Let's go with chapter 2 of 1st Peter. So put away all malice and all deceit and

hypocrisy and envy and all slander and like newborn

infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow into salvation if you indeed tasted that the Lord is good.

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.

So I circled this because

grow up into salvation and be built up as a spiritual house, I think are parallel ideas. The one has the imagery of you've been born again, you're like a child, and you want to grow.

And here you're a bunch of stones lying around and you come to the living stone and the

living and as you get connected with the living stone Jesus Christ who had been

rejected but now's made the cornerstone you are being built into a into a house So you grow up into a full mature

human being who knows God and you grow up into a house. So these are process

descriptions of the Christian life.

Being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood for spiritual sacrifices.

So this metaphor is being really exploited to the full by Peter. So we are

we are living stones and thus we become walls and ceiling and we're a house for God.

That's what the temple was. It was the place where God dwells. for God

Dwell. And Christians, when they are built together, well, they become a special dwelling place for God.

God shows up corporately in the life of the church uniquely.

Not only, you have your private times, but uniquely,

there is a power and a presence of God

in the corporate reality of the church that doesn't get experienced anywhere else.

And you are the priesthood which is functioning in the house.

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