Please remain with me in your Bibles now to 1 Peter 2, if you're able. 1 Peter 2, we're going to read verses 4 through 10, and that's on page 1014 in the Bibles provided for you. 1 Peter 2, 4 through 10 on page 1014. Peter gives us here a long list of blessings. many good things that he's telling these Christians, these new Christians, that they enjoy, even though they're suffering. They're suffering persecution at this time. And he's clear here, though, that these blessings are not true of everyone. There's a key difference. The blessing is for some and not for others. What is the difference here? What is it that makes the difference between those who enjoy these blessings and those who don't? 1 Peter 2, 4 through 10. This is the Word of God. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe. But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. 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. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. May the Lord bless the reading of his holy word. As a nation, we have set aside Thursday this week as a day of thanksgiving. The proclamation from the President won't come out until Wednesday, probably, but this is Thanksgiving week, right? We're pausing this week to give thanks. And you're going to hear a lot of discussion this week about making it a day of thanksgiving, not just being about eating too much and watching football and those kinds of things. You're told that you should really be giving thanks on this day, right? And often you're told that you should look around you Look at your life and think about what you have to be thankful for. Take a look at your circumstances. Look at the things that God has given you and give thanks for those things. We're supposed to think about things that we're taking for granted and that we're not being thankful for that we should be. And that's a good thing to do, right? We're supposed to receive all things in this world with thanksgiving from the Lord. It's a good thing for us to do. But the trouble is that those circumstances Those outward visible things around us are variable. And they can change on you. Maybe you're missing people at your table this year. Maybe finances are really, really tough right now. Maybe the closest relationships in your life are strained. Maybe your career is on the rocks. Maybe someone is out to get you. It's actively trying to hurt you in your life right now. Brothers and sisters, we need something better than just this visible world. Something better than our circumstances as a source of our joy and as a source of our gratitude and as a source of our identity even. And here in this passage, Peter gives us reason after reason to be thankful. But the beauty of these good things that Peter talks about is that they are not based on how great life is going for you right now, outwardly, visibly, in this world. Peter's writing to people who are suffering, who are marginalized in society, who are even being actively persecuted for their faith. And he's gonna have a lot to say about that suffering. As we keep going in this letter, he has a lot to say about how to handle that suffering, how to approach that suffering, how to think about suffering as Christians. But before he gets to that, he wants to remind them of how good they have it. To remind them what a treasure they have in belonging to Jesus. and even gives them some help in understanding why Christians are often marginalized and rejected in this world, and shows us what a precious thing it is to belong to Jesus, even when we don't have those good things to enjoy, as many of those good things to enjoy in the eyes of the world, when you look around and you maybe struggle to give thanks in your circumstances this week. Brothers and sisters, you have an identity in Christ that is more valuable than any success that this world can offer. It's more valuable than any wealth that this world can offer. And this passage calls you to treasure your identity as God's spiritual house built on Christ. Treasure your identity as God's spiritual house built on Christ. If we're gonna understand why the Christian life looks the way it does and why we still have many reasons to rejoice even in suffering, we need to understand God's plan for saving people like you and me and how he worked out this salvation for us. So we see, first of all, Peter shows us that God chose to build a spiritual house on a rejected stone. First of all, God chose to build a spiritual house on a rejected stone. What does Peter say about Jesus here in verse four? He calls him a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. Rejected by men. What is he talking about here? Why is he calling Jesus a stone? Why is he saying he's a rejected stone? Well, a few verses later here in verse seven, he quotes Psalm 118 verse 22. Psalm 118 verse 22 that we sang earlier, where he says that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. So this is a building metaphor, right? So think about building a building out of stone, getting your materials together. You have to choose a stone to be the cornerstone. The stone that's gonna be the first stone that's laid, that has to be strong, it has to be a big stone, it has to have straight angles on it, right, so that it sets the direction for each of the walls that come from it, and it sets the exact location of the building. And so the builders are looking for a corner stone, they're also looking for other stones to build around it, right, and they're deciding which stones to use. And Peter says in this metaphor, the builders have rejected one of these stones, He said, we're not even going to use it in the building. We're not going to use this stone. It's just off to the side. But God has taken what the builders rejected, and he made it the most important stone. He made it the cornerstone, the stone that sets the location and the direction of the entire building. God has taken what the builders rejected and made it the most important stone. This is talking about the way that those who were in authority in Jesus' day rejected him. The leaders of God's people rejected the stone that God had sent to them, that God had given them, rejected the Messiah that God had given them, the one that's talked about in Isaiah 28, 16 that he quotes in verse 6. They recognized that Isaiah 28, verse 6 was talking about the Messiah, but they rejected their Messiah when he came. And they said, we don't want anything to do with you, right? This is what happened when Jesus arrived on this earth. Isaiah 53, verse three, looking ahead to that says, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. This was predicted hundreds of years before Jesus came, that the Savior, the Messiah, was actually gonna be an outcast, was gonna be rejected by the most important people of his day, by those who were in charge in his day. And remember that on the night that Jesus was betrayed and in his trial that night, he was standing before the high priest of Israel, before the elders of Israel, all the leaders of Israel, they were the ones who chanted, crucify him. who got the Roman authorities to kill God's own Messiah. But then the Lord raised him up, took that cornerstone, took that stone that the builders rejected, and made it, made him the cornerstone. So Peter takes this idea that's quoted in, that's from Psalm 118, it's quoted many places. Jesus himself told the leaders in his day, you are the builders and you're rejecting me, the stone, right? This is a very clear message and he builds on it here, no pun intended, he adds to it here and continues the building analogy here, right? And he says that you yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. He says that God has taken Jesus as a spiritual stone, a metaphorical stone, and he's building on him with us. So that we are the building materials now. We are like living stones being built up into a spiritual house. That God's temple now in the New Covenant is not a physical building. We come to a physical building to worship, but this building is not a temple. That the temple of God now in the New Covenant is made of people. We are living stones being built on the foundation of Jesus Christ into a worship place for the Lord. And we offer sacrifices to him as a holy, as a priesthood. And this is important, this becomes really important when you realize what was going on in the day when this was written. You think about the circumstances of the people that Peter is writing to. Remember, the temple in Jerusalem was still standing at this point. And it was a magnificent temple. It was incredibly beautiful. We found recently, archaeologists have found these paving stones, these different colors of stones that were perfectly cut to form these patterns on the courtyards of the temple. And they've put them back together. You can look them up. You can see what the floor of the temple looked like. This beautiful building. And walking across, walking around on these courtyards were these priests in their beautiful robes. But they were the men who had rejected Jesus. The builders had rejected the cornerstone. You can imagine these people, these new Christians, looking at that and saying, look at that beautiful temple and who are we? What are we doing? We don't have any beautiful temple. And this didn't get any better in the other parts of the empire as you saw the beautiful Roman temples. the magnificent Greco-Roman architecture, which is still imitated today, and they had the friezes with these pictures of heroes and gods, even beautifully painted, brightly colored, and showing this perfect grandeur and majesty and beauty of Greco-Roman perfection. And here are these rejected Christians. But Peter's saying, look at those temples. Yes, they're beautiful, but they're still made of stone. They're made of inert, dead stone. God's temple is made of living stone, made of people. It's a spiritual house. God does not intend himself in the New Covenant to be worshipped in a physical building as a temple, but in a gathering of people. as his temple, that we are built on the living stone of Jesus Christ, and we, being living stones, we are both the temple and the priesthood, because we are alive and we are able to offer those sacrifices of praise to him. Just try to imagine being in the shoes of some of the people in these regions that Peter's writing to. In the area of Cappadocia, where Peter is writing, there was a city, one of the places he's writing to, there was a city called Comana. And the city of Comana was known as a temple city. The whole city was built around this economy of a temple. And in fact, the high priest of that temple was the ruler of the city. And Roman records say there were thousands of slaves serving in service to this temple, to the goddess Maenio. So if you can imagine here, you're a Christian in this city, and you're headed to worship on a Sunday morning. You're walking past this massive, beautiful temple, and you see these hundreds of slaves serving and working, and people gathering to this beautiful temple, and then you're walking the opposite direction, and as you go, maybe you have to step aside for the procession of this great high priest of the Temple of Ma'enyo, and you've got to stand out of the way while he passes in his beautiful robes with all of his majesty. You go past and you go to some kind of ordinary house on a back street with a gathering of a few unremarkable people. Or maybe you're a Jewish believer in this temple city. And you've recently been to Jerusalem. We know that there were people from Cappadocia at Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 2. They would travel back and forth. And maybe you know what the temple looks like. You've just seen it. You've just seen the priests in their robes. You've just seen all the people pouring in there to offer their sacrifices. And you know as a Christian you're not welcome there anymore. And you've been cast out of your synagogue and you go to this house where your fellow believers are gathered, and you're crammed in in this regular-looking house, or maybe a courtyard, and many of the people you're gathering with are slaves, people with no value in that society, you might look around and say, is this really the worship of the Almighty God? Is this really the gathering place of the worship of the one who made all things. And Peter is saying, absolutely. Because God's temple is a temple made of people who suffer the same rejection as the rejected cornerstone that we're built on. And we should not be surprised when we are marginalized and when we are rejected, like the cornerstone that we're built on, and when we don't look impressive to the world. But we are a temple of people who make up that building ourselves. Are you ever drawn by the grandeur of the temples and the priesthood of other religions or of organizations that are opposed to Jesus Christ? Maybe literal temples to other gods that you've seen. Maybe you've traveled, you've been to the Far East or South Asia or other places where you'll see so many beautiful temples. And they have their monks and they have their priests. And there's a beauty to it, right? There's a majesty to it, a grandeur to it. And you might think, that's kind of amazing. Are you ever drawn in by that kind of majesty? Or maybe the grandeur of atheistic organizations, of organizations that are opposed to Jesus Christ, like Communist China, or some of these places that have so much wealth and power. And you look at that and you think about, they kind of make Christians look pitiful. Who are we? What kind of an organization are we compared to that? Or you could think of the pomp and the ceremony of the Pope, and of the Church of Rome. which has denied the true gospel of Jesus Christ. There may be believers in the Church of Rome who understand the true gospel despite their church, but the church has denied the true gospel, and it is a majestic organization. There's so much money there, there's so many beautiful cathedrals, so much pomp. Are you drawn in by that? Or do you see that the temple of God today is a spiritual house? You can think of the staggering wealth of the Mormon church. and of the success, the earthly success of Mormons. Again, a church that does not preach the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Or even in Protestant churches, are you ever drawn in more by a beautiful church building or by a really impressive organization and not by what they're actually teaching and believing? Are they teaching and believing the true gospel of Jesus Christ? Does that matter more to you, that these people are fellow believers in Jesus, or are you drawn in by the organization or by the temple, the building? Friends, God's house is a spiritual house, made of people, and it's built on a rejected Messiah. It's the people who matter. Maybe you're kind of put off by things that, church, that make you cringe. Maybe we're kind of unimpressive. and you look at other things in your life, in your school, or your business, or that concert that you attended, seems so much more impressive, and so much more visually majestic. My brothers and sisters, see this spiritual house, these people gathered around you through God's eyes. See them as living stones built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ. That's what matters most. Now, Peter goes on to make a distinction here. that not all people become part of this spiritual house. So what is it that makes the difference? What sets apart those who are truly being built on this cornerstone and those who aren't? We see secondly that belief is the only way to be part of this house. Belief is the only way to be part of this house. Verses six and seven here, he says, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame, so the honor is for those who believe But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Here's the picture. He continues this building analogy, right? The picture is, if you are built on the stone, if you attach yourself to the stone, that stone is a source of beauty and a source of strength and a foundation for you. It's a blessing to you to have a good foundation, to have Jesus and to be built on him. But if you decide to build elsewhere, If you decide to build at a different angle, if you decide to build somewhere else, that stone is still there, and it becomes a stumbling stone for you. because Jesus is still in your way. He's not going away. He's still there. So you're either built on it and it's a source of great blessing to you and a foundation for you, or you try to go another way and it will be a stumbling block for you. Jesus himself will be a source of stumbling for you. Every building site has its castoffs, right? We've always got that pile of stuff that hasn't been used yet or it's, didn't really fit exactly what was being built and so it's just off to the side and it sits there for a while in case something might be useful at some point. But why does it usually end up in the dumpster? Because it's in the way, right? You're tripping over it, right? Especially if it's something large, you're not just going to leave it there because you're going to trip over it. The reality is we can't get rid of Christ. He is there. And the strength and the power of this stone that makes it a great foundation is a source of great judgment to those who have it in their way and who refuse to come to this wonderful Savior that God has given us. 1 Corinthians 1, 22 to 24, 1 Corinthians 1, 22 to 24 says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom. but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Jesus' death on the cross is a source of joy and life to those who receive him by faith, who come to him by faith. He's a source of goodness and support and a foundation. But to those who refuse to receive him, those who reject him, he's a source of stumbling and of offense, a foundation to some and a stumbling block to others. A few years earlier, Peter, the same man who wrote this, was standing before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. He'd been arrested for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he told them in Acts 4, 11 and 12, Acts 4, 11 and 12, he says, this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Peter connects this idea of cornerstone with Jesus being the only way. He's saying you're either on the cornerstone and you're being, you're built on him and he's a source of life and hope for you or you're tripping over him. There's no third option. That Jesus is the only name given under heaven among men by which we must be saved. The foundation stone that God has chosen to save people like you and me for our sins is Jesus Christ and he is the only way. The only way to the Father. Brothers and sisters, is belief in Jesus the dividing point for you? Maybe you find others who are theologically aligned with you on some other points, but they're not really clear on the atonement of Jesus Christ, or the person of Jesus Christ. Do you have greater unity with them than with your other brothers and sisters in Christ because of other points of theology? Or maybe you find unity with people who live lives according to what we call Judeo-Christian ethics. You say, well, as long as we all have Judeo-Christian ethics, then we're all the same people, right? We can get along. We're all really the same. And you have that unity with people who have Judeo-Christian ethics. Or maybe for you, it's people who believe in the monotheistic God. which is not a real term, right? Not a true concept. There is no one, just one monotheistic God. You say, people who say, well, as long as they're Muslims or they're practicing Judaism, then we're okay. We're on the same page here, but we won't have unity with those people who are worshiping many gods. Brothers and sisters, does this person believe in Jesus Christ? Have they rejected the cornerstone or not? that must be the source of our unity as a building, as the spiritual house of Jesus Christ. And as we coexist and work with our neighbors and care for those around us and be good neighbors to other people and love our neighbors, love our enemies, we have to make a distinction in our minds between those who believe in Jesus Christ and those who do not. That's what Peter is telling us and reminding us here. Brothers and sisters, don't miss the beauty of this idea that this is something that we come to him by faith here. Not by works, by faith. When he said the honor is for those of you who believe, when he says the honor is for you who believe, he could have said the honor is for you who are the most like the cornerstone. or for those of you who are the most morally, spiritually beautiful stones, or for those of you who are most closely related by blood to the stone cut from the same rock. But no, it's for those of you who believe. It's for you who believe. Those who put their trust in him, who receive him. Do you believe in Jesus? We talk about a lot of other theological points, we talk about a lot of other things that we should think carefully about, but do you believe in Jesus Christ? Whether you've been in this church for years or you're here for the first time, I hope you hear it loud and clear that nothing is more important than your faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing is more important than Jesus. And these blessings that we're talking about here this morning, being part of this spiritual house, being a priesthood, a chosen nation, all these things we're going to talk about here in a moment, all of these are gifts that Jesus gives freely to whoever comes to him by faith. You don't have to claw your way to this. You don't have to earn your way to this. You don't have to be sanctified to get into this. He justifies you freely as a gift by his grace. You're saved by faith. So if you've never put your trust in Jesus before, come to him today. Recognize that he gave himself up, he suffered that rejection as the stone, he suffered that rejection to pay the penalty for our sins, and he offers you what you don't deserve, what none of us deserve, to come to him and be forgiven and to become part of this spiritual house by faith. It's a salvation that is an honor for those who believe, not because we deserve the honor, but because he earned it for us, and he gives it to us freely as a gift. Now, belief is the only way to be part of this house, but if you do believe, thirdly, you are the true and precious people of God. You are the true and precious people of God. His passage sort of builds. There's a crescendo here as he just pours in all of these things that are wonderful about belonging to Jesus. All of these blessings, one thing after another in verse 9. He says that you are a chosen race. This comes from Isaiah 43, verse 20. Isaiah 43, 20. He says that you're a royal priesthood and a holy nation, a people for his own possession. This all comes from Exodus chapter 19, five and six. It says, now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. He says that we've been called out of darkness into his marvelous light. We read this earlier in Isaiah chapter 9, right? The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. Do you see what Peter's doing here? He's taking all the blessings promised to Israel. Those blessings were only for Israel under the old covenant, and you had to become part of Israel to enjoy those blessings, to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. He's taking those things and he's applying them to every person who comes to Jesus Christ by faith. And we know this, that it's not just for Jews. He's not just writing to Jews because of what he says there in verse 10. Once you were not a people, But now you are God's people. Some people believe 1 Peter was written just to Jewish Christians. But I think this is a clear evidence that it wasn't just written to Jewish Christians, because you wouldn't say this to a Jew. You wouldn't say, once you were not a people. The Jews have been God's people for a long time. They have been a people. Now, they've rejected God as a people at various points in their history. But you would never say to a Jew, once you were not a people, he's saying, All of you who believe in Jesus Christ were not a unified people. Many of you were not part of the covenant people of God, but now you are a people. Now you are God's people. Regardless of who your family is, regardless of what you have done in the past, regardless of your citizenship here on this earth, you are now the people of God. by faith in Jesus Christ. And all of those blessings from the old covenant that were promised to Israel apply to you being grafted into that people by faith. Ephesians 2, verse 12. Ephesians 2, 12, he says, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You didn't belong, you were on the outside, you were not unified in any real way, but now, together, by faith in Jesus Christ, you have become God's people. And that is a precious, precious gift. Friends, think about how important this was for these Christians who were being persecuted at this time to hear. who are suffering, who are rejected, who are marginalized, who had nothing good, none of the good things of this world, as they saw those who rejected Jesus enjoying all of these things, they needed to be reminded of how good it was to be God's people, how valuable it was, regardless of what was going on in their lives. Imagine someone walking into your house and they see that old painting that you got out of grandma's attic or that piece of furniture that you got at a garage sale and they say, do you know what that is? Do you know how valuable that thing is? Because you didn't realize what you had, right? Like the family in Rome a few years ago discovered they had a painting that they thought was a copy of a Rembrandt, and it turned out it was a Rembrandt. It was worth millions of dollars, right? They needed someone to point it out to them to say, listen, do you realize what you have? And it just seemed ordinary and not very, not really a source of joy or thankfulness for them. Peter's doing the same thing for us. He's saying, yes, you may not have the things of this world. You may be persecuted even. but you were a chosen race, a royal priesthood. You enjoy all of these blessings of being God's people and being part of this spiritual house. Brothers and sisters, what identity is most important to you in your life? What sparks that feeling of pride or gratitude when you know that you belong to this thing? You do have a family identity on this earth. Jesus doesn't do away with family structures. You have a national citizenship. Jesus doesn't do away with nations. We should serve the Lord as nations, right? He saves nations. We should honor Christ as King as a nation. But are you more proud of your family, your heritage, or do you feel a stronger connection with your family members than you do with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are your loyalties to your fellow Americans greater than your loyalties to your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ from other nations? The other living stones in this spiritual house that you're being built up into. That chosen race, the royal priesthood, the people for God's own possession, who are those who believe in Jesus Christ. Friends, the honor is for you who believe. And when you get that, when you understand what a good gift we have and how good it is to belong to Jesus, to be built on this rejected cornerstone, how good it is to be the people of God, you go from being embarrassed or bummed out about your unremarkable life, and you become excited to tell other people about this wonderful God who has, you become excited to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. You want to tell people about it because you know how good it is to belong to him. And so you become, you go from being secretly jealous of unbelievers to having pity for them. You go from being jealous of those people who have all the power and all the wealth and all the position of this world to pitying them if they don't know the good news of Jesus Christ. You have something worth treasuring, and this identity is far better than what the most successful unbeliever in this world has. Those popular kids at school that seem to have it all, but are they part of God's people? That neighbor who has a great job, who can afford all the great toys. Everything seems to go well for him. But has he received mercy from God? That pro athlete or that pop star making millions. They have thousands of people lining up for hours just to catch a glimpse. But has she been called out of darkness into this marvelous light? Or if a day comes when you suffer arrest or even violence for being a Christian, and that person comes at you to hurt you or to put those cuffs on you, who is really in the better position? Who has a better gift? Who has something better that is worth valuing and worth treasuring? Who has a greater and more blessed identity? Brothers and sisters, in those moments, what makes it possible to love that enemy and to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light is understanding that and knowing you have it far better than they do. And seeing them with compassion. and presenting them, even in that moment, with the good news of Jesus Christ, that they too, by believing in him, can become part of this spiritual house and be saved. Brothers and sisters, treasure your identity as God's spiritual house built on Christ. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, We come to you recognizing how often we are ungrateful, how often the difficulties of this life loom so large, and we just focus on what we don't have in this world. But Lord, this week, please fill our eyes with the vision of the blessing of being your chosen people, the blessing of being part of your spiritual house, That blessing that can never be taken away from us when we are built onto that foundation stone of Jesus Christ that will never be moved. Lord, please help us to value that this week. Fill our hearts with gratitude and help us to have that compassion and that courage then to share that, to proclaim your excellencies because you have brought us out of darkness and into your marvelous light. Lord, please help us to do this by the work of your Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.