The Witness of the people of God

If you have your Bibles, we open to 1 Peter chapter 2, and we will be looking at three verses, verses 9 through 12. Hear God's word for us tonight. 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. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your word. Lord, we praise You that You instruct us as Your children on how we can be co-laborers with You in this work of proclaiming Christ to the world. Lord, I pray tonight as we look at Your scripture that the Holy Spirit teach us. Father, give us understanding of Your word and understanding of what You are calling us to do. And Lord, then we pray that Your Holy Spirit empower us that we may act on what You call us to. Father, we praise You and we thank You for who and what You are. And it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

When Eugene called and asked if I could fill in this Sunday evening, I was thankful for taking it on. So you wonder what you should speak on. And I never have a text ready to give to the secretary or a title.

And so it never gets in. So Eugene had no clue what I was speaking on. But for that song to be the song that we sang is quite amazing in the sense of what I'm hoping to share with you this evening from this text in First Peter. I called this message the witness of the people of God. And over the past few months, I have the same routine every morning. I wake up, I turn on the TV to catch up on the news while I'm getting my dogs out and getting ready for work. And I have seen many commercials. And then as I read, I've come across several articles that deal with the struggles that society is having with mental health issues due to all the current issues that are coming together to cause stress in our society.

It has to be. I've seen a Michael Phelps commercial. I've seen several that are health care providers talking about if you need to talk, here's a number to call. I've read several articles on the issues with social distancing and isolation and what it's causing to the psyche. When you sit and realize what we have gone through in the past two years with COVID, even tonight to walk in. We saw Doug this morning. We were all happy and then to get news that he's not doing as well as we thought. And he ended up back in the hospital with stresses added to our thought process. From 2020, we have political and social strife in our country and across the world. There's race issues and sexuality issues, gender issues. And now there's the precipice of war in Europe or in the Middle East, lack of access to certain goods and services.

We see increasing increasing costs on almost everything. And these issues raise anxiety rates and depression rates in the society and sometimes even in the church. The solutions offered by the culture many times fall short in affecting lasting change.

Now, I am not suggesting that there are not good counseling resources available if needed, and I would urge anyone if they are struggling to seek out a Christian counselor. But in many cases, though, the counseling offered in our mainstream society falls very much short because we are trying to come to grips with issues that are much, much larger than we are. When we sit and think about a virus that is less than five microns in size, that you need a microscope even to be able to view it, we don't see where it's at or what person it's affecting at certain times. There is fear that raises in many in our population.

We, in my work, get to deal with a lot of people who have to come in and sit across from us. And the questions are big questions, life and death questions. You know, even my family affected by it in December with my brother passing, there is life and death questions that are before us in that process. Question of what is the value of anything anymore? One of the big things as being a business owner, there are article after article about the great resignation that's taking place. Many people are just leaving jobs. And not going and fighting others, they're just quitting. Now, many are fighting others and higher paying and that's great, but for some, they look and say, what is the value of this eight or ten or twelve hours that I'm putting in daily? They have a life question to what is the value, the true value around them. One of the final ones that I hear is, how should we treat one another?

And that is a very difficult one. When I am at work and I have a respiratory therapist that has to see a patient and that patient has a concern about COVID, we are always going to defer to their concern. We are going to make sure that we mask and make them feel comfortable. We are going to put others before our own needs. But in the society, that has lessened over time and there is actually a rank or a division amongst people and they can actually work toward hurting one another instead of deferring one to the other.

So, why am I making this big case? These questions are not new by any means, but they have a greater emphasis on them today due to everything that we are facing at one time. I believe that we are at a pivotal point in the world right now where the church can and will stand as a light in opposition to many of the false things that are out there. We, as the church, are in a time when people are searching the big questions, dealing with sin, and if we are a church founded on Christ Jesus, we have the only true answer that our dying society needs. As we think about that, this text this evening teaches that God's people can impact the world in which we are passing through and it is with the message of Christ. This morning, Eugene preached a tremendous word to the officers and the leaders of the church and I'm sure for those that are members in the church, you were sitting back thinking, good, they have to do everything.

Well, you were wrong because scripture doesn't give that. If you thought you were off the hook, if you thought the work of ministry was only for the officers, Peter is teaching that the people of God are of utmost importance in sharing the hope of Christ to the world. I'm in an Old Testament class right now and we just went through the book of Ezra and Nehemiah.

They combined them. We can have that conversation off line, but the prof who was doing the lectures on that book shared that the book of Ezra and Nehemiah is the best example of man's responsibility and God's sovereignty in one set of teachings that we find anywhere else in the Bible. It is something that we have to come to grips with that we have a responsibility that Christ, that God, that the apostles call us to in scripture and we are called to carry out that responsibility but carry it out in the help, in the working of the Holy Spirit through us.

What I'd like to tonight is for us to consider three points from our text. First, God has chosen a people to proclaim His excellency. Point two will be God's work of mercy is what unites and empowers His people. Point three, God's people are to be examples as they grow in sanctification. The first point, God has chosen a people to proclaim His excellencies. Look back at verse nine in chapter two. 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.

Does this text sound familiar to anyone? If you remember back in the book of Exodus chapter 19 verses five and six, these are the words. Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. The first thing we want to see that Peter is teaching the church is he is teaching there is a continuity in God's people from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

The church now that Peter is writing to are the people of God just as Israel was the people of God in the Old Testament text. From Sinai forward, God has held forth a people who are called to display His excellencies to the world around them. We've heard sermons or Sunday school classes on Israel's role. Israel was this small little country surrounded by greater powers but in a trade route and when they were established, they were a light to the pagan nations around them of being different because of the way God Almighty interacted with His people preserved and protected and kept through covenant His people.

Today the church stands the same. We have God who has come in flesh, who has stood in our place, who has paid our debt and made a new everlasting covenant and we are to reflect out to the world that excellency. If you sit and think about it from both the Old and New Testament, what are these excellencies of God? The people of Israel demonstrated over and over a redemptive or salvific, the salvation of the Lord.

They are delivered from Egypt, how? By the hand of God, defeating the armies of Egypt by opening the Red Sea and redeeming or saving His people from the oncoming onslaught of the Egyptian army. Afterwards, the going, entering in and possessing the land that was promised to their father Abraham, way back at the first covenant we see with Abraham and God promising nations and peoples in a land to His people, a place where they will exist, He will be their God and they shall be His people. We see the establishment with David of a throne forever that God would rule and reign with His people forever and David's covenant is a picture of that and Israel is proclaiming that throughout the world that sees how God deals with His people. Move forward into the New Testament. We see the same salvific excellency in the atonement of sin accomplished for us by Christ, by God keeping us. When we will turn our own ways, when we will be the faithless ones, but God will be faithful in what He has accomplished through Christ to sustain and keep us. For both the Old and the New Testament, it is His greatness, His holiness, His love and mercy we are to proclaim.

In the New Testament time, the consummation of all these things are found in Christ Jesus. The church is to proclaim Christ as the God-man who saves us from the wrath of God by being our complete substitutionary atonement. We are the church. We are a different people than the world. Tonight we come in and we celebrate and why do we celebrate in our worship? We celebrate because Jesus Christ has fully accomplished everything that you and I need so that we can be children of the Most High God. That's amazing folks.

It's not just a little difference between us and the culture. Jesus Christ is everything over and above this world and He condescended to us as we're told in Philippians, emptied Himself and took on our sin, paid our debt and made us right before a holy, right and just God. Those are the excellencies that we are to proclaim as we are called out by God to a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.

This includes the leadership of the church, but this is what the church is called to be. We are called to be this witness in the world. Peter doesn't leave it go there that we're just to go out and proclaim it, but he explains to us that we are to proclaim it not only audibly, but in the way in which we live our lives. It will lead us into point two, that God's work of mercy is what unites and empowers His people. In verse 10 we read, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy. Does anybody again find a similarity to some other scripture that that may have heard that? Hosea 2, 23 says this, and I will sow her for myself in the land, and 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. Again, Peter tying us back in this continuity with the Old Testament, Hosea's words talking about how Israel would forsake God, but God would stay true and faithful, and we see that in Christ Jesus, and it is not because anything that we have done. It is very clear in the text that says 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.

It does not say because you were good enough, Christ decided to come and take on what you couldn't do. It said that you needed the mercy of God because at that time we were sinners against a holy and right God. God is the one who displays mercy to us in a manner that makes us right with him. Do we sit and meditate on that thought by itself? Do you ever sit and just meditate on the grace and mercy of God? When we look at the names of God in the Old Testament, when we look at the might and the power and the authority of a sovereign God over all of creation, do we truly meditate on the mercy and grace that he bestows on a creature who without care many times sins against him without fear? It should shake us to our core when we realize even as regenerated people who have experienced that mercy, we are still capable to commit sin.

It should sadden us. It should drive us to the foot of the cross and just see the sweetness of Christ more and more because it is truly grace and mercy that God has displayed. Paul in Romans chapter 5 verse 6 says this, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, not those who were going to believe, not those who were okay just struggling. It is the sinners, the ungodly that Christ died for.

You and I have no claim to merit before him. He died for the ungodly which we were. And only through Christ can we take the term sons of God, daughters of God, children of God. Likewise, Luke 6 36, God not only shows us his mercy, but he calls us to be merciful also. Luke 6 36 says, be merciful even as your father is merciful. I don't usually do this, but by a show of hands, how many here are as merciful to those around you as God has been merciful to you? I didn't think I'd embarrass anybody.

I can't raise my hand. But we're called to that. I opened up with saying there is man's responsibility and God's sovereignty. One of the lectures I listened to, the gentleman made a real neat analogy. He said, of course it breaks down because they all do. But he was walking along an old railroad track bed where you could still see the rails, but over time because of disuse and just the way the world goes, there was a covering over the ties.

You could see the two steel tracks, but you couldn't see the ties that tie them together. Many times as we look at our responsibility and God's sovereignty, it's hard to see those ties. They are there and we are called no matter what, whether we see the ties or not. We are called by God. We are commanded to do certain things. But we can never lose sight that even though we do have responsibility that is given to us generously by God to be co-laborers with him, it is only through mercy and grace that we can attain to do those things.

One of the things that I love to tell my kids, and you can ask Ethan or Wendy, and I try to hold it to us, I fail many times. In this walk of sanctification, I sin. I need Christ more than anything else, and I need his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness. But it doesn't change the fact that we are a different people. You and I, though we rely on mercy and grace, it is our only hope. We are a different people because we have been called out by God and given a work to do. The scripture tells us that God actually prepared that work beforehand that we may walk in it, and he through his word, through his teaching, through prayer, through worship, through the ordinary means of the sacraments will empower us to walk in that work.

When we get to the third point, there is an importance to why I just said that. As we move to that third point, and we can never lose the second, that it is grace and mercy that sustains us, the third point from tonight's text comes from verses 11 and 12, and that is we are to be examples as we grow in sanctification. Verses 11 and 12, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

How are we to do this? I have preached from this pulpit or taught in Sunday school that we are sinners, that outside of Christ we have no hope save him. That is truly scriptural, but scripture also teaches much, much more about us, doesn't it? That when we are in Christ, we are a new creation. The old is put away and we now walk in the spirit. That is what you and I are called to, the responsibility that we step into when grace and mercy is applied to us. We are called in this passage to live a life that shows the world around us that Christ is worth what he has done for us. When Peter writes, Beloved, I urge you to abstain from the passion of the flesh. He is giving us a negative. There are things that we are not supposed to participate in, but we cannot do it by sheer willpower.

I'll share a fun example with you. This morning in Sunday school, I was telling the Lewis's that I'm fat. When I was in my mid-30s, I ran quite a lot. In that time period, I weighed between 155 and 165 pounds.

I could eat anything I wanted. I ran between 30 and 65 miles a week, depending on what we were training for. It was five days a week I was running. There were times that I was throwing swimming in there because we were doing triathlons.

Life was easy. I could have Krispy Kreme donuts and Mountain Dew, anything I wanted. When I was about 45, 48, I really stopped running, but I didn't stop eating. So 155 to 165 pounds is way back in the mirror back there, and I get very frustrated at times when I step on the scale and see exactly what my diet has done to me. So I am a very self-deprecating person when I do things. If you would see me out running, if I'm struggling climbing a hill, I'll say, come on, fatty, work a little harder. Don't give in. You can do this, fatso. Keep going.

And I do it out loud. So in December, I decided I'm going to lose weight, and I formed what was called the fatso club, and that stands for focused actions to, what is it? To something, it was designed to focus me on what I needed to do to lose weight. I began this process on December 17th. I lost in the first three weeks five pounds, doing great.

It is now the 6th of February. I weigh about a pound and a half less than when I started, which means I've gained back three and a half pounds. I share this story because I'm trying to lose weight on my sheer willpower. In my own power, I'm trying to do something, and I'm failing. Many times when we talk about what we're looking at here in these verses, abstain from sin.

So I leave after hearing the message, and I go home, and I say, I am no longer going to do this. Whether it's struggle with pride or whether it's a struggle with lust, but you end up at the grocery store, and you turn, and you look, and you see a magazine cover with a scantily clad model, or you end up at work in a confrontation discussing something you know you're right in, and you need to get your point across in order that everything be made right, and these little things hit you, and they bring back the sin that you walked out of church on Sunday saying, I am devoting to destruction today, and we find ourself as we rest in our own strength failing over and over. We are not able by sheer willpower to stop. The simple answer in 1 John tells us that if we walk out of here and say, I will not sin from this point, 1 John tells us what? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. So what is our hope? How can we do what God is calling us to do as we sit and look at the text?

It sounds simple. Abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Those are things I would want to be considered. I would want to be considered that I'm honorable in the way I act. I would want to be considered that I abstain from those things that do harm to the body of Christ or Christ himself.

But still, even in this changed body, I find many times that I fall very short. I looked up, how do you mortify sin? And when I looked that up, I found an article in Table Talk magazine, and I want to share with you real briefly because I found this very encouraging on how we must, in our call, in our responsibility, work through God's workings to mortify our sin and be an example to the world around us who is dying in sin. Turn, if you have your scripture, turn to Colossians 3. And I just want to read to you Colossians 3, 1 through 17. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Verse 5, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. If we stop there at verse 6, the tabletop writer made a very prolific point to me in my struggle of mortifying sin. And he said the very first thing that Paul does is not give the command to mortify the sin, he establishes the believer in who they are in Christ. We have that conversation quite open in the PCA right now as we talk about the revoice issue and whether or not a Christian should identify themselves by the sin characteristic that they are quote, unquote, delivered from. In our culture, it's quite common to hear the term either a gay Christian or a homosexual Christian. We use an identifier of the sin and tie it to but we're abstaining so we're Christian. Paul in Colossians doesn't give us that out. I can't say I'm a pride failing Christian or a lust fighting Christian. Paul starts out in Colossians 1 saying, If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. You are no longer identified by sin, you are identified by the perfect one, Jesus Christ. You are a Christian. Sin wars against you and you are to war back knowing that you are in Christ and Christ has defeated that sin. Paul in another passage says that you are a new creature, a new creation.

Those old things are passed away. We are not to live in the thought of the sins that we commit identifying ourselves. We are to live in the Christ who saves us from those very sins who paid the penalty for those sins.

Now Paul just doesn't focus us there. He explains it very clearly for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory and then moves to the command, therefore put to death these sins. Peter says, abstain from these things.

But why? Yes, it is a response in Romans 12 one and two that therefore we are to what? Present ourselves as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual worship and it is because of what Christ has done but clearly we can have an impact to those around us. We live the gospel in front of people who are suffering and searching with big eternal questions. Now, Peter doesn't tell us that we're gonna win everybody who sees that walk.

Quite the opposite, isn't it? He said, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, we are going to be labeled, we are going to be persecuted because we are in Christ Jesus. But just as we rest in Christ Jesus to continue that sanctification, just as we rely on the Holy Spirit to conform us more to the image of Christ, he will sustain us in that persecution and what is great to read in these verses that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Now, some people ask, is that day of visitation the last day of the judgment? Is it the day that salvation may be imparted to the person who is seeing your deeds?

I don't know the answer there. I would lean towards that is the day of judgment but it gives me great hope that there are those who will glorify God, meaning they have seen and the gospel has penetrated their hearts. Our goal here, folks, is to spread Christ through the nations. We are to go and make the disciples of all nations.

We do it by preaching the word primarily but those of us sitting in the pew week in, week out, it is by simply living the life Christ has called us to, being truthful with ourselves that we need Christ completely in order to continually work toward mortifying our sin and becoming fully sanctified and that will not occur until he comes back. Paul goes on in Colossians, but now you must put all them away, anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all in all.

Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. You can finish out through verse 17 and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I am not a great practical application guy, but that last verse as I studied this stung me. When I struggle with a temptation, if I would go before the Lord and if I can say a prayer, Father, I thank you that you are giving me the opportunity to participate in this and fill in whatever the thing is you're participating in. If that is not a prayer you want to utter to the Lord God Almighty, then you should probably flee from doing it. If we truly in whatever we do in word or deed do in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him, go in prayer for where God has us at that particular moment and what we are thinking of doing, I believe that the Holy Spirit would convict us not to follow through if it is something we should not be doing. I have read that verse hundreds of times and never thought of that until I was looking at how do I truly work at mortifying sin.

I don't go to God near enough. I figure I can work my way through things and then on the backside, I either have to go and ask forgiveness or I can rejoice in the work that I've completed. Paul is saying now when it's in front of you, do it for the glory of God and by thanksgiving and prayer to God, go to him and it will clear whether or not we should be participating in those things.

Finally, and I'll leave with this, we are to keep our conduct honorable. Basically, we can summarize this from Matthew 5, 43 through 48. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

The only way, brothers and sisters, that you and I can be perfect in any manner is finding ourselves in Christ, is looking at Christ as our only hope and walking in the spirit that he has provided, looking at those around us. How many of you have trouble even liking your neighbor at times, not even talking your enemy? I had a neighbor one time when we lived in an apartment, their TV blared right through our wall. And I can't tell you the number of times I would beat on that wall and they would turn it down and I would see him outside and I'd wanna punch him because it was like I've done this 17 times. But what I should have done is look at him and said, hey, thank you for turning that down and I appreciate it.

Would you please consider it in the future not to turn it up so loud? To have a true conversation. We're called to be different.

My buddy who's the unbeliever probably would have punched him but he'd pound on the wall and not talk to him. That's not who we are. We're called to be different.

We are called to be honorable in the way we act towards one another but also to the world around us. And in that calling, ladies and gentlemen, the church changes the world around us. Jesus Christ shifts the culture if he is the preeminent thing in the people's lives.

Not talk of sexuality or gender or war or COVID or anything else. If the people of God focus on Christ Jesus and living their lives in him, the culture within the church first changes, within communities change, within a nation change, within a world change. Jay, how could you say that? Because 2,000 years ago, there were 12 who followed. At the resurrection, there were 500 who believed. And they lived a way that was honoring through the Holy Spirit and they had changed the world for Jesus Christ. It is not an impossibility if it is in God's will to change the direction of a family, a community, a nation or a world. We are not called to say we need to make it happen. We are called to live a way that will enable us to fulfill what God has called us to do in a world that needs him and allow his sovereignty to determine how he will affect it. That's our responsibility in God's sovereignty.

We don't get to choose, well, the world's gone to hell too far, there's no sense in us trying. We are called to be imitators of Christ so that the world sees that there are answers to the difficult questions. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word and Lord God, as we study it, I ask forgiveness for myself. I fall so short so many times and Lord God, it is your grace and your mercy that I rest in. It is Christ Jesus who we as your people can look to and know that we are right through him, not through actions. But Lord, you have called us to works. You have called us to those things, the reading of scripture, the praying, the helping of our neighbor, of our enemy. Lord God, empower us through the Holy Spirit to live a life that is honoring and glorifying to Christ. Lord, we do pray for our nation. We pray that, Lord, the church be a light to those who are running headlong into sin and Lord, that there would be a great movement of your spirit across this people and Lord, that you would be glorified and honored by it. But Lord, we rest in you that you will do your will and it is for the right and good of your people and let us rest there completely. It is in Christ Jesus we pray, amen.