Our Priestly Service

The sermon text this morning comes from the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 15.

Romans 15 · chapter mention

You're reading verses 8 to 21.

This morning we're going to look back to what began in last September, the theme for the new year, the new year at ABC beginning the school year, September, we have a new theme every year.

This year has been a kingdom of priests.

What does it mean that we are priests in God's kingdom?

All of us.

Not just people with reverend in front of their name.

All of us.

And Paul teaches us much about that in the book of Romans, but I think we see it clearly in the text before us.

Our priestly service to God.

Reading from God's Holy Word.

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.

As it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name.

And again it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.

And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.

And again, Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all the knowledge and able to instruct one another.

But on some points I have written to you very boldly, by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

In Christ Jesus, then I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Elycrium, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.

This is the reading of God's precious, holy, perfect word.

So we pray and ask him to help us to know what he wants us to know.

Father, thank you.

I thank you for the worship that we have been a part of.

I thank you for the worship that we have offered up to you.

But Lord Jesus, we thank you that we give because you gave first.

Because you gave your son Jesus, we can worship you.

But because you gave us your spirit, we can continue to grow in our understanding of how you want us to live, what you want us to know, to be conformed more and more to the image of your son.

So, Spirit of God, conform us, use us, change us, make us more like Jesus.

In the next few minutes as well, we pray.

Amen.

The past month on my sabbatical, I've been working on this new project, but one of the things that has really taken my attention, grabbed my attention, is just studying, continuing to study the life of the Apostle Paul.

I've been studying the Apostle Paul since the kids in Bible school this summer.

I've had some great conversations with my grandsons about VBS this summer and Paul's missionary journeys and talking about them.

And I started likewise at a very young age learning about Paul, but in some ways I feel like I hardly know the man after all these years.

There's just so many more depths of understanding available in the scriptures, like what he actually did and how he behaved and how he lived for the glory of God.

And we had the opportunity to go to Rome and recently and just to have some experiences there and thinking about the impact of the gospel on the Romans' lives, and they come to the end of the book of Romans, and I see this passage where Paul is so emphatically and yet so proudly, in the right sense, talking about the priestly privilege that he had and the priestly privilege that we have to serve Jesus Christ.

This is what it means to be a kingdom of priests.

I want to take a deeper look at that this morning with you.

Paul's priestly duty, yes, but then let's also ask God to show us our priestly duty in light of the gospel.

If you look at verse 16, I want to focus especially on verse 16.

It's a powerful sentence.

Paul says, because I've written to the Romans.

He had never been to the Church of Rome when he wrote this.

He was planning to go, but he hadn't met these people.

But he'd heard about them.

He said, On some points I've written to you already, boldly, by way of reminder, because of the grace given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God.

We're going to break that down this morning.

First of all, a minister, what's the preposition?

Of Christ Jesus.

That denotes possession.

He's saying, I am Christ priest.

I am Christ minister.

And we need to think about that.

Not only for Paul, but for ourselves.

Paul is using this priestly language all over the book of Romans and beyond his epistles.

But we saw it last fall.

We took a whole month last September to look in Peter's understanding and teaching of what it means to be fellow priest.

And we came back in January and took another month to look at what that means in terms of sharing the good news.

And we come back at the end of the summer and we're asking ourselves, wait a minute, am I a priest?

And if I'm a priest, what does that mean?

What does that entail for my life day to day?

Most of us would agree that it was an artificial distinction that arose in the Middle Ages.

It was a terrible error in the church.

The artificial distinction between the sacred and what?

The ordinary, the secular?

And so somehow it got in the minds of the church for centuries.

That the priests, the ones who have been to seminary, the ones that have been trained, the ones that have been ordained, they're the ones that really serve God.

And the rest of you just do your best and hang in there and come to church.

Well, no.

No.

As Oz Guinness says so well in his well-known book, The Call, for all Christians who are followers of Jesus Christ, our primary calling in life is to follow Jesus Christ.

Period.

Now that entails a lot of things, right?

We need the Bible to unpack that.

What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ?

And Jesus would say in each of the Gospels, the only saying that he repeated in all four Gospels, he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

But we're all priest.

And yes, we all have distinctive secondary callings.

My distinctive secondary calling includes being a pastor at this church.

Yours doesn't.

But you have a distinctive secondary calling.

It involves your vocation.

It also involves some of our avocations.

It involves all of what we do, who we are.

Our secondary callings are important.

They are distinct.

Yet hear me, they are secondary to our primary call.

Priests serve their God.

He says, I am a priest of Jesus Christ.

That is not a bad thing to remind yourself of, perhaps to say to yourself every single day that you get up.

I am a priest of Christ Jesus today.

It might orient your day in a different way.

It might remind you whose you are in a different way.

We are his possession.

Paul says, I am a minister of Jesus Christ because of the grace given to me by God.

Now, can we not say the same thing?

The only reason that you're a priest of Jesus Christ is because of the grace that was given to you by God.

It takes no more grace to have the calling of a missionary Gentile to the Gentiles, as Paul did.

It takes no more grace for that than the grace required for you to fulfill your calling this week.

John Murray, the great theologian, said in verse 16, you could translate it, acting as a priest, ministering the gospel of God.

Now, Paul did it in a unique way.

Of all the people in the New Testament, he alone was called the missionary to the Gentiles.

Okay, but that doesn't mean that he's in a whole different category than us.

That was his distinct calling, secondary calling.

But acting as a priest.

Look, for those of you that have been here for the last year, I hope you're really believing this in a different way.

I hope you're believing it.

I hope that you're taking your priesthood more seriously.

I hope that your minds are expanding to see how God delights in your priesthood as you follow the high priest Jesus.

Secondly, look at that same verse, verse 16.

He says, to be a minister of Christ Jesus, to whom?

Well, for Paul, it was to the Gentiles.

But Paul's calling was somewhat unique.

In that time in history, there's no more true blue Jew in the Bible than Paul was raised to be.

Taught under Gamaliel, went to the finest rabbinical schools.

He knew the Torah inside out.

I mean, no one could outrank Paul when it came to Judaism.

And yet the mystery, the irony, is God tapped him on the shoulder and said, I'm calling you to spend the rest of your life reaching Gentiles.

But because of the grace given to him by God, he said, Okay.

And yes, like look, there's gonna be application mix in here, but we're looking at Paul first primarily.

But what can he tap your shoulder?

Can he tap your shoulder and set you maybe on a different course than you would have ever imagined?

Does he have that kind of control of your life?

I could imagine Paul really resisting this.

I can imagine Paul saying, No, Lord, you don't remember who I am?

I'm Paul.

I'm I'm Saul of Tarsus.

Remember, I've gone to the best schools.

I know your law.

I know the Old Testament, like nobody knows it.

No, this is what I'm gonna do.

Can he tap your shoulder?

Can he change your plans in your in your priestly service to him?

To the Gentiles.

This is mind-boggling.

You know, we've all been reminded, I've been reminded again, it's all over the world, it's not just in Washington, D.C., of just the divisiveness in our world today.

Listen to what it was like when Paul wrote these words.

Because he's he's he's speaking, he what he does is he draws out four texts from the Old Testament.

We're gonna look at that, break that down in just a minute.

But this is the world that Paul was writing to.

When Christianity burst upon the world after Christ's resurrection, it was an extremely divided place.

Some of the divisions were nationalistic, Greeks hating the Romans who had overpowered them and dominated the Mediterranean.

The Romans looking down on nearly everything they conquered, and therefore they called them all the other peoples were the inferior races of the then-known world.

Some of those divisions were racial, as between the Romans and the Greeks and the Jews, Arabs.

Many of these divisions reached back over centuries of hatred.

Many of them persist today, we know, fueling tensions that continued to disturb the Near East.

They were rivalries between cities.

You know, we just we just had a few weeks in Italy, and it's unbelievable.

You look, you studied the history of Italy.

They were all at odds with each other for most of the world.

It wasn't Italy, one nation.

It's been recent.

It's like every town had its own sovereignty, or tried to.

Every town had its own proudful heritage.

This is the history of the world to a large degree.

It's hard to imagine how deep these divisions were at the time of Christ's coming.

Though we can get an idea of it from an honest look at the hatreds in our own day.

This is Jim Boyce's comment.

But as real as these divisions were, the remarkable thing is that they did not divide the Christians in this day.

Christians simply transcended them so that the church from the very beginning was composed of Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free people, Greeks and Romans, blacks and whites, rich and poor.

The church at Antioch, which backed the Apostle Paul in his missionary journeys, is a superb example.

The leaders of the church included Barnabas, who was a Jew from Cyprus, Simeon, a black man, Lucius, who was probably a Roman from Cyrene, Menaean, an aristocrat, who had been raised with herring of all people.

Talk about a mixed bag.

Saul, the Jewish leader from Tarsus.

What a collection of very diverse people.

And yet what an effective church it was.

At Antioch?

At Rome?

How could these diverse people come together and function so fruitfully?

Because they were ministers of Christ Jesus, first and foremost.

That was their identity.

The word accept, many of you know that this is like a big verse we talk about in our inquirer's classes.

We have a theology of welcoming at this church.

Welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you, accepted you.

We don't have time this morning to go into the context, but if you go back and you look Romans chapter 14 and 15, you'll see Paul was addressing the differences.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

He's addressing the differences that got under their skin with each other.

Apparently, Paul was aware that there was a lot of opinionated people in Rome.

Not like DC.

And people were passing judgment on each other all the time.

They were trying to correct each other.

They were criticizing each other.

They were saying, no, you're doing that all wrong.

You need to do it like I do it.

Not DC.

Paul's addressing this.

And they came through it.

He uh, this is the environment of the world that Paul ministered to the Gentiles.

Let me read you a quote from William Hendrickson, another theologian, on this climate that Paul was writing these words.

When Paul is saying to the weak, and the weak were people whose scruples were, their consciences were set at a higher trigger point.

The weak would include people that were saying, No, you can't eat that kind of food.

No, you need to be circumcised.

The weak were people saying, You need to live your life this way.

You remember what Paul said?

To the weak, I'll become weak.

To the strong, I'll be strong.

I'm not gonna let my life be run by my opinions.

Do you hear that, Church?

There's a lot.

We're gonna get to we're gonna dive in a little bit more in a minute.

My life is not gonna be run by my judgments, my opinions, my ideas.

Eric uh Hendrickson says this.

Him who is weak in faith, accept, but not with the idea of passing judgment on their opinions.

Time flies.

Elimination of quarrels about non-essentials would conserve time and energy for proclaiming the good news of salvation to a world lost in sin.

Also, if you wish to correct a person of his error, what you think to be his error, first of all, make him feel accepted.

This isn't psycho battle.

This is the gospel.

This is what Paul's telling us.

Christ accepted us.

One more quote from uh Henriksen that I've been thinking about all week, which is so powerful talking about this.

You know how we struggle with accepting people who have different opinions than us, whether it's political, social, racial, whatever.

You know how we struggle with this, right?

Right now, we're you know, Washington's known for this around the world.

Everywhere we travel this summer, people say, what's it like in Washington?

Basically what they were saying, is it is it as bad as it seems?

The divides.

Listen, listen to this.

He's uh he's talking about the difference.

He's talking about the difference that it makes.

He says, um Jesus himself left the glory of heaven, entering into our miseries, the infinite qualitative difference between Jesus not passing judgment on sinners, the infinite distance, Jesus not passing judgment on sinners because they had different points of view, and how Christians pass judgment on Christians or non-Christians because of their views.

Did you hear that?

The infinite difference, the infinite qualitative difference.

What did it cost Jesus to not pass judgment on us?

His life.

His very life.

That's what it cost him to not pass judgment.

Judgment on me.

What does it cost me to not pass judgment on you?

Are you with me?

Do you see where we're going here?

What does it cost me?

My pride.

Thinking that I know.

The infinite qualitative difference.

Go back and study Romans chapter 14 and Romans chapter 15, and you might be surprised.

Romans 14 · chapter mention Romans 15 · chapter mention

It might set a different trajectory for the conversations that we have in Washington, D.C.

and around the world.

To the Gentiles, to a messy world.

And then Paul cites four quotations, just very briefly.

The first one from Psalm 18, verse 49.

Psalms 18:49

The psalmist states that he will declare God's name among the Gentiles.

Secondly, Deuteronomy 32, verse 43.

Deuteronomy 32:43

The Gentiles are called to join in praising God.

Thirdly, Psalm 117, verse 1.

Psalms 117:1

The Gentiles are called upon independently to praise God.

The psalmist sees the day when worship centers all over the world will not require Jews.

Even Gentiles.

Even we will be able to come to the throne of God with confidence.

Fourthly, Isaiah chapter 11, verse 10.

Isaiah 11:10

The root of Jesus, of Jesse, rather, that's Jesus, one day will come and rule over the Gentiles in whom they will hope.

Now that's an interesting transition.

Look at verse 13 in the text.

There's this undercurrent of hope that Paul is introducing from those four Old Testament passages.

And then he goes right into the benediction.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's the context for that great benediction.

May the God of hope.

What's that next word?

What is it?

Phil.

Do you need hope?

Do you need hope?

I don't care what age.

Junior high, high school, college, seniors.

Do you need hope?

Are you of the mind that you're just surrounded by people with that kind of hope?

Do you live in a hopeful world?

Do you have a lot of conversations with hopeful people as the Bible would describe hope?

May the God of hope, look, you can only get it from God.

May the God of hope, He's the source, fill you with all joy.

This is Paul's word.

Paul uses the word joy 21 times.

Nobody else in the New Testament comes close.

Do you need joy?

And what's the other word?

Peace.

Do you need peace?

How many days can we go without hearing something that is disruptive?

How many days can we go without hearing bad news?

About the world, about other people, about our own lives?

Do you sometimes just feel like your peace just kind of gets sapped?

As you believe, so that by the power, some of you know this Greek word, dunamis, dynamite, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may what?

Abound in hope.

I can't do this.

You can't do this unless you go to the God of hope.

We need to go to the God of hope every day.

He's the source of our hope.

He keeps us, he gives us balance and perspective.

He sees the things that rob us of our joy and our peace.

He sees how easily we get into squabbles and differences with people, and it just kind of gets all wrapped up around the ball, you know, like we get our eye off the real ball.

What's the real ball?

We are followers of Jesus Christ.

We are fellow priests.

We have a ministry.

It may not be to the Gentile to the Gentiles, but you've got a ministry.

We find a constant emphasis on the overflowing nature of the gospel as we open up to Jesus Christ and we see his glory in new ways.

May the God of hope fill you.

I would ask you today to make that your prayer this week.

Would you?

Would you make Romans 15, 13 your prayer for this week?

Would you make it your prayer this week?

God, may you fill me with all joy and all peace.

As I trust in you, but how am I going to do that?

By the power of the Holy Spirit.

So that you will abound in hope.

I promise you.

I promise you, your husband or your wife will thank you if you do.

Your children will thank you if you do.

Your roommates, your co-workers.

This is in short supply today.

And the Apostle Paul takes us right to the source of where we get it and how we get it.

And lastly, in the priestly service, that last prepositional phrase, in the priestly service of the gospel.

What's your priestly duty?

Paul, the priest of the Gentiles, where's your sacrifice?

Where are your sacrifices going?

To Jesus or to some principal?

Or to some other person, some ideal?

What is abounding in your life?

Let me take you back to Paul.

Let me take you back to Rome.

Right on the heels of this amazing benediction.

The last day we were in Rome, I went back to Paul's, the prison that they believed that Paul was incarcerated in at the end of his life.

It's called the Mamertine prison right there in Rome.

Let me tell you, I I I went back, I just, it's almost like a spiritual experience there.

It's really dark.

It's dank.

It's a hole in the ground.

There's a hole in the ceiling that they would drop the prisoners into.

You can imagine what the sanitation was like.

You know, we were in Rome for some 95-97 degree days.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be in that hole with no sanitation really?

Or how cold it would be in the winter?

Let me tell you something.

You know where that, you know where that is?

That is like within earshot of the forum, where the Senate, the great world power of Rome, with the Caesars, the Senate.

The world power was concentrated right there.

And you know what?

It's pretty close, I think.

It's like for me to the back of the sanctuary.

I thought about that.

What a mystery.

Paul is dying, his life is withering away in that little prison place, and all the world is right there, carrying on like none of this is true.

And Paul didn't lose his hope, and he didn't lose his joy, and he didn't lose his peace, and he didn't get caught up with all these side issues.

And I think a lot of people today are getting caught up with.

Not across the mall.

Listen, it doesn't matter where you are.

What matters is the God of hope filling you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him.

Are you looking to the Holy Spirit to give you that power and that perspective to be able to see yourself as a minister of Christ Jesus in your own particular calling, your own secondary calling, whatever it may be?

Do you see yourself as a priest?

That he is worthy of you bringing your sacrifices of praise.

You bring your sacrifices of purity in this day and age.

Priests don't serve alone.

Go on and read chapter 16 of Romans, and you're going to find 23 people that Paul lists.

Priests don't serve alone.

All these people that Paul thanks who were in Rome, he said, I've heard, we've worked together in different cities.

I know you're there.

Thank you for what you're doing for the gospel.

Thank you for what you're doing.

Thank you for opening up your home.

Thank you for taking care of the poor.

Thank you for taking care of the sick.

Thank you for raising up money so that we can do these missionary journeys.

Priests don't serve alone.

If you're alone, you're done.

You need to be in a company of other believers.

Secondly, priests are more focused on what they give to God than what they give up.

In our culture today, it seems like that's reversed.

Too many people are focused on what they have to give up than what they give to their God.

And then the whole thing of this the glory of God.

This is all about the glory of God.

You know, it really doesn't matter what happens to me.

It really doesn't matter what happens to you.

Can we say that?

What matters is what happens for the sake of the gospel.

And sometimes God tells his people, I'm gonna put you in that pit.

Paul wasn't the first person to be put in a prison of a pit.

Joseph was, most of all Jesus.

But it doesn't matter.

God give me a growing humility to see the bigger picture.

Give me a growing grace to accept my role wherever you place me.

That the gospel would go out and that more and more people would glorify you and fall more deeply in love with you.

And so we pray.

Father, please, would you give us this perspective?

Father, this morning in worship, we praise, we repent, we confess, we acknowledge, we yield to you, Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, would you please take us to the God of all hope?

Fill us with all joy and peace.

Give us faith to trust that we would abound in hope in new ways.

We pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.