Sunday, February 11- What is our mission?
2024-02-11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx661F8xqqQ

As a result of, chapter 1 ends with, "This is the good news, the gospel that was proclaimed or preached to you." And as a result of the gospel and the good news being proclaimed, Peter says this, "So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy, and on envy and all slander, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 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. Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. 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, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and 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 have received mercy. This is the word of the Lord. And as I was thinking about these things, one of the things that happens is that transformation captures our imagination.

And if you begin to think about those TV shows that feature transformation, you can find transformation in all different kinds of TV shows. We can transform how you look through maybe fashion or what you wear or how you present yourself. You can be transformed by partaking in a reality show where you seek to get fit and to lose weight. You can watch how a house is transformed from this fixer-upper into something that you look at and go, "Man, I would love to live in that house." You can watch how cars are transformed and made different or restored and made new. Just about every category of anything that you would ever want to watch being transformed, you can. And as I was thinking about that, the question that came to my mind is why do we love that transformation so much? Why does it capture my imagination? Why does it capture our imagination?

And I think there's probably a lot of reasons, but underneath them all is this: hope. If that could happen there, then maybe it could happen here. If they can transform themselves like that, maybe I can transform myself. If their house can be transformed, might be mine. If their car, mine. If their job, mine. And at the heart of this fascination we have with watching others be transformed into something new and amazing and exciting is a hope that we could also be transformed. And Peter, what he's doing as he begins chapter 2, is pointing us to the fact that in Christ and through the Gospel, we have been transformed. He begins 1 Peter chapter 1 like this, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

Christ from the dead. And the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus makes us new. He transforms us through Him. We are born again. And I want you to see, and you and I must see and must understand, not just in our heads, but in our hearts, that the good news of Jesus Christ is transformative. That it changes things. That it turns lives upside down. That it's different and more wonderful than anything else we could ever find in the entire world. Every other system of belief and way to seek happiness in our world says, "Work really hard. Do this. Get this. And then maybe you'll be happy. Transform yourself and you'll find peace." But the Gospel of Jesus Christ says that Jesus came into this world like us, and He experienced our sorrows and our weaknesses

and our joys and our temptations and our struggles, and He goes to the cross and He dies in our place for our sins. And on the cross, He says, "It is finished." And He dies for us. He rises again, giving us His victory over sin and death and hell. And He says, "You have been transformed." And the difference between the good news the church has and everything else in the world, as the world says, "Here, go and work for it, and maybe you'll be happy." And the church says, "Through Jesus, you are transformed, and you find peace and are completely changed." And so Peter, in this first part of chapter 2, is going to walk through how God has transformed us. He's going to say, "Here are all the new things that God has brought about in your life. Now here's what

you need to do about it, because of the good news." So briefly, what I want us to do is take a look at all the ways we've been made new in this 10 or so verses, 12 verses, and then I want us to unpack for a little bit what we need to do about it. The first thing Peter says in verse 1, is he will say this, that you and I in Christ have a new way of living. And he starts like this, in verse 1, he'll say, "Put away." Right, the very first words that he comes with are "put away." And it goes back to chapter 1, where he'll say this, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance." And the first thing that Peter says is that we are given a new way of

living, that we put it away. It means to take it off, to get rid of it. I don't know if you've ever seen, speaking of transformational TV shows, if you've ever watched the TV show Hoarders, if you ever really need to clean your house very deeply, watch an episode or two of Hoarders, and first of all, it's going to make you feel better about life, but secondly, it's going to give you this energy to go about deep cleaning everything. And it wasn't long after I moved to Winchester, so this would have been about 20 years ago, and we were helping, me and one of the guys in the church were helping this family. They called, "We need some help moving." Like, "Oh yeah, we can come help move." And we showed up, and it was exactly like you see on the TV show. It was one of the most, I

don't even know how to describe it. It was one of the most traumatic memories. I remember getting home after spending what I thought was going to be two or three hours helping load a moving truck. Twelve hours later, walking into my house, and not going in my front door because there was carpet, and coming through the side door where there was linoleum, and just getting a trash bag. And everything I was wearing, including my shoes, go into the trash bag, and then it goes outside. And I just remember how terrible I felt walking into the house. And as I was thinking, why was I so upset about how dirty and how gross I felt about that? The reason that I felt so bad is because I knew what it felt like to be clean. And so I wanted to take all of this and get rid of it and never touch it

and see it again. And so I took a shower and that one bag of trash, we just went to the landfill because I didn't even want it near me. The gospel shows us the depth of our filth and our brokenness and says, "In Jesus, you have made clean." And as a result, you've been made new. And so Peter says, "Put it away. Get it off. Change how you're living, not through your strength, but through the strength of Jesus." This is what David prays in Psalm 51. As he repents of sin, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." We are transformed to a new way of living, and then we are given a new desire. Peter says like this, "Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation."

Now, there are places in Scripture where milk is used as a contrast to meat in the terms of maturity. Don't drink milk any longer. If you're not a baby, grow up and drink meat. That's not what Peter is doing here. Peter is not using milk as a picture of spiritual immaturity. Peter is using a baby's desire for food as a picture of how God's people should desire what God has to say to us. This is not a comparison between milk being for the new and the immature and meat being for the strong and the mature. This is a picture of desire. Think about a hungry baby. Now, for me, I can kind of distract myself when I'm hungry. I can sometimes, not always, exhibit self-control. Now, I'm going to be real grumpy about it, but if I need to, I can go without eating.

But not a baby. Not an infant. Right? There's no consoling a hungry, hungry infant. There's a desire and a longing. And what Peter is saying is you've been transformed. Not just in how you live, but what you desire. And now, because of this transformation, you desire to know God more deeply and to fill your life with His truth. No longer are you chasing those things that disappear and leave you hungry and empty. But there is a new way of living, and you are nourished by the gospel. Next, Peter points us to a new foundation. In these verses that begin in verse 4 and go down to verse 8, Peter pictures this stone building that's made for the worship and proclamation of God's goodness. Now, this is not a building made of granite or of brick, but of God's people, Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.

And this cornerstone is one that is solid and does not move and does not shift. And the picture here is that everything in life you and I can hope for, apart from Jesus, can be taken from us, can be lost, or can disappear. Everything that we hope in, in this world, other than the goodness of God, can fall apart. But there is one place where we are secure, and that is in Christ alone, our cornerstone. And so here we are, we have a new way of living, a new hunger for the truth of God's word, and we are then placed into this building that cannot be shaken, because it's built upon Jesus. There's a new way of living, a new nourishment, a new foundation, and then we come to this. There is a new community.

In 1 Peter 2, beginning in verse 9, he says this: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, 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." There is this picture, and I want to start at the end and work our way back through the picture of this new community. He says, "Once you weren't a people. You're a bunch of individuals. You're here. You're there. You're Jewish. You're Greek. You're Roman. You're a barbarian." But God just takes those who were not a people and made them a people. And this is deeper than Peter just picturing God bringing a group together. This is a quotation from the book of Hosea.

I don't have time to go there, but read Hosea one and two. And these two pictures, one of not being a people and not having received mercy, are pictured there in this unfaithfulness of Hosea's wife to him and his renaming of his children from no mercy to mercy, from not a people to my people. And you have this picture that by the mercy of God, you and I in our brokenness and sin are brought together into a new community. There's a new family, right? You are a chosen people. The word here for chosen race is genos. It's the same word we get genealogy from, that you are brought into a new family. And you're given this new occupation of the priesthood, but not just a priest, but a child of the king. And you have gone from all of your different nationalities from all throughout the world, and you've been brought into one new group.

No longer Jews or Greeks, but you are one in Christ. And in this, we also see a call back to the book of Exodus, where God says this, "If you will obey my voice," he's speaking to the Israelites, "and keep my covenant, you shall be a treasured possession among the people. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." These are the words you shall speak to Israel. Peter takes those words, just like from Hosea, just like from Isaiah before, and goes, "This is you, that you have been made new into a new family, into a new calling, into a new nation." That you've been made new in terms of your life, in terms of your desires, in terms of the foundation, that we have been made new in terms of the community.

And so the question is, "Okay, great, so what?" Or maybe, "Great, what now?" Is it just simply an intellectual reality for me, that I have been made new in how I've been called to live, or made new into what nourishes my life, or made new in terms of the unshakableness of my hope, and the goodness of those who have gathered around me and with me? Peter says that there is a mission for the church. That for these new people, there is this. The purpose of being made new is this, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. That we may proclaim the excellencies. The mission of God's people individually and of God's church and our church corporately is that we would proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

Simply that we would proclaim Jesus. And at the heart of this proclamation of Jesus, all of it, everything we need in our lives and in the church and in the world is found in this proclamation. Let me just give you one example of how the proclamation of Jesus meets our needs. I know I'm probably not alone in this, but for me, I sometimes struggle to forgive. Probably many of you do, too. Maybe outwardly we can appear that we have forgiven, or maybe outwardly we can appear to be nice and friendly to those who have wronged us, but in the depths of my heart, for me, it is a struggle, and I imagine for you, too, to forgive. It is so easy for me to hold on to my hurts, to hold on to my resentments, to go back over them, driving them more deeply into my heart. It just keeps popping up.

Even when I think that I have forgiven, it comes back. That resentment keeps creeping up. And I think if there is one thing that we are all probably universally good at, it's keeping score of those who have wronged us. Maybe we don't say it. Maybe we don't act like it. But in the back of our mind, I imagine probably most of us struggle with the idea of forgiveness. And so the question, "How do I forgive?" In Ephesians 4, Paul says this: He will say, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." Now that sounds pretty simple. Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. I need to forgive, and I say, "How?" And Paul says, "Well, look at how Christ has forgiven you." I need to proclaim, and to hear it proclaimed by my brothers and sisters in Christ, that Christ has forgiven me, that he has forgiven them, and that because of that forgiveness of Jesus, I am now able to forgive.

And what you find is the proclamation of the good news that Jesus forgives. It's not easy, but it allows me to begin to let go of that resentment. And as I proclaim it to my brothers and sisters in Christ, as we proclaim it to a broken world filled with unforgiveness, saying dive into the wonderful forgiveness that is found in Christ, you will be able to begin to forgive as well. The proclamation of Jesus is not just an idea where we come out and we say, "Hey, listen to Jesus." But if you struggle to forgive, the answer to that is not try harder. It's proclaim Jesus and His forgiveness to your soul. If your friend is struggling to forgive, the answer is not say try harder and forget about it and let it go. It's say proclaim Jesus to the depths and His forgiveness to the depths of your soul.

You see, the proclamation of Jesus fixes everything, not just forgiveness. You struggle to love. Proclaim the love of Jesus to your soul. Hear it proclaimed to your soul. You struggle with generosity. Proclaim Jesus. You struggle with speaking the truth. Proclaim the truth of God through Jesus to your soul, right? The proclamation, not just our proclaiming it to ourselves, but in a corporate gathering where we proclaim it to each other and evangelistically as we go out and proclaim it to the world is what will transform. We have to proclaim. It's not just forgiveness, but freedom from fear, courage, struggling with generosity, with love. All of these things that we encounter are proclaimed in the good news of Jesus. It's all in him. And it may sound like I'm oversimplifying, but the mission of the church is proclamation.

It's proclamation. We proclaim it inward. We proclaim it as we gather together to each other. We proclaim it as we step out these doors. We use it in the church to encourage and correct and help. We share it as we share the gospel in this world. And so we come to this point where we say, I'm supposed to proclaim, the church is supposed to proclaim, because it changes everything. I want to try to define for you in just a moment what is proclamation. Proclamation is simply this: making God's glory known through both our words and our actions. Now, this is so important that we get both of these proclamations. We are called to proclaim. It means proclaiming, telling, speaking, reporting on the good news of Jesus through both our words and our actions, and it has to be both. One or the other, and you lose the gospel. Imagine the apostle Paul, after coming to Jesus,

going into the synagogue to proclaim the good news of Jesus, but still persecuting Christians. You say it didn't make a difference in his life. You have to have the words and the actions, or the early church, as they feed those who are hungry, as they ministered to widows and orphans, but never opened their mouth about Jesus. You're going to look at them and go, "Those are some great, nice people." But you're never going to see Jesus. The proclamation that the church and that we as individuals are called to is that we proclaim the good news of Jesus through both our words and through our actions. If it's words only, we're going to be hypocrites. If it's actions only, the message will never be received. In fact, just a couple of verses from now, Peter will say that they see your good deeds and glorify your

Father in heaven. We're given a mission, and that mission is proclamation. That you and I as a church are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus. Make it known through both our words and our actions in here. That's what we're going to talk about in the next couple of weeks. And then after that, what that means to do that outside these doors. That's where we're going. So if you're a Christian this morning, here's what I want you to take home with you. In Mark chapter five, there is this remarkable story, and I don't have time to tell it, but Jesus and his disciples encountered a man filled with demons. He's living in a graveyard. He's not wearing any clothes. He's been chained up, but he's too strong. He's cut himself. Jesus casts out all of his demons. And when the villagers come, they

find the crazy demon-possessed guy who's been running around naked in the hills, wearing clothes, sitting at Jesus' feet and listening. And the town and the village is so scared, they tell Jesus to go away. And Jesus says, "Okay." And this demon-possessed guy looks at Jesus, and he goes, "I want to go with you." And it's understandable. Jesus has just saved you, not just from a demon. When Jesus asked the demon, "What is his name?" He says, "Legion, for we are many." Not just one. You can't name us all. We just have a number. This guy wants to go with Jesus. Listen to what happens. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. He wants to go with Jesus. And he,

that's Jesus, did not permit him, but said this, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you." And he went away and began to what? Proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And everybody marveled. And this area where Jesus gets kicked out the next time he comes back to this side, to the Decapolis, this Greek area. There's crowds waiting to see Jesus. You see what Jesus said to him? "Go home and tell them how much the Lord has done for you." So here's what, if you're a Christian and a part of our church here this morning, where we want to start, and what I want you to take home with you is go home and tell how much the Lord has done for you.

Let me give you a couple of ways in which we can begin to do that. First of all, we need to sit and consider, "What has God done for me?" Because we all have an answer to that question, and oftentimes our first answer is, "Well, what has God done for you?" But as we begin to sit, and as we begin to think, and as we begin to see God's leading and working in our life, right? What's that old song we used to sing? Count your many blessings, sing them one by one, count your blessings, see what, anybody remember? See what God has done? Right? The first thing before we proclaim is we've got to sit and see the good work of God. And then I want you to take that good work of God, what He's done for you, and I want you to pray about it.

And not just, "Hey, thanks for what you've done," but pray specifically for this. Opportunities to share the good news of what God has done in your life. And the courage to take those opportunities when they arise. There's some times where I'm really good going, "Oh, there's an opportunity to talk about Jesus." And later that night I'm sitting in bed going, "Man, I wish I would have said something about Jesus." So count what God has done for you. And it can be big or it can be small. And then pray that you have the opportunity and the courage to share that. And then I think this might be the biggest part. You've got to do it. When it comes, look at what God has done for me. Look how He saved me and how He raised me, how He gave me His Spirit.

If you're not in Christ this morning, I want you to know that there is a different way to live. There's a new way of living that leaves behind the brokenness, that sets aside the filthiness of your sin, that gives you a hunger for something that satisfies, that builds your love on a rock, and that brings you into a community of people who love you and who are near you. And this morning, this text in Peter for the church is a mission. It's to proclaim, "What has God done for me? Where are my opportunities to share it? Do I have the courage?" And then doing it, but it's also an invitation. They say, "There is one who makes all things new, who takes away all of your brokenness, who does through by taking your place on the cross,

who rises for your victory, and all of your hope is in Him." Right? This is the message that we proclaim, and this is the message that we invite you to this morning. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Jesus. Lord, you have done so much for us. In our church, you have sustained us as a small group. You've provided for us at every turn. You have encouraged us, and in the dark times, you have strengthened us. We ask this morning that you would energize us for this mission of proclamation, that we would, as we gather together, proclaim the good news to one another, that we would encourage, that we would help, that we would correct each other, that we would stir one another up to love and to good works, and that we would proclaim in this world, through both our words and our deeds,

the glorious good news of your marvelous excellencies. I thank you for all that you have done for us. May we proclaim it for your glory.