1 Peter 2:9 But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
Another reason why we should gather together to pray and to worship God is that this is precisely what true believers were saved for!
Peter reviews the titles and honors that God has bestowed upon His children. They are a chosen race - God set His electing love upon them before He began the work of creation and purposed to save them from all the masses of fallen, rebellious mankind. He installed them as priests of the New Covenant, serving in the heavenly tabernacle under their Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, and offering spiritual sacrifices to God through Him. He constituted them a spiritual nation (the New Covenant counterpart to the physical nation of Israel under the Old Covenant) and made them holy - setting them apart from the world and setting them apart to Himself for His own use and service. Finally, he made them His treasured possession, the people He would own (having redeemed them with the blood of Christ), the people upon whom He would place His name and in whom He would take delight as they are fashioned in the image of Jesus Christ, the Son of His love.
These four privileges and blessings could occupy hours of profitable and delightful meditation for the believer - and they should! But for today, we want to ask a very simple question - why did God do this to us? Why take such feeble, fallen and frail creatures and pour out grace and blessing upon them in this way? Peter anticipates the question and gives us the answer. God did all this so that we might "proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light". Here is our purpose and our highest calling as the people of God - to praise Him and to give glory to Him! And the wickedness and corruption of our sinful hearts, the moral filth and pollution which are ours as descendants of Adam, serve to magnify and highlight the amazing grace of the God Who has had mercy upon us and cleansed us by Christ's blood.
We know, of course, that as His people we shall gather around His throne in glory and praise Him through endless ages with all the elect angels and the entire heavenly chorus. What we may tend to overlook, though, is that we do not have to wait until then to praise and thank Him - we can and we must begin here and now!
We live in a dark world - the darkness of sin and wickedness out of which God has called us. We are to be lights in the darkness and salt to arrest the corruption in this world. One way we can do that is to proclaim the excellencies of our God, loud and clear, praising Him and thanking Him for Who He is and for all His goodness to us.
If God's church will not proclaim His excellencies here on earth, who else is there to do this? There is no-one who would want to and no-one God would hear. WE are the royal priesthood! WE are the Chosen Race! WE are the Holy Nation!
With this in mind, surely we would want to take every opportunity to gather together as that race, that priesthood, that nation, in order to do the very thing God has purchased us to do - to praise Him and to thank Him!
Our next opportunity to do this may well be our fellowship's prayer meeting - in the light of the truths we have reviewed today, let's resolve to be there and to joyfully undertake the duties and privileges of the position to which God has so graciously elevated us in Christ Jesus!