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[0:00] You're listening to a sermon recorded at Providence Community Church, Truth and Beauty in Community. If you are in the Kansas City area, please consider joining us in person next Sunday.

[0:12] We meet in Lenexa, Kansas at 10 a.m. every Lord's Day. Until then, we pray that as you open your Bibles, the Lord will open your heart to receive His Word.

[0:25] If you'll open your Bibles to the book of Exodus, chapter 12. Exodus, chapter 40, verse 12. Exodus, chapter 40, verse 12.

[0:37] While I've got you here, I do want to remind you that we do have our Christmas Eve candlelight service coming up. That'll be at 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve. And if you haven't been to one of those services, they're relatively brief but super meaningful.

[0:49] So I would really encourage you to carve out some time on Christmas Eve evening to be with us here at the church at 7 p.m. Well, today we're going to talk about the priesthood.

[1:01] We see this in our text in Exodus 40, 12, something that God has been doing all the way from Exodus chapter 20 forward. And that is, in addition to establishing His tabernacle, He is establishing a priesthood to minister in the tabernacle and the temple.

[1:18] So in verse 12 of chapter 40, we read, Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall wash them with water and put on Aaron the holy garments.

[1:32] And you shall anoint him and consecrate him, that he may serve me as a priest. You shall bring his sons also and put coats on them and anoint them as you anointed their father, that they may serve me as priests.

[1:48] And their anointing shall admit them to a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations. Now, why end the book of Exodus talking about the priesthood?

[2:01] Well, the Old Testament priesthood is central to Christianity all the way from the beginning of creation into the new creation, all the way from Genesis to Revelation.

[2:13] The Old Testament priesthood figures quite a bit. If you're a Christian, I could tell you this in the most broadest terms, God has big plans for you.

[2:24] If you're a Christian, God has big plans for you. If I knew the exact nature of those plans, we could charge admission. I don't know the exact nature.

[2:36] I simply know that God has big plans for you and that they have something to do, a lot to do, with this priestly role that we'll examine in Exodus today and really throughout the whole Bible.

[2:48] If you're kind of new here, one of the kind of low-key commitments we make in the preaching at Providence is to preach all the Bible every Sunday. We want you to see the one divine author overseeing the construction of this beautiful thing we call the Word of God over thousands of years.

[3:08] And what we'll do today is we'll examine the role of the priesthood so that we can understand what we're supposed to be because the Bible's quite clear that one of the things Jesus has done in saving us is that he has made us priests.

[3:24] 1 Peter 2, verse 9, And when we turn to the book of Revelation and see eternity presented before us on those pages, we see over and over again the book of Revelation that our permanent status before God forever will have to do with this priestly role.

[3:54] Revelation 1, verse 6, just one of several verses in Revelation that say something like, He made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

[4:09] Amen. So if you want to understand what it is like to be a Christian, you are wise to examine the priesthood in the Old Testament. But more than that, and more importantly, I suppose, is that if you want to understand Christ, you will need to understand the priesthood because he is held up throughout the New Testament as the fulfillment of the priesthood itself.

[4:31] So how can we take a relatively brief period of time, one sermon, and tell you all you need to know about the priesthood so that you understand what it's like to be a Christian and you see something of who Christ is like?

[4:46] Well, I'm just going to distill this down to a few things that we see throughout all the teaching about the Old Testament priesthood. Three words, priority, protection, and presence.

[4:58] Priority, protection, and presence. So let's just jump right in. When it comes to priority, what I mean by that is that the Levites were set apart by God to have really only one allegiance.

[5:11] They were not given land. They were not given an inheritance. Their inheritance was the priesthood, meaning priests were dedicated to God, and that's it.

[5:21] Deuteronomy 18, 1 through 2, amongst many verses, says that the Levitical priests, indeed the whole tribe of Levi, are to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel.

[5:32] They shall live on the food offerings presented to the Lord, for that is their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites. The Lord is their inheritance as he promised them.

[5:44] So there's a priority we see in the priesthood. They have one thing to do, and that is to serve the Lord. Number two, protection. They were to keep and guard the temple.

[5:55] The priests had one priority, to worship and serve the Lord alone, and they were in charge of protecting the temple. They were to keep and guard the temple. It would not be surprising to me if when thinking about a priest, your mind wanders to some effeminate man in a collar.

[6:15] And one of the great things you'll need to do to detach and grasp what the Old Testament actually says is you'll need to understand that the Levites were singled out even before the priesthood as especially violent men.

[6:29] If there is a special operator, a special forces in the Bible, it is the Levites. They were chosen from the very beginning when Isaac issued his blessings over the tribes.

[6:43] He named Levite as a particularly violent group of men. Zach Garris writes, The Levites were not just priests. They were warrior priests.

[6:54] Their priestly origin is based in righteous violence. But God put that violent nature of the Levites to good use. Not only would the priests among them slaughter the animals on a regular basis, but also the Levites would guard the tabernacle and temple and the cities of refuge.

[7:13] Yahweh ordained and scattered the Levites throughout Israel in order to guard his worship. One representative passage for that would be in Numbers chapter 3 verse 5.

[7:24] And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near and set them before Aaron the priest that they may minister to him. They shall keep guard over him and over the whole congregation before the tent of meeting as they minister at the tabernacle.

[7:40] They shall guard all the furnishings of the tent of meeting and keep guard over the people of Israel as they minister at the tabernacle. And you shall give the Levites to Aaron and his sons.

[7:52] They are wholly given to him from among the people of Israel. And you shall appoint Aaron and his sons and they shall guard their priesthood. But if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death.

[8:04] It wasn't that long ago that we were looking at the golden calf passage. And at the end of that passage, when Moses has to deal with a whole mass of people who had let themselves run wild into heathen insanity, he calls upon the Levites to grab their swords.

[8:21] Levites were a protector of God's worship, of God's temple. And finally, presence. That's the third way to describe the priests' presence.

[8:32] They were responsible for entering the presence of the Lord, which under the old covenant was a really risky thing. I don't think it's any coincidence that God chose some of the most hard-headed, masculine, machismo kind of guys to do this one thing, to willingly enter into the presence of the Lord, which at that time was seen as a potential suicide mission.

[9:01] If you'll remember, at the end of the book of Exodus, or at the end of Exodus chapter 20, the people see God as he is, represented in lightning and thunder on a smoking mountain, and they say to Moses, you speak to God and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die.

[9:20] And so these masculine priests were in charge not only of protecting the temple, but even more riskily, they were in charge of entering the presence of God.

[9:31] If you do a search of the word die in the book of Exodus, a bunch of them have to do with what the Levites must do in order to enter God's presence and not die.

[9:42] The presumption was, if you entered God's presence as a sinner, you would die. And so Exodus 28, 35, and it shall be on Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard and when he goes to the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out so that he does not die.

[9:58] Exodus 28, 43, they shall be on Aaron and his sons when they go into the tent of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place lest they bear guilt and die.

[10:09] This is sort of the interesting thing you can ask about your job. Is there any part of the training manual that includes, do this or you'll die, do that or you'll die, do this or you'll die?

[10:22] You know, that's an important aspect of the priesthood that you need to understand. So, priority, they were serving the Lord alone. Protection, they were meant to use their tendency toward violence to protect the temple and the people and presence.

[10:38] They were to regularly, at least once a year, enter the Holy of Holies, the high priesthood, and this was a very, very risky thing. Now, while we're talking about this idea of entering the Holy of Holies, I want to make a little side quest with you in a moment because I think there's something important that's here that I think maybe a lot of us don't know.

[11:01] And that is, I don't think most Christians understand that the tabernacle and the temple were really designed by God to be echoes of Eden. The tabernacle and the temple were really just a recapitulation, a revisiting of what Eden was originally.

[11:19] We can see this through at least three clues that are in the text. The first one I've already referenced. There's this phrase, guard and keep. The Hebrew is abad and samar.

[11:31] And what guard and keep means when it appears together like this, it goes all the way back to Genesis when God put Adam in the garden in Genesis 2.15 to guard and keep the garden and to work it.

[11:45] Eden was a place of God's localized presence. And the reason that sinful man had to leave was that sinful man cannot stay in God's localized presence and not die.

[11:57] So one of the indicators we see that the temple and the tabernacle, which is all kind of the same thing, is a revisiting of Eden, is that the priests are given the exact same language, a highly specific language in their job description that hearkens back to Adam.

[12:13] There's a second piece of evidence that we can use to see this connection. If you'll remember what happened when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, what did God do? He placed two cherubim in front of the garden with flaming swords to prevent entry.

[12:31] Now, let's say you're a priest and you walk into the temple and you're nearing the Holy of Holies. Everything is separated, the Holy of Holies and everything else through this mighty thick veil.

[12:43] And past that point is where the presence of God is said to dwell. And this is the place where you die if you haven't prepared yourself properly. You know what was on that veil? What God instructed, we didn't read this in Exodus, but it's in there, what God instructed to be embroidered on that veil was two flaming cherubim.

[13:04] So that the priest would be entering back into Eden symbolically, back into man's original state, back into the presence of God.

[13:15] And there's one more piece of evidence. We didn't read a lot of this either, but you might have remembered if you were reading through Exodus that the priests were supposed to be, you know, decked out in jewels.

[13:28] They were supposed to be decked out in glory and grandeur. This is really how God viewed Adam before the fall. We have a text that tells us that the way that God viewed Adam was as a man clothed in jewelry.

[13:43] Not that he was literally clothed in jewels, but that that was the glory that human beings had before they fell. When God looked at mankind before the fall, he saw a glorious being, a crown, the crown of creation.

[14:01] We have a text through this in Ezekiel 28 where God is talking to the king of Tyre, but he is reminding himself or hearkening back to how he viewed Adam in the garden.

[14:14] Thus says the Lord God, Ezekiel 28 11, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.

[14:26] Every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, diamond, barrel, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings.

[14:38] On the day that you were created, they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God. In the midst of stones of fire you walked.

[14:48] You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you. How did God view Adam and Eve in the garden? They weren't literally clothed with jewels, at least not yet, but what he's talking about here is this is what a human being looks like who isn't a sinner.

[15:07] This is what you and I were created to be. We were created to be kings and queens of creation. We were created to wear a kind of glory and walk in the presence of God.

[15:21] Well, that description of Adam and Ezekiel maps on pretty well to what God says Aaron and his priest should wear in Exodus 28.2.

[15:31] You shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, for glory and for beauty. in Exodus 28.15. You shall make a breast piece of judgment and skilled work in the style of an ephod you shall make it of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen you shall make it.

[15:48] A row of sardis and topaz and carbuncle shall be the first row and the second row ebnerled sapphire and a diamond and so on and so forth. You see, what is happening with the priestly action is that he is essentially temporarily undoing the curse.

[16:08] There is a temporary once a year glimpse that God is showing when the priest re-enters the presence of God of this is what you have lost in the fall.

[16:19] This is who you all were before the fall. God is sending this priest into the Edenic presence of God once a year to show the people what their destiny always was and who they were created to always be.

[16:36] They were always created to be in the presence of God. This is kind of a disturbing story for some of you I suppose but when I was fishing a lot years ago I would sometimes catch these big catfish and I would take them home and cook them and only I would eat them because no one else in my family likes fish.

[16:56] And you know I had a decent little bit of a drive and I wanted them to stay fresh so I would just throw them in the back of the pickup truck after I caught them and I'd drive home back of the Jeep. And one thing about catfish is they don't suffocate quickly.

[17:13] They kind of groan and croak as they are trying to breathe air they're not supposed to breathe. And so they kind of gurgle.

[17:25] It takes them a while to suffocate. A regular fish will suffocate pretty quickly. A catfish there's some other fish like this too. They kind of hang on for a while. They can kind of half breathe air I suppose you might say.

[17:36] Listen friends one key to the priesthood is just knowing who you are and who you're made to be. This is a key of understanding Genesis as well. And let me just be simple about it. You were made to live in the presence of God.

[17:49] Like a fish was made to breathe water you were made to live in an Edenic localized presence of God. That's what you were made for. And what you're doing right now is at best hanging on.

[18:05] What you're doing right now is at best a sort of suboptimal existence that won't have its complete reversal until you die and are with Christ in heaven. You and I were made to live in the presence of God.

[18:18] Now you've gotten used to gurgling. You've gotten used to wheezing through this half kind of half appropriate situation. You were not made for this.

[18:30] I was not made for this. We were made to walk with God. We were made to be in God's presence. And our fundamental design is all tilted in that direction.

[18:41] And a lot of the problems we encounter with sin and why people go to idols and substitutes has to do with this problem. But what we see in the priesthood is that God is even after man has been sinning for quite some time, God is still progressing forward in a plan to reverse the curse and bring all mankind back into the garden.

[19:03] Now, that's where we come, that's kind of how the Old Testament ends. And then we get to Jesus and we see that he is both the new and perfect Adam and he is the great high priest.

[19:17] He's doing both of these things throughout all of his ministry and sometimes it's explicit. Other times it's not. But Jesus is the new Adam. He's come to be the new king of creation and to be a priest before the most high God.

[19:30] Now, a text that I think shows this to you pretty clearly is John 17. So, if you'll turn in your Bibles to John 17 verse 1, I want you to see the priesthood of Jesus at work.

[19:43] The priesthood of Jesus at work. Remember, we had three kind of descriptors for what a priest does. They are prioritizing God. He is their only thing.

[19:54] That's what they're there for. That's what they're there to do. Serve God. Protection and presence. So, let's go through John 17, which is Jesus' high priestly prayer, and let's see if we can see Jesus doing these three things.

[20:06] look at John 17 verse 1. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all you have given him.

[20:25] And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

[20:38] And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had before the world existed. Well, one thing we know pretty clearly if we've read our Gospels is that Jesus really only was about the Father's business.

[20:50] His priority was to do the work of the Father. And in this prayer, in verse 4, we see Jesus say, I have done all the work you've called me to do. In a number of other passages in the Gospel, Jesus is explicit.

[21:01] I only do what I see my Father doing. I have only come to do the works of the Father. So, he is aligned in that priestly priority. He has no inheritance other than that which God has given him.

[21:14] He did not take a wife. He did not own land. He is aligned in this sense. Number two, protection. Do we see Jesus guarding and keeping the temple?

[21:26] Well, now this is where things get a little interesting with the new covenant wrinkles, right? We see development here. Who is Jesus guarding and protecting in John 17?

[21:37] Well, look at verse 10. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world. And I am coming to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

[21:54] While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except for the son of destruction that the scriptures might be fulfilled.

[22:07] Now, we do see he's guarding and keeping. What is he guarding and keeping? the people? The people. Because through the ministry of Jesus Christ on the cross, the people are the temple now.

[22:20] You, my friend, are a dwelling place between God and man. You, your heart is a temple. Paul tells us very clearly that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus has shifted from guarding and keeping a localized expression of God's presence to guarding and keeping the invisible church, all the saints of God, not only those who existed at that moment when he prayed, but all those who would exist.

[22:46] And yeah, he's guarding and keeping them. There are three enemies we see typically in scripture that oppose God's temple people, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And in this passage we see Jesus praying that God would take care of them in each one of those aspects.

[23:03] He says they're not of the world, please guard them from the world, please guard them from the evil one, and then he says sanctify them, which is handling our flesh. So is Jesus exercising the protective role as a priest?

[23:17] Yes, he is. Now what about the presence of God? How is Jesus entering the presence of God? Well, I think it's important to remind us all that the whole idea of Christmas is that he who was rich became poor so that in him we might become rich.

[23:31] He left the glorious richness and presence of God and Jesus was indeed the presence of God on earth. One of the interesting wrinkles in the New Testament is that God flips the script on beauty.

[23:49] You see, the Old Testament priests had an outward, superficial, designation of Adam's former glory.

[24:00] It was on the outside. Jesus comes in the form of a servant, born in a manger, with no glory or majesty that any should desire him, Isaiah 53.

[24:13] All of his glory is on the inside. He's actually the glorious one who gave Adam his original glory. Jesus doesn't need to wear a vestment of jewels to portray his beauty before the Lord.

[24:28] He simply is glorious before the Father. Jesus has an inherent glory. Now, another wrinkle in all of this is that in the Old Testament, this clothing design, they made this outfit, and they would pass it on to each high priest each new year.

[24:49] By the way, John the Baptist's dad, where do we find him? He's one of these high priests. That's where he gets the vision for the coming Messiah and his son's role in all of this.

[25:02] But the robes were passed down. That's the thing I want you to remember. The robes were passed down. They didn't make a new outfit every year. I guess there was some kind of fitness routine because you didn't want anybody to get too fat.

[25:16] They couldn't fit into the wardrobe. They would pass this down year after year and the next high priest would come in and put the head dress on and everything and he would enter past the flaming cherubim into the presence of God.

[25:29] What about Jesus? How do we get his glory? Jesus actually says in verse 22 the glory that you have given me I have given to them.

[25:40] So Jesus is actually passing us his righteousness which isn't a superficial righteousness it's a righteousness that God accounts as coming from the inside out.

[25:56] Father I desire verse 24 that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

[26:08] So what we see in Jesus is that he is actually the one who makes us all the priests that we will be forever and ever. In Revelation 5 9 through 10 Jesus is seen as the great curse reverser.

[26:21] He is not just the redeemer of your soul he is actually redeeming mankind's original glory and original destiny to rule the earth with him.

[26:33] Revelation 5 9 through 10 and they sang Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth.

[26:55] So what Jesus has done in coming as the great final Adam and great final high priest is he's restored you and I to the original design we were created to do and that is to be priests before the Lord and serve the Lord as our only priority now there are three applications to this idea we've covered these three ideas that the priest did three things his priority was the Lord's he would protect the temple and he would enter into God's presence we see Jesus doing those three things in a much more extraordinary and glorious way so now there are three pieces of application that I want to leave you with because of all that we've said because all that we've said is true the following is also true number one all of my life belongs to the Lord all of my life belongs to the Lord I'm like a priest in that way you are like a priest in that way you're not supposed!

[27:53] to have anything else going on your whole point is to serve the Lord with every little bit of your being you know sometimes over the years I'll see a certain kind of person typically rather defiant and struggle a bit with submission they will often throw up the priesthood of the believer the reformed doctrine of the priesthood of the believer saying I don't need anybody to tell me what to do I'm a priest before God it's like well okay but the main thrust of the priesthood of the believer is that your whole life belongs to him and you have to serve him with every fiber of your being every minute of your day and that's the real implication what I typically see people doing is they're using it for this one thing so I don't have to listen to anybody but then I my whole life belongs to the Lord I'm a priest of the Lord my whole life belongs to the

[28:53] Lord in his classic work practical Christianity William Wilberforce writes the following it is the grand essential practical characteristic of true Christians that relying on the promises to repenting sinners of acceptance through the Redeemer they have renounced and abjured all other masters have cordially and unreservedly devoted themselves to God Christians are become the sworn enemies of sin they will henceforth hold no parley with it they will allow it no shape they will admit it to no composition the war they have denounced against it is universal and irreconcilable but this is not all it is now their determined purpose to yield themselves without reserve to the reasonable service of their rightful sovereign they are not their own their bodily mental facilities their natural and acquired endowments their substance their authority their time their influence all these they consider as belonging to them not for their own gratification but as instruments to be consecrated to the honor and employed in the service of

[30:08] God! This must be the master principle to which every other must be subordinate whatever may have been hitherto their ruling passion or leading pursuit whether sensual or intellectual of science taste fancy or feeling must exist only at the pleasure and be put altogether under the control and the direction of its true and legitimate superior give your life all of your life to the Lord Jesus you're not your own you were bought with a price you've been brought into a perpetual priesthood God doesn't get a segment of your life God gets it all and if there's something in your life right now that is pretty clearly reserved not for him well friends this is the Holy Spirit speaking through the preaching of God's word putting you cannot live in antithesis to your fundamental design and your fundamental design my friends if you are bought by the blood of

[31:10] Jesus is to give your whole life to him and serve him and him only that's one point of application because of the working of the priesthood through the Old Testament the New Testament and the work of Jesus my whole life belongs!

[31:31] I am called to guard God's temple people I am very eager for a return to the cultural respect once held toward those who express love through the act of protection I am so weary of a world that has forgotten to esteem protectors as godly kind generous people we want love to be a doting kind of thing an affirming kind of thing and we've lost all respect for this fundamental expression of love which is I will give my life to keep you safe well friends because you are a priest and because I am a priest in Christ we are called to guard and keep God's precious temple people you look to your left you look to your world the flesh the devil and friends it's your job and my job to guard and keep these temple people we're to bear one another's burdens!

[32:40] We're to look eagerly after other people's interests and not only our own interests and we're even to warn and admonish people when they start to cross into a dangerous line we've got to get back to seeing Christian love as essentially a protective love a love that guards and keeps the things it cherishes and we've got to get familiar and comfortable with the fact that people love us enough to guard and keep us and to warn us and to admonish us and to exhort us so number one all my life belongs to the Lord number two big part of how I should show love as a priest is to guard and keep God's temple people number three third application prayer is supposed to be a big part of my life prayer is supposed to be a big part of my life Spurgeon said if any of you should ask me for the epitome of the Christian life I would say that it is in one word prayer is that how is that how your

[33:42] Christian life is is prayer the epitome of your Christian life why would Spurgeon say that why would he say that prayer is the epitome of the Christian life because friends you were made to live in God's presence and what Jesus has done in offering himself for you is he has made it possible for you to boldly approach the throne of grace how will you express the protective care over those that you love you'll original design to be in God's presence you'll go into God's presence with prayer that's what the book of Hebrews says prayer is an incredible privilege it's an incredible privilege Hebrews 4 14 since then we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens Jesus the son of God let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need and

[34:53] I think that if I had to say why so many people struggle with prayer is mostly I believe a fundamental misunderstanding about their own nature I just think that we just to be in the presence of God and there's really no way of telling someone who has spent their whole life suffocating that they're not breathing well they've become completely desensitized to that which should have been normal and friends as Christians we're the only people on earth who get to do this we're the only people on earth who get to draw near boldly approach the throne of grace and spend time in God's presence not just once in the morning but all day to pray without ceasing is an incredible privilege and if you want to learn to feel as alive as you were made to feel at least as alive as you can feel on this earth before the new creations if you want to learn to feel alive you've got to learn how to pray without ceasing you've got to learn how to repeatedly all the time throughout the day conversate with your

[36:00] God friends you will notice a development a difference you will and you'll look back to all of those times you spent barely communicating barely spending any time in the presence of God and you'll look back at that and think how did I ever get along some of you have discovered some kind of food allergy or something that was really wreaking havoc with your health and you unplug from this one thing and suddenly a if you learn to pray so I think when most people don't pray I think they don't understand how badly they need it and how much their entire being was designed to be in the presence of God I suppose there's another thing I could cover just quickly and that is a lot of people probably don't pray because they don't understand the gloriousness that Christ has put on them I don't understand they aren't clothed with mere jewels they are clothed with the very glory of

[37:07] Christ that which Jesus asked to be given to us in his high priestly! prayer in John 17 has been given to us as we move to communion I think I would tell you this I think that if you want to understand the sweeping story of the Old Testament and New Testament through the lens of priest I would suggest imagine that Jesus put your sin on him and entered into the holy of holies what would happen he would die so what is the death of Jesus under the wrath of God what is substitutionary atonement how does Jesus receive the wrath of God upon us it's all if we cobble together the imagery and I think a biblically appropriate way we can just imagine this Jesus puts on your 40 years of sin some of you are only 20 but you've sinned 40 years worth he puts it all on you all of the disgusting and he walks in past the flaming cherubim into the holy presence of

[38:18] God destroyed why did he do that he did that so that that death might be endured on him and not on you but he also did that so that he could give you his garments so that now when you enter the throne room of grace when you go to pray you're wearing the garments of Christ the glories of Christ so I suppose that some people don't pray because they don't understand how desperately they need to but I suppose others don't pray because they don't understand how God sees them now that you put on this isn't role playing this isn't LARPing you my dear saint based solely on the gift of grace that Jesus made possible by his coming living dying and being raised has given you his glory so that you may boldly approach the throne of grace and you may begin to experience the life that you have always been designed to live not simply going somewhere to spend some time with

[39:28] God but to go throughout your day just like Adam was supposed to in the presence of God ruling and subduing in your own individual life so maybe it'll help you as you come to communion to think of this this idea that Jesus took on your sin knowing that that sin would kill him and he did that so that he could give you his own righteousness so now you can come that the Lord Jesus has made provision for your sin for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which I pray that you'll come now and taste and see that the

[40:38]  Lord is good