the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
A royal priesthood. - 1 Peter 2:9.
THE kingly and the priestly offices among the Jews belonged to different tribes. Judah had the sceptre, Levi had the censer. These were not found united in the same person; therefore, when king Uzziah stretched forth his hand to seize the censer in the temple to burn incense, his arm withered away. Before the law, in the time of the patriarchs, Melchizedek was priest of the most high God: and he was also king of Salem, which is, being interpreted, king of peace; therefore the apostle makes him a greater type of the Messiah than Aaron.
We read that Christ was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows; for he, as Zechariah expresses it, is a priest upon his throne; that is, he is both King and Priest. His followers are called upon to resemble him. We are told they are made “kings and priests unto God.” Here they reign and they minister; they reign as kings over their spiritual enemies, and they will be “more than conquerors through him that loved them;” and they will wear crowns of righteousness, which shall not fade away. Then they also are priests ministering in things pertaining to God.
A priest must have an altar, “whereof,” says Paul, “they have no right to eat, who serve the tabernacle.” A priest must always have something to offer, and they “offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” What are these sacrifices? A broken heart and a contrite spirit; alms, odours of a sweet smell, prayers and praises. And we are to present our bodies, says the apostle, “as a living sacrifice unto God, which is our reasonable service.” In some communities the term priest is applied exclusively to ministers. But this has no countenance in the New Testament. These are names which apply to the laity as well as to ministers. All who are the partakers of divine grace are there considered as sacred characters. They are a royal priesthood.
Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? - James 4:1.
THESE words breathe battle; and who is a stranger to the fact that war is a great evil? Alas, that we should, become familiar with the language and imagery of war. But ever since man became an apostate from his God, he became an enemy to his brother; and from the death of Abel to this hour our earth has been one field of blood. Isaiah says, “Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise;” the thrillings of the trumpets, the orders of the officers, the prancings of the cavalry, the clashings of the weapons, the shouts of the victors, the groans of the vanquished and dying, “and with garments rolled in blood,” some enclosing bodies already dead, others enclosing bodies dismembered or wounded, rolling in rueful anguish from side to side in gore, and with the destruction of animals, especially of the generous horse, and with the demolition of buildings which had housed happy families before, and with the tears, and sighs, and lamentations, and sufferings of widows and orphans, and with the temporary suspension of all the laws of morality.
No wonder, therefore, that Jeremiah exclaimed, “My bowels, my bowels. I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war.” And no wonder the Church should have said, “Scatter thou the nations that delight in war.” In the words of the Apostle James, we are reminded of the source from whence these dreadful scenes originated: “Only by pride cometh contention,” and “Whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” For sin, in all its forms,
“Brought death into our world and all its woe.”
Dire as is the evil, we may rejoice even in hope. A philosopher has said that if the ages of the world be compared with the ages of human life, the world has not yet passed its childhood, for, like children, we have not left off to quarrel and fight about trifles. But a better era is dawning. Nations will recover their senses, and learn their true interests, and to see that all wars are expensive and injurious, and that none of them, however skilfully conducted or successfully terminated, are ever gainful; and they will have recourse to negotiation and arbitration, rather than appeal to warfare. And do not the Scriptures of the God of peace tell us that a period shall arrive when they shall “beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks?” when “nation shall no more lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more?” “And what he has promised he is able also to perform.” Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Then these contentions among nations should lead us to think of something better; to rise from things seen and temporal to things unseen and eternal. And here we shall find the sacred writers going before us. They describe genuine religion as a warfare-a warfare, but a good warfare; and they represent Christians as soldiers-soldiers, but good soldiers of Jesus Christ, fighting the good fight of faith, and laying hold on eternal life.
