This morning we're gonna talk about belonging and as I was thinking about belonging the whole idea of belonging instantly like some of you my mind raised back to Those times where you realize that you just did not belong in a situation There's also times where you realize that you absolutely belong in a situation like that And I think back to one of the times the stuff my life were belonging Completely changed and it's when I was a kid and I was in high school and it was in church league basketball Okay, I've not changed that much since 1997 and I dare say many of you would not think I would have the physique for a basketball player But I'm gonna tell you my championship basketball season now a little free I was the kid who played one season of everything and that was it like my sports career was miserable. I Quit I quit taking karate one time so I could take violin lessons There's like a 1987 like when it was really cool. We take a karate I guess that's kind of but I'm a preacher's kid and my dad's When they grew up every boy played church league basketball you start at fourth grade and I had played fourth grade fifth grade seventh grade It's great. It's great.
Not great 10th grade without scoring a single goal Like my church league basketball career was horrible And I remember and in my town this is a big deal like big big deal and so there were rules to it And this is a time you got a high up when you're a kid like fourth graders like her and cats I go okay, it's kid basketball no big deal We also kid basketball games when you got into high school though like there's some rules so this is who played church league basketball in high school You weren't eligible if you were on the varsity team for your high school So if you play JV or you miss varsity you got to play church league basketball Are there's the kids that I couldn't afford to play school ball or like they're like all that so it was pretty competitive And here I am and I can my dad's gonna play church league basketball I'm gonna play sports on and so I go like it's after church wins tonight We go to practice first night of my junior year and we get in there and see all these guys I had kind of grown up with but I really wasn't friends with and I can an all but 10 minutes of basketball practice I get into a fist fighter in practice, which was kind of my MO at the time So okay, the preacher's kid gets in a fist fight at church league basketball practice And so the coach made decisions will bro, so listen, you're just I've known you this was good I'm not gonna go through an entire season with what could be a championship team with you getting in fist fights all the time So you need to go to the seniors and play on the senior team So I got thrown off the team and moved up it moved up a year This couple things were going on number one my high school had gotten a new basketball coach that year and the entire varsity team had quit The school basketball team so they were all of a sudden eligible for church league basketball They're all seniors lucky enough almost all of my friends were seniors So I was actually with like my boys for this and it's all the guys who played varsity basketball and all their buddies I've been playing pick up ball with for years if they were good and I had a really good coach He knew me well. He was my insurance agent, so he was fully aware of what I was capable of But he loved me out there the wing of his house. That's the Chad Rook swing from my high school driving career and He's a good coach and he realized okay. We got this kid.
He's got a tubby. Let's get in fist fights Chad you had a set of pick I didn't know what a pick was and so he taught me how to set a pick playing basketball If you don't know what pick is I didn't until I was 18 years old It's what you might find a way to sneak on the side of somebody and you stand there like this and they run right into you It's just like half of a fist fight Great and then a couple weeks later like we realize like this all were kind of practicing stuff And he realizes like for some odd reason bad. I don't have any more don't challenge me to it I had a heck of a three-point shot If I was if I was open and I wasn't mean guarded that much I had about 85% chance I was gonna hit this three point every single time so there I go for me and the kid like nobody wants to deal with in Church League basketball like to miss fit and renegade the basketball career like playing converse all-stars So I'm like for the first time in my life. I was like man.
I was starting it's never ever happened in my entire life But I belonged in a way that I had never belonged before and I was in a space that I had dreaded my entire life And out all of a sudden I became to thrive in that scenario now. I didn't even attempt to play my senior year I didn't want to jinx this magical season of church like basketball But it's like all of a sudden like belonging was it changed because these were my friends But now I was also I was in their space and I belonged in their space and I had people who cared about me enough For me to want me to thrive in that space and to be able to fully participate in that space and to do well in that space And so we're gonna talk about belonging today the very appropriate word from scripture When we think about what does it mean for us to be the community of God is possibly I pulled mirrors I like my top five favorite Bible verses to and so it's the first Peter chapter 2 verse 9 through 10 And we're gonna read it and talk about this just for a moment today But this is what it says but you are not like that for you are a chosen people You are royal priests a holy nation God's very own possession as a result you can show others the goodness of God for He called you out of the darkness and into his wonderful light And once you had no identity as a people and now you are God's people once you receive no mercy and now you've received God's mercy It's a great passage about belonging. It's from a guy named Peter who had his own struggles with belonging Peter was a disciple of Jesus Peter consistently lived with a foot in his mouth Peter was hothead I think Peter won the reason Peter struggled with with belonging like we read scripture like when Jesus met him He was working for his father's fishing business And they had multiple boats and and people who worked for them That would mean that Peter was actually fairly affluent and the New Testament And I kind of always get this vibe like Peter was the dude who was put up with because he had money Like he was kind of like a buffoon a lot of folks just didn't know what to do it They know how to deal with him. They kind of wanted to keep his mouth shut He might have been like a know it all I Imagine Peter struggled with belonging and now here's Peter writing a letter to a group of churches that he either started or had influence over That were hundreds of miles away from where he was living at the time and where church is not of Jewish people But churches of Gentile people people that were non-Jews and as we say And he's very just specific words to them about what it means to belong and what it means to be the people of God And inside of it is something I'll tell you I think all this fine comfort in the first thing Peter calls to you are chosen people The chosen is a big deal.
It's the fourth time this is mentioned in just a handful of verses. You're chosen by God He's building a story here that for us to be chosen by God means that we're products of God's wisdom and God's intention You're not an accident. You're not an accident. You're important.
You matter to him You were chosen by him and it's chosen because God made the decision that the people who would choose him He would choose to completely belong those who choose to follow that God would completely adopt them as sons and daughters that those of us who choose to Believe God will believe in and God offers himself everything to the depths of his son Jesus Christ who came for us God completely chooses us and this whole thing is not an accident Sometimes we feel like we kind of if you're felt like you're like snuck in the room you really don't belong I've been in those scenarios before I was in one earlier this week I mean we like you like I don't belong in this room why am I even in here? I read you a passage from like a long long ago before this in Exodus and depending on how old you are I either say that the charlatan has since 10 commandments or Disney's Prince of Egypt and you'll understand the story But of the Israelites leaving Egypt and going into the promise on there's a little first year that so many times that we forget about Exes 12 37 38 so that night the people of Israel left Ramesses and started for suck-off There were about 600,000 men plus all the women children this verse right here We forget about this we don't know about this one half the time. I was out of seminary by the time I read this and thought about this for the first time a Ravel of non-Israelites went with them along with great flocks and herds of a lot of a rabble of non-Israelites It means this is like a misfit bunch of people who don't belong God has chosen us We belong to him Belong is a very different thing. It's not by accident By God's intention and I will call anyone who follows me my son and my daughter and it will be part of me Regardless of who they are where they came from What story they're bringing to the table what anything like every I'm choosing you man If you've lived a life of not being choose too often that that can mean a lot Peter also says that your royal priests It's very interesting that belonging right here.
We find it that belonging is based in relationships No priests especially in Old Testament There's more there are more Old Testament like illusions and these two verses than almost anywhere else in the New Testament Like we could spend hours talking about all the other verses that just echoing a little bit your royal priests No priests were just a handful of people very specific very deliberate You had to be born into the right family and you had to be the right like son in the lineup But if you were a woman well, no forget about you like this was a very thing Here's piercing all of you are royal priests All of you belong to God and all of you have access to God That you don't need someone to serve as your enemy intermediary to go between you and God every single people person who chooses And who belongs has this access to God? It's not just a few people. It's all the people that you don't have to depend on someone else for your relationship with him Because of Jesus each one of us has access and power and has full authority and full accountability to have that direct one-on-one relationship With God This also says something about us as a person But also us as a people us as a church because we have this access to God the way that we engage with God the way that we Worship the way that we handle the good times and the bad times it talks about it really shows who we think God is Like how deep are we willing to live into this what Peter says your royal priest you have full access to God This sometimes I realize I don't live like I have full access to God But what does it mean for us to understand the next thing that Peter says is that you're a holy nation You know any conversation about belonging also has a cabin conversation about boundaries the study of holiness That we belong to God in a way that others do not have access to that But because of our choice to follow that also means that we make a decision to willfully live like him and To show others who he is and what he looks like you know our belonging needs to have a visible quality in our life Are we living as though Jesus is in charge? Are we living as though we don't feel like there's any hope going on it?
We know we as individuals But also we as a church that we have to exemplify this holy character of who God is The next thing that Peter said is our we're God's own possession It tells us that we are and if this used to hang me up It was what God felt he owns me or something what is this but now it's not that we are deeply cherished by God Okay, think about how many of y'all are loners or willing to loan stuff out Okay, how many of y'all very hesitant about loaning anything out? Okay, y'all we all have that one thing that ain't nobody can borrow right think about it in your head right now What's that one thing that you will not let anybody else borrow? It's your choice possession. It's valuable to you love it There's something about it that makes it really important and really specially Each of us or that thing that God doesn't want anybody else to borrow We matter that much to him that God has claimed each one of us for himself We matter to him belonging is a very different thing when we begin to realize that we are deeply loved by God This is unmerited love and his mercy He creates this new sense of belonging where will we realize that we are deeply loved by God and we don't process that just one time And are done with it.
That's something that we are going to think about and engage in and pray about and it's going to be a lifelong journey Is we begin to try to understand what does that mean to be deeply loved by God? We're chosen to be in God's presence because we've chosen him we have access to him. We're called to reflect his holiness We're also called to walk through the tough patches of life known that we are deeply loved and deeply treasured by God This is the greatest story about belonging ever You know, I think Peter he said these words to These churches in this book because I think Peter always struggled with belonging I think Peter you see the tension in the New Testament of belonging with Peter You find out that you know him and Paul had a pretty decent beef for a long time and much of it was surrounding idea that You know Peter's ministry early on the book of actually read how much he felt called to be part of this ministry the Gentiles and quickly He's ridiculed and for it the pressure is made so by the end of acts You see Peter being this person who wants every Christian to be a Jew first and you see Paul saying that's no longer necessary This is beef running all throughout the New Testament. What's so funny is so if Peter's this person who had a beef with Gentile Christians Those words we just read don't really sound like somebody who has a beef with that does it?
Here's the thing I think Peter struggled with belonging his entire life And if you ever struggle with belonging, you know, that does not go away when you're a kid They just morphs and moves and changes as we get older But I think Peter wanted to live into something that was so much bigger for him to actually be able to handle And I think Peter's telling these Christians these truths about their belonging and how their belonging is bigger Because he wanted himself to be able to live into that and understand that into work in that he wanted the church that he Hadn't Jerusalem to understand that and to live into that and to be able to to go forward in that Peter wanted belonging to be bigger It's almost the fundamental words of Jesus right there the Kingdom of heaven is here We belong this one of the things that is so important one thing that we do just among with baptism It's so so special is the fact that our belonging and understanding our belonging to God is part of our discipleship You know, we are a new Christian that individual relationships really important to us and it has to be important But as we mature as a Christian one of the things we have to realize is our community idea of belonging What does it mean for us to belong to a body of Christians? What does it mean for the church to belong to the larger church? What does it mean for us who are Christians living in 2018 and starting to Louisiana to be part of a church that has gone on for thousands of years? That we belong to God's people first and foremost and that's much bigger of a family than we can come up with on our own So Jesus help us to understand what does it mean to belong to belong to each other to belong to people in this room?
What does it mean for us to willfully put ourselves in relationships with people? That sometimes are tough or difficult because we know we need them in our life Jesus we pray for our own ideas of what does it mean to belong to be stretched? God for us to realize that sometimes we just need people in our life What help us understand what it means for us to reach out and to pull other people in to bring new folks into relationships with us with us as individuals with us as a church God help us to understand this call that Peter made 2,000 years ago is also a call to every person in this room right now For all of us to understand that we're chosen people that we're a royal priesthood We're a holy nation and the most of all that we are specially you and we're a person of your own choosing God, thank you so much for giving us such a good story of belonging. Let me pray amen