And our scripture reading for this morning comes to us from two places. First, the Old Testament in Deuteronomy chapter seven. And then our text will be from 1 Peter. Deuteronomy chapter seven. We'll read the first 11 verses. I hear now the word of the Lord. When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, You shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughters to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. So the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. but thus you shall deal with them. You shall destroy their altars and break down their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images and burn their carved images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loves you and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Therefore, know that the Lord your God, he is God. The faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. And he repays those who hate him to their face to destroy them. He will not be slack with those who hate him, with him who hates him. He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today to observe them. And secondly, turning also to 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter chapter two. I'll read the first 10 verses. Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is also contained in the scriptures Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect and precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. Therefore, to you who believe, he is precious. But to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble, being disobedient to the word to which they were also appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. As far as Scripture reading, your congregation, in 1 Peter 2, verse 9, Peter says, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people. And that's what made Moses ask in Deuteronomy 4, has anything like this ever been seen in the history of the world? that God would so reveal himself to a people that he would let them hear his voice out of the fire and thunder on Mount Sinai, that he would show his power and his might in delivering them from Egypt, from the large and military, the military strength of Egypt, to deliver them and to bring them out. And he showed in many ways his power through the wilderness, and he brought them to the land of Canaan, to give them a land to inherit. And he says, why did he do that? And he says, only because he loved you. Only because he set his love upon them. And we read in Deuteronomy 7, it says, not because you were any better or any greater than any other nations, because in fact, you were the very least, but because the Lord loves you. And then how was Israel supposed to respond? Well, first, by acknowledging and learning to know who this one and only true God was and is, and then also to serve him, to serve him according to the words that he gave him. In verse 11, we read in Deuteronomy 7, therefore you shall keep the commandments, the statutes and the judgments which I commanded you today to observe them. It's also part of the reason why we read the 10 Commandments on the Lord's Day. God calls us to follow the ways that he has given his people. But God first showed his love, his grace, his mercy to them in delivering them from the power of evil and bringing them out of the land of Egypt. And then he gave him his law to follow, to walk in obedience to him. And here in 1 Peter 2, Peter addresses these Christians as God's own special people on whom God has placed his love. That's a tremendous privilege, to be chosen as God's people, to be delivered from the power and dominion of sin. and one day then also to glorify him in all eternity. To have that land of promise given, that inheritance that is laid up for his people, but it also comes with a responsibility. In these verses, Peter outlines both the blessings of God's people, but also the duties of the Christians. And in verse nine, we see a stark contrast. He says, but you, And if you look back to verse eight, the second half, it says they stumble, being disobedient to the word to which they were also appointed. He's pointing back to the people who are disobedient, who reject God, who reject his word and turn away from it. But if you think back to Israel, the nations that God destroyed, such as Egypt and the various nations in Canaan, the seven that were listed at the beginning of Deuteronomy 7, they were destroyed because they served idols. because they did not know the true and living God. They were disobedient to him, they did not worship him. And here Peter is drawing out the contrast then between not only nations, but between individuals within the nation, those who are disobedient to God and those who are obedient to God. Between the unbelieving world who reject Christ, and God's chosen people who by grace believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Peter emphasizes this here as he speaks to the Christians in verse nine, but you, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people. So that should make us stop and consider the work of salvation already, that God would choose a people to be his own, to choose sinners out of this world, not because of anything that was found in them, but only because God's electing love, because God has set his love, his mercy on them. And just like Moses said in Deuteronomy 7, it comes with the responsibility to know the living God. And he calls us then to praise him in this world, to exclaim, to proclaim the praises of God, as he continues to say there in verse nine, halfway through, that or so that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Is that the description of your life? Is that the purpose or the desire of your life, the wonder of your life, that you can praise God for who He is and what He has done? And so that's our theme this morning, proclaim the praises of God. And in our first main thought, we can see the motivations that Peter gives here to proclaim his praises, the motivations to proclaim. Because Peter here, he gives these glorious descriptions of how God views his people. It's an amazing thought in itself to consider that this is how God views his people through Jesus Christ. And every description here seems more glorious than the last. But all these are focused on the corporate people of God, the church as a whole, all his people throughout history, not just personal or individual focus, because we often focus just on ourselves, but this is God seeing his church through the head of Christ Jesus, built on the Christ the chief cornerstone. And so the first motivation that we see is he says, you are chosen to praise God. You are a chosen generation. See, Israel was chosen by God as a nation, as a race, to be his own, one nation out of the whole world. And he delivered them out of Egypt, out of slavery, and he formed them into the nation of Israel. They're in the wilderness. He gave them the land that they would inherit in Canaan. He gave them his laws to govern and to guide them as a people. And in the New Testament, that chosen generation is now not limited to Israel, but it's to all those who are in Christ Jesus, specifically, but there's also the general view of the church. So a church made now up of both of Jews and Gentiles, Just as Christ was a chosen and precious and elect, as verse four says, all God's people are chosen. If you look at chapter one, verse one, he says, elect according to the foreknowledge, or verse two, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. You can go all the way back to Abraham. He was living in the Ur of the Chaldees. His family was idol worshipers, and yet God took him out of Ur of the Chaldees, called him out, out of idol worship to serve the living God. And then years later, his children moved to Egypt because of the drought, the famine, and they were eventually made into slaves there. But God set his love on them, and by his almighty power, delivered them, drew them out. That's a picture, isn't it, of how God saves his people today, how God saves you and me, sinners enslaved to sin in this world. And God takes them from the depths of that sin and misery and draws them out. There's no reason found in us. Go back to where you think the Lord found you. Was there any reason that the Lord would draw you or pull you out of your misery? If you have to be honest, you are running away from God. You are running into the world, content in your slavery. There's no reason found in ourselves, but it's because of the grace and the mercy, the sovereign good pleasure of God. And as He reveals Himself to us in His Word by His Holy Spirit, He turns our hearts from darkness to His marvelous light, delivering us from the power of our sin, leading us to repentance, leading us to the knowledge of the living God, leading us to follow Him in His ways, a chosen generation as a family of God, everyone able to share in the love of God, everyone able to call on Him as our Father in heaven through Jesus Christ, belonging to God, a chosen generation And you think of that even with the outward covenant as we see it in our churches, the membership and the blessings that are given to all who are here. All of Israel was taken out of Egypt. It says not a hoof was left behind, not an animal. And God brought them all out. He put them all under his grace and blessings. They all traveled through the wilderness. They all received that bread and that water, which is compared to the spiritual bread, Christ, and yet not all entered the promised land, and so it is here. You all hear the word. You all receive so many blessings, and yet not all people who hear will be saved if they do not turn to Christ and believe on him. Here, many of you taste and receive these blessings, but it must become a personal matter for us that we become part of the chosen in Christ, to be saved by faith, founded on Christ, the chief cornerstone. As he said, he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. Have you learned to believe on him, to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ? Because you know there's no other place to go, to fall on this chief cornerstone when you have nowhere else to fall. Know that you will not be put to shame. And we can think even of why has God chosen us just to be in church today? Why do we have even this word in front of us when so many in this world do not? Who are we to be different? And if you know Christ personally, why has God chosen you to know his saving grace? Isaiah 43 says, this people I have formed for myself, and they shall declare my praise. Is this not the answer, that you might proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light? That was the first motivation, the chosen to praise. But secondly, you're equipped to proclaim the praises of God. You're equipped to proclaim the praises. He says, you are a royal priesthood. Within that chosen generation, you've been raised to the highest office of kings and priests. Exodus 19, verse six says, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, royal priests belonging to the king of glory. Revelation 1, verse six says, to him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever." See, Christ was the chosen one to be the priest forever. He served God his Father by his holy life and by offering his one sacrifice for sin on the cross, by which he also secured that salvation for all his people for eternity. But here now God through him takes sinners from being slaves to being royal priests, from serving sin to serving the true and the living God. Verse five says, you are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And Romans 12, verse one says, then presenting our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto the Lord, which is our reasonable service. He equips you by his grace and spirit to be priests and kings, to proclaim his praise. He anoints you with his Holy Spirit. That's what he does when he saves sinners, like he poured out his spirit on Pentecost. He pours out the spirit into the hearts of sinners to turn them into priests. He equips them so that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. But then thirdly, the third motivation is you are separated. Separated to proclaim the praises of God. The third description there is you are a holy nation. God calls you a holy nation. The word holy really means set apart. Like Israel was set apart from all the other nations in the world, every Christian is to be set apart for God as a chosen race belonging to God, called out from this world to live for the glory of God, called out from the slavery and oppression of sin to serve Him. and to become a nation with citizens who are given God's rule, God's law to govern and to guide them for the welfare of their society. Now think of that, especially today or especially this month, when you see such uprising of wickedness. How does God call us to come out of this world in the sense that we do not partake in their wickedness and to stand apart from that wickedness and to oppose that wickedness? Isaiah 62 verse 12 says, and they shall call them the holy people redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken. This is a very interesting verse. You shall be called sought out. That means other people will call you the sought out ones. They have a desire to become part of that nation of God because they see how God blesses you. You are the sought out ones. Israel was called to be the holy nation and to be set apart for the world to see that they belong to God. Every nation around them could see how they worship God and what God did for them, how God delivered them and provided for them. And so you are set apart as a holy nation so the world can see that you belong to God. So that the world can see what it means. to be delivered from the slavery of sin, to be delivered from the sins of transgenderism and of homosexuality and adultery and whatever else it might be, from theft, from murder. How God can deliver sinners from the power of these sins and transform you into the image of Christ and his holiness. This is why you must separate yourself from these sins. You are to be the reason why others will seek for God's salvation. You are called to be a holy nation, a people separated specifically to proclaim the praises of God so that others will see, others will hear and seek for the living God, to seek for the deliverance from the living God. And many of you walk with that mark of baptism on your head, which by God's grace separates you from the world, calling you to live for his glory with the promises of God and the obligations of God on your forehead in his covenant. In Deuteronomy 7, God shows how Israel is supposed to be that holy nation governed by his laws. He reminded them to keep them carefully. He said, do not serve the idols of the world. Do not intermarry with the unbelievers. Do not mix. Why? Because you're to be separated. Holy to the Lord, for you are a holy people. Deuteronomy 7, verse 6, I'll read a few verses again. You are a holy people to the Lord. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth, not because you are better. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any others, for you were the least, but because he loves you, because you would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers. Therefore, know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. And he will repay those who hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates him. He will repay them to his face. And this is a call, he calls us to follow his word, to obedience. He says, therefore, you shall keep the commandment, especially in the times in which we live as God's separated people. We are called to walk in obedience and not compromise. because you are God's chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and he loves you with an eternal, everlasting love. Therefore, proclaim the praises of God." And fourthly, Fourth motivation, you are privileged to proclaim the praises of God. Privileged. Why? He says you are his own special people, a people belonging to God. a people on whom God has set his love, even if for some of us that is still only in the temporary external benefits. And yet in that way, God manifests his love in Christ Jesus, his patience, his long-suffering that is extended to the world, that the rainbow in the sky testifies to that God will not destroy this world but now with the flood again, and not for till the end of the world, but now his mercy is revealed to those calling all to repentance. And Malachi 3 verse 17 says, they shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, on the day that I make them my jewels. God claims his people to be his own. And then who are we? That God would be mindful of us. There is nothing special about the children of Israel, and there certainly is nothing special about us. Nothing that would make God choose us above anyone else. Peter even says in verse 10, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God. And here Peter is alluding to the prophecy of Hosea. And notice how he assumes that his hearers would be familiar with the Old Testament scriptures. And the Lord addresses the prophet Hosea here when his wife Gilgomer gave birth to their second son. And God says in Hosea 1 verse nine, call his name Lo-Ami, for which means you are not my people and I will not be your God. Gomer lived a life of prostitution while she was married to Hosea, and this child was not Hosea's. And God is saying that Israel was not His people because they served idols. They had committed spiritual adultery. They were unfaithful to God. And when Gomer gives birth to a daughter next, the Lord tells Hosea in one verse six, then God said to him, call her name Loruhamma, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. And yet, the Lord comes back in a few verses later and he says in verse 10, yet, And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there it shall be said to them, you are the sons of the living God. And in chapter two, verse 23, he says, I will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy. And then I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people, and they shall say, you are my God. There was a time, wasn't there, when you were not seeking God, when you were not useful to God, a time when you were unfaithful and living in your sin, and when God had to say, you are not my people, when you served the idols of this world and served your own sin and yourself and your own desires. And yet, through the preaching of the gospel in his spirit, he drew you to himself, and he worked in your heart to turn you from darkness to himself. And through the Lord Jesus Christ, you've been bought with the price of his blood that he shed on Calvary's cross, and you're made the people of God, belonging to God, because there's forgiveness in the Lord Jesus Christ for all your sin, because there's grace with him. as he showed grace to Israel, delivering them from slavery in Egypt because he loved them, and he delivered you from your sins because he loved you in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only reason. God chose you despite your wayward life, despite your slavery to sin, despite even your love for your sin, despite your rebellious idolatry and rebellion against God, but he delivered you because of his mercy. Nothing in you, nothing in me. But God has set his love honest people and called them out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. And he can do the same today for any sitting here who don't want to be here, who are still obstinate and rejecting Christ in their hearts. God can still turn you as well. Well, he does this so that you may proclaim the praises of him who loved you, who has taken you to be his own special people. That brings us then to our second main thought, the purpose to proclaim the praises of God. That's what he says, that you may proclaim the praises of him And again, I can ask, does this describe our life? That we would proclaim the praises of God for what he has done. That proclaim means to announce or to declare to others. The praises that he's talking about are the excellent virtues of God. Psalm 78, verse four says, we will not hide them from their children, telling the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. See, all the Psalms, they praise God. Psalm 96 verse two is another example. Sing unto the Lord, it says, bless his name. Proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples. That's evangelism. Proclaiming the praises of God. in your life, in your words, in everything. Heartfelt praise for your Savior, to speak of God's praiseworthy deeds, of his power and of his glory and of his mercy to undeserving sinners, of his holiness, of his love and his tenderness. And Israel did that by telling what the Lord had done for them in their history, and delivering them from Egypt, and providing for them in the wilderness, and giving them water, giving them bread, delivering them from the power of their enemies, and destroying the enemies in front of them that were so much larger than themselves. Seven nations, Deuteronomy 7 said, much mightier than you were, he drove out before them. We are to witness and to testify how God has delivered us from slavery to sin, how he took us out of the darkness to make us children of light, that God is so merciful that he would even save someone like me who went his own way. All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone gone his own way. Only because of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life, and yet who rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven, we're testifying that God's justice has been satisfied, that he was well pleased with his Son, salvation accomplished. Now, where do we begin to proclaim those praises? by obedience. As we saw at the beginning of this message, obedience and faith to God's word. Again, I draw your attention to the contrast between verses eight and nine. They stumble being disobedient to the word. Verses, verse nine, but you, the chosen generation, the difference is by faith in Christ. Verse seven says, you believe that Jesus Christ is precious. the chosen cornerstone. And God's people in verse nine are those who believe in his son as your only hope of salvation. Instead of disobedience, it is turned to obedience, to a desire to obey God's laws written on your heart. Jeremiah 24 says, then I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole hearts Has that happened to you? Deuteronomy 7, 11, therefore you shall keep the commandments. Exodus 19, verse four, now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So there's an evidence in the hearts. If you're God's chosen, if God's delight is in you, then your delight is in God and in his law. Is that so in your hearts? Is your desire to seek him? And then secondly, that will also cause you to declare it to others, to proclaim it to others. Acts 8 verse 4, the scattered Christian says, it says, when everyone are preaching the word, and that word there really means to spread the gospel, by sharing the gospel, they're witnessing about God's work in their life. The average Christian speaking to others by their words and deeds, let your light so shine before men, Matthew 5. It begins by teaching our children in the home and in the Sunday school and wherever it is, telling the nations about your God. You praise him because you once lived aimlessly. Peter refers to that in the previous chapter, wandering aimlessly in this world with no focus and no purpose, but now your purpose is to serve and to praise this God. Now you are a light in this world to proclaim the praises of him who called you out of that darkness into his marvelous light, and therefore you're also a light to the darkness that is around you in this world. You are his people, and the evidence of being his own special people will be demonstrated by how you proclaim his praises. Because if we don't proclaim His praises, then we also have to question if that has ever been made alive in our hearts. So is that the purpose of our life? Is that the desire of our heart? To proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Amen.