Sermon Transcript
1 Peter 2:9-12. 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 marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Welcome back for week 2 of our 6-week series diving into the topic of living as as exiles. Last week we saw really that all believers have been exiles on this earth ever since humans walked away from God at the beginning of our story. We saw we have never really truly been at home, no matter our country, no matter how much cultural influence or respect we have, we have always to some extent been fish out of water as believers in this world. That is to say, our surroundings will never be totally comfortable for us because we were made for somewhere else. We will nearly always face some amount of cultural headwinds, and even those rare moments when we don’t, we will still feel out of place here.
It’s not usual. It’s the way it will be until God finally remakes the world. Today we’re talking about when we feel out of place, part of what is happening, what is underneath those feelings of displacement, are actually questions of identity. In fact, whether we’re talking about exile or not, there is nothing that makes us more aware of our own identity or question our own identity quite like being in a place that is out of alignment with our identity. For instance, many of us, or for many of us, questions of our identity came up in middle school and maybe high school, and it’s why those years were so uncomfortable.
You know, in middle school you might not have really known who you were yet, so it didn’t feel like you fit anywhere. You were still figuring out what made you, you. So really nowhere felt right. Then by high school, maybe some of us had more of an idea of what made us, us. By the way, all this seems to be different now.
I think, I think current generations are faced with these questions much sooner than previous generations. So if you’re in middle school or high school today, maybe you’ve already got all this figured out. But for the the rest of us, maybe in high school you were the only drama kid in a sea of athletes and you just felt out of place. You knew these aren’t my people. Or maybe you were the only athlete in a sea of STEM kids, right?
Not that these are mutually exclusive, right? You could be drama, STEM, and athlete, but there’s probably only one that can be primary, that makes up more of the core of your identity. And if you were around a bunch of people unlike you, you just never felt like you quite fit in. Even if you couldn’t really put your finger on exactly why, you sensed they aren’t me. But then the day came when you found your group.
For some kids, they got the opportunity maybe to go to a specialized high school, which could have been, you know, drama or art or STEM. For other people, this happens in but suddenly you are around a sea of people just like you who care about the same things, who think about the world the same way, who have the same hopes, and you realize, oh, this is why I felt like I didn’t fit before. It has to do with my identity. It has to do with who I am. So knowing who you are, being comfortable with who you are, accepting Accepting who you are can make all the difference in the world.
Not only to help you find people like you, which is important, but also for when you aren’t around people like you. Because if you know who you are, it actually helps you navigate those places that don’t match with your identity. If you know what makes you unique from the people around you, you can see what they are lacking and therefore where you can add value. It’s why teams and companies use evaluations to determine people’s strengths and personalities and weaknesses, right? They want to know what each person can uniquely contribute and then needs to contribute in order for them to have a complete team.
So if you’re an analytical person, like many people around here are, if you’re an analytical person on a team with a bunch of creatives, You know, I’m not like these people, right? You see the world differently, right? And you know you’re going to frustrate each other sometimes, but you also know as an analytical person, you think, I am needed by these creatives, right? I can’t hide who I am. I can’t pretend to be someone else because who I am is actually necessary for this group.
They, they need me, for instance, probably to add structure to what they’re doing, right? I can add deadlines, right? If it weren’t for me, some of these creatives might never even think of a deadline, right? And I’m the one that can keep these creatives from chasing every little idea that pops into their heads and they get excited about. When they say, ooh, I just thought of something in a meeting that has nothing to do what we’re talking about, right?
They’re like, squirrel! They want to chase it. You say, wait, guys, not today. I mean, make a note of it, we can come back to it later, but right now, sit, stay on track, good boy. All right, once you know who you are, even if you’re in a spot that doesn’t match your identity, it helps you navigate that space much better.
So as Christians living in a culture that doesn’t always support what we believe, that doesn’t feel like we are home, knowing who we are is massively helpful trying to figure out how to live here, how we can contribute, what our role is even if we get frustrated by those around us. We have a better sense of what our job is, why we are needed. So today we’re looking at a small passage from the letter of 1 Peter which will tell us much about our identity in exile. Peter actually addresses his letter— I mean, chapter 1, verse 1, he addresses it to believers in exile, and then he lists places all over the Roman Empire, right? Which tells us, like we said last week, all believers everywhere are in exile all the time.
The Bible is consistent on that point because this world is not our home. But then in chapter 2, Peter talks about our And first Peter will tell us our identity in relation to God, which of course is primary, and then he tells us our identity in relation to the world around us, which we will never be able to live into our identity in relation to others unless we are first rock solid on our identity in him. So our identity in relation to God, then our identity in relation to those around us. Around us. Our identity in relation to God is chosen, royal, holy, desired, liberated, included, forgiven.
We can leave this slide up here for a while, and all of those come from verses 9 and 10. I’ll just read it again. Verse 9, 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 marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
You are chosen, royal, Loyal, holy, desired, liberated, included, forgiven. That is who you are in Christ through your faith in him. That is your identity. It’s not earned. It can’t be lost.
It can’t be forfeited. It’s what Christ gave you when he called you and redeemed you. And, and we need to hear from God who we are, probably every day at some point during the day. Because at some point during just about every day, we are going to feel off balance, insecure, unsafe, unwanted, criticized, threatened by someone or some event. And when that happens, you’ve got to hear who you are.
We talked about middle school earlier, right? And for many of us, middle school was probably the time in our life that felt most awkward, most insecure. We worried about being picked last for the team, or worried about if our friends would hang out without us and we would feel rejected, or maybe what someone would say behind our back who was supposed to be our friend. You know, when our bodies were changing, we never felt quite right in those, and we thought, when I grow up, all those insecurities will go away.
But they didn’t, did they? We just got better at hiding them. We can still feel unwanted. We can still feel stabbed in the back. We can still feel like we’ve blown it, that we’re inadequate, Our bodies still aren’t what we want them to be.
We still ask, am I good enough? Am I really loved? Am I really accepted? Have I done enough to be included? We ask those questions in the workplace, in our relationships, in our morality, and it’s actually those insecurities that usually drive all kinds of of other inappropriate behavior.
Verse 11, when Peter says abstain from passions in the flesh, he isn’t only talking about what we think he’s talking about, you know, some kind of hedonism, drunkenness, immorality, something like that. He’s not, he’s not really talking about those. He’s talking about what’s underneath all of those that come, that come out of our flesh. In Romans 7, the same word that is translated here as passions of the flesh is translated as covetousness. It means an over-desire.
So you could— a passion of the flesh could be a desire for something very good in itself, but you’ve elevated the desire too high, right? If it’s an over-desire, it leads to breakdown and other destructive behaviors. So for instance, work is a great thing, but if you over-desire work, if your career is what you must have in order to have a sense of worth and meaning, you’ll run yourself into the ground. Other parts of your life will suffer because of how you pursue it. You’ll say things like, if I didn’t have that job, that promotion, I would be nothing.
And then it kills you, or it kills something in your life, or it leads you to do unethical things in your job to keep your job. If you over-desire relationships, which are great, but if you over-desire them, you’ll throw yourselves into the arms of many lovers. Trying to fill your need for acceptance, right? You have to have it. If you over-desire affirmation or praise, you’ll be able to tell because you’ll never feel like you have enough affirmation or praise.
You’ll always be complaining about how people are criticizing you, and when you are criticized, you’ll feel crushed, and you’ll fixate on the criticism for weeks. You may binge 40 hours of TV or drink the whole bottle because you’re trying to escape escape. It hurts too much to face reality because you don’t have the particular passion of the flesh that you think that you need. It’s our drive for belonging, acceptance, worth, affirmation, approval. It’s what’s underneath so many of these other surface sins.
So Peter is at a deeper level than just saying don’t do wrong things. Instead, he’s going after the reason we do wrong things. He’s saying you wouldn’t cheat in order to beat your rival or win a national championship, for instance. You wouldn’t cheat unless you had a deeper insecurity driving that behavior. And it’s that deeper level where you need to hear who you are, that Christ has given you his merit, his status, his worth, his stability, His praise.
You have a new identity in Christ and it doesn’t fluctuate with success, failure, criticism, praise, acceptance, rejection. You are always in Christ maxed out accepted. You are always maxed out loved and wanted. Your worth is always maxed out. You couldn’t be any more validated.
You couldn’t have a higher Always, no matter what, because you have the status, worth, validation, belonging of Christ. You need to be reminded of it all the time, especially in those moments when you feel insecure. If that is up and running, you won’t engage in so many of the corrupt behaviors that we see from those around us all the time. The time. You won’t stab others in the back to get ahead because you know you’re already in the front of the line.
Then when you’re stabbed in the back, you can be gracious and forgiving and work toward restoration because you didn’t need the validation from this world anyway. It wasn’t at your core. Your identity is secure.
That’s our identity in relation to God. You could say our vertical identity. And again, that needs to be in place in order to have a proper horizontal identity. Or in other words, we will never be able to relate to others correctly until we are totally secure of our identity in God’s eyes. Because it takes an enormous blend of both confidence and humility, of both boldness and grace You need both extremes to relate to those around us as Peter is going to describe here.
You need an identity that gives you the fearlessness that you are always approved no matter what, but also an identity that isn’t arrogant at all about that approval, that’s humble, patient, gracious, and you have that in Christ because you are approved in him by grace alone. We have not contributed to our approval from God whatsoever, which gives us humility. We didn’t earn it. In fact, we don’t even deserve it, so we can’t be boastful. But also, it’s the most secure approval we could ever have.
It is rock solid. It is unchanging. We can’t lose it, so we have great confidence. And we need both of those, humility and boldness. For our horizontal identity, which brings us to our identity in relation to others.
Resident aliens. The phrase Peter uses in verse 11, sojourners and exiles, the word exiles, name of our series of course, but exiles is actually better translated as resident aliens, which means we are neither only residents residents nor only aliens, but we are a combination of both. So, we will take those one at a time and then put them together. Aliens, like we’ve talked about already, means this world really isn’t our home, that we as Christians will feel out of place here. We feel uncomfortable to some extent in any culture.
We can’t always go along with what those around us are doing. We can’t conform, we can’t compromise, even if everybody else we know is doing it. We are boldly against the grain. It takes fearlessness. If our company pressures us to push ethical boundaries in order to succeed, we have to say, no, I can’t do that, which means we might get fired, we might be out of a job.
How are we going to endure that failure, if you could call it that, unless our confidence is rooted in something that can’t be taken away. Or on the dating scene, we can’t be part of the hookup culture. We believe as Christians an intimate relationship is only exclusively with your spouse. We believe you do not give yourself away physically to someone unless you are also giving yourself away in every other way, right? When you get married, for those of you who are married, you know this, the other person has rights to everything of yours.
They have rights to your finances. Your spouse has access to all your money by legal code, right? Your spouse has legal rights to your property, guardianship of children, have— has rights even to your calendar, right? You get married, you realize, I can’t make any plans without checking in with my spouse first, right? You give away all of yourself when you get married, and until you do that and they do the same for you, you don’t give yourself away physically.
That’s what Christians believe. So we date differently than anyone else, and it might mean it’s harder to find someone, or it might mean that there’s people who don’t want to date us for that reason. And how do you face that kind of rejection unless you know how approved you are, how desired you are by the only one whose opinion really matters in the end. By the way, for single people, marriage won’t solve your need for acceptance. Marriage has its own challenges and its own way that we need to hear how approved we are.
All of us need to be rooted in Christ on a daily basis for what our flesh longs for, and that will make us aliens. We will not really fit with those around us. In one season of my life, I had the opportunity to live and work in Puerto Rico for about 3 months. Obviously, Puerto Rico is not my native culture, and while I was there, I could feel it was not my native culture just about every moment of the day, right? I looked different from the people that I worked with.
I didn’t speak the same language. Language, although they were very accommodating for me when I was around, right? They spoke English with me, but they would have side conversations with each other in Spanish, which of course is not any kind of problem, totally fine for them to speak their own language, but it made me feel like I was an outsider looking in and I didn’t understand their jokes. And they would make references to events and history and icons, all of which were foreign to me, right? Billboards boards advertised products that were irrelevant to me because I didn’t have that kind of hair or that kind of skin.
I didn’t even like their food, which surprised me because like the guys in my man group could tell you, I eat just about anything. And before I went there, I was actually looking forward to the food because I love spicy food, and I thought their food would be spicy, but Puerto Rican food not spicy. It was actually pretty bland. So I ask, isn’t this Latin food? Don’t y’all— and I used that word to tell you how out of place I was— don’t y’all use a lot of spices and peppers in Latin food?
And they said, not here. They said peppers didn’t like natively grow there historically, so it was never incorporated into their cooking traditionally. I felt out of place, always. I was an alien, right? Side note, living there for 3 months was this light bulb moment for me when I realized, oh, I feel like this because I’m a minority in Puerto Rico, and I’ve never been a minority before.
So this might be how minority groups in mainland U.S. Feel all the time. I don’t have the same jokes, don’t use the same products, don’t like the same food as the majority culture does. They might feel out of place quite often. Like, I instantly had empathy for every minority. But that is similar to how Christians will feel in any culture.
We’re not from here. We’re citizens of a different country, a heavenly one, which we talked about last week. And because of that, because we’re not from here, our instinct might be to pull away, especially if our identity is not rooted in Christ, to separate ourselves from the world around us because it’s more comfortable to separate, stay in our Christian bubble, keep our head down, don’t put down roots, be hands-off, which is basically what I did in Puerto Rico, to tell you the truth. I was not there for ministry. I was there as a software consultant, so my approach was get the job done, see some sights, sit on the beach when I could, go to the rainforest, go home.
Right? I didn’t connect with the culture or the area. It was only do what I’m supposed to do, really take what I wanted from the place, which was a paycheck and tourist sights. And get back to where I belonged. Christians could have that instinct in our culture today, benefit from the society where we live to the extent that we can, do what we’re supposed to do, but really just be looking forward to the moment when we can get out of here, wait for heaven without investing here.
That’s a mindset some of us have with our jobs. You know, how many more hours until I can get out of here for the week? Or how many more years before I can go somewhere comfortable?
But that would be ignoring the other part of our identity in relation to others. We’re not just tourists here. We’re not only aliens. We’re also residents. So we put down roots even though we’re not from here, even though we’re different from here, even though we’re gonna make it— we’re gonna make a go of it, right?
We’re gonna get our green card. We’re staying. We’ll never be full citizens of this world, but man, this world is our home for now. So we’re gonna do what we can to make this place better. We’re not gonna be hands-off from culture.
We’re linking arms with those in our culture culture. Work is not just get the job done. It’s put down roots there, connect with the people, be friends with them, eat with them, laugh with them, cry with them, help however we can. Whether it’s careers or relationships or anything else, we seek the welfare of those around us because we’re residents.
We’re residents and aliens. And being both of those simultaneously is the challenge and the beauty of being a Christian in this world. Because it would be easy to just be an alien, or it’d be easy to just be a resident, right? If you were just an alien, you could stay in your Christian bubble, right? You’d never really be challenged.
You’d never challenge others. It’s relatively easy. You see some religious groups do that kind of thing, more orthodox kind of folks. They do live here, right? But they are as separate from here as they can be.
Only involve ourselves in the world in ways that are absolutely necessary. Those kind of groups are very concerned with living according to God’s word. They don’t want to get entangled in the sin of this world. Stay pure. Emphasis is on being different.
They’re aliens, but they’re not residents. It’s not terribly difficult. Then you have other religious groups who skew more towards being residents. They’re very concerned with serving the world, being part of the world. They’re very humanitarian.
They’re involved in civic organizations. But those groups often look very much like the world. They don’t abstain from anything really unless the world abstains from it. You know, whatever the world approves of, they approve of too. Whatever the world is doing, they say, we’ll do it too.
We’ll go along with it. We’ll affirm the culture around us but not challenge it.
Our practices and lifestyles will look exactly like their practices and lifestyles. They’re residents, but they’re not aliens. It’s easy, or it’s easier to be all one or all the other, but we’re called to do both. It’s very similar to our vision statement here of people matter, truth matter. People matter, we’re residents.
Truth matters, we’re aliens, and it’s both at the same time. Jesus calls us to do both. So it’s not just here in 1 Peter like we’ve looked at today or Hebrews like we looked at last week. John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples and he says, the world has hated them, talking about his immediate followers and then by extension us. The world has hated them because they They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
We’re aliens. He continues, I do not ask you to take them out of the world. Remember, he’s praying, God, don’t take my followers out of the world, but keep them from the evil one. So we’re not going anywhere. We’re not leaving the world.
We’re residents. He continues, They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth, which means we will, we will look different from the world. We follow the Bible.
We are formed by the Bible. It’s why we are hated sometimes, which Jesus mentioned would happen at the beginning of his prayer. If we were exactly the same as everyone else, if we affirmed everything the world was doing, there would be no reason to hate us. The reason they hate us is because we’re different. We don’t go along.
We won’t agree with everything the world does. We are not We’re not the same.
We’re aliens. But yet again, he concludes by saying, as you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. As Jesus was sent, we are sent, which means we do not live on a compound and wait for heaven, because that is not what he did. We have a mission in the world. We are sent with a purpose.
We engage with the world, and we engage in the world the same way Jesus does. If we’re hated, we don’t hate back.
If we’re hated, we don’t overpower. If we’re hated, we don’t beat the opposition into submission. When they stumble and fall, we don’t laugh at them or make fun of them or mock them. We are sent in the same way he was sent, to serve, to spend our lives for others, even when we are hated. Like they hated him.
And how are you gonna have that kind of grace, that kind of patience, long-suffering to use an old word? How can we hug and serve someone who is spitting in our face, for instance? How can we do that unless our identity is rooted somewhere that is not threatened when someone spits in our face. You’ve got to have your identity in Christ up and running to be an alien and a resident at the same time. And it’s when we do both that we actually make a difference.
It’s when we give ourselves up for the benefit of those around us, when we fight for the welfare of others while disagreeing with them, even if it costs us everything, we serve them while being different, while being opposed, is those moments when we unleash forces of change in this world. It’s the two together, residents and aliens at once, that make a difference. We know that makes a difference because that’s how Jesus made a difference for us. Jesus was the ultimate alien from outside this world who became the ultimate resident in this world. He did that so that we who were residents of this world could become aliens and join his.
He became like us in every way so we could become like him. He became human. He even took on our sin. I mean, talk about being a resident. He absorbed this place fully.
He went all in here, even to the extent of carrying the punishment that we deserve. He did that so we could take on his holiness and righteousness. He became a resident so we could become an alien, and now we serve as his representatives on this earth. We look like him. The term Christian was originally an insult.
The Roman world looked at us, sneered, and said, oh, you followers of Jesus, You’re like little Christs, you’re like tiny Jesuses, you Christians. That’s what Christian means, like little Jesus. You’re just trying to be like him, following behind him. And the church of the first century was like, yeah, well said. That is what we’re trying to do, right?
Loving you while you’re hating us. Giving ourselves up for your benefit while disagreeing with you.
That’s what we do because that’s what Jesus did for us and that’s what changed us. We’re residents, we’re not going anywhere, we’re just going to stand here, keep loving you. But we’re aliens, we’re very different from you. That’s who we are.
There was a 2nd or maybe 3rd century writer that said this about the Christians living at that time. It’s called the Letter to Diognetus if you want to look it up later. He wrote, 2nd or 3rd century, Christians dwell in their own countries but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others. And yet endure all things as if foreigners.
Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth is as a land of strangers. They marry as do all others, they beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time, they surpass the laws by their lives.
They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are poor but make many rich. They lack all things but have everything they want. They are insulted but repay the insult with honor. They do good yet are punished as evildoers.
When punished, they rejoice, voice as if quickened into life.
That’s how people described us in the 2nd or 3rd century.
That’s how they should describe us today. That’s our identity.
You will never be able to pull that off unless you are utterly confident of who you are in Christ.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for sending Jesus as an alien into our world to be a resident so that we as residents could become aliens and join him in his country, which we long for, Lord. But we don’t long for it in a way that separates us from this world. As you did not separate from this world. We enter into this world, Lord, as you did, to serve it, to sacrifice our lives for the benefit of those around us, not to ever tear anybody down, but to build them up toward you. Give us the strength, Lord, and help us see who we are in you, that we are holy, blameless, forgiven, adopted, accepted, loved, desired, chosen, cherished, totally secure forever and ever because of what you have done for us.
We pray all those things in Jesus’ name.
