Do turn with me in your Bibles this morning to the New Testament, to 1 Peter 2. And on page 1015, if you're using the church Bible, 1 Peter 2. Don't you just love the church? That was the title of this short summer series, and we've been looking at the section really beginning in chapter 1 verse 22 through to chapter 2 verse 12. And this morning we're looking at verses 9 and 10. So 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 9 and 10. He's talking to the church, that is, he's talking to us. And he says this, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellences 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." Identity. Identity is one of the big subjects today that grabs the attention of people in all kinds of walks of life. It has to do with how we see ourselves and how other people perceive us. People in the corporate world are often concerned about the persona of their corporation through branding or the use of trademarks or marketing. Ordinary people, you may be worried about Identity theft, where someone takes your credit card details and uses them for criminal purposes. We once had that happen to us. A member of our family, who isn't me and is the mother of my children, was using a credit card in one of these hole-in-the-walls ATM things. And what she didn't know was that there were a group of people from another part of the world who were there, and they targeted that particular hole-in-the-wall, and they were able to clone her card, and they were able to max out our credit. Fortunately, they were caught on camera and we got all the money back. The bank didn't, but I think they caught the guys in the end. So identity theft is a real problem. And then there's identity politics, which refers to political arguments that focus on self-interest and on the perspectives of self-identified social interest, special interest, groups within society, and minority groups. There's personal identity, how I see myself, me, myself, and I. Cultural identity, what aspects or artifacts of cultural life do I identify with? Do I see myself identifying more with a punk band a rock band or with an orchestra or whatever, these cultural aspects of life. There's national identity or social identity. Where do I place myself in terms of race, class, ethnicity, and so on? What Peter is doing here in these verses is giving us a handle on the identity of the church. He defines the church, as we've been seeing, in terms of its relationship to the risen, resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. That, he says in chapter 1, that one of the hallmarks of the church is that it's composed of people who believe in Him. They haven't seen Him, but they believe in Him. Having not seen Him, you love Him and believe in Him and you rejoice with great joy. Joy unspeakable and full of glory. They're also identified by the fact that they actually have a share in the resurrected, risen life of Jesus. Yes, they share. Not just they will share one day resurrection life, but they share resurrection life now. They've been born again. They belong to a spiritual dimension. They are living people, just as He is living, so they are living. really living, spiritually, but really living people. They've become alive from the dead by virtue of the new birth. In fact, they're a new creation. They're a new creation. They've been born into a new creation. And we'll see how that works out. But above all, he's already signaled to us that these people who belong to the church, you and I, are in fact the heirs to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures are not something for the Jews that we're interested in. They actually are our inheritance. Let me show you how he does this in chapter 1 and verse 10. He's talking about the Christian salvation and he says that it was the subject of prophetic prediction. Now notice what he says here, concerning this salvation The prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have been now announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." What he's saying to you is this. Read the Hebrew Scriptures. Read the prophets of old. Read what they spoke about and understand that when they spoke about future things, they were speaking about you for your benefit. That's what he's saying. This salvation that was to be yours, they were serving not themselves, but you. You who've had the gospel preached to you. So when you read there about a restored cosmos, and when you read about a renewed Israel, and when you read about people being brought back from exile, and when you read about a rebuilt temple, and when you read about a new covenant, understand that primarily that is for your benefit, and is going to shape and form your identity as the Church of God. Why is that important? Here's why it's important. Whether your future is to be a creature of indescribable beauty or inexpressible horror depends on your ability in this room this morning to answer the question, who am I and what am I here for? And those are the questions that are going to be answered by Peter here in these two verses. He's been arguing that these people surrounded by Jews who don't believe in Jesus, Gentiles who don't believe in Jesus, he's saying that you are different from the world. Do you notice how he begins this sentence? Verse 9, but you, he's distinguishing between the people who are believing and the people who are not. That's exactly the context. He talks about Jesus who is a stone who is either the foundation of the church and therefore of your life, or he is the stumbling stone over which you trip. and you fall flat on your face and you are destroyed. It rolls on top of you and you're destroyed. Jesus is either your salvation or He's your destruction. You're either believing Him or you're rejecting Him. You're either going to be saved by Him or you will be condemned by Him. Those are the striking differences that He puts before us. But, you. And he says several things. You are, first of all, a chosen race. A chosen race. He doesn't just make those words up out of the blue, and he doesn't mean you to start kind of expounding them just as they stand there. He wants you to go to where they come from. He wants you to go back to Isaiah chapter 43, which we read this morning here in church, and verse 20, where God uses these very words of Israel. God says to Israel, you are my chosen race, in the Greek translation. The people I have formed for myself, that they might declare my praise or my excellences. You notice how there are two phrases from that verse that are in our text today. There's the idea of praising the excellences of God. That comes from that verse in Isaiah 43 verse 20. And my chosen race, that comes from Isaiah 43 verse 20 as well. So the very fact that he draws from that passage, we have to ask ourselves the question, what did that passage talk about? What was it speaking about? You go back to Isaiah chapter 43. You don't need to do this. I'll do it for you. I'll give you this for nothing. This is free. Next few minutes. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. And so it goes on. God is going to do a new thing. It's a new creation. In the context, God is going to take these exiled, these Jews who are going into exile, and He will bring them back. He will restore them. He will do a brand new thing. He will do a new creation. And He says He's going to make them into a chosen race. Descendants of Abraham. Bring them back from their exile in Babylon. Restore them to a new creation. and make them His chosen race. That's an amazing picture. Especially when you understand that He's applying it to you. That you are His chosen race. Now you say, but you don't know. Racially, I am not connected to Jews. I have an idea of where my racial connections lie. I know that there is just the most minuscule element of English in there, for which I'm utterly ashamed. Then there is a little bit of Welsh in there, which enables me to sing reasonably well in the bath with the door closed and no one around. And then, of course, there is the piece de resistance. There is Scots and Scots-Irish in there, which makes me fit for heaven already. And there is just a little trace of Scandinavian in there. So racial purity, it doesn't exist. I mean, here we are in the United States. People from all races have come together and they've come to be one new thing. They've come to be Americans. They've been brought together. And this is the picture that's painted in the prophets. Very often we think that God only deals in the Old Testament with the Jews. But listen to this striking, stunning prophecy in Isaiah chapter 19 verse 24. In that day, Israel will be the third with Egypt, and Syria a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people, Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance. In other words, the vision of the prophets for the future of Israel was that the future of Israel was not going to be limited ethnically or genetically. The future of Israel, this restored future that they foresee, is going to be inclusive of men and women from all over the world. All over the world. They're going to be included in the future of Israel. That's the basis of Isaiah's exposition. And what Peter sees, you see, as he indicates in chapter 1 in that passage we read earlier from verse 10, he sees all these promises of God to Israel being fulfilled in Christ. That Christ is the One. He is the One. And you can see this in a little reference in the context. For example, if you go back to verse 6, you can see that Jesus is described as being chosen and precious to God. And then in verse 7, he's talking to Christian people and he says, so the honor is for you who believe. And that word honor is a very same word as the word precious. So, there is the preciousness of Jesus and there is the preciousness that's given to the Christian. the person who believes in Jesus, shares with Jesus in the preciousness, in the chosenness. Our identity comes from our connectedness to Jesus. And it is our connection to Jesus, particularly in this context, as the true Israel. If you read through Isaiah the prophet, one day we're going to go through Isaiah on Sunday mornings. And I'm going to take my time. So, you're going to be here for a while if God gives me breath, okay? And one of the things you realize as you're going through Isaiah, especially in the second part of Isaiah from chapter 40 onwards, is that he's talking about the Messiah. He calls the Messiah the servant. He describes various things about the Messiah. He's going to be anointed with the Spirit. He's going to be doing the will of God perfectly. He's going to be keeping the commandments. He's going to save the people. He'll be despised and rejected. He'll rise from the dead. He'll bring a great people with Him. And you wonder, who is this? And in chapter 42, He's named. He's named. You, My servant. Israel. Who will save Israel. from her sins. Israel, the person, will save Israel, the people, from their sins. And that is precisely what Jesus says on the night he's betrayed. And He's standing with His own people around Him. It's very interesting in John's Gospel, there are two key uses of that phrase, His own. In chapter 1, He comes to His own and His own people reject Him. In chapter 13, He's there with His own and He shows His own how much He loves them. And in chapter 15, He says to His own, I am the true vine. The vine was the memorial, the symbol of Israel. Isaiah speaks about Israel as the vine that God planted and that produced bad fruit. Jesus says, I am the true vine and you are the branches. Now if you're the branches in a vine, what does that make you? It makes you the vine. It makes you the Israel of God. It makes you part of what God has done in Christ. So what he's saying here is this. You are God's chosen race. This is something that the non-Christian observers of the church in the first century observed. Suetonius, the great Roman writer, says about Christians, he describes them as a separate race. Genos is the word he uses. They're into some mischievous or mischievous superstition, whichever word is the right pronunciation here. Same word, different pronunciations. One's right, one's wrong. You can tell me after which is American. This mischievous, mischievous superstition, haters of mankind and anti-social. Those were the things that they said about the Christians and the Suetonius said. Because they lived and acted as if they were a totally new race of people. A race identified not by their ethnic background or their genetic makeup, but by their connectedness to Jesus. It made them a new race of people. A chosen race. Now if you're not familiar with this expression, don't think when you hear the word chosen, don't think choice. Don't think that they're a choice group of people, that somehow or other they're the ones you want. that they're the ones you would naturally choose, that you would look up and say, you measure up. In all walks of life, you know, we have our lists. Maybe you young guys, you've got a list of the perfect woman. You haven't met her yet, but you've got this list of what she looks like, all the attributes that you want her to have, you know, from her eye color and her hair color and her teeth, all that stuff. Well, best of luck to you. Don't tell her you had the list. At the end of the day, what God says to Israel and to the church is, I didn't choose you because you fitted my list. I didn't choose you because you measured up to my requirements. I loved you because I loved you, because I loved you. That's the way God operates. He operates in love. It was in love that He loved our fathers and chose their offspring after Him. We read in Deuteronomy chapter 4. And so this new race is a race that is identified as those whom God has chosen in spite of everything, in spite of everything. God says to them, DOS, I loved you because I loved you. A chosen race. Secondly, a royal priesthood. Here again, the language comes directly from the Old Testament. A royal priesthood. There are two ideas there. There's the idea of royalty, obviously, and priesthood. The idea of a king. Somebody who has dominion, who reigns, and someone who is a priest, that is, who mediates, goes between God and everybody else. The first king priest in the Bible, do you know who it was? It was Adam. Adam in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden, which was the first temple, or the holy place in the temple, and God's intention was that Eden would spread right around the world. And Adam and Eve's great commission was to fill the earth with image bearers, to expand the temple of God, fill the earth with image bearers until all cosmos was filled with image bearers that bore the perfect image of God. Adam is called both the son of man and the son of God. and he is God's representative, you remember, in the garden. Israel comes along and God gives to Israel the same commission. God chooses Israel. God places Israel in the garden paradise and says, here in this garden paradise that's like Eden, I want you to spread the boundaries of your little kingdom. Push them out, include more and more people, bring these people to a knowledge of the Lord, You are my kings and priests. If you read Exodus 19 verses 5 and 6, you'll find all of the language that Peter is using comes straight out of there, where God says to Israel, you are my kings and my priests. I want you to have dominion. And then I want you to exercise priesthood as you bring other people to a knowledge of God. Adam blew it. Israel blew it. So God comes to His people, the church, and He says, a royal priesthood. I want you to have victory over your enemies, over sin and Satan and the world. One day I want you to share with my son victory over the powers of darkness. And already, already, the position of the believer is that we are seated in heavenly places in Christ. Already we're with Jesus, our representative, on the throne, reigning with Him. One day that reign will become visible to the whole world. And with Him we will judge angels. And we are priests, every one of us, priests to God. That's not saying there aren't different offices and callings among us, but it is to say that all of us are priests to God. We all have this great responsibility and opportunity of mediating something of the work of God to the world. How's the world going to know God? Who's going to pray for the world if we don't pray for the world? Who's going to hear about the excellent deeds of God if we don't tell them the excellent deeds of God? Kings and priests to God. That's why it's so important what we do. It's so important what we do together as God's people that we are able to demonstrate to the world the reality of the existence and the nature of the God that we serve. Back in verse 5 it says that we are holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. This is something that people in their day, Peter's day, Couldn't get their heads around. He was this new race and they were not religious. They were irreligious. In fact, they called them atheists. They called them atheists for a couple of reasons. One, they didn't worship any of the gods of the Greek or Roman pantheon. But two, there was nothing religious about these people. They acted like a nation. They acted like a new race. And they did not have sacrifices that they offered, and they did not have priests in robes who went around officiating, and they did not have temples in which they worshipped. And so they were called irreligious and atheistic. Why? Because they are a royal priesthood. Wherever they are, they're serving God. And ultimately the expression, the next expression, helps us to understand more clearly what the church is. It is a holy nation. A holy nation. What is national identity anyway? I recited earlier my genetic background. There's all kinds of stuff in there. The best of everything. And you ask yourself, what is it that makes a nation? Here we are in the United States. One of the amazing things about the States that we celebrate is that people come from all over the world, from different backgrounds. They come together and they become this new thing. They become Americans. We have a daughter. She was born in Northern Ireland, raised in Scotland, married an Armenian who was born in, not an Armenian, but an Armenian who was born in Lebanon and Beirut. And like all cross-cultural marriages, there are all kinds of difficulties involved when you marry cross-culturally. And then they moved to the United States. They are now Americans. They're more American than you are, some of you. I mean, they're really American. And what they've discovered is that coming from two different backgrounds, they have now become this third thing that has created a whole new world for them. They're now Americans. I'm proud of it. And the thing is when you come to Christ, you see, we come to Christ from various ethnic and racial backgrounds. We come to Christ with a baggage of our past and we leave our past behind us and we become this new thing. We become a holy nation. What does it mean to be this holy nation? In this new holy nation, we don't have presidents. We have a king. It was a good thing to get rid of a king back in 17-whatever. It was a good thing. And I just want to underline that. It was always a good thing. Very good. So obviously good for you. And you've done well and so on. And those folk back in England are a bit jealous of you, but they're proud of you as well. So they're okay with it now. They've got over it. Took them a while, but they've got over it. But there is a king in this holy nation. What does it mean to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ? It means to be under the lordship of King Jesus. He reigns supreme. He's a totalitarian king. He is an absolute lord. He isn't a democratic monarch. He reigns and rules over his people. Now what does it mean then to be a holy nation? Let me illustrate it like this. I'm a number of things in my life. I'm a husband, and a father, and a brother, and a friend, and a minister, and a fan of the Bourne movies, and looking forward to Friday, and 24 fan, and so on. And so I'm all of those things. And you could list all of those things, but what you could not do is you could not take all of those things and then add at the bottom, and a Christian. Because being a Christian is not just one of the things. So, to use an illustration I think that Tim Keller uses about a drawer, a file drawer, and he says, you know, we have all these things that we are and we do in our lives, and if you imagine them all in a series of files, you put them into the drawer, one by one, so forth. Christianity, being a Christian, isn't one of the files. Everything I am, all of those things, has to go into the category of belonging to this holy nation, belonging to Christ, under the Lordship of Christ, bringing every thought under captivity to the things of Christ. Everything. under His authority. Because to belong to this holy nation is not just one other thing. It's comprehensive. So whether I'm in banking, or business, or media, or technology, or acting, or street cleaning, or nannying, my gender identity, everything has to go into the category Christian. Under Christ. Set apart for Him. For His honor. and his favor. Now because I belong to this holy nation, I cannot bring in with me the things that were important outside. So the things that are important outside that door, race, class, status, prejudice, I leave them at the door when I come into the embassy of heaven. See, we're not really very religious. When we come here, actually what we're doing is a political event. The Romans understood that. The Romans understood that when the Christian put his hand on his heart and said, Jesus is Lord, they couldn't say Caesar is Lord. They could respect Caesar. They could regard Caesar as a minister of God. They could pay their taxes to Caesar. They could fight in Caesar's army. But only Jesus was Lord. Only Jesus was Lord. A holy nation. And then the last expression is important too. A special possession. The church is a people for his own possession. Some of you may remember the old King James translation. It was a peculiar people. And that got a lot of laughs, because you just need to look around yourself and think, yeah, that's true, a peculiar people. But it really means special people, not special needs, but special people, who've all got needs of one kind or another. And they are God's people. Now the interesting thing is, here's another phrase that's used of Israel. You see, every one of these phrases is saying to the Church of Jesus Christ today, Because of your connection to Jesus, you are the true Israel. You're it. You're it. Jews and Gentiles. Israel continues through believing Jews who have been joined by believing Gentiles. and God's promises in the Old Testament about a restored Israel that follows God's ways, that listens to God's Word, that does God's will in the world, those promises and predictions have begun to be fulfilled. in the creation of the church. And do you notice it is a new creation, just as Isaiah said there would be. He says this, he called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. The language echoes the first creation when God said into the darkness let there be light and there was light. And now God comes to people who are in the night, they are in the darkness, intellectually, spiritually in the darkness, with no love for God, no interest in the things of God, no burden for the glory of Christ, no sense of angst or pain when they see Jesus' name dishonored or trampled underfoot by men. And He comes to people like that who have no love for God, no love for Jesus. and suddenly into the darkness the light switches on. God shines His light into their heart. He opens their eyes to see, their ears to hear, their heart to love. The Apostle Paul puts it like this, God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what He does. And when we gather in this assembly this morning, we're gathering in the Embassy of Heaven, and we're hearing the Constitution of Heaven read out in our ears. We're being reminded of the various parts of this Constitution of our Heavenly King and Kingdom. We hear it read, and do you know something? Those words are not bare words. They're not naked words. These are powerful words. They are living words. These words perform. These words do. These words activate. These words are dynamic. These words accomplish that which God sends it to do. And when this word is heard, when this word is proclaimed, dead people come to life. Blind people come to see. Deaf people come to hear. They hear. They come alive. They live with Christ. They are raised with Christ. They are given spiritual life in Christ. This word does it, but does what says in the packet it will do. It changes people. It makes them alive. It does what Jesus did at Lazarus' tomb. You remember, he goes to the tomb of Lazarus and he says, Lazarus, come forth. He came fifth and he lost the race. That's an Olympic, sorry. He said, Lazarus, come forth. And out comes Lazarus. He had to say Lazarus' name because if he hadn't said Lazarus' name, guess what would have happened? All the dead would have come up. One day he's going to say, come alive, and all the dead will come alive. This is the power of the Word of God. This new community is shaped by the Gospel. Do you see that? He's called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And then he quotes from Hosea the prophet. Hosea the prophet is talking to Israel in its rebellion. And God says, there is coming a day for you rebellious Israel when I am going to restore you and I am going to give you a new life and a new creation. And here Peter takes that phrase that is applied to Israel and he applies it to us and he says, this is what God has done. God has brought new life. Look at it. Verse 10, Once you were not a people, He's saying about these Gentiles who are there. You didn't belong. I think one of the best ways of looking at this is to glance for a moment at Ephesians chapter 3 verse 6. Let me read it to you. Where Paul says, this is the mystery, that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. Gentiles. Now here's what he says about Gentiles a few verses earlier in chapter 2 verse 2. He says this, that these people were dead in their sins and they were following the course of the world and they were without hope. Look at verse 12. Remember you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise. You see what he's saying to these Gentile Christians? He's saying that's what you once were. You used to be separated from the Messiah. You used to be strangers, alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel. And you used to be strangers to the covenants of promise, but now that's not the case. Now you have Christ. Now you belong to Israel. Now you inherit all the promises. That's what Peter is saying too here. The church exists as the true continuation of, not replacement for. Israel didn't end when Jesus died and rose again. Israel continued. In the upper room there were the twelve disciples, representing the new Israel. There they were, there they were. The Spirit fell, the flames of fire like the succine of glory fell upon them. God was continuing his will, his work. And he starts bringing Gentiles into Israel. What he'd always planned to do. You are the Israel of God, the apple of his eye, his chosen and precious and beloved people. And what are you for? That's who you are, but what are you for? Notice how he puts it. to declare, proclaim the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Isaiah 43 verse 20, my chosen people, the ones I have formed for myself that they might declare my praise. How do you declare the excellences of God? You do it in the boardroom, in the kitchen, in Starbucks. You do it wherever you are. You know, wherever you commend Him, wherever you praise Him, wherever you bring His name into the conversation, wherever you acknowledge His generosity and His kindness towards you, you do it wherever you magnify the excellences of God. You do it as you come together in worship and you sing His praise. You do it wherever God puts you in your everyday life. you proclaim his excellences. And I can't think of anything more worth living for than that. When I was 21, I was ordained in my home church to the Christian ministry and I got to pick the hymns. And I picked this hymn to summarize what I felt then, which wasn't yesterday. and what I still feel today, I'll praise my Maker while I breath. And when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers. My days of praise will ne'er be past, while life or thought or being lasts, or immortality endures. That's what life is for. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Let's pray. Father, we praise you that you have called us out of darkness. You've called us to yourself. You've declared that we are your chosen race, your royal priesthood, your holy nation, your special possession. We pray that we might be those who, unlike Israel of old, are content to expound and proclaim your excellences to anybody who comes within the hearing of our voice in this coming week, throughout this city, throughout this region, and around the world. In Jesus' strong name we pray, Amen.