About this sermon
1. The church’s spiritual status as the new/ renewed Israel of God (v. 9).
2. The incredible mercy displayed in God’s sovereign choice (v. 10).
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We continue our consideration of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter’s first epistle. Tonight we consider 1 Peter 2, verses 9 and 10. I’m going to begin reading at verse 4 and read through verse 10 to remind us of the context. But let us hear God’s holy Word. 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 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 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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we would ask that by your spirit you would make us once again open and receptive to your word. Help us, Lord, to realize and appreciate what a deep privilege it is to have access to your word And we would ask, Heavenly Father, that we would hear your word as it has been read and also as it is being proclaimed.
Help us to hear with reverence and awe. Help us to be teachable and instructive. And we pray that you would help us to grow from what we hear this evening. Once again, we would beseech you to guard my lips that I might only speak that which is faithful and true and edifying and glorifying to you. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Now you are God’s people. That is the title of my sermon on this Lord’s Day evening. And if the children would like to listen for some key words, there’s quite a few options for you. The words identity, status, Israel, continuity, holy, mercy, and belonging. Well, my dear friends, if you were asked to come up with a list of what you regard as some of the most pressing and some of the most serious problems and issues that are facing our society and our culture today, what would you include on your list?
Now, of course, no doubt there are many genuine problems and issues that we face today. There are many legitimate things that you could put on your list, and it’s not that one list would necessarily be more correct or better than another list. But friends, at least two items that I would include on my list would be number one, the crisis of identity, and number two, the problem of widespread crushing loneliness. You see, dear ones, in today’s toxic, broken, post-Christian setting, many of our neighbors, and especially, though not exclusively, those in the younger generations, simply don’t have a clear sense of who they are. They lack a clear sense of their own God-given identity. And this is one of the causes, I believe, for the, for example, the crisis of confusion when it comes to gender identity.
And because many today have grown up in broken and dysfunctional homes, and often live their lives without any kind of connection to any kind of genuine face-to-face community, such as the church, many today live their lives in almost extreme social isolation, and with very little genuine human interaction or intimacy outside of what they experience in front of their computer screens or on social media. And so friends, many today, again, especially though not exclusively many of our youth, many live lives of incessant crushing loneliness and despair. The hard cry of so many today seems to be the cry, who am I? As well as the closely related, closely connected cry, where if anywhere do I belong? Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s crisis of identity and the widespread problem of isolation and a lack of community presents us as the Church of Jesus Christ with a wonderful providential opportunity for evangelism and gospel witness.
You see, beloved, in the Scriptures, we have God’s solution to the crisis of identity. We have God’s solution as well to the problems of isolation and crushing loneliness that are the results of a lack of genuine community. After all, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, invites repentant sinners to find their identity in Christ as the beloved children and covenant people of God. And the church welcomes all such believing and repentant sinners into its fold as spiritual brothers and sisters in the forever family of God. In union with Jesus Christ, our Savior, we belong now and forever to God, and we belong now and forever to one another as members of the forever family of God. In answer to the heart cry, who am I? We answer, I am a redeemed sinner. I am saved by sovereign grace alone through God-given faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
I am adopted into God’s forever family and I am destined for everlasting glory. And in answer to the heart cry, do I belong? Well, friends, we answer, to use the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, we answer by saying, I am not my own, but what? I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. And because I belong to Christ, I belong to the company of his people. I belong to my brothers and sisters in the family of God. I’m no longer an outsider, but by the grace of God, I have been enfolded and brought in to the fold of Christ. You see, friends, in Christ, we have our identity. In Christ and in His church, we belong. Well, beloved, our passage for this Lord’s Day evening bears witness to and supports these assertions that I’ve been making.
For our passage for tonight serves to underscore our identity as the chosen people of God. And it also serves to underscore the truth that we who belong to Jesus Christ, we belong to God as his own precious possession. In this epistle, Saint Peter the Apostle has been writing to a group of mostly Gentile Christians who were facing the prospect of severe persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In this powerful letter, Peter, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, seeks to fortify and encourage these believers to face what lies ahead of them. And he does so, first of all, by reminding them of the wonderful spiritual and saving blessings that they have received in Christ. We noticed that, we considered that back in chapter one in the opening doxology, where we are reminded that we have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and so forth.
Peter also seeks to fortify and encourage his readers by reminding them of their identity in Christ and also by providing them with instructions on living faithful, godly lives even in the midst of a hostile, ungodly environment. Well, in this particular section of his epistle, Peter focuses on reminding his readers, and thus the Holy Spirit, through this portion of Scripture, reminds you and me, dear brother and sister in Christ. He reminds us of our identity as the people of God. Now in the immediately preceding verses in verses seven and eight, Peter had mentioned almost in passing those who reject Christ, those who disobey the word as they were destined to do. The last time I preached on Peter, we considered these difficult verses where Peter writes, 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, they’re responsible for disobeying the word, as they were destined to do. There we have, in one and the same verse, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. And so in this passage, he mentions those who stumble at the word. But then, after mentioning in passing those who stumble at the word of the gospel, Peter quickly returns his focus back to his readers and back to encouraging them. And he does so with some sharply contrastive language. He says, but you. He has just been speaking of unbelievers, of those who persist in rejecting the gospel, stumbling at the word or message of the gospel. But then he quickly says, but you, it’s different for you, brothers and sisters. It’s different for you. So that leads us to consider our passage for this evening, this wonderful and power-packed passage of God’s Word.
There’s so much here in these two verses. I could actually almost do a sermon miniseries on these two verses alone, but I will spare you that. But let’s dive in to this passage, and let’s first of all consider what we learn here about the church’s spiritual status as the new or renewed Israel of God. This is the first point on your sermon outline. The church’s spiritual status as the new or renewed Israel of God. Again, as I mentioned, there’s a great deal of spiritual and redemptive historical truth jam-packed into these two verses. As Peter says, as the Holy Spirit through Peter says to us, But you are what? 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.
And then he goes on to say, once you were not a people, once you were outside of the covenant people of God, but now, there’s that contrastive word, That’s the contrastive saying there, but now, now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Now focusing in particular here on verse nine, the language of this verse, if you were paying attention to the scripture passage from Exodus that I read earlier in the service this evening, you should recognize some of the language here. For here in verse nine, the apostle Peter utilizes Old Testament language that is drawn in particular from two Old Testament passages, namely Exodus 19, verse six, as well as Isaiah verses 43, verses 20 and 21. Let’s take a look briefly at those passages. Let’s have you turn back to Exodus chapter 19 and look at verse 6.
Exodus chapter 19, verse 6. And again, remember the context. God had rescued and redeemed the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. He brought them through the Red Sea on dry land. So he had redeemed them and he’s bringing them to the foot of Mount Sinai to receive his holy law, his holy covenant. And he reminds them of their identity as the redeemed people of God. He says in verse six, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Have you heard that before? Well, that’s the language that Peter uses in our passage for this evening. And then consider Isaiah chapter 43. Turn next to Isaiah 43, verses 20 and 21. Isaiah chapter 43, verses 20 and 21, where the prophet Isaiah writes the following.
The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I will give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise. Again, to remind us of the language of our passage in verse 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 marvelous light. This language that Peter adapts and adopts from the Old Testament to apply to the Christians that he’s writing to is very significant. And what is truly significant about this is that here we find Peter using this kind of Old Covenant language to describe Christians, indeed mostly Gentile Christians and mostly Gentile Christian churches.
Recent converts to Christ, very likely. As Dr. I. Howard Marshall puts it in his commentary, he says, Peter identifies his readers, and remember, Peter’s readers are mostly Gentile converts to Christ. They’re Gentile Christians. Peter identifies, Dr. Marshall says, Peter identifies his readers as the objects of God’s choice and care, the new Israel. See, before their conversion to Christ, they as Gentiles would have been regarded as outsiders in relationship to the covenant people of God. They would have been regarded as uncircumcised. They would have been regarded as unclean, as those with no identity among the people of God, and thus no right to be regarded as belonging to the people of God. but a great redemptive historical shift has occurred. Christ has come and now his kingdom has come in principle. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on Pentecost and the gospel is to go to all the nations.
Now in Christ, their status before God and in relationship to God’s people has radically changed. Now in Christ and alongside of Jewish believers in Jesus, Peter’s Gentile readers are to be regarded as full, equal members of the Israel of God, as those who themselves are part of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. Friends, the fact that Peter uses this Old Testament language to describe the status and the identity of these New Covenant Gentile believers is deeply significant. It has some profound implications, and I don’t have the time to go into all of the implications, but I would mention just a few. First of all, this implies, beloved, Peter’s use of this Old Covenant language and applying it to these Gentile believers living under the New Covenant in Christ indicates that there is a fundamental unity and continuity between the people of God under the Old Covenant and the people of God under the new covenant.
God does not have two separate and distinct people groups. He does not have two separate and distinct peoples. His earthly people, i.e. the Jews, and his spiritual people, i.e. the church. No, no. You see, in Old Testament times, God had a church. It’s just that God’s covenant people, as the church of God, were typically called Israel. under the old covenant. But now in the new covenant, in new covenant times, the covenant people of God, the true Israel of God, made up of both Jews and Gentiles who confess and believe in and trust in Jesus as Savior, Lord, and Messiah, now under the new covenant, the Israel of God is usually referred to as the church. While there are obviously some important differences and discontinuities between these two administrations of the one covenant of grace, underneath it there is a basic unity and continuity.
Again, our passage underscores the fundamental unity and continuity between God’s people living under the Mosaic administration, typically called the Old Covenant, and God’s people living today under the New Covenant in Christ. both before and after the coming of Jesus the Messiah. God’s people were a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And why do I belabor this point? Why do I seek to drive this point home? Because this goes against a very common but erroneous approach to Bible interpretation that is known as dispensationalism. And dispensationalism, contrary to a biblical Reformed covenant theology, dispensationalism sees Israel and the Church as fundamentally different, fundamentally distinct. They see fundamental discontinuity rather than unity, whereas The language of scripture in passages such as the one we consider tonight shows us that there has always been only one people of God and this one covenant people of God has always been saved and justified in one and the same way and that is by grace alone, God’s sovereign grace alone through faith alone in the Messiah, Jesus alone.
Old covenant believers were justified and saved by trusting in the promised Messiah yet to come. New covenant believers We are saved by trusting in Jesus, the Messiah who has come. But there’s one and only one way to salvation, and there’s only one and one only covenant people of God. Now many today would object to this under the influence of dispensationalism, which is a very prevalent view in the broader evangelical world today. Many would say, oh, well, that’s replacement theology, right? Pastor, you’re saying that the church replaces Israel. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is there’s no replacement going on here. This is not replacement theology, as dispensationalists will often mischaracterize biblical covenant theology. Rather, it is fulfillment theology. or what one particular Christian brother in a church that I previously served liked to put it, expansion theology.
You see, under the Mosaic administration, God’s saving and covenant mercies were for the most part restricted to the Jews living in the land of Israel. The church under the old covenant was constituted a covenanted national theocracy. restricted mostly to the Jews. But now that Christ has come, God’s covenant people, the church, is now an international spiritual kingdom, a kingdom inclusive of both Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus. The language that Peter employs here clearly implies that. And this is stated very clearly in many other places in the Scriptures. To compare Scripture with Scripture, I would have you turn to Ephesians 2, and let me just read and comment briefly on verses 11 through 22. Ephesians 2, verses 11 through 22. The apostle Paul again, writing under the Spirit’s inspiration, says basically the same thing.
And Paul here in this passage is again, like Peter in our passage for this evening, Paul is addressing a congregation consisting of mostly Gentile converts to Christ. And he says, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. In other words, before the coming of Christ and before you came to faith in Christ, you were outsiders with respect to God and the covenant people of God. You had no hope and you were without God in the world. But then notice what he says beginning in verse 13.
But now, now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, you Gentiles, who spiritually speaking were once far off from the people of God. and the hope of salvation. You who once were far off have been what? Brought near, how? By the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Probably referring there to the ceremonial laws and the ritual laws that separated Gentiles from Jews. that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. In Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile. We are all one in Christ Jesus.
There’s one body of Christ, one Israel of God, one people of God. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near. The far off ones are the Gentiles, those who are near, they are the Jews. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone and so forth. You once were outsiders. You once did not belong. You once had no identity among the people of God, but now in Christ, and through faith in Christ, now you belong as full, equal members of God’s covenant people.
And so, what is this identity that we have in Christ? Getting back to our passage for this evening in verse nine, how are we described, brothers and sisters? Well, first of all, Peter writes, but you are a chosen race. or as some translations put it, a chosen generation. This terminology highlights the divine initiative and gracious election of God. He chooses us, we choose him because he first chose us. We love him because he first loved us. We are chosen of him by grace, not because we’re worthy or because we deserve it, but because God has been kind and merciful. He took the initiative. He reached out to us in grace. So we are a chosen race or generation. We are next described as a royal priesthood. Dr. Marshall says the phrase means that the people constitute a group of priests belonging to a king.
Priests are those who have special access to the presence of God and through Christ, in and through Christ, we brothers and sisters have access into the heavenly holy of holies by faith and through the Holy Spirit. So we are a chosen race or generation, a royal priesthood. We are also described here as a holy nation. The term holy means consecrated, set apart to belong to the Lord. But why does Peter here describe the church, describe God’s people, as a holy nation? When we think of the term nation, we tend to think of what? Well, we tend to think of political entities. We think of nation states. But that’s not the sense in which Peter is using that term. The word nation, not a nation, he doesn’t mean a nation in the political sense of a nation state, like the United States of America, or France, or China, or South America, or India, or anything like that, no.
The word nation here is the Greek term ethne. It’s the word from which we derive our English word ethnic, and it refers to a people group. We are a people. We are the people of God, the holy people of God, a spiritual ethnicity, if you will. And we are a people, a nation that is international in its scope. It includes people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Jesus died on the cross, not just to redeem Jews, not just to redeem Gentiles, but to redeem people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And notice that he next describes us as the people of God as a people for his own possession, or as Marshall puts it, God’s special property. In other words, we belong to God in a special way. Now there are many implications of these descriptions that Peter mentions here about the people of God, about our identity as believers in Christ, but let me just bring before you a few implications of what we learn here from this passage.
First of all, We who are Christ’s, we who know Christ as our Savior, we need not suffer an identity crisis, for we know who we are, at least we should know who we are. Not only are we those who were created in God’s image, not only are we those who, because of the fall of Adam, are sinners with a broken and twisted image of God, And not only are we fallen sinners, totally depraved apart from God’s grace, in Christ, we are the people of God. We are redeemed by God. We are part of the new Israel, the people of God. Dear listener, are you assured that you belong to God’s people? You can know that you do as you rest in Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin. Find your identity in Him.
Another implication is that since we believers are all equal members of Christ’s body, whatever our background might be, whatever our skin tone might be, whatever our socioeconomic status may be, since we are all equal members of Christ’s body, let us treat each other equally with love and dignity, even counting others better than ourselves. Again, remember, Peter is writing to mostly Gentile Christians, churches that were made up of mostly Gentile believers, and he’s saying, you are fully initiated into the people of God. Now, this was a real big issue in the earliest apostolic church. Remember, friends, Jesus was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, and the earliest Christians were Jews. Most of those who were converted on the day of Pentecost to faith in Christ were Jews. There were some Gentile God-fearers and proselytes among the crowd, but the earliest Christians, for the most part, were Jewish Christians.
But when the gospel started to spread among the Gentiles, that created some tensions in the early church. Because imagine this, imagine that you are a Jew, you’ve been raised with the idea that those Gentiles, well, they’re unclean, they’re uncircumcised, they’re outsiders, but all of a sudden, let’s say you’ve come to faith in Christ, you’ve come to believe in Jesus as the promised Messiah, and you are part of the early church, the earliest apostolic church, and all of a sudden, these unclean Gentiles, these uncircumcised Gentiles are flooding the ranks of the church. That raises the issue, well, how can we welcome these Gentiles? Do they first have to become Jews and become circumcised before they can be regarded as fully initiated Christians? And what about table fellowship? How can we have equal table fellowship with them?
There were some real practical issues going on in the early church with respect to this. And Paul, The apostle to the Gentiles made it very clear that, look, in Christ, we are one. Peter makes this clear as well. Peter says, you, you Gentile believers too, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You too belong to this covenant people of God, and you’re not second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. You are equally part of the covenant people of God. And brothers and sisters in Christ, this is the attitude we should have one to another. God gives different gifts, different abilities, different callings to us. Yes, that is true. There are differences. But in Christ, we are one. And in Christ, In terms of our status before the Lord, we are equal before the Lord.
And so this truth ought to drive us to avoid divisiveness and factionalism and cliquishness in the church. Let us, brothers and sisters, regard one another as equal members of Christ’s body. Let us treat others equally with love and dignity in the body of Christ. And all of this is for what purpose? Well, Peter brings it out in verse nine. He says that we are all of these things. Why? That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Let us proclaim his excellencies by our life and by our testimony. But this passage also highlights, as we move on briefly to verse 10, this passage highlights the incredible mercy displayed in God’s sovereign choice. This is my final point on your sermon outline. Consider the incredible mercy that was displayed in God’s sovereign choice.
Peter goes on to say, 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. Once again, Peter is alluding to and drawing upon the language that we find in the Old Testament. In this verse, Peter picks up the language of and alludes to in particular, Hosea chapter one, verses six and nine, as well as chapter two, verse 23. Let’s turn there briefly. Let’s look at Hosea chapter one, Hosea is after the book of Daniel. Hosea chapter one, the prophet Hosea is addressing God’s faithless people. The people of God at this time, the professed people of God at least, were engaged in syncretism. They have fallen into idolatry. They showed that they were not truly repentant and believing. And so what does the Holy Spirit through Hosea say to them?
Look at verse six, and here is an illustration from Hosea’s own children. He says, she conceived again and bore a daughter, and the Lord said to him, call her name No-mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. And then skip down, if you would, to verse nine. And the Lord said, call his name not my people, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. But then, as we turn to Hosea chapter two and look at verse 23, it says this, and I will have mercy on no mercy. In other words, though God for a time has rejected, though branches were broken off from the olive shoot, if you will, because of their unbelief. I will have mercy on no mercy, and I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall say, you are my God.
Now, in the context of Hosea, Hosea is addressing the unfaithful people of Israel. But in the context of our passage for today, The Holy Spirit through Peter is addressing these Gentile believers. And He is saying, you were not a people. There was a time in redemptive history and a time in your own personal history when you were not a people. But now, now because Christ has come and now because you are saved by grace, now you are God’s people. once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Now that you have come to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ by his sovereign grace, you have received mercy. This points to a great transition that Peter’s readers had experienced, a transition from wrath to grace, a transition from disfavor to favor, a transition from deadness and sin to newness of life in Christ.
Once you had not received mercy, he says. Peter drives home his point that there had been a great before and after change in their lives since Christ had called them into his kingdom. Once either refers to their pre-conversion days or possibly to that period of redemptive history before the advent of Christ, when for the most part the Gentiles were excluded, or perhaps, Peter, Perhaps the wording here that Peter is using could refer to both situations. But in any case, he says, but now you have received mercy. Now that you have become part of the people of God by his grace through the gospel and through believing in Christ, now you have received mercy. And this is really a pivotal passage in the flow of Peter’s epistle. As Dr. Marshall points out, With this statement, the first part of the letter comes to an end.
Peter has shown how his readers are God’s people, loved by him and called to holiness. They are different from other people in the world. And the rest of Peter’s letter will explore the practical consequences of this, especially as they face hostility and even persecution. In conclusion, dear ones, What is the bottom line? The bottom line is if you belong to Jesus Christ, there is no need for you to suffer an identity crisis. You are part of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. You are part of God’s forever family. You belong and you always will. Praise be to God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have shown us mercy in Christ. We thank you that in Christ we belong to him and to his covenant people forever, that we are no longer outsiders.
O Lord, we pray that these truths would powerfully impact our lives, not only our personal subjective sense of identity, but also may these truths impact the way that we treat and relate to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We pray all of these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time together, let’s rise and we’ll sing number 404. The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. 404.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.