Full Transcript:
Alright, let us take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 5. I am continuing on the third part on the message, The Only Unique High Priest. Remember, Hebrews does give us a clear focus, maybe more than any other book in the Bible, of who Christ is. It is very hard to get away from Christology in Hebrews. In fact, it brings up things that no other book of the Bible brings up and puts it all together, especially when it comes to Old Testament truth.
So we have been considering so far Jesus as a Merciful High Priest who is for us, interceding on our behalf and helping us to hold fast our confession that we made in Christ Jesus. He helps us to take another step to breathe another breath and to do the next right thing that pleases Him. That is what He does for us. As we move down the road on our Christian pilgrimage, it is possible to find strength to continue when we both know in our flesh that sometimes we cry out to the Lord and we say that we do not have the strength or the resolve to go on. But He can give it to us!
He is our great High Priest and this is His ministry to the church. So we can trust Christ for His greatness and power as a High Priest and press on in our Christian pilgrimage no matter what befalls us on our way to the Celestial City, as John Bunyan so well wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress. Well we are moving and growing in Christlikeness, we should also be practicing going to Christ in prayer for necessary strength and grace to hold firm our profession. Our weaknesses are evident so we need the assistance of our High Priest. Remember this, all of the purposes of His office, everything that He accomplishes in this office of High Priest, being a Prophet, Priest, and King, is all accomplished in Christ.
This particular office is for our benefit. The Lord did none of it for Himself, but all for His church and people. They are available to us and we are to take full advantage of them, the problem is that we do not. We do not really take advantage of what God offers us. We continue to press on in our pilgrimage because of four essential aspects of Christ’s Priesthood. I mentioned two of them already.
The first one is that we can continue because of our Victorious High Priest. Christ had won the battle, and we are victorious with Him. The second one is that we can continue to press on because of our Compassionate High Priest. Christ understands our weaknesses to the fullest, to the highest measure and more than any human being could understand. Remember, in His temptation He went the full length of temptation. We give in way before we get to the end, whereas Christ went straight to the end. He took all the weight that temptation, the world, and people could throw at Him. He won and so He is compassionate. He understands and sympathizes with us.
The third and fourth aspects that I want to mention are that we can continue to press on in our pilgrimage because Jesus is our Submissive High Priest. This is very important for you and I to understand because Christ submitted to everything that would qualify Him to be our High Priest. That to us may not mean a lot. But it is major when it comes to the Lord Himself. He qualified as High Priest not only in the qualifications of the Old Testament, but He went beyond that and I will mention that this morning.
Now, how did Christ submit and in what ways did He submit and accomplish all of the qualifications He needed to as the High Priest? Well the first one is this, He submitted to becoming a human mediator and if you notice in Hebrews 5:1, it says this:
For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
In other words, our High Priest Jesus Christ was chosen from among men to represent man to God. That is the job of the high priest, to represent man to God, and to do everything that we cannot do or that we forget to do before God so that God’s wrath does not fall upon us. Because of God’s displeasure with man on account of sin, God cannot have favorable communication with us so there must be an appointed mediator between man and God. The priest of the Old Testament was that mediator. And of course, the priest of our New Testament is not only a priest but also the King Priest, Jesus Christ. But it could not have been anyone who fills the office or the role of high priest. He had to meet certain qualifications, then he was to serve the people and manage the religious affairs of the people.
That included several things, he was to do for them what must be done before God. They included the expiation or sending away of the people’s sin. He had to do everything the right way so that the people’s sins could be forgiven.
A second thing was to avert God’s displeasure and propitiate His favor. Propitiation simply means something that is done in view to God, an offering made to God that satisfies the demands of God’s law and His justice. And the High Priest was responsible for the people before God to make sure that was done. If it was not done, then the whole of humanity and the nation of Israel would have been wiped out because they were not meeting God’s requirements.
Another thing that the high priest was to do was to secure friendly interaction with God in the acceptance of people’s service to him and God’s blessing on them. All this was important in the high priest’s job. Do not ever underestimate the responsibility this man from the tribe of Levi had before the people. By fifty years old, they were done and worn out.
A second thing that Jesus submitted to is that He was to do the work of the High Priest, the chief priest. And if you notice in Hebrews 5:1 it says in the middle of the verse:
For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
We see this is a responsibility. He ministered the High Priest in order to carry out everything required by God on behalf of the people. We know from the Old Testament that all priests were in some way responsible for at least five key offerings that the Israelites made to God. They had a knowledge of these offerings in this sense, that when they did them correctly it would cause the forgiveness of sin in God’s people and it would restore fellowship back to God.
What were those five offerings? We have the burnt offering, but that in Leviticus 1 was a voluntary offering. And then we have the grain offering, which was also voluntary and really acknowledged in someone’s heart that they were grateful, that all belongs to God and that He was willing to share with them. And then we have the peace offering which also was voluntary. It expressed gratitude to God that symbolizes peace and fellowship with God.
But right here in this text, believe me that the most important offerings that the High Priest had to do were the required offerings. That was the sin offering and the guilt offering. The sin offering really makes a payment for unintentional sins of uncleanness like neglect or thoughtlessness before God. Everything had to be atoned for so a person could be restored to God. It also showed in the sin offering. Sin was serious and God took it seriously. Therefore, everything and every detail had to be done correctly.
Then of course there was the guilt offering that often was done with the sin offering. This made a payment for sins against God and even against other people. The sacrifice was made before God and showed the destructive consequences of sins, how sin brought such incredible guilt within the heart of God before a holy God. It was unbearable to live or go another step with this guilt hanging over the person.
I just want to show you from the Old Testament what some of these groups of people, when they sin, what the high priest had to do, as well as the intended result. Every time the High Priest went in to minister on behalf of the people, they had an intended result that they wanted to achieve. That is why when you look at the Old Testament, it is very meticulous on how somebody had to approach God. But when they were done correctly, there was an end result that was in view.
Let us take our Bibles for a minute and turn to Leviticus 4 so we can see some of the meticulous details in making the sin offering, as well as the desired results achieved by the high priest. We will begin in Leviticus 4:1-2, which says:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and commits any of them.
The priest had to look at himself and any sin that he committed before God, and he had to bring an offering as well. Leviticus 4:3-12
If the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer to the Lord a bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed. He shall bring the bull to the doorway of the tent of meeting before the Lord, and he shall lay his hand on the head of the bull and slay the bull before the Lord. Then the anointed priest is to take some of the blood of the bull and bring it to the tent of meeting, and the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the Lord, in front of the veil of the sanctuary. The priest shall also put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense which is before the Lord in the tent of meeting; and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, which is on the loins, and the lobe of the liver, which he shall remove with the kidneys (just as it is removed from the ox of the sacrifice of peace offerings), and the priest is to offer them up in smoke on the altar of burnt offering. And all the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering which is at the doorway of the tent of meeting. He shall remove from it all the fat of the bull of the sin offering: the fat that covers the entrails, and all the fat which is on the entrails. But the hide of the bull and all its flesh with its head and its legs and its entrails and its refuse, that is, all the rest of the bull, he is to bring out to a clean place outside the camp where the ashes are poured out, and burn it on wood with fire; where the ashes are poured out it shall be burned.
That is what the priest had to do to take care of his own sin, which is pretty detailed. Try to remember all that! He needed to make sure he did it in every detail. The priest went before God on behalf of the people as well as for his own sin. But notice verse 13:
Now if the whole congregation of Israel commits error and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, and they commit any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and they become guilty.
The same thing happens when the whole congregation becomes guilty. The high priest is to represent the people before God and take care of it in detail. Notice the intended result every time he did it and why he had to do it just the way God said to do it. Look in Leviticus 4:19-21:
He shall remove all its fat from it and offer it up in smoke on the altar. ‘He shall also do with the bull just as he did with the bull of the sin offering; thus he shall do with it. So the priest shall make atonement for them, and they will be forgiven.
The sacrifice was made for this purpose: so the people could be forgiven! Now look at verse 22:
When a leader sins and unintentionally does any one of all the things which the Lord his God has commanded not to be done, and he becomes guilty.
Then look at the intended result in Leviticus 4:26:
All its fat he shall offer up in smoke on the altar as in the case of the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin, and he will be forgiven.
Here is the result in verse 27:
Now if anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and becomes guilty.
Remember, anytime someone sins, immediate guilt comes. It lays heavy on the conscience, especially in a culture like this where people were very aware of whether or not they sinned. The wrath of God would be upon them. That is why the priest was there, so look at the intended result again in verse 31:
Then he shall remove all its fat, just as the fat was removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall offer it up in smoke on the altar for a soothing aroma to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.
Look at your own Bible and see what it says in the text of Scripture. The priest had a result and that was to make sure the people’s sins were forgiven, and that could not happen unless there was atonement. Atonement comes from the word that means to cover sin, to blot it out or to send it away, so the people could be restored to the Lord. Look now at verse 35:
Then he shall remove all its fat, just as the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of the peace offerings, and the priest shall offer them up in smoke on the altar, on the offerings by fire to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin which he has committed, and he will be forgiven.
Just reading this makes me exhausted! Reading a passage of Scripture like this should give you the sense that the priest’s job was relentless. It was exhausting and endless. He was totally involved as a man with the needs of men and if you know anything about the needs of people, they never end. The priests had tremendous responsibility and work that needed to be done on behalf of the people. Because the high priest had to deal with sinners, and at the same time represent sinners, they have to have a good attitude. If they do not, they cannot be a high priest. That is why in the New Testament if we are to minister people as the priesthood of believers, we have to have an attitude that properly sees people in a way that we can actually minister to them and not condemn them and be able to help them out of their sin and guilt into a relationship with God.
Just get this for a minute, in our Scriptures back to Hebrews 5, because his attitude and demeanor had to be equal to the weight of his task. Believe me, if somebody put a job description up on a board for you to apply to as high priest, most people would say to forget it!
But some may take it because of the glory of the job, and because of the nature of the position. I want you to notice a third thing that Jesus submitted to was human weakness. It says in Hebrews 5:2:
He can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset with weakness.
In other words, the high priest was one who must have compassion on blamable sinners. These were not innocent people, but those who actually sinned and offended God. They needed help at that particular point.
In the Greek, there is a very special word used here to describe the attitude the high priest has towards his fellow human beings. It means here to deal gently with ignorant and misguided people. Most of the time we do not want to deal with these kind of people. We want to deal with people who have everything together, and who are on our same level.
That was not what the high priest’s job was. He had to deal with people who were ignorant of what the Word of God. They were misguided and misled by the other nations around them. The word means to have feelings with right measure and understanding. Or to moderate one’s passions and emotions. I like where it says in Proverbs 17:27:
He who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.
The high priest had to have a tremendous character in order to be able to regulate his emotions. In fact at the end of verse 1, he kind of referred to the functions of the high priest at the day of atonement, the offering of gifts and sacrifices for sin. In verse 2, it seems to be on how he does his duty and not on the what. The word describes an attitude towards others which does not issue in anger or grief. Not getting angry with someone for not listening or for being ignorant. Or he could get so upset that he becomes grief-stricken by their sin. Those are the things that we deal with as Christians, when other people sin in their life, we can act like that. When we fail, it actually cripples us to do the next thing, which is to help them out of it and to direct them towards Christlikeness.
So the high priest is not to act like a stern judge, nor was he to ignore or condone sin. His job was to make atonement for sin on behalf of the people so they can be write with God. The person that has this office has incredible character. He is someone who in the end can deal gently with sinners, and directing them back to God’s way and helping them get and stay right with God. So he had a strength and resolve to him in which he wanted to please God and bring these sacrifices before the Lord in such an honorable way that the people can walk away forgiven and their guilt removed.
You see, it all points to Christ. I am not going to mention it right now, but I want you to notice a fourth thing that Jesus submitted Himself to, and that is great humiliation in Hebrews 5:3:
Because of it he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins, as for the people, so also for himself.
It is simply saying there that the high priest had to offer sacrifices for his own sins and then with the people. Of course that was not the case with the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the one who was the sinless One and offering up Himself for sinners. So there is a shift and a change that goes on in our text here. This is simply saying that the Levitical priests were partakers of the human nature just like any other man. However, the Old Testament priests had to come from a particular lineage and that was the line of Aaron, the Levitical tribe.
There is one thing that I want to throw out to you right now. Jesus was a High Priest but He was not from the line of Levi nor was He from the Aaronic priesthood. You might say, wait a minute. How is He going to qualify to be a priest if He is not from that line? Well we are going to deal with that in chapter 7.
I want you to notice the next thing that Jesus submits to. By not taking honor to Himself, He waits for the Father to appoint Him to the office of high priest. Look at verse 4, it says:
And no one takes the honor to himself, but receives it when he is called by God, even as Aaron was.
There is a comparison here between the priest of Aaron’s line and the one who was called by God. So any high priest had to be called by God in order to fulfill that office. We know, of course, that Jesus also had to be called by God. He did not take honor for Himself but waited at the right time and at the right moment to be appointed by God to this office before actually He went to the cross.
Now He did not seek the office of high priest for Himself and we have a quotation here in the Bible if you notice from two passages in the book of Psalms. We have Psalm 2:7 and Psalm 110:4. He brings up the Psalms and these passages that describe Jesus Christ as the High Priest. He was already there in Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. Notice what it says in our text here, in verse 5-6:
So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “You are my son, today I have begotten you;” just as He says also in another passage, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Now we have been singing that song for some time now and I would say that you and I may have difficulty identifying this particular person called Melchizedek. But before I look at that, I want you to notice that these Old Testament texts emphasize two important things about our unique High Priest Jesus Christ, that He is greater than Aaron. He is greater than the Levitical priesthood. It emphasizes Christ’s eternal Sonship in these quotes and His continuing priesthood. Christ’s call was based on His Sonship, Jesus is a Son not simply a servant like all the high priests before Him.
He is a Son and has full inheritance. We dealt with that in chapter 1. Secondly, it emphasizes Christ’s relationship with the Father and His identification with men that Christ’s call to the High Priest was based on His divinity. He is not merely a man from a human line of Levitical priests, but He is a divine Priest-King who is eternal.
Now for the first time, we are introduced to a very strange and elusive character in Scripture, in verse 6. That character’s name is Melchizedek. He was a priest-king found in the Old Testament, and I believe it is in Genesis 14. I will briefly mention somethings about Him because I only want to introduce this person. But then in chapter 7 I will bring up more about him.
His very name, Melchizedek, comes from two Hebrew words. One is melek which means “king of,” and tzedek which means “righteousness.” So put together, we see a man who is the king of righteousness. Also, we know from other passages of Scripture that He is the king of Salem and a priest of the most high God who lived in the days of Abraham. If you know anything about Biblical chronology then you will conclude that Melchizedek was in the order of high priest that was before the Aaronic priesthood, before it was ever established, or before Isaac and Jacob were even born.
Look down to Hebrews 5:10 quickly, where it says:
Being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
It gets really crazy trying to identify who he actually was. Look over to Hebrews 7:1-3, where it says this:
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham as he was returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham apportioned a tenth part of all the spoils, was first of all, by the translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, which is king of peace. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.
Did you know, by the way, that Jerusalem means “city of peace?” Who is this Melchizedek? This does not sound like a human being! This sounds like something that is beyond being a human being. That means that Jesus is more unique than any other high priest. Jesus is greater because His priesthood is perpetual and indestructible. So what do we have here? Who was this person?
Well we could see Melchizedek in two ways in the Old Testament. Melchizedek could be a theophany, which is a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It could mean also that he was a type, that Melchizedek was actually a person who typified every thing Jesus would be as a high priest and link Him back into eternity as the divine High Priest, who is in fact God.
This is something that is very important to you and I as believers because it so firmly secures our salvation. Jesus Christ is so unlike all the Aaronic priests and He even goes beyond them. He did everything possible that He could do so we could be saved.
I want you to notice something else in Hebrews 5:7. It says this:
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.
What did Jesus do in His flesh? Flesh here includes more than just the hour of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and the hour of torture on the cross. It also includes the whole of His learning and limitations and humiliation as a man in this world. Jesus was under the full pressure of humanity and therefore became a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He also became a man of prayer as we see in our passage in verse 7. He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears. This is our Lord! His divinity and humanity are linked very closely in this passage of Scripture. The Lord agonized as a Priest for us. He cried before the Father and agonized for us. He knelt in the garden the night of His arrest because He was faced with a humanly terrifying death. At the same time, a divinely necessary death.
It was a responsibility laid on Him as a High Priest. He prayed in verse 7 that He would be able to commit Himself to the One who could save Him from death. It says here that He was heard for His much piety. Now of course it does not mean that Jesus was saved from dying because He was crucified and died. What it means is that Jesus was delivered out of the state, realm, and even power of death. God the Father answered Jesus’ prayer by resurrecting the Son and resurrecting Him to His right hand in glory. The Lord had to accomplish that first in order for everything to be done. In verse 7 it says He was heard for His piety and His reverence. He gave God the Father all before Him and God the Father heard and answered His prayer. I believe that word piety goes beyond our understanding in our minds. I believe it means He was answered because He had a strong desire to obey the Father at all times and in all circumstances. Godliness is obeying God. Let your desire grow stronger and stronger to do so, everyday of your life! You cannot put sin to death unless you want to obey God and that your obedience is stronger than your passion for that sin. That is the only way you are going to put it to death. You know you cannot have both. You have to have one or the other. That is why in verse 8 it says:
Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
Jesus became experientially acquainted with obedience. It does not say that He learned to obey, but He learned obedience. It is different. He learned from the things that He suffered. He comes into humanity and in order to get the job done for people to be saved, He had to go through one level of suffering after another. He gets pulled into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil. He through everything he could possibly throw at him. Jesus passed and qualified in that test. He learned to hold to the Word of God in the sense that that is where the suffering came in. He learned obedience to that suffering. He learned from the things that He suffered, that is His obedience and His surrender to the will of the Father. The obedience referred to here is the obedience of the character of the high priest. The character of the high priest included doing whatever God appointed him to do.
If you do not do it right, then you do not obtain the end result. So when he did it right, and he did everything that He was supposed to do, then He would gain the result of the end of His office, which was to cover sin and send it away, to cover guilt by the blood of the sacrifice. And to obtain and secure salvation for men. That was the end result that Jesus fulfilled.
So no matter how severe the sufferings that would be required on Him, and He obeyed the Father and He did not shrink back from any of it and submitted to all of it. So what do we have here in Jesus Christ? We have a true in perfect submission to His Father’s will. His only desire was His Father’s will. That is what we have in Christ.
Look at Hebrews 10:9 where it says:
Then He said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
In a sense, the cross was the end of learning obedience. It was the final test and the commandment of the high priest that was to be received from the Father. He was to lay down His life for His people in whose place He stood and for whose benefit He acted, not for His own. So the great act of obedience for this unique King-Priest was that He should offer Himself for us a sacrifice and an offering. That is what He did and that is why we have recorded in Philippians where it says in Philippians 2:8:
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
This is obedience until the very end in order to secure our salvation, even death on a cross. Christ could never have died any other way. So do you know what that means? When you contrast Jesus with the Aaronic priesthood, Jesus is greater than all because He is not from the line of Aaron who died. Jesus is related to the priesthood of Melchizedek which has an eternal aspect to it. Jesus is the priest of God eternally so now Jesus Christ who perfectly qualified as a High Priest from an eternal order of priests can and will provide salvation to all who ask Him, making His ministry different and unlike all those who have gone before Him. His ministry is eternally effective. He did not have to do it over and over again like the Old Testament priests. He finished it because He was the perfect obedient lamb of God from the eternal order of the priest of Melchizedek. He was able to accomplish what no Levitical priest could accomplish.
And so on my last major point, which I will not spend much time on at all, I come to the conclusion. What was the end result of the work of the high priest? To atone for sins, right? So the people could be forgiven! That was the goal. Well let us see if that goal is mentioned in Hebrews 5:9-10 because we can continue to press on in our pilgrimage because Jesus is our effective High Priest. It says this:
And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Jesus has been made perfect in all His sufferings. He was the perfect offering before God. Remember perfection could have never been attained through the Levitical priesthood. In fact the law made nothing perfect. The law condemned and brought guilt. What does this say in this passage here? Because of what the Lord has done and because He is the perfect offering, He became to all those who obey Him, all those who believe and are His children. He becomes the source not just of salvation but of eternal salvation. A salvation that could never ever be overturned. It could never be taken away. It is yours forever because our High Priest has accomplished everything that He needed to accomplish so we could be saved. When Christ gives Himself as a propitiatory sacrifice, He satisfies what God requires because God requires the death penalty for sin and His justice demands that a life would be poured out. That means when a person repents and claims Jesus as the source of their eternal salvation, the wrath and justice of God towards that person is satisfied. Christ’s sacrifice then sets aside, purifies the people that come to Him, delivers men and women from judgment and averts the wrath of God forever.
Remember there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That is what that means. When Satan comes against you and accuses you, what do you remind him of? We say that yes, we are sinners, but we also have a High Priest who has paid everything and made sure that everything was paid for to God on my behalf. We are secure in Christ. So Jesus, the great eternal High Priest, takes care of everything that pertains to our relationship with God. If that does not encourage you in this pilgrimage that we are on, as we live each day and deal with issues and needs and problems and we go from joy to sorrow and sorrow to joy and back and forth all the way to the end of our lives. We have to have this truth really embedded in our hearts as a teaching that cannot be changed. We can continue on with joy and with hope to press on live for God in obedience.
God will receive all the glory and praise for everything God has accomplished and has yet to accomplish in your life. This is what the Word of God tells us in this portion of Scripture. Take it, brethren, and think about it. Make it part of your thinking and let it excite your soul because this is the truth. Amen?
Let us pray. Lord, I do thank You as always that You are our eternal King-Priest that accomplishes for us what no other priest could accomplish. That is our eternal salvation. Lord, just to look at those two words, eternal salvation, is mind-boggling. But I do pray, Lord, that if someone here does not know You as their Lord and Savior, that today would be the day of salvation for them. May they come and cast themselves upon You with all their sin knowing that You are their High Priest that takes care of them and makes them right with God. You cleans them, take away their guilt, and give them eternal salvation. Please, Lord, do that in those who have not come. Those who have come and know You, please continue every day to grow them in their faith, to grow them from being a babe in Christ to a young person in Christ who can take the Word of God and fight Satan with it, and then become someone who grows in their faith and be a Spiritual father. Lord, enable them and help them to do that and grow like that. So Lord, we can be ministers to other people as the priesthood of believers and be able to show and point people how to be right with God and how to stay right with God and how to walk with God, as we do so ourselves. So Lord keep us faithful, do not let us fall on our faces. Help the church to do the work to enable each other and pray for each other and hold each other up. I pray, Lord, that You would constantly remind us of the Scriptures that we read this morning. Encourage us as we live our lives. Lord, all that we can do is give You praise and worship now for all that You have done. I pray that we would do so appropriately, and lift up Your awesome Name. I pray in Christ’s Name, Amen.