" GOD PRIVILEGES US BY MAKING US PRIESTS."

Q. Why is He called Christ, that is, Anointed?
A. Because He has been ordained by God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Spirit,[1] to be our chief Prophet and Teacher,[2] who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption;[3] our only High Priest,[4] who by the one sacrifice of His body has redeemed us,[5] and who continually intercedes for us before the Father;[6] and our eternal King,[7] who governs us by His Word and Spirit, and who defends and preserves us in the redemption obtained for us.[8]
[1] Ps. 45:7 (Heb. 1:9); Is. 61:1 (Luke 4:18; Luke 3:21, 22. [2] Deut. 18:15 (Acts 3:22). [3] John 1:18; 15:15. [4] Ps. 110:4 (Heb. 7:17). [5] Heb. 9:12; 10:11-14. [6] Rom. 8:34; Heb. 9:24; I John 2:1. [7] Zach. 9:9 (Matt. 21:5); Luke 1:33. [8] Matt. 28:18-20; John 10:28; Rev. 12:10, 11.

Q. Why are you called a Christian?
A. Because I am a member of Christ by faith[1] and thus share in His anointing,[2] so that I may as prophet confess His Name,[3] as priest present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him,[4] and as king fight with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life,[5] and hereafter reign with Him eternally over all creatures.[6]
[1] I Cor. 12:12-27. [2] Joel 2:28 (Acts 2:17); I John 2:27. [3] Matt. 10:32; Rom 10:9, 10; Heb. 13:15. [4] Rom. 12:1; I Pet. 2:5, 9. [5] Gal. 5:16, 17; Eph. 6:11; I Tim. 1:18, 19. [6] Matt. 25:34; II Tim. 2:12.

Scripture Reading:
Leviticus 1:1-9
Romans 12

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 40:2,3
Psalm 54:3
Psalm 51:6
Psalm 50:7,11
Psalm 118:7,8

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

By the ordinance and anointing of the Lord, you and I are priests and priestesses. That’s not, I think, something we think much about day by day, but it’s true nevertheless. Rev 1: Jesus Christ "has made us kings and priests to His God and Father" (vs 6). And 1 Peter 2: "You are a … royal priesthood, a holy nation." It’s true of all God’s children in the New Testament dispensation; older and younger, male and female, healthy or not, are priests. As we bike to school, we are priests. As we construct that cabinet, we are priests. As we iron the clothes, we are priests.

But what, congregation, does that mean? Just how are you a priest? Why, for that matter, would God make us priests? What promises and what obligations follow from God making us priests?

To answer these questions, we need first to look at Scripture’s instruction about the Old Testament priesthood. Then we need to turn to Christ’s work as priest. That will set the stage for us to understand what the Lord promises to us in our being priests, and what He requires from us.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

The task of the biblical priest is drawn out for us in some detail in the instructions the Lord gave His people at Mt Sinai. You recall that at Mt Sinai the Lord established with Israel His covenant of grace, adopted Israel to be His people. Part of that covenant of grace was God’s desire to live amongst His people. Hence His instruction to Moses that the people should build for Him a tabernacle. The last part of the book of Exodus explains what this tabernacle had to look like, explains how the people built it, and, in Ex 40, that the Lord actually came to live in this tabernacle.

Important for our purposes today is the fact that the tabernacle was constructed in such a way that God’s dwelling in the tabernacle was at a distance from the people. That is, He dwelt in the Holy of Holies in the back of tabernacle, while the people could get no closer than the door of the tabernacle. This layout of the tabernacle was a reminder of God’s response to the fall into sin in Paradise; God told Adam and Eve to get out of His presence, out of the Garden. At the same time God promised to work reconciliation. Well now, that there was distance between God and the people in that tabernacle recalls man’s expulsion from Paradise. That God nevertheless lived amongst His people recalls the promise He gave to prepare redemption.

In the tabernacle of Mt Sinai God was pleased to bridge the distance between Himself and the people by placing an altar between His dwelling place in the Holy of Holies and the people outside the door. On this altar sacrifices had to be offered, sacrifices that spelled out how it was possible for sinful people to be reconciled to holy God. By the ordinance of God, the priest received a task at this altar.

We find the details of the priest’s work at the altar in Lev 1. Immediately after the tabernacle was set up in Ex 40 and God made His home amongst His people in the Holy of Holies, the Lord gave instruction to Israel about bringing sacrifices. Any Israelite, said God, could bring a burnt offering to the Lord whenever he wished, but God stipulated what ritual had to occur at the tabernacle. Vs 4: the person bringing the offering had to "put his hand on the head of the burnt offering." The purpose of the ritual was to transfer sin from the sinner to the animal. Thereupon, vs 5, the worshiper had to kill the animal he’d brought to the tabernacle. The point here is that God had said in Paradise already that if mankind would sin, man must die. Man did sin, so man must die; certainly he can’t appear in God’s presence. So sin is transferred to the animal, and the animal killed in place of the sinner.

At this point the priest appears on stage. Vs 5: the priest had to collect the blood of the killed animal, carry it through the door into the courtyard of the tabernacle, and sprinkle it around the altar that stood between God and the sinner outside. That is: the priest had bring the blood to the Lord on behalf of the sinner, and so ‘tell’ the Lord (in a manner of speaking) that Yes, outside was a sinner who deserved to die, but the animal had died in his place, and would the Lord now have mercy on this sinner and let him live, Yes, let him be near to holy God.

There, brothers and sisters, you have the first distinct task of the priest. The priest in Israel had to stand between the sinner and God, had to approach God on behalf of the sinner, and so had to intercede for the sinner. His bringing the blood to the altar constituted a prayer to God on behalf of the sinner imploring God to accept the sinner on grounds of the shed blood.

That being done, the priest had to go back outside to the dead animal, remove its skin and cut up the body into sizeable pieces. Then he had to put wood on the altar, lay the meat on the wood, and burn the lot. The purpose of that is described in vs 9; this is "a sweet aroma to the Lord." That is, here the Lord was sending a signal to the sinner outside that Yes, He was pleased to accept the blood shed on behalf of the animal, so that the sinner might go free from the judgment he deserved, is reconciled to God.

There, then, is the second part of the priest’s task. The priest in Israel not only stood between the sinner and God to intercede before God for the sinner; the priest also stood between God and the sinner in order to assure the sinner that Yes, the Lord accepted the sinner so that the sinner was reconciled to God.

It’s obvious, of course, that these two aspects of the priests’ work involved more than silently enacting certain rituals at the altar. In the process of carrying out his task, the priest had to tell the people why he was doing what he was doing. As such, the priest through deed and word had to preach the gospel of God’s free grace to the sinners of Israel (cf Lev 10:11; Dt 31:9-13; Mal 2:7). For that’s what the tabernacle worship was all about; all those sacrifices were the preaching of the gospel. That is: God and man could be reconciled through the shedding of blood, specifically animal blood foreshadowing Jesus’ blood, and that glorious result is that man could live in the presence of God, God would adopt sinners to be His children. It’s because that gospel was repeatedly proclaimed at the tabernacle that the psalmist could long so much to be in the tabernacle, to go to the house of the Lord (cf Pss 42, 84, 122). That proclamation of the gospel lay at the heart of the priest’s work. How much a privilege it was, then, to be a priest, and how much a privilege it was for Israel to have priests in her midst!

Before I step off this first point about the biblical priest, there’s one more thing I need to say. The priests’ work was centered around the altar of the tabernacle, so that he took a place between holy God and sinful Israel. The priest’s closer proximity to God meant that God required greater holiness from the priest than He did from the people. For example, the priest was not allowed to join in the customary mourning ceremonies when a friend of his died – I read in Lev 21. The reason is that death is the wages of sin, and the priest is engaged in preaching the gospel of life. He had to stay away from death, and the point is that he had to stay away from all that smelled of sin. To live that way required self-sacrifice on the priest’s part; he had to commit his life in a special way to God, had to sacrifice himself to God.

Yet that sacrifice-of-self should not be a difficult thing for the godly priest, simply because of the riches involved in his work. To be allowed to proclaim the gospel of redemption to sinners: there was no task more privileged than that!

We move on to our second point:

When Jesus of Nazareth was baptized at the beginning of His public ministry, God the Father anointed Him with the Holy Spirit so that Jesus might also be priest. So the author of the letter to the Hebrews can say of Jesus that God appointed Him to the office of High Priest (Heb 5:5f,10; 7:17).

As Priest, Jesus –like the priest of the Old Testament- received from God a place between holy God and His sinful people. God sent Him to earth to redeem His people from their sins (Mt 1:21). Jesus did that, though, not by standing at the altar to sprinkle before God the blood of calves and goats that the people might bring. The New Testament speaks of Jesus as "the Lamb of God", and the point is that Jesus is Himself the animal that is sacrificed. But Jesus is more than the sacrificed animal; Jesus is also the officiating priest at the sacrifice of Himself. That’s what the Scriptures mean when they say that "He offered up Himself" (Heb 7:27). He gave Himself as a sacrifice, and that’s priestly work. Here’s the perfect fulfillment of the self-sacrifice of the Old Testament priests.

The priest of the Old Testament had to enter the courts of God with the blood of the animal killed outside, and sprinkle that blood around the altar. Jesus did the same, though the blood He carried with Him was not the blood of an animal, but His own blood. Hebrews 9: "not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all" (vs 12), and that Most Holy Place is the presence of God. He came with His own blood, and so fulfilled all the Old Testament shedding of blood. Sinners came by the thousands to the tabernacle in the Old Testament, and each deserved to die on account of his sins. Each came with an animal, laid his hand on the animal to transfer sin to the animal, and then killed the animal as a substitute for himself – with the blood of the animal sprinkled around the altar as a prayer that God will please accept the death of the animal in place of the death of the sinner. But the blood of animals can never pay for sin or satisfy the justice of God (Lord’s Day 5), and that’s why one day a righteous and holy man had to come to shed his blood to pay for sin. Well, there was Christ’s work as priest. He officiated at the sacrifice, not of an animal, but of Himself, and then He presented to God not the blood of an animal but His own blood. In so doing Jesus Christ appeared before God on behalf of sinners, and implored the Father to forgive the sins of all those whom the Father had given to Him. ‘Those sinners,’ Jesus would say to God, ‘are sinners, O Yes. But I shed My blood on their behalf! So, Father, do not look at their sins, do not treat them according to what they deserve, show them You are their Father and they Your children for My sake!’ You see, beloved, here’s Jesus’ work as Intercessor!

And Yes, this priestly work of our Lord Jesus Christ continues on and on. True, one time only He officiated at the altar, when He sacrificed Himself to God on Calvary to pay for sin. One time only He appeared before God with His only blood, when He cried out on the cross that all was finished (Jn 19:30). But the work of intercession begun there continues through the generations and centuries. Heb 7: "He always lives to make intercession." That’s why John can write that "if anyone sins" –and we all do!- "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (I Jn 2:1). And Paul adds that Christ "is even at the right hand of God, [and there] makes intercession for us" (Rom 8:34).

Here, beloved, is enormous encouragement for us in the midst of our sins, for always we can go to God in prayer, and be assured that sins confessed are sins forgiven; Christ our advocate pleads before the Father on our behalf! There’s His priestly work, continuing today, rooted in priestly work done long ago on Calvary. What glorious privilege for us to have in Christ such a High Priest!

We move on to our third point:

From the texts I quoted at the beginning of the sermon it’s clear that the saints of the New Testament dispensation are all priests, whether we be older or younger, man or woman, sick or healthy. The time has come to answer that question of the beginning: in what way are we priests? What does it mean to be a priest?

The biblical priest, we learned, had a role to play between the people and God. That is, the biblical priest took the blood of the dead animal and sprinkled it around the altar – and in so doing approached God on behalf of the sinner with the request that God accept the sinner for the sake of the coming Savior. For our part, though we are priests today, we understand that we do not have to come with blood before God on someone else’s behalf, for Jesus Christ has put an end to the shedding of blood with His priestly work on the cross. Yet there is, brothers and sisters, an element from this work of the Old Testament priest that remains for us today. Through the blood he brought before God, the priest of the Old Testament interceded for the other. In fulfillment of this function of the Old Testament priest, Jesus Christ as Priest continues today to do the same. We, beloved, have the same mandate. Paul tells Timothy that "supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks" is to be made "for all men," particularly for those in authority over us (I Tim 2:1f). Notice: here is instruction to intercede for others, to plead with God on behalf of the other. Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the same instruction in the Lord’s Prayer. He did not tell us to address God as "my Father," nor to ask God to "give me this day my daily bread, and forgive my sins…." Rather, Jesus taught us to pray for each other; "Our Father," we are to say, "give us this day our daily bread, and forgive our sins…." God has established His covenant of grace not with me alone, but with many, all of who are my brothers and sisters in Christ, washed with His blood and sealed with His Holy Spirit. In my prayers to God the Lord would not have me pray about me alone (though there is certainly place for that); God would have us remember each other before God’s throne of grace, plead with God on each other’s behalf.

So, brothers and sisters: when was the last time you in your personal prayers mentioned before God’s throne of grace the straying of the congregation? When was the last time you mentioned the sick? Or the teachers at school? No, I don’t mean a general prayer now, as in, ‘Be with the sick,’ or, ‘Be with the schools.’ The priest of the Old Testament entered the courts of God with the blood of the individual’s sacrifice, and Jesus in heaven intercedes for us individually. As priests we have a similar role to pray for each other, and let us not hesitate to mention each other by name and by need before the throne of God’s grace. Let the fathers in the family prayers set an example for their children how to intercede before God for the needs of that straying brother and that ailing sister.

But there is more to our task as priests, congregation, something more profound, more out-in-the-open than our personal prayers. No, we’re not called upon to sacrifice at an altar of stone as the Old Testament priest was. Yet make sacrifices we are certainly to do. The Old Testament priest foreshadowed that role we have by keeping his distance from anything that smelled of death. Keeping this distance involved self-denial, self-sacrifice, especially if the deceased person was a close friend. Jesus Christ displayed this element of priestly self-denial perfectly when He laid down His life for His people. This is the instruction that very much remains for the priest of the New Testament dispensation. Peter writes that God has made us "a holy priesthood," and then explains our task as priests like this; he says that God would have us "to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (I Peter 2:5). Paul picks up the same theme in his letter to the Romans, when he beseeches his readers to "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God" (Rom 12:1).

Just how the Lord would have His people offer the sacrifice of their bodies is also spelled out in Scripture. When Peter says that we are priests and so need to "offer up spiritual sacrifices," he fleshes that out with the instruction to "abstain from fleshly lusts" (vs 11). The "fleshly lusts" which he would have the believers resist is particularly the urge to know best yourself. After his instruction to "abstain from fleshly lusts" Peter insists that his readers are to "submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake" – be it to the civil authorities or to the masters the Christian slaves had or even to the husband. That can involve much self-denial, self-sacrifice, especially when the king is a Nero or the master is brutal or the husband insensitive. The temptation is then so great to resist, to rebel, to take justice in your own hands, and that’s called "fleshly lusts". But here’s the priestly task God has given to His people: God would have His own deny themselves, sacrifice their own feelings and urges, in order to obey God’s commands.

The apostle Paul gives a similar instruction in Romans 12. He tells his readers to "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God," and then proceeds to flesh that out. The Christians of Rome are not to "be conformed to this world," but are to be "transformed by the renewing of your mind." That is, they’re not be like people of the world who follow the dictates of their sinful hearts; they’re rather to deny themselves, be changed, be transformed through the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. That means specifically that love for the other is to be genuine, even though you find lots of fault with the person to whom you show love (vs 9). It means that the Christian is to "abhor what is evil," even though the Christian’s flesh continues to be attracted to the evil (vs 9). It means the Christian shows kind affection to the brother, moving aside for the sake of the brother – even though that’s the last thing human nature wants to do (vs 10f). It means one is patient in tribulation, not throwing in the towel when the going gets rough (vs 12). Sacrificing oneself means that you "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse" (vs 14). It means one doesn’t insist on one’s own opinion (vs 16), and it means that one does not take justice in one’s own hand (vs 17ff). Instead, one denies the self, sacrifices the self to God in the conviction that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cares perfectly for His children, in His wise way.

Let me be clear, beloved. The Lord has ordained us to be priests, and so would have us sacrifice ourselves to Him, deny our own will to do His will in every circumstance of life. In the Old Testament the priest had to engage in sacrifices in order to work atonement between God and the sinner. The sacrifices we need to bring have nothing to do with working atonement between God and us, for our only High Priest has completed that work on the cross, reconciled us to God. But now that God has become our Father, the Lord would have us in thankfulness to entrust ourselves so completely into His care that we never follow our own heads, do what is right in our own eyes, but instead obey His will for us. That is the self-sacrifice He wants. It’s a sacrifice that reflects thankfulness, a sacrifice that shows that we know ourselves completely safe with the God who has become our Father – no matter what He in wisdom puts on our path. It’s a sacrifice that requires so much self-denial, for our sinful hearts would have us believe that our way is the best way. But that’s how we are priests in this society; we present ourselves a living sacrifice of thankfulness to God.

Can we be such priests? Certainly, beloved, we can! For when the Lord made us share with Christ in His anointing, He did not pour out His Spirit in small measure! If the Holy Spirit of holy God has made His home in our hearts, He will give us the strength to deny ourselves and make the sacrifice God desires of us. With the task God gives comes the strength to do it – to His greater glory!  Amen.