Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the book of Revelation. This will be study #18 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we are going to be reading from verse 6 of chapter 1, which says:

And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him *be* glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Well, let us take the first part of this verse: "And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his father;" We saw in the previous verse that the Lord Jesus was the prince of the kings of the earth, and we spent a little time looking at that phrase, "the kings of the earth," and we discovered that we are kings, the believers are kings, because we have been adopted into the family of God, and God is the great King, and, so, we have become, as it were, royalty. We are of royal blood now, of the blood of Christ that has covered our sins and has allowed this adoption to take place, where we can take the name of God, the name of Christ, and be a Christian.

And we also saw where it says 'kings of the earth,' that this was referring to the new Earth that God will create when He has destroyed this present world; and then His people will be kings upon that new Heaven and new Earth, reigning forever with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is King of all kings; and He is King of all earthly kings of this present world, and He is King of all spiritual kings, his children (His elect), in the world to come.

Well, let us look at a couple of verses also in Revelation chapter 5, verses 9 and 10. And it says in verse 9:

And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

Well, here, we see that this wonderful gift, this wonderful blessing, that is bestowed on us to be called, not only sons of God, but kings and priests, is given to all those that are redeemed from every kindred, tongue, people and nation. The entire company of the elect, all whose names were written in the Lamb's Book of life - they are the ones who become saved; they are given the gift of salvation, and in the process, "made unto God kings and priests." We are, spiritually, royalty, and we are of the royal priesthood. In a second we will look at a verse that states that.

But notice that it says, "and we shall reign on the earth," and there God is letting us know where this reign will take place, because it is a future reign. It is a reign that has not yet begun. It is the eternal reign of God's people when God brings in that eternal and glorious future that the Bible tells us so much about. That is when we will reign on the Earth, not at this present time.

The Bible speaks of other 'kings of the earth.' As a matter of fact, in chapter six, in verse 15, it mentions 'kings of the earth' who hide themselves in dens and rocks of the mountains when the day of the LORD comes to pass. They are hiding, out of fear, due to the judgment of God upon them. Those 'kings of the earth' are not true believers. They are kings of this present Earth. They are, in all probability, pointing to professed Christians who have their inheritance only in this lifetime, because they have never become saved.

So we have a far greater inheritance, a more wonderful hope and promise; it is not this world, but it is the world to come, where forever more we will be with the LORD, and we make that statement, and we say it quickly, because we really cannot fill it in all that much, due to our lack of comprehension, our lack of fully understanding, what that means. All we can do is read what the Bible says and just shake our heads and wonder that these things are in store - they are the expectation of all of God's people, to look to the future with just the greatest hope of the most glorious things that could ever be imagined will come to pass, and will be right before our eyes, into eternity future.

Now let us think about why God calls us 'priests.' We have talked about how we are 'kings,' but why are we "made unto God kings and priests?" Well, one reason is that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, being a King, is also a Priest. It says in Psalm 110 (and this is a Messianic Psalm referring to the Messiah who is Christ) and it says in verse 4 of Psalm 110:

JEHOVAH hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

This is referring to a character, an individual, who appears in the Book of Genesis in the days of Abram, for a short period of time, and Abram gives him tithes and offerings, and then he disappears. We find he is mentioned in this Psalm, and then in the Book of Hebrews, in chapter 7, especially, God goes into detail describing this mysterious person, Melchizedek, and He says in Hebrews 7, in verses 1 and 2:

For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness...

That is, the name Melchisedec, this is what it means by interpretation: "King of righteousness," and that would relate to Christ being a King whose kingdom, He said, is not of this world.

And then it goes on to say in verses 2 and 3 of Hebrews 7:

...and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

This is a description of Christ and it is a description of God. It is only God that is without a father and without a mother. That is, God has never been conceived; He has never had someone to bring Him into being, as creatures are created, and then they have mothers and fathers. No, God is not like that. No one conceived God. No one was before Him. So He is without father, without mother, without descent. There is none that predate Him, and there is no ancestor that comes before Him. He is, the Bible says, from everlasting.

It is just really one of the most incredible truths that we could ever think of, to imagine (and I mean to consider, to ponder, to meditate upon) the fact that God has always been. That, if anything demonstrates our inability and our finiteness, it is that - that He is from everlasting. He is eternal God. He has no beginning point in time or in eternity past.

That means we cannot go back a thousand years and say, "Well, God began here." No. No, we cannot go back to the beginning of the creation and say, "Well, this is God's beginning point." No, He did not come into being at that point either.

Well, before creation then? He had a beginning at some point before He created the world? No. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches that you can go back 'in your mind's eye' (and is that not an interesting expression that someone has come up with? And it is pretty accurate); it is in our 'mind's eye' that we see this, but picture it in your own mind, and think of an eternal past, and travel in the depths and reaches of your own thoughts for as far and for as long and for as deep as you can go. And it will not be very far, and all we can really picture before this world is a sort of darkness. We cannot picture anything; we have such limitations of mind, because we are creatures - creatures of time, creatures of this creation. We know really nothing of what was before this creation, and we know only what God tells us of what comes after this creation.

But there is an eternity that has always been, and we know this because God is eternal, and He dwells, He inhabits, He lives in, the whole spectrum of that eternity. And, so, for as far back as you can travel, or any of us can travel, even the most brilliant of men that would put their minds to it, for as far back as you can go, God is there and has always been there.

And we will go even further back, you cannot find the very beginning of God. It is mind boggling. It is incredible and amazing. That is an awesome God, and He is just an infinite Being. He is the Great I AM, Eternal, Almighty, Majestic and Glorious God of the Bible.

So how can He explain this? He tells us directly that He is "from everlasting to everlasting." But, again, we are not equipped, we are not able, we have no ability, to comprehend, and so He tells us of a Melchizedek. The theologians call Melchizedek's appearance a theophany, which means God making the appearance, and that was Eternal God. That was God who showed up in history, in order to establish the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek, so that the Lord Jesus Christ, when He would enter into the human race, could be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, because Jesus was not a priest after Levi. He was not born of the tribe of Levi. He was of the tribe of Judah, and only priests could come of Levi.

So God, ever meticulous, ever careful, to keep His own Law, had to establish another Law, a greater Law, than the priesthood of Levi, and that was to establish the priesthood of Melchizedek, an eternal priesthood, because this Melchizedek was the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when did Christ offer up Himself? When was He the Lamb slain? When we have the answer to that question, we will have the answer to when did Melchizedek accomplish His work as the eternal Priest of God? And the answer is, before the foundation of the world, and that is when Jesus offered up Himself and performed the task of the priesthood of Melchizedek, and so the priesthood of Mechizedek is a far greater, and more glorious, priesthood than Levi, the Levitical priesthood, ever could be. And God proves this and makes a point of it, by having Abraham offer tithes to Melchizedek, and then God points out that Levi was in the loins of his father when that happened, and the less are the ones who give the offering to the greater, so Melchizedek was the far greater priesthood, and this is the priesthood of Christ.

It says in Hebrews, chapter 3, in verses 1 and 2:

Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.

The Lord Jesus was appointed Priest by Eternal God, by the Father, and He was faithful in carrying out that task of His High priestly duties.

Well, since Christ is a Priest and was appointed a priesthood, the people of Christ - the body of believers, the elect, chosen before the foundation of the world - we become a royal priesthood. Now in order to be part of this royal priesthood, we must have our sins paid for. It says in Psalm 132, and in verse 16:

I will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.

There is the priestly garb, that is, the priestly attire, that every spiritual priest is clothed with. If you are a child of God, you are a 'king.' God has granted us a golden crown, the Bible speaks of, to wear (of course, that is all spiritual), and He has clothed us with salvation for our 'priestly attire.' These are our garments.

You know, there were priests when the temple was finished in Solomon's day. Let us turn back there, and let us take a look at what they were wearing. Turn to 2Chronicles 5, verses 11 and 12:

And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course: Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:)

And, here, the covering, the clothing, is said to be 'white linen,' and that is the "righteousness of the saints," Revelation 19 tells us in verse 8:

And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.

What do we find that the great multitude is clothed in, in Revelation, chapter 7? It says in verse 9:

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne...

Remember, we read earlier in Revelation 5 about those redeemed by the blood of Christ of every kindred, tongue, people and nation, and it said in verse 10:

And hath made us kings and priests unto God ...

Well, here in Revelation 7:9, we read, again, "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;" the white, fine linen, the white signifying purity and perfection - absolute holiness - because all sins have been washed away by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The people of God have been made clean in the eyes of God, and are now permitted to serve Him in a 'royal priesthood.'

This is what God says in 1^st Peter, and remember that, historically, God had set up, in the temple service, that the priests were to wash before they went about their priestly duties. Likewise, God washes the filth of sin away from His people before He has them carry out His priestly duties, whatever they may be, of carrying the Gospel, of sharing truth. Whatever God would have His people to do, they do it. It says in 1Peter 2, in verse 5:

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

What 'spiritual sacrifices' do we offer up? Well, yes, we involve ourselves with spiritual things: reading the Bible, studying the Scripture, prayer, and we may give of our resources for the work and ministry of God, and so on. But, really, primarily, the chief thing that God is expecting from each one of His priests is the 'sacrifice of himself,' that is, following in the steps of the great High Priest, as Christ offered up Himself for the sins of His people, for the sake of the elect. We are to offer up ourselves for the very same purpose.

During the day of salvation, we would offer up ourselves in service to God, to make sure the elect could hear the Gospel and all could become saved. In these days after the tribulation, and after the day of salvation, now we are in the night when no man can work, as far as evangelizing the world so that people might hear and become saved; that particular task is completed, but we still have a job to do. We have a task to perform, and it is to feed God's flock, to feed the Sheep, the truth of the word of God. So we continue to offer up 'spiritual sacrifices,' as it says in Romans, chapter 12, verse 1:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

This duty has not come to an end. We are not now to indulge the body, to give into the flesh, to serve the lusts of our fleshly thoughts, or any such thing. We are to continue. This is always the case for the true believer, to offer up our body as part of the royal priesthood of God, to take up our cross and to follow Him, and to mortify our members which are on the Earth, and so on. We are continuing to do the Father's will, whatever He would have us to do, and, certainly, it would be to keep our bodies under, that we might complete this spiritual race of running the Christian life, during these final furlongs that will lead unto that incorruptible crown of salvation that each 'king' receives on that last day, the final day of the day of judgment.

Well, let us go back to Revelation, and to our verse in chapter 1, verse 6:

And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father...

It is God who has made us priests and kings, and we serve Him; it is "unto God." But notice that it says, "and his Father." You know, some theologians really try to work a little extra to show how, well, this is actually talking about God, even his Father, that is, it is referring to God the Father alone, exclusively. And we do not have to try and get around the statement; the words are exactly as we find them written here - the Greek is translated properly: "And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father..."

Of course, why some theologians try to get around this statement is that it is saying that God has a Father, and to some, they are troubled by that. I do not know why. The Bible states that. The Bible declares that. It says in Hebrews, chapter 1, for instance, in Hebrews 1, verse 8:

But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever...

Here, the Father is speaking to the Son and He is saying, in addressing Him, "Thy throne," that is, your kingdom, your reign, your dominion, "Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever." The Father calls the Son 'God,' and, of course, Jesus is the Son, and the Bible is perfectly clear in just too many places for anyone to resist, although they try. But they cannot truly resist the Scriptures; they resist out of corrupt minds and out of corrupt desire to have Christ (be) less than God, but, actually, the truth of the word of God cannot be resisted.

It plainly, and absolutely, and very exactly, and perfectly, declares that Christ is Eternal God in the flesh, and He is the Son of God because He is the only begotten of the Father, the first begotten of the dead. And the Bible also teaches that God is the Father. Yes, "God and His Father;" that is an accurate statement. It is true of the Person of God, because God reveals Himself as three Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and, yet, one God.

Now, continuing in verse 6, it goes on to say, and let me read from the phrase we were looking at:

...unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion...

See, it does not say, "to them," but "to him," because God is One.