Foundation for Living # 6
November 13, 2005
Father, we do thank You that
we have the ability to come immediately before Your throne of grace. What a tremendous privilege it is for us as
church age believers for us to have this direct access because Jesus Christ has
split the veil and opened the way for us.
And because He is our great high priest, we have immediate access to You. Father we come to You in gratitude for all
that You have provided for us, for this building, for all the many grace
blessings in our lives, the spiritual blessings with which You blessed us with
at the instant of salvation. And Father,
now, as we study Your word, it is the highest form of worship, as we learn of
all You have provided for us that we may learn how to exploit, in this life, all
You have given us. And that we may
serve You as You have saved us and redeemed us for a purpose. And now as we
study Your word, we pray that You will challenge us with the things we study
that we may come to understand the basic dynamics of our Christian life even
more in order to grow and advance in the spiritual life. We pray these things
in Christ's name. Amen.
Where are we in this series? We started this as a basic series 2- 3 months
ago, because many people just do not understand what the foundation is that God
has provides for us in our spiritual lives.
This foundation is a grace foundation that we are to learn and master
early on in our spiritual growth. In
fact, when the apostle Paul wrote the
Corinthians
in 1Corinthians, it is within approximately 3 years of his first visit to
Corinth, so most of the people he is
addressing have been believers for less than three years, and he castigates
them, because he says, by now you should be mature. That indicates that believers should be on
somewhat of a fast track and move from immaturity to maturity within a relatively
short amount of time. Not in 10, 15, 20
or 30 years. The problem we have today
is that so little is taught from the word of God, So little is, fed to
believers to provide spiritual nourishment and foundation for spiritual growth
that we end up producing nurseries that last forever. One of my favorite lines is
one that was made by Dr. Earl Radmacher, who is now chancellor of Western
Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary pastors conference I attended some 15
years ago in Phoenix, and he commented
that the problem with the evangelical church today it is the largest nursery in
the world, and very few pastors, or nursery workers, have a vision, and an understanding
or blueprint of how to get the
babies out of the nursery. Not only that, most of them don’t want to get the
babies out of the nursery. They want
more babies in the nursery and they do not understand what the process is to
help them grow up and get out of the diaper stage and get into first or second
grade. A lot of that can be traced to a
number of different factors, but that is the state we are in today. That is a
different vision from what we have at West Houston Bible Church. My goal is to try move you from immaturity to
maturity and to teach you the entire realm of Scripture. So, there has to be a
foundation, people have to have a basic series and orientation to what the
Bible says, in fundamental areas which provides that grounding that many of us
have that enables us to grow and mature as believers. The first 10 lessons I
called the Foundation for Life. We
focused on who God is, on the exclusive claims of Scripture, that there is only
one way to look at life, which is God's way.
There is only one way to salvation, God provides the only way. That is
why Jesus Christ says, I
am the way, the truth and the life, no man can come to the Father except
by Me.
This claim of exclusivity challenges, and is almost an affront to, the unbeliever
who wants to think there are many ways to heaven, many ways to God, many paths to
truth. I addressed that. We went through the nature of the Bible; we
traced that theme through the Scripture.
We looked at who God is, who Jesus Christ is, We looked at salvation, all to
show that under a biblical view of reality, there can only be one way to God. To
come along and say there are multiple paths is essentially a self contradiction. The first 10 lessons were oriented
structurally more towards salvation ending with the doctrine of eternal
security. Then I asked the question, now that you are saved, what do you
do? After a person is saved, what comes
next? After you are born as a spiritual
infant, regeneration, what comes next?
We saw that salvation was simple. Salvation is based on faith alone in
Christ alone. What that means is fairly
simple to understand, but its dynamics are more complex. At a rudimentary level it means that the Bible
teaches is that there was a man named Jesus, who was actually more than a man,
He was eternal God, who took on humanity.
And He did that for the purpose of entering into human history, going to
the cross and dying as our substitute, He paid for our sins. We learned that if
we believe that, if we trust exclusively in Him as our Savior, not adding
anything else to it, not thinking that if I believe in Jesus, go to church, engage
in certain rituals, or get baptized or any
of the other things that people
tend to add to faith, but if it is faith alone and it is in Christ alone, then we have eternal
salvation At that instant we receive the imputation of righteousness, God
declares us to be just, we are regenerate, and we have this new life in Christ,
old things have passed away, behold, all things are new. As a result, we are indwelt
by God the Holy Spirit, and we have this new spiritual life that has to be
nourished and developed over time. All
these things that happen at the instant of salvation are non experiential. What
do I mean by that? I mean you do not
feel anything when it happens.
Regeneration is not something that you feel. When you are justified you do not get zapped
with some lightning bolt and shake or shatter, or rock and roll, or anything
like that. In fact, the only way you
come to understand the dynamics of what happens at salvation is to read the
Bible, to study the Scriptures, to be taught the word so that over time You
begin to understand all the things that happened at salvation that was true for
most of us. I know that when I was just
6 years old and my parents explained the gospel to me, I certainly did not
understand justification, imputation, or regeneration. I just knew that Jesus died for me, and if I
trusted in Him, I would go to heaven.
But as the years go by after that, we, as believers, need to study the
dynamics of salvation and what happened, because it helps us to realize and
understand all that God gave us. At
salvation, God gives us everything we need for the spiritual life. Ephesians 1:3 says He has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Well, what
are those blessings and how do we exploit those blessings in our day to day
life so we can grow and mature? That
becomes the focus of this 2nd part of the basic series which I call Foundation
for Living. In John 10:10 Jesus says, I did not come as a thief in the
night to kill and destroy but I came to give life, and
to give it abundantly. To give life is salvation. To give life abundantly is the exploitation
of God's grace at salvation. It is learning the word of God and applying it in every
dimension of life so we can experience the happiness, peace, stability, and joy
that God promises the believer as part of his daily life, in the midst of
living in the devil’s world, handling all kinds and all manners of suffering
and adversity. So this is the focus of
this second part which I call a Foundation for Living, mastering the basics of
the Christian life. In part 2 of this
section, I have focused, first of all, on the basic skills that we
develop. And now, I am going to move to
the second area which is priestly duties.
The basic skills dealt with confession of sin, walking by the Holy
Spirit, the faith rest drill, grace orientation and doctrinal orientation, we discussed
all of those. That laid the foundation. These are the skills we have to master
in order to grow and mature. But then we have priestly duties, because every
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is a priest at the instant of salvation, and
part of that has to do with prayer, which we will begin to study this
morning. Then we have ambassador
responsibilities, we are royal ambassadors.
Ambassadorship entails a different set of responsibilities. All of these
are basic things we must understand. I have structured this in this order
because there is a common misconception that comes across in too many churches,
in too many folk’s minds, and that is that somehow, spiritual growth is the
result of performing those priestly duties and ambassadorial responsibilities. But that is putting the cart before the
horse. The issue is, first of all, to master
the spiritual skills and that produces spiritual growth. And as you grow
spiritually, then, out of that spiritual growth, we function in our priestly
duties and ambassadorial responsibilities.
The priestly duties and ambassadorial responsibilities are part of our
spiritual life, but they are not the things that produce spiritual growth. They are the result of spiritual growth. You do not grow spiritual by witnessing, by giving,
or by prayer, those are the results or consequences of learning the word,
applying it and growing spiritually. And
then the last thing I think I will add to this, I am still thinking this thru, are what I
call the foundational fundamentals. Many
of you have heard the term fundamentalist. What is a fundamentalist? That term has picked up a number of negative
connotations in the last 30 – 40 years, but it has an historical basis, and
that was a set of books that came out in 1917 or so, called The Fundamentals of
the Faith, and it was in contrast to the new teaching of what was considered nineteenth
century protestant liberalism. In
liberal theology there was a rejection of the word of God as God's revelation
of Himself, it was just mans word about God. There was a rejection of the deity
of Christ, of miracles and that Jesus was going to come back physically to the
earth. And so the Fundamentals of the Faith
focused on the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth, the person of
Christ, the substitutionary atoning work of Christ, part of which we have
already covered in the Foundation for Life series, miracles, and the second coming of Christ. Some of those we still need to address, so as
a sort of catch all final category we will look at some of the foundational
fundamentals just to make sure we have brought all of the basic issues together
in one study. That gives you the
overview of where we are going. Today I
want to focus on priestly duties. We begin by understanding what a priest is scripturally. I have several points on introduction to Priesthood.
1. A priest is a member of the human race who
represents a portion of the human race to God.
This is the main idea of a priest.
A priest represents some one, or a group of people to God, in contrast
to a prophet, who represents God to man.
The role of a priest is to represent an individual, or a group of people,
a portion of the human race to God. He
may represent an individual person, a family, a clan or a nation.
2. A priest is a mediator. A mediator is a go between, someone who is
interacting between two different parties or groups, often two parties who have
a disagreement, or enmity. We are born
in sin, at enmity with God, so the human race needs a mediator, a priest. On the human level, the priest must be of the same nature as
those he represents. There are various
passages from Hebrews that emphasize this.
Hebrews 7: 4-5, 14 and 28. Hebrews
10:5 and 10:10-14. The mediator is of the same nature, this is
why Scripture says in 1
This, of course, is relating mostly to old
testament priesthood we’ll see that in the New Testament, because Christ has
completed the payment for sin, that dimension of priesthood is no longer applicable;
we no longer have to make the sacrifice for sins. Heb 5:4:
And no man
takes this honor for himself, but he is called by God. In other words, a priest is appointed by God, it is not a self appointed role. Just as Aaron was a high priest appointed by
God under the Mosaic Law. 5
So also Christ did
not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said
to Him:
“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.” Psalm 2:7.
6 As He also says in another place:
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek” Psalm 110:4.
These are passages that are
becoming familiar to many of us in our Tuesday night study of Hebrews. So priesthood involves a mediator, and God
appoints the priest, and God defines the role of the priesthood. And it will change from dispensation to
dispensation according to the nature of the role. To understand our role as priests in the church
age, we have to go back to look at the model of priesthood in the Old Testament. You don’t go to one passage and find a
delineation of everything that is related to priesthood. So you go back and look at to see what the various roles and
functions of a priest were. In the Old Testament, there were three different
orders of priests. The first were
patriarchal priests, who represented
the family. This was the primary
priesthood that functioned and operated from Adam up to the giving of the
Mosaic Law. It is the father as the head
of the family, or the head of the clan which would be a group of families
within a tribe that would represent the family or clan before God. It was the
head of the family who would build the altar and offer the sacrifice. He functioned as the priest for the
family. Patriarchal priesthood continued
among Gentiles, and it even continued among Jews into the Mosaic Law era. You see different times when patriarchs or heads
of the family would build altars to God, representing the clan or family. For instance, Gideon does this after the
angel of the Lord appeared to him in Judges 6, he builds an altar to the Lord,
and there is a reference there in terms of his role with the family. Immediately after he does that, God gives him
the responsibility for tearing down the idolatrous altar to Baal that his
father had built. So you see by this
altar that Gideon builds, he is functioning as a priest in relationship to his
clan which is the tribe of Manasseh.
Then there was the Melchizedekian priesthood, a different order of
priesthood. Melchizedek, which means
righteous king, it was probably a title rather than a personal name, was a
gentile. He is mentioned in Genesis 13:18, 19, and referenced again in Hebrew
7:1-3. His is the order of a royal
priest, or a king priest. It is the
order of Melchizedek, that concept of royal priest that becomes the precedent
for the kind of priesthood Jesus Christ has, in the New Testament. Because Jesus Christ was born of the tribe of
Judah, not the tribe of Levi, and in the structure of the Jewish nation, it was
only Levites that could be priests. There
was the Levitical priesthood, and the Melchizedekian priesthood. It is clear from the writer of Hebrews
that Jesus Christ is a King Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek
represented different people in sacrifices, not only those within his city, but
also those who came within his periphery.
With the giving of the Mosaic Law, which was a temporary law, there was
a third Old Testament priesthood, the Aaronic high priesthood and the Levitical
priesthood. In order to be a priest you
had to be of the tribe of Levi, but not all Levites were qualified to be
priests, those not in the line of Aaron
served in the Temple, but not as priests.
There was the Aaronic priesthood and the Levitical priesthood, based on
tribal affiliation and natural birth, not spiritual condition or
regeneration. If you read through all
the qualifications for the Levitical priesthood, spiritual qualifications are
never mentioned, believing in the coming of the Messiah. Only physical
qualifications are mentioned, which are listed in Leviticus 16:6-8 and 21-22. This gives us the three different orders of
priesthood in the Old Testament.
4. What exactly did the
priests do? They offered sacrifices and
offerings for the confession of sin.
People would come to confess their sin, to be cleansed from that which rendered
them ceremonial unclean, and they would bring burnt offerings, and various
other prescribed offerings to the Temple, and it was the responsibility of the
priest to perform the sacrifice, to slit the throat of the lamb or bullock, or kill
the bird, whatever the offering was, to present the burnt offerings, the grain
offerings. It was their responsibility
to oversee the sacrifices and offerings related to cleansing, confession of
sin, in the Old Testament. Furthermore,
they were involved in the administration of the tithes and the freewill
offerings to God. The Temple served as a bank. That is why it is referred to as the treasury
of the house of the Lord. When the
people brought their tithes, which were
the mandatory offerings, there were three different tithes that were required under the Mosaic Law were required
under the Mosaic Law, two were required every year, and a third was required
every third year, so actually, tithing
involved 23.3% of their
income. This was brought to the store
house of the treasury of the Temple, and the priests were responsible for its
administration, to do the accounting, and to make sure the money was used in
the proper way. That was part of their
priestly duty, to make sure that there was sound stewardship and the money was handled
in a fiscally responsible manner. They
were also responsible for teaching, instructing and preserving of the text of Scripture. They were to make sure the king, on a daily
basis, with priests as witnesses, the king was supposed to make a handwritten
copy of the Mosaic Law. This way the
king would be reminded on a daily basis of what God was expecting of the
people. They were to travel throughout
Israel, teaching the word of God, reminding people what the word of God
said. They were also responsible for
making copies and preserving copies of the word of God as it existed at that
time. Their focus was on the teaching
and preservation of the text of Scripture.
hey were also involved in the service of the Temple. They were involved in the public and
corporate worship of the nation in the temple services. They were involved in the choirs that were
developed in the Temple; they were involved in the orchestra, the musicians, in
all these different aspects of corporate worship. It was not something that was done just
privately.
They were involved in prayer,
in the sense of ceremonial prayer representing the people, taking the petitions
of the people before the Lord. All this
was part of the function and operation of the priesthood in the Old
Testament. When we come into the New
Testament, we see there are certain parallels between the Old Testament and New
Testament.
5. In the New Testament every
believer is a priest and represents himself before God. There is no special class of Christian that
is a priest. Every believer is a priest. Every believer has direct access to God the
Father. Every believer is functioning in
the same role as the priest in the Old Testament, with some exceptions, because
those things a priest did in the Old Testament related to sacrifice and sins,
and those things related to pictures of what Christ accomplished on the cross are
no longer part of those duties and those responsibilities. Now these duties for the New Testament priest
relate to confession of sin. When
we come to the Lord in confession,
utilizing 1 John 1:9, that is a function of our priesthood. It is the cleansing necessary in order for us
to come before the Lord in prayer, because sin disrupts our relationship with
God. The Psalmist said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not
hear. So there has to be a confession of
sin and cleansing in order for us to have a relationship with Him. Furthermore, there has to be an
administration of our resources in a way that honors God. good fiscal responsibility
and stewardship is emphasized numerous times in Scripture. The believer is to handle his money wisely,
so he has the financial resources to support the local church ministry and to
support missions, and to help other believers who are in financial
straights. If we do not manage our money
well, then all of a sudden, needs come that we would like to help with, but we
can’t because we are in debt up to our eyeballs. Ephesians 5:16 says we are to be redeeming
the time because the days are evil. In
other words, we are to manage our time wisely, our priorities, so there is time for bible study , time to go to church,
time to be a part of the local church ministry, and be involved in Christian
service. If we are not good managers of
time, then we end up wasting time and we only have a finite amount of time in
our lives to serve the Lord, and it is how well we learn to manage time that is
part of the duties of our priesthood. We
saw that same kind of thing going on in the Old Testament. This also involves participation in public
and corporate worship. Especially
communion, as we did this morning. That is part of our priestly function. The coming together as a body of believers in
corporate worship, singing praises and hymns to God, that is all part of our
priestly responsibility. The Bible does not have a view that it is normative
for the believer to sit at home reading his Bible, reading about the Bible on
his own, and that that is normative for Christian worship or Christian
growth. The Bible always talks about the
corporate body of Christ and it is important for people to meet together on a regular basis, as believers in the
Lord Jesus Christ. There are exceptions;
it does not mean that there is no right set of circumstances where people are
home alone. Sometimes due to illness,
sickness, such as that, shut ins, they cannot gather together with other
believers. But it is important that we
have some sort of ministry, to shut ins, where the pastor or others who are
ordained in the congregation can go to the homes of those who cannot get out
due to illness, age, whatever, and go and have the Lord’s table for them. That is an important part of their spiritual
life and priesthood. There should be a
provision made for that. The emphasis in
the Scripture is on public and corporate worship, and not isolation. When Paul went to different cities, Derbe,
Iconium, Lystra, and he went on up to Greece, he went to Philippi, Berea, Athens, and Corinth and all these other
places, he did not say, now everybody, just go home and read what I have
written. He instructed them in local
church congregations because it is the strength of the body of Christ coming
together as a body that gives them the resources to send out missionaries, to
take care of the needs of those in the body and to minister to one another. This
is part of what is involved in out priesthood.
So there is corporate worship, there is prayer; prayer is part of our
priesthood. There is daily Bible
reading. Because you are a believer
priest, you need to be reading your Bible on a regular basis. It is how God works through His word. Too often folks get the idea that, I really
should not read my Bible, I might have questions I can’t answer. Guess what folks, I have questions I can’t
answer. Every time I read the Scripture
something comes up and I scratch my head, and I say, okay, I’ll get to that
eventually. We are to read our
Bible. The level of biblical illiteracy
in out culture today is just incredible.
And that is among so called believers.
You start asking too many questions about what you know about the Bible,
and people don’t know it because they do not read it. You should be reading at
least a chapter a day. Preferably, you
should be reading five or six chapters a day.
There is a Bible out called Through the Bible, in a Year and it has
Bible readings set up. In my first
church I encouraged that, and I had a man who had been in that church for
years, a deacon, chairman of the deacons, he was 67, 68 at the time, and he had
never read his Bible. He read his Bible
all the way through, and this guy caught on fire, he went from lukewarm
positive volition to the boiling point. He said, I didn’t realize the Bible
taught half of that. He got excited. It is the reading of the Scripture;
it is the word of God that is alive and powerful. Sure you will have question, sure there are
mistranslations, but some of the modern translations like the New American
Standard, and the New King James, don’t leave you with those kind of confusing
things that happened a generation ago, when all you had was the King James, and
it was an outdated English vocabulary and some of the translation was off. Bible reading is important, making it a
priority to be in Bible class to study the word. You need a pastor teacher to teach the word
so those questions are answered.
At some level, every believer can function sort of like a gold miner. You can go and pan for gold and get a little
off the surface and that is helpful, but you need a mining engineer to dig deep
and find those rich veins of ore that give you that valuable doctrine that allows You to
grow spiritually. You have to have the
reading, study, application and preservation of text. The believer priest in the church age
functions in preserving the text by passing on the word of God to his children
and grandchildren. Something we have
lost in modern times, because we live in such a hectic society is the facet of
sitting around the table at dinner with the whole family, and at the conclusion
of dinner, having the father read a chapter of Scripture and having the family
talk about it. If you go back a couple of generations in this country, that was
normative in Christian families to do that.
For the whole family to come
together and take that time where the father was exercising his biblical
responsibility to raise up the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
And he was taking the time to oversee the spiritual development of the children
in the family, and how important that is, and just the example it provides for
the children as a leader in the home. We
have lost that. That is part of what has
caused weaknesses in marriages and families, because the word of God is not at
the center of the real family life, not just in terms of going to church and Bible
class, but every day experience of the family.
All of this is related to our priesthood. So that is our introduction, we are going to
look the next couple of Sundays at the duties and responsibilities of the
believer priest. Our basic responsibilities, and then we will come back and
look at our duties and responsibilities as ambassadors for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Father, we do thank You for
this opportunity to study Your word today, to be challenged by what the
Scripture teaches about the fact that each one of us is a believer priest. And as a priest, we have duties, and
responsibilities and obligations in order to serve You. And that is the function of the priesthood,
service to You. Father, we pray that
You would challenge us with what we study and that we would recognize that
these are part of our biblical responsibilities. Father, we also pray that if there is anyone
here who is unsure of their salvation, and uncertain of their eternal destiny,
that they would take this opportunity to make that both sure and certain. If you are here this morning and you have
never taken the opportunity to trust Christ as your Savior, you have never
understood the gospel before, this is your opportunity to secure your eternal
destiny. Scripture says that all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but the free gift of God is
salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Salvation is simple. It is
expressed best in Acts 16:31, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be
saved. Right where you sit, you can
trust in Christ as your savior. God the
Father, who is omniscient, knows what you are trusting in. The instant you trust in Christ as your
savior, you receive the imputation of Christ's righteousness, you are declared
just, you are regenerate, and you receive the imputation of eternal life, which
can never be taken from you. And you are
always a child of God. Father we pray
You challenge us with the things we have studied this morning, that the Holy
Spirit would make these thing s real to us and that we would put them into
daily practice. We pray this in Christ's
name. Amen