We Sing About Royal Priesthood!
1 Peter 2:9-10, John 20:19-23
My dear fellow priests, I’m guessing most of you have not been addressed that way very many times in your life. What did God say? You are a royal priesthood. Now to understand it, gotta go back to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, that’s not the way it was. In the Old Testament, the only people who could serve as priests were the descendants of Aaron. If you were not a descendant of Aaron, Aaron was Moses’ brother, if you were not a descendant of Aaron, you could not serve as a priest. So it was very limited as to who could serve as a priest. Secondly, it was only the priests who went into the temple. It was only the priests that offered up most of the sacrifices. The people got to be involved a little bit in some of them. But for the most part, it was the priest that did it. Only the priests offered up the incense that symbolized the prayers of the people going up to heaven and God smelling them lovingly and longingly. The people stood on the outside. And the priest was sort of the go-between between the people and God. But not in the New Testament. Not for you. In the New Testament, God gives the honor of being a priest, of getting to come into the presence of God, of getting to offer sacrifices of praise. God gives that honor to every believer in Jesus. You can go directly to God. You can speak directly to God. You can speak directly for God. And you do that any time you tell Jesus, tell people about Jesus in any way, shape, or form. You are exercising your priesthood of all believers. And God has given a wonderful authority to us priests. What is that authority? It’s to forgive or not forgive sins. Sins. We call it the ministry of the keys and confession. Because what we are doing is we’re either opening the door to heaven or closing the door to heaven, locking it. What would lock the door to heaven? Unbelief, unrepentance. And so if a person says to us, nope, I don’t believe it. I don’t care what God is. I don’t care what God has done. Or nope, I’m gonna live the way I want to. I don’t care what God says about it. I’m gonna live the way I wanna live. Then sadly, but importantly, we need to say to them, then you no longer have forgiveness of sins. You are going to hell. And those words are just as powerful and effective as if Jesus himself had said it. Oh, by contrast, if a person comes to us and says, man, I feel terrible, I know, I messed it up, I’m sorry for my sins, you get to say to them, your sins are forgiven. And those words are just as powerful and effective as if Jesus himself had said them. Wow. Talk about amazing power and amazing authority. And each of God’s priests has that power and authority. That’s really cool, amen? Now let’s be careful. Our words are only powerful and effective if we say what Jesus would say. So if a person comes to us and says, yeah, I’ve repented for my sins, and we say to them, your sins are forgiven, but inwardly they’re going, pull the wool over that guy’s eyes, what an idiot he is. Then those words that we spoke just bounce off because Jesus wouldn’t have said your sins are forgiven. Jesus, knowing the heart and mind, would have said, you’re lying to me. Or similarly, if we say to a person, your sins aren’t forgiven, but that person is repentant, then our words have no power and authority because they’re not what Jesus would say. But if we are saying what Jesus would say, our words are just as powerful and effective as if Jesus himself had said it. So when we gather together as believers in Jesus on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday night or whenever it is we’re gathering, and you make confession of sins and I say to you, your sins are forgiven. Those words are just as powerful and effective as if Jesus himself were standing up here saying it. Or if I confess my sins to you and you say, pastor, you’re forgiven, your words are just as powerful and effective as if they had come from the mouth of God himself. You are the priests of God. Rejoice in that amazing status. Amen.
