I would like to read a few Scriptures to begin with, starting in Exodus 19:6.
“And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”
“These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.”
Then in 1 Peter 2:4:
“Coming unto Him, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God chosen, precious,
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood,
to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
And in 1 Peter 2:9:
“But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,
that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light:
who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God:
who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”
And Revelation 1:4:
“John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him Who is and Who was and Who is to come; and from the seven Spirits that are before His throne;
and from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father; to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
And then one other verse, in Ephesians 1. Paul’s prayer, beginning with verse 18:
“Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling,
what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
Father, I thank You for the sacrifice that You gave for us in Jesus Christ. And I thank You that I can hide in Him this morning.
Father, I am praying that, as You give gifts to build up the brothers and sisters for the work of the ministry, that is what You will do this morning by Your Holy Spirit. Build us up for the work of the ministry, for what You have for us through Jesus Christ. Amen.
Is there any way we can turn this down? It is kind of weird, kind of echoey. You guys do not have to be so afraid. I guess I will have to use my teacher voice.
This morning, I would like to continue what I was sharing last time. If you remember, I was talking about being priests. I talked about basically what a priest was, and why the ministry of priests was important.
For those of you who do not remember—unlike my regular students—we mentioned this: a priest is somebody who has a special relationship with God. It is a relationship like no one else has. From that relationship with God comes service to Him, to His house, and to His people. That is basically what a priest is.
Now, we have all sorts of convoluted ideas about things. We read about ancient religions, and we see that these people are placed on pedestals and such, but that is not really what it is all about. God meant for all of us to be priests.
If you remember the example we gave, we talked about Hannah giving birth to Samuel: that we have been born again for this purpose, that we might be priests, that we might have this relationship with God and this service to Him. That is the reason why we have been born again. That is the reason why the Lord Jesus travailed on the cross: so that we might have this place with God.
It is not that we are to go out and wear all these robes and become somebody above others. No, it is for everyone—for all to have this special relationship.
We also talked about the significance of the ministry of priests. First, we talked about Jehoiada bringing Joash. In other words, the ministry of the priest brought the king to his throne. The other thing was that the ministry of the priest carries the testimony.
Those are the things with which we are really concerned: bringing the King to His place and carrying the testimony.
So, that is what we want to look at this morning. What do priests do? How do they bring in the King and carry the testimony? What is this thing that they do which we need to concern ourselves with, because we have been made priests? What are we supposed to be about?
I think, in my own heart, that this is one of the things the Lord really wants. The Lord wants the ministry of priests in His house. We have the house; He wants the ministry of His priests.
Let us start with Exodus 27. In my estimation—and I know I am not a great expositor or a great saint in any way—I think the first two things are the most important ministries of a priest.
This is the first thing that is actually mentioned about priests. When Exodus is talking about their clothing, it mentions this little ministry before it goes into the consecration of priests. Exodus 27:20 begins:
“And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually.
In the tent of meeting, without the veil, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the Lord:
it shall be a statute for ever throughout their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.”
So, the first priestly service is that they keep the lamp burning. You might say, “Well, what does this have to do with us?”
I think this has to do with maintaining your personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the first order of business for all priests: they maintain their own relationship with Jesus Christ.
They had to go into the tent of meeting. It was not in the holy of holies, because the holy of holies was entered only once. This was in the tent of meeting. And this is where we do it—we meet with the Lord.
The tent of meeting is where the Lord came down to meet with the people. We do this in our own place of fellowship, where we have that one-on-one fellowship with God.
Keeping the light going may seem like no big deal, but it is a big deal, because God said that light had to be burning all the time. Without light, we are in darkness. Without that light, our relationship as Christians crystallises and becomes a form.
So, the first order of things is to keep your own relationship. That means you have to trim the wick. As you go on with the Lord, He comes to you and says, “You have to trim that. If you want the light to keep burning rightly in your life, if you want that relationship to be kept clear, this needs to go.”
Now, I am not saying that you come in and say, “I have to get rid of this, this, and this before I can come to the Lord.” I used to think that a lot. That is not so, because He has made provision for you to come in no matter how you are.
But once we come in and begin to have a real relationship with Him, then He can start saying, “Paul, You see this here? This needs to go.” You might say, “Well, no, Lord, I think this is more important.” The Lord says, “We will get to that later. But right now, this is the part that needs to be trimmed.”
You know, we are the wick. The light comes from the oil. We are just the little thing that the oil soaks into. You can burn a piece of string, but that does not last very long. It is the oil that makes that wick of any value.
So, the first thing we have to do as priests is keep our own relationship vibrant. We are of no good to serve God without that vibrant relationship. It is so important.
At times, I know in my life, that is the thing that suffers most, because we have all these other things. I am not merely talking about business in our lives. We might say, “Well, I have youth group,” or, “I have this and that other thing.” We have all these spiritual things that begin to take the place of the most spiritual thing, which is your relationship with the Lord Himself.
He died and rose again that we might have that relationship. He wants it. He wants it. He is jealous for it.
So, the light must be tended. Notice that it is from evening until morning. The morning is when He comes again. We are to keep it vibrant until He comes back.
That is the thing that will make that day so glorious to us, because we will not be afraid of it. It is when we are out of this relationship that we fear. We get out of touch with Who God really is. We forget that He is the One Who brings us in to have fellowship with Him.
Then we start thinking, “Oh, I have this wrong with me. I have that wrong with me. Do not come back yet, Lord,” instead of crying out, “Oh, Lord Jesus, come!” Because that is what the Spirit says.
It is until He comes back that we are supposed to keep this relationship up. And we are going to have this priesthood through eternity. This is an eternal vocation. It is not just a one-time thing; it is something we are going to have forever.
I love to read C. S. Lewis. I do not like science fiction very much, but I recommend the Space Trilogy. If you look at Ransom, he actually becomes a priest by the end of that. His functioning becomes priestly. It is something that lasts on and on and on, and it is the same for us. This relationship is to last forever. It is an eternal relationship.
Secondly, let us go to Leviticus 6. I know this is the book you all love to read. As a young Christian, I think this is one of the hardest books to read, other than the first six or seven chapters of 1 Chronicles—all those names.
Leviticus 6:12:
“And the fire upon the altar shall be kept burning thereon, it shall not go out;
and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt-offering in order upon it,
and shall burn thereon the fat of the peace-offerings.
Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually; it shall not go out.”
So, the fire on the altar of sacrifice is to be kept alive. What does that mean? What does this have to do with priests?
Sometimes, when you think you are so spiritual that you have arrived and need the altar no more, that is wrong. Being a priest will never bring us to a place where we no longer have need or use of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We will never be able to approach God on the merits of our own faithfulness. Those are things into which we slip. “Oh, yeah, I can come. I have read the Bible five hours this week, so I can come.” That is not how we come.
This altar is what allows us to have this relationship with God. If we sin, what does the Scripture tell us? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us. Why? Because He has become the propitiation for our sins—Jesus Christ the righteous for us.
Being a priest will bring us to a place where we will forever see, in fresh ways, what the cross of Jesus Christ has done for us.
Have you ever noticed that, when you were a young Christian, sins were the big sins? Adultery, stealing, murder—those were the big ones. Or going off the way we used to go off and doing the things we used to do as kids in the sixties. Those were the big things.
When we came to the Lord, He delivered us from a lot of things. But as you go on, you find out how deeply embedded sin is. It may not be what we thought of as the big things when we were young, but it is the things that knock us out of fellowship with God: our attitudes, our heart toward a person, a meanness of spirit.
Those things knock us out of fellowship with God. We see that this is part of the same character, how deeply intertwined and woven into the fabric of our being sin has been.
We can become so discouraged, saying, “Oh, I will never be there.” But that is when we find out how great the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is for us.
Charles Wesley wrote it in a song: “His blood availed for me.” That is about as far as we can go. As we go on in our lives and see the depth of sin in our lives, we can come to that place of saying, “His blood availed for me.”
The other thing we can say is that it satisfied the Father. Those are probably the two most important things we will ever learn about what Jesus Christ has done for us: it avails for us, and it satisfies the Father.
A priest will come into a deeper and deeper appreciation of that, because that fire is always burning. That is the way to God. We find things in ourselves that are unpleasing to God, and we can say, “Lord, I know it is unpleasing.” The Lord says, “I have made provision for that. Come into My presence. I have been satisfied by My Son.”
Next, Leviticus 1 talks about offerings, especially the burnt offering. I am not going to read the whole chapter, but the whole chapter talks about offerings, because that is what priests do. That is the function of priests: they make offerings. They make sacrifices to God.
“Well, I thought sacrifices went out with the old dispensation. What kind of sacrifices do we make?”
There are a couple that I know we make. In Hebrews 13:15, we offer up the sacrifice of praise. That is one of the things we are doing this morning: offering up the sacrifice of praise, telling God His worth, letting Him know His worth to us and to the people of God.
It is a very important thing to let God know how you feel about Him. It is a sacrifice because sometimes we have to praise Him when we do not feel like it. We sacrifice our feelings, but we give Him what we know of Him and what we know Him to be for us.
Secondly, Romans 12:1-2 says:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.”
Another sacrifice that we offer up to God is our very lives—not for who we are, but for Who Christ is in us.
When we think of offering up ourselves, I do not know how you think about yourself, but let me read a section from Leviticus 1:14. I am using this because it is the smallest of the offerings. You have the bull, you have the ram, and then you have the bird—not even very big.
“And if his oblation to the Lord be a burnt-offering of birds, then he shall bring his oblation of turtledoves, or of young pigeons.
And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off its head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be drained out on the side of the altar.
And he shall take away its crop with the feathers thereof, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, in the place of the ashes.
And he shall rend it by the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire:
it is a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.”
You know, I used to think that I was pretty good. I used to play basketball. That was what got me to college, and I was pretty good. I will brag a little bit: I was pretty good.
I used to pray, “Oh God, if I could only make the NBA, just think what great service I could do for You.” That is natural to think that way, is it not?
I had a really great junior year. I was really good that year. Then, in my senior year, I sat the bench. I was thinking, “What are You doing, Lord? Do You not understand? Do You not understand how valuable I could be to the kingdom of God if I played in the NBA? How I could evangelise?”
The Lord said, “You have to lose your crop. I have to take that crop off of you, because that is not the way. That is not what I want from you. I do not want what you want. I want you.”
Here I was, just a big skinny guy. If I had been in the NBA, I would have been the big skinny guy with fame. But now I am just a big skinny guy. But that is what is acceptable to God.
It says, “Offer yourself as a living sacrifice.” Give Him who you are. You might be a dud. That does not matter, because Christ is in you. That is what matters.
Offer yourself as you are. Even if you come with a whole bunch of hang-ups and baggage, bring that with you and offer yourself to God. He will take care of it. He will take that offering. He will take the crop off where it needs to be taken off.
God does not want the fluff. He does not want the outer shell. He wants you—the one that you are—because that is the one He bought. He did not buy the other stuff. He bought you, and He is not ashamed to say that He bought you.
Next, Exodus 30. Besides offering sacrifices, priests burn incense.
“And Aaron shall burn thereon incense of sweet spices; every morning, when he dresseth the lamps, he shall burn it.
And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.”
The next thing a priest is supposed to do is burn incense. What is that? Psalm 141:2 says:
“Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense;
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
In Revelation 5:8, the twenty-four elders have golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. So, one thing that incense represents is prayer. We are supposed to pray.
That is the function of the priest: to pray. Pray for what? Whatever God puts on your heart. But I will tell you some things that I think are especially sweet aromas to God.
First of all, the faith that is in a prayer. Praying is one way that we exercise faith. Many times, we think that once we have accepted the Lord Jesus and accepted His sacrifice, that is the last time we ever need to have faith. But one of the ways we exercise faith is by praying.
When we see something the Lord is saying, “I want that,” and we understand that the Lord wants that, we pray for it. We say, “Lord, You have said this,” and we exercise that faith. That is a sweet aroma to God. He loves that. He loves to see faith in our prayers.
The other thing I think He loves to see in our prayers is when we depend on Him—when we say, “Oh Lord, I cannot do this.”
The thing that drove man away from God is independence: “I do not need God.” Christ was the One Who showed us that what pleases God most is dependence on Him: “I can do nothing apart from the Father.”
God delights when we come to Him and say, “Lord, I need You. I need Your power. I need Your love. I need You living in me.” He delights in that.
I think the prayer that furthers His kingdom is also precious to Him. I am not saying that we do not pray for our needs, brothers and sisters. We do pray for our needs. That is the compassion of Christ.
But there are times when we really need to pray for the furthering of His kingdom, starting in our own lives, then in our assembly, perhaps in the city, or even among the nations.
This week at the prayer meeting, we were talking about France, Romania, and Cuba. The furtherance of His kingdom is dear to His heart.
What does Revelation say? The kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Boy, that is going to be a glorious day, is it not? He wants His kingdom to advance.
Another thing that incense represents is worship. What makes us worship? First of all, it is what we see about God in His Word. What does God show us about Himself that makes us worship?
We cannot separate ourselves from the Word of God. You can read other books, and that is fine, but it is the Word of God that reveals Him. That is why He has given it to us: so that we could see Him and know Him.
This week, I was looking at the garments of the priests in Exodus 29. I started reading about the garments of the priests, and it was just so wonderful. It was wonderful to know how the Lord made sure that we were acceptable, clothing us with these garments, and how these garments speak about Christ.
You just have to sit there and say, “Lord, thank You. This is so wonderful, that You have covered me with these things.” It brought me to a place where I was just praising the Lord because I was so thankful.
One way that brings worship is reading His Word and looking for Him in it. You know those old Where’s Waldo? books? You look and look because you have to find Waldo. They have all those little pictures trying to hide him.
Oh Lord, why is not my heart like that with Your Word? Why do I not just go, “Lord, where are You? I know You are in here.”
Worship also comes out of the experiential knowledge that we gain of Him by faith. We find out what He is like. We find out His faithfulness, His power, His love for us, and His love for others. That makes us worship.
I remember when we used to go to high mass as a young man. They would bring in the censers with incense in them. That incense was the greatest smelling. They would wave them around, and the church building would be filled with smoke.
But you know something? That is what the Lord would like. He would like His house filled with that smoke. He would like His house filled with incense—with prayers and worship to Him. That is what priests are to do.
We have the house, but He wants people to work in the house. He wants people to function in the house. This is part of that function.
I talked about this last time. Joshua 3:6-17 shows the priests carrying the ark, because that is the other thing: they carry the testimony.
The testimony has weight to it. It cannot be carried by just one person. When we talk about having a testimony in Richmond, it might start with one person, but it never ends up with one person. It is always many who carry that testimony.
The more who carry that testimony, the brighter that testimony is. If we sit back and let others do the priestly service—which we can do—we are missing out on what God has called us for.
He wants us to carry that testimony, but He wants us to carry it in union with other brothers and sisters who are functioning as priests. It is not a one-person thing. It is a group. It is a body. The body takes up these things. They cannot be carried by just one.
Then Leviticus 10:8-11 says:
“And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Drink no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting, that ye die not: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations:
and that ye may make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean;
and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by Moses.”
Then, in Nehemiah 8, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly. He read from it, and the Levites helped the people understand the law.
“So they read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.”
Another priestly function—and this is such an important one—is that priests teach the law. Not only do they teach it, but they give sense to it.
Now, I do not want you to think that all people are teachers, because all people are not teachers. But there are those who are not teachers in that sense, yet they give sense to the Word.
Do not say, “Oh, geez, I cannot be a priest because I cannot teach.” It does not say that. Some give sense to the Word. It is not merely teaching or giving application; it is also bringing out the life and authority that are in the Word.
Let me give you an example. One of our Bible studies was studying Matthew 22. We were discussing the banquet that the king had called and the people who did not want to come. We were talking about reasons why they were not coming, and then somebody—I will not say who it was—said something that brought focus to the whole thing right in that moment.
We were here and there. I am not saying that we were not on target, but all of a sudden it became clear: this is the focus; this is what the Lord is after.
I knew that it was not just that person’s opinion or an off-the-cuff remark. It came out of the fact that person had read the chapter through the week and had been thinking about it. The Lord had spoken to them.
They probably would have said nothing. In fact, when they did say something, they started by saying, “I do not know if this really applies to what you are talking about, but…” Yet it just rang true. You could say, “That is the Lord.”
One of the functions of the priest is that they have not just an appreciation of the Word, but they study the Word and think about the Word. Maybe it is not so that they can teach it, but so that when they are studying the Bible, or when a friend comes to them with a question, they can bring something right there that gives meaning and brings life.
Yes, there are some who have a teaching ministry. Praise the Lord for them. But there are also some who give that sense. Praise the Lord for them.
Sometimes we get to thinking that if it is not a teacher, if it is not someone speaking from up here, then we do not know if it can be of God. Oh, brothers and sisters, you know how you have been spoken to by God just by little things a brother or sister has said, or by a verse they have shared.
You know that comes from God. You should be grateful: “Oh Lord, Your priests are functioning. Thank You.”
Now, we are coming to a close here. Numbers 10:1-10 talks about the blowing of silver trumpets.
I will let you read it on your own because we are running short on time. The blowing of these trumpets is for three reasons.
First, it is to call everybody together and get the camp ready to move. As priests, they get the camp ready to move, and then they start in the direction it is supposed to go.
Secondly, they sound the alarm for war. They see an enemy—boom—they sound the alarm. “Okay, let us get ready for war.”
Thirdly, it says that on feast days they blow the trumpets for gladness over the offerings. That is what is happening today. Priests blow the trumpet and say, “Hey, rejoice and be glad for what the Lord has done.”
So, this ministry draws the assembly together and directs the assembly. You often see this type of priestly ministry around the Lord’s table and in prayer meetings.
But notice that these trumpets are silver, not brass. There is a difference. Brass speaks of judgment. The blowing of these trumpets is not for judgment; it has to do with redemption.
It is for recovery. The Lord, in His redemption, has something to gain. He has somewhere to go. He has something to recover. Judgment for us has already fallen—praise God. The rest of our lives is to be redeemed.
The priest’s ministry is to blow these trumpets and bring us to the place of redemption.
Then Numbers 6:23. We used to have a brother who, at the end of every service, would sing this to bless the people. Priests are to bless the people.
“Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel; ye shall say unto them,
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
So shall they put My name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.”
Is this not Abraham’s calling? “I called you out” for what? To be a blessing to other nations.
For us, we are to be those who bless. How do we bless? By doing all these things we have been talking about. That is how He blesses people. That is why we put His name on them.
Our prayers, keeping our relationship up to date with God—those things are how you bless others, because out of that come all these other things. That is what the Lord is after.
There is one other thing I want to say before I close. I have a problem. Not only am I big, but I have a huge ego. That is a confession. That is true. I am not proud of it.
But Hebrews 5 says this about Aaron the high priest, and it applies to us:
“For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity;
and by reason thereof is bound, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.”
Taking up our priesthood does not mean that all of a sudden we become some big icon in the fellowship, that people will look at us and say, “Oh, that brother is a priest.”
It is not going to make us like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, with that vacant glaze out there, becoming so inhuman that you wonder whether you could even talk to the man.
Brothers, if that is what priesthood meant, the flock would die. We are always going to have our humanity. But our humanity will change in the sense that it will be humanity after Christ.
Being a priest is going to make you more human. It is not going to make you so spiritual that you cannot relate to anybody. Look at that verse. It says that he can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray.
I think that is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you imagine if our Lord Jesus had come simply as God, without becoming a man? He could not have related to us. Is it not wonderful that God put a face on Himself?
He was called a friend of sinners. It was those who thought they were so religious that they could not relate to Him. But it was the ones who needed Him who were able to relate to Him. Because they were able to relate, they were able to be saved.
That is the ministry of a priest: to save, not to separate oneself from sinners. That is why it is so interesting that, in the account of the good Samaritan, the priest sees the man and crosses over on the other side. That is not the priesthood God is after.
The priesthood God is after is one that will stoop down and lift that person up, bind up his wounds, and at his own cost lodge him at the inn and come back to see whether he is all right.
That is the priesthood God is after. That is the priest God wants. It makes us human, just as He made Himself human—not untouchable, but very touchable.
Now, we can say, “Well, who can do this?” We can say, “Only Christ can do that.” But I would say, “No, that is not right.”
Only Christ in us can do that.
The Lord Jesus is already carrying out His priesthood in the heavens. The priesthood here in His house is for those of us who are going to function. It is Christ in us Who is going to take care of that priesthood.
We cannot get out of it. We may want to, but we cannot. When we find the Lord living in us like this, you cannot tell me that you do not know His joy.
Even if it means going to the cross for yourself, you cannot tell me that when you fulfil that ministry, you do not have His joy.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the riches of His inheritance in the saints: not just that He has sons, but that these sons are priests like His Son, functioning that way in His house.
Father, we could come out and start saying, “Oh, forgive us, because we have not fulfilled this ministry.” Lord, it is true, and we do need that forgiveness. But Lord, I do not think that is where You are aiming.
I think You just want us to tell You, “Thank You for Christ. Thank You for Him Who is able to do this ministry in us and through us, and satisfy You, Father.”
Lord, this is our heart’s desire. We know this is why You bought us. We know this is why You have us: to serve You and to serve Your people.
Father, I know that, in the deepest reaches of our hearts, that is our desire. It is only our desire because You put it in us. When You birthed us again, You put Your Spirit in us, and He says, “Oh, I want to serve. Send me. Let me be these things.”
Oh Lord, this is our cry today. Lord, we can be in our own sorrow and drown in our own tears, but Father, save us from that, I pray.
Help us follow You within the veil, not stay outside of it. Lord, if we are supposed to follow the Lamb wherever He goes, help us go into the veil and find that we have a place of ministry there to You.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.