From Garden to Glory: 10 Days Through the Bible's Grand StoryНамуна

Day 5: A Kingdom of Priests

KINGDOM OF PRIESTS AND A HOLY NATION

What did God mean when he told the people of Israel they were going to be a kingdom of priests? Did he mean they were going to walk around in white collars and black robes? No. To understand this phrase, it helps to consider what priests do. Priests act as a go-between, an intermediary between God and man. They talk to God about the needs and failures of the people, and they talk to the people about how to worship and serve God.

By calling the Israelites priests, God was telling them they were to serve the whole world by being go-betweens. They were to pray for the surrounding nations and tell them about their great and mighty God. He was inviting his people to be participants in his story. They now had a part to play in this great rescue mission—not only as receivers of God’s mercy and grace, but also as those who could invite others in.

God united the Israelites to his mission to redeem a people for himself. As always, God’s sights were set on the whole world. It might have been easy for this newly formed nation to think that when God said he wanted to be their God, he was rejecting the rest of the world. But that has never been the case. God’s sights have always been on all the people of earth—even before the fall. God was giving this new nation, Israel, not just a purpose, but also an identity: They were his people, treasured, loved, and redeemed. They had a mission: They were called to be both receivers of God’s great mercy and extenders of it. Through them, God would make himself known throughout the world. And they were told what was required of them to be faithful partners in this beautiful relationship: They were to be holy. In other words, Israel was not saved for Israel’s sake alone.

Peeking ahead in our story a bit, how well did Israel do at mediating God’s presence and blessing to the surrounding nations? Not very!

A large part of the Old Testament is the story of how the people of Israel insisted on synchronizing themselves with the surrounding nations. The book of Judges chronicles Israel’s repeated downward spirals of leaving God, acting like the nations around them, being taken into captivity, crying out to God, and being rescued by God. Even many centuries later, in the book of Ezekiel, we read that Israel still wanted to “be like the nations” (Ezekiel 20:32).

The flip side of this coin is separatism. Even though syncretism was more often than not Israel’s problem, at other times, Israel so far removed herself from engaging the other nations that she was completely ineffective in her call to minister to them. This was the problem Jesus addressed in the parable of the good Samaritan.

The priest and the Levite (both Israelite religious leaders) didn’t stop to help the beaten man on the roadside because they didn’t want to become “unclean.” They were separatists.

Israel failed at fulfilling her mission to be a kingdom of priests to the world. But the good news is that we have one who did not fail; he was the perfect Israelite in every way. Jesus is the true and holy priest who can and does mediate God’s blessings to the whole world, and the true King of the kingdom who now functions as God’s light to a dark world.