Called to a priesthood

I thought this excerpt from a Ray Stedman teaching on Leviticus was very relevant to our time. The sermon that this section was pulled from was written in 1971!

…we are learning the great truth which time and again in the course of history seems to be lost and then recovered again — this marvelous truth of the priesthood of every believer in Jesus Christ. At times down through the centuries, unfortunately, the idea of priesthood has become very distorted in the Christian church. Various groups have set aside bodies of men ordained as priests and treated as different from other people, as “super saints” who have a special “in” with God. But the New Testament teaches nothing like that. It instructs us that every believer in Jesus Christ is a priest and has a ministry, and that our whole purpose for existence as believers is to fulfill our priesthood.

When this truth is recovered it always has the fantastic power to change a whole civilization. Whenever this has been taken seriously by the church in any nation it has always resulted in a tremendous awakening, a fantastic change of pace, and a vast improvement in the quality of life. Institutions and organizations which have been committed to injustice and have been causing the deterioration of society have been challenged, and much of what, in the best sense, we call “civilization” has been recovered through the impact of this truth. When Martin Luther and the reformers discovered and spread this truth, and people began to appropriate it, the Reformation swept through Europe like wildfire and completely altered the course of European history. I am grateful that once again God in these days is calling the church, a sleeping, slumbering evangelical church, which has largely forgotten this truth — it has slipped through our fingers and we have lost its impact — God is calling us back to take this truth seriously once again.