EXCLUSIVE ANOINTINGS

1. Attractive Distractions

Some oil that comes upon your head inherently excludes you from other oils, meaning that nobody can be everything, no matter how anointed they might be.  God said that David could not build Him a house, because he had been “a man of war” (1 Chronicles 28:3); meanwhile, it was the same God that made him a man of war.  The anointing to war, divine as it was, excluded him from the office or anointing of temple builder.  He was no less a man of God for being only a man of war and not also a temple builder.  Those two could not combine in his life.

For the temple-building ‘ministry,’ David had made elaborate preparations, persuaded that he would build his God a house.  Strangely, God never stopped him all the while that he prepared himself for it, until he had nearly started.  The silence of God all that time had meant something other than endorsement of his noble but wishful plans.

Had David not heard or obeyed God on the matter, he could very earnestly have built the house, and a great house for that matter – in the name of the Lord, because he had the means lavishly; but then, it would properly not have been the house of God, except in name only.  Sometimes the signboards lie (Revelation 3:1).  I have learned one lesson from this: that you can, does not always mean that you should.  Ability is not opportunity.  Every open door is not opened for you.  Some are attractive distractions, or even snares (Proverbs 5:8-9).  Discern your doors (Genesis 24:21, 56).

2. When Prophets are Postmasters

It was to David that God gave the pattern for building the temple, yet he was not to be the builder of what he had been shown.  The builder was to be another, who had received no vision himself but only secondary instructions.  Solomon was to build a house whose blueprints had been shown not to him but to his predecessor.  Had Solomon been my countryman, he would never have accepted that project whose vision was not revealed to him.  How dare anyone suggest that he was another’s inferior!

Every vision is not for the seer.  Sometimes prophets are mere postmasters (Jonah 3:1-2; 2 Samuel 12:1; 2 Kings 20:4-5).

3. Deceived by Strength

There are boundaries with the anointing.  When we fail to recognize or respect those boundaries, we wreck ourselves with pointless labours or even risk leprosy that casts us out – sometimes casts us entirely out of the very primary call.  That was the tragedy of one very successful king the anointing upon whose head had made him a great builder, a great innovator, a great and famous conqueror.  According to his story, he was “marvellously helped” by God.  In other words, there was divine grace upon his life to be successful in those ways.  Call it “anointing,” if you will.  Unfortunately, he mistook one anointing for every anointing, for “when he was strong” (mark that phrase), and especially as stubborn pride set in and shut his ears from all restraints, he crossed the boundaries from the kingly anointing to the priestly, whereas his oil did not possess or permit that particular combination.  He got smitten with a leprosy that promptly drove him not only out of the temple where he had been trespassing but also out of his palace that had made him pompous.  His son took over the throne.  A leper could not be king of Israel (2 Chronicles 26:15-16).  That king was Uzziah.  His name meant “the strength of God,” but his later life seemed to have changed that name to mean “the strength of the flesh.”

Uzziah’s conceited trespass did not only blight him, it blanketed the heavens over his land, such that even mighty prophets like Isaiah in that space apparently could not see or hear God anymore, until “In the year that king Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6:1).  If only that king had learned from the error of King Saul who had slipped at the same spot some two centuries before him, he might have jumped the hurdle (1 Samuel 13:9-13).  Running has rules (2 Timothy 2:5).  That is the wisdom of the lines on race tracks.  The fastest runner that breaches the lane of the slowest runner forfeits the medal, ending as much without a medal as the one that was last, or those that never even ran.

4. Ministerial Specifics and Combinations

Ministerial ‘specializations’ can be as clearly demarcated as when Paul asks, “Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? 30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?” (1 Corinthians 12:29-30), and when he states that there are definite offices such as those of the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, and the teacher (Ephesians 4:11).  Among other things, Jesus was also distinguishing divine roles when He identified the three categories of those that God had sent to the Jews, and still sends: prophets that announce, wise men that counsel, and scribes that write (Matthew 23:34).  Despite their diverse expressions, you can put all messengers of God into any of those three modal categories, or a combination of them.

Distinct as each oil is, however, certain combinations and restrictions exist, as foreshadowed in the Old Testament by the “holy anointing oil” with which priests were ordained into their office, and spaces and vessels of the temple sanctified.  That holy oil for consecrating men and materials was a combination of select fragrances (or graces) and oil, but it carried a caveat, namely that for anyone else to attempt the holy combinations or put the oil upon common flesh was to risk death (Exodus 30:22-38).  In other words, the boundaries of the oil could not be breached without consequences.  The combinations, though common knowledge, could not be commonly attempted.  Only God and the priesthood had the copyright.

God is still the Mixer of the parts and the Giver of the combinations (1 Corinthians 12: 4-11).  There are prophets, like Isaiah; intercessors, like Nehemiah; and others still in whom both oils are combined, who are intercessory prophets, like Jeremiah; plus the reverse case of prophetic intercessors, as we might say of Hannah the mother of Samuel.  In other words, prophets, intercessors, intercessory prophets, and prophetic intercessors.

There are pastors, like Timothy; pastoral prophets, like the shepherd-like Hosea; and evangelistic prophets of opposite fiery temperament, like Jonah and Joel.  I may speak of Elijah as a type of an apostolic prophet, and of Paul as a prophetic apostle, one being the anointed reverse of the other.  There are priests, there are teachers, and there is also the “teaching priest” in whom both oils are combined, according to 2 Chronicles 15:3.  There are ‘single-honour’ teachers and prophets, as we find in the church at Antioch (Acts 13:1), but there are also teaching prophets of ‘double-honours,’ like Judas and Silas (Acts 15:32-33), and the reverse case of prophetic teachers, too (Isaiah 40:1-2; Acts 6:10; Luke 21:15).

There are singular oils, and there are combinations of priestly fragrances.  But whatever the category, none is inferior or superior to the other, and despite the combinations, there are still lines separating the lanes. Sometimes we cross the lines out of naivety, sometimes out of pride, sometimes out of presumptuous zeal – like Uzzah, and as David might have done.  Sometimes, still, we cross the line because we fear that we would be outshone by the other.  Then we raise ‘protective’ competing alternative altars at Dan and Bethel, to restrain sincere seekers from the Pentecost at Jerusalem, by which territorial fears in the unfortunate spirit of Jeroboam the people are ensnared into institutionalized idolatry that curses our very throne and the tyrannical territory too (1 Kings 12:26-32).

We might walk with our hands, but never as perfectly as with our legs; we might breathe through the mouth as well as through the nostrils, but they know the difference who have ever been smitten with impervious starchy catarrh.  He is no fool that drew the lines.

5. Lessons from the Wise

Solomon was the wisest man that ever was, yet he had advisers; older men who “counselled” him (1 Kings 12:6, NLT, Good News).  Probably not foolish me if I had been that wisest king.  David was prophet and king, yet he would often call or hear from Nathan the prophet/seer to know the mind of God (1 Chronicles 17:3-4).  David was the man after God’s heart, but when it came to matters of the ark of his God, he respected the Levites whose oil should be speaking in those spheres (1 Chronicles 15:2).  If David had been a General Overseer in my day, there may have been more casualties than Uzzah the trespasser whose name meant “strength” – who also was probably fooled by his strength (2 Samuel 6:7).

We may all multi-task, but even nature teaches us that some roles are exclusive of others.  For example, being male means that one cannot also be female, despite the plastic surgeries and hormone therapies.  The voice of DNA will always be insistent with a verdict against the madness of an age.  Being a police officer means that one is not also an air force officer, even if one is similarly dressed, carries a firearm, and flies the police helicopter.  One can be a father and a police officer and a pastor and a caregiver at the same time, but one cannot be the president of the United States and the vice president of China at the same time.  Some oils are exclusive of other oils.  However, when pride blinds the imperial Uzziah from recognizing that, or the strong Uzzah from respecting it, casualties are inevitable. Unfortunately, sometimes, because the casualties are not as spectacular as in the cases of Strong Uzzah (the presumptuous priest) and Strong Uzziah (the pompous king), we do not always know and we do not mourn.

6. Stoned into Place

Early in his life, at the very start of his call, Paul was diligent to enquire, “Lord, what wilt thou have ME to do?” (Acts 9:6).  He seemed to have been answered so perfectly that he would later often identify himself clearly as the Apostle to the Gentiles, as Peter was to the Jews, thus recognizing the distinct oils between himself and that upon the other eminent apostle (Galatians 2:7-8; Romans 11:13; 2 Timothy 1:11).

Paul not only respected the lines between himself and the other, but recognized also that difference was no degree, that “different from” did not mean “better than” or “less than” (Romans 3:9; 1 Corinthians 4:7).  But it didn’t come easy for Paul.  It took repeated stoning and nearly death before he would cross over to the unpopular territory where he really belonged, crying, “I will go unto the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46; 18:6).  He got stoned into his proper place – ironically saved by the same stones that had been meant to silence him.  Had the Jews not thus driven him off with dangerous stones, he might have enjoyed a ‘successful’ ministry among them while wasting his years and his labour on that wrong side of a good field.

7. Wasted Sweat

If it should take stones to save some, may God send them.  Much sweat could be the visible sign of much labour, yet not all sweat is rewarded, no matter how profuse.  Ask them at the Olympics. Alas, how much sweat David would have expended and proudly exhibited if he had presumptuously proceeded to build the great house with his bloodied hands that played the harps in acceptable praise to God yet should not also build the temple of the Lord!  God could receive the offering of his psalms, but not also of a house. The two offerings, according to Jehovah, were exclusive of themselves.  The oil ordains, but some oil means that another does not combine with it.

Moses was called by the Lord, yet how presumptuous it would have been of him to try to build the temple vessels that Bezaleel and Aholiab had been ordained to do (Exodus 31:1-6)!  If all were seers, who would walk the eyes to their lovely sites?  If all were speakers, who would hear for them to answer?  If all were city preachers, who would save the interior?  And if we should deride the altars of the interior as inferior, how foolishly we would have misread the lines!  If we should forsake our humble sling for the loftier sword of Saul, how blindly we would have prolonged the days of the reproachful adversary in the Valley of Elah … “and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14)?

Much sweat could be the commendable sign of much labour, yet sweat is never rewarded for the sake of sweat.  If it will take the stones to force sense into certain souls seduced by strength to cross forbidden lines, O Lord, Thou knowest.

From The Preacher’s diary
June 25, 2024.