[Sunday School] The Threefold Vocation of Humanity in Christ (WSC 23)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for these brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the catechism that leads us deeper into your word. Thank you for Jesus, our Redeemer, our prophet, our priest, our king. Help us as we consider how he fulfills that threefold office and how he really fulfills the vocation of humanity. Help us to think more about who we are as human beings created in your image and what you have enabled us to be again by grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so last week we talked about Jesus' incarnation. We talked about how the eternal Son became a man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and yet continue to be God and man, the two distinct natures of one person forever. This week we talk about, or we begin to talk about the offices that Christ executed as our Redeemer. So question 23. What offices does Christ execute as our Redeemer? Christ as our Redeemer executes the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in a state of humiliation and exaltation. In the coming weeks we'll look at each one of those offices individually, but today we're going to put them together and consider how this threefold vocation intersects with our creation and calling as human beings. So, opening question: why were we created? Or another way to ask that question, what were we created for? God's glory.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

To glorify him.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

To glorify God. And enjoy him forever. Good. That's the shorter catechism answer. And there are different ways that we can answer that question that, you know, a summary can only summarize so much. So we might say to glorify and enjoy him forever. Or something I said quite a bit as we were in our Genesis series. We were created to know him and make him known, which is, you know, basically a different way of saying the same thing. Yet another way to think about it is through the threefold office of Christ, as prophet, priest, and king. We were made to reveal him as little P prophets. We were made to mediate or to bring others to him as little P priests. And we were made to rule the world, to have dominion over creation underneath him as little K kings. So we'll talk basically about that, the development of humanity's vocation as prophet, priest, and king throughout Scripture today, and use that to better appreciate who we are and who Jesus is. So that starts, of course, in the very beginning. Adam and Eve created in God's image as the catechism summarizes, and knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And that knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, it maps unto that prophet, priest, and king paradigm that I was talking about. You know, the prophet in terms of knowledge. Human beings are given the words of God in order to know him and to make him known. We saw that with Adam. God gives him instruction in the garden, and he gives him the responsibility to share those words with others. It's of course the failure of that responsibility that sinks us into the predicament we're in as human beings. As a priest, he was called to tend and to keep the garden. The language of tending to is very intentionally pulled in. It's the same language used as the priests and Levites in keeping the temple of the tabernacle. And Numbers and 1 Chronicles and Ezekiel. Eden was the prototypical garden temple. It was the place where heaven touched earth. It's the place where God met with human beings. In Israel's temple, you see all of, you know, we tend to gloss over those sections where you're getting all the intricate descriptions of the furnishings and the tapestries and all of that, and even the priests' robes. But if you look closely at that, all of those, all of the trappings, all of the details are meant to fashion the temple and even the priest's garments as a kind of reflection of Eden. Eden was the original garden temple. Israel's temple was kind of, the tabernacle was the temple on the way. The temple in Zion was kind of the fixed temple in the midst of history. And we're looking forward, not we're the temple, but we're looking forward to the time when all of creation becomes the garden city. And there is no physical temple that you can point to because all of creation becomes a temple. So we are priests in that temple from the beginning and in the end. And finally, the king piece, mapping onto righteousness. We are created in the image of God. And the image of God, you know, in the ancient world, it functioned a couple different ways. In one sense, the image of God, only the king was considered to be the image of God. Everybody else was whatever, the hoi poloi. They're the folk in the back. One of the radical features of Genesis is that every human being is said to be the image of God. Every human being is said to be something like a king. Another function of image, like you have the image as king, but you also have images, where you would, the king would erect throughout his dominion little statues of himself or little sign points with his likeness on them, basically signs. And they were to let everyone know that wherever you see the image, you see the dominion of the king. So we have that twofold thing happening in the creation of human beings. We are having dominion over the earth, and as we have dominion, as we multiply, as we fill the earth, we cover the face of it, we rule it as God's image is, and we also bear witness to him as the ultimate sovereign king over everything as his images. Does that make sense? Alright, so we have the prophet, we have the priest, we have the king, and that's kind of written into the DNA of who we are as human beings created in the image of God. Now, just thinking about that, I mean we'll tease this out more as we go throughout, but how do you see that applying to your life today? Prophet, priest, and king. Or at least potentially applying to your life today. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Some obligation, some duty, some responsibility. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

I would say privilege. Privilege, you know, to be to have a priestly function, to be bringing Christ to people in a sense, right? The truth and the knowledge of Him and of the Creator and the Redeemer and bringing, you know, uh, we'll say true anthropology to people, and you know, that's really important. That's a privilege in the fallen world to do that. Yeah. Because we got inclined as a gift. We're inclined to all that, you know, the substance and knowledge of that, or the knowledge and the substance of that was uh given to us as a gift. So um it's a massive privilege.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, yeah, there are definitely two sides of that. There's the privilege and there's the responsibility. Uh as little pea profits, really go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 7:37

I think it it flows from uh the new creation of being a new creature in Christ, being a new man. You come with all of those wrapped up in that few. I'm thinking of Paul's writing on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the uh administrative gifts, the teaching gifts, the mercy gifts, and all of that are to be applied and deployed in those roles. Um how I think about it. Yeah. So it's a function of the new man.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's and the as we're gonna see, the the vocation still belongs to the old man. Right? These these are responsibilities and potential privileges that every human being has as a human being created in the image of God. But the nature of sin is such that the image is so marred that we don't want to fulfill the vocation of humanity. And even if we did want to, which we don't, we couldn't. Well, thank you. You're not quite as pretty as my wife. I know, but she brought that. Thank you. Thank you. Suzanne dumped out my coffee this morning, so she she played, she uh offered to make me another one. Uh yeah, so you know, as little pea prophets, uh, we have the responsibility and the privilege of sharing the truth, of telling people about God, right? Bearing witness to him. As little P priests, we have the responsibility and the privilege of, yes, bringing him to people by way of the sharing of the truth, but also bringing people to him. We exercise our priestly vocation by praying for people, interceding for people. That is a kind of mediation, so long as we understand that Jesus is our sole mediator in the kingly function. I did a bunch of yard work yesterday, and I'm feeling it right now. It's part of my vocation as a king. As you know, you take the little bit of land that God has given you and you cultivate it. That can be very literal, like working in your yard, making it fruitful, cultivating that sort of thing. And it could also be figural. You know, whatever responsibility God gives you in life, whether it's in your business, whether it's you know in the classroom, in your law practice, it's you know, wherever it is, right? God is giving you the opportunity to cultivate that space, to cultivate the people in that space, and to make something better, make something more fruitful. That's part of the kingly vocation that belongs to all of us.

SPEAKER_05 10:28

I um this goes back to what you preached about last Sunday, the um the forgiveness and the um, or somebody asked for your quote, give them the whatever. You know, preach that passage. And I mentioned to you on the way out that I was raised Mennonite who are pacifists, who are non-resistant, who will not bear arms. And that was the first, actually, the first fracture in with me and the Mennonites is because I'm thinking, well, what about the centurions?

unknown 11:01

And what about Paul saying they bear not the door of the book?

SPEAKER_05 11:05

So when you're talking about prophet priest and king, um how do you think about people who have been, God is placed in law enforcement or in a military position to have to shoot somebody or blow somebody up, may not like it. And Lewis talks about why am I not a pacifist? That belongs to the role. So if you have a you're a parent with a child and the child slaps you up across your face, are you obligated to turn your face and let the child slap you? No, you turn that little kid's bottom up and wear it out, don't you? Because that the the words that Jesus spoke were not applying to, they were applying to people who want to get back and get revenge with a personal grudge. We're not applying to people in roles, right? Where doing something violent was part of the role, right? Smacking a kid's bottom.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:05

Or in the case of a soldier or a law enforcement, sometimes have to they have to be restrained to the point of shooting them.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:14

It's horrible to think about it. But Prophet Prieston's king has threads back to roles like that too.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Right, and I think I see that as part of the kingly vocation. And none of these things happen in abstraction from each other. They can all be you know overlapping and interweaving. But yeah, part of the original call for Adam, especially, was to provide and to protect. What should he have done when the serpent came into the garden? Cut his head off with a shovel. Not exactly, because this is pre-fall, but it's the uh what he should have done is declare the words of God. Right? He should have spoken the truth of God because he was there.

SPEAKER_05 12:54

God did say the your seed will crush his head. Yeah. And remember that scene in The Passion of Christ where our foot, the Lord's foot, comes down and squishes the snake's head. Y'all remember that?

SPEAKER_04 13:05

I love that scene. It was so much of that movie I closed my eyes because I was crying.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, we can talk about that movie when we get to the second commandment. Moving on. Uh so thinking about the vocation of humanity after the fall. Uh, like I said before, the image is marred, our vocation is compromised in terms of our ability to vote to fulfill it, and yet that office remains. There's a prophet, a priest, and a king in all of us, in a little P informal sense. And so that means that means we need the knowledge, righteousness, and holiness that correspond to that threefold office. Now, when we look at Abraham, uh, you know, fast-forwarding some through the history of redemption, we see the three offices continue to be located in one man. And we can say that about Abel, we can say it about Seth, we can say it about Noah, but fast forwarding to Abraham, uh, prophet, Genesis, verse 7. This is him talking to Pharaoh, or God talking to Pharaoh about Abraham. Return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you and you shall live. Priest, Genesis 13, verse 4, or 13, 2 through 4, and more generally in Genesis, you see Abraham roaming throughout the promised land, building altars in various places. That's priestly activity. Or a king, Genesis 14, when you have this coalition of world superpowers that ends conquering and pillaging and whatnot, and they take a lot, and Abraham makes his own coalition. They go after and they win the battle. That's kingly activity. So you have the offices there in one man, in the head of a home, and who would eventually become the head of a nation. But in the founding of that nation, in the growth of that nation, you see a division of labor start to take place. Uh, the prophetic office. I mean, Moses, in a sense, combines all these things in himself, but even under Moses, things start to break apart. So you have Moses and then the prophets rise up after him. Deuteronomy 18, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. So you have the development from Deuteronomy on of this distinct office of the prophets, who they are the ones specifically tasked with bringing the words of God to the people, in the sense of like revelatory words. When it comes to the teaching of those words, that actually comes down to the priests and the Levites. Think about Ezra and Nehemiah, where uh Ezra is reading from the book of the law, and all the people are listening in this great gathered worship assembly. It's like this covenant renewal ceremony, and it talks about the Levites there explaining the sense. Right? So Ezra's reading from the law, and the Levites are on hand to help everybody understand the law. Uh so priests, you know, we see that office instituted in Aaron. Exodus 29, 7 through 9. This is God talking to Moses, you shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them, and the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons. The king, the kingly office. You see that, you know, there's you get Genesis 3.15, you get an intimation of it in the crushing of the serpent's head. But then Jacob's blessing of his sons, how he says to Judah, the scepter shall not depart from you, in Genesis 49, Deuteronomy 17, uh, long before they actually got a king, you have all these rules about what the king should do in terms of copying out the Torah by hand and keeping a copy for himself and all that sort of thing. But then you have the actual establishment of the office in uh 1 Samuel, when the people asked for a king. And do you remember what the problem is with the people asking for a king?

SPEAKER_05 17:18

They wanted to be like the other nations around them.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Right. So the problem wasn't that they wanted a king. God did make provision for that. Uh ultimately they were supposed to want God as their king. But the problem was that they wanted a king like all the other nations.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

What would have the Torah consisted of in the time of Deuteronomy, just in Genesis? In the law, or mainly the law?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

So they would have had that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy is the last address of Moses to the reconstituted, like the second generation after they died off. The first generation died in the wilderness because of their fear and their disobedience at Kadesh Barna, numbers 14, I think that is, or 17. Uh so they didn't want to go into the promised land, and God's like, well, alright, you're all gonna die, except for these guys, right? And then I'll bring the next generation into the promised land. And so this is basically the people gathered, this next generation gathered getting ready to go into the promised land. So Deuteronomy fundamentally would have been written and compiled by Moses for them, but it also says at the end that Moses died, right? That's that's that's in that's in Deuteronomy. So Moses didn't write that part. So Joseph or Joshua probably had a kind of editorial like finalizing hand in buttoning up the Pentateuch or the Torah.

unknown 18:59

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

No, no, it's good, it's good. So anyway, you know, with Saul, he's he's very much a king like all the other nations. When it describes him as being a head and shoulders above all the other people, that's a important factor of a king in the ancient world. They're supposed to be the big, the strong, the imposing, like Goliath, right? Uh but of course we see in the Goliath episode, and in generally in Saul's rule overall, especially in Goliath, you got this big, bad Philistine champion, and nobody in Israel, including the king, wants to have anything to do with taking him out. And that's when you get David. You have the anointing, all of that. Uh but where we get the establishment of the office of king as a perpetual thing, is especially in 2 Samuel 7, with the the establishment of the Davidic covenant. Uh 2 Samuel 7, 12 through 16. When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. So we see the office of prophet, priest, and king, uh located at first in individuals, but then kind of breaking out into more formalized roles in the history of Israel. But of course, everyone fell short. On account of their affinitude, on account of their fallenness, prophets. You had true prophets, you had false prophets. Priests, you had good priests, you had bad priests, and even the good priests eventually died. So they were limited in that way. Kings. You had a few good kings, but mostly bad kings, and you see the problem of that. So we're just the whole time looking forward to the restoration of humanity's vocation. When are we going to get a true prophet? When are we going to get a true king? When are we going to get a true priest? And of course, that's what we get in Jesus. Jesus reunites all of the offices in himself as the second Adam, as the true human, as the one who fulfills and restores our vocation as human beings. And we see this in the wilderness, right, where Jesus recapitulates that original conflict between humanity and the serpent. What Jesus does, what Adam should have done, he comes out on top. And so Jesus becomes, 1 Corinthians 13 1 30 says it becomes these things. Our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification. He becomes, he is the knowledge, righteousness, and holiness that we need in order to be the prophet, priest, and king. That we're supposed to be, Jesus is actually that incarnate. Incarnate knowledge, incarnate wisdom, incarnate righteousness, the holy one of Israel, all of that. And so that's who he is from above, and that's who he became before us. But he also, in himself and in his ministry, he actually fulfills the offices. Like Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus goes up on the mountain in order to bring down the law of God to the people of God. Does that sound familiar? Moses on Sinai. Jesus, as the true prophet, speaks as one who has authority and not as the scribes and Pharisees. That's what they recognize at the end of that Sermon on the Mount, and we'll see next week at the end of the Sermon on the Plague. Hebrews 1, 1 through 4. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, to whom also He created the world. Hebrews telling us that in the past, God spoke to us in all these kinds of ways. We had prophets speaking to the fathers, but now, and it's meant to set up a qualitative difference. That was then, this is now. And now God has spoken to us by way of his son. So Jesus is the ultimate prophet. Jesus is quite literally the prophet to end all prophets. We can talk about the New Testament, you have like little P prophets, but that's not meant to be an enduring office in the church. Like we don't have prophets today. Or at least we're not supposed to have prophets today.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah. The Puritans did plenty of prophesying, but they wouldn't hold themselves up as prophets in that biblical sense. They meant that by like teaching, preaching. Yeah, that's what they meant. Teaching, preaching, the kind of spirit of discernment that happens in preaching and teaching, where you're not just like expositing the Bible in abstract, but you're actually applying it to the people in front of you. What we're doing right now. Right, right. So that's prophet, priest, right? That Hebrews 1 passage, it talks about Jesus completing the work of redemption and sitting down at the right hand of the Father. And it goes on to unpack that later on in Hebrews. But the priests could never sit down because they were constantly busy offering up sacrifices. But Jesus is the priest who offered up the ultimate sacrifice, which was of himself. And by virtue of that ultimate sacrifice, he was enabled to enter into the better sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, so that his priestly ministry is infinitely better than any other priestly ministry, and it goes on forever because he's not a priest after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek. So the ultimate priest, the priest to end all priests. Cain, right? He fulfills all the messianic promises. He quotes Daniel 7 during his trial to refer to himself as that Son of Man who comes to the ancient of days in the end and puts all the other kings of the earth in their place. He ascends to the right hand of the Father. That shows up a lot of times in the New Testament, and that's enthronement language. That's Jesus taking his seat of authority. And of course in Matthew 28, he says he possesses all authority. So, prophet, priest, king, all fulfilled in Jesus ultimately. And yet, right, we have that vocation restored to us, and we are enabled to enter that vocation to exercise that vocation. Not because we in ourselves are prophets, priests, and kings, but because in him we have that task and that ability.

SPEAKER_05 26:01

Look how, speaking of king, look how Jesus ruled the natural world. Ruled the demonic world. He could tell a demon, hush up and leave, and he could calm the seed leaf it. I mean, he was in the rightful role of king over the planet and all the spiritual forces that were gathered.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:27

He was occupying that kingly role even in his earthly ministry.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. In becoming what he was not, he did not cease to be what he was. Someone in the ancient church said that. I don't think anyone is sure who. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

And today is Ascension Sunday, and an important thing I learned from C.S. Lewis is when Christ ascended, the incarnation was not reversed. Because you think, okay, where did he go? He's up there. What is he? He's still human.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah, forever. The dust of earth rests on the throne of heaven. Yeah, and that's part of the implication of what we talked about last week. How he was and continues to be one God and two persons. Two natures, fully divine, fully human, one person, forever. Jesus will never cease to be human. So how does Jesus equip us for the prophetic task?

SPEAKER_02 27:39

The Holy Spirit. And go on. That starts the process. The internal teaching. We have the external teaching, which is what we're doing right now. What you're gonna do is step you know a little bit. And then the Spirit, Jesus teaches us internally these things, so that we really understand them and taste them and you know digest them and feel them, and uh so that uh we can. So that's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah, yeah, the spirit, you know, regeneration, right? He removes our old heart of stone. We'll talk a little bit about this today, removes our old heart of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh, and he writes the law on our hearts so that we are uh so that we desire and are able to keep it. Not as a not as our confession would say, not as a a covenant of life, or not as a not as a rule, but as a uh as a guide. Using the language there. So not to direct, not to show us how to merit salvation, but to teach us how we live in light of the salvation that we've received by grace through faith. Alright, so Jesus sends his spirit to teach us, he gives us the words of life, he gives us words of knowledge, right? Not in the weird prophetic, I'm gonna prophesy over you since, but he gives us revelation, he tells us what we need to know so that we can tell others what they need to know. Alright, how does Jesus uh equip us for the priestly task?

SPEAKER_01 29:34

We are given the desire by the Holy Spirit to self-feed. We're given a desire to want to open the word. Uh and when you open the word and you self-feed, you then it's manifested when you're speaking to maybe an unbeliever or someone who is, for lack of a better term, seeking. Um, because of your self-feeding, you're able to share, and and and that's part of that priestly duty. Um and then it draws you in prayer as you're in the word. You get pulled into prayer, you might read a certain portion of scripture, and you just have to step away and meditate and pray on.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Well, I was I was gonna press a little on the idea of self-feeding, but you led to where I was gonna press you to. Uh, when we're self-feeding, what do we mean by that? We're receiving the words that he's revealed, the prophetic, right? Uh we're also receiving from him, right? We're having communion with him. Uh in prayer specifically. And so, how does what the essence of the priestly office is that we would be praying for other people. Okay. Praying not just for people we like, but people we don't like. Like we talked about last week, praying for our abusers, even. Okay, uh. Who prays before you pray? It's a weird way to ask a question, but hopefully you know what I mean. With what inexplicable groanings, right? The Holy Spirit. Yeah. Well, who's your high priest? Jesus Christ. Jesus. Right. So before you open your mouth to pray for anyone or anything, he opens his mouth to pray for you. And when you're done praying, he continues to pray for you.

SPEAKER_05 31:24

Everyone is to make intercession.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Exactly. So there's a sense in which they answer these questions like how does Jesus prepare you for the prophetic task? Well, by being your prophet. How does Jesus prepare you for the priestly task? By being your priest. Right? So if I'm called to go and pray for all kinds of people, people I might not like, people who may be hurting me, people who, uh, if I'm honest, I don't want good for them, I want bad for them, you know, speaking as a sinner, right? Uh Jesus is praying for us, you know. Jesus has prayed for the abuser. If Jesus had to die for us because of our sin, because we are all, if we are all implicated in the murder of the Son of God, then we have all abused him. And he prays for us. Alright, so Jesus prepares us to pray for others by praying for us. So if, you know, if we don't feel like it, if we don't want to engage in that priestly task, all we need to do, simple to say, maybe not simple to accomplish, stop, be silent, be still, meditate on the fact that Jesus is our priest and what that meant and what it continues to mean. Spending time with him, right, kind of the more time we spend with him, it relativizes whatever else we might be facing in the world.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

As we get closer to him, we are enabled more and more to bring other people along with us through prayer.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

I think a key call-out here with this particular office, and not to say one's more important than the other, because that's going to be inaccurate, but I think this one's real special because the root of this one's love, right? Like, you know, we Jesus has to teach us about love and how to love to perform a priestly office, right? And all the things that we just talked about are obviously all very valid and part of it, but like the privilege of this for us is I've got to love other people and draw them to me, and and and and and I have to go to them. I have to get to know them to know what to pray for people. I've got to get intimate with people, I've got to get vulnerable, I've got to put myself out there, I've got to um I've got to get people to trust me and open up to me. I have to care, I have to show concern, I have to be passionate, I have to be tolerant and patient and understanding, gotta learn how to love people to get to know them. Um, and then because that how do I really, I mean, I can send up very surface-level prayers for everybody and everybody, and that's part of it because we obviously this part here is difficult and doesn't happen, you know, uh as much as it should. But to really get to know somebody and to really understand what they need prayer for, I gotta get to know them and I gotta love them. So to be a priest, and I mean if you think about what he did and how what he does, Kenny was talking about what he does for us, he knows us, right? He intimately knows us. So he knows intimately what to prayer pray for for us, right? And so, and and you know, as I'm I'm getting convicted as I'm talking about this, because where as men in particular, where does this probably first start? Well, with our wives, right? You know, and and and and you know, praying for my wife, knowing, you know, I gotta, you know, I intimate, I intimately know my wife really well, I gotta know what to pray for prayer pray for for her, and then you know, that starts there, and then I do that with my fellow brothers and you know, with my children, or if I have them, and my uncles and my cousins and my neighbors, you know. If we don't ever get involved with our neighbors, if we don't we don't get our hands on people and love them, we don't know how to you know work this office.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Yeah. All right, let's talk about the royal one. As king, how does Jesus prepare us for our kingly ministry or the kingly aspect of our human vocation? One aspect of this, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 36:03

It's all also in scripture, it's all in Paul.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Um talking about what are they teaching the children these things? What's that? It's all in Paul. What are they teaching the children?

SPEAKER_05 36:15

Yeah, what are they teaching themselves? It's all in Paul. You know, can the very practical application chapters of each of his epistles talks about deploying the administration of grace, yeah, the Lord Jesus, yeah, and our very practical, you know, what the roles of family, I love what you said, Tyler, the roles that you have within the family, within your neighborhood, uh whatever your job is, how are you being a royal person in the name of Jesus? Yeah, in that specific how you drive, how you go through Walmart, how you, you know, all the little things. Yeah. Um my mom used to say being a Christian makes a difference in how you hang your clothes on the clothesline. She had a clothesline and she had stuff outside.

unknown 37:12

Yeah, yeah. Makes a difference in how you do every little detail of your life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That's what I explained to some of my neighbors about like my yard. Not that I obsess over my yard, it's kind of my hobby. But it uh part, I live on a corner so that a good number of people, the first thing they see as they enter my neighborhood, or very close to the first thing they see, is my house and my yard. So what do I want my space to say about my neighborhood as people are entering? Do I want them to see it as a place where people care, a beautiful place where things matter, right? And it's an extension of my witness. Exactly. Right? And we can all find uh we can all find analogs to that, how you hang your clothes on the line. But also, you know, righteousness. Uh you know, sometimes we truncate righteousness and we think of it purely in terms of our vertical relationship with God, as this legal judicial category. And it's definitely that. It's you know, it's that's what we talk about in our doctrine of justification. We are granted an alien righteousness which makes us right with God. But in scripture, righteousness also has a horizontal dimension in terms of our relationships with other people and how we treat other people. So if we are a people who have been made right with God through the generous justice of Jesus, then we will live in just ways in all of the spaces in which God places us. So that you know that has an impact for how I live in my home, how I live in the workplace, how I live in the community, all that, all that sort of thing. And that is a part of this sort of kingly vocation. Well, as far as it depends on me, will I be a person who seeks righteousness in my own life and in my community's life? Insofar as I do that, I reflect the righteous rule of Jesus. And if we all do that together, we get to build communities that look a little bit more like the righteousness of Jesus. And call that Christian nationalism if you want to, but I think that's what we're called to. Teresa?

SPEAKER_05 39:25

It reminds me of Colossians 3.23. Whatever you do more carnally is for the Lord and not for beauty.

unknown 39:33

Yeah. Amen.

SPEAKER_05 39:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 39:36

And you'll be pleased to know that I had to hire a young kid to mow my yarn. I'm an old push mower, and I've been, I love doing yard work, but with this sternal fracture, I wasn't allowed to do that. So I hired a young kid and he texted me and he said, uh, could I mow your yard today? Sunday. I said, please no mowing on Sunday. But any day next week will be fine. Yeah. So even that little exchange, like Saturday is a day where I just don't want to be a regular yard work day.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not supposed to work and I won't put you to work either.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Alright, so these three things, prophet, priest, and king. Uh for the sake of analysis, we've pulled them apart and talked about them individually, but they're never supposed to exist in isolation. What do you think a little bit about what the prophetic and priestly and kingly roles are, what are some of the dangers you might see in maybe emphasizing one of these roles to the neglect of the other in your own life? It's kind of a loaded question, but I want to know what you do with it before I start answering it.

SPEAKER_05 40:59

Well, you already mentioned one, and you said that you were, you can call it Christian nationalism or whatever, but people who veer off into the kingly thing, and it's all about having power and imposing Christian values on everybody else and all that, I think they sometimes take a good thing and push it too far.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

So that's definitely one way.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Let's say each part is a check and balance.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

In a way, yeah. We don't want to see them as an antagonistic, though. Oh. The checks and balances like the US. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Yeah. You can't take one without the others. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

And one is no more important or less right or so taking Ruby's example, an over-emphasis on the kingly office, say to the neglect of the prophetic and priestly, then it really does become about power. It really does become about rule. It comes more about more about, say, the Christian tradition than what God has revealed in Scripture. And so it's like, let's have a Christian prince and let's enforce all of the rules and norms that we've had in Christendom for a couple of or for thousands of hundreds of years. Let's do that and let's you know not worry too much if you know certain aspects of Jesus' teaching maybe conflict with the way we're acting, because you know, we know what time it is, and we know what sort of muscular response we need to give right now. Or, you know, more individually, maybe you are a kingly type, you're a hard driver, you know what needs to be done, and you're gonna get it done, but maybe you lose the priestly aspects of the fact that say you're a leader in an organization, you know, you can't just run over people. You have to take your time, you have to lead people places, you can't just tell them how it's gonna be, you have to show them, and you have to give them time to come around. If you're a king at the expense of the prophetic and priestly, you're just gonna run over people. Or you know, what happens if, say, like let's do each one? What happens if you overemphasize the prophetic at the expense of the priestly and the kingly? What happens then?

SPEAKER_04 43:16

Words become empty.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

You're a solid words guy. You got a lot of truth to spit at people, but you do it for back it up. Yeah, nothing to back it up. You don't have the ethos and the pathos to back it up. You're just you're just a truth machine.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

No credibility, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:34

No example.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Yeah. You're high and mighty, you know how it's supposed to be, and you're just spitting it at people, but right, you're not backing it up.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Mile wide and uh HD. Yeah. All sizzle no state.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

All sizzle and o state. There you go. How about the priestly? You're a super priest, but you're not much of a prophet or a king. Then what?

SPEAKER_02 43:58

You can become mystic and become. Um mystical.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

Mystical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

You're not grounded.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Out of touch, detached, ungrounded. Or mushy. Yes. Right?

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Social justice, and that's all that matters. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Or it's all about relationships. Right? Relationships are preeminent, even if it means we need to wiggle on the truth a little bit. We'll affirm people because we love people. And we think that the most important thing we can do is to love them. But it's a very sentimental kind of love. It's not a love that's chastened by truth. So there's a danger, right? And of course, we're all going to have different vents. We're all going to have a personality that might incline us in one direction or another. And it's good to know that. It's good to know. I'm a more kingly kind of guy. And you know that, and you say, okay, I need to be asking myself, am I running people over? Am I just getting things done or am I stopping to reflect on what is true and whether we should be getting the things done that I think we're getting done?

SPEAKER_01 45:05

And then it's also good to describe yourself with other people who compliment that part.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Right. You see this denominationally too, I think. Yeah, and that's where I'm going next. You see this in the church, right? There is a correspondence between what we're talking about and the church. Part of it's reflected, the threefold office of Christ and humanity, part of it's reflected in the marks of the church. The word, sacraments, and discipline. You see the prophetic in this emphasis on the right preaching and teaching of the word. You see the priestly in the right administration of the sacraments, and you see the kingly in the right exercise of church government and church discipline. Now thinking about, you were going there, so continue to go there. Thinking in terms of the church or in terms of the denomination, what are some dangers if we get lopsided on these offices when we think at the level of the church?

SPEAKER_02 45:55

Well, you see it played out, obviously. But I think it goes back to it, it ties to just the struggle that we have as fallen people, the harmony in our own personhood that we struggle with, right? Yeah. It shows itself here, and it is hard to balance this out because if in every every denomination who thinks they're the denomination is honest, they're they're going to find their heavy, they're heavy, you know, we're all, you know, um, and there's something to learn, I think, from from all the different denominations in these aspects, but being intentional about having balance, right? Or to do so, you've got to know where your weakness is or where your problem too lean, right? And so um, you know, humility in that.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah, that's right. Have you ever been a part of a church that's very high on the prophetic element and not so much on the priestly and the kingly? So, and I don't necessarily mean prophetic in the charismaniac kind of way. I mean just in terms of words, theology, doctrine. You ever been a part of a church where their doctrine is button up, or at least they think it is. Theology is super important, they love their books, they love their Bible studies, all that kind of stuff, but relationally it's just kind of dead. The the pastor may as well be a seminary professor. Uh the government of the church is non-existent, it's just a Bible study rich uh writ large. That would be a church that's very high on the prophetic element with not enough priest and king. Or think of another church, a priestly church, where everything is relationship. And uh the truth is more of an illustration in the sermon on Sunday morning, it's more of an inspirational talk. Alright? Not much prophetic there. Or think of the kingly church, the pragmatic church, where they get stuff done. They know how to grow, they know how to impact the community, but the word is, again, more of an inspirational kind of talk. Uh the priestly element, it's, you know, maybe it's there somewhat, but there's not much of a sense of the glory of God and our need to commune with the glorious triumph God. You can see this. If you apply this grid, you can see this playing itself out in different churches and different denominations. And it's uh, you know, I'm suggesting that not as a way of waxing judgmental about every other church out there. I'm gonna have some things to say about judgmentalism in today's sermon. But really as a way of analyzing whatever we happen to be a part of at the church level and at the denominational level. Are we so high on our doctrine that we are not fulfilling the priestly and kingly aspects of the church? That would be the besetting sin or danger in the reformed tradition to some extent. It's not really fair to the tradition. You read the Puritans, you see a lot of reason, right? Uh but it's a good thing to think about in terms of our personal lives, in our ecclesiastical lives. And we have just a couple minutes. So I'll leave it open for any closing questions or comments. That's why we need to keep an eye on the fruit that's coming from the tree.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Right, right. Is this is this good fruit, right? Right. Um, and and to Tyler's point, that brings us to that relational being being in touch with people, you know, getting to know people, listening to people, because that'll show oftentimes are we out of balance? What do we need more of? What do we need to rein in? Um success or failure. You should always be asking why not so far. Yeah, yeah. Because you won't talk. Right. It it truly is a ship on the sea, and you have to keep you know shooting your actions, right? You have to keep, make sure you aren't listening to the left or the right. And you know, it starts with the the elders, the pastor, um, and then you know, of course, the congregation where yeah, this this is excellent. I really uh really have a lot of that applying that that threefold office to the administration of the church and the land of the church. That's outstanding.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

So great. Well, thank everybody. Thank you, everybody. Always a great set there. Thank you, appreciate that. Let's pray. Father, what a high and holy task you've given us as human beings created in your image. To receive and reflect for truth, to mediate you in some ways all of creation, to subdue creation, to cultivate it, to make it beautiful and productive and fruitful. Lord, we lament all the ways in which the fall has broken us and kept us from fulfilling that vocation as we should. And even as we lament, Lord, we rejoice that you in Christ have fulfilled that human vocation in our place, and you've restored us to it, even if imperfectly on this side of glory. Help us, Father, this week to be better prophets, to be better priests, to be better kings, knowing that we don't hold those things as offices that only Jesus does, and yet in Him and with Him, we are able to fulfill those sorts of functions in our world. Thank you, Lord, for saving us and for giving the grace to receive and reflect your truth once again, to mediate as your royal priesthood, your goodness and your glory to the people you place in our lives, and to cultivate this world that you've given us, our spaces and places, Lord, for your glory and not our own, so that we might enjoy you in them and enjoy all the good gifts you've given. Thank you for these things and for this morning, for this fellowship and this time that we'll get to spend together in worship. Bless us through it and prepare us, Father, for the week ahead. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

unknown 52:25

Amen.