WE ARE GOD’S PEOPLE

[Exodus 19:1-8; 1 Peter 2:4-12]

          Introduction to the Scriptures:

[Read Exodus19:1-3a]

          Exodus 3:b, “...and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, ‘This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: . . .” By the way, think about that – about God, Yahweh, the Creator saying: This is what I want these people to know. I should hope they would be listening intently. This is about God’s people. This is what God’s word says to you.

[Read Exodus 19:4-8]

          Now if you would remember those phrases – He has told them they are His “treasured possession,” “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation,” keep those three key thoughts in mind as you turn to the New Testament, to 1 Peter 2:4ff. This is the passage that surrounds what I’ve written in your bulletins in the meditation section today.[Read 1 Peter 2:4-12]

Prayer for Illumination – Lord, as we listen now to these words which you have spoken to us through two magnificent servants, Moses and Peter, we pray that we would hear your voice and that your Spirit would move among us. We want to know the relevance of this word for us and for what we are doing this day, what we are doing here as the body of Christ here at West Side, and how we ought to be living both individually and communally before you. We pray it in your name, AMEN.

Message

          De Oppresso Liber! It is, perhaps, the most important and the most difficult assignment in human history, “To liberate the oppressed.” It is the official motto of the United States Army Special Forces known as the Green Berets. But long before them, it was also the motto of our Lord Jesus Christ. He began his ministry in Nazareth by quoting from the great prophet, Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives [there it is, to liberate the oppressed], and release from darkness for the prisoners. [Isaiah 6:1]

          A Green Beret would be quite familiar with the huge and radically important significance of this commission. As a part of a long line of elite forces in American history going all the way back to the “swamp foxes” during the Revolutionary War, they are called upon consistently to perform nearly impossible tasks often in the face of hostile resistance or the most difficult of circumstances. They are called upon to participate in unconventional warfare, special reconnaissance, hostage rescue, counter-terrorism, search and rescue, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and much more, all to the end of helping to liberate the oppressed – De Oppresso Liber!

          Candidates for this elite corps are required to undergo rigorous physical, mental, and psychological training assuring that they will excel in intelligence, physical fitness, motivation, trustworthiness, accountability, maturity, stability, judgment, decisiveness, teamwork, influence, and communications, as they themselves state the goal of their training. They learn other languages, become experts on other cultures, and learn remarkable skills which enable them to operate in the most forbidding terrain and circumstances. Only the very best eventually earn the “green beret” – and you and I need to be very grateful, because our freedom and the survival of our nation very often depend upon them knowing and doing their extraordinary job.

          But I have a question for each of you this morning: Do you know your job? Do you have any idea who you are and really why you are here today? It is my observation, and that of many others, that the church in America today has lost it’s way. We have no clue who we are and why we are here. And as a result the church has become increasingly irrelevant. We desperately try to survive by polling the people, doing our “market research,” and then doing our best to measure up to their expectations. You want entertainment? Let me entertain you. Oh, we can do high-tech; we can put our services on stage – do a sound and light show that dazzles your eyes and deafens your ears and (you can look this up) delights your endorphins. You want affirmation? Oh, we are here to tell you that you are wonderful just the way you are, and nothing you ever desire should be denied.

          Problem is, that was never our job. We’re not here to entertain, we’re not here to affirm, we’re not here to make you feel comfortable and to provide you with the latest and greatest personal services. We’re here to make disciples for Jesus Christ – an elite corps, if you will, of special forces who share His mission of liberating the oppressed. That’s it. That’s our job. That’s what we’ve been called to do. And Christ himself has no interest in helping us to be or to do anything else. He wants us to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually fit. He wants us to be (the Special Forces gives us a great list) trustworthy, accountable, mature, stable, motivated, decisive, able to exercise good judgment, work together with a team, and be effective in communicating our faith and influencing others. It’s the same list as the Green Beret.

          The word translated “church” or “congregation” in the Bible is the Greek word ekklesia. It means, “those who are called out” and the first time it occurs in the Bible is in reference to this assembly of God’s people who were called before God at Mt. Sinai, the event we have just read about in our text from Exodus 19. They have been “called out” and He is going to form them into His special forces, His people. Writing to the New Testament church, the apostle Peter in the second text we read this morning, took all the key phrases from Exodus 19 and applied them directly to us – to the church of Jesus Christ. So if we want to find out who we are and why we are here, we need to listen not to the world around us (“what do you want us to be?”), rather we need to listen to what God says about our calling. We need to listen to these two brief texts from Exodus 19 and 1 Peter 2. You’ll notice they do not say anything about what we need to do to be popular or successful. They talk about the tremendously challenging and profoundly important work of liberation and discipleship.

          In the text you studied with Bryan last week from Deuteronomy 6, you heard a summary from Moses on what God’s call at Sinai was all about. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Were you listening? It’s about listening to God, it’s about letting God be God in your life and in our world, learning to love God, and learning to love the people He brings into your life, to love the world He loves. God cares about whether or not we do this. In fact, everything depends on it – everything! That’s what God told Moses to tell the Israelites at the beginning of our text from Exodus 19:3-5. I have redeemed you, you’ll notice. I have liberated you from slavery. I have set you free from death itself. “Now,” verse 5 says, “if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then [you will experience my blessing, and accomplish what I have recruited you to do].”

          You understand, God’s blessing always depends upon obedience. “But what about grace,” you ask. “Isn’t the message of the gospel that grace has superceded works (or obedience)?” Oh yes, it is by grace alone that we are saved, the Bible tells us that again and again, but the purpose of that salvation, the purpose of that grace is to equip us to obey. That famous passage in Ephesians 2, which we are fond of quoting, says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God – not [by] works, lest anyone should boast.” But that very next verse in the same paragraph goes on to say, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, . . .” [Ephesians 2:8-10] We are recruited to do good works “which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Or as Paul writes to the Philippians in 3:12-13, “continue to work out your salvation . . .” Yes, you’ve been saved by grace, continue to work out your salvation now “with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

          So, like the Green Beret, we have been called to be God’s special forces. That is what you have been recruited to do. We are God’s people, and we have a special job to do. The heart of that job is spelled out in Exodus 19:5-6. “Now if you obey me fully [if you do what I have called you to do] and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites [to my people].” You will notice that there are three identifying phrases here which tell us who we are and what we are called to do. They are the three phrases in your outline this morning. We are: 1) A Treasured Possession, 2) A kingdom of priests, and 3) A holy nation. In Peter’s application of these identifying descriptions to the church, he said, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [have you heard those phrases before?], a people belonging to God.”

          Let’s look at these three grand images more closely. Who are you? What are you called to be? Why are you here? In the first place God calls us to be His treasured possession. Now this is very important for us to understand in its context. “The whole earth is mine,” God says in Exodus 19:5, and He loves it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son,” John 3:16 tells us, to redeem that world. Nevertheless, He says, if you accept your calling, if you obey me, “then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” Can you imagine, really, what it means to be God’s treasured possession? Something He treasures and cares for and shows to His friends because He is proud of it? I love the whole world, He says. I truly do. I love the whole world immensely, enormously, more than you can imagine, but my desire is to have a special relationship with you which supercedes in many ways my relationship to anyone else.

          Do you hear what God is saying here? He says, if you will accept my commission, I want you to know that I will treasure you more than anything else in my creation! You cannot know how important your service is to me. You are my elite troops, and I admire you more than I can say, and my attention to you will be undivided, and I will supply you with everything you need, as Peter says in his second letter, for life and godliness. Do you think I would ever neglect my special forces? You mean more to me than anything else. Jesus says, I would walk through hell for you! We state that in the Apostles’ Creed. It is the heart of our faith. He has done exactly that.

          Now notice in this context that God is not promising us ease and indulgence. This is not the prosperity gospel – you are my treasured possession. No one enters His special forces for ease and abundance. In fact, He will watch with admiration and respect as we accept the toughest challenges and agree to undergo the greatest difficulties – no, better yet He will be there fighting alongside us, inspiring us to heroism and nobility in the face of battle. And when we have fought our way through, He will bind up our wounds and embrace us as brothers and sisters, and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Well done! That was even harder than you knew, and you did it! I am so proud of you. I can’t tell you how proud I am of you! It is a privilege to have you sharing this grand mission with me. That’s what it means to be His treasured possession.

          We are His treasured possession, as those He has called and recruited to represent Him in this world. But what, specifically then, is our job? What is our elite mission? Exodus 19:6 takes us to the second aspect of our calling. It says, “you will be for me a kingdom of priests.” Well now, we are not sure we know exactly what that means. Peter calls us “a royal priesthood.” Most of us kind of pass this one by as an invitation to be some sort of odd, religious misfit. We have an image of self-important people in long robes and various religious vestments, chanting and burning incense and doing no one any particular earthly good. But a priest, you must understand, is a person in an astonishingly privileged position. A priest has the privilege of personal access to God at any time. He (or she) is in God’s inner circle. A priest has a standing invitation to be present whenever the council is meeting. You get in on the strategy sessions. You are trusted with the critical information. You know what is going to happen before it happens. You can ask questions, you can offer observations, and since this is God Himself in the Director’s chair, you can lean back in wonder, your breath taken away by the brilliance of His plan, and the certainty of it’s accomplishment.

          But the job of the priest goes beyond this access to the inner circle. The Latin word for priest is pontifex which literally means “bridge-builder.” And this takes us to the heart of our mission. For while one side of our bridge is firmly established in heaven in God’s presence, we are called to extend the other side of that bridge into our own world. You and I, then, become the connecting link between God and the world He loves. That is who we are called to be. Jesus said our great commission was, wherever we go in the world, to make disciples. We are the special forces, penetrating deep into what C. S. Lewis called “enemy-occupied territory” to release the hostages and to recruit and train them to be a part of this great liberation force which is finally commissioned to break the stranglehold of Evil and set creation itself free from it’s bondage to decay, as Paul says in Romans 8.

          The job has not changed since God began recruiting way back at the beginning of the story. He had called Abraham out to belong to Him, promising him untold blessing provided he shared that blessing with “all the people on earth,” as He told him in Genesis 12. This was Abraham’s calling at the beginning. It was the calling of God’s people at Sinai. And it is our calling as well as Peter has informed us. We are, like Abraham, “blessed in order to be a blessing.” We are God’s personal representatives who get to hold the door open and invite others to the feast, to join God at His table!

          But to do that, we need to become what he calls in our third phrase, “a holy nation.” We generally think of “holy” as pure and righteous and loving and spiritual and all that sort of thing. But essentially the word “holy” means “different.” And I guess, when you stop and think about it, being pure and righteous and loving and truly tuned in to God’s Spirit certainly is “different,” isn’t it?

          I am often struck by how reluctant our culture really is to being “different.” Oh, we pay lip-service to being different, to being a maverick or a radical. We like to think of ourselves in that way, but we don’t really like to be different at all. Have you ever noticed how non-conformists are all alike? I mean, really, you don’t get a tatoo to be different. You get a tatoo to be the same! You want to fit in with all the other non-conformists. Can you even imagine a professional basketball player today without a tatoo? He would be excluded I am sure. If you are a student, you don’t do the “Goth thing” to be different. You do the “Goth thing” to fit in with somebody. We always want to fit in. We don’t want to be different.

          The same is true of getting drunk or messing with drugs or sex, or – sorry, but it’s very relevant – just throwing in the “f-word” or whatever your group’s most popular profanity is. These are all for people who are scared to death to be different. Or for that matter, it’s the same with surrounding yourself with all the materialistic perks that tell the world, “look at me, I’m wealthy and successful and can afford to look like every other wealthy and successful person, and belong to all their clubs too!” We don’t like to be different, do we? Holy means “different.” You don’t want to join the special forces if you want to be the same as everyone else.

          What would really be bold and different would be to say, “You know what, I don’t really care what anyone thinks of me, I’m going to do the right thing.” Now that would be different, and that is what holy means. “I can afford all those material perks, but I choose to live simply and use the wealth God has given me to accomplish good and noble things in the world.” That would be different. That would be holy.

          You understand, holy doesn’t mean so much “pious” as it means courageous enough to do what is right and good, no matter what anyone else around you is doing. Do you have that kind of courage? If so, God wants you in His special forces. It is to understand our elite calling, and to commit to the discipline and the sacrifice required of those who are called to participate in God’s special mission of liberating His world from the forces of Evil which prey upon it and keep it from ever coming to know His love and the true pleasures He desires for all of us one day to enjoy.

          This is what our texts this morning tell us God has called us to be: a treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation – a people who truly reflect God’s character. A people who are loving enough to care that the people around us are bound for eternal night without the light of Jesus Christ. A people who know that the world’s future rests in their hands – it truly does because we have been called to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in this world – and therefore a people who are willing to stop fooling around and indulging ourselves and instead to get after the job God has called us to do with all our might and with all our will. A people with the foresight and courage to be all that God has called us to be. Do you have that courage? Do you have that foresight? Do you have that will, that commitment?

          But if this calling has inspired you to finally stop playing around at being a Christian, I want to be sure we have seen one more critically important insight which Peter in particular spells out for us. We cannot do this alone. The military special forces know this. Working as a unit with a team is absolutely essential to who they are. In fact, when I was visiting the Marine base at Quantico this past summer, I flunked a test designed to see if you had what it takes to be one of “The few, the proud, the Marines.” And I flunked it because I tried to figure out how to accomplish an important mission on my own. Oh, I had great ideas, but I flunked it because I wanted to do it on my own. The only way the mission could be accomplished was to use the abilities of every other Marine in my unit strategically.

          The apostle Peter, in introducing our text likens our calling to considering ourselves “living stones” being built together into a spiritual edifice, a spiritual house. This rules out-of-hand the favorite indulgence of most would-be Christians in our neck of the woods, namely that we can be an effective Christian on our own. No, you can’t. You absolutely cannot. You can’t be a part of God’s special forces on your own. It is absolutely impossible. One stone does not make a house. As the New Testament scholar C. E. B. Cranfield says, “The free-lance Christian, who would be a Christian but is too superior to belong to the visible Church upon earth in one of its forms, is simply a contradiction in terms.” One board does not make a house.

          Friends, we are in this together. The strongest, bravest, most clever recruit who will not work as a team with others disqualifies himself immediately from consideration for membership in a special force like the Green Beret, or the Army Rangers, or the Navy Seals. And he disqualifies himself as well from the team of God’s People whom He considers His “treasured possession.”

          Our elite team of West Side Rangers is down by several members right now, as you know. These kinds of things happen to the best of teams. But we are a team, and every one of us has a role. It may be shouldering some new responsibility, or it may be providing generous support for the advance of God’s mission, it may be praying more diligently than you have ever prayed in your life. But we are God’s People, and we have been called and equipped for His mission. And, you know what else? We’re going to do it!

Closing prayer – Father, I want to thank you for the challenge you place before us. You don’t tell us, “Oh you can be a Christian. It’s easy. Anybody can do it.” Rather You tell us, “This is tough, but I believe in you. That’s why I’ve called you.” Father, we confess that we’re often lazy, undisciplined, self-indulgent. We can’t survive very long in your special forces that way. It’s a challenge to discipline our lives, to see the mission you have placed before us, to be willing to set other things aside, other things which have been priorities in order to do what you’ve called us to do. That’s a challenge some of us are unwilling to accept, but it is a definition of who we are called to be as Christians, members of your unique strike force in the world. So I pray that you would help us today to take some personal inventory as we reflect upon your word to see if we are truly willing to accept your challenge and, with it, to accept your equipping through your Spirit to be more than we ever thought we could be. Father, we want to do this but we know it is going to take the whole team. It’s going to take the whole unit that you have made us a part of here at West Side and beyond too – each battalion all the way to the whole of the army of God. So I pray that we would accept our commission, Father, and that we would receive here in communion at your Table today the resources we need for this day, for this week, and that we would come back to examine our commitment to you to be sure that we are doing weekly, daily, hourly, what you have called us to do. And may we find our energy restored, our vision cleared, our sense of mission more compelling than we have ever experienced before as your Spirit leads us and you, Jesus, walk alongside us in the accomplishment of your mission in the world. We pray it in your name, AMEN.