Everyone. Ah, you can do better than that. Come on, wake up. Good morning. All right.
The children are going back to school and family vacations are over, so things get back to whatever normal is in your household and the life of the church. So I'm delighted to be able to be with you. This is not my first time to be here. If you don't remember me, that's okay, because I don't remember everywhere I've ever been, so that's all right. But I've been here for in times past with pastors that you've had, and I go way back to Henry Lyon, to be honest with you, even though he's older than I am and passed on to glory now.
But also I've done some associational meetings here. I've followed with interest your church, your church family. And I want you to know that we at the State Board of Missions, and I am the executive director, at least for a few more months to finish up. 28 and a half years. Years.
We're here to help you in any way possible as you look to the future. And the future is going to be bright. We want to thank you for being a part of the Alabama Baptist family, for giving through the cooperative program, for being available to serve in various capacities outside the life of your church. And some of your church members have done that. Well, this morning, what I'd like for us to do is talk about our identity.
Sometimes we need to just pause and ask ourselves, now, really, who are we? In case you don't know, there is such a thing as an identity crisis. And some people are struggling with it more than others, some unnecessarily. I think, for believers, we don't have to struggle with it, but we often do because we get caught up in the culture of this world and everything about this world. It can be so distracting and yet so attractive to us that we find ourselves just wallowing around and trying to find really, where our moorings might be and who we are, essentially.
So I want to ask you to turn your attention to First Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 12, if time permits now to set the stage. We all know Simon Peter to some degree. We all have our, maybe our preconceived ideas about who he is and what kind of a disciple he was. Sometimes we're kind of hard on him, and sometimes we elevate him beyond really the measure he ought to receive. But Simon Peter was one of the earliest disciples called by Jesus.
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. How did you like to be known all your Life Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. Well, Andrew brought Simon Peter to Jesus. And Jesus saw in him a rock like quality. Although that rock could be a little unstable at times.
He starts following with the other crowd of disciples that Jesus gathers. And throughout all of his time with Jesus, he had every opportunity to listen and learn and he didn't utilize all of them. But now when we come to First Peter, we don't have the Simon Peter who was boisterous and somewhat filled with all kind of machismo about what he was going to do and what he was going to, how courageous he was going to be. No, that's all melted away. We don't have the one who had denied Jesus not once, not twice, but three times.
But rather we have the one who now has been shaped and molded as the masterpiece of the rock, the sculpture that he was supposed to be. So as we pick up in chapter two, verse four, what Simon Peter is going to try to do in his own language, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is to help us know who Jesus is. For us to know our identity, we have to know who he is and be reminded of it at significant times. And then also through him, through Christ, help us know who we are. So the first part of who Jesus is would be verses 4 through 8.
Verses 9 through 12 would tell us who we are. So follow along with me. The invitation is here coming to him that is Jesus. As to a living stone rejected by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also are living stones and are being built up into a spirit spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ. Therefore it is contained in scripture there in the Old Testament, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect precious.
He who believes on him by no means will be put to shame. Therefore, to you who believe he is precious, but to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders have rejected has now become the chief cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble being disobedient to the word to which they were appointed. Let's stop there and deal with who Jesus Christ is. Now remember, Simon Peter is not the most educated of all the followers of Jesus.
He was a fisherman and I'll be honest with you, I have this preconceived or had a preconceived idea of how I could describe Simon Peter to you. I used to picture him as sort of stocky with big quads where he's been pulling in all those fish through the nets and a bald head but one hair over here that he combs every day to get it in place. I had that conception of Simon Peter blown away by the television series the Chosen. He's a nice looking guy and level headed in his personality. We have not yet gotten to the point where his impulsiveness overcomes him like we see characterized in Simon Peter throughout the Gospels there in the ministry of Jesus.
So when I think of Simon Peter, I think of a person who is very much of an earthy, down to earth kind of individual. He is not educated like the apostle Paul, who had the best of education of that particular time. Of that time. Paul had what we would describe as an Ivy League education. Well, no, Simon Peter is one who has gone to the school of hard knocks and he's come up the hard way like many of us, most of us perhaps.
But here he's going to give you language to help you understand who Jesus is. That is so mundane that it's masterful. First he begins saying, jesus Christ is the living stone. Now this sounds awkward to those of us who want to be pretty precise about words. How can a stone be living?
It would be almost like taking this pulpit, knocking on wood and saying, this is a living pulpit. We know it's inanimate and how can it be animated if it's inanimate? But what Simon Peter is simply saying that through the power of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, even that which is inanimate can become animated with life. So he takes a real bit of a memory lane trip back to Caesarea Philippi and he remembers the words of Jesus when he said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell and death will not prevail against it. He remembers that and he remembers that rock, that stone.
And he said, well, Jesus Christ is the living stone. That rock was imported as a symbol. But Jesus Christ is the one who can bring life out of death. He is the living stone and he calls on us to be living stones. A further description of Jesus would be as later on depicted from language of the Old Testament, he describes Jesus as the chief cornerstone.
Now, I'm not an architect and I would not dare pretend to be one, but I can simply tell you that in the language of the first century, architecture was somewhat different, but there was the cornerstone was more than what we see out on the front of a church that's been built. And they'll have a cornerstone to have the name of the pastor, the year it was built, and the committee. And then that name of that pastor may have been one Way back in history, may have stayed a long time, but nonetheless, that's what we call a cornerstone. It's more decorative. In the first century, the cornerstone was very important.
In fact, it was the. If I could use this, the architectural glue that held things together. So if Jesus Christ is the living stone, he's the foundation on whom we build our lives. If he's the cornerstone, the chief cornerstone, he's the one who is cohesive. He's the henchpin that holds everything together, as Paul describes in Colossians chapter one, the living stone, the cornerstone.
All of that sounds so good as we think about the importance of it. But then he uses one other description of Jesus that for many years I just glanced over. And if you look at it again in verse seven, he said, therefore, to you who believe, he is precious. Now, the biblical term, precious, I'm reading out of the new King James, by the way, if you haven't picked that up yet. The word precious is used in the first century a good bit.
It's used to talk about the precious blood of Jesus, more precious than gold. Precious. If I could be a little bit on the. If you allow me to do this, I'm not trying to be sexist, but precious is more of a term that women are more often to use than men, until men become grandparents. And then all of a sudden, that little baby again with one hair on his head somewhere is really precious.
And I don't know how many times I've had people through the decades of ministry. Show me a new grandchild and I'll just think, wow, that looks great, but the eyes are gleaming. And this big, robust man, tall, strong, would say, oh, he's precious. Well, I've gone on the apology tour in the last decade or so because I have joined the silly club. I am a grandparent.
And so, yes, every night as I pray, as we pray, Pam and I do, I pray for our precious grandchildren. There's no other way to describe them.
And think about the way we feel about children and just ad infinitum, go way beyond that infinitely. And think about how we should look at Jesus, who gave himself on the cross, who died in our place, who became our sacrifice by his precious blood being shed. He is our precious one now, that's who Jesus is, the precious one. Oh, but there's a downside to it. To those who do not believe, he becomes a stumbling stone.
Now, you keep in mind the first century, they didn't have a lot of paved highways. They didn't have a lot of paved Parking lots. And so when they walked, they could stumble over a stone. It didn't have to be very big. It could be big, but they could just stumble all over it.
And the word even now is used in our vocabulary. Well, that's just a stumbling stone.
You know what people have done through the years with Jesus, who never saw him as the living stone, who never saw him as the chief cornerstone, who never realized he, he's the precious one, they stumble all over him. Unless we think that happens only in the 21st century, in a day of enlightenment and secularism, which is running and abounding in a culture. Our third President of the United States might well have been one of the more brilliant of our presidents. Now he was one who is known for a lot of things. We have just gone through the 250th celebration of our nation.
And he of course was the main architect, the author of the Declaration of Independence. He also founded the University of Virginia. He was the governor of Virginia. He was very well known in terms of the early days of our nation. Never wore the uniform like George Washington, but became a consequential president and the third president of our United States.
Sending Lewis and Clark to be able to find out what's on the other coast rather than just the east coast, the west Coast. And there began the expansion of America right from the very beginning, after 13 colonies. But Thomas Jefferson, though at times he would stand up for religious freedom as a matter of principle. Thomas Jefferson was at least some kind of deist where you just believe that God just created a world and threw it out there in existence and now we're on our own.
He even became so skeptical of the miraculous that he took the Gospels and he took out, extracted all of the references to miracles and it was called Jefferson's Bible. I saw one at a bookstore many years ago. You can go online, Amazon and buy Jefferson's Bible. I wouldn't recommend you do it, but the last words of the gospel is there, they laid him in the tomb.
Now if a brilliant president who helped found our country can stumble all over Jesus, people do that today. A self made person, a person who does not believe, they have to see it before they believe it. They have to be able to intellectualize it and make everything so scientifically correct. Stumbling all over Jesus, but thank God, those of us who come to know him as our Lord and Savior, who repented of our sins and become his follower, we see him as the foundation, the living stone on which we build our lives. The chief cornerstone, the cohesion of Our lives, the precious one, the motivation for our lives.
That's who Jesus is. Now consider because of that, who we are. Notice what is said in verse nine of this text. But you, now we've been talking about Jesus. Let's talk about us.
But you, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own very special people that you may proclaim the praises of Him. Yes, that's who you are. The one who called you out of darkness and into the marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not obtained mercy, but now you have attained mercy.
Beloved friends, brothers, I beg you. I appeal to you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable, good, respected among the Gentiles, that when they speak evil against you, when they do that they may see your good works which they observe and glorify. God. In the day of visitation, we had three descriptions of who Jesus is. Simon Peter now is just going to simply, in his own mundane way, give us three descriptions of who we are.
First he says, you are priests. Now, as Baptists, we kind of fidget around on that. We're kind of like those children were a moment ago when they asked questions and only one of them was honest. When was asked, are you anxious? And he raised his hand.
The rest of them just sat there. They're anxious too. But when we think about it, we get a little nervous, a little anxious when people want to describe a priest. And we're a priest now. I grew up very much in a working class environment.
I never was around many people at all that I could remember who were Catholic. And when we were around them, we always a little nervous. And I certainly was a long time before I was around anyone who was Jewish. Now that now I'm around all kinds of people. But I can tell you this.
The definition of the word priest in the Latin literally means bridge builder. And what Christ has done, when we become his follower, he's made us his priest. There is no mediator, not trying to offend anyone at all. There is no mediator between God and us. Jesus Christ took care of that.
He's the ultimate perfect bridge builder. And now he is asking and calling upon us, giving us the mission to be priests in this world, to build bridges for Christ. I must tell you, years ago I served at First Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa. Some of you know that, and DCH Hospital. They knew who I was.
I was there all the time. Because this size church we had, we always had someone in the hospital, but back years ago, I think I've seen it now. But back again, but back years ago they came out with these shirts that didn't have collars and they course collarless. And the way the idea then the trend was to button the top button, which I never have thought was very good if you didn't have a tie. And one day I made the mistake.
I had that shirt on and I put on a navy blue blazer in gray slacks and I went to the hospital and four people called me Father before I could get out of there.
Now that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about someone who is between us and God. We're talking about us as being missionaries for Christ priesting a generation. But then he went on to say, to amplify it further, we're his priests because we're his people. He says, you are my people.
Once you were not my people, but now you are my people. Once you had been outside of mercy, but now you're inside of Mercy. We're his people. That sounds so commonplace, but it's true. We take that for granted, do we not?
When I was in earlier church, I had a lady who was South Korean. She had come here to the States with her husband, which was very common. That was the early wave of that service. And she was doing her best to learn our language, which you got to understand is not an easy thing to do. Learning English is a mixture of Greek and Latin and German and everything else is a melting pot.
And she was trying to learn our language and she was trying to take the rigors of the exams that she was going to take to become an American citizen a little bit easier now than then. And on the Sunday after she had passed her exams, she had learned and mastered some English, not exactly getting everything right syntax and otherwise. But I was at the educational facility and there was a pretty good sized hallway there. She opened the door to come in and she came running down the hallway with her hands up shouting, pastor, Pastor, I'm an American people now. And I thought after that encounter, I thought, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if we captured even a little bit of that joy about being the people of God?
We are his people, his priests, his people. And then his pilgrimage. Verses 11 and 12 talk about sojourners and pilgrims in the Great Depression era. And then later too there was a song that was often sung. This world is not my home I'm just passing through.
Well, we don't sing that that much anymore because we've holy homesteaded now we're doing everything we can to stay right here. We're not thinking about heaven. Used to we would lament how few sermons you'd hear about hell. And now we lament how few sermons you hear about heaven. Because everything's focused on the here and now.
And we do everything we can to maintain good health. Nothing wrong with that. We take our vitamins and we even eat those bran muffins that taste terrible, like cardwood. We do everything we can to stay here. But what he's really trying to tell us is we are just pilgrims.
No matter the status we have, the fame we might have, the income we might have, we're just pilgrims passing through, hoping to have others join us. And on that pilgrimage, there are distractions, there are detours. But our focus ought to be on him and him alone, who's called us to be his priests and his people. We are his pilgrims.
Probably no more an authentic World War II motion picture was ever made than Saving Private Ryan. It's not for everyone. The first 22 and a half minutes are the most authentic, realistic view. The D Day invasion on Omaha beach, where in all the whole array of it, two beaches being the American beaches, 2,400 people passed away, died. And then it follows that Captain Miller, as he's given an assignment to find Private Ryan.
Now, this is a fictitious story based on some fact, and they go through the tedious rigors of trying to find him, and when they do, they realize they're kind of in a trap because Germans are all around them. And Ryan, Private Ryan is not going to leave. He's had other friends there. Why me? Why am I being saved and they're not?
So there's a fight that ensues, and everyone but Private Ryan and one other, two others make it. Captain Miller, in his dying words, says to Ryan, he looked at him with a breathless way of speaking, and he said, earn this.
The final scene is for Ryan at an older age there to Normandy Cemetery, and he's at Captain Miller's grave site. And he asked his wife, not knowing all the background, she didn't know it. He said, have I been a good person? Now, all that's great, it pulls our heartstrings, but I want to tell you, there's no way we can earn this.
There's no amount of being good that allows us to be his priest, his people and his pilgrims. It comes when we realize that we're nothing than just sinners and we repent of that sin, we place our faith in Christ. We begin the pilgrimage of being his priests and his people in this world. Because he's the living stone. There is no other foundation.
He's the cornerstone. There's no other way to hold your life together than through Him. And he's also the precious One. No one has done what he has done in dying on the cross. For you and for me today, magnify your identity in Christ.
Realize who he is, he is, and whose we are. I want to invite you to stand together. In a moment, your Chairman of deacons, Jim Corrigan, will be here at the front, but I want to have a prayer with you as we've gathered today. Father God, we thank you ever and always that. We thank you so much for what you've done.
There's no way we could earn it or learn it, but we yearn for it. And we can come to know you. We thank you for this church family. You've been with them these many, many decades, and they've been faithful on mission with a great commission here in this community. But I pray this morning, if there's someone here who's never professed faith in Christ, who's never repented of their sin and become a part of your priest family, your people on pilgrimage, for you, we pray for them.
And we ask, Lord, with all the distractions of this world, and they seem to be mounting in numerous numbers every single day, may they be just closed off, and may we see you and you alone as the Rock of Ages. In the name of Jesus, we make our prayer. Amen.