Oct. 22, 2017 A Message to Christs Priests by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Well, before we begin the preaching, I want to thank the church for their generosity sending me off, taking care of all the expenses for the pastor's conference

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I attended Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Colleen and the whole Owens family was down there as well.

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Appreciate being able to go. I find that a time for myself to be spiritually strengthening, and it was a time when

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I particularly needed that enlivening of my inner spirit by the fellowship and the preaching and the worship that I had with those other men, men in churches just like ours, running into the same issues and have the same challenges that we all have, but I'll most particularly be able to talk to men of that commonality, of that common experience and speak to strong Christian men and hear the preaching and join them in worship and prayer, and it was for me a very enlivening time, so I thank this church for, again, their generosity in sending me there.

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The theme of the conference by Pastor Errol Hale, of course, of Grace Bible Church in Moorpark, California, he came up with a very unique theme for the three days of preaching.

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It was doctrines recovered by the Reformation other than the five solas, other than the five great solas that are really kind of the battle cry of the

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Reformation. Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone being the highest and final authority of faith.

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Sola Fide, we're saved by faith alone. Sola Gratia, by grace alone.

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Solus Christus, through Christ alone. Sola Dea Gloria, because of God's glory alone.

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Those five great banners of the Reformation. And what Pastor Hale wanted this time for this one conference was things recovered from the

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Reformation other than those five, because it seems like as we approach the 500th anniversary of the day when

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Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door at the Church of Wittenberg, October 31st, 1517, that the focus is always on those five great truths on which we actually stand.

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But those truths had other derivatives that were very, very important, and those were what we focused on during the conference.

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We heard from Dominic Grimaldi regarding the recovery of biblical preaching.

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And biblical preaching, not just preaching from the Bible and expositing to the people what the

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Bible actually says, but beyond that, preaching to them in their own language.

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But biblical preaching, Dominic Grimaldi, who actually had a very interesting testimony. He, having spent 10 years and another .22

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years in prison, he being converted as a true mafiosa type from the

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Bronx in New York. Very interesting man to speak to in that regard, but saved as a sinner just as the rest.

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That was recovery of biblical preaching. I preached the second day in the morning on the priesthood of believers, which we will present to you this morning in a little bit.

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Craig Marshall on the recovery of the biblical view of vocation. We're in medieval times in Martin Luther's day as he approached this

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Reformation day. There was the idea that your vocation, if you were a shoemaker or a cobbler or a farmer or an accountant or a software engineer or something like that, well that was somehow less holy than being a priest or somehow in the ecclesial body of the church.

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And the Reformation brought back this biblical notion that no, what you do as unto the

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Lord is not to be set beneath being the pastor or the priest or the preacher or something like that.

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That we are all in this leveled field and a recovery of the sanctity of vocation.

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That work itself, being a blessing from God, toil from the curse, but work a blessing.

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Work itself is dignifying in and of itself as we work and make a living. We had recovery of biblical worship by Travis Peterson and how the mass was set aside and instead of the congregation observing and just seeing something in which they couldn't participate because the biblical preaching and preaching in their own language and other recoveries of biblical doctrine by the

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Reformation, the congregation, the body of Christ meeting in a particular discreet place becomes participants, which

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I believe is the biblical model. If you read the Psalms and how many of her antiphonal where there's a leader and then there's participation, there are responses from the congregation, that was recovered by the

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Reformation. And finally, recovery of the sufficiency of Christ where works are set aside, where righteousness is an achieved event by Jesus Christ on the cross and not something that we grow up into or a cup that gets filled with our righteous deeds and then it gets presented to God when we are called to Him and find out if we made it or not.

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That's all the unbiblical constructs like that set aside in favor of the sufficiency of Christ and our righteousness is from Him and from Him alone and this righteousness imputed to you by faith in Him and His work on the cross.

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So these were the five themes that we had at the conference. I found it to be a very good conference and I don't want to rank it against the other conferences that were members of FIRE, as you know,

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Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. All the conferences are good and I really do look forward to them but this one had a particular feel to it just because of the energy of the men, maybe it was just that particular group, the themes that were before us and again,

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I thank you once more for having sent me to that and I came back much charged up spiritually,

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I really needed that rest and that respite and that encouragement of the other men. So the priesthood of believers, believers, saints, disciples, whatever name you have as a believer in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, by grace you've been saved through faith, by God's grace, His grace alone, giving you faith to believe by faith alone, all these titles we can have, believer, saint, disciple, follower of the way as it says in the book of Acts, all these things, but they imply something else of you if you are a believer in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We are priests, we are priests of God together and notice

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I didn't say you are a priest because there's only one priest now, ultimately, and that's the

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Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, but if you're a believer in Him, you are melded together in this community of priests and you are part of a priesthood, not alone by yourself being a priest in any venue other than together with other believers, members of that priesthood, disciple, believer, follower, saint, yes, you are a member also of a priesthood.

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I want you to turn, please, to Hebrews chapter 5, I want to read the first 10 verses and what we're going to do this morning, and this is part sermon, it's part lecture, and then maybe

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Lord willing, back to sermon, I want us to understand a biblical view of the priesthood.

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What is this priesthood? Where did it come from? How did it develop in the scriptures? Let's do a little biblical theology and then in honor of the 500th anniversary of the

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Reformation, which will be October 31st, about a week and a half from now, we're going to look at how this priesthood developed into what it was in Luther's day,

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Martin Luther's day, and why it actually needed to be recovered. What did he recover? What was it when he stepped in?

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And God willing, come back then, as we must, to the scriptures. Hebrews chapter 5, verses 1 through 10.

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Just as Aaron was. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

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So we have one priest, and he's called our high priest, our eternal high priest, our great high priest, he who makes intercession for us, he who made on the cross intercession for us, and even now, sitting at the right hand of the

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Father, is at this moment making intercession for us. From him, this priesthood that I wish to present to you this morning derives.

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Without him, there is no priesthood. It is all of him, and by him, and because of him, and through him, and for him.

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And just as Aaron's priesthood waited for its ultimate fruition in Christ, so also the

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Levitical priesthood, the one that served him, that Levitical priesthood could only anticipate

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God's ultimate design. And what was God's ultimate design in his calling of the

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Levites to be the priesthood that served Aaron? Nothing other than you.

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We together are the fulfillment of that great pre -type, if you will.

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And pre -type is a terrible word, and my mind just lost the word I'm looking for. Prototype.

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The prototype ultimately fulfilled in you, in the church, in we together as the priesthood.

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Now 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 4 and 5, we find there the clearest passage that designates every believer, every disciple, every saint, in a word, everyone whose faith is the

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Lord Jesus Christ as a member of this priesthood. As you come to him, writes

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Peter, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

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And then just a few verses down, in that same letter, he writes, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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These are wonderful truths on which we can stand. This idea of a priesthood being designated by God, the offering of spiritual sacrifices, a priesthood, you who have gained by faith in Christ, accessed into the holy place, free access to God, therefore we come boldly to the throne of grace, says

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Hebrews 4. In Ephesians 4, therefore we together as a priesthood have access to God, a privilege only then for the priests.

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Wonderful truths. And this idea of the priesthood of believers, something that for me

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I always understood, I believed it, and as I studied it to present it to the men last

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Tuesday, I realized how much more important it was than I had ever known before, that this truth says things about us as a body, says things about the church, that even though in my mind

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I understood them and agreed with them, the importance of them has grown to a new level for me.

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One man wrote, the priesthood of all believers lies near the center of church life and Christian spirituality.

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Rather than simply being a quaint Protestant slogan, it is a way of naming the Christian's identity in Jesus Christ.

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Some scholars rank the priesthood of believers behind only sola scriptura and sola fide in importance.

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Alistair McGrath calls it Protestantism's dangerous idea, and it's a dangerous idea because what it does, what this biblical mandate does, is it insists that the authority of the church is not with a single man lording it over the church, but with that priesthood who hears and understands and actually as a body interprets the scripture.

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That was a dangerous idea, but only if we don't understand who's ultimately in control, who's building this house.

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Jesus Christ said, I will build my church. The psalmist says, unless the Lord builds his house, the laborer labors in vain.

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And we know, of course, the Lord is building his house. If you're a believer in Jesus, whoever you are, in whatever stage of life you're in, whatever way of making a living you have, whether you're a housewife, a lawyer, a plumber, a brain surgeon, you are with the rest a priest called by God as such and melded into a community of priests.

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That is the biblical witness. What is a priest? A priest is one designated by God to do whatever is necessary for God to accommodate himself to the people the priest represents.

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This is what priests do. They administer the requirements of the greater, of God, in order that God the greater can resolve himself or reconcile himself to the lesser, which is us, sinners.

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He simply reconciles the lesser to the greater in accordance with the greater's demands. And since there is none greater than God, nor will there ever be any greater than God, this priestly function has always been and shall always be necessary.

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By Luther's time, the priesthood had been in a stranglehold by Roman Catholicism, who recognized only a special class to be priests.

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And Luther said of this, into this holy, glorious, joyous, gracious priesthood the devil's swine, the pope, has come, uprooting with his snout.

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He has not only defiled, but utterly suppressed the priesthood of believers. In his place he has erected one of his own, assembled from all pagan priesthoods, as the dregs of all abominations.

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As I pointed out to the men Tuesday, is that a sentence or is that a sentence? And I think most of us could, if we thought about it long enough, could write a sentence that clear.

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But how many of us would do that if that sentence were going to be published, and people would know who wrote it, and the people who would be offended by that could actually send soldiers and drag us out of our homes and do great harm to us, would we have written something like that?

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But this morning I want to trace the priesthood from its origins up to today. I want to look at the scriptures,

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I want to see how the priesthood fares in the scriptures from its beginning, and Lord willing, to the present time.

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Before we do that, I want to point out to you, there was a time when the priesthood was carried out to perfection.

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There was a time when the priesthood was carried out without error. Nothing went wrong. And that was when

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Eden was a temple, and Adam its priest. Eden is universally recognized as having been a temple.

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Adam, the priest of that temple, is a temple because that is where God met with man, and that's the definition of a temple.

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No sacrifices then were needed because there was no sin. Therefore there was no anger to assuage.

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Now God still had to accommodate himself to his creature, because even without sin, Adam was less holy, he was less just, he was less everything than his maker, in a very important way, actually,

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God himself is the first priest in making this accommodation of himself to Adam. In Eden, Adam was a sinless and error -free priest, representing

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God before creation. We don't know how long that lasted, this error -free, this

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Camelot period, if you will, of this priesthood, but we do know it happened.

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And for God to accommodate himself to a sinless man still requires that he do that, that he accommodate himself to the lesser.

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If we think of how the tabernacle was constructed, which is given in great detail in the book of Exodus, one of the striking features of that construction is that the implements that were to be used in the worship of God, whether the laver for pouring water or tongs for moving the coal around, or the bowl that would hold the coal, or the gold that went around the table, all of it had to be atoned for.

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It's lesser than Godness, it needed to be reconciled before God, before it could be used in his service.

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Just a piece of metal, the purest of gold, was gold ever done wrong that it needs atonement for its sin?

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It simply needs to be atoned because it's less than God. So it's

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God himself who actually acts in a priestly manner at the first. You think of 2

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Corinthians 5, verse 18, where the apostle Paul writes, All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

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That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.

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God himself was accounting for the less than -ness of the world to himself.

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A distinctly priestly function. I go on, Not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

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Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

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For our sake he made him to be sin, that's, of course, Jesus. For our sake,

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God the Father, he made him, God the Son, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God.

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Note carefully that it is God who is the active party in this. It is

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God who is reconciling the world to himself. The priest resolves the unacceptability of the lesser to the greater.

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There's none greater than God. Therefore God, in reconciling we lessers to himself, acts in a priestly manner for himself.

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Now, all that being said, it must make sense then that we find this prototypical work of a priest in the very beginning.

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And in fact, I believe we do, and if you turn to the very beginning of your Bible, Genesis chapter 1, I want to spend just a few moments on the first three verses for you.

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Genesis chapter 1. First verse, familiar to us all.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's where it all starts.

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In the beginning, nothing before the beginning that we need to know anything about. In the beginning, God speaks it all into existence.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Verse 2. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

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So it's dark, it's dangerous, it's chaotic. What is it? It is less than God, less than its maker.

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Now this is obvious, because everything is less than God. But what we're saying is, it's not reflecting

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Him at all. This darkness, this purposelessness, this less than God -ness, it's disordered.

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It doesn't reflect Him. It couldn't, at that time, as Psalm 19 would later testify, proclaim

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His glory. This is the very beginning. The primordial time, as we sometimes call it.

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But now look at verse 3. And the Spirit of God was hovering.

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The Spirit of God was hovering. He's redeeming that which is less than His own perfection, making it acceptable to Himself.

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It will never match Him. Everything is less than Him. But it's being resolved that He can be there, that soon

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He would walk with His first priest who is Adam. He would walk there, and it needs to better reflect

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Him before He does that. Adam is actually second in the line of priests.

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I believe God was first. God redeeming this otherness of creation to Himself, reconciling it, not making it as good as Him.

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That cannot happen. But in His grace, and by His own working, reconciling it.

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Let's think about Adam for a moment, as we think about this idea of a priesthood of believers. His first priestly task was, as far as it is possible to do, to make the creation like its creator.

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To make it reflect Him, so you can look upon it as Psalm 19 would have us to do, and say, God made this.

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How do we know? Because it reflects His glory. He's proclaiming His glory. It's showing forth

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His handiwork. And as it says in Romans 1, verses 18 -25, Therefore you can look upon it, and you can see that it's an eternal

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God who made this, and a good God, and an ordered God who made all this.

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So Adam's first task is to bring it into compliance with the nature of God who made it.

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That's a priestly task. One of his first tasks was to name the animals.

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Now of course he didn't have taxonomical charts or anything like that to do this with, but he named the animals, which is to extend ownership and authority, as when

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Nebuchadnezzar renamed Daniel and his three companions. Or when Jesus renamed Peter, and said you will be

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Petras, the rock. Or how He will one day rename all of us who believe in Him, with that name

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He has written on His hand for us. Adam was resolving the otherness of creation to God, making it reflect

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Him better. That's his first priestly task. Making this dominion better fit God. Well of course, this all comes very quickly to a very tragic end.

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That's Genesis 3, the fall of mankind, the end of the Edenic priesthood because of sin.

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If man was less than God before the fall, if before sin man had to be resolved before God because of his less than -ness to God, how much more now, now that as the apostle says sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

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How much more now must there be this resolution of the lesser to the greater.

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You see Adam's priesthood needed to be recovered. And we go forward several centuries very, very quickly to where Joseph just read to you in Exodus 19, which if you will indeed obey my voice as was just read to you, and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

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These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. Not a new priesthood, really not a new priesthood.

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They were a recovery of the old one. And there's sort of a cycle that goes on, and we're not going to go into a lot of detail with it this morning, we haven't time, but there's this cycle in the priesthood where it has these high times and it falters, and the higher times and it falters, it's an up and down cycle.

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The Reformation's recovery of this doctrine is really sort of a repetition of what we have in the scripture itself.

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Think about it, what was it God did at first at creation? He redeemed the chaos to make it a fit place for him and his first priests to commune together.

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In Exodus 19, what is he doing? He's redeeming Israel from the formlessness, from the voidedness, from the less than godness of slavery.

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So is God again acting as a priest without whom the lower calling of priests is impossible?

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This priesthood is essentially the one that came in David's time, the one which David organized when he set aside the singers and organized the service of the

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Levites into the temple and how they would support Aaron, or the high priest at that time.

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King David's son, Solomon, would build the temple where they would minister. This is a recovery of that Edenic priesthood, a restart, a reboot if you will.

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A nation never fulfilled their priestly function, they seem to leave it in a way that is eerily like the medieval church centuries and centuries later, they left it in the hands of a certain class of priests instead of being that kingdom of priests, that nation that was called to do that.

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Even with their failures they did carry out the core duties of priests, they offered up the endless sacrifices that resolved the differences, the ungodness of the people.

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With the high priest going into the holiest place and there, as we read in Hebrews 5, what does he do?

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First he resolves his own sin before God and then the people's sin. And the

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Levitical priesthood in the intervening time, when people came with a sacrifice to resolve a sin before God, they would help them in that process.

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And this is the first real function of a priesthood, resolving the difference between the greater

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God and the lesser man, man with whom it is

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God's desire to commune. Plus the first idea is this resolution of the less -than -ness that we have.

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But there's another task of priests. And we don't think of this too often, but it's very important.

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The priests were actually commissioned to guard the high priest and his work.

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And if you turn to Numbers chapter 3, I think you'll see this, Numbers chapter 3, starting at verse 5.

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Now this of course is God speaking to Moses in the wilderness and all this is being initiated and put together and the instructions are being given.

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Now what are they keeping guard over? They're keeping guard over people coming in at the wrong time, the wrong person coming in.

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They're keeping real guard. And we need to understand these Levites were not a bunch of rent -a -cops.

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They were trained, skilled, brave warriors. We need to think something like SEAL Team 6 with swords.

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These Levites are from the same tribe who killed the calf worshippers. When they're told to go and slay your brother and your companion and your neighbor, these are the ones who did it.

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They're men who would die for God's honor. Do you remember the incident where Jehoiada, the high priest, saved

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Joash, David's son? There's this wicked queen in Judah named

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Athaliah who's trying to wipe out David's line to kill the holy seed and Jehoiada, the high priest, saved

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Joash, guarding, if you will, the holy seed. And when

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Athaliah came in and saw him being crowned king, as he cried out treason, do you remember they chased her out of the temple and they took her out and they executed her?

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But understand, I'm reading in a little bit, but the royal personages in that time never walked alone.

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They had a guard with them all the time. These Levites would have to go through that guard to get to her.

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I believe they did. In 2 Chronicles 26, we read how King Uzziah, do you remember him?

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Man of great accomplishment, and when his heart was lifted up because of all the things that he had done in a very

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Nebuchadnezzar -ish way, he was puffed up with pride and he decided he was going to go into the temple and burn incense, and it's the priests who guarded the temple.

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It says, not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense before the Lord. And they chased him out when he became a leper, when he was given by God that disease that more than anything else in the ancient

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Near East was a symbol of the ugliness and the blight of sin. But it was the

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Levites who chased him out, certainly had to go through his guard before they got to him.

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And when we think of the high priesthood, when we think of the priesthood, excuse me, just the priesthood, we rightly emphasize the intercessory nature of the

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New Testament priesthood. We rightly emphasize the right of access that we have before God and how that's a priestly function.

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But don't forget that the priesthood is commissioned as guards for God's honor.

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We defend the honor of Christ as a priesthood, as we together at the church. That's what we as pastors do when we preach his word.

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We're teaching the priests, you all, to know God's will, to apply it, to teach it to others.

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When priests walk worthy of the calling by which they were called, what are we doing? But defending

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Christ's honor. If you think of Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 20, that whole section on what

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Jesus says about how we defend the honor of the church by taking a strong view on sin, by disciplining members who will not acknowledge sin, will not repent of their sin, and how we treat them and all those instructions that we have, what are we doing?

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But defending as a priesthood the honor of this temple wherein God dwells by his spirit.

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It's a distinctly priestly function. May we be as bold as Jehoiada, the high priest, as stalwart as his captains.

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May God give us courage to resist the Uzziahs who might come in and blight the place with sin and pride.

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May we be those as a priesthood who resist that and in accordance with God's word and following what he tells us to do.

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As a priesthood, defend God, defend Christ's honor. Well, the cycle we have in the biblical witness just sort of carried on, sort of repeating itself through the ages, and if we fast forward to the intertestamental period, the period between Malachi and the preaching of John the

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Baptist, that so -called 400 silent years, if you look there, you find the history of the high priesthood in Israel becomes almost as sordid as the papacy that existed in Luther's day.

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As so often happens in church history, what sparks the church to respond to the wrong, but when something comes up that is terribly wrong and beginning to have influence?

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And think of a man named Arius, many centuries ago, he said there was a time when the sun was not.

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It hadn't been an issue before, the eternality of God the sun, the second person, the trinity.

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But when his ideas began to spread, the wrongness began to infect the church, then the church by a man named

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Athanasius found her voice and responded with the Nicene Creed and said no there never was a time when the sun was not, he is eternal, he never didn't exist.

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He's always been God the sun. He's always been, always shall be the second person of the trinity.

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In the same way, the early church had at first no highly developed doctrine of the priesthood of believers because they didn't need one, there was no controversy against it.

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The Roman church hadn't yet kidnapped the Christian's true calling. Now we don't need to pin down exactly when the

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Roman Catholic church that we know today actually began. It's sort of a nebulous thing, it sort of developed, despite or contra to Da Vinci Code theologians, it didn't start with Constantine.

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Nor was it under Peter, Rome's current doctrine notwithstanding. But I want to take a moment, a sort of historical review for you and do a quick review and try to see how the priesthood went from what

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Jesus handed to the church in the faith once for all handed to the saints in the scripture, what

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Jesus gave, and then what it became by the time Martin Luther came around.

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And again this will be a very quick review. Just so you understand that there were developments to it, it didn't just suddenly happen.

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In the mid third century there was a man named Tertullian and he really sowed the seeds of this idea of ordained elites, priests if you will, standing over the church.

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He began to speak of deacons and presbyters or elders as performing priestly functions upon, notice the word, upon, not with, but upon what was then being called the laity, the commoners, the not priests.

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He taught that the Eucharist, the bread and the wine that we celebrate every Sunday, that the

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Eucharist was a sacrifice to be handled only by the ordained and that led of course to ground that we're familiar with but we won't go there.

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There was a man named Cyprian, he's the bishop of Carthage at the time, and he took everything in the

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Old Testament that had to do with the priesthood and applied it to the church and what happened is predictable. A privileged class begins to develop.

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Men who took the privileges that God gave to Aaron and the Levites as their own, as the church elite.

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The leaders of the church, pastors and deacons, grew more and more and more segregated and above and over the people that they're supposed to be serving.

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The worst damage Cyprian did had to do with lapsed believers, those who recanted Christ under pressure and would offer sacrifices to the

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Roman emperor who they considered to be a god. And when they repented and came back to the church, Cyprian said that no, the priest is the one, not the church, not the priesthood that is the church, but the priest, the single man, this elite man, would decide if they come back in and he would set the penance before them.

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Completely taking away what Jesus says in Matthew 18, 15 -20, but told to the church and that priesthood will decide yes or no about this person, their particular sin and how then to proceed.

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Took it completely away from the church and put it in this one man. He might have been the first to equate salvation with membership in the church.

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He wrote this, they are the church who are united to the priest and the flock which adheres to their pastor.

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The bishop is in the church, the church is in the bishop, and anyone not in the bishop is not in the church.

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He meant by this that salvation is by membership in the church, not by faith in Christ.

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By membership in the church, by being in the priest, who he also called pastor.

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As if to say that if you all are not in me somehow, and I don't quite know what he means by that, that you can't be saved.

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If you don't join Providence Bible Church, you're going to hell. Well, that's what they taught and it began that long ago.

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Now typical of how all this took hold was a man named Hippolytus who was fairly influential.

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Listen to his prayer of ordination of a priest. He prays this. Grant to him that he may have power to forgive sins, to loose every bond, offering a pure and bloodless sacrifice which you instituted through Christ.

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So when in doubt, what do we do? You find a Bible verse and you blame it all on God and just go your merry way.

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But this is how it started. A little closer to Luther's time, in 1075,

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Pope Gregory said this. We decree that no one of the clergy shall receive the investiture from the hand of any lay person, laity.

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You had no say. The priesthood couldn't decide anything. Your authority, not even in view, you're impotent.

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The priesthood was dormant. And they were kept that way by the terrors of hell that were threatened if they didn't knuckle under to this idea.

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The people, this priesthood, this dormant priesthood, they weren't even aware of it, had no avenue of escape, they had no

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Bibles. The real priests were made such by papal authority. God's word, 1

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Peter 2, 5 -9, I referred to earlier. Most of the book of Hebrews, Revelation 5, all mangled, all ignored, man's additions negating the clear word of God.

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It was just as Jesus said, the scribes and Pharisees tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

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And so along comes our hero, along comes Martin Luther, who did not, as some people say, invent the priesthood of believers, he exhumed it from the grave.

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Everything that you need to know about the Reformation, you can actually find on YouTube. Look up the 1953 movie,

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Martin Luther, it's fabulous. And it has a scene there that rings very true to the actual biographies about Martin Luther.

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Martin Luther's mentor and his confessor was a man named Vicar Johann von Staupitz. He was

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Luther's teacher and his confessor. And in this scene, von Staupitz is very concerned about his former student's sudden concern for biblical authority.

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And he's terribly worried about where this is leading Luther. And he says to him, Dr. Martin, if you leave the

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Christian to live only by faith, if you sweep away all good works, all these glorious things you dismiss as mere crutches, what will you put in their place?

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And the movie gets it exactly right. He says, Christ, man only needs

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Jesus Christ. And upon hearing that, von Staupitz shakes his head sadly.

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And with the rich young ruler, he leaves sad, because he had much wealth to give up.

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He had many works. He had much control over the congregation. He was a priest, and they were not.

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Oh, he had much to lose by that. Luther's convictions and his courage, they're the stuff of legends.

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I mean, facing down the Pope and all the secular authorities who stood with him, he once wrote, consequently, every baptized

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Christian is a priest, because Christ himself has begotten him as one. I speak this morning to a priesthood, not by my authority, and not because you stepped and said,

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I'm going to take this honor upon myself. As it says in Hebrews 5, no one takes this honor to himself, but him who

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God gives it to. And that, brethren, if you're a believer in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, is you, not you solely. You are not a priest.

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You are a member of a priesthood. There's only one priest, singular. Jesus Christ, our high priest.

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Martin Luther famously said that the plowboy and the milkmaid, not able to read or write, were more of a priest than any who were made so by Rome, which is why he insisted that they have

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Bibles in their own language. Well, Jesus Christ, our great high priest, is served as a high priest the way

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Aaron was served as high priest. Aaron had the Levites, and they were to serve him. Who serves

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Christ? His church. This priesthood of believers, you, serving

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Christ in all the ways that I said before. You're a priesthood called royal. Why are you called a royal priesthood by Peter?

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Because you derive from the king of kings, from the Lord of lords. You derive your priesthood from Jesus Christ and none other.

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And if he is royal, then the royal priesthood is that which serves him. Each priest is able to come together as any other to offer up spiritual sacrifices, is acceptable to God.

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How? Through our eloquence? Through how well we sing? No. Through Jesus Christ because of him.

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The priesthood of believers is a truth that brings upon us all enormous responsibilities.

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I as a pastor, I preach to priests. The ones Paul says at the end of the book of Romans, Romans 15, 14, you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another, distinctly priestly functions.

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In Romans 12, 1, Paul consigns to the church the distinctly priestly duty of sacrifice.

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He says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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As Jesus presented himself as our once for all sacrifice to the Father, what do we do as his priesthood?

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We sacrifice. We sacrifice ourselves. Oh, not on the cross.

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We don't sacrifice ourselves, our lives for another, at least not usually. We sacrifice our time.

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We sacrifice our prayers. We sacrifice our life to one another in the investment that we give one another, not by death, not by a cross because I think that might even be too easy, but giving our time, ourselves to each other.

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We teach people to perform as priests when we teach them how to do what

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Paul says in Galatians 6 .1. What does Paul say? Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spiritual gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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Imitate Christ is what he's saying. This idea of going to the one caught in transgression and restoring him and being gentle, a gentle high priest, why?

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Because we know that we have the same weakness as they. This is a distinctly priestly function.

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This edifying, this resolving each other's sins, going to a brother, as Jesus tells us.

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Restoring one with the spirit of gentleness. The church's priesthood comes alongside and lift up the drooping hands and strengthen the weak knees, and make straight paths for their feet, so that what is lame may be not put out of joint, but rather be healed.

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What are we doing as priests when we resolve one another's sins? Matthew 18 .15,

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go to your brother, tell him his fault. Galatians 6 .1, you who are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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What are we doing but acting as a priesthood, resolving the ungodliness of the sin that we're confronting, helping one to repent and once again know the fullness of communion with God?

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Peter's text is a clarion call for us to guard this doctrine of the priesthood. Come to him, a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious.

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You yourselves, like living stones being built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

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We've read this already. A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, calling out the excellencies of him, of Christ, who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Spiritual sacrifices of praise, the fruit of our lips as we acknowledge Christ's name, the name above all names, and the name by which our priesthood is named.

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Well, the priesthood doesn't come to an end in Christ. We imitate and we replicate his self -sacrifice over and over according to 1

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Peter 2, 5 -9, according to Romans 12, 1, Galatians 6, and many others that we could name.

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We repeat it over and over as we sacrifice our lives for each other. Not our very lives as Jesus did, only he could do that while bearing sin, but sacrificing ourselves to each other in that way of edification, in that way of fellowship, in that way of commitment.

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Now, I think passages like Romans 12, like Galatians 6, they call us to imitate and even in a sense, in a sense, replicating

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Jesus Christ's high priestly self -sacrifice. It's what husbands are called to do, and there's a priestly command,

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Ephesians 5 -22. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

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That's what I mean by self -sacrifice. To directly imitate, to constantly duplicate what he did for us.

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What are we doing in Galatians 6 when you who are spiritual restore such a one with a spirit of gentleness?

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We are directly imitating Jesus Christ, our great high priest. Now, we don't get to die for one another.

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That might be easier. The giver of life, that's Jesus, the giver of life tells us to live sacrificially for each other, not to die, but to invest.

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We act as priests when we forgive as Christ forgave you, Ephesians 4 -32. We don't confer forgiveness, not like the

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Roman Catholic priests who stand between the supplicant and God, but when we forgive, the basis of our forgiveness is

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Christ's forgiveness of us. The only forgiveness from which we can proceed, and yet we are commanded to forgive one another over and over and over again.

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We act as priests when we practice church discipline, when we cast out the

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King Uzziah -type leper who will not repent, when we guard our Lord's reputation by insisting on biblical church discipline.

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What are we doing? We're acting as a priesthood, we together, as this royal priesthood.

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Galatians 6 -1, with this gentle restoration, Romans 15 -14, Paul says,

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I am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.

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Confident that we can behave as priests to one another and together as a priesthood. This priesthood of believers recovered in the

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Reformation some 500 years ago. So important. And for you all to know that if you believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, these duties which come to you, these duties of restoration, these duties of self -sacrificing lives for your wives and for each other, of giving ourselves to it, this duty of confronting sin biblically and gently and firmly, and guarding in that activity

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Christ's reputation in this church. So that Christ is honored, so that Christ, our great high priest, is glorified in this place.

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It's all because we are priesthood together. The priesthood of believers, you might notice if you read through the book, is at the beginning and the middle and end of the book of Revelation.

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It's that important. We could even say it's at the beginning and the middle and the end of all eternity.

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There will never be a time when you and I, even when we're made perfect and see Jesus as he is, when there's no more sin to block our view of God, no more interference because of iniquity.

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Even then, we will need the constant intercession of our great high priest,

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Jesus Christ. Revelation 1 -6, to him who loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom of priests to his

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God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Right at the beginning of Revelation, priests.

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In the middle of Revelation, chapter 5, verse 10, a song of priests as history begins its final chapter, worthy are you, they sing to Jesus Christ, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our

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God and they shall reign on the earth. And then chapter 20, verse 6, the end of history, if you will.

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Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection, over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

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It's been a very quick review. I went through centuries and centuries of biblical history and human history, so you could see how this priesthood is at the beginning as God redeemed the less than -ness of creation to himself and then

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Adam to himself and then his grace as Israel came out of Egypt was redeemed from the less than God -ness of slavery and how

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God by his grace is always resolving the less than -ness of us so we can come before him, if even then for a moment.

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And now, once for all, resolved in the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest. He who went to the cross for our sins and offered himself as the ultimate sacrifice.

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So he's the lamb of God who is the sacrifice for our sins and he's our great high priest who offers up that sacrifice of himself.

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It's by faith in him, by repentance for our sins and going to that cross and there finding forgiveness because of God's grace that you are commissioned as that priesthood and understand the responsibilities that priesthood has for our own conduct, to gently restore others, for our conduct as a church to be those who guard

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God's honor in this place individually and together, confronting sin as we always must confront because how do we serve our great high priest?

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We offer him up our spiritual sacrifice of worship. We guard our own spirits.

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As Peter tells us, be vigilant, be always vigilant. All this the work of the priesthood commissioned and centered in and because of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Heavenly Father, we give you thanks again for the day that you've given us, for the time that we have together and for this word,

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Father, that you've given us in your scriptures telling us of our responsibilities as priests and the very fact of it that you,

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Father, because of your son Jesus Christ, now have this royal priesthood, this holy nation and may our spiritual sacrifices to you and our sacrifices to each other bring honor and glory to his name.