Shalom to all,

To all my Chinese readers, a Blessed Lunar New Year. May the Lord grant you and your loved ones His bountiful blessings. May you continually experience His eternal measureless love as you walk in Him.

In less than 24 hours, my family and I will be bound for Israel to visit the land where our dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came to live and to die for our sins. It is a place where I have been longing to visit for the past ten years but never got round to do it until now. Praise the Lord for the experience we will have seeing the places where our Lord had walked before and which until now I had only read about in the Bible. What an excitement it will be for all of us.

The apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2: 9 - 10: -
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Who are priests and what do they do? In the Old Testament, we read of a special tribe of the Jews whose sole task was to serve in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple of King Solomon. The priests were all descendants of Aaron from the tribe of Levi. They represented the children of Israel to God, daily putting forth their petitions and making requests to God on their behalf. The priests had to be ceremonially clean to be able to perform all their duties and should they be found to be unclean, there were to be severe consequences on them and the children of Israel. So it behooves them to keep themselves holy continually.

Now we are called priests and we represent the requests of the people before the Almighty God just as the priests in the Old Testament did in the Temple. We are able to do so because we are no longer alienated from God. The Lord is no longer angry with us because Jesus died to save us from our sins and as a result of our faith in Jesus, the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ is now imputed to us who believe in Him. Whenever God now looks at us, He does not see us in our sinful nature but see us as Christ and therefore we can approach Him and bring our petitions before Him.

Peter also tells us in verse 9 that we are of royal status. When we receive the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts, God gives us the right to become children of the Most High and as children, we stand to inherit all that is in store for us. In John 1: 12, the apostle says "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God." Also the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8: 17, "Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory."

So knowing that we are holding royal positions, let us now declare His praises to the people and, taking advantage of our royal status, make petition to the Father on behalf of the people. We are a royal priesthood. This is a precious position granted only to those who have found great favor in the sight of God the Father. The devil does not want us to know our positions and wants us to continue to live as though we are no having royal positions. He wants us to live defeated lives and feel miserable, depressed and distressed. But beloved, know for a certainty that we are greatly blessed, highly favored and deeply loved by our Father in Heaven. The devil had been defeated when Jesus hung there on the cross to die for our sins. His resurrection now brings us life, even eternal life with the Father.

All these are now possible to him who believes.

The Lord blesses you and keeps you,
The Lord makes His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and all your loved ones,
The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you His shalom peace.
Numbers 6: 24 - 26

Shalom,
Andrew L W Lee

dated : 10th feb 2002