A Royal Priesthood

 A Royal Priesthood

By Richard P. Joseph

2/3/2025

In Exodus chapter 20 we find the newly formed nation of Israel moving through the wilderness.  They had recently been liberated from slavery by God through the hand of Moses.  Moses is now beginning to receive the law from God and the Ten Commandments are presented to the people.  It firmly establishes YHVH as the only eternal God and the second commandment was to never create any image that could be used to represent a deity or would be worshiped.  This was not ambiguous, it was very plain and understandable.  

Well, maybe not!  Flip a few chapters later and you have Aaron, the brother of Moses, fashioning a golden calf to worship to.  The human condition is hopeless, weakness is the norm and evil is the goal.  Exodus 32 brings this to light.  While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving instructions on how to build a tabernacle to YHVH, the congregation decided that Moses must have died and therefore they would create a pagan god from gold just like the Egyptians had.  They could not understand that a human cannot create a real god.  Moses did not go to God, God came to Moses.  God created man, man did not create God.  This was a very new concept back then.  So God sent Moses down the mountain to confront the Israelite nation and it wasn’t pretty. 

 Exodus 32:7-8 7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a [b]stiff-necked people!

God would have destroyed them had Moses not prayed and intervened.  Moses, however, cleaned the camp by putting to death 3,000 of those that would not follow the true and only God. 

Moses then formed a priesthood that was to serve the Eternal God and Him alone.  The Priesthood was to be formed from the tribe of Levi which Moses and Aaron were part of.  The main job of a high priest was to offer atonement for the people through the sacrificial system laid out in the books of the law.  There was, however, a different kind of priesthood that was not of human origin.

While Moses was the person responsible for the formation of the nation of Israel and the priesthood, it was Abraham who had previously become the father of the nation.  After Abraham had success in defending several of the cities, including Sodom and Gomorrah where Lot lived, he ran into a strange priest named Melchizedek, the priest of Salem.  Not much is mentioned about this obscure character in the scriptures but apparently the Jews knew more about him than what was written about him.  When David was prophesying about the future messiah in Psalm 110 he spoke about Jesus as being a priest after the order of, not Levi, but Melchizedek.  The book of Hebrews informs us that Melchizedek is one who has no beginning and no end and no traceable genealogy.  He is called a priest forever.  That is why the author of Hebrews associates Melchizedek with Jesus as one and the same.  

So now we have talked about two distinct priesthoods, but there is a third.  Revelation 1:6 reads like this:

  … and has made us [c]kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

And 1 Peter 2:9 says this:

 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

Jesus, who is a priest forever, will never change.  He is the High Priest of all time.  However, as humans, things change.  The Levites were called to be priests during the old covenant but once that covenant ran its course, Jesus established a new covenant with his blood.  Peter then informed us that we, the Christian men, are the new priests.  After AD 70, the Levitical priesthood ended.  Each Christian man is now the priest of his family and with this a tremendous amount of responsibility is placed on each man to lead his family into righteousness.  With this priesthood comes also a new nation.  Judaism has become obsolete and the church has become the new nation, a holy nation.   Marriage is the building blocks of society and the father and mother are responsible for bringing up holy offspring unto the Lord.  The institution of marriage is the most important union on earth.  As the marriage goes, the earth goes.  Each husband is the priest of his family and each Christian family joined spiritually together forms a holy nation.  This is what holds the world together.  It is sad to see people still associating the priesthood to religious organizations when in reality the real priests are the fathers and husbands of each family.  It is our responsibility to strengthen our families and our communities.  People who wait and rely on a religious organization to teach their families the gospel are out of touch with scripture.  While it is a great thing for people to learn from their pastors, it is imperative that the real teaching and lessons are learned at home.  This is something that should not be taken lightly.  Like Michael Jackson said in his song “We are the World”, “We are the Church”.  Let us be bold and lead the world by leading our own families.