Romans 15:16 - Promises to the Believer-Priest, Pt. 1 (10/09/2022)

A lot quieter than before church. Who was it? Somebody said you guys were fellowshipy earlier, but you're calmed down now. I think it was the singing. Did it calm you down a little bit or get you in a more pensive mood?

I don't know. It was kind of frightening today. I got to be serious. Yeah, well, he mentioned it was my birthday last week. It was his too. And mine's the fourth, his is the fifth. And Jeannie's is the eighth, right?

So does that mean you're twice as old as me? Two times four is eight. Mine's on the floor. Anyway, happy birthday to you too. Brother Bill's was on the third and he's with the Lord now. We know that, but he left his Bible.

He used to sit right there. You know, he left his Bible in there and I looked and noticed it was still there. I'm thinking our church may keep it. It's a possibility. I'm contemplating whether I need to ask the family permission or not, but I could just leave it where it is.

That's what Brother Otis used to say. If you find something that's not yours, leave it where it is. Don't pick it up because if they need to find it, they'll come find it. So, but I was looking through it a little bit.

It's interesting to me when it's a close friend or a loved one and it's their Bible and you look and you see what stuff they underline and the notes they write in there. I love to do that. And I was looking at some of the stuff he had written in there.

And I looked in one part that's in the sermon today and sure enough, he had made a circle and moved the word up to the right place where the word goes with an arrow. And I thought, yeah, I remember when we went through that.

Anyway, it's pretty cool. We all love Brother Bill and miss him. But I love it that our young men are picking up where he left off and teaching Sunday school. So if you guys can make it at 10 o 'clock, come on.

We have a good class. I'm glad to hear it looks like we have a new family we can help with our school. So that's a good thing to hear. And it's interesting when he talks about, I said he's used to it, when the mom starts crying, there's so much bad in the school systems.

And when they see a chance to escape that, it's wonderful. And thank God for Brother Paul. There aren't, I've done this a long, our school started in 1981. We had a wonderful young woman that ran it the first year.

And then she got, he was young and she got pregnant and the pastor said, you're running it now. And I said, oh really? So I got to run it after that for a long time. So I know what that's like. And it is really interesting to be able to deal with the parents and the young people too and be good with both.

And that's what Paul is amazing to watch and to see the fruit of his ministry. And when I first met Paul, he told me he had felt a call from God to do Christian education when he was a teenager. That's how young he was when he knew that's what he was supposed to do.

And so we are blessed and so are the families. And so I'm so happy that we can be a part of that, help support that. Well, let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Peter chapter two. And we're actually our launching pad is Romans chapter 15, verse 16, where God says that he accepts the offering up of the Gentiles.

They're made acceptable in Christ. And when you think about doing offerings, you think about a priest, don't you? If you think about the Old Testament, you think about a priest. And so we started a little study on the believer priest and because that's what we are, God made us all to be that.

And that's what we've been talking about the last few Sundays. So let's pray and ask the Lord to bless the Bible study time. And we'll jump in where we left off last time. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

And Lord, we thank you that you give us time to study it on our own, but also together. And let us make great use of that time of studying it together today. And we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Well, just a quick review in 1 Peter chapter two, verses one through all the way to actually chapter four, chapter two, three, and four.

What we did last time a couple of times is we talked about the preliminary duties of a believer priest. And so we saw 24 imperatives. In other words, 24 places where God said, I made you to be a believer priest and here are things you need to do to be fit to be one.

You do these 24 things. So we went through those and they're pretty fascinating things. I remember the last one was it went all the way to chapter four, verses eight through 11. And to me, a fitting end of that was above all things, because it already listed 23 things, that's a lot.

But above all things have fervent love one for another, be hospitable and minister according to your gifts. Pretty cool ending for it, I think. So today what I wanna do now, what's interesting about these passages in first Peter chapter two, some of chapter one, all the way through chapter four, it's got all of this information about the believer priest and it sort of layers it in, in such a way that it'll sort of talk about one idea and then change the subject and then change the subject.

So what I've tried to do is go through and organize where our minds can remember it a little bit better. So today, what I wanna talk to you about are the promises to the believer priest. So what we just finished was the preliminary duties of the believer priest.

Now we're gonna start talking about the promises and all of it's in the same passage and I'm just pulling it out and putting it in categories so we can remember it better, that's all. So we're gonna go through some of the same verses again, only we're gonna start, instead of noticing the things he told us to do, what our duties are, we're gonna notice the stuff he promised us because we are believer priests.

And it's pretty amazing. And then all these layers that you can find about this one topic, and this is not even the deepest of it. So the last study we do to me is just mind blowing how the scriptures use the Old Testament to picture what we're supposed to be doing spiritually now.

And the pictures are actually more vivid than the New Testament. The New Testament will lay out the doctrines, but the Old Testament comes in and adds the little A's, B's, C's, and D's, the subdivisions and all the little different colors of meaning to all of it.

And if you didn't have that, there would be so much missing. And that's why the scripture says the Old Testament was written a four time for those of us to live in the end of the age so that we might see the end samples or the examples that are there, the spiritual examples that are there and learn things from it.

So we'll get to that later. But for now, let's look at the promises to the believer priests. So if you are a believer priest, and if you're born again, you are one, we're all at different stages of development and preparation for how good we will be as a believer priest.

And that's what the 24 preliminary duties we looked at. I mean, we have to be working on those things. And you think, well, 24 is a lot to remember. It really is. But you can't do any of them on your own anyway, but it is good to know them and read them and get them in our minds.

But the old man can't really be good at any of them. So the new man has to be doing these things and he can only do it in conjunction with Jesus. So I picture it this way. When we were born again, we became a new creature, a new creation.

We were regened. That is the real us now. The old man, the sinful part of us is not even us anymore, but he hangs around, he or she hangs around. And that's by God's design too, which is really pretty amazing to think about.

And you have to remember that, or you'll beat up on yourselves all the time when you sin, because we still sin sometimes. And when we do, we can get really depressed about it. We can think, well, I'm not fit to serve the Lord.

All of those are lies from Satan. We are fit because he made us fit. We're only believer priests because he made us to be one, not because we were good at it. And all of this is God's design. He put this treasure in earthen vessels on purpose so that he would get the glory.

And if we don't grab hold of that, we just become quitters as Christians. And I think one reason the pews are not probably full, and I think so many Christians, they get all zealous when they get saved.

I remember I did, and some of the older members in the church that I grew up in said, you'll get over that. And I thought, first of all, you're wrong. Secondly, that's mean and not very spiritual. But so you start out all zealous and then you go out there and then all of a sudden you fail at the very things you thought the Lord had removed from your life, right?

And you fail and you just think, well, it doesn't work. It's not, or I'm not real. I didn't really get saved. And Satan puts those thoughts in the minds of true believers to make them quit and just be put on the bench or like the great apostle Paul said, I don't wanna be shipwrecked.

I don't want the Lord to take me off out of the game and put me on the bench. And so he said, I really work at fleeing the temptations of my youth. And he said, I really work at not letting any worldly habit take hold of me.

I will not let it control me. I'll take control of it. And he worked at those things, but none of that stuff is what saved the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul got saved on a road walking to kill Christians.

So he was a murdering, lost religious man. And he just was called. He looks up and the Holy Spirit opened his eyes and he could see Jesus and hearing the other people with him just heard a noise. He heard words because he was the one that got called.

They didn't. Great picture of how salvation works. If you look at the salvation of the apostle Paul and God just saved him. Well, after that, the Holy Spirit began to work in his life and Paul was an authority on the word of God.

So he knew the Bible. So he had the spirit and he had the water of the word and he began to grow. And that's when he started laying things aside and with the Lord's help. And that's how it is with us.

It's little by little. Some sins he removes almost immediately when you get saved and others, you struggle with it your whole life. Have you noticed that? And you can really either get down about that or you can say, well, this is God's will.

This is God's will. He's the one who made us this way. It's his will that we have the struggle. We have to struggle and the struggle, it just brings us closer to him. And so all of that is part of God's design for how this works.

And we have to go through this. The Bible says we don't enter the kingdom of heaven except by suffering, through suffering. Just like Jesus suffered on our behalf and we suffer as well. So all that's part of the plan and it's the perfect plan and there is no other plan.

And God in his infinite wisdom and love created this plan as it is. So what does that mean? That means even though we still have an old sinful man, the old man, we are a new man or woman. We have a Bible and we have the Holy Spirit and we have to work at walking in the new man.

We don't wanna spend a lot of time trying to reform the old man. How do you reform the old man? You try to make a list of rules to follow and guess what? It doesn't work. All it does is it turns you into a slave to rules you cannot even keep.

And yet most churches, that's how they solve this problem. Most even, I don't care, you name the denomination, they solve it with list of rules of how you're supposed to look, how you're supposed to dress, what you can listen to and can't, where you can go and where you can't go, which Bible you gotta read, just name it.

There's just thousands of things and thousands of things. And yet you say, well, that's wrong. But then we look at scripture and God says, I've made you a believer priest and then he names 24 things we're supposed to do and say, well, now I got a list to get.

All right, well, we do have a list and it's a good list. If you look at the things, they're all wonderful things. Love one another is out handed. And yet we can't make ourselves do those things. What we have to do is let the new man control ourselves, more moments of every day.

And then since we know the things, we can do them that way. So it kind of works like that. The main thing is to be vigilant and be watchful over our body, which is part of the old man. And our new man has to be always thinking about what we're thinking about because it all starts with your thoughts.

So the new man has to control that. And when a bad thought pops in there, that's not a sin. What that is, is that's the Lord using how he built us to cause us to see it and cause the new man to desire to control it and get rid of it.

You can use a lot of brother Rocky used to call them prayer formulas, but it's not like in the sense of prayer beads like the Catholics have, but it is like a word formula that you can remember. It's very effective in spiritual warfare.

So like a bad thought pops in your mind, you say, Lord, give me the mind of Christ. If you think it's a demonic thought, say, Lord, rebuke the demon, bind him, and send him away from me and give me the mind of Christ.

And instantly you'll be free. So if you're being tempted, pray prayers like that and be free. And then think about the 24 things we just studied and live that way in the spirit. It's the only way, right?

In the spirit. So now we've got all that behind us. Now let's look and see what the promises are for those of us who are living this life. So let's go back to some of the same scriptures and we'll find this part of it in 1 Peter 2, look at verse five.

And I always like you to be looking at the Bible while I'm preaching. Or I mean, you can look at me once in a while. So it gives me some encouragement to keep going, but I want you to see the scriptures.

Don't just listen to me, read it if you can, I don't care if it's your phone or your Bible, but find 1 Peter 2, verse five and follow along. It's probably best that you not do a thousand word studies while I'm preaching, because you won't get the message if you do that.

But if you have to look at a couple, go ahead, because sometimes you'll catch one I didn't catch or something. Do that in the Holy Spirit too. Like if the Holy Spirit guides you to look up a word, do it.

All right, here we go. Ready? Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Now that tells us the answer to our question over in Romans 15, where we're studying, where it says, how can a Gentile offer up sacrifices acceptable to God?

There's the answer really right there. But let's break this verse down. Verse five, the first promise that we see if we are born again, and we are a believer priest is that he has made us to be lively stones.

Now that means living, living stones. In other words, we're not dead. We're not walking dead people anymore. Like we were when we were lost. We are alive. People can look in our eyes and see life and light.

And you can look in some people's eyes and see darkness and death when you're out there on the street or on the job or different places we go out in the world, or on vacation, anywhere you go where there's masses of people.

There's the group of born again people is very much a minority. They were totally surrounded by lost sheep and lost goats. And we don't always know the difference, but you can look in their eyes and tell that they're not alive yet.

And sometimes the Holy Spirit will move you to witness or say something to them and try to get the gospel to them. And so we are made alive. Now this phrase, lively or living stones, the word living comes from the little Greek word zao, which means to be quickened or to be made alive by God.

So we were dead and God made us alive. You picture Adam, we were like Adam and God made Adam out of dirt, didn't he? And molded him into a man and then he breathed the breath of life into Adam. And when God saved us, he gave us that breath of spiritual life that we didn't have.

We had physical life, but we didn't yet have spiritual life. And that's the life this is talking about. Now, when it says that we're living, we have this life, but we're stones, that is a picture of the fact that Jesus is the rock of ages.

And we are little Jesuses. We are Christians, which means Christ-like or little Christians, little Christs in other words. So we are little stones and Jesus is the rock. And the funny thing is the Roman Catholics say that the Bible taught that Peter was the first Pope because Peter means rock.

It doesn't really mean rock, it means little rock. Isn't that interesting? But they missed that. But anyway, Jesus was the rock, okay? But we are little rock. So Jesus, when he saves us, makes us to be someone that's being made more like him all the days of our lives.

More and more like him all the days of our lives. To the extent that we're in the water and the word, I mean, the water and the spirit, which means the word of God and the Holy Spirit, to the extent that we study the scriptures and meditate on them while the Holy Spirit's teaching us, we will be the one who grows the most.

The ones who do that will grow more than others, but everyone will grow. And so we are living stones or little Christs in this world. All right, now let's keep looking. What else are we? We are a spiritual house.

We're built up a spiritual house. This word spiritual is kind of interesting because in the Greek, it's kind of like a negative to create the word rather than a positive. So instead of calling us a spiritual house, it's actually calling us a non-carnal house.

Isn't that interesting? Non-carnal. We're a non-carnal house. It's also a word that carries the connotation of something that's supernatural and regenerated. So we're a different kind of building than we were before we were saved.

And the Bible calls this body a tabernacle or a building that we live in. Our spiritual man, the new man or woman that lives, I think lives in our brain, lives in this house temporarily until either we pass away, in which case it's placed into a temporary body until the rapture.

And then when the rapture happens, or if you'd already died, the resurrection happens first and then the rapture with it. But your body's actually brought out of the grave, put back together and put into its glorified form.

And then your spirit's put back in your original body. Isn't that cool? And so when all of that happens, we are a spiritual, supernatural, regenerated building, but we're non-carnal. So what does that tell us?

Okay, so if we're a lively stones, we're supposed to be, we are alive, but we're supposed to be more and more like Christ. And we're supposed to be built up a non-carnal house, which means we're supposed to live more and more moments spirit-filled rather than in the flesh.

That's what it means. And that's the design of God on this physical body of ours is that it might be used to do spiritual work, but the only way that can happen is if you are a spirit-controlled, soul-controlled body.

You got that? A spirit-controlled, soul-controlled body. So you start with the body, you got all the organs, and one of them's your brain, right? Your brain is a physical organ. It's part of the old man.

And yet it's been programmed your whole life. In fact, most of your youth, I don't care if you grew up in a Christian home or not, it got programmed, probably majority of the programming was not positive.

It was from the world system, right? Words we learn, the things we see, the things Satan exposes us to, and sometimes the world exposes us to, sometimes bad friends when we're young in school exposes to these things.

So your brain gets programmed with predominantly bad things. And yet, if you did grow up in a Christian home, it also got programmed with some good things, right? But it's just an organ. It's like a computer, and it operates, the output has to do with the input that's in it.

Now, when we get born again, we're re-gened instead of predominantly being from the genes of our sinful parents, we have God's genes, and we're a new man or a new woman, but we still live in this old body.

And we live inside that brain that is just an organ. And all the thoughts that that brain grew up with are still in there. And that's why the apostle Paul says, flee youthful lusts. The sinful things that you learn to do from the age of say two years old to the age of about 20, let's just say, in your youth, they're in your brain forever.

And some of those become very powerful sin habits that are hard to break. And God leaves some of those in your life. Some he just removes the day you get saved, you'll never do it again. Others he leaves for his purposes to cause you to have to have the battle.

Now, isn't that interesting? And he does that on purpose. It's God's will for it to be that way. But he also says you'll never be tempted but what he leaves you a way of escape. Doesn't it say that? Does it, ladies and gentlemen, say that?

He does, doesn't it? So we never have an excuse to sin. Well, I'm a sinner, I was born this way. So that's why I do it. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not an excuse to sin because there's always a way of escape if we want to.

The problem comes into the want to because your old man has a want to, which is your brain. And your new man has a want to, which is wants to serve God and never wants to sin. In fact, he won't sin. He can't sin.

Your new man cannot and will not sin. First John says that, teaches that. So if you picture your body, especially your brain and the new you living in there, let's just say that's your spirit. You're born again, your new man spirit, a new woman spirit.

And then the Holy Spirit lives in there too, doesn't he? Because he indwells your body at the moment of salvation and the two are in there. And so picture your mind as a house and picture the Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of Christ as the groom and you as the bride.

And you live in the house and you're married. Does that make sense? The Bible uses that picture, doesn't it? To teach us our relationship with God. So you got a house here, it's your brain. And your new man is pictured as a bride and the Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of Christ who lives in there too, is the groom.

And the groom never leaves the house. All of your life on this earth is sealed within you, in your brain, your spirit is sealed within you. It cannot leave until you die or get raptured, which is the preferable way to go.

So my birthday made me think about that. Lord Jesus, come quickly. That was my birthday prayer. And so you have that. Now, the whole idea is to live more moments of the day embracing, okay? So like if you're an adult or an older teenager, you can picture what I'm talking about.

I'm just talking about staying hugged, staying together. You and the Holy Spirit, holding hands, loving each other and actually being together, because it is possible to be in the house and not be together though, right?

Like one could be in the living room and the other one in the study or whatever. But the idea is to live together more moments of the day where you actually come together and you're with each other, your spirit and the Holy Spirit.

Can you picture it that way? Does that help picture it a little bit? And that's what we have the ability to do. And that's what this means when it says we're built up a spiritual house. It literally means in the Greek, a non-carnal house, which means we don't let the old man or woman run the thought life during those moments.

We unite with the Holy Spirit and our new man become united together and that cannot sin and will not sin. If you wanna live many, many moments or even days a powerful life that can help other people that can be a better husband or a better wife or a better child or young person for the Lord, then walk that way and people will begin to notice it.

And if you wanna be a believer priest and serve as a priest, which means you're offering these spiritual sacrifices and living for the Lord, this is the only way to be effective. So it's all pictured right there in this, where it says we're living stones, we're a little Christ who are alive now and we're built up a spiritual house or a non-carnal person.

And that's the only way that this human body can be worth anything. So when your old man is in control of it, it's not worth the dirt it's made of. But when your new man controls it, it offers spiritual sacrifices to the Lord.

The things that your body does are actually things that will get you eternal rewards in heaven because you're walking with the Lord while you do it. Does that make sense? So you have that choice every moment of every day and every moment we make that choice.

Isn't that interesting? And the sad thing about it, which I don't like about it, but I can't complain because God made it this way. You know, there's things God did that we don't like. You do know that, right?

You know, one thing was he actually let Adam and Eve do what they wanted to do. He didn't make them do it. He just let them do what they wanted to do. And their want to was to sin. So they did. Well, that brought death and all the bad stuff we have to have along with all the beautiful and wonderful things, right?

It all comes together now because Adam and Eve said that's what they wanted. They didn't want to just know good. They wanted to be like Satan and know good and evil. So that's what they did. And that's who we are now.

And that's what we have. So you have a choice to live that way, carnal, every moment, or to say no to yourself. You're not in control. Me and Jesus are running this house and we're going to not do that.

We're going to do good things. We're going to focus on doing what the Lord wants us to do right now. So there's, you see all that in this little phrase. Now let's move on. It says a holy priesthood. Oh, wait, I left.

Can I back up a little bit? I wasn't quite through with the idea of the spiritual house. Sorry about that. Look at this word. House is interesting because when you go to the Greek it's not always exactly what the old English meant when they use that particular word in the translation.

Oikos is the Greek word. And it can mean a dwelling like a house, but normally what it means in Greek is a family, like more like a home. You see the difference? It's not just a house. It's the family inside the house.

It's the home that's created. And so when it says spiritual house it carries that connotation. So it's a non-carnal family or household. So it's you and the bride and Jesus is the groom living together in your house.

You got that? So it's really pretty cool to think about it. So now to the next place, a holy priesthood. Okay, now we know what holy means, right? It doesn't mean perfect, thank goodness. It means different.

It means separated from something unto something else. So we are separated from the world that we were birthed into naturally. We're separated from the flesh that we live in naturally and we're on a higher plane now.

So we're separated from the world and the flesh and the devil unto God. So that's what holy means is our service is not to the world and the flesh and the devil anymore. Our service is unto God. We are believer priests.

We're here to serve God. So that's what holy means. Now priesthood means just what it sounds like. We're here to reach up and take God's hand, take the hand of the man or woman who doesn't know him yet and bring them together and introduce him to this person.

Whether they will see it, listen to it, is not up to you or me. Our job is just to bring them together, to tell the gospel to people. We can do that. Our job is to be salt and light. We can do that. We cannot save anyone.

We can't make them get saved. We can just bring them together and introduce them. And that's our job. And so a holy separated unto God priest. Now, let me ask you this question because we live in the modern world.

We live in a world of so many mega churches where anything is done to relate to how the world does things. So more people will come and be comfortable in their sin. You gotta pay for the bowling alley and all the things that they have.

And if the membership starts going out the back door, the leaders get a little nervous because then they gotta pay for it by themselves. So let's just go out and have social drinks after Bible study or whatever the next generation wants to do, we will do that.

Let's allow homosexuals to just be as if they're normal in the congregation. Now, I wouldn't turn one away from the congregation but I wouldn't change my preaching. You know what I'm saying? I wouldn't change what we talk about and it made them uncomfortable.

They would either leave or change or whatever but this is what we've got in the modern church. And the problem with it is, is it's not holy. And by that, I don't mean perfect. I don't mean better than the next person.

I mean different. It's not different enough. And so the difference doesn't come really from what you wear. It comes from who you are on the inside. And whether you are the new man walking in oneness or unity with the Holy Spirit inside your tent here, your body, or whether you're just walking in the flesh and the world can see the difference.

And the thing is they will be repelled by that difference until the Holy Spirit starts chasing them down if he does. And he doesn't do it with everyone but if he does start chasing them down, they start looking for people that might actually know what they're talking about.

And how can a lost person find such a person other than I'm looking for someone that's different than I am. I'm looking for someone that's different than the world that has a little different glow on their face and a little different life in their eyes.

That's what I'm looking for. Well, you can't live like the world in church or anywhere else and draw those people. You just can't do it. So if you're gonna be a good believer priest you have to be a holy priesthood.

All right. So then the next thing it says in that same verse is a chosen generation. Now, it gets to the point where people think that all we preach about is Calvinism. Charlotte's not here so I can use the word.

When she's here, I'm not allowed to talk about Calvin. She said, look, it's not about Calvin, it's about Jesus. It's about Paul, it's about the Bible, it's not Calvin. And I say, I know, but Spurgeon used his name all the time and you read him every morning.

She's listening probably online right now. Love you. But I do see her wisdom. I'll say that because I just thought she might be listening. But no, I see her wisdom because if it offends people and you use the word, then they close their mind immediately and that's what she's getting at.

So, but I see who's here today. I think we can use the name John Calvin because all he was was a great teacher of scripture. He's just such a godly, prayed up, studied up human being who walked as a holy priest that his words are rich.

So it doesn't mean he was perfect or that he didn't have any error in the things that he said. We all probably do, but I'm sure he would try to correct it immediately if someone pointed it out to him because he was an honest man.

But the thing is, he was one of the best teachers that ever lived concerning the person of God and the works of God, which happens to be by definition, sovereign. I mean, you can't be God and not be in control of everything.

I get such a kick out of the terminology that we pick up from the world. How can it possibly time go by so fast? You know, like, well, I got out of God's will. Could someone in the room explain to me how you can do that unless you're God?

You can get out of God's will, really? You see, but we have these incorrect phrases and words in our minds. We have to eliminate them. Now you can sin, right? You can get out of fellowship with God pretty quick, can't you?

Not with the father though. See, people don't think about that. You can't get out of fellowship with the father, but you can get out of fellowship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and get a good whooping for it.

But you're in God's will all the time. Every time you take a step, you just stepped into his will. And so, because he's in control. Now, this particular verse, you also as living stones, the word also means like Christ was a living stone, you're also like that.

You're a little Jesus in that sense. You also as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And then it goes on and says, you are a chosen generation.