“Israel Matters”

A sermon based upon 1 Peter 2: 4-12

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

14^th Sunday After Pentecost, September 24th, 2017,    (Series:  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)

I once had the opportunity to walk through a Jewish cemetery, located in the village of Furstenberg, a small village surrounding the city where we lived in eastern Germany.  As I walked around, I noticed that some of the tombstones noted how the person did not die a normal death.   They died in German concentration camps like Auschwitz, Buckenwald, Dachau, or Sachenhausen. 

On one particular stone, I noticed that a man had been a decorated German war hero in World War I.  But when Hitler came to power he was treated sub-humanly, like millions of other Jewish men, women and children.  No matter that Germany was also this man’s ‘Fatherland’, because he was Jew, he was treated as a criminal and hauled away to Auschwitz to be murdered along with 6 million other Jews.

To force themselves to remember such cruelty, many German Baptist Christians had Menorah’s in their homes, reminding them to pray that such inhuman atrocities would never happen again in Germany, or in any other part of the world.   How could a land that called itself Christian, ever commit such war crimes?  How could people who had built some of the most beautiful churches in the world, and worshiped the ‘prince of peace,’ turned against the people who were the same race of Jesus Christ? How could one single Christian ever forget that Israel matters?

As we continue to think about our ‘missionary’ calling as part of the church of Jesus Christ, we need to understand that our mission and God’s saving purpose is also rooted in God’s choice of Israel to be his ‘own’ chosen people.  

BUT YOU ARE A CHOSEN RACE…

In the text before us, writing directly to Jewish Christians (not Gentile Christians), Peter uses the word ‘chosen’ several times.  First, he speaks of Jesus as a ‘living stone’,… rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight…’ (4). Without the choice of Israel, there would have been no Jesus.  Even though it was the Jewish religious leaders who crucified Jesus and the Jewish crowd who ‘rejected’ Jesus, Jesus is ‘chosen’ and ‘precious’, just as the Jewish people are still ‘chosen and precious’.

The second time Peter this word ‘chosen’ (6), he speaks of how Jesus was raised from the dead, making him the ‘cornerstone’ of all saving faith.   ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner”(7).  But also, in an even stranger statement Peter says that Jesus is also ‘A stone that makes them stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’  Why this happens, is the most outrageous statement of all: “They stumble because they disobeyed the word, as they WERE DESTINED TO DO’ (8).  

Peter is not this kind of thinking, because this is the same thing Paul wrote to the Roman Christians: ‘Through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles’ (Rom. 11:11).  Salvation is why God allowed (or ‘appointed’ KJV) Israel to reject Jesus: ‘In regards to the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors;  for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.  (Rom. 11:28-29 NRS).  What Peter and Paul are saying is that what happened to Jesus is how God works out His saving purpose.  Recall his previous word to the Romans,  “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  For those he foreknew he also predestined to conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family….(Rom. 8:28-29)….‘God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew’ (11:1). God does not take back his promise.   Instead, God has established through Israel’s rejection a ‘remnant, chosen by grace’ (11:6) so that someday, God can ‘be merciful to all’ (11:31) and ‘all Israel will be saved’ (11:26).  

This is some of the most beautifully inspired thoughts about our saving God.  God wants to save people.  Some people don’t want what God wants, so they reject God and his saving purpose.   God does not reject people, but some don’t want what God wants.    God chooses people.  God chooses because he wants to save more and more.  God will always have a ‘chosen’ people.  But to accept God’s choice which can be us too, we must learn to want what God wants.

This learning to desire or want what God wants is at the heart strange Old Testament word which Paul quotes in Romans 9:13, which has God saying, ““I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau” (see also Malachi 1:2).   How do we say God wants to save more and more when Scripture has God saying “I have hated Esau”?  What we have to understand that this is not about God’s feelings, this is about God’s purpose.  As the Firstborn, Esau did not want what God wanted.  Esau wanted to spend his life hunting and fishing, rather than lead God’s people in God’s saving purpose.  So, God choose to channel his love through Jacob, rather than Esau.  Jacob was no better than Esau, in fact, Jacob’s name means deceiver.  This ‘love’ relished on him was not about ‘works’, but it was about grace and it was about Jacob’s desire to be a part of God’s saving purpose.  Jacob wanted what God wanted. 

Do we want what we want, or do we desire what God wants?  This is key to being chosen by God to take part in his saving purpose.  But to do this, we will often have to change our wants.   We will have to make adjustments, adapt, and alter our plans.  A great example of how this might work in our lives, is what happened to Lewis and Clark, the great early American explorers of the Northwest.  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were commissioned by President Jefferson, to find where the Mississippi River ran into the Pacific Ocean.  They took their team and canoed up that great river, with the help of native guides.  But instead of paddling their canoes to the Pacific, they ended up, as one writer says, ‘canoeing the mountains.’  Of course, they didn’t actually canoe the mountains, because they ran out of water when they were the very first Americans to reach the Rockies.  

When they found the mountains, rather than the ocean,  Lewis and Clark could have turned around and come home, because they did get what they wanted, nor what President Jefferson wanted.   Instead, they decided to change what they wanted, and they found something just as good, maybe better than a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean.   They found more land, more beautiful, wild, mountainous land, than they had ever imagined.  They also discovered the potential of amazing natural resources.  They also established potentially good relations with the native Americans.  They didn’t get what they wanted, but they learned to change their wants and got much more (From Tod Bolsinger’s, Canoeing the Mountains).

YOU ARE GOD’S OWN PEOPLE

What wonderful new discovery will we uncover about us, when we learn to change our own wants to what God wants?   Speaking directly to those Jews who accepted God’s saving choice in Jesus, reminds them of who they have become when they have learned to want what God wants: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (v.9).   In the richness of this one verse, those ‘accept’ God’s choice; become ‘God’s own people’.  By accepting God’s choice of Jesus, God’s saving will and purpose in Jesus is now passed on to them, as they learn (are disciple) in learning what God wants.  Now, they too have become part of God’s saving people.  Now, they join God’s saving mission as they have been ‘chosen’ to choose what God wants.

Consider this most interesting idea that Christians, followers of Jesus, God’s choice, are now ‘chosen’ to choose what God wants.  We have a lot of ‘wants’ in this world, but now, when we accept Jesus we are called to ‘learn’ to make even better choices with our lives.  In Jesus, we are chosen to change our wants so we too, will learn to choose what God wants.  As Peter goes on to quote Hosea: ‘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.”   This is who we are in Christ, but then, Peter continues: “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. (1 Pet. 2:10-11 NRS).  What this means is in Jesus Christ, we also chosen by God’s saving purpose, but we also, in addition, chosen FOR God’s saving purpose, as we choose to continue to learn to want God wants. 

What is our learning to choose what God wants all about?  Why does it matter?  The answer comes as Peter names ‘God’s own people’ as a ‘royal priesthood’.   Now, we b Baptists don’t have priests, like the Catholic Church does.   We can now see the failure of that all over the recent moral failures within the scandals of the American Catholic Priesthood.  No, we don’t have priests, because we don’t need priests.  We already have the “High Priest” who is Jesus Christ.   All we need is Pastors who shepherd us to become ‘priests to each other’, as great Baptist preacher Carlyle Maurney put it.  Because of God’s saving choice, and as when we learn to choose what God chooses, we become, as Peter says,  ‘a holy priesthood’ offering ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’ (v.9). 

All this religious, Old Testament, priestly language, may sound archaic,  but we need to realize again, that our call to choose to ‘be priests to each other’ is at the very heart of what it means to be a biblical Christian.  This is what Baptists have always intended to emphasize in our understanding of the ‘the priesthood of all believers’.    God’s people Israel, were originally called to become a ‘perpetual priesthood’ (Ex. 40:15) as a ‘priestly nation’ (Ex. 19:6).  But when Israel wanted to be ‘like other nations’,  they choose ‘politics’ of ‘priesthood’, rejecting God to be their King (1 Sam 8:1ff).  Israel was not called to be or do like everyone else, but as God told Moses, ‘They are to obey my voice and keep my covenant” so they can be God’s treasured possession out of all the peoples.  “Indeed, the whole earth is mine,” God said to Israel, “but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5-6 NRS).  Israel was chosen to have a different purpose for the world, rather than be like the rest of the world. 

Now, however, with Israel’s rejection of Jesus, the mission of being a ‘royal priesthood’ has come to those who follow Jesus.  But guess what?  We also have to choose God’s choice of us too.   The mission is not automatically given to us, nor is the success of the mission, unless we learn to choose to want what God wants.  As God told Israel, ‘Indeed, the whole earth is mine’…(Ex. 19:6).  We too can choose to get involved in politics, or many other causes, purposes, or ‘desires of the flesh’ in this world  (1 Pet. 2:11). But God has called us to choose to be part of his saving purpose and his saving mission, but we have not only want what God wants, we have to choose to be the mission oriented people God wants us to become in Jesus Christ.    

The point in all this is that God always needs ‘a people’.   The saving, redemptive, and reconciling mission and ministry of God cannot be accomplished without ‘a people’.  This is why God chose Israel.  This is why God chose Jesus.  And this is also why God ‘choses’ us ‘to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.’  Even God cannot do His saving work without ‘a people’.  God has shown his saving ‘mercy’ to us, not just to save us, but to reveal his mercy and save more and more. 

THAT YOU MAY PROCLAIM GOD’S MIGHTY ACTS (9b).

Finally, notice the great reason God’s chooses people.  Peter says, “You are a chosen race….in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light…. (9).   Peter’s point is clear: God’s salvation and God’s light come to you to share with others. 

Of course, the question of our age is not, whether or not we are ‘chosen’, but what are the ‘mighty acts of him’?   It is becoming more and more difficult for even the most devout Christian or believer to see the need of God in this world.  Recently, I read of a major evangelist’s son,  Bart Campolo, who traveled with his evangelist Father all over the world, even starting his own gospel outreach ministry among the poor, who recently left ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in God altogether.  He now works as a Humanists minister, doing everything he did before, ‘without need of God’, he says.  Most interestingly, he explained that he did not ‘chose’ to leave his faith, but his faith left him.

Maybe the answer, ‘MY FAITH left me’ is most revealing.  When Peter said ‘to those ‘who believes’ (2:7), Jesus is still ‘precious’, concludes with ‘why’ Jesus and faith in God is still ‘precious’ to us.  We see in Jesus, and now in us, something God does, that we could never do on our own.  What is that?

Well, think about these terrible Hurricanes lately, Harvey and Irma.  People can lose faith in God, when they live through or consider the terrible wrath of such storms.  Such destructive powers can destroy most everything you consider ‘precious’.   But what if what is most ‘precious’, goes beyond the things loss in such a great catastrophe?  What if, in a great storm, maybe even in a spiritual ‘hurricane’, you discover something even more precious than your own life?   A good example is what I heard during the coverage of Hurricane Harvey from Houston.  They interviewed a black man who was using his boat, or truck to help rescue people.  He said, and I quote: “I’ll keep on trying to save people until ‘this thing blows over.’  Did you catch that?  In the midst of the worst of times is revealed the best of people!  And do you know something else, ‘this ‘thing’ hasn’t blown over yet.  Life still needs those who are ‘chosen’ to ‘choose’ to become whom God has chosen them to be.

Today, ‘until this thing called life blows over’,  we are God’s chosen people just like Israel is.  In the midst of all ‘the wars’ still waging against body and ‘soul’ (11), we are God’s chosen to ‘proclaim’ in word and deed, what this ‘marvelous light’ from God now means.  As the song says, “It only takes a spark, to get a fire going.”   One single person can be ‘spark’ the fire for the God who is love and the source of our life.  Will you be that spark?  Will you show and share that light?  How do you choose? Amen.