Mission Imperative - 1 Peter 2:9-10 Series

1 Peter 2:4 As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." 7 Now the honor is to you who believe, but to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, 8 and, "A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message--which is also what they were destined for. 9 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. 10 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.

Introduction: Taking Ministry Lightly

Several years ago I got a phone call from a little church in Buena Vista. They asked me if I could preach the following Sunday since their pastor was going to be gone. I was not pastoring a church at the time, so I had the freedom to accept, and was thrilled for the opportunity to preach. So I prepared a sermon, and when Sunday morning came I got up very early, since it was a 2.5 hour drive, and just before I left, the phone rang. They were calling to make sure I would be there, and just before we hung up she said, “We’re doing some extra music, so you’ll have about 10 minutes to preach.” Ten minutes is fine if you know in advance it is ten minutes, but finding out it is ten minutes after spending all those hours preparing a full sermon – that was not really what I wanted to hear. And during the long drive up there I am developing more and more of a bad attitude. Five hours of driving so I could speak ten minutes. That is a lot of gas and a lot of time for a devotional.

By the time I got up there I had such a bad attitude I just tossed my notes on the floor of my car. I figured, “I’ll just share from my heart for a few minutes and then sit down.” So I just grabbed my Bible and went inside. The service started, they sang a couple songs, and then the song leader said, “We have a guest speaker, and I don’t want to short change him, so Darrell, come on up.” And as I passed him on the way to the platform he leaned over and said, “You have an hour.” Now that’s great if you are Jeff Roets, but I do not preach extemporaneously. I go from a word-for-word manuscript. If I don’t have my notes I have a tough time remembering which chapter I am preaching from. So I arrive at the pulpit and I have nothing with me but my Bible, a bad attitude, and an eager congregation, and an hour.

Well, I bumbled my way through and finally closed in prayer and sat down. After the service, as I was making my way out this old, white-haired man walked up to me and introduced himself. He said, “I’m Dwight Pentecost.” Dwight Pentecost is a world-famous evangelical scholar. He has written twenty books, and he is one of only two men to ever receive the honor of Distinguished Professor of Bible Exposition, Emeritus, at Dallas Theological Seminary.

All my life I have daydreamed about someday preaching a sermon and having a famous Bible scholar be in the congregation. I never thought it would actually happen. And the one time in my entire life when I preached a full sermon with no notes because of a bad attitude, it happens to be the day that an eminent theologian is vacationing in Buena Vista. In my daydream it ends with the famous scholar being so impressed that he recommends me as a pastor of some huge church. But in reality I got a handshake and a sympathetic smile.

That happened because I had taken something lightly that turned out to be important. I thought it was going to be small and it turned out to be big. And as I drove home it just really hit me that I should have known it was important because the thing that made it important was not the fact that Dwight Pentecost was there. It was important because it was a gathering of the church. I don’t know if you have ever blown something off only to discover later that it was very important, but I can tell you that I am convinced the purpose of today’s passage is to keep us from making that mistake.