Being Called Series

Message

1 Peter 2:4-12

In Fellowship Together – Being Called

When did you know you were called?

It is a question I have been asked regularly as a Pastor.

The answer is for another time … but for now I want to get us to think about the question.

Because, for some who ask the question, there is a worldview that sees the calling to ministry as sometime extra special.

But let me show you the opening of Romans

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God

6 And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:1, 6-7

The underlined words are all the same in Greek.

When we are in fellowship we are all called.

YOU are called. Today we are going to focus on this question.

As people in fellowship together do we know who we are?

I’ll keep the question in front of us while we read 1 Peter 2:4-10

Through these words Peter is helping us to understand our calling. To know that we are a significant and important part in God’s plan. The way Peter helps us to see this is there are two building projects.

One building project is being built by mankind.

They are looking for a way to have identity and they have before them all sorts of methods and means. And they need to choose from the pile … a large pile.

Materialism is in that pile

Money makes me happy, I am what I own. Money will solve all my problems. Materialism helps me fulfil my calling.

Individualism is in that pile

I make my own decisions, I forge my own destiny. I can have pride in being able to say, “I did it my way”. My individualism helps me fulfil my calling.

Education is in that pile.

If I know enough I can get what I want. There is value in being able to come before others and say, “Look at my great understanding.” Education helps me fulfil my calling.

There are some of the options in the pile. And there are many others as well, lying around like stones on the ground. Stones which can be brought together to make up the foundation of my life.

And one of those stones is Jesus, and the hope that can come through Jesus. But so many people, as they go about their building project, look at Jesus and says, “No”.

He doesn’t give me materialistic gain.

He won’t let me be an individual.

He wants me to change my world-view.

I’m not going to use Jesus as part of my project. And so Jesus is rejected.

It is a powerful picture isn’t it. And the sad reality is that this is a situation which has been going on for centuries.

11 This is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people:

12 “Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.

13 The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.

14 He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.

15 Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.”

Isaiah 8:11-15.

Even back then,

… 800 years before Jesus

… in the land which God had given to His people

… even there and then everyone kept focussing on their own building project.

Thinking that this will give them identity and help fulfil a calling.

But it doesn’t.

All they are doing is stumbling around in the darkness and chasing after futility.

Which brings us to the other building project. As mankind builds, God also builds. But God takes up the very thing that has been rejected by mankind – the stone. Peter drives the point home.

The Living Stone ... God chose.

The Stone is precious and becomes the founding component ... the cornerstone.

That stone which rejected is the stone on which everything else stands.

We see it so clearly. That the stone is Jesus and what He has done.

Death - resurrection - ascension.

Giving the Spirit and building the church.