My Peculiar People

My Peculiar People

1Peter 2:1-25

By Brother David Rogers

Bethlehem Baptist Church

This week as I thought about the sermon that God was placing on me for this week He brought to my mind the peculiar people that I have met in my life. I have known people who did not believe in modern technology and refused to have any of the modern conveniences that many of us enjoy today and believe that we have to have fro survival. Others simply had peculiar ideas or personalities but what all had in common was that their oddity separated them from them humanity so much so that they stood out in my mind.

For instance there was a man who lived in a northern city who did several years ago. Now this man had lived an improvished life. The home he lived in did not have electrical service nor did it have running water. He survived by collecting cans and bottles and turning them in for money. When he did the city struggled for several years to locate next of kin but they could find none. Here this little man had lived alone all his life, never having friends. When he died he was buried in the paupers graveyard because there was no money for a proper burial. All his life, his neighbors and those who saw him had looked upon this little man as being peculiar. After the city had exhausted every hope of locating a relative they took over the estate and prepared to liquidate it. Workers’ clearing out the house was removing a mattress when one noticed a slit in the mattress. Out off curiosity one of the workers placed his hand into the slit and pulled out a roll of money. By the time all the money had been removed from the mattress there was nearly a million dollars hidden in that old mattress. All these years people had thought this little man was poor and all that time he was sleeping on fortune. But what good did it do him to hoard this money. It did not do him any good nor did it do any one else any good. He had no one to leave it too nor could he carry it with him when he died.

God does not call us to be peculiar in this way. No he has another sense of peculiar when He calls us His peculiar people. What God means is this, we are to be peculiar because we are not like the rest of the world. We think differently, we do things differently, we live differently, our morals and values are different from the majority, and we talk differently. Lets see how God says we are to be.

I Peter 2

1pe 2:1 Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,

1pe 2:2 as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation;

1pe 2:3 if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious:

1pe 2:4 unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,

1pe 2:5 ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1pe 2:6 Because it is contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: And he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame.

1pe 2:7 For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner;

1pe 2:8 and, A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.

1pe 2:9 But ye are a elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God`s] own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

1pe 2:10 who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

1pe 2:11 Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul;

1pe 2:12 having your behavior seemly among the Gentiles; that, wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.

1pe 2:13 Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord`s sake: whether to the king, as supreme;

1pe 2:14 or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise to them that do well.