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1 Peter 2:9-10
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you turn in your bibles to first Peter chapter 2 reading verse 9 and 10. I'm Ryan Martin. I'm the pastoral intern here at, Redeemer. Aubrey and I have been here for almost 3 years now. And it is a great blessing to get to, open up God's word word with you today.
Speaker 1:And, I ask that you guys would pray for me and that we would focus in and listen to what the Lord would have for us today. I'm not a particularly patriotic person. I think I was a week ago when we were in the World Cup. That brought it out of me. But, when I was like in 5th and 6th grade, I went through a phase where I was really interested in, like, the American Revolution and the colonial period before.
Speaker 1:I think it was probably because it's when the Patriot with Mel Gibson came out. And to a 6 year old a 6th grade board, that's like the coolest thing ever. I remember playing this game in 5th grade where we were, would mark out tape on the grounds and we'd have to sit in our little Mayflower and ration out food and roll dice to see who died of cholera. But I was just really interested in in the beginnings of our country. And I think the reason was, is that those moments, that time, really defined who we were as a nation.
Speaker 1:You saw in in those times, you know, people that valued freedom. People that would refuse to, bow their knee to oppressive governments. You know, people that formed a constitution. Here's who we are and what we're going to do as a people. I think just because of the defining nature of that, it was interesting to me, and and and still should be probably more than it is.
Speaker 1:Peter here is going to address our identity, who we are. As the body of Christ, as the church, what are we mainly about? What are we? What is our purpose in that? Let's read in 1st Peter 2, verses 9 and 10.
Speaker 1:And let's listen carefully. This is God's word. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy.
Speaker 1:This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the gospel. Thank you that we are yours.
Speaker 1:I pray that you would make that truth so clear, so clear to our hearts tonight that you would send your spirit to open up our hearts and our eyes to see our living savior in whom we place all of our hope. God, I pray that you would open up our eyes and our hearts to see that. If your spirit does not work, then we're all wasting our time. Father, rid me of any desire to impress. Help me to be faithful to your word.
Speaker 1:Father, I pray that you would speak today. It's in your son, Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Alright. So we've looked the last 2 weeks at the beginning of first Peter 2, of, talking about this house, this spiritual house that God is building, taking us living stones and building a dwelling place for himself.
Speaker 1:And here he's describing what kind of house is that. What kind of people are the people of God? He's about to go, in the next several weeks, as we look at the next chapters of 1st Peter, he's about to go into a more ethical dimension of it. How do we behave because of what God has done? Because of what Christ has accomplished for us?
Speaker 1:What do we do? And this is kind of his last push into who we are before he goes to that. So we're addressing the fundamental question of identity. Who are you? Who is it mainly that you are?
Speaker 1:Are you mainly the sum of what you've done, of your accomplishments, of the decisions you've made or haven't made in the past? Are you mainly a husband, or a wife, or a father? Are you mainly whatever your work is, are you mainly a med student or a doctor or a teacher or a student, or a stay at home mom? Are you mainly an American? Like what is it that really makes who you are?
Speaker 1:Because what you believe that is will determine what you do. We've talked about, I believe Jeff, when we went through, the end of first Peter 1, we talked about how it's not what we do that makes who we are, but what we do says a great deal about who we think we are. So that's what Peter is addressing here. He's addressing who are we? Because from there is where the ethical dimension of our faith, what we do flows out of that.
Speaker 1:Those of you who are parents know this a lot better than me. It's a lot easier to just tell children a list of, here's what you do, here's what you do. Do this, don't do that, don't do stop doing that. Then it is, what we really want to do is show them who they are. Show them that they are loved unconditionally.
Speaker 1:That they are children who are under the our authority, that need to do what we say, that are brothers and sisters, that need to treat the other people in their family with love. That's what you as parents want to get at. And then out of that flows what we guide them to do. Peter is doing the same thing with us in this text. So there's 4 identity statements that he makes.
Speaker 1:Look with me at verse 9. It says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for his own possession. This is who he is saying that we are. And keep reading that. This is in order that This is the purpose.
Speaker 1:What is the reason that we were a chosen race? Royal priesthood? A holy nation? A people of first possession? In order that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Speaker 1:So I wanna look quickly at each of these four things, and then look at how each of those really does help us, show us how we proclaim the excellencies of God, who called us out of darkness into light. So let's look first at it. We are a chosen race. A chosen race. Now a race is a single people.
Speaker 1:Right? It's a it's a group of people. The word here for, I don't know if there's any biology people in here, but the word is genus. It's a kind of people. And it's worth saying with all 4 of these, with race, the priesthood, the nation, and the people, these are all singular things.
Speaker 1:Peter's addressing the whole of who this house that he's building, the whole people of God, who we are. Right? Single thing. So keep that in mind as we walk through. Alright?
Speaker 1:This is one people. It's a chosen people. We are a chosen people. And this is how God operates. And we see this through the flow of salvation history, going back to God choosing Abraham, God choosing Isaac, choosing Jacob.
Speaker 1:Israel is God's chosen special treasured people. And it's worth enter it's worth asking here, what is this based on? Because if we think about this the wrong way, it could have the adverse effect. If I get chosen for the baseball team, which would never happen, it's because I'm a good baseball player. Right?
Speaker 1:It's because I can offer something that affects that choice. I want us to, look at Deuteronomy 7. This is in the giving of the law, verse 6. We read, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The lord your god has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
Speaker 1:It was not because you were more in number than any of the other people that the lord has set his love on you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all people. But it's because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers. So the Lord is telling Israel that their choosing is not located in them. They're not the reason for that. But it's because the love of God who sets His love on them.
Speaker 1:So what does this matter? Why does it matter that we're chosen? Why is this worth even saying? Or why is it worth Peter saying to us here that we're chosen? Paul addresses this directly at the beginning of 1st Corinthians.
Speaker 1:It says, for consider and this is almost insulting, if you really listen to it. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise, according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many of noble birth.
Speaker 1:But god chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. So if we are a chosen people, then we have no case for boasting. That's why we need to know this.
Speaker 1:That's why we need to tell this. Knowing this brings us to proclaim the excellencies of God, because it gives us two things. Knowing that we're a chosen people gives us confidence, knowing that God is faithful to the covenant that he's made. We serve a God who is faithful to his chosen people, gives us confidence. And it also gives us humility, knowing that it's not located in ourselves.
Speaker 1:It's in the grace and mercy of God. So who are you? You're a chosen race. You are one people chosen by God. And when we proclaim this, when we proclaim our being chosen, we are proclaiming the mercy of God as opposed to the righteousness or the glory of ourselves.
Speaker 1:Alright. 2nd, we are a royal priesthood. You are a royal priesthood. And Peter gets this phrase from Exodus 19 verse 5. And we're gonna be looking here a lot, if you want to flip there, if you have your Bibles with you.
Speaker 1:Exodus 19, verse 5. This is right before, the 10 Commandments that you are likely familiar with. This is one of the most important passages in in the Old Testament, where God has brought his people out of slavery to Mount Sinai, and he's telling them, again, like Peter is here, who they are. Lord says, now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine.
Speaker 1:You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So here you see where Saint Peter is drawing from. He's going back to who God's people are and who we see that. So this is kind of a confusing statement for God to tell his people, you are a royal priesthood. Because we know that the priesthood is a select group of people within Israel.
Speaker 1:Right? Levites, sons of Aaron. This is the priesthood. Right? But God is telling Israel, you are a Kingdom of Priests.
Speaker 1:So what does that mean? In what sense was all of Israel priests, a priesthood? What does a priest do? What does it mean to be a priest? It's all about access.
Speaker 1:The priesthood has access and responsibility to mediate that access. The Latin word for priest is pontifex. You may have heard that before. I don't know any Latin. But I think it it means bridge builder, or one who builds a bridge.
Speaker 1:And that's a good picture. That word help, gives us kind of a picture of what a priest does. It's a bridge. A priest knows the covenants and the laws of the Lord, and he shows the people, and he offers up the worship of the people to God. So this is Israel's job.
Speaker 1:Israel has the law. They have the word of the Lord. And God is saying to them, you are responsible for showing the nations what God is like. You are Yahweh's blessing to the nations. Back, we talked a second ago about Abraham's call.
Speaker 1:When the Lord calls out Abraham, He says, through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And of course, the ultimate fulfillment of that is in Jesus. Right? But we already see that this plan for the nations is not just something that bursts on the scenes in the New Testament. This is God's plan for his people from the beginning.
Speaker 1:And we see Israel, when they obey the law, doing this. Just as one example, look at, Radshak, Meshach, and Abednego. Right? Through their faithfulness, through their covenant faithfulness to the law of God, Nebuchadnezzar comes to acknowledge the, acknowledge the Lord. It's kind of a hard to interpret confession and hard to know what he meant.
Speaker 1:But through their obedience, through their proclaiming Yahweh only, you see the nations being blessed. You see people called in to worship the Lord. So what's Peter telling us? How are we priests? Well, God's people have the same responsibility today, to bless the nations.
Speaker 1:We've been called we have the gospel, the fullest revelation of who God is. We have that, and we have the access. Right? The curtains the curtains been torn. See this in Hebrews 10.
Speaker 1:We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us. We have this access, and now we have the responsibility as mediators to take that love that the God has lavished upon us and send that to the nations. Give that, bring them the good news of the gospel. And Peter here can mean even more. This is even a greater statement.
Speaker 1:Because that priesthood we talked about, that smaller group of people, that has ended. The curtain's been torn. Have you all heard of the doctrine, the priesthood of all believers? That's amazing. That means that we, as members of the body of Christ, have access to God through His blood.
Speaker 1:And that has implications on a community like this. Of course there are special responsibilities and things that we see for pastors, for Joel and Jeff and Dwight. And we should bring things to them and they love serving us. But you are in a home group that is full of priesthood members. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have access.
Speaker 1:And just like that, you have the responsibility as priests, as mediators, to share that love with the people around you. So realize, I'm not trying to lower the pastorate. I'm raising up what it means to be in the people of God. And that's amazing. You are a priesthood.
Speaker 1:You have access and responsibility with that. So take the gospel and bless the nations. Alright. Let's keep rolling. You are a holy nation.
Speaker 1:This is also from Exodus 19. We just read that. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So what does holy mean? We've been talking about this all through 1st Peter.
Speaker 1:It means other. Right? Distinct. It means not in a category that we already have. When we talk about God being holy, holy, holy, what we're saying is, God isn't just, like, the most kind that we can imagine, or the most loved that we can imagine.
Speaker 1:God is distinct and other from anything that we can comprehend. He is utterly different. And that's perhaps somewhat easy to explain and easy to understand. It's harder to see how a nation, a people could be holy. In the same context of extonements, you see other things being holy.
Speaker 1:A holy garment, or holy oil, or a holy tithe. And what that means is that those things are set apart for a specific use. Right? The holy garment is a set aside garment for a priest who's worshiping the Lord. Right?
Speaker 1:It's it's other, it's different, it's not, like, common would be a good opposite. You have common and then you have holy. So this gets us a little bit about what it means to be a holy nation. We're not just more of certain categories as Christians. We're not just it's not like we're nicer or we're a little better at loving.
Speaker 1:We should be. But what makes us who we are is that we have a different makeup. We're new creations. We're other. We're different.
Speaker 1:Doctor Cole, doctor Graham Cole, who did our theological talk bat, can't remember what that's called, He says this. He says that the church is the body language of an invisible god. The church is the body language of an invisible God. And I had to think about that for a second, but what that means is when we're functioning as this holy nation, the world sees what our God is like through our conduct. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:When we function as this, when we are the holy people, we set aside categorically different type of people, that when they look at that, they should see what our God is like. I think it's at the conjunction of this, the holy nation, and the kingdom of priests that we see how we're supposed to live in this world. We are in the world functioning as priests, as mediators. We are working ourselves into communities that would rot without us, as we've talked about going through Daniel. Right?
Speaker 1:But we are also different. We're not so much in the world that you can't tell the difference. We're holy. We're set aside. This is who we are.
Speaker 1:And fourthly, you are a people for his possession. And look again at Exodus 19, if you're still there. I'm reading back, starting in verse 5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. For Israel, this is a statement about value.
Speaker 1:Right? As you read through the Psalms, and as I've every time I've read through Psalms since I've been working on this, passage, I've noticed this over and over again. Israel is God's treasured people. Israel is God's special people, his portion. And there's comfort in that.
Speaker 1:Israel finds its joy and comfort knowing that we are God's chosen and treasured possession. There's implications of this that I think are really important, and it's this. As a Christian, you are not your own. You do not belong to yourself. I collect vinyl records and I am careful with them.
Speaker 1:I like them, especially if I spend money on them. But, you know, I'll whip it out real quick and drop the sleeve on the grounds and flip open the thing and pop it on and hit go and go sit down. When I borrow somebody else's record, which I do a lot, I'm really careful. I take it out really nice. I grab just the very edge and kinda shake it out of the sleeve, hold it from the edges, you know, lift up the case to the, top really carefully.
Speaker 1:Because if I scratch that, I mean, it's not mine. It's not mine to scratch. And that's not a perfect example, but you do things differently when something is not your own. And we, as Christians, fundamentally believe that we belong to our King, Jesus. Bishop N.
Speaker 1:T. Wright was asked in an interview, what what does it mean to be a Christian? Just like, what is, somebody walks up to you on a train. That's what the question is. We don't ride trains here, so that doesn't but, somebody walks up to you on the bus or in an airplane and says, okay, so I see you're reading this book.
Speaker 1:I see you're reading the Bible. You're a Christian. What does it mean to be a Christian? His answer, I thought was fabulous. He says to be a christian is to belong to king Jesus.
Speaker 1:To be a Christian is to not be your own. It's to be it's to be the Lord's. And that changes the way that we do everything. When we realize that our time and our money and our dreams are not our own, that we don't belong to ourselves, that changes the way we, interact with somebody that needs something that we drive by on the street. If that's not my time, if that's the Lord's time, then I'm much more likely to be the kingdom of priests, the holy nation, or be a part of that, than, I would be if I'm not realizing that.
Speaker 1:We are not our own. And this might If you're like me, this almost like bites your idea of Christian freedom. I think it's a very misunderstood term. We've talked about it a lot recently. I think of it like a man who's let go from prison, let out of jail.
Speaker 1:Alright? If he were to suffer for some reason, I don't know, try to, like, want to get back in to his cell, or get back into the prison, and the warden's trying to stop him, he might say, go. You're free. You're you're free. Go go go out there.
Speaker 1:You're free. Right? Nobody's gonna look at the warden and say, well, if he was truly free, then he could go back in his cell. Right? When we are belonging to Jesus, when we are living out this calling as a holy nation, we're doing what we were made to do.
Speaker 1:Right? I believe a few weeks ago, Joel used the image of of an eagle not being free to swim. It's for an eagle's free when it's flying. We as Christians, our freedom is found in life towards God. Life belonging to our savior, belonging to cre to our king Jesus.
Speaker 1:Alright. So we're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his own possession. Right? This is who we are. Now keep reading.
Speaker 1:That, so that we might proclaim the excellencies of God. So these things that we are, we are for a specific reason that we may proclaim the excellencies of God. This is really not unlike Ephesians 28, 9, and 10. If you're like me and you were in Awanas when you were a kid, you learned Ephesians 28, and 9. Right?
Speaker 1:For it's by grace we have been saved through faith, not of ourselves. It's the gift of God, not by works that no one can boast. And I always just stopped there. The next verse is kind of important. Right?
Speaker 1:For we are is this for, it is not by works and no man can boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. There's a reason, there's a purpose. God does this to us. He chooses us. He saves us.
Speaker 1:And it is to a specific end. And it's this end that we see here of His glorification. This has always been the purpose of God's people. In Isaiah 43, we see God saying, behold, I'm doing a new thing. I will give drink to my chosen people, people who I formed, that they might declare my praise.
Speaker 1:So I have saved you for me, for Godward living. And this is how who we are goes into what we do. Peter's building a bridge between the who we are and the what we're going to do here. And we see through in these four things great filters. As we look at what it means to be a chosen people, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a people of God's possession.
Speaker 1:We see in that, that is how we do that. That is how we proclaim the excellencies of God. So as we look at this, run your life through that framework. Because it is as we grow in these things that we do that. It's the reason that we were called.
Speaker 1:Let's take a closer look at what exactly we are proclaiming. Says, in order that we might proclaim the excellencies of a God, who calls us out of darkness into light. Now that's the gospel. We see this in Colossians 1, when we see God has delivered us from darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. I love the songs we sing here at Redeemer because and not that it's wrong to have songs that just praise God kind of in the abstract or just by name, not at all.
Speaker 1:But you see again and again and again and again in the Psalms that we're praising God who delivered us from Egypt. The God who is steadfast. The God who keeps his covenant. The God who delivers his people. So you can tell that the songs are very carefully selected to tell that message.
Speaker 1:We're proclaiming the excellencies of the God who transfers us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his Son. So who are you? And what is your purpose? We are these things, these four things, all for the purpose that we proclaim this gospel, this message, the out of darkness into light message. Now it's fundamental that this starts with the darkness.
Speaker 1:This is the starting point of the gospel. And it's worth asking, really, do we believe that we need saving? I love, this, bit of Martin Luther counseling someone. He says, you want to be an imaginary sinner and to regard Christ as an imaginary savior. You must accustom yourself to think that Christ is a real savior, and that you are a real sinner.
Speaker 1:God does nothing for fun nor for show, and he is not joking when he sends his son and delivers him up for us. Our Lord says to Nicodemus that the light has come into the world, but the people loved the darkness rather than the light. We are children of wrath, lovers of darkness. The story of salvation begins here. So I ask, do your lives proclaim that God?
Speaker 1:The God who took you out of darkness, the God who takes you out of a real darkness? Because that is a real savior. It's worth asking, and it's worth me asking myself, are our lives so together that we are telling people around us that we do not truly need a savior? Are we willing to go there? Are we willing to show ourselves as the kind of people who need Jesus?
Speaker 1:I love DT Niles, a Methodist priest from Sri Lanka, a missionary, says, Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. I think that's a great starting point. And I think that really changes when we start there. That we are proclaiming the excellencies of a God who called us from darkness. But he didn't just call us out of darkness.
Speaker 1:He calls us to something. He calls us out of darkness into his light, marvelous light. So we've talked about all your do your lives proclaim that you've been called out of darkness? But do your lives proclaim that you are a new creation? I've seen this time and time again, especially in my generation.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes we can get ticked off at certain tendencies of, our parents churches, the churches we grow up on. And we just think it's really cool to sit around and talk about how sinful we are and how great Jesus is, and just leave it at that. And I think that's half the gospel. God calls us out of darkness, yes, but he calls us to something. He calls us to Christ, the light.
Speaker 1:He calls us unto himself. Living out these four things that we are looking at tell that story. When we are a holy nation, we show that we have been brought into something, that we are a new people, a new creation. When we act as a chosen race, we're telling that story that we were chosen out, we were not a people, and now we have been made a people. Our lives need to proclaim that whole spectrum, the starting at the darkness and going to the light.
Speaker 1:Your life should proclaim the excellencies of Christ, a real savior who has taken you from a real darkness and brought you into a real light. Because that's who you are as a Christian. And that's where our ethics, every category of that comes out of there. We'll close like Peter does in this passage with going to Hosea. Read the very last, very end of verse 10.
Speaker 1:Read, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So he's alluding specifically to the story of Hosea here. And, for those of you who don't know, Hosea was a prophet who was told by God to go out and marry a prostitute, who would be unfaithful to him. And told him even in that, even though she's going to be unfaithful, to go and take her back.
Speaker 1:At one point, even buying her back from her lovers. A story meant to show Israel, a kind of a word picture for Israel to say, your God is faithful even though you are not. That you have run away and your God has pursued you and taken you back. In the midst of this, we're in chapter 1, we reach, Gomer, the Hosea's wife, conceives and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, call her name Lo'l Hannah, no mercy.
Speaker 1:For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. Israel, in the midst of rebellion, when she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son and the Lord said, call his name Lo Ammi, not my people. For you are not my people and I am not your God. Dark passages. The Lord is making good on his promise from Deuteronomy, that if the people disobey and rebel against him, that he will scatter them amongst the nations.
Speaker 1:And God is faithful in that promise. But we also see in Deuteronomy, 2 chapters later, that God says when the people repent, I will bring them back. I'll bring them back and make them one people again. And we see a great picture of this in Hosea 2. The Lord says, I will betrothed you to me forever.
Speaker 1:I will betrothed you to me in righteousness and injustice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I'll betrothed you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. And listen to this right here. I will have mercy on no mercy, and I will say to not my people, you are my people. And he shall say, you are my God.
Speaker 1:So this daughter and son of Hosea, no mercy and not my people. The Lord says, There will come a day where I will look at no mercy and I will say, mercy. That I'll look at not my people, and I will say, my people. God is bestowing an undeserved title on his people. And Peter is saying the same thing about the church.
Speaker 1:Because of Jesus, God has declared his people righteous. He has looked at us, Rohama, no mercy, and he has said, Mercy. He has looked at us, not a people, and said, you are my people. That's what Peter is doing here. He's saying you and your rebellion and your sin has been called, and you have been called something.
Speaker 1:You have been placed into a people. This is who you are in Christ. You're people who have been brought from darkness into light, bought by the blood of Jesus, transferred from not being a people to being God's people. Going from not receiving mercy to receiving mercy.
Jeffrey Heine:So what
Speaker 1:I wanna ask here just as we close is, do our lives tell that story? Whatever job you have, whatever work you're in, whatever you do, do you tell that story of a God who calls us out of sin into his marvelous light? We do this by living into these things, by by proclaiming that we are a people who is chosen, by by filling out this priestly ministry, by, living as a holy nation, distinct and set apart for God, by realizing that we are not our own, that we are God's possession. Run your life through these filters and really ask yourselves the question of who are you mainly. Because out of that comes what we do.
Speaker 1:And it's when we realize that we were in darkness and brought into light, when we realize and proclaim that with our lives, is when the things that we're going to read in the coming weeks of first Peter makes sense. Because our lives are not our own. We belong to king Jesus. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your mercy towards us.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the gospel. Thank you that you have sent Jesus. He is our king. He has defeated death and sin and darkness, and that we have been brought through his blood into your people. I pray that we would live into that through your spirit, that you would send your Holy Spirit to transform us, to change our hearts, to show us the excellencies of you who has done this for us.
Speaker 1:Help us to see that. Help us to live that. Thank you for your grace, and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Joel Brooks:Amen.