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Hillview Bible Chapel is a vibrant Bible-based church centered on the Lord Jesus Christ, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Join us each week as we learn from God's Word together. To learn more about Hillview Bible Chapel, please visit https://hillviewbiblechapel.org
Go ahead and open your Bibles up to 1 Peter chapter 2.
And we're talking about a topic that I'm really excited to talk about today, which is the royal priesthood of believers.
Before we get into it, I want to put a little picture in you guys' mind.
So imagine you've got a kid that has a great imagination and you put them in a costume, okay? Have you noticed how a costume can change a person's behavior? Right, if you take a little girl and put her in a very beautiful princess dress with a long twirly skirt, it's gonna be pretty fast that she's just gonna be twirling around the house on her tiptoes.
It doesn't take but five seconds.
Or if you give a little boy maybe a little police officer's uniform, all of a sudden everything in the house is going to turn into an investigation.
Right? The costume changes their behavior through their imagination.
So what I'm gonna have you guys do today is we are going to put on our priestly robes, but this is not a costume party.
This is not dress up.
This is real.
This is who we really are in Christ.
It's not imagination, but I want you guys to picture yourselves through this sermon as priests because that's who we are.
And let's see what God has to say about this in, oh, I should probably be using my clicker here.
All right.
Okay, so just real quickly, here's the outline of the sermon that we're gonna go through today.
We're gonna talk about 1 Peter 2, then we're gonna talk about a few lessons from the Old Testament, and then we're gonna talk about our new position in Christ and our new practice and how we're supposed to walk according to our calling.
Okay, so here's our text.
1 Peter chapter two, starting in verse five.
You also, as living living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
And then skipping down to verse nine, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who have not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
And so that's the key spot where we're gonna be jumping off from the text and the scriptures, talking about who we are as priests.
There's so much here in these verses to unpack.
I won't keep us here all afternoon, I promise, but there's so much and it's such a beautiful picture.
The little piece in the middle of 1 Peter chapter two that we skipped over talks about Christ, the chief cornerstone, and then talks about us as living stones being built upon that foundation.
And just so, our priesthood is originated by Christ the high priest. Just so our priesthood is originated by Christ the high priest. We are not the high priest, that's Christ's job.
So we're gonna spend a bit through this sermon talking about the priesthood and the various images from the Old Testament, but I don't wanna confuse anybody here between the role of the high priest, which is Jesus, and our priesthood, which is following after him.
There's an important distinction there.
But like all the priests, it is our job, there's a few things here that's listed that it's our job to do.
We're supposed to offer up spiritual sacrifices.
We'll talk more about that later.
That we're gonna proclaim the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Remember, we're only priests because of our high priest and what he's done for us.
And who once were not a people, but are now the people of God.
That harkens back for all the step students we went through Ephesians, where it's talking about the body of Christ being built out of both Jewish and Gentile believers.
And so we talked about that Christ has abolished the entity between those two groups and made them into one new man, his body.
That ties into the priesthood.
Because we, all the people in this room, right, we were not a people, but now we are a body, the church, through Christ and in Christ, and that's where our position comes into all of this.
There's so much there to talk about.
And it's really interesting, this passage is actually quoting out of Exodus 19, verses five and six, where God says this about his people Israel back in Exodus after he's called them out of the land of Egypt, out of their slavery, and he saved them from their bondage, and now he's made them a people whose only identity before was that they were slaves and descendants of Abraham.
Now their identity is in their relationship with God, and he sets up the priesthood to administer that relationship between him and his people.
But the idea was, is that ultimately, God wanted to make the whole nation of Israel what he would call a royal priesthood.
That was the plan that he had for Israel and it's not fulfilled yet.
As we know, Israel didn't do such a great job of following the Lord, and there's some lessons that we'll talk about there.
But that's God's plan, and that plan also extends to us who are in Christ.
We don't replace the nation of Israel.
I'm not here to preach replacement theology here this morning.
God still has a plan for Israel.
But in the meantime, us as Christ's body, the church, He has a plan for us to make us His royal priesthood, His own special people.
And of course, the reason that we're all here today is because there were priests before us that told us the gospel and shared who God was with us, and now we are here because of the message of others.
One other thing that I have to kind of just gloss over for the sake of time and talking about the royal priesthood, I'm gonna spend most of the sermon talking about the priesthood side of that and not so much the royal part of that, but we know that Christ is king, right? He's the king who we serve.
And as children of God and joint heirs of Christ, we are part of God's royal family the same way.
So if you wanna put on another addition to your priestly robes, maybe put a crown on there, right? Because you are a royal priest.
God has made us special in every way that he possibly can.
And if there was any other blessings he could possibly give to us, he would have given them to us already.
That's just who God is.
So a couple things here that I wanna also briefly mention that are important.
Why is this doctrine of priesthood so important to us in this church today? Well, one is the fact is that there is no distinguishing by God amongst certain believers are priests and certain believers aren't, okay? And that's what really distinguishes us, at least for about the last 500 years, from the Catholic Church.
Because the Catholic Church believes that there are priests handed down through the heritage of Peter, and those are the people that really control access to God.
They're the ones who read the scriptures, they administer the sacraments, and that without the priests, nobody can be saved.
And that is not how, that is not what the scripture teaches and that's not what we practice today.
We are all priests, right? Not just the elders or the deacons, right? We are all priests.
We all have access to God.
We are all ministers of Him and of His kingdom.
So that's important. of him and of his kingdom.
So that's important.
It's also important into how we understand the pictures that God has for us in the Old Testament, especially and a lot of New Testament scriptures as well.
But if you look at all the Old Testament scriptures about the pictures and the priests that are looking forward to the new covenant that we have in Christ, if you're like, oh yeah, that's just about the pictures and the priests that are looking forward to the new covenant that we have in Christ.
If you're like, oh yeah, that's just for the priests, no lessons there for me, you're gonna miss a whole lot of the Old Testament.
So we're gonna go through some of that.
And then of course there are many, many scriptures in the New Testament that talk about our priesthood.
I wish that we could go through an exhaustive list of them today. But again, I promise not to keep you here all afternoon.
And then also I wanna just point out one thing about our priesthood.
We're gonna talk about a lot of pictures from the Old Testament, what we call the Levitic priesthood from the tribe of Levi.
We are not here to replace the tribe of Levi.
Christ, our high priest, offered one sacrifice for sins forever and sat down at the right hand of God.
He fulfilled the Levitic priesthood.
So our priesthood is something different entirely.
The role is similar, but it's not like we're part of the nation of Israel now or anything like that.
So I don't wanna confuse that issue.
Okay, so let's talk about what is a priest and go through a quick definition here.
So I looked it up online, just went to a dictionary.
And the dictionary definition of a priest is not super helpful.
It says it's someone who, a religious person who's authorized to perform religious rites, and someone who is a mediator between people and God.
And I'm like, well, that's not super helpful, at least not from a biblical standpoint.
So what is a biblical priest? And so the working definition I'm gonna use today is that a biblical priest is someone who is called to lead others in worship of God and to offer sacrifices.
We're gonna talk about what that means.
But, so that means.
So that means that a priest isn't someone who's in between people and God, right? I'm not in between anybody here and God today.
However, my worship of God points other people to him.
But I don't save anybody, and I don't have to lay my hands on anybody to save anybody or anything like that, right? That's not my role as a priest.
We're called to lead others in worship of God, and to ourselves offer sacrifices.
And we'll talk about what Christian sacrifices look like, because we're not offering bulls and goats anymore.
We have one sacrifice, who is the Lord Jesus, and he was offered for us once and for all.
So no more sacrifices that way.
All right, so let's talk about the picture of the priestly garments that Aaron and his sons wore, and what that informs us about our priesthood.
All right, so I'm gonna read a few verses here from Exodus chapter 28, verses one through five.
Now take Aaron your brother, remember Moses and Aaron were brothers, and his sons with him from among the children of Israel "'that he may minister to me as priest.
"'Aaron and Aaron's sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.'" More about them later.
"'And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother "'for glory and for beauty.
"'So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him that he may minister to me as priest.
And these are the garments which they shall make, a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, a skillfully woven tunic, a turban, and a sash.
So they shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons that he may minister to me as priest.
All right, so again, this is, while they were still in the wilderness, just come out of Egypt, remember God is taking the nation of Israel that had no identity other than the fact that they were slaves, and he's now making them into his special people.
And there's a direct parallel there to us, right? We once were slaves, not in Egypt, but we were slaves to sin, and immorality, and our own flesh.
And Christ, when he saved us, he set us free from all of that, and he made us into priests of righteousness.
Now this righteousness that we have is not our own righteousness.
I'm not here to talk to you guys about my virtues, and you're not here to talk to me about your virtues.
We're not coming before the Lord saying, Lord, look at how awesome I am.
Don't I deserve to be your priest? Of course not.
I'm a sinner just like anybody else.
But when we, the picture here is of a righteousness that is not our own, the righteousness of Christ that we put on in our service to him.
And this has mentioned many scriptures throughout the New Testament, most significantly, probably several times in the book of Revelation where it talks about the saints standing before the Lord in white robes.
And we know that even though I am not right now physically before God, dressed in white robes, positionally in Christ I am.
I already have the righteousness that God has given to me as a new creation in Christ.
And these robes that God had, the artisans make for Aaron and his sons are a picture of the robes which we get, which we have now, and then that will be clothed in when we stand before the Lord finally in glory.
So, and notice what they're for, about a third of the way down, it says, you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother for glory and for beauty.
In other words, you're not just gonna give him some jeans and a hoodie, right? And say, now you're a priest.
You're gonna give him some special garments that set him apart as someone who's before the Lord and has to go into the very presence of God.
And so I'm not gonna go through all the various garments, the robe, the ephod, all the stones and everything that were on there.
There's wonderful pictures there.
But what I wanna point out to you is just a couple important parts here.
And I believe this is Exodus, yeah, 28, 36 and 37.
He says, you shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the Lord, and you shall put it on a blue cord that it may be on the turban that shall be on the front of the turban. So imagine Aaron standing there in his robes and it's all woven together with gold and the ephod and the precious stones on his breastplate and he's wearing a turban of pure white as befits a holy priest but he's got a it's almost like a nameplate right on the front of his forehead.
But it doesn't say Aaron the high priest, or tribe of Levi, or anything like that.
What it says on that plate right on the front of his head is holiness to the Lord, because that's what he's supposed to represent.
And maybe you guys are already starting to guess at the spiritual parallels here for us as believers.
When we go about our daily lives, who are we called to represent? We're representing Christ, right? We're ambassadors for Christ.
You can go look up those passages in the New Testament.
But our nameplate on the front doesn't say, Sam the preacher, or Gino the guitarist, or anything else like that, right? We're here to represent the holiness of the Lord to the world that doesn't know what that looks like, has no idea the holiness that the Lord wants to give each and every one of us through his love.
And there's so much imagery in this, the fact that that's tied on with a blue cord.
The blue cord, if you go look at the Hebrew traditions, blue is the color of God's divine authority, and the whole point is is like blue is like the color of the sky divine authority, and the whole point is, is like blue is like the color of the sky, which is high above us.
And so God's divine authority is so much higher than we are, and we're under that.
And so the holiness is by divine authority, right? It's not by Aaron's or any priest's claim to their own holiness, it's by God's authority they're representing him.
And they're putting it right at the front.
That might be one of the first things you notice when you see a priest, that high priest is that plate right on the front.
And so, obviously the picture there, as I mentioned before, is that we are representing God to the people around us.
And oftentimes we think of this as like, oh yeah, when I go out into the world, into the workplace, I'm supposed to be representing God.
Yes, that's certainly true.
But we also represent the Lord to one another, okay? And we're supposed to build one another up in love and good works, as the scripture says.
So the priesthood isn't just for us towards the outside, it's also for us amongst ourselves as well.
And it was something that was to be taken quite seriously.
In verse 43, I don't think I put this in the, yeah, I didn't put this in the slides, but in verse 43 of Exodus chapter 28, it said that Aaron and his sons had to wear their robes when they ministered in the tabernacle and when they came into the Holy of Holies, because if they weren't wearing those robes, they would die.
So you might imagine that Aaron and his sons took those priestly garments pretty seriously, because if they didn't wear them, they would die.
And I think for us, there's a encouragement there to us.
If we're going about our priestly duties to one another, to the world around us, and we're not putting on our priestly duties to one another, to the world around us, and we're not putting on righteousness and a representation of Christ, then we're not doing our jobs as priests as God has called us to do them.
So that's one thing that I want us to think about.
Another one here, and this is gonna go...
So bear with me, I got two bad examples of priests not doing their job well.
So we're gonna have to kinda suffer through this a little bit in a serious tone, because God wants us to take our identity as priests very seriously. And trust me, we'll get to the good parts a little bit later.
But I wanna talk about Nadab and Abihu for just a few minutes.
Remember, we just looked at Nadab and Abihu were Aaron's sons.
He had four sons.
These were the first two, and they were given priestly robes, just like everybody else in the family.
But Nadab and Abihu, unfortunately, did not take their commission as priests very seriously.
And in Leviticus 10, for context here, just real quick, in the first part of Leviticus, in the first nine chapters, For context here, just real quick, in the first part of Leviticus, in the first nine chapters, God gives the priests and the people the instructions for all the sacrifices and how he was to be approached.
And so for the first time in Leviticus chapter nine, they go through and they do all of the sacrifices, just like God told them to do.
And at the end, they get done consecrating the priests, and they put the final sacrifice on the altar, and fire from heaven comes down and consumes the offering on the altar.
And all the people see it and they give a great shout, because they know that this is God confirming, yes, you did everything right.
We have a relationship.
And so the people are super excited about this.
And then immediately after that, the priests screw it up.
We just got through doing everything right.
And literally, the next thing that happens in chapter 10, verse one, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took a censer, which was like, this thing was made out of silver, and it was for putting incense in and fire, and it would burn and create smoke, a very sweet-smelling smoke that was part of the worship, part of the temple ceremonies.
And so they were commanded to do this.
This is part of the worship.
And you can go into Exodus and Leviticus and see where the instructions were for how they were supposed to do it.
God even gave instructions on what sort of incense to put into it. God's instructions were incredibly detailed.
And so these two young men get their sensors, and they think, look, we're going to worship God.
Well, we've got some ideas about how we're going to do it.
And so they get their sensor, they put incense in it, and then they go to put fire in it.
But God commanded them that when you do that, you're supposed to use fire from the altar.
And that fire is the fire that God just lit.
Remember, he just rained down fire from heaven, signifying his presence with men.
And Nadab and Abihu don't follow those instructions.
They go get their own fire, and the Bible says of this fire, it's profane fire.
Or if you've got NASB, it might even say strange fire.
And they offer this to God as a sacrifice, and God says, no, you're doing this in your own way, not following the instructions that I gave you, and you're doing this instead of my glory, right? Remember, our righteousness is not our own righteousness.
It's God's righteousness that makes us stand before him.
This fire is God's fire, right, that he placed on the altar.
And instead of that, instead of God's own presence being offered back to him, they offer him essentially their own works.
This is our effort, this is our fire, not God's fire.
And God says, no, no, no, no.
And he actually, in verse two here, he says, and fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.
And Moses said to Aaron after this happened, he said, this is what the Lord spoke, saying, by those who come near to me, I must be regarded as holy.
And before all the people, I must be glorified.
See, this is the serious part about our priesthood.
And of course, about the Levitic priesthood under Aaron and Moses.
God is holy.
The God that we worship is not any different than the God in the Old Testament.
And so the priests need to know the Lord and know that he is holy, otherwise we're gonna offer him our own efforts and our own false religion, and we're not gonna be offering him his presence and his holiness like we're commanded to. And so it's important for the priest to know who God is and to regard him as holy because as it says there at the end, before all the people I must be glorified. God will be glorified, right? With us or without us.
But if we do it right, it brings immense glory to God.
And if we do it wrong by our own works and our own actions and taking in the glory for ourselves, as we'll talk about a little bit more later, then from God, there's serious consequences to that.
and from God, there's serious consequences to that.
And there's a, I'm gonna go into some verses that you probably won't hear preached from the pulpit very often.
But we, in the New Testament, obviously we're not offering incense to the Lord and sacrifices of animals, right? But we still need to regard the Lord as holy.
And so I wanna bring up this passage from 1 Corinthians 11 quickly here, talking about the breaking of bread service that we celebrate every Sunday.
It says, therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep." And he's not talking about just sleeping at night here.
He's talking about death.
For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world.
There was a problem in the Corinthian church where people were coming to the breaking of bread and treating it like a great big party and they were either coming drunk or getting drunk while they were there, and carrying all sorts of profane behavior during the breaking of bread.
I'm happy to say I didn't see any of that behavior this morning at Hillview.
But, and so I'm not standing here in condemnation of anyone here, but we do need to treat the breaking of bread as a serious moment of worship.
And I'm not trying to stifle all worship during the breaking of bread, right? We have an amazing savior, an amazing grace, but it's something that the Lord has called upon us to take seriously.
And so I want to encourage you through these verses, we're supposed to examine ourselves before we come to the breaking of bread, make sure that there's nothing between us and anybody else in the church that would prohibit us from worshiping the Lord.
And if we have to leave a gift at the altar, then we do that.
But because our worship in the breaking of bread is a picture to those who are outside and if we're coming before Him in an unthankful manner, right, then we're... it's like offering profane fire in a way.
So there's some encouragement. Then just briefly, Eli's sons in 1 Samuel 2, it says, and the sons of Eli were corrupt.
They did not know the Lord.
That's very important.
They did not know the Lord.
And before they burned the fat, the priest servant would come and say to the person who brought the sacrifice, the man who sacrificed, give meat for roasting to the priest, for he will not take boiled meat from you, but raw. this is the man who brought the sacrifice, said to him, they should really burn the fat first, and then you may take as much as your heart desires.
He, and that's the servant, would then answer him, no, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force.
So just real briefly here, the priest, if you go through the instructions in Leviticus, he's gonna give you the bread of the Lord, and he's gonna give you the, and if not, I will take it by force. So just real briefly here, the priests, if you go through the instructions in Leviticus, when someone brought an animal sacrifice, they were supposed to trim the fat off the animal, and the fat and the blood are the Lord's, and you can see that in Leviticus chapter 17.
There's certain parts of the animal, those were God's parts. Nobody touched those.
The priest didn't touch them, and the people didn't get them.
That was God's, and that was to be burnt up on the altar as a sacrifice, as a suite of Roma to the Lord.
But in Samuel's day, Eli's sons thought, well, if you put the fat and the meat together, that's like the best tasting part of the animal.
So instead of offering the good stuff to God, I'm gonna take the best cuts of meat for myself, and we can just burn the lean bits later.
And so it says of them, therefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred or despised the offering of the Lord. So imagine this, you've got priests who are so greedy for everyone that comes to the tabernacle to worship that they're taking all the best of what people bring to offer for themselves. And the result of that was the nation of Israel hated coming to the tabernacle to offer sacrifices because of the behavior of the priests.
Okay? Now, it's not a great leap to go from there to thinking about our church and our community as a community of priests here on Sunday, if the hypocrisy amongst us and the greed amongst us or maybe amongst the pastors and preachers, right, it's so much that people hate coming to church because of the hypocrisy and evil doing of the people in the church, that is a great sin. And that does not bring the Lord glory and credit.
Here's the lesson for priests, if we're being priests.
Don't touch the glory that belongs to God.
When God's working in us and doing things, don't take the glory for ourselves.
And there's thousands of examples of this just across America today of pastors who are got these huge mega churches and living off the fad with their private jets and all of this, right? Do you think they are really promoting the kingdom of God? No, they're promoting themselves.
And it brings revulsion.
How many people here have talked to other people that said, you know, my problem with the church is it's full of hypocrites, right? We've all heard comments like that, right? It's the behavior of the priests in between people and worshiping God.
So we can't behave that way.
All right, so let's talk about some ways we can behave and some victories.
I love the story of Jericho.
And we're gonna look at a couple of verses from chapter six here in a minute.
But if you remember the story of Joshua, Moses has died, the people are coming into their inheritance in the land, which has all these spiritual pictures. And Joshua, right? Moses has died, the people are coming into their inheritance in the land, which has all these spiritual pictures, right? And they're getting ready to come into the land, and Joshua tells the priests, okay, this is from chapter six, so I'll go back for just a second.
In chapter three, they've got the Jordan River to go across.
And they've got like a million plus people that need to cross this river, and it's flood season.
So there's a lot of water in this river.
And Joshua commands the priests to take the ark on their shoulders and go down to the water, and when their feet touch the water, the water stops.
The river is dammed up, and it stands there in a heap, letting the whole nation of Israel go across on dry land.
And so that's the first miracle that the Lord works as part of the conquest of the land of Canaan, the inheritance of God's people, okay? One of the huge proclamations of the church, you and me, here today, is that we do not fear death.
The Jordan River is a picture of death.
The priests are the first to go in and there is no danger for them.
They are able to stand in the middle of the river, the people pass through, there are no casualties, there's able to stand in the middle of the river. The people pass through.
There are no casualties.
There's not even a twisted ankle going across this river because of the priests and their worship of God.
We stand today.
We know people are dying all the time. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was with my grandma.
She's in a home with severe dementia and she probably doesn't have a whole lot longer, right? And so I sat beside her bed and I read her the scriptures and I praise God with her and I prayed with her.
And we talked, as much as she's able anyway, but we talked about Jesus and the things of God and being together on the other side of death.
And it was...
It was a really precious time.
Sorry.
But we as priests of God don't fear death.
I'm not sitting there besides my grandma thinking, oh, I'm never going to see her again.
I'm thinking about the victory that we have in Jesus.
And we're going to be eternally in God's presence, in our inheritance with the Lord forever in heaven.
And that's one of the worships of a priest, is to say, look, death has no power over us.
There's nothing here for us to fear.
And those priests stood in the middle of that river beneath that growing wall of water that was piling up, but they had no fear.
We ought to do the same when we're confronted with death around us, knowing who the Lord is and what he's given us.
That's the ministry of a priest.
So there's one practical way that we can do that.
Second of all, in Joshua 6, we all know the story of Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, right? There's a song there.
Not a whole lot of fighting in the battle of Jericho.
I don't know if you've read the scriptures here.
But Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priest took up the Ark of the Lord.
Then seven priests, bearing seven trumpets of ram's horns, the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets.
And the armed men went before them, and the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord while the priests continued blowing on the trumpets.
The second day they marched around the city once and returned to camp, so they did six days.
But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day, marched around the city seven times in the same manner.
On that day only, they marched around the city seven times.
And the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets that Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city.
And the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets, and it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat.
And that was the end of the Battle of Jericho, right there.
So you may think, well, what does this have to do with our priesthood and our walk? Well, if you look at this story, the priests are going around blowing their trumpets as they walk around the city.
Are they blowing the great war cry of Israel? I don't think so.
I think they're blowing praise to God for the great victory he was about to accomplish.
The people aren't screaming at the defenders on the walls. In fact, they were commanded to just be silent for the entire week.
But every day for the whole week, the priests are out there blowing praises to God the whole time it takes to walk around the city, which I don't know how far it was, but it probably wasn't a very short walk.
As priests before God, we have the same opportunity when difficulties arrive in our lives, when there's something between us and something that God has promised us that we're supposed to have, do we say, oh no, what a great strong walled city. We can't, you know, I can't overcome this problem. You know, what is my army gonna do? We don't have any ladders. Or do we say, you know what, let's go about this with an attitude of praise to God over whatever this problem is and see if God doesn't resolve it in a way that only he can do. And when you demonstrate faith like that, God doesn't just sit there. Now you may think, well Sam, it took him seven days before that wall fell down. Where was the Lord for the first six days? He was there. They were following what he commanded them to do.
And sometimes in our problems, it may take longer than six days before we see that wall fall down flat.
But the Lord's there nonetheless.
And as long as we keep praising him and giving him the glory, God will answer.
There's no doubt about that.
He might not answer in the way that we expect.
I think maybe the Israelites imagined that maybe a gate was gonna pop open and they could go in and win the battle, but none of that happened. God destroyed the city all at once, all by himself, in an instant. And I think there's great lessons for us as priests.
Are we the people that grumble and complain, or are we the ones that offer up praise to God? All right, just quickly here, there's a whole bunch of passages that we could go through, but I just want to read you guys a couple of verses here from Romans and then Ephesians, talking about our ministry as priests.
Romans 12, one and two, you guys are probably all familiar with this.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
And do not be conformed by this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Getting more into our ministry as priests, we ourselves are to be offered as sacrifices for the Lord.
Our lives, our daily walk, our practice, right? That is our sacrifice to the Lord.
And I wish I had time to go into all the applications of this for us in our lives at home with each other, right? As we offer ourselves a sacrifice to the Lord, are we in our families, are we encouraging one another to worship the Lord, or are we standing like Eli's sons in between a family member and their worship of God? Are we treating people badly and selfishly and taking the best for ourselves so that other people grumble about us before the Lord? That ought not be.
We ought to be encouraging one another, living loving selfless lives in imitation of our great high priest who gave himself for us, right? We ought to be giving ourselves for each other.
And that proves what the will of God is.
And then finally, in Ephesians chapter five, talking again about the perfect will of God in verse 17.
Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in Psalms, in hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
What a great time of praise before this, I might add.
Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord.
So that is our ministry as priests before one another. And there's so much here in these verses and we're gonna be able to speak to you.
So that is our ministry as priests before one another.
And there's so much here in these verses that we can apply to our lives.
I want us to think about these things seriously because this is our ministry to one another as priests, right, as we put on those priestly robes and behave like priests towards one another.
and we should be encouraged to be a priest towards one another, we should be encouraged to be in to one another, giving thanks always, right? There's an attitude of thankfulness that a priest has or should have, right? Can you imagine a priest in the tabernacle saying, oh, man, I've got to be here worshiping God again today, right? You wouldn't want that at all, today, right? You wouldn't want that at all, right? But do we do that Sunday morning? Oh man, I got to get up and go to church again. Or in Ephesians right after this, then the very next verses are to husbands and wives, right? And their service for one another, right? Oh man, do I have to love my wife again today? Oh man, do I have to love my husband again today? We're priests of God. We have robes of His righteousness. We have His forgiveness. Right? How can I treat my family members badly when I'm wearing the robes that God gave his own blood for.
So there's much, much more that we could talk about, but I will just leave you one picture here, some words from a hymn talking about when we're in glory before the Lord.
When I stand before the throne, dressed in beauty, not my own, when I see thee as thou art, love thee with uncinning heart, then Lord shall I fully know. Not till then how much I owe." Let's pray. Lord Jesus, our great high priest, we thank you for calling us into your service. Lord, we thank you for calling us into your service.
Lord, we thank you for the ministry that you've given us, one towards another, to encourage one another, to build one another up, to sacrifice for one another, to love one another.
Lord, just as you have loved us.
Lord, help us to put on the robes as your priests every day to think of ourselves Lord is under you and what I pray that you would change our hearts and change our lives this week and give us the victories Lord may we see you work in our lives Lord for your glory and not our own. Lord Jesus we pray this in your name amen.