The Kind of 'Holy Nation' God is Really After

There are numerous metaphors in the Bible which describe the people of God. Each metaphor focuses on an attribute of the people of God. They are referred to as a Church (Assembly), Bride, Body, Kingdom, Army, Vine, Flock, Race, Priesthood, Nation and other symbolic terms. While the term Church is most popular in our generation, the whole vision of what God’s people are to be, cannot be seen without consideration of the other terms. Here we will examine God’s people as a nation. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9, NAS).

The apostle Peter reminds the early Church that they are a holy nation among the nations. This is a reconfirmation of an Old Testament truth. Israel, God’s old covenant people, were a nation. God’s new covenant people are a nation also. The Lord Jesus is the King of a nation — with a definite citizenship, a constitution, laws, leadership and a land. When one is added to Christ, and to the people of God, he becomes a citizen of a new nation and under a new government. This was the case with the early people of the new covenant. While they continued to submit to and honor all authority, they were citizens of an eternal Kingdom (Philippians 3:20; Colossians 1:13; 1 Peter 2:13—17; Romans 13:1—7). This principle presently understood has strong implications. Watch the emergence of this principle in the Scripture.

ABRAHAM, FATHER OF NATIONS

God selected Abraham to receive His sovereign covenant and raise up a people. Abraham’s seed would be God’s people. Genesis 15 records the conversation with Abraham:

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.”

And Abram said, “Oh Lord God, what will Thou give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”

And Abram said, “Since Thou hast given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”

Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who shall come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”

And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be” (Genesis 15:1—5, NAS).

Genesis 17 refers to Abraham’s descendents as nations:

“No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you” (Genesis 17:5—7, NAS).

It was not until their redemption from Egypt that national identity began to be created in Israel, Abraham’s descendants. Having come into the land of their inheritance, they were to rule it under God’s government as stewards. Among the nations of the world they were to become respected as God’s nation — to His glory.

LORDSHIP MEANS OWNERSHIP

Peter’s reminder to the new covenant saints was a quotation from God’s words to Moses concerning Israel. “Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for 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 sons of Israel” (Exodus 19:5–6, NAS). All the world is God’s. He loves all people; they are His creation. Nevertheless, God offered Israel a unique opportunity. In exchange for their obedience to His law, and faithfulness to His purpose, He would grant them a unique role in international affairs. They would mediate and minister to God as a nation of priests. They would be holy or special to God among all nations for the purpose of His making them a model of divine government. Obedience would bring Israel numerous benefits. (See Deuteronomy 28:1–13). Such an example would draw other nations to bless Israel and seek God’s government (See Isaiah 60).

All of this sounded very good. Especially was it good in the light of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt. They were in bad trouble — disease, abuse, murder of the babies, and intolerable labor. There was one major consideration, however. If they accepted God’s offer, they would not be their own anymore. They would be His possession. “Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:7 NAS). “Freedom would be better if we could just go out and do what we want to do,” some must have reasoned. “Beggers can’t be choosers,” others must have added. “But it was going our own way that got us into this mess in the first place,” the wiser ones knew.

“My possession!” God had emphasized.

Suppose you were in serious trouble. No hope was in sight to alleviate the combination of poverty, disease, moral degradation, physical toil and misery. Along comes a wealthy, benevolent friend.

“Need help?”

“Man, do I! I sure could use a lot of help. I’m in deep trouble this time.”

“No problem,” the friend smiles. “I can pay your bills, pacify your enemies and get you medical help. Besides that, I can give you some pointers that will completely change your outlook and way of living.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No, absolutely not!” your friend says. “However, there is one stipulation. You will want to consider it at length before you accept my help. I have a legal document here that I’ll ask you to sign.”

“What does it say?” you ask soberly.

“It says that from now on I’ll own your life and possessions. This document gives me sole control over your existence.”

Silence . . .

This is the opportunity God offered Israel . . . and offers all men through the new covenant in Jesus Christ. Direct your own failure or succeed at being a servant of God.

The very term redeem means “to buy back.” God’s redeemed people are twice His. They were His by creation, but they were lost through rebellion; they sold out to another master. Now God has bought them back when Jesus paid the legal penalty of death, thus satisfying justice. By His blood, the lawless are redeemed or “bought back”; they are twice God’s.

Once a person becomes God’s possession, there is but one consideration: What is God’s will? Paul proves this point in Romans 9:21, “Does not the potter have a right over the clay?” Having become God’s possession, He has the right of usefulness. He can choose when to use, how to use, or not to use at all for a season.

For example when I say “my watch,” I mean I can wear it or not, any way I choose — all it does is tick! The consequence of accepting redemption is to become His possession.

When God’s people were redeemed, they had no identity at all. They were not a nation, they were just scattered, lost individuals. Through redemption He gives them an identity and shapes them into a united nation — a universal and eternal power to reveal the splendor of His heavenly government. He has the right to do that; His people are His own possession!

LORDSHIP DETERMINES RELATIONSHIPS

Once it is established that God’s people belong to Him, it follows that He has the right to determine the borders and nature of their relationships.

When the Lord your God shall bring you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and shall clear away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you; and when the Lord your God shall deliver them before you, and you shall defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:1–4,6, NAS).

God had hardly explained to Israel that they were His; when He began telling them with whom they could make covenants. God’s covenant with Israel was like a husband/wife relationship (Ezekiel 16:32 and Isaiah 54:5 etc.). Genesis 2:24 speaks of the fact that husband and wife should become one flesh. So God and His people should become one spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). And covenant or relationship into which Israel entered involved God, once they became His. Consequently, God had the right to approve or disapprove. God is jealous over His people, as a husband or wife over a spouse (Exodus 20:5).

Paul reminds husbands and wives that their bodies are not under their own authority anymore. After entering into covenant, the wife has authority over her husband’s body, and the husband over his wife’s (1 Corinthians 7:4). So it is with God’s relationship to His people. He has the right to select our relationships because He is Creator, Lord, Possessor, and Covenant Lover.

The apostle Paul puts it this way: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14, NAS).

Do not make a covenant with those who will not covenant with God. This is the message. Binding relationships with non-Christians will cause us either to compromise our relationship to God, or break our vows to them. Neither is pleasing to God. Such relationships can be spiritually adulterous in God’s eyes.

Perhaps you stood before an altar one day and answered a question like this one: “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife; to live together after God’s ordinances in the holy estate of matrimony? Do you promise to love, honor, and comfort her in sickness and in health, and for-saking all others keep yourself only unto her so long as you both shall live?” If you said “I do,” you entered into a covenant relationship. That put your spouse in a unique relationship to you. That covenant made all other human relationships secondary. Any relationship which jeopardized or violated that one, was forbidden.

God loves the whole world; but He is faithful to His people with whom He has a covenant in the blood of Jesus. If God entered into fellowship with our enemies and blessed them, we would question His loyalty. He has the same right over us. To bless the enemies of God and to commit ourselves to the uncommitted is grevious to the loving Spirit of God who desires our fellowship in purity.

Bear in mind God desires that all men enter into covenant fellowship with Him as His people — His Bride. But if we who have received His covenant are not faithful to it, then how shall the world know what it means to be the people of God? And how shall they see the glory of the Husband in the countenance of His Bride? (1 Corinthians 11:7).

To be the covenant people of God and to be aliens in the world, is to be shut up to His love. To be faithful to His grace, is to be the recipient of His secret favors and tender mercies. How good and unspeakable is His love! What love or lover can compare with Him who is love and the Father of it. To allow Him to be the Lord over our relationships is to know our Lord in a relationship that brings radiant righteousness, perfect peace and jubilant joy. What a relationship to exist between the Governor and the governed!

LORDSHIP PRODUCES LIKENESS

Lordship means ownership. Ownership qualifies us for a unique relationship with God. Close relationship with God will change our behavior. One becomes like those with whom he associates — and this is God’s purpose: to manifest His manifold wisdom and glory through His people.

The proportion and role of spiritual maturity is directly proportioned to the intensity and singleness of our fellowship with God and His people. Soon, one not only belongs to God and is related in love, but he begins to act like it.

When God’s people are faithful they soon become orderly and peaceful, because He is. They soon become merciful and gentle, because He is. They soon become meek and patient, because He is. God is majestically impressive. One cannot fellowship with Him without a marked difference in his behavior. We are becoming a nation of godly people — or a nation of people, under His government, who will manifest His ways to a world in darkness. I sincerely believe that Christians from different continents have more in common and act more alike than members of the same natural family, where some know the Lord and some do not. The Christian attributes of a spiritual race and a holy nation are beginning to show up more distinctly. Daniel says, They shall shine like the stars (Daniel 12:3).

God’s ways are very practical and concern practical things. Israel had been so long in Egypt that they lived by Egypt’s ways instead of God’s ways. By close fellowship, God intended to change the way they lived and behaved day to day.

You are the sons of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave your forehead for the sake of the dead. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. You shall not eat any detestable thing (Deuteronomy 14:1—3, NAS).

God was interested in their diet. In Egypt, they had eaten animals that were disease carriers and because of this, suffered the same as the Egyptians did. Thirty-five hundred years ago there was no Food and Drug Administration to protect the quality of the food. Since God’s ways are clean, and He is the architect of good health, He began to point out to Israel the foods that were unhealthy. In Exodus 15:26 He promised Israel that if they would obey Him, they would have none of the diseases that were experienced in Egypt. God knew, before medical science, that pork, for instance, carried certain kinds of diseases. God is not only interested in what we eat, but how much.

Obedience pays off even when we don’t understand. Circumcision, another of God’s commandments, has kept the cancer rate low among Jewish women. This practice, too, was instituted long before it was understood medically.

“Do not cut yourselves or shave your heads on behalf of the dead.” In Egypt, the Israelites had seen an unnatural fear and grief over death. Frenzies and mutilations often accompanied the loss of a relative or friend. Perhaps Moses said, as David did later, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones” (Psalms 116:15, NAS). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had beautifully released their spirits to God in death. But not so in Egypt. While there, the Israelites had forgotten how to die in the peace of God. Now they would have to learn God’s ways again.

In some pagan societies, widows have been burned alive on the funeral pyre with the body of their deceased husbands. Aren’t you glad God has taught His ways concerning death? God’s ways are practical and beneficial.

Some of the most victorious occasions have been at the graveside of a Christian friend. One such occasion was at the grave of a former drug addict that had been led to the Lord. We were all disappointed that his body had not been spared as his soul and spirit had. But his body had been damaged beyond belief. God alone could have spared him; but He chose not to. Grateful for the man’s salvation, but saddened by his death, we gathered to worship and give thanks for his salvation. Former friends of the deceased were there, as well as family members, some of whom had come to know the Lord because of our departed friend. As we waited in God’s presence, the Holy Spirit settled as a gentle presence over the small gathering. We began to remember what God had done in our friend’s life and the lives of others present. Praise began to well up and overflow. Precious was death in the eyes of the Lord. Around the graveside it seemed so natural and spontaneous to sing the Doxology . . . “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow . . .” Tears of gratitude were all around. Christians and non-Christians alike felt God’s presence. “I never saw a funeral like that,” the funeral director commented as we drove away.

My mind went back sixteen years to one of the first funerals I’d ever conducted as a young minister. A couple lost a beautiful 18-month-old daughter. They did not know the Lord. It was a tragedy shrouded in despair. We had to literally carry the parents from the cemetery as they wept uncontrollably.

“I never saw a funeral like that,” the director said as we drove away. I had not either. To this day he and I both remember it. The ways of God are so different, so wonderfully different. His presence makes us different.

Diet, disease and death are not the only ways in which the holy nation is different. Deuteronomy 20 tells us how the nation of Israel was to face battle. Other nations had orgies or drunken parties to gratify the lusts of those who might soon be killed. Fear gave way to wild indulgence as terrified soldiers were compelled to fight under duress. It was not to be so among those of the nation of God.

As the moment of war drew near, the priest stood before the waiting troops. “Do not be afraid or faint-hearted,” his voice thundered over the multitude of men. “The Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to save you. If any of you have built a new house and have not dedicated it, go home and dedicate it, lest you die in battle and another dedicate it.”

“Why didn’t I build a new house?” some men must have thought. “We are already outnumbered, why let them go home?”

The priest continued, “If any of you have planted a vineyard and have not eaten the fruit of it, go home lest you die and another eat its fruit.”

“Praise the Lord for my vineyard!” some men may have exclaimed as they returned home. Others, left behind to fight, felt even more despair as the numbers dwindled.

Again the priest spoke. “And if there are any who are engaged to be married, you also may go home and marry your fiance, lest you die and another marry her.”

Could the army stand further depletion? It was outnumbered even at the beginning.

“And if there are any fainthearted and fearful men here, you also may return home. Do not go to battle and spread your fear among the others!

This was an all volunteer army. No one need go to war in double-mindedness. Only those who believed in the cause would go. God does not draft soldiers. As a matter of fact, He usually trims down the volunteers.

How different from the command, “Every able bodied man report to the government, or be imprisoned! Any deserter will be shot!” God’s ways are different. He is looking for a few committed men. Twelve would do for a start.

Whatever the time or place, eating together, in battle, or just a normal everyday situation, God’s people are to stand out. Their ways are to be different, even as God’s ways are different.

LORDSHIP MAKES ALIENS

As the early Christians were being formed into a “new” nation, one which was to reflect Christ’s way of life, we hear Peter admonishing them, “I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:11–12 NAS).

We can almost hear them asking Peter, “Keep our behavior excellent among the Gentiles? We are Gentiles!”

“No,” might have come the answer. “You were Gentiles. Now you are a new race – a holy nation.”

If Peter were writing to a group of Christians in America, he would have written, “Keep your behavior excellent among the Americans.”

We might protest, "But we are Americans."

"No, you were Americans. Now you are citizens of the Kingdom of God - a holy nation. You are living in America and you must honor America. You must submit to its institutions. for the lord's sake. It is the government under which God has placed you. You are in it, but not of it."

Radical? Perhaps. But this was the message given to the early church living under the rulership of Roman government. Are we to be different from other Americans? Yes. It is being different that takes grit. It is not your theology that will get you into trouble - it is your way of living. Paul said (2 Timothy 3:12 NAS), "All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

What people do not understand, they fear. What they fear, they persecute. That is the primary reason for the persecution of the citizens of the Kingdom of God. But much adversity only purifies the nation of God, its motives and its works. Though the unregenerate world slanders the nation of God as evil­ doers, yet in "the day of visitation" they will glorify God because of what they observe in His people (1 Peter 2:12); not because of what they hear from His people.

Today, in the recently established state of Israel, we see this principle of purification through hostility taking place. After 3500 years of warfare and wandering, there is still bombing and terrorizing in the land. A nation is crystalizing, and this new nation will come into its true identity through adversity.

What happens in the Middle East is but a shadow of what is happening in the heavenlies (the spiritual realm) as the people of God are formed into a holy nation under the leadership of their King. For it is God's purpose that a holy nation be established upon the earth - one with its head in the heavens and its feet on the ground!