Rock And Role: Another Brick In The Wall - 1 Peter 2:4-5a 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 to you who believe, this stone is precious. 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: We Need to Know our Identity to Know our Task

Review

We have now completed the first two major sections of 1 Peter. The first section had no commands – just a big celebration of our salvation and promised inheritance. Then the second section was full of commands. Live in hope. Live in holiness. Live in fear of God. Love one another with undying love. Crave pure, spiritual milk. Now, starting in verse 4 of chapter 2, we begin the third section, and this one is just like the first – no commands. From verse 4 all the way to the end of the section in verse 10 there is not a single command. Then, in the next section, a bunch of commands again. So Peter is alternating between telling us wonderful truths about our salvation, and then calling us to respond. Before we can ever properly obey the commands we need to understand exactly who we are and what has happened to us.

In the first section the focus was on our salvation as individuals. Each one of us was chosen, born again, and given a wonderful inheritance. Now in this section the focus is on what we are corporately, as a church. Peter has a lot to tell us about our identity as a church.

Identity and Mission

And I hope that is something you are eager to study. It is crucially important that you understand what the church is supposed to be because you are the church! You cannot live the life God wants you to live without understanding what the mission of the church is, and what your role in that mission is. And you cannot understand the mission of the church until you understand the identity of the church. I think one of the mistakes churches tend to make when they are writing their mission statement is to focus only on their task, and not enough on their identity. There is a whole lot of, “We exist to DO this…,” but not much of, “We exist to BE this…” But your conception about what a church is supposed to be will color your understanding of our task.

Many times I have heard people say, “The church is a hospital.” People come here with spiritual sickness, and we provide healing and restoration.

Other people have said, “No, we shouldn’t think of the church as a hospital…; we should think of it as a training center, where you come to get educated about God.” Those people come to learn, and if they learn some great stuff then coming to church was a success – even if nothing else happened.

For others the church is mainly a social club. It is a place where you can meet people, make friends, and enjoy interaction with some nice folks. Those people drive away after church and their whole assessment of whether it went well or did not go well is based completely on the kinds of social interactions they had or did not have with people.

Can you see how your conception of what the church is will have a huge impact on what you do at church and how you do it? And if we all have different ideas of what the church is supposed to be, we will all be working toward different goals and we will lack unity, and we will get frustrated with each other because we will be pulling in different directions.

One of the leading conceptions of the church that is getting more and more popular in our time is that the only purpose of the church is to evangelize. The catchword for this movement is “missional.” By that they mean everything we do should relate to God’s mission, which is one thing – conversion of lost people. They argue that everything else we could do better in heaven. The only reason God has left us on earth after we are converted is to reach the lost. So everything is geared toward that. They believe that the church exists mainly to transform the culture. One of the leaders of that movement is Tim Keller, who is a great preacher, but I cannot go along with him when he says this: “A missional church gears absolutely every single part of its life–its worship, community, public discourse and preaching education–for the presence of non-believers from the culture surrounding it.” So everything the church does is for evangelism. If we have a Bible study, it is only so we can be trained for evangelism. Even our worship is done not mainly to honor God, but mainly to reach the lost. Honoring God is just a means to a higher end.