Living Stones (1 Peter 2.4–5)

In 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 4-10, Peter talks about believers being built into a spiritual house, the church. He describes believers as living stones and Christ as the cornerstone. He emphasizes that believers, who were once dead, have become alive through Christ and are now active members of the church. Peter also highlights that Christ is the stone chosen by God and precious to Him. He urges believers to understand that they cannot have Christ without being part of the church, as the two are integrally united. Let us go one more time then to 1 Peter chapter 2 and let us read verses 4 all the way to verse 10. We're going to read the whole paragraph but we are going to meditate this morning only on verses 4 and 5. As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Now to you who believe this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the opportunity you give us to come before you. Thank you for the privilege we have to confess your name to sing praises to you. Hallelujah. Amen. Glory to you. Thank you that you are so wonderful, so kind to us. You have forgiven us through the sacrifice of your Son. You comfort us, you encourage us, you advise us every day through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We pray that we would be sensitive to your tender promptings, not just as you speak to us through the word, but as you speak to our consciences through your Spirit. May we respond in faith and may we, Lord, do that which is pleasing to you. That is our desire. May we bring offerings to you and sacrifices of thanksgiving to you, Lord. And now we pray that your Holy Spirit would speak to us through your word. We would be challenged. We pray that you would soften our hearts to welcome your word without any animosity or disbelief. We pray that we would be humble and obedient. Amen. Verses 4 to 10 of chapter 2 of Peter is about the church. I told you that as soon as verse 13 of chapter 1, Peter already starts giving instructions to us. Verses 13 to 25 of chapter 1, the instructions had to do between you, believers, in relationship to God. How are we to approach God? How are we to live our lives? That actually goes all the way to verse 3 of chapter 2. But now, from verses 4 to 10, he's going to ask, he's going to speak to believers in relationship to one another, in relationship to the church, in relationship to their brothers and sisters. Whether you've realized or not, this entire paragraph, verses 4 all the way to 10, is about the people of God, which the church, which he describes in two ways. He describes them as a temple, or the house of the Lord, he says. And he describes believers, not in two ways, actually in various ways, as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Right now, in the passage we are going to study, the main metaphor, however, is that of a temple, stones that make up of this temple. So, we will spend some time to talk about this. But right now, as an introduction, we want to meditate on verses 4 and 5. As you come to Him to live in a stone rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to Him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. How many of you know that I was born in Peru? All of you, right? Good. I thought some of you might have missed that because of the pristine shape of my English. Peru is known in the world, really, for their food. If you pay attention, if you look at the food channel and those things, every now and then they'll feature something Peruvian because they've won prizes and things like that. Peruvians are very proud of their food, and I think it's pretty tasty. One of my favorite foods in Peru is called pachamanca. Can you say that with me? Pachamanca. Yeah, it's actually, it comes from the Quechua pacha, which means earth, and manca, which means pot. This is perhaps one of the most well-known dishes that came to us from the Incas. One of the most peculiar things about this Peruvian dish is that it is cooked in an earthen oven known as huatia. That comes from Quechua, too. Yeah, what you do is you dig up a hole. So, preparation begins with hidden stones over a fire. Once these stones are burning hot, some of them are placed as a layer at the bottom of the hole, which was previously dug on the ground. So, the first thing you do is you dug up a big hole, and then you leave the hole aside for a while. Then you heat up stones until they're burning, burning hot, and then you use some of them as the first layer at the bottom. Then all the ingredients are placed on top of these stones, and then they are once again covered with the remaining stones, thus creating the earthen oven. Now, some of you are wondering, wow, that sounds not so clean. The ingredients are protected from contamination by leaves, often banana leaves or corn husks, a lot of corn husks, which are placed in between the stones. So, once you put the hot stones, you cover it with leaves, with either banana leaves, all around, everything. You actually make kind of like a wall or corn husk and all of that. And on top of that, you put the meat, which is all kinds of meat. You can put pork, beef, lamb, alpaca, everything. Then you put potatoes, sweet potatoes. Then you put something called habas, which is like a big green bean. And you put some herbs and seasoning. You've seasoned the meat, of course, with pepper and garlic and all other things. And then you put the whole thing there. You cover it with the stones. And then this oven is opened up after about two hours, and the food is ready. It is amazing. So, if we go on a mission trip and you come with me to Peru, we're going to go eat Pachamanca. It's not cheap, so you're going to have to pay a lot of money. And since I am the one giving you the opportunity to eat it, you're going to have to pay for me, too. It is amazing. As you can see, it's not cheap because it is a lot of work from digging up the hole and then doing the whole thing. Sometimes in a restaurant, people wake up at two in the morning to have it ready by noon for lunchtime. And they're working and all of that. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's good. Now, you might be wondering why am I telling you about this traditional Peruvian food. Well, I am not starting my sermon by talking about Pachamanca simply because it's one of my favorite foods. I don't think you're not interested in what food I like and what food I don't like. I don't think that's irrelevant to you. Rightly so. Well, the reason why I am talking about this particular food is because I believe it provides a beautiful picture of what Peter is going to teach us this morning. You see, in this passage, both Christ and believers in Christ are described as living stones. Christ is Da, with capitals, right? He is Da Living Stone. And we are, as a result of our connection with him, also living stones. He says, as you come to him, Da Living Stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also like living stones, he says. So, we are compared to living stones. Now, when I think of a living stone, I often think of the burning hot stones used to prepare the Pachamanca, which are those, as you can see. Yes, I know just because they have been heated up, that does not mean that all of a sudden, lifeless stones have become alive. That's not the case. However, once these stones have been heated up, they can produce a change in everything they touch. In this case, of course, the uncooked ingredients for the Pachamanca. After two hours, they are fully cooked, ready to be eaten. These ingredients, after having spent two hours with the hot stones, are ready to be enjoyed by their consumers. Now, in our text, believers who were once dead, because of their union with Christ, have become alive. But the point is not so much that they are now alive simply for the sake of living. The point is that as a consequence of this new life, they are now stones of God's temple. They are not lifeless stones. They are living stones. That is, they are active members of Christ's church, of God's temple. This is the point Peter makes in these two verses, actually in the entire paragraph we just read, which may be summarized in two statements. Now, these two statements are important, so if you want to write them down, that's fine. What are these two statements? What is the point Peter wants to make? First, this is not on the screen, but this is the point Peter wants to make. First, when believers come to Christ, they are at the same time coming into the church. That's the theology he wants you to understand. When believers come to Christ, they are at the same time coming into the church. Second, the church has the character of a temple and must therefore fulfill the functions of a temple. Or to put it in a different way, when you come to Christ, you are made an active member of his church. That is the point really. When you come to Christ, you are made an active member of his church. Now, as you can see, there are two key words in this statement and the one you have on the screen. There are two key words. They are actually highlighted there in case you may miss it. The first key word is Christ and the second is church. And the importance of these two words is that you cannot have the latter without the former. And you cannot belong to the former and not be part of the latter. This is extremely important because there is a lot of Christians today who identify as unaffiliated Christians. I believe in Christ. I'm a Christian, but I don't believe in that church nonsense. I've talked with people. They tell me, yeah, I believe Jesus. I love Jesus, but I don't care for the church because there's a bunch of hypocrites there. And I usually respond to these people. You've heard me say this before. I said, well, there's always room for one more hypocrite because we are sinners. That's right. I have no doubt that there are hypocrites in the church. We're sinners. But you need to understand this. You cannot have Christ and just ignore a relationship with the church. You can't. Both are integrally united. And this is the theology of Peter. This is the reason why Christ is the cornerstone of the church, which Peter equates to the holy temple of God. And this is my first point of the sermon, as you can tell. That Christ is the cornerstone of the church is made very clear by Peter in verse 6. Where among other scriptures, the apostle quotes Isaiah 28.16. Where it is stated that the Messiah was going to be God's cornerstone. That is the most important stone in God's building. I am not going to spend time examining this passage. This will take place next week. Today I will concentrate only on verses 4 and 5. But let me read the quotation from Isaiah, verse 6. For in scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone. And the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. Then he quotes another passage. Now to you who believe this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall. It is clear then that for Peter, Christ is the cornerstone of the church. This is clear. And it should be clear for you as well. In other words, Christ is the most important stone in God's building. However, before Peter elaborates on this notion of the cornerstone, which is in verse 6 we just read, he says two other things about this stone, whom we know is Jesus Christ. And we must take some time to look at these two things he says. Before we go and talk about the cornerstone itself, the first thing Peter says in this passage, or the first thing that he says in this passage, is that Christ is the living stone. He doesn't identify yet as a cornerstone in verse 4. He'll do that in verse 6. He begins, As you come to Him, the living stone, he says. Before he even explains to us what he means by calling Jesus the cornerstone, he refers to Him as the living stone. As you come to Him, the living stone. Now this is an interesting metaphor, because if there is one thing stones are not, it is living entities. It doesn't. In nature, stones are lifeless objects. You don't believe me? Go to the lake or to the beach and get one stone, and why don't you talk to it through the night? It might comfort you as you go to sleep. Good night. Hi. You can paint it, you can put little eyes. I can assure you it will never talk to you. And if Wilson, the football is not enough, the soccer ball, get a stone. Maybe it will be better than Wilson. Yeah, stones are lifeless objects. Yet, and that's why I think it's important that we pause before we go right straight to the cornerstone, and we try to understand why Peter does this. Peter's not stupid. He's not dumb. He knows stones are lifeless. But there is a whole theology here, profound. It has to do with the temple. Some people don't like to read the Old Testament. Oh my goodness, you really need to study the whole importance of the temple in the Old Testament. Everything in the Old Testament revolves around the temple or the tabernacle. If you are knowledgeable of that Old Testament passage, this text will make better sense to you right now. But if not, I'm going to do my best to help us. Okay? He calls Jesus a living stone. In other words, Peter is mixing metaphors. He's using living entities or a noun that refers to living entities to qualify a lifeless entity. Why does he do that? Well, because unlike the cornerstone which supported the old temple, which was a dead stone, the stone that supports this new temple, which is the church, you and I. More on this in a few minutes. This stone that supports this new temple is Christ. And He lives forever. But that's the reality. But what's the implication of that? The implication of this reality is that the new temple, which is built upon this living stone, is superior to the old temple in the sense that the new way to approach God is superior to the way which took place under the old temple. It's superior. We are under the new covenant. And the temple language has no change. It's as important. But there's been some changes. Now the cornerstone of this temple is living. Not just the cornerstone, by the way. The stones themselves. Which we will see in a minute. The other implication is that the life of the living cornerstone is transmitted to the other stones of the temple. Again, we'll say more about that in the next point. That is why I said in the introduction, and I say it again, when you come to Christ, you are made an active member of His church. You see, it's lively, not lifeless. It's a living stone. The life of the cornerstone is passed on to the other stones that make up the temple of God. And those stones are those who, in faith, come to Christ. The second thing that is said about the Lord in this passage is that Christ is the stone chosen by God. When you write, there are some things that you have to write, and there are some things that might not contribute to the argument that you want to make, but it's so important that you don't want to, as a writer, you don't want to leave it out, that you put it in parentheses or you write a footnote. Well, that's what Peter does here. He's saying, as you come to the living stone, and that sentence really continues in verse 5, as you come to the living stone, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be holy priests who offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, and he goes, right? But he doesn't want, there is something that interrupts his sentence, that is so important that he doesn't want to leave it out, so he's going to put a parenthesis. Yes, I realize they didn't have parentheses. It's a convention we've invented here, but he puts it there. If he was writing a paper, he would have put a footnote or something, and that's why, if you have the NIV, you have those little lines there. As you come to him, the living stone, and there is, rejected by humans, but chosen by God, and precious to him. The second thing that is said about the Lord in this passage is that he is the stone chosen by God. Peter tells his readers that this living stone, though rejected by humans, was chosen by God, and in fact is precious to him. Here, Peter is paraphrasing Psalms 118, verses 22 and 23. He's quoting the Septuagint, but he's not quoting it verbatim, word by word, he's paraphrasing it, and that's okay. The text in our translations, a little different than the Septuagint, says like this, The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. If you are a conspicuous reader, you might realize that Peter has changed, in his paraphrases, the psalm a little bit, so that it may seem that it says something different. In Peter's paraphrases, he says, Rejected by humans, but chosen by God, and precious to him. The psalm says the stone was rejected by the builders. However, it was chosen by God, it is assumed. But the psalmist then says, and it is marvelous in our own eyes, not in my eyes. You see, in that psalm, it's very likely that this is a word that the congregation is repeating. Because this is a psalm, this is poetry, it's like a psalm. It's like when I read scripture, and I have taught you, learning from other congregations, that when we say this is the word of God, you say, praise be to God. The idea is, it's very likely that when this psalm was sang, this was a line that the congregation said together. Maybe the woman had a part, and the man had a part, but then everybody said together, it is marvelous in our eyes. The congregation speaking. However, Peter, in his paraphrases, says that the stone which was rejected, and there is no doubt that it was rejected by men, because that is the idea. Those are the builders, that what's rejected has been chosen by God, and it is special, precious, marvelous to God. Now, Peter is not being cynical here. He is actually capturing the sentiment of the congregation as they gather in the temple to sing this that represents the voice of God. So, when the congregation says, it is marvelous in our eyes, really they are capturing the sentiment of the whole worship of that moment at the temple. By the way, this was very much sang at the temple. And they are reverberating, if you want to say it that way, reproducing God's voice. They represent God's voice, as they say, it is precious in our eyes. So, Peter is right when he paraphrases it and applies it to God, the Father. The stone which was rejected was chosen by God, and in fact, it is precious to Him. Both in the Psalms and here in Peter, the picture is that of a stone that has been dressed or cut, and it sits ready for incorporation into a building. The builders have considered this stone as being unfit for the task. Even though the stone has been prepared for it, they cannot see that it is the right stone. That is the picture. When you are building an important building, and you need a corner stone, I will show you a picture of a corner stone next week when we look at that passage, it has been cut out for that. But for whatever reason, the builders look at the stone and ask, it is not good enough. No. For whatever reason. Even though the stone has been prepared for it, they cannot see that it is the right stone, but they are wrong. They are wrong. For the stone in question has been approved by the architect. That's what happens with builders. They don't like what architects tell them to do. Talk with Mr. Bill. That's what the architect says, no, no, he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he's going to build it his way. The only reason he can do that is because he's not here today. The architect knows what he was doing. It is precious to him. It is marvelous to his eyes. The precious stone in God's sight is what has come to be the corner stone. The relevance of this thing is that everything our worship in the temple revolves around Jesus Christ, and He is the foundation of it. We are a Christ-centric church. It's not that Jesus is more important than the Father, and Jesus is not more important than the Holy Spirit. Theologically, however, Jesus is the flesh-human connection between the two. It is the expression of God among us. He has revealed the Father. He's the cornerstone. He's living. But cornerstone of what? Of course, I've already betrayed my answer of the temple, but it's worth thinking a little bit about that. With the goal of answering this question, we must now move to the second point of this morning's sermon, namely that believers are joined to Christ to become the holy temple of God. If we set aside for a moment the parenthetical phrase which we examined in the first point, I mean that the stone is rejected and accepted by God, the text reads as follows, As you come to Him, the living stone, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. This complex sentence is the heart of the passage, and of course, of this sermon. In this sentence, there are three very important, and I would even dare say non-negotiable truths concerning the church. The first non-negotiable Christian truth in these words is that when people come to Christ, they come into the church. Let me rephrase this truth in a more picturesque way. If your name is Christian, like the Pilgrim Progress, if your name is Christian, your last name is Church. What's your name? My name is Christian Church. Thank you. Your identity as a Christian is the result of both your union with Christ and with His body, the Church. Just like it would be very odd for a child to bear the neighbor's last name instead of the father's, it is very odd, contradictory, in fact, for a person to call themselves Christians, and yet refuse to have an affiliation to the Church. That doesn't exist, at least not in this verse. I'm not saying, and please understand carefully, I'm not saying that these people who are like that are not Christians. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that it is an anomaly. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have theological support. When people come to Christ, they also come into the church. Peter makes this very clear. Two things in the text shows the truthfulness of this statement. First, according to Peter, individuals who come to the living stone, by their connection to Him in faith, acquire His living nature. Hence, they become living stones. They are not just individual stones that are hot or living, and then they stay somewhere in the property. No. They are together connected to the building. Right? I mean, think of bricks, I guess, is the best thing. I mean, when you have a brick as part of the wall, the idea is to contribute to that building, not to be set aside on the grass there. So, when they come to Christ, and it is important that you pay attention to that word, because he says, as you come to Him. The idea is when you come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, when you believe the gospel, when you come to Him, the living stone, you yourself become a living stone. The life of Jesus goes into you, but that life means that then you are involved in the development and growth of the temple, which means you are involved in the development and growth of other individual stones, and ultimately of the temple as a whole. Hence, And this is the second thing that shows the truthfulness of this first statement. People who come to Christ become the spiritual house of God. They become the spiritual house of God. And I'm going too fast here. Right? When you come to Christ, you are not only joined to Christ, but in a mystic and miraculous way, you are joined to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And that is why I said when you come to Christ, you are made an active member in His church. Together you are the house of God. The second non-negotiable Christian truth in this text is that when the church is gathered, it has the character of a holy temple. We have just read that when people come to Christ, they become or are being built into a spiritual house. But what kind of house is Peter talking about? An individual house? A private home? Well, we already know the answer to that question, of course. The house Peter has in mind is the temple, the house of God. How do we know this? Well, Peter mentions the holy priesthood, spiritual sacrifices. Where do you offer that? In your private home? No, in the temple. There is no doubt that Peter has in mind the temple. But the question relevant to you and to me and to Peter's reader is, what are the implications of this truth? Why is it so important? What are the implications of that? Well, the first and most important implication is that God dwells in our midst. That is why it is of paramount importance that we gather irrespective of what the government says. I don't mean to get controversial here. And I'm not saying that the government has made a mistake in putting restrictions and in helping us to not navigate correctly this dangerous situation. And I am thankful that they've allowed us to gather as long as we follow the restrictions. But the minute the government says, you cannot meet, you cannot meet together because simply I don't like it or whatever, whatever reason they give, I believe we are called to social disobedience. That's the minute we become the catacombs church, the underground church because we are a temple. And God meets, he meets us in this temple. We are his temple. And as we gather, God's presence in our midst has no confinement. The fact that God dwells in the temple didn't mean that he couldn't be anywhere. He's omnipresent. But the idea was that his presence had no confinement. We had closeness to him. There's a difference between the Old Testament and this New Testament. However, in the Old Testament you couldn't meet with him. You went to see, you approached him to get forgiveness, but now we meet with him, we have direct access. He lives and he dwells in us. Another implication is that the church has been purified to content the presence of the Holy God. And this is the difference. In the Old Testament, believers went to the temple. In the New Testament, believers are the temple. The temple was purified in the Old Testament to contain the holiness of God. It had to be made holy. And the people had to come and go through a whole set of rituals. In the New Testament, we are holy as we are gathered together because the very presence of God is in us. This, of course, does not deny the fact that we must continue to be purified. It does, however, emphasize the reality that Jesus' offering is sufficient to reconcile us with God. In Christ, we can enjoy the presence of God without any fear of being rejected. The third and final truth in these verses is that as temple priests, believers approach God through the high priest. As you can tell from reading these verses, believers are not only the stones that compose the building, but also the priests who worked in it. This is nothing unusual. The New Testament writers like to transition from metaphors to other metaphors. If you read 1 Thessalonians, in Peter, believers are both the nursing mothers and the children who nurse. And the fathers, too. They're everything. This is like crazy, but that's what they do. So here, we're not only the temple, but we are the priests who work in the temple. And the transition actually fits nicely, because that's the point of being a temple. The point of being a temple is that we are ready to serve God. That is the point. At the beginning of this sermon, I told you that there were two important truths, and that was the very first one, that we exist as a temple to provide service to God. Their task, believers' task, is to offer spiritual sacrifices. Now, it is important to keep in mind that not all sacrifices are acceptable to God, particularly those offered from wrong motives, and not accompanied by the right attitudes toward God and other people. Check Micah on that, chapter 6. It is also important to clarify that the offerings we offer to God are not offerings for sins. It's not sacrifices for atonement. The sin offering has already been made once and for all when Christ offered himself up at Calvary. Most believers, however, forget that in the Old Testament, there were offerings that had different purposes. Not all of them were sin offerings. Some offerings presented at the tabernacle and later at the temple were meant to have a different purpose. There were thanksgiving offerings, and offerings for fellowship, or fellowship or communion offerings, if you want to call them. So, as temple priests, then, these are the kinds of offerings we bring to God. Some of these offerings are singing praises to God, confessing His name, sharing the goodness of God with others. That's according to Hebrews, chapter 13. According to Romans 12, we are living sacrifices to provide a reasonable worship to God. According to Philippians, some of these offerings that are sweet aroma to God are supporting missionaries and pastors and other things. That's the point. And perhaps the most important part is that we must never forget that spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God are offered only through Jesus Christ, the High Priest. He says, As you come to Him to live in a stone, you also, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We do it through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. What this means is that all who approach God come through the Mediator whom He has appointed. Yes, we are all priests. We can approach God directly, but we do it through the High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ. And only when our offerings are acceptable to Jesus in the first place, it is then that they are acceptable to God. It is through our knowledge of Christ that we know the character of God and what will be pleasing to Him. As I've been saying, when you come to Christ, you are made an active member of His church. In Christ, we become members of His body. And through Christ, we are enabled to offer acceptable sacrifices to God. It is passages like this that make me convince Baptists. You see, my theology of the church beyond names is so high. I think we have very, in modern Christianity, the church and even these temple ritual aspects that we have, it has become unimportant. We should rethink the very fact that the church is compared to the temple in the Old Testament. The theology of the temple in the Old Testament should inform the way we worship today, I believe. We should rethink our view of the local church. If you're one of those Christians that think that you just come here to, I don't know, to be encouraged, to be entertained, whatever, you have missed the point of being a living stone in the body, energized by the living stone itself. How involved are you in the lives of your brothers and sisters in Christ? How committed are you to the goals of the church? And I'm not just limiting this to the local church. Of course, Peter is talking about the universal church, but the universal church has its expression in the local church. There's no universal church without local churches. How are we involved with one another? You need to think about that. I cannot stop emphasizing the value and the importance that the church has for God. In fact, I believe that the church is the most powerful institution that God has established in the face of the earth to fulfill his purpose. In fact, he's gone through the pain of fashioning, as the architect, the most beautiful corner stone to put as its foundation. Let us pray. Dear God, thank you for your word and for your mercy. Thank you that you have made us living stones, like those burning hot stones that transform everything they touch with their heat. Transform us and use us to transform others in this community, that we would serve one another, that we would love one another, that we would consider others as superior than ourselves. And as we do, may we be energized by the Lord Jesus, by your Holy Spirit. And may we be able to offer you pleasing sacrifices through him. Amen.