You’re a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, Peter writes. He’s writing to us. You are a community of priests. Every one of you is a priest. Many of you are junior priests, priests-in-training. But you’re all priests, because you’re baptized into Jesus, the Great High Priest.

What do priests do? Israel’s priests were servants of the Lord’s house. And one of their main jobs and joys was to offer sacrifice. A worshiper brought an animal to the tabernacle or temple and slaughtered it. The priest collected the blood, splashed or smeared it on the altar, cut the animal in pieces, and then put the animal parts into the fire to turn them to smoke on the altar.

If you’re all priests, you should be offering sacrifice. You should come to church with a knife or sword or cleaver. Your hands should get bloody from butchering and handling livers and kidneys. By the time you leave, you should have the smell of burning meat on your clothes.

Of course, that isn’t what happens at church. And that might make us think we don’t offer sacrifice anymore. Israel used to sacrifice; we don’t. That doesn’t make sense. Peter says we’re priests, and a priest who doesn’t sacrifice isn’t much of a priest.

Listen to what Peter says: You are a chosen nation and a royal priesthood to proclaim the excellencies of the One who called you from darkness to light, you are a temple made of living stones, so that you can offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” You do come here to sacrifice, but you offer a new kind of sacrifice, a spiritual sacrifice of praise.

We might still be confused. We might think Israel offered real sacrifices, and our sacrifices of praise are pretend sacrifice. That’s backwards. When Israel offered animal blood and flesh, when they dismembered and splashed blood and burned, they were the ones offering pretend sacrifices, pictures of real sacrifice.

We offer the real thing, because we don’t offer corpses – dead animals – but our living bodies. We offer the real thing, because we don’t offer animals but ourselves.

Real sacrifice is always human sacrifice. Jesus is the model. He didn’t offer thousands of bulls and goats for our sins. On the cross, Jesus offered Himself to the Father as a perfected sacrifice. Through the Spirit, He catches us up into His offering to the Father. Jesus offered His body so we can offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

Song is one of the chief forms of living sacrifice. When you sing vigorously, your whole body gets involved. God gave us breath, and through Christ and His Spirit we return His breath to Him, beautified as song. 

You’re priests, all of you. You come here every week to offer the sacrifice of song. Sing heartily. Sing so heaven can hear. Sing so your voice rises like smoke from a burning altar. You fathers and mothers, train your children to sing. We’re priests. Singing is our job. Singing is our joy.

Blessings,
Pastor Leithart