Privileged Identity

Society now likes to divide us into subcategories of different identity markers that we like to identify ourselves as. For example, you might be a person whose family has roots going back maybe six or seven generations here in the United States. So you would not be called an immigrant by any means, but others of us have immigrated into this country. or have recently laid down roots here. And so you say, oh, well, I am not an immigrant, but others are. So an immigrant American is one of those identities that we mark ourselves with. And the ways that we identify also could be, well, I'm not white, I'm black. Or I'm not black or white, I'm Latino. Or it could be, oh, I am a man or I am a woman. And the ways that we identify ourselves, society likes to separate ourselves in those categories. And then sometimes they like to latch onto those identities, aspects of privilege. And just to make this interactive, could you raise your hand if you ever heard anything about privilege recently? Yeah, it should be about everybody. If you're listening to any political stuff happening right about now, it will be probably a front and center topic. next year, come the election season. And privilege is usually seen as a negative thing. There's the dreaded white male privilege, which is the highest point of privilege you can ever have, apparently, in society, where if you're a white male, then you have historical privileges, historical benefits that everybody else has not had in this country. As you can tell, I don't benefit from that, so society tells me. But one thing that we also have here in this church is privilege. We're in a privileged position. And I'd like to bring before you today, this evening, that privilege is not an end-all, be-all negative. That God, the sovereign God, grants to each and every one of us privilege. So if you could turn to your Bibles to 1 Peter 2, verse 9. the verse we will be focusing on today for the devotion. I want to read it quickly. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. What we have here is a verse that actually is quoting an earlier passage in scripture, Exodus 19.4, I believe, that happens at Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai, the incident where Israel becomes a people. And so the language here is not accidental, it's not even incidental, it's purposeful. These were people that God had just delivered from Egypt in the Exodus. These are people not just descended from Abraham, or not just descended from Isaac, not just descended from Jacob, If you read Exodus 12, you'll find that it was a mixed multitude also of people who went up with Israel. And that day God called all of them to become a new nation chosen by His own will, led out by His own power, to partake in this new family of God, to proclaim the excellencies of God to all the earth. And we as Christians are called to that, every single one of us, each individually, but called collectively together to be this new people of God. And so we have here privilege. God is calling people to be his. He's calling each one of you to be his. And if you look around, if you ask each other, we don't all come from the same background. We don't all look the same. Keith hit on that earlier this morning. God makes a new family. And so what we see here is that in this passage, Peter is writing to these Christians to let them know that what they have here is a responsibility and what God has given them, but it is all God. It is nothing that they have done to earn this. That's the first point, is that we are privileged. It's not a bad thing. This is actually inherently good. I hope that you are all feeling really great about being privileged to be called by God. It comes with responsibilities. It comes with benefits. It comes with new family. Looking around here, I see many people, just as Keith said earlier, who would not be sitting together otherwise. really a blessing. But one more thing that it comes with is a new point of unity. We are unified. So the first point is we are privileged. Second point is we are unified. To go back to the verse again, verse 9, but you, that's a plural you, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." So God very much acknowledges, even for the Sinai event, where he makes one nation for his own possession, that there are many people there who are individuals, who have their own identities, their own sort of focuses, their own foci, what they want to get in life. And he says, no, but I've called you out. each and every one of you. I'm calling you to be in my kingdom, each and every one of you. It doesn't mean you stop being you. The you there is plural. So you as a collective body and collection means that you have to have individual parts. All of us are called to share in this one destiny as God's people. That's what he's talking about. And Peter is drawing from this earlier passage, which would have been in his Bible, the Hebrew Bible, that we see is Exodus 19.4. He's drawing upon this to remind the Christians he's writing to that this is who we are. These are the promises we have. If you look at the verses prior to this, you'll see what Keith mentioned a little bit in Psalm 118 about the stone that the builders rejected. and how we are unified in Christ. There's nothing that we have done to earn this position, just as there's nothing that Israel did to go out of Egypt. If you read the Exodus story again, which I challenge you to do, you'll find that Israel did absolutely nothing against the Egyptians, one of the greatest, in fact, the greatest army at that time in the 15th century BC, as far as we know. They did nothing. Nothing. Nobody lifted up a sword or nobody pulled up the strings of a bow. Nothing. God was the one fighting for them. And God reminds them of this over and over again throughout the entire Bible. That's what the Passover event is. God's final victory over the forces of darkness that hellish people down. And just to bring this home a little bit, we read these passages. We know that this one position we have, we have in Christ. We are unified in Christ. All of us come with our own family. our own family identity, our own sort of personal proclivities. We come with our own varying amounts of personal privilege as far as the society we live in, but God has called us all together to be that one new nation, that one new people. So it seems that if I can have you turn to 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter 1, verse 1, just like every other or most verses in these epistles we have, lets us know who the author is writing to. I'm going to read this real quick. This is the first two verses. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those chosen, living as exiles dispersed abroad, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. May peace and grace be multiplied to you." Of course, the you there is plural again. I'm going to keep mentioning that. What's funny is that 1 Peter chapter 1, but doesn't jump out unless you have a good translation that brings it out, is that what Peter is writing to is the diaspora. The diaspora. If you don't know the history at this time, at this moment, is that Peter is writing to a diaspora of a group of people. A diaspora of Jews, actually. So Peter is writing to fellow Jews. We know that Peter had a special witness to calling to the Jews. As Paul testified in his letters, Peter was called to the Jews, I to the Gentiles. We get that in Acts chapter 15. Peter is writing to his fellow Jews, saying, these are the promises of God that we have in Jesus. Now, why is it that this is in our Bible? Well, I didn't just read verse one, I read verse two. Chosen, it leads on to verse two, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you. That is the identifying marker of a Christian. All of us who are Christian have that identifying marker. All of us share in that one covenant. Therefore, Though not all of us have that ancestry, not all of us are privileged to have that, God's promises are yes in Jesus. And that is the mystery that even Paul says, that from the Jew and Gentile, God makes one new man. He destroys the dividing wall of hostility between the two and unites them both in one. And so no matter your background, your ethnicity, no matter your family background, no matter if you're white or black, no matter if you're a man or a woman, no matter what society tells you your shades of privilege should be and how you should divide yourself and cordon yourself off from other people, whether you're an immigrant to this country or not, whether you even live in this country or not, know that God is making a new people. And so the same privileges that Israel had on Mount Sinai, the same privilege that they had, you now have because of what Christ did for you. The epistle to the Hebrews, another epistle written to the Jews, says that we have come to a better mountain. We have come to the assembly of the firstborn. Again, a point of privilege. The firstborn is a privileged position. You don't control when you're born. You don't control that. It's God who does that. And today we're hearing a lot about what the church is doing with missions, reaching out to people who have not heard the gospel, people who have been really cut off from the gospel for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years. And God has given us the opportunity of privilege to reach out to those people, to meet them where they are, and to bring them into this fold, to bring them into the family of God. And that is the goal of Christ and Messiah. So that leads us into the third point, the final point, purpose. And we can go back to 1 Peter chapter 2. Verse 9, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for its possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Priests represent God on earth. Priests are the ones who go before God and communicate directly with God. Royalty, a royal priesthood. they rule and have dominion. These are two things that we clearly see humans had in the Garden of Eden. So this is restorative. This is God bringing again, bringing anew the destiny of humanity through Christ to all of us. So our renewed purpose then is to be the humanity that God intended us to be. And so in this one verse, when we reflect on this verse, I pray that we all come to this verse with the understanding that we are one new people. We are one new kingdom in Christ. In Revelation 7, 9, we see every nation, tribe, tongue, and people, all the bases covered, worshiping before the throne of God. And that is the vision that God has for all of us. It's this unified vision. So the next time you read this verse, or you read Exodus 19, or anything like that, or even in the coming political uproars, or whatever happens in our nation, realize that God's destiny for us as his people, as his church, is higher. It's ultimately what we were supposed to do at the very beginning. It is brought to us by God, God alone. And also, one more thing. If you read Exodus 19, and you read this passage, you'll realize that there was nothing anybody, any of us did to get this position, this privilege. It wasn't the Jewishness of the Israelites that helped them to be chosen by God. No. God very much says the opposite later on in his law. You are the smallest of peoples, he tells them. It's not because of how great you are, but from our own name. And we are called to be Christians. We share in God's name, Christ. We are one people. And I really pray and hope that we remember this as we go out into the world, as we represent Christ, as we proclaim his excellences, his praises, the praises of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.