2 Peter 2:1-3, 9-10

2 Peter 2:1-3 and 9-10
Theme: How Gateway Can Become a Truly Holy Church

The following is the rough draft of the message that i preached. I forgot to save the finished work.

I am continuing in our series on the Elements of Revival and we are in our third week on the topic of Holiness. Last week I defined personal holiness as the Christian’s inner life of mortification of sins and delight in the perfections of the holiness God and nothing else! This is different from God’s holiness because, whereas God is Holy in that He is morally pure and set apart without blemish or stain, the Christian can only hope of becoming Holy until we reach eternity.

I want to remind you of that for two reasons: 1) so that you don’t lose heart at your failure (despite your best efforts) to utterly mortify the flesh in this life because no matter how hard you try, the mortification of one sin will only shed light on deeper more ingrained sin. Putting an end to gluttony should reveal the deeper sin of covetousness and unforgiveness (which may have driven you to binge eating) or some other more entrenched sin that underlies the external behaviour.

The other reason I remind you that the Christian can only ever hope of becoming and not being holy in this life is so that you don’t become self righteous (and stunted in your growth) like the Pharisees who thought because they fasted and prayed in the public places and read the Torah and kept all of the ceremonial laws that they were as holy as God (indeed holier than Christ). In fact, their external righteousness blinded them to the root of their sin: the heart. The doctrine of Christian perfection as taught by Wesley is not taught anywhere in the scripture and I will not advocate it here!
So let me just say it this way: you are closest to holiness and becoming like God when you are most grieved by your own sin and most delighted by the sinlessness of God.

I want to encourage you so that you do not become frustrated and give up. This life is a battle against sin and for the attainment of holiness; holiness will always seem just beyond our reach. It will feel like it’s just over the next hill only to find that, on the other side of the next hill is an even larger set of mountain ranges to be scaled. So long as we continue to delight in holiness we will find no other pleasure we will not lose heart, but holiness will compel us to the next peak of holiness. But holiness by degrees is better than non at all!

But even though in this life our character is not yet perfect in holiness and we still fight to subdue the remnants of sin in our life, our status before God is that of having already realized holiness (as though we had already arrived in eternity- that’s good news!). Let us not confuse the doctrine of Justification with the doctrine of Sanctification as do the pietists and papists. The attainment of holiness must never be seen as the attainment of salvation- it is the result of the salvation we already hold. We are not overcoming sin in order to be saved; we are overcoming because we are saved.

Joel Beeke says it this way,
“Your status in holiness is conferred; your condition in holiness must be pursued. Through Christ you are made holy in your standing before God, and through Christ you are called to reflect that standing by being holy in daily life. You are called to be in life what you already are in principle by grace.”

I want to relate today’s text to what I believe that God is saying to our church regarding His desire for holiness:

1. What we Are (A Royal Priesthood)
First, let’s talk about what we are: in verse 9 of our text this morning Peter (the Jewish fisherman who lived far from the centre of Jewish religion and was probably not a descendant of Aaron) he reminds Gentile converts to Christianity that we are not just lone rangers, but that if we are called to be a holy royal priesthood. That call is a corporate calling; a call to a group not individuals. The church is priesthood and priesthood operates in community the same that a body is the sum total of all of its parts. You are not a royal priest if you aren’t a member of the priesthood!

Peter is quoting an Old Testament text that referred to the Nation of Israel:
5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. 6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.” (Ex 19:5-6)

This is to say that we are part of a kingly priesthood. Revelation 5:10 also refers to Christians as kings and priests similar to Christ who was a King and a Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Notice Peter uses the term synonymously with other descriptive terms such as chosen people and a holy nation. The implication is that we are God’s elect, a new people, a new nationality, a nationality made up of Kingly priests, a new ethnicity (no longer Asian, or African, or European, or Aboriginal). Today I want to emphasize the priesthood aspect of our royal priesthood.

Priests have two functions: the first is Mediation. When God called Israel a nation of priests, he was calling them to the role of priests of the world; go-betweens between God and the nations of the world. One of my books on the Biblical Theology of the Old Testament explains it this way:

As mediators we represent God to the world. We are heaven’s ambassadors…

The second key function of a priesthood is intercession. Intercession means we represent the world to God and make requests on their behalf. That is, figuratively speaking, we make sacrifices so that we may enter the holy of holies with pure hands and a clean heart in order to make requests of God on the world’s behalf.

Priests have a unique form of dress: Exodus 28 explains how a priest was to dress in order to communicate the sanctity of the office. The manner of dress communicates something about the way that God viewed the priesthood. For instance, the priest wore a gold plate on his forehead with the words KRSH L’YHWH (“Holiness unto the Lord”). It signified the consecration of the priests thoughts and the atonement of his arrogance to believe that he could even look upon the throne of God, much less think upon it. It is similar to the helmet of salvation that Paul tell Christians to wear as we engage in spiritual warfare.

The priest was clothed in blue, purple scarlet and gold to signify the heavenly glory. Likewise we Christians are clothed in pure white to signify that we have been washed.

His breastplate was a sign of righteousness. It guarded the heart

The urim and thurim were hidden inside the breastplate to signify divine judgement. Christians have the indwelling of the Holy spirit to lead us into all truth…

At the bottom of his robe hung the pomegranates and bells that rang as he walked. How beautiful are the feet…..

In His hand he held the incense whose frangrance signified the satisfaction of God for the sacrifices offered. We are the fragrance of Christ….

2. What we should do (Rid ourselves of…)
A royal priesthood is consecrated to the Lord. Peter says that as such we must rid ourselves of certain things in verse 1

i. . Malice

ii. Deceit

iii. Hypocrisy

iv. envy

v. slander of every kind

and instead we are to be like newborn babes who hunger for the milk of the word of God so that we can grow….

3. The Purpose of our priesthood
All this so that we can be the people of God who declare the praise of God who called us out of darkness (the stuff in v. 1)…

Declaring the praises of God has two parts to it:

Missions (Home and World)

Worship