People, Place, Purpose, Presence | 1 Peter 2:9-10

Introduction

From a young age, I think we are all searching. I don’t know about you, but I can distinctly remember certain feelings of longing even as a younger kid and on through to—well, if I’m honest—even adulthood.

It starts in your neighborhood and on the playground. Can I play with those kids? Will they let me share the swings with them? Riding your bike off that sketchy homemade ramp looks like a lot of fun—“Can I do that too?” We all wanted to have friends over to our house, and we wanted to be invited to theirs. We bonded over shared desires to build Legos, watch cartoons or movies, play pretend, and kick or throw a ball.

And as we get a little older, the longings, desires, and questions don’t really change—they just get a little more sophisticated. We begin to ask questions like: Am I a jock or a nerd? Am I okay being the band kid? A theater kid? A gamer? A loner? Sometimes you don’t even get a vote—you just find yourself placed in a role. And maybe that didn’t feel good.

As a kid, my family moved between fourth and fifth grade, and I felt like I lost a lot of friends. I floated between different groups, trying to find my place. I played soccer, so at times I hung out with the soccer kids. I had kids from school who lived in my neighborhood or within walking distance, so I would hang out with them. I had friends I met at our new church, and I would play with them too.

But there was one group I didn’t want to be stuck in—the nerds.

Which is a bummer because I WAS a nerd. I loved to read, I loved to study obscure things, and I really enjoyed learning. But it didn’t seem very cool to be THAT kid.

In junior high, our school yearbook decided to do a section on “The Most…” “The Most Athletic,” “The Most Funny,” “Most Likely to Succeed,” and so on. They had kids vote one day during our first-period class, and later that day, during an assembly, they were going to hand out awards.

Little did I know that some of my friends had conspired to get me voted as one of “The Most.” And they picked “The Most Intellectual.” And I had no idea this was coming. During the assembly, they announced the categories and, to my surprise, I was called up to receive a wooden totem-pole award inscribed with “The Most Intellectual.”

I tried hard not to cry—that would have likely been social suicide in a junior high assembly. But I did not want THAT identity. I didn’t want to be stuck forever as a nerd.

As my friend Eric walked up to me afterward, smiling and telling me how they had all made sure to get everyone to vote for me…I did something I shouldn’t have.

I hit Eric over the head with my wooden award.

Eric, if you ever hear this, I am so sorry! I’m sure my friends were not trying to be mean. But my longing to belong—and to belong in the way I wanted to belong—was hurt that day.

Your story undoubtedly is different, but we all spend time trying to figure out who we are. And that doesn’t necessarily stop in adulthood. Where do I belong? Where do I fit? What am I good at, and what am I supposed to do? Does my life matter?

Ultimately, what we are asking is:

Who are my people?
Where is my place?
What am I here for?

We all have ideas about what we wish the answers to those questions would look like at different times in our lives. We seek, strive, and hope to find ourselves where we think we belong, with people we want to belong to, doing something that matters.

Sometimes we find some of those, for a moment. For some of you, maybe you did find a lot of those things along the way. You had a loving family. You found people you belonged with. You were exactly where you thought you should be—whether that was the jock, the nerd, the social butterfly, or something else entirely. You thought you were on the right trajectory and had found the right path.

And yet, somehow, some time we still might feel like something is missing.

Perhaps those questions still don’t reach our deepest longing. Even when we have people we love, a place where we belong, and something meaningful to do, we can still sense that there is something more—something deeper and more all-encompassing:

Who am I with?

And that question is a little different than finding your people. That question isn’t finally answered by having just somebody, or anybody. It pushes us toward a much more specific question:

Am I with the One I was made to be with?

What if these longings are not arbitrary? Maybe we have these longings precisely because we all search to understand the life we were created to have. We are wondering, “What did God actually create human life to be?”

Review: The Story

This is our third sermon in our series, The Story. We are going through the grand story of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation with the idea that, perhaps, we could all learn to tell the story of God to someone who might want to know more. And perhaps be encouraged ourselves and fill in some of our knowledge-holes along the way.

So far, we have seen the amazing glory of our God. The Story starts with him—God. The God who IS. He always has been, always will be, and everything was created from him, through him, and to him. Even more than that, he doesn’t only relate to his creation as Creator, but also as King. And he is a good King! Everything he does is only good, and this good King created us to have a place in his Story and to reign and rule under him. We get to represent the King!

And that raises the question: What then does life in the King’s Kingdom look like for us? And our answer today is that this life looks like:

God’s PEOPLE, in God’s PLACE, fulfilling God’s PURPOSE, enjoying God’s PRESENCE.

This week, in looking at these four Ps—People, Place, Purpose, and Presence—we are examining WHAT life and relationship with God looks like. Next week, Jack will talk about Covenant and how life IN COVENANT with God shows us HOW God orders his relationship with us and carries the relationship through The Story.

Don’t Leave Eden Behind

We just went through Genesis, and I think something odd can happen for many of us when we think about the beginning of Scripture and the Garden of Eden. We begin to see it only as a prelude.

How many of you are old enough to remember Flannel Boards? They were about as interactive as storytelling could get back in the mid-to-late 1900s. If you didn’t have a big team to do a skit or the money to buy puppets or marionettes, you could always bust out a Flannel Board. A simple board, covered in flannel, where you could then stick flannel cutouts of Adam, Eve, a tree, an apple, a serpent, and illustrate in real time the story of the Garden of Eden.

I think many of us think of Eden like the colorful opening scenery of the Bible. The pieces are all put on the board, and then, with sin, they are all taken off. Then another scene is put up—this time it is Noah and all the smiling animals walking in two-by-two. Then they are taken off, and another story is put on. Abraham, then Moses, then David, and finally Jesus.

But the opening of Scripture in the Garden is not just a one-time, disconnected story. We are brought into God’s creation at the Garden because it is THAT imagery that is going to stick with us throughout the entire Story. We start in a place—the Garden—and with God and his people. He gives them a job to do, and they live in his Presence. There is a river. There is a tree of life. No curse yet. No sin.

And then the Story of Scripture ends with a remarkably familiar picture. Another garden image, a river, and the tree of life. Humanity reigning with God. No curse. God dwelling again with his people.

If Eden were simply a beautiful picture of the beginning, a story we are meant to move on from, then why does the end of The Story sound so much like how it began? This image is going to keep repeating, and not just the image itself. What keeps repeating is the content: People, Place, Purpose, and Presence.

Eden: People, Place, Purpose, and Presence

Genesis starts with much about God—how he creates and makes all things. And we then see his kingly nature as he makes a place and a people for himself. After making Eden, a beautiful place, God then says:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

We talked about this a lot when we taught through Genesis this last year. God makes a people for himself. He creates humanity in his image—male and female. And God doesn’t just put them in his place, his creation, but he gives his place and his creation to them.

We also talked about Purpose in our Genesis series. God commissions the man and the woman to rule over the Garden and the earth. They are given dominion—reign and rule under the good King. In this way, they are little kings and little queens. They are to rule, cultivate and guard, multiply, and fill.

And importantly, God is with them. He dwells with them as the Garden becomes a sacred space with God and mankind. They are:

God’s PEOPLE, in God’s PLACE, fulfilling God’s PURPOSE, enjoying God’s PRESENCE.

We mentioned these four Ps in our Genesis series. But what we didn’t talk about is how they endure beyond just the Garden, and how often we see them again throughout the Story.

When we get to Genesis chapter three, we encounter sin. And we should all be asking, “What happens to this picture of People, Place, Purpose, and Presence in the Story when humanity sins?” And according to Genesis, the answer is that everything breaks. People fracture and fight. Place is lost. Purpose is corrupted. Presence with God is forfeited.

We should expect that God will move on from sinful humanity, revoke their purpose, stay away from their place, and especially keep his presence away from THEM. That should be the end of that.

But it isn’t!

We are meant to be reading the Story and be surprised when we realize that God refuses to abandon what he intended from the beginning. God is going to do something amazing with the life that humanity ruined!

So we follow each piece of that picture through the Story to see what God does with it.

People: The King Will Have a People

The first thing we should expect to disappear is his people. But that isn’t what happens if we keep reading. God acts within history to accomplish his purpose: he will have a people who belong to him.

And this is important to notice: the Story does NOT become a story about humanity successfully recovering what THEY lost. Rather, the Story is about our God acting to fulfill his purposes despite humanity’s failure.

We begin to see this almost immediately. With Noah, God preserves humanity through judgment rather than abandoning his creation. With Abraham, God calls one man out of Ur and promises that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Then, with Israel, the “People” theme becomes unmistakable. God rescues Israel from Egypt and brings them to Sinai. And then listen to God’s language to Israel at the mountain:

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.
Exodus 19:4–6 ESV

Israel is God’s “treasured possession,” “a kingdom of priests,” “a holy nation.” That sounds like God’s original creative purposes again! God isn’t merely rescuing disconnected individuals; God is forming a PEOPLE for himself.

And notice that the categories are already beginning to overlap. These PEOPLE are also given a PURPOSE: they are a kingdom of priests.

As we move forward in the Story, we see that Peter picks back up on the language of Exodus in our passage for this morning. He says in 1 Peter 2:9–10:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

All this language here is about God’s People again—chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, a people for his own possession. Peter is not only going back to Exodus; he is also picking up the language of Hosea—“not my people” and “no mercy”—the name of Hosea’s children. Peter takes that language and applies it here: those who were not a people are now God’s People; those who had not received mercy have now received mercy.

And this continues all the way to the end! In Revelation 21:3 it says:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Revelation 21:3 ESV

“And they will be his people.” The Story starts with God creating a people and ends with God dwelling with his redeemed People.

Application

Oddly enough, we don’t often acknowledge this reality. God is not just saving YOU. Yes, you are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, but you are saved INTO something. You are saved into a Kingdom with a King AND HIS PEOPLE. It was never meant to be, nor will it ever be in the future, just you and God. You are part of His People!

Look around you this morning, Main Street. This is one of the places where that reality becomes visible. You belong to a People. God’s People, his gathering, his Church. And yes, I know at times it seems like it would be much easier if it WAS just you and God. But this is good for us!

We were meant for a People. Humanity ruined the picture, but God refuses to abandon his purpose.

The King will have a People.

Place: The King Will Give His People a Place

And God does the same thing with Place. God’s people were with him in the Garden, the place where God dwelled with humanity. But as a result of sin, humanity was exiled from the Garden. We might think that God’s concern with having his people in his place ended there, but watch the Story!

God’s dealings with Abraham and Israel repeatedly involve land. God doesn’t merely promise Abraham descendants; he promises somewhere for those descendants to live. Israel is eventually brought into the land. Place continues to matter. In Leviticus 26 we see this idea of Place brought together with many of these other aspects as well:

I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:9–12 ESV

Look at how much of the original picture is showing up again. God has a PEOPLE, and they are in a PLACE. They are to be fruitful and multiply—the language of humanity’s original PURPOSE. And God says he will dwell and walk among them—his PRESENCE.

God’s PEOPLE, in God’s PLACE, fulfilling God’s PURPOSE, enjoying God’s PRESENCE.

People, Place, Purpose, and Presence are showing up together again. God has not abandoned the picture we saw in the Garden.

And when we get to the end, we find that God’s People again have a Place. If we expand back a little more into Revelation 21:1, this is what we see:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
Revelation 21:1–3 ESV

A new heaven and a new earth. God is not only gathering his People; his People will still have a Place! And notice the direction: the holy city, the New Jerusalem, comes down out of heaven from God. God is the one providing this place for his people.

The Story doesn’t move from creation to failure to abandonment of creation. It moves toward a renewed creation!

The King will have a People—and his People will have a Place.

But God didn’t create humanity simply to exist somewhere. His People were created for something.

Purpose: The King Will Restore His People’s Vocation

Remember the Purpose we saw in the Garden. We were called to be God’s image-bearing representatives—little kings and little queens beneath the Great King. We were called to rule and reign under him, to cultivate and guard what God had entrusted to us, to multiply and fill the earth.

Sin doesn’t erase our image-bearing identity, but it profoundly corrupts how we fulfill the vocation God gave us. So, does God abandon our original Purpose?

No!

Let’s go back to Exodus 19:5–6 again:

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.
Exodus 19:5–6 ESV

God doesn’t merely tell Israel who they ARE; he identifies what kind of People they will be. They will be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Israel would have a particular priesthood serving in the sanctuary, but here God describes the entire nation as a “kingdom of priests.” The whole People have a representative, priestly calling before the nations.

And the royal and priestly language come together. This develops the vocation we first saw in Genesis. God still intends to have people who represent and serve him in this world.

People and Purpose are inseparable.

God’s People are given God’s Purpose.

And again, if we come back to 1 Peter 2:9, we see that Peter also carries forward the language of Exodus. Again, we are a royal priesthood, but Peter explicitly adds the activity of God’s priestly people:

“that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

God’s People don’t merely belong. They represent HIM. They serve HIM, and they proclaim HIS glory!

And this Purpose isn’t meant to stay in one place. Adam and Eve were called to multiply and fill the earth. Israel was called to display God’s glory among the nations—to be a light to the nations. And Jesus sends his People to go and make disciples of all nations.

The expressions of expansion and our purpose may develop as the Story progresses, but God’s Kingdom purposes were never meant to stay confined to just a Garden in one place. The Garden of God was meant to expand through the faithful rule and reign of his image-bearers.

Greg Beale describes the purpose of God’s people this way:

“[T]he presence of God which was limited to Eden was to be extended throughout the whole earth.”

G. K. Beale, “Eden, the Temple, and the Church's Mission in the New Creation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48, no. 1 (March 2005): 10–11.

In other words, humanity’s Purpose wasn’t simply to put more human beings in more places. As God’s image-bearers multiplied and filled the earth, faithful human rule was meant to extend outward from Eden. And the King’s image-bearers would fill the King’s world just with image-bearers, but image-bearers that were reflecting the glory and good rule of the King.

That is what we see fulfilled at the end of the Story. When we get to Revelation, what are God’s redeemed People doing in his Place?

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Revelation 22:3–5 ESV

God’s People are worshiping him and serving him. They are reigning with him forever and ever. In the Garden, humanity is commissioned to reign and rule faithfully under God. In the New Creation, redeemed humanity finally fulfills that calling—forever and ever!

And that is what we are working towards today. Missions exists because the world is not yet full of the glory of God! Our purpose, even today, is to see the glory of God spread across the earth like water covers the oceans. That is the great Kingdom purpose into which the Great Commission sends us.

Our God hasn’t discarded humanity’s vocation—instead, he has fulfilled it.

The King will have a People, his People will have a Place, and his People will fulfill his Purpose.

And amazingly, this isn’t the greatest thing that God refuses to give up!

Remember Beale’s description: God’s Presence in Eden was meant to extend throughout the whole earth. And humanity’s Purpose was ultimately tied to something even greater than ourselves—it is tied to the Presence and glory of the King filling his Kingdom.

God doesn’t merely ensure that there will be a People, give them somewhere to live, and then restore them to meaningful work.

God intends to be with them. To be with us!

Presence: The King Will Dwell With His People

Even when God gathers a people again, brings them to a specific Place, and recommissions them to live out their Purpose, the greatest loss of Eden remained: humanity had been driven away from that very special Presence of God.

One question still remained:

Will the holy King ever dwell with sinful humanity again?

The astonishing thing is that this shouldn’t be possible on our terms. A holy and righteous God cannot simply overlook sin and pretend it doesn’t exist. Sin deserves judgment. Sinful humanity cannot simply walk back into the Presence of a holy God.

And yet, God begins to do just that—he begins to dwell again with his People! Look at what God says in Exodus 25:8:

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.
Exodus 25:8 ESV

The God who drove sinful humanity from Eden is choosing to dwell again among a sinful People. We see this through the Tabernacle as they wander in the wilderness, and we see it in the Temple built in Jerusalem. In Exodus 40, God’s glory fills the Tabernacle. In 1 Kings 8, God’s glory fills the Temple.

But God does not dwell among sinful humanity casually. His Presence comes with a sanctuary, priesthood, sacrifice, holiness, and mediation. God is dwelling among his People, but humanity has not yet returned to the unhindered Presence it enjoyed in the Garden.

We saw this language already in Leviticus 26:

I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:11–12 ESV

God isn’t merely recreating the Garden; he is carrying out his intention to live with his People.

Then, something unprecedented happens.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
John 1:14a ESV

The language there in the Greek is meant to make you think of the tabernacle. God came and “tabernacled” with us. But now God’s Presence is not localized in a tent or a temple. God himself has come to dwell among humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

And here we finally begin to see how the holy God can dwell with sinful humanity. The God who came to dwell with us also came to deal with the sin that separated us from him.

Jesus Christ would take the judgment our sin deserves upon himself at the cross. God does not ignore our sin so that we can enter his Presence. In Christ, God deals with our sin so that we can be reconciled to him.

God comes to dwell with humanity, and through what HE alone has done FOR us, he makes the way for his People to be brought back into his Presence through faith in Jesus Christ.

But when Jesus dies on the cross, is resurrected, and then ascends back to the Father, does that mean we no longer have the Presence of God with us? No, something even greater happens.

God dwelt WITH humanity in Eden.
God dwelt AMONG his People in the Tabernacle/Temple.
God dwelt AMONG us bodily in Christ.
God now dwells IN his People by the Spirit.

Think about how astonishing that last statement is. Where is the dwelling place of God now? Paul tells the Romans:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Romans 8:9 ESV

Do you see what has happened in the Story? The Presence of God was associated with the Garden. Then the Tabernacle. Then the Temple. Then God himself came and tabernacled among us in Jesus Christ. And now, because of what Christ has done, God’s People themselves have become the dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit.

This is the long-awaited promise of Ezekiel 36: God would put his very Spirit within his People and cause them to walk in his ways. God’s love has been poured into our hearts now, and we know him intimately through faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is more than just an individual promise; it is for his corporate people as well. Ephesians 2:22 tells us that together we all—God’s People—are being built together into a dwelling place for God by his Holy Spirit.

God has not left his People alone while we wait for Jesus to return. The King is present with his People even now. God himself dwells in us by his Spirit.

And the Presence of God isn’t going to stop there. One day, when he returns, God's People will see his face.

As we have seen already in Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God…[And] they will see his face.
Revelation 21:1–3; 22:4a ESV

The King will have a People. His People will have a Place. His People will fulfill his Purpose. And greatest of all, the King himself will dwell with his People.

God’s PEOPLE, in God’s PLACE, fulfilling God’s PURPOSE, enjoying God’s PRESENCE.

And the greatest gift the King gives his People is himself.

Conclusion

Even today, if we are honest, we are often asking ourselves:

Who are my people?
Where is my place?
What am I here for?

But importantly, we all know there is an even deeper longing within all of us:

Who am I with? Am I with the One I was made to be with?

When we come to The Story, we are not meant to see each scene, starting with Eden, as scenery that God takes down and then moves on to the next. They are not disconnected stories. And even more, they are not evidence of a constantly changing plan or a God whose purposes were thwarted by the sin of humanity. Human sin ruins OUR participation in God’s good purpose, but it does not ultimately thwart God’s purpose. The Story is about God and his glory as the good King. But that good King has also shown us the life he created his People to enjoy under his reign.

I think that is part of what I didn’t understand when I was a kid hitting my friend over the head with an award because I was so worried about where I belonged and who I was supposed to be. I was trying to figure out the Story by myself and in myself.

Graciously, God has given us HIS Story. Across thousands of years, from Genesis to Revelation, he shows us what he is doing. He is gathering his People. He is bringing them into his Place. He is restoring them to his Purpose. And ultimately, he is bringing them back into his Presence.

And maybe that changes how we think about the questions we started with. We naturally ask and struggle with:

Who are MY people?
Where is MY place?
What is MY purpose?
Who do I want to be with?

But remember where we started this entire series: God is the Story. Our story only makes sense inside his.

So maybe the answers to our deepest questions don’t begin with MY at all.

They begin with GOD.

God’s PEOPLE, in God’s PLACE, fulfilling God’s PURPOSE, enjoying God’s PRESENCE.

Summary Moment

So how would you summarize that sermon? We have a God who IS, who created everything, and everything is from him, through him, and to him. He is a King and a good King. Everything he does is good, and he calls us into his rule and reign as his representatives.

Then what? What does life under this good King look like for us?

[Pause]

Again, you don’t need to keep my version of these sentences, and hopefully this one was a little easier as you get the hang of this. Here is my sample for this section:

God created us to be his PEOPLE, living in his PLACE, fulfilling his PURPOSE, enjoying his PRESENCE. In Eden, Adam and Eve were royal and priestly representatives of the King, meant to live with God and fill his creation with faithful human life. This is the good human life God created us for.