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Living Stones (1 Peter 2:4-8)
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Clark Fork Seventh-day Adventist Church, ID, USA
Delivery: 2010-10-23
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2010-10-27 19:09Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-1peterpt08.php
Peter calls us to grow up into salvation, and it is interesting how he illustrates this process of growth. He calls the Christian a living stone, rejected by men but precious to God.
What does it mean to be rejected by men? How could your being rejected by other people be a central feature of the Christian life?
Remember, First Peter has a great deal to say about persecution. It is a letter of encouragement to believers who were on the receiving end of rejection. Christians are in the world but not of the world. Present on earth as lambs, midst wolves, we are called to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Day by day we experience rejection by others. But to God, we are precious. Whatever the world thinks about us, God wants us. He loves us.
We are never accepted by the world; we are rejected. This is stated as a plain fact. We come to God having been rejected by the world. When we turn to Him, the world rejects us.
The problem is, somehow we think that we can have things both ways. But the principles are in contradiction. Sometimes this contradiction is aggressive and others it is more subtle. But it is a fact of the Christian life: you will be rejected.
If this rejection seems to slumber, it must be because we are blending in too much with this world that is perishing. Ours is a fine work: To be in the world and yet manage to navigate the course without being contaminated by the world. The Bible tells us that we are to remain unspotted by the world. You wonder how. It is like trying to walk through a lumberyard in the rain and avoid the puddles and the mud. So how do you do that?
We want to remember our purpose. We are only passing through here. Heaven is our home. How much are we taking to heaven? Just what we can carry in a suitcase? A backpack? Our pockets? Try this. We’re not taking anything with us to heaven but our character only. We can get our boots muddy in the lumber yard here, but the boots aren’t even coming. They will be burned up at the brightness of Jesus’ coming.
Being unspotted by the world has to do with our character. We can walk through this world, and we can get through it unspotted. If we keep this in view, then we look to Jesus. Then there is hope.
God’s Building Project
Remember, we are in a process, growing up into salvation. Peter further describes this under the idea of building a temple. He says that it is as if we are being built up into a spiritual house. He says that we will be a holy priesthood. God’s design is for us to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus.
When a building is built, it is almost always started at one corner. It provides the main reference point. Everything is measured from that corner. Peter says that in this temple that God is building, Jesus is the cornerstone. He is the beginning, the point of departure. For Christianity, everything has to start with Jesus. There could be no temple for man to worship God without Jesus.
Notice, we are being combined into an organic whole. Jesus is the cornerstone and we are joined to the cornerstone. He is part of the structure that God is building and we are part of the structure that God is building. We are to be closely joined together with Him.
This gives us a hint at what Peter said—that our sacrifices are made are acceptable to the Father through Jesus. There is a blending, you see. What we do and what Jesus does is blended together. When man sinned, a separation came between him and God. And God is the only source of life.
And so, man cannot live alone. He has no life in himself. He comes into being because God has willed it, but then he begins to whither away, to curl up and dry up. Life begins to go out of him. He becomes brittle, then he dies. He cannot stand alone; he was not designed to.
God wants to bring him back. So he sent Jesus. He came to the broken race and started fresh. Jesus is the beginning of that restoration. Everything that God is doing to bring man back begins at Jesus—at the cornerstone. Everything is measured from Him. Man receives the invitation to be reunited, joined, reintegrated, into God’s kingdom. Positioned on this rebel earth, still he is offered a part in the restoration.
Without God we are as dead stones. With Him, we are as living; we are alive; we are connected to life. This world is waning, fading away, preparing not for life but destruction. But we are here, agents of hope in a place where the clock is ticking down.
Priesthood in Action
But why “living” stones? Because of this connection with God, life, we become living stones. There is a purpose. God wants to save. Here’s the deal: He is looking for priests. He is creating a priesthood.
The priest is one appointed to deal with sin issues and reconciliation between God and man. Imagine a whole nation devoted to peace and reconciliation, the end of sin, rebellion, suffering. Then you have imagined the plan of God. He is not just looking for five or six priests, a few here and a few there. He does not propose to have just a few priests in each church, say, the pastor and the elders. Every congregation is to be a congregation of priests. So, if there are 40 of us here today, there are not three or four but 40 priests.
All of us can pray for others; all of us can seek our own reconciliation with God and with each other. All of us can intercede for others. All of us are to live out before the world the ethical life of Jesus. That is, we are to do positive good and to cease entirely from sin. Then and only then are we a nation of priests.
When you have priests, what is next? Sacrifices. Peter says that the priests—that is, us—are to offer up spiritual sacrifices. What does he mean?
Throughout this epistle, we read of sanctification, faithfulness under persecution, faithfulness in becoming a Bible people, faithfulness in copying Jesus. The whole life is to be one that honors God, a sacrifice. Now these sacrifices are acceptable to God through Jesus. It is clear that these are not direct sacrifices for salvation—Jesus alone has offered and presently mediating that sacrifice in the sanctuary above. This sacrifice is on the same order as mentioned by Paul in Romans 12:1, 2, where he says we are to let our minds be transformed and are ourselves to be living sacrifices.
How then a living sacrifice? We are to endure persecution, endue the sad things, the disappointments, the battle with self.
By the way, how can you tell when a sacrifice is being made? There is fire, isn’t there? Smoke? Flame? Something is burning. Something is being used up. Something is going up to God. Remember, a fire is a chemical reaction. Fuel is burning, substance is transforming. The priest makes sacrifice; the priest is sacrifice. The key feature of the sacrifice is that it is a lived prayer, a reconciliation, a removal of sin. Sacrifice undoes what sin does. Jesus is our only sacrifice for salvation. And yet, our lives are give into Him. Sin is to be ended in them. What an awesome, undeserved honor.
Honor, Dishonor and Cornerstone
What greater honor than being joined into the structure which God is building with Jesus Himself? We are to become—with Him—fishers of men. We are called to enter the work of Jesus.
But there is dishonor for the unbeliever. He rejects the Cornerstone, He rejects Christ. He rejects God’s form of government. There is some intentional irony in this text. For Peter says that the cornerstone becomes a rock of stumbling. But what was the size of the temple cornerstone? We do not know for certain. We know that the smaller stones from which the temple was built weighed in the range of 25 tons. Almost certainly, the cornerstone would have been among the largest, probably in excess of 100 tons. So, when we think about a stumbling stone, it is more like walking into a brick wall. Jesus is actually quite hard to miss. The one who avoids Christ or goes around Christ is not as one who trips over a small branch in the way; he is as one who bumps into a building standing in his pathway!
It would have to be this way, wouldn’t it? If Jesus is the only way to the Father, He must be unavoidable. Not that we must be forced to choose Him; we must not be! But that He must live an unmistakable, unavoidable life; He must present a crystal-clear difference from Satan’s kingdom, He must be a confrontation lived in the flesh. He must be unselfishness through and through, so that my choice for Him is for life or for death.
The unbeliever who doubts the existence of the giant cornerstone doubts that which he has insisted on tripping over. If not doubting its existence, he has to deny that Jesus’ claims are valid. In order to go there, he is choosing stubbornness, for he is resisting all the evidences that Heaven has provided. But he is permitted to if he insists. The evidence is so strong that he brings himself to dishonor.
Why will they stumble, besides raw obstinacy? The text tells us. These stumble because they disobey the word. And here we come to two different translations. King James says that they were appointed to this fate. The English Standard Version says that they disobey “as they were destined to do.” We want to understand this correctly. Some who teach predestination doubtless will feel triumphant here. By that understanding some were destined to be saved and some to be lost; they have no say in the matter.
Remember our earlier message from 1 Peter. The theme Peter is working on here is the same as there: the importance of the Word. We grow by the Word of God (1 Peter 2:2), and we are called to cultivate a desire for God’s Word and for growing by it. If we fail to desire the Word, our Christianity will be stunted; our faith will be small. Our preparation for the difficulties of the Christian way of life will be insufficient.
Then when we are confronted by Christ, we will find His hard sayings hard indeed. Although he is unmistakable, hearts harden rather than soften and we stumble where we should graciously obey. Because we have chosen a path in which we have failed to grow, we will reject His Word. To choose not to grow is to choose to wither.
When we reject Christ’s Word, we are rejecting Christ. And so, actually, our destiny is what we choose. Yes, there are those who are “destined” to disobey, or “appointed” to destruction, but this because they choose to reject the Author of the Word. They reject Jesus. They reject His government, His mercy, His proffered power for obedience. And inevitably they crash. Reality is that which one or every person can disagree with, and it will still be the way it is.
Whether one likes it or not, Jesus is God. He is the Way. He is the only Way. He is the Cornerstone. For stubborn people, He is the Wall. He confronts man, and says, You need not go down into ruin, you need not be selfish. Join Me; become part of My temple. I have a place for you in My Father’s house. I would like to prepare that place. But there is a preparation. You need to grow. Grow by My Word! I will help you.
Conclusion
And so, God invites us to join Jesus as He is making a new temple. He is restoring the union between God and man. His mercy makes possible our joining with the Highest. But if we do not stay in the Word, we will not grow as we should, and we will stumble at some place where, for our own good, Jesus asks of us something that we have not re-evaluated in the light of the Cross.
A day is coming when “all flesh shall worship before the Lord” (Isaiah 66:23). When John saw the new Jerusalem, he could not see a temple (Revelation 21:22). The explanation given is that God is the temple. Really, what God is doing is making (remaking) a world. In the end, all flesh will be part of the temple.
A temple is a place set apart for the worship of God. These will have fully joined themselves to God. They embrace His government by living-out the character He intended for man. Not just one patch on the earth, but all the earth, will be His garden. Goodness and unselfishness will fill all.
But here’s where you and I come in. many people are standing back, waiting for God to intervene, while they do little. Let none forget that God is building His temple right now, we are being joined with Christ right now. We are billboards, web-pages, advertisements, demonstrations of the kingdom now. GCO
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