The People of God
Sermon on 1 Peter 2:10
Title: The People of God
Theme: God has made us a people through Jesus Christ
Goal: to encourage Christians that Jesus Christ has made us a people.
Need: We often think of ourselves as people instead of as a people
Outline:
Introduction about not losing sight of being the people of God.
People
Possessive
Power of all Powers
Conclusion
Sermon:
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
This morning we begin an adventure that we first did last year. The pastors from the Christian Reformed churches in Brighton, Frankford, Bloomfield, and Trenton have worked together to create a sermon series that we will share with the churches by rotating the pastors around to each church. This year we each have one image or word picture of the church that can inspire a you perhaps as a new believer or a person new to a church family to a fresh understanding of the church. And that in turn can inspire us to take on a new identity as a person who belongs to a church community.
As we begin, I thought I would first say one thing. I will be preaching on this topic over the next several weeks, so if you would like to share your thoughts on the topic that I am preaching on today, feel free to do that. If you have a comment to share feel free to catch me afterward. If you didn’t like what I said, you can email me at david.deur@hotmail.com. Seriously, feel free to contact me however.
Let’s look together at the passage where many of these images of the church will be coming from. 1 Peter 2:4ff.
Dreams, the great mysterious unknown that we all experience. But with as random as dreams can be, there are some dreams we all have. Raise your hand if you have ever had this kind of dream. Falling. Can’t get away. Creepy crawlies. How about this one. The inappropriately dressed or undressed dream.
I have had that one. I can remember one where for some reason as I got out of bed I was standing in my pajamas in the middle of my fourth grade class.
Not a good feeling. In a more serious way, I wonder if our experience of the church as the people of God might often be similar. When we come into church to worship we think about coming to this building with these people to worship with these songs. We often don’t even notice or feel comfortable that there are parts of the culture in the west that make us look kind of silly and out of place before God as we claim to be his people. The big ones, individualism. Was it worshipful for me. Did I connect with the message. We often think of the individual and forget about the other 500 here. The other several million in Canada. And how about the other 2 billion believers around the world. How much about God are we missing out on because of some of this baggage. And how much of the wonder of the church universal do we miss out on because of it as well.
The image that we are looking at today is found in verse 10 where Peter says the church is the people of God.
I think you will find through this series that many of the other images jump off the page a little quicker. Some of the other images are much more concrete, like living stones. Or they are analogies and word plays that really can get you thinking, like when Peter calls the church aliens and strangers.
But “people of God.” Nothing too wham bam, jump out at your whoa. Awesome image. At first hearing, “people of God” sounds nothing more than ordinary. Almost like a phrase we can easily miss. But this morning, we are going to look at the power that lies in the church being the “people of God.” And we are going to think about how that might have already changed something in our life, or how it might challenge us to relate on a deeper level of love with God and each other.
To really be challenged by this, we need to begin by looking at the three words individually. Then we can see how understanding it that way may help us shed some of the inappropriate thought of the western world in a more pure understanding of the church the way God intended.
You know the different points of my sermon then. People of God. Point number 1 is. . .
People. Right. The first point that we need to remember is we are A People. Sounds kind of weird to say it that way, a people. You see, from when we are just little munchkins in school we are taught the difference between singular and plurals. Add an s. Preacher. Preachers. Dog. Dogs. But some of the odd ones like ox, oxen. Goose. Geese. Moose. Moosen. What about person. When I came to church there was only one person here, but now there are about 500 people. Right. The plural of person is people.
If that is the case you look back at the image of the church Peter gives us. People of God must be a plural right. Wrong. If you go back and read the original Greek like most of us usually do, we find out something interesting. The word Peter uses is Laos. And that word is singular.
I can tell you aren’t as amazed as I am. So?
The reason why this difference between the plural and the singular is so powerful is because its here that our western Christian, the church is there for me if I decide to do that, mindset.
Laos, people. Maybe a less confusing word for today would be “stash.” I have a stash of books on my desk. I have a stash of old hockey cards in the basement. Stash. Just one, but made up of many.
The first part of this image, people of God, laos, the church, we together, are one people. We are a people. One. Together. Sure we are allowed to think about our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But this image challenges us to think much broader. We think together. We move together. Like the Hebrews through the wilderness stuck together until they reached the promised land. We are a people, and we are in this thing called a faithful life following Jesus together! Look around at your friends and neighbors here. I want you to realize something. And don’t think, oh look there are lots of people in church. No! Look we are a PEOPLE! Together. All of us.
Okay people of God. The first point was “people” The next word, and the second point is of. We are of. That’s got to be the strangest main point I have ever used. We are of!
Did you know that the word of has over 12 ways it can be used. Here’s a couple of them. Of can denote a place of origin. The men of Brighton are chiseled. Of Brighton. Place of origin.
It can denote substance. The men of stone are chiseled.
It can denote what something is filled up with. That cup of water is chiseled.
In this case of our passage looking at the point that Peter is trying to make. He is using a possessive sort of idea. People of God. Not made from God. But chosen and possessed by God. We are God’s people because he wants to have us and not let us go or see us wander away.
Point 1. The people: The group, the stash, the nation. The people. Point 2: Of: Possession. Belonging to.
The people of… and our third point is… the people of God.
We should have just hurried on ahead to this point. God, the power of all powers. Who knows every square inch of the ocean floor? God does. Who knows the exact number of molecules in the midget star we call the Sun. God does. Who can see the span of eternity of which we are an insignificant slice. God.
That God has made us a people! Verse 10 again says,
10Once 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.
Since I read it again, I am sure one passage is just screaming out at you. Since you are all thinking it, I will just say it. You are thinking of Hosea chapter 1. Hosea marries a prostitute named Gomer. The names of two of their children, prophetically, are daughter ‘not-pitied’ and son ‘not-my-people’. Peter is alluding to this time in Jewish people’s history to remind these Gentiles that at one time, God had not claimed them. There was a time when they were not in God’s good graces. There was a time in the history of these Christians’ lives that they couldn’t say, my comfort in life and in death is that I belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.
It is an incredible assurance to be the people of God, but just like these early gentiles, we always have to magnify the wonderful name of Jesus Christ. Christ by his blood made claimed us as one group. We who believe are a part of the Church. We are the loved possession of the power above all powers. We have been claimed through the death of Christ.
Peter reminds them of that just a little later in 1 Peter. Chapter 2:24-25
24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
You know that nasty thing called sin that you fight with day in and day out. Temptation. Even though we have been washed clean by the cleansing blood of Jesus, there is still a residue on this side of eternal life that remains. Its temptation. It’s the sinful nature. In our life we have so many things that remind us that deep down we have been contaminated through and through.
And it’s a constant reminder that we are trying to move beyond that time of life when we were loners, doing whatever I wanted. That is an old life before I belonged to something that knit me together in life and spirit with my brothers and sisters in Christ. In my old life, I used to think about whatever pleased me because me myself and I, that’s the only thing that mattered. Looking out for number one.
But now, it is so much different. Now, we know that we belong. We have been bought. We are of God. we are not of the old self. we am not of this world. we are not of ourold bad habits. we belong to nothing else but Jesus. Like Canadians singing O Canada. We are united as a people in Church. We live under one banner. We belong to Jesus. We will love the persons around us in the church. And we are going to work with these others that are people of God with us so that we together can be the people that have with one goal made brought the love of God to our community so that they too may find their place under the banner of Christ.
People of God. Take Jesus Christ. Accept him. Accept this people’s mission to love. As the PEOPLE Possessed by the Power of all powers, BE THE PEOPLE OF GOD.
Amen.