The Real House of God
Note: This sermon was preached at the Free Church in Springfield, MO on the occasion of the dedication of their new church building.
I have always been fascinated by building construction. When I was a small child a friend gave me a used Erector Set (probably no one under 40 even knows what that is), and I spent untold hours building bridges and buildings and contraptions of one sort or another. Anytime a house was going up in our neighborhood I would go and watch the workers for hours–from the digging of the hole to the pouring of the foundation to the framing to the finish work. Later, as a teenager I was privileged to have my first real job in Northfield, MN, where I worked for my two cousins who were residential contractors.
In more recent years I have been known to tackle some pretty serious remodeling projects, delighting to see what can be produced by creativity and hard work. One of my unfulfilled dreams is to someday build my own house from scratch.
But how much more exciting and significant is it to watch God building the house spoken of in 1 Peter 2:4-10–a building made without hands and that will last forever! This true house of God is spiritual, built on the Living Stone with living stones. Listen to these 7 verses:
As you come to him, the living Stone‑‑rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him‑‑ {5} 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. {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.” {7} Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,” {8} and, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message‑‑which is also what they were destined for.
{9} But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. {10} Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Those to whom the Apostle Peter addressed this passage would have been struck by his use of familiar terms in unfamiliar ways. House of God, cornerstone, building stones, priesthood, sacrifices, chosen people, holy nation–all these terms would have immediately reminded them of the Jewish faith. The house of God for them was the great temple of Herod in Jerusalem. It had a massive cornerstone plus thousands of huge quarried stones that fit together so perfectly mortar was not even needed between them. The priesthood was powerful and influential, sacrifices were the appointed way to atone for sin, and of course the Jewish people considered themselves a chosen people and a holy nation set apart uniquely to God.
But on closer examination it becomes obvious that Peter is not referring to Judaism at all, nor to any of those familiar symbols of the Jewish faith. With the once‑for‑all sacrifice of Christ on the cross, everything has changed–the old system has passed away and access to God is now by a new and living way.
The house of God is not a Jewish temple made of stones but rather a
living organism consisting of all believers;
the cornerstone is not made of granite but is the living Christ;
the priesthood is no longer inherited but belongs to every Christian;
spiritual sacrifices take the place of animal sacrifices;
and the chosen people and holy nation are no longer definable ethnically but
spiritually.
One of the most important truths you can possibly keep in mind is that this edifice which God has graciously given you is only a tool for ministry, not the ministry itself. The sign outside our facilities in St. Louis does not read, “First Evangelical Free Church,” bur rather, “The home of First Evangelical Free Church.” That’s our way of reminding our people that the church is not a building but a family. And I can think of no portion of Scripture that presses that fact home more clearly than the one before us. It speaks clearly about two indispensable features of God’s building plan: a Living Stone and living stones. Both are introduced in verses 4 & 5; then the Apostle expands upon the Living Stone in 6‑8 and upon the living stones in 9, 10.
The Living Stone
The Living Stone of our passage is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ. We know that because of the sentence immediately preceding our text. In verse 2 we read, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Then immediately we read, “As you come to him, the Living Stone. . .” Furthermore, the OT quotations found in verses 6, 7, and 8 are all from Messianic prophecies about Christ. Jesus, the Living Stone, however, is presented in two sharply contrasting roles: He is the Cornerstone for believers but He is a stumbling stone for everyone else.
He is the Cornerstone for believers. I checked, and this building has a cornerstone, but as a cornerstone it is only symbolic. It holds nothing up and, in fact, it probably wasn’t even installed until after the structure was completed. But in ancient buildings the cornerstone played a much more important role. It was massive and served as the anchor and measure of everything else. It had to be accurately cut and set in the right direction or the entire rest of the structure would be at risk.
Peter borrows the metaphor of a cornerstone to describe Jesus as the foundation of the church. First, He was chosen and laid in place by God (6). Some spiritual leaders appoint themselves; others are picked by people. But Jesus was made the Lord of the Church by God Himself.
Furthermore, as the Cornerstone Jesus was precious, both to God and to those who believe (4,7). This word “precious” in the original means “costly” or “highly valued.” It speaks of the perfect suitability of Christ as the foundation of the church.
Still further, the Cornerstone is completely worthy of trust. It says of Him in verse 6 that “the one who trusts in him will never (an emphatic double negative in the original) be put to shame.”
But Jesus is not a Cornerstone for everyone, but only for those who believe. To everyone else He is a stumbling stone and a rock of offense. In verse 7 it says, “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe . . . He is a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’”
In what sense was Jesus a stone of stumbling? Jesus Christ has always been and always will be a person regarding whom it is impossible to be impartial, objective, and detached. When people pay lip service to Him as a great teacher or ethical example or visionary leader but refuse to commit their lives to Him, they are being either very dishonest or totally ignorant. As C. S. Lewis, long-time Professor of Medieval Literature at Cambridge University, and once an agnostic, wrote,
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, (like) ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.” Later he added, “You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Many, of course, have failed to fall at His feet and call Him Lord. The reason they stumble on the Living Stone, refusing to believe, is not (as commonly thought) because the evidence for His deity and Lordship is insufficient. Verse 8 says clearly, “They stumble because they disobey the message.” They are aware that Jesus makes ethical demands they are unwilling to meet. Their problem is really not intellectual but moral. Unfortunately, their refusal to anchor themselves to the Living Cornerstone means that someday that Stone will crush them. Even some who have been religious, and who assumed they were Christians, will hear those terrible words come from the mouth of Christ, “I never knew you.”
Now so far we have see that the Living Stone, Jesus Christ, is the foundation of the building that God is erecting. But He is not the whole building. There are also what Peter refers to as
The Living Stones
I want us to ask and answer four simple questions about these living stones.
Who are they? Well, their identity is clearly all believers. If you go back to chapter 1, verse 23 you see that Peter is writing to those who have been born again through the living and enduring word of God. The living stones are all those who have been regenerated from their natural state of spiritual death by faith in Jesus Christ. True, some of them are still spiritual babies and desperately need to grow up in their relationship with God (verse 2), but they are still living stones by virtue of the fact they have come to Jesus, the Living Stone (verse 4).
What is the destiny of these living stones? Their destiny is stated in verse 5: “They are being built into the spiritual house of God.” The form of the verb is very important here–it is both present tense and it is passive. The significance of the present tense is that this is a process currently going on; the spiritual house of God is not finished yet, for God continues to add stones to it. The significance of the passive voice is that we are not building ourselves into a spiritual house; we are being built into a spiritual house. The church is God’s building project. Jesus said, “I will build my church.” We do not become living stones in God’s house by personal effort or by ancestry or by luck; nor do we build independently of the living foundation. Rather as we come to Jesus, He places us into the building at just the right place and energizes and equips us for ministry.
What is the nature of these living stones? The answer comes in the form of four expressions in verse 9–all indicating worth and value of a high degree.
1. A chosen people. The Jewish people were God’s chosen people in the OT. If you were not a Jew that didn’t automatically and necessarily exclude you from having a relationship with God, but the Jews certainly had opportunities and advantages no one else had. The Scriptures were given in Hebrew; almost all the prophets were Jewish; the sacrificial system was Jewish; even Messiah was Jewish.
But once Jesus came and fulfilled the Old Covenant through His death on the cross, His followers–of whatever race or tribe or people or nation–became the true chosen people of God, the true sons of Abraham. Secondly, these living stones are …
2. A holy and royal priesthood. We do not call our pastors “priests”, but many of you grew up in Catholic and Episcopal churches and are familiar with the professional priesthood. The priest was a kind of mediator between you and God. He might hear your confession of sin, promise you absolution, consecrate the eucharist, and even give you last rites on your death bed. And while I would not for a moment disparage the pastoral or preaching or counseling ministry of a godly clergyman who may be called a priest, I do not hesitate to tell you that since Jesus died and rose again there is no need for a clergyman to function in a priestly role, for in the spiritual house of God all believers are priests. You don’t even have to go to Seminary! Equal access to God has been opened up and the spiritual red tape has been eliminated.
Furthermore, we all have priestly duties, namely offering sacrifices acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ (verse 5). These sacrifices are not of the animal variety but rather are spiritual in nature, including the offering of prayer, praise, thanksgiving, time, talents, resources, families, and ourselves to God for His purposes. Thirdly, the living stones constitute …
3. A holy nation. At this election time some of us long for a holy nation, as we remember nostalgically when our country had at least a semblance of a godly foundation. But I’m here to tell you that the only holy nation you will ever find on earth is the Church of Jesus Christ. Some of you may be saying, “But I don’t see much holiness in the church.” Unfortunately, there’s some truth to that; the church leaves much to be desired, but we must understand that there is both a positional and practical holiness in the Bible. The word “holy” literally means “set apart for God’s use,” and in that positional sense the Church is perfectly holy. But there is an ethical counterpart to that kind of holiness that we must also strive for, which Peter addresses later in verses 11 and 12: “abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.” God longs to see holiness in His Church–a practical holiness that matches our positional holiness. Fourthly, the living stones are …
4. A people belonging to God. The KJV was a marvelous accomplishment of biblical scholarship, and the English language will probably always be indebted to it. But every once in a while it delivered an unfortunate translation, either because the text was misunderstood or because the language changed. Here in verse 9 is one of those places. It translates this phrase, “a peculiar people.” Frankly, I have known some pretty peculiar Christians, but that is not what Peter has in mind. Strange or not, we are a people owned by the Living God.
Some things are valuable in their own right. Others are valuable because of who owned them. When we were in Moscow we visited the Armory, an amazing museum right in Red Square. In this building are many of the treasures that belonged to the last Czar and his predecessors, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, etc. There were crowns and jewelry and thrones and dishes and weapons and even carriages covered with so much gold and so many precious stones that the mind could hardly take it all in. I think Russia could probably sell a couple of these items and pay off their national debt. These items are intrinsically valuable because of what they are made of.
But other things are valuable only because of who owned them. When Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ personal belongings were auctioned at Sotheby’s, her fake pearls sold for $211,500 and JFK’s wood golf clubs went for $772,500. These items were not valuable because they were themselves worthy but because they once belonged to someone famous. I think we as believers are in this category. We are valuable and worthy primarily because of who owns us.
What is our responsibility as living stones? Two are mentioned in the text in verses 11 and 12:
1. To abstain from sinful desires. Here come the ethical demands of holiness we mentioned a few moments ago: “Dear friends, I urge you.” Stop there for a moment. Peter is passionate here. He is saying in effect that in light of all that we are as God’s children, in light of our roles as living stones in a permanent building and our status as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people belonging to God, he has reason to urge us as follows: “as aliens and strangers in the world, abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” Our earthly behavior must square with our divinely provided benefits.
You know, God doesn’t ask us to avoid evil desires because He likes rules or because he’s a killjoy. He does it for our benefit. For unbelievers earth is just a playground, where the flesh is free to romp and run wild. But for believers, earth is also a battleground. It’s the place where we combat the lusts that wage war against our souls. Our second responsibility is
2. To live such good lives that even our enemies notice. Christians are to live holy lives, not onlyfor their own spiritual well‑being but also in order to maintain an effective testimony before unbelievers. The world is watching us, friends. Don’t think for a moment that it makes no difference to unbelievers how we live. Of course, we cannot keep them from treating us disparagingly at times; after all, this world is not our home, and we will always be aliens and strangers in it. But it is possible to live with such honesty and integrity that they will eventually come to see their accusations as lies. Peter writes in verse 12, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds.”
CONCLUSION: It is very important for us to realize that our beautiful new building will only have eternal significance as it contributes to the building of the spiritual house of God. It should be our desire that hundreds of additional stones would come to life as we witness to the fact that Jesus died in the place of lost sinners and they can have new life by receiving Him as Lord and Savior.
It should also be our desire to help those new living stones grow and become equipped so they can be
an integral part of the greatest building‑‑the Church,
being constructed by the greatest builder‑‑God the Father,
designed by the greatest architect‑‑the Holy Spirit,
and established on the greatest foundation‑‑the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for sending your One and Only Son, Jesus Christ, to forgive our sin. Thank you for building us into a spiritual family so we can grow and have our needs met. And thank you, Father, for providing this beautiful facility as a tool for this particular part of the Body of Christ. Bless Jerry and Donna, the rest of the staff, the elders, the deacons, and each one who serves. I thank you that you have many people in this city–some of whom already know You and others who are waiting to hear. May this family of believers be willing and eager to declare the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His wonderful light. In the strong name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
DATE: October 29, 2000
Tags:
Cornerstone
Priesthood