1 Peter 2:1-12; Genesis 17:1-18:15
You can be seated. Please take out your copies of the scripture and turn to Genesis chapter 17. And then our gospel reading from Matthew 19. And then from first Peter chapter two, verses one through 12. Today, we want to think of the covenant community that we belong to as the children of the living God.
One little side note is this is not our final pulpit. We have one being made, and this is just a little podium we’ve rigged up here. So it will do the job, but there’s something different coming. And hopefully it will hold all my stuff. This is a little bit of a mess up here.
First in Genesis chapter 17, we have the first One of the well, not the first one of several promises God makes to Abraham, Chapter 12, Chapter 15 and Chapter 17 are big chapters in the life of Abraham, where God promises to be his God, to bless his generations after him and to make covenant with him. So hear the word of God from Genesis 17, beginning at verse one.
When Abraham was 99 years old and the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly. Then Abram fell on his face and God said to him, behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be a father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abraham or Abram, but your name shall be Abraham. For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make you into nations and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you through their generations for an everlasting covenant to be your God, to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God. And God said to Abraham is for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you.
Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh and everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of the foreskin shall be cut off from the people, for he has broken my covenant.
And God said to Abraham, as far as Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her.
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. God said, no, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac.
I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father 12 princes and I shall make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house, or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house. And he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael, his son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day, Abraham and his son, Ishmael were circumcised. And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him.
And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. As he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran to the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to all the earth and said, Oh, Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.
Let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves. And after that, you may pass on since you have come to your servant. They said, Do as you have said. Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, quick, three sieves of fine flour, knead it and make cakes. And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf tender and good and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
They said to him, where is Sarah, your wife? He said, she is in the tent, and the Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son. Sarah was listening in the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years, and the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, after I am worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son. But Sarah denied it, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. But he said, no, you did laugh.
Now turn to the Gospel of Matthew. And since putting these verses in the bulletin, I’ve changed my mind. Still turn to Matthew 19, but look to verse 13. When Jesus is out ministering among the crowds and among the people, there is an occasion where the little ones come and his disciples rebuke the parents, rebuke the children. So Matthew chapter 19, verse 13 says, the children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them and went away.
Then now to first Peter, chapter two, verses one through 12. And as you hear these words, notice how Peter, the apostle of our savior, Jesus Christ, uses many Old Testament terms and titles and names to speak of the covenant community of God’s people in the church of the living God. First Peter chapter two verses one through twelve. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up to salvation. if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in the scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do.
But you, or 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, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Amen. The word of our gracious and living God. Let’s pray for a moment. Father, may your word be profitable today. May it do its holy errand and accomplish its everlasting work. We pray in the name of Jesus, our great savior. Amen.
Well, I suppose we’re what about 10 weeks into the new year and your new year’s resolutions are probably long out the door. You’ve probably got your treadmills on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. You’ve got back to your old bad habits. And when it comes to Bible reading, perhaps you set out at the beginning of this year with one of those handy lists. I’m going to read through the Bible, five chapters a day, three on Sunday, whatever the list is. If you’re like me, you’re underwater. You miss a day. It’s hard to catch up. You miss two days. It’s really hard to catch up. You miss several days and you might as well start over like March is January or something like that.
But some of you, I’m sure, have been diligent and you’ve been making your way through the Bible in a year. And you have noticed in your Old Testament reading, there are a lot of chapters of the Bible dedicated to genealogies, a couple Weeks ago, I suppose, in one reading plan, there was the book of First Chronicles. And you read First Chronicles 1 and you say, hmm, names.
Chapter 2, hmm, names. And chapters three and four and five and six and seven and eight. And guess what? Chapter nine, nine chapters of names. And then there’s Genesis five. And you know, there’s some names in Nehemiah, names in Ezra. There’s the Jesus narratives and the gospels, lots of names. I think there are about 20 chapters of Bible verses with names.
And you say to yourself, well, I remember learning second Timothy chapter three, where Paul says to Timothy, all scripture is breathed out by God. And you wonder, does that mean the names, the generations, the genealogies, all scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and for training in righteousness so that the man of God is equipped for every good work. And you wonder why the genealogies. Well, here’s the reason for genealogies. God is in the business of saving people and people have names. And there are stretches of the scripture where God says, you are my people, you are my treasure and possession. He speaks in the book of Revelation of their being in heaven, a lamb’s book of life.
And I would bet while most of us would complain about the genealogies, Uh, not even being able to pronounce all the names we would say, Oh, why is that in there? I’ll just skip over it. Nothing edifying for me. I bet you every one of us, if our name was on that list, we would say it better be read loud, proud, strong, and pronounced correctly in Hebrew. We would say that, but I’m sure we definitely wish our name to be in the lamb’s book of life.
We want to be one day in heaven where God is, where Christ our savior is. And so we want to think today about the covenant community, the people of God, and we want to think about our names and how they get there. And I think the phrase that is at the end of the Westminster Creed is so helpful. You’re welcome to flip there in the back of your handle and see those words.
But we say this, I believe that from all eternity, God gave his son a people. who will be one day redeemed and called and justified and sanctified and glorified. Now, definition and glossary sermons are very painful, and I know we have the smell of lasagna coming down the hallway, and so I’ll try to be as brief as I can, but I want us to understand today What does God do to bring us into his family?
Remember that we are not natural born children, but we are adopted in the son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are made sons of God. We are made daughters of the most high. And so in eternity past, God, the father, God, the son, and God, the Holy spirit thinking to themselves and what’s commonly called the divine boardroom meeting said to each other, what will bring us the most glory?
And so the plan, the providence of God, the decision of God, the human, I’m sorry, the history of humanity that came up in the mind of God is perfect will, perfect plan, perfect wisdom, all that good stuff. We’ll make a people for ourselves. We’ll put them in a garden. They’ll fall into sin. but the son will go and seek and save the lost. And so in our theology, we often call this the pactum salutis, the covenant of redemption, where the three persons of the Trinity determined to make a people who would fall into sin, who would be sought and bought with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see in the scripture, the whole unfolding of this story of redemption. And so we believe that from all eternity, God gave his son a people first who will be redeemed.
Redeemed is a transactional type word. Those of you who clip coupons and you read the fine print and it says something like in order to redeem your savings, you present the coupon to the cashier at the time of purchase. Or perhaps you get a check and you want the dollars and cents that are coming to you. And so you go to the bank and you turn that check in and you hand them the paper, they give you the money. It comes out of another’s account and you get that in your account.
Redemption is often considered in the context of slave trade. You’ll remember the famous story in the Bible of Hosea and his wife, Gomer. Hosea was called by God to be a prophet to the people. And in order to set an example or to set a parable before the people, Hosea would marry Gomer. Gomer was an unfaithful wife. Gomer was a prostitute. And what did Hosea do?
He went to the auction block and he purchased her. He redeemed her. He gave the price for her slavery. And so when we come to the cross of Jesus Christ, We come to the covenant making and covenant keeping God, seeking a people and to redeem them. What is the price? The price is his own blood. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to this earth to redeem us from our sin and misery.
And so Jesus obeys the law that Adam failed to keep. Jesus fulfills all the ceremonial laws of the old covenant. And when he goes to the cross and offers up his own life, It’s an offering that is acceptable in God’s sight. It appeases his wrath that’s due to us for sin. It settles the justice. Sin must be paid for. And so when Jesus dies on the cross and cries out, it is finished, you could, in one sense, think in your minds, Jesus is saying it is paid for. Your debt is paid. You are no longer debtors. Well, except we are debtors to mercy. indeed indebted to the Lord Jesus Christ for all that he has done for us. And so we believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to save a people for himself.
They will be redeemed. They will be bought with a price. What does Paul say to encourage believers? You are not your own. You have been bought at a price. So glorify God in your bodies. Well, the next word that comes in this passage or this this creed, I believe that from all eternity, God gave his people a son of people who will be called.
We know what a calling is. It’s mom calling out the back door when you’re young. It’s time to come in for supper. We know what a telephone call is. We know. what it is to be called into various situations, including jobs. Sometimes we call our job, our calling, our vocation. But calling in this sense is the call of the gospel.
When Noah was building the ark, for those hundred years, he constructed an ark believing that God would send a judgment, a deluge, a flood that would flood the earth and destroy any who were not safely hidden in that ark. And so his job was to saw and cut and hammer and to nail and to build, but it was also to preach. We’re told in the book of Hebrews that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And you can be sure that for 100 years, he called people to turn to the arc of safety, just as we call people to leave their sin and come take rest in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we give the outward call of the gospel in our preaching and our evangelism and in our witnessing as we go about this world. But that call with the power of the Holy Spirit opening eyes, that call with the power of the Holy Spirit opening hearts, that call becomes effective, it becomes real, and perhaps you can remember when the gospel was plain and clear and true to you.
You know, most of us have grown up in the Christian South, as we call it, and we just assume everybody believes, everybody’s a Christian. But I’m sure you can remember a very specific time in your life where you realized you were a sinner. You realized you needed a savior and you realized that you were not it. It needed to be someone else. And that Jesus made sense to you because the spirit of God opened your eyes to hear and respond to that gospel call. Well, the next word is a wonderful word. God’s people given to his son will be justified.
Our Heidelberg Catechism gives us a very wonderful way to remember justification. Justification is just as if I never sinned, but also just as if I have always obeyed. And in our justification, which is a legal term, it’s all throughout the scripture, it’s a righteousness word. The Bible in Hebrew, the Bible in Greek, Old and New Testaments speak of righteousness, but they also speak of being righteous fide.
Now we don’t have that word. We got to make up a new one, justified. But in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, they speak of people who are righteous, like an adjective or a noun, but they also speak of a verb, being righteous fide. We don’t have that. But justification is an act of God where he declares us judicially righteous in his sight. And it’s just as if I never sinned, just as if I’ve always obeyed.
So when you stand before the throne of God in heaven and he says, what gives, what are you doing here? Jesus will say, that is one of my children. I bought him. I redeemed him. And he has my righteousness, my obedience, but he has also my atoning sacrifice for sins.
And so when we are justified, we are justified by faith alone. That’s our belief. That’s our trust. We are justified by faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone. Remember back to that divine boardroom meeting where Paul says in Ephesians, in eternity past, the Trinity determined to seek and save a lost people for the glory of the son. Well, what about sanctification? Sanctification is our lifelong calling. Sanctification is connected to saints or holy ones.
And so our life, After being righteous five, right? Our life after being justified is to be sanctified. And our whole life long is to be understood as a perpetual war with the flesh. That’s the remaining sin with the devil, the evil one, and with the world and its system that is contra God. And so as believers, our lifelong endeavor, our lifelong task is the struggle against sin, world and devil. And in sanctification, God enables us more and more to hate what is evil, to hold fast what is good and to put to death what is earthly in us. And sanctification is an up and down lifelong progress. And it’s with an enemy that will never leave us. We’ll talk about when it does, but it never will leave us in this life.
Your life, because of remaining sin, that’s, yes, been pardoned and been subdued, but yet remains in you. Robert Murray Machine, the Scottish theologian said, the seed of every sin is in the heart of every man. And if you were to open up the porthole of your soul and look down into its depths, you would see the seed of every sin. Now by God’s grace in much of our lives, we don’t perhaps let those seeds germinate, but plenty of them do. And plenty of them wreak havoc in our lives. But the lifelong goal of the believer is to become more holy, to become more Christ-like. And so our job is to lean in to that fight, to lean into that battle. And then it says that we will one day be glorified.
A couple of Sunday nights ago, we were making our way through the Heidelberg Catechism and it spoke to us about death. And it said two things about death. Death first is our entrance into heaven. If you want to get into heaven, it’s not the pearly gates that get you there. It’s dying. It’s death. It’s the end to this life.
The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and immediately pass into glory and enjoy the presence of God forever. Our bodies rest in the grave until the resurrection. So first thing about death is it’s our entrance. into the presence of God Almighty, the immediate presence of God. But the other side of the coin of death, and this is a wonderful side of the coin, death is the end to our sin.
You know, a lot of times we’ll say, this is made up Aunt Maud, we’ll say, you know, poor old Aunt Maud, she suffered a lot. And usually we mean, you know, she had a backache or a knee ache or cancer or, you know, something physical. And while we live in this life, sickness is very difficult on our bodies and our souls and our spirits. But what if we, at the end of our life, said our fight is over? And perhaps we had cancer or some other dread physical medical disease. But what if instead we said our fight with sin is over?
One of the greatest hopes of every believer ought to be what St. Augustine spoke of in his discussion of the fourfold state of man. He talks about, I won’t get into it because we got lunch, but he talks about our state in the garden before sin, our state after the garden in sin, our state of our soul within Jesus. But he simply says our state in heaven will be this, it will be not possible to sin. It will not be possible to sin when we are glorified and when we get to heaven. Yes, our cancer will be gone. Our other sicknesses and backaches and weak knees will be gone. But the big one is when we die, we go to heaven and our sin has ended.
And so we look forward to the day when our redemption is made full. This redemption God speaks of that draws us into the family of God. It is a process. It is a lifelong process where the redemption comes with the calling from the gospel. It comes with the response to the gospel, our justification before God and by God, the lifelong struggle of sanctification, but then that one day glorious. in the presence of God, when we will sin no more, we will be glorified and we will enjoy Almighty God forever.
Next time you read those really long chapters of the Bible with names you can’t pronounce and all the begats, right? And all the deaths and the more begats and the more deaths and who lived this long and that long and who was gathered to their fathers and all the rest. And you get kind of bored and you think I’m gonna skim it. You remember this, by God’s grace, your name is in the genealogy of the heavenly city. And that means much to you. And you will want your name read aloud when the books are opened.
And so I encourage you today, come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that he has lived and obeyed, but also suffered and died in your place. And he freely offers himself to you in the gospel. And he is a God who keeps his promise. As we pray, he will with Obadiah, but also ourselves. Let’s look to this, our God now in prayer.
Our Father, we thank you for your love, for your people, that you love us with a love that is everlasting, it’s a love that sees nothing lovable in us, but it’s a love that’s simply for the sake of your pure enjoyment. We see you as the father on the porch looking for the prodigal son to return, and off in the distance you see a dirty, dusty, foul-smelling child, and you run, you embrace, you Call for the fattened calf, for the shoes, the ring and the robe. And you say, for this, my son was lost and is now found. Let us celebrate. Lord, let there be rejoicing in heaven for salvation today in this room. And we pray it in the name of Christ. Amen.