Book of 1 Peter, Ch. 2 - 11/28/2021

Okay good morning. This morning we're going to be again in 1

Peter chapter 2 and we're going to actually do verses 9 through 12.

That won't be very much but we will get there shortly. But before we do that I'd like to go back and look at last week's finish for just a second.

And I'm going to pick up in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 6.

So here we go. Verse 4. Also it is contained in the scripture.

Behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone elect precious and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious. But unto them which be disobedient the stone which the builders disallowed the same is made the head of the corner.

Now these two verses present a sharp contrast between those who believe and those who do not.

To those who believe Christ is precious and of ultimate value.

But to those who do not believe, to those that have rejected

Christ, they stumble because of their disobedience. We see that in verse 8.

And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient were unto also they were appointed.

Now there's three words. We're not going to deal with them right now but we will before this class is over this morning.

The words are elect, chosen, and appointed. We use these words pretty much in our classes and as we go through the scripture as if they are exactly the same.

But there's some slight subtle differences. And what I'd like to do as we go through is have you consider when you see these words appear how they are alike and how they are different.

The words again are elect, chosen, and appointed. But before we do any of that let's take a moment to pray.

Most gracious Heavenly Father thank you for allowing us to reach out to technology to reach people that we cannot meet in person.

Thank you for making this technology available to us and thank you for allowing us the ability to meet together even though not in the flesh but in the spirit as one.

As one church. As one body of believers. As one collection of believers who are obedient and who do or try to do the things that you ask us to do.

Thank you again for your Holy Scripture that you've given us that we may go to it and study it.

And thank you for the Holy Spirit which you have given to us to allow us to understand what you've read or written in the scripture that we have read.

Thank you most of all for giving us your son. Who came into the world and part of his mission was to redeem the lost.

And all of yours, all of the ones that he came into the world to redeem, he has or he will redeem.

Bless us and keep us. Go through us, go with us through all the lessons today, through all the sessions today.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay. So now we're to this week.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.

May ye should show forth the praises of him who called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light.

Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.

Which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify

God in the day of visitation. Okay.

The ideas expressed by Peter in verses 9 and 10 passage we just read, come from Hosea chapter 2 verse 23.

And they're reinforced by Paul in Romans chapter 9, where a reference is explicitly made to the calling of a people made up of both

Jews and Gentiles. So now I'm going to read chapter 9, verses 9 and 10 again.

And I have highlighted some words, and I'm going to try to stress them as I go through. And if you don't quite get it, just let me know.

But ye, that's one of the words I underline, ye. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light.

In time past, which in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

So Peter is going to use Old Testament concepts to emphasize the privileges of the

New Testament Christians. The first word, actually the second phrase that I highlighted, beyond ye, ye are the people that are reading the letter that he wrote, that would be us this morning, ye are a chosen generation.

That came from Deuteronomy 7 .6, when the

Lord is telling Moses what to tell the people of Israel when he goes back down off the mountain to take his word to them.

He says, for thou are a holy people, that's Israel he's talking about, for thou are a holy people.

Now, you know what holy means? Holy means set aside to do the work of God.

And one might consider as we go forward, what is the work of God for Israel?

Or what was the work of God for Israel? And did they do it according to what he had told them to do?

You are a holy people, set aside to do God's work. Unto the

Lord God, the Lord thy God hath chosen thee,

Israel, to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people.

For ye were of the fewest of all people. But because the

Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the

Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh the king.

Now, that was the message that Moses had to give to Israel.

And one of the things, actually, two of the things, they were a chosen generation and a holy nation set apart to do

God's will. Now, Peter is using this same phraseology, a chosen generation.

He's using a chosen generation to refer to the church. The church is also a chosen generation.

And like it said earlier last week, this is in strong contrast to the disobedient, who are also chosen, or we might better say, appointed.

But they're appointed, as we saw last week, to wrath. I'm going to read 1

Peter 2, 8 again. 1 Peter 2, 8, we read at the beginning. A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient, were unto also they were appointed.

Okay, so the church is chosen, just like Israel was chosen. And the non -believers, the non -believers, the disobedient, are also appointed, but they are appointed to wrath, not appointed to the

Lord. Not chosen by the Lord to be part of the chosen generation, but chosen to be members of which, of a group which are appointed to disobedience, appointed to wrath.

Well, let's go on. The next word we came to is a holy priesthood.

The concept of a royal or kingly priesthood is drawn from Exodus chapter 19, verse 6.

And ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

Okay, so in Exodus, what did he say? That Israel is going to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Again, remembering what a holy nation's call is to do, and what a kingdom of priests is called to do.

Israel temporarily forfeited this privilege because its wicked leaders crucified the

Messiah. At the present time, it's the church that is the royal priesthood.

And it's the church that is united with the royal priest,

Jesus Christ. We need to understand that a royal priesthood is not only a priesthood that belongs to and serves the king, but is also a priesthood that exercises rule.

Presently, we belong to and serve our king. Later, in his millennial kingdom, we will rule with him.

And we might want to consider for a second, who are the we that are going to rule in the millennial kingdom with our king,

Jesus Christ? Is it the Gentiles? Is it a mixture of Gentiles and Christians?

Well, we'll get to that in a few minutes when we get to Paul's illustration of this particular passage.

Well, we know from Revelation 5 .10 that God hath made us unto our

God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. So in the millennial kingdom, that's when we will begin to reign and rule with him, as well as being his priest.

Now we see a second concept, another concept, that of a holy nation.

And I've already alluded to this a couple of times. A holy nation is a nation that is set apart to do

God's will. God's will for the nation of Israel was to serve as a lamp and light unto the world.

To show God's, to show

God's, I just got a message that my, my internet is unstable.

So if it flicks off, I'm not sure what's going to happen. But I'll just keep going. Maybe everything will be okay.

We see another concept, the holy nation. This is an illusion. This is also another illusion to Exodus 19 .6,

as was Deuteronomy 7 .10. Tragically, Israel temporarily forfeited the great privilege of being a unique people, called,

Peter calls them, a peculiar people, a unique people of God.

And they forfeited that to unbelief. And until Israel's future acceptance of its

Messiah, God has replaced the nation of Israel with the church. So who is to be

God's light to the nations now? Well, that's to be the church.

But don't carry it too far. While the descriptions of the church are similar to those used of Israel in the

Old Testament, this in no way indicates that the church replaces

Israel, nor assumes that the national blessings promised to Israel, and to be fulfilled in the

Millennial Kingdom, are given to the church. Similarity does not mean identity.

Peter simply used similar terms to point out similar truths, as Israel was a chosen people, chosen by God, a royal priesthood, chosen by God, a holy nation, chosen by God, and a people chosen by God to belong to Him.

So too believes today, the church is a chosen people, chosen by God.

It's a royal priesthood. It's a holy nation, separated to do

God's will. It's a people chosen by God, and belonging to God.

Now, God's purpose in choosing believers for Himself is so that they can declare the praises of Him before others.

And the praises could also be translated excellencies or virtues.

So believers should live their lives so that their Heavenly Father's qualities are evident in their lives, because the people of the world cannot see

God, and they can't see Jesus. All they can see are those people who claim to be believers.

And if we are believers, we should live so that our Heavenly Father's qualities are evident in our lives.

They are to serve as witnesses of the glory and the grace of God, who call them out of darkness unto

His. To reread just a bit of 1

Peter 2, verse 9, you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of the darkness into His marvelous light.

So what's our role? Our role is to live a life that reflects the virtues of Christ, so that people can look at us and say, what is there that makes this group of people different than everybody else we know?

And they will say, well, they claim to be believers, and they all act this way. That is something special.

And that's one of the ways that we can help do our part in making unbelievers see the virtues of God.

And then we leave it up to God to choose the ones

He wants to choose. We can't win anyone to God, but we can make

God's virtues available to be seen by all people.

And God will choose who to believe. Then Peter goes on to explain the figure of speech, darkness into life.

And he does this in verse 10 with a quotation from Hosea 2, 23.

I'm going to read first verse 10, and then I will read

Hosea 2, 23, verse 10.

Which in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

That's what Peter said. A people that in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Now here's what Hosea 2, 3 says, I will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy.

And I will say to them which were not my people, thou art my people, and they shall say, thou art my

God. Well, that's where Peter got the passage that he quoted in verse 9.

Now, darkness. Darkness refers to the time when his readers were pagans.

He's writing this to a group of Gentiles primarily, also to Jews, but he's talking about a time when his readers were pagans and were not aware.

They were ignorant of God's provision for salvation, which we will find in Colossians chapter 1, when they were not a people and when they had not received mercy.

So what does this say? Darkness refers to the time when his readers were pagans, ignorant of God's provision of salvation, when they were not a people and when they had not received mercy.

So let's go to Colossians and look at what's there, and we'll pick it up in Colossians 1, verse 12.

Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet, and I'm going to stop there a minute and say that means fit, and I'm going to reread that and just replace meet with the word fit.

Giving thanks unto God which hath made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints and light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear

Son. That's the translation. He has translated us from darkness into light, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

That's part of what makes us fit to be partakers. Who is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.

All things were created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.

So there he is, the church. What is the church? Jesus is the head of the church.

Jesus is the cornerstone of the church. Jesus is the firstborn of the church, the firstborn from the dead.

For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.

And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself.

I say whether they be things in the earth or things in heaven. And you, speaking of the church, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he hath reconciled.

Not by what we did, but he did it. In the body of his flesh, through death, to present you holy, unblameable, unreprovable in his sight.

To whom, I went down a few verses, to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among Gentiles, which is

Christ in you, the hope of glory. When we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man, that is to say, every man who believes, both

Jew and Gentile, we may present every man perfect in Jesus Christ.

Whereunto I labor, striving according to his workings, which worketh in me mightily.

So now, his wonderful light illuminates all the people of God, because all the people of God have received his mercy.

The practice of holiness being set apart in which

God's people serve as a holy and royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices and extolling his excellencies, is the proper response to the mercy that they have received.

It is only proper that with all the mercies that we have received, that we should want to extol his excellencies.

Back to 1 Peter 1, 3, Blessed be the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again, and to a lively hope by the

Christ from the dead. That's what they were ignorant of. That's what we were ignorant of until the time came that we believed.

Okay, let's look once again at verse 9 and 10 of 2

Peter, 1 Peter chapter 2. But ye are chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his wonderful, marvelous light, in which time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Now, Paul, as we mentioned before, amplifies all of this in Romans 9, and I'm going to read a little bit of Romans 9, beginning at verse 23.

And that he may know the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had aforeprepared for glory, who are those even us whom he hath called, not of the

Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As he said in Hosea, I will call them my people, which were not my people, and her beloved, and her beloved, which were not beloved.

And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my children, there shall they be called the children of the living

God. So what did Paul say? He said, make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had aforeprepared unto glory, even us, the church, whom he had called, not of the

Jews only, but of the Gentiles as well. And now we're going on to verse 11.

Dearly beloved, I beseech ye as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

Those who are loved by God are exhorted to live as strangers or aliens, perikoses, those who live in a place that is not their home.

That is a word that issues figuratively of Christians whose real home is in heaven.

Strangers and pilgrims, strangers in the world. No one is really a pilgrim in this biblical sense if he has not first become a stranger to the world.

Just as Christian values and beliefs are rejected by the world,

Christians are called upon to reject worldly values and beliefs and live a life apart from the immorality and sinful desires that surround them.

1 Peter 4, chapter 1 says this, for as much then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that has suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lust of men, but to the will of God.

For in time past, our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the

Gentiles when we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excesses of wine, reveling, banqueting, and abominable idolatries.

Now the word abstain that we found in verse 11 is literally to hold oneself constantly back from.

Christians are to resist the pull of those worldly desires which war on their spiritual lives.

James chapter 4, verse 1 said this, From whence comest wars and fightings among you?

Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members? And now we go to verse 12.

Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they shall behold glorify

God in the day of visitation. I'm gonna reread that again and change two words to fit in more with our current use of words.

Conversation in this verse doesn't mean talk about. It means live like.

It means your way of living. And honest means honorable or even more than honorable.

Extreme honorableness. Extreme good. And so I'm gonna reread this and read it this way.

Having your lifestyle be seen as good among the

Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they shall behold glorify

God in the day of visitation. So what was a negative exhortation in verse 11 to abstain from sinful desires is now followed by a positive instruction.

In order to abstain from sinful desires, they need to do that not only for their own spiritual well -being, but also in order to maintain an effective testimony before unbelievers.

A positive Christian lifestyle is our most powerful means of convicting the world of its sins.

Now Paul used the word, the Greek word that we translate here as honest and honorable, good, two times in verse 12.

What's to define Christian lives and their works?

A good life, honest conversation. It's composed of good deeds.

That's also spelled out in Matthew chapter 5 verse 16.

You are the light of the world and a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle and put it under a basket, but under a candlestick, on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father which is in heaven. I'm gonna read that last verse again. Let your light, he's talking about Christians now, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and they will see the virtues of your

Father in your good works and they will glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Before the critical eyes of slanderous men and their false accusations, the good deeds of the believer can glorify

God and help when others can believe. Now, I told you this earlier, the

Greek word for honest is rich in meaning. It applies the purest, highest, noblest kind of goodness.

It means lovely, winsome, gracious, noble, excellent.

Having been disciplined in the inward and private side of their life, the

Christian must outwardly live among non -Christians in a way that reflects that inward discipline.

Now, in the day of his visitation, the day of his visitation is when

God is once again present with us. This will be in the Millennial Kingdom. Peter was teaching that when the grace of God falls on the heart of selected believers, not all selected unbelievers, not all unbelievers but only those that are chosen by God, on selected unbelievers, that selected unbeliever will respond with saving grace and will glorify

God because he remembers the testimony of believers that he has observed.

Then he will become a believer as well. That's how we have an input upon this whole issue.

Unbelievers see the virtues of Christ in us, and when

Jesus selects them, they will remember the testimony of all of the believers that they have observed, and they will become a believer as well.

But there will be some that do not respond properly. They will remain unbelievers, and they will experience the visitation of his wrath in the final judgment.

And that is the conclusion of verse 12, and we will pick up verse 13 next time, and I will take a couple of minutes for any questions if we have any.

And I don't know how much of this got recorded because I've had things flashing about saying my internet is unstable.

Okay, thank you very much to all of you, and hopefully next week we'll be back at church on a more stable platform.

And if not, we'll struggle on as best we can. I want to thank all of you, and I want to close with a quick prayer.

Most gracious, Heavenly Father, thank you for all that you have done for us. Thank you for all that you've given us.

Thank you for your Son. Thank you for yourself. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for being the holy

God, the creator of everything. Just thank you, and thank you, and thank you.