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.
Peter had used these words before, in a very public setting. In the book of Acts we read that he and John had miraculously healed a lame man, and drawn a crowd. They used the opportunity to preach the res-
urrection of Jesus. But the leaders of the Jews threw Peter and John in jail for this (Acts 4:3). Instead of keeping quiet, Peter and John simply turned around and preached the same message to them:
Acts 4:8-12 ...Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead - by this name this man stands here before you in good health. He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF
CORNER stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
The Jewish leaders had rejected salvation. The builders had rejected the very cornerstone of the temple, and stumbled over the rock.
Growing up, there was a vacant lot next to our house. One day, a bunch of equipment and workers from Philyaw Construction showed up—and built a house on that vacant lot. It was a huge beautiful brick house—and Philyaw’s moved into it! One day, my dad was looking at the house and realized that even though some professionals had built the house and even though it was a beautiful house—it was crooked on the lot. It didn’t line up with our house or the house on the other side of it. When they laid the first foundation stones, they didn’t lay them square to the road and square to the lot line. That first stone was off, so the whole house was off.
When we lay the foundation for our faith on the person of Christ, holy, sinless, absolute truth, absolute grace and compassion—you build your house around that foundation stone and it will be built right.
When we as a church focus on Christ, our church will be built right. I was reading the other day about churches and the book I was reading said, “The American church sees itself in terms of democracy; the British church sees itself in terms of a culture created at Oxford and Cambridge; the European church sees itself in terms of history; the African church sees itself in terms of culture; the Korean church sees itself in terms of material recovery…but the church is supposed to gain its identity and purpose from the Lord and Spirit who created it…spelled out in the pages of the Bible. We need to center on Christ.
Second, we are priests in a royal priesthood. vs. 5,9
For the Jewish reader, royalty and priesthood were only for those who were born into those families. These two concepts were things that the common person could not even dream about. They had no way to get there. All the attempts and all the good works and all the good intentions cannot make someone part of the royal family or part of the Levites who were the priests. And especially if you were a proselyte—a Gentile coming into Judaism from the outside. There is no way you could ever feel the privilege of being a priest or part of the royal family.
But when we come to Christ and find salvation, we gain access to the throne room of God…we gain access into the holy of holies where we can offer up prayers directly to God…we gain a status and privileges that royalty has.
You are royalty—and don’t you forget it.
We have been raised knowing about access to the Father. Unless we have experienced British life, we really don’t understand the separation from common people that the royal family has. The priests had access into special courtyards and holy places that the common people didn’t have.
So, for Jewish readers, this newfound privilege would have been so fantastic that it was unimaginable.
But, realize: calling us a royal priesthood it means:
Access
Status
Privilege
Honor
Hebrews 10:19-25 – every believer has the privilege of coming into God’s presence.
If we are priests, we need to live our lives as though every day of our life was serving God in the temple and offering sacrifices to God. As a priest, we offer acceptable sacrifices to God:
Romans 12:1 we offer the sacrifice of our bodies
Hebrews 13:15 we offer the sacrifice of praise
Hebrews 13:16 we offer the sacrifice of good works
Philippians 4:10-20 we offer the sacrifice of our money
Romans 15:16 we offer the sacrifice of bringing people to Christ
Finally, we are citizens of a very special nation. vs. 9,10
This is found in both Exodus and Isaiah where God makes the point that out of all the nations He chose Israel for Himself. “Although the whole earth and everything in it belongs to God (Exodus 19:5), the ancient nation of Israel was to be God’s special possession” (Jobes 162). This is the same way God sees believers, they are His special possession, chosen by Him, for Him, and to bring praise to Him.
We experience this in our father son relationship. God could have picked anybody else in the whole world to have a relationship with and he chose you and me. That defines, what it means to be a special possession.
Colossians 1:12 the Bible tells us that in Christ we have been “qualified [you] to share in the inheritance
of the saints of the kingdom of light.”
I Corinthians 6:20 The Bible clearly says that God owns us. We are His property.
Special people – means “for one’s own possession” (“private possession”)
We are a people of His own private possession! Often a value of a thing lies in the fact that someone has possessed it. (celebrity homes, an outfit Elvis wore, a Marilyn Monroe dress, etc.)
They can be very ordinary things: clothes, a pen, books, furniture, but if they were owned by some great person they take on greater value. It is so with the Christian -- he acquires a new value because he belongs to God!
We have to see ourselves as God sees us. God believes in you and thinks you are special, but do you feel the same way about yourself? Are we living like we are God’s special possession?
Just think about it, if we are God’s special possession. That statement alone should trump any negative words that people use about us because if we are not careful we will believe the critics, then we will live life from other people’s point of view and not God’s. You have to base your self-image on what God’s word says about you, rather than false standards that society promotes.
Conclusion:
The Taj Mahal is regarded as one of the most beautiful buildings in all the world. What you may not know is how the building of that structure came about. It was begun after the death of the wife of emperor Shah Jahan. He was devastated at her death and resolved to honor her by constructing a temple that would serve as her tomb. Her coffin was placed in the center of a large parcel of land, and construction of the temple began around it. No expense would be spared to make her final resting place magnificent.
But as the weeks turned into months, the Shah’s grief over his wife’s death turned into a passion for the building project. He no longer mourned her absence. The construction consumed him. One day, while walking from one side of the construction site to the other, his leg bumped against a wooden box. The prince brushed the dust off his leg and ordered the worker to throw the box out.
What Shah Jahan didn’t know is that he had ordered the disposal of the coffin of his late wife. And so the one the temple was intended to honor was forgotten, but the temple was erected anyway.
There is the same danger with church buildings and with churches. If we’re not careful, we can forget the purpose for which we were constructed. We can become so consumed with the building process, that we forget the one in whose honor the building is intended.
Peter calls us back to our purpose, to proclaim the praises of him who called us.
I want you to notice what Peter says is our purpose:
1. The church is to grow in respect to salvation vs. 2 --this is education.
2. The church is to offer sacrifices acceptable to God vs. 5 -- this is worship.
Our sacrifices become acceptable to God because they come through Christ and because we become a priesthood thought Christ.
3. The church is to declare the virtues of God vs. 9 --this is outreach.
Peter’s church had problems, too. Many of his readers come from areas that Revelation 2-3 address and they had lots of problems with immorality, false teachers, mediocrity and materialism. But Peter still sees the church as blessed. Even with our problems, our factions and our sins, we are still the bride of Christ! We are His chosen people who have received mercy.
You can go to any bar in Highland and find people who fellowship together…
You can go to the Lions Club, the Rotary or the Knights of Columbus and find people who serve…
You can go to any number of organizations and find places that teach moral and ethical living; that teach
spirituality; that have people who care.
But the church is where God is!
The church is where God has chosen to express His grace to the world.
The church is where God has chosen to tell the world about a Savior.
Although at times it seems as though the church is in ruin and rubble, God sees it as a beautiful building.
Clinker bricks are bricks did not quite make it. For some reason or another, they come out of the kiln misshapen or deformed. I read about a Presbyterian Church in New York State that was intentionally built of clinker bricks. Apparently, the congregation wanted to send a message, so they build their church of imperfect, rejected bricks. [“Clinker bricks and Ebenezers,” May 2, 1999, Exeter Congregational United Church of Christ Web Site, users.rcn.com.] The message is that we are all clinker bricks, we are sinners, we are imperfect people full of follies and foibles, but through Christ we become living stones in his church. We do not become living stones because we are so great. It is Christ who is great. We are connected into his church through him.
