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INTRO
I look back on my time in college and I have a lot of fond memories.
It was there I met my wife.
I felt rooted in my calling to preach the gospel.
But there were things about attending a Christian College that wore on me.
One thing that got a bit annoying was dorm devotions.
Once a week we were required to drop everything sit in a hallway in our dorm and share in a devotional time.
Sometimes this was a joy.
Other times the guy sharing would decide he would eat up our whole evening with a full hour long sermon.
I’ll never forget one night I was trying to finish up a paper and one of the guys on my floor saw me as he was leaving the library and reminded me when needed to head out for dorm devos.
I let out a deep sigh.
And he chided me saying, “Billy come on man we will never have Christian community as great as this for the rest of our lives.”
Nothing like forced community!
Perhaps the way I feel about dorm devos is how you feel about Sunday morning or sitting in a circle at small groups.
It feels you with annoyance.
My hope is two things.
I hope this morning I encourage you to have zeal for gospel community
Also to show how wrong my misguided friend was.
As enjoyable as college was it pales in comparison to the joy I have experienced in rich community in the church as Jesus intended.
We’re in the middle of a short sermon series called We Are.
This is a sermon series where we explore the vision of Coram Deo Church, that we are a Gospel Community on Mission.
Gospel, Community, Mission.
Those are the things we are exploring in this series.
Today we look at the fact that we are a Gospel Community.
It’s important we start with that word Gospel.
We aren't a community for communities sake.
In order to have a vision for community, we need to understand the purpose of community.
Over the years I have heard many purposes for focusing on community in church, including but not limited to: belonging,
making big churches feel small,
learning the Bible,
pastoral care,
fellowship,
friends,
closing the back door of the church,
evangelism, and so on.
Look all of these purposes has merit and can be argued as essential to the church.
I would suggest, however, that these "purposes" are in fact the product of community rather than its ultimate goal.
Why is this significant?
If were playing basketball and you pass the ball back to me for me to just lay it up in the wrong basket it doesn't do much good does it?
The point: it is increasingly difficult to score points for your team when you are aiming at the wrong goal.
So let’s think about the church, our goal is to produce disciples of Jesus who worship him and exalt his name.
If we aim at a product such as belonging as the purpose of community, we can achieve that goal without pointing to Jesus.
When keeping people becomes our goal, we inadvertently communicate that our purpose is to grow the church rather than glorify God.
We can become more interested in building the church rather than advancing the kingdom.
What we don’t want to do is lift up the name of Coram Deo rather than the name of Jesus.
At the end of the day, our purpose in community is to receive the grace of God and respond by imaging him and lifting up the name of Jesus.
I want you to see Coram Deo, that community is a result of being a disciple of Jesus.
We are the body of Christ created in the image of God, this God exists in community, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have eternally existed in relationship with one another as one God in three persons.
God is a relational being who created us as relational beings so that we could image him.
As a community, this means that we are to reflect the goodness of God and preach the gospel through our lives together.
This means loving one another, forgiving one another as Christ forgave us, calling one another to confession and repentance for the purpose of reconciliation, and challenging one another to lives that glorify God.
That’s the view I want you to have in mind this morning that we are the body of Christ created in the image of God, who exists in community.
With that framework in place let’s go to our text to walk this idea out.
I.
The Text
Some context for us, Peter is describing how we as believers ought to conduct our lives in light of what Christ has done on our behalf.
Look at the text with me 1 Peter 2:9-12
1 Peter 2:9–12 (ESV)
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.
Peter begins with our identity.
He gives us four ways to understand whom we are rooted in, who Jesus is, and what he has done.
He starts by saying We are a "chosen race," reminding us that we have been set apart and are predestined to follow him.
We are a "royal priesthood," reminding us that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we no longer need a mediator between God and us.
We are a "holy nation" through the imputed righteousness of Jesus,
and we are a people of God's "own possession."
Everything we are called to be comes out of what God has already done.
(repeat)
What a beautiful picture of God's love.
We have been born again through the resurrection of Christ.
We are new creations that are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness.
God is jealous and unwilling to share possession of his people with sin.
I like to picture my son when I read this verse.
I love kids in general, but I have a passionate love for my son.
That's how I see this rolling off of Peter's pen
We are God's kids!
All four aspects of our identity are rooted in Jesus and, significant to our discussion, are plural in nature.
Catch this, these are corporate identities of a race, priesthood, nation, and people.
As the church, we need to recapture our sense of community and connectedness to one another,
Peter reminds us that we are indeed a people, not a collection of individuals.
The church is a people who understand their identity in Christ and have a corporate or communal understanding of that identity.
So here is what this means.
It means that we are committed to one another.
It means we are committed to our collective growth in Christ.
Then, out of that identity, we worship; we "proclaim the excellencies" of Christ.
Through Jesus we have been reconciled to God and to one another.
Once we were not a people, but now we are God's people through the mercy of the cross
Therefore we ought to be a people who point to and worship Jesus consistently.
If the group you call your community does not regularly point you to Jesus and remind you of his grace and mercy in your life, then it is not a gospel- centered community.
We are a people in awe of what Jesus has done and we worship him accordingly.
Out of that worship, Peter challenges us, in verses 11-12, to live lives that reflect the transformation that comes from the gospel penetrating our lives.
1 Peter 2:11–12 (ESV)
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.
Because we have been made a holy nation, we can live holy lives.
Now here is what happens, often at this point in the passage we begin to read from a personal rather than corporate viewpoint.
We are accustomed to reading scripture and thinking of our holiness in an individualistic manner.
We label sanctification as personal holiness.
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