Priesthood of all believers
Introduction
What’s in a label? What’s in a term for someone? Sometimes there is a lot and sometimes there is not much. What term do you use for me? How do you think of my role? Often when talking with people outside of a church context, and particularly outside of a protestant church context, people don’t know how to ‘label my role’. The other night Leni was picking up some take-away Thai food from the local church and the lady who worked there was asking about me. She wanted to know what I did. Leni was trying to describe my role. The place to start was by talking about a monk. I’m kind of link a monk – but different. At the Wests Tigers I often call myself the ‘priest’ because that is what most of them can relate to, although I don’t really think of myself as ‘the priest’. Why not? What is it about our church, or more specifically Protestant church culture, that means that I’m not a ‘priest’?
Context: Church History
In John chapter 4, John describes a discussion that Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. She asks him a question about where is the right place to worship. Is it on the Mountain where the Samaritan’s worship or on the mountain where the Jews worship. Jesus answered that it because he had come it no longer mattered about the place where you worship but the way you worship.
One of the implications of Jesus answer was that there was no longer a need to maintain a place where ‘God lived’. No longer are we to think of God living in a certain place, but rather God is now to be seen as living in the hearts of those who followed him.
This had implications for the Israelite priesthood. They had a priesthood who looked after the temple, the place where God lived. It was their role. It was their duty before God. If there was no longer anything special about the temple then the role of the priests had changed. In fact there was no longer any differentiation between priests and normal people who followed God. All were priests. When we look at the twelve apostles we don’t find one being a priest and the others not. We find that they all have a relationship with God. There were all ‘priests’. They fulfilled the roles of priests according to the new revelation of God.
However, Jesus didn’t completely deal with sin in our lives this side of death and sin continued to try and work distance between people and God. People tend to feel fearful of God. We, like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, tend to want someone else to deal with God for us. So it didn’t take long for the church to start establishing a difference between those who were set aside to serve and the rest of the people.
A ‘new priesthood’ was established. Though it wasn’t completely the same there were some differences. However because the word ‘priest’ started to be used people read their Old Testament and started to project ideas on to the priests. And so while some of Jesus’ teaching about the loss of the role of priests was lost, not all was lost in Catholic or Orthodox theology, but it was often obscured by terms and people’s understanding of those terms, right or wrong. In time the new priesthood became very entrenched and took on laws, based on the Old Testament. We see this priesthood in the Orthodox Church and in the Catholic Church and even to an extent in the Anglican Church. Later theologians, such as Luther, rejected this priesthood. They saw it as being irrelevant for the life style of Jesus followers.
Why did the reformers reject what the establish priesthood had become? Today I want to have a look at some of the things that the reformers saw that they were re-establishing when they promoted the idea of ‘the priesthood of all believers’. This is again one of the distinctives for us as a Baptist church. It is a part of the foundation of our understanding of ourselves as a church. Therefore it is an important concept in understanding how the church works and why it does what it does.
The first aspect of this idea of priesthood of all believers that I wish to discuss tonight relates to access to God. We all (as priests in God’s sight) have access to God’s presence. In the Old Testament there was initially a tent where God lived and then later a temple. Now of course we all understand that God didn’t just live in a tent, or in a temple. Rather the idea was that God’s presence was in a special way in this tent / temple. They knew that God is everywhere. In Psalm 139:7-9 it says ‘where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.’ God was everywhere. But he was especially in the temple.
The way the temple was laid out was that they had a general place, a holy place and a really holy place. In the general place all God’s people were able to go there. In the holy place, where God’s presence was in a more special way, only the priests could go there. In the really holy place, where God’s presence was in a really special way, only the high priest could go and only once a year. He would go in through a large curtain and have a rope tied to him and bells on, so that if he wasn’t acceptable to God, if he was in sin, he would just die and people would know because the bells would stop ringing and they could pull him out.
When we get to the New Testament, the story of Jesus and how that affects our lives, we find that things have changed a bit. In a way it is the same. But in a way it is very different. Now we have a high priest – Jesus. And Jesus is in the really holy place. Not just once a year – but always. He is in heaven, a place where there is no sin. A place where there is none of the effects of sin. He is completely in the presence of God. Nothing held back.
How do we get there? Jesus is the way. When he died the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom. The temple, the old way was no longer the way to God’s complete presence. The way to God’s presence is through Jesus, by becoming a follower of Jesus. And Jesus is calling us into that complete presence of God. At times we can feel it. At times we enter into God’s presence in a very special way.
However when we do become a follower of Jesus what we do, in a symbolic way, is more from the general area into the holy area. We become a priest, able to enter into God’s presence, into God’s special presence in this world. Again we know that God is everywhere, but his presence is with us in a special way, just as it was in the temple in a special way. We don’t have it completely. But we do have access to it in a way we didn’t before.
It’s a bit like being a fan of a rock band, or a singer, or something. And we are move from being just one of the crowd out there, sitting way up the back in the entertainment center, to having a VIP pass, where you can get back stage and stand to the side of the stage, and be much closer to the action, speak to the singer, to the band after the concert. We now have access to areas that others don’t. We have access to God’s presence but not quite the fullness. One day we will. It will be like we move from the side of the stage to the middle and play or sing in the band. But for the moment we are just in the VIP area, not in the band.
But for us today Jesus is calling us into God’s presence, where his presence is in a really special way. Hebrews 10:19-22 says Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
We are all priests. We all have access to God’s presence. Not just this special person. Not just the person who preaches. Not just the person who sings. Not just the person who leads the service. All who follow Jesus, the Way, have access to God. It doesn’t matter how we feel. God is near. Let’s us draw near to God. Let’s look for God’s presence. Let’s seek it, when we gather, when we pray, when we sing, when we encourage each other.
Do you ever feel God’s presence? In what times do you feel God’s presence? Are there things that you do that help you find God’s presence?
But priests aren’t just about entering into the holy place and having access to the areas where God’s presence is. They also have a role in bringing God’s love, God’s blessing and his desire for relationship to others in the community. They have a role in ministering God to others in the community. There were a number of functions that the priests performed in the Israelites system of worship of the Old Testament.
There were involved with sacrificing on behalf of others for the forgiveness of sins so that people could re-enter relationship with God, for cleansing people from being unclean so that people could again enter into God’s presence (Lev 12), they were involved with making decisions to keep out disease to keep people in God’s good health for them (Lev 13), they were involved in making decisions in court cases to keep people in good relationships with each other (Deut 17), they were to encourage troops before they went out to war and so help people take or keep the land which God had given them (Deut 20). There were lots of ways in which the priests were to minister God’s blessings to people of God, the people of Israel.
The thing was that it was only the priests that could do these jobs. It didn’t matter or not whether you knew how to do them. You couldn’t do them unless you were a priest, unless you were born into the right priest family. And there are a number of examples of people trying to do the things that priests should do when they weren’t priests and paying the price. King Uzziah is one example (2 Chr 26:17-20). He went in to the temple and tried to offer sacrifices, instead of letting the priests do it and he became leprous instead.
It is like if you are a doctor, trained in Cuba, or somewhere else, and then you come to Australia and start practicing medicine without gaining permission. It doesn’t matter if you can do the job or not, if you aren’t qualified you can be in big trouble. And it was only the priests that could minister a restoration of relationship with God to others in the community.
Notice that there were lots of different ways in which the priests ministered to other people. There was a number of different ways in bringing God’s love, God’s blessings and his desire for relationship to other people. There was sacrifice. But there wasn’t just one sacrifice. There were a number of different kinds of sacrifices and it wasn’t just about sacrifices. It was about health. It was about teaching. It was about keeping peace between people. It was about bringing God’s blessings into all areas of life.
Now for us today when we talk about the priesthood of all believers we aren’t saying that everybody can do everything. But we can all serve others both inside and outside our community. What do we bring? We bring God’s love. We Bring God’s blessing. We bring Jesus, that is, the restoration of God’s relationship with people. We can all serve. But we don’t all serve in the same way. Some serve through one way, maybe through helping cooking a meal next week. Others serve in a different way, maybe calling up someone who is going through a difficult time at the moment. But we can all encourage. We can all make others feel loved and if someone feels loved by others maybe through that they will feel God’s love as well. And we all struggle to feel God’s love at time. We all need to be encouraged, to be pointed back to God, to be loved by others and God.
The final aspect of priesthood that I want to discuss tonight is the role of priests in ministering to God. The priesthood wasn’t just about coming close to God and it wasn’t just about ministering to other people. It was also about bringing things to God that please God.
In the Old Testament this largely involved sacrifices but it also involved keeping fires going before God, keeping the bread of the presence there as well as praying. What I want to concentrate on tonight is the concept of us, as priests, bringing sacrifices to God, as doing something for him. 1 Peter 2:4-5 draws on this image, we are a royal priesthood, but we are to offer ‘spiritual sacrifices’.
What are those ‘spiritual sacrifices’? There have been various sacrifices suggested by people in the past but I want to concentrate on one tonight. The one sacrifice I want to talk about tonight is the idea of confession. In the Old Testament ‘confession’ took the form of offering a sacrifice to God for forgiveness. However now as followers of Jesus in the New Testament we don’t physically offer a sacrifice, Jesus has already offered himself as a sacrifice, but we participate in that sacrifice by confessing to God our sin, where we have failed, where we feel we have fallen short of his standards.
When we confess we can have a confidence. When we really confession, not like when we acknowledge that we got caught out, but because we realize that we have done something wrong, something not loving, something against God’s best for us. This sort of confession involves being willing to do something to make up, in some ways, either through restitution and / or acknowledging whatever character flaws sin is feeding off and getting help to bring Jesus’ healing to our character.
When we do confess in this sort of way we know that God will hear us and will forgive us. He has already paid the price for that forgiveness so he can forgive and he wants to forgive. It is up to us to receive that forgiveness.
