Destined for Disobedience

1 Peter 2:7-8

Immanuel – 5/23/21

Are we not caught between worlds, between dust and divinity, between darkness and light? Our lungs expand with the breath of life and every exhale is a shadow of our death. Though the world is cruel and hostile, how we each ache for a living hope.

And so the Divine became dust. The Light flung Himself into the darkness. And His Spirit rushes into ours, casting out every shadow of death. Though this world is cruel and hostile, we have been given an unshakable and living hope!

So it is for all who believe that Jesus is the Son of God – who lived and died and lives again. In Him we have forgiveness from sins. In Him we have life eternally. In Him we who are many become one. In Him we have hope and joy and love. Indeed, we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good!

But it is a different story for those who do not believe. They are gripped by another world. No one enjoys walking into the shadows, but today’s text leads us there; God is leading us there. And if God did not walk us into difficult places, then what kind of God would He be? Certainly one of our own making.

We come to a text today that has caused countless people to stumble. We walk right into a great controversial subject. We walk into some of the deepest mysteries of God.

Purpose

Review depravity.

Read 1 Peter 2:4-8

In the Bible, there are two ultimate categories that catch up every single human that has ever lived: belief and unbelief. It is the difference between believing that Jesus is Lord and Savior, or rejecting Him. There is no middle ground. He is your Lord, or He is not. He is your Savior, or He is not.

Depravity

But there is not a single person who is born a believer, at least not in the natural sense. We are born in unbelief, enslaved to our sins, and despising the things of God.

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

-Romans 3:10-12

This is our very nature, from the womb. Some people are trying to make claims that they were born a certain way. Well, all of us were born this way. We were born dead.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world…among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. -Ephesians 2:1,3

Born in sin, totally deprave, unable to do anything good. Rather than seeking God, we ravenously chase the passions of the flesh. Our highest ascent is a moment of pleasure or a fleeting applause. Our very nature a corruption and abhorrence, detestable to God and eliciting His righteous wrath. We are spiritually dead. And what dead thing can bring itself to life? Not even one.

But all the corruption of humanity could not foil the love of the Father. He had a plan to deal with this. He had always had a plan: the Divine would become dust, the Light would invade the darkness, the Spirit would bring life to the dead.

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

-Ephesians 2:4,8-10

Before the foundations of the world were laid, God was not only preparing good works for us to walk in, He elected those that would walk in them. Not all the world would be made alive with Christ, but only those that He chose. Upon these would He graciously give the gift of faith – the lifeblood of spiritual living.

This is the doctrine of election. And with this we return to 1 Peter.

We have now seen, again and again, the doctrine of election deeply embedded in Peter’s letter. Peter begins his letter with it, addressing the letter to the elect exiles. In 1:3 he notes that it is God who has caused the elect to be born again to a living hope. And in verse 4 we see that God is keeping the elect for an unfading inheritance in heaven. In verse 15 the elect are named obedient children, and in verse 16 God has called them holy. Finally, in verse 23, we learn that it was by God’s supremely powerful and imperishable word that the elect were born again.

Earlier I stated that there are two ultimate categories catching up every single human: belief and unbelief. Belief in Jesus Christ is the marker of the elect. And the elect have been given this faith by God Himself.

Now let us look to our passage.

Read vs 7

The honor is for you who believe. What honor? To answer that question we need to god to the previous verse.

Read vs 6

From the Rubble

As we saw last week, Peter is quoting the prophet Isaiah. The world rejected Jesus, spit upon Him and crucified Him. But in God’s eyes, Jesus is the chosen and precious one, the Father’s most beloved Son. Christ is the stone that God has laid in Zion: the Living Stone, the Cornerstone. Upon Jesus will God construct His house.

Which means that when God digs through the rubble of humanity, lifts out a stone and places it upon His Cornerstone, that living stone is likewise chosen and precious. This is the honor that is for you who believe. God has chosen you, you are precious in His sight, you are named among His elect!

And now we must remember a bit of the context of this letter. 1 Peter writes to the elect exiles. Being an exile means that you are far from home. You live in a land in which you do not belong.

The churches all throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia faced local persecutions of all sorts. Jews persecuted Christians because they could not accept that Jesus was the Messiah. The Gentiles persecuted Christians because they would not conform to pagan society like everyone else.

They were being rejected, just as the Cornerstone had been rejected. Which is exactly why Peter directly quotes Psalm 118:22 in verse 7. Peter had first heard Jesus quote it, in reference to how the religious leaders would kill their Messiah. But when Peter quotes Psalm 118:22, he is speaking far more broadly than the religious leaders in Jerusalem. He is speaking about all those who reject Jesus, and how Christ’s rejection means your rejection, elect exiles.

Again, this is as Jesus said it would be; words that Peter most certainly remembered well.

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” -John 15:18-19

Here is a sweet promise to all who believe. If the world rejects us, we can know that Christ walked this road first. If the world rejects us because of our faith, it is a further evidence that Jesus Himself has chosen us out of the world; picked us from the midst of the rubble.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.” -Isaiah 43:1-4

When the world shames, Christ honors; and we can rejoice in our sufferings. If we are God’s then nothing can snatch us from His hand! Nothing can separate us from His love! Our’s is the honor!

And as we continue in 1 Peter, we must understand that everything follows this same line of reasoning. Even the unbelief in the world is according to God’s plan. For if even unbelief is according to God’s plan, then what is there to fear?

Read vs 7-8

In verse 8 Peter again quotes Isaiah.

But the Lord of Hosts, Him you shall honor as holy. Let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling…a trap and a snare…And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken. -Isaiah 8:13-15

The Rock of Offense

Notice who Isaiah is talking about: the Lord of Hosts – Yahweh. When Peter quotes this passage from Isaiah, saying that Jesus is the rock of offense, He is saying that Jesus is Yahweh.

How the whole world stumbles over this truth! How profoundly offensive! In the eyes of the Jewish religious leaders, this was blasphemy. In the eyes of the Romans it was sedition. It got Jesus crucified. It will eventually get Peter crucified. In the eyes of secular society, this truth is regressive, hateful, intolerant, and close minded. So say the unbelievers of the believers.

The dogmas of modernity are diametrically opposed to the truths of the gospel. The transcendent reality of God is an existential threat to the delusion they have built from time, matter, and chance. And so they will reject that threat; and they will reject those that believe.

When confronted with Jesus – the true Biblical Jesus – all unbelievers are capable of is stumbling and offense. The Word of God who became a man, died in place of sinners, and rose from the grave to vindicate and redeem all who believe – this God they reject. For none of them understand, none of them seek for God, they all have turned aside and become worthless; as we saw from Romans 3. They are dead in their disobedience.

And now we come to what is, likely, the most controversial sentence in 1 Peter. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. Following Peter’s logic, people stumble over the word of Christ, the gospel; and therefore over what all Scripture is pointing towards. This means they are disobedient to the Word. So you can clearly see that stumbling over the cornerstone, being offended by Jesus, is the same as disobeying the Word.

Therefore, you can flip this sentence around to rightly read, “They stumble because are destined – predestined – to disobey the word.” Stunningly, this means that God has appointed, or destined, unbelievers to disobey His word. This is so stunning, and so difficult, that many have tried to squirm out from under the implications of these words.

Some people say that the meaning behind the word stumbling is about judgement. Stumbling is about punishment. Stumbling is Hell. Therefore, God appoints hell for those who disobey. Now that is true, but that is not what this verse is saying.

Within the verse itself, Peter is defining stumbling as disobeying the word. Additionally, when Peter quotes Isaiah, he is equating stumbling with being offended at Jesus. Or, not believing in Jesus. This is not about an appointed punishment. It is about God’s sovereignty over people’s unbelief.

And this further supports Peter’s larger goal of comforting the churches who are suffering at the hands of unbelievers. Because if your suffering – and even those causing your suffering – is a part of God’s sovereign plan, then you can rest assured that He is using your trial to result in your praise and glory and honor; as He said a chapter earlier.

The context of verse 8 will not allow us to escape the sovereign reality that God has predestined people to disobey His word. What Peter is saying here is again, only something that He heard His Savior say.

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” -Matthew 21:42

Jesus is quoting Psalm 118:22. This is why Peter uses the same quotation in our passage. Though Jesus quoted a section that Peter does not: “This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” But what Peter does not quote, he takes very seriously. He knows that God planned Jesus to be rejected. It was God’s purpose. It was God who destined it.

And it wasn’t just Peter who understood this. The church understood this from the beginning. For when persecutions first started to break out against them – remember, persecutions, sufferings – they prayed like this:

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

-Acts 4:27-28

Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel; four groups of people that God had predestined to stumble over Jesus and commit a horrific disobedience – something utterly distasteful to God – the murder His Son. For there was a far greater glory on the other side: a people redeemed, a multitude from every tribe, tongue, and nation surrounding the Cornerstone in glory-filled worship.

Again, Peter does not quote, like Jesus did, that stumbling upon Jesus is the Lord’s doing. But what He does not quote, he explains. Which is the controversial sentence of verse 8. People’s disobedience to the word is because God is sovereign and He has appointed it to be so.

This is the other side of election. If God elects some, then He passes over others. If out of the rubble of humanity He chooses some to be refined and made precious, then He determines that others remain rubble. And we are able to identity many of those who God passes over because of their expression of unbelief.

But if God predestines whole swaths of humanity to disobedience, how can He still find fault with them? The Bible does not disclose God’s mind on this.

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who can resist His will?” But what are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory – even us whom He has called. -Romans 9:19-24

We must understand that the Bible has a category where God can sinlessly predestine what He despises: any and all forms of disobedience. God would never do anything that would compromised His righteous holiness. He only increases His perfection by making it more visible, more glorious, a greater source of satisfaction and worship for those who believe.

Though this is outside the scope of our text today, I want to give you some categories of thinking that are very helpful when confronted by such a difficult topic. These are all taught in the Bible.

There are no persons who want to be saved and are prevented against their will.

Every person that perishes, willfully rejects the knowledge of God that they have.

There are no persons who are not morally responsible for their unbelief.

There are no persons whose judgement will be unjust.

All of us were hopelessly sinful, and none of us deserves to be delivered.

Take heart, embattled exiles, none of your adversaries can thwart God’s plan.

(Bullets taken from Desiring God’s “Look at the Book” study of 1 Peter 2:4-8 Part 2)

This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. Marvelous does mean that it gives us warm fuzzies. It means that we stand back in awe; the way we would stand back as thunder rattles our chest and lightning rips a tree in two; or the way of volcano levels the landscape and clouds a hemisphere.

O, it is my prayer that you would not stumble over these words today! Rather, let us fall to our faces in worship! For God will not be made into the image of men, and conform to our shifting sensibilities. He will do what He will do, and He will not request our permissions. And whatever He does we worship Him as holy and good and awesome, King of kings and Lord of lords, who loved us and gave Himself for us!

We may not understand, but if He is a God we could completely understand, then what kind of God would He be?

There is one more thing that I want you to see in verses 7 and 8; something that would be much easier to see if we were reading the Greek. All of the important verbs in verses 7 and 8 that relate to unbelievers are in the present tense. “For those who presently do not believe…They presently stumble because they presently disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”

This verse clearly affirms that the present disobedience of unbelievers has been appointed by God, but it stops short of speaking of Hell. Certainly every subsequent moment of disobedience is also appointed by God, and if what is present continues, the end of unbelievers is condemnation. But verse 8 does not indicate whether or not this unbelief will continue throughout life.

This hostile world is filled with hope, even for the unbeliever. Elsewhere Peter makes this so clear.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

-1 Peter 2:12

Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with all gentleness and respect. -Peter 3:14-15

Earlier I said that we are able to identity many of those who God passes over because of their expression of unbelief. But we should never throw our hands in the air and give up on them. God can still rescue them from their unbelief, take what is dead and breath into her eternal life. He can, and He will, pluck more stones – chosen and precious – from the rubble of humanity; just as He has done for each one of us.

And perhaps the way that God will pluck another one from the pile is through your mouth.

Are there any today to do not believe? Today is the day of salvation! Come to Jesus and be saved! Come to Jesus where your soul can be satisfied. Come to Jesus and find rest!

We all must come before the Almighty God, who is beholden to us in no way, and worship. How wonderful that He has rescued us from death, that He has shown us His Son and we are not offended! How marvelous His mercy and how generous His forgiveness! Who is sufficient for these things?

In just a moment we will see these glorious gospel truths put on display as two more living stones have been placed upon the Cornerstone. Baptism is a mini-drama of the gospel. Plunging beneath the water they declare that their old selves are dead. Rising from the water, as Christ rose from the grave, they declare that they now live unto Jesus. And as we all have been baptized, these two join the many: we all together – chosen and precious stones placed upon the great Cornerstone!