SPEAKER: DAVID MITCHELL

PASSAGE: 1 PETER 2:4-10

KINGS AND PRIESTS

All right. Hey, good morning, everybody. Good to be with you this morning. My name is David. I get to serve as a volunteer on the teaching team here at Vintage. I’ve been able to do that for the last ten years or so. Really glad to see you here this morning. 

I’m not sure why you came to church. That could sound like a rude question. I just- we come for a lot of different reasons, right? Some of us came because it’s cheaper to be here. The AC is running, we don’t have to run it at home, all right, so it’s going to be colder. But maybe we got dragged here, maybe we felt guilty, so we wanted to be here. We don’t know, but we’re here, and we’re going to study the scriptures together. 

And what’s beautiful about studying the scriptures together is that we know from experience and from what God tells us, it’s not an IQ test, it’s not an intellectual test to see how much we can remember and can we study right for the test. It’s about the Spirit of God moving through the Word of God to come into our lives to pierce us in our hearts where we need to be pierced. Right? Now, that could sound, oww, that sounds painful. Sometimes it is, but it leads us to a place of change and transformation. 

So, as we study the scriptures today, all I want to ask you to do is to be cognizant of: Is there any part of your life right now that you’re saying, Hey God, you can have the rest of it, but not that part. Okay, because if He is, that’s where He’s going after. I can guarantee it, all right.

But what I want us to be, what we have studied together in the scriptures, we’ve been going through the book of 1 Peter. We’re not a group of individuals. We’re a collection as a church, a collective of people, and so we don’t get to do this Christian life by ourselves, we do it together with one another. And that means that when we gather around the Word of God, we are gathering around it collectively as a people to be strengthened by it, challenged by it, and transformed by it. Okay.

So in last week’s teaching, Dustin reminded us of a few central ideas about our identity in Christ, and so you may have been here for that, but just to remind you of two of the central ideas that we’re going to study again together in 1 Peter chapter 2. Idea number one is that we are a royal priesthood, and that is humanity’s- that is God’s original design for humanity. Now we might cheapen that identity, we might forget that identity, but we are a royal priesthood.

A priest has access to the altar, royalty has access to the throne, and as a royal priesthood, we have both access to the altar, the sacrifice of God, and we have authority from the throne of God. And so we together are to carry the character and the authority of God in our lives.

Big idea number two is Dustin led us to remember the story in Joshua of the people of God crossing the River Jordan. Right, they’re crossing, they’ve been wandering through the wilderness for forty years, moving away from their life of slavery, and they’re to cross this river. Because as Dustin reminded us, part of the job of the people of God is to leave behind our old lives of slavery. That what Joshua needed to do is to move them from a place of holding on to what life was like back there. 

And we, in our lives as disciples of Jesus, we have to learn what it looks like to move beyond the trauma and pain of the past. It’s not that it isn’t important, it’s not that it doesn’t need to be dealt with, but we are not to live this side of the river, we are to live this side of the river. Does that make sense? 

Okay, but here’s the thing, they cross the river, forgetting the life of the past, and then Joshua says this, when they get on the other side of the river in Joshua chapter 4, he says, Hey, I want you to go back into the river, one person from each of the twelve tribes, and I want you to gather a stone of remembrance, and we’re going to set it up as a remembrance. You say, Wait a second, God, you’re doing two things at once here. You told me to forget, and now you’re telling me to remember. 

The life of a disciple of Jesus is both forgetting and remembering. We are to forget and to move on from some of the past that holds us, right where we’re thinking about the nostalgia of Egypt, or what life was like back there, or even when we’re held in bitterness, or in our trauma, in our pain, right? We’re to move past that to deal with it with God, but then we are to gather a stone of remembrance from the place of transformation, and Joshua says to the people, Gather stones that we might remember his faithfulness. So, as disciples of Jesus, there is a forgetting, and there is a remembering. 

Okay, all right. So we are to walk in the presence of God, under the authority of God, with the character of God, all for the Kingdom of God. That’s the message that we gather from 1 Peter.

 1 PETER 2:4-10

So we’re going to read a few verses from 1 Peter chapter 2 today, verses 4 through 10. We’re going to see today how we are a holy priesthood and a royal priesthood, because in Christ you are both a priest and you are royalty, and that we don’t say that for flattery or to be puffed up by that identity. We say that because as disciples, we’re going to take responsibility for that. Right?

We see, you know, you see people who, they may be royalty, but they’re not living with the responsibility that comes with royalty. Or we see people who, you’re a priest, you have access to God, and yet you never use that access. 

So let’s read together 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 4 through 10, says this, “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 to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion,’ this is speaking about Jesus, ‘a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ Now, to you who believe, the 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.’ They stumble because they disobey the message —which is also what they were destined for. But if you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, 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, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

So this passage in 1 Peter chapter 2 reminds us of our true identity, but also our true responsibility. So we can’t just walk out of today with greater awareness of who God has made us to be. We have to take responsibility for who He’s made us to be. 

HE IS THE LIVING STONE & THE CORNERSTONE

So idea number one from this passage is who Jesus is. It says He is the living stone and the cornerstone. So in ancient architecture, the cornerstone was the first stone that was laid that set the direction and structure of the entire building. Jesus is chosen in Matthew chapter 16, verse 18. He says to Peter, “I will build my church,” not you’ll build it, but you’ll be a part of it. In fact, you’ll be a living stone that He will build, and so He is building His church, but built upon the cornerstone. 

And that you and I, if we are to be living stones being built into a spiritual house that 1 Peter chapter 2 says we are, then we have to be in alignment with the cornerstone. Now it says that He was chosen by God, but He was rejected by man. Right? They rejected Him. Why? Because they wanted to build their lives upon something else. 

You and I were trying to build different stuff in our lives, right? You might be trying to build a life with somebody, you might be trying to build a career, you might be trying to build a reputation, build wealth, build all these things. If you’re building on anything other than the chief cornerstone, you’re building in misalignment to the will of God. You and I have to set our lives in a structured way in alignment with the cornerstone. 

It says they rejected Him because they were trying to build their own kingdom. So the question for each of us as disciples is, what kingdom, whose kingdom are you trying to build? If we are trying to be builders with Him of the Kingdom of God, then we must be built upon the cornerstone of Christ. 

Says that not only was He rejected by them because they wanted to build their own kingdom, right? The people in that time wanted their own type of kingdom to be built, not the kingdom that He was building. It also says that He was rejected by men, and He became a stumbling stone. 

So Jesus is this stone, this rock that stands in front of all of us, and we have two choices: we can either try and move around it and stumble over Him, or we can choose Him and be built upon Him. And so, if you feel like in your life right now that you’re stumbling forward in life or stumbling backwards, one of the questions to ask is, Am I building on Him, or am I trying to build on my own foundation? 

It also says that He’s a living stone. Now, when we look back at Scripture, and we see in Exodus the people of God, they’re moving through the wilderness, and they have this desperate need for life through water, and they don’t know how to find it. And God tells them, Strike the rock, and water will flow out of it. There’s more to go into in that story, but later in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul will say of the people moving through the wilderness, “they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” 

So not only is He the cornerstone that we are to build our lives upon, He is also the living stone that we are to go to for the source of all life. So the question for us to ask ourselves is, Who are we building our lives upon, and who are we going to for the source of life? 

We go to ridiculous places to try and find life. We go to social media, we go to politicians, we go to movie stars, we go look in the mirror for too long. We’re not going to find life in those places, we’re going to find life when we go to Him, the Rock that accompanied us through the wilderness. That rock was Christ. 

WE ARE LIVING STONES

So, idea number two, not only is He the chief cornerstone, not only is He the living stone, the source of all life, but it says that we also, verse 5, as “living stones are being built into a spiritual house.” We’re not designed, church, to be isolated stones. We are designed to be built together, and stones that are built together need to be shaped. 

It’s not just that you and I are going to show up together in a church and suddenly find, you know what, we just perfectly fit together. We’re going to have rough edges, jagged edges. We need to be surrendered to the builder. 

That, as I said, Matthew 16 verse 18, Jesus says, “I will build my church,” and that means that you and I, as living stones, have to say, God, would you shape me the way that I need to be shaped, so that I can be fit into the spiritual house that you are building. 

Anybody else have edges that God is working on? Right? Turn to your neighbor, say you’ve got some edges. All right? Okay? Really, really big ones. Okay. Really rough ones. Okay. Church, look, we need to repent and move on from the idea that Christianity is a solo endeavor, it is not. 

And to be a living stone means that we are built upon Him. It means that we are being supported by those below us, we are supporting those above us, because we are being built into a spiritual house.

WE ARE TO OFFER SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES

Idea number three, we are to offer spiritual sacrifices. It says that we are as “living stones are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” So we are responsible for the offering and the sacrifice. We are to make offering of spiritual sacrifices. 

It will talk about in the scriptures being the fruit of our lips. That no longer do we have to come as they did in Leviticus and in the Old Testament and bring an animal sacrifice, but we are to be living sacrifices ourselves, as Romans 12 says. And we are to be those who are in the business of making our lives a sacrifice. 

So there is a story in the Old Testament in 2 Samuel chapter 24 where there is a plague going on, and David feels the responsibility as the king to build an altar and offer sacrifices to God. And so he’s on the hunt for a place to build this altar, and he comes upon this plot of land owned by a guy called Araunah or Aruna. I’m not sure how you say it, but he says to him, Hey, we need this plot of land. We need to build an altar to sacrifice to God. And this guy turns, generously, kindly, says to David, Hey, you can take it. Just have it for free. And you and I might have said, Wow, what an incredible gift! This guy is offering this up for the king, and he wants the respect of the king, but he wants to be a part of this thing that the king is doing. And David says this, he says, I must pay you, because I can never offer to God that which costs me nothing. 

That’s a sacrifice. Sacrifice has cost, and we see through the Old Testament that God makes incredible provision for cost. There are some families who have no physical money, and so He allows them to offer a bird, something cheaper than the more expensive offering. He knows that everyone can offer a sacrifice. And church, the question for each of us is that if you are to offer a spiritual sacrifice today, this week, with your life, it cannot be something that costs you nothing. A sacrifice is costly. 

So we can ask, we can say, wait a second, if animal sacrifices are done away with, do we have anything left to offer? Wasn’t Jesus the final sacrifice? Why do we need to be priests? Why do we need to sacrifice? The answer is that we do, but it’s redefined. 

That instead of blood sacrifices, we now offer a sacrifice of praise, which the writer explicitly defines as “the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.” You can say, All right, great, I was here for worship time. If you’re a little late, bummer, you missed it. All right, you can say, Hey, I’ve done it. All right, good job. I’ve paid my debt. Okay, that’s not what this is. 

He says that we are to be living sacrifices in Romans 12. We are to offer spiritual sacrifices in 1 Peter chapter 2. You say, what is a spiritual sacrifice? It sounds great. It sounds like the kind of thing you can be like, yeah, it’s just invisible. No one sees it, you can’t tell if I’ve offered it or not. Oh yeah, I definitely offered that spiritual sacrifice. Right?

The word Peter uses in 1 Peter chapter 2, pneumatikos, it never in Scripture means ghostly or intangible. It means spirit-led, spirit-empowered, and spirit-ordered. In fact, Paul uses the exact same word for the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus returns in the resurrected body, and He’s not ghostly or invisible; He’s eating food, and yet He’s able to pass through doors.

A spiritual sacrifice is more real than the Old Testament physical sacrifice. It’s the offering of our being to God. It’s the offering of our lives to God. You see, some of us wouldn’t we prefer to be living in the Old Testament. Say I got a bit of extra cash, I can buy a lamb. I can buy a dove, and then I can walk away and say, Done, I’m good. Say this spiritual sacrifice, we say, Okay, maybe I’ll come, and I’ll sing a song, or I’ll turn K-Love up loud on the way to work or whatever it is. 

And these are good, these are good habits and good behaviors. But church, I want you to go before the Lord right now, not before me, but before the Lord right now. Say, God, where are you asking me to offer my life? Where are you? He just might give you a picture of the next ten years, the next twenty years, but He might just give you a picture of the next ten minutes. Say, man, I don’t want to offer that, it costs me something. 

I remember many, many years ago being in Myanmar, and there was this lady, this follower of Jesus, and she was a member of the Karen tribe, which, if you know anything any history of that country or what’s going on right now, they’re really a persecuted tribe, and she is a follower of Jesus. And I remember the guy I was with asked her and said, “Hey Natrumi, if the,” because they want to eradicate these believers, right, and so he said, “Hey Natrumi, if the military comes for you, what will you do?” And she said in her broken English, she says, “Whatever the cost, I’m prepared to pay it.” 

Look, you and I in America, the cost might not be our lives, but I really want to encourage you that you and I, we’re not just to offer a spiritual sacrifice. It is not only a privilege, but it is a responsibility, and it is to mark us as priests before Him. 

WE ARE A ROYAL & HOLY PRIESTHOOD

So, idea number four, we’re a royal and holy priesthood. So we see this idea; it comes, initially, we see it in Exodus chapter 19 when He calls them a kingdom of priests, right, to the whole nation. We see it then in Revelation chapter 1, where He says, “I’ve made you a kingdom, priests before God.” And here’s what we see about this idea of being a priest. 

You might be sitting there, like I might be standing here, saying, You know what? I don’t really want to be a priest. Sounds kind of lame. All right. I don’t want to be a priest. Right? Because we’ve got this picture of what it means, and we need to see what it really means through the Scriptures. And by the way, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you are a priest, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you’re going to act like one. Okay?

So we see this journey of priesthood from everybody in Genesis having access to God, to then in Exodus chapter 19, there becomes, because of sin, a narrowing of the role. So from everyone to Exodus chapter 19, a single nation. And then in Exodus chapter 32, because of sin, because of the golden calf, because of worshiping an idol, the role gets narrowed again to a single tribe, to the Levitical tribe. Only they can have access to the altar of God. Only they can go inside to the Most Holy Place.

And then we see that that narrowing happens again to the singular person of Jesus. And because of the work of Christ, because it says of Him in Hebrews that He is our forerunner, because it says of Him that we do not have a high priest who cannot empathize with our weaknesses, meaning we have a high priest who can. The role of the priesthood begins to expand again. 

That is the work of Christ. See, sin will always make your world smaller. Any of you experience that? Where you begin to be enslaved by the lies, by the sin, by the choices, and you feel wrapped up like this. And the gospel of Jesus breaks those chains and expands the role. Expands it from one man, to one people, to then to what we see, that every tribe, language, people, and nation in 1 Peter chapter 2. The expanding pattern of the Kingdom of God, where He gives us not only access but also authority. 

Church, are you taking advantage of your access? Are you taking responsibility of your authority? That we might walk out of here today not as a group of individuals, but as living stones being built together into a spiritual house, carrying the nature and the character of God, because we use our access and we take our authority. 

So we see access to the altar and authority of the throne. That we are called to be priests, we are no longer spectators. See, in the Old Testament, when the Levitical tribe they were the priests, you could be a spectator to the things of God, right? You could just be kind of like, Hey, I do my thing, you know, I give my money, I do my thing, but we are not called to be spectators. The discipleship of Jesus is not a spectator sport, and we are called to be active participants, living sacrifices. 

WE ARE TO LIVE AS PRIESTS

So, what does it mean to live as priests? There are a few things that we see in Scripture that it means to be a priest. Number one, you are a witness of the sacrifice, and you can give testimony to the blood. 

What do I mean? Imagine for a moment you’re living in the Old Testament, and you’re living in the time of Exodus chapter 32, when the priesthood, because of your sin, has been narrowed, and you no longer have access to the altar of God, to the tabernacle of God. And you would see this select group of people who’ve been set apart because of their loyalty and faithfulness to be priests. And they walk in carrying a sacrifice, and they take the sacrifice with its blood and its offering to the altar of God. 

And then look, we read about the Day of Atonement, where in the most holy place once a year, where the high priest would go in. And look, this was high-risk work, okay? If the offering wasn’t acceptable, the priests would be consumed by fire. The workers’ comp insurance was a nightmare. This was high-risk work. Okay, and you say, Man, I want access. Are you sure? Because access comes with responsibility. 

But you imagine you’re stood outside, and you’re outside because of your sin, and the high priest would wear this gown, and at the bottom of the gown would be these golden bells, and there’d be a moment when the high priest walks in, and you can’t hear anything anymore, because he is silent before the altar. And then eventually you would start to hear in the distance, as the high priest started walking out again, the sound of the bells at the bottom of his robe. He’s alive, the offering was accepted, and he’d walk out.

And you can imagine being either friends or knowing this priest, the high priest, or one of the Levitical priests, and you’d have questions, right? Hey, what’s it like in there? What did you see? And I imagine the priest saying, I saw the sacrifice, and I saw the blood, and I found mercy. Your sins have been forgiven. 

Church, as priests, our job is to be witnesses of the sacrifice. That for those around us- those friends, those neighbors, those family members whose world has narrowed because of sin, because of their choices- we are to be those who tell them, I’ve seen the sacrifice. I’ve seen the blood. There is mercy and grace and forgiveness awaiting you. Come with me. Come to the altar. That’s the job of the priest, to be those who bring others to the altar, because we know that as the Scriptures tell us, there we will find grace and mercy in our time of need. 

Number two, we are as priests to be intercessors. So in the Old Testament, only the priests could enter on behalf of the people, but Jesus has opened up the way, that’s what 1 Peter 2 is telling us. That means we have full and complete access to God, so we don’t need another human being to go to God, right? 

You don’t need a pastor, you don’t need clergy, you don’t need a speaker, you don’t need somebody else. You have direct access to God, and yet, as priests, we are called to be intercessors. That it’s not that we go, that somebody needs to go through us, but look, we as priests will go to the throne room on behalf of others to pray for them, to intercede for them, to bring their name before God. 

And so today, would you consider who you can go on behalf of to the throne room of God, where not only is it an altar, but it’s also a throne, and say, God, I want to intercede for this person. It’s not, I’m going to God for you, but rather I’m going to Christ, would you come with me? Follow me as I follow Christ. 

Couple more ideas about the responsibility of priests. Priests were responsible for teaching the statutes, Leviticus chapter 10 verse 11, and for preserving wisdom and knowledge, Malachi 2 verse 7. Okay, here’s the thing: it would be nice job security for me to tell you that I’m the only one who’s allowed to teach. Be nice, okay. Now it’s a volunteer job, so you know there’s things with it, but look, it’d be nice for all of us, the teaching team, to say, now you know what, we just like we just have something you don’t have. Not to be rude, but you know. That’s not what the scriptures teach.

Now look, in a church setting and a structure, yes, there will be those, as we read about in James, who have the responsibility to teach the church of God, to guide them through the Scriptures. But look, you might not be called to teach the church like this, but you are called to be someone who knows the Scriptures. You are called to be someone who is able to preserve knowledge and wisdom. Every believer is called to know and pass on scripture, not just the clergy. 

We must be disciples of the word. I want to challenge you to step into that responsibility, to be someone who consumes the word of God, who ingests the word of God, who’s prepared, as we read about in the Scriptures. Sometimes, you know, when we read about Jeremiah or Ezekiel, these guys ingesting, and at one point it says the sweetness and the sourness. There are hard things in the Scriptures, but we are not to be those, you know, like a little kid picking through their plate. Okay, we’re not to be that with the Word of God. 

And right now, if you’re somebody who picks through the Word of God, eating the parts you like and leaving the broccoli, okay, we need to repent of that, right, need to repent of that. John doesn’t forget the broccoli, all right, he’s eating the high-protein eggs, the broccoli, I know it. All right, it’s good, all right, but look, you and I are not to pick through our plates. Do you get that? We are to be those who preserve wisdom and knowledge, to pass it on to the next generation, okay? 

And lastly, we are called to holiness. The priests, both then and now, were called to a standard of purity. That was a responsibility. It wasn’t a purity that, it’s not a purity that we generate of ourselves. It’s a purity that He offers to us if we choose to live in alignment with him. 

In 1 Peter, I forget- I think it’s coming up in chapter 2 or chapter 4. I forget, but it says that “we are partakers of the divine nature,” and so it’s like this trade. You say, God, I’ve got my nature, and I see this divine nature. Can I get that? Can I become more like you, that I might live with holiness? It’s not found in our own rituals, but it is found in our discipline with the word.

Anybody who tells you that the new covenant has done away with discipline is lying to you, all right? They’re selling you short. Yes, there is abundant grace, the abundant grace that has opened up the veil that you and I can have access to the altar and access to the throne, but we are to be disciplined with the word. Holiness is not legalistic, holiness is the responsibility of the priest, understanding what honors God versus what compromises, and maintaining personal purity as a witness. 

So, church, are you prepared to step into the responsibility of 1 Peter chapter 2 to be formed and shaped by Him as a living stone, to go to Him for the source of life? That stone that accompanied you through the wilderness, that was the source of life that sustained us. Are you prepared to put your nature to death? That is the sacrifice, to put your nature to death and carry His nature to pursue holiness and to live a life of sacrifice to choose to be a royal priest. Let’s stand together and pray. 

Father God, we are reminded this morning that you, Jesus, have opened up a new and living way through your sacrifice, through your body. May we be those who take that access and take the responsibility that comes with that. May we be those who carry the character and authority of you, not by our own strength, but through your grace. We need your help. We want it. We pray that Spirit of God, you would speak to us through this word. There’s, you know, all the people in this room, we all are coming in with different needs, different heartbreaks, different challenges. Would you please speak to us through your Word? We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.