Monday 16 February 2009

How Do Christians Understand their Role in Their Home Nation?

The New Testament Church is described in the Bible as a Royal Priesthood. That sounds pompous, but what does it actually mean?

The Bible is the answer to all its own questions. For me one of the best places to find the answer is Numbers 8:17-19.

The priests were a ransomed people. A people that should have been dead, had it not been for the mercy of God and the many Passover lambs that were slaughtered in their place. Saved from death, they are put to work ministering in the tabernacle/temple. Working under the direction of the high priest, they would do all that was necessary to maintain the spiritual health of the nation.

For example, they would offer sacrifices on behalf of the people:

They would lead the people in praise,

and pronounce a blessing on them:

They would look after all the articles used in temple worship. All of them symbols of the Heavenly reality that is coming.

They would also teach the people all that was in the law and how to live it.

What is both fascinating and terrifying from the Numbers passage mentioned above is that when the priests do their job properly, the nation is safe. If they fail to teach the people how to approach God or fail to do their job properly, the Lord would break out against the nation of Israel with a plague.

The priesthood of Christians is royal. Christians are children of God and therefore bonded familial-y and eternally to the God of Heaven.

We have both a privilege and a responsibility under our great high priest, Jesus, to show our people how to approach God and also plead on their behalf before him.

Final judgment seems to come on a people/nation when sin reaches its climax. Biblically that appears to be when child sacrifice and/or sexual deviancy are happening systematically and en masse! I put it to me and you that with all kinds of perversion being held up as good and the god of convenience being worshiped at the altar of the abortion clinic waging war on the truly weak, now is as important a time as any to pray for mercy upon our nation of (Great?!) Britain, regardless of her economic prosperity or lack thereof. Lest our wickedness see us vomited off the land on which we live.

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