Jevon Martin: Hey, Waterway. My name is Jesse. I'm one of the pastors here at Your Church. This is Javon. He's one of the other pastors here at Your Church. That's right. It's good to be with you today. This is actually take two today because the first one that we started just a few minutes ago totally fell apart. I started laughing, couldn't think of the right word. So we're gonna try to do it better this time. What do you think, Javon? Yeah, let's give it a shot. Ready to go? I I think we might be able to do it. All right. So so here we are. It's the second full week of July, and we are continuing in on this series of Jesus Christ as kind of the The fulfillment of the types and shadows and the hints that we find in the Old Testament about who the Messiah was going to be. And so today, instead of just zeroing in on one character from the Old Testament, I kind of got hung up on some of the images that were talked about, especially in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, talking about who Jesus was and talking about three of the offices or three of the roles that Jesus fulfilled that were filled by humans in the Old Testament. And then fulfilled by Jesus Christ now. That's the offices of prophet, priest, and king. And so just wanted to kind of roll through that quickly here. About the middle of the summer, we're we're kind of in the middle of this series of sermons and podcasts too. what did we say? This is podcast number eight. We think so. We think this is podcast number eight. So we're trying to get this figured out. But if you have any questions or thoughts, call the church, let us know. And if they're kind, Lana will pass them along. but yeah, as we come. Continue to think about who Jesus is, how he fulfills some of this Old Testament prophecy. Looking at the office of prophet, priest, and king, wanted to talk about that for a little bit today because some of these offices, especially prophet and priest, might be a little bit unfamiliar to some of us, especially kind of in our Anabaptist and Mennonite transfer. Do run into a prophet every week or? not that I'm aware of not that I'm aware of either. Or priest for that matter. Well, I I think I run into a lot of priests every week, but we're we're getting Well, that's true. That's so here we go. But but yeah, so a prophet, as we look at just a really basic definition of a prophet, a prophet is somebody who represents God before people. Okay. So like Moses was one of these. We've been talking and preaching about Moses the last few weeks and thinking about the law. Moses delivered the law, delivered God's words to the people. So he was a prophet and he fulfilled that role well. Lots of other prophets in the Old Testament. You know, we talk about Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah, all these prophets who brought God's word to the people. And so they represented God before the people. In the book of Hebrews, which is in the New Testament, it says that God spoke through the prophets in the Old Testament, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his son. So Jesus, through his life and through his death and then resurrection, Jesus is. Representing God before us in showing us how God would like us to live. This is why we spend so much time in our context here looking at the gospels. What did Jesus say? What did he teach? Right. And we see his teaching as ultimate above all. Referred to as the living word, right? Exactly right. He is the word of God before us. And so this affects some of the way that we do things, right? We we take the old testament seriously, but we know that Jesus has fulfilled what those Old Testament prophets were pointing towards. And so if the Old Testament says one thing and Jesus says something Different, we listen to Jesus. He is the newer version, he is the perfect prophet that's bringing God's word as a representative before the people. So Jesus fulfills that role of prophet. He also fulfills the role of priest. And through the Old Testament, we see a number of priests, and there gets to be an official Levitical priesthood. You know, we've talked about that for just a moment. We talked about that a little bit with some of the offering and communion kind of stuff we talked about some weeks ago. Melchizedek. With Melchizedek, Hebrews chapter three, talking about this again in the book of Hebrews, says that Jesus is our great high priest. Hebrews, in fact, says that Jesus offered up prayers and petitions. He suffered for us. He is our source of salvation because a priest is a person who represents the people before God. Prophet represents God before the people. Priest represents the people before God. In the book of Hebrews it says Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Yeah. Which if you want to learn more about that, go back to what was Sermon two of this series. It was very early, back in Genesis, Genesis 10, 11, 12, 13. Something like that. Some of those early chapters picking up some of what's happening as Abraham is rolling around. That's a that's or that's a that's an interesting name. Put that put that Melchizedek on the name of Baby future baby name something. Not hearing a lot of people with that name anymore. I know Melky Cabrera played for was it for the Yankees for a while. interesting. I don't know if Melky was short for Melchizedek or not. That's the closest thing that I've seen, Javon. And that's just old baseball card knowledge. Yeah. but Jesus is the perfect prophet. Old. You know, like twenty years ago, right? Old stuff. Yeah, it was about six years I'm sorry. We'll keep going. Jesus So Jesus is the fulfillment of being what it means to be a prophet, a prophet representative. Jesus is a perfect priest. He represents the people before God. And then he's also our perfect king. this was talked about before Jesus was even born. The angel Gabriel came to Mary and said, your son, he'll be great, will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. Something that was often talked about in the Old Testament, that the Messiah would take the throne of David. in in the angel's announcement, the annunciation to Mary, he says. That Jesus will reign over Jacob's descendants forever, his kingdom will never end, he will be great, he'll be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over Jacob's descendants forever, his kingdom will never end. And so Jesus is a perfect prophet, he's a perfect priest, he's a perfect king. Jesus is already ruling. Right? He's ruling in heaven. He rules in our hearts. however, the earth has still been allowed to be under the rule of evil for some time as as history is unfolding and we're seeing who these people are who are going to give their allegiance to the Lord and recognize him as king. but we know that there is coming a day when all evil will be wiped out, every knee will bow, every Tear will be dried, right? And I think I think as you're like you're mentioning, like some of these they're weird for us to think about. Even that king one. Like we have a president, we have a democracy, but this concept of a king who you pledge full allegiance to. You're you're you're what the king says goes, right? And I think it's just interesting. We I don't know that we often grasp like we're declaring Christ as king. That means he he is the ultimate authority in our lives. We're putting him as the one who rules and reigns over our own lives when we surrender to him. And I've heard it talked about too with that that name Christ is referring to that that that concept of Jesus as king being Christ the Messiah is literally declaring him as that royal king that you're referring to. But when we read Christ we almost just treat it as a name. Right. Like here's his that's his last name, right? Right. But it's actually that title the gospel writers are literally constantly declaring his kingship. And I feel like sometimes we just kind of yeah, Christ is king, yeah. It's like, well that's not hold on, like that's not a small topic, but so exactly right. And that was why I wanted to bring that up today, because honestly. No, you're exactly right. I mean, that's why I wanted to bring this up today, because I think especially here at Waterway in our Mennonite context, when we think of prophets and priests and kings, right, those can feel a little bit abstract to us. Even though this is clearly taught in scripture. this these are not titles that we put on people. very often or these are not titles that we interact with very often. And so it can feel just kind of old and abstract. We can say, what's the point? But This really does, these titles and the way that we think about Jesus fulfilling these roles of prophet, priest, and king really do affect how we do church here. So for example, Jesus is the ultimate prophet, right? His words represent God to us. And Jesus still speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, but there are some traditions that will call their priest, or I'm sorry, they will call their pastor or a person who speaks at their church. They might give them the name prophet, you know, someone who is representing God to the people. And while you and I certainly stand up in front of the church on Sunday mornings, we give sermons, our intention and our conviction is that our sermons are based on the word of God. Right? It's not just Jesse's thoughts for the morning or Javon's thoughts for the morning. And and very rarely will you hear any of us leaders here say, Well, God told me. Yeah. And so now I'm going to tell you. Right. We don't usually use that kind of language. And frankly, for a lot of you who are in the congregation, how would that go? That that that's a difficult thing for a lot of us to hear because we we recognize if we think about it that Jesus is our prophet, but we don't we don't give that title to people very often here at our church. And that's part of the reason we see Jesus as kind of fulfilling that role. And we see his words and we see the gospel and we see the written word of God as adequate for all that we need to live and and figure out how to live. Now we have the blessing of guidance from the Holy Spirit. Right. But how do we do that here at Waterway Church? Very rarely is it one single person standing up and say, I know the way. Right. Those things happen in gatherings together, in meetings where we're praying together, thinking together, talking together. We talk about discerning the will of God together. Right. And so there can be challenges in that. That's that's a not always the cleanest or simplest way to do things. But this idea of Jesus Christ as ultimate prophet informs how we do our church. Right. Have you ever thought about that church? Comparing it to Jesus the living word, his life, as it's written in the inspired word and and allowing ourselves to to to take what we're preaching and speaking. I I think I would hope, you know, scripture talks about the Bereans, that when when you guys listen to Jesse and I preach, you're not just coming and listening and leaving. That something we're saying is going, man, I gotta read, I gotta read that story. I gotta I gotta look into this myself. Man, what Jesse had to say was interesting. I want to check that out. Like or even to make sure that it's correct. Right. That's that's one of the things that is is part of being a pastor here is that from time to time we do Get emails or or comments in the lobby, you know, or phone calls that that are rarely confrontational, but often like, hey, is that really what that means? Tell me more about what you were intending to say. Could you be clear? Because we recognize that it's not just you or I who have the corner on representing God before the people, right? It's Jesus Christ who has that ultimate authority. We are simply acting as his ambassadors. Exactly. but we're doing it in the context of a whole community. Yeah. So we work at this prophecy thing together as we look at scripture. Jesus is our priest, and and this is Different for some of you that have different kinds of church backgrounds, especially if you've some of you have been in churches, maybe it's the Catholic Church or an Episcopalian church, or some of the churches where they have someone who is specifically called a priest. Now we are not called priests, we're pastors. but you have a priest, a person who represents the people before God. and you'll notice that there are some different ways that they do things in worship around communion time. You know, what is our role? Our role is simply to serve, but oftentimes in the Catholic Church or in some Of these other traditions and and they do their thing. Listen, that's cool. But the way we understand this priesthood thing working is that we see that Jesus Christ is the ultimate priest. And so this is why we talk about the priesthood of all believers. All of us now have an opportunity because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, because he paid the price for our sins, because now we are redeemed in the sight of the Lord. All of us have the opportunity, we believe, to speak to God and be heard. Like we can pray and God hears our prayers. I don't need to go through a priest to be heard. I can ask for forgiveness directly from God. We believe that that's taught. In the New Testament. I don't have to have a priest forgive me. I don't have to confess to a priest. And so again, I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody's other practices, but this is how we see it. And this thinking of prophet, priest, and king affects the way that we do church, right? Which I think we can still we can still slip into that mindset at times. Again, we're we're here because we feel called to this body, and we want to serve you, the body, right, that God has put in this church. But In a sense, there's this reality where we while we have a special calling, we're not needed, right? Like Jesus can do all the work that that he wants to do sure through you because you have a direct connection to him. And you know, don't don't wow we want you to come to us to to lay your prayer requests that we can pray for pray for you. That's what that's what we feel we're called to do. To be in it together. You also don't need to wait. Like you know like you can pray to God for whatever needs you have right there and then because you can boldly approach the throne of God because of h Jesus's blood for you. Exactly. And and so this is an important part of how we do what we do, right? And and there's different ramifications that work themselves out for that. But we see Jesus as our prophet and and our priest. And so it affects the way we do our worship services, it affects the way we line things up. And it affects the way that Javon and I try to challenge the people here at our congregation, recognizing that because all of us have that connection with God, we have an opportunity, even a responsibility to all serve together, work together. It's not just it's not just one or two experts. you know, who are leading the charge, but we're working at this working at this together. and then, you know, Jesus is our king. and this works itself out. we've had all kinds of ways that Anabaptists and Mennonites over the years have dealt with governing authorities, whether they called themselves kings or whether they had the title of prince or president or whatever. And the reality is is that we have committed to follow earthly kings only as long as those kings don't call us to do something That's contrary to our belief as we see Jesus prophesying and delivering to us in Scripture. And of course, all Christians say that, but as we have different convictions, as we think of things of war and peace and killing, that has affected a lot of people's thoughts over the years. As people have decided, hey, I'm going to be a conscientious objector, which is a wonderful blessing that our government has given us, but I'm going to be a conscientious objector and serve in some way that does not include. you know, carrying a gun or delivering lethal force. you know, we we feel that our conscience leads us in this way, this way, and this way. And so no, I can't do what the king might like me to do. And and that's gonna frankly be a lot more challenging as you go to different places around the world. We're pretty blessed in here in Pennsylvania in America, we're pretty blessed to to have a lot of religious freedom and and whether you like the way that the current government or the past government or the next government, whether you like the way they're ruling or not, we in our country recognize that we are still led by our conscience and and not ruled by a king. But as Christians we recognize Christ is king. And and so that's something that's going to continue to be a challenge for us and it continues to be a challenge for our brothers and sisters around the world who live in some areas where the government does feel like they can dictate everything. and and some of those brothers and sisters around the world have a much more difficult time than we do. Right. to to be able to live that out at with higher costs. So Jesus, prophet, priest, and king, fulfill some of that old testament stuff and just wanted to connect some dots as to why we do some of the things the way that we do, because Jesus Jesus stepped into those roles on our behalf. That's just some fun stuff to think about. And we could talk for a long time about the rest of the ramifications, but those are just a bit of the tip of the iceberg to think about why is Waterway the way it is. Does that make sense? That that does. That was great. That's awesome. Wow. Well that I like to hear that. Great. Awesome. Sounds good. All right. Well, hey, for Javon and for the rest of the staff here at Waterway Church, good to see you all. Hope you have a blessed rest of your day here in July.