Learning To Live As A Chosen Generation And A Royal Priesthood

Unto you therefore which believe

 He is precious: but unto them which

disobedient to, the stone which the builders

disallowed, the same is made that head

of the corner, and a stone of stumbling 

and a rock of offense, even to them

which stumble at the word, being

disobedient: whereunto also they were

appointed.  But ye are a chosen generation,

a royal priesthood, as holy nation,

a peculiar people; that ye should show

forth the praises Him who hath called

you out of darkness into His marvelous

light: which in times past were not

a people, but are now the people of God:

which had not obtained mercy, but now

have obtained mercy.

I Peter 2: 7 -- 10

     People often call themselves "Christian" but seldom do they refer to themselves as "a royal priesthood." By what right do we become "a royal priesthood?"  Just because a person calls himself a "Christian" and attends a church, Bible studies, and other various functions of Christianity does not make a person a "Christian" nor does it make a person "a royal priesthood." A "Christian" is one that has come to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and follows the commands and precepts of God.  The right to be  "a royal priesthood" is due to the atonement.  A person cannot earn this right for it is a free gift of God for all of his children.  Now, as a priest of God we have responsibility to God.  Are you prepared to be a priest of God?  Are you prepared to leave yourself resolutely alone and to launch out into the priestly work of prayer?  Are you willing to continue to look inside of yourself to see whether or not you are what you ought to be sold that you are not generating a self-centered, morbid type of Christianity, not the robust, simple life of the child of God.  Christianity is not a club, a sorority, and not a place where we get our feelings and our emotions rubbed so that we feel good about being a Christian.  Christianity is simply the simple life of the child of God and Intel we get into that understanding and develop a right relationship to God, then your relationship and your Christianity is hanging onto this truth by the skin of your teeth.  How often do we hear a Christian say what a wonderful victory they have gotten from God.  That may be true that God has given you a victory but there is nothing in that it indicates the miracle of Redemption.  An Authentic Christian is one who launches out in reckless belief that the Redemption is complete.  If you launch yourself out in his recklessness of belief then you are to bother yourself no more, but began to do as what Jesus Christ said we are to do.  This to do list includes praying for a friend who comes to you for help, to pray for other Christians in your congregation and around the world, that is to pray for all men and that the Gospel will reach very ears and that they will respond to the Holy Spirit leading them into faith.  Do you realize that you are only perfect in Jesus Christ?  Do not rely on this plea: "O Lord, I have done my best, please hear me."

     How long will it take for you to free yourself from the morbid habit of thinking about yourself?  We must come to the place where we get sick unto death of ourselves and there is no longer any surprise that anything God can tell us about ourselves.  We do not know the depth of the darkness within us, that morbid and is in meanness and ourselves.  We may not know, but God does know, and there is only one place to get ourselves to be right and that is in Jesus Christ.  When we reach that place, then we pour out of ourselves with all the worth we have in this ministry to clean out our interior and place all of our trust and faith in Jesus Christ.

     Those who do not do this are disobedient and this disobedience is shown in their lives as they shun the word of God. You who are honestly and obediently seeking the truth and are listening to the Holy Spirit as He leads you into the faith will come to know that you have been appointed to do this work outlined by Jesus Christ.  You are a priest, so act as a priest and chilled the praises of Jesus Christ who has called you out of this darkness that you are an and called you into his marvelous light.  You are not just a person of this world.  You are a child of God, a people of God, and you have received His mercy.  So what is holding you back?  It is not God.  It is not Satan.  It is you.  Therefore, only you can repent which means that you turn 180° from the way you are now going to the way that you should be traveling. you are not alone in his effort for you have the Holy Spirit speaking to you through his Word and by means of that quiet voice that speaks to your soul and only you can listen, only you have the power to hear.  Praise God for as a child of God and a priest of God and have received His mercy and have been appointed to spread the gospel have also been appointed to have eternal life.

Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD,

     I will frown on you no longer come for I am merciful,

declares the LORD, I will not be angry for ever.

     Only acknowledge your guilty -- you have rebelled

against the LORD your God, you have scattered your

     favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree,

and have not obeyed me, declares the LORD.

     Return, faithless people, declares the LORD,

for I am your husband.  I will choose you -- 1 from a town

     and two from a clan -- and bring you to Zion.

                               Jeremiah 3: 12b-- 14

Live as a priest of God

Richard L. Crumb

What Does It Mean: You Are A Priest Of God?

Wherefore laying aside all malice, 
 and all guile, and hypocrisies, and
envies, and ll evil speakings, as new
born babes, desire the sincere milk
of the word, that ye may grow thereby:
if so be ye have tasted that the Lord
is gracious. To whom coming, as unto 
a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, 
but chosen of God, and precious, ye also,
as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, 
an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

IPeter 2:1-5

     When a person come to believe in Jesus Christ and commits their lives to Him they are to put away those former things that kept them apart from God. The are not to cause evil, to speak evil, to be crafty, insidiously cunning, to be deceptive even if done artfully. To be insidious is to be one who intends entrap another, to operate inconspicuously so that this causes grave effect.    

The former things of life are to be put away forever and then you are to be committed to Jesus Christ. As a new Christian you are a babe in Jesus Christ. As a babe you do not need meat for if offered you would reject it for you desire to have milk which you then could digest. But as you grow you are to transfer you desire for milk to things that are meaty. This is possible if you have "tasted the Lord." If you taste Him you will find that it is good and that He is gracious. Jesus Christ is the "living stone," and as a living stone, even though "disallowed by men," has chosen you to also be "living stones." As a "living stone" you are solid in your faith and as one that is and has the living word of God in you are able to dispense this life giving message about the One and True Living Stone, Jesus Christ.   

     This building up of you into living stones is so that you as now a priest of God will offer acceptable sacrifices to God. To become a priest of God is so that you have some prominence in the Church, no, it is so that you as one of His priests will do the work that He commanded for His children to do: to spread the Gospel. That Gospel is not to give "ear tickling" messages, no it is to show and lead a person to understand that they are a sinner and deserve death which they will receive when Jesus returns. They must be taught that only by receiving Jesus into their hearts and lives can they have offered to them and receive from Him everlasting life. It is believe in Jesus that one receives salvation: "Wherefore also it is contained in the scriptures, behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded" (IPeter 2:6). 

     Yes, to believe on Jesus Christ goes against this world that, especially in this present day are doing all they can to remove Christianity from the face of the earth. Yes, this will cause you trouble, even persecution, trials, but there is only two sides to this coin: One side: life, the other side: death. The choice is yours: chose wisely!

The stone the builders rejected

    has become the capstone,

the LORD has done this, and it is

     marvelous in our eyes. This is

the day the LORD has made; let us 

    rejoice and be glad in it.

                       Psalm 118: 22-24

You are a priest of God: live it!

Richard L. Crumb 

Learning What It Means To Be Obedient

Seen ye have purified your souls in

obeying the truth through the Spirit

unto unfeigned love of the brethren,

see that ye love one another with a

pure heart fervently: being born again,

not a corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,

by the word of God, which liveth and

 abideth forever. For all the flesh is as

grass, and all the glory of man as the

flower of grass.  The grass withereth,

and the flower thereof falleth away:

but though word of the Lord endureth

forever.  And this is the word which by the 

Gospel is preached unto you.

I Peter 1: 22 -- 25

     Obedience is far too often something that we trifle with and use it whenever it is convenient.  For instance: in California where it is posted a maximum speed limit is 70 mph.  Yet, it is inconvenient to just travel 70 miles an hour when you are, let's say, going to Sacramento from Redding, California and somehow you are proud of yourself to make it in a shorter time as though this makes a person seem more glorious bodies of others.  The person does not leave on time to only travel 70 miles an hour but knows that if they travel 80 to 90 miles an hour they can make up any time that they did not give themselves before leaving.  This example is one of many examples that could be used to show that obedience is often simply used when it is convenient.  For instance, one sees a highway patrolman and immediately slows their car down to the speed limit posted.  What is obedience is the state or quality of being obedient or the act or practice of obeying, in other words comply and with or being submissive to authority.

     So what is the authority for an authentic Christian?  Is it not simply outlined for us in Scripture?  By Scripture a person is purifying their souls through the truth led by the Holy Spirit. It is by this obedience that a person has the ability to love their brothers and sisters and a sincere and genuine manner.  The word translated as "unfeigned" comes from the word "feign" and that word means to put an appearance that is fictitiously or deceptively, or an excuse, to make believe, to pretend.  So would be "unfeigned" is not to be any of those things.  This is true love and that true love has its foundation upon the word of God and our obedience to God's Word.

     An Authentic Christian is one who has been born again.  What does it mean to be born again?  When you came into this world by the means of birth of your mother you were born.  That birth gave you life.  When you have become an Authentic Christian who has converted their lives to follow the word of God they have been born again to eternal life.  The life of this earth for a person has an ending and that ending is death.  An Authentic Christian has a life that has no ending whereby there is no death.  It is a life that is incorruptible and our faith in the hope is based upon the sheer truth of God's Word.  It is this a word of God that lives for ever so that word will guide our lives eternally.  Man lives from B-to-D, birth to death, so the analogy of a flower that fades away or grass that dies and withers away represents in this life but the Word of God led by the Holy Spirit in our lives teaches us that that is not true for an Authentic Christian.  It is this that is the gospel that is preached unto you, that Jesus Christ died so that we can have eternal life and it is this that is being preached unto you.

     If you believe this and are obedient to this you have that eternal life, not by any works that you do, nor even by the Gospel that is preached to you, your eternal life comes to you by that death and life of Jesus Christ.  By means of this truth be become obedient and follow the leading by the Holy Spirit that is based upon the truth of Scripture.  We don't just go about by some vision or revelation that we believe has come from God, rather, we based all our decisions, all our exercise of life by a truthful examination of God's Word.  We do not base it upon any man's supposed truth even though he may be correct we will not know for sure unless we examine what he has said according to Scripture.  Turn off the TV, stop running to and fro, pick up your Bible, read it, study it, and allow the Holy Spirit to guide your study.  You may use commentaries, or Strong's concordance, all these things are good to have but they are not good if all they are doing is collecting dust.  The question is: are you an Authentic Christian, obedient, one who has been born again?

Now let the fear of the LORD,

     be upon you.  Judge carefully,

for with the LORD our God there is

no injustice or partiality or bribery.

                       2 Chronicles 19: 7

Praise God for He saves

Richard L. CrumbLearning