Christ the Cornerstone
Download MP3If you would, turn to 1st Peter. I'm not going to talk terribly long tonight. 1st Peter chapter 2. And actually, I I think you have more of that in your worship guide, but we're gonna begin reading in verse 1. So put away malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy and all slander.
Joel Brooks:Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up to salvation, If indeed you have 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 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 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.
Joel Brooks:They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Pray with me. Lord, we ask in this moment that you would open up your word that it would not just be black words on white pages. Lord, through Your Spirit, these these words we read become alive in Jesus, we would hear You calling us. You writing these things on our heart.
Joel Brooks:Lord, I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but may Your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I grew up going to church. Actually, I grew up a lot in a church building.
Joel Brooks:I was there every Wednesday night for church supper, for choir, for, royal ambassadors. I was there every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening for our worship service. And I was there usually early during those times because my mom was the church organist, And so I was I was just always at the church. The building itself became my playground. Just like after the service here, kids go nuts, if you haven't noticed.
Joel Brooks:Parents, guard. They will want to jump in this afterwards. But, you know, after every service, kids are always jumping into baptismal. They're, they're climbing up different places or going underneath the pews. That was me as a little kid, but, I always took it to the extreme.
Joel Brooks:I was just so bad, and sometimes my mom is a church organist. She'd see me. Like, she didn't trust me, whatever I was doing in the pew, and she would call me. Like, you come in the middle of service. You you're gonna sit next to me by the organ.
Joel Brooks:And so I would sit next to her, and I I remember one time as people are singing, and she's not paying attention to me, and I'm behind like one of these little barrier things there. And, and so I got a dime, and I started undoing one of the vents. And I and I unscrewed the vents, and I crawled underneath the stage to the church, and I went underneath to where the pastor was when he started preaching, and I started scratching and knocking under his feet. But so so that was me. I mean, I just I grew up in a church building, just loving it.
Joel Brooks:But I knew that church was more than a building. As fun as the building was, I knew it was more than that. I knew that church was made up of, singing hymns. It was listening to the preacher. And of course, church was the people.
Joel Brooks:And to this day, I remember all the different personalities that were part of the church that I grew up in. I remember that the amen man, 3 quarters of the way back on the right side. Whenever the pastor needed something, he looked that way, he got it. Amen. I remember the, the the lady who sang soprano, front row.
Joel Brooks:She couldn't sing a lick, but she thought she could. And she sang louder than anybody, and everybody would just look at her. She thought she was amazing. I I remember during our, called conferences that we had after church, the I don't even know the man's name. He just always had moved the motion to be received.
Joel Brooks:And that is what he said every single time, and that's what I knew him as as the moved the motion to be received man. And so all these little personalities, I I still vividly remember, from growing up in church. And so I knew a church was hymns. It was teaching. It was part of people.
Joel Brooks:And I thought I had a pretty full picture of what church was. Yet I really didn't understand what it was. I really didn't understand what church was until probably when I was in college, and I started studying through 1st Peter. And I came upon this text, and this text here, so shaped the way that I view church. It was life transforming for me.
Joel Brooks:We're going to look at just three things that this text says about the church. First, it says that church is the temple of God. 2nd, that we here are living stones that make up this temple or this spiritual house. And 3rd, Jesus is the foundational cornerstone. Look at those three things.
Joel Brooks:1st, the church is the temple of God. When you look at verse 5, and it says, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house. That spiritual house is a temple. It's what a temple is, a spiritual house. And and what Peter is saying here is found throughout scripture.
Joel Brooks:It's not unique to him. Paul says this in several places. And 1st Corinthians 3 says, do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Ephesians 2 verse 19 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints, members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, and whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Now, the temple. You know, we read these, and it's just like the temple of God. Okay? We become the temple of God, and we shouldn't just breeze by these verses. You need to understand everything that the temple represented in the old testament.
Joel Brooks:Just what the temple meant. The temple was the place that the the glory of God, the kabod, the glory of God, this the Shekinah glory, his presence uniquely dwelled in the temple. You have a picture of this in 2nd Chronicles when the temple was just built and it's being dedicated. So Solomon has just built this, and and here is his prayer of dedication where he prays this. And right after he he prays this prayer, something amazing happens.
Joel Brooks:Leading up to this, he's been making tons and tons of sacrifices. A 153,000 men built this temple, took 7 years. And so in response to this, you had to have some kind of huge ceremony. So they sacrificed a 120,000 sheep. They sacrificed 22,000 cattle, all for this one dedication service.
Joel Brooks:That is 20 sacrifices a minute for 10 hours a day for 12 days. All leading up to this temple dedication. And so Solomon prays, he dedicates, and then we read these words in 2nd Chronicles 7. After Solomon prayed, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priest could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house.
Joel Brooks:When all the people saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord saying, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. And and you read something like that, and you try to picture that, and you think, wow. I mean, I would have loved to seen that. That had to be amazing. Fire coming down.
Joel Brooks:The shekinah glory of the Lord filling the temple. You can't even get in there, because his glory is so thick in that room, in that space. And you just kinda want to be there. You want to be one of them. And yet, they could not fathom the privileges that we now enjoy as new covenant believers.
Joel Brooks:That was their temple, and still they they couldn't even enter in when the glory of God was there. And here Peter, here Paul is saying, you're the temple of the Holy Spirit. God lives in you now. Do you realize this? I mean, it's it's such a huge thing to Corinthians.
Joel Brooks:And that's why Paul is saying, do you not know that you're a temple of the Holy Spirit? I mean, don't you know this? It's pretty amazing. You know, almost every reference to being filled with the Holy Spirit or us being a temple of God, a temple of Holy Spirit, almost every reference to you is plural. You all are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:You all are being built up into a spiritual house. Let's go to the second point. 2nd Peter teaches us that each one of us is a living stone being built up into this temple. Every Christian is a stone It's been made alive. A living stone that makes up the temple of God.
Joel Brooks:This means a lot of things, but let me just tell you one of the things this means. It means that your lives are interconnected with the lives of other believers. When you come to Christ, you are not only joined to him, you are joined to others. You're you're mortared to them, permanently attached to them for all of eternity. You were attached to them.
Joel Brooks:So you're gonna depend on them for stability. They're gonna depend on you. So right here, Peter saying, no one here is called to follow Christ alone. We are interconnected, being built up into a spiritual house. You you are called to join yourself so tightly to a group of people that if you were absent, if you left, there would be a gaping hole in their midst.
Joel Brooks:It'd be obvious. No one here is a living stone that is just kind of thrown out there in isolation by itself. No one. You can't have by church you can't have church, you know, on the hiking trail by yourself. You you can't have church in your car listening to a podcast.
Joel Brooks:That's that's not church. You're also not a living stone that's just been piled together with a bunch of other living stones. Once a week, there's this big pile of stones, all together. And I think that's how a lot of us view church. You know, once a week, it's we we're living stones, but we're all just kinda heaped together where we get to hear some teaching, sing some songs, and then we go our separate ways.
Joel Brooks:And Peter says, no. Not that that's not what a living stone is. That's going to church. That's not being part of a church. It's not being built up into a spiritual house.
Joel Brooks:Peter says, you are not a heap of living stones, but you are being put together into a house by God. So God, the images, he he chose you. He chose you. He picks you up, and he is putting you to be part of a structure in which other stones will depend on their for their stability as well. You will depend on them.
Joel Brooks:They will depend on you. So when you are gone, it should leave a gaping hole in them. And I want you to notice who's doing the building here. God is the one doing the building, not us. We don't get to build what we want in a church.
Joel Brooks:What we want a church to look like. We don't even get to choose who we're joined with. God does this. God's the builder, and this is what makes church different than a country club. It's what makes church different than a fraternity or a sorority, because God is the one doing the choosing.
Joel Brooks:He's the one bringing people in. And now often, he's gonna bring people in whom you have nothing in common, people who look nothing like you. And he's going to join you together. Like, now you 2 are being hooked together, part of a spiritual house. I love the description.
Joel Brooks:It's an obscure verse. It's found in 1st Kings 6, but it's the description of the temple as it was being built. David actually did a lot of the hard work beforehand. He he made all the supplies and stuff. It was Solomon who built it.
Joel Brooks:And and in 1st Kings 6:7, you read this. When the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry so that neither hammers nor ax nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built. So when this huge structure that took over 7 years to be built was being built, not a single hammer could be heard. All the stones were delivered, already custom made for how it would be put together. Now, why did God choose for the temple of God to be built like that?
Joel Brooks:Not because it was easier. It's because because the temple's all that that was a shadow pointing us to the reality. That was a symbol pointing us forward. It's a sign that points us forward to the church and how God builds his church, in which he's gonna bring people, and you don't get to change them and think, oh, I really want you to be like this. I really you know, you really need to change these things.
Joel Brooks:God's gonna take these people, and he's gonna put you together. He's going to bring people of all different shapes, sizes coming in different skills, different personalities, and he's gonna build a beautiful house. You know, this is how it works in our home groups. Often, we have people come up to us, you know, home groups, community groups. We're really boring in all of our names, if you haven't noticed.
Joel Brooks:We have groups that meet in homes. We're like home groups. And people are like, can can I be in a home group, you know, with like maybe, 25, 26 year olds. Maybe some who just finished school, or then you got others to say, can I be in a home group that, you know, we're just it's just parents, new parents? Can I be in the newlywed home group?
Joel Brooks:And people want to come in and think, can you please place me in a community where everybody is like me? Now now that could work. It actually is a really easy way to grow home groups. It's an easy way to grow a church. I mean, you can have home groups based on interest.
Joel Brooks:We we can have the ultimate Frisbee home group. You know, everybody who loves ultimate Frisbee get together. And the problem is that's your passion. That's the reason you're getting together. God's not building that.
Joel Brooks:Some outside interest is building that. Or if it's all the young new parents, y'all are all gonna come together. Well, great. There's lots lots of natural connections there, but is God building the house? But but when you have different ages, when you have different stages of life, and you're and you're put together in a room, and you're like, I don't remember anything about what it was to be single.
Joel Brooks:And yet, somehow, we're supposed to really love one another and get involved in one another's lives. We're supposed to be connected. God has brought you to this church, and so he is building us up into something. And so you you you begin to let God do that, and then let the world wonder at what's being made. Because you have no other interest than Christ.
Joel Brooks:And that's one of the things we we we strive for in doing our home groups. Not to perfection by any means, but we try. And if I could add, this I know I said 3 points. Can this be a point 2 b? Am I allowed to do that?
Joel Brooks:So this is like, if you're making notes, sorry. I normally don't do the 3 points. So this is 2 b, and that's the priesthood. We're not just being built into a spiritual house. We're being built up into a holy priesthood, and we're gonna look at this a lot more in detail next week, But I want to put a toe in and just say a couple of things.
Joel Brooks:When it says that we are a priesthood in the old testament, when you came, you you delivered your sacrifice to the priest and he did all the work. He did all the preparation. He kind of did all the worship, and you were really kind of a spectator that kind of paid money for the services. And you couldn't really experience, the presence of God. You're you're always kept at a distance.
Joel Brooks:The the temple was where the priests were. And Peter says no more. Paul says no more. Says we we are now priests. So so we we don't we don't hand off our work to another.
Joel Brooks:And let me tell you one of the ways that works into church. You don't come as a spectator. You don't come and think, okay, we've got the professional ministers up there. They're the ones to do the praying. They're the ones to do the singing.
Joel Brooks:There's the ones to do all of this. And so let them put on their show and we can be a spectator. That's not church. We all come to contribute. Make a conscious decision when you come into this place, and get to know somebody.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna try to find out what some of the prayer needs are. I'm gonna find a way to encourage somebody in this place. I'm going to connect my life with them. I'm not gonna just come and sit and ask for a show to be put on. That's not what being a priest is.
Joel Brooks:We'll look more at that next week. Finally, Peter teaches us that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. Look at verse 7. 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. The cornerstone.
Joel Brooks:Peter's quoting here from Psalm 118. He he likes to quote from here. He's used it in sermons. Jesus quoted from Psalm 1 18 saying that he was this cornerstone as well. It's a very foundational text for both Peter, for the apostles, for Jesus.
Joel Brooks:It's a foundational text about Jesus being the foundation. And one of the things I want you to notice here is everybody's building. Everybody's building out now. There's some builders who reject this stone, and there's another builder who's going to accept this stone, but everybody is building. And Peter saying is, everybody is is building their lives on some foundation.
Joel Brooks:They're looking around for foundational stones. Is it is it gonna be, you know, is is it gonna be the right neighborhood? Is it gonna be in having children? Is it gonna be in finding the spouse? What's gonna give meaning to my life?
Joel Brooks:What's that foundational stone? You're always building something. And Peter says, your foundational stone is Jesus. That's what a cornerstone is. A cornerstone was the was on the corner and it was what set the entire foundation right.
Joel Brooks:You line that up and the building would be strong. Jesus is that foundation. If you don't know what your foundation is, ask yourself, what are the things that stress you? Causes you a great anxiety or fear. What do you constantly think about all the time?
Joel Brooks:What do you dream about? That's usually what your foundation is. There's a temptation, I've shared this before, but there's a temptation, especially for husbands, to be like Elkanah. He he was in first Samuel. If you remember the story, he had a wife, Hannah.
Joel Brooks:She couldn't have kids. She's basically, like, give me kids or I'm gonna die. And so kids were her foundation. She had to have kids to be somebody. And then Elkanah, this good husband, comes up next to her and he's like, no, no, no.
Joel Brooks:Don't you know I love you more than anybody else? Let my love be your foundation. But you know what, he'll fell at some point. It's just another that's just another false foundation. It's it's another sinking sand.
Joel Brooks:And how easy it is. I know this. I feel this all the time as as a husband with my wife. And maybe the the finances are somewhat hard, and I'll be like, hey, trust me. I'll get us through this.
Joel Brooks:Trust me. And I should be saying, trust God in this. Let's trust Jesus. Let's get on our knees and let's seek him about this. We think about things like, you know, what about, you know, the education of our children?
Joel Brooks:Where we live? How are we gonna make this work? I'm like, hey, don't worry. I'm gonna come up with something, honey. Trust me.
Joel Brooks:Let's trust the Lord. He is the cornerstone in which every aspect of our life is to be built on him. Nothing excluded. But we also remember that he was the stone that was rejected, and that's gonna bring us to this table here. The stone that was rejected.
Joel Brooks:When Christ came, he was rejected. He was broken for us. I find it interesting that Psalm 118, which is quoted here, was a Psalm that was sung during the slaughtering of the lambs during Passover. They they were already just singing about the stone that would be rejected. And yet, so many still miss Jesus.
Joel Brooks:But we remember Him now. We remember Him in this place. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. He said, this is my body broken for you. In the same way he took the cup, and he said, this cup is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of many.
Joel Brooks:This is the cup of the new covenant. Paul would say, as often as we eat this bread, we drink drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. We proclaim the cornerstone that was rejected. The cornerstone in which we build our entire lives on. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, you're the cornerstone. May we build our lives on you. May there not be a part that is excluded. And Jesus, through the power of your holy Spirit, will you make us into a beautiful spiritual house in which your spirit blows in our midst, in which our lives are so interconnected with one another. Lord, through your spirit, make that happen.
Joel Brooks:We remember you now, Jesus, and we rejoice in your work. In your name we pray. Amen.
