When something updates right
in the middle of what you're doing, there's an update. Praise God.
Trying to save the trees. Bible never updates. Though some think it should.
1 Peter chapter 2. I'm going to
start reading. In verse 4, down through verse
10. Again. As you come to Him, a living
stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones,
are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood,
to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ. For it stands in scripture, behold, I'm laying in Zion a
stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes
in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe,
but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock
of offense. They stumble because they disobeyed
the word of God as they were destined to do. 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,
but now you have received mercy. I probably will be in this little
section of text a few more weeks. Because there are things in here
that I just don't want us to pass over. For example, I want
to talk in the weeks to come about what it means to offer
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
That that actually is about a life lived and a life lived well in
the gospel by faith. I also want to talk about the
reality that there are those who stumble because they disobey
the Word of God. What does it mean? What is God's
electing love that we've already understood from chapter one?
How does it apply to this? I want to explain how He's telling
these Jewish people that you were not a people, now you are
a people. When they've been Jews their whole lives. And by definition,
they felt as though they were the people of God. There's a
lot of things, but the Lord willing, We'll come to it as we need.
But today I want to focus on several specific things. Starting
with the reality that we are, of course, living
stones. But as Christ is rejected, we
are accepted. I think that's where I left off
last week. As these Jews were dispossessed from their lives,
from their homes, from their communities, from their culture,
They became a people to be possessed by God. Now when we think about
possession, it's a little bit pejorative when it talks about
people. If you think about it, it's not even that. It's almost
negative. It's almost unethical. Well, we possess one another.
That means that we own each other. In a spiritual sense, this is
true. We've been bought by the blood of Christ, but that ownership
is not lording over. That ownership is not something
that requires us to fall and be subject to this rigidity,
to despair, to cultural or worldly standards
of righteousness. But yet it is possession, and
that as Christ has died, we are His body, so we have died with
Him. What does that mean? In order for us to be accepted,
we must be rejected. And in order for us to be acceptable,
then something acceptable must have been rejected. So for us
to be found in Christ means that as Christ's death was effectual,
if we are His body, we died with Him. If we are not His body,
we did not die with Him. And what did Christ's death do?
It satisfied justice. It satisfied righteousness. So
then, as Christ rose from the dead, we also were raised to
life. This is a promise. This is a
power of God. This is the reality of who we
are as His people. In the core of the gospel, the
core of the good report, the core of the good news, this is
the point. And that there's nothing that
we are that puts us in that place effectively. There's nothing
that we do that puts us in that place effectively. It's everything
that Christ is and who he is and everything that he has accomplished
that has put us there. He has put us there. That's why
we see that. That we have been what? Brought into. Brought into. So the honor is for you who believe,
see beloved, in verse seven, but for those who do not believe,
the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and
the stone of stumbling in the rock of defense. They've stumbled
because they disobeyed the word that as they were destined to
do, but you, but you, but you, verse nine, are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession
so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called
you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You weren't
a people, but now you are a people. And beloved, we can apply this
to our lives because it's not just here. We see Paul teaching
that to the Church of Ephesus. We see Paul saying these exact
same things to the Church of Colossae. We see it everywhere
we go. We see Jesus going into Samaria,
going to Sychar, going away from the Jewish centers to the people
who were absolutely hated, who were really heretics, sinners
of sinners when it came to worship, and embracing them because he
chose them. He shared himself, he gave himself,
he revealed himself. This is very important to grasp. And I know that I'm saying a
lot about these things, but beloved, we've overlooked them culturally
for a long time. We've overlooked the being of
belovedness. and the being of marriage and
the being of adoption. We've overlooked it to the point
that we've lost who we are in Christ. And so we have to create
an identity that finds itself in something that's attached
to what the culture says Christ is. And you may not think that
you have been affected by this, but we all have. We all have. We've all got some quirk to some
degree of finding that we feel good about ourselves because
we either do something because it's supposed to be what Christians
do, or we don't do something because of what Christians aren't
supposed to do. A couple of weeks ago, in a very
long conversation I had on record with Pastor Brown, I said that
some of the best Christians are unbelievers. or unchurched people. Just like I said several years
ago that the cults do better at love than the church does.
And I was rebuked and then I changed my mind that maybe they're right.
Then I went back and thought about it. No, I'm right because
that's how I see it. The perspective that I'm looking
at is correct. Because the scripture will teach
us that we're to put away malice, we're to put away deceit, we're
to put away hypocrisy, we're to put away envy, we're to put
away slander for our enemies, for the people who kill us, for
our neighbors, for the lost people, for the cults, for the unbelievers,
for the false believers, for the weirdos, and then all the
other people. I just, you know, whoever. We're
to have compassion. We're to have authentic love. Because when we don't give authentic
love, when we're unable to express empathy for someone else, it's
because we have put ourselves in the way of that. And what
suffering does is it breaks us down to identify with Christ
and His rejection and to establish in us a faith that cannot fail
even when we decide to throw it away. I want you to think
about that for a second. A lot of folks are like, you
know, I just don't believe anymore. That's not true. They just refuse to admit
it. You might have lost your hope.
You might have lost this feeling. You might have lost this experience.
You might have lost the desire to actually engage in any way
that you used to engage. You might have lost your love
for certain people who used to treat you a certain way and now
you realize they were just using you. You may have lost the attitude
that, you know what, Jesus isn't, Jesus is enough. I just don't
know what that means anymore. But you haven't lost your faith.
You still rest in your eternal hope in Christ alone. And I see
it everywhere. I see influencers and thought
leaders and people who are talkers. Do you know if you try to be
an influencer, if you try to be a thought leader, if you try
to be someone who actually has a voice, you never will be. That's
not how it works. But if you just be authentically
you, and you speak into the life of the people around you, you
will influence the life. Who are you if you're an influencer? How many people do you have to
influence to be an influencer? One. One. How many lives do you have
to touch to make an impact? One. That's it. We need to embrace life as a
precious gift because we are a precious people. And we've
been loved eternally by God who gave his son to satisfy justice
for us. He declared us righteous. He
declared that we were not good in our sin, but he would declare
us good and make us good. And it had to be legitimate.
It had to be real. It had to be true. So he had
to Call us out of darkness by opening the light of our eyes.
2 Corinthians chapter 4, right? For God who said let light shine
out of darkness has shone in our hearts the light of the knowledge
of the glory of Jesus Christ. We see it. And we see it as children
who have come to their parent, to their father, to their mother
with arms open. Knowing the embrace is there.
Knowing our pains. It doesn't matter. We don't have
to explain or have to excuse. If we're hungry, we come to eat.
If we're thirsty, we come to drink. If we're alone, we come
for intimacy. This is what it means to be a
child of God. And the harder life is, the more
desperate we become. But desperate people are dangerous.
First to themselves and then to the people around them. Because
desperation fuels destruction, not delight. We step over the
promises into the puddles of despair, and the next thing we
know, we are drowning in something that shouldn't have enough water
to kill us. Flailing around, screaming for help. Have y'all
seen these videos, these kids, little sections of water, and
they're screaming, and they're about to pass out, and the parent just
walks over there and stands them up, and the water's knee-high? Stand up. Stand upon the rock. Stand upon the cornerstone. This
imagery is here for us not to forget. It's for us to embed
inside of our conscience, embed inside of our heart and our soul
so that we will see this picture forever because it's not always
possible to parse out language and to dive into theological
debate and to understand the nuanced theology behind all this.
But it's real easy for me to picture myself standing on a
rock that can't be moved. It's really easy for me to think,
I don't know where I'm going, I don't know why, I don't know
how, but I know that Christ has set the way, so I'm just gonna
look there. But we've turned this life of
Christianity into platitudes and into cliches, and into cliches. And they don't work. Even when they're true, they
don't work. Because life is a second-by-second, breath-by-breath, minute-by-minute,
day-by-day, week-by-week, and so on and so forth experience. And we who are in Christ, we
experience life every breath. And some of us have good control
over our minds, and some of us don't. Some of us have good health
in our bodies, and some of us don't. Some of us have incredible
relationships with other people, and some of us, we just can't
seem to find friends. But if we're in Christ, we're
one body. We're one people. And we are
going to experience rejection because Christ experienced rejection.
And just as we are found in his suffering and his death and his
resurrection and life, we will also experience his rejection
and his subsequent honor. Because if we were honest, and
sometimes we can't be honest because we just don't know, right?
If we were honest, we could say to ourselves, what is it that's
ultimately at the root of everything that I've ever wanted to be? Now, how long would it take you
to answer that question? For me, it took a few years. Because
the quick answer is typically wrong. What is it that I want
from life? Well, man, I wish I had done
this because I'd have made a bigger difference in life. I wish I
could have done that or followed that pursuit because I would
have been somebody. You ever thought that? I just don't want to be a...
I just don't want to be a... I just don't want to live. And
no matter where we go in the answer to those questions, we're
always going to be left wanting. We're always going to be left
without an identity that stands. No matter what we change about
ourselves, our lifestyles, our habits, our disciplines, our
bodies, our minds, our language, our learning, we're never going
to find fulfillment if we're not in Christ. And the best, this is gonna sound
so weird, it's not new, it's just a reminder, the best thing
that could ever happen to us is that we bleed. Is that we get broken. Is that
we get bruised. That we get burned. What are
the B's you come up with? We get berated. Because in that, we are humbled.
And in that place, We become desperate for hope. And then
we become desperate for Christ, who is hope. That is why these
people were suffering the way they were, so that the resulting
faith, which could not perish, would result in praise and honor
and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Why? Because that
which we long for most deeply will satisfy us most fully when
we get it. I'm gonna say that again, that
for which we long for most deeply will satisfy us most fully when
we get it. New car smell doesn't last long
enough. New shoes don't stay clean long enough. Nothing stays. Peter's already reminded us of
that, right? All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like
the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower
falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever, and this word
is the good news that was preached to you. So you have been clothed
with a righteousness that's not yours. Keep it clean. Don't cover
it up. Did y'all sing a little VBS when
you were kids? This little light of mine? I'm
gonna let it shine, you know? Hide it under a bushel. And what
do you do when you sing that line? You scream the word, no!
I'm gonna let it shine. We really understood that. You
put a bushel basket over a candle, it's gonna catch a bushel basket
on fire. I mean, come on, guys. Bunch of pyromaniacs here. No,
don't burn this up. Letting the righteousness of
Christ shine in us. That's what life's all about.
Verse 11, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain
from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they
speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify
God on the day of visitation. But the problem comes when we
don't understand what righteousness really looks like. And we forget
that we are clothed with the perfection of Christ. So even
when we try to put on our good works, we got this incredible
prayer life, we got this devotional studies, start putting them on. Well, we don't say those words
anymore. We don't watch those shows anymore. We don't read
those books anymore. We don't shop at that place. We got our
iPhone and our Android, though. We have standards, folks. But
not if they cost us everything. We've got a lever to pull on
November. We've got a lever to pull in March. We've got these
things to worry about. The whole world's upside down.
Oh, my goodness. Look at me. I'm doing the right
thing. And we just look like fools. Because our righteousness that
we put on over the righteousness of Christ is like filthy rags
and there's no reason to wear it. Why do we get dressed up
and then put on the yard clothes on top of it? You can work in your yard in
a tuxedo, man, but it won't be fit for the ball. So we take all that stuff off,
the good and the bad. What we think is good, it's actually
bad. And we rest truthfully in the reality that we're going
to be rejected. Now, why am I saying all this? Because you will be
rejected when you live that way for Christ. I mean, you can jump into a little
echo chamber, you can step sideways into a little Christian circle,
and you can agree with the sentiment, you can agree with the focus,
you can agree with all these things. Oh my, you're not gonna
be alone. You're not gonna be rejected.
You'll have a little group over here that's, you know, about this
far to the left, and they'll be like, oh, I just can't see
you anymore as a brother, or as a sister. I can't see you
as a person with sins. You would dare buy anything from
Nestle. or Procter and Gamble with the devil's tool picture
on the back of their toothpaste. Who cares? But you'll be accepted somewhere.
But when we, as the people of faith, aren't looking to be validated
by other people, but we know and rest that we are absolutely
validated by the righteousness of Christ, that our Father is
not angry with us, that our sin has been put away and put on
Christ, so therefore there's no condemnation. Well, God might
discipline. Why does He do that? Because
He's furious? No, because He loves us. Discipline is not punitive. It's
not punishment. It's growth. It's love. But when we begin to think this
way, when we begin to think, you know what? I'm a chosen race. It can go sideways too, right? People are gonna reject us. And
in the Old Testament, I talked about Psalm 118 last week. Verse
22, the stone the builders rejected. The Messiah's rejection. He had
to die and be rejected in order for him to be resurrected. Moses
and Isaiah both were the same way. I mean, Moses, what was
Moses? Moses was saved from birth because,
what was the edict? That there will be a Hebrew child
born into Egypt who will liberate the slaves. So what does the Pharaoh do?
I'll fix that. When was this supposed to happen?
All right, all the boys born in that era, in that time frame,
just throw them to the crocodiles. So what does Moses' mother do?
She puts him in a basket, floats him up the little river that
gives water to the palace, and then gets to raise her child
by proxy, who grows up as a prince. Why? Here's this prince, this Hebrew
child growing up in the castle or whatever they live in in Egypt
at the time, the kingdom. And his people hated him. Then
he kills someone and has to flee for his life. And then his original people
don't want to receive him. And then God calls him out of
all that. He's like, you know what? I have a pretty good life.
I'm doing a little sheep herding. I'm out here for some reason
wearing all this garb in the desert. You ever notice how they're
all like dressed in like nine layers on the television shows?
But they're in the desert. Okay. I mean, you know, they
don't wear that thick of material out there. They do wear long
stuff, but not that thick of material. So anyway, back to
the point. Moses is rejected by his people.
And God calls him to go back to Egypt and tell the king to
let the Hebrews go. And who is Moses? And then Moses goes back to them
in Exodus 1. And he says, hey guys, I know I've just lived
this posh life. And I know I've gotten out of
that, but I'm one of y'all now. And I want y'all to know that
God spoke to me. He burned a bush, and the bush
told me that I'm to be the leader and get y'all out of slavery.
And what do they do? They laugh him in his face. They
reject him and they even ask, who made you the prince and judge
over us? You'd probably kill us like you
did that Egyptian. Oh, somebody needs to take a Gottman lesson
on conversation, communication. It's definitely the wrong way
to respond. Now as a savior, as the one ordained
by God, he could have easily said, you know what? God gave
me this stick and I don't know what it's going to be for. But
right now, I'm about to beat y'all with it. I mean, but that's
not what he did. He was rejected as a precursor
to Christ, who came to his own and his own did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him, that is believed in his name,
he gave the right to become the children of God, not because
of the way they were born, nor the decision that they made,
nor the blood in their veins, but by the will of God. The light has come into the world.
Isaiah, same thing. Isaiah. I mean, if you haven't
read Isaiah in a while, just get in there and read it. Isaiah's
like, wow. Nobody's going. Just send me,
God. Send me into this dark world
of idolatry. God speaking about Judah and all the other nations And
he says, send me. Now imagine volunteering for
an amazing thing. He didn't really volunteer, but
he was willing. And then being told, yeah, we
don't want to listen to you. We don't care what you have to
say. Who died and made you the ruler of all this? Who do you
think you are telling us what the Lord is supposed to be telling
us? Why are you telling us how to live our lives? Who am I going to send, God says.
Isaiah says, yes, send me. And then what does God tell Isaiah?
You go and you tell them what I said, but I'm not going to
let them hear you. And I'm not going to allow them
to follow you. Now see, then I'll be looking
at the job description. You asked me to come do this, but you're
telling me I'm going to fail at it. You told me to go sell
water to a thirsty bunch of folks for free and they're not even
gonna accept it for free. I'm gonna have to pay them to
take it so they can pour it out in spite in front of me. That's
literally the picture of what I think about when I think about
Isaiah's ministry. But Jesus, Isaiah prophesied
of Jesus. What was the whole point? He's
gonna be hated. He's going to be despised. He's
going to be brutally murdered. And his wounds, we will be healed. And by his stripes, we will be
healed. He's going to be turned into hamburger meat. That's the
sentiment. That he'd be beaten so badly
he wouldn't look human. And that strikes a nerve with
us. That builds some emotion, right? This is the God of the
cosmos, the creator of every breath. that ever breathed, being
subject to the very ones who hated Him, so that He could liberate
them, which is us. So what do we do there? We've got
to understand rejection as believers. That it aligns with our experience
as believers. And we've got to remain faithful.
We've got to understand as a church that Christ is a stumbling block.
I hear it all the time. Yeah, you preach the true gospel,
nobody's going to want to hear it. That's not true. There's hundreds of thousands
of people flocking to these kind of echo chambers on all this
deep thing, these deep theologies. That's all they talk about. These
Greek experts that say the word run means run. Word lip means
behold, look. That doesn't help anybody. These talking heads that are
influent, third, you know what? Anybody can sit around in the
toilet and talk poop and be in the right context. The question
is, can we, in a way of service, mindset, attitude, and purpose,
live that other people will follow us to where we're going? We are living stones. And we need to live in the honor
of being built into such things, despite our rejection, especially
from who? The religious people of the day.
I remember in 2004 when I first got my good first dose of the
free will versus sovereign grace debate in the academic sphere. I'm like, oh, what in the name
of Crispy Chick is this? This doesn't make any sense.
And I know my first mindset after that big diatribe was all the
while I've spent the last three days listening to these two guys
fight on a stage about nothing, my neighborhood is going to hell. And so I wrote an article about
it. And then later in my life I realized, you know what, this
is a big deal. It's a big deal to get this theology right because
it's being debated. It's something that's been fussed
about for a long, long time. It was fussed about in Paul's
day, but you know what I've learned then subsequently is that it
doesn't matter to the degree in which we respond to it. It
just needs to be through positive doctrine reinforcement, and more
importantly, through a life well lived in righteousness by faith. To be able to say to somebody
who is on fire, upset about something that's actually not burning,
and say, you're not even burning, it's okay. Let me give you a
glass of water. And when they hate you, what
does the Bible say about that? That you're pouring hot coals
on their head. So that little bit of fleshliness
that gets sort of like, we're gonna love them because we love
them, but I'm burning your hair off. Sucker. You don't even know you're burning
your own hair. But I'll help get you a wig when you come to
your senses. We're chosen people. We're a
royal priesthood. Out of nothing, out of no one,
out of nowhere, God calls his people. Out of all nations and
all tribes. Jesus Christ saved the world.
There is no one not represented in the elect. There's no unmet
people group, there's no unmet bloodline, there's no... And
it's not like God has all the genealogies of the world up there
in an appendix to the book of life, in an addendum. Oh no! We forgot the, um, Walmartians. Better go send a missionary over
there, Walmartians. You know, with a little smile.
That's how you know who they are, or they don't wear clothes
when they're shopping. Either one. The people of Walmart, you haven't
seen those memes yet. OK. But out of these people, God
has chosen a people. I'll take some out of here and
I'll take some out of here, and it's not arbitrary. It's his
wise counsel. These are the people I'm giving
to my son from the foundation of the world. I love them and
I will save them through the death of Christ. It is finished. God, through Isaiah, even says
that the wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because
I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland
to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for
myself that they may proclaim my praise. It really is, life really is,
I don't like this, I'm a high-producing person. Even if it's busyness
down the wrong side of the road, going nowhere, costing me everything,
I just want to do something. I want to produce. I like to
build and create and think and talk about it. I love to talk
about it. But what we're really supposed
to be doing is living together and resting and rejoicing and
repeating. The call of Abraham was someone
that, I mentioned this last week, but here's Abraham. I have friends of mine who sent
me pictures when they were over in the Middle East and sent me
pictures of ziggurats. They were in Ur. Check this out. Never knew they were so big.
I mean, most of us won't get in the car and come to church
unless let's climb this pyramid. go up there and look at the moonbeams
and wonder why the moonbeams aren't staying around when the
sun comes up. We made our God angry. Now the hot God's out. I mean, that's who God chose,
the fateful Chaldean. And how did he speak to him? I mean, if I were God, I'd have
spoken to Abraham like this. As he's looking at the moon, The
man of the moon. Hey, would you look at that?
But that would have been, that would have been bad because then
he said, you know, the God of the moon, the one we've been worshiping,
he spoke to me. No, we don't know. It could have been the Holy Spirit
of God put it in his heart and he couldn't stop it. Could have been an unknown prophet
moving through town. We don't know. But Abraham said,
yeah, God said, Abraham, go from your country and your kindred
and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I'll
make a great nation of you and I'll bless you and make your
name great so that you will be a blessing. I'm not going to
lie, the man in charge comes and says, hey, I'm about to give
you a golden ring. If you follow it, you'll have everything you
want. You'll be the most amazing name in the world. You'll be
a household brand. You will be an influencer. I
mean, I have to sleep on that, you know? I'm like, hmm, this
sounds too good to be true. It might be true. I'm willing
to take a trip. It's the same trip these people in the dispersion
are taking. That's how God pulls us out.
He takes us out of our grand schemes and our grand plans and
our grand things. It doesn't mean we don't have
them, but God's going to put a stop to them. If everything I'd ever purposed
to do and be came to fruition to the fullest of my vision for
it, I'd have a hundred companies. I'd be paying the bills for a
million people and our church would probably have 600 locations
packed. Thank God it's not like that.
Because you know what I don't want to do? Maintain all that. Imagine All the plans we've laid
and God has said, nope. I'm gonna run a 5K next week.
You break your leg. Nope. I'm gonna learn how to fly airplane.
Nope. You got some eye problems now. I'll never make anything. You
are everything already. I mean, even in the church, right? We've got a standard. Of course,
our standard is very relaxed now, thank God. You don't have
to come in here all dressed up and things. Heaven help. But we still have some standards.
There are certain types of people, the way they look or the way
they speak or the way they act or the way they smell. We might
think, you know, you need to start thinking about some stuff
before you come to worship with us. Why? We shouldn't. Yeah, there's a
standard of behavior just because we live in a society, but it
doesn't mean that it's the behavior that we have to have because
we're in a place of worship or a dress code. You know what
I say? Dress to the temperature. When it's cold, I might put on
a suit next year. I don't know. I like suits. I'm
just glad I don't have to wear them anymore. And nothing thrills
me more to go to Brooks Brothers and try on new jackets that I
don't buy. Yeah, that looks nice. Take a picture. Put it on social
media and go on about my day. It's good stuff. We're a royal
priesthood. We don't have to put on the regalia
to pretend. We are. We don't have to wear
the headdresses and the phylacteries. We don't have to put on all the
stuff. We don't have to burn the incense. And listen, I'm
not poking fun at our Orthodox friends. It's okay if you want
to do that kind of stuff, but it's not more spiritual. It's
not more righteous. It's not the point. How about Levi
and all of his descendants? Well, they came from Aaron, right? grasp the fact that we're a royal
priesthood, we're a chosen nation. Aaron and his sons are set apart
as priests to serve the community of faith. Leviticus 8, and Moses
brought Aaron and his sons and washed them with water and he
put the coat on them and tied the sash around his waist and
clothed them with the robe and put the ephod on him and tied
him skilfully woven band and the ephod around him, binding
it to him with the band. I always say ahead of where I'm
going in the scripture, remember. We don't have to look a part. We are the part. So let's live
the part. I'd much rather live the part than look the part.
People are astonished that I'm a pastor when they meet me for
the first time. And then they apologize for every
profane word they've ever said. I'm so sorry. Why? What did you
do wrong? Well, I used that ugly language
in front of you. I said, well, what makes language? I get in
these extremely stressful, psychological conversations with them because
I want to push these buttons so they can get the point that
being a Christian is not about saying the right words and wearing
the right clothes and being in the right place. Anybody can act like a Christian.
Anybody can posture spirituality. Anybody can pretend to be a priest
or a chosen. But only the authentic article
can be genuine in every circumstance. Church, we must be a people who
are genuine in every circumstance, no matter what. We have a collective calling
as a church. We are called, what I just said,
is to embody and proclaim God's kingdom. What does that look like? We
need to worship. What is a priestly role? We need
to worship. We need to be on mission. We
need to do service for each other. Don't think that the pastors
are the priests. We are the priests, we each have
our role. Because we are God's special
possession. Now think about that for a second. I love Hosea. It really paints the picture
of what Paul and Peter talks about in the context of how marriage
relationship is supposed to look as a picture of the gospel, not
necessarily function as, I'm God, you're not, do what I say.
That's not biblical. And we'll get to that when we
get over to chapter 3. Christ isn't in charge of his
church, he's the head of his church. There's a huge difference. And he led his church by dying
for them so that in his death he justified them and presented
them blameless and holy without spot or blemish. This is the
truth. So Hosea's life and marriage symbolizes God's love and redemption
for his unfaithful people. I will have mercy." What did he call him? Oh, no
mercy. And I will say to not my people,
you are my people. And he shall say, you are my
God. Think about it for a second.
I started last week's sermon with this question. How do you
view yourself in the context of the gospel? How do you identify
yourself? How do you talk about yourself? How do you name yourself? What adjectives do you use? And the first thing that should
come to your mind is not sin or saved by grace. Undeserving
rich. Worm. I am beloved, precious, redeemed, adopted. I am a child of the Most High. My daddy is a really important
thing. Think about that for a second. Oh, look at all you all out there
in the wilderness walking around. See, if you just stuck with the
truth, if you just stuck with the program, you got to go out
there and follow some weirdo. I mean, you knew he was a weirdo.
Look at who came before him. Locust in his mouth, wearing
stuff he shouldn't be wearing. I mean, no priest wears that. John the Baptist. Looking like a crazy guy. And
you know, he's the one who said, look, behold, the Lamb of God
takes away the sins of the world. Then Jesus hanging out with prostitutes
and thieves and tax collectors and and everybody else and every
bad thing under the sun. But these weren't the bad people.
These were not the bad people. It was the self-righteous who
were the bad people. They were the real sinners. Because these
people were the beloved of God. And the same thing happening
here with Peter's audience. They had to leave everything
and everybody, oh, you know, oh, hey, shh, shh, hey, Johnny,
hey, little Johnny, don't talk to them. Well, we want to play,
whatever. No, I'm sorry, you can't play
with them. Why? Because they're not good people.
You see how they dress? They don't even bathe. They don't
even have a place to bathe. Don't hang out with those people. What is it one of my grandmothers
or grandmother Tibbetts used to say? Didn't have a pot to
pee in or a window to throw it out of. I don't understand that. Why would you throw your urine
out the window? But either way, weird old Southern colloquialisms.
You are a royal priesthood. You are someone who God has purchased. That's who we are. We have a
holy identity. The prophetic symbolism of Hosea
is the beautiful picture that we who were not, we didn't fit
in, but now we do. We don't fit the mold, but now
we are perfect. We're loose and bruised around.
You know, there are missionaries, their whole purpose is to clothe
primitive natives so they can be more Christ-like. There are whole groups of missionary
arms that try to get the King James, not the original, not
the first 300 versions, but, you know, one of the closest, so that these people could have
the actual Word of God on their hands and they don't even speak English. there are mission fields right
now in the United States in our communities that work so hard
every single day teaching children in Sunday school and schools
and other places and home and making us feel very guilty because
we dare feed our children and Oreo we let them watch a Disney
movie And I'm not mocking people's
conscience. I'm rebuking their fear. There's a difference. Because
that fear leads to bondage. Then we lose sight of who we
are. We have a holy identity. We are God's possession. Live in that security, beloved.
I mentioned it last week and the week before, nothing can
separate us from the love of God. That is security. Why? Because
we are holy people. So therefore, as a holy nation,
we are to pursue holiness. We are to strive to live a life
that is set apart for the name that we have been called because
we are those people. See how much love the Father
has given to us that we should be called the children of God?
And so we are the children of God. Why? Because He called us
the children of God. Then we rest. We find our identity
and our value and our worth and our being and our movement and
our coming and our going in the thought that we are a treasured
people. We are secure in His love. Because
we are that way individually, we should be that way as a people. And it is okay to say, eh, I
don't know, I don't like, I don't understand. We want to be a safe
people with a unified purpose. and that means beloved as long
as we exist as a spiritual family that we call grace through church
were, have a whole large diverse group of people And we're not our goal is not
to get everybody looking exactly the same or getting to the same
level of maturity. It's going to go up and down.
Our goal is to live compassionately with each other as children.
In the household of God. Because of the body and the blood
of Jesus Christ that purchased us. We are not just God's people. We are also becoming God's people. So let's walk in a manner like
that. Let's walk in that journey. And let's do it together. I hope
you're blessed by who you know you are and by whose you are.
Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for loving
us, Lord, for purchasing us in the person of Christ, your beloved
son, whom you set forth to be a propitiation, to satisfy righteousness,
to satisfy judgment, to satisfy wrath. Father, as we continue to move
through this letter, let it be because we're reading it together
and that we're thinking about it together, that we're living
it out together, that we may begin to embrace some of the
practical things that we're going to hear, Lord, from a place of
absolute joy and great expectation rather than fearful obligation. Help us to be OK with being real
and honest. And Lord, help us to see that
our strength comes from you by the spirit as we engage each
other. Not because we're fearful of
one another. Because we're faithful to one another. Help us to be
faithful to one another. The way that Christ has been
faithful to us. And the way that Christ has been faithful to you. And it's in His name we pray.
Amen.