James Meehan - You Are Chosen
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— Well, hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of "Switch Uncut". I'm here and my name is James. And with me, I was gonna get the order wrong, but I caught it in the moment because sometimes we make mistakes.
— Mm.
— But God's grace still wins. With that being said, let me pass it over to you, Kaitlyn.
— Hello.
— Please save us.
— So I'm Kaitlyn Caffrey. And today we are gonna talk about what it means to be citizens of heaven.
— This is like...
— Yes, please.
— What we...
— Oh, I spit a little bit.
— Oh, goodness. So, what we started talking about on Wednesday and we're just gonna follow up that conversation by walking through some of that passage that we started talking about, which is 1 Peter 2:4-12. So I'm gonna ask James to read that, and then we're gonna kind of pull it apart and see what the Holy Spirit is saying to us through that passage.
— Ready?
— Ready.
— 1 Peter 2:4-12. "You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God's temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What's more, you are his holy priests. through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. As the scriptures say, 'I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor and anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.' Yes, you who trust in him recognize the honor God has given him. But for those who reject him, the stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. And he is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they do not obey God's word and so they meet the fate that was planned for them. But you are not like that for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation. God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. Once you had no identity as a people, now you are God's people. Once you received no mercy, now you have received God's mercy. Dear friends. I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires, that wage war against your very souls. be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior and they will give honor to God when he judges the world".
— Cool, so that's 1 Peter 2:4-12. And what we like to do first is kind of set up the context for this passage and ask those questions. Who wrote it? Who did they write it to? And why were they writing it?
— Great questions.
— So, context for this, who wrote it is Peter. One of the disciples of Jesus. And he wrote it to the believers throughout the Roman provinces. And the reason that he wrote it is because these believers were experiencing persecution.
— Yeah.
— And Peter was like, man, I wanna encourage them to stay faithful to Jesus. And so what he does throughout this letter is encourage them in their relationship with Jesus to stay faithful. And he starts off by kind of like reminding them who Jesus is and then who they are because of Jesus.
— Come on, that's so good.
— And so, yeah, we're gonna start digging through this passage with that first verse, verse four.
— Verse four once again. "You are coming to Christ who is the living cornerstone of God's temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor".
— Yeah. So, a question that comes to my mind right away is what is a cornerstone?
— That's a great question.
— I feel like it's a term that we've probably heard before, but maybe not understood what it's meant. So a cornerstone is, in these buildings, the stone that is laid first, that everything else kind of gets its alignment off of and the actual weight of the structure rests upon it.
— Interesting, yeah.
— And so what Peter is doing by calling Jesus the cornerstone is saying Jesus is the first, he's the first born of new creation and all of new creation rests on and is aligned with Jesus.
— Okay, Peter, I see you. Is it kind of like corner pieces of a puzzle?
— Yeah, like how it's so helpful to put those in place first so you can figure out where everything else goes. That's a great example.
— I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm glad you said, yeah, 'cause that's what I was thinking about. I was like, this might be a dumb question, but I'm gonna ask it anyways.
— No, I like that example. That's good.
— Thank you. I'm proud of me.
— Good. So, the other thing that is standing out to me, it says "You are coming to Christ who is the living cornerstone of God's temple". And that word "coming". It's not like a one and done type of deal.
— Right, right, right.
— It's like every single day we are still coming to Jesus.
— That's super good, yeah.
— And I think a lot of us in our relationship with him can think, okay, like I came to Jesus, I got saved, prayed the prayer, all the things. But what Peter is saying that in order to stay faithful to Jesus, we actually have to keep coming to him.
— That's fantastic.
— Again and again and again. And the last part of that first verse is "He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor". And what I think Peter might be doing is kind of reflecting on his own journey a little bit because Peter actually rejected Jesus.
— Right.
— He denied him three times.
— Right.
— And what we're gonna see a little more throughout this passage is Peter's own redemption story as he's encouraging faithfulness in the believers.
— That's awesome.
— Yes. Next verse.
— Verse five. "And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What's more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God".
— Right, so verse four kind of set up, okay, this is who Jesus is, this living cornerstone. And then verse five is like, okay, this is who you are because of Jesus.
— Right.
— You are the living stones that God is building. And what I love is like the order of these verses is like, okay, let's get the foundation right first. And then we can go on building the thing.
— Yeah.
— And then again, like I mentioned, I think this is a reflection on Peter's own journey that he is claiming for himself. Hey, I'm also a living stone.
— Right.
— That God is building into this temple. When Jesus spoke to Peter, he said like you're Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church.
— Right.
— And so, this moment of Peter encouraging us, like, hey, you're also a living stone, is him claiming that identity for himself?
— So good.
— Like this is who Jesus said that I was and this is who we get to be together.
— Right, because before Peter was Peter, he was Simon.
— Yep.
— And then Jesus gave him a new name.
— Yep.
— And that word Peter means rock.
— Yep.
— And so, that idea of stones keeps coming up here. But I think what's important for you to know as you're watching this video, is no matter what you've been called in the past.
— Come on.
— When you come into a relationship with Jesus, he gives you a new name.
— Yep.
— And you may not realize it the moment you say yes to Jesus because Peter was Simon.
— Yep.
— For awhile of following Jesus before he became Peter.
— That's good.
— And for a while, even after he got given the new name, he didn't quite live it. But now later in his life, he's saying, this is who I am.
— Yep.
— And this is who we are.
— Yep.
— Because of who Jesus is.
— Come on. That's so good. The last thing that is sticking out to me from verse five is "You are the living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple".
— Come on.
— What I think is important to note is that God is the one doing the constructing and not us.
— Yeah.
— There's so many places in scripture where it's like, God does not dwell in places built by human hands. And I think that what is Peter is calling our minds back to is that God is the one doing the constructing and it's a reminder that I can't contain or construct God.
— Right.
— He's not like built by my own design. I don't get to decide who God is.
— Right.
— And I don't get to decide the timing in which he works.
— Right.
— And I think that would've been really encouraging.
— Sure.
— For the audience that Peter was writing to.
— Right.
— Of just like, God's the one who's working this all out in his own time.
— Yeah.
— All you gotta do is stay faithful to him.
— Come on, God is our creator.
— Yep.
— So he gets to say who we are.
— Yep, come on.
— We are not his creator.
— Nope.
— We don't get to say who he is. That's really good, ready for verse six?
— Yes.
— So verse six, "As the scripture say, 'I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor and anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.'"
— So, this is actually a quote from Isaiah 28. And what I think is so cool is that the Jewish people in Peter's audience would have known right away the context of this passage.
— For sure.
— Because they just like internalized the scriptures and the text. And so, what they would've realized is that Isaiah 28 is telling this story of how the people of Israel had built for themselves a refuge, they'd built for themselves their nation. And it was actually on a foundation of lies and deception.
— Interesting, yeah.
— And what God is doing in that story is he is saying "I'm placing a new cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor and anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced". And then Isaiah 28 goes on to say that this new foundation that God was placing among his people was based on righteousness and justice instead of lies and deception.
— That's good.
— And also, it is like the reminder that sometimes we have to pull out the old stuff.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
— The old foundations that we've built our lives on.
— Right.
— In order to step into that new identity that God has given us.
— That's so stinking good.
— Cool, well.
— Verse seven?
— Verse seven and eight.
— Verse seven and eight. "Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given him. But for those who reject him, the stone that the builder's rejected has now become the cornerstone. And he is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they do not obey God's word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them".
— Yeah, so again, Peter's quoting from the Old Testament and these passages are from Psalm 118 and Isaiah eight. And what is super interesting is that Jesus actually talked about both of these exact same passages in Matthew 21. And in Matthew 21, Jesus is telling this story to some of the religious leaders. And it's this story about a vineyard and these tenants that this master has entrusted to watch over and take care of this vineyard. And the master keeps sending servants to this vineyard to check on it, check on the progress, see how it's going.
— Right.
— And the tenants, the guys watching over this vineyard, keep killing the servants.
— That's kind of gruesome.
— Yeah, it's really intense. Jesus' story, not mine.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
— Until finally the master ends up sending his own son and they actually kill him too.
— Hm.
— And what Jesus and then it's after telling this story that Jesus quotes these passages about him being the cornerstone that the builders rejected.
— Yeah.
— And him being this stone and rock that makes people fall. And what he says, what's so interesting is what he says at the end of that passage in Matthew 21, is that the religious leaders knew that they were talking, that Jesus was talking about them.
— Hm.
— And they tried to kill him.
— Right, right, right.
— And so they like are getting called out so hard.
— Yeah, yeah.
— But their response to that, like conviction, is not humility and repentance.
— Sure.
— It's we gotta get rid of this guy.
— Right.
— And so, they're literally playing out the exact story that Jesus just told.
— That Jesus just told.
— Which is crazy to me.
— I think what's so interesting is even like, as we're reading through this, we're reading the words of Peter.
— Yep.
— In the Bible.
— Yep.
— Who's quoting Jesus.
— Yep.
— Who was quoting the old Testament. Just like repeatedly.
— Yep.
— And like in the series that we're in right now, if you're joining with us for our messages on Wednesday night.
— Yep.
— We are engaging this practice known as scripture memorization.
— Yeah.
— Where we want to internalize the truth of God's words so that eventually his words become our words.
— Yep.
— I think this passage in first Peter is such a beautiful example of that.
— That's so good.
— We're like, as Peter is writing this, he's not writing his own words.
— Yeah.
— He's writing the words that God had already spoken in scripture, but the Holy Spirit was inspiring him to write, to encourage other Christians to stay faithful in the middle of persecution.
— Come on.
— Which is just bonkers.
— Yeah.
— I wanna be like Peter.
— That's so good. Okay, so this is like kind of the response that the religious leaders had to hearing these passages.
— Yeah, yeah.
— But then in verse nine.
— Come on.
— This is what Peter says.
— So Peter says, "But you are not like that".
— Come on.
— "For you are a chosen people".
— Yep.
— "You are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light".
— Yeah, I love that so much. "But you are not like that". And he's painting that contrast between the response that we saw when Jesus quotes these passages.
— Yeah.
— And the response that we are called to have.
— Yep.
— As people chosen by God.
— Come on.
— And again, what is so cool is that the Jewish audience, I mean, I love how you just talked about scripture memorization.
— Right.
— The Jewish audience listening to this would've been able to finish the passage that Peter brings up in Psalm 118. In Psalm 118, 26 through 27 says, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you. The Lord is God and he has made his light shine on us. With boughs in hand, join the festival procession up to the horns of the altar". And again, the beautiful thing about this passage is that it's literally mirroring verse nine that we just read.
— Right, yeah, yeah.
— And it is saying "You are royal priests, you are a holy nation". It's this, "We bless you from the house of the Lord". And this invitation to "join the procession" is something that only priests could do.
— Yeah.
— They were bringing gifts into the presence of, into the temple, into the altar. And that was something that was specifically reserved for priests to do.
— Yeah.
— But the use of the word, "We bless you from the house of the Lord" and the invitation to "join in the procession" is just affirming what Peter is saying of God has called us and invited us to be priests. To interface with him directly and to access his presence.
— Come on.
— And he continues to like add to that in the next verse.
— Verse 10, "Once you had no identity as a people, now you are God's people. Once you received no mercy, now you have received God's mercy".
— Yeah. So, I love in here that there's literally like identity, purpose, belonging.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
— All wrapped up into this verse.
— Right.
— Is like he has given us belonging as part of his people.
— Yeah.
— He has given us this identity as priests and he has shown us mercy. And because we're priests, the way that we live, really really matters.
— Absolutely.
— And that's the picture that we see kind of painted throughout the entire Old Testament.
— Right.
— A lot of the kind of like laws and regulations and whatever that we read in the Old Testament were specifically for the priests.
— Right.
— To show them how to interact with God, because they were so special and set apart.
— Right.
— And in the same way, we are so special and set apart. We're God's special possession, his chosen people. And so because of that, the way that we live really matters.
— I understand.
— And I think that's how Paul kind of wraps up this chunk.
— Yeah, in verses 11 and 12, Peter says, "Dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior and they will give honor to God when he judges the world".
— Right. So, the way that we live matters. "Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors". Because even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they'll see how you're behaving and they will actually end up giving glory to God. That reminds me of another thing that Jesus says in Matthew five in the Sermon on the Mount.
— Yeah.
— When he calls us the salt and light of the world and he says, "Let your good deeds shine before others so that they can see them and give glory to your father in heaven".
— Yeah, absolutely.
— And so again, I think what we see Peter do throughout this whole passage is kind of reflect on who God has made him to be.
— Yeah
— And who God is making us to be. And the invitation that we have to be special and set apart because of who Jesus is.
— Yeah, and it's really cool because you know, throughout this semester of Switch, we are going on a journey together, starting with understanding who God is.
— Yeah.
— Then moving to who he says we are.
— Yep.
— So, that we can discover the difference we've been created to make.
— That's good.
— And that flow, God, us, and then our purpose.
— Yeah.
— Is exactly what we just walked through. As Peter wrote, he starts with Jesus and who Jesus is.
— So good.
— Then he moves to who we are.
— Yep.
— And then, because of who Jesus is and who Jesus says we are, this is how we are called to live as his people.
— Yep.
— To show others the good news that's been offered to us. I think that idea is really, really special. And so spoiler alert, after this series we're in right now, who am I, we're gonna move into a series titled what difference do I make where we're gonna explore what is the purpose that we've been created for?
— Yeah.
— What is the difference that we've been called to make? Because of what Jesus has done and who Jesus says we are.
— Yeah.
— And I'm really excited to get into that.
— I'm so excited too. So, as we've kind of walked through this passage, another thing that we wanna do is kind of talk about the questions that the Holy Spirit is asking us and the things that we're kind of being challenged and confronted with and pulling from this passage. So, is there anything that's sticking out to you, James?
— Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I think is so, so powerful here is the understanding of the order in which all this operates.
— Yes, that's so good.
— Because it's really easy to focus on this is what we're supposed to do.
— Yeah.
— And miss out on who Jesus says we are and who he is.
— Yeah.
— Because the what we're supposed to do matters, right, we're supposed to live in such a way that our lives point to the goodness of God.
— Yep, come on.
— And so that matters. But before we've been ever asked to do anything.
— Come on.
— Jesus died for us.
— Come on.
— And he offers us grace.
— Yeah.
— And so, this is what's really important to understand is yes, as a follower of Jesus, we have been called to live in a way that is totally different than the rest of the world.
— Yeah.
— That most people would consider very strange and weird. But when we live faithfully to Jesus, they're gonna see, oh yes, it's weird, but it's also good. But even when we fall short, God's grace still covers us.
— Yep.
— It goes further than we ever could. And so, us doing these things doesn't make us more holy or more awesome or more righteous than other people.
— Right.
— Because our righteousness is found in the work that Jesus had already done.
— Yeah.
— Not the work that we've been called to do. And I think starting there is really important.
— Yeah.
— Because I can so easily, I talked about it in last week's episode of "Switch Uncut". If you missed it, you can go back and check it out. But I can so easily do a bunch of things and think I'm awesome because I'm a full-time pastor. That is my job, is to get paid to two church things.
— Yeah.
— That does not make me better than anybody else.
— Right.
— All of us are living stones. We are the temple of God, the body of Christ.
— That's good.
— And we've been called to engage in this mission together.
— Yeah.
— What I do is important, what you do is important. And you may not even realize it, but I think that's one of the things that God wants to invite us into.
— Yeah.
— Is to see the eternal difference we can make by being faithful to Jesus right where we are. Right how we are.
— Yeah.
— And with the things that God's given us.
— Yep, that's awesome. I think going off of that, one of the things that is sticking out to me or the questions that I'm asking is are there any areas of my life where I am still trying to do the constructing instead of trusting God to do that?
— That's good.
— We read in that passage, like God is the one who is building this temple. God is the one who is putting all the pieces of his body together exactly how he wants them to be. But I think sometimes I can be really tempted to think that, you know, maybe this person should be over there.
— Right, God needs my advice.
— God, yeah, for sure. Like a little assistant to his architecture project.
— Ooh, that's good. Assistant to the architect.
— That one.
— That's my new title.
— But here's the thing, like that's not my job.
— Right.
— My job is to be a living stone in his hands that he can position and put whatever he wants.
— Come on.
— And trusting God does not look like criticizing others. I'm just getting real confronted with that.
— Yeah, pause for effect. Let that sink in. That's good.
— Ouch.
— Anything else?
— I think possibly the other thing that, or the other question that I'm asking is again, in verse nine, I think it was, "But you are not like that".
— Hm.
— And the way that we talked about kind of the contrast of responses that we can have to hearing the words of Jesus is like, we saw the picture of what the religious leaders did and then Peter saying, but that's not how you respond.
— Yeah.
— And so, I want to continually ask myself the question of, is there any part of me that is rejecting Jesus and his grace?
— Come on, dude.
— And I wanna confront those parts of me and eradicate them.
— Right.
— So that again, in humility, I can just allow Jesus to do what he wants to do in his work in my life.
— That's so good because Jesus is going to point out the things in us.
— Yep.
— That are not good.
— Yep.
— And most of us probably won't do what the religious leaders do and have him killed.
— Right.
— But, we might do something just as harmful.
— Right.
— In our present day and just either reject what Jesus is showing us.
— Right.
— Or ignore him all together.
— Right.
— And for those of us who have said yes to a relationship with Jesus, what we all know is that our response isn't to deny Jesus.
— Come on.
— It's not to ignore Jesus. It's not even just to consume Jesus.
— Come on.
— It's to follow Jesus wherever he leads.
— That's so good.
— And so, wherever you are right now, what is it that Jesus wants to show you? How is he revealing more of who he is so that you can better understand who you are and the difference that you've been created to make.
— Yep.
— As we continue to go on this journey, we're hoping that you stay engaged, you stay committed. You keep showing up day after day because the good news is that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
— Come on.
— The foundation that he laid 2,000 years ago,
— That's good.
— is a foundation that all of us are still standing on today. And that's really special. And we're thankful that we get to do all of this together with you.
— Yeah, 100%. We are so much better when we do it together. So leave your comments, leave your questions, and let's continue to wrestle through this and go on this journey.
— Awesome, see y'all next week.
— See you, guys.