How is the church a spiritual nation?
"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." 1 Peter 2:9
Transcript
In what ways is the church a spiritual nation we read that from 1st
Peter 2 and Jesus talked about taking the kingdom and giving it to a nation bearing the fruits thereof
So he's talking about the church Peter affirms that So if we call ourselves a spiritual nation in what way are we a spiritual nation?
Somebody is hearing that and said I don't get it. That doesn't make sense to me how the church is is a nation
We have a king, okay, so in order to have a nation you need a few different things. What do you need?
Well, the king would be the government right? You need a government Obviously you need people
So I mean we have the people Christians and New Testament believers are the people we have a king we have a government
What are we lacking though? When you think of a nation and what that would include what are we lacking the obvious thing?
The thing we're lacking and the reason this wouldn't make sense to people How how are we a nation because we don't have a land?
Like this world we say it and we hear a priest. This world is not our home Our citizenship is in heaven.
So we're lacking a Land, so if this whole idea of the church being a spiritual nation if it doesn't make sense to you
Here's here's why because especially as Americans when we think of a nation
We think first we think about the land with a certain
You know set of borders, you know, no comments on the border thing But that typically that's what you would think of right a nation would have it's a specific plot of land with borders, but biblically a nation
It's not necessarily talking about land there are
Nationalities there are nations in the Bible where the people they are a nation, but they don't actually occupy a land
Can you give an example of that matter of fact, we covered it. We went through a whole book that dealt with that The children of Israel, when did they become a nation at Mount Sinai?
They were a people at that time. They had the Covenant. So they had their leaders with Moses and Aaron They had their religion.
God was their king in a sense, but did they have a land? No, they were sojourners and they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years
So here's the thing do have a nation. You don't actually need a land and as the church we are a spiritual nation
We ain't got the land because we're sojourners upon the earth But another way a nation can be defined is a group of people united by common descent or We are united by identity
Culture we have standards and practices. So does that apply to us?
Do we have a common descent? Biologically no, but we
Spiritually are all children of who we're children of God. So in that way we have a common descent
Do we have a common identity? Yes, we have an identity in Christ. Do we have a
Culture does the church have a specific culture? Yeah, and even though churches in the
United States are going to differ from churches in Eastern Europe in Africa And there are going to be some differences obviously a
True believer no matter where they are even with the language barrier if you can communicate you're gonna find that you have a lot of things in common