The privilege of church

1 Peter 2.9-12

Have a look around at St Peter's church this morning...

...I trust that everyone is looking at the living stones of the church and not the hard, dead, dry, stones of the building.

What do you see? A group of ordinary people? Men & women. Married & single. Widow & widower. An accountant, a plumber, a manager, a full-time mum, a receptionist, a surveyor, a nurse. Some younger, some older. Some retired, some at school...

As you look at St Peter's, you could see that and no more – a bunch of ordinary people who happen to be interested in Christianity. Perhaps you view us as more than that:

• we're a church – a C of E church – a church that's not growing fast, but has seen a slow but steady stream of people coming to faith.
• We're a united church and a caring community.
• We're a church which is struggling financially, but, thanks to the generosity of a few people and some grants from other organisations has managed to stay in the black – for now.

But, in fact, the reality of who and what we are is gloriously and wonderfully and infinitely greater than that:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  1 Peter 2:9f

So, we are God's chosen people.

That might sound incredibly arrogant – to claim that God has chosen us from amongst all the billions of people in the world is surely pretentious pomposity! But understood correctly, this claim actually drives us to our knees in humility. 

In verse 10, Peter says 'Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.' It is only because of God's great mercy to us that we are his people. God chose us, not because we were good or great. Not because we were deserving or worthy. Quite the opposite. God chose us when we were sinful, rebellious, dirty, no-hopers. 

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians who were in danger of becoming proud Christians, he said,

Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no-one might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

So there's absolutely no reason for Christians to be proud. We were the nothings & the nobodies. But God chose us because... we don't why, he just did. 

When we choose something, we look for the best – the best value, the best looking, the fastest, the most powerful, the most modern. And we learned this early on in the playground when we lined up to be chosen by the team captains for a game of football or rounders. The best or the most popular were always chosen first. The last person wasn't chosen at all – and everyone groaned when they realised that two-left-feet Fred would be on their team.

Well, we were the last, the least, the worst. And yet God chose us – he set his affections on us and was merciful to us, forgiving our sins & failings. We may be a chosen people, but we're not a choice people. But now, as his people, he is our one and only God. We serve no-one else because we belong to no-one else. We are God's chosen people and a royal priesthood

Priests are people who are appointed to offer sacrifices: Sacrifices to take away sin; and sacrifices of praise & thanksgiving. We know that we don't need anyone to offer sacrifices to take away our sin because Jesus has done that. And so when we come to the Lord's Supper, we say to God, 'We praise you especially for your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, who by his death on the cross offered once and for all time, the one true sacrifice for sin, reconciling us to you and satisfying your just demands.'

So we don't need to make any more sacrifices for sin, Jesus was the full & final sacrifice for all our sin and guilt. And now, with our sin forgiven, we're free to approach God – to come to him to offer sacrifices of praise, worship and thanksgiving. 

So at the end of v9, Peter says that God called us so that we might 'declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light'. Your calling, every bit as much as my calling, is to be a priest declaring the praises of God. And so Christians love to tell God how great his is and just how much he means to us. We love to sing his praise. And we love to encourage each other by singing God's praises. But we also love to tell non-Christians how incredible God is.

So just think about this: God chose you when you were rebellious & sinful; his Son, Jesus, willingly took away your sin and just punishment when he died for you; God called you out of the darkness of disobedience and filled you life with the light of life. He appointed you as priest to his royal majesty. Now as his priests, you will only find true satisfaction and joy when you fulfil your job description.

I know it's not always easy to praise God, and I find that it's hard to praise God when I've become absorbed in myself. But a few minutes thinking about the greatness of God, and praise can return. Use the Psalms, listen to some songs of worship, spend a few moments pondering the love of Christ and the sacrifice of the cross. Turn out from yourself to Christ.

One of the mistakes we make is to think that God saved us for our own sakes. But God saved us for his own sake – for his praise and glory. And the wonder of this is that we discover our purpose and our goal when we worship him: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

So we're God's chosen people and his royal priesthood. But there's still more: we're also a holy nation, a people belonging to God.

Had you ever thought of the church as a nation?

Yes, we have a national church – the Church of England – but that's very, very different from what we're talking about here. We're talking about the church universal – our congregation here together with churches in Kabul, Almaty, Sydney, Beijing, Guatemala, Asuncion and everywhere else – including the congregation of believers who have died and are with Christ – we together constitute God's holy nation. And each individual congregation is like an embassy of God's nation.

Every nation has it's distinctives – the Germans make things that work; the French cook; the Australians want to win everything. And in Britain, we have men who wear socks with sandals! And the church is holy – a people belonging to God.

Now holiness, as most of us know (and perhaps we're over-familiar with the idea) means that we are called out to be separated from the ways of the world, called to be special for God, called to belong to him. So, v9, we have been called by God out of the darkness of this world and into his wonderful light. And v10, we have received mercy. So, v11, we are urged to live as aliens and strangers in the world – we're people from another planet – planet heaven. And we're to live as aliens, and not conform to the beliefs & practices of the natives.

The church is often called to be more like the world – people within the church make this call – but we must resist it. The whole point of the church is to be holy; to be different from the world; to live in light when the world lives in darkness; to be holy as God is holy.

So we will not follow the sinful desires of the world – we must not crave what they crave. Of course it would be easier to give in to those desires, of course the world would stop criticising us if we adopted their morals and their ways, but then what would the point of the church be? Our rallying cry must be, 'We are God's holy people, and we will be God's holy people.'

Is this easy? No. Life is never easy for the stranger, for the person who is different from the majority. But even harder than the external pressures is the pressure from within our own hearts and minds. These sinful passions wage war within against us, v11 – and we must fight with all our strength to resist the invasion.

But this resistance isn't only to protect our own souls, it's also so that we can declare the wonders of God to the heathen population around us. We will not conform to their ways, but we will, by word and deed, invite them to join us in God's wonderful kingdom.

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

So we will do what is good. And we will allow our King – the Lord God himself – to determine what is good and what is not because we are his people. But as we do what is good in God's eyes, non-Christians will accuse us of doing what is wrong. We tend to think that this is something new – something that's only happened in the last 10 or 20 years. In fact, it's always been so.

And we shouldn't despair when the world criticises us for:

• wanting to preserve the life of every unborn child
• or to care for those who are terminally ill until life is taken by God
• or to uphold heterosexual marriage as the only good and right context for sexual activity.

Why shouldn't we despair? Because some might see our good deeds as good deeds, and so glorify God on the day he visits us. We never know when God will 'visit us' – I certainly didn't expect God to visit me in Leatherhead Leisure centre that day many years ago when he showed me that Jesus had died for me.

And so as you live a life that is very different from the lives of those around you, you never know when God will speak through your words or actions. You don't know if this year will be the year when, through your words and deeds, God will visit your non-Xn husband or wife, your friend, your colleague, and they begin to glorify God.

So we're not different from the world out there because we happen to come to church. We're different because God has chosen us to be his royal priesthood, his holy nation, his own people. And when we ponder the enormity of what God has done for us in Jesus, then surely we can't help ourselves – we simply have to declare it. Declare the praises of this amazing God: to God himself, to one another, to non-Christians.

And when we think about the people we now are, the surely we can't help ourselves – we simply have to live out what we have become – God's holy people.