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; 10:5 and 10:10-14. The mediator is of the same nature; this is why
Scripture says in 1Timothy 2:3 that there is one God and one mediator, the man Christ
Jesus. The
emphasis there is the man Christ Jesus, because in order to represent us to
God, Jesus Christ had to be fully human. So a priest is a mediator, a go
between that is the function. So
we understand he is a member of the human race, he has to be a member of the human race in order to be
a mediator, and we see this develop in 6 verses of Hebrews 5.
For every high
priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that is the role of a priest, the high priest, is the
head or chief priest in an order of priests in order
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. So we see that part of what the priest does is to
offer gifts and sacrifices for sin to God.) 2 He can have compassion on those who are
ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. 3
Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer
sacrifices for sins.
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 and 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. 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 storehouse 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. They 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