Romans 15:16 - What It Means to Be a Believer-Priest, Pt. 2 (09/25/2022)

We love you, sir. Morning, everyone. Wow, this is the youngest group

I've seen in a long time. Y 'all look great. I just spent 48 hours with my graduating class from 1972, our 50th anniversary.

50 years since I graduated from high school, and they all look so old.

I could not get over it. But anyway, no, I don't normally like,

I've never gone to one of those things. They have them probably every 10 years or every five years, and I just don't go to them.

But I had three people that kept telling me, you got to go to this one.

One of them's a guy named Pepper Posey that I graduated with, and he works with me in Tradeway. But he just really wanted me to go.

He goes to quite a few of them. And then Terry Aycock, who a lot of you know, but he's a grade below me, but he wanted me to go.

And then Cissy Garber, who married a guy from my class, wanted me to go. So I decided to go, and I was as nervous as I was the first day of high school.

I couldn't sleep the night before. Charlotte was with some of her classmates. Some of the girls in her class get together once a year, and so she was with them.

So she wasn't with me. But I did have Pepper with me, and that was good because he was a close friend all through these years, even first grade, even before high school.

So I really didn't know what to expect. I wasn't real popular with my classmates because I started school when

I was five years old instead of six, so they're all a year older. So most of my friends were in the grade below me or the grade above me.

And so I just really was nervous about going, but it turned out to be amazing. I won't be done thinking about it for weeks, probably, the different things, the thoughts the

Lord put in my mind about it and everything. One thing I noticed is everything, people do mature, and not only in looks, but they become more empathetic.

I'll just give you an example because I don't know if any of you ever will do this with your class and notice these things, but you might.

I felt like it was interesting because you can remember for 50 years, you can remember if you weren't one of the popular kids, right?

And you know who they were, right? And so what was interesting is that those individuals made a point to sit with the ones that weren't the popular kids rather than with who they wanted to sit with.

I mean, this event spanned two days and a whole bunch of things we did together. And I thought, that is really neat.

I don't know what to make of it other than it's a good thing, but it was really interesting to observe. And so I made a point to sit with all the unpopular kids and make them feel better.

Actually, they sat with me. But anyway, the popular ones. But it was very clearly a change in their attitude.

It was really neat to see. And the other funny thing is you got to figure out a plan because if they come up to you and you didn't see them, you're not going to know who they were.

If you don't have many seconds to think, you won't know who they are. So I figured out, well, as soon as I see them,

I go, hi, I'm David Mitchell. And I'm hoping they're going to say, and I'm, you know, and tell me their name. That way, no one's embarrassed.

But anyway, so we had some systems going. But it was the only one that got me was this one girl.

And I had talked with Pepper about her the night before because she's one of the sweetest girls in the class. And she was behind me.

And I didn't see her. And she tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. She's right there. She said, you know who I am? And man, my brain just went.

And I'm looking at her. I'm just trying to focus on her eyes and her face because you usually can figure out who they are if you do that.

And my brain knew who she was, but my mouth couldn't say it. I'm Debbie.

And I said, I know, I know, I know who you are. She was one of the sweetest girls. And sure enough, she ended up being a missionary her whole life in places like China and all over the world.

And she and her husband, and they're retired now. But anyway, I could go on. It was such an amazing event.

I will be going through it for days and days in my mind on what the Lord taught me from it about me, about other human beings, and really how funny we are as people.

None of us have a whole lot of self -confidence, really. You were talking about pride in Sunday school.

It was an interesting topic today, Ben. And I'm so proud that my son's such a great teacher.

I was thinking about that while he was teaching. And Ashton told me, well, the trick, see, her grandmother is a preacher's wife, right?

So her grandmother, her granddad's a preacher. And so she told me, well, what the trick she uses is when she's trying to talk about her grandbaby, she won't say,

I'm proud of my grandbaby. She'll say, my grandbaby's just tickled me to death. So see, Ben, there's ways you can say it and be prideful.

No one knows you're prideful. Good lesson, though.

But anyway, I really did. Charlotte was so tickled about the whole thing because of all people she knows me.

And of course, Katie's tickled, too. My kids know me. It was so out of character for me to even go, but let alone to.

So Charlotte calls me from where she is with those. She says, well, what are you? The other night before, she says, well, what are you going to go to?

I said, well, I'm going to everything. Well, everything? Well, what are you doing in the morning?

I said, well, I got to go at 10 o 'clock and help decorate. And she just went, decorate.

It is funny, too, because Pepper told his wife the same thing. And she got real quiet. And he said, honey, what's the matter?

She said, isn't that what all the girls come to do? But anyway, it was great.

All right, we better get to business here. Maybe I'll think of some spiritual things to relate to you that I'll learn from it as we go.

Not today, but as I think it through, because I'm so glad I went, though.

Well, let's turn to 1 Peter chapter 2. And our launch pad is actually

Romans chapter 15, verse 16, where it says that God accepts the offerings of Gentiles.

They're acceptable to him because of Jesus Christ. And that's got to study in this question of, well, what makes it acceptable?

And what is it? What are the offerings? We don't offer goats anymore, do we? Or sheep, or any birds, or any of the things they offer in the

Old Testament. So what are the offerings? And we've talked about that. So now we've worked our way over to a little bit deeper study of what the believer priest is, who they are, how can they be qualified to be one, and what are they supposed to do, and all this.

So we just started out in 1 Peter chapter 2, and we looked at verses 1 through 5 last time.

And then we looked at Revelation chapter 1. Now, we're going to come back to the 1

Peter chapter 2 passage in a few minutes. But there's one passage there in verse 5 of 1

Peter chapter 2 where it talks about that we have been built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

So it talks about us being named by God as believer priests. And so we started looking at some other places, it says the same thing.

And in the book of Revelation, it says it a lot. So last time we looked at chapter 1, I think verse 5 through about verse 8, verse 6 says we are kings and priests unto

God, right? So then we went to chapter 20 of the book of Revelation in verse 4, and it sort of says the same thing again.

But what's interesting, I think you might remember last time that I mentioned, and I mentioned this a lot,

I grew up believing, all my mentors believed in what they call the pre -tribulation rapture theory, that there's a rapture, and then seven years go by, and then the second coming happens.

I believed it all through my adult life. All my mentors believed it, including

Brother Otis, who used to sit right there, including Dr. Irwin Freeman, who had four earned doctorates.

He was a genius, a Jewish believer, wonderful man, really proud of my relationship with him. But yeah, he was an amazing man.

He believed it that way too. And of course they taught it to me that way. So that meant that for the rest of my adult life, up until, how many years ago did

I meet, did Russ get me to think about it?

I wonder. Right, Katie, you'd be good at guessing that, how many years ago? About the time Dave came to work with us, or was he still there when you first came?

Russ, he was still there, right? Okay, so about how long ago? Okay, about 2005 is when

I was challenged by a friend of mine to at least take a look at it myself, rather than just accepting what

I had been taught and some of the stuff I've read in books, textbooks through theological studies. And one of the things he said, would you at least consider letting

Jesus' chronology of the end times in Matthew chapter 24 be more important to you than the books you've read?

And I thought, well, that's fair. And I said, yeah, I will do that. I'll consider that. And some other questions. One other question was interesting.

How many last trumps can there be? And I knew what he was getting at, because I had a few little questions.

The Holy Spirit would convict me a little when I would try to teach that in certain passages where it was very clear that it didn't teach that.

So I would just skip that part and go to the next, because I didn't know how to put it together. And I didn't want, I wasn't interested in it, basically.

I was more interested in character of God and studying salvation and all the wonderful things about salvation, preaching those kinds of doctrines than I was the end times when

I was a younger man. So finally, I looked at it. And when I started studying, I studied for about a year on my own.

I looked up, I had all the books, you know. So at least the good thing about them is they show you where all the scriptures are that people go to to prove their different positions.

Even when they don't agree with each other on the position, they still have to use the same verses, right? It's only so many verses that we have to talk about that.

But it's a bunch, it's a bunch of them. So I knew where they were and I would go through and read them.

And the only difference was, was I'd go back and read the entire book that it was in, and especially the first part of the chapter that these proof texts were in and get them in context.

And by the time I finished, I had completely changed my view of it. In fact, all those passages where I was a little bit under conviction because they wouldn't fit, now they fit perfectly.

I mean, there's never a contradiction when you understand what

God actually says because he can't contradict himself. So if you get it right, it won't contradict itself.

And if you get it wrong, if there is a contradiction, you've either got one of the verses wrong or all of them are wrong. And you've just got to go study and keep studying because it will fall together.

God cannot contradict himself. That's a good starting place. So anyway, what's interesting, one of the proof things they do, they don't have many, to be honest.

I actually, I would go out to, Brother Bill and his family used to go out to California once a year and hear

Dr., what's his name? You went, MacArthur. For a week, there's a

Bible conference every year. And I went one year with them. And Dr. MacArthur is one of the true conservative

Bible scholar voices that actually has a voice in a large church and a voice that people listen to.

And praise the Lord for his ministry and his life. But he has a seminary,

I don't guess, probably isn't a seminary. It's at least call it a Bible college. And I think they call it a seminary now on his campus.

And he hired a gentleman to run that seminary. He actually was instrumental as one of the authors of the

New American Standard Bible or editors, I should say. And so he runs the college.

Well, I have a disagreement with him right there because I don't think the New American Standard Bible represents the correct Greek underlying the

New Testament. But anyway, I didn't get into that with anybody when I was there and wouldn't even think of doing that when

I was there. It's their show, right? But it was interesting because that particular man had a, they had sessions where pastors could sign up for different things they were interested in.

So one of the things I signed up for was the end times stuff. Well, he was the teacher of it.

And it was over in the seminary in his class. And he was sitting there with his feet up on his desk when we walked in and we all, probably 60 pastors in there and myself.

Well, what's interesting is one of the other pastors raised his hand and said, well, could you show us one verse, one verse in the

Bible that proves the pre -tribulation rapture theory?

Oh boy, we need some spray. You know where it is? Got a fly up here. He will bother me the whole time you watch.

He'll fly like this. So if you have it, bring it up here. Just say it right here.

And I will shoot him in a minute. This thing working,

Ben? Okay. I had a message for me down there. It said, kill the fly. All right.

So, all right. So they asked him that question, which I think is an honest question. You shouldn't teach something you can't prove from scripture, right?

And he leaned back in that chair and he folded his arms. This is a PhD that, okay,

Satan, I know you don't want me talking about the truth, right? He'll bother me. I'll come down here and sit with you.

It won't even bother you. All right, here it comes. But anyway, so he leaned back in his chair and he said, well, gentlemen, did you other, that's in the rhythm.

He says, well, gentlemen, there's really not a person who says that.

When I'm looking at all the holes in the Bible, I'm leaning towards you. That's all he could say.

Now, I'm thinking, okay, if I don't have a PhD, why would I sit with him? And I'm asked by any one of these people to prove in the dictionary,

I don't have any scripture. Why would anybody want to prove it to me?

Did you know that? Through textbooks, through history, you don't have to be a church. So he could not do it.

And this was just after, not too long after I had my surgery, seven years old at home, you know?

And I thought, that's very interesting. And some other people could ask some important questions about how to do good at that, or do you think that's one of the things that I should do?

I'm just like, this is why I just feel like this. The thing

I don't want to do when I get to really preaching here in a minute, I don't want to inhale the fly, all right? Because preachers start sucking air when they get going.

You know what I mean? You've seen me do that. I'm so outgoing. So that was interesting to me in the early days of my study of this topic.

Well, what's interesting is they really only have a few proof points, and they'll go pull a verse to prove the point.

But the problem with the verse is it is out of context every time, 100 % of the time. If you study it in fairness with the 10 proper rules and proper

Bible interpretation, they are not in context, and they're not even talking about what they're trying to prove with the verse.

Now, you would think this seminary professors of all people would not make that mistake.

But universally, every seminary that I'm aware of in this nation, among the

Baptists and the Pentecostals, most of the Charismatic and the Bible churches follow that theory, knowing full well what the rules of Bible interpretation are and teaching them in their schools, but not using them for that one point.

And I'm sitting here thinking, has there ever been in the history of the church a lie propagated on the church greater than this lie by Satan so that all the seminaries have taken hold of it?

And then my answer was, you didn't find it. Okay, we'll get by. My answer was, yeah, there is one other one, and that is that we should be using the

New American Standard Version or the Revised Standard Version or some of these modern versions. That's really the biggest lie because all universally, all the great seminaries, none of them use the

King James Version. Well, I'm not a King James only guy. I don't break fellowship with you if you don't use it. I'd rather you use the

New American Standard than not read anything. But I have spent two years studying manuscript evidence, so therefore

I don't use those because they are full of errors and they're drawn from the incorrect

Greek, the wrong Greek manuscripts. Easily proven if anyone dares study, but it's very fascinating how

Satan has shrouded that too. And those two are the two biggest lies in my lifetime perpetrated on the church.

Well, so if you want to look at one of the proof texts for this rapture theory, it is like they will, and you'll see it even in the

Scofield footnote because Scofield bought into the theory too. And he's one of the ones that made it worldwide popular because he put it in the footnotes of the

Bible. And a lot of people think that's part of the Bible. They think if you've got a Scofield Bible and it's in the footnotes, oh, it's inspired by God, which is not true.

It's just a theologian's ideas of what he thinks down there. And so it's in there and he believes it.

So you can sometimes see them in a Scofield Bible. You'll see a footnote says, well, this proves this, and you can find where these points are.

And if you just go read the whole chapter, you'll see it's not in context. Brother Bill, one of the smartest men

I've known in my life, a great Bible teacher. He said, maybe I shouldn't teach the book of Revelation because we don't agree on this because his family held out on that.

They wouldn't change just because I changed. They wouldn't change just because I changed, which is great. I don't want you to change because I changed.

And so he wondered if I'd allow him to teach it. And I said, yeah, I don't mind you teaching it, Bill, because we've had coffee enough for me to know that you believe in using the 10 rules of proper

Bible interpretation. And I don't think you're a cheater. You will not cheat to win this argument. So yeah, teach through it.

And so he taught through it and I could hear him correcting himself out loud. Some of you were here for that.

I know you guys heard it. And he would point, he would read the proof text. This one in particular, in chapter three of Revelation, it says the church is not found anywhere in Revelation after the chapter three, which is a lie.

That was one of the ones, but several of the ones he would read. And he'd say, you know, class, we just got through studying from verse one down to here.

And that's not really talking about that, is it? And the class will go, nope.

And by the end, he changed his view on his own. The Holy Spirit changed his view. So anyone who will just, you know, you've got to get to a place where you're an adult as a

Christian and you say, look, I'm an adult now. I have the right to question my mentors, my preacher, my teachers.

I can question them if I think they say something that's not biblical. And it's okay.

I can question like myself, if I think I have taught and believed something my whole life and it's wrong,

I am okay to change it. And your topic on pride is a big issue there because like Brother Otis, for example,

I wrote him about 25 page paper on several things, but that one, on that,

I wrote him the paper. He reads the paper. He comes back, throws it on the table at coffee one more and says, okay, I'll never teach that again.

You're right. It's not right. It's not biblical. And he had taught it that way for 50 years.

And he said, I'm sorry, Lord, I apologize. I was wrong. I wish I could go back and tell every student

I taught that it was wrong, but of course he can't. But so that's the way we should all be. Now, if a man who was approaching 80 years old taught the

Bible 50 years can be that humble about it, certainly we all can do that. We all have to be that way.

It is not about the argument. It's about the truth. Now, one of the things they say is the church is not found anywhere in Revelation after chapter three.

So last time we just touched on that because in Revelation chapter 20, which I would say is pretty far past chapter three is one of these places where it talks about us being believer priests, but it also gives information about whether the church is mentioned in the book of Revelation beyond chapter three or not.

So we touched on that a little bit last time, but in chapter four, what you see is you see elders.

Now, who are elders? Elders are the, you could call them pastors.

You could call them, what are some other names? Brother Larry, you know all this theology stuff.

Bishops, right? You can call them bishops. And when you look at it in the

Greek, it's all the same, pretty much the same office. They must be apt to teach, it says.

And it's a lot of other qualifications, a one woman man, they're not supposed to have eyes for other women and be married to five different women.

There's a few qualifications and the deacons have a lot of similar qualifications as well. But the one they don't have is they don't have to be apt to teach, but the elders do.

So the elders are the pastors. So here we see a group of elders in heaven already. And they're looking down in chapter 20, looking down on the earth and they're seeing

Jesus Christ. They're seeing people that they call their brothers and sisters being beheaded for the faith because of the

Bible that they read and because of the gospel that they preach, they're being killed. And there are places in the book of Revelation where they questioned the

Lord Jesus and said, well, how long will you wait? Don't you think that's interesting? But it's okay to be honest when we pray, isn't it?

Like if we have something that's burdening our heart, we can share that with the Lord. And a lot of times we do think he did something wrong, don't we?

On timing of stuff, don't you think sometimes we think his timing is not quite right? He's always late, isn't he?

Especially with money, wouldn't you say? And somebody, but he's not really late, is he?

He's not really ever late. He's right on time to teach us whatever we need to learn. So here they are questioning, when will you come

Lord? Because they'll be beheading our brothers. You need to go down there and stop that and take control and start the thousand year millennial kingdom and rule over the, send these people to hell.

That's what they're telling him. Well, now, who do you think they're talking about if they call them our brothers and sisters and it's elders talking?

They don't call them elders among the Jews. They're called priests and rabbis.

Among the Christians, they're called elders. It's the church. Anyway, so there you have it. That's just one of the proofs there in chapter 20, verse four through five.

But every single point these people have is either out of context or it's a lie. And I can't say it any nicer.

I mean, if you say that the church is not mentioned in Revelation chapter three, you are lying and you're doing it on purpose if you're a

PhD scholar because you're smart enough to know. So you're blinded or something.

I don't get it. I just, I honestly don't get it except I guess I could get it because I did it for a number of years just simply because I was regurgitating what

I had been taught. So maybe they're doing that. I don't know. I do know this.

There are two types of false prophets listed and one is found in the book of Jude which was foreordained by God to be a false prophet and didn't end up in hell.

That's one type of false teacher. The second type is a type that just gets it wrong and they teach it wrong maybe for a number of years and then the

Holy Spirit and the Bible corrects them and they correct it and they say, I apologize, I was wrong. Here's what it really means.

And that's the second kind. So there's both. So you have to be careful judging people. You don't know which kind they are, right?

But the point is all of us, if we're gonna get up here and teach, we need to strive to teach the truth and we need you to help us.

And if we're off, you need to tell us and we will fix it. That's just the whole, for 2000 years of church history, even before that, that's how it should have been, should be.

So this is one example of how a lie can creep its way into the church, be accepted by a few big preachers.

There were two basically that accepted this one. Scofield was the second one. The other one, I know his name,

I can't name it right this minute, but he was a huge mega, for that day, a mega church preacher that heard the theory, bought into it, started preaching it from his pulpit over in England, back when this was invented.

And there's a little book you can get that'll give you the history of when it was invented. And before that, it never existed in church history, the theory never existed before that.

And so it was invented in a house in England by a woman who spoke in tongues.

And that tells you a lot about it right there. And that's fact, fact of history. So anyway,

I wanna go on with this one now. We had already covered chapter 20, verse four, through about verse five, and even down through verse six.

It says, blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection, on such the second resurrection has no power.

So there are only two resurrections, by the way. And by the way, these people that propagate this false theory, they try to act like there's a whole bunch of resurrections.

They invent other resurrections that aren't taught in the Bible. For example, they'll say, well, when

Jesus was on the cross, you got an earthquake and people were resurrected and walked around, isn't that true?

So that's really the start of the first major resurrection. It has a A, B, C, and D component.

And this is number one, A, number one, B, number 10, but that's not a resurrection. And if you really thought it through, you would know that because when people are resurrected, they don't die again and get buried again like those people did.

A resurrection is like you're glorified. You live forever in a glorified body.

It's not a resurrection, but there are books that say that in it. And just think people, they'll just won't look into this.

It's amazing the means that people will go to to try to prove something that's false.

You get all tied up in a line and you just get deeper and deeper in it.

So verse six says, but they shall be priests of God and Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years.

So the people who are resurrected on that day and then along with the resurrection, but after it, in other words, with it, but shortly after it is part of the people that are raptured.

So the resurrection has to happen first. So that's how we know that the rapture does not happen seven years prior because the resurrection happens at the end of the church age.

And so there's another proof, but I mean, it's simple once you see it. It's like one of those things where once you see it,

God opens your eyes, you go, wow. Wow, all the scripture fits when you get it right.

And it was not fitting. So here they are gonna be believer priests for a thousand years and reign.

So they're not just priests, but they're king priests. So it's like Jesus is a king priest, but we're

Christians, which means we're little Jesus's. We're followers of Christ and we're gonna rule and reign with him for a thousand years.

If you jump backwards to Revelation chapter five and look at verse eight, and when he had taken the book and the four beasts and the four and 20 elders fell down, now here you have elders mentioned in two chapters after chapter three.

So these are preachers who have died and gone on to heaven and they fell down before the lamb and they're falling down before the lamb along with some angelic beings who are there as well.

Sometimes it calls them creatures in the Old King James, but creations is a good translation.

They are angelic beings that God created that are in heaven and the elders are there and having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odors, which represent the prayers of the saints.

And they sang a new song saying, when I say represent, they actually were the prayers of the saint, but it pictures it as almost like incense going up before God is how it pictures our prayers, but it's actually our prayers they're talking about.

And they sang a new song saying, thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God.

Now, let me ask you, who is that? Who is the us that got redeemed to God when Jesus died?

Well, it's both the church and the Old Testament saints. Would you agree? It's all of God's people, but it includes the church and redeemed us to God by the blood out of every kindred.

It's not just Jews, it's Jews and Gentiles and out of every tongue and people and nation.

And has made us unto our God, kings and priests. So who made us have that position?

Did we give it to ourselves? That would be prideful, wouldn't it be? Did we give that position to ourselves or did someone bestow it upon us and make us to be that?

And it was God, right? Jesus Christ made us to be kings and priests and we will reign on the earth.

Think about that reality right there. Think about that reality. You know, being with classmates, most of them, you hadn't seen for 50 years, but you spent lots of time with them for four years or some of them,

I was with them all the way from first grade. And then you see them again and you think about, okay, what's the purpose in all this?

What have we accomplished? We had dreams when we graduated, y 'all's age, right?

We had dreams. Now we're out here on the far end of it and a full 25 % of my class is already dead.

25 % are either in heaven or hell right now that I graduated with. So what's the purpose?

We're on the other side of it now. Did we accomplish our dreams? Did we accomplish our purpose? And then what if you extrapolate that out into the future about a thousand years?

Was all of that training in high school with these people, did I know every one of those people on purpose so that they would, in a sense, mold me into who

I am so that I'd be who I'm gonna be the day I face Jesus and the day that I rule and reign with him for a thousand years?

The answer is yes. All of it's important. It's hugely important. So, and has made unto us our

God, he made us kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. Verse 11, and behold, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beast and the elders, that's church people, and the number of them was 10 ,000 times 10 ,000, thousands of thousands.

Dave, we got that number last week. What was it? How many people is that? It was a hundred million people.

And that's the minimum because it doesn't just say a thousand times a thousand, it says thousands times thousands.

So it's a minimum of a hundred million people, but it could, if that means 7 ,000 times 7 ,000, then it could be even more.

Yeah, yeah, it probably was. And even that, we don't know how many thousands times thousands. So it's millions of people.

And they're saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb. So I'll picture that for a minute. You got hundreds of thousands, probably a few millions of millions of millions.

Yeah, a hundred million, right, not hundreds of thousands, a hundred millions of millions and some angelic creatures.

But here we're talking about, including the church, people that had already died and gone to heaven and even

Old Testament saints. Saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb. Now tell me that's not a revival meeting.

Now, when they say in heaven, it's loud, that's loud. That is loud.

Saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches.

Now what is praise? Tell me what the difference between Thanksgiving and praise is. What's praise?

Giving him the glory. So Thanksgiving is sort of thanking him for stuff he's done for us, right?

Praise is thanking him for who he is or just talking about who he is, his characteristics and things like that.

How wonderful and amazing. Well, here you're about to get some adjectives you can use. When you want to praise him, here's what they're using.

Here's some of the adjectives they're using to praise God in heaven. They're saying he was slain to receive power.

So he's all powerful. He's omnipotent. He was slain to receive riches.

So he owns everything. He was slain to receive wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing and to be praised for all these things

Jesus Christ wants. And by the time he resurrected and ascended back into heaven, you can be sure that most of the attributes of God that he had laid aside to be made lower than an angel so he could die for us, he had them back.

Now, maybe there's some things he doesn't exactly have. For example, he is a man.

He is a God man now, which means he is in a physical place which has time in the third heaven.

He's in space and time. And he wasn't before he came here. He was outside of all that. So that he didn't take back.

But at the same time, he said that no man had seen God at any time save the son of man who has seen him and been with him.

So he can be with him out there and come back and all that. But still, there are some attributes that he laid aside and still will have them laid aside until after age and age and age and age and all those ages are over.

And then everything is brought back into God and then he'll have all of his attributes back. Isn't that interesting? But in essence, he's fully

God. But in service, there are things he doesn't do that he always gives precedence to the father.

He's subservient to the father. So all that happened when he came down to save us.

Isn't that something? And he did that for us. So we could praise him for that too, can't we?

And every creature which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, heard

I saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne and unto the lamb forever and ever.

So he that sitteth on the throne is the Shekinah glory. And that's just a little resemblance of God the father.

It's not God the father, because if he came into that place, it'd destroy everything. So he shows a bit of his life there over the mercy seat.

And that's a reference to God the father though. And Jesus is seated at his right hand and there they are.

And they're being praised. The father and the son and the spirit are being praised by hundreds of millions of created beings and people that had already gone to heaven and preachers that had already gone to heaven and so forth.

Verse 14 says, and the four beasts said, now these are not beasts, they're angelic beings.

It's just an old English translation. They're angelic beings. And they said, amen. And the four and 20 elders, these are pastors who had been part of the church and died and gone to heaven and they're already there.

And they are, now you got to think about this. When Paul, I'm sorry, when

John was given this vision, if you put it on a timeline, what timeline was he seeing this?

Well, if they're complaining because their brothers are being beheaded, it's during the seven year tribulation period.

So it's still out in our future. And that is what John was seeing was out in our future. And so you think about Charles Spurgeon, I bet he's one of these elders.

What do you think, Charlotte? I think he's one of the ones that got picked. Out of the entire church age, 24 are picked.

I think he's one. Brother Rocky's one of them, I'm sure. Otis can't be because he wasn't called to preach.

He was not an elder. Probably someday Ashton's grandpa will be one.

I don't know. We don't know who they are, but they're men who were pastors of the churches throughout the 2000 plus years of the church age.

And so there they are. And they all fell down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever.

And the things that they praised Jesus for were power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing.

Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him forever and ever.

Now I wanna go back to the 1 Peter 2 passage if you turn back 1 Peter 2.

And I'm gonna skip down to verse nine. We'll cover verses six through eight in a little bit, but right now

I wanna skip down to verse nine. 1 Peter 2 verse nine says, but you are a chosen generation.

Now that generation doesn't mean like, that got me thinking about a 50 year anniversary.

I'm a different generation than most of the young people in the room in here. But it doesn't mean that kind of generation.

It comes from a Greek word. It's what our English word gene comes from.

So it's actually talking about the fact that when we got born again, we got re -gened.

Our new man is not after the genetic code of our parents, human parents of the flesh. It is after God.

We are children of God. We're re -gened. And that's what that word generation means. A chosen, re -gened, born again group of people.

So this does not include everybody that goes to church around the world throughout the last 2000 years.

It includes the ones that were actually saved. All right, the saved ones that went to church, the born again ones, the re -gened ones.

So they are a chosen, re -gened group of born again new people.

They had, yes, an old man or woman that drug around for their whole life on this earth. And that's on purpose too.

God said that this treasure, the new man or woman is in earthen vessels on purpose so that God would get the glory, which means when we do get it right,

Ben, we can't take pride in it. Because anything we get right is because he did it in us. Because we're in an earthen vessel that can't really do anything right.

We're just full of mistakes. We're full of getting it wrong. We don't have all the information. We never do. And we don't get it right.

But when we do get it right, it's because Jesus did it in us and he chose to use us to bring glory to God the

Father. And that's why we walk with him in his family business. He chooses more often than not to do it with us rather than by himself.

He likes to do his things with his children. So here we have this re -gened group of people.

And now it calls this same group of people. Now this is not the preachers. This is just everyone to save.

Every saved person in the history of the church. 2000 plus years of saved people.

He now calls them a royal priesthood. The word royal means they're a king and a priest. They're not just a priest.

They're a king priest like Melchizedek. He was a pre or kind of a type of Jesus Christ.

A royal priesthood. They're also a holy nation. Now, if you look up that word nation in the

Greek, it's ethnos, which means like an ethnic group. Which means our race. Which means once we get saved, the color of our skin does not determine our race anymore.

We are all these re -gened people. We're part of that race. It's a race of God's children.

And that's the part we are. That's why we don't have to have racial problems in the church. We don't have to have, like born again

Christians are not prejudiced in that sense.

Now we can, if what, it depends on how you define that word, by the way. That word is really misused quite often.

It is okay to recognize a distinction in the races. We're not the same.

We have different strengths and weaknesses, generally speaking. But none better than other.

It's all part of God's creation. But what it does do is it totally takes away the animus or the hatred towards people of a different color.

And it's not just color. If you go into Africa today, you know as well as I do, if you read that the different tribes slaughter each other because they're not the same race.

They're the same color. But they're not the same race. They don't come from the same tribe and they kill each other and just tear each other up.

In fact, it was black tribes that sold the original black slaves. It wasn't white people. Black tribes defeated other black tribes, took the weak ones and sold them for trinkets to come over here so that the evil white men, and I say that and I mean it, that men who claimed to be

Christians and had slaves, I think they had something missing in their equipment, their Christian equipment.

They shouldn't have done that, I don't think. But how can I judge them? I didn't live in their era. But the point is that this fact of being part of a holy nation, it means a holy race, means we don't have racial problems.

You look right past all that when you're born again with other born again people. Now the world has them and they can pretend all day long that they don't, but they have it.

And they love, liberals love to talk about, oh, you know, we're colorblind. Well, just using the word shows you're not, right?

So it's a fake, but with Christians it's real because we're the same race. Now the third thing it says we are is we're a peculiar people.

Can I get an amen on that? And so peculiar people, and I think it was

Brian out here in our internet group pointed out that some of the times, and Brian, I didn't look this one up unfortunately, but I think this might be the one you pointed out to me.

Some of the times, there are a couple of different Greek words to use for that peculiar, but some of the times what it means is it has a root word, which means a bought people.

Isn't that cool? Why don't you send me a note back here, Brian, and tell me if this is one of those times when it means that.

But it means kind of like a purchased people. I love that. Why? So that we would show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

That entire group, that entire race of people, that holy nation, every single one of them was individually called to be part of that.

They were called out of darkness into light. And everyone here that's saved has experienced it.

And some of you that got saved at a very young age might not remember it as well as those of us who got saved later in life.

Like I know I was in my car driving to work when it happened to me. And so there you have it.

I mean, 100 % of that group of people were called out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We could contemplate that for a couple of hours, couldn't we? What would it be like today living in this time of more and more tribulation?

People are noticing it. Charlotte and I came in on that ship and we went right past Cuba and Puerto Rico and landed in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday morning.

And by the time I got home and got settled in and started looking at the weather channel, there was a hurricane developing and it just slaughtered

Puerto Rico. We sailed right through there. It was just, what, three, four days after it just totally annihilated. They still don't have electricity.

And the Lord protected us from that. I mean, you have favor when you're saved.

Nothing will ever be able to cause you to be ashamed of the Lord when you're saved.

Now that is such an amazing attribute, such an amazing gift to be in his marvelous light.

These same people, which in time past were not a people. Now, if you want to talk about us, most of us in this room are

Gentiles. The Jews considered us to not even be people.

Did you know that the whites in this country in the churches started a thing called closed communion because they didn't want black people to take communion because they did not consider them to have a soul.

Now, you see it right here in the Bible. The Jews said that the

Gentiles were not a people. This is why so many people get it wrong when they say

Jesus died for everybody. Well, there's verses that said he died for all men, but if you take it in context, it doesn't mean all individuals because it's

Paul talking to the Jews who didn't believe God would save a Gentile and say, no, no, no, no.

He didn't just die for you, he died for all men. Now, if you put it in that context, what does it mean?

It means all kinds of men. And the Greek word pas more often than not means all kinds of rather than all.

So it's just throughout people have such prejudice. So here you get this

Jewish concept of being not a people and it comes in here and it says, which in time past were not a people.

You might say not considered to be people by the Jews, but are now the people.

I like that word, the. Do you see that? You should underline that word, the. At once we were not even a people.

It says that we were without God in the world. It said, we had no hope of salvation.

We were without God in the world. That's in the book of Ephesians. And yet that's how we were.

And we were not a people and now we are the people. We're the people, we're the bride of Christ.

We're the ones he chose to be his bride. So now we were not a people, now we are the people.

And the church is predominantly Gentile and has been since the first century. But now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul.

Now, here's what's interesting. Starting with about verse 11 and moving down through some of this information, it begins to give us the preliminary duties of a believer priest.

And there's quite a few of them, it's interesting. It's gonna tell you, if you're going to be a believer priest, which you don't have a choice because you've been named one, you are one, there are some duties that you're supposed to do.

Now, let me ask you, does that mean that we're saved by works? No, because we're not talking about the cause of salvation, we're talking about the effects of it.

When we are saved, we have now become a believer priest. We didn't do the things of a priest to get saved.

You see what I'm saying? You did it because you are saved. I'd like to, let me ask you this, this helps. A lot of you heard me say it before, but I can't think of anything better.

So I keep using it again and again, but like, does a cow eat grass in order to become a cow?

Why does he eat the grass? Because he is a cow. So the grass eating is an effect.

The cause was his mama was a cow and his dad was a bull. That was the cause, but the effect is he eats grass.

But what about a lion? Does he eat meat in order to become a lion? Like is a lion a cow that started eating meat?

So he turned into a cow, turned into a cow, a mean cow with teeth? No, a lion. So why does he eat meat?

She, a lioness, why does she eat meat? Because she's a lion, right?

So Christian, listen, if you're a believer priest, you don't do the things a priest is supposed to do in order to become one or to get saved.

You do it because you are already one. Now, why can people not get that? These people that are off on salvation by works, they said, well, look at the book of James.

Well, I have looked at it. It's all about effects, mostly predominant. And where it does talk about cause, it agrees perfectly with the book of Romans.

Anyway, rabbit trail, I like that though. So I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on what percentage of my sermons are rabbit trails.

Or what percentage of my sermon is actually a sermon. That would be good too. It'd be the inverse of that one, right?

All right, so here it starts to name the duties of a believer priest.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims. So that tells us what we are once we become one is we're not accepted by the world.

We're like a stranger to them. You walk into town, they don't like you a whole lot because you're like a stranger.

You're like the kid that joined the class in the seventh grade, which is what happened to me. When all of them had been together, first, second, third, fourth and fifth and sixth grade, and they all knew each other, loved each other or hated each other or whatever it was.

And then I show up with only one friend named Buddy Wilford. And he was their thing, by the way.

It's tough. How many of you kids, how many of all you kids have ever moved, your parents moved and you had to come into school at a day, yeah, military or whatever.

Yeah, it's tough, isn't it? Yours was starting new churches everywhere. And who else had that happen?

Raise your hand, let's see. Okay, it's difficult. All right, so that's just kind of how that goes.

Now, here we are strangers and pilgrims. And it says, our duties begin here.

We're supposed to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

Now, don't you think it's interesting that when the world tempts us or our flesh tempts us or the devil tempts us and we sin, that that wars against our very soul.

Why do you think it does? Because we're really the new man. And the new man won't sin and he hates sin and he can't sin, but he lives in us and he really is us, but the old man still dwells with us too.

So when we allow the old man to sin, it grieves the new man and it happens every time.

It grieves him every single time. So it's wars against your soul in that sense.

So we're supposed to abstain from the things that tempted us in our youth and will still be a problem for us as we grow through this whole life.

We're supposed to fight that and abstain from it. If it's a sin, if it's a sin.

And sins are listed in the Bible, by the way. Now, there are some exceptions to that where it says, if you can't do it in faith, it's a sin.

So that could be almost anything, but most of them are flat listed in the Bible. And so don't let some legalist tell you, invent things you can't do.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about actually Bible things. So that's the first thing is we're supposed to fight to live right.

Now think about that. Does that mean we're legalist in this church if we believe in that or what?

I mean, like if we think we're supposed to try not to sin, we're supposed to actually know what some of the sins are by reading the scripture and then try not to do those.

Or if a sin is knowing to do right, not doing it, then we're supposed to also know what the right things are we're supposed to do and do it and not avoid it, right?

So here we're supposed to do that as a believer priest. So what does it tell you? The first thing listed for a believer priest is that you have to have a good standing before the world.

Those are on the outside. Those that aren't saved as they look at you, if they can see that you're a womanizer or you're a boozer or whatever, they're not gonna come to you when they need help, are they?

You can't, what is a priest? Remember from last time, reaches up, takes God's hand and takes the human's hand that doesn't know

God yet. They're not even gonna come take your hand if they see you live in that way. So you've got to have a mind that wants to make the choice to be a good person, a good

Christian person. And it's not about legalism. So abstain these fleshly lusts.

Verse 12, having your conversation honest. What does that mean? Your lifestyle. You don't need to be a hypocrite.

Like if you're gonna come to church on Sunday, you need to kind of live right in the home. If you're gonna say, well, a

Christian believes in kindness and gentleness and stuff, then you treat your spouse that way predominantly. And when you mess up, you apologize.

Love covers a multitude of sins. I understand that. That's why we're still together, right? But you make it right and you work hard at it.

And you try to be what you're supposed to be all the time, not just at church. You can't be a hypocrite and be a good believer priest.

So you gotta be real. You've got to really be someone who wants to walk with the Lord and be a good

Christian. So here we have our conversation is not hypocritical. It's honest among the

Gentiles. And see there, that word is just used meaning among lost people that are watching us all the time.

So that whereas they speak against you as an evildoer, cause they don't like you anyway, they may buy your good works, which they will see.

They might end up glorifying God in the day of visitation. Now that's an interesting thought, isn't it?

So it talks about the preliminary duties of a believer priest. And they are mentioned here as number one, laying aside.

If you go into 1 Peter 2, verse one, it's gonna say lay aside malice. And it's gonna be quite a list of them.

We'll save those for next time. And that's right where we'll pick up. So let's stand and have prayer together. I mean, you're gonna, one thing about it, if you're gonna be a believer priest, you probably need to understand right now, there's like 24 duties.

There's 24 things I've found just in this past scripture that you are supposed to be doing to be a believer priest.

Not to get saved, but because you are saved. And when you're saved, you are named as a priest unto God. That's quite a few things to work on, isn't it?

So we'll be looking at those in the next few weeks. Lord, thank you for this time together. And we ask you to bless it in our hearts and minds and encourage us to strive for these things and to have a desire to please you in these areas of our lives.

And Lord, we know that for a thousand years, we're gonna be ruling and reigning with you as believer priests.

And we sense that this right now is our training time. And so help us to do the best we can in this life, in this earthen vessel and to work at it and to be the best shining lights we can be in the city, of course,

Canada and the world and the places we go. Lord, go with us into our time of fellowship now, bless the meal and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

You are dismissed. That time just flew by for me. I don't know about you, but man, that was near enough time.