As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 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.
When I was in high school, I was a pretty directionless ship. I didn't know what I was good at. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have many people speaking into my life saying, you know what, Jonathan, I see this in you and I think you're good at this. And so I just, as high school was nearing end, I got more and more scared because I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know what I should do. Every now and then I'd have an idea of something I could do or maybe I'd like to do, but the idea of jumping into something and not knowing how to do it or not even really knowing how to get started kind of froze me up. I was almost too scared to get going because I just, I didn't know how to start something new. And so as I neared the end of my time in high school, I had decided that I was going to go to school for criminal justice to be a police officer. My reasoning of thinking there was, well, no matter what city or state you go to, there's always a need for police officers. So, you know, there's some job security there. It's something maybe I can learn how to do. And maybe I'll enjoy it. And that was kind of my thinking. It wasn't really any more complicated than that. But I also worked at McDonald's in high school. That was my first job. And there was a couple that would come in multiple nights a week after dinner to get some ice cream. And they would come in, they'd order it, and then they'd sit together at a booth for a little while and leave. And I saw them a lot, and I took their order a lot. And one night, after I took their order, I gave them their change, and I got their ice cream made, and I gave it to the wife, and she grabbed them, and before she turned around, she smiled and said, thanks, radio man, and then turned around and walked away. I had never heard that before. I didn't know why she was calling me that, but you know what? You get all types of characters at McDonald's, so let it be and just move on. So I did. I moved on. But from that day forward, she never stopped calling me Radio Man. Every time I saw her, hey, Radio Man, good evening, Radio Man, thanks, Radio Man. I had a name tag. But Radio Man was what it was. After a few months, I decided I was going to ask her what she meant by that. And I said, I got to ask, why do you call me Radio Man? And she said, I just think you have a great personality for radio. And she said, tell me, what do you want to do when you graduate high school? And proudly, I said, well, I'm going to school for criminal justice to be a police officer. And she said, can I tell you something? Yeah, sure, go ahead. I know it's not going to mean much coming from me because you don't know me very well, but if you do that, I will be extremely disappointed in you because you're wasting your talents. You need to go to school for radio and you need to be in radio. That shocked me. No one had ever been that bold with me before. But as much as I was shocked, I was also extremely encouraged because no one had ever spoken into my life before. I was saying, you should do this. And it felt like for the first time that the ship actually had a rudder and a little bit of a direction. I wasn't just floating out there and seeing what would come. Well, I went to school for radio. And just before I started my freshman year, I went back to McDonald's to pick up a paycheck or something. And I saw her and her husband through the window as I was walking in, so I decided I would go and I'd tell her. I walked up to the table and I said, I want to thank you. I'm going to school for radio and it's because of what you said to me. So thanks for saying something. And she said, I'll tell you what I've been praying for you since we had that conversation. I had no idea that she was a Christian, but she cared enough to speak into my life and get me to where God wanted me to be. I could not be more thankful for that, because not only did radio lead me to a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ, it actually put me into my calling, where I feel like God had me to be. And not just in radio, but also preaching. I wouldn't be up here talking to you now if he didn't start me there. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing better in life than doing what you're supposed to be doing, living out your purpose. We're in a sermon series right now called Strangers, How to Live Far from Home. And one of the best ways we can do that here on earth is to live out our purpose. We all have different gifts, different talents, different callings in specificity. Sometimes your calling is what you get paid for on a daily basis. Sometimes your job is just a job and your calling is what you do in the off time of that. But whatever your gifts may be, whatever your talents are, we all have one general shared purpose. If you have your Bibles, open them up to 1 Peter 2. We're going to be in 1 Peter 2, 4 through 10. And verse 9 here shares with us our general purpose. Peter says, 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. No matter what we're called to do, no matter what we do here on earth, our purpose is to proclaim God's excellence to each other and to the world. We are meant to glorify God. I want to kind of branch off here for a second because this is something I struggled with, and so I want to share it with you that some of you may be struggling with the same thing too. Satan can attack us in a lot of different ways. Carl Payne said it this way, and I agree with him, that Satan really attacks us in two very unique ways. Either he attacks us in making us think that we are unworthy to be followers of Jesus Christ, or he attacks God's character, making us think that God is unworthy to be our Savior. And this was how Satan had attacked God's character for me, is when I had heard that we were meant and made to glorify God, it almost sounded selfish to me. Oh, I only exist to tell God how great he is? Well, that sounds kind of crazy. But that's not what this means at all. What it means to glorify God, I think it's really cool. Pastor John Piper put it this way, and I think he says it the best, is that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. God is the very definition of the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control— And he wants us to experience those things from him because he is the life source of those things. And as we experience him deeper, enjoy him on a greater level, glorifying him, sharing those aspects with other people so that they can come to know him and experience those characteristics about him. He is most glorified in that situation. So yes, we are created to glorify God, but that really means we are created to enjoy Him to the utmost and help other people enjoy Him to the utmost. That's so selfless. That's what it means when we are called to proclaim His excellencies and to glorify Him. How do we do that? You know, St. Augustine of Hippo said this, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. A famous quote, and a lot of people focus on the second part of the sentence, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. But I really like the first part of the sentence, and I think that it's important that we say it. You have made us for yourself, O Lord. We are intricately designed for God and for the things of God. So we experience the most joy and the most fulfillment when we are most deeply connected with him. And we can't proclaim the excellencies of God until we understand deeply what makes him so excellent. And Peter in this passage really lays out, okay, we're built to proclaim the excellencies of God. This is why he is so excellent to you. And that's what we're going to be looking at today. I'm going to share with you through this passage five truths that empower us to proclaim His excellence to the world. Truth number one, you are sacred. You are sacred. 1 Peter 2, 4 through 5 says this, As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. You may have passed over this word in the reading just now, but it's the word I want to most focus on, to be a holy priesthood. In our Western culture, this is something that we don't understand as much as Peter or his audience would have understood it. But a priesthood, to be a priest, was something extremely sacred. The priest had a really sacred relationship with God, and he had a really sacred duty that were unique to the priest. First off, if you look in Jerusalem in the Old Testament, the construction of the temple, it was really unique. It was these multiple courtyard kind of layouts. So in the middle, there was the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, and it was said that God's presence was upon that place. Then there was a courtyard and another kind of wall, and then a courtyard outside of that, and it kind of built outwards. everyone, even Gentiles, could go to the most outer courtyard. But then as you made it through to these inner courtyards, they were almost more sacred. There was more sacred levels of being closer to the middle. And in the middle, that's where the priests got to reside. No one but the priests got to go there. And then inside of the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, only the high priest could go there, and he could only go there once a year during Yom Kippur. The priests got to be closest to where the physical presence of God resided. They got to be closer physically to him than anyone else. They had to remain on the outer courts, but the priests had a sacred relationship with him. They also had a sacred duty, which was to bring the kingdom of God to the people. They were meant to be mediators for the people. They would offer sacrifices on the people's behalf so that the Lord would remain close to them and forgive them for their sins. They would help the people in offering these sacrifices. They would pray for the people. They would help the people come closer to God. It was called atonement, which is, you spell it out and you break it up into words, at-one-ment. It was to help the people be one with God. That was their duty. But the cool thing is, is when Jesus died on the cross... The veil that separated people from the Holy of Holies was torn in two, and it was torn from top to bottom. I love how the scriptures talk about that. It's almost as if God reached down from heaven and grabbed the top of the curtain and just ripped it. Because the barrier was gone. Anyone that believes in Christ is now a part of this royal priesthood. Christ lives in us. We are now the temple. he is as close to us as he could ever be. We have a special relationship with him. The priests, you couldn't, it doesn't matter how much you loved God, or you couldn't buy your way into it, you couldn't love God your way into it, you had to be born into the line of Aaron, the first priest, the brother of Moses. But now, as Christ followers, and because of Christ's death on the cross, we all are priests. So we have that sacred relationship with him. We also have the sacred duty to usher the kingdom of God to the earth. As we are strangers here on the earth, living far from home, we have the duty of showing people who God is and bringing them to Him. He's called us to that. You know, God doesn't need us to accomplish His purposes. But he does desire us to accomplish his purposes. You know, Jesus can say to me, Jonathan, I don't need you up on this stage right now to do what I wanna do. But I do desire you to be up on this stage right now to do what I wanna do. And that's a blessing. God wants us to be a part of his work because he wants us to experience the full joy of his victory. You know, I'm a gigantic Chicago Bears fan. Most of you know it. If you don't know it, get me talking. Dan Jones knows. Get me talking about it, and I won't stop. Pray for my brother in the back with the Packers gear on, by the way. But if they ever win the Super Bowl, I'm going to be the craziest fan in the entire world. I'll be happier than anybody else in the state, I can guarantee you. But you know who I won't be happier than? The people who are on the field. They get a special seat that I don't get to participate in. Because you know what? They're on the team. They work hard for the victory. And when the victory comes, sure, the fans are in the stands cheering, but no one gets to be in the seats that they're in. They worked for it. And they see the victory from a different perspective. The joy is greater for them because they participated. The victory is sure for the people of God. God wants us to participate in it because when that victory comes, he wants us to be able to say, I got to be a part of that. God used me to usher in his kingdom. And when it's finally here in full, we get to be more joyous than ever. So don't just be fans, but let's jump into this sacred duty with a joy. Because that's what makes it so excellent. God calls us to a sacred relationship and a sacred duty so we can experience more of his joy. And that's why it's so excellent. Truth number two, you are accepted. The same verses here, four and five, right at the end after he says, but you're built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. What does he mean when he says spiritual sacrifices? Well, he means to offer ourselves up as living sacrifices. That's what Paul calls it. To surrender ourselves to God's will every day. To let him be our master. Pastor Carl talked about it just a few weeks ago in John 12. If a seed falls to the earth and does not die, it remains alone. But if it does die, it bears much fruit. That's what a living sacrifice is to be. When we get up and start each morning to say, God, you're my master. Be in charge today. If I want something that's apart from you, don't let it happen. I give myself to you. But look at what the passage says here. It says to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. The Bible shows us here that our sacrifices that we make are only accepted because of what Christ did for us on the cross. John 14, 6 says that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. So even the righteous acts that we do here on earth without Christ, they're unacceptable to God. Because we all have sin, and unless Christ has paid that debt for us, unless we believe in him and have given ourselves to him, we can't be accepted. Because Christ is the only one who can clear that sacrifice for us. But the beautiful thing is that it's not on us to be accepted. If it was my work, sure, maybe I can go a couple hours, maybe, maybe, without sinning in my mind or my heart or my actions. But let's say I can do righteous acts for a whole day, completely righteous, let's say I could, I can't. But I'm completely righteous, as soon as I sin, I am now unacceptable to God, and I've lost the acceptance. But when Christ died on the cross, the last words he said are, it is finished. No parenthetical statement, no comma, period, an exclamation point. It's done. If our acceptance relies on what he did for us, and it is finished, the acceptance never leaves. And now we have the ability to live out of that acceptance in life. You know, I remember my first sermon I preached at 180. It was up in the Northwest Campus. And I get very nervous when I preach. You know, I do work on the radio, but when I'm talking behind a microphone, I see three other people, you know? So I can act like I'm not talking to anybody, and it's fine. But when I see you guys, I'm like, oh, you're all looking back at me now. This is different. But I was nervous, and I came for the pre-service prep, and we walked through what the service was going to look like. And then at this campus as well, everyone who's volunteering gets together, and we all pray. We pray for the day. We pray for the service. We pray for you who come in. And Carl's bride, Janann, was there, and she was one of the people that prayed. And she prayed over me and said, "'Lord, you have anointed Jonathan for today.'" And those words, she didn't need to say anything else, I didn't really hear anything else because that just struck me in a new way. And not in a prideful way, I recognize in all honesty how unworthy I am to be able to stand up here. Yet even though I am unworthy, Christ has anointed me for a moment. You know, Something that I struggle with, we all struggle with it, but I struggle with is because I'm in radio and I do talking and I stand up here and I talk, sometimes I can struggle with feeling like I need to craft the perfect sentences to get the best reaction. I wanna be accepted. And it's a struggle sometimes when I'm standing in front of people to not live out of trying to get acceptance from you. But you know what? When I live in the reality of what Christ has done for me, I don't have to. I don't have to have the perfect words up here. I can mess up. I can forget a part of my sermon or something I really wanted to say. I can stumble on my words. And I leave the stage just as accepted as I was when I walked on it. God accepts us. No matter what we've done, no matter how perfect we live this life, we want to grow closer to Him through living righteous lives and getting sin out of our lives. But His work has done it all for us, so we don't have to worry about losing that acceptance. That's how excellent God is to us. Truth number three, you were honored. First Peter 2, 6 through 8 says, for it stands in scripture, behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. You know, this world is not looking to honor us. In fact, most of the time, no matter where you live, they're probably looking to shame us, to embarrass us, to try to call us out or disprove us because of our commitment to God. If you don't feel it here all the time, ask our brothers in Iran or our sisters in Nigeria whether they feel honored or not by the people they share streets with. Most of the people, if they knew they were Christians, they'd be looking to kill them. We are not meant to be honored by the people we share our neighborhoods with. And even here in America, where we don't face that level of persecution, there's still a hostility to the gospel. There's still people, it said it in that passage, that to people who don't believe in him, Jesus is a rock of offense. Just believing in Jesus can be offensive to people. And they seek to put us to shame for that. But where the world puts us to shame, God will honor us. Said the honor is for you who believe. Jesus says it again in that passage I mentioned in John 12 where he talks about the seed falling to the ground and dying and bearing much fruit. Right after he says, if anyone serves me, he must follow me. And where I am, my servant will also be. And those who serve me, the Father will honor me. God seeks to honor us. He recognizes the hostility that there is to him. He sent his son to his own people and they killed him. So he recognizes the difficulty that it is. He relates to not being accepted in a strange land. He relates to the hostility that we face. Yet the fact that we will receive honor from him both here and in full when we go to meet him face to face and he says, well done, my good and faithful servant. He gives us strength by letting us know the reality that he honors us for staying committed to him in a world that would love to see us fall down. And we have to be willing to seek that honor instead of seeking the honor of the people around us. Sure, it is more immediate. And it can make us feel more comfortable in this moment. But at the end of the day, His honor is worth way more. And He will exalt those who have been humbled here. And He will humble those who have been exalted here. So seek to be humble here and look for His strength in the midst of it and realize that He's going to honor you. He honors you now. And He's going to honor you in full later. It is for you. Let that give you strength today. Truth number four, you are God's people. The first part of verse 10 in this chapter, it says, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Before God transformed us, we belonged utterly just to ourselves. I don't care what groups you may have been a part of or where you identified yourself in with other people. We were alone. You know, I think back to when I was in high school, I had some really good friends. We spent a lot of time together. We laughed together. We had fun. We partied. But at the end of the day, I would never share my deepest heart with them because what help were they going to give me? They were just as alone as I was. We were all alone together. None of us could help each other through life because none of us had experienced life. And I think that a lot of us can relate to that. Before we found Christ, searching and seeking, and even people who didn't know Christ but were well-intentioned and tried to help us, the advice they gave us wasn't life-giving because it didn't include Him. But now, we are God's people. We are God's family to a greater degree. You know, he gave us himself. We are a temple that he lives in, so he's extremely close to us. Yet, he continues to give us more. He gave us a beautiful family of believers to help us through the most difficult areas of life. And I want to talk to you about this a little bit. Because I think that, not this church specifically, but the church in general has familiarized the words brother and sister a little too much. Hey, good morning, brother. Nice to see you, sister. Do we really treat each other like brothers and sisters? Or are we just using it as a name? I mean... The reality is that we are supposed to be closer tied than people who we are just related to blood by. The saying is that blood is thicker than water, meaning that those who are your actual biological family are supposed to be closer than just your friends or your acquaintances. But spirit is much thicker than blood. We are meant to have a relationship that people who are only related by blood could wish they have. God has built for us a family. When his mother and his brothers came to try to find him while he was preaching, his followers said, hey, your family's here, they're looking for you, should we give them a spot right up front? And he said, who are my mother and my brothers? Those who do the will of God are my mother and my brothers. That meant... Those who were connected to him through the Father were closer to him than just his biological family. It is to be the same way for us, and it's meant to be a blessing. You know, we're talking about Mother's Day today, and a lot of us have had great relationships with our mothers, and a lot of us haven't. Maybe your mom didn't love you the way she was supposed to. Maybe she spoke words of death into you rather than words of life. Maybe she wasn't present for you the way she needed to be. Maybe she cut off a relationship with you because of your relationship in Christ and the way that it changed your life. Maybe that person wasn't your mom. Maybe it was your dad. Maybe it was your brother. Maybe it was your sister. Maybe it was your kids. Christ seeks to fill in the gaps where he knows we're hurting. And in Matthew 19, 29, he says, those who leave house or mother or father, brother, sister, or child, for my sake, will receive it again a hundredfold. He recognizes the difficulty of those who should love us most not, and even those who are closest to us leaving us because we follow him. And he wants us to be a blessing to each other. But I say to you this, this truth is only as excellent to us as we are willing to live in it. If we are not willing to actually be brothers and sisters to each other, this truth isn't excellent to us at all. If we just get up and leave and aren't known by anybody and we don't know anybody, what is this? How is this good news? Because we're not living in it. We haven't made these people our brothers and our sisters. We haven't made them a resource for us, a family member for us. I would do anything for my blood brothers. And I want to be able to say the same about all of you. Because you are just as much connected to me through my family as anybody else. And so... Let the people of God, the family of God, be a family to you and be a blessing to you. Because they need to be a blessing to you and others. And another thing is because sometimes we're a consumeristic society. What can other people do for me? You're also meant to be a blessing to everyone else in this room. And so you're cutting yourself off in two ways. You're not letting people be a blessing to you. And you're not letting yourself be a blessing to them. And that's important. Let's be a family and let this truth be really excellent to us. The final truth is that we have been given mercy. The second part of verse 10, right after that, is to say once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is by far the most excellent reality that we have. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And I want to phrase that in a different way, because we've all heard that. We weren't just people who were walking around indifferent to God. I'm just looking for something. And then Christ died and we go, oh, perfect, it's you. I've been looking for you. I want you. No, we were active enemies of God when he died for us. We were rebels to him. We, by all intents and purposes, hated him when he died for us. You know, Sometimes when I'm watching the news and I've been watching it for a little too long or a little too many days in a row, I have to take a break because the hurt and the evil in the world is just too overwhelming. It's too angering. And I have to turn it off because I just can't handle it. But with all the news I've seen, I can't even begin to imagine the evil that I have not seen in this city, in this state, in this country, and in this world. The news shows us way too much, and it's not even close to a one percentage point of all the evil that is in the world. Yet Jesus, knowing every act of rebellion, every heinous and horrendous act, and every evil desire, knowing about all of them from the beginning of time to the end of time because he's been present for every single one. He stood there and looked at every single one of us in the midst of our most evil actions, in the midst of the world's most evil actions, and he still chose to die for us. That we might receive mercy. Not even that we would be guaranteed to receive his mercy. Think about it this way. If everybody on this earth was righteous except for one person, there's one sinner out there, and Jesus knew that that sinner was never going to come to him, he'd still die for him. Because that's how much he loves that person. He died for us that we might receive his mercy. What more excellent quality could there be And when we really know that and understand that and believe that, glorifying God will just pour out of us. What else can we do but to proclaim His excellencies when we walk around in our day believing that? You want to live here well while you're here? Because God's put you here. We may be excited to go to heaven and be with Him for eternity, but we're here right now. While we're here, he's got you for a reason. Shine his light for other people to see so that they can experience him. Living out our purpose and glorifying God was never meant to be a chore. But I've struggled with it looking that way to me sometimes. It was meant to bring us closer to the Father. and to help increase the tribe of those who would build their life on the rock. Looking at the Great Commission can sometimes feel scary. But I promise you, when you look at what makes God so excellent, and you understand it more and more, we'll never understand it perfectly, because our understanding is limited here. But the deeper you go, the easier it gets. and the lighter the burden feels. So if it feels scary to you right now, just go deeper. God, what makes you so excellent? The more you understand it, it'll just come out. He'll work through you. I want to leave you with this why in the road this morning. Start each day this week By asking God to remind and show you his goodness. We need to be reminded about it on a constant basis. The world is difficult. We are not of this world. Every now and then, we're going to make mistakes. And we're going to move a little farther away from him. Start each day this week asking him to pull you close. And don't ask at the end, ask at the beginning of your day. Let it be the foundational point so that you can be on the lookout for him. And then see how it pours out of you. Be intentional about that as well. Because I promise there is joy waiting on the other side of living out your purpose here well. It certainly makes living in this world much easier to do. Let's pray. Father God, we love you so much. Abba, I recognize just how excellent you are. But Lord, I want to recognize it more, and I pray that for each one of us in this room. Lord, in the midst of all the distractions, all the difficulty, the pains, and sometimes even the joys of life, let us not lose sight of you and what you've done for us, and what makes you so excellent to us. Thank you for being good to us when you did not have to be. Once we had not received mercy, but now we have. Because of you. Lord, let us share that with the world so that they might receive it too. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
