You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now, here's the teaching. Well, good morning. As pastor Joey said, my name's Nathan, one of your other pastors here at Faith Church.

And while I don't get to get up here very often, I always relish the at the opportunity. So I'm thankful that you're sticking with me for the next 45 to 50 minutes or so. So no. I'm just kidding. Well, it was October of 2014, a little over 10 years ago.

I got down on one knee and asked my wife, Claire, to marry me. And I'm thankful. She said yes. We've been married now for nine and a half years. You know, it's been full of ups and downs, 3 kids, and everything else in between.

And and I invited her into a lifetime with me, and she invited me into a lifetime with her. But that also my invitation to her also included a lifetime invitation into the Kingsley family. Now maybe you know a little bit about me, but just in case you don't, fast forward to a week and a half ago, around the kitchen of my parents' house, there were 8 brothers, 7 wives, 2 aunts, my 2 parents, 17 kids under the age of 8, a few other friends, all totaling close to 40 people, and a couple dogs. And neither Clara nor myself could have known what the family would become, but it was an invitation that we both accepted. And we might have come into the family in different ways, but we're both in it at this point.

I was born into it, but she did choose this. Though, to be fair, even though I'm one of 8 boys, I I think it would be hard to predict, just how crazy it can be when we all get together. But it obviously has its blessings as well. Now for many of us, the family that we belong to is what we call home. It's the place that speaks comfort and peace into the chaos of our lives.

It's the memories, the smells, the pictures on the wall. But for others of us, our family might not be the place we feel we belong. For one reason or another, maybe the place we feel we belong the most is a community of friends or maybe your workplace or your school. And unfortunately, for each of us, I think we all have, in some ways, a deep rooted fear that we will never truly belong, that we feel alone and outcast, feeling misunderstood and alienated. Do our friends really like us?

Does my family truly love me? You know, we see the ugliness of our own lives and wonder if our quirks and warts will remove us from belonging. And often, this fear of losing home, or losing belonging can drive much of what we do and how we act. But there is good news. And the good news for us, for all of us, is that no matter whether you feel a sense of belonging or not, ultimate belonging is available.

And ultimate belonging is found in the home you're longing for. Last week, pastor Jeff opened up our Advent series, Longing for Christmas, by showing us that God is inviting us to the home that we didn't even know we were longing for. And and this is a home that god has made for us. It's a place for his people to belong, to belong to him and find belonging with one another. And so this morning, we're looking at these 2 connected passages, from Hosea and 1st Peter, trying to understand this very thing.

What does it mean to belong to God, and how do we find belonging with him and his people? And we all yearn for that belonging. And so we're gonna unpack 4 marks of true belonging, these 4 facets of what it means to belong. And so first, you belong at God's invitation. You belong at God's invitation.

So if you haven't already, turn with me to Hosea chapter 1. We're on page 892 of those black bibles under the seat in front of you. And in this story of Hosea, Hosea was a minor prophet during the times of the divided kingdom of Israel, which we'll get to in a second, but Hosea is this prophet that God uses his life as an allegory for God's relationship with his covenant people. And so he tells Hosea to take a wife whose name was Gomer, who was a prostitute. She was unfaithful.

And yet this picture of Hosea and Gomer is a picture of God's faithful love to Israel even when they are not faithful. So he, like I mentioned, was prophesying during the later parts of the divided kingdom. And in this passage that pastor Joey read for us, we see 2 of these children that Gomer has and the names that Hosea is told to give them. The first one, he is told to give the name in Hebrew, which means no mercy or she has not received mercy. And then the second one is which means not my people.

Quite the names for children. I get that. And side note, if you're looking to the bible for inspiration for baby names, I might suggest looking elsewhere, not in Hosea. But that's maybe just my thoughts. Anyway, so we get to Hosea.

He names these children. And for the people of God to hear this from Hosea, to hear this from God, this would be devastating. It would be earth shattering. Because Israel was the people of God. Period.

End of story. Their entire history revolved around the truth that they were set apart from all the other peoples of the earth. They were chosen. Israel belonged to God. That much, they knew.

So for them to hear that God was rejecting them and calling them no mercy and not my people, it leads them to question their entire reality and understanding of their belonging. So to further unpack this, let's back up for a moment and rewind and remind ourselves how Israel became God's people and why this indictment on them was so devastating. So back in Genesis, after Adam, after Noah, God made a covenant with a man named Abram, who we often refer to as Abraham, because that's what God changed his name to later, and with his wife Sarai. So God promised to be faithful to Abram. He promised that his descendants would be like the numbers of the stars in the sky.

And it says that Abram believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. So he believed the words of God, even though at the time he and his wife were very old and had no children. So God promised Abram that through this covenant, through Abram, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And he also promised him a land of inheritance. And this is the beginning of the story for God's people, for God's people, Israel.

This was Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, then the many generations that came after Jacob's 12 sons. Well, they ended up in Egypt in slavery. And after 400 years, God delivered them by using a murderer with a lisp named Moses. God was faithful to deliver them even though it probably took a lot longer than they were hoping or expecting. After saving them from Egypt and then again, pharaoh's army, god led them to Mount Sinai where he reaffirmed this covenant with his people, Israel.

He reaffirmed the covenant that he had made with Abraham. In this covenant, god promises to be their god, and they will be a people, a chosen people for his own possession. They are to be set apart and declared as holy. God also reminds them that Israel is a people at his initiation and at his invitation. It was not because they were anything special or the most numerous or the most powerful.

These aren't the reason he chose them. He chose them even though they were slaves, and they were, as he says, the fewest of all the peoples. He chose them because his own love for them and his own faithfulness to the covenant with Abraham. God reminds his people, Israel, that he loves them. He will be faithful to them, and he will keep his covenant with those who keep his commandments to a 1000 generations.

So we see this picture of god's faithfulness that he's promising to his people if they obey and follow. But from that moment onward, from the golden calf all the way up to the point where we get to Hosea, the story of the people of god can, in one way, be summed up by saying that God was faithful even when Israel was faithless. And, yeah, there were many faithful people in the old testament that followed the commandments of Yahweh. But even the heroes of the faith from the old testament, like Moses or Joshua, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, they all had their moments where they sinned and fell short of God's plan, God's perfect standard of holiness. Yet, god still invited them to belong.

He did not turn his back on his people. He kept calling them back to himself. Repent and return to me. I am your god, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. There is no reason not to return except your own stubbornness.

So through the prophet Hosea, god is once again reminding his people that even though they have turned away from him, they have followed after other gods, they have lived in sin and idolatry and have not lived according to the law which he gave them, he is still extending an invitation for them to belong to him. Hosea stays with Gomer even though she is likely bearing children that do not belong to Hosea, but are more than likely rather results of his wife's sinful excursions. But in the same way that Hosea does not divorce his wife but loves her faithfully, so too does Yahweh, God, love his people and is willing to forgive them and invites them back into belonging to him. So with all this, we see that true belonging begins at God's invitation. It's not a result of what we have contributed to the relationship.

It's about who we are being chosen by God, not about anything that we've done. The second mark of true belonging is that you belong despite your wandering. You belong despite your wandering. God invites his people to belong to him, But we belong to him even though we wander away and consistently and constantly miss the mark. In Hosea, verses 6 and 7, we see just what we're talking about.

She conceived again and bore a daughter, and the lord said to him, call her name no mercy, for for I will have no mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah and will save them by the lord their god. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. So if you remember, this is the divided kingdom. There was the northern kingdom of Israel, which was the 10 tribes, And they were led astray by many wicked kings.

And despite God seeking after them time and time again, sending many prophets to warn them, they still chose to ultimately reject him as their god. They followed after other gods and idols. And this is why he says he will have he will not have mercy on the house or the kingdom of Israel. Their judgement was imminent, and he was not going to prevent it. And we know from history that in 722 BC, the Assyrians came and conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and they were scattered throughout the nations.

However, God tells Hosea that he will indeed still have mercy on the nation of Judah. Because they weren't perfect either. Even though they had fallen into some of the same sins as the northern kingdom and had also pursued other gods and idols, they had also at times turned away, repented of their sins and returned to the Lord. Even though God's people in the land of Judah had wandered, they heeded his warnings. They listened to prophets like Elijah, Elisha, and others, and they had returned to God.

Yahweh, the God of Israel, asserts that he will have mercy, and he will save his people. But did you notice that he doesn't really say how? He says how he won't do it. Right? He said he will save them, but it will not be through armies, weapons, or military might.

And so Hosea and god's people are probably wondering, okay. You say that we are going to have mercy. We will be spared. How is that going to happen? And it's a question that gets answered in our second passage of first Peter.

And we'll get there in just a minute. But while we're still in Hosea, we wanna think about our own wandering for a moment. We've all been invited into true belonging with God, yet we have all wandered. And when we wander, we try to find belonging in other things. We may find it in other people, try to find belonging in our career, in accomplishments, or even other groups or clubs.

We can find joyful belonging in cheering for the same football team or having the same hobby, or living in the same neighborhood. But none of these situations really set us up to be fully known and deeply loved. And so we are invited to cease our wandering and find our belonging in Jesus. I don't know about the rest of the parents in the room, but I know for me, I've lost track of the number of times where god uses my own relationship with my kids to show me a small picture of my relationship with him. You know, one of my kids will will do something wrong.

And and just like Adam and Eve in the garden, they'll maybe hide or or run away. And I I patiently try to draw them back, to give them a hug, to let them know that I forgive them and I love them. But I'm not perfect. There have been times I've raised my voice or lost my patience. Yet even with my mistakes, I want them to know that I love them.

Yet god does not falter as our father, as I am inclined to. If I'm trying to convince my kids that they can trust me and return to me because I love them no matter what, despite my shortcomings, how much more does our our perfect heavenly father love us and accept us even though we are wandering? So we can accept that invitation to belong to him even though we've messed up and we've wandered. We've been invited, and that invitation from our god is still extended to us. Doesn't matter where you find yourself here this morning on December 8, 2024.

Even if you are still wandering, that invitation is still open to you. We are invited to come and worship and adore Jesus, who is the Messiah and king. And this is who we are invited to belong to. If ultimate belonging is found in the home we're longing for, that home is being in the presence of Jesus. But like any good home, belonging to that home doesn't end with just being invited or accepted.

And that leads us to the 3rd mark of true belonging, and that is you belong for a purpose. You belong for a purpose. So with that in mind, let's turn to our new testament passage, first Peter chapter 2. And in these couple verses, we see this reversal that we've been hinting at. And so Peter in this letter, he's he's not writing to a specific church with specific questions or requests, like many of Paul's letters.

He's writing a general letter that is then shared among the churches, in Asia Minor. He specifically addresses his the people he's writing to as exiles. And he's not talking about their socioeconomic status, but to hearken back to the language that described the people of Judah when they were exiles in Babylon. Because, yes, after Hosea, while they were spared in some ways, they still were sent off into exile. But god had a plan.

He brought them back. So he's addressing them as exiles, and he also does this to remind them of their status in this world, that this world is not the home that they belong to. So verse 9 starts with, but you are a chosen race. Well, if it starts with but, then we need to know what Peter is contrasting. And so let's back up a verse, and we see that he's just mentioned that for those who do not believe in Jesus as the Christ, they do not believe that Jesus is the only path for salvation, they have stumbled, and it's because they have disobeyed God's word.

So when he says, but you, he's talking to those who have obeyed, who have faith, who believe in Jesus for their salvation. 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. So what Peter is describing here is the fulfillment to what Hosea and the other prophets were prophesying as a future restoration of Israel. Verse 10, you can hear that clear echoing back to Hosea. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy. So we see this ultimate reversal of what God said through Hosea. What was once not my people now is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And this is all through Jesus. So what does it mean that we are a chosen race?

It means we're a people chosen by God. It's not earned. Like I said earlier, it's it's not about what you can do. It's about just who you are and the fact that god loves you for being who you are. We are a royal priesthood.

We're a kingdom of priests. Those with such a close relationship to God that their closeness to him is priestly. We are a holy nation, set apart because god is set apart, holy because he is holy. We are also a people for his own possession. We are a unified people, not peoples.

Right? We are one people brought together for a purpose. And though, lest we think we are anything special, just remember that we are nothing special. We were chosen despite our blandness, if you wanna think about it that way. One commentator I read this week said that just because we are a chosen people does not mean that we are a choice people.

We have no room for pride but should recognize that everything we have comes from him. And so far, we've looked at this composition of who is god's people, what what can be described, of them. And I can hear you wondering. I thought you said this had something to do with purpose. Well, since you asked, let's go there.

In verse 9, we see this purpose. So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. So as we find our ultimate belonging as the people chosen by god, Our purpose is to proclaim his glory. We worship because God loved us with a love that doesn't make sense to sinners, to us. God loves us because he is driven by his love.

He is moved by his love. He forgives us. He removes our transgressions far from us, and he extends to us his grace and mercy all through his son, Jesus. We share the good news that saved us from the kingdom of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of light. So not only do we worship, but we also share.

When we find belonging, in a book club, people who all have read the same book and really love it, or we find belonging in a school or a workplace or a sport or or even a church, we naturally want to share that with others. Right? We talk about the things that we care about. We talk about the things that we love. And so as we find our ultimate belonging in our home with our lord, we share God's invitation to belong.

We share that with the others we care about, and maybe even those we don't. In this season of Advent, we rejoice. We celebrate all these things. We celebrate the arrival of Jesus, the son of God. It was this Jesus that came to earth as a baby, lived a perfect life, died a sinner's death on the cross, but 3 days later, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

And all this was for the purpose of reconciling us to God and for God to show his love to us, to his people. Jesus coming to earth was not a matter of convenience, coincidence or chance. He came to show us that our ultimate belonging is found in the home we're longing for. So that leads us to the 4th and final mark of true belonging. And it's that you belong to a home that you haven't yet been to.

You belong to a home you haven't yet been to. And this last aspect of belonging, it kinda feels odd and somewhat counterintuitive. But if you've ever reorganized all the furniture in your house, it's because probably as you sit in your house, you think there's a better way to do this. There's a better way we could put this furniture here and this furniture here and the flow is better. Right?

So anyone who's gone through that, you kind of can understand that it's possible to belong and yearn for something that you haven't yet experienced. Our ultimate home is in the presence of our lord and savior Jesus Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. And while we have the presence of the lord here with us now, the holy spirit, we are indeed exiles and sojourners, as Peter describes. We know that this world is not our ultimate place of belonging. So if this world is not our home and we're longing for a home we haven't yet been to, what do we do in the in between time?

Simple. We continue to walk the way of Jesus for the sake of those wandering without him. If you have found belonging in Jesus, and this Christmas, you're celebrating that reminder that the son of God came to Earth to bring salvation, then maybe this advent season is an opportunity for you to invite someone else into that belonging. Who do you know that is wandering without Jesus right now? Are there those that you know that are seeking out belonging in things that do not ultimately satisfy?

And the truth is, there is a place worth longing for, even if we haven't been there yet. Into the Christmas season at our house, advent calendars and paper chains are getting us excited for Christmas. Not just for presents, not just for that Christmas morning feeling of joy and being together as a family, but we're celebrating at Christmas the same thing that the shepherds were celebrating over 2000 years ago, that the king has come. For each of us, there is a place of belonging that is worth longing for. We should think about it, meditate on it, talk about it with our friends and family, talk about it with our kids.

We should be yearning and longing for this place of belonging. But maybe you're sitting here this morning or listening later online, and you've never actually accepted the invitation to belong. Now is your opportunity to step into this invitation to belong to god and belong to his people. Have faith and believe that God loves you and wants you to belong to him forever. Our ultimate belonging is not here in this world, but that doesn't mean we should be isolated until we die.

Right? Or we shouldn't be isolated until Christ comes back. Yes. We belong to God, but we also belong to one another. The community of believers, what we call the church with a capital c, is is a special place to belong.

But we also know that, guess what, no church is perfect. We all have warts. But the belonging we find with each other goes far beyond just cheering for the same football team or the fact that we're workplace proximity associates. A church is a place to be known by others and still loved and accepted. So if you find yourself here this morning and you belong to Jesus, but maybe you don't yet belong to a church, or maybe you belong here at Faith Church, but you don't really quite feel like you belong with the people, maybe that's a step of faith that you can take today.

Or in the near future, join a serving team, join a grow class, join a community group. There's many other ways to get plugged in. Or if this is your 1st Sunday here, come and join 2nd Sunday lunch. Come learn more about how we all, with our quirks and warts, are belonging as god's people together. So this Christmas, whether it's a season where joy comes naturally and, you know, it's just full of joy and happiness, or maybe right now life seems just a little bit too overwhelming, I want you to know, I want me to know, I want us all to know that there is a place of belonging for you and for me.

The god of the universe who sent his son as a baby born for sacrifice is inviting you to belong to him. And it's because of Jesus that our ultimate belonging is found in the home we're longing for. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we are often restless and wandering until we find our rest in you. That you have called us by name, you have made a way for us, and you have chosen us as your people.

Even though we had no good thing to offer, we have not done anything worthy of praise, but because of your love for us, you initiated, you invited. So father, as we reflect on what it means to belong in your kingdom, to belong in your family, we return to you with praise and honor and glory because it is you who have loved us and chosen us. You have made us a chosen race, a chosen people, a people for your own possession to declare your glory, to share that with the people around us. So father, may we all, this Christmas season and beyond, reflect on what it means to truly belong to you and may we always be looking for those around us that we can invite into this belonging. We thank you.

It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.