Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid. Would you turn in your Bibles this morning to First Peter, chapter 2, and we begin by talking to our Father in heaven. Lord, the thought that comes to my mind immediately when I see snow is that "though your sins be as scarlet, they will be like snow." Snow covers things, makes them pure. But also what the prophet Isaiah declared; that is, the rain comes from heaven and the snow, and does not return there. But give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so is the Word of God. And that you will accomplish your purpose as the seed of the Word goes out like snow that comes from heaven and is good for the soil. We pray that your Word would penetrate the soil of these lives and bring forth fruit in days to come. We ask for your Spirit, Lord, to be our teacher, in Jesus' name, amen. So there was this newlywed son-in-law who wanted to prove to his father-in-law, who was a building contractor, that he was not a klutz. And the way he was going to prove it is this newlywed and his wife bought an old house, they were going to renovate it. He was going to do all the work himself. He would begin by painting two rooms in the house. He began Friday night and worked all day Saturday into Sunday morning. When his father-in-law came for dinner Sunday evening, he found his son-in-law collapsed on the floor in a pool of sweat, wearing a ski jacket and an overcoat. And the father-in-law said, "Are you okay?" The son-in-law looked up and he said, "I was trying to show you that I was competent by painting two rooms, painting my house." And the father-in-law said, "Okay. So, why are you dressed that way?" And the son-in-law looked backed up at his father-in-law and he said, "Because the instructions on the can said, 'For best results use two coats.' " [laughter] So, do you think he impressed his father-in-law very much? Probably not. What he should have done is looked at that series that began in 1979 and continues to thrive, called This Old House. It's a home improvement program. They take and they renovate homes. It's in season thirty-three now, and it gives ways to improve your old house. I want to talk to you today about this old house--the church of Jesus Christ that's two thousand years old. It's the building project by which God is always interested, always building, still not finished, adding stone by stone as the years go on. My dad was a builder. He loved is to take a piece of land, get blueprints for it, lay a foundation, build apartments or homes, sell them, and start again. It's what he loved to do. He loved projects. My heavenly Dad also likes building projects, and you and I happen to be it. So, in First Peter 2:4, Peter writes, "Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. "Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, 'Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame.' Therefore, to you who believe, he is precious; but to those who are disobedient, 'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,' and 'a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.' "They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they were also appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; who once were not a people but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." You recall that our Lord Jesus spoke about heaven as being his Father's house. Remember he said, "In my Father's house there are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you"? He was speaking of a literal place called heaven to which one day you and I will all go to enjoy. But until then, Peter would tell us of the intermediate reality of God's building program here on the earth, building up his church. So, since he uses this analogy, we want to look as this building, as we believe Peter does, in four parts: the basis or the foundation, which is Christ; the building, which is us; the blueprints; and then, finally, the builders of this. We begin with the basis, the foundation. Verse 4; look at it again, this time a little slower. "Coming to him as to a living stone." Now immediately we understand that Peter is drawing an analogy of a construction zone, of a building, but not a building like you and I know it, but a stone structure. It sort of surprises people whenever I take them on tours to Israel, when I take them over there, you can't find two-by-four wood construction anywhere. Everything is made out of stone, stone block, or hewn stone. And that's because stone is the most abundant natural resource in that land. They don't have a lot of wood to use, they have lots of stone, it's everywhere, and so the buildings, especially the building of the temple which Peter has in mind, was the material used for the building. But look at what it says. He calls it a "living stone." "Coming to him," personal pronoun, "as to a living stone." Now, if ever there was a paradox, it's the term "living stone." It's an oxymoron. Living stone? We talk about something being as dead as stone, stone dead, inanimate, but he speaks of this stone as "living stone." It's a contradiction in terms, sort of like "government organization." [laughter] Couldn't resist. "Airplane food," "short pants," those are oxymorons. Those are contradictory terms. Years ago, and I'm gonna date myself by this, there was a fad going around in America called pet rocks, and I had one. It was on my desk. It was this little pet rock, it was in a little wired cage, and it was advertised at the best pet because you don't have to feed it, you don't have to clean up after it, you don't have to groom it. They just paint a little smile on it, and they put it in the little cage, and it's your pet rock. But it was still a rock. It had no life in it whatsoever. But what Peter is talking about is a living stone having all the strength and solidarity of a stone, of rock, but it's alive. Why is it alive? Because the rock is Jesus Christ and he died and was raised from the dead. And in Revelation 1, the Lord Jesus said, "I am he who was dead and am alive forevermore." So Peter, knowing that, calls Jesus the living stone. You're probably also familiar that Paul uses this term, sort of, but in a different way, speaking of Jesus. First Corinthians he said that rock that was in the wilderness that followed them around and quenched their thirst, that rock was Christ. Also, something else that's just sort of interesting to note about Peter's writing. When Peter wanted to talk about the kind of hope that we have back in chapter 1, verse 3, he called our hope--what kind of hope?--"a living hope." When he wanted to speak about the Word of God back in chapter 1, he called it the "living Word of God." And now he speaks you a "living stone." Now, keep in mind that Peter had in his mind the temple in Jerusalem, I believe, the temple in Jerusalem with its priesthood and its massive structures. In fact, Peter was among the group of apostles that one day when they left the temple precincts, was just sort of blown away by the enormity of the stone structure. They get out of the temple, and the apostles say to Jesus, "Master, behold the stones and these massive structures." That's when Jesus said, "Not one stone will be left upon another, all will be thrown down." So that's what he has in mind is this temple; "Coming to him as to a living stone." But he further describes Jesus Christ in verse 6 and in verse 7 as the "cornerstone." What kind of living stone is he? Well, he's the cornerstone. And if you know anything about ancient buildings, the cornerstone was the most important part of the entire structure. The cornerstone set the angles for the rest of the building. Let me explain: the cornerstone was at the foundation, at the base. Cornerstones were typically the largest and heaviest stones because they did form the footing for the building. So they didn't lay cement slabs, they actually cut out hewn massive stones. And if I could take you to Jerusalem, I could actually point out to you still in existence the cornerstone from the temple complex at the southeast corner of Jerusalem. They have the cornerstone which--get this--measures thirty-nine feet four inches long, seven feet ten inches wide, and forty-three inches tall. They say that one stone weighs eighty tons, eighty tons, eight-zero. And that's not even the biggest stone. If you went down a little bit further on what's called the "master course" of stones, they have a stone they could show you that's forty-one feet long, it is fifteen feet wide, and eleven and a half feet tall, weighing upwards of six hundred tons. Massive! So the cornerstone was that foundation stone laid at the corner that not only provided foundation, but provided symmetry, measurement for the rest of the structure. It is the cornerstone that maintained the symmetry for the rest of the building and set the direction for all sides. If the angle of the cornerstone, any of the sides were off, the building would be off. The building could kind of go in one direction if it wasn't lined up right and skew off. And the stones, because they wouldn't be laid right, the cornerstone wasn't cut just perfectly, that building could collapse outward or inward. So, think of the cornerstone as the reference point for the whole building. I read this week about an artist. He's a landscape artist. He paints landscapes with oils. And he said that by his easel or on his easel he always keeps three stones for reference--an emerald, a sapphire, and a ruby--simply to bring him back to what true blue, true green, true red is. He said when you're involved in painting oil landscapes like he does, after a while you start losing color perception, and you need to go back in reference to the standard. Well, that's what the cornerstone was like. It provided an orientation. It unified the structure. It brought foundation for the entire building. So, Peter describes Jesus Christ as the living cornerstone, the foundation on which everything is laid. And I hope Jesus Christ is the foundation of your faith. I hope that you are not building on just the sayings of Jesus or the example of Jesus. "Oh, isn't Jesus just a fine example? And he said so many cool, wonderful things." I hope you're not building on just those things or on the traditions of people who follow Jesus, but on Jesus himself, the chief cornerstone. Notice he says, "Coming to him." That's when it all begins for you and I, we come to him. We speak about coming to Christ or coming to faith in Christ, a term Jesus even used. "Come unto me," he said, "all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest." So, here's God, he's got his building program going, you and I enter into that building program when you come to Christ. That's the basis, that's the foundation--Christ. Second, notice the building--that's us. Verse 5, "You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." That's just profound. It's one thing to come to a living stone; it's quite another thing to become a living stone. That's his whole point: when you come, you become. When you come to Jesus Christ, you become like Jesus Christ. Did you know that? That's the whole point that Peter is making. When you come to him, what happens is you start following him and you become more and more like him. You know the very term "Christian" what it means in its origin, right? It actually means a miniature Christ, a little Christ. So, how are we doing with keeping up with that title? That's kind of a tall order, but the point is this stone is alive, and when you come to him, you're not a dead, unanimated rock anymore, you're alive yourself. You share his life, and you share his strength, because you're a living stone. Great story about the ancient king of Sparta in Ancient Greece. He used to brag about the mighty walls of Sparta, how strong they were, how massive they were. One day a king came to visit Sparta. He said, "I've heard about the mighty walls of Sparta, but I see no walls. Where are they?" And then the king of Sparta pointed to his well-disciplined troops, his men, and he said, "There they are. These men are the mighty walls of Sparta." And even so Jesus Christ would point to you and I, saying, "These are the stones of the building that I am building. They are the living stones." It simply means we share his life, we share his strength. The life and strength that exists in Christ exists in us. Christianity is the only belief system or, if you prefer, the only religion where the life of the One we worship becomes our life. Do you ever hear of anyone being in Buddha? in Confucius? in Muhammad? Yet, repeatedly the New Testament says you and I are "in Christ." "When Christ who is our life shall appear, we will appear with him in glory." Or as Peter writes in his second letter--if by God's grace we ever get to it. In Second Peter, chapter 1, he says, "He has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, whereby are given to us," he continues, "great and precious promises"--here it is, listen--"that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature." We come to him and we become like him, sharing the nature, the life, and the strength that is in Jesus himself. Look back at verse 5, he continues, "As living stones, are being built up a spiritual house." Now, think of everything we've heard just so far. We're built upon the foundation Jesus Christ. He sets the angles. He gives the direction. And he's all about building people up. You know, God isn't all about property and all about temples. I hope you know that. "Well, is this the right temple? Is this the right place we can put God in?" God doesn't care. Stephen said to the Sanhedrin, and Paul said to the men and women of Athens, "For the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands." But he does build up people, and the point that Peter is making is that this is a spiritual house. In verse 9, "You're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people." Verse 10, "Who once were not a people but now you are the people of God." God is far more concerned with building up people than us building properties. That's why in Hebrews 3:6, "Christ as a Son over his own house, whose house we are." First Corinthians chapter 3 verse 9, "You are God's building." So God builds up his kingdom by using people, and he's not done yet. If you ever want to go to an interesting house, go to San Jose, California, and check out the Winchester Mystery House it's called. The story is; is that Sarah Winchester who is the heiress of the Winchester rifle group in the late eighteen hundreds she inherited $20 million. That's an enormous amount at any time, but back then it was huge. So she took her money and went west to San Jose, California. And she was very superstitious, and a medium told her that if she continued building a house that she would never die, she'd have eternal life. For the next thirty-eight years, twenty-four/seven she hired something like thirty-six different building crews to build a house that eventually took up six acres, just the house. It had six kitchens inside of it, forty stairways, many that led to nowhere, because--"Just keep building, just build." And rooms were added, and hallways were added, ten thousand windows, one hundred and sixty rooms, and the house was never finished. So think of this house, this spiritual house that God is building, though with a different motivation than Sarah Winchester, as not being done yet. Every time a person comes to Christ, another stone is added, God adds another hallway, another staircase, another room. His building program continues. It's a spiritual house. And notice it has a holy priesthood--see the analogy?--offering up spiritual sacrifices. Okay, so the analogy is that of the temple that was in Jerusalem that Peter had seen with his other buddies and with his Lord. And now he says we're a "spiritual house," we're a "holy priesthood," to offer up spiritual sacrifices. I want you to understand the point he is making. He's saying we don't go to the temple, we are the temple. We don't come through a priest, you are those priests. And it's a spiritual house, and we have access like a priest, but also a responsibility to be holy like those priests. I have a question: What kind of spiritual sacrifices would you and I be offering? Can you think of any? Well, one, the most important one is you. You sacrifice your bodies. Romans chapter 12 verse 1, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your body a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service." So, basically you say, "God, here. Here are my hands and my feet and my mouth--they're yours. I sacrifice them for your purpose." That's a living sacrifice. Now, a living sacrifice is always harder than a dead sacrifice. A living sacrifice has the tendency to want to squirm off the altar. "Lord, I give you my life," the next day, "I'm not sure about that commitment." Get back on the altar. It's a living sacrifice. You live it out. Another sacrifice is praise. Hebrews 13 verse 15, "Let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of our lips," the writer said. How is praise a sacrifice? Simply this way: there's sometimes you don't feel like worshiping. You don't feel like saying, "God, you're awesome. I trust you. I believe you." That's when it's a sacrifice--you do it anyway. It's a sacrifice, a "sacrifice of praise." Good works, sharing with people is also a sacrifice. Hebrews 13 verse 16, "Do not forget to do good and to share, for which such sacrifices God is well pleased." Fourth, another sacrifice would be when we give financially to God's kingdom, his work. Philippians, chapter 4, Paul speaks of their giving as "an acceptable sacrifice" that is "well pleasing to God." So, we're a spiritual priesthood in a spiritual house with spiritual living stones being built together solidly on the cornerstone which is Jesus Christ. And it's a wonderful endeavor, but it's also a messy one, because God is in the business of building us all up. And you know what? You and I don't always agree on everything, do we? We don't always get along on every theological issue. And, yet, he builds us up together. Do you know that you're going to be in heaven with people you disagree with, and that God reserves the right to use people who don't agree with you on every issue? I know that bothers some. I know that's one of the reasons people say, "I'm leaving this church and going to that church." That's fine, until you find people at that church that don't agree with you either. But one day we're all going to be in heaven together if we trust the Lord Jesus Christ. That's just what the family's all about. Every family has people who are different. There's loud ones and quiet ones in your family. There's morning people and there's night people, but they're all part of the same family. Even among the apostles there were arguments. Between Peter and Paul there were disagreements. And so it is in the church. There's premillennialists, and there's amillennialists, and there's people who are just sort of confused about the whole thing. There are people who believe in a pretribulation rapture, there are--I call them Post Toasties.[laughter] There's fuzzy fundamentalists, and kooky charismatics, and God puts us all together and builds up his house. And I'm glad he's the one building. So, there's the basis, there's the building, and, third, there's blueprints. And my dad always used a set of blueprints in his buildings and so does God. And Peter refers to those in verse 6, "Therefore it is also contained in the Scriptures." Those are the blueprints. And he quotes three of them in verse 6, 7, and 8. He goes back to the Old Testament and he goes, "Look, this building that we're a part of didn't just sort of come up haphazardly and instantaneously, it's built upon the blueprints of what God said in the Old Testament." And he mentions three texts out of the Old Testament that speak of this building, or of this stone, or of this cornerstone. In other words, what Peter wants us to know is that the building enterprise that God is all about has been passed through the building commission of heaven, and come through the architect, God, into the hands of the Old Testament prophets. God spoke about it and here we are enjoying it. And these are the Scriptures, the blueprints of Scriptures. Now, let's close with two builders. I want you to notice this here. There's two builders that are mentioned--false ones and the real one--wannabe builders, self-appointed builders, but then the real builder, which is God. Verse 4, "Coming to him as to a living stone," look at this, "rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious." Go down to verse 6, "Therefore it is also contained in Scripture," going back to the blueprints, " 'Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame.' "He continues the thought, verse 7, "Therefore, to you who believe, he is precious; but to those who are disobedient, 'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.' "So, first of all, there's these wannabe builders. What Peter has in mind, no doubt, is the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Sanhedrin two thousand years ago, the caretakers of this religious system who were the self-imposed builders of God's work on earth. And the picture that he uses is that they had sort of like a measuring line. They took out their measuring rod, the measuring instruments of their own religion, and they surveyed Jesus Christ and his claims as Messiah. They checked out Jesus as possibly being the cornerstone, but they took out the measuring implements of their religion, and they assessed the suitability of Jesus Christ. And they decided, "Reject him. He's not qualified to be the cornerstone. He's not qualified to be the Messiah." He didn't pass their calculations. Nothing was more abhorrent to those Jewish leaders than the idea that Jesus Christ would be the cornerstone that God would build everything on. They rejected him. And what they did two thousand years ago, people still do today. They look Jesus over, they think about him, and then most people reject him as being the One that they should build their lives upon. They'll build their lives on something or someone else, some superstar, some rock star, some ideology, some religion, but not Jesus. So he's rejected, which leads me to this to just surmise: Why should I care about what the world out there thinks about me? I mean, they didn't get Jesus right; they rejected the most important one God sent. They kicked him out. They rejected him. So why do I care what they think about me? Their opinion holds no value at all. They didn't get the most important one right. But then there's the real builder, that's God. Verse 4, "But chosen by God and precious." "And to you who believe," he continued in verse 7, "he is precious." You see, what Peter wants us to know is that God also had a measuring line. God also examined Jesus according to the measurements of his own perfection. And God looked over the cornerstone and said, "I approve. It's perfect. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He passed that test. There were two men who went to the Louvre, the museum in Paris, and looked at this classic work of art, this beautiful painting. And as they stood in front of it, one man said to the other, his buddy, "I-I-I don't get it. I don't get much out of that work of art." A curator overheard them, and walked up to them, and said, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but that painting is not on trial, you are. This painting has already passed the muster of value; the world has already assessed this as being valuable. All you are doing is showing the adequacy or the inadequacy of what you think of it. But it's not on trial, you are." So, Jesus came and the leaders and the people rejected him and they wanted him crucified. They got rid of him. That's why Peter would stand up in Acts, chapter 4, and say to those very people these words: "Let it be known to you that Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that's why this man whom they healed stands before you whole." Peter continued, "This is the stone that you 'builders have rejected, but has become the chief cornerstone.' "In other words, you might have rejected him, you might have rejected that stone, but God did not, and he proved his approval by the resurrection. That's what this means. There was a young teacher teaching her class. And there was a group--there were young kids in the class. And this young schoolteacher, she was an atheist, and she felt compelled to let her students know. She said, "I'm an atheist." She announced that to her class, "I'm an atheist." And then she said, "How many of you are atheist?" Well, these are little kids; they really didn't understand the concept of atheism. So, they just wanted to please the teacher, and, like fireworks, shot their little hands up, except for one little girl named Lucy. She wouldn't raise her hand. Teacher said, "Lucy, what's wrong with you?" She goes, "I am not an atheist." "Oh, you're not? Well, what are you?" Lucy said, "I'm a Christian." "Oh, you are?" said the teacher. "Why are you a Christian?" And she said, "Um, well, I was raised to love Jesus in my home, and my mommy is a Christian and my daddy is a Christian, so I'm a Christian." Teacher got angry and she says, "Well, what if your mommy was an idiot and your daddy was an idiot? What would that make you?" And she said with a smile, "An atheist." [laughter] So, just because the world at large looks at Jesus Christ and says, "Not for me. I'm rejecting him. I will not build my life upon him," to us he is precious. And he sets the angles, and he sets the direction, and it's a smartest, wisest choice anyone could make. Let's pray. Lord, you gave to this world only one Cornerstone, the foundation stone upon which your whole building enterprise would be staged. You did not give several; you did not give one among many, but One that is elect, chosen, precious, approved by you, and precious to those who believe. You said in your Word that we should give our bodies as living sacrifice. Said Paul, "It's our reasonable service." It's the smartest thing we could do to build our lives, our stone laid upon the Cornerstone, the only one who has the right angles, the right direction, the right stability, eternal life, adequate strength to build our lives on--all other is sinking sand. Thank you for the solidarity, the solidity, and the magnificence that is Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, I further pray your blessing on this flock for this coming week. I pray that the world's opinion of them would matter less and less, and what you have established would matter more and more. I pray you'd keep them safe as they travel in this snowy weather today, tomorrow. I pray their week would be filled with your joy, with your blessing, and that your Holy Spirit would direct the steps and the lives of each one, in Jesus' name, amen. For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.
