“Super People with a Super Purpose”     1 Peter 2:9-12

Vicar Peter Zaferos     5th Sunday after Epiphany     February 6, 2011

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! 

The Word of God for our consideration this morning comes from 1 Peter chapter 2.

⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ 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.

¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. ¹² Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

In our house, my wife and I hear a lot of interesting phrases come from our 2-year-old’s mouth.  And lately there has been a theme of independence.   “I can do it by myself!”  and “No Daddy, let me do it!”  It’s common for little children to eventually have a desire to do things their way.  I doubt that anyone of you was surprised by my story.  An attitude of confidence in a child is a good thing, but it also causes a problem.  Thinking you’re able to do something is very different from actually being able to do something; especially for a two year old!  My daughter might think she’d have no problem chopping an onion into a nice petite dice with our big chef’s knife, but guess what?  She can’t!  She might think she can take our car for a joyride, but I might have my child taken from me if I let that happen!  For people of all ages, but especially for children, there is a big difference between thinking you can do something, and actually being able to do it.

            In our Old Testament reading for this morning we saw an example of that.  Joshua was 110 years old and was speaking to the people of Israel for the last time before he would be taken home to heaven.  The people had been through a lot with Joshua.  If you remember, Moses led the people out of Egypt but never actually got to enter the Promised Land.  So, Joshua was the one who actually led the nation of Israel into Canaan.  He’s the one who led them, marching around the walls of Jericho, until the walls fell down.  Joshua was the one who led the Israelites into battle against all the heathen kings living in the land God had promised to them.

But Joshua also knew that it wasn’t really what he did for the people, but rather what God did for the people.  Joshua wanted to remind the people that their God was the one who led them up out of Egypt and handed them the land of Canaan.  He did this by offering them a challenge.  He challenged the people to decide who they were going to serve; the gods their forefathers had worshiped in Egypt, or the God who had brought them up out of Egypt.  The answer the Israelites give Joshua sounds good!  “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! ¹⁷ It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. ¹⁸ And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”  Sounds good doesn’t it?

Well, listen again to Joshua’s response, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. ²⁰ If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”  From Joshua’s answer, it seems the people had forgotten the difference between thinking you are able to do something and actually being able to do something.  They had forgotten what their God demanded of them in Leviticus 19, “²Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”   Joshua wanted to remind the Israelites of who they were –sinners, unholy people who could only be saved by the grace of God.  He wanted to make sure that they didn’t fall into the temptation of thinking that they were good enough to serve God perfectly!

            Do you and I ever fall into a similar temptation?  Much like a child, do we forget the difference between thinking we can do something and actually being able to do it?  Do we ever start to think that deep down we are really “good people” and that in the end God will see that we’ve led “good” lives and take us to heaven?  Do we ever get so comfortable with our sin that we can excuse it away by thinking our so called “good works” have balanced the scale?  Do we ever forget exactly what God meant when He said, “²Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”?  Do we ever forget that “holy” means “NO SIN ALLOWED!”?  Do we forget that “holy” means you can’t lust, not even once?  Do we forget that “holy” means we can’t hate that annoying coworker even just a little bit, or lie to our parents, or belittle our spouse, or live together outside of God’s institution of marriage which is between one man and one woman?  Do we forget that “holy” means we can’t abuse alcohol or use illegal drugs?  Do we?  If we are really honest with ourselves, we have to go to our Heavenly Father and say, “Lord, I’m sorry!  Forgive me!”

            Praise be to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because He lived His life on this earth without one sin, because he was truly “holy,” because He died, innocently, for the sins of the whole world, because He rose from the dead.  Because Jesus did all these things God really can say to each and every one of us, “I forgive you!”  Because of what Jesus did, the believer is “holy” in God’s sight and headed to Heaven!  Like the Apostle Peter reminds us in our sermon text this morning, now that Jesus has died for the sins of the world, believers are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God!”  You are God’s “chosen people!”  God cares about you so much that He kept His promise to save His people from their sins by sending Jesus!   God cares about you so much that He wanted to pay for your sins so He could call you His own!  Not only that, but you are also a “royal priesthood!”  The Jewish priests had to be mediators between God and the people.  They had to bring sacrifices before God for the sins of the people.  But today, because you have been washed by the blood of Jesus you can go directly to God on your own behalf!  Because God has declared you to be holy in His sight you can approach Him in prayer!  And as if that wasn’t enough, you are a part of the Christian Church here on earth!  Not just a part of Living Word, but a member of the Church on earth made up of all believers, a “holy nation” of people, and “a people belonging to God!”  Wow!  That’s really cool!  Thanks to Jesus we are no longer wicked people in the eyes of our God, but instead we are “SUPER PEOPLE!”  Sorry, I had to go there…it is Super Bowl Sunday!!

            And since we went there already, why stop now!  Thanks to Jesus, you are now Super People with a Super Purpose!   Like Peter says, “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”  As Super People we have a Super Purpose, to declare the praise of him who called us out of darkness into the light of His salvation, to make sure that everyone knows the reason for the hope and the joy and the peace that we have!

But it doesn’t stop there.  Peter also reminds us of how we are to live our lives as redeemed Christians.  He reminds us that this earth is not our home.  We are strangers here and are not to make the ways of this world our own.   We are to abstain from sinful desires, which war against our souls.

Isn’t that a great way to describe sin?  The wicked ways of this world fight us tooth and nail!  You and I go to war with sin every day.  Satan wants to use sin to kill your soul!  He wants to drag you down to hell!  But as Super People, forgiven by our Father in Heaven, the war’s already been won for us!  Now that we’ve been made holy in the sight of our God, we can please our God with our actions!  We can show our thanks to our saving God by fighting back when lust attacks, we can show love to that annoying coworker, we can resist the temptation to lie to our parents, we can build our spouses up instead of tearing them down!  Not because it will earn our way to heaven, but because we want to say thank you to the God who made us Super People!

            Our purpose in life is to live lives that are pleasing to our Saving God.  As the Apostle Peter encourages us in the last verse of our text, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”  Live lives that show your thankfulness!  Live lives that show your joy!  Let everyone who does not know Christ and His salvation have no choice but to see the power of our saving God.

So, on this Super Bowl Sunday, and on every other day of the week, remember who you are.  Remember that, having been washed in the blood of our Savior, you are Super People with a Super Purpose!

Amen? Amen!