Deborah13
Member
Paul taught the different gifts, some were pastors, some were teachers.
Pastors could teach and preach but they were to oversee the flock.
A noble task indeed.
But were the Levites ever given this task or were they to always point towards God?
"The Lord is my shepherd"...
I ask this because I don't see it, I may be wrong.
I'm honestly not sure what you are looking for.
I see pastors living with the people and teaching them God Word.
I see rabbis doing the same today.
I see levites doing the same then, rabbis by a different name.
When one lives with the people (their flock) teaching God's Word they are watching over them. They will naturally be drawn into the peoples lives. Just like today the people turn to their pastor or rabbi for all kinds of help, with marriages, children, decision making of all kinds. The pastor or rabbi will tell them when their behaviors are out of line with God's Word (he will judge) which the levites did as well but even on a larger scale because there was not a separate government entity to do that.
There is another scripture that I think supports this view of how levites position compares to a pastors. It instructs the people not to forget to care for the poor, the widow, and the levite that live among them (in their cities, area). This says to me that the 9% of the tithe that was given to the Levites as a group and shared among them, was not always enough to sustain them. Somewhere there is a scripture but I can't remember where, that allows the levite to have outside work to make other subsistence besides what they receive from the people.
There were actually two groups of from the tribe of Levi. The regular levites, descendants of two of Levi's sons (lived with the people) and the Levites who were priests of the temple. They were a separate group that were descendents of Levi's third son. Today I believe these are called the Kohan. jasonc may correct me on this but I think that's correct?
So to bring this around to the statement that started this, "that we are the Levites" the kings and priests, I think they were correct in this statement.
When Paul tells the church at Corinth to turn the guy over to satan and says don't you know you will judge...." he wasn't talking to A pastor, he was talking to the whole church, all the people. For the sake of order the people choose people to administer the different functions in the church. Pastors, elders, financial admin., etc. But all the people are responsible for all the things needed by the church as a whole.
Sorry for the very long post everyone, I wish I knew how to not be so wordy.