Ministering Exiles
Sermon Notes
Intro/Context
We want to see the Gospel multiply in our city through our church. What we’ve been studying is the Apostle Peter’s letter to a group of persecuted Christians trying to strengthen and encourage them. They’re living as Exiles in the middle of the Roman world because of their faith. But what is encouraging is that it is during this time of deep persecution that the early church actually grew in massive ways. So no matter how difficult we think the times are, there is still hope for the Gospel to multiply.
We’ve also introduced our church’s discipleship method in the last couple of weeks. To help us all remember we’ve started talking about 3D Discipleship. Louis has preached about the first 2 D’s of that model. The first was Discover: we discover the Jesus and the Gospel and the beauty that He has for our lives. Then we move to Deepen: we grow deeper in our faith and it is evidenced by an increase in our Holy living. Today, we’re gonna talk about the 3rd D, Display. So, as we discover and deepen our faith we are called to Display our Faith to others. Now you may have just gotten a little uncomfortable there as I talk about Displaying our faith. I might go on to say scare words like witnessing, sharing our faith, or evangelism next (ooooo, scary). This is a topic that usually makes us feel a mixture of anxiety and guilt. But what we’ll look at today should help us learn that we are all called to Display our faith, and, thankfully, that we are more than equipped to handle that calling. Let’s dive in to 1 Peter 2:4-12.
The Word
4 As you come to him [that’s Jesus], a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—
There’s a ton of information packed into these two verses, so we’ll spend a bunch of our time here. The first thing to notice is that, even though this is a sermon and text about us displaying our faith, we start with the identity of Jesus and not us. We’re going to circle back to why this should be such a relief to us in a couple minutes, but for now let’s take a look at how Peter describes Jesus here. He calls Him a living stone. He’s going to refer to Jesus as a stone a few more times in this passage so we need to understand what Peter is talking about. It seems a bit like an oxymoron, right? Rocks aren’t exactly known for being very lively, are they? What rocks are known for, though, is being strong and stable and good for building material. What Peter is saying by calling Jesus a living stone is that He possesses all the qualities of a rock (strength, stability, longevity) along with the qualities of something with life (personal interaction, care, relationship). This also serves to help explain some of the OT references that Peter will use as evidence of Jesus’ identity later in the passage. It’s also a fitting term for Peter to call Jesus, since his name of Peter means rock and was given to Him by Jesus himself. What else does he say about Jesus in vs.4? He was rejected by people but chosen and honored by God. While many people back in Peter’s day and today in our day sinfully reject Jesus or misconstrue who He is, He is always chosen and highly honored by God. This is something that we’ve been exploring in our Visible God series on the book of John. This should force all of us to ask ourselves the question: What do you tend to care about more, the approval of man or of God? Jesus had His priorities straight, most of us struggle to have that same priority straight, though. Thankfully, our hope for this comes in verse 5.
5 you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Our identity in Christ if we are the ones that come to (believe in) Him – He is a living stone, so we are living stones, parts of an entire spiritual house.
As part of this identity with Christ and each other, we are being built up into a holy priesthood. It’s important to note that there are no other qualifiers on this statement. Everyone who believes in Jesus as Savior and Lord are part of the priesthood. Peter is saying that everyone that is an Exile is a Minister. We all have a ministry. This doesn’t kick in once you’ve been a Christian for a set number of years or have learned enough of the Bible. It’s a standard accessory of being a follower of Jesus. Everyday, every moment of our lives is to be a ministry for and to God. Ministry is not restricted to what you generally think of in the church, it isn’t just for pastors, missionaries, or other “super” Christians. God is calling each and every one of you to a ministry that you are uniquely suited for. That’s why our relationship and identity in Christ is so vital. We aren’t called to ministry in a vacuum or under our own power. And there is ample motivation in the world for us to live out our various ministries. Let’s take a look 2 of the main obstacles to our life as ministers and priests and the solutions to them.
6 For it stands in Scripture:
See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and honored cornerstone,
and the one who believes in him
will never be put to shame.
The first obstacle to our everyday ministry is one I call the Lack of Power. For some of you, you’ve tried to share the Gospel with those in your lives or you’ve had a strong desire to but you haven’t seen success or you feel like you aren’t equipped well enough. You ran into a response or question that you weren’t able to answer. You poured so much energy and time in just to get rejected or have the relationship that you built up getting strained or ruined. You’ve tried and want to be a minister but you just feel beat down and unable. Peter explains that the solution comes from depending on Jesus more than we depend on ourselves. Peter uses another stone example to describe Jesus. This time He calls Him the “cornerstone.” In architecture back then, the cornerstone was by far the most important part of any building. It was the first stone laid in the foundation. It had to be the strongest and best part of the building or else it would all fall down. It also had to be the perfect size and cut, because every other stone used in the building had to be cut and placed in proper reference to the cornerstone. So not only did the cornerstone provide the strength of a building, it provided the design and cohesiveness of it as well. That is how crucial Jesus is to every part of our identity as Christians especially our identity as Ministers.
See what we are tempted to do as Christians is trust in Jesus for our salvation and source of comfort in hard times, but then try to do everything else under our own power and according to our own will. This even includes spiritual things like discipleship and sharing the Gospel. That’s why we often feel burnt out or ill equipped. Pastor Tim Keller compares the Christian life to any other living organism. We need a proper balance of inputs and outputs. We need food, water, and rest (inputs) but they have to be coupled with outputs like work, exercise, and other activities. You couldn’t expect to work an 8 hour day and train for a triathlon everyday on 2 hours of sleep and a granola bar. You’d soon run out of energy and burnout. The same is true of our lives of ministry as exiles. Our ministry to others has to be fueled by Jesus’ own ministry to us in our personal times of prayer, bible study, and nurture from church teaching and community. So often we go about building the house of our lives with whatever we can lay our hands on and ignore Jesus as the cornerstone that gives us strength and stability.
That’s the Lack of Power obstacle we face as Ministering Exiles. On the other end of the spectrum is another obstacle. I call this one the Lack of Motivation. If we’re honest sometimes we avoid living as ministers because we just don’t really want to be bothered. Ministry is messy and difficult. People sometimes have issues we just don’t want to deal with. And sometimes we’re just content to let people live how they want. We don’t think about the stakes that are involved when it comes to what people think about who Jesus is. Peter very clearly shows us the stakes that are involved in our lives as Ministering Exiles.
7 So honor will come to you who believe; but for the unbelieving,
The stone that the builders rejected—
this one has become the cornerstone,
8 and
A stone to stumble over,
and a rock to trip over.
They stumble because they disobey the word; they were destined for this.
What someone believes about Jesus has huge ramifications and consequences. Peter uses a couple of passages from Psalm 118 and Isaiah 8 to illustrate this. We just discussed the importance and comfort that comes from Jesus being our cornerstone. But He’s not the cornerstone for those that reject Him. Instead of being the source of strength and order and stability for their lives, Jesus becomes a stumbling block. He becomes a source of falling and faltering because people refuse to believe in Him for who He actually is. This may sound harsh to say but the Bible is crystal clear that there are only two alternatives when it comes to Jesus. A person can believe in Him as their savior and Lord and receive salvation and the blessing that accompany it. Or a person rejects Jesus as savior and Lord and does not receive forgiveness from sin. They stumble over who Jesus is and will pay the full penalty for rejecting God for eternity. That’s not a message that is popular in our culture, but it could not be more clear in Scripture. Peter preaches this very thing in Acts 4:12 when he says, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.” Jesus taught it himself throughout His minstry and probably most clearly in John 14 when He described Himself as THE way and that “no one comes to the Father but through Him.”
So when you and I struggle with the Lack of Motivation or Apathy obstacle, it’s not because there isn’t good reason to be motivated. It’s because we are still struggling with sin that shifts our eyes to other priorities or causes us to frankly not care that much that people are destined to Hell without the grace of Jesus in their lives. So do you care enough? If not, we need to repent of this grow past the place of thinking that Christianity is just one way to live this life that happens to be working for us to the truth that Jesus and the Gospel is THE ONLY way to be made right with God. (ministry of reconciliation) Let this be the motivation that you need to get in the game as an everyday minister of the Gospel (or motivate you to fully follow Jesus for the first time today).
This is a weighty charge to be put on us and we know that there are obstacles that we must overcome, but Peter gives us one of the most encouraging verses in the Bible next to strengthen us as Exiles for God.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Often we don’t feel equipped for evangelism and other aspects of ministry in our lives. Sometimes we fall victim to the obstacles we just talked about because of our own sin or someone else’s sin against us. But look and be encouraged and strengthened by the blessings that we have in Jesus. We are a chosen race and holy nation, people pulled from all races, nationalities, and walks of life to an identity as children of God that unites us and transcends all of those differences that have caused so much division in history and today. We are a people of God’s own possession, we gain unprecedented value by being the possession of someone that is infinitely powerful and valuable. It’s like how back in May a pair of signed, game-worn Jordan 1s that Michael Jordan wore during his rookie season sold at auction for $560,000, but you likely wouldn’t take my game-worn basketball shoes if I tried to give them to you. What’s the difference? Michael Jordan owned them and played in them, that’s the difference. How much more value do we derive from the fact we are the possessions of God himself? He ascribes us that value and called us out of darkness into marvelous light and gives us a ministry to help others out of the same darkness that we used to be lost in.
Peter also brings back the language of the priesthood here. We’ve already discussed how that means that all Christians are to be involved in the ministry of the Gospel. This is the 3rd D in our 3D Discipleship model, Display. You Discover Jesus and the Gospel believing it, you Deepen your faith and holy living, and Display what Jesus has done in your life to others. Now let’s take a second to do some practical application of what being part of this priesthood entails. The word Priest is an interesting term. Despite what we might think, it is not synonomous with words like pastor or elder or overseer like we use in our church. When you hear the term “priest,” what you should think about is the role of intercession. A priest is someone that stands between God and ordinary people and tries to intercede between them and bridge the gap. You see this understanding of a priest in the Old Testament when the high priest would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the people and in Catholic theology where the priest is the person that takes your confession before God and offers you the means to be absolved from that sin. Now churches of our tradition believe that this role is ultimately filled by Jesus himself. He stands as our high priest giving us direct access to God while also praying for us before God.
In a lesser way we are to act in this kind of priestly role when it comes to our lives as ministering exiles. We are to use our lives as a bridge from God to others. Sometimes that is within the church as we encourage, disciple, and hold each other accountable. But it also needs to be outside the church to those in our lives that do not know Jesus. We are called and used by God to help bring those people into relationship with Him. There’s two main avenues for this. Pastor Tony Merida sums this up really well.
“We can take God to people in evangelism; and people to God in prayer”
I love how simply he puts that. We can bring the good news of the Gospel in evangelism, by telling people about it. And we can regularly be bringing the names of people that need to follow God before and ask Him to move in their lives using us to do so. This works best when it is part of the regular rhythm of our lives. Some of us likely need to unburden our schedules a bit, so that we don’t have a ready excuse for not doing personal ministry, but most of us would benefit greatly from just using the time and opportunities that we have more intentionally and strategically for the mission of God. It’s like what we say here often, “Do you what you do well or love to do for the glory of God, and do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.”
Imagine what your prayer life would look like if you just shifted it to be focused more on ministry to others than on your own needs and desires. You still pray for your needs, but you just trust God with them and instead dedicate your energy to praying for the people in your life that are hurting or need to know Jesus. Do you think that would shift how you act and structure your life a bit? What if those extra chairs we all have for our dinner table were filled more often by people in our lives that could benefit by seeing what a Christian family looks like and prioritizes? What if your lunch or coffee breaks weren’t used as a time of solitude and catching up on your audiobook or podcast, but instead used to connect with someone that you’ve been working with but never had a real conversation with? What if you and your kids saw their sports team, dance studios, or schools not as places where they just have fun or have an outlet but as a mission field that they are uniquely skilled to minister to? A ministering exile doesn’t have a slot on the schedule called “Ministry.” Instead ministry is baked into every line of the schedule. A call to be part of the royal priesthood should impact every area of our lives. We’ll have more resources available to you to help make this a reality, but let’s take a look at one more way that we can do this.
11 Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. 12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.
Like we talked about last week. The act of Deepening our faith, growing in personal holiness is one of the best ways to Display our faith to others. If you’re going to be telling people about sin and the need for forgiveness, you better not be playing fast and loose with sin yourself. Our lives should Display something worth coming to, not just empty words about how to run away from sin.
Big Idea
To sum this all up. Our Big Idea for today is this: Ministering Exiles use their identity in Jesus as their fuel for everyday ministry.