Dear Church Pt. 2 // Now, You Are God's People

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church podcast. We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying rooted in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his awe-inspiring love. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at Vinelife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Vine Life. Again, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Okay? 1 Peter chapter 2 to the New Testament. After James, we were in James last week. And we're continuing to move through the New Testament together. We've been on this journey through the scriptures and the storyline, the expansion of the church to steep ourselves in the Word. This particular series that we're in is called Dear Church. There's letters. And today we're looking at 1 Peter. And this particular letter was written to Gentiles and Gentiles that were scattered in the dispersion of the saints as they all left Jerusalem. They were replicating. He was writing specifically to Gentiles to reiterate to them that they were a part of God's story. They were chosen and adopted into the family of God, the family of Abraham. They had been given a new hope, a new identity, and been brought into a new family. That is good news for Gentiles, and everybody said, Amen. Okay, that's good news for all of us. We are here because God chose to open the door wider. And that's why you and I are here today, because we've been pulled into a story. And that's what Peter's doing. He's setting the stage to pull them into a story. And I want to read this passage in 1 Peter chapter 2, starting in verse 4. It says this as you come to him, a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 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. Let's pray together today. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for the gift of grace, God. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that our identity in you has been changed as we can as we come into you, that we become living stones, that we become a chosen race, a holiness, and a royal priesthood. And today, Father, we rejoice for the gift of being a part of what you're doing. And today, would you establish us in your word? Would you establish us in a larger vision of what you are doing among us, God? Speak to us this morning, Jesus. In Jesus' name. We pray together. Amen. Amen. So in this particular passage, Peter starts laying some foundations. He starts off quoting Isaiah 28. He's quoting the prophet Isaiah, saying that, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone. And so he starts rolling out this language of Christ being a cornerstone. A new construction is happening. And all of this is what it really is what it is is temple language. And he's painting a picture of this new new kind of temple that God is building. And in this new temple that has to be constructed, Christ is the cornerstone. And you and I become living stones that are built upon Jesus. Everybody turn to the person next to you and say, you are one good-looking stone. It's true. You guys are unbelievably good-looking stones today. And he starts rolling out this language that you are now a part of what God is doing to inhabit the earth. And as a royal priesthood, you now have, all of you have access to God collectively to extend the good news of God's rule and reign in the earth. A royal priesthood. There's something kingly about it, and there's something priestly about it. So this is where he starts. He's bringing us into there's something new God is doing to fill the world with his presence and his glory. But then he starts to catch them up with the age-old story. And so this language about them being a chosen, uh chosen race and a royal priesthood and a holy nation, this isn't new language that he's using. This is very ancient language that he's using. Some of these Gentiles may not actually have understood what he's saying, but he's referencing the promise given to the people of God at Mount Sinai. Now, just to catch you up in the larger story, uh, we read very early on in the scriptures in the Old Testament that the people of God were given the promise of God to be a blessing in the whole world. That he was blessing them to be a blessing, that there was something bigger that was going on. Now, they were enslaved, they were taken as slaves in Egypt for about 400 years. And in this time, as a people, in covenant with God, they actually lost their identity, they lost their purpose, they lost their mission. They had no way to live out their destiny to be a blessing to the world while they were in slavery. So living as slaves, they were totally deformed in who they were as a people. They had completely forgotten God's purposes and had no ability to be a people called by God to be a blessing to all the nations. And so God raises up one of them named Moses. And they go back and forth, but eventually Moses concedes to the Lord, he's sent into Egypt, and the Lord supernaturally liberates the people of Israel from Pharaoh's grip. From that point in time, he led them into the wilderness. They were out of Egypt, but as it's been said, they were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not yet out of them. How many of you guys know that we can be saved from something, but the process after that is God reforming us from the inside out. So they were freed from Egypt. They were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not out of them. They could have gone to the promised land by foot in just a couple weeks. Instead, it took about 40 years of wandering through the desert. And this was on purpose. God used this time of testing in the desert to reform and reshape them. What was deformed in Egypt was reshaped in the wilderness and at Sinai. He led them with his presence through the wilderness, through a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. Every morning they woke up to supernaturally provided food, quail, and manna. Their clothes and their shoes did not wear out, we read. Over and over, God was showing them that he could be trusted and that they were his beloved people, a special, set-apart people for his possession, which is why he would ratify his intentions towards them at Sinai through a new covenant given through Moses and the tablets. He would build upon the Abrahamic covenant that they were blessed to be a blessing, and that something huge was happening, but he would reiterate to them that this wasn't just an individual thing, this would be a collective thing. So, Exodus 19, 4, we read this God says, Yahweh says to Moses, you yourself seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. 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. So this is the language Peter is borrowing. Essentially what Peter's saying is that just as Yahweh delivered Israel from Egypt and made them into a people again, something new has happened to us in Christ. And despite all of Israel's attempts to be a faithful people, we read it didn't work. We read over and over again in the Old Testament that the hearts would grow dull, the hearts would grow dissistant, they would get the hearts would grow distant from God and from each other. They would get distracted, they would be pulled away from their first love. They needed a new heart and a new foundation. So according to Peter, Christ has become the new foundation on which they were able to build, being joined together as living stones. So according to Peter, what God is building among us starts with us individually, but culminates in us and what God builds in us together. Now let me just ask you a question. That was really fast. I didn't expect it. Remember the Titans, okay? Chariots of Fire, what?

unknown 11:21

Miracle.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Miracle, come on. The blind side, oh my gosh. Mighty Ducks. Come on. Isn't it just exciting hearing the titles again? Like, don't you just get lit up? I love the sports movie, especially all the ones that it's pretty much, whoa, Jerry McGuire, yeah. Pretty much all the ones that are about a team, you know, that's just totally in shambles, and then the entire movie is about them learning how to play together, right? So remember the Titans? That's one of my favorites. I just remember just crying in that movie. It was great. I mean, it's uh it's a it's a civil civil rights era-based movie of a team of high school students and and blacks and whites coming together and learning actually how what has to be undone and redone in order for them to play together. They had to be reshaped into a team that could actually win games, right? Um same thing with uh Mighty Ducks, you know, all of these, all of the losers in school. I would have been on the Mighty Ducks, by the way. Um I didn't have much of a chance uh you know when I was growing up. So that probably would have been me. But yeah, the Mighty Ducks, they're all these kids that don't belong together, but somehow come together, and it culminates in the you know, the the the proclamation as they would come together, it all really culminates in the what is it? Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. I'm waiting. Quack, quack, quack, quack. Okay. That's enough. I had a few people follow me into that. I was really curious how many of you were gonna go for that. No, so the Mighty Ducks, as a team that wasn't a team, they weren't, they had no ability to be a team, but then they had to be shaped into a team, which was individual on a lot of levels, but it was a thing of something had to happen for them to become something, like to actually work together, right? And so when we're reading through Peter and he's he's emphasizing, listen, something has happened significantly in Christ. Once you were not a people, now you are a people. Something has happened where we have a new foundation, you've been given a new heart, and a temple is being constructed, and you're the living stones, but you're being built together, interlaced, interlocked together. And he answers the is if we're to answer the question, what is God doing here? That God's story is not just about persons, but a people being gathered up into his name. So the reality is this: Jesus loves you individually. He loves you as a person. He knows your name and your name, and your name. So walking with Jesus is highly individual because even when Jesus was calling his disciples, he was calling them by name. Hey, Peter, Simon, come walk with me. Right? James and John, come walk with me, come follow me. And he does the same with us. So we are in a faith that's very highly personal. God has an unbelievable amount of affection for you. For you. Okay? And we need to start there, because that is so true. But ultimately, he doesn't save us into just an individual pursuit of him. God's saving work always moves us towards creating a family. God's ultimate dream is to make for himself a people. Okay? So, why is this important for us today, for us to explore today? Because much like the Israelites who lost their collective identity in Egypt, we too face cultural forces that work against our identity as a people group joined together for God's glory. Okay? So I'm gonna get into a couple details, right? Hang with me on here. This is gonna be a little bit about preaching to the choir, but um just hang with me. I want to talk about just take the survey of across the landscape of this, of, of what we'd call church attendance. So the Barna group, who studies larger church data and trends, found that uh 10 years ago in 2011, 43% of Americans said that they went to church every week. By February of 2020, that had dropped 14% to 29%. Since the beginning of the pandemic, one-third of all Christians have stopped gathering with other believers altogether, online or in person. Okay? And again, preaching to the choir, you guys are here in person. But this this is the couple important things that we have to look at. Much of this, uh much of the disruption in the gathering has been about an abundance of caution to not spread the virus. And I would say, all the grace in the world. If you're watching online, all the grace in the world, that's the season that we're in. And so we have to acknowledge that. That's that's part of what we're doing. Um but when asked, many stated that in this study, uh many stated that they're that there's something uh when when asked about what has led them to pull back this trend that started far beyond far before COVID and essentially was accentuated in a season of pandemic. Uh when they were asked what contributed to that, many people said they don't like something about their church, about 38%. But more commonly that they have, quote, learned to practice their faith in other ways, about 44%. So the ones who started pulling back and said, eh, I don't know, it's because they would self-identify as I've learned to practice my faith in other ways. Okay? So there's several things at once when we look at our culture the day that we're living in, there's several things at once that start to erode at our not only our ability to gather together, but our desire to gather together. What is it that we actually want? So even pre-pandemic, there has been, and you guys know this, there's been culturally this growing distrust for institutional organizations, institutional religion. Um, you know, maybe a distrust because of some abuses by spiritual leaders. And so that's that's increased skepticism. Not only that, but we're living in a time of right we're living through the rise of hyper-individualism. Hyper-individualism. Every technology right now exists for you and for your convenience and your comfort. And I'm not saying technology is bad. I love all the technology and all the things too, but I'm just saying what happens is it starts, we start to uh we're living into a day right now where the question that we typically the question that we ask most days is what's best for me and my preferences. Not necessarily a bad thing to ask on some level. You get to have your preferences, but we're living in a time where everything is hyper-focused on me, right? So growing distrust, rise of hyper-individualism, then you tag on that a pandemic, and you have a recipe for a complete disruption of the ability for people to have a cohesive identity with anybody else outside of themselves. You see what I'm saying? If we want to talk about a perfect storm for what would war against the ability to be living stones built into a spiritual house, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a chosen race. These are the types of things. This is the water that we're swimming in right now. And so it's really affected. So even as things have opened up per se, um, you've noticed this, and we've we've all felt this, that on some level, it was just nice to have the flexibility just to do whatever you want on a Sunday, right? Can we just clear that out? I mean, like, let's, it's okay, we can admit that. Um, but for whatever reason, right or wrong, it's clear that our habits have been reformed. And many, in the days that we're in, are opting to go it alone. And so many Christians haven't necessarily left the faith, but they have left the faith, but they have lost a vision to be a part of something larger than themselves. Okay. So the thinking sounds something like this. As long as I'm personally growing, whether I'm at a church service or not, as long as I'm personally growing, regardless of whether or not I attend church, that's all that really matters, right? As long as I'm right, as long as I'm personally growing. And so um the way that looks is the trends for many Christians is kind of this loosely curated life that involves spiritual inputs when and how we want them. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna live with God. I'm gonna read the books and the podcasts and the worship music when I want, how I want. And if I have need for relationship, I'm gonna, I'll call my my close friends and we'll do brunch or we'll get together for whatever we need to. And it's this uh this kind of life that's highly preferential, it's highly designed around what's best for me. I and I would say to take it even a little further, for Coloradans, I know that you know, if you're like me, I moved from the Midwest. I didn't move to Colorado to sit around. That's what everybody did in the Midwest. Right? You moved to Colorado for a reason, right? Um and I think John Muir probably his quote probably sums it up better than uh than anybody. I'd rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in a church thinking about the mountains. Come on. I mean, have you have you ever felt that? He kind of nailed it. I mean, I would say if there's one mantra that drives the ethos or culture of our particular geography, it's that. It's like I kind of want the ability to do whatever I want and I'll include God in it. I'd rather much do that than have to be in a place with people I don't know per se. They're not like me, at a time that I don't prefer, in a place that I don't prefer. With music that I may or may not like, and sermons that I may or may not like. And it goes longer than I want it to, you know, and it takes, you know, whatever. I mean, all the things that we can come up with. And so you know, so so what's happened is, and and you may have felt this, um, the longer we go, this trend is leading. To a disintegration of people into more a collection of individuals, all kind of on their own, little pursuits of God, believing that as long as I'm growing myself, isn't that what God wants? Is that what God's best for me? And obviously, uh you know the answer to what I'm saying, but as I've dug into this a little further, even this week, I believe that even though those, even though growing personally is incredibly important, grow personally, do that, have a vibrant relationship with God in your prayer closet and in your mornings and in your home and in your family and in your car and do those things, right? But as well, what's happened is we've lost a vision for becoming a people together. And when we lose a vision for what God is doing, what the what God is building as gathering for Himself a people, then we're getting further and further from the picture we see in heaven. Okay? So Revelation chapter 7 says this. Verse 9, he says, John, in his revelation, he says, After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and all peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb. So our whole lives are gonna culminate in this moment where we're gonna be joined up into this multitude, probably a crowd bigger than we want to be in. If you're an introvert or you're claustrophobic, oh my gosh. This could be this could be rough. But even more than that, we're gonna be joined in with the people, and in some ways, we're gonna we're gonna be, that's gonna be the story at the end of the day that Christ has summed up all things in himself, and he's gathered for himself a whole group of people. And so I believe that's actually what discipleship is from now until then. Discipleship in our lives is God making us the type of people who will actually enjoy heaven. So the things that are happening in our lives, he's actually working to make us the type of people who would actually enjoy heaven. So some of the things we read about in heaven, if we're honest, we actually wouldn't like it. But he's making us that he's not gonna force people to be a part of something they don't want. You know, in in heaven, we're going to have a king who sits on our throne. That king's not gonna be you. It's not gonna be me either. It's not gonna be who you want it to be on earth. It's gonna be Jesus, and we're gonna sing the songs that he wants to sing. We're gonna talk about what he wants to talk about, and we're gonna be so, our eyes are gonna be so dialed in to the face of Jesus. And so until then, the work of God in our lives is discipling us to become both individuals and a people who have the ability to host the glory of God and to be a representation of his presence on this earth. It's a royal priesthood. You cannot be a royal priesthood apart. We cannot be a chosen nation apart from each other. Which means that we have to be more enraptured by a vision, by God's vision of what he's building than what our culture is selling. Believe me, this isn't the message I want to preach. It's not a feel-good message, and I wrestled with it. I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to preach that. I don't want to be the pastor that's just harping on everybody to show up to church. That's not actually what it is. I'm not, I have no desire to say you need to, you need to up your commitment to a church service and your frequency. No, that's not what it is. But what I am saying is we all need to grow in our vision to be caught into God's vision of what he's building, and for us, for that to reflect in a responsive, uh a delight and a devotion to being committed to being the people of God intentionally and regularly and together as much as we possibly can. That's gonna happen around tables, and that's gonna happen in the sanctuary, right? And so the author of Hebrews talks about this when he he re-emphasizes in Hebrews 10, verse 24, he said, Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not not neglecting to meet together as in the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near. Is the day drawing near? So ever more so. Let us consider, let's consider, let's dream about how to be with God and his people. There's about over there's over a hundred one another instructions in the New Testament. It's I've here's what it's one thing I've found. It's really hard to practice a one-another when you're alone. It's I've tried it. Try it with myself. I'm gonna serve myself today. I'm gonna be generous towards myself. I've earned it. It's like, no, all the one-anothers, the entire context is you're with people, some of whom you really like to be with, and others that you don't. And that's where God gets the glory. His glory is made manifest in the church because it's unlikely people brought together to display the wisdom of God to rulers and principalities looking in, that no, through no other way could this have happened. So, all that to say, we are formed in our culture. The Israelites were formed in Egypt. We get formed by the day in which we lived. How many know that American Christianity is much different than African Christianity and Asian Christianity and South American Christianity? There's things that we get right, um, definitely. There's other things that have to be reformed in us. God separates our earthly nationality from our kingdom nationality, and he disciples us in the midst of it. It's called the formation. It's what church history is called spiritual formation. And we we have we have language that talks about spiritual disciplines. I don't particularly like the word spiritual disciplines because it sucks all the fun out of it. I like spiritual delights or even formational practices. There's things that we give, that we give our lives to in order to form the image of Christ in us. And let me give you some examples. And you know, if if you want more proof of that, I was just listening earlier this week that apparently people who grow up in New York City, if you're from New York City, you walk uh your average pace of walking is faster than every other place in the world. Or at least in America, I don't know the actual trend, but people in New York City walk faster than every other place in the world. Why? Because you have to learn to walk faster in order to survive in New York City. That's what it's like. Now, if the pace of your walking is increasing, what else do you think is being formed in an environment like that? And it's the same with us. There's things within our society that exist to pull us away into convenient bubbles rather than a forging together to be a people, right? So we have to give ourselves to spiritual formational practices. It's why we do what we do. Everything that we do, there's so many practices that we do that both remind us of what's true and resist the forces of darkness that pull us into what's untrue. So a few examples. We sing. The reason why we gather to sing is to remind us that Jesus is worthy of our worship, even though we don't always feel like it. It's a lot more than that, too, but that's one example of we sing to announce to God, regardless of what we're actually feeling that day, we sing, and as we sing it, we we we we are formed from the inside out. That's why singing is so important. We Sabbath, and if you don't sabbath, you should. And when we Sabbath, we take a day off unto the Lord, unto rest. We resist the relentless pace of life that our culture says we should be abiding by. And and we resist the belief that we actually run our lives and the world runs around us, and we start to enter into the reality that Jesus, Jesus is the one that we're living for. The work is his. We practice silence. When we practice silence, just sitting before the Lord in silence, we resist the noise and anxiety of the world and remind ourselves that he is the one fighting for us, just like he fought for the Israelites. We read the scriptures to renew our thinking in a world addicted to news. I'm telling you, if the first thing you read every morning is the news or Facebook, I'm telling you, that will affect your gauge on reality. It will. It will form you into a certain kind of person. What you feast on with your eyes and your ears forms you into a certain kind of person. I'm not saying put your head in the sand. No, read the paper. But just start with the real news and the good news and then move on to all the other news. All the sub-stories of what's happening today. Those are all sub-stories in a larger pot of what's true about God and what's true about us. That was good right there. We intercede. We give ourselves to intercession. It's a practice. Um we contend in prayer, it's it's different than silence. Intercession reminds us that we're participating with Jesus and calling forth a new world. That we're actual active participation uh participants. Communally, we're generous towards one another. Acts, purposeful acts of generosity towards one another remind us that we are not poor in Christ, but we are abundantly rich. Doing things generously and consistently form the kind of person you are. The more generous you are, the more rich you think. Even if it's not true. It actually is true because you're rich in Christ. So the act of generosity, you're retraining, you're rewiring yourself. Same thing with fasting. Fasting reminds us that we have a deeper hunger than our bodies would have us to believe. When we fast, we're reminding ourselves we hunger for something eternal, not just what's temporal. Okay? And all that to say, gathering is the same. The commitment to gather with the saints regularly, with the full heart, not out of duty, but just as a spiritual practice. It reminds us that our best life is not catering to our preferences, but participating in a family. Gathering is how we remind ourselves that God longs to pour out his presence to a people united in his name. When we gather together, especially the days that we aren't quite feeling it, it actually resists the magnetic pull of the world that would love nothing more for us than to just do our own thing. But gathering is way, it is a formational thing. When we gather here, I mean, and we don't even have the time to get into this. All the studies show you're a healthier, happier person if you actually gather regularly with believers. There's actually physiological logical benefits, but even aside from that, gathering reminds us that God has his own vision for what he's doing. And it's not just my personal growth, it's also about us becoming a people together. That's koinonia in Acts when we read about the early church and the type of fellowship. It's this Greek word called koinonia, which actually means shared participation in Christ. It's one of the deepest forms of community. We're not just in the room barely making it, but we're we're we're leaning into relationships that actually can make much of Christ. So all that to say, friends and family, I know that's why you're here today. You're here because you know that intrinsically. But what I'm saying, the reason I'm reminding you of these things, is because we are in a time, we are in an age. And it's gonna be easier just to pull back and to distance and just kind of start to float and kind of drift. I'm kind of I'm just gonna organize my own life around my things. I'm just saying, guys, the days moving ahead, the pre- the the glory of God that he wants to pour out is going to happen in more than just individual pockets. We have not yet seen the type of glory of God that will come together as the people of God come together agreeing to be that we are a royal priesthood and a chosen nation and a people for his possession. I believe that the day is coming and is upon us where as we come together and as we choose to come together and we let the desire of God fill our hearts and overflow into relationships, I just believe that God is going to continue to inhabit, inhabit this earth through people who are deeply covenanted to being part of God's vision for where it's all ultimately going, every tribe and tongue surrounding the throne. And guys, listen to me. We must start practicing this right now. We must start practicing heaven right now. This is our opportunity to do that.