forty years in the wilderness, the people of Israel enjoyed manna. The priests, however, enjoyed a richer portion of Christ day by day. The people enjoyed a simple, small portion of manna, but the priests day by day, even in the wilderness, enjoyed the offerings as a richer, fuller portion of Christ in His different aspects. Many people in today’s Christianity appreciate the manna, but the enjoyment of manna is a sign of wandering. Those who enjoy manna are in the wilderness, not in the rest or in the tabernacle. Those who are in the tabernacle enjoy not merely manna but all the riches of the offerings, even in the wilderness. Today the majority of the church are like the people of Israel in the wilderness. However, a minority, a small number, are like the priests, enjoying Christ in a fuller way in the tabernacle.
That Christ is the life of the priests is indicated by their clothing. All the elements of the tabernacle are on the clothing of the priests. The tabernacle is covered with linen, and the robes of the priest are made of linen. Within the tabernacle is gold, and on the robes of the priest there is gold to hold the precious stones (Exo. 28:5-8, 15-21). This signifies that every aspect and item of the clothing of the priests are portions of Christ. On the breastplate of the robe there are twelve stones with the names of the twelve tribes, indicating that the twelve tribes are transformed into precious stones, held by the gold, and built up together. In the flow of the river in Genesis 2 there was onyx, a precious stone, and on the shoulder pieces of the priest’s robe are two onyx stones (Gen. 2:12; Exo. 28:9-12). The priests have Christ as their righteousness, signified by the white linen; Christ as their sanctification, signified by the gold; and Christ as their transformation, signified by the precious stones. They also have Christ as their glorification, signified by the shining of the stones, and Christ as their building up, signified by the twelve stones built together in the gold settings. All these are different aspects of Christ. The eating, clothing, housing, and everything in the life of the priests are Christ.
The function of the priests is always to minister Christ either to man or to God. When they offer the sacrifices, they minister Christ to God. When they share the sacrifices with the people, they minister Christ to the people. The key point of the function of the priests, however, is not to offer sacrifices but to burn the incense. According to Exodus and Leviticus, the priests were charged to burn the incense as their central service. Then whenever they burn the incense, they also have to light the lamps of the lampstand and set the bread of the Presence.
Our function today is to burn the incense. This is not merely to pray but to offer the resurrected Christ to God in prayer. When we come together in the meeting, we do not mainly offer the sacrifices. Rather, the main thing we do is offer the incense. When we come together to meet, are we in the outer court or in the Holy Place? The meeting for preaching the gospel is a meeting in the outer court, but Christian meetings such as the prayer meeting and the Lord’s table meeting are in the Holy Place. In these meetings we offer the incense, that is, the resurrected Christ, to God in our prayer. By doing this, at the same time we light the lamps. As we offer prayer with the incense, people are enlightened. At the same time also we set the bread of the Presence upon the table to feed people.
In the past we have said that we offer Christ as the offerings in the meetings. This is still true. The younger ones among us offer the Lord as the offerings. The more experienced ones, however, offer the Lord as the incense. Do you like to offer the offerings, or do you like to offer the incense? We would rather offer the incense. However, we cannot pretend to do this. If we do not have the experience of the incense, it is hard to offer the incense; we simply do not have it. We may have only the experience and enjoyment of Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering. We may say that this is wonderful and adequate, but this is still in the outer court. We have to experience Christ more deeply. Then whenever we open our mouth, we will offer the incense instead of only the offerings. In this way, the function of the priests is always to minister Christ, not only to the people but also to God.
We should not say that the first priest in the Bible was Aaron or even Melchisedec. Abel made an offering to God (Gen. 4:4), and no doubt Adam already had done the same thing. Noah also offered to God as a priest (8:20), and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each built an altar and offered something to God (12:7; 26:25; 33:20). None of them when they offered sought an “official” priest to make the offering for them. This proves that every chosen person of God is a priest. As we have seen, a priest is one who serves God by enjoying God in Christ. God’s intention is that all His people enjoy Him as priests. God’s original intention was to present Himself as the tree of life to be enjoyed by man, and those who enjoy God the most are the priests.
In Egypt when all the people of Israel offered the Passover lamb, there was no official priest to do this for them. Rather, every family offered the Passover by themselves. This again shows that God intends all of His chosen ones to be the priests. After the people of Israel were brought out of Egypt and led to Mount Sinai, the Lord told them, “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exo. 19:6a). It is as if He said, “I brought you out of Egypt to be a nation of priests. Every one of you is a priest. No one has any need to hire someone else. You yourselves are the priests.”
Revelation 20:6 speaks of those who will be priests for a thousand years, and 22:3 says, “His slaves will serve Him.” To serve Him is to be a priest for eternity. Who will be the final priests? It will be all His redeemed ones, who share in the New Jerusalem. They will be the final priests eternally.
By all this we can see that our function as believers is not a small matter. We do not see much proper functioning among Christians today, because many do not have the adequate realization and experience. In these days, however, the Lord will recover our service. We will realize more and more, and we will come into more experiences of Christ. Then we will be able to function properly.