Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations. Make your
praises heard, and say, 'LORD, save your people, the
remnant of Israel.'

gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will
be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in
labor; a great throng will return.

them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a
level path where they will not stumble, because I am
Israel's father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son.

Sometimes in church we can say things that make an awful lot of sense to us because we\u2019ve been around it for a long time. We have a churchy code \u2013 and if we\u2019ve been through catechism classes and listened to enough sermons \u2013 we can decode it pretty quickly\u2026

But we always have to be careful \u2013 because what we assume when
we say certain things doesn\u2019t necessarily apply to someone else
sitting in the pews\u2026

For example \u2013 our contemporary testimony uses these words \u2013
Prophet, Priest and King \u2013 to describe who Jesus is\u2026Now it
comes from Calvin \u2013 it\u2019s in our Catechism \u2013 we hear it in our
sermons\u2026we know these are good things\u2026

Prophets \u2013 maybe we watch the news and start thinking about guys like Warren Jessop and his compound down in Colorado \u2013 he calls himself the prophet \u2013 and he runs a polygamist cult.

When Israel spurned God's love\u2014
lusting after other gods,
trusting in power and wealth,
and hurting the weak\u2014
God scattered them among the nations,
yet kept a faithful remnant
and promised them the Messiah:
a prophet to speak good news,
a king to crush evil and rule the earth with justice,
a priest to be sacrificed for sinners.
God promised to forgive their sins
and give them a new heart and a new spirit,
moving them to walk in his ways. \u2013 CT 22

Priests \u2013 they don\u2019t get much good press these days \u2013 guys in
collars and robes \u2013 who are the butt of many jokes on late night
television.

And kings \u2013 or queens \u2013 well we still have a bit of a connection to
the monarchy \u2013 but even then\u2026most people have a ridiculous
notion of what a monarchy is about these days\u2026

It\u2019s why it\u2019s good for us to review these things \u2013 because when we know we often let familiarity lessen their impact in our hearts and minds \u2013 and when we don\u2019t we feel left out\u2026

I. Now we\u2019re going to begin where we\u2019ve started the past few
weeks. The contemporary testimony requires us to think about
our sin in order to understand our redemption

This is the foundation that the writers have laid so that we can
build on it \u2013 and we\u2019ve seen it through the past few weeks \u2013 we
begin with sin and come to a greater realization of wonderful grace
\u2013 and the same is true in understanding these roles of prophet,
priest and king.

After John Calvin came along with this Munus Triplex \u2013 the
official term for the threefold office \u2013 to describe who Jesus was
anointed to be \u2013 or who he was \u201cChristed\u201d to be \u2013 the theologians
that followed started to draw lines that connected those offices to
the work of redeeming particular categories of sin.

I don\u2019t particularly like this term \u2013 it comes from an older time \u2013 and theologically it\u2019s more a symptom of sin than a category. This is why we\u2019re going to connect this category with original sin\u2026the pathological model that we\u2019ve been working with so far.

When we look at sin like a disease like we have been doing then
we understand the symptoms as being things that hold us back. It\u2019s
like a cold doesn\u2019t let you breath fully or an infected toe doesn\u2019t let
you walk properly. Original sin keeps us from reaching our
spiritual and moral ability\u2026

And I could go on \u2013 but I think we get the point. Original sin \u2013 the
diseased nature that we\u2019ve inherited \u2013 causes us to be ignorant of
the good and held back from what is right.

We may understand that sin has been passed on to us through the
generations \u2013 but weKNOW the things that we\u2019ve done wrong. If
we take the time and examine our lives against the Law of God we
know there are places we\u2019ve fallen short.