Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. I’d like to start by asking, what are you doing to nourish your faith and understanding of Christianity? Going chapter by chapter through the New Testament is a great start, and today’s podcast will go deeper as to the what, when, why, and how. Keep listening. First Peter chapter 2. Remember who you are.

There are times that have come, or are now, or will come at some point in the future that may seem overwhelming, dark times that overtake us and we can’t see how we’re going to get through them. When Peter wrote this letter for the benefit of a lot of young believers in such a time, he hoped it would reach those who had scattered from Rome trying to escape the persecution breaking out against Christians. They were in new places, trying to figure out where to live, how to make a living, all the while wondering what was going to happen next. Peter knew they needed a lot of encouragement as well as a challenge regarding how they should respond in such difficult circumstances as God’s people. In chapter 2, he delivers that. If I had to summarize his message simply in a few words, it would be, Remember who you are.

As I read and reread and reread this chapter to try to figure out what was Peter’s mind as he wrote it, looking for the idea that kind of pulled the unconnected, seemed to me unconnected metaphors together, I was having more trouble than usual. I stepped away from my computer for a bit and I laid down on a couch and I just tried to meditate on his different ideas in this chapter. And I prayed and said, Lord, the epistle of James says we can ask for wisdom, and I need some wisdom here. How can I get at the big idea that’s in this section of your Word? And that line came to me, Remember who you are. When I thought about it, against the backdrop of chapter two, I saw the connections.

But I also was curious where that line came from that was in my head, because it seemed so familiar to me. Remember who you are. Was it some other place in the Bible? If so, I couldn’t remember where. Was it some important person who said that in history at some crucial time, like a leader to his nation, George Washington to his troops, or Winston Churchill to the British people during World War II? I didn’t think so.

So finally, I did what we do nowadays. I used the Googler, and I voiced into my AI app, Who famously said, Remember who you are? And I hit enter, and on my screen came up movie clips. Some of you probably know. They were short clips from a movie my kids near wore out years ago as they watched it so many times on our VCR in the living room. So I’m sure that’s why the phrase was stuck back in my head.

I clicked on one of the clips and saw a fearful and discouraged young lion who had been displaced from his home, run out of the Pride Lands. He was standing over a pool of water looking at his reflection. He was no longer a lion cub, but now a full-grown lion. And as he looked, his reflection seemed to turn into the face of his now dead father, looking back at him. As he stared into the reflection, his father Mufasa spoke to him, Simba. Father?

Simba, you have forgotten who you are, and so you have forgotten me. But Father, how could I go back? I’m not who I used to be. Remember who you are, Simba. You are my son. Remember who you are.

Remember, remember, remember, as he faded away. Sound familiar? Who hasn’t seen The Lion King? Remember who you are is, in a nutshell, Peter’s encouragement and challenge to the displaced and fearful Christians he addressed this letter to. And he conveyed that message through four metaphors in chapter two. I’m going to be quoting primarily from the New Living Translation today.

First, in verses two and three, he writes, Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have tasted the Lord’s kindness. At the end of chapter one, he had begun that thought, For you have been born again, he wrote there, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living Word of God. Through this first metaphor, Peter reminded them that they had been born again into God’s family. The message of the gospel had been like a seed, a spiritual seed, when they heard it planted in their hearts.

And when they believed it, it germinated in them and brought forth new spiritual life. Some of those who read this letter from Peter perhaps were Christians for some time, but most, I think, were apparently young believers, as we’d say, baby Christians. Moms and dads know that sound. Didn’t you love it when you had to get up in the middle of the night to feed your baby? Babies instinctively want fed. They crave nourishment.

They need lots of it. But it needs to be nourishment that’s suitable for them. That’s the first metaphor Peter is using here. Remember that you have been born into God’s eternal family, and you’re like babies. Crave the milk of God’s Word. Crave the spiritual nourishment that you need.

That’s what he’s urging them. We know that if a baby doesn’t get regular and adequate nourishment, it’s not going to be healthy. It will not grow properly, and soon it will be in jeopardy. Babies need help, and so do new believers. Is your church providing help for new believers to get the basic spiritual nourishment they need? It’s probably not enough to say, Just come to services and pick up what you can.

That will help, but they need more appropriate help, someone to take a personal interest in them and explain the basics of Christianity to them, to answer their questions, help them get on their feet spiritually. It’s very helpful if a church has targeted classes to help new believers understand basic Christian doctrine and what it means to walk as followers of Christ. By the way, in our blog section at sharetheword.org, we offer some direction about that if you are a newer Christian, or if maybe you want to teach newer Christians. Look for an article titled, Now That I’ve Believed, What’s Next? But it follows from Peter’s analogy that you may have to cry out for this nourishment, as he puts it. Ask for this kind of help from a Christian you admire.

Ask at your church if they have something to help new Christians get grounded in the faith. Don’t be shy about that. My babies never were. They cried out. As babies develop physically and emotionally in the first few years, if that’s healthy, it sets the stage for the rest of their lives. And the same is true spiritually.

So remember who you are. You’re God’s own child. Crave the spiritual nourishment you need to grow and be healthy and to mature as a believer. In verses 4 through 6, Peter continues with a second metaphor, maybe one that sounds a little odd at first. He writes there, 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 a spiritual temple. As the Scriptures say, I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor, and anyone who trusts in him will never be disappointed. That last line about trusting in him and never being disappointed is from Isaiah chapter 28. In that metaphor, Christians are stones that God, as a master builder, is building into a new temple. By living stones, that sounds kind of funny because we think of stones as being about as inanimate as anything can be. We even use the expression stone dead.

But Peter is picturing believers as individual living stones God is building into a spiritual temple, of which Jesus is the foundational cornerstone. He’s borrowing that image, by the way, also from a messianic psalm, Psalm 118. That was a worship song that people would sing when they went up to the actual temple in Jerusalem in Old Testament times. Part of the psalm said this, Open for me the gates where the righteous enter, and I will go in and thank the Lord. These gates lead to the presence of the Lord, and the godly will enter there. Then it says, The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing, and it’s wonderful in our eyes. How do we know that’s a messianic psalm? And by the way, I mean an Old Testament allusion pointing forward to Jesus when I say messianic psalm. We know because Jesus himself used it the last time he was at the temple in Jerusalem. He told the religious leaders that day, in front of a crowd of listeners, a thinly veiled parable indicating they had rejected God’s Son, and he knew they were going to kill him. And he warned them that in return, God was going to reject them as the leaders over his people and give the spiritual oversight of what he was going to do next to others.

They scoffed at Jesus and said, That’ll never happen. And Jesus said, Then what do you think the psalm means when it says, ‘The stone that the builders rejected will become the cornerstone of something new’? And all that did happen. The religious leaders rejected and killed Jesus, and God rejected them and their physical temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed in 70 A.D. He was already well underway building something new, a new temple, so to speak, but this time a spiritual temple of which Jesus is the cornerstone. Everyone who believes in him becomes a living stone, in Peter’s words.

God adds them to the structure as it’s going up, by which he means he’s building his church on earth. So the metaphor Peter is using to encourage and assure these scattered believers is, realize God himself has chosen you and placed you like stones in the spiritual temple he is constructing. This is God’s own doing, and it’s built on the sure foundation of Jesus Christ. This metaphor, stone building, speaks to our unshakable union with him. God is the mason who’s adding us to the wall. We are mortared in.

I like the line, and anyone who trusts in Him will never be disappointed. Our hope, when we trust it in Jesus, will never fail. God will do everything that He’s promised us. So remember who you are: a living stone God has chosen and placed securely into the eternal building He is building, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. In verses 9 and 10, Peter shares a third metaphor. He writes there, You are a chosen people.

You are royal priests, a nation for God’s own possession. As a result, you know you can show the goodness of God, for He has called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you had no identity as a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had received no mercy, but now you have received God’s mercy. In the Old Testament times, among God’s chosen people, the Jews, there were certain people selected to be priests. They had to come from special genealogical lines, certain families.

They had to meet special requirements and get extensive training. And it was through them, these priests, that God’s people could approach Him. They were the holy men, and they served as the mediators, the go-betweens between ordinary people and a holy God. But that was Old Testament times. Since the death and resurrection of Jesus, all who come to faith through Him, Jew, Gentile, male, female, no matter who we are, we’re part of a new chosen people. And more than that, he says, we are royal priests, all of us, royal priests before God.

We don’t need special mediators any longer to approach Him. We are a part of the royal household of God. God is our Father. We can now do what only priests could do in the past, and that is come right into God’s presence. And not just in heaven someday, but now we have direct access to God and are invited to approach His throne of grace boldly. If you’re a believer, you’re a royal priest.

You’re qualified and welcomed into God’s presence. Bring Him your prayers. Bring Him your praise. Intercede for those you care about. You have the access. In olden times, the chosen people, the Jewish nation, were called to be a light to other nations, to the Gentiles, to show them the ways of God and the goodness of God.

But now Peter is saying the Church of Jesus Christ has been given that role. That’s what he means by, You can show others the goodness of God, for He has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. We’ll see more about how Peter suggests we do that later. But he’s reminding them, you may be understood now and even persecuted now, but remember, you are God’s chosen people. You’re His holy nation now. Remember who you are.

You’ve been called out of darkness, so let your light shine in the darkness of wherever you find yourselves. There’s a final reminder that’s coming in verses 11 and 12. Dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your 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 one day. I told you last podcast that this theme of Christians being foreigners runs throughout the epistle of 1 Peter.

Have you ever been a foreigner someplace, ever gone on a trip to a place and culture very different from your own? You don’t know the language, you can’t read the signs, the food is very different. You may even stick out because you look different from the other people that are native to that place. That can be uncomfortable, the experience all by itself. But now throw on top of that, these people Peter was writing to were forced to relocate to places foreign to them, and they are also Christians, people who participate in a strange new religion, who believe in and practice odd superstitions from the perspective of the world around them, I mean.

I’m sure there was a strong temptation for those early Christians forced to flee Rome to get away from persecution to just now try and blend in, to be as inconspicuous as possible, figure out what was as normal where they were and participate in that in order to not stick out like sore thumbs. But Peter is challenging them to continue to live out their faith. He wants people to notice they are different as God’s people. He wants them to keep away from the things in the world around them that dishonor God. As the apostle John urged similarly in his first epistle, don’t love the world or the things in it, for people who belong to the world only crave physical pleasures. They think they need everything their eyes set on and pride themselves in their positions and status.

These things are not from the Father, but are from the world. I once heard a message where a speaker asked, If you lived in a time and place where Christianity was illegal and followers of Christ were rounded up and tried, would there be enough evidence to convict you of being a Christian? That’s a good question. I don’t think Peter is suggesting these people go out of their way to make trouble for themselves, but he is urging them, don’t go back to your old ways before coming to Christ. Don’t try to blend into the pagan world around you, living like people around you. Keep living out your faith.

Let people see your lives are different, your values are different. Be examples of excellence. Who knows? Your life and faith may well influence your neighbors and coworkers to want to become followers of Christ too. Remember that correspondence I read last podcast between the Emperor Trajan and a Roman governor of Bithynia named Pliny. I kept reading.

Pliny used the word superstitions, like, I’m not sure what these people believe and what they’re about. They believe weird things, strange things, I hear. What was that all about? Well, all kinds of rumors spread about Christians in that time, especially after the fire at Rome. Were they really terrorists? Did they practice cannibalism because people misunderstood the celebration of communion, you know, eating his flesh, drinking his blood?

Were they plotting inciting slaves to revolt because they treated slaves as equals? Were they practicing incest or other perversions because they were always talking about loving each other? I mean, people didn’t know. Christianity was new and different, and their meetings were often held in secret out of fear. So rumors spread. In that context, Peter is saying, don’t hide.

Live excellent, God-honoring lives among your neighbors in your community. Yes, you will look different, but we are aliens and strangers here after all. Our real home is heaven. We’re just passing through. Remember who you are. I don’t know where you’re hearing this or when you’re hearing this.

We hope our podcast commentaries will make their way to many places in the world as people share them. I’ve heard from people as far away as Pakistan and Nigeria and West Africa who are listening. Maybe some who are listening today are in places where they feel threatened, where Christians are being mistreated. Peter’s words to you would be the same as they are to these people he’s writing to in the first century, because the principles in God’s Word are timeless. Live out your faith. Be a good citizen.

Love your neighbors. Live exemplary lives. And if that causes you to suffer in some way, some unfair way, remember that the most important things are things no one can take away from you. Remember who you are. Remember you’ve been born into God’s family and are His child. Remember to keep nourished in His Word.

Remember He has chosen you and placed you into a spiritual temple that He is building. You’re united to Him now and secure. Remember you’re part of His chosen people in the world and have access to Him through prayer 24/7. And remember we Christians are, in the final analysis, foreigners here after all. We are passing through. Hear the encouraging but challenging voice of your heavenly Father say to you, Remember who you are.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Remember who you are. What a great podcast, and what a great way to bring out the big idea of this chapter. Whether you’re a new believer or not, I strongly suggest that you take a moment to visit sharetheword.org and read the article entitled, Now That I Believe, What’s Next? Such rich insight, and truly a reminder to remain authentic to the Christian way of life, for we are children of God. Don’t hide, shine bright.

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at info at sharetheword dot org.