Numbers 18:7 Therefore you and your sons with you shall keep your priest's office for everything of the altar, and within the veil… '... I have given your priest's office unto you as a service of gift.' -- NUM. xviii.7. All Christians are priests -- to offer sacrifices, alms, especially prayers; to make God known to men. I. Our priesthood is a gift of God's love. We are apt to think of our duties as burdensome. They are an honour and a mark of God's grace. 1. They are His gift -- (a) The power to do. All capacities and possessions from Him. (b) The wish to do. 'Worketh in you to will.' (c) The right to do, through Christ. 2. They are a blessing. (a) Note the good effects on ourselves -- the increase of fellowship with Him, the strengthening of all holy desires. (b) The future benefits. Apply this to prayer and to effort on behalf of our fellow-men. II. Our priesthood is to be done as a service -- under a sense of obligation to a master, with diligence (an [Greek: ergon], not a [Greek: parergon]). III. Our priesthood is to be done as a gift to God -- to be done joyfully, giving ourselves back to Him: 'Yield yourselves unto God' -- 'your reasonable service.' Then only do we really possess ourselves, and 'all things are ours, for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.' Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore thou and thy sons with thee shall keep your priest's office for every thing of the altar, and within the vail; and ye shall serve: I have given your priest's office unto you as a service of gift: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death. |
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