The Apostle Peter wrote the letter we call 1 Peter while persecution against Christians was simmering in and around ancient Rome. He wanted his readers to be prepared for hard things to come, and he sought to prepare them by reminding them of their identity as the chosen people of God, living as exiles in a world of suffering.
We continue our series in 1 Peter looking at 1 Peter 2:4-8.
Jesus is a living stone.
Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation…” Isaiah 28:16
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”...He was speaking about the temple of his body. John 2:19, 21
Jesus is the cornerstone.
Three Exhortations:
- May Jesus Christ be precious to us, just as he is precious to God.
- May we grow together into the holy temple Christ has made us to be.
- May we be faithful knowing that nothing can thwart God’s plan.
"We all serve God inevitably, but it makes a great difference whether you serve like Judas or serve like John.” - C.S. Lewis
Life Church exists to glorify God by making disciples who treasure Christ, grow together, and live on mission. Salisbury, NC
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- And good morning, life church. Glad that you're with us this morning. If we don't know one another, my name is James Sharpe, and I'm one of the elders here. It feels like it's show your work Sunday where we're kind of pausing to explain to you why we do what we do. And so, kids, if you're in the room, I'm gonna stand here and I'm gonna talk at you for about 35 minutes. We call this the sermon, but you may or may not know that there are different kinds of sermons. And here at Life Church, we lean into one particular kind. We call it biblical exposition, and that's a fancy sounding word, but perhaps you can hear at the very root of that, the word expose. Like my aim over the next 35 minutes is to expose to us what God has said through his word in the passage we're turning to. First Peter chapter two, verses four through eight. And so, in this moment, I don't really care that you remember what I say. I do pray as I've prayed all week that the Holy Spirit would expose to us what God has said in these verses. So, first Peter chapter two, verses four through eight. If you have a Bible with you, I hope you do. I pray that you will just turn in there and hang out and wait for me. First Peter two, four through eight. And it was not that long ago that in order to be famous in the world, you have to be great at something. Right, fame and greatness seemed to go hand in hand. Right, and so if you wanted to be a famous athlete, you had to accomplish something great on the athletic field. If you wanted to be a famous movie star or actor, you had to accomplish something great on the stage or behind the camera. But it doesn't really seem like fame and greatness go together necessarily anymore, does it? Right, in the world in which we live, there are a lot of people who are famous simply for being famous, it seems. There are reality TV stars who are famous only because they're willing to let cameras document every moment of their lives. There are YouTube or social media influencers who have translated nothing, but a willingness to make their lives a public spectacle into a massive following online. Such people are famous, but their fame is really divorced from any kind of greatness. Who wouldn't want that? Right? The opportunity to be famous without putting in the hard work that's necessary to be great. Fame and the fortune that obviously seems to come with fame, I mean, doesn't it seem like that's what we're really looking for? Fame seems to promise so much. It almost seems like the shortcut to what we really want out of life. The opportunity to be famous without having to roll up your sleeves and put in the hard work to really accomplish something that is worthy of fame, and it doesn't that seem like the answer to so many of our problems. Except for the fact, of course, that many famous people are also famous for their misery, for every celebrity with the seemingly perfect life. There are a dozen more enduring, very public divorces, or very high profile addiction problems. Fame looks like the cheat code to get everything that we want out of life, but it doesn't deliver. Yet that steps none of us from pursuing it. I don't know that anyone in the room is ready to star on real housewives of around county, or anything like that. But we are inclined to pursue fame in smaller ways and subtler ways. Are we not? We all want to stand out for something. If you have kids at home, you want to stand out for the way you raise your kids. If you yourself are a student, you want to stand out for your grades or your accomplishment in your school, maybe it's for the way that you keep your house or maintain your lawn. Maybe it's for the way that you work and the way that you've climbed the career ladder. Maybe it's even for the ministry work that you do. But the human heart loves to build a platform, any platform upon which we might be made much of. We yearn for recognition, for approval, for praise. And that's why following Jesus Christ really runs against the grain of our deepest instincts and desires. Our passage this morning, for Peter two, four through eight, it describes for us the new identity that Christians have in Christ and because of Christ. Peter tells us that Christians are a new temple and a new priesthood. And as priests in this new temple, our purpose is to become a platform, not for our own fame and renown, but for the fame and renown of Jesus Christ. When we understand and apply what Peter tells us here, we'll realize that Jesus is ultimately calling us to tear down the platforms we're building for our own personal fame and in their place to dedicate our lives to his. That's what I hope the Holy Spirit exposes in God's word this morning for us. I'm gonna point us to two things that Peter says about Jesus' identity and then on the other side of those things will come to a clear grasp by pray of our own identity in Christ. Peter's gonna teach us that Jesus is a living stone and he is the cornerstone. Let's see that and then consider what those things mean for us today. First Peter two, four through eight. Peter writes, "As you come to him, a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves are 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 and 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 a fence. They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Church, this is God's word for us this morning, the grass withers and the flower falls. But the word of the Lord remains forever. The first thing that Peter tells us here is that Jesus is a living stone, right? That's what he says very clearly in verse four. But then in verse five, Peter quickly shows us that this identity of Jesus is identity as a living stone, is the foundation of our new identity as the new temple of God. What does that mean? Well, when I say the word temple, perhaps like the first image that comes to your mind is Indiana Jones running through like an Amazonian rainforest being chased by cannibals or something like that. Some of us, when we think of the word temple, we picture other religions, not the Christian faith. It's still others of us. When we think about a temple, we just picture the ruins of ancient Greece or ancient Rome. What does it mean to Christians when we say that we are part of a new temple in Jesus Christ? Well, in the Old Testament, the temple was the place where God promised to meet with his people. There in the temple, the priests represented God to the people and they represented the people to God. They made sacrifices to God to atone for the sins of the people. And it was the place where the rule and reign of God was visibly acknowledged. And it was the place where the presence of God dwelled most intensely. Now the Bible teaches us that God is everywhere at all times. But the Bible also suggested that God was most intensely dwelling in his temple. And so if you wanted to meet with God, you went to the temple. But then God's Old Testament people rebelled against him. They sinned against him. They broke covenant with him. And so God disciplined his people by exiling Israel from the promised land. God raised up invaders, foreign kings and foreign armies who came in and crushed his people and destroyed their cities and destroyed even the temple itself. And then these invaders, they carried the Israelites away from the promised land into exile. And as exiles, the Israelites, they had no temple and no access to their temple. It was crushing to them. They could not meet with God. They could not make sacrifices to him. They could not worship him. But that wasn't to be forever. God promised one day to bring his people out of exile and to restore the glory of his temple. He promises in many places, but here's one. This is what the prophet Isaiah declared. And Isaiah 28, he said, "Thus says the Lord God, behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation." God's promising that he was gonna restore his temple, that he had already laid the foundation stone of that new restored temple. Hundreds and hundreds of years before the Israelites would come back out of exile. God was saying, "This is something that I will do." And then when Jesus Christ was born, he walked around declaring that he was that restored renewed temple. In John two, we read this. Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." And then John adds, he was speaking about the temple of his body. In some of the New Testament we see that the temple of God became a person. It became Jesus, the God man. He was the place where God would meet with his people. He was the place where God's rule would be displayed in the world, he was the place where offerings and sacrifices for sin would be made. He would be the place where God's presence would now dwell most intensely upon the earth. And this is what Peter's saying in our passage. He's saying that Jesus is a living stone. He's fulfilled the prophecies. In Jesus, God has restored his temple, but that temple is now a person, it is Jesus. However, Jesus is not the only stone in this temple. He's merely the first and the most significant stone. He's joined by his people. Right, if we're in Christ, then we are a part of this new temple also. The new place where God dwells among his people, where spiritual sacrifices are made, the new place that exists for the fame and glory and renown of God. If you look back at the passage, I think you can see this, right? Verse four, Peter writes, "As you come to him," him in this case is the Lord. We see that if you look back in verse three, there Peter's speaking about tasting that the Lord Jesus is good. Now he's saying when you taste that something is good, your appetite for it grows. You keep wanting to eat more and more of it. You keep coming back for more and more. And so that's verse four. "As you come to him again and again, more and more, Jesus." Know that the one you're coming to is a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. Now we don't normally think of stones as things that are alive or dead. But Peter wants to make this point because we don't normally think of temples as things that are alive or dead either. But Jesus, who has been raised from the dead, has made the inanimate stone structure of the temple into a living and breathing organism. He's a living stone. Men rejected him, they arrested him, they crucified him. But in the sight of God, he is chosen and precious. And so he overcame the grave. He is living, but he's not alone. Verse five, "You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house." That's the temple where bricks or stones in the spiritual house of God, we as the people of God are a part of this new spiritual temple. And so no longer must we travel far away to someplace else to worship God. No longer do we need to purify ourselves to enter into the presence of God. If we are in Christ, right, if we've trusted in his saving life and sacrificial death through faith, then we are made pure and the presence of God dwells within us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the perfect and final sacrifice made in this new temple. He sacrificed himself once for all times so that no further physical sacrifices are necessary and no physical building is necessary for this new temple. At the church of Jesus Christ, we'll meet in buildings all over the world. But the church of Jesus Christ is not a bunch of buildings, it is a people. If you are a Christian, you are in Christ a brick or a living stone in that temple. But you're not merely a brick. You're also a priest in this household of God. We continue in verse five, "You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house." Why? To be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ. Right in many religions around the world and throughout history, it's been the priests and only the priests who have had special access to God. The priests and only the priests have been the one to go between God and the people and between the people and God. But that's not our reality if we are in Christ Jesus. If you're a follower of Jesus, then you too are a part of his holy priesthood. Right, God doesn't save his presence, his spirit, for a special select few who have this special anointing. No, he dwells within each and every one of his people. And so each and every one of his people is a priest. I have no special access to God that you do not have. I have no special calling from God that you do not have. All of us, our job is to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, Peter says. It means all of us are to live lives of faithful obedience. We're to live for his glory. We aren't to exist to display our own fame or to exist to display his. As is people, living stones in his temple, holy priests in his service, we are to aim to make much of him. That's our purpose, our mission, our ambition in life. The Triune God and the Bible, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he is the most glorious being in the universe. We're called to live lives that declare and display his glory. If we are among his people, then that is our mission. Because Jesus is a living stone and in him we are too. If we are among his people, then that is our mission. However, not everyone is named or numbered among his people. The gift of salvation in Jesus is free. But for some, it just costs too much. They don't or won't pay the price. Peter acknowledges this by making a second claim about Jesus in our passage. He says Jesus is a living stone, but then he adds he is the cornerstone. Yet he will not be the cornerstone to everyone. Look at how verses six through eight continue and develop this idea. Peter, he quotes from three Old Testament passages here. These passages suggest that some people will trust in Christ's saving word to be part of his new temple, but others will reject Christ. And the cornerstone will be to them a stone of stumbling. Read this with me. Starting in verse six, he says, "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. Now in ancient buildings, the cornerstone was the first stone that was set in a building's walls. And it was the guiding stone for all of the other stones. Every other stone in the wall was set around and in relationship to the cornerstone. Jesus, Peter says, is the cornerstone of this new temple. But not everyone gets in line with Christ, the cornerstone. If you do, if you believe in him, Peter says you will not be put to shame. You will receive honor. I think that honor is the imperishable inheritance that Peter described way back in chapter one verse three. It's our faith in Christ that aligns us with this cornerstone. Yet not everyone gets in line. Verse seven here suggests that those who do not believe reject the cornerstone. Verse eight says that Christ becomes to them a stone of stumbling in a rock of offense rather than getting in line with Jesus. Rather than becoming a living stone in the walls of God's holy temple, they stumble over him in disobedience and unbelief. In their sin, they reject Jesus. That is their choice. But notice, according to verse eight, it is also God's choice. Peter says the end of verse eight, they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Why do unbelievers stumble upon Christ and reject him? You've wondered that, I'm sure. As you've prayed for people in your life who are far from the Lord, as you shared the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us with people that you love and care about, and they've turned from that good news. They've rejected that good news. You've wondered why? Peter answers why. I want you to notice that he describes this as their responsibility and God's responsibility. They stumble, he says, because they disobey the word as they were destined by God to do. When unbelievers reject Jesus, they do that absolutely and freely. It's of their own accord. In sin, they reject the one who is worthy of worship and choose to bow down to others. All of this is their own will. All of this is by their consent. And at the same time, all of it is according to God's design. It's destined by God, Peter says. I know that it's difficult for us to understand this, maybe even more difficult for us to accept this. But I can assure you of something. No one that God had destined to unbelief ever longs to believe. There's no one now. We're an eternity future who longs to worship the one true God, only forgot to slam the door of heaven in his face. There is no one now. We're an eternity future who begs to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, only forgot to deny him that desire. Now, when unbelievers reject the gospel, when they stumble and unbelief and in hardness of heart, that's their choice. They disobey the word, Peter says. Even as God himself destens them to this. Well, let's not miss the broader point Peter's making here. Peter's suggesting that Jesus is the most polarizing figure to ever walk the face of the planet. But there's no middle ground with Jesus. You cannot be lukewarm with Jesus. Either he is the living stone and the cornerstone or the Son of God, who is Lord of all, or he's nothing, a maniac or a liar who is not who he claimed to be. And so either you love Jesus and worship him and orient your life around him, building your life on his cornerstone, or you reject him and stumble over him. But there's just no middle ground. That's the broader point that Peter lays before us in these words. My only daughter, Elliot, she will turn 13 in a month. She's amazing of all of my four kids. She's my favorite. I tell all of them that on a regular basis, I'm not ashamed at all. Yeah, she is really great. I was remembering this week that when Elliot was six, she was in kindergarten. There was this boy in her kindergarten class. His name was Logan. And for her entire kindergarten year, it was clear to me and to her mom that Elliot was a little bit smitten by Logan. Like she would come home from school and say things like, "Logan is the tallest and the fastest boy in class." And then she would sigh, and then I would barf. We lived in the Midwest at the time, and in the Midwest there's this tradition called May Day. I don't think it's celebrated here in the South, at least not in the same way. May Day is May 1st, and the May Day tradition is that like you gather up a bunch of treats and you go to the houses of your friends and you set them on their front door step and you bring their doorbell and then you run off. And so you know, your friends, they open the doors and you've left treats for them, but they don't know who their treats are from. And I remember that kindergarten year, someone left treats on a front porch and they rang our doorbell and they ran off. And when Elliot saw what people had left for us, she said, "I wonder if Logan left these for me." And then she sighed again, and then I barfed again. "Can I confess something to you? I never met Logan. I'm sure he was a perfectly nice kid. Did I move my daughter halfway across the country to keep her away from Logan? It's possible." But here's my confession. That's not a confession. Here's my confession. Still today, I kind of hate Logan. I know this is irrational, but there's this involuntary anger that wells up inside my heart every time I think about him. And if by some fate of Providence he were to walk through the doors here, I would have to restrain myself. Like I would be tempted to punch that kid. This is the way. Fathers of daughters, we know that there are really only two possible reactions to the boys that our daughters might be interested in. Either we learn to tolerate them or we despise them. There's no middle ground. Either we accept their existence as one of life's necessary evils, or we look for opportunities to erase their existence from our daughters' lives. This is the way. Church, there are only two possible responses to Jesus Christ. The living stone who is the cornerstone. There's just no middle ground with Jesus. That's what Peter's saying here. Either he is everything to us or he is nothing to us. Either Jesus is the cornerstone and our lives are built upon him, or he's the rock of a fence that we are stumbling over, and we've rejected him and despised him. I pray that you'd ask yourself, is Jesus the cornerstone that your life is built upon? Or is he the rock of a fence that you are stumbling upon? This is who Peter tells us that Jesus is, a living stone and a cornerstone. You might notice in this passage that Peter doesn't give us any commands. He doesn't tell us what we should do in response to who Jesus is. And so given that, let me just close us this morning by summoning us to three things. I think there are three exhortations, or really three invitations, that lie beneath the truths of this passage. Here's the first. May Jesus Christ be precious to us, just as he is precious to God. Some of us, we want to treasure Jesus. Now, some of us want to tolerate Jesus while we treasure other things. And many of those are the things that are good things, right? Family, career, financial security and stability. But if Jesus Christ is precious to God the Father, then he should be precious to us. Not just acceptable to us, not just tolerable to us. We should not begrudgingly obey him and serve him. We should treasure him above all things. And so I pray this morning that you would diagnose the condition of your heart. I pray that you would ask yourself, what am I tempted to love or to live for or to treasure more than or in place of Jesus? What has my heart in a way that only Jesus should have my heart? He's chosen by God and precious to God. May he be precious to us also. The second invitation. May we grow together into the holy temple that Christ has made us to be. Some of us, we're convinced that we don't really need others in order to follow Jesus faithfully. Right? Some of us are convinced that other Christians are like optional accessories in our Christian life, but they're not the main thing. We're reflecting our culture in this way, by the way, because our culture, it puts the individual at the center of all of life. But if what Peter says about Jesus here is true, then we really need to be committed to the local church. Not just going every now and then, the way that I might go to the dentist or to the dry cleaners. Not just showing up on Sundays only. We need to be committed. We need to be involved. We need to be invested. It's common in our culture. To think about the church is something where we just go and we receive some goods and services, and then we move on. But according to Peter, we don't just go to church. We are the church. We are the temple of God together. We're not a pile of individual stones. We're bricks that had been mortared together by the blood of Jesus. And so we belong together. And we must grow together. I think if we really understand that, that will change the way we think about the brothers and sisters who are with us in the church, who are the church with us. And so I hope you'd ask yourself this morning. Does my attitude toward the local church reflect what Jesus has done to bind me to spiritual brothers and sisters? Do I live my life like an individual stone doing my own thing? Or do I live like one stone in a wall designed and built by Jesus himself? Here's the final exhortation. May we be faithful knowing that nothing can thwart God's plan. Christ, the cornerstone, he was rejected by men. He was arrested. He was humiliated. He was condemned. He was crucified. That did not hinder God's plan. And then many more in Jesus' day and still today continue to reject him. Many more still find him to be a stumbling stone and a rock of offense. But God's plan is not hindered by that either. God is building his temple. His eternal plan is being revealed by who chooses him and who does not. No thing and no one has any power to thwart God's plan or purposes in the end. So may we be faithful. May we follow him. May we make spiritual sacrifices with our lives. May we serve him as holy priests. May we give our lives for him knowing that nothing done for his sake will ever be wasted because nothing can thwart his plan. C.S. Lewis once said, "We all serve God inevitably, but it makes a great difference whether you serve like Judas, someone who sought to oppose God's plan, or like John, someone who surrendered himself to God's plan." In the end, God is triumphant in all things, in our belief and in our unbelief. He's triumphant in our obedience and in our disobedience. We cannot thwart the ultimate purposes of God. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, knowing this, knowing that nothing done for God will ever truly finally fail. Ask yourself, in what new ways can I give of my time, my energy, my money, my life for the sake of the one whose kingdom will never fail? How can my life be a platform for his fame and his renown rather than my own? Let's pray together. [BLANK_AUDIO]
