Appointed Duties

I was reading through Numbers today and something caught my attention. In chapter 4, the duties of the Levites were being defined specifically for each family—Aaron and his sons who were the priests, the sons of Kohath, the sons of Gershon, and the sons of Merari. What I found interested was throughout the chapter, the Lord specifically assigned duties for each family so that everyone had a roll and no job was left undone.

Often as Christians we can become jealous about what the Lord is doing through the life of another believer. We want to have their life and be assigned their duties rather than being faithful with what the Lord has entrusted to us. On the flip side, we can wonder why other Christians aren’t helping us with our work. They seem to only be concerned with what they are doing that they don’t stop to offer to help us.

My friends, the Lord has given us each a specific task for His kingdom…one that we are designed to do, that no one else can do. It would be slighting the Lord if we thought we knew better than He, thinking we would be better suited for a different task or someone else for ours.

Throughout the chapter God says to “appoint each of them to his service and his task,” “appoint to them all their tasks as their duty,” “assign to each man by name the items he must carry,” “each according to his service and according to his task.” Everyone had a job to be performed “to do the work of service and the work of bearing burdens” in order that the tabernacle, the place of God’s dwelling, might be taken care of.

We, as Christians, are the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the church His body. If we are too busy striving to be something we’re not, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 12:14-27, we will be divided as a body and accomplish nothing, which is exactly what the enemy, Satan, wishes to accomplish in the church. Run your race in your lane. Let us stop quarreling and complaining, but be faithful to the end with what the Lord has given us that He might say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”