Precious In His Sight

What it means to be “precious in His sight.”

I Peter 2:4-10

A guy had been feeling down for so long that he finally decided to seek the aid of a psychiatrist.

He went there, lay on the couch, spilled his guts then waited for the profound wisdom of the psychiatrist to make him feel better. The psychiatrist asked a few questions, took some notes then sat thinking in silence for a few minutes with a puzzled look on his face. Suddenly, he looked up with an expression of delight and said, "Um, I think your problem is low self-esteem. It is very common among losers."

Well thank you very much for telling me I’m a loser! No wonder I feel so bad. DID YOU EVER FEEL THAT WAY?

A very homely person made an appointment with a psychiatrist. The homely person walked into the doctor’s office and said, "Doctor, I’m so depressed and lonely. I don’t have any friends, no one will come near me, and everybody laughs at me. Can you help me accept my ugliness?"

"I’m sure I can." the psychiatrist replied. "Just go over and lie face down on that couch."

Did you ever feel like nobody loved you or cared about you? Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I think I’ll go eat worms.

Take heart! There is someone who cares for you.

1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”

In the same way that Peter starts off chapter 1 talking about how great our salvation is, he now continues by showing us the unique position we have as God’s children and God’s church.

Peter breaks it down into three pictures: a house, a priesthood and a nation. What I want you to understand as we look at these three pictures this morning is that being a child of God and being part of the church is an honor beyond description.

First, we are stones of a building with Christ as the cornerstone. Vs. 4-8

Take vs. 4,5 as one sentence with a little parenthesis in the middle of it. It should read, “Coming to Christ who is our cornerstone, we are building blocks for a temple where we can make acceptable sacrifices to God.”

Paul used this same imagery in Ephesians 2:19-22, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

A. Notice first of all that Peter never claimed to be the stone that the church was built around. He realized that he was just another of the building blocks—but Christ was the cornerstone. This view is very different from the Catholic view that puts Peter as the foundation. ,

B. By the way, notice (in vs. 4) that we enter the church by coming to Christ, not we find Christ by coming through the church. The church cannot save you. The church cannot bring you forgiveness. We need to come to Christ, who then puts us into the family of God.

C. Notice also (in vs. 7) that the church needs to be aligned with Christ. He is the cornerstone—and then we work off that original foundation. What building that takes place has to have a landmark that is square and that doesn’t move. A pastor friend of mine had a problem when it came time for them to build a new church building. They went to do some of the surveying and found out that someone had moved the benchmark—the surveyors mark. It had originally been part of a huge boulder on the corner of their property. But somewhere over the years, that boulder had been moved, so their property lines were no long where they were supposed to be.

People, I want to base my faith on a benchmark that won’t move. I want the foundation for what I believe to be something that doesn’t change—like God!

Hebrews 6:19 “This hope we have as an anchor for the soul, a hope that is both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil.”

In the days before laser levels, rangefinders, CAD systems, Global Position System survey equipment, and other high-tech gadgetry, there were more rudimentary methods of getting a building built right. Back then, the cornerstone was the starting point for all building above the foundation. It was perfectly leveled and precisely aligned. Throughout the rest of the building project, the cornerstone became the basis for determining every measurement, uniformity, and alignment. We need to center our church on Jesus Christ.