A Different Kind of People

"To be a priest is to set your life aside." In the fourth episode of the series "Robes, Candles, Smells and Bells," Robert talks about the purpose of God's people in the world, the expansive mission of God's kingdom, and our holy, peculiar, passionate, particular calling to be priests, unified by one Spirit.

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Alright, today we have been in a sermon series about what it means for us to be a royal priesthood in a holy nation and today we're going to dive into the history of basketball who's ready for it. Here we go. Um they're just real quick there. If you look in the 19 sixties, in the N. B. A. There were two players that dominated everybody's imagination. They were the only figures that everybody in the country knew about. Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell wilt Chamberlain, it's probably the greatest pure scorer of all time. He was seven ft one. He had, he had one game, the only game in NBA history where somebody scored 100 points in one game, Kobe Bryant went out to try to do it and he only got to 80 200 is incredibly difficult in 81. Sorry, thank you. Gosh, Getting fact checked real time. Thank you Snopes. Alright, so, Well, chamberlain was just incredible. Um he regularly scored in the 50s and 60s. In fact, in 1961, his scoring average per game Was 50 points. Just to give you some context today. If you average 32 points, you're likely the m. v. p. of the league. He scored 50 points per game that year. But you know who won the league Mvp that year. It was Bill Russell. Bill Russell. He Played for the Boston Celtics. He regularly average about 15 points a game, But he averaged 24 rebounds per game and his team, Even though it was less skilled, it had less star power. He won 11 NBA championships in the 13 years that he was playing basketball. Like just think about that level of excellence and dominance. And when you think about the contrast between the two, Wilt won two titles in a 20 year career. Bill 1 11 and 13 years, what it really came down to is that Bill Russell was the ultimate team player and wilt. Chamberlain played for the name on the back of his jersey instead of the name on the front of his jersey. It was all about stats, it was all about his individual contribution, his endorsements, making money for himself. But what we all know, I think from the history of not just sport but the history of the world is that players can't win on their own. It requires teams to win. Players can contribute, but even in a sport with just five people on the court, If you have the greatest player of all time Playing regularly, 40 minutes a game, The Lakers in 2022, you still can't even get to the playoffs if you don't have a team that's playing with you. And of course I think that this metaphor is what our world needs right now more than ever. You look at our globe and you look at the interconnected ways that we are all affected by something that happens on the other side of the world. And you start to think maybe it's not just about my own individual choices, maybe it's not about who I am or what I'm pursuing. One guy, he goes and just has to have some bat meat in china and millions of people die from Covid. One guy says, I want to invade Ukraine and the entire world is facing grain shortages and oil shortages. All of us are deeply connected with one another and until we recognize that we have responsibility to one another, not just in our families and not just in our community, but in the world. All of us are going to live with the repercussions of the cost of other people's sin on us and God knew that. So he built his people as a relief valve valve. He built the people of Israel and then his people, the kingdom of God as a relief valve. To save us from our individualism, to save us from our nationalism. To save us from thinking about ourselves. He gave them a mission and a reason to exist. This is what it says In. Let's see Genesis chapter 12 I did not get set up. So we're gonna have to go genesis chapter 12 verse one The Lord said to Abram, leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make you famous and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless. Those who bless you and curse those who curse you with contempt. All the family on earth will be blessed by you. This is such a familiar chapter. But this is the beginning, the start of God setting aside for himself a particular people that would be a part of his redemptive plan for history, his people that he held as his own. When you hear chosen. When you hear that God has set aside for himself, a chosen one or a chosen person, it probably evokes one of two responses. I think The first is we think of the chosen one as someone who's given special privilege that makes them exceptional To be envied. The chosen one. We see them as enviable when you think about um, in the basketball world, you look at Wilt chamberlain, the guy was an alien. You look at pictures of the dude and he had like a nine ft wingspan on a seven ft tall body. He literally looked like he didn't belong on our earth. And he was made for one particular thing, better than anything else and anyone else that ever existed. To put a orange piece of leather in a steel hoops, the chosen one, this is the image we have is that they are exceptional. They're different than us and they belong in their own category to be envied and to be admired and looked up to. But then you you probably also here in the chosen one are the narratives of of of story. The chosen one is a gift that's given to people to be a savior. When you think about luke Skywalker and you think about um you think about even harry potter who is just a retelling of Star Wars, let's be clear. Um and you and you think about and you think you think about all the stories where the heroes are the chosen one that's been prophesying from before time when the chosen one shows up, the chosen one is is a relief because there is hope, this hope is reborn in the one that's given to us as a gift to bless us with this special gift that they've been stewarded. They've been given to steward for other people because God's purpose for salvation is to come through people to be bearers and stewards of his kingdom so that the world will experience his presence. Abraham was chosen not because of his righteousness, but because God needed to make for himself a people anyone would have done. And Abraham just happened to be the one who said yes. It's funny that we don't get a sense that God may have asked other people. Here's the thing. I'm betting God has asked you to do some things and you've said no to him, am I right? You don't have to raise your hand. I see your eyes. God has probably asked you to step out in faith and you may have said, not right now and not yet and you wait and you held back, that's happened throughout all of history. But Abraham was the guy who said, I'm in, he uprooted his family and he heard God's voice and he went forward and created for himself the people that God had chosen. He was a steward, not an owner of this call. God called Israel, his people so that they would be his representatives to the world. In an in a sense, they were the ones who would embody. God's presence. Like we're called a nation of priests, a holy nation. The kingdom of Israel was meant to be that he called the Levite priest, not because they were righteous, this special tribe, but because God needed a people who would represent his people in God's presence. If you think about it, the Levi, it's kind of got the short end of the stick, right when they went into the problems, land and what percentage of the land did the Levi's get? 0%. It wasn't a place for them to gather, privilege and position. It was a place for them to be a servant to play a particular role. And that's what we've been talking about throughout this sermon series is that priests are holy in that they're set aside for God's particular purpose. In Chapter three of numbers, it says this, then the Lord said to moses call forward the tribe of Levi, present them to Aaron the priest to services assistance. They will serve Aaron and the whole community performing their sacred duties in and around the Tabernacle. They will also maintain all the furnishings of the sacred tent, serving in the Tabernacle on behalf of all the Israelites assigned to leave fights to Aaron and his sons. They have been given from among all the people of Israel to serve as their assistance. A point Aaron and his sons to carry out the duties of the priesthood. But any unauthorized person who does not go who goes to near to the sanctuary must be put to death like this passage just seems really like straightforward, but there's something like the word serve shows up like four times in it. I I think about this, when the, when the Tabernacle, when they would move camps in the desert wanderings, you know how mom is always the last one to get ready when you're going on a trip. Like at the very end, the whole car is packed and mom has yet to pack her bag, why is that? Mom was packing everybody else? And then dad is sitting there going, honey, are we gonna leave? And she's like, are you kidding me? Are you flipping kidding? Yeah, she's, she's frustrated and that's what the Levite had to do right? When they were, when they would pack up there. You gotta imagine moses shows up and he's like Aaron. So here's the thing we're gonna move again and he's like, are you kidding me? Where you want me to pick up the whole Tabernacle on top of cleaning my own camp and go create something in a new place just because you feel like we're supposed to move when you're called to be a priest, you're called to a life of being set apart for particular duties above and beyond everyday life. That's what it looks like to be a priest is to set your life aside and say it's been set aside for God's purposes, Aaron's families were servants, they had access to moses and Aaron and Miriam, but they were set aside because they were a family of servants. It's not a privilege, but rather this, this sacrifice, They have a different kind of inheritance than the kind that the other tribes had. The other tribes had land to protect them. Their inheritance was from God. It was about God's people pleasing him. It wasn't about making themselves great, but of course the levy, it's didn't really get it and they made a mess of stuff because they thought that their privileged position gave them the right to take what they thought they deserved. So the Levite, it's would use the temple as a way to promote themselves to gain power and influence to take money and to take resource and to take animals and grains and more than they deserved from the people. It was corrupted just like our call as a holy nation, a royal priesthood has been corrupted by us seeking after our own way. And all of this is really about our calling as God's people. We live under these idols of radical individualism where we believe that our lives are our own, that our bodies our own, that our time is our own, that our money is our own and that we can do whatever we want with it. That's the fundamental thesis that America was built on is that you get to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't kill or steal from somebody else or as long as you steal in a way that is okay with our I. R. S. That's the deal radical individuals and that's who we are as a people and so us becoming a nation of royal priests. A holy nation is going to require setting aside our belief that our lives are our own. The church has been full of spiritual abuse because they believe that their places priests gave them a privileged position in the world around us and that the world should honor the things that we do rather than us serving in humility. We have taken on the mantle as americans, calling ourselves the saviors of the world. We've imagined that it's our place to be the ones that were chosen to be a city on a hill. You don't believe that. Look back to what the puritans wrote when they came over to America. They fundamentally believed that they had taken over Israel's place as God's chosen people set aside for his holy purpose. We believe that our country itself is the savior, not God himself. We have corrupted the call of our priesthood by looking around and competing with other priests. Churches compete for people and for money and for resource. We battle over who's right in interpreting scripture. We battle over who's worshiping the best way. We battle over how we think people ought to live. We've corrupted our call as God's people by participating in the evil political parties of our world. Rather than grabbing hold of our call as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. We have corrupted our calls God's people by taking our identity as americans and saying that it allows us to assert privilege over the world. We have corrupted God's call because we have we have saw ourselves as as supreme over all things as God over all things. We've been talking about what it means to be a priest. We've been, we've talked about how the role of priest is one who's a mediator between God and man. We've talked about our role as priests and the ones that offer the sacrifices and that we have shifted from being the butchers to being the lambs who are sacrificed, that our lives are living sacrificed. We've talked about how we as priests, make consecrated places by consecrating people by making places that are set aside for God's presence by our lives being transformed in the way of the kingdom. We've talked about how the kingdom authority we get comes through service and connection with God rather than positions of authority. We've talked about how in the Kingdom of God, there is no special class of priests but that all of us are a part of God's priestly class. We've talked about how as priests, we do a different kind of prayer, one that's filled with authority from the Holy Spirit's presence in us. We do a kind of prayer that's interceding for the world around us. We do a kind of prayer that brings blessing to a world that's lost and broken and today we're gonna be looking a little bit at, let's see, let me get the passage right on this. I don't know why my sermon thing. Does this weird. Alright we are in this is Hebrews chapter three Hebrews chapter three verse five. Here we go. I ask you again does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you? Because you obey the law? Of course not. It's because you believe the message that you heard about christ in the same way Abraham believed God and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. The real Children, Abraham then are those who put their faith in God. What's more the scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago and he said all nations will be blessed through you. So all who put their faith in christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith. You see the movement from the very beginning to the very end as this inclusive work that jesus does to grab hold of people and bring them into his family. He is constantly opening up the door way for people to enter in. He created the people of Israel so that the world would know how to worship and how to be in God's presence. He created the people of Israel so that God could bring his presence through jesus as our Savior. Then he gave the world his people filled with his holy Spirit so that we would then bring the world to his presence by us going out with him, our call and our work as priests is to be a part of the mission of God. That's what today is all about is that priests have a clear mission. We want to connect this holy nation royal priesthood, our new identity as priests with God's mission in the world, which is to be a blessing to all people just like the levi's had no land to call their own. We are going to be a peculiar kind of people who mission with God to bring his presence everywhere we go. So instead of having our own politics, instead of being a part of the politics of this world, we're going to be a peculiar kind of people who say, I'm gonna turn aside from the right and the left and I'm going to follow the way of kingdom instead of claiming America is our home, we're gonna say we're exiles in a lost and broken world and our kingdom is everywhere we go because I myself am loyal to the king of all creation. And so where I go, I bring his authority, I bring his presence and I bring his rule and reign with me into my family into my neighborhood, into my kingdom. The kingdom is like an empire that's working like yeast through the world. Remember when jesus said the kingdom of God is like yeast and that you just put a little tiny bit in the dough and pretty soon it works its way through the whole thing, that's what the kingdom of God is like. And so when we act as priests instead of inviting the world to come into our sanctum instead of saying we're going to create one holy place that the whole world must pilgrimage to God himself, put his presence in his people and then sent them out. In fact, not only did he sent them out, he made it so they couldn't stay in Jerusalem. They got pushed out by the ruling authorities who oversaw the temple and said not here And then what God did 60 or 35 years later was he tore down the temple and never let it be rebuilt so that his kingdom had to go out. Not come back in pilgrimage to Jerusalem because the Holy City of Zion is the presence of Jesus, not a place can I get an amen, we must take hold not only our identity as priests but our identity as missionaries. What are missionaries? Well, there are people who live understanding their purpose and their calling that we are this royal priesthood and a part of an underground eggs Ilic empire moving throughout the world, bringing God's justice, God's peace, God's blessing and God's presence into the world. We are trying to create something different here at redemption hill than most places what happens in this room is good, but this is not the extent of God's Kingdom mission in our lives, that's why we have micro churches, that's why we commission you as missionaries and send you out into your neighborhoods is because we we gather to be built up then were sent out to live on mission as a part of God's Kingdom. We have, we have fought creating a special class of people in our community. Um No one on our staff is full time by design. That's what we've done because we want everybody to have a place in a work outside of the church so that they're connected with people who are far from jesus. It's so that you understand that those people who serve in particular roles in our community, they're not a special kind of super christian, they're just an average everyday person who's taking a little bit of their time to take care of our community so that you can go live as missionaries in our community. We don't think it's wrong for the church to support people and to be full time. We support people who are living as missionaries throughout our city and we think that it's valuable but we want to up turn turn the paradigm upside down so that it's not this special class of super christians who are able to preach and teach and lead but that it's everybody has a calling and a purpose outside of sunday mornings. Mhm We are priests and we are missionaries. That's why many of you, the last two years have gone through our training with our we have we're part of a movement called the syndicate here in