Written to a People, Not a Person
Last week we talked about how where we're going decides how we travel. Today we're looking at 1 Peter chapter 2, and at what we're being made into. Before we start, let me pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you've given it to us, that we have it, that we can read it, that we can look to it for wisdom, and that we can glean all sorts of truths from it. And ultimately, Lord, that it is written to help us, to lead us, to guide us into glory, to become more and more like you, going from one degree of glory to the next, as your Scripture says.
So, Holy Spirit, would you be in this place this morning? Would you speak to us? Would you minister to us through your word and through this sermon, Lord? But would we ultimately hear from you this morning? Would you be our minister? Amen.
Here we go. Before we start in chapter 2, I want to go back, because I want us to remember who this letter is written to "" who the letter of 1 Peter is written to. If you recall, it starts like this: "To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia."
We notice immediately that it isn't written to, I don't know, Simon in Galatia. It's written to God's elect. It's written to a people "" to a people as a whole.
So everything we read this morning, we need to read in that context and with that understanding: it's written to a church, not to a Christian. It's written to a people, not a person. That is who Peter is writing to.
And that's important, because as we explore 1 Peter chapter 2, what we come to realise is that God is building a people. God is building a people "" and you as an individual, and me as an individual, we are not the whole building. We'll explore what that means and what that looks like as we go.
The Cost of Self-Definition
If you ask the culture — the dominant culture outside the walls of the church — if you ask the culture who you are, you will get an interesting answer. You will get answers about how you are the central point, how you are self-made, self-defined, self-sufficient. You will get answers about how you need to follow your heart, how you need to trust your gut, how you need to find your truth, how you need to do you. Have you heard that one? You do you.
There's a song about it. You can do you, so I can do me.
I want to ask you a question this morning: how's that working out? How's that going? Because it seems to me — and the statistics bear this out as well — that fewer people in our culture really belong to anything anymore. Fewer of us turn up for anyone anymore.
The clubs, the choirs, the committees, the Saturday picnics in the park with the community — mostly gone. Shared experience, mostly gone. Pride in who we are together, mostly gone. And what's left is a people who are free, but on their own.
I have some statistics for you about volunteering in this country. This isn't to do with church; it isn't church volunteering. This is just generic volunteering in the community for any purpose. The question is about how many people volunteer once a month or more. Ten years ago, that figure sat at 27 adults in every hundred who volunteered at least once a month to something as part of their community. Last year, that figure stood at 17. So there's been a significant drop-off in engagement with community.
Now, the Bible speaks into this. First Peter chapter two speaks into this. And the Bible says something that the culture finds incredibly offensive. Should we go there? It's not too offensive — it's not one of the hot topics. We'll get there. We'll get there. But the Bible says something that the culture finds offensive.
You need to know that you matter enormously to God. You matter enormously to God. He knows your name. He chose you. He died for you.
But you also need to know this: you are not the focal point. You are not the focal point.
Load-Bearing Stones In God's Building
You are a stone in a wall. You are a stone in a wall.
The world says that you are the whole building — that you are self-contained, that you are everything that matters. But Peter says that you are a load-bearing part of something much bigger than you. So let's look at what each of those means.
What does it mean to be the whole building? It means that you, in yourself, are the foundation. You are the walls, you are the roof, you are the architect, the builder, and the material — all coming together to make this building, all in one person. Every load in your life runs through you. And when one part of it fails, there is nothing underneath it.
So what do we get from Peter in 1 Peter, when he talks about us being a load-bearing part of a bigger creation? Firstly, it is not small, and it is not anything less than you might think. Picture a wall, if you like — picture a load-bearing wall.
Someone told me a story this morning. Who was it? Steve? No, Riddian. He was talking about a load-bearing wall. He had a friend who wanted to remove a wall in his house. So he did — and it turned out it was load-bearing. The upstairs became the downstairs rather quickly. That's really suboptimal! But that's the point: if you take a load-bearing wall out, the building comes down.
But also, a load-bearing wall only means something when it's inside something bigger. A wall by itself is just a wall; it isn't bearing any load. What is around it gives it context and gives it purpose. Does that make sense? Church, are you with me this morning?
So it runs both ways. As a load-bearing part of something bigger, I hold weight up — but I can't carry everything by myself. What is carried either side of me is carried by others.
We need to know that we are not the whole building. Peter actually has a different categorisation for what we are, and he goes on to explain it.
Living Stones Built Into A Spiritual Household
Thanks, Dad. Now, just look at the room that we're in. We're in a school hall, and we've got the chairs which were put out this morning and will be put away after the service. We come into this place and we turn it into a church every Sunday, and then we turn it back into a school.
But ultimately this is a place that belongs to somebody else, doesn't it? It doesn't belong to us. Roughly eight weeks from now, we're going to be in a building of our own, which is super, super exciting. But we need to know that we are no less the church today than we will be when we're in our own building. We are no more the church when we're in our new building.
And Peter is writing this letter to a people who have no property, no standing, no protection — a people who ultimately have nothing. In eight weeks' time for us, there will be something, won't there? There will be keys — well, we already have the keys — but there will be this place that we're walking into, because we will have made a declaration approximating that the building is finished. And I'll use air quotes for that. In eight weeks' time we might be able to say the building is finished, but we need to know that we are not. The building might be finished, but you are not. We are not, as the church.
So we haven't got this building yet. We're not in it yet. And Peter's readers hadn't either. So watch what Peter calls the people he's writing to in 1 Peter 2:4:
"As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house."
We are not the builder. We are the material, and we're being built together. Now, before Peter says anything about you or me or his audience, he says something about Jesus. He calls Jesus the living stone. There are two parts to that. A stone is something solid. Do we know that? It's immovable; it's load-bearing. But he also uses the word "living." It's not a monument, it's not a relic, it's not a memory. There is something active about this stone.
And then he says that this living stone, Jesus, is rejected by humans. Peter watched this happen directly. He watched the rejection of Christ, and he had a go at stopping it. Remember the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane? He had a crack at it. But then, even after that, he denied that he even knew Jesus three times. So Peter isn't guessing at rejection. He tried to stop it, and then he participated in it.
And yet this rejected living stone is chosen by God. This "chosen by God" idea is the same choosing, the same active participation in choosing, that is used about us in chapter 1, verse 1. So Jesus is rejected by the people but chosen by God. And you are rejected by the people but chosen by God.
Now, the culture's rule is simple. It's how culture operates, and we know this; we live it out whether we're in the church or not. It says this: if you're rejected by the culture, by society, it's because you were wrong. It's because you didn't fit in. But Peter puts this rejected stone at the very center of what is happening, at the corner of everything — which is so countercultural to what we see around us. This idea that that which is rejected becomes the cornerstone, that the first will be last, that the kingdom of heaven works in this opposite dynamic.
So we have this picture of this living stone. Now, a stone or a brick by itself is — can we say it, church? — fairly useless. We can say that. By itself, a brick is fairly useless. You could use it as a doorstop if you want, or a paperweight. It's doing a job, but it's not the job it was built to do, the job it was created to do. It really becomes what it was created for when it's set into something bigger — in line with others doing a similar thing, bearing weight and taking weight off the one next to it, the one above it, the one under it. The purpose of the brick is ultimately fulfilled when it's set where it needs to be among the rest.
And so we see this spiritual house taking shape. Now, the word for house is oikos. Do we have a word study for that? I can't remember if I did one. No. Oikos. Say it: oikos. That's Greek for you — you're welcome.
A spiritual oikos is not a structure; it is a household. It's more akin to the word "dynasty." You know when you hear the phrase "the House of Windsor"? They're not really talking about a physical building. They're talking about a dynasty, a family, one that comes together under a name. That's the word oikos being used here — a spiritual oikos, a spiritual dynasty founded here.
And what is occurring, the Scripture says, is that this verb is passive. We are being built into this spiritual oikos, this spiritual house. We are being built. It is actually being done to us. We are the ones being built, but we are not doing the building. And in fact it is happening to all of us at the same time. We're not being individually built; we're being built together as this spiritual dynasty. And it's an ongoing process that is not yet finished.
So there's actually quite a lot wrapped up in this very short and simple Scripture, because it rejects individualism from the start — which is the ideology promoted by culture. It rejects individualism and says, no, you are part of something bigger. You're not the focal point. And together you are being built into a spiritual dynasty by somebody else. It's nothing to do with you. It's an ongoing process. It's not yet finished. There is so much in this Scripture that we can extract and understand.
Because if we build ourselves — you will find, I will find, I have found, and you probably have found — that when we try to build ourselves, it is an exhausting endeavor. It's ultimately also a pointless endeavor, but it's exhausting even while we're doing it. But being built, as we allow ourselves to be built, continues even when we can't hold ourselves up. We can't do that ourselves. And so we are each a brick placed into what he calls this spiritual house.
Now, it's really interesting that Peter talks about this spiritual house, because at the time Peter is writing 1 Peter, the temple in Jerusalem is still standing. It's the second temple, but it's still there. It's still standing, and the Jews around at the time are still going to the temple. This is where Peter would have gone as well, because Peter was Jewish. In fact, all the disciples, including Christ himself, were Jewish. So they have this temple, this central part of the community — and not just the community, but the central part of their entire worldview, their entire ideology. This temple is right at the center.
And so Peter uses this temple language, but he's actually rejecting the temple. He's saying something else is being built. Something else is being built that is no longer about the temple. It's no longer about the building. But now, in fact, you yourselves, we ourselves, are being built into this spiritual house. Why?
A Royal Priesthood, Not Individual Priests
"...to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
Now, church, we read this kind of scripture, don't we? We put it on the fridge, we put it on the mirror: we're a royal priesthood. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Has anyone heard that before? Yes, we're a royal priesthood. And it is nice. It's part of our Christian culture. It's part of our understanding of the Scripture.
But what Peter is declaring here is monumentally significant. It's massive. It's massive because of the role of a priest in the Jewish tradition, which is where the majority of his audience would be coming from. The role of a priest is set apart. It's holy. It is so unbelievably significant in where they are and what they are doing. It's the holy of holies. If we were Catholic, it's the sort of reverence we might attach to the Pope. There's no way that you could be the Pope. You can't be the Pope. Can you be the Pope? No, you can't be the Pope, largely because you have to be Catholic to be the Pope. There are probably some other requirements as well. I don't really know much about the papacy. There you go — I've demonstrated that point for you wonderfully.
But it's like the distance between a regular Catholic person on the street and the Pope — or probably even more than that. And so for Peter to declare that you are a priesthood, that you are the priesthood, that this is no longer something reserved for the super-duper holy, but instead now you are the priesthood, every one of us part of this holy priesthood, each one of us offering sacrifice — that is staggering.
And I want us to notice again, because this is a theme running throughout this passage, that he doesn't say "priests." He doesn't say you are priests, does he? He doesn't say you are individual priests. He says you people are a priesthood. One body, not a collection of individuals, but one priesthood. Again, Peter is rejecting individualism. He's rejecting it outright. He isn't speaking to individual Christians; he's speaking to a people. He's speaking to the church, and he's declaring that they are a priesthood, a royal priesthood, a holy priesthood.
And we know, as we read the Scriptures, as we read the Old Testament and understand the role of a priest, that a priest is never a priest for themselves. You can't be a priest to yourself, because the role of a priest is to stand in the gap between the people and the Lord. A priest takes the requests, the sacrifices, the communications of the people and presents them to the Lord.
As a side note, a prophet operates in the reverse direction: he hears from the Lord and then explains that to the people. So the priest goes up, and the prophet comes down. That's what we understand from the Old Testament.
So a priest's role, and a priesthood's role, is to take that which comes from the people and present it to the Lord. It's not done on behalf of themselves. It's done on behalf of the people — standing between God and somebody else, praying for people who aren't you, interceding for people who aren't you, presenting requests for people who aren't you.
You can't be a priest to yourself. Did you know that you are called a priesthood, that you are called part of a priesthood, and yet you can't be a priest for yourself? Because we're not individuals. We are one house, and each of us is a part of it.
The Cornerstone That Measures Every Life
Then we read from verse 6: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, "the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and, "a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall."
Peter quotes the Old Testament scriptures three times in this passage, and the central point of this scripture is this: Christ is the stone that every life is measured from. Let me explain what I mean.
When we say cornerstone, we all know the phrase, don't we? If you've been a Christian two minutes, you know the phrase cornerstone. You know the song "Cornerstone" — I do like that one. And when we think of this cornerstone, we often think, "Oh, that's the really important bit of the building." That's how it's been explained to us before.
But the Greek word for cornerstone is more precise than that. It's the word akrogoniaios. It's formed from two Greek words. The first is akros, which means the outermost point, the very tip. It's actually the root of words like acrobat — and Acropolis, the city on a hill. The second is gonia, which means angle or corner. It's where we get words like diagonal.
So this is the stone at the outermost angle. Not necessarily the biggest, not necessarily the prettiest, but it is the stone which is the point at which everything starts.
The cornerstone of a building does three jobs at once. First, it is load bearing. It is where two walls come together, and there is significant weight and load on that stone from both directions.
Second, it sets the angle and the direction of the building. If the cornerstone is mislaid, then every course of bricks that follows from it will be wrong. It might not look wrong in the first few metres, but when you get to the end of a wall twenty metres long, it's out by three feet — and everyone's crying about it at that point.
Third, it is a reference stone. As stonemasons lay stones for a building, they measure against the cornerstone. They don't measure against the stone that came before it. They go back to the cornerstone and make sure everything is plumb with the cornerstone. Every stone is measured from the same corner. That's what makes it a wall and not just a pile of rocks. One corner, from which everybody draws the same reference, and which carries both walls.
You can change nearly anything in a building. You can change the doors, the paint colour, the roof, the layout. You can change most things. But you cannot change the cornerstone without taking down the whole building.
So Peter is drawing this imagery of a cornerstone on which this spiritual house is being built. And as I say, he quotes the Old Testament three times: first from Isaiah, then from the Psalms, and then Isaiah again. And we get this Old Testament picture of who this cornerstone is.
Isaiah calls him a tested stone — this stone being tested before he was trusted. Last week we talked about how our faith is tested, didn't we? When we're on our journey, when we're walking through and we face various things. Peter is talking about persecution; Peter is talking about all sorts of things that can come against us. And this week we read that the stone on which our spiritual house is built has also been tested.
And then we learn that the builders reject him. Rejecting a stone is the builder's job. As a stonemason builds, finding the stones that aren't going to fit is his work. It is the job of the builder to reject. So the professionals look at this stone and they bin it, because it isn't what they were expecting. It isn't what they were expecting — which I find very interesting.
Everything in your life is measured by something. The question is not whether or not you have a cornerstone, because we all do. The question is, what is that cornerstone? What is your life measured by? What is setting the angle? What is the reference point?
I love drawing the distinction between what the Scripture says and what the culture says, because the difference is fairly vast. The culture will declare that the cornerstone of your life is really you. You are the cornerstone. Follow your heart, trust your gut, live your truth. And so we construct these cornerstones out of how I feel on a Tuesday, and that becomes the reference for my life.
But feelings are responses to our situations and circumstances, aren't they? And they change. Whereas a stone does not.
A Chosen People, Built Together
Here's the message this morning. We had a leadership meeting on Wednesday — no, we didn't, it was Monday. And we were talking about the importance and the significance of community, and how we are the church.
And it's fascinating, because the conversation came out of — can I be honest with you, Church? The conversation came out of pain on Monday. It came out of hurt.
It was our first leadership team meeting back after the summer, and it's been a busy summer for many of the leadership team. Alex and Sally started fostering, and we're back to work after a year of maternity leave. We've just done Awaken and had another baby as well. So we're all fairly tired, doing this building as well. There's just a lot going on. There's a lot going on.
And so I started this leadership team meeting and I said, "All right, let's just have a chat. Let's just talk about our summers. How did it all go?"
And some stuff came up that was sore about community in our church — and, can I be honest, the lack thereof. That was felt at the top of the leadership. We're a church that's doing great things, doing awesome things. The Lord is blessing us with opportunity. Well, we've had opportunity from the start, haven't we? In this place, we talk about this new building, and it is awesome, and I'm so excited about it, because it's going to open up even more. But even in this place, while we've been here, there's so much opportunity to build relationship with the community and the school and what have you — and that opportunity will increase.
So we do so much, and we see the ministry that's going on, and the work with the King's School. There's just so much, and there will be more, and there will be more. But it came out of this leadership team meeting on Monday: okay, but what about the community? Does it feel like we're doing this together? Does it feel like we're journeying together? Does it feel like we are one people together, built together in this spiritual dynasty?
And I find it fascinating that this all came out of a question: "Hey, guys, how are we doing?" Then I thought, don't ask unless you're ready to hear the answer. We've got to be honest, haven't we?
And then this week — this teaching series that we're in is in the book of 1 Peter. There's this letter written to a church that's on its way to do some incredible things. That seems familiar. And it's addressing community. It's addressing the oneness of the church. It's addressing the rejection of individualism. It's addressing genuinely being built together, bricks side by side, taking weight, bearing load — not just fulfilling a purpose, but actually being built into something that helps and assists one another.
And the two are unrelated, because I planned this series a few weeks ago and then just asked a question at a leadership team meeting. And it seems that when I opened the Scripture to preach from 1 Peter chapter two this week, I thought, "Okay, so this is what we were talking about on Monday, then." It's funny how that works, isn't it? It's funny how that works.
You are a chosen people. We are a chosen people. You're not an individual. I'm sick of what the world says. It's boring, and it's wrong, and it's destructive, and it's stupid. You're not an individual. You're a chosen people. We are a chosen people. "A royal priesthood, a holy nation" — listen — "God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."
Once you were not a people. Once you were not a people. Once you were an individual. Much of the world, much of society and the culture, is still living as an individual. It's painful. It hurts.
Once you were not a people; you were a person. But now you are the people of God.
Thank you, Lord.
A Holy Nation Sent Among The Nations
Thank you, Lord. Where's this bit? It says this: "Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."
We are a chosen people who have been sent out, the Scripture says, among the pagans. Now the actual Greek here is very interesting — I love this stuff. The word is *ethnos*. In fact, in this verse it is the plural form, and "among the pagans" would be better translated "among the nations." It's *ethnesin*, which means the nations, the plural of *ethnos*.
So we are a nation under God. That's what the word means — a people, a nation, an *ethnos* under God — who is sent out among the nations to declare his praise and declare his glory, so that one day they would acknowledge who he is. That's our job. That's our purpose. But we do it together.
Don't hear what I'm not saying. But you can't declare the praises of God by yourself. It takes a church to do that. It takes the holy nation, the royal priesthood. And so there is much that can be said here.
There is much that can be said, and I want to know, church, how we are going to build community in this place. Can I be honest with you? I don't have the answers for that. I'm just going to be honest with you this morning, because I feel like it's the best way to be. Community building is not my strength. I am an introvert. I will study the Scripture, and I can teach the Scripture when I'm not having a moment — but I'm not great at community. I'm really not.
But it's not just me, is it? It's not just me. This is not my church. I'm just a guy here who is willing to do the preaching. We're all in this church. We're all the royal priesthood. We're all a nation, an *ethnos*, under God.
And so I want to encourage all of us to be active in the pursuit of building community. And like I say, I don't know exactly what that looks like. Someone do a barbecue? I don't know. But we're in this pursuit together — to declare his glory, to declare his praises among the nations out there.
And we can only do that from this acknowledgement of who we are and where we sit: a rejection of individualism, and an acknowledgement of where we belong in this holy nation. So we're going to sing. I think we should do that, and declare his praises. Amen.
