I Declare… His Praises

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)

Chosen, set apart, and redeemed by the blood of Christ—you've been drafted onto God's team to declare His praises.

Chosen for the Team

There's nothing like getting picked for the team. All of us experienced that as kids—standing on the line while two captains chose players, hoping not to get picked last. Every year at the end of April the most-watched team-selection process in the country happens at Radio City Music Hall: the NFL Draft. All 32 teams gather to plan who they'll get and what they're looking for, and every eligible player hopes to go in the first round.

Commentators will tell you that going later in the rounds can be detrimental to a player's career—though that wasn't the case in 2000, when Tom Brady went in the sixth round at pick 199 and everyone thought he'd never do anything. He turned out to be one of the greatest quarterbacks in football. Still, the big money goes in the first round, so we all want to be picked early.

As we come to this passage, we find a truth that should encourage you. Point number one: if you're a Christian, you are chosen by God. People love to argue the finer points of that choosing—how it happens, when it happened, whether God chose us or we chose Him. We're not going to put that centuries-old debate to rest this morning. All we can say for certain is that the Lord has chosen us. If you're not a Christian, become one—put your faith in Christ. But if you are a Christian today, Scripture is very clear that you are chosen by God, set apart as His possession.

A Royal Priesthood

Peter says not only are you a chosen generation, but you are a royal priesthood. Back to the draft: when those 32 teams gather, even though they study individual players—their stats, game film, how they run, tackle, and throw—at the end of the day they're really selecting a position. They come saying, "We need a defensive end, an outside linebacker, a cornerback, a quarterback," and then they look at the pool of guys at that spot.

When the Lord chose you and me, He set us for a position in His kingdom: you are a royal priesthood. That's your position on the team. A priest is one who stands before God on behalf of the people, and before the people on behalf of God—a spokesman for the Lord. Peter is speaking globally to the church: you, the church, are a royal priesthood.

A Holy Nation Set Apart

Thirdly, he says you are a holy nation. Some people stumble at the idea of holiness, but to be a holy nation means to be a people set apart. Point number two: to be holy is to be set apart, not perfect. Don't misunderstand—God does have a plan to perfect us. Paul writes in Philippians 3:12, "Not as though I am already perfected," and in Philippians 1:6 he is confident that God will complete the work He began. Someday, when we see Him, we shall be like Him. None of us are perfect now, but we are holy.

We tend to equate holiness with perfection because God is "holy, holy, holy"—separate from sinners, undefiled. But the idea of holiness here is consecrated, set apart. The word "nation" is the Greek ethnos, a people group set apart. When a team drafts a player, the league doesn't assign him; the specific team selects him. He gets a jersey with his name on the back, marking him as part of that team. God has eklektos—elected—us to be part of His family, His own special people, consecrated to Him.

His Own Special People

Then Peter says you are His own special people. In the 2006 draft the Saints used the second pick on Reggie Bush—"about the only saint they have in New Orleans," I'm told. They looked at all the running backs in the pool and said, "Over and above all of them, we want this one." That's exactly what this text says: you are God's own special people, His possession.

This phrase is hard to translate. The King James says "a peculiar people"—and several hundred years ago "peculiar" didn't mean "strange," though plenty of people who know you probably think you're strange anyway. The New King James says "a special people." The literal sense is "a people over and above the others." However it works in God's providence—whether according to His foreknowledge or His choosing outside of time, a debate we won't enter—the reality is that over and above all others He said, "I want you to be part of My team."

God's Redeemed Possession

Point number three: as a Christian you are God's redeemed possession. The Saints didn't get Reggie Bush for free; they paid a lot of money to redeem him for their team. God has redeemed you—not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

At the end of our service we'll take communion, remembering the night before Jesus was crucified when He took bread—"This is My body, broken for you"—and the cup, "This is the blood of the new covenant." Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, "You are not your own; you've been bought with a price," and again in chapter 7. We are His redeemed possession; He owns us.

Redeemed With a Purpose

All of this is purposeful. Look at the middle of verse 9: "that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light." When an NFL team drafts Peyton Manning, they're drafting him to call plays and lead the offense down the field. When the Chargers drafted Junior Seau, it was to disrupt offenses, force fumbles, sack quarterbacks. When the Lord chose you and set you apart as a priest in His household, He did so for the purpose of declaring His praises.

You may feel you have no major abilities or talents in the draft pool, nothing special about you. But thankfully the work God has called us to is not difficult—it's simply proclaiming the good things a good God has done. We're sometimes ignorant of those good things, and the best way to know them is to get to know Him through Scripture, the playbook. Our task is to declare His goodness, how God has transformed us.

I prefer the translations that say you should proclaim His praises, because it fits the context: He chose you, redeemed you, set you apart, and gave you a position. This is similar to Romans 12, where Paul begs us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, "which is your reasonable service"—your only right response after all the Lord has done. In Ephesians 4 he begs us to "walk worthy of the calling." This is what you're supposed to do.

There's a funny story this season about a Seahawks player who's required by his contract to do interviews but doesn't like to. After being fined, he now just sits there and answers every question, "Yeah, yeah." He was hired not only to run the ball but to do the things he was contracted to do. The Lord has selected us to be part of His team, and we should do what He selected us for.

The translations add weight to the task: proclaim His praises, His excellencies, His goodness, His mighty acts, His wonderful deeds. How can you ever do that if you don't get to know Him by reading His word? You'll never accomplish what He's called you to do without spending time in Scripture. It's a new year—get in the game, get a plan, and read through the Bible. A chapter typically takes about five minutes—unless you're in 1 or 2 Chronicles with those names. Set aside five minutes a day; it'll grow. If life derails your plan, just come back to where you are and keep going. If it takes a year and three months, take it. If it takes five years, take five years. But spend time getting to know who God is, so you can fulfill what He redeemed you to do—to proclaim His praises.

He called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Two weeks from today, in Ephesians 2, we'll look at more of these great things—how we were dead in trespasses and sins, subject to wrath, but now chosen, set apart, and redeemed by the precious blood of Christ.

Declaring His Praises, Not Our Blessings

Point four: our purpose is to declare His excellent goodness and His wonderful works. Some Christians say we need to "declare bountiful blessings" into our lives—there's a number-one bestselling Christian book that teaches this. I want to make it clear: that is nowhere in the Bible that I can find. What we are called to do is declare His praises and how gloriously awesome He is—to make Him famous.

God does not exist to make you and me happy, although one byproduct of glorifying Him is joy; we become more satisfied in God as we make Him great. This teaching about declaring bountiful blessings is just repackaged Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking from another generation—very little Bible. The Bible teaches that Christians are to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

The Priesthood of All Believers

Before we move to verse 10, I want to point out one thing. We American Christians sometimes struggle to interpret Scripture because we individualize every text. Partly that's because we're individualistic people, and partly it's a linguistic problem: in English there is no "you" plural—unless you live in the South, where they have "y'all." So we miss that much of the Bible speaks to us corporately, to the plurality within the church.

Here's how that becomes a problem. We read, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood... that you would proclaim His praises," and we say, "That's about Pastor Josh, Pastor Miles, the elders—not me." But that's not what the text says. You, church, are a chosen generation and a royal priesthood.

This is one of the foundational principles of the Protestant Reformation: the priesthood of all believers. The Reformation grew out of Roman Catholicism, which had entered a dark age where the work of the ministry belonged only to the professionals, the "saints," the set-apart holy ones. But the Bible says all Christians are saints, all are holy, all are set apart, all under this priesthood. You may never have a pulpit—we don't even have a pulpit—but you have a classroom, a construction site, a corporate office, a basketball team, a soccer team you coach, some place in the community where God has placed you to declare His praises. That's your task, not just mine.

Now the People of God

In verse 10 he says, "You once were not a people but now are the people of God." Circle the word the—you are the people of God. That word "a people" speaks of a nation. Nations usually share common forefathers, borders, language, history, and culture. But look around this room—there's a lot of diversity here. Revelation 5 and 7 say that around God's throne there will be people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. There's diversity in the family of God. He has made us who were formerly not a people into the people of God.

Apart from Jesus Christ, you'd never have gotten to know many of the people sitting in your row. Some of them you'd never associate with—maybe you'd even be afraid of them. But in Christ He has made us one. How did that happen? The end of verse 10: "who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." All these great things are afforded to us by His grace and mercy—not because our stats were good. The reality is none of us had very good stats; some of us had negative marks on the stat sheet. It has nothing to do with how great we are and everything to do with how awesome He is.

Created for Connection—and Reconciliation

God created us at the very beginning to live in communion with Him and community with one another. We talk about this a lot at Cross Connection because it's central to who we are. In Genesis 1 and 2, humanity lived in unhindered communion with God and community with one another. But the story doesn't end there. In Genesis 3 the fall devastated both that communion and that community. Ever since—and especially since the prophetic promise of Genesis 3:15—God's plan has been to restore that connection, to bring reconciliation and redemption.

Jesus came 2,000 years ago on a mission from the Father to enact that redemptive, buying-back plan. That's why He instituted communion on the night He was betrayed—He was pointing toward reconciliation, the rejoining of separated parties. Through the fall, humanity was separated from God and from one another; communion and community were lost. But God comes to restore both. That's why our vision at Cross Connection is to experience life in connection with God, with one another, and with the world through Jesus.

In Romans 5:6, "When we were still without strength"—when our stat sheet didn't look so good—"in due time Christ died for the ungodly." God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Being justified by His blood, the cup that symbolizes His blood, we are saved from wrath. When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, and through Him we have now received the reconciliation.

In Ephesians 2:14, Jesus "Himself is our peace, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation," abolishing the enmity, creating in Himself one new man, thus making peace and reconciling both to God in one body through the cross. He preached peace to those far off and those near. So you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Those separations where there is racism and hatred—those are products of the fall. Jesus makes us one.

And He has made us reconcilers. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." God reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors for Christ, imploring people on His behalf: be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Don't Be a Spectator—Get in the Game

In 2015 our aim is that we, the chosen people of God, would experience life in connection with God, one another, and the world to a greater extent—expressing it in how we live and extending it to a world still marked by disharmony and division. We do this through worship, prayer, the study of Scripture, fellowship, communion, baptism, generosity, service, outreach, evangelism, charity, and compassion.

If Cross Connection is your home church, you've been chosen by God and set apart for His team. So point number five: don't be a spectator; get in the game. The Saints didn't hire Reggie Bush to stand on the sidelines—they drafted him to engage. Every drafted player is drafted for a purpose. Next week we'll begin a push for new volunteers. About 200 people here serve regularly, but we need about 120 more just to make Sunday mornings happen. We'll be asking you to step out of your comfort zone and do something you may never have done before.

There are also outreach opportunities this year as we express and extend this connection to our community. Next Saturday, January 10th, from 9 to 10 a.m., we need people to help clean up Seven Oaks Road—you live there, it's your home. There's serving dinner to veterans on January 22nd and 29th, and assembling hygiene kits for the homeless. Email Kelly Kierstead, our director of outreach, for more information.

If you're not a Christian, become one—simply put your trust in Jesus Christ, ask Him to redeem you from your sins, and confess your sin to Him today. As we take this bread, we hold something that symbolically represents that Jesus gave His own body—no one took it from Him. He gave it to ransom us back, to reconcile us to God and to one another, so that we would bring reconciliation to the world. The world cries out for racial reconciliation, but there is no racial reconciliation apart from Jesus Christ. Remember that Martin Luther King was a Christian minister, and his recognition was that these things truly come together in the kingdom of God. Until our nation recognizes that, there will be no real racial reconciliation—it's only found in Christ.

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray that You would work in us as Your church, that this year would be a year of new things for every one of us. May we be stretched out of our comfort zones—to discover who You are by reading Your word, to spend more time before You in prayer, to serve You, and to give of ourselves, our time, and our resources to glorify Your name. Lord, we thank You for Your body that was given and broken for us. You laid it down. You gave Your back to those who would whip You and Your face to those who would strike You, and You did all that so we could be a redeemed and ransomed people unto You. So God, lead us now as we worship Jesus. Amen.