Living Stones in a Spiritual House

Coming up next on Renewing Your Mind. The church is built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. The chief cornerstone is Christ, the living stone, but that every Christian who is in Christ is also called to be a stone, a living stone, part of the fabric of this building called the church. When you hear the word church, what do you think of? You might think of a building or your pastor and the people you see every Sunday.

You might even think of a religious system with a massive hierarchical structure, but we'll see it differently today as we return to R.C. Sproul series on 1 Peter. We'll learn about the foundation and cornerstone of this spiritual house and our place in it. We have been looking briefly at the first letter of the Apostle Peter in the New Testament, and I mentioned in our first session that Peter was given the nickname as the Apostle of Hope because his letter is so uplifting and so comforting for people who are in the midst of suffering and affliction and tribulation. But we also remember that Peter had a more famous nickname.

In fact, the very name Peter was not the name with which he was born. He was called Simon or Cephas, and he was renamed Peter by Jesus because of the great Caesarea Philippi confession. You remember that incident that is recorded for us in Matthew's gospel when Jesus asked His disciples about the scuttlebutt.

He said, well, who do men say that I am? And they told Jesus what the public opinion polls were reporting, and He finally then turned to His disciples and said, fine, who do you say that I am? And you remember it was Simon who spoke up for the disciples and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, to which Jesus replied, Blessed art thou, Simon bar Jonah.

For flesh and blood hast not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And then Jesus said to Simon, And thou art Petros, Petros, Peter, the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church. That's a strange saying that Jesus made on that occasion, upon this rock I will build my church. The Roman Catholic view or interpretation of this is that Jesus meant that He was going to establish His church on the basis of the papacy, that He was going to build His church on the rock of Saint Peter. The Protestant interpretation of that verse sees it a little differently, saying that no, that Jesus was going to build His church on this kind of foundation, the foundation being the confession of faith in Him as the Messiah as it was expressed here by Peter, that on a rock solid faith would be the foundation of His church.

And yet it's interesting that this concept of rock and concept of foundation figures so prominently in the New Testament concept of the church. You know, we are quick to say when people are asked, Where do you go to church? And they say, Well, I go to such and such a church, Saint so-and-so's church, or this church, or that church. And they speak so often of the church as being a particular building that is located at a particular site. And we are quick to say, But wait a minute, the church is not a building. The church is not a building. The church is people. The church is a fellowship, a communion of saints who are assembled and gathered together. Well, that's one of the ways in which the Bible speaks of the church. The Bible uses several different metaphors or images to describe the church.

One of the most common, of course, is that the church is called the body of Christ. It is, in a sense, the continuing incarnation, and just as a body is made up of integral and important parts that need each other as the eyes need the ears and the ears need the mouth and so on. So, the New Testament analogy there is that the church is like an organism.

It is like a human body. It has a head who is Christ, and it has arms and legs, and it's made up of all of these different parts who are the people who bring various gifts and vocations to the church. But the fascinating thing for me and for our concern today is that one of the major metaphors that is used of the church in the New Testament is the metaphor of a building.

This doesn't mean that the church is a building, but the metaphor of the building is used frequently to explain the nature of the church. Now, we know, for example, that Jesus was a carpenter by trade. His father had a carpenter's shop, and we tend to think of carpenters as being woodworkers or cabinet builders, people who work virtually exclusively with wood. But in the ancient world, in the world where Jesus lived, the carpenter did far more than woodworking. The carpenter did a lot of heavy work with wood. He built plows, for example. But the carpenter was also a stonemason, and the ancient carpenter worked as much with stone as he did with wood.

And that is a partial explanation for why it is that so much of the imagery of the New Testament is drawn from the labor of the stonemason. And Jesus frequently speaks about building houses and how important it is to have a solid foundation for that house. He tells the parable of the man who built his house upon a rock so that when the storm came and beat against it, the house was able to withstand this violence and this punishment. But then the foolish man built his house upon the sand. Then it gave way.

It crumbled under adversity. And that is drawn from Jesus' own experience of the building industry of His day. Well, here Peter gives us one of the most magnificent and rich descriptions of the nature of the church that can be found in the New Testament.

Let's look at what Peter, who himself is called the Rock, says about the church in the second chapter of his letter. Chapter 2 of 1 Peter begins with these words, "'Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.'" Now just prior to that, he had talked about God through His Spirit causing us to be born anew unto a living hope, which is in Christ. But yet he's saying that it doesn't matter how old you are as a Christian, he's addressing here adults who from a biological standpoint and a chronological standpoint are mature, grown-up people, but spiritually they are still in their infancy.

They have been reborn, and after their second birth they have not yet grown to adulthood in spiritual terms. And so he says that they should earnestly desire the milk of the Word. You remember later the Christians were rebuked for living on a diet of milk and not growing up to the heavier things and eating the meat that is part of God's revelation. But Peter is saying to those in the early days, earnestly desire the milk of the Word of God. That is the source of your nourishment. That is the source of your nurture.

That is that which will give you the strength to grow up into spiritual maturity. And now he turns his attention to this. He said, You have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Then he goes on to say, Coming to Him as to a living stone. Now in our first lecture in 1 Peter, we saw that Peter introduced the concept of a living hope. Now he turns his attention from this living hope to another strange conjunction of words, a living stone.

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Stones are by nature inanimate, inert objects. We don't think of stones as being alive.

Leibniz to the contrary with his metaphysical concept of petite perceptions that he attributed even to such things as stones or rocks, and Jonathan Edwards to the contrary who facetiously wants to find nothing is that which sleeping rocks dream of. But we don't normally think of stones or rocks as being alive. But now Peter, who is sensitive, supremely sensitive to the idea of stones, speaks of a living stone. He himself is a living stone. His very name, Petros, means stone or the rock. Christ his Lord had given him that name and said, Peter, you are a rock.

You are a living rock. But when Peter now calls the people to come to the living stone, he's not saying, Come to me. He is not identifying himself as the foundation of the church, but he is referring to someone else who is prior to Peter, who is superior to Peter, who indeed is Peter's Savior and Peter's Lord, and he calls him the living stone.

Coming to him, that is to Christ, as a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. You know, we make a distinction between stones and jewels, between stones and gems. Gems are, for the most part, stones.

Are they not? But they are stones that are different from common, ordinary stones, and we refer to jewels or gems as precious stones. And so, do you see what Peter is doing here as he plays with the words a little bit? He said, Coming to him, to Christ, who is a living stone, and then he further qualifies this by calling Jesus a precious stone, a jewel, this stone which has been rejected by men but is chosen by God and precious. Now he says, you also, that is the people of God, the believer, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is also contained in Scripture, and now he quotes from the Old Testament, the Old Testament, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame.

Now, let me pause for a second here and ask you this question. Who is the foundation of the Christian church? I like to ask that question because it's kind of a misleading one as I'm trying to fake people out a little bit because inevitably when I ask Christians, who is the church's foundation, the immediate reply that the majority of people give to that question is Christ.

Why do people say that? Well, I think the reason is obvious because of the famous hymn, the church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, the primary image of foundation, however, in the New Testament when the building metaphor is used does not refer specifically to Christ. The New Testament says there is no foundation which can be laid except that which is laid in Christ Jesus, but the chief use of the metaphor of foundation is attributed to the prophets and the apostles. The New Testament says that it is the prophets and the apostles who are the foundation of the church, so that the church's foundation does not begin in the New Testament. It is established early on in redemptive history in the Old Testament, the prophets of God are the foundation upon which is built the house. The Old Testament prophets, the New Testament apostles together comprise the foundation. When you look at the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven in the book of Revelation and you hear this magnificent description of streets of gold and of walls that are bedecked with all these precious jewels and everything, what's the foundation?

The foundation is the prophets and the apostles. Now, what role does Jesus have in the building metaphor? Again and again, Christ is called the cornerstone. He is the one who anchors even the foundation, and the whole building is supported in a certain sense by that chief cornerstone.

If you take out the cornerstone, the whole building collapses. And so now Peter calls the people to come to Christ as a living stone, the stone that was rejected by men but chosen and regarded as precious. And now he quotes the Old Testament Scriptures, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious. So three things are said about this cornerstone, that it is the chief cornerstone, that it is elect or chosen. Sometimes when we think about election, the doctrine of election, we overlook this central motif of the Scriptures, that the primary person who is elected of God is His only begotten Son. He is the beloved elect of the Father. He is the precious one in the Father's sight. He is the chief cornerstone. But then the psalmist said, But he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame.

And the ad said earlier, You also are living stones. So we have the full image here that the church is built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. The chief cornerstone is Christ, the living stone, but that every Christian who is in Christ is also called to be a stone, a living stone, part of the fabric of this building called the church. So even when the New Testament speaks of the church in terms of a building, it is still describing the church as people. And the building is simply is simply a metaphor, and so that each person who is integral to the body of Christ is one of the bricks or one of the blocks or one of the stones that is fashioned together to build the whole building. He goes on in verse 7, Therefore to you who believe, he is precious. But to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense. See how he mixes these images here that for God, Christ is the cornerstone of the church. To those who do not believe in Christ, Jesus is still a stone, but not a living stone, a precious stone, an elect stone, or a cornerstone, but he's now a stumbling stone, a stumbling block. And what is a stumbling block?

Something that people trip over, hurt themselves. They've rejected this stone. They kick against the against the stone with their boots and with their feet, and they stub their toes and fall and trip all over him. He is a rock of offense, and so he says, they stumble, being disobedient to the Word to which they were also appointed. But you, he says to the church, are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. Here is an oblique reference to the prophet Hosea, do you remember, who married a prostitute, a harlot at the bequest of God, and then he had children, one of which was called Lo Ammi, which means not my people, which was a statement of judgment against disobedient Israel who had departed from the covenant that they had made with God. And so symbolically, the child of the prophet is called Lo Ammi, not my people.

And Hosea said at some time in the future, God is going to take a people who is not his people and say to them, my people. And here is the fulfillment, that those of us who are Gentiles, who by the grace of God have been incorporated into his church are people who were once no people but are now his people, his church, a chosen nation, a royal priesthood. It is a glorious destiny and a marvelous thing to become a part of the church of Jesus Christ. Peter, Peter loved the church that Christ built, not on Peter, but with Peter and with all of the believers molded together, welded, formed, cemented solidly into Christ himself, the chief cornerstone. Earlier on in our teaching on this program, I mentioned a sermon that my pastor preached one morning entitled, Who Loves the Church?

It's a wonderful message. And it was a timely message because we are living in times where the church does not enjoy the greatest reputation of its history. There is much hostility directed against the church, not only from pagans and unbelievers, but also much dissatisfaction among believers with regard to the institutional church. In many cases, the church has let us down. In some cases, the church has become a citadel of unbelief, a monument to unbelief.

That's the shame and the scandal of our age. But yet, we are the church, and Christ is the head of the church. And a Christian cannot love Christ and despise His church because the church that Christ is building in this world is an extension of His own body.

And it may not be precious to us, but it is certainly precious to Him. And we are called to understand our identity as the people of God and as Christians who are part of Christ's own body. We are those who must love the church. We live in a day when it's common to hear professing Christians say, I love Jesus, but not the church. Yet, as we heard in today's lesson, we find that we must love the church precisely because it's so beloved by Christ. It's His bride. Thank you for joining us for Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday.

I'm Lee Webb. Peter wrote this epistle to encourage believers living in exile. They were persecuted.

They were suffering. Yet Peter called them to hope. But not a blind hope, a hope anchored in the one who had bought them with a price. And as we hear a portion of Dr. Sproul's series on 1 Peter this week, we hope that your attention is turned to your source of hope. I have to say that I have found this letter to be a great encouragement to me over the years, and in particular the passage that R.C. was teaching today where Peter reminds us of our citizenship as Christians, that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.

I recommend R.C. 's commentary on 1 and 2 Peter. This is a hardbound edition. It's easy to read. It goes verse by verse, and you'll find that the believer's hope has been completely secured by Christ and is now preserved in heaven by God. When you contact us with a donation of any amount, we will send you Dr. Sproul's commentary along with a digital download of the series that we're hearing this week. You can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, and Facebook.

You can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343, or you can make a request and give your gift securely online at renewingyourmind.org. Suffering can cause us to question God's goodness. When we're in the midst of trials, it can be difficult to see God's purposes. But God's Word brings clarity, and that's one of the reasons that we established Ask Ligonier. It's a free online course, and it's designed to answer your biblical and theological questions in real time. You can try it right now when you go to ask.ligonier.org. Renewing Your Mind is the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you'll make plans to be with us again tomorrow. you