Numbers 8:10–12

The children of Levi belonged to the Lord as His redeemed. He saved them when He judged sin, and they were themselves offered as an offering to the Lord. Laying on hands joined the man who did it to the victim. If it was an offering for sin, the offering was identified with the sinner in his sin. If it was a burnt offering, the offerer was identified with the value of the victim's consecration to God's glory in the matter of sin. Romans 15:16 points back to this consecration of the Levites, and sees the church offered to God in the same way from among the Gentiles. The Israelites laid their hands on the Levites too. So the whole people were, in a sense, identified with them in this consecration, as an offering they made to the Lord. In this way the Levites represented them before Him.

It is the same Hebrew word for "lay" as in Deuteronomy 34:9, where Moses laid his hands on Joshua; and as in Numbers 8:10, where the Israelites laid their hands on the Levites, expressing fellowship or identity for special service in each case.

The whole congregation of the people identified themselves with the Levites by laying on hands. This rite shows its force here. By it the people identified themselves with the service, so that they counted as serving their God in the service of the Levites.

The act of laying on hands expressed identification. So the Levites give us a distinct view of the people of God in the wilderness. They present them to us as a company of earnest workers — and note, not as casual labourers running here and there, each doing what seemed right in his own eyes. Nothing of the sort.

By laying their hands on the Levites, the people owned that they were one with them. From now on the Levites would stand in the place of their firstborn sons to do the Lord's work. They fully owned God's rightful claim on their firstborn. They also acknowledged His way of redeeming their children from a service He could rightly have demanded.

This is very beautiful, and also a striking display of God's grace. God chose the Levites out of Israel for the service of the tabernacle. Yet the whole congregation was identified with them, as their laying on of hands showed. And Aaron presented the Levites to the Lord as the gift of the children of Israel. They belonged to the Lord, who claimed them because He had delivered them from Egypt through judgment. Still He will receive them as the gift of His people, so that His people stand represented before Him in all the service of the Levites.

How happy we are when we fully recognise the rights of the Lord, and at the same time find our own portion so much the better. We are not poorer because a thing is the Lord's. We are so much the richer, because His things are ours.

In verses 10 and 11 the Levites come before the Lord and are offered to Him, so that they may serve Him. All this happens under the direction of priestly communion. God first brings the whole Church to Himself, and then sets it in service under spiritual priestly direction... No service is intelligent or reasonable unless it springs from priestly communion with the Lord. An intention to obey is not enough on its own. It is communion which gives power and intelligence in service.

The Levites were given to Aaron and his sons, just as the church is given to Christ, the true Priest and Son over the house of God. They were given for the service of the house. Israel first offered them to the Lord for His service through Aaron the priest (v. 11). It was a wave offering (tenupha) — that is, they were presented before the Lord as consecrated to Him.

Then the Levites were offered as a wave offering before the Lord (v.11). This may seem strange, since the Levites were probably not waved in a literal way. Still, it was called a wave offering because, as servants of God, they were identified in picture with Christ ascended to the right hand of God. For Christ, ascended in glory, provides all ministry today (Eph. 4:8). Therefore, ministry is from heaven, on a far higher level than anything earthly.

On that day all the Levites were publicly consecrated to God's service — all the firstborn in Israel belonged to Him (Ex. 13:2), but He accepted the Levites in their place, as far as their numbers went, man for man. A heave offering here, as in the other cases, would have been out of place. It was not some of the firstborn whom God claimed, nor some of the Levites that He accepted.

The Levites were chosen out of Israel for the service of the tabernacle, yet the whole congregation was identified with them. Their laying on of hands showed it. What is more, Aaron presented the Levites to the Lord as the gift of the children of Israel... Do we not learn this? Service is individual in its responsibility to the Lord. Yet it is still rendered on behalf of His people, and in connection with their unity.

Turn to Numbers 8 and you find the account of the "offering up" of the Levites before the Lord, in the place of the firstborn of the children of Israel, that "they may do the service of the LORD"... Read in this light, Paul regarded his preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles as a priestly service. His aim was that the nations might be presented to God as an acceptable offering, through the infinite value and power of the sacrifice of Christ, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

The Levites are first offered to God. (v. 13.) "After that the Levites shall go in to serve at the tent of meeting." (v. 15.) Here is the true character of service — "first gave themselves to God," then God employs them... The service of the Levites was entirely the consequence of their being the Lord's. "The Levites shall be mine." (v. 14.) For as it is written, "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price." (1 Cor. 6:20.) It is blessed to say, "My beloved is mine;" but it is greater progress and a deeper joy to say, "I am His."

The Levites were given as a gift to Aaron and to his sons, for service in the tabernacle of the congregation... Given to Him for salvation, as every believer is, we have also to remember that we are a gift to Him for His absolute disposal. Our only proper attitude, therefore, is that of Saul of Tarsus, who said, "Lord, what do You want me to do?"

Does this not show that all true Levitical service aims at supporting priestly service in the presence of God? This is the real goal of all true ministry: that worship to our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ may be the result.

The Levites laid their hands on both the sin offering and the burnt offering. This act of laying on hands expressed one simple fact: identification. But how different the result in each case! When Levi laid his hands on the head of the sin offering, it transferred all his sins to the victim — all his guilt, all his fierceness, cruelty, and self-will. When he laid his hands on the head of the burnt offering, the transfer ran the other way. It gave Levi everything that made the sacrifice acceptable, all its perfection... That weighty passage at the close of 2 Corinthians 5 sums up the teaching of all this: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Here we have presented to us, in type, the two grand aspects of the death of Christ. The sin offering gives us the one; the burnt offering gives us the other... In the sin offering, we see Christ bearing sin in His own body on the tree, and enduring the wrath of God against sin. In the burnt offering, we see Christ glorifying God even in the very matter of making atonement for sin. Both make atonement. But the sin offering measures atonement by the depth of the sinner's need. The burnt offering measures it by Christ's devotedness to God. In the one, we see how hateful sin is; in the other, how precious Christ is.

Looking at Levi by nature, we could see that his character was such that God would have no fellowship with him at all. Left to himself, Levi would stay forever in his own home, in the company of the "instruments of cruelty" that were there. But God will not leave him there. So God Himself must provide the remedy. God Himself must cleanse this self-willed, cruel and fierce man.

It teaches very plainly that no one can render true service without the sense of acceptance in Christ... Putting their hands on the head of the sin offering transferred, so to speak, their guilt to the bull. Before it was offered, the bull became identified with their sin. The same action with the burnt offering worked the other way: the Levites became identified with all the acceptance of its sweet fragrance as it burned on the altar. There was in this way clearance from guilt and positive acceptance.

In verse 12 the Levites laid their hands on the head of the sin offering, the whole company thus standing guilty before God. They laid them on the burnt offering too, and that identified them fully as accepted in all the perfectness of Christ's sacrifice — a sweet fragrance to God. Just as He bore our sins, which were laid on Him, so God accepts all our services through the burnt offering. Laying my hand on the burnt offering identifies me with the fragrance of Christ in the presence of God.

In the offerings that went with their consecration there was no peace offering, because it was a question of service and not of communion. But they did offer the sacrifices that represented the effectiveness of the atonement, and the devotedness of the Lord Jesus even to death. These marked out the ground and nature of their service... In the application the sin offering comes first.