In order to understand how the New Testament talks about the church, we have to understand Old Testament background. You know, there are images that the New Testament authors will give you about the people of God. And while those metaphors can have, in a sense, a kind of low-hanging fruit where a reader might say, I think I get what that means, the moral testament we understand the more illuminating these titles and descriptors in the New Testament become. And I'll give you an example from first Peter. Occasionally I'll quote from first Peter two verse nine, where Peter says to the readers, you are chosen race, a royal priesthood. a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And Peter doesn't tell you the Old Testament background in that verse, but it's full of Exodus and as a whole Pentateuch terminology, a background of the identity that Israel embodied as a people of treasured possession that the Lord had taken for himself, as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. All of this stemming from Exodus 19, Peter just takes those phrases and he says to the Jew-Gentile church in Jesus, that's who you are. All of Peter's language here is based on the Old Testament. Now, the Church of Christ, we could say, is the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel as a people. We are the true Jews. to use the language of Romans 2, verses 25 to 29. We are the household of faith, the Israel of faith, the church of Jesus Christ. Now, one of the titles in 1 Peter 2.9 that the author uses, he says, you, you Jew Gentiles in Jesus, you're a royal priesthood. That word royal makes you think about kings. That word priesthood makes you think about priests. When you're thinking about kings and priests, well, then all of a sudden we're thinking a lot about the Old Testament. Because Peter writes, as someone steeped in the Jewish scriptures, he would say most fully the Christian scriptures from Genesis through Malachi. And those Old Testament scriptures lay the foundation for how Peter is going to think about and write about the Church of Jesus. And he calls them a priesthood. That's what he says they are. And tonight I want to think about the office of priest in the Old Testament. Our passage is not a long passage. And so as we get to that in just a few minutes, I think it'll be worth our time to think also broadly about the notions of priesthood, where it comes from, and why our passage tonight really matters for the people of Israel, and why a short passage about food provisions for Levites and priests is important to think about for the New Covenant community. Now tonight, let's think about this notion of priest as rooted most deeply, not in Deuteronomy, not even in Numbers, Leviticus or Exodus. If you go all the way back, the notion of a priest is rooted in Genesis. The first book of the Bible teaches about people who would build altars and offer prayers and give others representation. They would come on their behalf and they would think about their sins and their needs and sacrifices would be made. For instance, Abraham acts as a priest for his family in Genesis. In fact, his son Isaac is so used to this that when Isaac in Genesis 22 accompanies Abraham to the mountain of sacrifice, Isaac goes through the boxes, so to speak. We have this, we have this, but what about the offering? Isaac knows what it is to have an altar built and for his father to be a priest for their home. You see this as well in the book of Job. Job acts as a priest for his family. Early in biblical history, the role of the priest was occupied by individuals of a household. You can see this priestly household activity at work even in Exodus 12. Remember that the blood of the unblemished lamb was to be placed upon each household, so that the blood of the lamb was put on the doorposts and the lentils, symbolizing this home dedicated to the Lord and for judgment to pass over. Now, if you keep going past the 10th plague, Within the tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes, the role of the priests was eventually given to a particular tribe. The backdrop works like this. In Exodus 32, the Israelites make a golden calf at the bottom of Mount Sinai, while Moses is at the top of Sinai receiving instructions about building a tabernacle, a dwelling place. Below at the bottom of Mount Sinai, the Israelites are in white-hot rebellion against the Lord, and the Lord is angry with the people, and judgment comes to them. Divine judgment, and understandably so. According to Exodus 32, 26, Moses says, who is on the Lord's side? Come to me. What happens next, the narrator tells us, is that the sons of Levi, gathered around Moses. And he gave the Levites a word from the Lord. He says, put your sword on your side, each of you. Go to and fro from gate to gate through the camp. Each of you kill his brother and companion and neighbor. And he's talking there about those in rebellion against the Lord that would be receiving the punishment of death, meted out by the means of judgment, the rod of judgment, the Levites. The Levites did this. 3,000 people fell under God's judgment, Exodus 32 tells us. Moses then tells the Levites, today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and brother. The Lord sets apart the tribe of Levi to represent the other tribes. As a people, the Israelites were a kingdom of priests for the nation, so you could say that the name and holiness of God was to be upon the people as a nation, but within that nation, a designated tribe, the Levites, were to be a holy and set-apart tribe on behalf of their brothers and sisters, the Israelites, and for and with any Gentile who joined the covenant community. From the tribe of Levi, you would see priests arise. So here's the levels. In one sense, Exodus 19.6 tells of all Israel, you're a kingdom of priests. Because priests mediate. And they stand in the gap, and they represent and are on behalf of another. And the kingdom of priests that the Israelites were, it's a way of saying to them, among the nations, you're bearers of the light of the knowledge of God. You have the law of the living God, and you have a covenant with God, and you have true worship and sacrifices, holy commands and revelation. You're a kingdom of priests. But then within the nation of Israel, the Levites would represent the other tribes in unique ways. So while the Israelites were a kingdom of priests, there would be a specific office of priests from a particular tribe. We could word it this way. You've heard me say this before. While every priest was to be a Levite, not every Levite would be a priest. The priests were a subset of Levites and they descended from Aaron. So let's refresh our minds on the genealogical descent here, the board might be helpful. I need things like that because reading a list of names in the order the verses often give them is very difficult to map out. So if you think about just starting back to Abraham's day in Genesis 12, even though you could go much farther back, and the genealogies do. You can start with Abraham and notice that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the three patriarchs to whom God makes promises. And Jacob has many sons. Jacob has 12 sons who will become leaders of what then become tribes, each bearing the name of the original son of Jacob. of these 12 sons, we want to focus on Levi. Levi is a son of Jacob, and we would say any descendant of Levi is a Levite. So a Levite is a descendant from the tribe of Levi, headed by Jacob's son of that name. Now we also know that Levi has sons. The three to notice in the scriptures are Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. Each of these Levites, through these three sons, have various roles and responsibilities that the book of Numbers lays out near the beginning of that book. But Kohath, the second son here, has a man named Amram, and Amram has two sons called Aaron and Moses. What we can notice here is there are Levites before Aaron and Moses. So you've got Levites that can go through the sons Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. And this is why not all Levites are priests. The priests are a subset. And how are they a subset? Well, Amram has Aaron and Moses, and Aaron will be the first high priest of Israel. It is through the line of Aaron that the priestly line will unfold. Aaron has four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. You may remember that he is quickly moved from four sons to two. when in the book of Leviticus and in chapter 10, Nadab and Abihu sin against the Lord and are judged. Eliezer and Ithamar are the remaining priests while their father Aaron is the first high priest of Israel and these three priests engage in tabernacle work and they will be the first of the many priests to follow them from their family line. According to the book of Numbers chapter 20, Aaron died and was replaced by his son Eliezer. Eleazar is the father of Phineas and so when Eleazar dies near the end of the book of Joshua, Phineas will be the high priest at that point. We can notice then that within the tribe of Levi there are priests. but there are non-priestly Levites. The reason we want to think about all of that is because Deuteronomy 18 doesn't just address priests. Deuteronomy 18 addresses non-priestly Levites as well. Knowing this will help us in remembering some of this genealogical descent even though it can feel complicated, the various names, and they get much more expansive than this. This is kind of a bare-bones presentation. You're welcome. And at the same time, with Aaron's lineage here, we see what's unfolding in the books we've been studying since Exodus. What we'll notice tonight in Deuteronomy 18, 1-8 is an overarching point. The point is this, the Lord is gonna provide for the Levites. Some of them will be priestly, some of them will be non-priestly, God's gonna provide for them. Now you might think to yourself, haven't we seen that in the Pentateuch though already? Yes, good question. Yes you have, you have seen that already. You've seen this provision mentioned in Exodus, mentioned in Leviticus, mentioned in Numbers, it's already been mentioned in Deuteronomy as well. There are various themes and instructions that the biblical authors do not mind repeating. And for their own stream and themes that are interconnected, there are good reasons why certain things are repeated when they are. But in Deuteronomy 18, we have information that is not entirely new, but that is worth reflecting on because of how it addresses the Lord's provision. Verses one and two refer to all the Levites. then it's going to zoom in in verses 3 to 5 about the priests specifically. And then it's going to zoom back out in verses 6 to 8 about the Levites in general. And so you have that movement, it feels like an ABA pattern where Levites, priests in particular, and then back out to Levites once more. That's the movement of our verses tonight. And when you read this, you will notice that none of the duties of the priests are laid out and described. You do get those in Numbers 18. You do get those in Leviticus chapter 10 after the Nadab Abihu kerfuffle. What you do have, that may have been the first time I've ever said kerfuffle in a sermon, by the way. I don't know why that's the word that came out. I almost said episode and thought I should go with this one. I regret that now. But nevertheless, you do see that in Leviticus 10 in Numbers 18, these duties of the priests are laid out. This is a description of the welfare and provision God's going to give. So not primarily duties of the priests, but God's provision for them, these instructions addressed to the Israelites. All right, verses one and two, the unique inheritance of the Levites. So we're thinking not just a priest, but even the non-priestly Levites, Levites as a whole. Verses one and two, their unique inheritance. The Levitical priests All the tribe of Levi, so there we got specific and broad, so you're just putting your arms around all of the Levites, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. We got to remind ourselves what that means. Inheritance or portion is language of the land. So if you looked at a Bible map, You will notice the various colors and coordinated boundaries and all of that trying to lay out the best estimate of where the different allotments of tribes were. And if you look through a Bible map, you're not going to find a plot of land devoted to Levi. You'll find Issachar and you'll find Zebulun and you'll find Naphtali and you'll find all the others, Ephraim and Manasseh. You're going to find all of the tribal allotments. But you're not going to find Levi's tribe because it says they shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the Lord's food offerings as their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance as he promised them. So we've heard this before, as he promised them. God has earlier said this. The Levites aren't right now saying, wait, what? You know, if they've been paying attention and for many years, they know what Moses is saying here is true. And God's already promised them that they will be provided for. So one of the benefits of having an allotted territory is that you could work that land. You could live there and steward that land and you're going to benefit from those crops. But if you're a tribe without an allotted territory, things are complicated. What are you going to do? It says here, they have no portion or inheritance. And if you were to say, well, then what are they going to eat? They're going to eat, verse one says, the Lord's food offerings. Where are those given? At the tabernacle. The tabernacle is a place where offerings are given. We also noted from Deuteronomy 14 a few weeks ago that there's an every third year tithe where people bring in all sorts of goods to give for the Levites and the priests in particular for their sustenance. The food offerings are those. From the tithes, from the regular offerings, various offerings in Leviticus could have certain portions of the animal left over. And then portions of those leftovers could be given to those priests and Levites who needed that at the tabernacle. That is what the Lord's food offerings refer to. Food that would be brought to the bronze altar in the tabernacle. And that is their inheritance. That is the portion given for them. In verse two, he's just reiterating, they shall have no inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance. That language has appeared before. According to Deuteronomy 10, earlier in our very book, chapter 10, verse 9, says the Lord is his inheritance. And then earlier in chapter 18 of Numbers, he says to the Levites, you shall have no inheritance in the land. Later on in verse 20, he says, I am your portion. and your inheritance. So when they say, the Lord is their inheritance as he promised them, it could be appealing to some unreported statement elsewhere, even earlier than Numbers 18, or simply a reference to Numbers 18, verse 20, where the Lord promised them, I am your portion and your inheritance. And you might think for a moment, okay, on a material side, aren't they at a disadvantage? And you can think on a practical level of why it would be advantageous to have an allotted territory, but wait. If they actually are being provided for by the various tribes and at the tabernacle, the priests who minister there are not going to do without, but are going to have the provision of the Lord there, then not only do they continue being sustained by the Lord, the Lord's food offerings that benefit them show their set-apartness. It shows the unique role that the Levites are going to play. So if you're a Levite, I think the wrong way to think about it would be, well, that's just not fair for us. Did we get the short end of the stick or what? Actually, among all of the tribes, you have been set apart for particular acts of ministry and priestly work, and that's not a less than situation at all. So they need to think about this as if you could say, well, this land of Issachar or this land of Zebulun is their inheritance. The Levites would be able to say, the Lord is our inheritance. A reader might wonder, but wait, can't every Israelite say that? Isn't the Israelites as a whole, can't they say the Lord is our inheritance? Yes. Just like they can say that they dwell in covenant with the Lord and approach his tabernacle in worship. But the representative nature of the priests, the priests are working the holy vessels and furniture in the tabernacle. They're the ones going in the holy place and the high priest behind the veil on the day of atonement. So yes, the Israelites as a whole are a holy nation, but there is unique work within that. Once you look under the microscope, you see specific tasks and roles that are being fulfilled. In a spiritual sense, the Levites can say the Lord is our inheritance because of the holy work dedicated to them. We do know that according to Numbers 35, The Levites don't have land, like an allotted territory, but they do have cities. Maybe you recall that in Numbers 35, there are 48 cities. They're going to be scattered throughout the Promised Land. Some of these cities will even be on the eastern side of the Jordan River, because two and a half tribes will have territory there. And the importance is that the Levitical cities are places of pastoral care, service, and reception for the people. There will be priests there and Levites there who are teaching and instructing the Word of God. It's not like everyone who's a priest only lived where the tabernacle was 365 days a year. Instead, you would have priests who would be ministering in various ways. And we find out from later Old Testament books, even in the temple, there were rotations and cycles of priestly service. And so other responsibilities throughout the land would include pastoral care and instruction from the Law of Moses. And if you're Levi, if you're Israelites rather, throughout the land, you don't need to think to yourself, well, there's only one place we can go for that Levitical instruction and the pastoral care. And you will know that there are cities throughout the promised land for you. So these Levitical cities were very important. And 48 of them are identified in Numbers 35. We also see in Joshua 21, when they go into the promised land under Joshua's leadership, Joshua 21 tells you the fulfillment of those 48 cities being set apart. So not only are they predicted in the Torah, the book of Joshua tells us they come to pass. But we still would not call that an inheritance. That's not a contradiction in verses one and two. The inheritance refers to an allotment of territory of land and region, not a particular Levitical city. That's different. Now having spoken about the unique role or service of the Levites, let's zoom in in verses three to five with the food for the priests. Verses three to five, food for the priests. And this shall be the priest's due from the people. That word due, D-U-E, is about obligation. It's a duty that the Israelites have to fulfill. So the priest's due from the people means the instructions given to those people of the responsibilities to care for those Levitical priests. Here's the due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice. Whether an ox or sheep, they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. the first fruits of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep you shall give him." Verses 3 and 4, you could break this into four categories. There's food, there's drink, there's oil, and there's material for clothing. identifying the food for a moment, whether it's an ox or a sheep, they're to receive the shoulder, the two cheeks, you could translate that the jowls of the animal, the cheeks and the stomach. So those are all examples of the food from the animal that are gonna be given as a food offering. That's what it means by the Lord's food offerings. What's brought to the priest to sacrifice and some offerings, there will be leftovers like this. And then in verse four, moving from the food, well, you even see the first fruits of your grain, that's still food. But then wine, representing the drink. So from food to wine means food to drink and then oil, oil that would be used for a variety of things, cooking and anointing and things like that. And then the material for clothing, the first fleece of your sheep. First fleece of your sheep, that has nothing to do with food and drink, okay? That's something else. They're using that and appropriating that for material, for clothing. You shall give that to the Levites because they need it. They need to eat, they need clothing to wear, and so the Lord's food offerings and the fleece from the sheep are gonna be provided to these Levites by the Israelites. It's the dew from the people. The explanation in verse five, is a callback to an earlier status. For the Lord your God has chosen him, who's him? Levi. It's a way of talking about the tribe in the singular. The Lord has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time. So from the Levites, you would have priests and non-priestly Levites would have responsibilities to aid the priests, to guard the tabernacle. When the tabernacle was torn down and set up from camp to camp, there were non-priestly Levites that had responsibilities of transporting certain furniture in certain orders. Oh, they had roles to play. These non-priestly Levites would later for the temple be singers and choir members and gatekeepers, people who had a role even if it was not at the altar and even if it was not in the holy place with the lampstand and table of bread. In verse five, he says, the Lord has chosen him, Levi, out of all the tribes to stand and minister That's language of representation. So you got all these tribes, from the tribes, here's this one, they stand and minister at the tabernacle, and they do this on behalf of the Israelites. They minister in the name of the Lord, Him and His sons for all time. This is a way of saying God's not going to these other tribes one year after the next on a rotation. What are they to expect for priestly lineage and continuity? Levi's tribe. Levi's tribe is where it's at. And so for him and his sons, his descendants, Levi's tribe, and then Aaron and his sons in particular. Now, another one of Kohath's children that is not up there, it was a brother of Amram, had others named Korah and other sons who rebelled against Moses and Aaron. According to Numbers chapter 15, Number 16, Korah was upset, along with others upset with him, that Aaron and his sons were the priests. And so later on in number 16, Moses and Aaron realized that Korah, their relative, for crying out loud, a fellow Levite even, is rebelling against the Lord. And Moses says, would you seek the priesthood also? Like he recognizes what Korah is doing. But they need to understand the sovereign choice of the Lord. The Israelites might look at this and they might say, as a different tribe from Levi, well, we want to be those that stand and minister, but we're from Naphtali. When are we going to stand and minister at the tabernacle? Or people from within Levi might say, well, we're not a descendant of Aaron, but why can't we have the priests? In the Pentateuch, these first five books of the Old Testament lay out for us the sovereign choice of God for his own reasons that Levi's tribe will be the tribe set apart from them come the priests and the other tribes are to submit to the will of the Lord here and recognize that this is not the Lord saying it's Levi for these good reasons and, you know, you other rotten tribes or something like that. You know, it's not about that. It's rather the Lord's sovereign pleasure to set apart whom he will, when he will, for the reasons he does. And according to Leviticus, I mean, Deuteronomy chapter 18, Levi's tribe is chosen. Chosen by whom? Not Aaron. It wasn't like Moses rolled the dice. God chose and they were chosen to stand and minister. Now having zoomed in on the priests and the fact that they're gonna get food and drink and oil and material for clothing, we're gonna zoom back out in verses six to eight with more provision. Here we recognize there are Levites who don't live near the tabernacle. So the circumstance that we're gonna look at in verses six to eight is a circumstance where Levites don't live near the tabernacle but have to travel. So let's imagine, he says in verses six and following, if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, and that's not just hypothetical, like this would happen. So he's giving them this circumstance to imagine. from wherever he lives and he may come when he desires. Now where's he going to go? This Levi who's traveling from a town. In verse 6 it's to the place the Lord will choose. We identified that language in Deuteronomy 12 weeks ago. The place the Lord will choose is the theological phrasing for wherever the tabernacle is. That's where the tabernacle is. That's the place of worship. It's the place set apart for the sanctuary of God and the sacrificial offerings. So when it says the Levite comes to the place the Lord will choose, it means the Levite leaves where he lives and is going to the dwelling place of God, wherever that is at the moment. Eventually it would be in Jerusalem. And he goes there in verse 7 and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord. Now you say, wait, as a priest, perhaps if he's a priest that is now going to minister in the priestly way, but he just doesn't live near the city and now he's going to leave because it's now appropriate for him to come and engage in his duties. It could also be non-priestly Levites, because remember, they're gonna aid and support the sanctuary ministry. There will be certain things these non-priestly Levites will not do. They're not priests, after all. But if they are a non-priestly Levite, they can still stand and support and aid their fellow Levites. That's what's being talked about here. He's going to perform this because they're a set-apart tribe, and he's showing that to be the case. So if a Levite does this, In verse 8, what are the people supposed to do? Wait, how far did you travel? Do you live near here? What's the jurisdiction? You know, if you live so far away, you've got to figure out your own means of food provision. No. In verse 8, he may have equal portions to eat. Doesn't matter how far he travels. If he is a Levite, you know what he gets when he shows up at the sanctuary? The Lord's food offerings, that's what. He gets the provision of the Lord, that's what. In other words, he gets equal portions to eat besides anything he receives from the sale of his patrimony. That's language about estate because wherever these Levites live, there would be things that they might inherit from their father, their father's father. It's not going to be allotments of land like, you know, the tribes that actually have territories. But this sale of some sort of estate or some sort of inheritance that is not like what we would consider the tribes to have received. If they sell that in order to gain money, he is to still have equal portions to eat, even if he has money acquired from selling certain things that belong to his family. It is the Lord's provision for these Levites. Now, in Deuteronomy 18, in verses 1 to 8, we could say again, with a big picture, God provides for the welfare and well-being of the Levites. Priests in particular, Levites as a whole, they can count on God's provision. God's plan would be for the Levitical priesthood to minister at the tabernacle. Later, they will minister at the temple. And non-priestly Levites would support and aid the ministry of the priests at the temple as well in the days of Solomon. In the fullness of God's plan, when we continue reading past the days of the tabernacle and temple installations, you will recognize that those responsibilities and the office of the priest is fulfilled in Christ himself. This is a big deal in the Gospels and especially in the letter of Hebrews. The writers are concerned in the New Testament that we understand that Jesus, among the things he embodies, he also embodies a priestly role. And he fulfills it in the most consummate way imaginable. He would be the perfect mediator for sinners. So every time someone like Abraham or Job or even Noah before them, or people later like the Levites and the Israelites in the Egyptian 10th plague scenario or at the Tabernacle and Temple, all of the mediating work, all of the representation, it was leading somewhere. Christ is the consummate priest to be the ultimate mediator and representative for God's people. He is the ultimate high priest who goes behind the veil, so to speak, the very veil of his flesh, rent for us so that on our behalf, he might approach the throne of God that now becomes a throne of grace based on the merit of his own sacrifice. And now in union with him, what are we? Well, we're what Peter calls us. We are a priesthood. You say, but wait a second, I don't know my tribal background. That doesn't matter. You know, this is not about a Levitical terminology anymore. The Levitical set-apartness of that tribe was a shadow for ultimately what the Church of Jesus would be. Isn't it the case that Israel was a kingdom of priests? Exodus 19 is in the background of Peter's statement. We, the church, are a royal priesthood because we are in union with the priest himself, the Lord Jesus. And what was true for Peter's audience is true for us. As the body of Christ, we shine the light of the gospel in the darkness. We mediate truth. We represent through the proclamation of the gospel, good news for the nations. We represent truth in a world of lies. We shine light in the darkness in a spiritual sense. We can also say what was shadowed for the Levites of the church is that the Levites could say the Lord is our inheritance. That's true for the church as a whole. We would say, of Christ Jesus himself, that the greatest thing to know and receive is the Lord. Not something other than the Lord that is greater than him, but the Lord himself is our inheritance. That's not just true for a segment of the Church of Christ. So while the Levites had that language applied to them within the whole nation of Israel, the entire Church of Jesus Christ can rightly say, the Lord is our inheritance. We don't have various other earthly mediators trying to bring us to the Lord. We have Christ. We have Christ Jesus, who is the one mediator between God and man. Christ Jesus himself, and in union with him, We are priests. The Lord is our inheritance. And what was true for the other tribes is also true for the church. So what I'm trying to do here is say what was true for Levi uniquely, that's true for the church as a whole. And what was true now for the other tribes is also true for the church as a whole. Those tribes had allotments, promised land. Their earthly inheritance foreshadowed our end-time inheritance, and Jesus means it when he says, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. That's bigger than the promised land. It's a way of talking about the Old Testament land in its rightful place in the timeline of God's redemptive purposes. That there was a role that land played to foreshadow the greater hope of new creation. We would say, along with Hebrews 11, that the patriarchs were looking for a city whose builder and maker was God, and they weren't thinking about where they came from, because they could have just returned home, but they were looking for a greater city. So Hebrews 11 is helping us read the Old Testament with greater clarity, not reading into it what's not there, but helping us see the longings that were present all along in the Old Testament storyline. What was true for all those other tribes, they had a forward looking view toward land. Well, what will it be for the church who now says of Jesus, he is our inheritance? He, our inheritance, Jesus, is leading us into a new creation. Not only is the Lord our inheritance, we are pressing forward to a new heavens and a new earth. The Lord has provided those things for his people. When we look at the details of Deuteronomy 18, we can appreciate and rejoice in the faithfulness of God to His holy people and to that tribe set apart to serve them. We can also see in the fullness of where it's all going, God's greatest provision would not come from a Levitical priest, but from the king priest from the tribe of Judah who was born in Bethlehem. It would be the Lord Jesus who would have a priesthood not like Levi, but like Melchizedek earlier in Genesis, who was both a king and a priest. You see, these Levites, they could only from Aaron's line be priests, they would not be kings. But in Deuteronomy, we're seeing various offices addressed, aren't we? At the end of Deuteronomy 17, the kingship. Here at the beginning of Deuteronomy 18, the priesthood. At the end of Deuteronomy 18, the role of the prophet. And what we will find is that in Christ Jesus, all of them intersect. He is the prophet and priest and king. He is the one who brings to a fulfillment all that the sacrificial system, tabernacle and temple represented. And he is the perfect mediator for his people so that we can say of Jesus, the Lord is our inheritance. And we are not a people without a land. We are citizens of an unshakable kingdom, pressing forward to that, knowing that the Lord who is our inheritance will lead us into new creation to dwell with him forever. Let's pray.