“A Spiritual House”

1 Peter 2:4–10

As we begin this morning, I want to thank you for hanging out with me for the past few Sundays. It has been a great time here at Yates. It is always a blessing to be with this corner of God’s kingdom. A little heads-up on where we are headed in the next few weeks: I will not be here next week — Marty Childers from the Tri-West Association will be preaching that day — and then I will be back for two Sundays after that. I am excited to come back and spend a couple more weeks with you. Some of you already know — I am kind of like a bad penny. I keep coming back.

So as we come to this morning, I want to continue a conversation that I have been having with you for the past few weeks. A couple of weeks ago, the point of the sermon was this: if you are a Christian, you are a saint. Sainthood is not a category reserved for an extraordinary group of Christians. Instead, it is a status bestowed by grace, and it is a calling that we pursue. To be a saint is to be a holy one of God. It means that you have been claimed by God and set aside by God for his purposes. So: you are a saint.

Last week we continued that conversation to say this — and that is a good thing. Sainthood is not about being a goody two-shoes who never has fun. It is not about hypocrisy. It is not about being holier-than-thou. No — sainthood is about following Jesus into a vision of humanity. It is following Jesus into the people that God intends and calls us to be. You are a saint, and that is a good thing.

Today we are going to move to this: we are saints together. If you are called to be a saint, that is not a lone wolf calling. Instead, you were called into a people. You were called into a community. And that communal piece is central to who we are.

To talk about this communal dimension of sainthood this morning, I want to open the Bible with you to 1 Peter chapter two, verses four through ten. Let me give you a little backstory on what is going on in 1 Peter. Peter is writing to groups of people in places called Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These are groups of Christians who are falling on hard times because of their devotion to Jesus. The surrounding communities are not being kind to them; they are suffering for the name of Jesus. Peter writes into this setting. Through much of chapter one, he reminds them who they are and what they are called to. He uses different language, but he hits some of the same beats we have been hitting in the past couple of Sundays. In chapter one, verse fifteen, he says: “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy'” (1 Pet 1:15, NIV). Peter is reminding these people that they have been called to holiness. They are to follow God into that calling — to reflect God to the communities around them.

Then you come to chapter two. Peter gives them a few ways this is supposed to happen. In verse one he writes: “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (1 Pet 2:1, NIV). If you are going to be holy, there are certain ways of being that you need to put away — ways of living that do not match the kind of life God is calling you to. And notice: Peter is already intimating the communal character. He says rid yourselves of malice, of deceit, of hypocrisy, of envy, of slander. These are all ways of being that destroy community. Put them away. And instead, Peter writes: “like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Pet 2:2–3, NIV). Put away the ways of life that are not what God intends for you, and realize that your life of faith is not static. You are meant to grow up in your salvation. You are meant to be nourished by Christ.

Which brings us to chapter two, verse four:

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.

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.”

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. 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. (1 Pet 2:4–10, NIV)

It is a well-known and beautiful passage of Scripture. This morning I want to approach it not in order, but by taking up the middle first and then jumping back to the beginning to see how these pieces fit together.

The middle — verses six through eight — is all about who Jesus is. To understand what is going on here, you need to understand that Christianity emerged in those first decades as an incredible surprise. Jesus came and fulfilled the role of Messiah, but he did it in a way that was unexpected. Come Good Friday, when Jesus dies on the cross, his followers believe the game is up. We had placed our hope in him, and yet he has died at the hands of the authorities. We must have misplaced our hope — until Resurrection Sunday, when we learn that even the grave could not keep Jesus down. He begins to appear to his followers. It turns out that Jesus really was the Messiah. The resurrection proves that. But he fulfilled that role in an unexpected way, which means we have to go back and reconsider everything that came before.

It is kind of like one of those movies where a key piece of information is withheld until the very end. And then once that revelation is finally made, the light bulb goes off. You realize that everything has been leading to that point, and you have to go back and reconsider what came before. It is often such a gut punch that you have to watch the movie again, and as you watch it, you begin seeing clues all the way through. You wonder how you did not see it before.

Imagine the disciples. Jesus has been raised from the dead. He really is the Messiah. But that means we have to go back and reconsider all of our preconceptions. As they return to the Scriptures, they start seeing those clues. They start saying: we can read this in light of Christ — in light of who he was, in light of who he is. In fact, Jesus himself had applied the Psalm that mentions a cornerstone to himself (cf. Matt 21:42, NIV). And so the disciples say: Jesus applied that to himself. There are other passages that have stones in them. Those seem to apply to Jesus too.

What Peter does in this passage is stack all of these passages about stones and apply them to Christ. It goes like this. In verse six: “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” (cf. Isa 28:16, NIV). Then in verse seven: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (cf. Ps 118:22, NIV). And: “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall” (cf. Isa 8:14, NIV).

You can see how these come to be applied to Jesus. Here we have the Messiah who was rejected by the authorities, rejected by the world — and yet it turns out that he was indeed the chosen one of God. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Notice the imagery Peter is drawing on. You have people building a building. They find a cut stone and say: that stone is not appropriate for our building; we will discard it. But it turns out that God has chosen that very stone to be not just any stone in the building, not just an appropriate stone, but the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone that is laid in a building. It has to be cut perfectly, because it determines which way the building faces. It determines the angle of the walls. It is the first stone that gives shape to everything else. The stone the builders rejected has become the most important stone in the building.

That certainly sounds like Christ. And there is also the promise that the one who trusts in this cornerstone God has laid will never be put to shame. That is us. We put our faith in this cornerstone. We will not be put to shame. But then there is also a stone that causes people to stumble — and we keep seeing people in our communities tripping over this message about Jesus. It is a message about rejection that is actually a message about acceptance and chosenness. The world may be rejecting Christ, but in God’s eyes, Christ is the cornerstone: rejected, but actually precious and chosen by God.

Remember, these are people experiencing rejection as they are true to Christ in the world. The same thing is true of them. Peter will go on to say: you are a chosen nation. This passage is in part about those who feel rejected actually being those who were chosen.

Here is what I want you to see this morning. Peter goes a step further. He really plays on this idea of Christ as the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone in the building. And when you zoom out, you start to see that the cornerstone is part of a larger structure.

Go back to verse four: “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” (1 Pet 2:4–5, NIV). Notice this. Jesus is the cornerstone, the first stone God has laid. And now each and every Christian also becomes a living stone that is built into what is called a spiritual house. That is temple language. The temple is God’s special dwelling place on the earth. It does not mean that God is confined to the temple, but this is God’s special dwelling. Peter seems to be saying that you have Jesus as this cornerstone, and around Jesus, on Jesus, in tune with Jesus, God is building a temple where he will dwell. You are the people of God. You are God’s special dwelling place. Together, you are the spiritual house that God inhabits. You make up the walls of God’s temple. And God dwells among you by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the cornerstone. You are a living stone who, with other living stones, is being built into a spiritual house.

But you do not just make up the structure. You are not just part of the walls of the temple. You also make up the ministry group within the temple. Peter goes on to say that God is building you up to be a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Not only do you together make up the special dwelling place of God — you are also the priests in God’s house. And it is your vocation, both individually and together, to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are pleasing to God through Christ. Spiritual sacrifices has to do with what we do here on Sunday morning. It has to do with proclaiming the deeds of our great God. It also has to do with who we are throughout the week — who we are together, how we pursue this calling of sainthood together. You are part of God’s house. You are a minister in God’s house. You offer spiritual sacrifices to God. You are a priest.

And this is where I want to camp out this morning — this idea of being priests before God. Now this is a place that Baptists love to camp out. How many of you have heard of the priesthood of the believer? We like to hammer home that we do not need a mediator between us and God, because Jesus alone is the mediator between humanity and God. And therefore, as Hebrews says, we can approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and to find grace (cf. Heb 4:16). So in one sense, we are priests before God. We are able in Christ to approach God without mediation, and we are able to offer sacrifices to God — those spiritual sacrifices we talked about just a moment ago. Priesthood is relationship to God.

But here is where I really want to camp out this morning as well. It is not just about our relationship to God. It can also be about our relationship to one another — or maybe we could say it is about our relationship to God with one another.

Here, maybe we could talk about sports. Anybody here play golf? Golf is an interesting game because it may be more fun in community — you can go out with other people — but ultimately you do not need anybody else to play golf. Sometimes we think about Christianity like that: it is really just me and God, and maybe sometimes it is more fun when there are other people around, but really I can do this on my own. But what if Christianity is less like golf and more like baseball or soccer? With those kinds of sports, you cannot play by yourself. You can toss the ball up and down, but you really need other people if you are going to play baseball. You can juggle the ball, but you need other people if you are going to play soccer. Christianity — church — is like that. It is a team sport in which we are brought together as the people of God. We approach God together. We serve God together. We pursue God together. It is a communal calling, this priesthood piece.

We see this. We come together and we raise our voices together in praise. We seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus to our community together. And yes, we do that individually, but there is something special about when the people of God come together as priests who approach God and who, on God’s behalf, approach the world. We are priests before God individually. And we are priests with one another.

Do you remember last week, how we talked about how the Holy Spirit is bringing about fruit in our lives? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (cf. Gal 5:22–23). We said: these are good things that we want. This is part of the life that God has for us; this is what God is bringing about. What is interesting about those qualities is that so many of them are communal. Yes, they have an individual aspect, but if you are going to love, you are going to love one another. Joy can be individual, but it is so much sweeter when we are joyful together. Peace — because we need peace among one another. Patience — have you met Baptists? Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is as if God is making us able to be community. God is fitting us to be a certain kind of people.

We are priests with one another, which means it matters how we are with one another.

There is one more piece of this priesthood that I want you to see. This is something that Baptists sometimes overlook, but it is really important. We are also priests to one another. Now that is not because we need a mediator between us and God. It is because God often chooses to work through people. How many of you have ever experienced a moment where a fellow Christian came alongside you and said the right word at the right time? It was almost like God had sent them to you. It was almost like they said the words that you knew you needed to hear from God. Priesthood can also work like that — where on God’s behalf, we do the work, we say the words, we hold one another up.

It reminds me of a story in Exodus. When the Israelites were attacked by the Amalekites, Moses sent Joshua and the fighting men down to battle. And it says that as long as Moses stood over that battle and held up his staff, they did well. But when Moses began to lower his arms, they began to lose — which becomes pretty problematic, because you can hold your arms up for a while, but eventually you are going to get tired. The way the story goes is that there were two people with Moses: Aaron and Hur. They realized they needed to help him. They pulled up a stone behind Moses so he could sit down, because even just standing had become too much. And then they stood on either side of him and held up his arms (cf. Exod 17:8–13). The Israelites won the battle that day because Moses held up his hands with that staff — and Moses held up his hands because Aaron and Hur gathered around him and helped him with the task.

Sometimes church is like that. Have you ever felt like you have got this thing you have to hold up, but you are just so tired? And sometimes God chooses to work through people — to send them around us, to pull up a chair, to hold up our arms.

The sainthood thing is not about being a lone wolf. It is about being called into a people. It is about being called together. Together we become the walls of God’s temple. And notice how each stone offers support to the stones around it. Not only are you a member of God’s dwelling — you are a priest in that dwelling. You are a priest before God. You are a priest with others. And you have the privilege, at times, of being a priest to one another.

Yes, we are called to follow Christ and to become who we are called individually to be. And we are also given the privilege of being called into a people.

Works Cited

The Holy Bible, New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids: Biblica.

© 2026 Michael Smith. All rights reserved.