You Are a Royal Priesthood | God’s Calling for Every Believer

Alright, we’ll finish the verse. But you are a chosen race, a royal, a kingly priesthood. You are a holy nation, a peculiar people, so that you should…guard the tabernacle, clean the vessel, wash down the temple, mop the floor; go out and serve God. Is that right? No! We are a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, a peculiar people that we might show forth the praises of Him. God chose a hard-hearted nation when He chose Israel so He might show His mercy, but He showed greater mercy when He chose us, because we were so far, far from Him. But now He has brought those who were far near, and He has made us a kingdom of priests. We are a kingdom of priests.

Please return with me now to Revelation 1:5: And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood. Unto Him, we who are in darkness. Verse 6, and hath made us king and priest unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Revelation 5:9-10: and they sang a new song…this is written in Greek meter, brother hymn writer. This song was probably sung in the early church. It is written in Greek. It is written in portrait, and it should be in English, something really rousing. Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seal thereof; for thou was slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every race, out of every tribe, out of every people, and out of every nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth.

God has chosen a group of people to be a whole nation of priests. Priestly kings, kingly priests. They are to serve the Lord and to reign on this earth. I give you a principle: there is no future. God has not given anything deeper than what He has given as a present expression. God has given a present foretaste of everything in the future, and nothing in the future is beyond what He has given on this earth as a present pattern.

Revelation 20:6: Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection; on such the second death has no power. When you go through death once, you can’t go through it twice. But they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with Him a thousand years.

Revelation 22:3: And there shall be no curse; the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, that is, in the new Jerusalem, and His servants shall serve Him. What are you going to do the rest of your life? Are you going to start as soon as you get to Jerusalem? No. We must realize that Jesus Christ was and is, though a King, yet for us at this moment we must say a Prince, and God wants on this earth a group of people who are priests and kings of this earth. The church does not look forward to the future when it will be priests and kings in a far-off city. First Peter was not written for the future, nor was that which was written in Exodus written for some future day. God’s present plan was for a people on this earth, not one or two people, but a people who would be priests to God.

God told Moses to tell the children of Israel, “I will make you a kingdom of priests.” Then Peter tells us the same thing. Christ has made you royal, kingly priests to offer up spiritual sacrifices to Him. Brothers and sisters, in God’s plan, in His thinking, in His concept, in His master design, in all that He had worked out for all the ages, His major plan for you is to be a priest. A priest. And God has ordained that we all be a kingdom of priests. I don’t really want to get off on the future. I urge you to remember that right now, God has a building made of living stones, and those same living stones are also priests.

In the Old Testament, there was a picture, and the priests were to be the stone of the very building, but at the very same time, they were to also be a living priesthood for all the earth. The greatest priest on all this earth is in the line of Melchizedek, in the line of… I would say in the line of Judah. I don’t care what priest or king is on this earth. Do you realize that a king must have a prince? I never appreciated that word in English. If I say princes, I do not mean a “princess.” Have you got that? It is God’s purpose for you and me to be those priests. As we saw this morning, the priests bring in the building and the city.

I want to pause for a moment and say to you that you and I are to be priests today. What do we not mean by that? Alright, here’s what we do not mean. It does not mean a professional group of people who go to the seminary. It is not a group of folks who train to serve God. It is not a group of people who preach a sermon every Sunday or wear a special kind of robe. It is not a group of people who preach or go out to evangelize the earth. It is not a group of people who get special training for a special work. A priest is not any different from any other Christian.

Now, unfortunately, my brothers and sisters, that is only in theory; unfortunately, you know that is true, and it has always been true, except in the early church, and as the Lord will restore, it will never be true again. Some have to take the position of what God wants for all His children. We’ll get to that in a while.

What then is a priest? What are you, brother? It’s time you found out. Well, I’ve been looking at a lot of things this week and trying to figure out what a priest is. I realized everybody always starts with Genesis and chases things through, and I didn’t appreciate that at all. I really didn’t, because I couldn’t see Adam as a priest. Adam’s the first priest, Abel’s the second, Enoch would be the third, and Noah the fourth. After Noah, there would be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but I had to give in when I went back and looked at it: truly, really, these brothers, and they were brothers, were priests.

I even got to get jealous of Adam. Can you imagine what he did all his life until he fell; however long that was? The word of God says he did three things. No matter how short that period was, he did three things. What were they? Three things.  He worked the land. He worked the land. The second thing he did was eat, and the third was to live in the Lord’s presence. I looked at that, and I said, “That’s what a priest is. A priest is well pictured in Adam. He tilled the soil. He ate, and he lived in the presence of God.

Well, I would like to go quickly through this. We have a picture, of course, of something of this in Abel, who offered up a sacrifice to God, an acceptable, noble sacrifice to God the Lord. He offered up a certain kind of sacrifice to God.