The All-Important Stone Part II 1 Peter 2:4-12

We started 1 Peter back in late June and today we find ourselves in 1

Peter 2, verses 4 -12. What I'm going to do is

I'm going to begin by reading the text. Last week we did part 1 of these verses, 1

Peter 2, 4 -12, and today we're going to be looking at part 2.

So if you'd follow along with me, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to 1 Peter 2. 1

Peter 2, verses 4 -12. 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, they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are

God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak evil against you, they may see your good deeds and glorify

God on the day of visitation. So here's our big idea for this two

Sunday sermon on 1 Peter 2 verses 4 -12.

The big idea is this, this is what it's calling you to do, what this text is calling you to do. Know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response.

Jesus is the stone that demands a response.

And there's four ways how in these verses. We saw the first two ways how last

Sunday. The first way how is by receiving rejection from the world. And what we saw one week ago is that most of the world rejects the stone, the living stone, the cornerstone.

Most of the world rejects them. And this is not just true of Jesus Christ. This is true of all prophets down through history.

Going back to Moses, Moses was rejected three times by the people of Israel as he led them out of Egypt into the

Promised Land. And Moses is a type of Christ. So Moses' experience is similar to that experience that the

Messiah would experience. And of course when Jesus came 2 ,000 years ago, what happened is that he was largely rejected by the

Jewish people. The Jewish leadership rejected him. In fact, they were the ones who delivered Jesus up to the

Romans to be crucified. So the first way that he is the stone that demands a response is that the response that he got from the

Jewish leaders and the response he gets from most of the world even in our day and down through history is a response of rejection.

The second way how you were to know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response that we saw one week ago is by receiving delight from the

Father. And this is so important. So the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus.

Most of the world rejects Jesus. But at the end of the day, there's only one opinion that matters.

His Father does not reject him. His Father delights in him.

And the second half of verse 4 says this. In the sight of God, he is chosen and precious.

He is the true king of the world. He is precious to his Father. And now we're going to see the people whom he's also precious to in the third point.

And the third point is this. So know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response. And the third way how is by welcoming people built on him as the foundation.

And we're going to see this in verses 5 through 7 and verses 9 through 10. So I just mentioned that not everyone rejects the living stone.

The Father does not, nor does every fallen sinner. And this is what we must understand is that everyone who is born into this world is born a sinner.

We are sinners by nature and by choice. Romans 3 .23

says that for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So we're all born in this world rejecting

Jesus. At some point along the way, people have the opportunity to believe in him as the gospel, as the good news is preached to them.

And the good news, of course, is that Jesus came into this world on a rescue mission to save sinners.

He came 2 ,000 years ago. He died on the cross for our sins. He rose gloriously from the dead.

And everyone who believes in Jesus has their sins forgiven. His righteousness becomes their righteousness.

And they have eternal life. This is the story of the Bible. This is the Bible in a nutshell, everything

I just said to you. Jesus came into this world to save sinners.

So not everyone rejects him. And we see this. 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. Not everybody just goes to heaven.

Faith. Faith alone in Jesus. And those who believe in him will not be put to shame.

So what we learn in verse 5 is that those who follow Jesus are joined with him. Scripture describes his followers as the church.

The church is not a building. The church is a people.

Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

To be a member of Christ's church means that you believe in Jesus. And there's people like this all over planet earth.

Every corner of the earth there's people who believe in Jesus. And every one of those people is a member of what is called the universal church.

But how do we find these people? We find them in places like this.

Local churches. The local church makes the invisible church visible.

We see people who are alive in Christ. You believe the Holy Spirit's been given to you.

You have this life in Christ. You've been born again. And so you are found in a local church.

And what Peter writes is that whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. This is once again a prediction from the

Old Testament. Peter is quoting Isaiah chapter 28 verse 16.

They needed to hear this in the first century. That whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Why did they need to hear this? They needed to hear this because we need to understand how

Jesus died. He was humiliated. He died the most humiliating death possible.

He died a criminal's death on the cross. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 118,

I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God to those who believe.

Even though the cross was Jesus' humiliation, the power of God is shown through it since through his death and resurrection,

Jesus conquered sin, Satan, and death. And through his saving work, he gives you eternal life.

You are not to be ashamed of being a follower of the suffering Messiah. He is the one you want to be allied with.

Through his death, he is the conqueror. And one day he will reign in power. To believe in Jesus means that you are not throwing away your life like the rest of the world.

Because this is the meaning of life. People ask that. What is the meaning of life? Jesus Christ and him crucified.

That is the meaning of life. Now the beginning of verse 7 describes something special about humans all over planet

Earth who do not reject Jesus like the Jewish leadership did and most of the world does, but ally themselves with him.

What Peter writes is that the honor is for you who believe. The Greek word means value.

The value is for you who believe. The New American Standard version of the

Bible brings this out. This precious value then is for you who believe.

As one author writes, this benefit is the joy of loving Jesus. Far from shame, to believe in Jesus is the most joyful thing possible.

Just as the Father knows his precious value, so everyone who believes in him also understands how precious he is.

Now verse 6 mentions that those who believe in Jesus are believing in a chosen and precious cornerstone.

There is a very close attachment, a very close connection between believers and their

Lord. The church, that is, the community of believers, is made up of believers from every tribe, tongue, and nation who believe in Jesus since the time he ascended to heaven 2 ,000 years ago.

At Eureka Baptist, as I mentioned already, we are a local expression of the universal church.

Verse 4 describes Jesus as the living stone. Verse 5 describes him as the cornerstone.

And verse 5 also describes his followers as living stones that are being built up as a spiritual house.

Now you can see why we sang what we have the last two Sundays. Last Sunday we sang The Church is

One Foundation. This morning we sang Christ the Solid Rock. Now The Church is

One Foundation, what we sang last Sunday, is a song written in the 1860s by Samuel John Stone, a pastor in the

Church of England, and a poet. And the first stanza of the song says

The Church is One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water and the

Word. From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

There are several metaphors given in Scripture concerning Jesus' intimate relationship with his church.

In John 15, the relationship is described as Jesus being the vine and the church being the branches.

In Ephesians 5, Jesus is described as the bridegroom, while the church is described as the bride.

Here in 1 Peter 2, verses 5 and 6, Jesus is described as the cornerstone, while his followers are described as stones being built up as a spiritual house.

Peter is describing Jesus in such a way that prophecies described him long ago.

We've already looked at several prophecies of the Old Testament in the Psalms and Isaiah. Earlier I quoted

Isaiah 28 .16, and I focused on the part where those who believe in him will not be put to shame.

But now we're looking at the first part of this prophecy where Isaiah writes that the Lord is laying a stone in Zion.

Why Zion? What is Zion? Zion is another way of saying

Jerusalem. But what Isaiah predicted in Isaiah 28 .16

and what Peter is echoing here is intended to be figurative. Sinai in Galatians 4, verses 24 -26 and Hebrews 12, 18 -23 symbolizes the old covenant.

The old covenant was never meant to save anyone because no one could truly keep the law.

And this is a question we ask people who are about to be baptized. Can you earn your own way to heaven?

The answer is no. You cannot. You cannot.

It is only through the finished work of Jesus Christ. Jesus paid it all.

All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

So Zion symbolizes something different than Sinai. Sinai is the old covenant.

Zion is the new covenant where Jesus earns your salvation for you which comes through faith.

I know you're probably saying, okay, well, is it that simple? It is.

But you must understand this. When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are completely transformed.

You become a new person. If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. You have new works that are produced in you.

The Spirit enters your life. You actually live differently. You don't live like the world.

You start to live like a different person. You love God's law where before it was a burden.

And you felt like you had to keep it just to go to heaven. Well, now you say, you know what? He is my treasure.

I want to follow Him. You understand that this is the path of joy. So what happens is that anybody who truly believes in Jesus has good works.

And this is accomplished through the new covenant when Jesus shed His blood at Calvary.

Now as we read that the Lord is laying this stone in Zion, He's not just any stone, but the cornerstone.

And once again, Isaiah 28 16 says that He is chosen and precious and everyone who believes in this cornerstone will not be put to shame.

So why is Jesus described as the cornerstone? We've been building up to this over the last two

Sundays. Foundations in ancient times had what was called a head corner and is translated into English as a corner stone and sometimes the cap stone.

It was a very strong stone placed on the four corners of a building upon which the rest of the building would be built.

It was on these corner stones that the entire building depended. As I mentioned in the introduction last

Sunday, it does not matter how well built the rest of the building is. It doesn't matter how good it looks.

What matters is the foundation. The foundation must be strong for the building to be upright.

For the building to be long -lasting. I remember when we came to the church six and a half years ago,

I asked Sean, our head deacon, about the soundness of our church buildings.

And the first thing he told me is that the foundations are sound. I said, okay, we're good. We can do a remodel then.

We don't have to condemn the building. And when it comes to the church, the body of Christ, Jesus is the most important part.

Without Him, there is no church. He is the part on which everything else depends.

Just like in the vine and the branches analogy in John 15, you cannot have branches without the vine.

In the same way, you cannot have a house or a building without a sound foundation. Jesus is not just any foundation.

He is the firmest foundation upon which the entire community of believers is built.

Every other foundation a person builds on is faulty and will ultimately collapse. As the song we sang this morning says, on Christ the solid rock

I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. When you believe in Christ, you are being built up on the sturdiest of foundations.

Last week we looked at this in chapter 2, verse 2, where Peter writes, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.

When you believe in Jesus, what happens is that the Spirit makes you like Jesus. As Peter writes again in verse 5, you are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

We are a holy priesthood in that the priesthood was to be set apart as holy as they offered sacrifices on behalf of Israel for their sins.

As members of Christ's church, the way believers offer up sacrifices is by living a life pleasing to the

Lord, a life where He looks on and accepts our Spirit -generated works. Now let's look at verses 9 and 10, where he writes again,

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

What Peter is doing here is he's comparing the church with Israel. He repeats here again how the church is compared to the

Old Testament, the Old Testament priesthood specifically. Once again, as they were set apart for service to God, so are believers who belong to the church.

Then Peter writes how the church is a holy nation. Just as God called out the nation of Israel to be a people for His own possession, so the

Lord calls out the church to be His own possession. And they become His possession through the sacrifice of Christ.

The church is different from Israel in that Israel was chosen as a nation where not everyone was a true follower of the

Lord. Well, everybody who is in the church is a genuine believer. By definition, if you belong to the church, you are born again and you are heaven bound.

This wasn't so with Israel. They had, in fact, most of the people who didn't even truly follow the

Lord. But he's comparing the church to Israel here. But this is important to understand.

Just because someone attends a church does not mean that you belong to the true church.

Once you believe in Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit, this is when you belong to the community. This is when

Jesus becomes your foundation and you are being built up into a holy life as you follow

Him and His Word. As the end of verse 9 says, everyone who belongs to the church has been called out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Because of this, as verse 9 says, you proclaim the excellencies of Him. There's a rejoicing.

I'm no longer lost. I'm no longer blind. I'm alive. I can see what a hopeless state it is before someone comes to faith in Christ.

It was indeed darkness, but you were brought to His light. This is the place you were in when you were not counted among His people.

As Peter writes in verse 10, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This is where you were, and I was, before we became followers of Jesus. And my prayer is that everyone here would experience this transfer from darkness to light.

What an enormously blessed place once you belong to the Lord Jesus. You are built on the solid rock, the cornerstone, and no one who believes in Him ever regrets it.

As the old prophecy that Peter writes about in verse 6, whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.

And we live in a world where people laugh. You Christians, you guys are so gullible.

How could you believe in these fairy tales, right? These stories from the Bible. People think that, but this does.

Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. No one who believes in Jesus ever regrets it.

It's the opposite. Anybody who rejects Christ will eternally regret it.

So know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response. And the third way how is through welcoming people built on Him as the foundation.

So the question is, do you want to be built on this foundation? And here's the fourth and final way how.

You are to know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response, and that is by displaying transformed people to the world.

This last point starts out with a command to the believers in Asia Minor to whom

Peter is writing. But very much this is to us as well. Verse 11.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.

What we see Peter do here is, once again, he says exile. And this goes back to the first verse of this letter.

1 Peter 1 .1 where Peter is writing to the exiles. And what

I explained then is that the exiles are people who are exiles in this world.

This is not your home. As a believer, heaven is your home.

You are just passing through here. And it gives the image here of sojourners. Sojourners, what do they do?

They just pass through a land. They're foreigners. They're not natives. And they're passing through until they reach their home.

So believers, we're described this way. We are exiles. We are sojourners.

Philippians 3, verses 20 and 21 says our citizenship is in heaven. And from it we await a

Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body.

Peter also describes believers as those who are sojourners, as I mentioned. And as believers, and my prayer is that everyone in this room is a follower of Jesus Christ.

As believers, we need to understand that this is the reality of our lives. As much as this earth may feel like home, it most certainly is not.

With how crazy this world is, it should feel less like home than ever.

And as citizens of a different land, how important it is to live like the people who will live in that future land.

I mean, think about this. When this earth is recreated in the future, one thing that will not be present is sin.

Revelation 21 -27 says nothing unclean will ever enter it. Nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the

Lamb's Book of Life. This world, this future world that's coming, that's described at the end of the

Bible, is going to be a completely different world than this world we live in right now.

This present world, as 1 John 5 -19 says, lies in the power of the evil one.

We wonder, what would a world look like when the devil is in charge? Well, we live in it.

This is what it looks like. And obviously God restrains him to a certain extent, but this is a wild place we live in.

This is an evil place. But it won't always be this way. World history is moving toward a time when a redeemed people, those who have been bought by the precious blood of Christ, will live on a new earth.

And on this new earth, everyone there will reflect the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone you meet will be pleasant.

Everyone you meet will truly love you. Can you imagine that? And we get a taste of this in this life.

That's what this world is. It's a taste. It's a taste of what is to come. In this life, when you have a relationship with fellow

Christians, you see the pleasantness of a person who is being made more and more like Christ.

And you wonder, there's something I really like about this person. I like this guy.

I like this woman. What is it that you like about this person?

It is Christ in this person. You have friendships like this where you can spend hours and hours together.

Keith Johnson, one of our elders, he's not here today, but Keith and I drove to Whitefish Point in northern

Michigan. Nine hours one way. Nine hours on the way back. We talked the whole time.

And by the end of it, I was pretty tired. But we talked the whole time and never ran out of things to talk about.

I think, I like this guy. And I hope he said the same about me too. But it was just an enjoyable time.

This is the experience of believers. Think of what it would have been like for the disciples when they spent time with Jesus during His ministry.

We can imagine all the laughter they had. Sometimes we think it was always serious. Don't be fooled by that.

People who are truly following the Lord laugh a lot. Church should be a place of laughter.

This is not just a serious place. Obviously, we don't just joke around all the time, but you know what

I mean. We're serious, but we also laugh. My old boss, the motto for his company was

We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously.

I thought that was a good way of saying it. We can make fun of ourselves, right? Why not?

We can laugh with each other. This is what it's like to be a follower of the

Lord. It's a place of joy. It's a place of laughter. And it's not sinful laughter.

It's not sinful joking. There's a holiness to it that is present there. Now what

Peter is saying in verse 11 is don't be like the world. Be like Jesus.

Don't give in to the sin that wages war against your soul as he says in verse 11.

Here he describes the passions of the flesh. There's a reason that people sin. It feels good for a time.

But then you find out how empty and painful sin is. People who drink alcohol, do drugs, engage in sexual immorality, and so many other sins, it never ends well.

There's a reason there's a place like Hazleton. This isn't too far from here. It's people who went down that path.

And I've shared this illustration that I learned before, but it's worth sharing again. I remember as a child watching cartoons and there was a cartoon character who was going through the desert and he looks off in the distance and he sees this well where there's this plentiful water.

And he keeps going and he sees it in the distance and he keeps going and then he finally arrives to find that it was all a mirage.

There is no well. And he's in the desert. And this is what sin is like. This momentary pleasure that comes from it.

After that momentary pleasure, what's present is pain. Sin never delivers on its promises.

God always delivers on His promises. Sin promises happiness, but never delivers.

But if you live for that better land described in Revelation 21 and 22, you will find that God delivers for those who follow

Him. As Psalm 1611 says, in your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So Peter is saying, stay away from those passions which wage war against your soul as you travel on your journey to your heavenly home.

Why would you deal with these sins? You've been delivered from them. That's the very thing we're focusing on today with this baptism.

You've been set free. You are alive in Christ. You no longer have to be in bondage to this sin.

Now it's important to understand this. As you stay away from sin and live your life for the Lord, people are watching. This is what he says in verse 12.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

God on the day of visitation. And we need to hear this. In this world, you will be called all kinds of names for following Jesus.

And the closer you are to Him, the closer you walk with Him, the more pushback you are going to receive.

It has always been this way and it's very much in our day. And we see this in America. The unbelieving world is being told by the secular elites to fear

Christians. They are the problem. These are the ones you have to watch out for. But you know that the truth ultimately prevails.

What's the definition of integrity? There's lots of definitions of integrity, but here's one definition of integrity. Doing what is right, even though it costs you, knowing that in the end, you will be vindicated.

Let me say that again. Doing what is right, even though it costs you, knowing that in the end, you will be vindicated.

When you do something that is right, most people might say, oh, this person was wrong. But in the end, everybody's going to know you were actually on the right side.

Most people don't want to do that. Most people don't want to do the right thing because they care too much what the world thinks.

I don't want to have that image. I don't want to have the image of being a bigot, all these names that you're called.

But the Lord calls you to stand with Him no matter what. To follow

Jesus means the world will hate you. That's what John 15 says. And they will view you as the problem.

This man -centered world desires to move on from God and the Bible, but one day, no one will be able to deny who was in the right and who was in the wrong, who was truly good and who was not.

As Philippians 2, 10 and 11 says, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. So not only is

Jesus triumphing in the end, but so too is everyone who is allied with Him.

This is what Peter writes in verse 12. At the time when Jesus returns and the final judgment, as Peter calls it the day of visitation, everyone is going to know who was truly good and who was not, who followed the timeless truths of Scripture and who forsook them to go their own way.

In the end of the world, people will not be able to say all these insults against you because they are baseless insults as you follow

Jesus. In fact, they will be shown that they were in fact those people.

And this is what you must understand. In a world where Christians are called lots of things, people are just describing what they themselves are, but they're projecting it onto you.

We must understand this. It is true also that those who were once lost, who believed these lies for a time, who believed the lies about Jesus, about the

Bible, about his followers, that some people are going to believe. Some people are going to see it for what it is in this life.

And those people will praise God saying, Lord, thank you for sending these believers along who

I was able to watch and at first I didn't like them. At first I believed the lies, but then

I saw that these people as they followed Jesus were virtuous. They were following the narrow path.

They were following the way to life. And people are going to praise God someday on the day of visitation that the

Lord sent these people across their path. So understand that God is glorified through your faithfulness to Him in this world as you pass through as exiles and sojourners.

He will vindicate you in the end even if people think all kinds of evil about you.

People see these works that God has produced in you and whether in shame or in joy, these true works of God are recognized and the

Lord is praised. So know that Jesus is the stone that demands a response.

And in this text, over the last two Sundays, we have seen four ways how through receiving rejection from the world, receiving delight from the

Father, welcoming people built on Him as the foundation, and displaying transformed people to the world.

No one can be indifferent toward Jesus. He's either the foundation of your life or the stone that people stumble over.

So which stone is He? Ask yourself that. Is He your firm foundation? Will you understand that without Him, I'm nothing?

My life, my hope is built on Him. If that's you, you are in an amazing place.

But if that's not you, then He is the stone that you stumble over, where you will forever be under judgment.

Just make sure this day that He is your foundation. Now next time, next

Sunday, Lord willing, Peter transitions to talking about something that has been very relevant to us over the last few years.

What does biblical submission to government look like? And I look forward to looking at that with you.

But at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for sending

Jesus. He is our firm foundation. He is the foundation upon which Eureka Baptist is built.

And my prayer is that that would be the case for everyone in this room. And Lord, as we go out to baptize five people,

Lord, we are excited to declare the victory that they have in Jesus Christ and that He indeed is their foundation.

And so we ask for your blessing upon the rest of this afternoon. And as we go downstairs too, we thank you for this food that has been provided.

And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. So today,

I'm just going to do it right from up here. Let's close with the gospel song. The gospel song is

Holy God, in love became, perfect man to bear my blame.

On the cross, He took my sin. By His death, I live again.