So let's read God's word together. Three, two, one, go.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by God 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. — 1 Peter 2:4-10

Would you join me in prayer? Father, there is nothing like your word. And we who sometimes complain that we want to hear your voice—you are whispering and shouting and speaking to us this morning through your word. Give us ears to hear so that we might walk out of this place changed, that we might walk out in joy and usefulness to you and in partnership with one another. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Now, I grew up in the South and we spent sixteen years of our lives up in the Philadelphia area and I lost over that time the word y'all. But in the last eight years, I'm glad that y'all has made its way back into my vocabulary because the other words just don't do as well. I didn't do the Midwestern use well, right? Like, "you guys," which is okay. But y'all—I just love y'all. I think y'all really is by far the best of the second person plurals.

Now, I love the version of the Bible that we use in our church. We encourage people to read from the ESV, the English Standard Version, because it's both pretty readable and it's very accurate as well. But I got one beef with the ESV. If there's one thing I could change about the ESV—all the places where it says "you" plural—I would want that change to use not "you guys" but "y'all." In fact, what I'm going to push for is the SESV, the Southern English Standard Version.

Because the Bible is incredibly oriented toward God's people as a people, not as individuals.

Now, I had a buddy in college in our Christian fellowship group and every time he got up to lead in worship, he would hyper-personalize parts of scripture to drive home the point. He would read passages like this. He said, "You know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. No, for God so loved me that he gave his only son."

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. — John 3:16

Or he would read from Romans 5:8, "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He'd say, "No, Christ died for me."

Or Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not of yourself. It is the gift of God." He'd change all the "we" and "you" to "me" and "I."

Now, the question: if you do that, is it still true? You got to talk to me this morning. I am not talking by myself. Yes, right. It's still true. And yet, you miss something huge. When you do that, you miss big themes of the Bible. When you make it all about you, it's very American to do that.

I remember there's another ministry that I was a part of years ago and I met this guy who'd written this praise song to Jesus and it went like this. And yes, I'm going to sing it.

Me and Jesus got a good thing going. Me and Jesus got it all worked out. Me and Jesus got a good thing going. We don't need nobody to tell us what it's all about.

Now, you would never write a terrible song like that, right? That's a terrible praise song because it's all about me and Jesus. And yet, that's how Americans so often live out the faith. As if it's "me and Jesus got a good thing going. We don't need nobody to tell us what it's all about."

Richard Loveless, who's an author of a book called Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal, says that orientation toward the Christian life is like an old-timey deep sea diver. Now, I want you to picture this. Do you remember those old-timey divers? They got the metal helmet with the little circle, right? With the little portcullis they're looking out of. They're wearing the white heavy suit, the big boots, right? And they've got a tube that goes from the diving helmet all the way up to the boat. This is what he says.

The individual believer is connected to the source of grace like a diver who draws air from the tube up above. He is a self-contained system, but he is cut off from the other divers around him. If their air supply is cut off, it doesn't damage him. But neither can he share his air supply with them if he even wanted to. We're all doing the same thing, but we're separate or distinct. That's a problem.

Contrast that with what Peter shows us this morning:

"You are living stones. You are a chosen people. You are a holy nation. You are his special possession. Once you were not a people, now you are people." — 1 Peter 2:9-10 (paraphrased)

Peter gives us five descriptions and he's not saying, "Hey, I want you to work really hard to be all of these things or if you strive hard, you'll become these things." He's saying, "This is who you all are." This morning, that's all we're going to look at: who you all are.

Living Stones

Living stones is an incredible metaphor for the people of God. God is building a house and it's a living house. He has made Jesus, the living stone, the resurrected one, the cornerstone. Everything depends on him. But because of faith in Him:

"You are living stones, being built on Him together as a spiritual house." — 1 Peter 2:5

This is an amazing picture, but there are two things we really need to understand about it. First, every stone has a different shape and size. Second, every stone is interdependent.

Different Shape and Size

In the New Testament, when they were building houses, they didn't build them out of bricks. Now, you go around Raleigh, we love bricks here. New houses going up with wooden frames, metal frames, bricks. Bricks are all the same shape, all the same size, hopefully all the same color. They're put together in a very even way into a particular type of house.

But what's described here are stones. Stones are by definition not the same shape, not the same size, not the same color. They come out of a quarry. They're dug up from the ground. There are all kinds of different odd shapes. If you go over to England, or France, or somewhere in Europe, you will see these old stone walls. Some of them 500, 600 years old, built without any mortar between them, made of stacked stone. Somebody has to be really smart about it to get the right shapes to fit together. They're all different shapes and sizes, different colors, and yet the person forms them together. Some of these are still standing 600, 700 years old. It's amazing to watch.

This is a picture for us of our church. God doesn't call you living bricks because you're living stones. You may get in here this morning or be around other Christians and think, "I just don't feel like I fit in here." You're looking for other bricks. You're looking for all of us to be the same. Guess what Peter would say to you? Praise God. Praise God if you don't feel like you fit, because we're rocks. God is forming us together. He takes all kinds of shapes, all kinds of sizes, all kinds of colors. If you don't feel like you fit, welcome home. We are glad you're here. You are in a house being built with living stones being stacked together, formed together for his good, for his glory, with him in its midst.

Interdependence of Stones

The second thing we need to know about this is how interdependent the stones are. Think of yourself as a rock in a wall. You're dependent on the rocks underneath you, right? The ones under you. If somebody takes out one of those rocks, it weakens the wall, causes it maybe even to collapse. These stones are interdependent.

I didn't necessarily pick this passage to line up with college send-off day, high school graduation day, but man, the Holy Spirit did. So I got a word for you, high school seniors: you can't be an independent Christian. You cannot be a solo Christian. You need fellowship. You need rocks around you. Find some other rocks, because rocks are useless if they're independent. God is building us together. God intends that we would be interdependent.

You Are a Chosen Race

Would you turn around to somebody who didn't drive in the same car with you this morning and say, "I need you." Amen. That's right. We need each other.

Second, verse nine: you all are living stones, you're also a chosen race. Now, this is crazy, Phil, that Peter writes this. If you have ever been a student of the Old Testament, you know that the way this is written about who is the chosen race—who is God's chosen people? The Jews. Israelites. Right? That country.

Peter writes this though. Peter writes this now to what he calls the elect Israelites scattered throughout, and he names all these places that are in modern Turkey. Not Israel. Mostly Gentiles. He's writing to them using the same language that in the Old Testament was applied to the covenant people of God, Israel, and the Jews. What is he saying? You, Christian believers in Christ, you are the new Israel of God. All the promises for Israel are for the church. They are for you.

Now, that word "chosen." Let's be honest about that. Nobody likes that word. I mean, does that play well right now? No. We don't like that word, and here's why: it implies that some are favored and some are overlooked. Some are privileged, some are not. We don't like that word, but as one of my old seminary professors used to say, Ed Clonaughey, he says, "You know, being the chosen people of God does not mean by any sense being the choice people of God."

Sometimes we think of "chosen" meaning "choice"—like people who are smarter or better, or they're more moral, they're more upright. They're really good people. But nothing could be further from what we read in the Bible, right?

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast. — 1 Corinthians 1

Do you hear what he's saying? I mean, kind of insulting to the people in this room. If you're not a little bit insulted, you're not listening. Lowly, not wise, foolish, despised—that's what he's building his church out of. And this is why it says in verse seven, we are honored to be included in that, to be not the choice but the chosen people of God.

A New Genus of Person

Now, when Peter calls us a chosen race, literally there is a word here that he uses: genus. Not genius, not smart, but biology class—genus. So some of you all, did you ever have to do this in like freshman biology in high school where you had to learn the classification system for all life? Kingdom, phylum, class, family, order, genus, species? Anybody remember this? Right. Genus is like, okay, there's this group and there's that group. That's what all these words mean. It's like grouping life in various categories.

So he's saying, look, there are two genus of human beings. There are those who know Christ and those who don't. And there's a world of difference between them. You all are a new genus of person. Now, that's going to strike you as really weird. But think with me.

Only those who belong to Jesus are adopted into his family. Only those who belong to the genus of Jesus are given all the justification, all the work of Jesus credited to you, forgiven, made righteous. Only those who believe in Jesus have the Spirit of God poured into your life, into your very person. So no, you're not just like everybody else. You're completely different. You are, as we said last week, weird in a good way, right? Very different. We are a different species of person.

This is why the Bible uses all this language like being born again—buried with him in death, raised with him in new life. All these metaphors that describe a different, completely different person. And this is two things. One is we see that those people, they look like everybody else, but they're different from everybody else. This is why the Bible tells us, "Hey, yeah, we're sort of incognito. We look, sound, have the same BO as other people, right? But God has scattered us here for a purpose. We'll get to that in a second.

But the other thing it means is that we need to be really careful. This explains why the Bible says things like, "Do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever" in marriage or in dating. And I want to explain that like that is not cruel. That is profoundly kind. And here's why that's kind.

Because you know that cutie? Okay. You know that cutie who's interested in you, who may not believe in Jesus, right? Looks like this would work out really, really well. Here's why that's not going to work out really, really well.

If you are a follower of Jesus, if all those things apply to you, if you're a different genus of person, it is really unfair for you to date that person. Because that person could be like, "Oh, you're my everything. You're my number one. I'm all about you." And you're going to always be like, "You're my number two. You're not my everything. You can't be my number one. I'm given. I'm owned by Jesus Christ. I am his sacred possession. His spirit is in me. I am a different order of person. I have a whole universe of reality that you can't even enter into. You can't even imagine what I'm talking about. You can use the words 'Holy Spirit.' You can use the words 'people of God.' You have no idea."

And that's why the Bible is not being cruel in saying, "Hey, don't be unequally yoked with an unbeliever." It's incredibly kind in doing so. Because there's a life that you can share and there's a life you can't.

Look, again, high school seniors, we are sending you out as missionaries today, scattered throughout the college empire. Wherever you go, remember: you are not just like everybody else. You are a chosen genus. So I want you to turn to other people and say to them, "You are a chosen genus." I know it's weird. Go ahead and do it.

You Are a Royal Priesthood

Number three: you are a royal priesthood. We read this in verses five and nine. And this part of your passage should really have quotation marks around it because it's a direct quote.

Chosen people, royal priesthood, and holy nation. — 1 Peter 2:5, 9 (quoting Exodus 19:5-6)

Those come from Exodus chapter 19, verses five and six. Again, he's quoting from that where God tells them, "This is my plan. You will be a kingdom of priests."

Now, this is bizarre. Every other culture, every culture in the Old Testament times around them had two things. They had a special people—the holy people, the priests—and they had a special place, the holy place, like a temple. So Egypt had this. Israel had this. Assyria had this. Babylon had this. Every nation had some form of special people, priests, and special place, a temple. But only Israel had this. God says, "Hey, you know what?" And we went through this in Leviticus this fall, if you hung with us then. God said, "You know, I have a priesthood because one day all of you will be priests." The whole vision from Exodus 19 is not "there's a special priesthood forever." No, it's "a kingdom of priests." All y'all are to be the priests of God.

And Peter himself watched this happen. He was there on Pentecost, which we celebrate this day in the church calendar when the Holy Spirit of God was poured out, and people spoke in strange tongues, and all these people came to Christ. And what Peter saw with his own eyes was like, "God's making it happen now. All y'all are priests. All y'all."

Now, this is just a side note for those of you who grew up Catholic or know people who grew up Catholic. This is the place where Peter could have said, "And I'm the special one called the pope. Right? I'm the special, extra special priest." But he didn't say that. The one person who God called—you know, said, "I'm going to build my church on you, you're my rock"—he could have said that. Now he's like, "All y'all are the priesthood. All y'all are priests."

Now, what is a priest? A priest mediates the presence of God in the world. A priest stands in the gap and represents the world before God. Priests in the Old Testament would lead the people in worship and perform the sacrifices. We read about sacrifices of praise and worship. And who is a priest? Y'all. Oh, y'all.

Peter doesn't say, "Hey, okay, you're going to try really hard and you just might make it to be a priest. Study, study, study and know the Bible inside out and then you'll be a priest. If you're really, really good, you're going to be a priest." No, he says, "You are a priest."

It's just like we talked about last week. Remember last week, as we looked at the term saint, I said, you need to go home and write this in Sharpie or lipstick on your bathroom mirror. Because when you get up in the morning, I want you to look in the mirror and say, "Saint of God." That is who God says you are. You can also write under that "priest." Because that is who God says you are. When you look in the mirror in the morning and you see that really haggard looking person, that is a priest of the most high God that he has put in this place. You.

See, if you are a believer, the world watches you. You have the incredible opportunity to mediate the presence of Jesus in your school, in your workplace, at your summer camp, all those places that you walk. People can read off of your life: "Oh, that's the kind of God that person serves."

Like the way we use our resources, the way we open up our lives and our calendars and our homes, the way that we care for people who just nobody else wants to be around. All that says, that's what God's like. That's what our God is like. See, it changes the way we look at the places we walk every day, the people we work with every day, mediating the presence of God. It is a great privilege of mediating the presence of God.

And the priest also gets to pray on behalf of people. So think about the people that you know that you love, people that you care about, that you're like, man, I wish this person were a Christian. You get the incredible privilege of taking that name, that person before the throne of God. That's what a priest does.

This also changes, by the way, how you walk in this door. When you come in here on a Sunday morning, this flips the narrative for how the world views churches. Right? Have you ever heard people, when they start going to shop for a new church: "This place is not meeting my needs." Now, priests don't say that. Consumers say that, right? Consumers say this place is not giving me all the goodies that I thought I was going to get out of this place. No, no, priests say, hey, I'm here to serve. I'm here for you and you and you. We're here together to praise God because I'm a priest. We're here to serve each other because we're priests. We're here to go the extra mile because we're priests of God.

So I want you to turn to somebody else again. You are a priest of the most high God. Go, go. Y'all are getting good at that. All right.

A Holy Nation

Number four: a holy nation. Verse nine. The word here is ethne for nation. Literally the word where we derived in English as ethnic group. You're a new ethne. So when you are a Christian, when you become a Christian, the theme of Peter is you are now an exile. The theme of your life is I don't belong here. I don't belong here, right? I'm here but this isn't home. I'm here for the good of other people. I'm here for Jesus. I'm an alien in the land of my birth.

One pastor, Tim Keller, says it this way. He says, when you become a Christian, you are not primarily from Ohio or Germany or Asia anymore. When you become a Christian, you are not primarily Anglo, African American, Asian, or Hispanic anymore. When you become a Christian, you're not primarily white collar or blue collar anymore. We are a part of God's new ethne.

Now be careful how you heard what I just said. I said the word primarily. Right? It doesn't mean that becoming Christian erases our race, where you came from, the particular family you grew up in. It just means that you have that identity, but you have an even deeper one. You are now God's people together. You are His ethne. And the implications of that are really big.

It allows us to still be people who identify our ethnic background, where we came from, and say that matters, but I have some distance from it in a way that I can both embrace parts of it and critique parts of it. It makes me think critically about where I came from. It makes me think as a person who is set apart, who is distinct, that the gospel has to change every part of my life. It needs to invade every part of my life, and it unites me with people who are from really different backgrounds from me. People who don't look like me, or sound like me, or come from the same family values, or understand what things are valuable, how you greet one another, what you eat, what you do.

You know, this is one of the reasons that we at CTK are so big in talking about race. And I know that some of this rubs some of you the wrong way, but we think this is biblical to talk about. Revelation 5 and 7 draw out in a fuller way what is only hinted at here in 1 Peter, right? What's only hinted at here. This kingdom of priests, this royal priesthood, we see in Revelation 5 and 7, is going to be made up of people from every tribe and language and nation and tongue.

So when verse 9 says:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

Here's what we read: one race, one chosen race, one nation, one people, one priesthood. One new race made up of all of the races. One new people made up of all the peoples. One new nation made up of all the nations. And this royal priesthood will reign with God forever with all kinds of colors and languages and backgrounds. And that is not erased but rather highlighted and enjoyed.

This is why we talk about this so much. This is why we're so excited. Russell McCutchen and Toya and Zion have moved here to help plant Reconciliation Church. This is the vision—Revelation 5 and 7—for their church. We pray it comes to fruition, right?

So I want you to turn around to somebody else and say: You are a holy nation. Turn around. Go say it. All right. Last one. Last one.

A people for his own possession. Verse two. Now, if you listen to this, this is such strange sounding language. Listen closely.

Once you were not a people but now you are a people.

Like, what were we if we weren't a people before? But it goes on:

Once you had not had mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Now, those words may just kind of bounce off of you like rain off the windshield. But to the original audience from First Peter, this would have been astounding. And it reminded them of back to their Old Testament, a story about a prophet in the minor prophets named Hosea. This is a unique story of the Old Testament. God comes to Hosea and says, "I'm going to involve you in a little bit of performance art. This is going to be your calling in life right now. You're going to be a prophet who lives out in his life what my relationship is like with Israel."

So he goes to Hosea and says, "I want you to go find an unfaithful woman for a wife. Go take a prostitute as your wife," and he does. He goes and takes a woman named Gomer and brings her into his home. They begin a married life together, and soon she has a baby. But it's not Hosea's baby. And God says, "I want you to name that child Jezreel because that little boy—there's going to come a time where judgment comes on the Plains of Jezreel."

A couple years later, Gomer has another baby. It's a little girl this time. And God says, "I want you to name that baby Lo-ruhamah." It's a terrible name, because Lo-ruhamah means "no mercy." And again, it's not Hosea's kid.

And then a third time, again, she has another baby—a little boy, and not Hosea's. And God says, "I want you to name that one Lo-Ammi: not my people."

And what happens soon after this, Gomer abandons the household. She runs off and leaves Hosea with the three kids. She goes from man to man, and her life begins to circle the drain. She is abused and used by men. And finally, she is sold into slavery.

And God tells Hosea, "This is what the relationship is like with my people. They're unfaithful to me. But here's what I want you to do: I want you to go find her and bring her home."

So he goes to the city center and there is Gomer for sale. You've got to imagine she's not dressed well and she's being sold as an object for use. And he goes and pays the money and brings her back home to reconstitute his family life again.

Now, we don't know what happened after that. We don't know the end of the story about Hosea and Gomer, but God tells us the rest of that story. He says, "This is how my relationship is like with my people. And one day I will do the same thing."

And this is what we see in the New Testament. Several hundred years later, there's a man named Jesus. And he's standing up and he's exposed. And yet he's not the one for sale—he's the one who's doing the buying. He's on a hillside outside of Jerusalem, where he is paying to buy back people for himself, to bring us home. We who were Lo-ruhamah—no mercy—our new name is Mercy. We who were Lo-Ammi—not my people—are now Ammi, my people. That's the rest of that story. That's who we are.

Once not a people, now the people of God. Once who knew no mercy, now the people who know mercy.

The Lone Rider

Let me close in this way. The theologian Karl Barth—not somebody I quote a whole lot in this church—but he used to go preach regularly at a prison near his home in Basel, Switzerland. He'd go preach to the inmates there, people who had been found guilty and condemned to a life in prison. And he went and preached this one sermon from Ephesians 2:8.

By grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. — Ephesians 2:8

And he illustrated that by saying, "Let me tell you guys a story. Let me tell you an old Swiss legend about the lone rider. You probably don't know this one, so let me tell you how it goes.

"There was a man in Switzerland in the dead of winter, a lone rider on a horse, coming at night into a village he'd never been to before. The snow is deep and the snowstorm is bad. He can barely see where he's going. He finally comes into this wide open space where he can make some progress. He sees lights in the distance, and when he arrives finally into the town, the people freak out. They turn and say, 'Do you have any idea what you just rode through? You rode across the frozen lake.'

"And the man gets off his horse and just kind of collapses, overcome with the narrow escape he has just had with death, not even realizing what he'd ridden over. He could have collapsed through the ice into the water and not survived.

"This is what Barth said to the inmates: 'It is in such a moment that we are like the terrified rider.'"

When we heard this word from the Lord, by grace, you are saved through faith. We involuntarily look back, do we not, and ask ourselves, where have I been? It's over an abyss in mortal danger. And what did I do? The most foolish thing that I've ever attempted, not even knowing it. And what happened? I was doomed, and I miraculously escaped, and now I'm safe.

You ask, do we really live in such danger? Yes, and more so. We live on the brink of death, but we have been saved. Do you know who for whose sake he hangs on the tree? For our sake, it's for our sin, sharing our captivity, bearing our burden, he nails our life to the cross. This is how God had to deal with us. From this darkness, he has saved us.

He who is not shattered after hearing that has never heard it.

By grace, you have been saved

Or better yet:

By grace, y'all have been saved

In the name of the Father, and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen.

Would you pray with me? Father, we pray for grace today to live as people who would own our identity, that we are living stones, that we are a chosen people, we are a royal priesthood, we are a holy nation, and we are your special possession, people who once knew no mercy, but now know mercy. Once who were not a people, but now are the people of your family. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.