Today, I’m your substitute teacher, in case you didn’t know. Glenn Miller had to take care of some family matters, so late Friday we made a bit of a change.
Now, in my former life, when I was a great sinner in high school, I remember what we did to substitute teachers. It was a holiday. You asked Jim—he’ll tell you—you didn’t listen to them, and you didn’t pay attention, because you knew they weren’t the real teacher. So I’m trusting—what? Once in a while.
Nevertheless, we inflicted them with torture, I believe, was what I used to like to do. I used to confuse them, and when they—well, anyway, thank the Lord for salvation for the worst of us. So I am filling in for our brother. You got the word late Friday.
I’d like for you to turn, if you will, to Revelation—the Revelation, as it is properly called—the last book of the Bible. We’re going to look at a very small text this morning, beginning at the latter part of verse 5. Chapter 1, pardon me. Keep the substitute teacher in order, please. Chapter 1, verses 5b through 6.
To Him who loves us,
and has washed us from our sins in His blood,
and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.
Just a word of prayer.
Lord, we’re so thankful that Your Word is living. We’re so thankful that we come to the One who will teach us all things. We yield this time to the Holy Spirit, that You would, as was promised by our precious Lord, teach us all things concerning the Lord Jesus.
Lord, You alone have the words of eternal life. There’s no one else we can go to. We look to You to quicken us today as we share and consider this short text, that You’ll speak to us in a living and fresh way, and that we will hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. May Your will be done. We worship You, and we look to You for all You have for us this morning, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Well, I’ll try to share just three overall thoughts this morning from this very short text. I believe the overall title is “The Essential Revelation of God.” I think that’s not too big of a title.
The text is very brief, but it is enormously full. When you look at its fullness, you get an impression of the essential revelation of God. As a matter of fact, that is what the book of Revelation is all about.
I just said a few moments ago that it is the Revelation. Some people, unfortunately, read the title of this great book as the Revelations, as if it were plural. There is some defense for that, by the way. There are many revelations in the Revelation: the letters to the churches, the plagues, the vials, the wars, the overcomers, the coming of the Lord, the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth, and the great victory of our Lord Jesus. We could go on and on: Satan, the beast, the false prophet. There are so many revelations.
This book has captivated believers for the ages, but it is, in fact, the Revelation. It is one revelation. It is singular in its title because it is all about the Lord Jesus. It is not about the Lord Jesus and all these other things; it is about the Lord Jesus.
These other things tell us how our sovereign Lord fulfills all His will at the end of the age. It is a wonderful thing. But John made absolutely clear in the opening verse of this book what it was all about:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him.
It was not many things; it was one thing. That is the secret of this book.
It is not unlike the book of Hebrews, which we are starting to consider as an assembly. In the first verse it says:
God, having spoken in many parts and in many ways formerly in the prophets, at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son.
The entire letter to the Hebrews, by that unknown author, is about the final speaking of God in the person of His Son. There is another point we need to make when we consider that: it is not His Son speaking; it is the speaking in the Son. There is quite a difference. His Son is His message. His Son is the entire revelation of God. His Son is the essential revelation of God.
So these books are very much the same. “In Son” is literally how the Greek should be read, although it is awkward. Then, in Revelation, we have “the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him.” They are, in a sense, one and the same.
Now, there is a chief exhortation in the book of Hebrews. It uses the phrase consider. In Hebrews 3:1, it says:
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus.
That is what Hebrews exhorts: consider Jesus. Then, when you come to Hebrews 12:3, it is even stronger. You know I am partial to the Darby translation, and he uses the words, “Consider well Him.”
Consider not just as you consider what pair of socks you are going to wear in the morning. I always seem to get that wrong. I cannot tell the blues from the black, and it is not uncommon that I have gone into my closet, come out, shown up at the office, and had two different-color socks on.
As a matter of fact, as John is saying, I showed up at my office one day with a black and a brown pair of shoes on. It was utterly embarrassing.
But, brothers and sisters, we are to consider well Him. He is to be our focus. He is to be our only focus. He is the essential revelation of God.
We do well to hear the Apostle Paul’s prayer to the church at Ephesus. It was his first of two prayers in Ephesians 1:17, and it is a prayer we need to pray for one another again and again:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him.
Many of us pray for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and we stop there. But thank God the prayer did not stop there: in the full knowledge of Him. That is the essential revelation of God. That was Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus.
Today, we are going to look at these one-and-a-half verses. They are short, packed, and full. They give us a fuller revelation of this essential revelation.
Maybe I will try to illustrate, because I do not know if I have put you to sleep already. People tend to sleep when substitute teachers speak, so I might yell at you. If I know your name, I might yell your name. Beware of that if you get a little groggy.
This is, to me, molecular Christianity. Most of you are probably bored already just mentioning that, but I think I am going to give some kind of science lecture. You know what a molecule is. It is the smallest substance—now, all the art students have no idea what I am talking about—but it is the smallest thing to which a substance can be divided and still contain its original and complete nature.
It is very small. You may need a microscope to see it, but that molecule of a substance—like water, H2O—contains the nature of water. H2O means you have two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. In that tiny little thing is all that water, this thing we cannot live without, this thing we would die without.
So I think these verses, although they are only a verse and a half, are molecular Christianity: very small, very full, with all the substance there.
I think you can see it in three ways:
First of all, let us look at His supreme way.
I am purposely using these adjectives because I think in this little bit we see something grand, something phenomenal, something extraordinarily beautiful in depth and scope. We see His supreme way.
That supreme way is contained in this little phrase: “To Him who loves us.” That is His supreme way.
The Bible talks over and over about our need to know the ways of God. If you read the Old Testament, that was the exhortation: the children of Israel were to know His ways and walk in His ways. That was what He condemned Israel for. He said, “You have not walked in My ways.”
That is what He condemned the kings of Israel about. Listen to just a few verses:
And thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him.
—Deuteronomy 8:6
If thou keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God, and to walk ever in His ways.
—Deuteronomy 19:9
Think of David. Psalm 25:4 records the prayer of his exercised heart:
Show me Thy ways, O Lord;
teach me Thy paths.
I wonder if that is our prayer. Then think of Psalm 103:7:
He made known His ways unto Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel.
That is what separated Moses. Brothers and sisters, how we need to pray that we would know His ways. If we know His ways, He can cause us to walk in His ways. That is what He is after in the end.
This text deals with His supreme way. It does not deal with all His ways; the whole Bible contains all His ways. But it unfolds that there is a supreme way of God behind and energizing all His ways. We see it in that first phrase: “To Him who loves us.”
This is His supreme way. It is His love, brothers and sisters. It is the explanation of everything. If we do not understand that His way is love, we will never understand the Bible. It will be rules, revelations, stories, things—this and that—but it will never be His supreme way.
Now, I do not see many movies, by the way. I am not too good a movie person, so I am not recommending a movie. I never saw the whole thing, but I saw enough of A Beautiful Mind that a single impression was made in my heart.
Russell Crowe portrayed a brilliant mathematician who was, to put it mildly, confused. He was schizophrenic. He heard voices, saw people who were not there, and lived a tormented life. But he was brilliant. No one could accuse me of being brilliant, and so far no one has accused me of being schizophrenic.
In the movie, after this tortured life, this brilliant man was given a Nobel Prize. When he stood to receive it, he said the most remarkable thing:
Only in the mysterious equations of love can any logic or reason be found.
Brothers and sisters, this one thing explains everything about God. All of His ways, all of His mysteries, are explained by love.
John the Apostle got this. In 1 John, the first of his three epistles, he used the word love, or agape love, thirty-two times. In that little book, he used that word more than in any other book in all the Bible.
He understood the deep meaning of this supreme way. He made two extraordinary statements. In 1 John 4:8, he said:
God is love.
That supreme way, that thought above every thought, captured him so deeply that nine verses later, in 1 John 4:16, he said it again:
God is love.
Here is one who understood this essential revelation. We all know and love John 3:16. John 3:16 is the heart of the Bible. That is what younger people call a mic drop. Read that verse and drop your mic.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
—John 3:16
End of the story.
G. Campbell Morgan was known as the prince of expositors. He did not call himself that, but he was so eloquent and thorough in his understanding of the Word of God that many great men gave him that title.
He said an extraordinary thing about John 3:16. He said, “This is a text that I have never attempted to preach on.” Isn’t that remarkable? The prince of expositors said that this central text of the Bible was one he had never decided to preach on.
He went on to say, “It is too big. It is too big. When I have read it, there is nothing else to say. If we only knew how to read it so as to produce a sense of it in the ears of the people, there would be nothing else to preach about.”
This is God’s supreme way.
There was another brother in history, Henry Moorhouse. He was quite the opposite of G. Campbell Morgan. He began to preach when he was sixteen years old and lived a short life, somewhat like Oswald Chambers, but he was used of God.
Do you know what he did every time he preached? Every time Henry Moorhouse stood up, he used this singular text, John 3:16, and he never deviated from that single text. Remarkable. Here was one who understood His supreme way.
Our text says, “To Him who loves us.” The King James Version says, “Unto Him that loved us,” in the past tense. I love the King James Version. It has been mightily used since 1611, and it has saved many millions from hell. We should never disrespect something that has been so greatly used.
But I happen to like this rendering: “Unto Him who loves us,” in the present tense. He never stops loving us. He did not love us just enough to save us and then say, “You are on your own in this Christian walk. Do your best.” He continuously and unendingly loves us right to the end.
Darby, the Revised Standard Version, the American Standard Version, and the New American Standard Version all say, “loves us.” The Greek interlinear means, “to the One loving us.” It never stops. It is continuous. It is current. It is from before the world’s foundation to the very end: unto Him who loves us.
Carolyn Bowles used to read to us from the Amplified Version quite often when we were younger in the Lord. I will never forget one time when she read it this way: “To Him who ever loves us.” That is His supreme way.
If it were merely “He loved us,” think of how bleak that would be. Every divorced couple at one time loved each other, and something changed. They no longer love each other. God is never like that. He loves us and will never change from that supreme way.
Not only does God never stop loving us, but His love is an inexhaustible resource. You can exhaust my love pretty quickly. It does not take much. You may think much of your loving manner, but I suspect that if you lived with me a while, I would exhaust your love pretty quickly.
But you can never exhaust the inexhaustible love of God. It is impossible.
I sometimes feel that all I ever got out of school was fragments. I remember taking economics—thank you, John—and a professor said to me a profound thing: “Economics is the study of scarcity.” I had never thought about that. I thought it was the study of wealth. It is not the study of wealth; it is the study of scarcity and the science of how nations deal with scarce commodities.
Think of that in light of the Lord’s inexhaustible love. There is no such thing as scarcity. There is no limit to it. There is no way you can exhaust it. There is no way it will ever run out.
It is the inexhaustible—and the only inexhaustible—resource. We talk about natural resources being exhaustible, and we should be good stewards of the environment. But this is not a natural resource; it is a divine resource that you can never exhaust and that will never run out. Thank God for this inexhaustible supreme way of His.
Another thing about the love of God: His love is unmeasurable. You cannot measure His love. Listen to Ephesians 3:17-19:
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.
Brothers and sisters, this love of God takes every human definition of measurable dimensions and says that it exceeds them all. Whether it is height, depth, breadth, or length, all those measurable things cannot measure the immeasurable love of God. It is absolutely unable to be quantified.
I remember Brother Richard Ackroyd, a very proper man, a tall and handsome man. I believe he was a former submarine captain and had married one of T. Austin-Sparks’s daughters. He was a professor in Louisville, and Linda and I had the pleasure of having him stay in our home.
He was infatuated with the hymn, “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.” You may remember the one time he spoke here. He corrected us a little about slowing it down and thinking about this immeasurable thing. He sang with such a beautiful voice:
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.
This is the supreme way of God. You cannot measure it.
One last thing about the phrase, “Unto Him who loves us”: this supreme way is so great that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Listen to Romans 8:38-39:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Isn’t that good news? Brothers and sisters, we should encourage one another with whatever we might be going through, whatever might be allowed in our lives for a moment: “Don’t you know, dear brother or sister, nothing is able to separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?” It is, after all, His supreme way.
Now let us go to the second point: His supreme work.
And has washed us from our sins in His blood.
—Revelation 1:5
This is what He does. God is a God who works throughout the Bible. And we must remember another thing: God is a God who always finishes His work.
I have often told the story—Linda hates to hear it—of how I designed and built our house thirty years ago, and I never finished it. People would come to our house and ask, “Why didn’t you ever paint this door?” I never had a good reason. I just never finished the work. Aren’t you glad I am not God?
God always works, and He always finishes His work. Genesis 2:1-3 says:
And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God created and made.
God works, and He finishes His work.
In John 4:34, the Lord Jesus said:
My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.
Aren’t you glad He said that? Aren’t you glad the Lord Jesus did not merely say, “I have come to do the work of Him who sent Me”? He said, “I have come to finish His work.”
In John 5:17, He said:
My Father worketh even until now, and I work.
Then, as was read this morning in our time of remembering the Lord, John 19:30 says:
When therefore Jesus had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.
Brothers and sisters, these were the last words of our precious Lord on earth. How important it is that when it comes to God’s supreme work—He is always working, and He always finishes His work. Likewise, when it comes to the Lord Jesus’ supreme work, He is always working because He sees the Father working, and He always, always finishes His work.
Our text says, “And has washed us from our sins in His blood.” This is a supreme work of the Lord Jesus: our redemption. In a sense, it is greater than the work of creation.
When you go out on a beautiful spring day and look at all the foliage and flowers, or when you go out on a starry night, without the pollution of light, and see the vast expanse of space, you conclude, “What an awesome work. What an incredible work. Who is this whose hands flung stars into space? What work is like Your work, O God?”
But there is one work that exceeds every other work: the work of redemption. That is what this verse has to do with.
Do you understand that we were the ruined creation? It would make sense if God were to pass us by and say, “I am done.” It would make sense if He were to start anew and say, “I will do a new work.” But instead, this unthinkable thing happened: those who rebelled against Him, who came under the dominion of sin and death, He chose to redeem as His supreme work.
When you read 2 Corinthians 5:21, think about it. Meditate on it. Really think about it:
Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf.
That is a hard verse to wrestle with. We may think God’s redemption through Christ Jesus is sort of like a presidential pardon. With a stroke of a word, He could say, “You are free from your sin. Go, you are free.” But it is unlike a presidential pardon.
What king or president would say to the executioner, “Let me take his place”? Can you imagine? Notice the first part of that verse: “He who knew no sin.” He did not even know what it felt like.
You and I live in a sin-sick world. Sin is ordinary to us. The sin nature is ordinary to us. But take in the meaning of that phrase: “He who knew no sin.” He did not know what it looked like, did not know what it felt like, and did not know the impact it would have upon a human frame until, by the grace of God, He tasted death for every man.
That is what Hebrews says. To me, that is extraordinary. It is His supreme work.
Jim has been sharing from Peter’s epistles. In 2 Peter 1:9, it says:
For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is the supreme work: redemption. It will take us eternity to figure out redemption. Hebrews says that He did not choose the fallen angels, but He chose the seed of Abraham. I wonder what the angels must think—those obedient angels and those fallen angels. This is the supreme work, and I think it is tremendous.
I have a problem—perhaps you already figured that out. I have more than one problem, by the way. But I have a problem that makes Linda so angry. I put ink pens in my shirt pocket, and they stain my shirts.
Now, I have overcome my problem. I am a little embarrassed to show you, but I wear a pocket protector. I re-engineered it and cut the flap off so you would not think I was such a nerd.
I will never forget one time when I went to ODU to speak to national educators on the importance of distance learning. I rushed out of the car while scribbling a few notes. I got up to the lectern, unbuttoned my jacket, and found that this brand-new monogrammed white shirt had a huge black spot. I looked down, and for a moment I thought I would not be able to speak. So I buttoned my shirt up and told them that my wife would kill me later.
But do you know that the stain of sin can only be removed by this work of redemption? So deep is the stain of sin that it is irremovable. You cannot take it away. It took a supreme work to take it away.
Isaiah 1:18 says:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
That is how great and incredible this supreme work is: there is no longer any evidence of sin in us when He saves us. Psalm 103:12 says that He removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. How far is the east from the west? It is what we call an engineering infinity. They keep diverging. You cannot even quantify them.
So great is this supreme work of redemption that He removes every stain. The promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:34 is:
And their sins will I remember no more.
I have been involved in so many marriages where people remember every little thing. But this God, the One who made memory, the superior intellect of the universe, Himself says, “I will remember no more.” That is the supreme work.
There is another thought in this verse. Not only are we washed from our sins, so that the stain is completely gone, but we are also loosed and freed. He not only deals with sins; He deals with sin.
I will never forget the impact on me when I read Brother Nee’s book The Normal Christian Life. If you have not read it, please read it. When he comes to Romans 6, he categorizes that section as “the path of progress.”
Not only is this supreme work so great that He washes us completely from every stain of sin, but He deals with the dilemma of the sinner. He takes the sinner, Romans 6:6 says, to the cross:
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him.
That is what happened. Not only your sins, but yourself. Now, because of that great supreme work, we can walk in newness of life. These words are not allegorical; they are factual. They are divine facts. You have been crucified.
The second part of this divine supreme work is that not only have your sins been cleansed, but you have been dealt with. Second Corinthians 5:17 says:
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.
I like the rendering, “Behold, there is a new creation.” We are put in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus becomes our very life through this new work, this supreme work. Now we can live unto God, not by the frustration of the old Adamic life, but through and in the life of the Lord Jesus, and be in freedom.
All we have to do, Romans says, is yield ourselves. If you yield yourself to this King, if you yield yourself to this Holy Spirit, then you can live in the power of an indestructible life.
Hebrews 7:25 says:
Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.
I do not know about you, but I do not use the word uttermost very often. If I went to Linda this afternoon and said, “Linda, I love you to the uttermost,” I do not know what her reaction would be. It might not be pleasant.
But the point is that we do not use such words. When it comes to the supreme work, there is never a superlative that is adequate. An English professor once got on me for using the word great too many times in a paper. She said, “You should not use too many superlatives. They become ordinary.”
Superlatives need to be reserved for the Superlative One. This is His supreme work.
Let us go to the last thing. Go back to Revelation and our text:
And made us a kingdom, priests unto His God and Father.
—Revelation 1:6
There is a reason for His supreme way of love. There is a reason for His supreme work of redemption. The reason is that He has made us priests unto God. There is a supreme will behind the supreme way and the supreme work.
There is a purpose behind the supreme way and the supreme work. If you do not see that, you are going to see everything as having to do with you and not God. In the end, all of it is about His purpose, His supreme will.
The reason He loves you to the uttermost, and the reason He saves you to the uttermost, is so that in the end you may serve Him as a priest. That is the end. The supreme will is the supreme purpose.
As Christians, we always talk about God’s will. “What is God’s will for my life?” That is an important question. I do not want to take away from it. I do not know how many times I tried to answer that question as a young believer.
He makes His will very clear. His will is that He has loved you forever. His will is that He has redeemed you completely. His will is that you serve Him as a priest in the house of God.
You are a priest. The text says, “Has made us priests.” I think we all try with all our energy to make ourselves priests. You cannot make yourself a priest. You cannot go to priest school, get a priest’s degree, somehow get a starched collar, turn it backward, and suddenly become a priest.
Brothers and sisters, in the end, His supreme will is that He has made us priests.
If you do not see that all His way of love and all His work of redemption are for a purpose, it will distort everything about His love and redemption. But if you see that all of it is for an end in view, then you can serve as a priest. He has made us priests. It is the reason He loves us. It is the reason He washes us.
I remember years ago, I think it was Sister Spence who read from the New American Standard Version. Ever since she read Acts 13:36 about David, it has captivated me and become a prayer:
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep.
Do you know that is God’s purpose for you? You are not here merely to have a family, get an education, or become a successful businessman or businesswoman—or not. You are here for a supreme purpose, and that supreme purpose is that He has made you a priest.
That is the end. Did you know that was your divine destiny? Did you know God made you a priest? Are you serving Him as a priest?
We have recently been meeting at Dora and Stephen’s house, considering Brother Nee’s book, The Universal Priesthood of Believers. Watchman Nee said this in the preface:
It is a pity that this biblical truth of the universal priesthood of Christian believers is not being practiced among most of God’s people today. And hence, these messages are very important and should be carefully and prayerfully read.
It is a shame. The very reason He loves you, the very reason He has redeemed you, we have not fully entered into. How it must break His heart. I do not believe He will start over, but I believe He yearns for ones to respond.
Did you know you were a priest?
Years ago, we had brothers’ meetings. They were a little saucy at times and a little difficult at times, but that is okay. We are the family of God. It is okay not to agree on everything. It is okay to raise our voices at times.
But we did something I think was extraordinarily beneficial. We said, “We have gone through a lot as an assembly, and you ones are still here. Think about it: What caught you? What has kept you?”
One of the more solid ones in our midst, Bobby Mueller, said something I will never forget: “What captured me, and what kept me, was this understanding of the universal priesthood of all believers.”
Has it caught you? Has the supreme will caught you?
First Peter 2:5 speaks of a holy priesthood. First Peter 2:9 says we are a royal priesthood. This has always been God’s heart. When He brought the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt because He loved them so, He wanted them to be a special people, a people of possession.
He brought them to the mountain, and this is what He told Moses. We think this is a New Testament idea. It is not a New Testament idea. Exodus 19:6 says:
And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
The Lord told Moses, “These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” From the beginning, this was His supreme will.
Let me end with this. I do not know if we merely have good teaching on this or not. Thank God, we have teaching on it.
People say, “What are you?” I say, “I’m a priest.” It drives them crazy. You ever tell a priest that—tell the fellow in the collar—they go crazy. “You are a priest?” “Yes, I’m a priest.” “How did you become a priest?” “God made me a priest.”
Do we know we are priests? But here is the problem. This is the burden. If you forget everything else I said, is it all just up here?
Are we still caught in the curse of Catholicism and the curse of so-called Protestantism, where we leave it to so many others to be priests and the rest of us are merely laity?
The question that comes out in Romans 12, and the issue in the end, is not that you understand that you are a priest and can recite the verse, “He has made me a priest.” The issue is whether you can say, “I am functioning as a priest.”
Every one of us, no matter how gifted—or, perhaps in my case, not so gifted—you may be a one-talent person, but you can respond to that divine will. You can say, “Lord, You have done all this for this end. How can I not respond to You?”
“I need to respond as a priest and take up my priestly function in the house of God, with brothers and sisters, and wherever I am, for that matter.”
You may be a teacher; you are a priest. You may be a doctor; you are a priest. You may be a homemaker; you are a priest. You may be a student; you are, in fact, a priest.
The end of this full and complete little one-and-a-half verses is that He has made us priests. May the Lord help us to respond.
This verse is so full. It shows us His supreme way: “To Him who loves us”—a love that never stops, never ends, and is unmeasurable. Think of it: nothing can separate you from it.
It shows us His supreme work: the work of redemption. How great it is. The New Testament even uses the phrase, “the putting away of sin.”
It shows us His supreme will: “And made us priests.” It is no wonder that this little introduction of the Apostle John in Revelation ends with these words of worship:
To Him be the glory and the might to the ages. Amen.
If you see His supreme way, if you see His supreme work, if you see His supreme will—the essential revelation of God—you will break forth in worship. It can be the only adequate response.
Lord, we offer to You these thoughts from these few words in these verses. We say, Holy Spirit, show us Jesus anew.
Teach us Your ways, O Lord. We do not want merely to see Your acts; we want to know Your ways. Show us the great redemption that is in Christ. Show us what extreme measure You took and how sure, and to the uttermost, this salvation is.
Lord, lead us into Your will. Forgive us for thinking it is all about us—always wondering how much You love us, always wondering how much You have done for us, and never thinking, “What do You want?”
Count Zinzendorf said:
You have done all of this for me.
What have I done for You?
Capture us in a fresh way with these few thoughts, that we may live and serve Your purpose for our generation. In Jesus’ name.