Saturday Evening at the Miller Avenue Lectures
The Miller Avenue lectures are always time well spent. The theme for this year’s lectureship is “God People” and is based on 1 Peter 2:9. Saturday evening we were treated to the “one-two punch” of Josh Carter from San Francisco, CA and DJ McKnight of San Diego, CA.
The evening session kicked off with Josh Carter talking about what it meant to be A Holy Nation. Josh indicated that this “identity phrase” was a fairly common one in the Bible. He did mentioned several specific references along the way. He stressed that to really understand that this phrase meant, one really had to appreciate the Philippians 3:19-21 passage, particularly how God provides us all we need to be transformed in A Holy Nation.
Josh choose to dissect the phrase even farther, taking it word by word. He started with the word “A.” He remarked that this may seen pedantic, but that the word “A” was actually quite meaningful in this context.
He contrasted the singular use of the word “A” with a union or a confederacy. He noted that even though the people making up this “A” were from many “countries” (Revelation 7:9), that all we made one under Christ. (Galatians 3:26-28) He also pointed out that even people of different genders, races, and economic status were all made into the singular “A.”
Next, Josh looked at the world “Holy.” He noted that this word was special. Love, hope, faith, joy are all words we use in other contexts, for example, but holy, is really not. He also mentioned that our common definitions of “holy” as “set apart” or “separate” are not wrong but really not strong enough. He referenced the angels saying “Holy, Holy, Holy” of Jesus in Isaiah’s great throne room scene. (Isaiah 6:3) Josh concluded this section by noting the connection between purity and holiness and stressed I Thessalonians 4:3.
Finally, Josh turned his attention to the word “nation.” He pointed out that the word actually referred to ethnicities and not “nation-states.” He also, in a play on words, pointed out that it could even be translated as “species” since Jesus was not of this world and we are not of this world (John 17:16-26). Josh concluded by pointing out that we should think of the fact that Jesus said he would not bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34-39) within the context of what the sword really is (Hebrews 4:12).
Next, DJ McKnight talked about what it meant to be God’s Own Possession. DJ pointed out that it was not really viewed as a good thing to be owned by anyone. He pointed out that this concept of belonging to God was a fairly uncommon one in the Bible, and that it usually came up in the context of some other discussion, for example, he pointed out that Paul discussing why the Corinthian church should not practice sexual immorality noted that they should not do this because their bodies belonged to God. (I Corinthians 6:19)
DJ connected belong to God with the concept of being “ransomed.” He noted that scripture was very clear on this point (I Peter 1:18-22, many others). Still, DJ noted that the world would not relate to the concept of being owned by the person who paid your ransom – that they would view this as exchanging one captivity for another.
But, DJ concluded, the ownership by God is different. First, it calls us to be self-aware. Second, it calls us to see things the way God sees them, not as the world does using terms like “optimism” or “pessimism.” The best analogy, DJ pointed out, was the one Paul used of “exile” in I Peter 1:17. As we think about what it means to be God’s own possession, DJ noted, our life is best lived with the mentality of being forced to live in a foreign land.
You can access the complete sermons here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ocqfmDb2HI0BvvEZd_aGDdfVa5l_EV-T?usp=sharing