1 Peter 2:9-10 - Why Do We Worship?
“9 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. 10 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.”
He who has ears let him hear the Word of God.
If I asked you to define worship, how would you define it? We would probably get a variety of answers just from the people here this morning. Now, what if I clarified what I mean by worship. What is biblical worship? Or what does it mean to worship God? Specifying it that way, we may still get a variety of answers even in this room. Since we are in church, I imagine that most of you would answer in a way that pertains to church. For example, worship is a religious experience. Or worship is what happens in a church. Or maybe it’s when Christians sing in church on Sunday mornings.
It is important to understand or to know what worship is so that we might engage in it appropriately. It is also important to understand why we worship. You see, we are all worshipers. Every person that you know, every person that has lived or is living or will live, is a worshiper. Worship happens all around us every day. Worship of celebrities. Worship of jobs. Worship of status. Worship of money. Worship of power. Worship of education. You name it, mankind can and probably has worshiped it.
In a very basic but real sense, we were created to worship. You see worship is not incidental—it is the reason for mankind’s existence. In fact, the Bible tells us that man was created to worship. So, the question is not if we worship, the question is who or what do we worship and why.
The Bible not only tells us that mankind was created to worship, but it tells us that we were created specifically to worship God. We find this in commandment 1 and 2 of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20, God tells us in the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. In the OT book of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah elaborates on the first commandment in verse 25:26 by saying, “6 Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them.” We even see the concept of worship as early as Genesis 4 when Cain and Abel brought their offerings before God (act of worship) and God accepted Abel’s and did not accept Cain’s. Actually, this concept of worshipping God is all throughout Scripture. In fact, the overarching theme of the Bible is - God is redeeming worshippers for Himself. Mankind was created by God to worship Him and Him alone.
Now you may agree with that. But what does it mean to worship God, and why do we worship him? That is what we want to begin to look at this morning.
Look with me at verse 9 of chapter 2 - “9 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.”
The people of God are referred to here as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. These are descriptions of God’s people that we find in the OT, primarily Deuteronomy and Isaiah. They were used to refer to God’s covenant people, Israel, and Peter has brought that language into the NT to describe the covenant people of God, which includes both Jews and Gentiles. In other words, Peter is describing Christians, followers of Christ. Peter says that Christians are a people for God’s own possession. God has not only created them, and all of mankind, he has purchased them by the blood of His Son. They are his. In Isaiah 43 God tells His people – “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”
Believers or Christians are the redeemed of God.
And what are the redeemed to do? Look at the second part of verse 9 – that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness. The redeemed are to worship – to ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Everywhere they (God’s people) should vocally proclaim God’s praise, worthy virtues, deeds, power, glory, wisdom, grace, mercy, love, and holiness.
Listen to this description of worship of God from Psalm 96, you may recognize it as a passage we often use for our Call to Worship – “Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts!
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!
This Psalm along with many other Psalms captures the heart of worship - ascribing to the Lord the glory due his name.
People ascribe worth or glory to many things. According to Statista, a consumer data website, their global consumer survey polled 50,000 people and asked, “What are the three most important aspects to you in life? The top three were: a happy relationship, an honest and respectable life, and safety and security. You know, I believe this is a pretty accurate survey. The average person’s highest priority is typically themselves. So, it would make sense that they would ascribe great value and worth to things like happiness in a relationship, honesty and respectability among peers, and safety or security. Even as believers, we find ourselves tempted to worship things or ourselves rather than God. Worship is so integral to what it means to be human that we cannot help but serve and praise something. Now I do want to be clear here, the Bible does not say that things such as a good and happy relationship, honesty and respectability, or safety and security are bad things. In fact, the Bible commends these traits. We do not have to look any further than the Proverbs to see this. Pursuit of these things become a problem when they are our hearts’ greatest desire, above God. Again, this reveals that we are ultimately worshiping self rather than God.
See we experience true fulfillment only as we live as worshipers of our triune Creator. Since we were made to worship the Lord, we fulfill our purpose for living when we worship Him. And He is worthy to be worshipped.
In biblical worship, the focus is on God himself, and the acknowledgment of his inherent and unique worthiness. We worship in order to glorify and bless God. And here’s the thing: When we worship God, we are blessed by God. As we worship, our desire for God grows. As our desire for God grows, our worship of God grows.
What about you? Do you find that you often struggle to ascribe God the glory and worth that are due to Him? If so, you are not alone. All believers struggle to worship God as they should. But Scripture teaches that there is grace for us even when we fail to worship as we should. Grace is the means God uses restore us when we fail to worship Him. That brings us to our second point.
Look at verse 10. 10 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.
As we have already seen, God made us to worship Him alone, but we persist in worshipping everything but God. In fact, according to God’s law, worshipping anything other than God is sin. And yet, that is what happens. Because of our fallen nature, because of sin, we are actually enemies of God and separated from Him. The first part of Ephesians 2 tells us – “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air … and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Here is the issue, though we were made to worship, unrighteous creatures cannot worship a holy God. Isaiah 59:2 tells us – “2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” God cannot hear from sinful creatures. Sin has put a wall between us and God. It has separated us from Him. Because of the sin that separates us from God, we cannot offer worship appropriately. We worship wrongly.
Sin has perverted our worship and caused us to pursue the created rather than the Creator. Romans 1:21-23 says, “20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Because of sin we worship the wrong thing – we worship the creature rather than the Creator. It is not that we will cease worship altogether if we reject the Creator; rather, we will go on worshiping but change the object of our worship—to our great peril.
So, what are we to do? Where is our hope? After describing our fallen condition in the first part of Ephesians 2, Paul goes on to say this – “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Scripture tells us that God has provided a way of redemption for us, so that we can be restored to Him and therefore worship as we are supposed to. To say it another way, as creatures, we are to worship our Creator, but as sinful creatures, we are unable to fulfill this obligation apart from Jesus Christ. However, redemption in Christ restores our relationship with God and positions us to offer appropriate worship. God, because of His great love for His people, has provided His only Son Jesus to make us alive, to redeem us. This is all of grace. We do not deserve Christ, but God lovingly sacrificed Him so that His people could be saved.
Though we may understand what worship is and we were made to worship God and He is worthy to worship, we do not always worship appropriately, do we? The language Peter uses here comes primarily from the book of Hosea. Hosea was the last to prophesy before the northern kingdom of Judah fell to Assyria. His ministry followed a golden age in the northern kingdom, with a peace and prosperity not seen since the days of Solomon. Unfortunately, with this prosperity came moral decay, and Israel forsook God to worship idols. So God instructed Hosea to marry Gomer, who was a prostitute. Gomer was repeatedly unfaithful to Hosea during their marriage, yet each time, God told Hosea to take her back and love her. Gomer’s unfaithfulness to her husband would serve as an example of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Hosea then explained God’s complaint against Israel and warned of the punishment that would come unless the people returned to the Lord and remained faithful to him. The book shows the depth of God’s love for his people, a love that tolerates no rivals.
This is why Peter can say here in verse 10 that those who are believers were once not a people but now they are God’s people. Once, they had not received mercy but now they have received mercy. It is because of Christ. Friends, if you have trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior and you possess saving faith, then this applies to you. You are God’s. You are part of what Peter referred to in the beginning of verse 9 as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation.
So you see, you can now worship God because you are in Christ. Christ provides the means to worship and gives us another reason to worship. We are no longer separated from the God; the veil has been torn and we can enter the presence of God through the blood of Christ where we can bow before Him and worship Him. We can, with all the redeemed, proclaim “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
Why do we worship? As I mentioned earlier, we were created by God to worship Him. Worship is the chief reason for our existence. The answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
We have been created and redeemed to worship and God is worthy. In other words, we proclaim His excellencies! We proclaim and praise and celebrate the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Friends, we were created to worship. And we were created to worship God alone. We can know no greater joy or fulfillment than when we are engaged in worship of the one, true God. If you do not know God, if your heart is not surrendered to Him, would you turn to Jesus today? Place your faith and trust in Christ. Only in and through Christ can you offer the worship to God that you were created for and that brings you true fulfillment.
If you are a believer, let us renew our worship today. Our goal in worship should be to engage with God, glorify and enjoy God, ascribe to Him his worth, commune with Him, receive his favor. Let us confess that we have often worshipped created things rather than the God whom we were created to worship and who is worthy to receive all glory, and honor, and power.
Let’s pray.
He who has ears let him hear the Word of God.
If I asked you to define worship, how would you define it? We would probably get a variety of answers just from the people here this morning. Now, what if I clarified what I mean by worship. What is biblical worship? Or what does it mean to worship God? Specifying it that way, we may still get a variety of answers even in this room. Since we are in church, I imagine that most of you would answer in a way that pertains to church. For example, worship is a religious experience. Or worship is what happens in a church. Or maybe it’s when Christians sing in church on Sunday mornings.
It is important to understand or to know what worship is so that we might engage in it appropriately. It is also important to understand why we worship. You see, we are all worshipers. Every person that you know, every person that has lived or is living or will live, is a worshiper. Worship happens all around us every day. Worship of celebrities. Worship of jobs. Worship of status. Worship of money. Worship of power. Worship of education. You name it, mankind can and probably has worshiped it.
In a very basic but real sense, we were created to worship. You see worship is not incidental—it is the reason for mankind’s existence. In fact, the Bible tells us that man was created to worship. So, the question is not if we worship, the question is who or what do we worship and why.
The Bible not only tells us that mankind was created to worship, but it tells us that we were created specifically to worship God. We find this in commandment 1 and 2 of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20, God tells us in the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. In the OT book of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah elaborates on the first commandment in verse 25:26 by saying, “6 Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them.” We even see the concept of worship as early as Genesis 4 when Cain and Abel brought their offerings before God (act of worship) and God accepted Abel’s and did not accept Cain’s. Actually, this concept of worshipping God is all throughout Scripture. In fact, the overarching theme of the Bible is - God is redeeming worshippers for Himself. Mankind was created by God to worship Him and Him alone.
Now you may agree with that. But what does it mean to worship God, and why do we worship him? That is what we want to begin to look at this morning.
Look with me at verse 9 of chapter 2 - “9 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.”
The people of God are referred to here as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. These are descriptions of God’s people that we find in the OT, primarily Deuteronomy and Isaiah. They were used to refer to God’s covenant people, Israel, and Peter has brought that language into the NT to describe the covenant people of God, which includes both Jews and Gentiles. In other words, Peter is describing Christians, followers of Christ. Peter says that Christians are a people for God’s own possession. God has not only created them, and all of mankind, he has purchased them by the blood of His Son. They are his. In Isaiah 43 God tells His people – “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”
Believers or Christians are the redeemed of God.
And what are the redeemed to do? Look at the second part of verse 9 – that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness. The redeemed are to worship – to ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Everywhere they (God’s people) should vocally proclaim God’s praise, worthy virtues, deeds, power, glory, wisdom, grace, mercy, love, and holiness.
Listen to this description of worship of God from Psalm 96, you may recognize it as a passage we often use for our Call to Worship – “Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts!
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!
This Psalm along with many other Psalms captures the heart of worship - ascribing to the Lord the glory due his name.
People ascribe worth or glory to many things. According to Statista, a consumer data website, their global consumer survey polled 50,000 people and asked, “What are the three most important aspects to you in life? The top three were: a happy relationship, an honest and respectable life, and safety and security. You know, I believe this is a pretty accurate survey. The average person’s highest priority is typically themselves. So, it would make sense that they would ascribe great value and worth to things like happiness in a relationship, honesty and respectability among peers, and safety or security. Even as believers, we find ourselves tempted to worship things or ourselves rather than God. Worship is so integral to what it means to be human that we cannot help but serve and praise something. Now I do want to be clear here, the Bible does not say that things such as a good and happy relationship, honesty and respectability, or safety and security are bad things. In fact, the Bible commends these traits. We do not have to look any further than the Proverbs to see this. Pursuit of these things become a problem when they are our hearts’ greatest desire, above God. Again, this reveals that we are ultimately worshiping self rather than God.
See we experience true fulfillment only as we live as worshipers of our triune Creator. Since we were made to worship the Lord, we fulfill our purpose for living when we worship Him. And He is worthy to be worshipped.
In biblical worship, the focus is on God himself, and the acknowledgment of his inherent and unique worthiness. We worship in order to glorify and bless God. And here’s the thing: When we worship God, we are blessed by God. As we worship, our desire for God grows. As our desire for God grows, our worship of God grows.
What about you? Do you find that you often struggle to ascribe God the glory and worth that are due to Him? If so, you are not alone. All believers struggle to worship God as they should. But Scripture teaches that there is grace for us even when we fail to worship as we should. Grace is the means God uses restore us when we fail to worship Him. That brings us to our second point.
Look at verse 10. 10 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.
As we have already seen, God made us to worship Him alone, but we persist in worshipping everything but God. In fact, according to God’s law, worshipping anything other than God is sin. And yet, that is what happens. Because of our fallen nature, because of sin, we are actually enemies of God and separated from Him. The first part of Ephesians 2 tells us – “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air … and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Here is the issue, though we were made to worship, unrighteous creatures cannot worship a holy God. Isaiah 59:2 tells us – “2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” God cannot hear from sinful creatures. Sin has put a wall between us and God. It has separated us from Him. Because of the sin that separates us from God, we cannot offer worship appropriately. We worship wrongly.
Sin has perverted our worship and caused us to pursue the created rather than the Creator. Romans 1:21-23 says, “20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Because of sin we worship the wrong thing – we worship the creature rather than the Creator. It is not that we will cease worship altogether if we reject the Creator; rather, we will go on worshiping but change the object of our worship—to our great peril.
So, what are we to do? Where is our hope? After describing our fallen condition in the first part of Ephesians 2, Paul goes on to say this – “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Scripture tells us that God has provided a way of redemption for us, so that we can be restored to Him and therefore worship as we are supposed to. To say it another way, as creatures, we are to worship our Creator, but as sinful creatures, we are unable to fulfill this obligation apart from Jesus Christ. However, redemption in Christ restores our relationship with God and positions us to offer appropriate worship. God, because of His great love for His people, has provided His only Son Jesus to make us alive, to redeem us. This is all of grace. We do not deserve Christ, but God lovingly sacrificed Him so that His people could be saved.
Though we may understand what worship is and we were made to worship God and He is worthy to worship, we do not always worship appropriately, do we? The language Peter uses here comes primarily from the book of Hosea. Hosea was the last to prophesy before the northern kingdom of Judah fell to Assyria. His ministry followed a golden age in the northern kingdom, with a peace and prosperity not seen since the days of Solomon. Unfortunately, with this prosperity came moral decay, and Israel forsook God to worship idols. So God instructed Hosea to marry Gomer, who was a prostitute. Gomer was repeatedly unfaithful to Hosea during their marriage, yet each time, God told Hosea to take her back and love her. Gomer’s unfaithfulness to her husband would serve as an example of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Hosea then explained God’s complaint against Israel and warned of the punishment that would come unless the people returned to the Lord and remained faithful to him. The book shows the depth of God’s love for his people, a love that tolerates no rivals.
This is why Peter can say here in verse 10 that those who are believers were once not a people but now they are God’s people. Once, they had not received mercy but now they have received mercy. It is because of Christ. Friends, if you have trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior and you possess saving faith, then this applies to you. You are God’s. You are part of what Peter referred to in the beginning of verse 9 as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation.
So you see, you can now worship God because you are in Christ. Christ provides the means to worship and gives us another reason to worship. We are no longer separated from the God; the veil has been torn and we can enter the presence of God through the blood of Christ where we can bow before Him and worship Him. We can, with all the redeemed, proclaim “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
Why do we worship? As I mentioned earlier, we were created by God to worship Him. Worship is the chief reason for our existence. The answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
We have been created and redeemed to worship and God is worthy. In other words, we proclaim His excellencies! We proclaim and praise and celebrate the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Friends, we were created to worship. And we were created to worship God alone. We can know no greater joy or fulfillment than when we are engaged in worship of the one, true God. If you do not know God, if your heart is not surrendered to Him, would you turn to Jesus today? Place your faith and trust in Christ. Only in and through Christ can you offer the worship to God that you were created for and that brings you true fulfillment.
If you are a believer, let us renew our worship today. Our goal in worship should be to engage with God, glorify and enjoy God, ascribe to Him his worth, commune with Him, receive his favor. Let us confess that we have often worshipped created things rather than the God whom we were created to worship and who is worthy to receive all glory, and honor, and power.
Let’s pray.
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