Do you like worshipping God? Imagine you were a Levite reading this, you might feel cornered. Your job being to worship God for everyone else. To serve at the altar, to sing and play instruments over the ark, the presence of God. But you want to be a bricklayer, craftsman, farmer, baker. You want to be normal. It seems though the orderly worship of God is of utmost importance. God knows that His people need to keep Him central and how easy it will be for them to stray.
These Levites had many appointed duties, they knew what to do. There service was for the whole community. It kept before the nation the ways of the Lord. It demonstrated their complete dependence on God and their incompleteness without Him. The Levites in the past had demonstrated righteous zeal for God, even to the point of violence.
This post gives a great explanation of the Levites. https://knowingscripture.com/articles/levites-class-of-warrior-priests
This divine appointment of just one group is now usurped by the ‘priesthood of all believers’ we now enjoy. We are all called as a priestly nation:
‘…you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 2:5, NIV)
The pattern of worship continues. We need to keep Christ central in our hearts, to not drift far from our dependence on Him. We need to join the sacred and secular, indeed all that is secular has moved into the sacred realm. We worship as we work, play, love and live!
Do you sometimes wish you were someone else? A farmer content to fix fences, plough fields, enjoy the provision of seasons and God given weather throughout the year. A baker that makes good bread. A missionary in a far-off land bringing Good News to people for the first time. Someone who feels the world through their hands, like a builder. We cannot be all things, do all things, even though we are able, we are limited by time bound humanity and a society still structured religiously around its allocations of functions.
However, we are all able to be priests. To worship God, pray direct to Him and offer ourselves as living sacrifices, and this us surely holy and pleasing to God. (Romans 12:1)
Read 1 Peter 2:4-10.
Give thanks today for the place God has put you.
Think about the broader community that you serve.
Ask God to show you if there is another place for you to serve.
This day, offer yourself as a living sacrifice in all you do and say.