I know this is long and I encourage you to read it. After the verses in Numbers is Spurgeon’s commentary, it was true then as it is today.
Burden bearers or bearing burdens?
Enjoy & blessings!
The Duties of the Gershonites
(Numbers 3:21–26; 1 Chronicles 23:7–11)
21And the LORD said to Moses, 22“Take a census of the Gershonites as well, by their families and clans, 23from thirty to fifty years old, counting everyone who comes to serve in the work at the Tent of Meeting.
24This is the service of the Gershonite clans regarding work and transport: 25They are to carry the curtains of the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting with the covering of fine leather over it, the curtains for the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, 26the curtains of the courtyard, and the curtains for the entrance at the gate of the courtyard that surrounds the tabernacle and altar, along with their ropes and all the equipment for their service. The Gershonites will do all that needs to be done with these items.
27All the service of the Gershonites—all their transport duties and other work—is to be done at the direction of Aaron and his sons; you are to assign to them all that they are responsible to carry. 28This is the service of the Gershonite clans at the Tent of Meeting, and their duties shall be under the direction of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest.
The Gershonites were burden bearers!
“There are some of us who can be very glad and merry, for we have naturally great elasticity of spirit, yet we are bowed down, day after day, by the apostasy of the professing church of this present age, and by the way in which everything is followed except Christ. Every kind of false doctrine is popular nowadays, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is derided as old-fashioned and out of date, and I know not what. Sometimes, the very bread we eat seems bitter, and the air we breathe is contaminated, because of the sin that is everywhere around us.
Well, dear friends, whenever you feel depressed and burdened on this account, so that you go like one who misses the light of the sun, say to yourself, “It must be so, this is what must happen to those who are of an earnest, burning spirit. They must be consumed with grief by reason of the iniquities of the times, for it is appointed unto the families of the Gershonites that they shall serve by bearing burdens, and this is our burden.”
I might say much more upon this head, but I will not, for you all know that the burdens which God puts upon His children, or allows others to lay upon them, are very many and very varied. But this is the comfort of it, their burdens are all for the Lord. If they are in a right state of heart, this burden-bearing is true service for the Lord.
Remember how Peter wrote, “For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called.” If the buffeting comes upon you for Christ’s sake, you are, in some sense, made partakers of His sufferings, and you shall also be partakers of His glory.
A true child of God lives wholly for God. He is not merely a Christian when he goes up to the place of worship, and sings the praise of the Lord, but he seeks to live for God as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning, and until he closes them again at night. It is for God that he eats and drinks and for God that he buys, and sells, and works, and gives, or saves, or does whatever it is right for him to do.”
The Levite of old had no business to do in the world but the business of God, and the true Christian is in the same condition, for though he keeps a shop, or ploughs the fields, he keeps shop for Jesus, and ploughs the fields for Jesus. He is not his own master, but he is the servant of Another, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is his joy to labor faithfully as a steward and a servant on behalf of his Master. (Spurgeon)
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