Duties of the Believer Priest | Final Thoughts (03/10/2002)

I want to finish up. Otis didn't want me to start the series of Titus because we kind of like for him to do the opening remarks and so he'll start that next

Sunday. So I'm just going to, what I'm going to do is finish up the last three points on my study of the priesthood of believers.

I wasn't going to preach on these in the morning time anyway, so I'll just finish those up and we will have gone through them all.

Let me just review what the ones were we discussed. The first one was keeping charge of the tabernacle, which now of course is your body, or temple of the living

God. The second one was offering sacrifices of praise giving in our own bodies as a living sacrifice.

The third was keeping the sacred fire always burning, which pictures the helmet of the hope of salvation.

And also the fourth one was placing and removing the showbread.

Offering the first fruits, which pictures resurrected life, victorious Christian living.

Trimming the lamps and burning incense unto the Lord, which pictures prayer and then blessing the people. And then the last time we talked on deciding in cases of leprosy, which pictures sin.

And we'll have word of prayer and then we're going to discuss, there are three more of these, but they're not,

I was not even going to use them on a Sunday morning, so they're not long. So we'll just finish this little study off this afternoon.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your presence. We thank you that your

Holy Spirit is our teacher and our comforter and the one who molds us into the image of Jesus Christ as the equipping continues in our lives.

We ask you to use this afternoon as another part in that equipping for Jesus' sake. Amen. Okay.

Now, the last time we talked about deciding in cases of leprosy, which leprosy is a picture of sin all through the

Bible. This one is somewhat related, but it's called judging in cases of controversy.

So it's kind of interesting. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 21 and verse 5.

You might mark this in your notes too. Deuteronomy 17, 8 through 13.

We won't cover that this afternoon, but that's another passage that deals with it. So Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 5.

And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near. For them the Lord thy

God hath chosen to minister unto him and to bless in the name of the

Lord. And by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried. So that is saying in areas where they had controversy among the children of Israel or areas where it speaks of the stroke.

It's just speaking of legal matters actually and punishments and different things that have to do with legal laws broken and so forth as a nation.

Now since we don't live under the Judaistic national law anymore, then we have to find a spiritual application of this.

But the New Testament finds it when it speaks of times in the church where if there is a brother that you need to go to, brother or sister you need to go to, the

Lord made it very clear that you ought to go to them privately first one -on -one. If there's a difference or a matter that you feel is wrong, needs to be dealt with, or if they've offended you or wronged you in some way, you're to go to them and explain in private to them that that's occurred and why you feel that it's occurred and give them an opportunity to make it right.

If they will not hear you, the Lord says, then take one or two brothers and go back.

Just one or two, maybe three at the most people, including yourself. Go back and have another semi -private discussion about it with them and try to work it out.

Do everything that can be done to bring reconciliation and peace. And then if they still won't hear it and they are at fault, then you bring it before the whole church.

Now the bringing it before the church back in the early church, this was their way of taking care of legal proceedings.

They weren't supposed to take it to the governmental courts and so forth.

In the Jewish days, the precursor of the Christian church, that was very easy because you had one temple and you could come there and the case could be tried, so to speak, before the people of God.

When the early church began, you had the church in Jerusalem, same thing could still happen. As the church spread across the world, it made it somewhat more difficult.

And today it's virtually impossible to see how this could even be governed because if your friend goes to the

Methodist church down the street and he wrongs you, the likelihood of the Methodist church meeting with us and trying a case are virtually zero.

So it makes it very difficult. So the best application for this would be within our own church body of when there are differences among us in our local church, that it should be worked out by the priest, which pictures the believer priest, which simply means you should work it out yourselves.

First one -on -one, then one or two brothers with you, and then if that won't work, you can bring it before the whole church and the church can try to alleviate or choose in the controversy, alleviate the problem.

So there is still a basis for practicality in this, and as believer priests, this would be one of our duties.

It might not be pleasant or something that you would look forward to going through as a church, but there are times when it is necessary.

Then that brings us to the next point. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 33 and verse 8.

The next duty of the believer priest was a duty of teaching the people.

Now the way this applies to us, to all of us as believer priests, is that we're supposed to be disciplers of the people that the

Lord brings into our lives. Brand new Christians, perhaps someone you lead to the

Lord yourself, and then they need to be discipled. They need to be taught the basics of Christian living, what the

Bible teaches, the basic doctrines, and so forth. So let's read this duty in Deuteronomy 33, 8.

And of Levi he said, They shall put incense before thee and hold burnt sacrifices.

Hello there. Well, come on in. You're going to be part of the ministry today.

Upon thine altar. Alright. So, you're going to come back out.

Your mom wants to see you. Right out that way.

That's why we put locks on that door. We should use them,

I suppose. Well, you missed the deep meaning of this passage.

So, let's look at verse 10. They shall teach

Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law. They shall put incense before thee, which pictures prayer, hold burnt sacrifice upon thine altar.

And so, the priests, one of the roles that they played is they taught

God's word. Now, the New Testament counterpart of that is found in Matthew chapter 28, verse 18 through 20, which is known as the

Great Commission. And it ends this way, Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And so that's our job, as we see new believers come into the fold, or into your circle of life.

They may not come to this particular church, but they're in your circle of life, which means maybe you have them over and spend time with them.

In discipleship, you simply bring them as close to where you've come as you can.

You bring them up in your knowledge of the word, your understanding of the Lord. You bring them along and try to bring them up to where you can bring them.

Matthew 28, 20 goes to all believers. Not to pastors, not just to those who have the quote, gift of teaching, but to all believers.

Anyone who is a Christian is witnessing and has a discipleship responsibility.

So, you tie in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, along with Deuteronomy 38, verses 8 through 10, and you see that the believer priest, one of the duties is to be a teacher.

It doesn't mean you have to have a class if you don't feel that you're gifted. You don't have the gift of teaching.

It doesn't mean you have to have a class or a congregation. You may just have a person at a coffee table, in a

Bible, and you begin to share with them what God has done for you in your life, and what you've seen the

Lord do. And everything that you know about the Lord, you begin to share with them, much as you would your own child, as you go by the way, as you go with this person to do things.

It's not always that you have to sit down and say, hey, let's have a Bible study, although that's good too. But it's not always the best learning moment for them.

It might be when you're just walking together somewhere, doing something, and you see an opportunity to point out what

God's doing in your life, in their life, around them, and you put it right in the middle of the conversation about whatever else you were doing.

So that they begin to see that God is real to you in your everyday walk. It's not just at a table with a

Bible, doing a quote Bible study, but God is real in your real everyday life. That's a large part of discipleship as well.

Alright, so that's the judging in cases of controversy, and then the role of teaching. And then the next one is this, encouraging the people when they went to war.

And if there were one that would be a good one for a Sunday morning, this one could have been a good one, I think.

But let me give it to you this afternoon. Deuteronomy chapter 20, if you would look there in verse 1, there are 12 of these in total.

And we've preached through all of them but these last four. This one is one of my favorites of the 12, because we're continually in spiritual warfare.

So one of the roles of the believer priest is to encourage the other as they go to war.

To be an encouragement to each other as we go into battle. Deuteronomy chapter 20 verse 1,

When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, in other words, you're outnumbered, be not afraid of them.

For the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be when you are come nigh unto battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto them,

Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day into battle against your enemies. Let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them.

For the Lord your God is he that goeth with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you.

The role of the priest was to challenge the people in that manner and encourage their hearts before they went into battle, even if they were greatly outnumbered.

And so the spiritual aspect or application of that for us as believer priests, we're always supposed to be there to encourage one another.

When we see the brother that's going through a particular battle in his or her life, to remind them that it is really the

Lord's battle, and he will fight for you against your enemies, it says. He will fight for you against your enemies to save you.

That's powerful information. Not just that you can go fight and God will encourage you, or not just that you go fight and God will help strengthen you and make you stronger.

That's not what the message was. The message was that God is the one who goes with you and he fights for you.

He fights your enemies. And the whole purpose of it is to save or to deliver you.

So what greater promise could you have going into a battle than to know that is the outcome?

The outcome is that God will end up fighting the enemy because they're really his enemies. He will fight them and save you.

And it's the believer priest's job to remind each other of that when one of the other may be weaker and have forgotten it, and he feels that he faces his enemy alone.

Satan will always bring that into your minds. He uses fear quite often. That's one of his greatest tools against the saints is fear.

And when you get that fear late at night that just overwhelms you about your life or your occupation or whatever part of it, your child rearing, whatever it is, be reminded of this very verse.

You can be your own believer priest. Remind yourself that it is God's battle.

He fights the enemies for you and in order to save you. And then the last one is to be intercessors.

Now, I don't have an Old Testament verse for this, but we just know for a fact that what the priest, one of the great roles of the priest is he would come and raise his hands before the heads of the people, symbolically taking their sins, and then he would place his hands on the head of the scapegoat and then send the scapegoat into the wilderness.

Or if he went into the Holy of Holies one time a year by himself, but not without blood, he did it on behalf of the people.

It was as if he became an intercessor between God and the whole of the nation.

And that was part of the role of the priest. Now, let's look at a couple of New Testament passages that deal with us as believer priests.

Let's look at 1 Timothy 2, verse 1, and then Colossians 4, verse 12.

These are my final two closings for the wrestle. 1 Timothy 2, verse 1, and then

Colossians 4, verse 12. 1 Timothy 2, verse 1, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.

Now, it's interesting because the Timothys, along with Thessalonians, but especially the Timothys, are known as the pastoral epistles.

And that's because they were written to young Timothy, who was a pastor, and Paul is giving him information about how to be a good pastor and how a church ought to be operated.

So therefore they call him the pastoral epistles. And right in the middle of this he says, I exhort you first of all.

In other words, all these other things that I've taught you to do about the church and about the people and all this are great, but before you do any of that, first of all, there ought to be supplications for each other, prayers for each other, intercessions on behalf of one another, and giving of thanks before the

Lord made for all men. And the reference there is all men within God's kingdom.

In your local church, in other churches that you know of, people that God brings before your heart to be in supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks.

So you can see that is sort of an intercessory role. When it says intercessions here in 1

Timothy 2 .1, intercessions for all men, you are interceding, you're going before the throne of God on behalf of the other person with their prayer needs.

And it's a great part of the role of the believer priest. Then in Colossians 4 .12, it says,

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always laboring fervently for you, see that's intercession, for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.

So we ought to stand before the Lord on behalf of one another. That's part of the role of the believer priest.

So that concludes our 12 points that we can gain from the Old Testament Scriptures on what the priest used to do.

Spiritually, it shows us duties that we have as believer priests. Let's have a word of prayer.

Father, we thank you for this word that you've given us. May you continually remind us to be interceding for one another, to be blessing one another, and a blessing to one another.

And Lord, when there's controversy in the church, that we might play the proper role and lead out in resolving the controversy and so forth.

Thank you for these teachings. You make it clear to us the different duties and responsibilities that we have as believer priests today.

And we thank you that you've allowed us to live in this day on this side of the cross and with the wonderful hindsight that we have as we study the

New Testament Scriptures and the Old Testament Scriptures come to life and we see the details and the colors of the truths that you give us.

Thank you for letting us live in this time, but we know that you also give us an awesome responsibility because of the information that we have that other generations never had access to.

So Lord, encourage us to take what you've given us and to be good stewards of it.