What is the greatest story ever told? I think the answer to that is the story of how God takes a people who are ‘not a people’ and makes them into (what Hosea once called, and Peter now recalls) ‘the people of God.’ It’s what Peter is talking about in these verses and, in a sense, it’s the story of the whole Bible. God is building a church.

A living church! (Not there’s such a thing as a dead church! That would be an oxymoron, if ever there was one).

What have we been doing tonight? We have been praying for each other. Whether silently or audibly, in our prayer meeting we have been lifting each other up before God. Do you understand what that signifies? It’s what the Reformation called, "the priesthood of all believers." There is a communion of saints, what Luther called a communio sanctorum. As one person has said, Luther brought down the communion of saints from heaven to earth! It’s because we are all part of the body of Christ (a slice of the same cake, Luther often said –he must have liked his food, don’t you think!), that we can pray for each other and our prayers are powerful.

It’s important for us to see how Peter introduces us to this idea. How is it that we become living stones built into the church of Christ? And it is as you come to Christ, the living stone.

And we need to pause to ensure that we are really hearing what he’s saying. That you don’t become part of a living church by merely coming to a living church. You become part of a living church by coming to Christ the living stone.

It is all too possible to miss what stares us in the face. We need to see that. It may seem obvious to you, but this is one of the great mistakes that we can make. How do we become part of the church? We are part of a family which believes and we may assume that we are living stones. John 5, "You are searching the Scriptures, but you will not come to Me that you may have life!" There it is! Peter is saying the same thing: my dear friends in Turkey: don’t make the elementary mistake of thinking that coming to a living church is the same thing as coming to the living Jesus Christ. And as he goes on to speak of the living Christ, he gives us one particular test as to how we may be sure that we have done more than come to a living church, we have come to the living church’s living Savior.

Now, as we look at this passage, we see that Peter is talking about two things:

First of all, the identity of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Living Stone; and then he goes on to speak of the role of Christian believers as members of the living Church. Christ-the living stone and believers as members of the living church.

The corner-stone
The rejected-stone
The stumbling-stone
The chosen/precious-stone

And what Peter is doing is giving us the whole story of Jesus in terms of Jesus identity as God’s stone, God’s rock. How God had given him as the corner stone of all his purposes in history to be the Saviour of men and women and set him in a place where he would be a corner-stone. And the word that he uses is not just the ordinary word for stone, but a carefully dressed stone, a chiseled stone, where the mason has worked on it and there it is perfectly fitted for the place he wants to put it. To be the stone that would be the corner stone of the edifice that God intends to build: His church, those called into fellowship and union with Himself through the death and mediation of His Son. And there it stands. And then men and women come along and they look at the stone, and they say, "That is not the stone" They reject it. That cannot be the stone. Actually, the word Peter uses is in a tense that suggests that this is not a casual rejection, but something quite deliberate after testing and scrutiny. They have taken a long, hard look at Jesus and said, "No! We will not have this man to reign over us!" And then they discover that God intends to use this stone for salvation. By the resurrection I show the whole world that this rejected stone is the One God has chosen. It becomes a stone of stumbling to them. Because they disobey the gospel, they find themselves rejected by the stone they had themselves rejected.

Now, you may reject this stone, you may stumble over this stone, but look at what Peter says in verse 8. He’s quoting Isaiah 8:14), and what he says in effect is this: they may stumble and reject this stone, but it was all a part of God’s plan—"to this, they were appointed" he says.

Now why does Peter say that? Had he been reading too much Calvin? That he has this fixation on sovereignty and predestination and just has to get in something here to annoy all those Arminians out there? Of course, not! Peter wants to say something to encourage the people of God! Yes, encourage! They are facing rejection themselves and will suffer even worse things before the decade is over and Peter wants them to know that there is nothing that takes God by surprise, that the theology of Gregory Boyd (who teaches that God does not know the future) just will not cut it whenever trouble comes. Look, even this rejection by the Jews of the Messiah was all foreseen and planned and purposed by God’s all-knowing all-wise providence. And everything that happens to you, everything, everything is part of God’s plan.

We may reject His way, but we cannot reject His plan!

C. S. Lewis, in one of his letters, put it this way: "For all, either willingly or unwillingly, do the will of God: Judas and Satan as tools or instruments, John and Peter as sons." In the end God is glorified in our belief or unbelief. He is triumphant in our obedience or our disobedience.

Remember how Peter talks about this in Acts? God has raised Him up from the dead and made Him the head. Peter here turns to these Christians in Turkey, and to you and me, and says, the real evidence that Christ is no longer a stumbling stone is that you think of Him as the Father thinks of Him: that while to God He is precious and chosen, to you also He is precious and chosen. V.7. To you who believe, He is precious! Not least because He is precious to God (4,6; Isaiah 28:16).

That’s the test. It hangs on this: What does Jesus Christ mean to you? Are you able to finish Peter’s sentence in Peter’s way? Jesus Christ is precious to me. Jesus Christ is so precious to me that nothing else ranks in the value I place on the one the Father has exalted. That’s the real test as to where we are in the relationship both to the living stone and to the living stones. To be able to say: Jesus Christ is precious to me.

I’m so glad I learned to trust thee,
precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;
and I know that thou are with me,
wilt be with me to the end.
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er!
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more!

I can put that in a different way. What would you give up for Jesus Christ? We sometimes sing: "Jesus Christ is all the world to me." Or as soon as I say this, do I find myself saying, Jesus Christ is all the world to me, except…

How marvelous it is to hear all this from Simon Peter! So often Peter boasted, Jesus, you are more precious to me than everything to me than all the world. And you remember how Jesus began to cut him down and say, "Simon do you really love Me more than these? Am I really as precious to you as you have professed?" And Jesus chiseled him to that point that he says here: Jesus Christ has absolute preeminence and honor in my life.

Three things:

Peter is not talking here about a building: bricks and concrete and stained glass windows and blue carpets. They didn’t have any buildings! No, he’s talking about these believers as a corporate entity, coming together as God’s covenant people to worship through the mediation of the one high priest, Jesus Christ. We are being built into a spiritual house. This stone and that stone being placed side by side, shaped and fitted so that God’s house will be glorious.

A little bit of grammar here will help us, I think. Peter uses a verb form in verse 5 that suggests continual coming. He’s not talking about conversion but a constant drawing near to God. And the NASV is more accurate here than the NIV: it’s "and coming to him" (continually), rather than "as you come to him (which may suggests something you do once). As you come to Jesus again and again, something is going on as you do so: God is building you into a spiritual house. It’s not me in my small corner and you in yours. We are being built together, into the same house of God.

He’s not talking about the pastoral staff, or the choir, or the elders, or one or two "holy joes" out there. He is talking about every single person who names the name of Christ and counts him precious. They are to offer spiritual sacrifices to God.

What exactly does this mean? All kinds of things, everything that we are and have are to be offered up to God. But Peter doesn’t leave us guessing, he tells us in the second place what this is.

It’s important for us not to individualize what Peter is saying. Peter seems to be describing what we do when we gather together as living stones to form the temple of the Lord: in our worship we are all like priests carrying the sacrifices of praise and thankfulness into the presence of the majesty on high. We want Him to have everything. We want Him to have all our souls, strength, energy… to bring to Him as we come together into His presence the praise that is His due. We are a great assembly of priests, bringing all our hearts and energies to Him and saying, "Lord, receive our praises because you are worthy of them." Think of how the priests in Joshua took the ark of the covenant which was the symbol of God’s presence, took it into the River Jordan, and how we may reflect the psalmist when he says that God is enthroned upon the praises of His people. It is almost as though we feel the weight of His glory bowing us down; it is glorious to be in His presence.

Henry Lyte, in 1834, wrote what was an almost perfect hymn.

Praise my soul the king of heaven,
to His feet thy tribute bring;
ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who, like me, His praise should sing?
Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him,
Praise the everlasting King.

Angels help us to adore Him;
you behold Him face to face;
sun and moon bow down before Him,
dwellers all in time and space,
Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him,
Praise the everlasting King.

 

For many years, I must say I thought very little of impressionist painters. Van Gogh. The power and brilliance of the art work! The light that shone. Well, Peter is saying something far more important. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When we’ve seen the marvel of the Aaronic benediction: "the Lord make His face to shine upon thee…" we want to trumpet it to the nations and to tell the nations how praise worthy He is. And it’s true of our life together. The language he uses is this: you have been called to declare the attributes, the perfections, the character of Him who called you. The life together is essential to you, so that together you may declare it. The fellowship and communion of the saints. We are built as living stones in this living church, and together, those who have no Bible, can see God reflected in the fellowship! Can you catch something of the marvel of that? That the body of Christ which is the church, reflects something of the perfections of God!! Cf. Ephesians 3 and the multi-faceted wisdom of God in the church" (polipoikolos).

Is this a little anti-climactic to you?
    Priests offering sacrifices,
    heralds offering His praises, and now
    a people to have received mercy.

But that’s the most important thing of all. That is what will show us to be a living church to a dying world. That we are sinners saved by grace. Needy people, who have received the mercy that other needy people need. And it always comes to expression in the lives of people, in that mystery that the world cannot understand: that on the one hand, we are men and women most deeply conscious of our sin and our need, but have been humbled under the mighty hand of God; and yet simultaneously, we are men whose dignity and poise is also characterized by the fact that we have seen the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ. That like Jacob who limped, he limped as a man who had seen the face of God. And had received mercy. Jesus Christ is a many-faceted living stone, beautiful in God’s eyes, and He is building us together into a glorious temple!

Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that infinitely precious!

I'll close with this wonderful story of how Doug Nichols, the International Director of Action International Ministries, made the excellencies of God known in a tuberculosis sanitarium in India in 1967—he was a missionary with Operation Mobilization and got TB. He was in the sanitarium for several months. He tried to give tracts and copies of the Gospel of John away, but no one would take them. They didn't like him and assumed he was a rich American.

At one point, for several nights he would wake up coughing at 2 AM. He noticed a little old emaciated man trying to get out of bed. The man couldn't stand up, and began to whimper. He lay back into bed. In the morning the stench in the ward was terrible and everyone was angry at the old man for not containing himself. The nurse who cleaned up even smacked the old man for making such a mess.

The next night the very same thing happened. Doug woke up coughing with his own terrible sickness and weakness. He saw the old man try again to get out of bed. Again he couldn't stand, and began to cry softly. Doug got out of bed went over to the old man. The man cowered with fear. But Doug picked him up with both arms and carried him to the bathroom, which was just a hole in the floor, and then brought him back. The man kissed him on the cheek as he put him down in bed.

At 4 AM another patient woke Doug with a steaming cup of tea and made motions that said he wanted a copy of the booklet—the Gospel of John. Through that whole day people kept coming to him and asking for his booklets even though he could not speak their language.

In other words, one way to declare the excellencies of God is to act them out. When we act out the excellencies of God, people will hear them with even greater eagerness. Which is just another way of saying that our identity—who we are—is for the sake of God. God made us who we are to show the world who He is.