Understanding Our Role as a Royal Priesthood

In Deuteronomy chapter 18, in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 17, they're getting ready, this is Moses' sort of final presentation to them, now that you're moving into the place where God has provided for you. Here is the way your world is to be structured and ordered. And he starts out with talking about the judges that they would appoint, who would take care of the legal arrangements for them and the law courts. And then he talks about the king with regard to sort of the political structure of the nation. And now he moves to the religious life that they're to have. And he begins by talking about the role of the priests and the Levites. The priests were descendants of Aaron from the Levite tribe. All of the Levites were designated to be workers in the temple. All of the descendants of Aaron were also Levites, but there were some Levites that were priests. That is, they worked in the temple to make the sacrifices and the offerings at the temple. And the Levites also worked at the temple, but they would take care of the material things. They would take care of cleaning things up. They would take care of the maintenance and repairs. But they couldn't offer any of the sacrifices. Only the descendants of Aaron could do that. So when he talks about the Levites, there are two dimensions to the Levite family. The descendants of Aaron, and also the rest of the Levites who were from other members of the Levite tribe. Aaron was one of the tribes of the Levites too. So here he's talking about the leadership, the spiritual leadership of the community of Israel. Now, I think it's important to understand when you look at the Old Testament, a lot of people are a little bit hesitant about the Old Testament. They see it as remote and distant. But you have to understand that the Old Testament was the Bible of Paul. And it was the Bible of Jesus. And everything that Jesus taught, and all the things that the writers of the New Testament wrote and taught, were founded on the Scriptures, the Old Testament Bible that they had. Sometimes we look at the Old Testament and we see a sharp divide between this is the Old Testament and this is the New Testament. And in fact, some people in the history of theology have thought of fact, have proposed that there were two gods, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. You would see that because of a misunderstanding of the nature of what's taking place. The story of God from the beginning of the Old Testament all the way through to the cross and to the second coming of Christ is a continuous story of God and how He's interacted with the world. He didn't have a personality change between the Old Testament and the New Testament. There is one continuous stream. The New Testament does not rethink or redo the Old Testament. It fulfills it. What Jesus said when He came, He said, I've not come to do away with the law. I've come to fulfill it. What He meant by that is, I've come to show you what the ultimate, complete fulfillment of what the Old Testament law was is really about. So whenever you read about the story in the New Testament, behind that and underneath it and in back of it is the foundation of the Old Testament. It's like a house or a big building, a huge building that's built. You go downtown to the big skyscraper of their building and they're digging in the ground five, six, seven, eight stories deep to build the pillars on which the building is going to stand. Whenever it's all finished, you drive by the building, it looks like it sits on the ground. It doesn't. It's deep in the ground. And when you look at the Old Testament, it's a tendency to see it as something that's insignificant. But everything in the New Testament was built on the principles, the ideas and the truths that are found in the Old Testament. And the New Testament simply amplifies those in a way that helps us see that these same principles are valued in different settings in the New Testament. So we see then the New Testament principles applied in our own circumstances, in our own world is another step from that. So you have the Old Testament setting, the New Testament setting and then ours. So when we look at these, everything in the Old Testament has to be seen in terms of the principle and then the application to them, the application in the New Testament, which is what Jesus does for us, what Paul does for us. And then we take the next step to say, how does it fit the world in which we're living? All of the things you find in the New Testament have their roots and their foundation in the Old Testament. So when we read these stories, they are important to us because they're the foundation stones on which the things that we practice are really built. And if you don't have the foundations very firm and secure, your building just won't stand. These foundation stones help us to understand the truths that God wants us to live by. So when he talks about here the instructions for the priests and the Levites, the key ingredient for us is to say, who would that be then in the New Testament that this is directed to? Who would it be then in the church that it's directed to? And understanding who the modern contemporaries who would do the work of these people, then help us to understand what he says to them and how it fits in the circumstance in the world in which we live. So we have to stop and look to say, what was the role of the priests in the Old Testament? What was the role of the Levites? The priests were the people who took care of the religious organization. They were the people who went to the temple and they made sure the sacrifices were done correctly, exactly as the law of Moses gave them to do. They were the ones who made sure that the places of worship were taken care of, so that anyone who went there would know exactly what they could do and what they should do. And they would make sure that they were clean so that when they participated in the activities of the temple, they wouldn't be killed. Anyone who went into the precincts of the temple where they were not allowed would be killed. It's a serious thing. So when we look at the New Testament, we're looking to see, what does the New Testament describe in terms of the priesthood, the role of the priest? If you turn in the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2, Peter is one of the writers of the New Testament that is very connected to the Old Testament principles, more so than the Apostle Paul, even. Paul, while he was deeply ingrained in the Jewish tradition, was not as evident in his Jewish writing as was Peter. So Peter, in chapter 2, beginning with verse 9, says, But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you might declare the praises of him who called you out of the darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as aliens, strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Peter begins to describe to those who are listening to him, these are followers of Christ now. Notice what he calls them. You are a chosen people. Does that ring a bell for you? It is the same language used of the people in the Old Testament. Chosen people. You are Israel now. So when you look at the New Testament, you see that these people who are followers of Christ are chosen people, not by the bloodline of Abraham, but by the faith line of Abraham. They are the chosen people of God. You are a royal priesthood. Here he defines the role of all believers in terms of their priestly position. These are the people who are to be able to present to the world the demands of God. When you went to the temple, the priest's job was to tell you how you could please God, what you could do that would be right in his eyes, how you might be able to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice would be a fellowship sacrifice. How can you have fellowship with God? How can you have forgiveness of your sins? What can you do that would relieve you of the consequences or burdens that you feel because of something you've done that God doesn't want? It was the priest who allowed you to be able to know how to have a contact and a relationship with God. Now, he's saying this not to the preachers, but to all the people who are listening to this. You are a royal priesthood. You're the ones who've been called to stand between the people of the world and God and bring the message of God to the people of this world and to bring the people of this world into the presence of God in a way that is saving and beneficial to them. That is your role. Every person who's found Jesus Christ as Lord of their life are in the New Testament idea a priest, a part of this royal priesthood. You are a holy people. Now, the word nation in the Bible doesn't mean a political entity like we think of the term nation to mean. It means a group of people with a particular identity. It can be language or it can be religion. So we are a holy group of people. We're holy because of God's forgiveness in us. We're holy because we belong to him. We're holy because we're being used of him in a special way. When the Bible uses the word holy, it means you're different than the rest of the world. As God is different from human beings, so anyone who's holy is different from those who do not belong to God. Everywhere you go, you are holy. You are a saint. Many of the Old New Testament writings, Paul describes his writing as to the saints at Corinth or wherever he's writing. That word for saint is simply the word for holy. You are holy. You are chosen people. You are a royal priesthood. You are people who belong to God. All of these are characteristics of priesthood, the role of someone who brings the message of God to people and brings people into the presence of God. So when we talk about what the Old Testament describes in terms of the Levitical role and the priest, it's really talking about the church in the New Testament. Because the role that the priests were given in the Old Testament, this one family, the Levitical family, now has been given to all of us. We're all in that sense, Levites. We're all in that sense, priests. Our responsibility to God is the same as the priest. They were to be able to bring God into the presence of people and people into the presence of God. And that's what we do. When the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and he is shaping our character, wherever you go, whoever it is that meets you, meets God. Now, you may not see that yourself, but the person who does not know God does see it. They may not be able to define what it is, but they understand that there is something about you that's different. And what it is, is the presence of God's Holy Spirit inside of you, helping you to think correctly, helping you to act correctly, helping you to respond to things correctly, helping you to make choices. All the things that God promised in his covenant, I will guide you so he helps you make good choices. I will provide for you so he helps you to know how to be able to manage the things that he gives you. I will defend you and protect you, and I'll make your life meaningful and valuable, a good meaning and a purpose for your life. So when God is at work in your life doing all of these things, people will look at you and see that there is something happening in you that is not happening in them. They won't know what it is. They may say, boy, you're sure lucky, things just seem to turn out right for you. Or they may say to you things like, how do you do what you're doing? You just seem like you're able to handle life and circumstances in ways that I just can't do. All of those differences in you are the difference in the presence that God is there. So as the Old Testament priest used the temple as a way of being able to bring people into the presence of God and God in the presence of people, in the New Testament, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives inside of you, and you are to work at the task of living in such a way so that you bring God into the presence of every person you meet and help that person find the presence of God in the way you found Him. That's the priestly role that you have. So that what God is at work doing is using your life exactly in the same way that He used the priest in the Old Testament. Now, there's a tendency among people when they look at the New Testament to think of the priestly role as the role of the pastor or the preacher, but that's next when we talk about prophets, people who proclaim the Word of God. The priestly role is something quite different. Now, in the Levites, there was a whole family of Levites. Anyone who is a descendant of Levi and those who are descendants of Aaron were the people who did the priestly work at the temple. And that's the role that the New Testament assigns to us. We are the ones who do the priestly work of Aaron. That is the work of bringing people to God and bringing God to people. So, in God's care for His priests, which would be you, He's talking, here's what He says, the priests who are Levites, indeed the whole tribe of Levi, are to have no allotment in the inheritance with Israel. See, every other one of the Israelites, every family received a plot of ground. And that plot of ground was the source from which they could raise their crops. It made financial security for them. So, here He says to the Levites, you're not going to have income like everybody else. Now, remember, He's talking about you here, too. You're not going to have the same kind of income that everybody else has around you because you have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the offerings made to the Lord by fire, for that is their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance, as He promised them. Now, what it meant in the Old Testament was, I'm going to give you no land, and here's the way you're going to get your money. When people come to the temple to make an offering of an animal and they're going to burn it up, you get some of the meat. You can eat some, you can sell some, whatever you choose to do. When people come to the temple and they're so far away that they can't bring an animal and offer a sacrifice, they'll give you money. And some of that money is divided among all of you, so you'll have assets from that. When they bring the first fruits, they bring in the wheat, you get some of that. They bring in the barley, you get some of that. When they bring sheep, you get some of that. All the things that they bring will be a part given to you. You will not receive it directly from me, but you will only receive it through other people. Now, the other Israelites, they'll get given a plot of ground and they'll have to farm that, and they'll get it. But you will be completely dependent on me for everything you have. You won't be able to raise your own. You won't have a plot of ground to be able to do that. You will find that I am your inheritance. You're not going to inherit, your children aren't going to inherit land that you leave them. And you won't inherit land from your father who left it. Instead, I will be the source, ongoing source, of all the financial means that you have. Now, when you look at the New Testament, you'll turn to Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus was talking to his followers and describing to them how things would work with them. He was telling them that, starting with verse 25, he was telling them, don't worry about your life, what you eat or drink, or about your body, what you wear. Life is more important than food, and the body more important than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store in barns, and yet their Heavenly Father feeds them. In other words, they don't have a plot of ground to call their own. They don't have anything to call their own. But the Father feeds them, he takes care of them. Who of you, by worrying, are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See the lilies of the field? See how the lilies of the field grow? They do not labor or spend, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. Yet that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire. Will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. In other words, you make the priority of your life, allowing God to control you. That's what the kingdom is, controlling you. And then you make a priority of living your life as a righteous person, which is what a priest ought to do. You ought to be a righteous person, you ought to be a person who's doing what he's supposed to be doing, and you should make your primary concern doing what the king tells you to do. Do the king's business in your life, and live the way the king tells you to live. In the Old Testament, you were to do what God told you to do, and make a priority of living the way God told you to live. But seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble on its own. See what Jesus was teaching was, God is your inheritance. You're not being given a plot of land like in the Old Testament, but what you've been given is God. And he has made a promise to you. You do the work that I've given you to do, like the priest in the Old Testament, and I will give you everything that you need. Everything that you need will be provided for you. Why? Because we are the priests of God in his work. And just like the Levites in the Old Testament, he said, I am your inheritance. If you have, someone told me about a man one time, a family who had a rich aunt, and this guy was telling me this story, he said, ever since I was a little boy in school, my friends kept telling me about the rich aunt who had a lot of oil land, and that whenever she died, they were going to get all this money. And so, he said, every time we'd talk about it, they would say, well, when aunt so-and-so dies, you know, we're going to all be rich. And Christmas time came, they all rushed to her house to make sure they made a good impression on her. So, she was there, they all rushed to her house, and she lived on and on and on and on. And she died, and the friends Gary was talking about were up in their fifties when she died. And as happened, the oil wells, you know, don't continue to produce the same amount that they did in the beginning, and when they settled the estate, there was nothing left. The inheritance that people look forward to, to provide the resources for their life, disappeared. But if you look for an inheritance from your family, it can be a great benefit to you. What God says to his priests, I am your inheritance. What are you going to get? You're going to get everything that I have. And here's my promise to you. I will give you everything you need. Food, clothes, and shelter, I'll give to you. I will provide the need you have. You see, as priests with the Lord, we have a financial status far different than the people around us. God has made a promise to us. Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness. You live a life in obedience to me, a holy life in obedience to me, and you let the first priority of your life, obedience to me, that is seeking God's rule over my life, and everything you need will be taken care of. You'll be dressed like I dress the flowers. You'll be fed like I feed the birds. I will take care of you. So in the New Testament, the promise to us is given in a different way. In the Old Testament, he said to the people of Israel, here's what you do. The priests are to receive the inheritance. This is to share, do the priests, from the people who sacrifice a bull or a sheep, the shoulder, the jowls, the inner parts. You're to give them the first fruit of your grain, new wine and oil, the first fruit of the shearing of your sheep, for the Lord your God has chosen them and their descendants out of all the tribes to stand and minister in the Lord's name always. And he's chosen us out of all the world. His chosen people. That's what Peter said. For his chosen people. He's chosen us out of all the people of the world to be his ministers and to take care of his work. And his promise to us is, I will take care of you. You just make sure that the business that I've given you to do gets done. The priestly work that we have to reflect the character of God to the world, to show people what God is like and to bring others into the presence of God. And when we do that work of the kingdom of God, he promises he will indeed take care of us. If a Levite moves from one of your towns anywhere in Israel where he's living and comes in all earnestness to the place the Lord will choose, he may minister in the name of the Lord his God, like all of his fellow Levites who serve there in the presence of the Lord. He is to share equally in their benefits, even as he has received money from the sale of family possessions. He's saying that a Levite who is not in Jerusalem, there are several Levite towns that people could live in. And if they're not in Jerusalem, but they want to come to the temple, they'll be free to do that. And whenever they come to the temple in his own hometown, he'd be able to be taken care of there by the community in which he lived. And now when he comes to the temple, he is to receive the pay that will allow him to live. And if he's leaving the place where he has his home and he moves to the temple to work there, he is to receive the benefits that all the other people who are there should receive. Now, Paul, when he was talking to the New Testament church, he said in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, he addressed this issue about the people who were working in the church, which would be like the priests who were at the temple, physically at the temple. 1 Corinthians chapter 9, beginning with verse 3, Paul is defending himself here. Maybe it takes you a while, as it did me, to understand when you read these stories growing up in the church and you hear about Paul, a great man and a wonderful hero, and a great star he was, you'd think everybody loved Paul. A lot of people really didn't like him. And they said terrible things about him. One of the things they said about Paul is he's just in it for the money. He's not really doing anything except just trying to make a fortune for himself. So he's defending himself here in this chapter. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord, the beginning of verse 1? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. In other words, you've come to know Christ because of me. How could you not say that I'm not a messenger to you? This is my defense. Paul had to defend himself. This church got so mad at Paul, they told him not to come around anymore. They were really mad at him. He got fired from them, if you could use that language in our time. This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Can you imagine anyone sitting in judgment on Paul, saying he wasn't a follower of God and he wasn't doing the right things? Don't we have the right to food and drink? Don't we have the right to have a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles, the Lord's brothers and Cephas? Apparently the other apostles travel with their wives and family. Even Jesus' brothers travel with their families, and Peter traveled with his wife and family. Or is this only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? In other words, when a soldier goes out to war, does he have to earn his own living? I know, you pay a soldier and he works at the job of being a soldier. Who plants a vineyard and doesn't eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the law say the same thing? What's written in the Law of Moses, do not muzzle an ox while he's treading out the grain. Is it about an oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? This is written for us because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar in the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel? You see, Paul goes back to this very concept of the priest. He in the temple takes a part of what's been given for his own service. So whenever the church says to someone, we want you to work in the church and make that a full time job, then the church has some responsibility, like the temple of the Old Testament, to provide a resource or a living for that person who's there. Paul says it's a principle in the scriptures. If an oxen treads on the grain, he deserves the food that he makes, some of the food that he makes. So that the person in the church, and he's talking about himself and Barnabas, those of us who are doing this work full time, we could claim to be supported by those who are in the church or in the synagogues. But he said, I've chosen not to do that because what I want to do is to make sure that there is not one single stumbling block between me and the work that God has given me to do. And even though he didn't take a penny, they still blamed Paul for being in it for the money. You see, what Paul is talking about is the very same thing that was told about in the Old Testament. The priest and the Levite are to be able to benefit because God takes care of them. If he works in the temple full time, he lives from those things in the temple, because those are the produce of the work of the kingdom of God. Now, in the New Testament, all of us are priests and God has made a promise to us, I will take care of you. You seek first my kingdom and my righteousness and everything you need will be provided for you. If, as a priest, you say to one of your members, we want you to serve here in a position of leadership so that there is no opportunity for you to have another job or do anything else, then your responsibility is to make sure that that person receives the benefits of the work of the body of Christ over which they serve. So that a pastor who is working in a church, so that he has no other opportunity for a job, he receives the pay that comes from the congregation. The benefits of that are given to the pastor to be paid for. Now, in the Old Testament, it said that the priest should be paid well and should have the benefits of selling his own family heritage. For example, if he had a brother or sister, a mother or father that died and had some assets, he didn't have to sell his assets and live off that. He could have those, but the congregation or the temple was still responsible for taking care of him and paying him. Neither Paul nor the Old Testament expected someone who served as a missionary or preacher or religious full-time religious service needed to live in poverty. They were received generously from God, given through the body of Christ. So God's intention was to make sure that all of us are well cared for, well enough to be able to take care of our own homes and family, and cared for well enough to be able to pay for the salary of people we ask to do full-time work for him in our congregations. The very same principle that was used for the priests and the Levites in the Old Testament was the principle God uses for the body of Christ today. The guarantee for you that every need you have will be met, and the guarantee for the missionaries and the people who are called, preachers, teachers, whoever they are, that through you all of their needs will be met. God has chosen to say to his people, you do what I tell you, and I will take care of you. Could you bow your heads, please, for a moment? We have to ask sometimes, then, why is it that we run into difficulties financially? You have two choices. You have to say, well, God didn't keep his promise, or two, I haven't used him well. Stewardship is a key ingredient in what God promises. He doesn't say, you buy everything you want, anytime you want it, any way you want it, and I'll make sure you have enough. He says, I will give you enough to live. Manage it. God has promised us that he will take care of us, a promise and oath based on his integrity and his character. Father, you've made us a promise that no one else in the world has, that devoting our lives to live in obedience to you, you will take care of us. You were doing this for thousands of years, even to your people as far back in the Old Testament as the establishment of the tabernacle, and you're still doing it. Teach us to be dependent on you for our inheritance, not ourselves or our families. Teach us to be responsible with the things you give us, that we might see the fullness of your promise come to pass. It would be a wonderful thing if everyone who knew us and knew our financial circumstances could be amazed at how you provide. So help us to be stewards in a way that people can see that you take care of us as no one else in the world has cared for, that it might bring glory and honor to your name. Amen.