You may be seated. I’m going to change the order of service this morning. Leto will do the announcements and the offering at the end. Kids, you can go, head on up. We bless you as you go. We pray that you have a great morning. I just feel like staying in like a framework of worship here for a while. Everybody, tell George how good he looks this morning. I asked George if he would translate for me today. He said he would if I didn’t use big words. I wasn’t aware that I knew any. We’re going to try to make it simple this morning.
If you have your Bible with you, turn with me again to 1 Peter. We’re making our way through this book. We continue to encourage you, make it a habit to carry your bible, I don’t know why we feel so strongly about that. Maybe it’s preparation, we’ll see. Maybe one day they’ll shut off our smartphones and we won’t be able to read out Bibles any more.
We’re talking about being light – that’s our overall theme. But we’re really trying to gain some practical insight about this from 1 Peter. Some of the themes will keep repeating themselves; you’ll hear that again today. But I want you to hear what are some very familiar terms. I’m really asking the Lord, and this was my prayer last night and this morning, ‘That Lord, you will help us to hear them in a new way.’ The problem with preaching from very familiar Scriptures is that it’s going to bounce in and away, because, we’re in there already; we know that. But I’m really praying that the Holy Spirit will really give us a soft soil today.
I’m going to step through like I did last week. I want to thank those who contacted me, to show appreciation. It encouraged me to believe that the Lord is speaking to some of us in new ways with things we’ve known.
So, if you look with me beginning at 1 Peter 2:4,5, you’re going to recognize a lot of this. “As you come to Him, the living Stone —rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to Him you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a Holy Priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Now, in all of these passages, there’s going to be a lot that we can talk about. We can’t unpack all of it, but I want you to pay attention to the part that I have underlined. It’s not because it’s the most important part of each passage – maybe they are maybe they aren’t. Some things may be more important to you hat to me. As the Holy Spirit quickens your mind. But these are some of the thoughts that stuck out to me, as I worked my way though the passage of Scripture.
The fact that Jesus is, ‘The Living Stone’, how many times in Church have you heard this being talked about. We build our lives on the rock that is Jesus Christ. He’s the ‘Living Stone’. But when we hear that phrase, we cannot just let it be some kind of theoretical phrase. The Scripture calls Jesus the living stone, because He is both alive and life-giving. Jesus is alive! I don’t want anybody here to be confused that this is a 2000-year-old story. Jesus is ALIVE! He died, was buried and was resurrected. He ascended to heaven, and He lives today, doing ministry for you. Jesus is alive. I say that because I know a lot of people today who call themselves Christians, but continue to live like Jesus is an old story.
He’s not an old story. He is alive today and He is life giving. There is something that comes from Him, which is not just like the breath of God that gives you life like at creation, but Jesus breathes life into you today, that creates a whole new thing. You are a new kind of creature, because Jesus is life giving. As the Son of God, He has life in Himself. The Bible says, ‘In Him was life and He was the life for us.’ This is a word that the Scriptures likes to use over and over. ‘He’s living water. He’s living bread. He’s the living way.’ Why did the Holy Spirit inspire people to write that so often? So that we would come to the understanding that this is a living thing, it’s real. And it generates something in you.
And then the Scripture says, ‘That He was rejected by humans but chosen by God.’ We are going to see throughout the book, Peter is constantly making a contrast, he’s showing the difference, between the hostility that people who don’t know him have toward Him, and on the other side, the way that Father God constantly exalts Him. In other words, humanity, humans are trying to push Him down. Pastor Gail likes to tell the story of a father, when we had the school, he didn’t want us to teach his children about Jesus, but we kept telling him, ‘Come to school here, it’s going to happen.’ Three times he came into the office, ‘No Jesus! I’ll pay you.’ We knew what that meant, because we had a lot of families who didn’t pay. So, when a guy is saying to you, ‘I’ll pay you.’ How many know that is good news. All the teachers that are from the school will say, ‘Amen to that.’ Right? I’ll pay you – no Jesus. Sorry. Finally came back the last time, he said, ‘OK. Little Jesus.’
That’s the human condition. Mankind is trying to create a little to no Jesus. But the Father is constantly lifting Him up. So, what does that mean for you and I? We must constantly be lifting Him up. He is the chosen of the Father and we are the chosen in Him. So, we must join that task. There is no room to hide Jesus in the Christian walk. Now, I’m not talking about people in places where they’re going to die, if they speak the Name. They’ve got to deal with their salvation. But I’ve known more people in that situation, who are brave about their faith, than people who live like we do. I’ve seen a grace that comes on people when they’re persecuted. I’ve literally sat with leaders from Muslim countries, who looked at us westerners in the face, and said, ‘Stop teaching us to be afraid.’
Come to faith, but hide it. Come to faith, but be ashamed. That’s more of a western approach. Come to faith, but be a little embarrassed. Come to faith, but don’t make too much noise about it. Jesus was rejected by humans, but chosen by God, and precious to Him. And you also, that’s us. Turn to your neighbor and say, ‘You also.’ Billy, you also, Eva-Lena, you also. You also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house. We’re living stones. That’s different than being hard headed. You’re hard in a different way, OK. That is, we get our motivation, we get our energy for life, from what Paul called, ‘The life-giving Spirit of God.’ The Scripture says, ‘This house, the temple in its fullness.’ Now notice this, the Scriptures tell us that you are the temple of God, but the Scripture also tells us that WE are the temple. The temple in its fullness is not an individual pursuit. Each stone, each one of us, is to be alive and holy, in our own situation, but those stones come together, and become the spiritual house, the holy Priesthood.
The Priesthood does not exist in one person. Jesus is our High Priest, but He became first of a Priesthood. You are all Priests, and together we are the Priesthood. We cannot do this alone in solitary. I need more people to say Amen. You cannot fulfill your role in the Priesthood, by being by yourself. It takes us – George I can’t do this without you. Look at your neighbor and say, ‘Good morning, Priest.’
Verse 6, “For in Scripture it says: ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame.’” Jesus is the cornerstone. You know what the cornerstone of a building is, right? It’s a tough word. It’s the first stone that gets placed for any building. It has to be perfectly placed. Because, everything else is going to be measured by it. This is why, last week we said this, we must shape our lives around Christ, and not other things. We talked about ungodly desires, we talked about ungodly relationships, we talked about ungodly situations. If you are organizing your life around things which are not Godly, you will end up with the wrong shape and direction of your life. It’s got to be around Him.
Now, here’s the thing. I love what it says, ‘The one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame.’ You know what I thought of when I read that? Well, my first thought was this, ‘I don’t think that’s true.’ And then I had to correct myself, ‘It’s the Bible. Get your mind straight Brian.’ So, I wrote it this way, ‘I don’t believe that it’s always true that we feel that way.’ Sometimes, we feel shame. Sometimes, we feel that we’re constantly being put to shame. I won’t to ask you to raise your hand, but I bet there’s a few who have felt that. I don’t like feeling shamed for my faith. But just because we feel shame, does not mean that we are shamed. We are not! These feelings are temporary and unimportant. It happens in life, but it’s not the end of the story. Trusting in Christ makes you the winner, not the loser. And so, you may feel it for a moment, but you’d only need to ask the One, who constantly exalts the Son, and because of that it constantly lifts us up.
I can look at this Scripture, and I can preach to you without any hesitation, ‘You will never be put to shame.’ One day, you’ll see the ultimate victory. Read the end of the Book – you win. From anybody who’s ever put you to shame, unless they find faith in Christ, they will lose, and you win. You’re on the right team and you will never be put to shame. Come on. Devil you cannot shame me. Person, you cannot shame me. We need to learn to say that out loud to ourselves more often.
Verse 7,8, “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and, a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.’” See this little word here in the Greek, we use a lot today “Τιμή” we mostly use it just for price, right? What’s the price? But there are rich roots in that word. I did a little study in the ancient Greek, granted, I’m reading from English scholars, so, but I found uses for this word such as, “Esteemed”. It has a price, because it has a value – esteemed. It actually means sometimes, “Money Paid.” And I love this, my source said at its very root, it means, “Something that possesses dignity in itself.” It’s precious. It possesses dignity of its own.
Life outside of Christ may taste good for a while. We all have family and friends who believe that. And to be honest with you, we’ve tasted of it ourselves. Sometimes in this flesh tastes kind of nice to be ungodly. We have loved ones who are tasting life and they think it’s good. And you cannot tell them that it’s not when their pockets are full, and when the night life is fun, and it’s easier to get away with a lie than to tell the truth. You can think of all the examples you want, sometimes people think, this tastes good. It might get you a life of pleasure in this world. I’ve known people that say, they’ve never regretted one day, the life that they have lived. And I’ve watched them lie and cheat and abuse people, but they’re fine with it, it tastes good. When you get away with it, it tastes good. When you can help yourself, it tastes good. Come on people, don’t be too Christian today. He who is without sin, it tastes good sometimes, but in the end it’s failure. I promise you this, in the end it is failure.
I wrote myself a note here, it says, “Here is what a lot of people don’t get. This is not a warning, listen to me, this is not a warning. This is a fact. They stumble because they disobey the message. And because they disobeyed the message, they’re destined for the stumble.” It’s not a warning, I’m not warning you. I’m giving you a fact. Somehow, that settles in me. It’s probably the Holy Spirit working it in me.
Verse 9,10: Oh, you’ve heard this so many times, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” You see, Peter here uses language that was used for God choosing Israel. We are a new people. Not because of our race, not because of our family or ethnicity, not because of our skin color or the country we come from, but we are a spiritual race. With Christ, we share a Father. We’re a holy nation. We’re a unique, a different group of people who have been called out for a special purpose. You are set apart; we are set apart from all other nations. I tell my friends in the states all the time, “I am not an American Christian. I’m a Christian who just happens to be American. My identity is Christ.”
We are a Royal Priesthood. In the Old Covenant, only certain people could be Priests. But in the New Testament, we all carry that pleasure. By the way, that doesn’t mean that you can go to God without somebody else. It also means that you can perform the ministry of a Priest one to another. The Bible says, “Confess your sins one to another that you may be saved.” It says lay hands on one another and see the ministry of healing take place. It tells us to pray for one another, because sometimes you need me to pray for you in ways you can’t and I need that from you. The Priesthood of believers, is not just that there is nothing between God and us, it’s that there need not be anything between us.
Why has He made us this kind of a people? By the way, there’s ownership in this. God takes ownership of us. We are His people. He did this:

So, we could declare His praises, and that’s more than just a response to God’s goodness and greatness. It’s not something we do to be polite to God. We don’t sing, “I love you Lord and I lift my voice.” because we don’t want to hurt God’s feelings, so, we’re going to give it to Him. We’re not being polite to God when we worship, and we’re not doing Him any favors.
We declare God’s greatness, because He’s the reason for our very existence. You have no reason outside of Him. And if you are outside of Him, when your breath ends, your reason disappears. When we praise Him, we fulfill our purpose. He’s called us out of a meaningless life, He’s called us out of an eternity apart from Him, and He called us in what He calls, “His wonderful marvelous light.”

Some of God’s people should say Amen. I told you last week, it gets me to the end faster. Last passage: Verse 11,12, “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, (has anyone of you been accused of doing wrong?) they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.” You see this is the central point of our message, “Be Light.” We keep repeating, we’re foreigners and exiles. Repeat it until it gets in there, “We are in the world, we are not of the world.” And when we live this way, even those that want to accuse us, will be able to see you good deeds and glorify God on the Day He visits us. And some of us have been holding onto life for a long time, wandering when will God visit us.
And in all that time, taking the ridicule, feeling the displeasure, feeling shamed, hurt. But one day, because of the way you have lived between then and then, one day the Spirit of God is going to visit. And when that happens, they’re going to look at you, and say, “Oh my goodness, how were you so right. I have to give glory to God, because of what I saw in you.” They’re going to see it. And when they do, you’re going to fulfill your purpose, to bring glory to God.
You see, if we live this way, people are going to come to the true realization, say true. This is a reality I’m going to be talking about here. They’re going to realize who Jesus is and they’re going to realize who you are in Him, and you’re going to realize your own status in this world. And that will lead into freedom to act and look and speak like the special possession of God that you are, and the special possession that we are together. We will look like it, we will act like it, we will speak like it, we will work like it, and that will bring glory to God and make Him known.
You are chosen; we are chosen and we cannot be put to shame; it can’t happen. Praise God. I said it at the beginning, I know you’ve heard all of this before. I had no intention to come preach a new sermon. But I do want to preach the sermon that hits new. He’s calling us to something guys. Week after week, the Holy Spirit is calling us, not just for us. It’s a good place to start, feels good. I like being part of God’s special people; I like being favored of God, but I know this, He has no intention for that experience to be just mine, or just ours. But He intends for it to reach every person we know. Be Light! Organize life around that Light. Reflect that Light. Bow your heads. Holy Spirit, do Your work here, do Your work here. Lord, I pray, as we said at the beginning, Holy Spirit, that You would bring freshness, renewal, renewal of the things that we know, Lord maybe revelation of things that are new to us. Lord, we desperately want each other to leave here knowing better who You are, knowing better who we are in You. Lord being convinced than we have ever been, more anointed to live life, more anointed to do your ministry on this earth, that Lord, we would increasingly know, what it means to be a chosen people, a holy nation, a separate and strange kind of race, that can bring glory to Your name, and can bring people to Your Kingdom. I thank You Lord, for this Word that has meant so much to me, Your promise Lord, is that we will never be put to shame. Your Word is true, Your life is true. What You say You will do is true, and we embrace that in our lives today. In Jesus’ name we pray.
Can you receive that Word with me today? Let’s finish with this.