“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” (1 Peter 2:9-10)
Every human being is driven by something. Some people are driven by guilt. Some people are driven by worry or fear. Some people are driven by insecurity. Some people are driven by anger. Some people are driven all through life by resentment. Some people are driven by their past and they spend their whole lives running from their past. Some people are driven by their possessions and the desire to acquire overwhelms them and they’re consumed by their consumables. Some people are driven by their parents. Even twenty, thirty, forty years later and maybe their parents are passed away they’re still trying to do what Mommy and Daddy would approve of.
If you would look up the word “drive” in a dictionary, you would find that it says “to guide, to control, or to direct.” When you drive a nail, you drive, control, or direct it into the wood. Many people have attempted to answer the question as to what drives people. Yet every stated purpose, save one, breaks down upon scrutiny. For example, Karl Marx stated that people exist for politics (or the state). Yet if one is driven for the state, what happens when the state exists only for its leaders (read the fatcats) and all the while it tramples on the backs of the common people?
Many today will tell you to live for popularity. Popularity comes in many different forms: athletes, rock stars, movie stars, etc. Many young men would like nothing more than to be famous athlete or entertainer. MTV recently ran a special on the devoted fans of Michael Jackson. One New York man portrayed on the show, probably in his mid 20's, had one consuming hobby. When he is not working his primary job, his life’s calling is to promote the pop musician Michael Jackson. His activities included Michael Jackson look-a-like contests, Michael Jackson memorabilia conventions, and Michael Jackson dance competitions. His life’s motto was summed up in the following quote: “My life’s goal is to personally tell every person in the world how great Michael Jackson really is.” Yet anyone with any sense realizes that popularity is short-lived. For example, few if any know the number one entertainers during the height of Roman power. Yet others strive to be the Bill Gates of the world and are driven for possessions. Many of us in this recent downturn of the market have seen that a life lived for possessions is short-sighted drive. Whatever you buy on earth is eventually either going to rot, rust, fall apart, wear out, or be stolen. Things don't last. If I buy a car, it gets a dent in it. If I buy clothes, they wear out. I buy food, it goes to my waist -- then I wear out. But the most popular life philosophy for us today is to live for our pleasure. Our culture is driven for to seek pleasure. Francis Bacon in the 1700's wrote that his purpose was to avoid pain and seek pleasure. America has given a thumbs-up to Bacon’s philosophy. But the question that Scripture presents for us is this: Do we live for His pleasure or our pleasure? Do we live for the pleasure in God or the pleasure in ourselves?
The OT background to today’s passage: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel” (Exodus 19:5-6).
“…And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God’” (Hosea 2:23).
1. Who Am I?
“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” (1 Peter 2:9-10)
1.1 I am a Chosen Race
I know that this is a corporate identity, he’s talking about the church—the true Israel. But the implication is individual, because this race is not racial. The chosen race is not black or white or red or yellow or brown. The chosen race is a new people from all the peoples — all the colors and cultures — who are now aliens and strangers among in the world. See verse 11, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers . . . “ What gives us our identity is not color or culture. But “chosenness.” Christians are not the white race; they are the chosen race. Christians are not the black race; they are the chosen race. We are the black chosen and the white chosen and the yellow chosen and the red chosen. Out from all the races we have been chosen—one at a time, not on the basis of belonging to any group. That’s why this amazing phrase is individually crucial for you. You are part of the “chosen race” because the race is made up of individuals who were chosen — from all the races. So your first identity is that you are chosen. God chose you. Not because of your race — or for any other qualification—God chose you. Who am I? I am chosen.
1.2 I am a Royal Priest
The point here is first that you have immediate access to God — you don’t need another human priest as a mediator. God himself provided the one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ. You have direct access to God, through God. And, second, you have an exalted, active role in God’s presence. You are not chosen, pitied, possessed, and holy just to fritter away your time doing nothing. You are called now to minister in the presence of God. All your life is priestly service. You are never out of God’s presence. You are never in a neutral zone. You are always in the court of the temple.
1.3 I Am Holy
You are not merely part of the world anymore. You are set apart for God. You exist for God. And since God is holy, you are holy. You share his character, because He chose you. If you do not act in a holy way, you act out of character. You contradict your essence as a Christian.
1.4 I Am God’s Possession
This idea is expressed twice in these verses: “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” (1 Peter 2:9-10). Now God owns everything. So in one sense everyone is God’s possession. So this must means something special. You are God’s inheritance. You are the ones he aims to spend eternity with.
When God says (in 2 Corinthians 6:16): “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (2 Corinthians 6:16)
1.5 God is Merciful to Me
When God chose us, he then saw us in our sin and guilt and condemnation and He pitied us. We are not just chosen. We are pitied. We are the not just the objects of His choice, but the objects of His mercy. I am chosen and I am pitied — or you could say I am “graced.” I am “loved.” God did not just choose me and stand aloof. He chose me and then drew near in mercy to help me and save me. My identity is fundamentally this: I have been shown mercy. I am a “mercied” person. I get my identity not first from my actions, but from being acted upon—with pity. I am a pitied one.
2. What Am I to Do Here?
I hope you’ve read Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life. In it he writes: “If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by His purpose and for His purpose. You were made by God and for God–and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Life is about letting God use you for His purposes, not your using Him for your own purposes.” (The Purpose Driven Life, p. 22)
Peter is specific when he tells us the precise reason for our existence. He says in verse 9:b that we exist for this reason: “…that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9b). This is the full-time destiny of a royal priest — to make the glories of the King known: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:5-6).
What do priests do? Priests build bridges. The Latin word for priest is pontifex – which means comes from two Latin words, “bridge” and “to make.” The Pope is called the Pontiff, which means “bridge to God.” Our High Priest, Jesus, is THE Bridge that spans across our sinful condition so we can be connected to God. We are under-priests, and we should be building bridges for people to know God as well. Our identity and our reason for existence is connected. God made us who we are so that we might proclaim the excellency of His freedom in choosing us. The excellency of His grace in pitying us. The excellencies of His authority and power in possessing us. The excellencies of His worth and purity in making us holy. C.S. Lewis wrote, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”
What is the impulse that drives the Almighty? What does He pursue in all his plans? God did not leave us to guess in this affair. He answers the question at every point in Bible history from creation to the end. Let’s survey some of the high points of Scripture to see what he says. Why did God create us? “…bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth,?everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isaiah 43:6b-7). Why did God choose a people for himself and make Israel his possession? “For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen” (Jeremiah 13:11). Why did God rescue them from bondage in Egypt? “Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:7-8). Why did God spare them again and again in the wilderness? “But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out” (Ezekiel 20:14). Why didn’t God cast away His people when they rejected him as king and asked for a king like the nations? “And Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself’” (1 Samuel 12:20-22). Why did God use His power to bring back his people from exile after punishing four generations of sin? “For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.?11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:9, 11) Why did the Son of God come to earth and to his final decisive hour? “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…” (John 17:1). And why will Jesus come again in the great day of consummation? They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:9-10). From creation to recreation God’s ultimate allegiance is to Himself. His unwavering purpose in all He does is to exalt the honor of His name and to be marveled at for His grace and power. “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16) “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory…” (Hebrews 2:10a). “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
God places Himself before anyone else as an act of love. Let me explain. Do you ever pay attention to the airline attendants at the beginning of a flight? It’s just before the plane is to take off the runway that they explain the safety procedures set in place by the FAA. Curiously, they tell parents that in case the plane is depressurized, leaving no breathable air for the passengers, the mother and father are to reach up to the ceiling and place the oxygen mask over their faces before their children’s face. Why in such a terrible moment of tragedy would a parent do such a selfish act of placing their own safety before their child’s? Because the most selfless act the parent can do is to place their own oxygen mask on first in order to ensure they will have not blacked out. Only when the parent is fully conscious can he or she care for their child. It’s only when the parent has taken care of their own oxygen supply that they then turn to their child’s interests of safety. Since God is unique as the most glorious of all beings and totally self-sufficient, He must be for Himself if He is to be for us. If he were to abandon the goal of his own self-exaltation we would be the losers. Everyone one of those Scriptures I read to you a moment ago showed how God acted on behalf of humanity while glorifying Himself. Did you notice how in each of those previous Scriptures that you and I benefitted immensely because of God’s self-exaltation? Now, what should drive you?
I’ll read the key words in 1 Peter 2:9 and then Revelation 5:9–10. 1 Peter 2:9: “You [that is, you who trust Christ] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” Revelation 5:9–10 (a glimpse into heaven after this age and the task of missions is complete):“And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you [Jesus] to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth’” (Revelation 5:9-10). You can hear the connection in the parallel words. “Nation” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “nation” in Revelation 5:9. “People” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “people” in Revelation 5:9. “Priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “priests” in Revelation 5:10. And “royal” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “kingdom” and “reign” in Revelation 5:10. In both texts, God has made for himself a royal priesthood. It called “royal priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9. And Revelation 5:10 says, “You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and thy shall reign on the earth.”
Missions and missionaries in this age are at the heart of what God is doing — forming one new race and nation and people and priesthood from all the races and nations and peoples of the earth. God is jealous for them all. Revelation 5:9 uses the word “every.” It says, “You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Christ bought them with His own blood. He will have them. Long before the united financial crisis in New York and Tokyo and Paris made globalization more understandable, God created a globalized people. But it is far more than globalized. God’s aim is not that his redeemed people be made up of people from a mere 192 countries from the United Nations. His aim is peoples, tribes, languages, ethnic groups—all of them. All 13,000 ethnolinquistic groups in the world and 1,568 Unengaged Peoples. According to Joshua Project, there are 6,850 of these peoples with fewer than 2% evangelical Christians. And 1,568 of those are unengaged — that means there are no believers in Christ and no missionaries working among them. In other words, the task of cross-cultural, global missions is not finished. There should be no unengaged peoples. Given the global scope and education and wealth of the church, the global church of Jesus Christ should have teams of missionaries in every people group in the world.
