Of Priests and High Priests (Part 2 of 3)

4.  The Pattern of Gethsemane

I remember Gethsemane: all the disciples (priests) entered with Jesus the High Priest into that garden of Passover prayers, but none went with Him beyond their sleeping points to the “yonder” holiest place of sweat and blood, where the ‘covering cherub’ over the ark of that location appeared to Him “from heaven, strengthening him” for the coming day (Luke 22:43-46; Matthew 26:36).   While as High Priest Jesus groaned through the night in that holiest place of intense prayers, all the priests who had entered with Him, at their outer-court station, slept off.

In Hebrews 10:19-22, Paul admonishes us not only to enter into the courts but to “draw near” or proceed with “boldness … into the holiest” place.  In other words, we have all been granted access into God’s presence, with “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”  There is veritably a “service of God” in the outer court with its fervent sacrifices unto God, yet “deep calleth unto deep” in the yearly stillness and silence of the exclusive holiest place (Psalm 42:7), that place of service with God rather than just for Him.

5.  High Priestly Types

There are ministry types that demand daily services in the House of God, with the masses and their perennial concerns with sin and sickness.  Such ‘daily’ ministries understandably keep priests busy, their pleasant voices heard often by many witnesses over many channels, their clothes sometimes soiled with the blood of their many sacrifices.  They are “accomplishing the service of God.”

Flamboyant and regular as those Levites might be in the house of God, they do not represent all the “service of God.”  There are ministries and ministers of a different kind, who do not necessarily minister unto the people but unto the Lord; ministers whose service has little to do with the people’s sacrifices but who service the Lord’s altars of incense and shewbread, ensuring that His flames burn without ceasing even through the darkness of nights.  Those are priests whose service might seem comparatively less rigorous, and without an apparent congregation; ministries whose mandate does not require frequent outward services; ministers who are less front-line in the nature of their call, yet are no less effective in their “service of God.”  These priestly types are scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments, as we shall presently see.

6.  Simeon and Anna

The opening chapter of St Luke’s Gospel tells of two such high priests, not in terms of their titles but in terms of their divine commission, for titles alone do not define every office.  If we judged only by titles, we could miss mighty generals like Lady Jael without a title, and enthrone flashy but abominable Jezebels with mighty billboards announcing their fat self-arrogated labels (Judges 4:21; 5:24-27; Revelation 2:20).

In Luke 2:25-30, the Bible tells of a “man in Jerusalem” – simply a “man,” without a title; a “just and devout” man, filled with the Holy Ghost.  That was the “man” who, guided by the Holy Spirit into the temple at the right time, performed the recorded dedication of baby Jesus.  It was as if that simple act was all that the old man had lived for; all for which “the Holy Ghost was upon him.”

Would God anoint someone with so much grace for so long just for one brief service?  No crusades? No thousand souls saved? No fire called down from heaven, like Elijah?  No centuries-long ministry?  As soon as Simeon had performed that brief ceremony, he was ready to go, and he said to God, “NOW lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”  It will appear that the “word” or mandate he had received from God, “according” to which he had patterned his entire life of silence and waiting, until then, was that brief Baby dedication service.

How do we compare such a one-day minister with someone like Prophet Jeremiah, whose ministry spanned about forty-two years, through four consecutive kings?  How do we judge as successful such an old man who lived all his life ‘wasting’ the Holy Ghost anointing on him, until one brief service after which he said that he was ready to go, as if he had saved the whole world?  Before the Baby Dedication Service, there had been no record of him; after that service, we hear no more of him.  He disappears into eternity, like Melchizedek, who happened suddenly upon Abraham, without recorded ancestry or genealogy, and ‘vanishes’ again out of the narrative after the meeting with Abraham!

In the same ‘infant dedication service’ conducted by Mr Simeon (he was not recorded as an official priest), was another character, a woman, who had lived her eighty years of widowhood in the temple, fasting and praying.  Two lay people, it will appear.  She “departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (v.37).

It says she “SERVED God with fastings and prayers.”  Is that truly service, with no leper healed, no Red Sea divided, no city saved, no epistle written, no synagogue branch opened anywhere during that lifetime?  Eight decades of daily “fastings and prayers” … all that spiritual investment merely for ‘giving thanks’ at a baby dedication service where another untitled old man was officiating?  Given her status as a prophetess, plus her years of consecration in fasting and prayers, didn’t she deserve more?  “Service,” for such a person, should have meant more activities than the thanksgiving speech recorded of her.  Some ecclesiastical juries are bound to judge such a life (or ministry) as rather too passive.  Alas, she was a high priestess of another order, although she never entered the hallowed chambers where titled high priests served every year.

Prophetess Anna’s daily intercessions did not deliver Israel from Roman oppression in her days, and she brought about no documented ‘revival’ to her land.  She was at the Baby dedication service merely to prophetically ‘support’ the motion of the holy man who had been speaking when she arrived.  Could so many years of consecration have been just for the dedication of one little child?  What Child was that?  At least, as far as the Bible records, that was all that she did.

Whereas we have wondered about the comparative worth of yearly high-priestly ministries, Anna’s case seems even worse – eighty years of intense spiritual incubation merely for a few words at a brief ceremony, one day!  I do not understand.  I wonder what profound presence or atmosphere of God she carried with her!  I wonder the divine aura and fragrance, incubated for eighty years, followed her into that brief ‘special service’ of God’s only begotten Son!  By virtue of the calibre of those He brought to that event, that dedication service must have meant much to that Child’s Father.

From The Preacher’s diary,

October 24, 2025.