You are a King and a Priest to our God, A Dominion of Kings and Priests – Every Believer Is
#TheGreatExchangeForService #PriestandKings #RoyalPriesthood #Priest #King #kingdom #dominion #earth #slaves #obedience #obey #commitment #covenant #JesusChrist #peace #joy #righteousness #intercession #unity #peace #disunity #pride #Christianity #fruitfulness #gift #service
Subject – The Great Exchange For Service – intercession Part 10 of 8 –
You are a King and a Priest to our God, A Dominion of Kings and Priests – Every Believer Is – Your Acceptance or Rejection of this FACT will affect Your Kingdom Service Outcomes and How God Responds to You – Believers have only two options: to live like slaves or to live as kings and priests.
OTAKADA.org content count 471,608
16th of December 2018
Blog link https://www.otakada.org
Key verses:
You are a King and a Priest to our God, A Dominion of Kings and Priests – Every Believer Is
Revelation 1:5-7 The Message (MSG)
His Eyes Pouring Fire-Blaze
4-7 I, John, am writing this to the seven churches in Asia province: All the best to you from The God Who Is, The God Who Was, and The God About to Arrive, and from the Seven Spirits assembled before his throne, and from Jesus Christ—Loyal Witness, Firstborn from the dead, Ruler of all earthly kings.
Glory and strength to Christ, who loves us,
who blood-washed our sins from our lives,
Who made us a Kingdom, Priests for his Father,
forever—and yes, he’s on his way!
Riding the clouds, he’ll be seen by every eye,
those who mocked and killed him will see him,
People from all nations and all times
will tear their clothes in lament.
Oh, Yes.
Revelation 5:9-10 The Message (MSG)
6-10 So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God’s holy people. And they sang a new song:
Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals.
Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women,
Bought them back from all over the earth,
Bought them back for God.
Then you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God,
Priest-kings to rule over the earth.
Exodus 19:5-6 The Message (MSG)
3-6 As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.’
“This is what I want you to tell the People of Israel.”
Hebrews 9:13-15 The Message (MSG)
Pointing to the Realities of Heaven
11-15 But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven’s “tent”—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.
1 Peter 2:5-8 The Message (MSG)
The Stone
4-8 Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent:
Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion,
a cornerstone in the place of honor.
Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation
will never have cause to regret it.
To you who trust him, he’s a Stone to be proud of, but to those who refuse to trust him,
The stone the workmen threw out
is now the chief foundation stone.
For the untrusting it’s
. . . a stone to trip over,
a boulder blocking the way.
They trip and fall because they refuse to obey, just as predicted
Romans 12:1-2 The Message (MSG)
Place Your Life Before God
12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Introduction
You are a King and a Priest to our God, A Dominion of Kings and Priests – Every Believer Is
Dear Brethren, welcome to our 10 of 8th series dealing with division in body of Christ as a result of this subject of kings and priest, our roles, who we are, how God sees us and what we do with who we are.
Working for and walking with God rises and falls with our BELIEVE in who God says we are and what we do with that information in the SPACE God has assigned us to. Because of the importance of this subject to you and I as new covenant believers in Christ, I will be running this series in two parts, to conclude next week, God willing. Please stay with me on this one.
As citizens of God’s kingdom, we are not just residents of His realm – we are kings and priests under the authority of Christ, our King and High Priest. – Revelation 1:5; 5:9-10. Our twofold role describes or portray or delineate precisely our God – given dominion on earth.
It has always been God’s intention to make His people capable of developing a close and intimate relationship with Him while carrying out their purpose as His chosen instruments to expand His kingdom on earth.
Let us discover how God wants us to fulfill the two ministries of king and priest in the here and now. We will begin by exploring the connection between covenant and kingdom – between our relationship with God and our manifestation of His presence and power on the earth
The Covenant – Kingdom Connection
The connection between God’s covenants with His people and their role in His kingdom is a thread that can be seen in both the Old and New Testaments. God told the Israelites, Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:5-6)
The nation of Israel under Moses was a forerunner of the church with its roles of king and priest. God told the Israelites they were to be a “kingdom of priest” as they blessed the world. His main goal when He redeemed them from slavery in Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai was to make a covenant with them, present them to Himself, and establish an everlasting relationship with them. To fulfill God’s purpose, they needed to meet two conditions:
- Obey His voice,
and
- Keep His covenant
These conditions still distinguish a true child of God today.
The key for us is that, while the Israelites were never able to uphold their part of the covenant, Christ has enabled us to fulfill the new covenant with God. (See Hebrews 9:13-15)
Through His sacrifice on the cross and resurrection, we receive the Holy Spirit to live within us, so we can love God, obey Him, and serve Him. This will have dealt with extensively in our last blog 10 of 7 series.
The covenant with our heavenly Father that Jesus provided is similar to the earlier covenant of sacrifice that God made with Abraham, because that covenant was one that was fulfilled only by God, unilaterally, though it required Abraham’s faith. See Genesis 15
Human beings could never hold up their end of a covenant with God in their own strength and effort.
The most important requirement in any covenant is the commitment of sacrifice.
In the New Testament, we read,
To Christ Jesus who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father…(Revelation 1:5-6)
God never develops a permanent, personal relationships with anyone unless it is through a covenant of commitment. ‘Gather My saints together to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice” – Psalm 50:5)
All parties involved in the covenant must observe the conditions of the promise and be loyal to it and to each other. The same is true in all areas of life. For example, we cannot develop healthy family or ministry relationships without a commitment between those involved. This is why God requires obedience to the covenant, which can be summarized in one word: loyalty.
We must keep in mind that it is only through Christ’s atonement and grace that we are able to remain in right standing with God. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Without a covenant of commitment, it is impossible to have a permanent, biblical relationship with God.
Picture our covenant with God like a cross: The vertical post indicates our relationship with Him, and the horizontal one our relationship with our fellow believers and other people. If the vertical relationship is broken, the horizontal relationship is affected, and vice versa. Thus, when our relationship with our neighbor is damaged, our relationship with God also suffers injury.. Matthew 5:22-24
When God liberated the Israelites from slavery, He presented them with a special threefold offer to make them a treasure, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. The parts of this offer are inseparable – one cannot exist without the others. However, over the years, Israel was interested in the covenant more for the Promised Land and blessings God offered than it was in God Himself. Unfortunately, the same is true for much of the church today.
Moreover, we find it had to rid ourselves of a “slavery” mentality, just as the Israelites did. It is our destiny to live as kings and priests. Instead, many believers lie like slaves – to sickness, depression, fear, rejection, sin, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex, pornography, food, and so on. They are kings in theory but slaves in practice. We must renew our minds to understand our kinship and priesthood, and surrender to God through a covenant of commitment, in order to receive our full inheritance in Him and experience His kingdom life.
Do I want to live as a king and a priest under Christ, or do i want to live as a slave under the condemnation and accusation of the enemy?
Believers have only two options: to live like slaves or to live as kings and priests.
Christ redeemed us to make us a kingdom of kings and priests.
There is a world just waiting for us to go and demonstrate that our supreme King and High Priest, Jesus Christ, lives today and that we are kings and priests in God’s kingdom. Many people realize that their material possessions are not ultimately satisfying, and they know that their lives aren’t working.
They are waiting for us to show them practical solutions and to manifest the power and authority we have in Christ to rule over the works of the devil; to show that the gospel of the kingdom is not mere theology, theory, or words, but that God’s power can save people, heal their afflictions, and deliver them from bondage
We are God’s representatives, called to bring heaven to earth wherever we go and in the midst of any situation we might be experiencing.
Let us now explore our two main roles in the kingdom. We begin in this 8th series with the office of the priest, because we cannot be kings until we have understood our priestly calling and have entered into it. The two roles are always interconnected.
If we have not fulfilled our responsibilities as priests, we will not be able to exercise our functions as kings.
What is a Priest?
You…are being built up…a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1Peter 2:5
Our culture’s idea of the priesthood is that it is a special calling for only a chosen few. Most of us think of a priest as a man who wears a black robe and a white collar and who is beyond the reach of the common person. He is not allowed to marry and must dedicate his life totally to God’s service, and this lifestyle sets him apart from the rest of the people.
Since this image of a priest is so ingrained in us through our traditions, it is difficult for many believers to envision themselves as priests.
The New Testament concept of a priest is someone who presents spiritual sacrifices to God.
The work of Jesus Christ is for everyone who believes in Him and who confesses Him as Lord and Savior of his life. The priesthood of all believers is included in this work. We are priests of the almighty God, able to offer spiritual sacrifices to Him, thanks to the work of His Son.
It is important to recognize that there are priests in the kingdom of darkness, also – witches, sorcerers, wizards, and so forth – who sacrifice animals (and sometimes humans) to gain power from Satan so they can dominate and control people and situations. Some people who are in position to rule over others seek such “priest” in order to gain power.
They lend themselves to these practices that offend God. As priest and kings in God’s kingdom, we are engaged in a war against the evil spiritual entities that are behind these satanic priests and that strive to gain dominion over all earthly territories.
Under the law of Moses, the kingship was given to the tribe of Judah and the priesthood was bestowed on the tribe of Levi. In those days, the king of Israel was not allowed to offer sacrifices or burn incense on the altar of the temple.
In Jesus Christ, the kingship and priesthood were united once again. Jesus served as King and Priest on earth, and He was highly exalted by God the Father as King od kings and Lord of lords after His resurrection and ascension.
On this basis of His priesthood, Jesus offered bread and wine during the last Supper with His disciples as a symbol of His body, which would be presented to God as a living sacrifice. See Matthew 26:26-29 He offered prayers, intercession, and Himself ( see Hebrews 5:7; 9:14) to His heavenly Father by means of the Holy Spirit, constituting Himself both as the Priest who ministered the sacrifice and the Sacrifice itself. After making atonement for us, He entered the Holy of Holies in heaven on our behalf and as our predecessor (Hebrews 6:19-20), so that we can now enter God’s presence, also. As we are called to be like Him in the world, we are priests and kings who extend His realm on earth.
“Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus” Hebrew 3:1. In this verse, we see two of the Lord’s titles: Apostle – one sent by God to carry out a specific mission; and High Priest – one who is the mediator between God and man. Jesus has been our High Priest for more than two thousand years – and He continues to be our High Priest today. He is high priest “forever” Hebrew 5:6. His work continues in force because no one can approach, communicate with, or bring offerings to God without the mediation of a High Priest. There, we depend totally on Christ Hebrews 7:24-25;8:6
The following are some specific responsibilities to which we are called as priests in God’s kingdom:
- Present Our Bodies as Living Sacrifices to God – Romans 12:1
- Means we are living and our lives are sacrifices unto God, this sacrifice is our reasonable service, given of our free will and made possible by God. It is something we ourselves are able to give. The altar is our heart and the sacrifice is ourselves. We will no longer offer our selves to things that displease God which are carnal but we will live for eternal purposes in carrying out God’s good and perfect will and this will help us to prove what is good and acceptable will of God. He will carry out His will on the earth in our lives.
- Offer Sacrifices of Praise and Worship Hebrew 13:15
- We praise regardless of our circumstances
- Do Good and Share with Others Hebrew 13:16
-Giving that comes from the heart and takes us out of our comfort zones is a sacrifice that is pleasing to God
- Present Physical Gifts and Offerings to God – Hebrews 5:1
- Offer Prayer and Intercession – Hebrew 7:25
CONCLUSION:
Christ’s present ministry in heaven is to make intercession on our behalf. He offered prayers, intercession, and Himself on earth, and now he lives to mediate for us. Since we are the extension of His ministry on earth, we also should prioritize prayers and intercession on behalf of other people. There are countless plans and purposes of God that cannot be carried out until we birth them through prayer.
Therefore, we must align our prayers with Christ’s prayers…Expansion of the kingdom, salvation of souls, manifestation of Gods children, amongst other things. What an honor and privilege to be part of this ministry. This is not time to leave the job for the privilege few, this is time for us all to roll up the sleeve and swing to action in the kingdom. We do not have the time to relax in the pews so let us get into action today. The Lord is waiting. Are you ready?
Prayer:
Dear Lord God, thank You for the privilege of callings in as priest and kings in your kingdom here on earth. We pray for a willing and obedient heart to this role as we receive grace from you to excel in the enforcement of kingdom mandate upon us all in Jesus name, amen
You are a King and a Priest to our God, A Dominion of Kings and Priests – Every Believer Is
Shalom!
Monday Ogwuojo Ogbe – E-discipleship at Otakada.org
Originally posted on December 15, 2018 @ 10:10 pm
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