Nora, I hope you can read that. I’ve tried to make it big. I may not stay exactly word by word.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me okay? Okay, I hear a little bit of an echo back there.
Well, it’s good to see everyone this morning. I’ll tell you right off the bat what the title is going to be this morning: “The Royal Priesthood of All Believers.”
Notice, I did not just say “the priesthood of all believers.” We would sorely miss an important part of that if I did not say royal, because that is the Lord’s perspective this morning. He has declared us to be royal priests in His household.
I really want you to focus on two words in that title. Number one is, of course, royal, and the other word is all. That is what led me to this topic a while back.
Some of you who have known me for many years know that this topic, or this notion of priesthood, has been very special to me. As a matter of fact, this notion of priesthood is really what led me to meet here many years ago.
I was thinking recently that sometimes we need to refresh ourselves and reconsider what a calling we have to be priests in the house of our God. It is not a position that we hold. It is not an office that we are elected to. I am not going to come walking in with a name tag saying, “Hello, my name is Bobby the priest.” You are not going to see anything like that.
The priesthood, in the eyes of the Lord, is largely hidden. It is who we are in the Lord. It is not an outward position that we recognize or that the world would seek after.
When you think about this idea of priesthood, you might be thinking, “Well, how is this guy going to cover something as large a topic as priesthood in, say, twenty-five or thirty minutes?” Don’t worry; it is not going to happen. He is not going to do that.
As I was preparing for this, I really tried to hone it down and edit it. I want to make it meaningful and applicable to us, because this is a very large subject. You could spend a whole year doing a comprehensive study in the Old Testament on the priesthood of all believers, or on the Levitical priesthood. What a complex subject.
I do not want you to fear this morning that we are going to delve so deeply into this that we will not be able to crawl out of it. That is not the case at all. I want this to be living this morning, and I want us, as a result of this, to be excited about being priests in the house of the Lord.
Sometimes we forget that. We can let it fall to the wayside, and it is good to be reminded again of what a privilege we have to be in the Lord’s house and to serve Him and one another as priests.
Last week I was at Kroger, and one of my jobs is to unload the basket and put everything on the counter. When I am leaning over like that, I am looking right at the magazine rack with the periodicals and newspapers about this far from my face.
I looked up, and there were Prince Harry and Princess Meghan of the royal family. Every week I see them in the same spot. They are always in one of the tabloids, and I think, “Well, I wonder what they did this week to be in the news.” There they are again.
I got to thinking, that is the royal family. When the world thinks of royalty, that is probably what comes to mind: Prince Harry, Meghan, or the Queen Mother. That is royalty from the world’s perspective.
But that royalty is earthly. Its origins are in man. As a matter of fact, if they did not produce male children down the line, it is conceivable that that royal family could come to an end. There would not be any heirs.
But then I thought of the kind of royalty that we are called to, and it is so different. Ours is a heavenly royalty. The reason is that we have a lineage with our very King: no beginning and no end. It is heavenly. What a difference.
This is the kind of royalty to which we belong—not of this world. To me, that is such a special blessing to know.
I do not want to dwell on the royal family like that. I do not have anything against them. I think they are probably fine people and would make good neighbors. I only wanted to point out that this is the kind of royalty the world sees and aspires to.
But not us. We do not have to, because we too are born into a royal family. When you are born again, we are royal in the eyes of the Lord—from His perspective.
With that beginning, we will get into the message. I did not want to go too terribly long today. This is a broad subject, and if you are not careful, you can get into a lot of unnecessary detail. I want to keep it meaningful to us.
I divided my time into three parts:
When you hear the word priest or priesthood, at least for me, I am automatically drawn back to Exodus. You think of Aaron or something like that. It is the natural thing to do when you hear the word priest.
Sometimes it does not seem like priesthood fits in with today, does it? It seems to be Old Testament. That is true; that is where the origins are. But in order to gain understanding, we need to take a trip back to the Old Testament and have a closer look.
Let us briefly look at the word priest. This is just a generic dictionary definition:
A priest is a person appointed by God whose function is to make sacrificial offerings and perform other religious duties as an intermediary between God and man.
Aaron probably comes to mind when you think of Old Testament priests. That is a broad but accurate definition of what a priest does. In the Old Testament, it was a position they held, and they had duties and responsibilities to perform.
I certainly do not want to spend time going over everything we already know about the function of the Levitical priesthood. In many ways, it defined Old Testament life for the people of God, the Israelites. Their lives revolved around the sacrifices and all that they had to do.
It was, in many ways, a very complicated life as they struggled in the wilderness for forty years and beyond. We know the story. I only want to lay groundwork for what we will consider later this morning about priesthood.
I want to begin with an Old Testament passage from Exodus 19, beginning in verse 3. Here we get an early look at what God says about priesthood:
Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said,
“This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob
and what you are to tell the people of Israel:
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt,
and how I carried you on eagles’ wings
and brought you to Myself.
Now if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant,
then out of all nations you will be My treasured possession.
Although the whole earth is Mine,
you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.
I want you to hone in on that phrase: “You will be for Me a kingdom of priests.”
When I read that anew after many years, I thought, “Wow. Isn’t that just like the heart of the Lord—to want all to be a kingdom of priests?” He did not want only a select few with extraordinary qualifications to do that. His heart was that all would serve Him as priests in such a kingdom.
Sometimes we do not give the Lord enough credit, do we? When you think that far back, His heart was that all would serve. I had made the bad assumption that only a few were qualified to do that, until I read that verse anew.
This is the heart of our Lord. He was just as merciful back then as He is today. He always wanted the best for the Israelites. We know the story: they were a stubborn people, and that is just the story of man, is it not? We do not have such a great history, do we?
What does the Lord mean by telling them that they will be a kingdom of priests—all of them, mind you? But then, if you look in Numbers 1:47-51, we see something different:
The families of the tribe of Levi, however, were not counted along with the others.
The Lord had said to Moses:
“You must not count the tribe of Levi
or include them in the census of the other Israelites.
Instead, appoint the Levites to be in charge of the tabernacle of the testimony—
over all its furnishings and everything belonging to it.
They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings;
they are to take care of it and encamp around it.
Whenever the tabernacle is to move, the Levites are to take it down,
and whenever the tabernacle is to be set up, the Levites shall do it.
Anyone else who goes near it shall be put to death.”
When you read that, clearly these things were to be handled by the priests and the priests alone. For anybody else to undertake anything like that carried very serious consequences. There was a well-defined job that the priests had, and only they could do it. It was very strict.
We all know the story in 2 Samuel 6, where David was transporting the ark back to Jerusalem. The oxen stumbled, causing the ark to become unbalanced and nearly tip over. Trying to do a heroic thing, one of the fellows reached out and stabilized the ark. As a consequence, he dropped dead.
You would think, “What a terrible thing to happen.” But he was not of the tribe of Levi, and it was not his job to handle the ark. As a matter of fact, even when they were transporting the ark on that cart, the priests should have been carrying it on their shoulders, not simply rolling it along. They were really in violation there, I believe.
You see the serious nature of the duty of a priest or a Levite, and that only they could perform it. Despite the good intentions of the fellow who reached out to help the situation, could this be a case where the letter of the law kills? I just throw that out there. The letter of the law killed literally. Could be. I had never thought about that.
Does all this not sound like a contradiction? On the one hand, the Lord’s heart was that all would be a kingdom of priests. Yet in this situation, that was not so. It was the Levites who had to do it, and there were serious consequences if anyone else did.
It almost looks like a reversal by the Lord, does it? What is going on here? Has God changed His mind? I do not think so—not at all.
The Lord does not change His mind. He is never wrong. When there is an issue, or something is not going according to the way it should, you can be sure that it is man’s fault. It is our fault. It is not God’s inability, nor is it something that He has done wrong. It is always going to be us when there is a problem.
The fact of the matter is that for all to be priests was conditional upon their keeping the Lord’s covenant. Remember what we read in Exodus. The key statement was that, in order to be a kingdom of priests, they needed to obey the Lord. Of course, they did not.
They could not. Sinful man was fallen, and they simply could not live up to the standards of God. Nobody could. Even if we had been there, we could not have done it either. We would have been in the same boat.
Let me give you another example along the same lines. No sooner was Moses upon the mountain before God than the people grumbled and demanded a golden calf be fashioned so that they could worship it. This is found in Exodus 32.
While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, everybody else was at the base of the mountain, and Aaron was there with them. It was not long before they began grumbling and complaining: “Why is Moses still up on the mountain? We do not know if he is ever coming back.”
They demanded that Aaron build them a golden calf. The strange part of that story to me is that Aaron did not seem to resist. He simply said, “Okay, you want to build a golden calf? Give me your gold rings, earrings, and necklaces. We will throw them in the fire and fashion one.”
He went right along with them. He did not even encourage them to give Moses a few more days. No, he went right on with it.
They fashioned that graven image and worshiped it. They became so impatient that it was probably not just a little grumbling; it was more like an outright riot or rebellion. I doubt there was anything Aaron could have done to stop it.
This is another example of how they failed to follow the Lord. It did not take long, did it? It did not take long at all before they fell into their old ways. How quickly they forgot.
As a result of this rebellion, God had to do something else. That is when He separated the Levites to administer all the priestly duties. God was going to have His kingdom of priests, even if it was a largely reduced and downsized version of it.
It was not His original heart to have just a select few. But because of disobedience, this was what God had to do to remedy the situation. That is largely how the Levitical priesthood was born: out of the necessity of having priests when the people could not do it themselves.
I want to mention a few critical verses from Hebrews before moving on. Hebrews 5:1-3 says:
Every high priest is selected from among men
and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God,
to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
This is why he has to offer sacrifice for his own sins,
as well as for the sins of the people.
That is exactly what God did through the Levitical priesthood. It was born out of necessity, but it was also His mercy.
Now listen to Hebrews 7:11-14:
If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood—
for on the basis of it the law was given to the people—
why was there still need for another priest to come,
one in the order of Melchizedek,
not in the order of Aaron?
I think that is a good question. The key word in that verse is perfection. If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, why was there still a need for another?
The answer is fairly easy. Unfortunately, perfection could not be attained. Why? Because they were men—mere men. The priests would never be perfect.
Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies with a sin offering, a blood offering, once a year. This had to repeat itself year after year because it could never permanently satisfy the requirements of God.
The priests executed these sacrifices once a year, and God was satisfied with that provision. But the problem was that it had to be repeated year after year after year. That is where the imperfection comes in. It was not permanently satisfactory to God once and for all.
God would ultimately have to do something to break that never-ending cycle. This gives us the background of the Levitical priesthood and why it became necessary.
From the very beginning, this narrow, limited priesthood was not in God’s heart. He wanted all His people to be priests unto Himself.
Let me give a brief recap. From the very beginning, the Lord wanted all His people to be a kingdom of priests. Due to sin and rebellion, they failed. As a consequence, the Lord raised up another priesthood: the Levitical priesthood.
That priesthood did what it was intended to do, largely, but it was not perfect. It had to be repeated year after year. God was looking for perfection, and perfection could not be found in the Levitical priesthood. It was good, but it was not perfect. It was not God’s final heart.
I want to share a few personal experiences to make this living and relatable to us.
Some of you ladies may have heard Lynn mention this at a sisters’ meeting several weeks ago. One night, probably around ten or eleven o’clock, we had gone to bed when we got a call from a neighbor.
She was pretty upset and in panic mode. She asked, “Do y’all know anything about birthing sheep?” I said, “Golly.” Lynn handed me the phone and said, “You talk to her.”
Our neighbor, Donna, lived just up the road and had a small farm. She asked whether I knew anything about birthing sheep. I said, “Well, I have done a lot of things, but birthing sheep is not one of them.”
She said, “Do you mind coming down to the barn, praying with me, and giving me moral support?” So I told a little fib and said, “Sure, we do not mind getting up and coming down there. It is only eleven o’clock.”
I thought I had better put on some old clothes, because I was not sure what I was getting into. I might be in over my head before I knew it.
Lynn and I went down to Donna’s barn. She was working on a sheep that she thought had gone into labor, but it was not progressing fast enough. She thought the sheep might need a little help to get things moving.
She enlisted me to work on the sheep and help manually get the labor started. She told me where to start pressing and said, “Get to work.” It was like giving the sheep CPR.
She said, “You have got to go harder than that, and you have got to go faster than that. Get these contractions started.” Well, I was doing the best I could.
Long story short, by about two in the morning, I finally said, “Donna, we are not getting anywhere with this thing. That sheep is lying there nearly asleep. You are the one who is all worked up. You need to go to bed and start this process over in the morning.”
Her uncle was going to be there that morning to help her out.
I went over the next morning and was shocked to find that her uncle had put the sheep down. He knew what to do as far as birthing sheep, and he found that there were four stillborn lambs. The mother could not deliver, and so he had to put her down.
When I was talking to him, he was carving the sheep up into little pieces. I thought, “Hmm, that makes me think of what I am talking about today.” This would have been the job of an Old Testament priest: carving up animals and presenting them as blood sacrifices.
I got to thinking, this whole thing is very disagreeable to me. I would not want any part of it. In other words, I would have made a terrible Old Testament priest. But that is literally what they had to do. It was not a pretty job, was it? But that was the requirement.
I realized, is it not so good this morning, just like Herb prayed, that we do not have to bring in a sacrifice and lay it on the altar just to be accepted by our Lord?
Now, no doubt, there was a sacrifice laid on the altar: our Lord Jesus. Yes, it has been done, and it is permanent. But we did not have to do that. God did that, and we are the beneficiaries of His mercy as we come to the Lord’s table.
Many of you know that I was brought up in the Catholic Church. Some others here were also brought up that way. I think we understand that the outward structure of the Catholic Church very much resembles the Old Testament priesthood in many ways, especially regarding the work of the priest.
He had well-defined functions that only a priest could do and that the rest of us could not.
I remember, as a young child in the late 1950s and early 1960s, being in the Catholic Church. I remember an older fellow named Father Egan. Of course, he would perform the sacraments, including the Lord’s table, confession, and things of that nature.
As I grew older, I began to feel that something was missing. I was not growing in the Lord. I had become somewhat alienated, it seemed, and the older I got, the more it bothered me.
I could not put my finger on what the problem was. Probably I assumed it was too much sin or something, but I never seemed able to keep up with the requirements of the Catholic Church. It became a real heavy burden on me.
When I went to college, I began meeting other Christians from various and diverse backgrounds. I saw that there was more to it than the sheltered life in which I had grown up. As I met with other Christians, I began to see a little more light.
Without going into detail, it made me think that perhaps it was time to seek elsewhere. After I finished college, I never returned to the Catholic Church of my youth. Yet I still did not know what the future held.
In time, I met my future wife, and she had been raised in the Baptist Church. You might think we started meeting in the Baptist Church, right? No. We started going to a Methodist church here in Richmond.
We were both still searching. We became active in Sunday school and various things, but the problem was that no matter what you did, you still had the minister or priest performing one function while the rest of us did little else.
You had the priest and the laity. You had that separation. No matter where you went—Methodist, Baptist, or Catholic—it did not matter. You still had that separation, where certain ones had a function and others did not.
I saw that and did not necessarily understand it, but I could see that it was an issue. I think it really restrained people. You were not free to worship and allow the Holy Spirit to lead. You had a creed and a bulletin guiding you through a service. It did not matter where you went; it was pretty much all the same.
Something still nagged at me, and I think it did my wife too. At that point, we were still meeting at the Methodist Church, and Jerry, I am going to put you on the spot here, brother. You invited me to go to a men’s retreat at Camp Easterseals in King and Queen. You remember that?
This was around 1987 or 1988. I appreciated the invitation, and we went. There were quite a few brothers there, including many of the old-timers from here, as well as brothers from Bowling Green.
It may very well have been an Ed Miller retreat, for all I know. It very likely was. We were there for the weekend, and during the worship time, I saw for the first time in my life brothers offering up worship, praise songs, and readings of Scripture from the heart.
There was no creed to read and no guideline to follow. It was not just a priest or minister leading the worship. It seemed to flow out of the life of the Holy Spirit in everybody.
I was out of my comfort zone. I had never seen this before. But something witnessed deep in my heart, and I said, “This is good. This is the way worship ought to be. It ought to flow from within, not from without.”
Later that weekend, we had a time of prayer in small groups. I remember sitting at a table with Roger, and perhaps Jerry or somebody else. There were three or four of us, and we were going to pray.
I was looking around, thinking, “Well, I wonder who is going to do the praying?” Finally, Roger spoke up, in the way only Roger can, and looked at me kind of funny. He said, “Well, we are. Who else is going to do it?”
I nearly slithered under the table, because I had never been in a setting where I had to pray out loud. I just did not know what to do. I was way out of my comfort zone.
But in the midst of that discomfort, something witnessed to me: “This is good. This is right. This is the way it ought to be.”
As much as I was against doing that, I was in favor of praying. I was not thrilled about it, but I knew that was the way we should be doing it. Praise the Lord, the brothers did not give me a hard time. They were very encouraging and helped me along. I have always remembered that.
Jerry, that was a great weekend. Thank you for inviting me. Thirty-some years later, I thank you. And I thank Roger too. He is a precious brother, and we are still friends after all these years.
That is it for personal testimonies. I wanted to share those because they lead into the final part: the priesthood of today. It really is truly amazing.
We have looked at the requirements of the Old Testament and the vital role the priest played. Now, in Hebrews 10:8, we see a rather startling statement concerning the Father:
“Sacrifices and offerings,
burnt offerings and sin offerings
You did not desire,
nor were You pleased with them”
—although the law required them to be made.
What a startling statement. I thought the Lord was pleased with all those sacrifices in the Old Testament. They served their purpose. They got the job done. But He was not pleased with them.
So what was the Lord trying to tell us? What was He pleased with?
The answer is found in Hebrews 5, where God declares Jesus to be His Son and a priest—there is that word priest—in the order of Melchizedek.
Why Melchizedek? Melchizedek is an unknown and somewhat mysterious fellow. Who was he? He was quite an intriguing person.
Hebrews 7:1-3 tells us that he was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. His name meant king of righteousness and king of peace. He was without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life. Like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
When you read that, you think, “That sure sounds like the Lord Jesus, does it not?” Some believe perhaps that was Him. Regardless, it does not matter. That was Melchizedek, and our Lord Jesus was like him.
The very interesting thing is that this man did not trace his descent from Levi, nor does Jesus. Jesus’ earthly lineage was from the tribe of Judah. He was not a Levite. So how could the Lord Jesus be a priest, even a high priest? We will see.
Jesus is not of the Levitical priesthood, yet He fully satisfies the requirements of God. God is fully satisfied by His Son. He was able to meet us in our most desperate need.
Hebrews 7:26-27 says:
Such a high priest meets our need—
one who is holy, blameless, pure,
set apart from sinners,
exalted above the heavens.
Unlike the other high priests,
He does not need to offer sacrifices day after day.
He sacrificed for their sins once for all
when He offered Himself.
Jesus is that perfect High Priest. We have now found perfection. Remember, in the Old Testament we had good, but we did not have perfect. But now we do, only in the Lord Jesus.
What is the significance of all this? How does it affect you and me this morning—right this minute, right now?
Hebrews 10:19-22 declares:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence
to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain,
that is, His body,
and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
let us draw near to God with a sincere heart
in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us
from a guilty conscience
and having our bodies washed with pure water.
To me, this is nothing less than profound. What a statement. We can now draw near to God. It is really incredible compared to what it used to be in the Old Testament.
When the Lord Jesus, our High Priest, died upon the cross, we know that the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. Thereby, access was opened once and for all to us.
The Lord has effectively declared us all to be priests unto the Father, just as His heart was from the very beginning, as we saw in Exodus.
When that veil was torn, the Levitical priesthood ceased to exist. At that moment, when that curtain was torn, that was the end of the Levitical priesthood. It was obsolete. It was no longer needed and did not need to be brought forward.
Do you see how glorious this is? That was a pivotal time in our history. You and I are now priests unto our God. No longer is there any need for another priest to represent us. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
Revelation 1:5-6 declares:
To Him Who loves us
and has freed us from our sins by His blood,
and has made us to be a kingdom and priests
to serve His God and Father—
to Him be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.
We are now His kingdom of priests. The Lord has what was on His heart from the very beginning because our Lord Jesus died on the cross.
When that happened, the Lord Jesus was appointed High Priest, and we have been appointed priests under Him in His house. This morning, we gather unto the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know He is our Head, and we are His priestly body—not just His body, but a priestly body.
Brother Kong mentioned in his little book, Why Do We So Gather?, that we come together to meet the need of God and fulfill His purpose concerning His Son. This is our priestly function.
Now we have the full capacity to do so. We do not have the limitations of old. We operate under the law of the Spirit of life, which comes from within and not from without.
As we minister to one another and to those the Lord puts in our path, according to the gifts that the Lord has bestowed upon us, we operate in that new realm, out of the Spirit of life. In doing so, we are actually ministering to the Lord.
As we have been seeing in our study of 1 Corinthians, we have gifts now that we exercise, but they are born out of the leading of the Holy Spirit. They are no longer under law. Do you see the difference here?
That is what it is to operate as a priest in the house of our Lord. It is organic. It is from within. It is hidden. It is not a position, and it flows naturally among us.
This is accomplished in a practical and living way by functioning as priests in His house—not under obligation, but under the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is what we need always to remember.
When we are born again, we become priests of the Lord. It is by divine appointment. We do not have to graduate from seminary. Look at all the tuition that would save.
Is that not something—to be a priest and not have to go four years to school for that? That is pretty good.
But it is very practical, and it is not something too spiritual to lay hold of. We serve as priests without being conscious of it. It becomes the natural way that we live and function in the house of God. It is organic.
You do not have to think about it as a priestly duty or function, because we do not have that heaviness to it. It is living, and it becomes our way of life in the church. It is within us. It rises up out of the life of Christ in us, and it cannot be any other way.
First Peter 2:5 says:
You also, like living stones,
are being built into a spiritual house
to be a holy priesthood,
offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ.
And 1 Peter 2:9 continues:
But you are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
a people belonging to God,
that you may declare the praises of Him
Who called you out of darkness
into His wonderful light.
There is that word royal. We are not just a priesthood; we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.
What a privilege we have this morning to be called royal by God Himself. Now that is true royalty, is it not? That is not earthly; that is heavenly.
We are a royal priesthood because we have a heavenly lineage with the eternal King—not an earthly lineage like the Levites or even the royal family of Great Britain.
This morning, as we gather, we remember Jesus as our great High Priest. As a result of the new covenant, He has declared us all to be priests in His house—not just a special few, not just some with greater qualifications than others. He has appointed all to serve as He has given us grace to do so.
We come from a royal, heavenly lineage—not of man, but of God. What a privilege. What a heavenly calling.
Regardless of your personal ministry, calling, or gift, there are many things that we do in the house of the Lord. As we go about doing these things, no matter how minor or insignificant we may think they are, the Lord sees them in the light of a precious priestly function. That is His perspective. He sees it from above, and He sees us as His precious priests.
Never forget that. Never forget that.
This priesthood of all believers has held a dear and special place for me as my Christian life has unfolded. It has been many years in seeing this light, and it did not come easy.
When I was much younger, I did not understand a whole lot about how the church operated. Probably none of us did. But over the years, through brothers and sisters, getting to know them, and through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, I have come to see and have a greater appreciation of what He has done for us.
I will not say it has always been an easy path. It has not. I think many of us have traveled that path ourselves over the years. But by the Lord’s grace, it is His way for us.
In closing, I want to say once again that we are all His priests—not just priests, but royal priests. What a heavenly calling we have. How precious that is.
I hope I have not overdone this this morning. I wanted to keep it as succinct as possible. But I hope the outcome is that you will have a new appreciation that you are all royal priests. What a privilege we have to be in the house of the Lord. That is what He has done for us.
Let us praise His name and take this back to Him.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank You this morning for showing us more of Yourself regarding what it is to be a priest in Your house.
Lord, how easy it is to forget what You have done for us. Lord, it is by divine appointment that You have made us priests. Your heart is so large, and even looking way back into the book of Exodus, Your heart was equally large for the Israelites.
Lord, we are not unlike them. We have disobeyed too. But Lord, thank You for today, for being our High Priest, seated at the right hand of Your Father, executing Your will.
Lord, thank You that You have also appointed us to be priests in Your house. Help us really to appreciate that, to have renewed vigor for it, and to become excited about what You have done for us.
For Lord, it is all of Your grace, and it is Your mercy. It is good that You have a kingdom of priests now. Your heart has been satisfied.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.