Privileges for God's People, Part 1b

God measured Christ by the instruments of his own perfection and said, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. While the world rejected him, Christ said, He is my chosen one. He is my precious one. Now think with me for a moment. You know, there are many of us when we give our lives to Christ, there is a certain amount at times of rejection on our part, isn't there? There are times that we reject the stone. We reject the words of the Living Stone. Because they go against our own personal belief, our own personal styles.

You know, there are times we have a hard time swallowing what God has said to us, and we have a difficult time accepting what he said, and there is a tinge of rejection that we portray against him, but there need not be. Why? Because Peter gives us the description of our privileges. He says, because you came to him, because of who he is, the Living Stone, you came to him, and because you came, let me tell you what you received.

Number one, this is the description of the privileges. Number one, you became Living Stones. Living Stones. You also as Living Stones. Well, if Christ is the ultimate Living Stone, then we are the little Living Stones. We are the Christians. We are the followers of the Christ. It's our privilege to live in accordance with that honorable life, because he, of course, is the chief cornerstone, and we are the stones being built up as a spiritual house. We are part of the same building and possess the same life.

Christianity is the only religion in which the object of its worship becomes the life of the believer. A Buddhist is not said to be in Buddha. A Muslim is not said to be in Mohammed. A Mormon is not said to be in Joseph Smith. But we are said to be in Christ. We are said to be in the Living Stone, so much so that we become Living Stones. Paul said it this way over in the book of Colossians, the third chapter.

He said this in verse number three. He said, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Christ is our life. The stone makes us a stone. The Living Stone makes us Living Stones, because his life is now our life. We, as Peter says over in 2 Peter 1.4, are partakers of the divine nature. So we partake of his nature. So as he is, so are we. Granted, not to the perfection that he is, because we still have that old sin nature, and yet until the glorification of our bodies, we are still in the process of becoming more and more like him.

We have a distinct spiritual privilege to share in his life. We participate in his eternal nature. We possess the same resurrected life. You see, God is a, is a, is building the spiritual house. That's why he's called the Chief Cornerstone. That's why he's called the Living Stone. He is building a spiritual house. You see, to build the temple, you had to have all the right stones to make sure the temple wouldn't fall over once it was built. And you would go into the temple, and you would worship the God of that temple.

Well, Christ, who is the Chief Cornerstone, is now building a temple. It's called the Church of Jesus Christ. That's why we're called Living Stones. That's very important for, for us to, to understand. And, and that stone is, is built upon the foundation, as, as Paul would say, let me read it to you over in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians chapter 2, verse number 18, And through him we both have our access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

That's what God's doing. Now we, because we came to him, are a part of that spiritual house that Christ himself is building, because that's the place he himself dwells. Acts 7, 48, the Bible says that the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.

Over in 1 Corinthians 3, verse number 9, the church is called God's building. Hebrews 3, verse number 6, says Christ was faithful as a son over his, that is God's house, whose house we are. First Timothy 3, 15, says that the church is the household of God.

You see, God is, is doing something so unique. He is building a spiritual house, because you see, in that spiritual house, which, which he calls a spiritual temple, are, it's gonna be filled with spiritual priests. That, too, is one of our privileges, and we'll talk about that, that priesthood in a moment. But God dwells in us. We possess his spiritual powers because of the spiritual resources that he, he gives, and our responsibility as living stones is to, is to furnish ourselves in a way that would reflect our owner's taste, our God.

Our Lord, the living stone, has made us living stones, because this chief cornerstone is in the process of building a spiritual house, and while the world rejected him, Christ says, he, to me, he was chosen, to me, he was and is precious, and therefore, we now become living stones.

This denotes our union with Christ, our union with Christ. The very first privilege we have as living stones is that we are united with him.

We are one with him. Christ did it this way, over in the, the Gospel of John, the, the 17th chapter. He said these words, John 17, verse number 21. He said, as he prayed, that they all, or may all be one, even as thou, father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me. He was praying for the union, for the unity of his people with him as he is united with his father. Verse 23, John 17, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that thou didst send me, and didst love them, even as thou didst love me.

Christ is saying, you know, my prayer is that they would realize that they are as loved as I am loved, because we are all one together. We are united with the Holy One of Israel, the stone of Israel, the rock of Israel. We are united with Christ, Christ in us, the hope of glory, that is the mystery that the Old Testament saints never saw, but now is revealed with the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And so the very first privilege we have is that we are united with Christ.

We are one with him. We are in union with a God of the universe. Number two, not only union, but admission.

Admission. He says these words, You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a, what, holy priesthood, a holy priesthood. Go down to verse number nine, but you are chosen race, a royal priesthood. Now, the ramifications of this are, are far-reaching, and I'm afraid that for the most part, we don't understand it. We talk about the priesthood of the believer, but if we really believed in the priesthood of the believer, we would act a whole lot differently than we do today.

But the priesthood of the believer is truly one of our great privileges. It is our admission to God. That is, we are admitted into his very presence, permanently. That is a privilege. Why? You know, not all of us can be preachers, not all of us can be teachers, not all of us can be evangelists, but we can all be priests. Did you know that? All of us can be priests. Now, you can't preach this in the Roman Catholic Church, but you can preach in our church because we can all be priests, belonging to a kingly order that has been set apart specifically by God for a great and wonderful purpose.

Priests have specific responsibilities to offer our prayers, to bring spiritual sacrifices, to intercede to God on behalf of others, to stay in tune with the spiritual side of life. That applies to every believer from every age, every society, any social standing. We become priests. You see, the unbeliever is not welcome in the presence of God. The believer is. So we are admitted into his presence. By living stones, it denotes our union with him. By being a holy priesthood or a royal priesthood, it denotes our admission to him.

That is, we are always in the presence of God. We are never outside his presence. We go to him at any time. We talk to him at any place because we are in his presence. In the Old Testament, the average Jew could pray to God, could draw into the presence of God spiritually, but could not draw into the presence of God physically. Only the high priest could do that, and only once a year. Also, they were the only ones able to offer sacrifices. Any individual who attempted to offer sacrifices to God paid a dear price.

2 Chronicles 26, Uzziah was afflicted with leprosy when he sought to perform a priestly duty. 1 Samuel 13, God cursed King Saul's lineage because he sought to perform a priestly duty and there would be no king from his loins. In Numbers 16, Korah was one who tried to perform priestly responsibilities and the earth opened up and swallowed him. So in the Old Testament, there was a great distinction between the priests and the people. In the New Testament, it's different. In the Old Testament, the priesthood was limited.

In the New Testament, the priesthood is unlimited. In 1 Peter 2, verse number 5, it says that we are both a temple of God and we are the priests who serve in that temple. We are the living stones who are being built up into a spiritual house, a spiritual temple, and we also now are the priests who serve in that temple. That's our privilege. Not only that, in the Old Testament, they had a priesthood. In the New Testament, we are a priesthood. Big difference. Big difference. Let me explain to you this way.

A priest was chosen by God. Did you know that? You couldn't go down to the local temple and fill out an application for the priesthood. I think that, you know, one day I had to be a priest, so do you have an application I can fill out? Is there an interview process that I can go through? Is there somebody I can talk to about maybe becoming a priest one day? That's not how it worked. You had to be specifically chosen by God to be a priest. That's important for us to understand. Exodus 28 tells us that God chose His priest.

It tells us that no one ever volunteered for the priesthood. No one did. There was no spiritual test you could take. There was no intellectual aptitude test you could take that would qualify you to be a priest. God sovereignly chose Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, Ithamar, and their descendants to serve as priests. Now, you must understand that Aaron, like Moses, is the descendant of what tribe? The tribe of Levi. Now you must understand the implications of this to understand our priesthood today. The descendants of Levi.

Levi was a cursed tribe because of their sinfulness. Because of their violence, God cursed them. The entire tribe had been cursed by Jacob. Because of what had happened in the city of Shechem under the leadership of Simeon and Levi, both of them were cursed. They plundered the homes of the people of Shechem. They kidnapped their children. They murdered the men. They murdered their livestock. And they enjoyed doing it, the text says. And God cursed them. God cursed them. The point being is that God chose the priests from a tribe that was cursed.

He chose them amidst the fact they were sinful and the least respected of all the tribes. God chose them. Do you see the point? You see, when God chose us to be a kingdom of priests in His spiritual temple, He chose us not based on who we are or what we did or what family we were born in or that we were good guys or better guys than somebody else. No, He chose us in spite of our sinfulness. He chose us in spite of the fact that we were cursed because that's what God does. And so the privilege comes because of the choice God had with us.

As God would choose the Old Testament priesthood, He too chose the New Testament priesthood. Peter already talked about that in chapter 1. That we were chosen in Him. That's how God works. In fact, the Bible says in John 15, verse 16, You did not choose me, I chose you.

That's good, isn't it? Because if it was left up to us, we wouldn't have chosen Christ. He chose us. Ephesians 1, verse 4 says that we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 26-29, it talks about the fact that God didn't choose many rich or many noble. He did choose some but not many of them. He chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. The poor things. The nobodies. The cursed ones. The empty ones. To become in His spiritual house a priesthood.

In fact, this is how John says it in Revelation chapter 1. It says, verse number 5, Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, to Him who loves us and releases us from our sins by His blood. And He has made us to be a kingdom priest to His God and Father. He loved us because He loved us He He liberated us and because He liberated us He licensed us to be a kingdom of priests. That's the privilege of being in God's kingdom. We become a priestly nation.

We become the ones chosen by God. And we'll look at it next time, not only are we chosen by God but we are cleansed by God as the Old Testament priests were cleansed by God.

And not only were we chosen and cleansed by God but we are clothed by God. God clothed the Old Testament priest. He clothes us as well. Not only that, He consecrated the Old Testament priest. So too, He consecrates us the New Testament priesthood. Plus, He charged the Old Testament priesthood with a specific responsibility. So too, He charges us with a specific responsibility. That's why the ramifications of the priesthood are far-reaching. See, we tend to think that to be in the kingdom of God that we can just kind of fly out of the seat of our pants and do anything we want.

But we don't understand who we are in Christ. See? Because we are a priesthood. Because God made us that way because of His choice with us. About 15 years ago, there was a young lady by the name of Tracy Eichmann. She was a young lady who lived in Rockford, Illinois. She was an AIDS patient. She was a prostitute. Someone from a church in Rockford, Illinois found her one day, shared Christ with her, gave her life to Christ, came alongside of her, helped her get cleaned up. She was baptized in that church.

She gave her testimony at a baptismal service about what God had done. She asked God to forgive her for all the men she had infected with AIDS, all the marriages she had destroyed by being a prostitute, and all the babies that would die because of her. After the baptismal service, after her testimony, one of the long-standing members of the church where she was baptized, to a person in that church who shared Christ with her, wrote this letter to the Board of Elders. I have been a member of this church and am a member in good standing even this day.

And what you're trying to tell me is that I can, for a certain amount of money, give sex and AIDS to your fathers, to your husbands, to your sons, and then turn around and say, oh God, I'm sorry, forgive me, and that's it. No way may she burn in hell. Well, that is not how it works. And yet it is how it works. God takes those people filled with sin and chooses them and calls them to himself. No matter what their background, no matter what they've gone through, there is no sin so great God can't forgive it.

None. And for someone to say, well, you know, because this person came to Christ and they were baptized and they did all these things in the past, they can't be forgiven and they shouldn't be forgiven, is wrong. Because you see, God chooses people not on the basis of who they are, but on the basis of who he is. See? We forget that. All you've got to do is read the genealogy of Christ in Matthew chapter 1. Prostitutes, Rahab, adulterers, Bathsheba, right? Pagan nations with Ruth the Moabite, Tamar, a harlot, all in the genealogy of Christ.

Because the genealogy of Christ is not about the people in it. It's about the God who saved those people in his wonderful grace. You see, we forget that. And that's why we forget about the privileges that God gives to us. Someone saves or someone is born again because of what God has done in their life. And they didn't come from a background like this young lady Tracy Eichmann did. Didn't come from that. And so we don't think that our salvation was nearly as great as hers was. But it was. Because every man is dead in the trespasses of sin until they're born again into a living hope.

By a living word because of a living stone. And therefore, what God does is so magnificent that he takes the most defiled and privileged people and he makes them priests in his spiritual house. Folks, that's a great privilege. That's a tremendous privilege. And as I think about that and think about our responsibility to our God and the wonderful privilege that he's given to us as his people. We are a blessed people. And our salvation, based on the character and nature of our God, his great and mighty work at Calvary has allowed us to be in union with him.

One with him. That because he is the living stone, now we are called living stones. Not only that, it allows us admission into his presence. Permanently. Because we became a holy, royal priesthood. Chosen by God. Cleansed by God. Clothed by God. Consecrated by God. Charged by God to do his work. That, my friend, is a great privilege.