You Are a Chosen People
First B Jackson
2023-12-03

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Alright. Good morning, friends. How are we doing? The timer count, it went down, and it looks like we're we're here to worship. So would you stand, with me, and we'll we'll sing joy to the world, some familiar Christmas carols this morning.

And go tell it on them.

You can have a seat here for

a moment. We got a few announcements. Hey,

everybody. Oh, there we go. Hey, everybody. Welcome to First Baptist Church, and welcome for the Christmas season as we kinda kick things off here a little bit. There was a discovery class between services.

If anybody's interested in becoming a member, just let us know. It's just an opportunity to, to get to know the church, to get to know what we believe, see if we line up, and, to join as a member, and we can schedule that, whenever whenever you're available. I wanna see you at Awana. We have Awana Kids Club every Monday night here at the church, and there are somewhere around 65 kids, right, that have been attending. Would you keep Awana in your prayers?

It's a really important, very valuable ministry, and lots of great people are involved in it. Consider helping out. We've got some familiar faces who are there all the time. Jackson Hole Men's Alliance is back. It's the first Wednesday of the month at 06:30AM.

Here at the church, it's an opportunity to get some free pancakes, and who doesn't want those? That's reason enough to come. So if you're a guy or know a guy, come on in. It's a great chance to get connected. And there are paper calendars available in the back.

I thought I was a little too sassy during the first service about this. Just to say, if you still use a paper calendar, would you please consider picking up one here? They're a wonderful collector's item. We'll autograph it if you want. How does that sound?

All the money goes towards, our youth programs. And here's our Christmas calendar. Everything's on the website, so if you forget, don't worry about it. It's also gonna be in all the emails until and through Christmas, but we're just gonna go through the breakdown. December 10 is the scout Sunday, and that's when they come and they cook breakfast for us here.

They spend the night here beforehand, cook the breakfast during the 9AM service, goes into the connect hour. So y'all come a little early for that. And then on the seventeenth, the Christmas caroling and chili cook off. We're gonna be walking from here onto Town Square, singing some carols starting at 04:30, and come back here for a chili cook off potluck. So we need a lot of chili.

And I've been told by Mike, our youth director, that we need, as adults, to step it up because our youth have beaten us for too many years in a row, and we to dominate some of these categories. It's secret ballots, and I think this year, we're going have an adult win. So, it's spiciest category, fan favorite, and then most unique. Those are the three you can win prizes for, and we've added a category this year of prizes you can win of things left behind in the church. If you're missing something, you might get it back.

Come on come on by. But it is a chili cook off, and we would love to have lots of chili. Typically, if you could bring it in a crock pot, that's a great way to go. And if you could bring two crock pots, you stand a better chance of winning because you have enough for people to actually taste your chili. On the twenty fourth, Christmas Eve, there are no morning services even though it falls on a Sunday.

So, if you if you wanna show up, you're welcome to entertain everybody else who showed up and forgot, but there won't be a scheduled Christmas, service that morning because we have the 04:30 and the 6PM services that night. Those are the candlelight services. It's always a big hit. We want you to bring the whole family, but would you consider coming maybe to the 6PM instead of the 04:30 to make a little bit of room for other people and or sit in the front because a lot of people don't sit in the front or consider going into the overflow room if there's too many people? We're just trying to make it comfortable because a lot of times, that's the only service people come to in here, and we'd like to make it possible for them to do that.

On Christmas Day, the twenty fifth, there are no services here as well. So if you have any questions, feel free to let us know. The women's Christmas luncheon is December 6. That's this week. If you'd like to go, it's free over the Snow King Ballroom, and that's in the hotel section up there.

But please RSVP. If you need help with that, let me know. But the link is on our website. It is free. A great chance to invite somebody who doesn't know the Lord, to be there.

The angel tree is out in the lobby. Tommy is taking that on again. The tags are due back by December 20. You can take a tag, buy the item that's on it, bring it back to the church, but do us a favor and leave that tag on the packaging so that we don't have to unwrap and find out what you got. That'd be great.

By December 20, just kind of expedites things and makes it easier for us as well. I think that's it. We do have the candle of hope today, and the geek family is going to come up and do our first advent reading of the year.

I'm Mary Geek, and this is Josh and Baron and Charlotte, and the kids are gonna read, our advent today. Your turn. Today is the first Sunday in Advent. We light the first candle, the candle of hope. We have hope because of our faithful promises of God.

He sent his son, and we received our savior, a savior born to redeem the world from sin and death.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Geek family. And shall we stand and sing again? Birthday of the king. Man, you can have a seat here for a moment. This is the the worship through giving part of the service, and I'll invite our ushers to come forward here.

And and, also, would you would you join me in just a word of prayer? Lord Jesus, we're we're grateful to to gather here together to mourning, this morning. And in your name, God, would would we just quiet our hearts, still our minds, take a moment to pause, and simply say thankful and to say thank you. Thank you for the gift of your son. Emmanuel, we've sung of it.

But, Lord, we just pause to say it out loud. Emmanuel, God with us every moment, every day, everywhere we go to the very end of age. That's your promise to us, Emmanuel. Lord, would you would you use us? Would you use us as your continued body on earth and and use these gifts that are are put in these plates and otherwise because there's so much more than than that goes so much more than just what goes in these plates.

Lord, it's the day to day things. Obediently carrying out your will in our lives with the gifts that we've been given to advance your kingdom right here in Jackson to the ends of the earth. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you, Judy. And I would like to invite up Brad Yates.

Brad, Yates is one of our elders, and he's gonna be, preaching this morning from first Peter, two verse nine and ten. And, before before you speak, can I pray for you and pray for pray for us too? Lord Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word, that it is living and active, that it does not return void. And we trust that. We believe that.

And we ask, Lord, that that you'd give us an an open and receptive heart, Lord, that the that the word would fall on on fertile soil here, that we'd not only be listeners, but but doers, that there would be something in the word this this morning that that captures us maybe like never before. And so, Lord, would you use the truth of your word? Would you use Brad's personality here to con convey it to us? And, Lord, may your kingdom advance because of your willing and obedient servants. In Jesus' name.

Amen.

I got a red light. Is this a sign? It's working. I'm gonna use the batteries real quick. Okay.

I'm excited for that to happen in real time. So it's alright. Good morning. So as humans, we have this deep seated need to oh, we are doing this right now. Look.

Okay. As humans, we have this deep seated need to Hi. Levels good? Everybody hear me? Great.

Let's try that again. Good morning. Hey, we're doing great. All right. So as humans, we have this deep seated need to belong, and you see this play out in all sorts of ways.

Our identity depends I'm gonna knock these off if I don't move them. Our identity depends so much on the groups that we associate with and those that we're accepted into. And one of the funnier ways that it plays out is with spectator sports. And so for me personally, in the odd year that Wake Forest is having a decent football team, the emotional connection I feel with these kids is borderline absurd and they are kids. But I don't know them.

I can't do anything to help them, and I can't even do anything, like, remotely near supporting them. And yet, when there's a big play, when there's a touchdown, whatever, there's like this primal, let's go or go on or, you know, like and it's ridiculous. And that's even before I confess to you guys that often I'm watching a recording of the game after it's already taken place. But it's a fundamental part of who we are as humans that we have a need to belong. Well, today we're gonna talk about the ultimate belonging, our ultimate source of identity.

And you need to know your identity because if you can't simply and succinctly answer the question, who are you? Then Satan will do it for you. Now I confess, I feel a little bit like a fraud in bringing this message to you guys. This is something that I've wrestled with all week. My life is not the way that I would want it to look in light of the text that we're gonna discuss today.

But that in no way actually relieves the burden on me to teach it. If anything, it just elevates my necessary response. So I've been convicted in the Holy Spirit as I've prepared this text, and I've honestly prayed that you guys would too. So let's take a look at our text for today. First Peter two nine through 10, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

For once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So for a bit of context there, you need to know that I have no formal training in Greek or Hebrew. The only ancient language I ever took was a few years of Latin in high school, and doctor Jacobs didn't think very highly of my skills then, And they've only degraded since. But I am capable of reading commentaries, consulting experts, things like that.

And one of the key points for this letter is the use of the second person plural. One of the failings of our English language is that we tend to use the same word for both second person singular and second person plural, that being you. However, my creative friends from back home in Texas, we have an inventive solution for this that the rest of the world thinks is backwards, of course, being y'all. There we go. Or even the more emphatic, all y'all.

But what you need to know for today's context is that in the vast majority of Peter's epistle and most of the epistles, it's being written in Texan. It's y'all. So our central thesis today, accordingly, is that when God chose us and saved us, he made us part of something brand new. And in light of the kingdom of God, we as a church are to be different from the people around us. Now getting from that sort of central thesis to our text, we're gonna pick out four phrases that we're gonna take a look at.

Chosen people, holy nation, people for God's own possession, and royal priesthood. So first, looking at the phrase chosen people. Because I don't know about you guys, but I can often get pulled into this cultural idea that Christianity is a list of things that we are supposed to not do. It's as if by removing some aspect of myself or some part of my life that I can somehow make myself good enough for the eternal perfect and holy God. And you hear this subtly reinforced throughout our culture because everybody seems to know what we as Christians are against, but nobody knows what we're for.

And some of that's on us. In modern western culture, they think that we're too conservative, that we are in the way of social progress, that we should just get with the program regarding sexual or identity mores. When the truth is that some of the very things that are considered love or kindness in our society are the very things that God condemns or tells us to speak out against. But the irony of course is that in many Eastern or shame and honor cultures, Christians are considered far too liberal for these ideas of forgiveness or of grace or of the idea that all humans have equal dignity, value, and worth. The idea that women and children are not property or chattel.

It would if it weren't so tragic, it would actually be a little bit funny the way that modern Western culture kind of usurps the ideas of human dignity from Christianity. Reinvents them, perverts them for their own purposes, and then pretends as if they're some modern new invention of secular humanism. But it's not the case. Anyway, people that have only a a lazy or passing knowledge of the Christian faith think that we're just like any other religion. You've heard the Ray talks about old time religion, you know, that don't drink, don't chew, and don't go with girls that do.

So we respond, and we get grumpy. And and and in some ways, we should lament the passing of social norms and of morals from our society. But that can't be the end of our faith. That's a shallow religion, and the Bible knows nothing of that. No.

Our faith is that we cannot be good enough for God, that there is nothing that we can do in and of ourselves that makes us acceptable to the creator. No one can. We are all sinners. You, me, Carl, all of us. I've recently heard this called the bad news of the gospel.

And that's a phrase that I just love and you're probably gonna hear me repeat. But the bad news is that there is nothing that we can do to redeem ourselves. That we are so inherently flawed and sinful that we cannot be made acceptable to our creator by any efforts of our own, no matter how good or noble. And you can't accept the good news of the gospel unless we accept the bad news of the gospel first. We cannot accept the good news that God made provision for that.

That Christ Jesus lived a perfect life, died a perfect death that we deserved, and then on the third day he walked out of that grave. No. The good news is that when he walked out of that grave, he was the first in the resurrection. And that all of us that identify in Christ, we will follow him one day in that resurrection. So we can't accept, like I said, we can't accept the good news until we've accepted the bad news.

Because God chose to reveal himself to us here today through the person and work of Jesus for the purpose of creating this very gathering, this people, the church, so that we might work together for his glory. We do that in loving one another no matter how imperfectly we do that and by reminding each other of the grace that we have received in Jesus. Because you guys realize that as Romans five says, we were enemies of God, each and every one of us. We weren't Switzerland. We weren't neutral parties.

We were enemies of God. But now, as Paul goes on to say, we have peace with God through Jesus. And it's not just so that we can be a more polite version of ourselves. This is what Peter is talking about when he says, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. The bad news of our iniquity, our transgression, our sin, that was the darkness that we were in.

But God called us out of that into his glorious light, and that light is that we are made whole in Jesus and we are given a new life to live here on earth and to proclaim every day until we die or until Jesus calls us home and comes back. Because when Jesus walked out of that grave and he did, and it's the single most important fact in human history. He created something new when he called us to follow him. Peter says on this, for once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. A big part on this is that we have to remember that Peter was a Jew.

And being a Jew in first century Israel was a huge deal for your identity. And yet, when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles in acts two, it created not just a new nation, but a new type of nation. This is not a political entity. This is not a nation based on borders or ethnicity or history or geography. This is something brand new.

This is the holy nation. And this is why Peter in our text today is using several mixed analogies. He's trying to explain something that is brand new. We aren't the new nation, the Republic Of Christendom. No.

We are a nation of Christians in whatever context we are in, spread out around the world, but we are to be set apart within that context. You've all likely heard the phrase at some point that we Christians are supposed to be in the world, but not of the world. Yes, we're physically here. We participate in it. We take our kids to ridiculous hockey practice times, but we are a nation without borders, ethnicity, and without alliances.

Jesus, when he's praying to the father, he's with and praying for the disciples and for each and every one of us. He says, I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Peter is extrapolating effectively this text when he's talking about us as an as a as a new thing. Peter's contemporary James, the half brother of Christ, gives us the warning version of today's text when he says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

And that text terrifies me. Because I I know that I am, and I suspect that we are all guilty of friendship with the world in the way that James is talking about it. Now to be clear, the way that James is talking about it does not mean that we are to be jerks or that we are to isolate. The church has never correctly interpreted it that or applied it that way. Now what he's talking about here is compromise.

Friendship with the world means being of the world, like our text in John 17 said. Now what he means here and what helps us with our text today is that we are to be different. Fundamentally, intrinsically, observably different, like oil and water. And think about how different or otherworldly Jesus was. He owned nothing.

He had no worldly achievements. He's made plenty of time and he spoke kindly while in truth to the least of society. And he spoke boldly boldly without fear of consequence to those in power. He lived in constant prayer, and he lived in abject poverty, and from a worldly standpoint, deep material need. And yet his apostles chose to follow that example.

But by way of contrast, I hesitate to share my faith with people because in my mind, I downplayed the ultimate realities of eternal life. I instead worry or fear about being vulnerable or as if it matters that I won't be articulate enough in the way that I share my faith. Or I worry first about my worldly comforts and control. My friend, Caleb Malone, back in Dallas, it's his birthday today actually. So if you see this, hi, Caleb, has this great line that says, it is better to be awkward than silent.

Keep in mind that's only regarding evangelism. In the rest of your life, it's probably better the opposite. But when we're talking about Jesus, when we are proclaiming the excellencies of him, it is better to be awkward than silent. And if we do it frequently, we'll grow less awkward over time. And that's what our text today is telling us to do.

There we go. Got it that one. So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him, not of ourselves. We're not telling people how good we are. We have nothing good to offer in this equation.

We're proclaiming the excellencies of him. No. Because the best way to counter the cultural pull around us is actually to talk about Jesus, and this is something I struggle with. We we don't need to talk about conservative morals or about church or about God generally or about love is love or any of the other meaningless tropes that the culture trots out. We talk about Jesus.

The son of God that loved us and gave himself for us so that we might have right relationship with the father and with one another. That we might love one another in such a way that the world says, I don't like that. That's different. Or they even disagree with it or maybe even so far as hate it. But they know that there's something appealing about it.

That's what we're called to when we love one another. Similarly, I have brothers and sisters in every country and on every continent. And I have more in common with them than I do with my unbelieving neighbors because we have Jesus. I don't know if you guys have ever done this before, but you're in this random context. You're just going through your daily life, And you see somebody, and they've got the the fish ring or the cross necklace or the tattoo or whatever.

And you just kinda go, oh, that's that's neat. What does that mean to you? And they say something about their Christian faith. And then you kinda do that awkward dance where you're both trying to figure out if you're like a real follower for Jesus. And And there's that moment and you realize it and you do the like the high five pound thing that doesn't really work.

But you're just like so excited in that moment. And I've had that on like with taxi drivers or Uber drivers on trips before. Where there's that moment that you realize that this person, though, is from the other part of the world. So the only thing you have in common with them is that you the physical space that you're in in that moment and Jesus. And so what do you talk about when the only thing you have in common is Jesus?

You talk about Jesus, and you praise Jesus. And can't you see how God is glorified in that moment? And it's so great. But, similarly, as we're thinking about nations, we need to talk about holy nation. Because something I have to speak to briefly here is what Peter is not talking about with regards to holy nation.

He is not talking about nation states or political entities. And he's definitely not talking about The United States. And I know that seems obvious that that's not what Peter's talking about because that's how time works. But I think it bears repeating as we can often get tied up in our national or political identities, maybe even more than our Christian ones. Now don't mishear me.

Patriotism is a healthy thing. I think the American democracy experiment is probably the best in the history of human ideas. But we have to be able to clearly prioritize our Christian faith in and above any national or political identity. That's true of America, and it's also true of our friends in Israel. Now that's particularly loaded to say right now, so I'm gonna be very careful and use my notes.

But when Peter says holy nation here, he is not talking about the modern state of Israel. I know that Israel as a nation state today is a secular modern nation. It is an amazing and necessary safe harbor for ethnic Jews, but it is a very far cry from what God is talking about in the Bible or what God promised Abraham in Genesis 12. So when you see Israel in the Bible and you see Israel on the news, we cannot a 100% conflate the two. There's overlap for sure.

But over half of polled adults in the current state of Israel do not identify themselves as religiously Jewish. And even those that are Jewish, they love the father, but they've rejected the son. So which John has a the apostle John has a great quote. First John two, no one who denies the son has the father. Whoever confesses the son has the father also.

So church, we pray for Israel. We support Israel when they are in the modern when they are in the moral right. But we are ultimately praying for them in the same way that we are praying for any anyone else. That they would find a saving faith in Jesus. Now, the Bible makes very clear that God is faithful to his promises, and God has made specific promises to the nation of Israel.

But again, for our purposes, that does not involve everyone that carries an Israeli passport or lives within its national borders. Does that make sense? Okay. Another historical example is in three thirteen AD, Constantine issued what's called the Edict of Milan, making the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire no longer illegal. 10 later, Christianity is effectively the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Why I bring it up here is that Christian leaders then, as now, struggle with the consequences of that. How do we include people in a Christian nation when Christianity is not an inherited religion? Let me put it this way. God has no grandchildren. It is available to every single one of us to be children of God, but you are not a Christian because your parents were or their parents before them.

You are a Christian if you have placed your hope in the saving person and work of Jesus Christ and him alone. So running a nation as Christians then, it gets a little complicated because we can set up moral, ethical, or legal guardrails against evil. But just as nations are incapable of doing anything against the spread of the kingdom of God, and boy, aren't we seeing that play out in North Korea and Iran and China right now? But just as they can't do anything to stop the spread of the kingdom of God, nation states will be used by God but cannot legislate a saving faith in Jesus. For example, here's an exhaustive list of the officially Christian nations that exist in the world.

Just to pick on one. Do you know the percentage of Norway's population that attends church on a regular basis? 2%. It's an official Christian nation. The other nations on this list, especially those in the developed world, they don't fare any better by those metrics.

So that is not what Peter is calling us to here. Our chosen people, our holy nation, they're totally different from anything that has existed before. And that's really powerful because if you find yourself being sold on a political alliance or having your healthy patriotism elevated above your Christian faith, Keep in mind that the Bible is calling you to so much more. So what makes this holy nation different? I'm really glad you asked because that's the next point in my outline, which is that we are a people for God's own possession.

This is such a powerful idea that Peter is communicating to us here, and it is so necessary for our anxious age. Because

do

you know who you belong to if you have a faith in Jesus? You belong to God. The creator, sustainer, redeemer of all creation, of all that has ever been, and all that ever will be. And there is nothing that you can do to ruin that no matter what. There is no sin that is unforgivable apart from denying Jesus.

And you know who got scared and denied Jesus three times for a little bit? The author of this very letter, Peter, the leader of the early church. So that's not what the Bible is talking about when it talks about denying Jesus. Now what it's talking about is a determined permanent denial of Jesus. Like deciding and then successfully following through with never submitting to Christ.

So no matter what you have done, no matter how many times, no matter how for how long, there is grace available to you. Guys, angels in heaven, they rejoice when atheists, when Muslims, when Satanists, when abortionists, when they come to a saving faith in Jesus, the heavens cry out. And it happens all the time. So we talked about Peter. How about some of the other biblical leaders?

Do you know that one of them professionally killed Christians before he became one? Apostle Paul. But God had plans for him. God chose him, revealed himself to him, and redeemed him out of his own self righteousness. And then kind of as a flex of the Holy Spirit, Paul spends the rest of his life running around founding churches, not buildings, people, writing over half the New Testament and then is martyred for his faith.

It's just such a beautiful example of how no one is too far gone for God. Because, show of hands, has anyone here killed Christians? No? Okay. Because if you have, you still need to go to jail.

But we will pray for you. We will celebrate you. We will baptize you. We'll go wild celebrating your faith. And we'll even help you start a prison ministry, and God will bless that too because of the blood of Jesus.

But I use that as an extreme example. But we need this because we fall short, all of us, some aspect or another. And we just need to be reminded that there is grace available to us would we but partake in it. But just as Peter talks today about God showing us mercy, we can show mercy to ourselves and to everyone around us. So when you screw up, whether it's large or small, public or private, you bring it to God and you share it with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Because the other key point in this text is that you are a people. And as I mentioned in the introduction, all throughout this text and in the epistles in general, it's written in Texan. It doesn't come across in the ESV or the NASB. Maybe if Eugene Peterson had been from Dallas or something, his his paraphrase the message would have gotten it. But when this text says you read y'all, as in y'all are a royal priesthood, y'all are a chosen nation.

Chosen people, holy nation. It sounds good. But my point is this command is it's written to us collectively because each and every one of us, we have a responsibility to try and live out the commands that Christ has given us. But we can't do it alone. This is that famous analogy of the hands and the feet and the eyes and the tongue.

We all have different gifts and different capacities. And and I realized that I'm I'm saying this to a Sunday gathering. So you're here. That's the great first step. But if this is the sum total of your interaction with the church, I'm saying that you're missing out on the blessing that's available.

And I think this text is saying that you're falling short of the calling. Tony Evans out of Oak Cliff Bible has this. Jim, you paying attention? Yep. We were talking about Tony Evans earlier.

Tony Evans has this great quote. He says, I hear people say, I don't have to go to church to be a Christian, and they're absolutely right. Salvation is through faith alone and Christ alone. But you don't have to go home to be married. But you stay away long enough and your relationship, it will be affected.

Natalie and I got married here about ten years ago. And you don't have to tell me, for those of you all that have met her, she doesn't age today and I look like somebody took me out of the fridge and left me on the counter for too long. But if after that beautiful day, if she'd gone home to Dallas and I'd stayed here, we would still be married. And we would have a great theoretical idea of each other. We would have never had any of the conflict over kids or or budget or house or, you know, ministry or schedules or any of those sort of things.

But we would have never gotten any closer to our biblical roles. And we would not have benefited from the maturing that occurs when iron sharpens iron. I'm reminded of of Proverbs fourteen four, which says, where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but much profit comes by the strength of the ox. Community works the same way. Church does too.

If all you ever do is put on your Sunday best and keep your hands clean, you might be saved. It's not for me to tell, but I'm saying that you're missing out on the blessing that's available to you because we are saved for God's purposes, not our own. This is my segue to royal priesthood because I worry a lot that we are gonna have too pretty of a church. We have this really cool old building with this beautiful backdrop. And Tim Dalton and his team, they do I can see him getting nervous now they said it.

Do an awesome job taking care of the facilities here. Steve Baldock is moderator, Jim Reed running financials. These guys make the church work. We're really good at managing butts, budgets, buildings here. But I worry that we're leaving too much of the mess to the professionals.

I am thankful that Ray and Carl and Mike and Diane and Nick, they do such an amazing job interfacing with our community and dealing with those that are hurting and broken. And they do it on a day in and day out basis, and it's often thankless. But there's an opportunity for us to do that too. And we get to grow in those opportunities when we interface with a hurting neighbor or when our brother or sister in Christ, when they're hurting or when they need to confess something, instead of pointing them to the vocational ministers if we deal with that ourselves. That's community.

Because if you look through acts, if you read through the Bible, and you look at what the difference is between our job description and Ray's or Carl's or Nick's, it's not much. This letter was not written to vocational pastors. This letter was written to y'all, to me. And this is something where I feel like I've fallen short recently. Because priests in the Old Testament, they were the mediators between men and God.

They were set apart specifically for that purpose, and now that's our job. All of us. Take a second and reflect on that. How are you doing as a priest recently? How are we doing as priests collectively?

Because I'll confess to you right now, I know I'm falling short. And I've wrestled with God a lot in preparing this message. This is this was a hard one for me and it's a really healthy one. The last time I spoke, think I told you guys about I I need these paradigms. I need really simple phrases that I can like burn into my brain that pop up whenever I'm in need of it.

And the one I think I told you last time was that there's a there's a phrase that I've that I've adopted, which is that what I really deserve is death. And it just keeps me living a life of gratitude. Similarly, for today, I'm committing to being weird. That's it. And I know there's some etymology issues with the word weird related to witchcraft and things like that.

Believe me, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being weird in the way being different, being abnormal, being supernatural. I'm committing to being weird, and I'm asking you guys too as well. And I mean that as a church. We should be weird.

They should say, hey, those first b people, they're weird the way they love each other, the way they always wanna talk about Christ. But God will glorify that. And we get there by reminding ourselves that we are a kingdom of priests as it says in Revelation one. And that we are, as Peter said earlier in our text, called out of darkness and into light. That what each of us really deserve is death.

What we deserve is judgment, but we've been spared that. And so we can be grateful. Because you know what the difference is with this mindset? It's you. It's me.

The circumstances will still be just as hard. That driver with California plates looking at their cell phone is still gonna cut you off and have no idea. But you have the opportunity to bless them, to pray for them, and they're not gonna know. Your coworker, your gossipy friend, your terrible boss, whatever, they're still gonna be too self absorbed to notice. But everybody else around you will see that there is something different about you, that you have a joy and a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Guys, priests priests are holy. They're set apart. They're weird. So how do we then take that and we live a life similar to this famous passage from Galatians five? So that we're living out the fruits of the spirit.

I like to I take this passage and I try to insert my name. And I see and it's a question when I do it, just to be clear. Brad is love. Brad is joy. Brad is peace.

And this is the kind of stuff I've wrestled with this week because that convicts me. Do I have more gentleness or do I have more anger? Do I have more selfish ambition, or do I have more peace? Those are things that have hit me hard this week. Here's another one.

If we're gonna be priests, is our sexual morality actually different from that of our neighbors? Do you protect what your eyes see? Do you take your thoughts captive? Or do you fall prey to the massive industry that wants to monetize your attention and it does so in allegiance and in tandem with the enemy that wants to destroy your ministry and your marriage and your purity through pornography, lust, and adultery? I realized in the 9AM that this is far too small for them, so certainly for you guys.

But this is a Barna Group study called the porn phenomenon. And these are all terrifying statistics about porn both in and out of the church and usage of it. You can find this study if you just Google it. You can send me an email and I'll get you the stats. But the really important note here actually is that if any of this in any way describes you, these stats are actually clearly saying that you're not alone.

And the Bible is very clear about what we are to do when we are caught in a sin struggle. We're to confess it to God and we're to bring it to a brother or sister in Christ. Because the most terrifying and the most freeing conversation that you will ever have, if you would but have the courage to start it, will be the day that you bring what you thought was a disqualifying sin to a brother or sister in Christ and you bring it to God as well. For some, that initial conversation, that sets people free from lifetimes of struggle. For others, not as much.

For others, it'll still be a struggle, but at least you'll have a co laborer. You'll have somebody with you, a brother or sister in Christ to remind you that that sin does not determine your identity. It does not disqualify you, and it does not define you. As we said earlier, you are God's own possession. And there is nothing that you can do to change that.

There is no sin that surprises God. Jesus knew what he was buying when he was on the cross. Because Jesus died for that one too. So in the church, we've often referred to this whole idea as strangers and aliens. And you know who the coolest stranger and alien is in fiction?

Superman. Now in the comics, Superman is actually an alien named Kal El and he's from the planet Krypton. And depending on how old you are, Superman either looks something like Henry Cavill or Christopher Reeve. But here's the thing about Superman. His energy comes from a different source than the people around him.

And because of that, he can do things that the people around him can't. Guys, he can fly. And we at First Be, we talk about not falling into the ditch on either side of legalism or licentiousness, which is somehow both fancy and folksy, which is what you get when you have a head pastor from rural Georgia with advanced degrees. But it gets the point across. But what Peter is saying and what I'm saying to you today is that you can fly.

We don't wanna bounce between the ditches of this exhausted, angry, white knuckled moralism and legalism, or this devil may care, Jesus paid for that too, so what is sin? Licentiousness. No. We fly above those. You can transcend them.

And because you can transcend them, there is the expectation that you will. And you do so by joining together with aliens in a way that the world says is weird. And that's where the Superman analogy breaks down because he does things on his own. He's Superman. I'm learning at the age of 38 that I'm not.

And I'll invite Judy back up, but you are a chosen people. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You are a people of God's own possession. Why? So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness and into light.

And I'll say it again to make it very clear. All those things that Jesus or that Peter says that you are, the chosen people, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, that is so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You were called out of the world while being physically left in it so that you can tell people about Jesus. There is opportunity right now today to change the rest of your life to stop living for the complacency, for the sin that can control you, for the fear of others, for the fruits of the flesh, and we can recommit to being holy together, all y'all. Church, y'all are the people of God.

Go forth and proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out, and into his marvelous light. Do not be merely hearers of the word, but doers. I love you so much, church. Thank you for this time. Have a great week of worship.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brad. And would you stand and we'll sing one last song together, A Little Town of Bethlehem? And I wanna leave this, leave us with this verse from from Galatians, five as we part here, and it is that we've been called to live in freedom. That's what happens when we put our faith and and trust in Christ. We've been called to live in freedom.

But it says, our brothers and sisters, let's not use that freedom to satisfy our sinful nature, but instead use that freedom to serve one another in love. Amen.