All service for the Lord must be priestly, regardless of what kind of service it is. Our service to the Lord must be a kind of priestly service. The priests in the Old Testament were not only priests, but also the army; so the army was a priestly army. Priests not only stand before God, ministering unto Him, but they also fight the battle. The army of the Lord is a priestly army. This means that if we are not priests, we can never fight the battle for the Lord. We must be a priesthood in order to fight the battle for God.
After the children of Israel went over the Jordan and entered the land of Canaan, the first warfare was a battle fought by the priests. It was not fought by any secular weapons, but by the ark. The ark was the prevailing weapon. In addition, they used rams horns. They were a peculiar army, and they fought the battle in a peculiar way with a peculiar weapon. Everything was peculiar. That is not the way we would fight a battle. Later on, however, we will see that we must learn to fight the battle in this way. Basically speaking, this army was the priesthood. I do not mean the office of the priests, but an army of priests, a body of priests coordinated together under the leadership of the ark.
As we come to the New Testament, we see that the apostles were priestly apostles. An apostle must be a priest. If we do not know how to be priests, we could never be apostles. The Apostle Paul tells us that he served as a priest in preaching the gospel. It was as a priest that he offered all the Gentile believers unto God as an offering. I believe that we all have read Romans many times, but have you ever noticed that Romans 15:16 tells us that Paul preached the gospel as a priest? If we are evangelists, we must be such as priests. We must be priestly evangelists. If we are not priests, we can never preach the gospel in an adequate way. The gospel must be preached by priestly evangelists.
Then the Apostle Peter tells us that he and others had to first give themselves unto prayer and then unto the ministry of the Word. This means that to minister the Word, we must first be priests. As priests we must give ourselves to prayer and spend time in the presence of the Lord. This is the priestly ministry.
Before all kinds of service, we must first serve as priests in the Lord’s presence. If we are elders, we must be priestly elders. If we are deacons or deaconesses, we must first be priests. Without being priests, we can never be good brothers or good sisters in the church. But even this is not all. We must be priestly husbands, priestly wives, and priestly parents. We have to be priestly in all things.
The army must be priestly; the apostle must be priestly; the evangelist must be priestly; the minister of the Word must be priestly; the elder and deacon must be priestly; the brothers and sisters must be priestly; and the husbands, wives, parents, and children all have to be priestly. This simply means that in the Lord’s service we must first open ourselves to the Lord and spend time in His presence. This will enable Him to fill, saturate, and even swallow us up that we may be one with Him. Then He will be our content, and we will be His expression. He will be able to say something through us and to express something from within us, whether we are fighting the battle, preaching the gospel, teaching the Word, or serving as elders or deacons. Whatever we are will be a channel for the Lord to flow out. This must be our way of living, our way of work, and our way of service.
Thirty years ago, if a brother came to me asking how he should act as an elder, I would have outlined several points he needed to know. I would have said, “Brother, let us open the Word,” and then I would have given him all the points. But today if anyone comes to me to ask how to be an elder, I will say: “Go to be a priest. Go to practice the priesthood. Then you will be a good elder.” When I was young the sisters also came to me and asked how to have a proper family life. Again, I would give them the first point, the second point, the third, etc., until twelve points were given. But in these last years I simply tell the young sisters to go to the Lord, touch the Lord, and be touched by Him. When the Lord has saturated you, you will know how to be a good wife. It is not by the Ten Commandments or the twelve commandments. All the commandments do not work. Only one thing works, that is, to go to the Lord, open yourself to Him, and let Him fill and saturate you with Himself. Then the Lord will be your very content and reality, and you as a good wife, good husband, good elder, or deacon will be His outward manifestation.
Do not trust in your message, teaching, or ministry very much. There is only one thing in which we can trust: the priesthood. In 1934, a co-worker moved to one of the biggest cities in North China. It was a naval base with a population of nearly one million people. When he went there, he was very poor and did not know anyone in that city. The first few years he really had a hard time. He could not get one person to meet with him. Later, two or three moved there from my hometown, but it was a very difficult situation. Many of the brothers tried to encourage this brother to move to another city, but he would not move. Gradually, people began to be saved and the number increased. In the spring of 1949, they baptized more than seven hundred people at one baptism. The point is this: this brother could not minister in a very eloquent way. He was awkward in speaking, and his utterance was always very slow. But he prayed very much. The work there in that city was carried on by the priestly ministry.