THURSDAY August 24th
1 Peter 2:5b and 2:9a
‘. . . to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’
‘ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’
I have put together these two verses, for as Peter makes the first statement in verse 5 he re-echoes it when we get to verse 9. He reminds us that as ‘living stones’, we have also become the people of God, we are not only his children, which in itself is good news, worthy to rejoice in, but we have become to God his own people. As the ‘living stones’ or as the Church (Gr ‘Ecclesia’) we are called out ones, we no longer live as citizens of the world but rather as citizens of the Kingdom of God. We are in the world, but no longer of the world.
The picture Peter gives here is the same as that of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, they were God’s people, they were his chosen race etc. In Psalm 100:3 we read ‘Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.’
Today we as the redeemed of the Lord can also say that we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture, we are ‘a people for his own possession’. Now, it is important to understand that because Peter has used language that was also used to describe Israel in the Old Testament* to describe we as the Church today, it does not mean that we have replaced Israel and that they as a people no longer matter in the purposes of God. God has one programme at the moment and the emphasis is on the Church, the preaching of the good news of the gospel, for we are living in the day of grace, and therefore the gospel is applicable to both Israel as well as the rest of the world, Jew and Gentile, but God still has much to work out for Israel.
But for today, in the now of yours and my experience we can rejoice that we have been brought into the fold of God, we have been saved to be his children, his people and as his people we have become a chosen race, a royal priesthood and a holy nation.
We serve God together, we are in this world but not of the world, we are separated to be God’s holy people, we should as Jesus said in his sermon on the mount be so different to all outside that we shine bright as lights in this darkened world in which we live. It is also a good time to remind ourselves that we should pray for the nation of Israel, in particular that those who rejected the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ when he came into this world, will by the Spirit have their eyes opened and will come to understand the truth concerning who Jesus is and will welcome him into their lives just as we have done.
* See Exodus 19:6, Deuteronomy 7:6, Isaiah 4:20.