SPEAKER: DUSTIN SCOTT

PASSAGE: 1 PETER 2:4-5

THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD

So we went off the beaten path this morning, and instead of doing a traditional teaching, which is more of a monologue, where you listen to me for twenty minutes and try to stay awake, we did more of a study in a conversation. And we’ve got just about the right amount of time, and I’m just more excited about it, to do study this morning rather than teaching. Which means I might ask you a few questions, and I’m going to give you a clue, this will help you. The youth students, no matter how many times I teach them this, they don’t learn. If you don’t have a thought, and you’re kind of, sort of scratching your head and putting your hand in the air like this, maybe you’re just kind of doing this, I will call on you, and you will probably regret it, and we will have fun. 

1 PETER 2:4-5

Hey, I know it’s the Fourth of July weekend, but would you stand with me for the reading of the scriptures? It will be short. It’s only going to be two verses. We’re going to dive into chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 of 1 Peter, and it says, “Come to him,” who’s him? Jesus, right, “a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Lord, would you be with us this morning? Would you teach us what it looks like to be a royal priesthood? Royalty and priestliness are not really language we’re familiar with as Americans, and so would you give us supernatural wisdom to study the scriptures? Would you show us what it looks like to carry the authority of your Kingdom, and would you show us what it looks like to carry the humility and the priestliness of your Kingdom? Lord, our prayer in all of this, while the scriptures are beautiful, they’re fun to study, there’s so much intricacy and complexity here. The aim of the scriptures is to be our owner’s manual for living the life of Christ. As we study, would you allow our study not just to inform us, but to transform us, so that we look like you, so when the world sees us, they would see Jesus. Transform us this morning, we pray. Amen. 

A PRIESTLY CALLING

Peter is going to call us a royal priesthood. John, in the book of Revelation, is going to pick up a very similar language. This language, while foreign to us, was familiar to them because, as Jews, they would have known the book of Exodus and chapter 19, where Yahweh says to the people of Israel, I have made you a kingdom of priests. 

Now the story goes back even further, because this wasn’t just an identity that was given to Israel, it was actually an identity that was given to humanity. If we go to Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 27, Yahweh, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, say, “Let us make humanity in our own image, after our own likeness, and let them have dominion..” over the earth. 

As human beings, God created us to be both priests and royalty in creation. What do I mean by that? We have spirits, we have bodies. We were intended to be ”on earth as it is in Heaven,” creatures. That by living in relationship with God, by living in the presence of God in the garden, by living in submission and friendship with God, we would be a people who carried His supernatural authority and influence upon the earth. 

Now, the tragedy of Scripture is, while that was pretty cool, Adam and Eve didn’t think so. So, rather than in the words of Peter, coming to the Lord, what did they do after they partake of the fruit? They ran away, they hid. Rather than, and we’re going to be in the book of Joshua this morning, chapter 3, rather than following the Lord, what did they do? They disobeyed, and they partook of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. So humanity failed our royal and priestly vocation. 

And so God takes a nation, Israel, maybe they’ll do a better job of it. Well, just a few chapters after chapter 19, where the Lord says, I’ve made you a kingdom of priests, what does Israel do? They make a golden calf, and they start worshiping it. So they didn’t do any better, and for a moment we could go, well, did God’s plan fail? Did He have to make some kind of plan B in Jesus, where it’s like, I had this intention for humanity, but they really messed it up, so let’s send this nice guy named Jesus, and He’ll kind of be the plan B of the situation. 

Now, the book of Numbers tells us that “God is not a man, that He should lie” or “change His mind.” The scriptures are about how Yahweh Himself, Jesus Himself, became a human being, learned obedience through what He suffered, died, and rose again, so that a new humanity could be born, and that we, as followers of Him, could carry the authority and the presence of Christ as His royal priesthood. God’s intention never changed. 

NEW CREATION LIFE

So we’re going to be looking at 1 Peter 2, and we’re also going to go to the book of Joshua, chapter 3. If you could go ahead and scroll over to Joshua 3, or if you’re using a paper Bible like me, let’s head to Joshua chapter 3. And Peter is so ridiculous, in a good way, he’s quoting from the Psalms in Isaiah 40 and the prophet Zechariah and the book of Exodus, and also from Joshua in like four verses, and I’m like, man, you should show me how to preach. I would be such a better preacher if I could utilize the scriptures like Peter does, but let’s head to Joshua 3, because we’re going to see some things about what it means to be a royal priesthood. 

This is the moment that the Israelites are leaving the wilderness, they’re crossing through the River Jordan, and they’re entering into the Promised Land. I want to give us just a bit of information on our friend Joshua. It might surprise us, but Jesus and Joshua actually had the same name. 

The Hebrew name Yehoshua, the Aramaic name Yeshua, is Joshua, meaning “Yahweh saves.” And in Greek, Jesus’s name is Iésous, so in English we render it Jesus, so that we can keep Jesus and Joshua straight. Because otherwise we’d be new believers back in the book of Joshua, and it’s like I thought Jesus was coming a lot of centuries later, what’s He doing here? But you know what, the dilemma is that differentiation has caused us to differentiate their two stories, because Jesus is the fulfillment of the life of Joshua, and I’m going to show you how. 

Let’s start in verse 1, it says, “Early in the morning Joshua rose and set out from Shittim with all the Israelites, and they came to the Jordan (river). They camped there before crossing over. At the end of three days,” Three days, have we heard of three days before? Where are three days important? The death and resurrection of Jesus, right? “At the end of three days, the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, ‘When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place. Follow it, so that you may know the way you should go, for you have not passed this way before.”

Pause. One who shares a name with Jesus, Joshua, the ark that, according to the New Testament writers, contains the presence of Jesus, the name of Jesus, the presence of Jesus, are crossing the Jordan River, where who is baptized? Jesus, right? 

Now, watch this, the Israelites have just left 40 years in the wilderness, they are crossing the River Jordan and entering into the Promised Land. If we go to Mark chapter 1, Jesus, the man from Heaven, the incarnation of God, He’s baptized in the Jordan River. John the Baptist says, This is all backwards, I shouldn’t be baptizing you, you should baptize me. Jesus says, Hey, dude, this is being done to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus is baptized, and where does He go immediately after? For 40 days in the wilderness. 

Wait, the people of God and Jesus are heading opposite directions. Why? Because the people of God, through the work of Christ, are entering into the promised land, we’ve been made new creations. God is transforming us through the power of His Spirit to carry the nature of Christ. All while Jesus is going back into our wilderness, back into our history, back into our sin, and redeeming us, because He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. If you’re ever wondering, what is Jesus doing as our great high priest in heaven right now? He’s going back into our history and setting us free from everything that ever enslaved us. 

Which shows me something. According to 1 Peter, chapter 1, we’ve been ransomed through the unblemished blood of Christ from the foolish ways of our ancestors. Which, without speaking bad of the healing process, without saying that therapy isn’t necessary, sometimes it is, but I see a troubling thing in our culture, even in our culture amongst the churches today, we are obsessed with our histories. We are obsessed with the way people have harmed us. We are obsessed with our traumas and our offenses and our bitterness. 

And what are we doing when we fixate on our past? We are saying the one to the one who has redeemed us from our past, Hey, your blood wasn’t actually perfect. The Israelites showed us the same pattern. They were set free from slavery, yet they went round and round and round and round and round and round, because they were complaining and murmuring and longing to go back to the slavery of Egypt. May it not be so for us, may we live as new creations. 

THROUGH THE WATERS

So, let’s keep going. “You are the one who shall command the priests,” this is in verse 8, “who bear the ark of the covenant, ‘When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’ Joshua then said to the Israelites, “Draw near and hear the words of the Lord your God.” I’m going to drop down to verse 13, “When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, come to rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan, flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.” 

Waters being separated, what does that take us to? The deluge of water is always a scriptural and metaphor, it’s not a metaphor, it’s actually reality for the judgment of God against sin. There’s a guy who floats on a boat over the top of a flood. Does anyone remember his name? Let me show you something. Here’s Joshua, who has the name of the Lord, traveling through the very place where the Lord is baptized. The water is being separated. 

Let’s hop over to the story of Noah, the earth is being judged with water, the water is being separated, and what does Noah send out of the ark to see if the judgment of God has ended? A dove, right? How does the Holy Spirit descend upon Christ in His own baptism? 

You see, Yahweh makes a covenant with Noah that never again will the earth be judged with water. Why? Because God didn’t want the earth to be drowned in judgment. He desires for the people of the earth to be drowned in baptism, so that new creation life can be known, and the words of the prophet Zechariah can be fulfilled, that the whole world would be full of the knowledge of the glory of God. 

Yahweh says, I have desired mercy instead of judgment. So, here is the judgment for our sins being heaped at each side. And I imagine the priests are going through, like, please, Lord, don’t stop holding back the water. What does that show us? Do we contribute anything to our salvation except our own sin, the piles of sin on each side? 

And what does Peter tell us to do? He says our only role is to come to Jesus. Joshua says that our role is to follow Jesus, so besides going to Jesus to receive His grace, to receive His truth in the scriptures, to receive of Him, and then being willing to cooperate in repentance with the way the Lord leads us. Do we really do anything in the process, or do we just kind of walk through? Because God is that merciful, He is that gracious. 

And the amazing thing here is the people are told to stand at a distance of two thousand cubits from the ark because of the incarnation of Christ. Because of His conquest of our sin, we don’t actually have to stand at a distance anymore. He abides in us by the power of His Spirit. 

A NEW PRIESTHOOD

Let’s keep going. I want to push just a little further. This is crazy, I couldn’t believe this when I found it yesterday. Starting in verse 14. “When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people.” There’s Christ believing the people. “Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of the harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far away at Adam,”

The city is named Adam. I went to the Hebrew to confirm this. It’s the same name as Adam, and before any of us are like dumb Adam, he had to go messing this whole thing up for the rest of us, the joke’s on us, because in Hebrew, without a definite article, the name Adam means human. Which means every time we curse Adam for our slavery to sin, we’re really just pointing back into a mirror, and it’s pointing right back at us, because Paul says “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” 

Romans 1 says that “God has made His character known through creation, so that none can be without excuse.” We all have known what is right before God and chosen our own way, we all have failed the vocation of being royal priests. But here’s the beautiful part, because Christ has restored our nature, because He has formed a new humanity, a new priesthood. 

Joshua gives the command to follow Him, that was the law, you have to follow the commandments of God. And for any Neo-Marcionites in the room, if you’re like what does that mean you don’t need to worry about it, who would say that grace no longer requires obedience to God? That isn’t true. Grace is what enables our obedience to God, so here is the law, the command to follow Him, but Peter reveals the new covenant which is, come to Him. 

How do we follow Him? By going to Him and receiving His grace, truth, and power, so that we can carry the nature of Christ and carry His presence, and live a life of authority. In our time, and I am a proud charismatic Christian, I believe that God is working, He’s living, He’s alive today, that the supernatural is so incredibly real. 

But there’s a problem in our tradition. We want the power of God without living from the presence and person of God. We want the gifts, we want the benefits, we want the miracles, we want the majesty, we want the provision, but when it comes to things, what does a priest do? 

If we go back to the Levitical law, to the books of the Torah, well, they wash themselves a lot, a lot, seven times before they even get ordained to be priests. So, what does a priest do? We wash ourselves continually in the blood of Christ, which means every place within us that does not reflect Him gets washed off and let go. 

What else does a priest do? Offers spiritual worship and sacrifices to God. So, like Greg was telling us earlier today, is worship important? Yeah, it’s really important, it’s how heaven invades earth. What else do priests do? They intercede for the people, they intercede for those who are estranged from God. And lastly, what does a priest do? A priest serves the people. 

Could I submit to us that one of the reasons why the church in America looks so powerless is because we aren’t washing ourselves, we aren’t worshiping, we aren’t interceding for the people around us, and we’re really bad servants. And then we wonder, why isn’t my life more powerful and influential, because when people look at us, they don’t see Jesus. And I’m not indicting anyone particularly in this room, I’m just saying, as a whole, the reason why the church feels so impotent in our time is because the church is not carrying enough of the nature of Christ.

Last week, Greg taught on the importance of living out the selfless love of Christ, and there’s this moment in Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians that we love to tune out at weddings, it goes, “love is patient, love is kind.” Dustin, would you stop the ceremony, please? We just want to get to the reception. How do we carry the nature of Christ? Are any of you like me, and sometimes it’s really hard to measure, like how am I doing in the discipline of love? Love feels so abstract. Well, Paul says it’s actually not. Love is patience, which means my daughter and son could tell you every single moment that I’m acting in love and I’m not acting in love based on what my patience is. 

But how do we carry the authority of our king? People around go, wow, look at them, they’re so patient, nothing throws them off, everything can go wrong in their life, and yet they’re filled with joy, and they have confidence. What about kind? Oh man, no matter how you treat them, they never react with wrath or anger. They’re just so nice, they’re toxically nice. We don’t know what to do with them, they’re almost obnoxiously nice. Love doesn’t envy. Man, those Christians, they’re really content with what they have. I want a new car, I want a new house, I want another vacation house, I want 10 more cars, but I’m looking over at those believers, and they’re perfectly content with what God’s given them. What about boasting? Man, those Christians, they just love to raise up and reveal and honor the people around them. It’s like they never talk about themselves. The only people they talk about are this guy named Jesus, and then the person around them who they’re loving. 

You want to know how God designed us to function as royal priests? We carry authority in our culture by living the nature of the high priest Christ, and His people see His nature and character within us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Everything changes. You see, God never changed His mind. 

CONDUITS OF HIS PRESENCE

This is a bit of a rabbit trail. We have six seconds left. Are you guys okay with it? We see these moments where there’s this stone that accompanies the Israelites in the wilderness, and it’s kind of weird, right? If you had a stone following you around in the wilderness, you’d be a little weirded out by that, right? And the stone gives out water, and Moses and Aaron decide to say, Hey, we’re the ones who gave you the water, and so God judges Moses and tells him he can’t go into the promised land because he claimed a power for himself that was only given by God.

We see this staff that Moses carries, this hunk of wood, but he lifts it up in the Red Sea parts, and we go to the New Testament, we find out that that staff was actually the cross of Christ. We see this ark that carries the presence of God, and then we go to the New Testament and find out that Christ is the ark of the presence of God. He is the one in whom the fullness of divinity was pleased to dwell, and you know what the scriptures say, that was the lesser covenant, the blood of Christ speaks a better word. 

If the church were to embrace a fuller expression of the nature of Christ, what would we see? If the Jordan River was parted by the ark, imagine how demons and sin patterns are obliterated by the water of baptism. Imagine how the kingdom of darkness trembles every single time we surrender ourselves freshly to Christ, receive a greater level of Him, and then partake of the bread and the cup. Imagine how the kingdom of darkness trembles when we worship. 

And then all those small moments, like Tuesday at two-thirty pm, where a coworker writes us an annoying email, our kids are being really loud and obnoxious, and we feel the call to go back to Egypt, to go back to our new nature. Imagine the supernatural power of God that is available when, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, in that moment, we say, No, Egypt, I choose Christ. 

I think there are so many dimensions of the Kingdom we have yet to experience. So, how do we experience it? We go to Him, we study the scriptures, we don’t just learn about His truth, we embrace it. We spend time with Him, we hear His voice, even when it’s really hard to hear His voice, and it takes long periods of time, and we have to wake up at four am in the morning. It’s not like I’m whining, maybe I’m whining. 

How else do we follow him? Well, it’s in the key, it’s in the words, right? We don’t just read about Him, we don’t just hear His voice when He speaks, we obey Him, and we carry His nature, and in that moment, we become conduits of His presence and authority. And in the words of Paul in the book of Ephesians, the whole church is placed beneath the feet of Christ until God becomes all in all. That’s our calling. We’re out of time. Let’s pray. Would you stand with me, please?

Lord, as I think about the piles of water representing the due judgment for our sins. This whole kingdom life is by your grace and by your generosity, and so we thank you for making us new creations. Lord, you could have left us in slavery, you could have left us stranded in the wilderness, but yet your cry has always been that you would dwell with your people and have relationship with them. So we thank you for your selflessness and your generosity, Lord. Over the coming week, I think about the statement of Joshua, they will be given away in a place they do not know, Lord. For all the places this week where we just feel lost, we have no idea what to do, how to react, what decisions to make, whether in family, work, or in wider relationships. Would you give us grace to find your truth in scripture? Would you speak to us in prayer, and Lord, would you strengthen us in our weakness, so that we would obey you? This is my cry, so that when the world sees us, they see you, Jesus. We ask this in your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.