The Lord has definitely and clearly shown us in these days that our New Testament service in the church must be a kind of priesthood of the gospel. In the Bible there are two stages. The first stage is the Old Testament and the second stage is the New Testament. Whatever was there in the Old Testament was a type of the better things to come (Heb. 7:19, 22; 8:6; 9:23). The better things to come are in the New Testament stage. If we look into the Old Testament service, the main thing that we find is the priesthood. The entire service of God’s people in the Old Testament was a priesthood. A priesthood denotes a body of priests built up together. There was no individual service, for all the priests served as a body. The high priest and the other priests were burdened and charged to carry out a certain part of their unique service. In the English language, the word priesthood denotes two things. In 1 Peter 2:5 and 9 it means a body of priests, whereas in Hebrews 7:12 it refers to the priestly service. A group of priests were there to carry out the priestly service. All those who were engaged in the priestly service mainly offered sacrifices to God every day. In Numbers 28 and 29 the children of Israel were charged by God to offer daily the continual burnt offerings morning and evening. It was called the continual offering because it never ceased morning and evening.
Today we are the New Testament priests. What should we offer? As the New Testament priests of the gospel, we must offer living sacrifices; we have to offer persons. Our service must not concentrate on business affairs which in the eyes of God are nothing. Rather, it should concentrate on living persons. This is why we are called the New Testament priests of the gospel (Rom. 15:16).
Paul is a pattern (1 Tim. 1:16), a model, of all the New Testament saints in that he handled people all the time. He preached the gospel to the unsaved to beget them, fed them to enable them to grow, and built them up (1 Cor. 4:15; Gal. 4:19; Col. 1:27-29). Whatever he did became a kind of offering to God. We must have a change in our thinking. For many years we thought that church service was just to do things such as vacuuming the carpet, arranging the chairs, mowing the lawn, trimming the trees, or preparing the bread and the wine. Sometimes our service also included two other things. One was to stand on the platform and give a message; the other included visiting the saints. These last two matters are worthwhile because they are directly involved with people, but the other things such as cleaning, arranging, and ushering are just sundry matters. To distribute the bread and the wine at the Lord’s table is really good, but that kind of service is too minor. New Testament priests should daily offer living persons to the Lord. On the one hand, the Lord added people to the church daily (Acts 2:47). On the other hand, the church should offer people to the Lord daily. In the Old Testament God charged the children of Israel not to stop burning the sacrifices on the altar (Lev. 6:9-13). They were charged to burn the sacrifices, not just the wood. Of course, this is a type of our service today.
Every day the church should offer living persons to God. We all have to endeavor to carry out this new practice. What has been our service in the church in the past? Was that the New Testament priesthood? From this point of view we all have to admit that in our church life there is very little that could be considered as the priesthood. During the Lord’s table meeting, some brothers always come forward to bless the bread and the cup and distribute them. This is very good; it is better than nothing. However, this alone could never be considered as a priestly service to God. Only the priesthood that offers real sacrifices to God is counted by God as a priestly service rendered to Him. Neither can vacuuming the carpet, ushering, or cleaning the windows be considered as a part of the priestly service.
In the Old Testament, all of the small responsibilities were carried out by the Levitical service, not the priests. When we come to the New Testament there is no difference between the priests and the Levitical service. Those who vacuum and clean must be priests as well. We perform the Levitical services in preparation for offering something to God. During the Old Testament time, there was surely the need of some service to clean the altar, prepare the wood, and so forth. These sundry duties were a preparation for the offering of the sacrifices. If the altar is clean, neat, and properly kept, yet without any sacrifice on it, God could never be satisfied. There must be some sacrifice burning on the altar. Therefore, the total service of the priesthood, including the Levitical service, is to offer sacrifices to God. The service of vacuuming, cleaning, and arranging could never be considered as food to satisfy God. We must offer something as God’s food to satisfy Him. What we have been doing in the sundry things could not be counted as the priesthood. I would rather see many of us bringing living sacrifices to God than maintaining a large, clean hall with only a few saints meeting.
We must go to contact people. Do not hope that others will bring forth children for us to adopt. In John 15:16 the Lord said, “I appointed you that you should go forth and bear fruit.” We must go to gain some new ones. Then these new ones will become our folks. We must go and take care of them. In this way we will surely have some living sacrifices to offer to God.
Recently a brother among us went to Taipei for eight days. While he was there he attended various meetings in five different halls. He reported that the district meetings for prophesying, the prayer meetings, the central meetings, and the small group meetings were all living and fresh. The church in Denver is also practicing this way of prophesying in the meetings. At present, one third of the saints are prophesying in the meetings there. We do need a change. The old way was wrong and off the mark. We must come back to the God-ordained way that is revealed in the New Testament. This is a battle, and we have to fight for this way. I am so grateful to the Lord for the change of the system in that large church in Taipei with five thousand meeting together. Everything there is in order and is going on quite well. Our thinking must be turned from merely doing things to the matter of contacting and handling people. We all must have a new start.
One way to reach people for the gospel is to go out in teams of three. We should not expect to get into every door. If out of twenty doors one is opened to us, this is very good. Each team should not expect to bring one hundred to the Lord in one year. If within one and a half months each one of us could gain one who is properly baptized and taken care of, that would be wonderful. If a church has about two hundred meeting together and each one gains three or four a year, this is a threefold increase. We should not expect quick results. To take the quick way does not work for the long run. We must go the slow way. When we come together as a team, we must put our opinions on the cross and go on together. Then the Lord’s blessing will be with us.
The secret of success is to go slowly. Do not expect to gain a big number. After going out for two or three weeks, a number of persons will be saved and baptized. These will become our children to feed and raise up in the home meetings. Eventually we should gather them together into a small group meeting. The small group meetings are mainly for perfecting the saints. In the first few weeks, we may need to go out twice a week, but after a few weeks, once a week is enough. This is the way for us as New Testament priests to gain the living sacrifices to offer to God.