1 This week we re continuing our series in first Peter, but first a couple of fast surveys. By show of hands, who would know what I m talking about if I used the acronym MCU? OK, who knows who the avengers are? OK, who knows what movie is being released this week in the Avengers series, or the marvel cinematic universe? Final one, who has spoken to another human being in the last month about the up coming movie Avengers: infinity war? Love it, hate it, or find it a bit so so, Marvel, the comic book company turned cinematic giant, have achieved something pretty remarkable. If you don t believe me, then allow me to offer some examples why this is a noteworthy achievement. This week s movie release will mark the nineteenth film in the franchise. Those eighteen films, when grouped by lead character, so putting the Iron man films in one group, the captain America films in another, and so on, comprise nine separate yet intertwined storylines, which have each been recognisably moving toward the movie that comes out this week. The build up of other movies leading toward this one has been going on now for a decade, and although many franchises have lasted longer than that, you might struggle to find another one where the ultimate villain and storyline was already set at the time the first film came out. The achievements of plot cohesion and planning pale in comparison to the financial achievements of the saga of sagas. The gross production budget to date is 3.407 billion dollars. There are 43 countries on the United Nations list of nations by Gross Domestic Product that make less annually. The films have collectively taken 14.83 billion dollars at the box office. There are 88 countries that make less than that. And many are estimating that the takings could double or even triple by the time Marvel reach the end of their planned series. The point, though, is that this week marks the culmination of something kinda big. Well, we re continuing in first Peter tonight, and we re up to a culminative moment that makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe look like dust on the lens. Peter is going to point us toward a truth that is earth shatteringly brilliant. But before we get to it, I want you to imagine for a second that you are one of the Christians that Peter is writing this letter to. They were not experiencing what they saw as earth shattering brilliance. Peter tells us, as early as the sixth verse of the first chapter, that these people are suffering for their faith. Their faith is being tested by trials. And from the number of times in this letter that Peter talks to them about suffering for Jesus, we can surmise that persecution was one of the big reasons the letter was written in the first place.
Peter talks in the letter about suffering like it is an imminent and necessary reality, which gives us the impression that this suffering is just beginning to ramp up. The letter was likely not written in a time when it was illegal to be a Christian, although that was on the horizon, but socially it was becoming more and more unacceptable to live as a Christian. So, imagine for a moment that you are one of these Christians. Maybe you re Richard the carpenter, or Rhonda the carpenter s wife. Every day you face opposition for your faith. In a world where it is culturally required that you worship various gods, and where it is widely believed that the good of people, families, communities and the empire rests on the people s acceptable worship of these gods, the fact that you worship one God is treated with open suspicion. People don t want to associate with you. You are treated like a lower class of society. Moreover, you don t just insist on worshipping only one God, but it is widely known that you worship a man who was killed by crucifixion. Crucifixion was one of the most humiliating and painful deaths the Romans could come up with. And you claim, bizarrely, that the same man came back to life and is now some sort of God. So your neighbours treat you as though you were stupid. Who would believe such a thing? As a result, your business has been affected negatively. People don t want cabinets and carts that are made by a man who basically brings a curse on himself by not worshipping the gods. People don t want to associate with Christians. Imagine how it might have felt, and what you might have thought. You believed in Jesus to save you, and yet all you ve received so far is a harder, more painful life. You might begin to wonder: Was I right to believe? Is believing in Jesus really worth it? You are losing so much, and it seems it s going to get worse, are you really going to win out in this situation? Or would you be better off stapling your faith and hope somewhere other than Jesus? You might even think to yourself: my faith really doesn t need to be something that affects my public life. Sure, I ll believe in Jesus. But in a world where Jesus isn t a welcome name, I m going to keep the peace by avoiding letting people know about God, and what He has done. 2 Well, tonight s passage, containing the most famous verses of this book, is written to these suffering Christians to completely turn their world upside down, and to show them that there is a deeper, more glorious truth in their lives than the truth of their suffering, And that if they believe that truth, they will live completely transformed lives. So open this with me now, and we ll get into it.
Peter opens this passage speaking to these Christians about themselves in relation to Jesus. Read this with me, from verse 4 of chapter 2: As you come to him (that is, as you come to Jesus through faith in the gospel) 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. To these Christians who must have been looking at their lives and thinking wow, look at the result of us having believed in Jesus. I m losing work. People don t want to associate with me, they don t like me, they reject me. I m being persecuted. Peter says that is not the ultimate reality of what happens because you believe in Jesus. Peter doesn t deny their struggles, but points them toward something deeper and more fundamental. In verse 4 there, the words As you come to him refer both to having been saved by Jesus, and also to the ongoing experience of coming to Jesus that he spoke about in last week s text, growing in Him as we hungrily grow in the truth of the gospel. As you come to him the reality is that you are like living stones, being built up as a spiritual house. The image here is a temple image. The temple, before Jesus came, was the place where God s presence lived. Peter is saying, to the Christian community, you are now the house of God. Because you have come to Jesus, the cornerstone, the foundation of where God lives, you are now the place where God lives. What it means that it is a Spiritual house is that it is a house that the Spirit of God dwells in. So what Peter is saying to Christians is that your identity is not defined by the rejection you are feeling from this society. It is defined by the fact that you are the dwelling place of God because you have believed in Jesus. And then he goes on to say that we are being built up, not just as the dwelling place of God, but to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So we have an identity, we are the temple of God, and we have a role now. Our role is not defined by my job or my status in society. If that was what defined my role in life, being a Christian would crush me because, for these Christians, it could mean losing those things. But for Christians, our role is that we are a holy priesthood, that is a priesthood after the character of God, and we offer sacrifices. As Jesus was the ultimate and only sacrifice for our sin, we now follow him by offering sacrifices to God through him, which are acceptable. The heart of what those sacrifices were is going to come out more in the rest of our passage today, but generally it seems that what Peter has in view here is a life lived in faith in God. Living out the reality that because of Jesus you now have God in you and you represent him in this world. Important side note: Peter isn t talking about priests here in the sense of leaders in the church. The fact that every Christian is a priest and that we together are the representative priests of God in this world does not go against the many passages in scripture that direct a Church to be led by a group of qualified elders. But what this is saying is that, with regard to access to God and representation of God, Christians stand as equals. There is no one Christian who represents the others before God, we all have access to the Father through faith in Jesus. 3
4 Imagine how remarkable this would have sounded. In a culture where everyone was offering sacrifices to gods, running to the temples and relying on the priests, desperately trying to please these gods and find their favour, Peter says the lives you re living now, lives lived out in faith toward God, are an acceptable sacrifice to the one true God, because of the one who gave the ultimate sacrifice. And then, in verse 6, and the start of verse 7, Peter sums up what that means for them. 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 honour is for you who believe So, Christians, this is the ultimate reality of your situation. God has established Jesus as the very cornerstone who is chosen and precious. He is the foundation of what God is doing in this world, building himself a dwelling place, and because you believe in him. Notice that, the only thing that s separates you is that you believe in Jesus. Because you believe in him you will not be put to shame. You will receive honour. And the basis for that is both the current reality, that we have God s Spirit in us now and are representing him in this world as His priests, and the future reality that will come about as a result of that: we will receive glory and honour at the return of Jesus, like he said back in chapter 1 verse 7. So to every Christian, everyone who has faith in Jesus and lives a life that reflects that faith in Him, Peter says: it doesn t matter how downtrodden you are in this world. Your pain is real, but ultimately, God s people are chosen in Jesus for honour And they will receive it. What an encouragement this is for every Christian. But now, in verses 7 and 8, Peter turns his attention toward those who do not have faith in Jesus, and he writes this, from verse 7: 1Pet. 2:7 So the honour is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, 1Pet. 2:8 and A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
These Christians must have looked at the lives of the people around them who did not believe in Jesus and thought wow. Not believing in Jesus seems to be really working out for them. They seem so well off. Noone persecutes them for worshipping their gods. They fit in in this society, their employment is steady. Yet Peter again points them toward the deeper reality of the situation. The very one that they reject, Jesus, is the cornerstone, and whilst he is for you honour, and in him you are the very dwelling place of God, for them he is a stone of offense and stumbling. Peter s pointing out, the one they have chosen to reject is central to the plans of God, and he is the way in which God delivers his people from the enemies that surround them. Jesus is the cornerstone of God s presence and work in this world. Please, if you can, take the time to read through psalm 118 (it s not very long) and Isaiah 8:11-15 (that s even shorter) when you go home tonight. They are all about how God faithfully rescues his people, but destroys his enemies. And at the centre of both is this stone, this cornerstone that he uses to do that. And the stone looks forward to Jesus. What that means is that those who do not put their faith in Jesus are going to stumble, they are ultimately going to lose. The final situation of those who oppose Jesus is not the comfort and security that you see them in now, their final situation is that they will come to condemnation. In fact, Peter writes, they are doing as they were destined to do. And although some try to get around this, it seems pretty clear what he means: those who do not believe in Jesus are not acting outside of the sovereign will of God. Now that might seem troublesome to us, but Peter just holds these two things out: those who reject Jesus are indeed willingly doing so. It s not that they are forced away from him, they disbelieve. But also, they are not acting outside of the good will of God. Now, if you want to talk that through more, please come have a chat after the service, but what we mustn t miss here is why Peter is saying this. In this situation where it looks to the Christians like those who reject the gospel are blessed, like they have all the power, Peter is saying Don t be afraid of them and don t fret over their apparent power. The reality is that their disbelief condemns them. And it doesn t matter how much power they may seem to have, God is still in control. Those who reject Jesus reject their only hope. 1Pet. 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Now Peter turns his attention back to the Christian readers. Having uncovered something of the honour that is for those who believe earlier in the passage, now he really just goes to town. This little passage, perhaps more than anywhere in this letter, hammers the nature of the identity Peter is calling Christians to live out. Notice these four little groupings of words: You are: A chosen people A royal priesthood 5
6 A holy nation A people for his own possession Most of these titles are quoted from the Old Testament. The main passage that is being referenced is Exodus 19 which George kindly read for us earlier in the service. That passage comes at an immensely significant moment in the Old Testament. God has saved his people from slavery in Egypt and has brought them to his presence at Mount Sinai, where he is covenanting with them to set them apart from all the people of the earth as his special, chosen people. And now Peter takes these words and applies them to those who believe in Jesus, and the connection is fairly clear. In Jesus, God has saved you from slavery to sin, the deliverance that Israel s deliverance looked forward to. You are now the true people of God, indwelt by his Holy Spirit. And so these titles belong to you, as his covenant community. You could not describe greater honour and privilege than comes out in these words. With regard to the God of all creation, those who believe in Jesus are His chosen people, Thanks to nothing we had done, God chose his people to believe in Him and be saved. Every Christian has this in common: God chose us and made us his special people that he has committed himself to caring for and bringing to his glory. Those who believe are His royal priesthood. Here the priest idea comes in again, meaning that we bring the presence of God to the world. And not only that, we are a royal priesthood, because the one we represent is the King of the universe, of everything. Those who believe are His holy nation. The reality of the Christian is that no matter where he or she lives, they are first and foremost a citizen of the nation that God has saved out of this world, out of sin. Those who believe are a people for His own possession. He has claimed you for himself when he rescued you out of sin and condemnation, and he will not let you go. You know, the marvel movies, are an incredible achievement. They are pretty remarkable. Making 18 films that work fairly cohesively toward a single point, that s an achievement. And we talk about them don t we? It s natural that something so exciting comes up in conversation. The good folks at marvel want people to go to their friends, to their colleagues, to everyone that they can go to and say come and see, marvel at this incredible thing that they have done. (Why did you think they were called marvel?) That's what happens when you see and you experience something incredible.
7 But let's be real here, the marvel cinematic universe is nothing compared to the Excellency of God and what he has done in showing us mercy and making us his people. Let me make that a little more stark. If the events of the marvel cinematic universe had really happened. If aliens had tried to invade earth, if a man had created a flying metal combat suit, if the united states government had created a super soldier, if characters from Norse mythology turned out to be real beings, and if all of them and more banded together to fight off villainous powers that would destroy or enslave the earth. It would not compare to the saving work of God, when God himself, Jesus, became a man, lived a humble life, died carrying all the weight of the sin of God s people, and rose to life again on the third day, and through this made for himself a people from no people, showed mercy to those least deserving mercy. When he took sinners, and made them his precious possession. My greatest enemy is not some alien armada above me, or the Russians, or the sokovians. My greatest enemy is me. In my sin I was separated from God, facing his imminent judgement and eternal hell. But he brought me out of darkness, he brought his people out of darkness and into his marvellous light. And our response to that, the purpose for which we have been chosen, is that we might proclaim the His excellencies. Tell the world how amazing he is. This is what lies at the heart of the acceptable Spiritual sacrifices of the Christian life, that we saw back in verse 5. This is the obvious and overwhelming implication of our chosenness. We tell the world about our God. We tell the world about how he took us from darkness, he took us from being nothing, being opposed to him, being his very enemies, and he brought us into his marvellous light! Made us sons and daughters, his precious people! In that last verse, verse 10, Peter reminds us that these words have not always described us, but a great change has happened because of Jesus. Once we were not God s people. Once we had not received mercy. We were separated from God and rolling inevitably towards being punished for our sin. But now, those who believe, have received mercy. The sovereign mercy of God drives us to tell the world about Him. Do you see how this all fits together for us? He has chosen me. If you have believed the gospel and been saved, he has chosen you. He has chosen to show us mercy, even though we deserve nothing. He has ordained that His very Son, chosen and precious in His sight, who is himself God, who by all reasoning should have touched the earth and the oceans boiled and the land turned to ash and it all came to nothing in a mere instant because of the presence of His glory, yet He sent Him to die so that you could receive His mercy, and become his chosen, precious people. So that you could become His.
8 And don t be afraid of those people who oppose you. It s not that God is sovereign over you, but that the Devil is sovereign over them. No, God is SOVEREIGN, without exception. They are responsible for their actions, but His will is done, even there. He is RULING over ALL. You, and them, and EVERYTHING! He is sovereign over all and he has showed you mercy, so DECLARE THE EXCELLENCIES OF HIM. Who brought you from death to life. Who brought you from sin to righteousness. Who called you out of darkness and into His marvellous light! With the author of Psalm 118, we can say I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. For Christians who are struggling to see how their faith in Jesus has really benefitted them, this turns their understanding on its head and drives them to share their faith with others. And isn t that still so relevant to us today? It s worth saying, the situation of these churches that Peter is writing to seems less distant now than it did ten, or even five years ago. For as long as I ve been alive it has been generally uncool to be a Christian. But that seems to be beginning to intensify now. Increasingly out country is becoming a place that holds to values and a morality that are specifically opposed to Christian faith, and leads many people to see Christians as bigoted, dated and ready to die. Now that shouldn t surprise us. Any person that doesn t worship God does worship something, and a person who worships something other than God will find themselves opposed to God. Fill a whole country with such people, and you end up with a country that is opposed to God and His people. But that is exactly why we need to hear the truth of this letter now. Just as much as the Christians Peter was writing to needed it. I think one of the biggest blind spots of the Australian Church is that we tend to be beset with a defeatist attitude when it comes to sharing the good news of who our God is and what He has done. I ve certainly experienced this in my own life, and having lived in, attended churches in three states or territories of our country, in rural areas, in urban and suburban areas, and knowing Christians in every State and territory of our country, my experience is that we tend to approach our evangelism with the attitude that it s not going to work. Our situation isn t so different to that of the Christians Peter wrote to. We re surrounded by a culture that, on the whole, often seems pretty well off without Jesus. A culture where people are very set in the worship of their gods, although they may not be carved from wood now. And a culture where people are beginning to see Christianity as different and unwelcome. We generally state that we trust in the power of the gospel to change lives, but if we re honest, often we look at the situations of our unbelieving friends and think why would they believe? What reason do they have to believe in Jesus?. But can you see how in this passage Peter puts a fire under us for the spread of the gospel. Peter would say to us: stop paying so much attention to the struggles of your situation. Stop focusing so heavily on the power of a secular society, and the unlikeliness that one of these comfortable people would come to believe in Christ.
9 Instead, focus on the ultimate, eternal reality. Because you have come to Jesus, you are in truth honoured. You are the dwelling place of God, you are his holy priests, you are his chosen people. And remember, the reality for those who reject the gospel is not comfort and blessing. They will stumble and fall, because they don t believe. and more than that. You may look at the culture around you and think that the odds are stacked against people coming to faith. But remember that that was you. You were separated from God, but now you are his people. You were one who had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You were darkness, but now you are light. It is not any harder for God to bring anyone from darkness to light than it was for Him to bring you out into the light. So don t be afraid. The very purpose of your salvation was that you would proclaim the excellencies of the one who saved you. You are blessed beyond reason, beyond imagination, now tell the world about the God who has blessed you.