Understanding Your Rights

Understanding Your Rights

I Peter 2: 2-10 (Contemporary English Version)

2Be like newborn babies who are thirsty for the pure spiritual milk that will help you grow and be saved. 3You have already found out how good the Lord really is.

4Come to Jesus Christ. He is the living stone that people have rejected, but which God has chosen and highly honored. 5And now you are living stones that are being used to build a spiritual house. You are also a group of holy priests, and with the help of Jesus Christ you will offer sacrifices that please God. 6It is just as God says in the Scriptures,

"Look! I am placing in Zion

a choice and precious

cornerstone.

No one who has faith

in that one

will be disappointed."

7You are followers of the Lord, and that stone is precious to you. But it isn’t precious to those who refuse to follow him. They are the builders who tossed aside the stone that turned out to be the most important one of all. 8They disobeyed the message and stumbled and fell over that stone, because they were doomed.

9But you are God’s chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. God has brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that he has done. The Scriptures say,

10"Once you were nobody.

Now you are God’s people.

At one time no one

had pity on you.

Now God has treated you

with kindness.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Today we are gonna talk about the rights that we have been giving as children of God. What I do know that living as Easter Sunday Christians in a Good Friday World… we need to be reminded of who we are and who we belong to from time to time. Even I need to be reminded of that. Believe when it can be literally a matter of life and death because we need to understand that we got it going on in God and with God. We got to make sure that when it’s all said and done that we keep it pushing around here because we have a job to do because we are living in a state of emergency, but we have always remember that as children of the Most High we are living in victory! We have to be reminded that we are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus!

1st Peter 2:9 “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Often times you will see someone or speak with them and ask the question “How are you doing” and many times the reply that you get, if we are honest with ourselves we do not really want to hear. They begin by saying things aren’t going to well, my back is aching, my chest is tight, my kids are driving me crazy, my marriage is on the rock, all in all things are going to pot, my day is bad, my life is bad, there seems as if there is no rest for the weary, I’m tired and I wish that everything was over, the devil is making mince-meat out of me and I don’t know just how much more I can take. These are saved folks talking like this. They go through life being bombarded by the devil, tossed around like an old rag doll, held in psychological slavery, they are emotionally destitute, they are spiritually impoverished, and are literally at the point of just about ready to lose their natural minds.

The reason they are suffering the things they are suffering and the reason why their lives seems to be in utter turmoil is because they have failed to understand their rights, they have not yet comprehended that they have certain rights that are afforded to them just because of who and whose they are.

The Christian of today faces many challenges in life; there are many obstacles that must be faced. Trials and tribulations must come, for as the old cliché states “into every life a little rain must fall”, but in the midst of it all you must understand your rights.

Rights, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is something to which one has a just claim, the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled, and something that one may properly claim as due. There is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family it is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. It establishes that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. It states that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. That’s the rights of just being human-beings.