Romans 15:16 - What It Means to Be a Believer-Priest, Pt. 3 (10/02/2022)

Good morning. Yeah, I wouldn't have made it in this school because I would not have worn that hat.

But that's just pride. Where's Ben? Is Ben listening? Do you hear me?

We always debated when Jesus' birthday is, but most scholars believe he was born around October 5th.

4th, I mean. 4th, I mean. No, somewhere early

October. So Bill's was the 3rd, mine's 4th, his is the 5th. So you average it, it's 4th.

The average would be the 4th if you wanted to average it. So I'm just saying. We don't know for sure.

But not December 25th. We know that. Anyway, good to see all of you today. And I echo everything that's been said about Brother Paul by my wife today.

And he should be greatly honored. I was sitting up here praying during the piano piece, which was beautiful.

And it put me in a pensive mood thinking about things.

But I'm very thankful that the Lord has put in my life some people that are really good at organizing and management, such as Paul Davis, and Katie, and John Quinn, and Pepper Posey, and some different people in my life that are good at organizing and management.

Because it takes that. It's not my strong point at all, but it is so necessary.

I mean, this place is amazing how Paul Davis keeps everything going.

How do you learn to put stripes on a parking lot? I mean, how would you know how to do that?

And you started exactly even with the curb. And you go out, and the cars fit in them.

And they go right to the end, and it's the right width, and they're all straight. I don't get that. Is there anyone else in here besides me that have a problem doing that?

I could not do that very well. So he can do that, but he's good with adults, like parents, and he's good with the kids.

I've never met a person who's good with both. Usually, it's one or the other. And so it's amazing.

Thank God he brought you here, my brother. It's amazing. And we, Charlotte and I, think about it and pray about it all the time for you guys.

And anyway, all of you, it's just a wonderful place to go to church. I was just thinking yesterday, on a

Saturday, I doubt too many people are sitting around getting all excited about going to church on Sunday in this country.

But I was just sitting there thinking, I'm excited about getting to go to church tomorrow with this group of people.

Not just because it's church, but I mean because it's a church that loves the Lord and is in the word.

That's the kind of church I want to be in. Now, so glad to be here today.

And also, at the end of the service, we have the joy of one of our online listeners is wanting to join our church.

And so we'll have a very brief business meeting right after the message, right before lunch.

And I want to have several pages. We have a form that they fill out answering questions, but I got several pages.

I don't know if you can see it out there, but the handwriting is beautiful, which

I admire that, because I couldn't do it. I mean, I got like five pages of this, the testimony.

I'm going to hit the high points for you. But it's just beautiful. This is beautiful.

And so I'm going to share some of that with you. And then we will take care of that at the end of the service today.

So that's a joy, too. I mean, this right here is what keeps people in the ministry other than the

Lord. But I mean, you got to have some encouragement from God's people too, right? This kind of thing makes you want to get up and do it another day and another day.

And what a blessing. All right, well, let's turn in our

Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 2 is where we will be today.

We're actually in Romans chapter 15, verse 16. I've been stuck there a while, because it was the launching pad going into this study on the believer priest.

And Romans 15, 16 talks about the offering up of the Gentiles being acceptable to the

Lord. And so it kind of launched us into this study. So let's pray, and we'll get started.

Lord, thank you so much for the service already today and the wonderful music and the lyrics we've sung to each other and to you.

And Lord, we thank you for the time of fellowship we'll have later today. And we thank you for this time of being in your word where we can listen to you.

So please speak to our hearts through your word, by your Holy Spirit. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, we talked to kind of introduce the idea of the believer priest through 1

Peter chapter 2, verses 1 through about 5, maybe through even a little more than that.

And then we saw some pretty amazing verses in the Book of Revelation about us being believer priest.

And the language is always that God made us to be believer priest. He's the one that did it.

It's not something we did, nor is it something we desired to do, nor is it something we had to strive after.

It's something God just did to us because he wants us to be believer priests and kings, it says.

But I think, to me, the kingly part starts in reality in the millennial kingdom, not now.

Because right now, Satan is the little geek god of this world. And if you tried to go out and be a king, you wouldn't last long in this world.

So you're a priest, you're a servant at this point. And that's our big role.

But we already are the king. We are the king, and we are the priest under Christ. But we have to be a very humble king, like King David was, while Saul was chasing him around trying to kill him.

That's exactly the role we're in right now. So it's not that we aren't kings with Christ, but we don't get to display that yet.

But there will come a time when we do. And God's preparing us for that now. So everything that happens to us, both good and evil, both joyful and sad, all of that is to make us be that person that we have to be when that day comes.

But even now, we have a huge role in being the believer priests. So today,

I want to go to 2 Peter. I'm sorry, 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9, just to start out.

And then we're going to review a couple of some of the points in verses 1 through about,

I don't know, 8, I guess, that came before this, because they are the context that set this up.

But there's some really important information in there, and I'll show you how it fits together. So first, let's just follow along with me, 1

Peter chapter 2, verse 9. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

There's a lot in that verse. Which in time past were not a people, but are now 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 lusts which war against the soul, having your conversation honest, in other words, your life, the way you live, honest among the

Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they will behold, glorify

God in the day of visitation. We covered most of that passage last Sunday. And so now what

I want to discuss is there are some preliminary duties of the believer priests that are mentioned in the context of that passage

I just read, but you got to go up above it. So let's go up to 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 1 and review.

We've already read through those, but I want to just quickly read it. And I want to point out what's in it because it gives some preliminary duties.

1 Peter 2, 1, wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and evil speaking as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if so be that you have tasted that the

Lord is gracious to whom coming as into a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen by God and precious, you also are living stones or lively stones.

You are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

And he has made us Kings and priests unto God and his father. Do you find that phrase interesting?

He calls him God, but he calls him his father, Jesus' father, but Jesus is also God fully.

And he has made us Kings and priests unto God and his father to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, amen.

Behold, he comes with clouds. Every eye shall see him and they also, which pierced him and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him, even so, amen.

I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending saith the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come, the almighty.

That material comes right before what we just read in verses nine through 12. So in that passage, verse one through eight, even here in verse 11 is another part of it.

We see some preliminary duties of the believer priest. The first one in verse one, it says, lay aside all malice.

And malice is a little, I think that word has changed a little. In Sunday school today,

Ben was talking about how words can change, English words change. And I think in English, the word has changed.

In Greek, it's cemented in. That's why the Lord, one of the reasons the Lord chose Greek for the

New Testament, because it was a dead language for a long time. It didn't change. So just kind of like Hebrew was too.

There was a point where only three Jews in the world still knew Hebrew. It was almost extinct as a language.

And that way it kept, God kept it from changing. But anyway, that's interesting. But so let's look at this word malice in the

Greek, kakia, it literally means badness. Okay, see that's,

I guess malice, a malicious person is a bad person, right? But it carries some other connotations, but it literally means badness or depravity, like a depraved person, or trouble.

It can be translated simply into the word trouble. Evil, naughtiness, wickedness, all these are words that it is in fact translated into in the

Greek, English New Testament, I should say. So lay aside all depravity, lay aside all badness in your life, lay aside trouble that you would cause for others is what it's saying.

You can't be a believer priest if you're walking in the flesh. You know, we live in the flesh, but we can't walk in it and be a believer priest.

So we have to work on the new man growing stronger and stronger and Ben's Sunday school lesson has a lot to do with that, and that he's in right now in Obadiah, especially dealing with Esau.

And so we've got to realize that our old man is unsavable.

Our old man is not redeemable. Our old man cannot be fixed or made better through character traits or through working on character traits or anything like that.

They're striving to do good, striving not to do bad. The old man is not fixable. The good thing is we are the new man.

That's who we are. When we got born again, that's us now. And we have to make a choice as the new man though, whether we're going to rule over this body or not, because this body that we live in is part of the old man and the natural part of us is part of the old man.

And the old man can be used to do glorious things for God.

That's why we're supposed to commit our body as a living sacrifice unto God, which basically means our new man has to control it all the time.

And the moment you stop willfully thinking about it, you will fall into the flesh, a fleshly way of thinking.

I loved it in a Sunday school lesson this morning, Ben, where you're talking about Joseph and the

Pharaoh brings him in and says, you're a brilliant, wise man who can interpret dreams.

And Joseph said, I can do nothing. God can do that, right? That was his first thought, but Ben pointed out pretty wisely that when he was a kid telling his brothers how he's going to rule over him, that was not his first thought.

His first thought was tell how cool he was, right? So you see the battle against the flesh is a lifelong battle.

And Joseph didn't get to that place where that was his first thought until after years of trials and tribulation and imprisonment, being falsely accused of things and very tough situations he went through.

Ben finally gets to the place where he said, no, it's not me, it's God. It's God doing all this. He's chosen to use me for whatever reason and I'm willing, but it's

God. And that is how we have to grow more and more to get to the place where our new man rules, because until we do, we do have malice in our lives because the old man is full of malice and we have to know that.

So listen, if you're not to the place that older Joseph was yet, where your first thought is often the wrong thought, you shouldn't beat up on yourselves about that.

Satan would love for you to dwell on that, how bad you are. You can't do that because that's not you.

That man or woman or boy or girl has been crucified already. That's not you, but it will demonstrate itself if it's allowed to.

So the best thing to do is when the first thought is wrong, is correct it immediately. Your new man can come in and say,

Lord, I know you see everything in my heart and mind. You know, the thought that I just had, but that's not really my thought.

That's my old man's thought. And I ask you to rebuke it and I reject it.

And let me have the mind of Jesus Christ right now. And the Lord will give you that mind right now.

So that eliminates the malice, right? So, but you can see that we have to work at walking in the spirit to eliminate this problem because it's talking about depravity.

And that's what the old man is all about. Totally depraved, does not think right. It'll think the wrong thought first every time.

And no matter how good you may think you are, because you've been a Christian for a long time, that part of you is not any better than it was the day you got saved, even the day before you got saved.

It's no better than it was. Now, maybe it's ruled over more by your new man, and that's a good thing.

And that comes with life. And a lot of times, unfortunately, tribulation and sad things have to happen to us to humble us enough to walk in the spirit more than in the flesh.

And just age helps. If you're still in the word, and you're with a good group of solid

Christian people, and you're walking with the Lord, then in that situation, just age will help.

If aging means you're walking like that while you're aging. I've met old people in churches, there are more baby

Christians than some of the kids in the youth group were. I've seen that too. So age in itself doesn't fix it.

But just walking with the Lord and in the word for a long period of time helps the new man be stronger.

So that's a good thing to know. Second thing it mentions is the word guile. And all these words are found in verses one, mostly one through five.

But guile, it's a word, it's dolos in the

Greek. It literally means a decoy. Like you put a plastic duck on the water and it makes the ducks fly in and you shoot them, right?

Anybody a duck hunter? I bet we don't have too many of those in our church. We might have one or two. I bet

Brother Davis is a duck hunter. Have you ever hunted ducks? Have you gone duck hunting before?

No, me neither. Have you? Yeah, I think I did actually do it once with another person.

It might've been Joe Tom Haney. He was a big hunter when I was a kid. But anyway, a decoy, everybody knows what a decoy is.

You float the plastic duck, or several of them is even better, tie them together and put them out there and let them kind of float among the reeds and the ducks will see them from way up there and fly in there and land beside them.

And then when they take off, you shoot them and eat them, right? You don't just shoot them for fun. Nah, you wouldn't want to do that.

Your old man would kind of like that actually. But so that is kind of the meaning of this

Greek word, a decoy. Now you think about that a minute. So what does it mean? Having wiles or craftiness or deceit, subtlety like Satan.

The word devil means that, by the way. And you know what reminded me of that? I think

I can say this in this small church. And I think you guys, you know, don't send it to your friends or anything.

But I watched part of the debate between Governor Abbott and Mr. Beto.

And Beto, he has a lot of dolos going on. He's got a lot of wiliness and craftiness in his words, deceit, guile, subtlety, where he will twist things and make it look like Governor Abbott is evil and terrible and everything he's done is awful.

He's never done anything good by just using certain words and phrases. And he's really good at that.

I had not seen him debate before. He's really good at that kind of wiliness. And I think that a lot of politicians get good at that, but, you know,

I vote a certain way because the ones I like to vote for have less of that and a little more honesty and a little bit less of that stuff.

And when I see a man where everything they say is designed to deflect or deceive people,

I don't care what he says, I'm not listening. You know, it's just like, it's a meaningless speech to me when

I see a man like that. So I saw one on TV and his name's Beto. In case you don't know it, that's how you pronounce it.

It's not Beto. All right. But I was going to put up a sign that said

Beto and then I figured out it's Beto, so it won't work. You know, how about get

Beto? No, no telling what they think. Probably the Secret Service would visit you if you said that.

All right. So we need to lay aside that stuff if we're going to be good Christians. Now, being a good politician is different than being a good

Christian, but as good Christians, we need to not be hypocritical.

People need to, we need to be what they see. And, you know, like whatever you are here,

I always love to hope that's how you are at home with your spouse and your kids, you know, and you hope

I'm like that at home too. So the less you talk to Charlotte, the better. And just keep that in mind.

But we need to lay aside guile. All right.

Well, wouldn't you know, the third one it mentions is hypocrisies. All right. So in other words, be who you really are in front of people.

That's who you should be in the home. Now, I know we let our guard down some with our family, but we really shouldn't.

Years ago, I put together a study that I like to give to young couples that are about to be married.

I like to ask them to read it and come by my office and discuss it with me for go through the material before they get married.

And so if you look at it carefully, it really is full of stuff that the

New Testament just says you ought to be to other Christians, which means here at church, those things, like be kind, one to another, gentle hearted, forgiving, like those.

We think that's what we're supposed to be to each other here at church. But my whole premise in the study is, well, if that's true, how much more is it true toward your spouse at home, right?

And if you ever really think that through, it will change how you act and speak at home.

It'll help the new man to be able to at least not let the second word you say or the second thought be quite the same.

It will be better. And you'll treat one another better in the home. So that's what it means here with these two words, with this word hypocrisy and the previous word.

And then the fourth one is envies. Now, what's interesting is maybe a better,

I just saw that fly. You may have to bring me the fly swatter because I will use it up here. Just wanted the fly to hear that.

Envy, maybe a better English word now is jealousy. So when you think of what it means to be jealous, envious, the biblical connotation is kind of like, boy,

I wish I had what you have and I kind of wish you didn't have it. That's both, that's jealousy and envy working at the same time.

And so if we're going to be a believer priest, we cannot be that way. We have to be, if we see someone that is blessed in a certain area more than we are, we should be happy for them, not wish they didn't have it and we did.

That kind of thing is what I'm talking about. So to be an effective believer priest, you can't be looking at other people.

I mean, if we're gonna help the lost and take their hand and hold God's hand and try to bring them together, we can't be jealous because they have, they're on Forbes billionaire list and we're sitting here trying to make it, right?

You say, why is that? Well, the book of Proverbs says, don't ask why, don't worry about that. You don't need to ask that.

And then it goes on to say, God will sometimes take what they have and give it to God's people eventually. So you don't know

God's purposes in that. So you don't sit there and envy, certainly the lost, but we shouldn't envy one another either.

And then the next one is evil speaking. And another good way to put that in English would be backbiting.

Like talk about anyone in this room behind their back, God hates that. And any other

Christians, as a matter of fact. God just hates it and we're prone to do it. You know, we'll find the one that's not in the room and pick on them a little bit.

And we can even do it in our families. And far be it from a believer priest to be backbiting anybody.

So if you catch yourself doing it, just know it's the old man always.

It's not the new man ever. And let your new man correct it. Even if you have to stop and think,

I've been doing this five minutes. I need to apologize to the person I'm doing it with and to you Lord.

And the person I was talking about, maybe not verbally go tell them because they don't need to know you did it because they'll never forget it if you tell them.

But you need to tell the Lord. Remember this, good Baptist never confess to men, we confess to God. And you say, well, what about in James?

No, that's just a whole different context on the one where it says, confess your sins to one another so the person can be healed.

If you check that out, that is not talking about a general statement for us towards one another. That specifically has to do with elders when they didn't have doctors and that person needed to be healed.

That situation is the only situation you would confess anything to someone else, unless it's your spouse and God, the

Holy Spirit told you to tell them. But listen, don't tell them if the Holy Spirit didn't tell you to tell them because I'm on a rabbit trail, but it's really important.

A human being cannot forget what you tell them. God can. So you confess to God, he'll forget it like you never did it.

If you're in Christ, if you're covered with blood, it's like you never did it. Humans can't do that.

So be really careful what you confess to other people. I mean, look, a brother Otis told me this one time.

He said, you got a brother that didn't ought against you, like the Bible language says. He said, yeah, you can go to him.

You can even take a brother and go to him. You can even bring it before the church. But he said, if you can just deal with it with the

Lord and ask the Lord to take the bitterness out of your heart and the bad feelings and just get over it with Jesus, just do that and don't even deal with it with humans.

And I thought that is really wise. And it kind of shows your spiritual level whether you can do that or not.

But even the most spiritual of us, sometimes if someone is trying to nail you with their words or they're lying about you or something, sometimes you really, you just pray about it for a while and you'll say, yeah,

Lord, I got to go to him because I'm not getting over it. You know what I'm saying? And when that's the case, go to them, point out what they did and tell them the truth and see if that'll solve it.

Good rabbit trail maybe. But backbiting is never useful. It's never called for.

It's never something the new man would do. It's not something a believer priest should ever be known as doing. So the next one is study your

Bible because you desire it. That's 1 Peter 2, verse two. Desire the sincere milk of the word.

Desire it. That means you don't just read it because you got to. Oh, I'm reading through the Bible in a year. I'm not against reading through the

Bible in a year, but do it because you want to. Don't do it because you told yourself, oh, legalistically, I'm not a good

Christian if I don't do this and I need all my other brothers not to read it through in a year anyway. See, that's legalism.

But if you're doing it because you genuinely love the word and you know you need the big picture, the best way to get the big picture is read it through.

Read it fast. But that's not ever enough. You got to read it slow also, don't we?

Don't worry. Ben and I will take care of that with you. We like to go slow. Look at every jot and tittle.

And Dave too, although I will say Dave can get on through his outline pretty good.

But his outline's always really well thought out. So you've got to get the big picture, read it through, but always do it because you desire it.

That's in 1 Peter 2 too. If you don't have the desire, don't say, well, since I don't want to read it,

I'm not going to read it. Don't do that. Just ask the Holy Spirit to give you the desire. You know,

Lord, a normal, healthy baby desires the milk and I'm not desiring it right now.

And, you know, please give me that desire. And we should even graduate to the meat, shouldn't we?

Desire the meat. Okay, so a good believer priest got to be in the word. The seventh thing is he should grow.

Desire the sincere milk of the word that you made. What? Grow thereby. So we ought to be growing.

We shouldn't be depending on what we learned in the Bible five years ago, you know? Okay, the next thing is show forth praises unto

God. 2 Peter 2 .9. So our whole walk in this world should be a praise to the world of what the

Lord's done in our lives. That is as much a part of the role of the believer priest as you can get right there, is you show forth praises unto

God because that is taking God's hand in the hand of the person that doesn't know him and bringing him again and saying, look at him.

He's real in my life is what he's done and I'm not perfect, but he's made me better man than I was before I met him and you need to meet him, that sort of thing.

It's just, that is our job. All right, in verse 11, it puts forth the idea of living as a stranger or a pilgrim in this world.

What do you think that really means? Yes. So if we're gonna put it like up here where it says avoid hypocrisy, avoid envy, you know, avoid backbiting, what is this one saying to avoid?

The world system, right? The world system, like if we're pilgrim, if we are strangers here, it means

America is not our country, heaven is our country and we're just passing through, which is what a pilgrim is.

And we've got to keep that attitude about the systems of this world. It doesn't mean you don't enjoy a beautiful waterfall or the ocean, beautiful blueness of the ocean or the mountains, that's

God's creation, we can enjoy that, you know, but you don't enjoy the systems of the world that Satan put together or the

God of this world and the things he's doing, power, money for the sake of power and all of that.

All right. And then in 1 Peter 2, 11 also, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

We just read that one last time and this time it was at the end of that little passage starting with verse nine. But that little passage there, abstain fleshly lusts, they war against the soul.

Now, jot down this 1 John 1, 9 is the canon that you can use when the flesh has warred against your soul and you found yourself, your old man got in control and you sinned.

You don't just roll up in a ball and quit, you get back up on your feet and you get right back in the battle.

And the way you do it is with 1 John 1, 9. Okay. And the interesting thing about 1

John 1, 9, it says faith, Jesus is faithful, which means he will always do this. And it says he's just, which means it's right for him to do it.

That when you agree with him that the sin you just did is sinful, it's gone.

You don't even have to ask him to forgive you for it. You can, we always will, our nature is to say, forgive me.

And that's okay, but you don't have to. All you have to do is in agreement with the Holy Spirit and your new man, your new man already knows it's a sin and he doesn't want to do it.

The Bible in 1 John says the new man will never sin. So in agreement with the new man, agreeing with the

Holy Spirit that what the old man just did was a sin, then it's gone. Now, I want you to test that because you'll get the opportunity this week.

If you're human as I am, you'll get the opportunity to test it this week. And I want you to ask yourself, how much do you believe 1

John 1, 9? Because do you immediately feel clean after that? Or do you still feel guilty?

Test it because the amount you believe it's true, then it should be gone.

If you still feel lingering guilt, you don't believe it's true. Or you doubt that it can be true.

So you got to really check yourself on 1 John 1, 9 whether you believe what God says is true. And God, what God says is true.

You're already, you stand forgiven before you even did it. God's already seen your whole life.

And the father doesn't even know you can sin anymore. He doesn't know you sin. Jesus does, and he'll give you a whooping for it because he's in time, or he can be through the

Holy Spirit at this point. But God, Jesus deals with your sin and sees it, but the father has forgotten it already.

So you just need to know those facts, those truths, those positional truths about the fact that you have been justified already.

And that means just as if you've never sinned, but you still are obligated to confess any sin that your old man does, because it's under your watch care.

You're the new man and you let that happen. By just letting down and you let it happen, you need to confess, okay, that was a sin,

Lord. And please, please wipe my conscience clean. Please, I know you've taken care of it.

And I'm so thankful, whatever, however you deal with that. All right, so that's the sense in which these fleshly lusts and sins can war against your soul, because your soul is the new man in this context.

New man just hates it, which means you hate it. And you got to deal with it immediately and put it behind you and get up and go into the battle again.

Your whole life is that. It's a strange life, I know. You feel like a schizophrenic,

I know, but it's the battle. It is the battle that God chose. It's his perfect plan, and there's only one plan, and we're in it, and it's the best plan.

It involves us having this treasure in earthen vessels for God's glory. So you got to remind yourself of that, or you get down on yourself, and Satan had used that to cause you to quit everything.

All right, so the 11th point that I see in here is have an honest lifestyle.

That's verse 11. That has to do with not being a hypocrite, but it's the positive side of that.

Be honest, be who people think you are. Be that person, if they think you're good.

Okay, that's funny. All right, the 12th point is do good works, which bring glory to God at the second coming.

Isn't that interesting? First Peter chapter two and verse 12 talks about that. Do good works, and it will bring glory to Jesus Christ at the second coming, because there's going to be a judgment seat of Christ, and when you did do some good things, it proves he was working in you.

He gets the glory. That's the whole idea of the treasure being in earthen vessels, so that he gets the glory. This is where he gets it, is at the second coming.

When we meet him, he gets great glory that we made it through this life where we were schizophrenics, and we lived in a world where our flesh liked that better than God, where our flesh is more like the devil than Jesus, and yet we walked with him and stayed with him a whole lifetime from the point you got saved, anyway.

He's going to get great glory for that, because in reality, we sometimes don't think what a miracle that is, that we don't fall away, because even many denominations say you can, but the word of God says, though the steps of a good man are ordered by the

Lord, and though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholdeth him in his hand.

That's what the word of God says, and it's miraculous that we make it, but we do make it, and we'll be victorious in it.

I will tell you something. When you're with him and you're going into the battle of Armageddon, fighting with him, that's going to be a glorious day.

You can't explain what that's going to be like, and he will destroy the world system with the sword of his mouth, with one word.

We don't know what the word will be. Maybe it's die. I don't know what it will be. All right, so that's something to look forward to,

I'll tell you. Do good works, which will bring glory to the

Lord at the second coming, 1 Peter 2, verse 12, and then submit to the laws of the land.

That's verses 13 through 15. So all of these things are things that a believer priest should be doing.

Now, just as a reminder, I don't need to remind this group, this is not legalism, because we're not saying that you do this stuff so that God will save you.

That won't work, but once we are saved, because we're saved, we are in fact a believer priest, so we need to strive to be a good one, and that's what this list is for.

This will help you be a better believer priest, but nobody can do these on your own. You have to do them in Christ.

You have to do it through the new man, which is the Holy Spirit, one with your new man in here, walking that way, and then we exhibit these things on purpose.

All right? Okay. The next thing that I see is live as free.

Now, listen to this. Paul always talking about how we're not slaves to sin anymore. We're free. So live as if you're free.

That means don't be a legalist. Don't go telling people how they got to dress, what they can listen to, what they can't, and all that stuff.

Let the Holy Spirit do that in their life. So live as free, but not using this as a cloak of maliciousness, but rather to be good servants of the

Lord. Now, this word malicious is kakia, which means badness or depravity.

It's a synonym of that other Greek word we saw earlier today. So live as free in Christ, but don't use this freedom as a cloak to be bad.

Wow. That's good for the modern church, don't you think? You know, the modern mega church where they'll take the young college couples or the young married couples, have a nice Bible study and go out and have drinks together.

Listen, your freedom is not for that. That's not what it means. And we need to review these things.

Now, you can, I'm not saying a saved person can't do that and still be saved, but you know what they're not?

They're not a priest at that time. They're not taking God's hand and taking this dude's hand or dudette's hand and bringing them together because the dude won't even come to you if he thinks you're just living like they are.

So you don't get to be the role of the priest if you do those kinds of things. In my book,

I'm not, and don't make me say something I'm not saying. I'm not saying that anyone,

I hate to even get here because I'm going to be honest. I wish the Bible said don't drink ever. Don't touch alcohol ever.

If you're saying it does not say that, I wish it did. In fact, if I was going to be a Jehovah's Witness or a

Mormon, I would write that into my Bible, but I don't get to do that. So in Germany, I know

Martin Luther owned a brewery, one of the greatest men of God ever, at least his wife did. I'm going to blame it on his wife.

She owned it actually, but he hung around there a lot. But we're not in Germany, we're in the

Bible Belt. And I don't think that Brother Paul would like it as much if he caught me out having a beer with one of you guys at one of the restaurants here in town, would you, brother?

Would you have a talk with me if you saw that? And I would come right back and say, show me in the

Bible. No. And he'd go, I don't need to. I quit. But you see my point.

I mean, I think it's best to not touch the stuff because how do you know if you've got that little alcohol gene thing in your family or not?

Right? You don't know. Your first drink of alcohol could be what kills you someday because you could become an alcoholic.

You don't know. So why mess with this stuff? I don't know. That's a rabbit trail. But I do know what it's saying here to be a good believer priest.

This is not to get saved, but to be a good believer priest is don't use your freedom in Christ as a cloak of maliciousness, as a cloak to do bad.

Okay? You've got to decide together with the Holy Spirit how much drinking alcohol is bad.

Okay? Me and the Holy Spirit have decided any of it, but I had a problem with that before I got saved.

See? And the Lord made it really clear the day he saved me, or actually it was the day he saved me, you're not going to get to do that anymore.

And he didn't say, if you do, I won't save you. I know that's not what he meant. He just meant I'm taking that away.

Is that cool? But deal with it as the Holy Spirit leads you. And my prayer is he'll just remove it from your family because I don't want your kids seeing you do it.

You know what I mean? Kind of like smoking and then teaching them, you shouldn't smoke. That's too much of a rabbit trail.

Even I'm getting uncomfortable now. All right. Not because I smoke, but...

But Ben does and it bothers him. No, he doesn't. He'd be the last one. All right.

Okay. The next one is honor all men. Do you think that fits with Ben's Sunday school lesson?

Where he was saying what real pride, the bad kind of pride really is. It's thinking yourself better and higher than another person.

Can you be a believer priest and have that attitude? Who would you go help? You wouldn't help them because they're so lowly.

Right? Like they're so much worse than me. I'm not going to touch them. You'd be like a Jew. Like the

Jews treat the Gentiles. And a bad Jew, I should say. So the opposite of that is honor all men.

Lost people. Listen, lost sheep, lost goats, saved sheep, all of them.

Honor them because God made them. And God will deal with them, but you honor them and you'll be a great believer priest.

Next one, love the brothers and sisters in Christ. Wow. Isn't it interesting that it specifically tells us as a command, these are all imperatives.

They're in the imperative in Greek grammar, which means Jesus talking here. He says,

I'm your king. You're going to be a king under me. Here's what you need to do. Here's what I want you to do.

Do this. And that's what these things are. So we can decide whether we do them or not, but he told us to do them.

So there we have it. Love the brothers and sisters in Christ. Fear God and honor the king.

Now the king could be the president. That's hard to do right now, but we'll be better off in about two years.

You can then obey that. That's a joke. No one laughed. My son would say joke's over.

No, it means the king. It means earthly king, your leaders. It doesn't say you have to agree with them, but you honor them as leaders.

That you honor the office. Is that a good way to put it? Honor the office of the presidency. Oh, I don't want to get on a rabbit trail, so let's move on.

Next one, be good employees and bosses. It's okay. That puts it in the connotation of slaves and slave owners, but we don't do that now in this world and should have never done it in my opinion, but it means employees and whoever's in authority and the one that's under them, they need to treat each other as Christians and that's what that's talking about.

So on both ends of that, whether you're the employee or the boss, you need to be Christ -like in all things to be a good believer priest.

The next one, it gives instructions for husbands and wives in verses chapter three,

I should say, in chapter three, verses one through seven. Then it gives instructions for the whole church in chapter three, verses eight through 12.

Then it says, sanctify the Lord always in your heart in chapter three, verse 15. What does that mean?

Set him aside as the highest place in your heart. Sanctify the Lord means set him aside as the highest place in your desires.

Your desires in your whole life, the things you desire, put him as the number one desire. That's what that means.

Sanctify him always in your heart. Always be ready to give answer to every man that asks you a reason for why you believe like you believe.

What does that mean? We got to study to show ourselves a proven God, don't we? We have to get better at answering those questions and the best way to answer them is with another question.

To get them to answer their own question is the only way they'll change their mind anyway. And then verse, that's verse 15.

And then in verses 16 through 18, be willing to suffer for what you believe, all right?

So that is, you know, if you really think it through, if you are doing a lot of those positive things it says to do, it kind of take, it doesn't leave enough time in your life to do the bad stuff.

Brother Otis used to say that. He would say, you know what the best way to avoid all the bad things you used to do?

How? Just stay busy doing good things for the Lord all day. You won't have to think about it. He said, that's always better than thinking, don't do this, don't do that.

There's a lot of wisdom in that, isn't there? All right, I think that's enough for today. That's a big list.

About 24 different things. Oh, I didn't get the last one, let me give it. Above all, it's the most important, have fervent love one for another.

Fervent love one for another. Be hospitable and minister according to your gifts.

That's chapter four, verses eight through 11. All that's in first Peter. So it gives, it really gives a job description for a believer priest, doesn't it?

Really like the attributes you need to already have to be qualified to be one. Now, the interesting thing is

God has named us as one already. So if we are one, then we have to become students of this.

We have to be like, we wanna get a master's degree in it. So we have to go review these things again and again, make sure that we're striving for the new man to be in control because there's no way to exhibit these through the flesh.

So there we have it. Let us pray. Lord, thank you so much for giving us your word, for giving us your mind on how you want us to be living in this world as witnesses for you, as believer priests that would be used by you to draw your elect to you.

Think about that. As it causes us to think about that as we walk together with all kinds of people in this world, that just us walking through the room, we should be useful in your hand to draw the elect in that room toward you, toward the light and help us to always be aware that that is our role.

And we have another role, and that is to speak the truth to those who are not elect, to the goats.

And they'll be judged by it, but we're not sure who they are sometimes. So we need to be truthful and loving and honor these people, all different kinds of people all the time to be good priests in your hand and help us to do that.

Lord, bless our meal together in a few moments and bless the food in Jesus' name, amen.