“And I will also take some of them for priests and Levites,” says the Lord” (Isaiah 66:21).
To understand this verse, we need to look at the beginning of the previous verse. Verse 20 begins with, “Then they shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord out of all nations.” The verse includes a list of everything that will be brought, and in verse 21, God says He will bring people from all nations and make them priests and Levites.
In the Old Testament, you could only be a priest and serve the Lord in the Temple if you were born into the tribe of Levi. Your birthright qualified you. You could not marry or be adopted into it. If you had a genetic disability, you were excluded from being a priest. You could work in and around the Temple, but you could not be a priest. Women were also not permitted to serve in the Temple.
But in our devotional verse, the prophet Isaiah records that there will be a time when God will call people from all nations and all tribes to be priests and Levites.
This means that it doesn’t matter what family you were born into. It doesn’t matter if you were raised in the church or not. Your gender, your ethnicity, your economic status, and your earthly birthright doesn’t matter. We were all born with a fleshly nature and cannot enter the kingdom of God without being born again. When we are born again, we become children of the King! Our royal blood, the blood that guarantees us the privileges of royalty, comes from the blood of Jesus, not our earthly parents.
Romans 11:13 refers to the Gentiles, those not born into one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Romans 11:17 states, “And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree.” God cut open the House of Israel and grafted us (the Gentiles) in making us one with His children. We have His spiritual DNA!
Prayer:
Because of who You are, I thank You. Your mercy and grace caused You to sacrifice Yourself so we could be included with Your children. We are equal partakers in the inheritance of Your Kingdom. May we end each prayer with Your Word from Romans 11:36, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”
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