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1 Peter 2:4-10 Who Are You?
First Peter chapter 2 reading from verses 4 to 10. Hear the word of the Lord 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 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 am 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 disobey the word 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 and to 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. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, there's been a lot of talk about norms lately, you know our norms as Americans.
What it means to be an American is to normally do these things. Our identity isn't Americans mean these are our norms. Norms arise from identity of who you are. If you're an American, how do you handle differences of opinion?
You know a bookstore selling a book you don't like. Do you go and chant? Demand that the the proprietors take it away. How how do you handle results of an election? You don't like how do you express your suspicions about it and deal with others producing evidence to the contrary to your conclusions?
How do you protest what the government is doing or just protest generally? What is your identity as an American have to do with how you behave? Just Tuesday before last Someone commented online that there will probably be a big upset at Capitol Hill the next day and I said, but no that won't happen.
We don't do that kind of thing. Who are we. I thought the next day I was totally wrong. Of course now whether or not you're an American. How does your identity whether you're a Chinese or Singaporean or American or or other?
How does that shape your behavior? About all kinds of things maybe like sexuality. You have sexual desires. How does your identity determine how you satisfy them or whether you will have to deny them for a time?
That is how does your culture direct you. And maybe it doesn't not anymore. American culture used to frown on sex outside of marriage even after it stopped being punished. Officially now in Puritan days if it became known that there had been sex outside of marriage the culprits would be flogged.
Sometimes it became known because a newly married bride gave birth to a fully developed child six months six months. Mind you after the wedding and of course they figured out why? They would flog the man as soon as the pregnancy became known but wait until after the birth to flog the woman.
But after that was done away There was still a lot of unofficial social disapproval for generations of sexual immorality. Living together before marriage was called living in sin a couple might have to prove that they are married to rent a hotel room or Have a sleeper cabin in a train.
I've heard about that having to prove your marriage even as late as after World War two getting a sleeper cabin on the train. You have to a couple would have to show that they're married. Now. The only place where I've ever Experienced that was in Seoul, Korea.
Checking into a hotel with Mary and the man there in charge of the hotel asked me to prove that we were married. Now the only thing I could do is point to my ring. I don't carry the marriage certificate around with me all the time.
But now here in America, there's no such expectations. There's basically no connection Anymore between our identities as Americans and how we behave sexually or then our how we marry. The result is that many Americans now have no guidance.
So they have no confidence about how to do basic things. Involving that like how to date be engaged get married. The culture doesn't tell them how to do it. So they have no idea how to do it now in Singapore the founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew Wrote that the Chinese educated there that is Singaporeans who were educated in Mandarin and learned Chinese history and culture that they were more they were more confident.
They knew who they were. They had a culture that told them how to live. When they wanted to get married their Chinese culture told them exactly how to do it. You get permission from the parents to honor the ancestors at the very wedding ceremony itself usually held it.
When the man's house they have a tea-pouring ceremony at the wedding. They might even live with a man's parents after being married, but the English educated and he doesn't mean just Westerners. He talked about the English educated Singaporeans and often did Western influence.
He said they had no guidance. He didn't say this part. They had very little culture. And so they had he said no confidence. They might mimic the Americans they saw on television or on the movies. And so when it came to major events of life like getting married, they didn't know what to do they suffered from what sociologists called a Nomi a sense of normlessness that is a lack of identity of of not knowing who I am of who we are and then and therefore.
What are the norms for life? What should guide us how to behave that a no me that normlessness? A sense of having no foundation. There's nothing solid in life to shape it to guide it that prevents me.
Nothing solid in life that prevents me from just following whatever impulse that just takes me over whether sexually or rage or willfulness or greed that foundationlessness shows in our culture by norms breaking down.
Because we don't know why they exist. We just think that's just the old way people used to do things. We don't know why they did it. We don't know why we should why is marriage between a man and a woman?
Why do we not live together before marriage? Why did we not riot into the Capitol building? Why did we not ban people from social media just because we don't agree with them? We don't know who we are.
And so we don't know.
How to live.
Here we see first who we are. So that will then know How to live. And we see that in two major parts first stones and then status. Well first stones. Now if we spoke in red Greek, it would be immediately obvious to us when we got a letter from a man Named Peter.
Rock.
Why he so likes themes. Having to do with rocks with stones. The man Jesus named rock.
Likes talking about rocks.
Here he says in verse 4 continuing from before now that you long he's continuing What we what we saw last week you now that you long for this pure spiritual milk. You crave God's Word you crave his presence and his people because you have tasted in them that the Lord is good.
So you are coming to him and he is the living stone. It's kind of a strange analogy. You know the stones aren't alive. But stones are solid. You build on stones if you don't if you build on sand. You set your life that is you set your life on your feelings your pleasures your cravings or maybe your ego the norms of a changing culture.
Then your life will crash all of the ground as we just sang is sinking sand. If you want to be solid Build on the rock, but this rock unlike natural rocks is.
Alive.
He's both solid and.
He was also rejected by men. Remember we saw just a few weeks ago in Luke chapter 20 where Jesus startles the crowd that had been hanging on his every word. With the eye with the idea. Remember that the parable he told the beloved son who is being sent to get rent from the vineyard.
It's going to be killed. Standing for himself explaining what's happening to himself be killed by the tenants of the vineyard who also the builders of God's building at least the X builders representing the religious leaders and those.
Former builders are going to be replaced in the crowd. Just shouted, you know, surely not. I cannot be that's against our norms. But then Jesus answered but that's what's all 118 means when it says the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
God is building his people on the rock and the religious leaders Have rejected him. But that's the one that God has chosen to build on if we build our lives and church on the same rock. So don't be surprised if people even religious people Reject us too in the past.
They would have rejected us here in the South because if If we're building on the Living Stone That will affect who we include. That is we will include people of other races and so will be rejected by a racist culture.
Today, I don't think that's so much anymore. I really don't but today we might be rejected for who we exclude because we'll follow scripture and Exclude people who will not repent of for example sexual immorality.
So again, we'll be rejected if Christ was rejected by men. We shouldn't be surprised if we are too but he was chosen and precious. Rejected by people but chosen and precious to God chosen in verse 4 is Elect is the same word same word used for us in chapter 1 verse 1 the beginning of the letter.
We are the elect exiles. He's elect. We're elect. He was also precious to God. We're elect because he's elect. We're precious to God. Because he's precious to God not just because we're precious, right?
Because he was precious. God sees us in him. He makes us precious. And who exactly are you? You are in verse 5 like living stones. Same exact phrase just used for Jesus same exact phrase except now plural.
We are each of us who are you who are elect and precious like Christ? Living as made alive by the resurrection of Jesus and the Holy Spirit who is living in us and solid like stones. Why would we be stones?
Okay, we get that understand it's easy to understand that mr. Rock Writing this letter. He loves to play on the rock themes. Okay, we get that and we get that Christ is the living stone and we should build on him.
But why are we stones? You know, we don't build on us. Christ doesn't build on us. But he does build with us. We are being built he says together as stones to be a spiritual house. We're stones because God is building a house and he wants it solid.
So we're not just building with boards and planks that could termites could rot. He wants it solid. So he's building with stones and we are the stones now first notice that we are being built. Who was doing the building?
Well, God is remember the divine passive we talked about and Jesus is teaching just a few weeks ago. You know like everyone who has or more be given. Given by who will buy by God here. We are being built passive built by who.
By God God is building his own house. It's not a physical structure. But a gathering of people he's put together and he is the master builder. He doesn't need us to build for him. It's not asking to build his church for for him.
He calls us to be the stones in it. That's why every Christian should be a member of a church where they are. They are fitted in where they are a stone when they're a part of a building. They're not customers who go from one religious services provider to another unstable unsolid unrock like.
We're supposed to be stones in the building that God is putting together. It's a spiritual house. That means it's not just a physical house. Made of living stones not a physical house made of cinder block and steel or even for some thing.
You know grand architecture with stained glass and you know, gothic style, whatever. This somehow is God's house. No, we named this building the gym. One purpose so that we would not confuse this house with God's house.
God's house is the people that's you that God has fit together and filled with the Spirit. The temple in the Old Testament was a picture of it a symbol. Solomon built the temple and Consecrated it and the Spirit of God came and filled the place.
So that the priests weren't even able to stand so overwhelmed were they by the presence of God today? It's not our buildings. Certainly not a gym that our spirit filled houses of God, but the church. The people that God has chosen and called precious because of Christ.
Well, who are we?
We are a spiritual house and that determines what we do. Our identity creates our norms. It guides our behavior. What do spiritual houses do then? Well first notice how corporate this imagery is. We are not each of us kind of individually Spiritual houses all on our own single-family dwellings.
Together, I guess maybe we make up a spiritual neighborhood. Is that how we work? We're neighbors, but not really living together in the same house. No, that's not the imagery here. We together are one Spiritual house built by God to be connected.
The church is not a spiritual services provider like your favorite restaurant or theater and you go to whichever one is providing you with the Specials or the shows that you want right now. You're a stone or brick or a cinder block Built into a house with other stones.
Now if that doesn't describe your connection to the church There's something wrong. Where are you getting your norms from?
Where are you?
What are you assuming is your identity if you're in America and you might assume that you're basically an individual and that institutions? From businesses to schools to churches. They exist to cater to your needs to provide you the products and the services that you consume your identity.
So you've been taught by your culture. Is that of a customer. You might even be a regular good customer. Like I'm sure some of our Chinese restaurant people they have I assume they have regular customers.
Who come on you maybe almost every day or some maybe some reliably on a certain day of the week. Every Monday like clockwork. They're there having their dinner and Some people viewed the church just like that.
They might be very good customers always having their spiritual dinners every Sunday morning. But deep down they still see themselves as customers who might go elsewhere. If another religious services provider offers them better services, or maybe doesn't step on their toes quite so much their identity as individual customers shapes how they live as.
Detached.
Individuals. Even if they are regular ones. But if they see themselves as stones that is solid parts of a building spiritual building. Attached to other stones. They'd be more than regular customers, but actual parts.
Attached.
The individualistic customer finds this idea shocking maybe revolutionary maybe Repulsive because of their identity and their norms. They might even be they might even be Christians taught that they should regularly go to church.
Believe that they need you need to hear the preaching of the word, but they believe it like like I believe I need to have lunch. Okay. It's my need I need to meet it and My connection to you or any else other customers there and whatever restaurant I choose to go to it doesn't factor into it at all.
It has nothing to do with other people with whom I'm attached. But this is really this theme that Peter is illustrating here is really all through the Bible or the church. Paul's favorite analogy of course is the body bodies parts don't exist by themselves.
They say oh not alive for very long by themselves. Detached arms and legs our eyes and ears kind of walking down the street by themselves here. Mr. Rock Prefers the the stones analogy you're part of a building that God is raising up.
That's your identity. How does that shape your norms then? Well in the middle verse 5 you together living stones built together are a spiritual house to be. Function it's what you're to do a holy priesthood.
From the Old Testament analogy the priests were people who went into went into God's house to intercede for people to God here. Now with us the priesthood and the house here. They're the same thing notice that.
Your house and you as a house are to be a priesthood now with the church. The house is the priesthood the gathering of people whom God lives in on earth. That's his house is the priesthood who intercede.
For people to God the priesthood is not just a few select men in the church like me. Who intercede for the rest of the church the priesthood is the entire church. We are all a priesthood. That's our identity and that should determine How we behave how we live?
What do we do as a priesthood at the end of verse 5 we offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now those spiritual sacrifices are Ourselves as Romans chapter 12 verse 1 says we present our bodies and our whole lives as living Sacrifices our sacrifices are living and then he's not calling us.
You know just sacrifice our lives by some act of self-immolation. That is burning ourselves to death. You don't pour a gallon of gasoline over your head and set yourself on fire and claim I'm giving myself as a sacrifice to God but by living for him every day handling every penny we have as If it belonged to him since it does.
Seeking to use our jobs our roles as wives or husbands or children or parents to serve him that's Acceptable to God now, it's only acceptable to God if it is through Jesus Christ. That is it's a fruit of our identity as believers in Jesus.
Because we are disciples of Jesus. That's our identity. Then what we do is offer our lives to him as a living sacrifice. Now if it's something we do to try to earn Approval from God that is we see ourselves as earners.
Somehow we think we can please God with enough of the right Sacrifices if we give enough money or we deprive ourselves of enough pleasures or we afflict ourselves. Like Francis of Assisi who threw himself bare-bodied into the snow to punish himself if he accidentally had touched some money.
As horrible as that is we think we have to give ourselves to something that poverty chastity and obedience is a lifelong Sacrifice to earn merit with God if that's what we do. Then that's not through Jesus.
That's not having a faith and trust in him. And so that's not acceptable our living sacrifices and living stone should arise from our new identity as believers in the living stone. Now we know his identity and ours because in verse 6 Scripture says.
Behold that is look pay attention. I God speaking. He's the master builder. I'm laying in Zion the place where God has chosen to dwell a stone that living stone a Cornerstone. It's the foundation stone is this place in the corner and they were laying foundations of a building.
From which the angle of the rest of the walls and the level for the rest of the foundation would extend from that Cornerstone, so the cornerstone Sets the norms for the rest of the entire building chosen.
Again, the word elect and Precious is irreplaceable. Whoever believes in him so builds his or her identity on him and From that identity comes behavior. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
That is you'll not finally be embarrassed. That that you believed in Jesus that you were you're a loser because you believed in him. You won't be shown to have been you know on the wrong side of history.
Even if people reject you now. Instead there is a verse 7 honor for you who believe. There is honor for those who believe but for those who don't believe. He says there is stumbling then mr. Rock. He quotes another stone passage in Psalm 118.
It's the same one. He had heard Jesus Quote back to that crowd in the temple. Explaining why he would be crucified. Jesus is the stone that the religious builders rejected. Building his spiritual house He had.
God is building his spiritual house of the church and he has made him that cornerstone in that house. Another verse. Mr. Rock has memorized from Isaiah chapter 8 explains why. For for some Jesus isn't their cornerstone but he is their stumbling stone.
A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Now for some Jesus is who they build their lives on for others He offends them. They can't get over the fact that their morality or their religion their their Ancestry the family they were born into that it isn't good enough.
They can't stop trusting in their money like the rich young ruler. They can't sacrifice it and seek first the kingdom of God. And so they are they're offended at Jesus and they go away. They stumble at the end of verse 8 because they disobey the word.
Remember the word at the end of chapter 1 is the gospel. They don't obey the command to believe the gospel. So they stumble. Now, why don't they believe and obey? It's what he says at the end of verse 8.
It's what they were destined to do. This is versus kind of controversial look what it says in the verse 8 they were destined To do that to stumble. They were that is they were appointed literally. It's what it means appointed to disobey and to stumble just like an axe and on the flip side of Acts chapter 13 verse 48.
Whereas we're Luke there says all who were appointed to eternal life. All who were appointed To eternal life believed they believe God because God made an appointment for them to do so. And so here these people stumble over Christ because God made an appointment for them to stumble.
Now this is one of the few verses in the Bible that talks about the predestination of the lost. There's few of them because mostly the Bible is concerned with the salvation of God's people is for God's people like like this letter to the elect exiles and It's not the Bible is not mostly concerned with what happens to others.
But here those who are offended at Jesus do that. Because God destined them to. They are not one of the elect exiles that this letter is written to they are non elect. That's their identity. That's who they are.
Well, who are you.
Who are you and what you're gonna do over stones? Now what's our status? They might stumble but in verse 9 you Plural as y 'all corporately again about the whole church. You all are for things you're chosen Chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation and God's people.
That's your fourfold identity. A chosen race is again the word chosen elect same word as before race as a kind of People a kind of people here a kind of people not determined by race. Of course as Christians our racial identity is never the most important thing about us.
That's why the idea of having a church determined by racial identity for only our race our physically kind of people. That shouldn't be tolerated. That should be just absolutely Inconceivable for a Christian.
No, we're a chosen race not just a white people's race or black or anything else. Our race is Chosenness based on mercy. We are a royal priesthood royal and that we are sons and daughters of the king and A priesthood like before and that we all have access to God through Jesus and we can all intercede To God for others.
We're a holy nation Holy in that we're set apart from the rest of the nations. We're distinct from them. The other nations are determined by ethnicity. We're not we're determined by God's choice of us by grace.
And so should be different from the rest of the world from the other nations. Even different than the cultures that we grew up in who tried to try to tell us there were individualistic Consumers are there were most of all family members living to make the family better mostly make more money for the family.
No, we're God's Nation literally the Greek word. There were his ethnos where we get the word ethnic from we're his Ethnicity. Our identity as God's people is far more important to us than our identity as Americans or Chinese or whatever.
Finally, we are a people for his own.
Possession.
We're God's people. We're not our own. We're not America's. We're not our families. Not our political parties not anything else. We're God's. All of these terms for us our identity. Peter is borrowed from Exodus chapter 19 verses 5 and 6 where God tells the Israelites there He says to them if you will obey if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant.
This is what you will be. This will be your identity. You'll be those four things some say but this verse first Peter chapter 2 verse 9 shows that God has now taken the identity That belonged to Israel and he's transferred it now to the church that the church has replaced Israel.
That's called Supercessionism. The church has superseded Israel, but in Exodus, he doesn't say You know to ethnic Israel. This is who you are. That you are is ethnic Israel. You are a chosen people a royal priest of the Holy Nation.
God's people but he says there if you if you keep my Covenant if you obey my voice if you obey keep the covenant then this is what you can be. You obey by believing the covenant is fulfilled by Christ.
If they had obeyed and kept the Covenant they would have been believers believers in Jesus even before Jesus like Abraham. Ethnic Israel in Exodus 19 is being called be invited to believe.
To be.
The church. It's not that the church replaced Israel. I know maybe I'm kind of quibbling. This is an area of interest to me. It's not that the church replaced Israel. It's that the true Israel. That's the Israel that believes.
Was always the church the elect people the priesthood the Holy Nation. We haven't replaced Israel. We always were. That's our status. What's your status. Well today that sounds like relationship status people often ask that status.
They're referring to that if you've married you single whatever that determines some of how you behave. If you're single you you can date and Get to know people in a certain way. If you're married you can.
If you're dating where you're kind of somewhere in between status influences behavior. Here our status is as the people. Who are what? Israel was always supposed to be we are. What Israel was always Supposed to be what they were invited to be the chosen people related to the king but interceding for the world a holy nation God's possession.
How does that status mean then that we should live? Because that's who we are we are to now proclaim. The excellencies that is how excellent he is his his virtues his blessings all the good things that he's done for us.
Proclaim them. He says tell them out. Let them be known preach about them. Whatever venues you have at your disposal share about them in conversation or on social media sing about them. He has called you out of darkness.
That was your status in the dark. Blind to the truth to what was your identity and how you should behave about right norms. You had to know me. You didn't know who you were. He called us out of that and into his Marvelous.
Look at these superlatives here. Notice them Marvelous that is a light that makes you marvel. It just awes you so much that you go. Wow, what a light. Into his marvelous light.
Who are you?
You are corporately again. That's together a people we're not just individuals. You are a people like a nation and ethnicity a body a temple of living stones. Once you were not a people. No wonder you had to know me.
You had no identity. So it's understandable if you had to know me. Normlessness. Foundationless. If you didn't know how to live you had no confidence and in who you are, but now in verse 10. You're God's people.
Once you hadn't received mercy. You had no mercy. And here he's quoting from Hosea chapter 1 and 2 remember from last summer. The people who thought that they were God's people by birth were not God's people.
But here the people Who were not a people? Have been caused to be born again. And so the people who were not a people who I didn't know me who didn't know who they were who had no identity.
Now.
They're God's people. The difference is.
Mercy mercy.
Makes you different if You've received it. It makes you one of God's people. It changes your identity and your identity. Changes how you live? So who are you? Are you someone? Who has received mercy.
If so.
You've been changed by that. You have a new identity if not yet. Why not receive it now?