A Stone in Zion, Laid

Turn with me, if you would, to 1 Peter 2:4, and we’ll be making our way, God willing, through verse 10.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of a man named Jean-Paul Sartre or existentialism. Sartre was a 20th-century French philosopher whose philosophy is arguably part of the most popular philosophy in America today with very few really knowing that they have bought his ideas.

One of Sartre’s big ideas was that “Existence precedes essence.” What he meant by that is that human beings are free to author their own identity—that you exist, and then you create your own essence, your own identity, after whatever mold you want.

Maybe you see how popular that idea is in our culture once you hear it in those terms, right? Ours is a culture that fervently believes that it has the power of self-definition, to define your own essence. You get to decide what it is that you actually are.

This morning, Peter is going to talk with us about this, about who we are, about identity. This is a massively helpful text, because Sartre was dead wrong—what you are determines what you do. To put it another way, your activity follows your identity. Our doing comes from our being.

And that is why, really, Peter is going to tell us now so much about our identity—about who and what we are. Because for virtually the remainder of the book, he’s going to tell us how to live. He’s going to urge us towards all kinds of activities and all kinds of doing.

And so this morning, in 1 Peter 2:4–10, Peter will tell us our identity in order that he might call us through the rest of the book to live as what we are—in order that our activity would correspond to our identity. To be what we are.

He points us to four foundational identities out of which all of this doing is to come from:

1. A Temple. You are living stones in God’s new creational Temple.
2. A Priesthood. You are a priests in God’s holy priesthood—royal priests, in fact.
3. A People. You are God’s chosen race, a holy nation to God.
4. A Possession. You are a people for God’s own possession.

“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.”

-1 Peter 2:4–10