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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] today's scripture reading is taken from first peter chapter 2 verses 9-10 but you are a chosen people a royal priesthood a holy nation god's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light once you were not a people but now you are the people of god once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy this is the word of god good morning fbc and it's good to be able to see all of you again and to be
00:00:57 back to worship with you and to learn the word of god together and every month as you're aware i'm doing a series on the church and last time we spoke just to recap i spoke with the church as sacred space and some people say well very complicated la so i thought today we do a little bit of recap just to refreshen us about this really important and often overlooked topic and last time just to recap we looked at the tabernacle the tabernacle is a sacred space but in the new testament john tells us that jesus
00:01:30 tabernacled among us and then later on paul tells us that we are the temple of the holy spirit and so we are sacred space so today i'm going to develop this from the sacred space we're going to look at the priests now the royal priests you know the idea of priests a lot of us don't really uh we don't really uh understand a lot of this but it's a huge topic in the bible it's one of the most major themes and today in the 45 minute sermon we are not able to really give it a lot of the detail i just gonna do a summary
00:02:09 it may be a little bit complicated i'm going to try to really simplify it but this is very very rich and i really hope and pray the word of god comes alive to you today and today you know people normally preach from a text i'm going to do that but more so i'm going to really preach on two words and this is this word royal priesthood what exactly does it mean the two words are put together royal and priesthood and so today we're going to ask ourselves the church as royal praise as his follow-up from the last
00:02:46 sermon the church as sacred space and god willing will continue on this as the church as the glory of god to just see how the old testament speaks to the new testament and the new testament speaks to the old testament let's come before god in prayer lord we ask that all scripture is given to you including the hebrew bible is divine we ask that it is not the clever words of man this morning but your word that becomes alive and when we just look at the entire backdrop of the old testament so much of it of the hebrew bible is so
00:03:23 real and when we read it uh for those in the new covenant for us as christians as uh as as believers today we just see how the whole old testament just points to jesus to teach us to read scripture and love scripture and that scripture will change your life and not the words of a speaker who is just very clever with words but scripture alone and we say this in jesus name amen so i'm just going to do a little bit of introduction about the problems we have with how we read the bible and i will speak about myself
00:04:01 for example i think we read the bible like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle for example some of these bits here maybe the interesting bits these are the gospels we'll read it you know and then maybe these are episodes and what are the missing pieces i can tell you has the pentateuch how many of you ever read the book of level thickers i read harvey you also want to go to sleep already and the book of numbers and maybe here the book of the song or songs wow song of songs she was saxon you know what's he going to do with the bible
00:04:32 i mean the story of the bible and then you have all the minor prophets malachi and some of this nature maybe isaiah so the problem is a lot of us even if we read all these things it's a cursory reading and our main problem is we don't know how they connect and like doing the jigsaw puzzle to see how song of songs leviticus all these books we don't like to write big portions of the book of job all these books which are so hard you need to see the big picture of the bible and so today while i'm using the first peter
00:05:05 text i'm going to be taking you through from the hebrew bible and then perhaps as we go through and i really hope you see the big picture so that's the first point what's the second point of the big picture the big picture of the bible actually points to jesus that's really what the whole big picture is and jesus tells this to the pharisees if you believe moses you would believe me for he wrote about me he said this in john 5 46 and really all scripture is about the messiah it's about jesus crucified and jesus
00:05:42 resurrected and so we're going to move front and back as we go through this series you just in particular we're really going to look at the hebrew bible what we call the old testament to see how this points to us and today we'll do that uh you know so let me tell you how the summer is going to go for a while um i need your attention the first 20 minutes you will see were very boring because i'm going to take you to the historical aspects of priests but ignorance is boring that's what they say national geographic you know and
00:06:13 some people very kind my last someone i said no i'm worried like national gothic some people have done what set me back no it's not but for those of you going to find it a bit dry ignorance is not just boring ignorance is dangerous my job is to make it simple and readable but always remember this a sermon isn't here to entertain you know we are not a ted talk we are here to make scripture come alive as teachers of the world so just bear with me as the first 20 minutes as we really go into the details and then we
00:06:47 go to some application so let me recap a little bit the last time we spoke we talked about the church as sacred space i want to recap that a little bit and again just to give you a bit of scripture on this peter reminded me of this verse in 1st corinthians 3 17 for god's temple is sacred and you together are that temple and right from paul's mouth you and i are sacred space and the root wood hill here temple goes back again to the old testament and it goes back to the tabernacle the tabernacle was that
00:07:23 sacred space so let me explain how that works for us as a church just briefly to recap you know people like to argue how you worship what is the way of the church service the danger is we do church sb12 but what scripture tells you there's a template and the template is the tabernacle actually the template comes from an earlier tab earlier template which i'll go through a bit so let me quickly just show you some broad principles what happens when the church as sacred space meets up number one as you know the way
00:07:54 the tabernacle is arranged it goes in layers outer court inner court holy of holies it's an important point as you come first thing entering to be a sacred space what's the first thing that you need to reminder sacrifice we become sacred space not because of the sacrifice of bulls or lambs or doves but sacrifice of lord jesus christ who died for my sins so that's why it reminds us as i move closer that sacrifice reminds me i am consecrated this is of course the altar of sacrifice and this is the basin
00:08:30 where everybody washes themselves the priests will wash themselves and consecrate themselves so you remind ourselves entry to be a sacred space is by the sacrifice of jesus on the cross because of that we have become consecrated people not by our own works not by our own deeds but by the sacrifice of christ and as you enter into a church as i mean as a community of believers you're reminded of two things first this is called the fellowship table okay or the show table and basically it is about fellowship with god some churches
00:09:10 end up becoming a what they come becoming like a community club a church isn't a holy huddle a church is where you are remembered we are here to fellowship with god and the pause opposite this that is what is known as the menorah or the lamp stand and fellowship of god reminds us of what reminds us that there is the tree of life there is life in god because the menorah is shaped like the tree of life and in god there is light and in god there is perfection and there are seven here in god there is sabbath
00:09:45 rest that we rest in god so this is really very powerful and it doesn't matter what church you go to charismatic evangelical liturgical all of that these are basic principles that we adhere to when we are sacred space and as you come closer we are reminded the main focus this is the altar of incense it is about worship and what makes worship possible is the blood of sacrifice worship is centered on the blood of christ and and in the out of incense the blood of the lamb is often uh wiped upon the corners there by
00:10:21 the high priest and as you go right in the middle we have the ark of the covenant and again that reminds us that god meets us in his mercy seat by grace we meet him by our own works we're not good enough but by his grace we are saved and what does god want us at the center of the covenant it's basically what is true what is not true what is good what is not good the ten commandments it points to obedience and discipleship really is about obedience by the work of the holy spirit and it's a continual process so let me
00:11:00 just recap i hope that's helpful but let me tell you the other thing which i brought up last month when we spoke about this the tabernacle points forward to the church we as sacred space but it points back and it points back to where it all started how do we know very obviously this other cerebellum we find that in genesis chapter 3 and you find that in genesis chapter 2 and you find it again at there at the at the entrance to the holy holy so the shadow beam were placed there if those who don't know your bible where adam and
00:11:34 eve were kicked out and then they were not allowed to come back in so they guarded that which was holy to the lord and of course we have other references to it the tree of life is there at the center of the garden of eden there was the tree of knowledge good and evil really inside here the ten commandments is the knowledge and good and evil the entrance places south exactly at what the garden of eden is so very obviously the tabernacle was done to remind us of eden so let me give you a diagram it points forward to the
00:12:09 church people at sacred space and in fact if you those so you know your scripture a bit it points you to revelation 20 and onwards where there is the city of god but there's no tabernacle there is no temple because the city of god is the people of god in fellowship with christ and then it points backward to us why because this really is where it all started so bear that in mind as we go a little bit front and back so today i said one word royal priesthood the greek rendering of the word royal actually means palace
00:12:49 what does it mean does it mean that we are like priests who serve in the palace you know that means uh there is uh we are like just we only work inside a certain place you know what does it mean so let's go to the root word first and we'll break it down and we look at the word priests and then we try to understand what the word royal means say we're going to look a bit old testament to help us now three points there's a difference between the role and the office of a priest this is really really we are often
00:13:20 misunderstand this and royal priests and the image of god again this is so powerful and royal priests and understanding missions so let me just give you a few pictures here here some pictures of priests you ask anyone what's the priest here we're not trying to to to look down anyone or criticize any religion but just generally if i ask you what is the priest you don't need to go to a dictionary we all know right instinctively the priest is the person that connects between you and god or gods so it's instinctive everybody knows what
00:13:52 a priest is you know so in not so many words all the dictionaries will point to that so the priest is the mediator between people and god so that's the key word and it's very interesting because all cultures have priests for some reason human beings believe that somehow that god is so holy they need a priest or some intermediary before them so you want to bring a sacrifice like in the hindu food the coconut you you need to go through a priest you want to go and pray incense whatever you need to be
00:14:27 where the priest is the priest intercedes for you that is somehow in every religion even people who are not religious uh suddenly they feel that they feel they want to go to a church or a temple if the temple no priests are something wrong one no so why is that so the second thing about the priest the priest takes care of the house of worship you know you you can't walk around temple and then sukasuka you cannot certain things only the priest can touch you know and thirdly have you noticed that all
00:14:58 the priests got special clothes you know and you notice something the clothes all one color one uh white la black la saffron la and you check carefully all the clothes have something to do with purity in some way or another or or the topic or the narrative or purity have you ever seen a priest with many colors rainbow color don't have have you seen the priest we've checked module don't have all the major faith is white black or saffron and in in the christian jewish faith or they were always white even the
00:15:35 orthodox priests west black when they do the eucharist they'll put on white so white is the most common of the faith of that region why is that so so let me just give you a picture for it and there's some few points to pick up common sense uh we're going to come back to this because this actually tells you a lot about the inherent nature of human beings now this one is in all cultures that means there's something about our dna that talks about this i think about that yeah so called those of us in what we call
00:16:07 the reform tradition evangelicals we say oh all this then we go and criticize other people we say luther taught us about the priests with all believers but then like this cartoon shows you we do something else you know every truth you take it to this for the most extreme it becomes a lie and yes the new testament talks about elders premises you know shepherds pastors but you see what happened is that even in the protestant church when we push it we created a new species you know it's called the senior pastor
00:16:42 a senior pastor isn't found in a new testament i'm not going to criticize churches that are doing this today we want to have grace but very often people then look at the senior pastor or sometimes even the elder like he's closer to god so i need to go to this person when i was a younger man you know i i i remember no i i see all these uh videos of people who are touched by all these uh people who got healing power you know you touch you the fellow fall down so i would go for all the rallies i used to
00:17:14 line up because i felt that person was closer to god and maybe if he touched me then he would be my intermediary and i'll get this wow this and it'll fall and i saw only people falling down again not criticizing but again is that our nature and sometimes this is where there is a difference between office and function we can criticize other churches but if a church is run by a few people who think they are holier than everyone else they are closer to god we are actually making ourselves praise so that's something to think about
00:17:48 here's the other thing for you to think about the word pastor in you look at efficiency is really about shepherds but nowadays if anybody graduates from a seminary we call him a pastor already so you could be a young person hasn't worked in a church before he graduated with some divinity diploma he's a pastor now i'm not criticizing any pastors out there but that's really not the way the new testament looks at this it's all about shepherding and it's always plural so think about this yeah all right now
00:18:17 where does the word priest come from and the first occurrence of it is genesis 14. so i'll put this up for you genesis 14 i'll read it to you this is after adam adam years after abraham had what is called the battle of the nine kings he went in to rescue lord and after he won a few kings came to see him the king of solemn and then this king the king of salem that melchizedek was it king of salem brought out bread and wine he was priest of god most high and he blessed abraham saying blessed be abram by god most high
00:18:55 creator of heaven and earth and praise be to god most high who delivered your enemies into your hands then abram gave him a tenth of everything so few things are which is quite interesting one he's a king king but by what he's doing he's also a priest and then he's blessing abraham now understand this before this if you read the narrative before these chapters has anyone blessed abraham or abram at this point before his name is changed no only god has done it so what melchizedek is doing is confirming
00:19:36 abraham's covenant with god i want you to pick that up and what's even more interesting is melchizedek he's not a hebrew he's what we call an amorite and the place of salem is intentional it's actually modern day jerusalem and in fact the rude word means peace some some trivial for you and after he blesses abraham abram gives back a sacrifice are you you can see a bit of a second patent here now that's all when you pick up the melchizedek it's a very controversial topic some people like to talk about the order melchizedek uh
00:20:13 those of you believe in these things let's have grace to agree to disagree there are only three chapters in the bible talks about this you know psalm 110 hebrews 5 and this text in genesis so let's let's not get into controversies all right we won't go too much into this now from a royal priest it goes to a kingdom of priests okay and of course let's read exodus 19 3 to 6. i know it's a bit drier but like i said uh tahan before it gets interesting uh we're going to really try to let the bible speak to us
00:20:45 so let me read it to you and moses went up to god a lord talked to him from the mountain and said this is what you say to the descendants of jacob and what you are to tell the people israel now what happens the israelites have just got out of of egypt the the the red sea had parted and they arrived at a mountain called sinai so this is the beginning of the exodus and he said you yourself have seen what i did to egypt how i carry you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself now you obey me fully and keep my
00:21:15 covenant then out of all the nations you will be my tragic possession although the whole earth is mine you will be for me a kingdom of priests and holy nations these other words you'll speak to israelites so remember you have all these entire nations who has just come out of the of an escape you know all very lost very frightened the you know sunny things are also volatile and uncertain you know and and they're on the move and so god says these assuring words now are these words formula yes because
00:21:48 first peter the text we are reading is very obviously picking up from this text now how do we know look at some words the most most obvious you have the word holy nation you have the word holy nation and then you have the word chosen people and you have the word tragic possession which is really saying the same thing and so of course when we have the word royal priesthood and then we have the word here a kingdom of priests and we know that the word palace is found in the word royal here obviously peter is referring to exodus
00:22:22 19 and exodus 19 is basically what we call speaking forward or what we call uh foreshadowing or these all these big words first peter 9. old testament speaking the new testament new testament speaking the old testament so we know the israelites were meant to be royal priests and as we go on we're going to try to understand what it means all right but we could really see some words kingdom you see already from melchizedek he had a kingly posture all right so let me just give you a few uh that's for those
00:22:55 of you may not know your bible very well the parallel israelites and bondage egyptians mankind is in bondage to sin god rescues israelites by the blood of passover lamb those who don't know this story read it up ask your life group leader god rescues sinner by the blood of jesus christ god disclosed his covenant with the 12 tribes of israel and jesus declared the new covenant with the two of disciples and so god tells the israelites they are called to a kingdom of priests god tells the church to be royal priests so it's very
00:23:26 wonderful when the old testament speaks to the new testament the new testament speaks to the old testament so let's go on with this so of course you can this moment say all right because if you go on to the rest of uh exodus 19 israel says yes we'll follow yahweh we'll do it oh you know like going to this rally you know everybody goes hallelujah lord yes hallelujah we'll do it we'll do it and then moses goes up and then they wait well moses is very long huh very long and like us we wait and we wait
00:23:58 and we say you know i wait a very long time don't know when moses is going to come down and then this happens they create their own god called the golden calf and those of you who have not read this read the rest of the exodus account god gets very upset moses comes down breaks the 10 commandments and then the levites come to him the rest you read and so from a nation of priests all right they are supposed to be a kingdom of priests and why because they are but they are supposed to obey me and fully keep my covenant
00:24:38 this is not keeping god's covenant instead of being a kingdom of priests they became a kingdom with priests you get this so i need you to understand the floor uh we're going to come to the exciting part in the show and then the levites come in and then the high priests or the sons of aaron come in now afterwards when you read the rest of the old testament you really realize this was basically a stopgap measure that means this was not what god wanted god wanted israel to be a kingdom of priest everybody man woman
00:25:14 oh young all of you also when you read second peter this is your history but because they sin this ended up happening and when you read the rest of old testament was this uh does it really work if i tell you it doesn't really work isaiah tells you their hearts are far from me they come to me with sacrifices the the the high priests the sons of aaron the descendants eli and his two sons became such immoral people so the entire system of priests the way the bible narrative tells you is that it doesn't quite work
00:25:51 people are sinful and the best example is at the time of jesus who are the people who oppose jesus the most the high priest so that is how the bible links it to we know the idea of having a high priest having rituals and having all these people is not what god wants and the new testament speaks about this the second part of the old testament does it it goes so bad the ark of the covenant they lose it so after the kingdom is conquered by the babylonians and then the syrians the ark disappears that's
00:26:28 really the ultimate insult you know so there's a few things so i just want to now give you the last part of the boring bit and then we go to something interesting i just want to tell you a little bit what the the the levites do uh right now they do two things uh one they do the work of the tabernacle you know what the world the tabernacle the world the tabernacle is to take the sacrifice of the people and take it before god if you're unclean you cannot enter okay we spoke a little bit about this uh last
00:26:56 time secondly they take care of the furnishing it sounds familiar or not after school to do it but the two words here the hebrew word for work is abbad take care but notice this it's the same mediator within earth and heaven they take the sacrifices of man and basically take from the for israel and take it before god they'll tell an israelite whether you're unclean an entire book of it the leviticus book is written for this they don't get a place of worship only aaron could enter the holy holies if he
00:27:35 died there they tied the rope to him pulling out and they had special clothes all white aaron got white and they had the 12th tried on him so notice there's this thing that the lord is trying to teach us you know of course at the point where you know the bible you say ayah we know all of this because hebrew 10 tells us that jesus is a high priest and we can draw near the full heart of faith your heart sprinkled clean evil conscience so all those who know the bible says jesus is the high praise we don't need all these booze and
00:28:05 all the levi's but you ask yourself why why the old testament write so much about it no because they try to tell you certain details you know and so some people say yes jesus hallelujah you know your bible but i want to go back a little bit i'll go back a little bit you see in hebrews 5 there's an interesting verse it says this you know i won't read it i want to just say something about him as a priest and this is what hebrew writer says you are a priest forever in the order of melchizedek jesus is the order while she said and we
00:28:38 already established who is mel shishidek fell she said is the first royal priest because he was king and he was priests and so jesus is also the royal priest in fact jesus is the royal priest he is king prophet and priest you have you noted the old testament about all the stories there all the characters they're either leaders kings or their priests or their prophets you know new testament now you've got fishermen got texts collected got all sorts of strange people but old testament you read oh tesla all of all
00:29:10 the characters priest prophet king and jesus is all of them he is the priest the prophet the king okay so now we come back to the text so when peter says in an earlier verse as you come to him the living stone that's jesus rejected by men chosen by god pressure you also like living stones now plural are built into spiritual house to be a holy priest food and then he uses priestly language offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to god through jesus christ notice spiritual so if jesus is the living stone and he
00:29:50 is the royal priest and you are like living stones what does that make you royal priests like jesus that's what he's saying there's another thing here to pick up when we say living stone jesus and your living stones peter is saying you are made in the image now when you hear this word made in the image where do we get this from we go back to eden because the tabernacle had priests and we know the tabernacle points to eden and eden is the original cosmic temple it also had priests and here give you a diagram where you see the
00:30:34 similarity of the two those so you want to go more detailed i'm quite happy to do your bible study on this we can run through genesis one and two but it's really really beautiful on this all right who are these priests we already established that the tabernacle points to eden the garden of eden to be more particularly so let me give you just now we talked about this thing very boring because got this word about the levites so i want to go back to genesis 2 and the lord god took the man put in the garden of eden notice the
00:31:07 word work it and take care do you know what these words are used in hebrew they are the same words god took aaron and put him into the tabernacle god took adam and eve and put them into the garden of eve of eden to work he took adam and put in any fashion eve and so the first royal priest was not melchizedek they were adam and eve they were the mediator between earth and heaven they had dominion over the earth kingly dominion they took care of the first temple the garden hey but no clothes no it was a special
00:31:49 prissy clothing all the priests got white baju all of that i don't know if don't have you're right adam and eve were naked but they felt no shame and that is the ultimate expression of the priest because he had a relationship with god so close he hid nothing adam and eve were the mediators and you are made in the image of god like adam and eve sorry not even naive now let me pause here's a painting uh oh painting you know and the author i mean the painter was trying to paint god he says a lot about odin some older
00:32:37 churches i'm not trying to be critical he couldn't figure out god so he better god as as what praise high praise so he painted god as a high praise so imagine a medieval person looking at this and if the medieval person went to church next day and he saw someone that looked like that what do you think he think that person is he thinks that person is god a mediator for god you see where we're going with this so this is the danger but adam and eve they are this these things should be on both of them
00:33:20 they are the priests they are the high priests so let me just take you on the royal priest the image of god that i found is very powerful and i i you either will find it very boring but very powerful one it is our spiritual dna to be royal priests to deny that is to deny your true identity especially in this cove 19 times this really anchored me my identity is to be a royal priest from the first day when god created me in his image he put this in me i was meant to be a royal priest i had dominion over the earth and i had direct
00:34:03 access to god and then sin came in number two as royal priests we have direct access to god you don't need priests pastor elder bishop you know sometimes our people treat the elder like fbc like somebody special know like that they had a discussion with john he's like elders say something like oh better listen to elder i mean we thank you for the respect but we are just normal like you we are all royal priests every one of us you do not need to go through peter um to have access to god you do not need to go through some
00:34:38 super fantastic famous preacher to lay hands so you have access to god and here's the danger because the protestant church has made so much of this a culture some of these superstar preachers which we think mediate between us they are snakes you know and the worst thing is correct because what did the snake do to if he tried to mediate between eve and god the snake told god to to if did god really say that if you eat of this you will not surely die there's a reason why moses used the image of the snake he's snakey
00:35:11 and some of these super pastors very snaky one you know so do not take away your royal priesthood thirdly we are all royalty and the one i want to tell you male female bangla nepali indian you name it everyone royal priest but in nbc other churches oh no no i'm nobody royal priest maybe elders oh maybe deacons are i haven't served you know i just like to come to church give money you are going back to the old priestly system this is very dangerous and there's some ministries we really need women you know we talk about office
00:35:53 and role if a woman goes to rescue women from sexual slavery you can put on whatever title to her you can call a pastor caller that you all can argue about being complimentarian about egalitarian the fact is the function is she's functioning as a priest as a royal priest to go to brothel to rescue women from sexual slavery because men cannot do that all of us and once we understand this we understand we carry the image of god in missions let's take a step back bit heavy yeah this morning but very deep you know very
00:36:28 meaningful you see adam and eve mediated israel was meant to mediate in the end didn't work out of course and then the church is supposed to be and all royal priests what happened the first one failed because instead of being royal priests they led a false mediator of false priests the snake a false priest step inside this gap israel was supposed the royal priest failed instead of uh worshipping god they let a false god get in the way you see where we go with this and when we get to revelations you
00:37:09 have both the false prophet and the false god and so the question is how about you and i and so i want to speak especially to those who don't serve who just like to come on sunday give money you know careful you are going back to those olden days you know where i just come i don't need to give involved i give some sacrifice last time they give booze nowadays you give some money and then i just do my ritual and then the rest of the week i do everything that's not christianity you are royal priest is
00:37:37 your identity now let me tell you how this affects us okay this woman meghan markle wasn't meant to wasn't called to be a royal priest she was called to be a royal princess but she didn't like being a royal princess indian she says i'm independent of it so this is the world the problem the word is identity is what i want to be don't force me some people they try to be somebody else because they want to be accepted so maybe she felt i i'm being forced to conform to be a royal british family i don't like it
00:38:08 or i want to be myself the point of the text is your identity isn't chosen by others or chosen by you your identity is given to you by god an identity which is in your dna number two the identity goes through every other identity because the other identities we carry this very old movie a lot of you may not see it is but all person who retired quite real to some of our senior citizens and they don't know what to do with life he was very successful job take away his job she don't know what to do
00:38:42 he thought he loved his wife his wife passed away he found her wife an affair broke him as a husband he tried to read books to find things to do donor books about purpose that day i was having a discussion about with a brother edward he'll tell me you know some people after the before they retire they will say you know their handphone busy all the time brother edward were telling us in the in the breakout group one of his friends i had two headphones you know every day people call him i had to choose all who to go
00:39:10 for did lunch with you know you got he was working the factory wow so busy every day decide who to go for lunch they retire the phone never ring really you want to go for lunch you go for lunch you're begging people to call you for luncha you see if i find my identity as uh and my work in this kovi 19 that will really make you depressed because a lot of people have lost their identity if they're anchored in work you'll find my identity in my family let's be real sometimes children disappoint you your spouse disappoint
00:39:43 you because we are all broken but in my identity is as a royal priest together everyone else it ties me to all of this in fact the next chapter paul tells you that identity is seen in work he uses the imagery of the slave is also found in your relationship as husband and wife he goes to family he goes to work being a royal priest takes you through every aspect of your life and i really pray you you find this out so here you're saying okay all very good in theory and how do we practice this so so let me just go to the last part
00:40:19 firstly the the what is the role of the royal priest we know the identity here did his fist function he declared he or she declared the praises of him who caught you out of darkness into this world he declares it how does he declare it and so let's just give you some fine little tips and then we can close you know our last um sunday we had this talk webinar on education and the first speaker talked about vuca a vuca world the boy brigade has not brought himself also why because kovit 19 is volatile
00:40:54 we don't know with our political situation we don't even know how our economy collapse you know some people are saying we are a failed nation it's uncertain now delta variant now you you even half the cases in in use on the daily case are people with already the first dose you know the numbers because the of the delta variant by now in august our numbers are supposed to drop according to who last year you're going to check the global kovit 19 the numbers are not dropping it's complex we have to tape our servers
00:41:28 i have to do online i cannot eat in the restaurant and it's ambiguous when this is all over how would the world be and then he taught us the uh uh the first speaker dr goh he says that you know there may be all these techniques about vocabulary but the most important thing because of the education seminar is about how a parent loves a child if a parent loves the child deeply that is the power love that goes through and i i began to figure out that you know it's the same god's love right god's love takes us through a vuca war
00:42:03 now you are saying me what is that god to do with royal priests to go to go you see the vuca war didn't just occur today you know actually the word vuca occurred after the vietnam war it occurs at every time in history when you're starting a journey which is uncertain and it occurred to me the israelites when they arrived at mount sinai it's a vocabulary it's volatile they just escape the egyptians the enemies around don't know what happened tomorrow from their perspective is uncertain because how long are we going
00:42:40 to be in the desert they didn't realize they're going to be there 40 years it's complex they are nation on the walk on the move they have no infrastructure they are a nation of tents you know that was a mobile nation and it's ambiguous because what happens when you go to the promised land how are we going to defeat the canaanites and so god in his love shows his power and then says if you obey my covenant you obey me you will be my tragic possession you know you you will be a kingdom of pray he gave them purpose and
00:43:16 he showed his love to them and he gave them some hope and assurance to move forward and then he he pushed it forward by showing himself as a cloud of the daytime the pillar like night in this vuca world so let me just give you the word vuca stands for volatility uncertainty complexity ambiguity but as royal priests as royal priests who have been loved by god v doesn't stand for volatility we have to sing the praises of him declare praises you know what we is this vision we have a vision for the nations
00:43:58 you for us as royal priests in a vocab world you isn't about you know unclear you is understanding because we understand it is in our dna to be royal priest that's my true identity c is not that the word yes the word is complex the world is difficult my business may collapse i may get a lawsuit i may get sick i get my children may do this but see as royal priest is we have courage we have courage and a yes it's ambiguous but because we have courage and we have understanding we are adaptable and that's what the church is
00:44:41 so i will just close with one last thing you know what during abraham's time it was also a vucawa abraham didn't know when he would be blessed with with offspring he didn't know how he was going to be a blessing to the nations and there were people around him that were hostile he was a bukhawa and so when we look at the story of melchizedek and how melchizedek reaffirms abraham's covenant with yahweh and reaffirms god's love to him blessed be you abraham blessed be for god has delivered you and in gratitude
00:45:23 abraham gives a sacrifice back to him of 10 today as you and i look towards the cross as jesus affirms our covenant with him that he loves us in this vuca world we offer back a sacrifice of praise and we will declare him together we will declare his glory and his light to a nation to a world of darkness because you and i are royal priests god bless all of you i praise scripture and not arnold lim spoke to you because this really spoke to me let's pray lord we remind ourselves that we are a chosen nation chosen people
00:46:13 a holy people people belonging to you we are royal priests we are called to to be mission minded is in every area of life to be good husbands to be to be good at our work and no matter what that's our identity so that we lead such lies as first peter says the pagans look at us and they would just glorify god the missions is everything taking care of the environment as the way adam did social justice as what god told the israelites being good parents good husbands and to declare all of this and we do
00:46:56 this together to the nations the missions is a lifestyle make this to us anchor our identity that we function as royal priests royal priests oh lord that we are more than conquerors we will not like the word breaker during this covet 19 and we will stand in the gap between this sinful world as royal priests in the image of jesus christ with you o lord and we say this in jesus name amen god bless all of you and so if you feel the message spoke to you said pray to fbc i know it's a bit long but i felt it was meaningful
00:47:39 let someone talk to you again you failed jesus spoke to you you want to enter to be sacred space let us know you have a prayer request you're struggling honor all of this all very theoretical i'm just feeling depressed you are depressed talk to us because we are priests together we are not better than you we are not lower than you equal under the cross let us pray for you and uh perhaps alpha will help you understand a bit more of this and i can't even ask those who want to understand the ideal
00:48:13 priesthood more i'm very happy to do bible study with a small group of you and then if you like to join a live group please do so just just let today speak to you
