Royal Priests to God
1 Peter 2:5–9
As you know, we all have tests and Jim Myers Ministries is going through
a couple of tests this summer. It’s nothing the Lord can’t handle, though.
Jim’s business manager, Dick Mills went home to be with the Lord earlier this
summer, so they had to reorganize some of the responsibility stateside and the
Lord has provided very well in filling that gap.
This week on Monday night there was a break-in at the [Word of God
Bible] College and they stole the safe and the thieves got a substantial amount
of money. It was in cash because that’s how things have to operate there now.
They also got all of their business documents. These are documents related to
being able to do what they do in Kiev, including their lease agreement. You
know, things of that nature that are important to have and are difficult to
replace. So you need to be in prayer for the fact that the Lord will resupply
those finances. It’s the Lord’s money and the Lord can supply that money just
as well a second time, as He did the first time.
I would encourage you to pray about it and to see if you can help them
with finances. I’m talking not just talking about the congregation here, but
also those who are listening on video and live streaming that if the Lord has
provided for you in a way that you can give above and beyond your normal giving
in order to help meet this need, then I would encourage you to pray about it
and give it serious consideration. We can trust the Lord to provide all these
things. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. This is not anything that is
too difficult for Him. It’s just from our perspective a little bit of a speed
bump, but it’s an opportunity to trust Him.
Opening Prayer
“Father, we’re so thankful that You are a great and magnificent God. And
as Jim has taught several lessons here this summer, that You are omniscient and
omnipotent and that there is nothing that we face in life that is unknown by
You and that You have not prepared for, Father.
You are a great God and too often we are caught up with the details of
our own lives and forget Your immensity, Your greatness, and Your glory.
Father, we recognize that You control all things, and that these little speed
bumps that Jim’s ministry has experienced this summer are just opportunities
for You to demonstrate Your grace and Your goodness to that ministry. We’re
thankful for all that they do and for his faithfulness and we pray that You
would continue to supply their needs and to resupply that which has been taken
and that this will not be an overwhelming problem but one that can be easily
remedied.
Father, we pray for us as we face trials, tribulations, difficulties,
and heartaches in life that we may always be reminded that these are designed
to teach us to go to You. We do not know all the facts whenever we hit a
difficult time, no matter how hard it is. Sometimes we get angry. Sometimes we
get upset. Sometimes we just get depressed or discouraged because our plans and
our agenda don't conform to Yours.
We know what You’re trying to do is to get our attention. Father we pray
that You would help us to be mindful in each of the circumstances that we need
to be learning the lesson of trusting You and relying upon You and being
obedient to You.
Father, as we continue our study in 1 Peter we pray You will help us to
understand what Peter is trying to communicate and the implications for our
spiritual lives. We pray this in Christ’s name, Amen. “
I don’t know about you but I always get a little nervous when I’m here
and we’re hearing the thunder outside. Some of you were here that night about
eight years ago when it started doing this about the time class started. By the
time the class was over at 8:30 the streets surrounding the church were filled
with about a foot and a half of water.
Nobody could get out. Some people tried but they had to come back and we
didn’t make it home till midnight. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that
tonight, but who knows, maybe the Lord decided we need some social life after
Bible class tonight.
Open your Bibles with me to Ephesians 2 and also 1 Peter 2. We’ll start
in 1 Peter with just some review but we’re going to go into Ephesians 2 pretty
rapidly, because that connects back to what we are examining in context
tonight.
In 1 Peter 2 we are engaged in this study that seems to have a
particular resonance with these Jewish-background believers. It’s important to
understand this because what Peter is doing is not saying, as I’ve indicated in
the last few weeks, that this is something unique and distinct to these
Jewish-background believers. It’s true for all believers. That’s what Ephesians
2:12 through 22 or 25 actually establishes.
It is special to these Jewish-background believers, though, because of
their history, because of their tradition, because of their background, and
because of their understanding of the Old Testament that this has a particular
significance to them. I think that’s why Peter’s bringing this up and why he is
going to these verses, because there was something that was true of the Jews in
the Old Testament in terms of that they were to be a kingdom or actually royal
priests. That’s the same language, same verbiage we have here in 1 Peter 2 that
that they never fulfilled as a nation.
They were to be a priest–nation to all of the other nations. They’ll
fulfill that in the Kingdom. They’ll fulfill that when the Lord returns and
establishes His throne in Jerusalem. Right now we’re not living in the Old
Testament period. We’re not living in a New Covenant age. The sacrifice for the
New Covenant was made at the cross, but the New Covenant is not initiated until
Jesus comes back.
We’ve done extensive studies in the past, showing that that when you
look at passages that resonate with New Covenant language, that it shows that
the New Covenant itself isn’t put into effect. It doesn’t begin yet. It’s not
this “already not yet view” that’s out there today. The New Covenant itself does
not go into effect, until there is the Messiah on the Davidic throne and the
people of Israel are back in the historic homeland that God has given.
Those are always the conditions that we see in the Scripture, that those
things all come together and therefore we cannot be seeing the New Covenant in
any way, shape, or form today. We are in preparation for it in terms of our
spiritual life.
Every now and then I get questions from people that ask why Paul said
we’re ministers of the New Covenant. That is because those who are saved today
under the Church Age gospel will participate in the fullness of blessing when
the New Covenant is established in the Kingdom.
This is then the issue of Christ saying at the Lord’s Table, “This is the new covenant of My blood.”
That’s the sacrifice that establishes the New Covenant, but that doesn’t begin
the New Covenant. He just establishes the sacrifice that is the basis for that
covenant.
In 1 Peter 2 the focal point is on spiritual growth. That spiritual
growth is the basis of the command in verse two that we are to “crave”. We are
designed to desire the milk of the Word and that’s such an important thing.
Last year we talked about having a Bible reading
challenge to people and we put that up on the DBM
website. A lot of people are following through with reading the Scripture
through on a regular daily basis. Some people have already finished reading
through the whole Bible. They sped up. Other people are consistently plodding
along.
I get reports every now and then that people are realizing things in the
Scripture that they never knew were there because they never read the Bible.
I’ve been meeting with a young man for the last year or so and he was trying to
start a ministry when we were first talking about 15 or 16 months ago. I asked
him if he had ever read the Bible all the way through. He said “no” and we
talked about that a little bit and then one day he said I really got convicted
last night thinking about that that. He said, “Here I want to start a ministry
and I’ve never read the Bible all the way through.”
You might say that you want to live the Christian life and you’ve never
read the Bible all the way through. That is something that can be said for many
people, and this is the most important thing. Jim [Myers] gave a great message
Sunday morning and talked about the fact that that Scripture
indicates that we’re to remember the mighty things that the Lord has done. It’s
hard to remember something you’re ignorant of and the mighty things that are in
the Scripture are the mighty things that are repeated again and again in the
Scripture.
They don’t compare with some of the things that we focus on in our
day-to-day lives. At times we think we’re sure glad the Lord protected us when
we could’ve gotten that speeding ticket the other day, or the Lord protected us
from getting involved in that accident. Or maybe we were going to get into a
business deal and it turned out later that it wasn’t so good. The Lord
protected us and those things are all true and fine. They pale in significance
to the historic great and wonderful acts of God.
It doesn’t say that the apostles spoke or proclaimed the gospel on the day
of Pentecost. It doesn’t say that. A lot of people read that into the text. It
doesn’t say that. I think they talked about the wonderful works of God. I think
what they did was they talked about those wonderful works in the Old Testament
and tied everything together so the people could understand what those two
disciples on the road to Emmaus came to understand and that is that from
Genesis to Malachi everything talked about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Everything talked about the Messiah, but to be able to do that you have
to know the Bible, you have to be reminded of these things and that doesn’t
just happen. It’s not just, “I read my Bible through this year.” That’s great.
Then three years later, you say, “I think I’ll read it through again,” It
doesn’t work that way. We need to know the Word. We need to crave the Word. We
need to desire it more than anything else.
When you die, that’s the only thing that is going to go with you and
transition from this life to the next. We’re going to get a resurrection body.
We’re going to get eternal life and are going to get a lot of things that are
different.
We’re not going to take any money with us or your degrees or my degrees.
All of those things we’ve accomplished in this life are not going to go with
us. The one thing that transitions is our knowledge of the Word and the Bible
doctrine that’s in our soul.
That Bible doctrine that in our soul isn’t just what we learned
academically. It’s what we’ve applied, and we have drilled on again and again
and again. If you’ve ever been involved with sports or you’ve ever been
involved with music or you’ve ever been involved with any kind of dance or
athletics, you know for one thing that you can’t master something if you don’t
practice it, and practice it, and practice it.
The old adage that “practice makes perfect” is wrong. Perfect practice
makes perfect. If we’re practicing what is wrong that’s what gets embedded in
our soul. We’ve got to practice the faith-rest drill and those other spiritual
skills over and over and over again.
What I see happen so many times in life is when folks get older, whether
they’re in their 30s or 40s or 50s, they have a blowout on their road to sanctification
and spiritual maturity because they confused academic knowledge of the Word
with practicing it and implementing it day-to-day. And then suddenly something
happens and life blows up on them. They get upset with God because they really
didn’t internalize and practice. They just have a lot of nice organized
notebooks.
That’s the focal point here, it’s growing and carrying out the ministry
that God has given us. That’s what Peter develops when he talks about
priesthood in 1 Peter 2:4–9.
We look at those verses that we are to come to Him. Actually it should
be understood “since coming to Him as to
a living stone” and that living stone is Jesus who was rejected by men, but
“choice”. We will see that should be translated, “by God, choice and precious.”
“You also, as living stones,
are being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.”
Now what we’ve seen here in terms of interpretation is that the body of
Christ is comprised of Gentiles and Jews. Peter’s writing to Jews. That doesn’t
mean it doesn’t apply to Gentiles. All members of the body of Christ are equal.
The Jews are a subset. The remnant of the Jews is who Paul talks about in
Romans 11:5, and that is the audience. But what he says that applies to them as
Church Age believers also applies to all believers.
So we come to Jesus, and as I pointed out, He’s the living stone who is
rejected by men.
Then there are these words put together on this slide. One thing I
wanted to bring up again is this word EKLEKTOS, which has been historically translated as
“elect”. You’ll even have perhaps memorized at one point in time that there are
several elections in Scripture. There’s the election of Israel, which I think is
true. Then Jesus is elect, which isn’t true because the idea of election has
the idea of making a selection of one out of others.
Think about that. What others would God the Father have chosen Jesus
from? From what group would He have selected Jesus? It’s a select group of one.
Therefore, it’s not like an election where you’re choosing one from many. The
emphasis here in context is talking about His choiceness, His quality, and His
excellence.
We see from the quote in Isaiah and the quote here that the words that
are used that surround this are words that also talk about His preciousness and
His value. He’s tried and that’s important. Isaiah 28:16, as I pointed out,
calls them a tried and approved stone, a precious cornerstone, and a sure
foundation.
All of those relate to His quality and His excellence and not that He has
been chosen for a specific task from among others. There are no others!
So the language that we see behind 1 Peter 2:4–5 and from Isaiah 28:16
and Isaiah 8:14, which talks about that the stone of stumbling and rock of
offense, are relating this to the Messiah.
1 Peter 2:5 says that “you
yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ.” I think understanding this is really a key to understanding the
next three verses, because the next three verses are giving quotes from the Old
Testament to substantiate what he is saying here.
This is talking about something that is being constructed, not in our
spiritual lives, but in terms of the church, the body of Christ, that we’re
being built up a spiritual house. I know that getting into the grammar gets
confusing, but if you don’t understand what the text is saying in the original,
then it can get confusing because you’re misapplying what you think it says. It
doesn’t say what you thought it said.
It’s confusing with Peter.
He talks about being built up a spiritual house. This word “spiritual house”,
because it’s in the nominative case, can’t be the object of being built up.
It has to be understood as relating to an appositional description,
which is another description of what these living stones are. I think that it
should be moved up to the front of the verse.
“You yourselves also a
spiritual house.” That’s what we are. It’s a
building project and the Holy Spirit is the building engineer. [Pause when it
starts raining: I’ve got to look outside too when all of a sudden it starts
raining. I see everybody turn and start looking towards the window. I pastored
a church in Irving, Texas back in the late 80s. It was in a YMCA and
had about a 15-, 16-foot ceiling and the entire wall of the church was glass
and looked out on the parking lot. Church started about 10:30 and it was Easter
morning, Resurrection Day, and just about 10:45, 15 minutes into the message,
it started snowing. Everybody was looking outside, so we had to stop and pay
attention to the snow for a few minutes. Yes it was snowing in Dallas, Texas on
Resurrection Day in the middle of the spring. This never happens there. Yes
it’s raining outside here now. Probably won’t last.]
Okay, we’re being built. We are a spiritual house. That’s what we are.
That’s what the church is, the body of Christ. The body of Christ is one
metaphor that’s used to talk about the church as a living organism with Christ
as the head. We’re the members and that’s one analogy that Paul uses.
Here we see this other analogy that it’s like a house. We’re going to
ask the question in a minute, what kind of house? As living stones we’re being
built up to a living priesthood.
Now this is where Ephesians 2 comes in. So let’s turn back to Ephesians
2 and just briefly review what we looked at last time, because this is so
important for controlling our understanding of what is happening in the body of
Christ today.
We started in verse 14. We summarized this and basically what we’ve seen
is that there are two barriers that are indicated in this section. One barrier
is a barrier that exists between Jew and Gentile in the Old Testament that was
described as the barrier of the Law. The other barrier is the barrier that
exists between man, the Jew and Gentile, and God.
Jesus in His death destroys both of those barriers so that that the
dividing wall, as the text says, between Jew and Gentile is now removed. That
distinction that existed in the Old Testament is not there anymore. I pointed
out in verse 18, “For through Him we both
have access by one Spirit to the Father.” The “we both” is Jew and Gentile.
We both have access by one Spirit.
Later on in Ephesians chapter 4 Paul is going to talk about the fact
that it’s one body. It’s one Spirit. We have a unity in the body of Christ. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as
you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all.” The one baptism there is not saying that the
baptism by the Holy Spirit is the only baptism and there’s no water baptism.
Because the water baptism is a physical, visual aid for teaching about Spirit
baptism.
Spirit baptism is a very abstract idea and so water baptism helps us to
understand this profound doctrine related to positional truth or our
identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Then there is a shift and he begins to talk about these citizens that
were no longer strangers and foreigners but were fellow citizens with others,
Jew and Gentile, members of this household of God. There we get this idea of a
house again and that it’s built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets
and Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.
So that helps us to understand this building idea. Well, what kind of
building is this? That’s developed when we get into the next couple of verses.
Ephesians 2:21 starts off, “In whom
[that’s a reference back to Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone] the whole building [that’s this new
edifice that’s being developed through the living stones, you and me, through
the living stones that are constructing this new house] the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in
the Lord.” This new building is a spiritual temple.
Let’s review a couple of things related to what we’re studying here.
First of all, in the Old Testament we had a physical building that was
originally a tent, a mobile home, going through the wilderness that was a
dwelling place for God.
Then once they entered into the land they had a semi-permanent location
at Shiloh for probably 300 to 350 years. Then there was a period when the ark
went on … well, God decided He wanted to go on a little walk and went on a
little travel through the Gaza Strip and came back. He brought Himself back
without any help from man, showing that He’s perfectly capable of taking care
of Himself.
When He came back, the ark … we’re not really sure where it was kept,
but it may have been kept just a little west of the Temple Mount. It may have
been kept at Nob. Scripture really isn’t clear until David brings it. It’s at
the home of Obededom for a little while. Then it’s brought somewhere near, a
vicinity near the Temple Mount for a few years.
Then it’s put into the temple, a permanent structure built by Solomon.
That temple was beautiful. It was just amazing. People would come from all over
the world to see this magnificent temple that was designed not to give glory to
the architect. That’s what happens in the second temple when Herod the Great
decides to remodel the temple so that it would be the eighth wonder of the
ancient world and everybody would come and ooh and aah over what Herod built.
This was designed to reflect the magnificence and the glory of God, so
that when people came they would reflect upon the majesty of God, and upon the
greatness of God, and upon His grace and provision to Israel.
If you went on to the Temple Mount precinct you would discover that
there were certain social divisions that were in effect for those who wanted to
worship God. If you were a Gentile, you could only go so far. If you were a
Jewish woman you could go a little bit further. If you were a Jewish male, you
could go a little bit further still.
If you were a priest you could get a little bit further and then if you
were the high priest, you could go into the Holy of Holies once a year where
God dwelt between the cherubim. There were these distinctions that were made in
relation to their closeness to God.
Now part of this is showing that these divisions have broken down
because in a second point, it’s through the baptism of the Holy Spirit that we
become one in the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:4 talks about one body, Jew and
Gentile alike. That’s further explained in Galatians 3:26–28. We’re “all sons of God through faith in Christ
Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This,
though, is empowered and energized by God the Holy Spirit. He’s the one who’s
building this temple.
Ephesians 2:22 says, “In whom you
also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit”.
In 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 6:13 you have references to the Holy Spirit dwelling
in you. I think both of those places are talking about the indwelling of God
the Holy Spirit in each individual believer.
Romans 8 also talks about the Holy Spirit indwelling each individual
believer, but here it’s talking about the Holy Spirit, Who is energizing the
church. The Greek phrase is EN PNEUMATI, which I think almost always indicates when
“in” is used with “the Spirit” that God the Holy Spirit is doing something or
is being used by God to do something.
Back to 1 Peter 2:5. Here we see that there’s something left out of the
new King James Version. It’s usually added or is accurately translated in the
New American Standard Version and some other modern translations that are
updated. It expresses the goal “to a holy priesthood”. There’s a preposition
there. That’s why there’s a difference between the New King James, which puts
spiritual house, a holy priesthood appositionally when they’re both different
grammatical forms and don’t relate to each other.
We’re being built up to
something. There is a training here. We have a priesthood, but we are training
now in the use of that priesthood because of where we’re going in terms of the
future. It’s not an emphasis on the present reality of that priesthood as much
as it is an emphasis on the training in that priesthood today in light of where
we’re going.
In Revelation, as we will see, we are going to be a kingdom, priests to
God. In other verses it describes us as kings and priests. It’s a little
different terminology, a little bit different word than what’s used in 1 Peter
2:9 for a royal priesthood. It’s the same root, but it’s a different form of
the word and we’ll look at that in just a minute.
The purpose for this training right now is to offer up spiritual
sacrifices. We talked about this last time. It’s a sacrifice of praise. We
should be training ourselves to learn how to offer up the sacrifice of praise.
I don’t think this is just limited to singing, although that’s definitely part
of it. I think it’s also expressed through the things that we say.
We live in a somewhat superficial, sentimental time in Christianity.
People don’t take the time to think very deeply or profoundly about their own
spiritual life or their walk with the Lord. Often what we see are “share
groups” or home Bible studies. Different things like that are rather
off-the-cuff, top-of-the-head kinds of expressions. “Oh, let me think of
something or say something. I want to hear my own voice expressing something
that God did for me in the last week.”
That may be true but when you read Scripture as we heard Sunday morning
when Jim Myers emphasized that the more you read Scripture and you read through
the Psalms for yourself, it should elevate the quality of the kinds of things
that you express when you are talking about what God has done in your life.
That becomes a pattern and a model for how we should express praise to God.
We can declare our praise. One way we talk about the Psalms is
declarative praise. We declare what God has done. Another way that we do it is
that we describe it, and we give thanks to God for what He has done. There are
more than just the trivial things although you know God takes care of the
details in our lives. Often the reason we go to trivial things is simply
because that’s the easiest, that’s the simplest, and we haven’t given it a
whole lot of thought. We don’t want to be caught flat-footed and we want to say
something.
We need to think. I know when I was younger and growing up, working in a
ministry, working at Camp Peniel and in other ministries, I would hear people
talk about having a quiet time and sometimes that was denigrated a little bit
as, “Well, you’re not really doing real Bible study if you’re just having a
30-minute devotional.
The older I get the more I realize that when I get up in the morning and
I get my cup of coffee and I cook my breakfast real quick and go sit down in my
chair and I get through with breakfast, it’s then when I open my Bible and I
spend the next 30 minutes just thinking about the Word. I’m thinking about the
Lord and I’m writing down things, underlining the Scripture, and making notes
and thinking about it at more than a superficial level, that my morning seems
to go just a whole lot better.
Better than if I get up in the morning, as someone here pointed out not
too long ago, if I get up in the morning and read Breitbart and Drudge Report
and look at the mainstream media, I start the day more than a little out of
fellowship.
It’s important to have that time because it focuses us and our focus
should be on the Word. It’s not something we need to hurry through. We need to
make time for it. That’s part of the spiritual sacrifices that we make when
we’re giving thanks and praise and giving financially. All of these are part of
the ways that we serve the Lord.
Our life is to be a living sacrifice and that doesn’t mean this sense
that we’ve given something up—that we gave this up for God or I feel some loss
in my life. What’s essential to the idea of sacrifice is giving something to
God for His service and the idea that I may feel a loss or not is not
significant.
I know that you had the same experience that I’ve had. Some of you have
done this with your kids. Some of you have done it with somebody else.
Somebody comes along and you know they have a financial need and you
give them a hundred bucks or a couple hundred bucks or maybe more, you say,
“Well, I guess I just won’t go out to dinner tonight.” Other times it makes no
impact whatsoever on your plans and ideas. You just had the money when they
needed it. You just gave it to them and moved on. You didn’t give them a second
thought.
That’s as much a sacrifice in giving to God as thinking you won’t go out
to eat or you won’t go buy that new “whatever it is this” month. You’ll have to
wait until next month. Sometimes we feel a sense of loss. Sometimes we don’t,
but that idea of a sense of loss is about as relevant to sacrifice as how you
feel is relevant to your confession of sin. It’s may be there or it may not be
there.
That’s not what sacrifice is talking about. So we give sacrifices. We do
this as a part of our priesthood.
Let’s go over a few points related to what a priest is in the Scripture.
First of all, all Church Age believers, Jew and Gentile alike, are set apart to
God. We are positionally holy. “Holy” is one of those words that so many people
today don’t use and don’t know. That’s been true for a long time. We overuse
words and then they lose their significance and meaning. So we don’t understand
“holy”. Holy means to be set apart to the service of God.
When we go back into the Old Testament we realize that for the vessels
in the temple to be used in the service of the temple they had to be cleansed.
Before a priest could serve the Lord in the ministry in the temple he had to be
cleansed. He had to come in and go to the laver and wash his hands and wash his
feet.
Jesus uses that same imagery when he talks to Peter in John 13. He says
if you don’t let Me wash your hands and your feet, which is a depiction of
experiential cleansing, you won’t have any inheritance with Me in the kingdom.
So it’s pretty serious.
We have to be cleansed. That relates to experiential cleansing. In
Exodus 19:6 God said of the Jewish people, of the Israelites, “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests.”
You could translate that “royal priests”. The part of speech there clearly can
indicate royal priests and a holy nation, a nation set apart to My service. The
whole nation was to have a priestly function in relation to the rest of the world.
We’ll look at that in more detail in a minute.
In Ephesians 1:4, Paul says of Church Age believers, “Just as He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in
love.” We’re to be set apart before Him. What’s true of the Israelites and
the Jews under the Mosaic Law is also true of Church Age believers.
The church isn’t replacing Israel. It is that both are peoples of God,
and that they are being used by God in different ways. To be used by God, and
to serve Him, they both have to be holy.
A second thing that we learn about the priesthood is that every church age
believer has direct access to God. This relates to the basic definition of a
priesthood: the difference between a prophet and a priest. A prophet represents
God to men and a priest represents men to God. That’s the core functional
difference between the two.
The priest represents men to God so he is bringing sacrifices and
offerings on the part of people to God in order to praise God and to provide
for Him. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that the priesthood has access to God. In the
Church Age our priesthood has direct access to God. That’s every believer. “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne
of grace.” Why? Because we have a High Priest who is passed through the
heavenlies and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. So because of
that we can intercede. We can pray for ourselves and bring our petitions before
the Lord and we can intercede for others.
A third thing that we learn about Church Age believer priests is that we
are to offer our life as a living sacrifice to God. Our lives should be an
offering of service to God. We’re here to serve Him. We’re not here to serve
our own selfish pleasures. That doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy life. That
doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good time, that you can’t pursue a career,
that you can’t engage in the hobbies and the fun things that you like to, but
it’s all under the umbrella of serving God.
In Romans 12:1 Paul says, “I
beseech you, I beg you, I plead with you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God …” That’s grace
orientation. If we understand grace, we can understand service. Not like a lot
of legalists and a lot of churches that want to have you get involved in what
they believe is Christian service, which basically means teaching Sunday school
or helping out in the kitchen or going on visitation or something like that
before you know anything.
In my first church I had some guy tell me, “If you want to build this
church, as soon as you get a visitor in the church you give them a
responsibility.” Why should I do that? They don’t know anything and I’m not
even sure they’re a believer. That’s how the world operates in terms of
building an organization in the flesh.
We are to present our bodies. Why does Paul say bodies? He doesn’t say
mind. The next verse he talks about renewing our thinking. But here he talks
about our bodies because that represents the whole person. Your mind is inside
your body and when you talk about your body, you’re talking about not only your
overt actions and what you do and where you go, but also the thinking that goes
behind it. So by using the term “bodies”, he’s talking about the whole person.
You are to “present your bodies a
living sacrifice”. That’s that sacrifice of service, holy, set apart unto
God. And it’s acceptable to God, not because of what we’ve done, but because we
possess the perfect righteousness of Christ. We’ve been positionally sanctified
so we can do that. Then he says this is your LOGIKON.
That’s the same word used for the Word of God and in 1 Peter 2:2. It’s that
reasonableness. It’s that that rational expression of truth.
Once we understand that, we understand we’re to serve the Lord in lots
of different ways. I’ve been encouraged over the years as I watch people in
this congregation take the initiative to develop ministries, some small, some
not so small. They just wanted to serve the Lord in some capacity. That’s so
much better when it happens that way than for the pastor or the deacons in the
church to come and say something needs to be done. There’s nothing wrong with
this either.
A lot of churches have programs. In and of itself that is not wrong.
It’s just a structured way of doing something, but it’s the way they approach
it. That’s the problem or can be the problem. It’s always something that’s
initiated from the top down. We need to have a missions project and we’re going
to start recruiting people to support this mission’s project, rather than somebody
coming up with a desire to go do X, Y, or Z with a missionary opportunity. They
ask, “Now what do I need to do in order to get that going?”
Or maybe they say, “I’d like to do something with the Child Evangelism
Fellowship? Who do I talk to? How can I get involved?” Where the individual, as
a result of his own spiritual growth, is taking the initiative to serve the
Lord is much more effective than to have it come from the top down in terms of
church leadership. Every believer is to offer his life as a living sacrifice to
God.
Fourth, all believers, Jew and Gentile, are equal in access to God
because we have been placed “in Christ”. That’s positional truth. Some people
call it identification truth. It’s the same thing that we’re identified with
Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. We’re a new creature in Christ
and because of that we have new privileges, we have new responsibilities, and
we have a new destiny.
So this is what Peter is saying in verse five, “As living stones,
spiritual house, you are being built up into a holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” We talked about
that last time and a little bit just a few minutes ago.
Then we see verse six starts with a “therefore” and verse seven starts
with a “therefore”. That tells us that we ought to see why he’s doing that.
He’s quoting these Old Testament passages in order to show a comparison that
this is some of the things of God predicted in the Old Testament, what He was
doing, and now we are seeing this take place within our own lifetime.
So in verse six, Peter says. “Therefore,
it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a chief
cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him …[Notice that
identifies the cornerstone as a person] will
by no means be put to shame.’ ”
Now he gets this language from Isaiah 28:16. I had the slide up here
last week and this week from the new King James Version and also from the NET
Bible, the New English Translation, to show the source for this language. God
says, “the Lord God [Yahweh Elohim] says behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation.”
In the midst of Isaiah’s prophecy in this chapter, chapter 28, there’s
been a strong condemnation of the religious leaders who led the people into
apostasy and idolatry. Now what God is saying is He’s pointing to His gracious
provision that even though He’s going to bring judgment on Israel for their
apostasy, He still hasn’t deserted them. He’s going to provide a solution.
Let me remind you of something that it’s easy for us to forget.
Sometimes when things happen that are not what we want, we look at them and
think, “My life is just going to be destroyed.” Maybe you’ve received a
diagnosis of cancer. Or maybe you’ve had an unexpected death of a loved one, or
maybe you discovered that there is a very real chance with the oil downturn
that you may or may not have a job in another month or less.
These kinds of things tend to rock us to our very core. They tend to
scare a lot of us, and it’s an opportunity for us to trust in the Lord. Whether
it’s divine judgment that may come our way for bad decisions or some sin in our
life or whether just because God is testing us or training us, the solution is
the same. Just make sure you’re in fellowship, walking by the Spirit, and
applying the Word. That doesn’t mean it’ll go away.
Let me tell you, there are people that I know and you know that I don’t
know how they do it. Every time I talk to them it’s another disease, it’s
another job loss, it’s another disaster, or it’s another problem. Some people
always seem to be happy. They know that the Lord is providing. They’ve grown
and they’ve learned in those situations. Other people, they hit a couple of big
speed bumps and it’s like running into a brick wall and they just go to pieces.
The Lord is training us. The Lord was training Israel by bringing
discipline on them for their sin. He said that He was going to provide a
solution and that solution is going to be this foundation. A foundation stone
is something that is solid. It’s compared to a cornerstone, that which is
critical to upholding all of the architecture.
It’s a tried stone. That means it’s been tested; it has been approved;
it can carry the weight; it can handle it. It is a stone of proving in the
Hebrew. It’s precious, valuable, and significant. It is precious because of
what it does, what it provides. It’s a sure foundation.
And then the issue becomes clear in the last line, “Whoever believes will not have panicked.” I like that way the NET
translates that, “the one who maintains
his faith [in the midst of disaster]
will not panic.” They’re going to be able to survive the difficulty and
bring glory to the Lord.
This is a focal point there. This is why Peter is quoting this. He’s
talking about this cornerstone. That’s the focal point going back to verse
four, the living stone. What living stone is this? It’s the one that Isaiah
talked about that is the chief cornerstone who is choice and precious. This is
where he got that language in verse four.
Therefore, it is also contained in Scripture, in verse six: “Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone.”
Then in verse seven we read, “Therefore,
to you.” It’s a second “therefore.” It’s another application.
The conclusion here is related to how you respond to that cornerstone.
You have a choice. Some are going to believe in the cornerstone. Others are not
going to believe in the cornerstone. That’s the issue in all of life. The cornerstone
is a reference to the Messiah. Over and over again in the prophets there’s this
reference to the Messiah as a stone and as a cornerstone.
In 1 Peter 2:7, Peter says, “Therefore,
to you who believe, He is precious.” He’s precious to God. He’s valuable to
God. “To those who believe, He is
precious; but to those who are disobedient …”
The text says, “the stone which
the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” That’s from Psalm
118:22, which I have at the bottom of the slide now. We studied that historic
event in context and historically that referred to the event of Israel coming
back into the land, building the second temple, and dedicating the second
temple.
They had been overlooked and trodden down by the big empires, the empire
builders. That’s who the builders represent, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Egyptians. These little bitty Jews are in the way. Well, they’re just in
the way and as these nations came through, they conquered all these other
people and they relocated them throughout their empires.
But something unique happened with Israel. They are brought back, and
God is restoring them to that place where they will be a cornerstone in
history. That’s the original context of Psalm 118:22. By the way in verse 24,
it says, “Behold this is the day that the
Lord has made.” That’s another verse that gets trivialized by a lot of
folks who don’t pay attention to the context. It’s not talking about waking up
in the morning and the sun’s coming up and it’s a bright day and, “Golly, it
got down to 76 last night.” We’ve had a hot summer because the lows in the
morning are 81 and 82. If we get a 76 in the morning we feel a little bit
refreshed.
That’s not what this is talking about. It’s not talking about waking up
in the morning and having a good cup of coffee and the day’s going to look
good. We feel refreshed. Maybe got down to 60 in the morning and we’re cool.
It’s not talking about that.
It’s not talking about that day. In context in Psalm 118 it’s the day of
rejoicing that the temple has been rebuilt and that God has restored His
worship in Israel and is restoring Israel to their plan. This is something
significant. This is like the Fourth of July. This is a huge celebration. It’s
a great day. It’s a significant day and it’s applied prophetically to when the
Lord returns at the Second Coming, and establishes His kingdom.
Now those are great days. These are not just a good day because I’m
getting out of bed and my name is not in the obituaries today. So the stone
which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Then he quotes in
verse eight from Isaiah 8:14. Isaiah 8:14 talks about, “He will be as a sanctuary.” That’s the Messiah again. He will be
as a sanctuary, a holy place, a dwelling for God.
He will be as a sanctuary, but for those who don’t believe, He will be a
stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel. There’s
that prediction that they’re going to reject Him. To both the houses of Israel
He is a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
So Peter takes that and he applies it and reminds them that there can be
some who believe. There will be some who are disobedient. Those who are
disobedient saw the cornerstone, rejected Him and stumbled over Him.
He was offensive to them. And the reason they stumbled was they were
disobedient to the Word to which they also were appointed. I think that’s real
important. Gentiles were not appointed to the Word. Israel was appointed. They
were the custodians of the Scripture. So again, this reminds us that Peter is
talking to Jewish-background believers.
Now I drew this little chart to illustrate that verse. He talks about
the . To God He is choice and precious. To the believer they are not put to
shame. No matter what happens in life when we get to the Judgment Seat of
Christ, we’re going to see how it all worked out. “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who
are the called according to His purpose.” We may look at things in this
life and think that God’s not paying attention. I’m mad at Him. But guess what,
God is still in control.
We just don’t know all the facts. We don’t know everything that’s going
together. We don’t know that God isn’t taking us through this because somebody
in our periphery that we don’t know anything about is watching us and it gives
us an opportunity to be a great witness and testimony to God’s grace in the
midst of difficult times.
The believer is not put to shame and to the believer the is choice. To the disobedient, they
reject the stone and the stone is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
What we see here is that Peter has made his point back in verse 5 and that we
are being built up. We are a spiritual house that is being built up toward a
holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices. That’s the present tense. We’re
functioning as priests now, but we’re learning for something in the future.
That sets the parameters for our interpretation because when we get to
this next verse we get into some difficulties. One of the difficulties is that
some people in church history who believe that the church has completely
replaced Israel and argue that the church is an entity to replace Israel look
at this and say, “See Peter is saying that Israel is no longer the chosen
nation, the chosen generation, or holy nation; they’ve been replaced by the
Church. He takes this language from Exodus 19 and he applies it to the church.”
We ran into the same kind of problem when we were looking at Matthew
21:23 when Jesus says to the Pharisees that you are going to see this judgment,
but God is to take this away from you and give it to another nation. Some
people said see that’s the end of Israel. They are replaced by this new nation,
the church.
We have to be careful with the language here. I think that what Peter is
doing here is he is showing an analogy that just as God called Israel to be a
chosen, actually a choice generation with an emphasis on quality, a royal
priesthood. That’s the same language that we have in the Greek Septuagint and
from the Old Testament. “… 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.”
What he is saying is, in the Old Testament if you are Jewish, you’re
under the Mosaic Law; you’re going to be in a priesthood. Part of that
priesthood was to proclaim the greatness of God, the One who called you out of
darkness into a marvelous light.
Paul uses that same language: that we’re to shine His light in the midst
of a wicked and perverse generation as believers over in Philippians 2. What
Peter is saying is, this is true in terms of who they were as Jews. But now
they’re in Christ. They’re in this new spiritual temple and it’s even more true
in this new spiritual temple.
One of the things that I’ve seen come along here that I just wanted to
briefly touch on is the use of this word “nation” here. What’s happened because
of Replacement Theology and the big battle taking place right now to try to
fight Replacement Theology, is that there have been people who have argued that
the church is not a nation. I think they’ve taken this word too technically.
The way they support this is from a passage in Romans 10—towards the end in
Romans 10:19. I’ve seen this in more than one place where someone has argued
that while you see the church isn’t a nation, this can’t be applied to the
church as a whole. It’s got to be applied only to the Jews because they are a
nation. The church is not a nation.
Let’s go to this passage, Romans 10:19. What does Romans 10:19 say? Paul
quotes from the Old Testament. Paul says to introduce his quote, “But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses
says, …” and this is a quote from Deuteronomy 32:21. They only quote the
first line. The first line says, “I will
provoke you to jealousy [Israel]. I
will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation.”
That’s as far as they go in the quote. Now if you know Romans 11, you
know that God says that He’s going to use the Gentiles in the church to provoke
Israel to jealousy by blessing them [the Gentiles] through salvation. They
immediately connect that to what Paul says in Romans 11. They say, “See, it
says there ‘I will provoke you to
jealousy by those who are not a nation’.” Let’s read the next line. The
next line is in synonymous parallelism. God says I will move you to anger by a
foolish nation. In the first line it says they’re not a nation. The second line
it says they are a foolish nation.
In one line they are a nation and in the second line they’re not a
nation. So you can’t use this. You can’t pull a phrase out of context and argue
that Romans 10:19 says that the church is not a nation. It doesn’t work that
way. It has other implications. In the Hebrew you have two different words that
are used there. You have the word am
and goy in Hebrew, but they’re used
in poetry. They are synonyms of one another so you can’t apply a technical
language.
I think this is a problem sometimes we get into in exegesis, especially
when we’re fighting a heretical doctrine, we tend to get too myopic in the text
to try to make it answer a question that it’s not addressing. It’s not making
that point about Replacement Theology at all. It’s just making an analogy
between the distinctiveness of Israel in the Old Testament and the
distinctiveness of Church Age believers and that these Jewish-background
believers can realize their priesthood and their significance in the body of
Christ in a way they never could have in the Old Testament.
Now when we look at the original in Exodus 19:5, it says, “Therefore if you will indeed obey My voice [that’s
Israel] and keep My covenant then you
shall be a special treasure to me above all people …” In the Hebrew that’s
the word am. In the Greek it’s the
word LAOS. “For all the earth is Mine.”
The Septuagint actually adds, “You will be a special people from all the
nations”. See, it’s using all these different terms in synonymous ways. They’re
not distinguishing them in these kind of technical distinctions that are being
imposed on them.
Verse 6, “And you shall me to me a
kingdom of priests [royal priests] in
a holy nation.” That’s ETHNOS. Sometimes people think that ETHNOS just refers to Gentiles in the New Testament
because that’s the Greek word, but that’s not true. It can apply to Jews also.
Here’s the term “kingdom of priests”, this phrase BASILEION HEIRATEUMA that is found here in the Septuagint and it is translated “royal
priests”. That’s what we are, where we get this terminology that we are royal
priests is by application of Exodus 19:6 as it’s used.
Then we get into passages like Revelation 1:6, “And He has made us kings.” This is a little different form of the
word. It’s not the word BASILEION. It’s the word BASILEIA and it means, “He has made us
kings”, but literally here it’s a kingdom “comma” [there’s no “and”], priests to His God and Father.” The word
BASILEIA can refer to king, a kingly rule, or a kingdom. He has made us a
kingdom, priests to God.
Revelations 5:10 uses a slightly different form of the Greek word where
it’s translated “And have made us kings
and priests to our God.” That’s our destiny. We’re in training now. I think
that’s what Peter is saying, that by learning to serve the Lord now, we’re in
training, because when the Lord comes in His Kingdom, we are going to be fully
functional royal priests. We’re going to be ruling and reigning and serving God
with Him.
We need to be about our business of being trained now so that we have
the capacity to serve Him at that point. Let’s close in prayer.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this opportunity to reflect upon this passage and
to be reminded that the thrust of this whole section is to serve You, to
realize that our whole life is to be in service to You and that is in terms of
training for the future. It’s predicated on growth, craving the milk of the
Word, that we may grow to maturity so that we can serve You, Father. We are
challenged by You and all the things that we are studying and thinking through,
that we might realize more and more that our service to You is of greater value
than anything else we do in life. And we pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.”