Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Good morning, Valley View. I wasn’t planning to do this, but I think we need to just just continue for a minute. In this spirit of proclaiming Jesus’s name over whatever you’re facing. I encountered a couple situations this week where I thought, Lord, I can’t do this alone. And you know, it’s not complicated. I think in life we tend to. The devil tends to convince us you can’t have victory here. You’re never going to make it through this. But his name is power. Look, all you got to do is stop in that moment and cry out his name. It’s not complicated. Jesus, would you show up right now? I’m facing a temptation or a challenge or something like never before. Would you show up? I declare your name in this moment. And it’s not because of how powerful we are to say his name. It’s because his name is powerful. And so here’s what I want to do right now. I want you to just cry out whatever it is where you need him to show up. Let me just hear it. What is it that you’re facing this week? Nothing. Okay. Well, good. I forgot we had a perfect church. You probably need a different pastor then. The perfect pastor, too. What is it? Anxiety. Who else is facing anxiety? Okay, I heard family. Well, we won’t quite know how to interpret that one. Pride. Fear. Who else has financial troubles here? What else? Grief. Sickness. Sin was another I heard. What else? What else are you facing? Depression. Loneliness. Sorrow. Operations. The world. The pressures of the world bearing down. Uncertainties. Man. We could go on like this probably for the next hour. Here’s what we’re going to say in response to those things. And I’m not minimizing those real challenges. But here’s what we do in the midst of the overwhelming anxiety. What do you say? What do you say? Jesus, show up. Jesus, I’m not going to submit to this. Jesus, would you show up? Overcome these anxieties? Yes. They’re here. Yes. They’re real. Jesus! Show up in the midst of the depression, which is real. What do you say? What do you say? Jesus. What do you say? Jesus. Would you show up? I can’t handle this on my own. In the midst of the sin and temptation. Right in the midst of it. We don’t entertain it. We don’t let it fester. What do we say? Come on. I thought you’d have it by now. What do you say? And with that, you say it louder. Jesus! Would you show up? Jesus. Thank you. That it’s your power that will cast aside temptation and sin that will guide us through anxiety and depression, that will guide us through sickness. You are the one we turn to. Give us the strength this week as we look at your word. As we look at Peter talking about how we find joy in the midst of suffering. God, give us the strength and wisdom to turn to you and whatever we face. Thank you that your name has power. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Well, we’re continuing in our study of First Peter, and we’re going to be in chapter two today. And we’re taking on a larger chunk than we have been looking at, verses four through ten. And so if you have a church Bible that will be on page 953, and if you don’t have a Bible, you can go out to the connection corner and get one anytime. Those are free for you. Those are for you to keep. And we put the page numbers on the screen. If you’re not familiar with the Bible, that helps you to be able to follow along as we read, but we’ll be in first Peter chapter two, and I’m going to read the verses before we start. Like I said, it’s a little longer section than what we’ve been examining. We’re going to read these and then we’re going to unpack them, and it’s going to take a little bit of time today with this larger chunk for a couple of reasons. And I think you’ll see as we get into it. First Peter chapter two, verse four, even as you come to him a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 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, 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 offence. 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 and 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. There’s a story from ancient Greece about the Spartans. You may have heard of them. They’re famous for the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 men stood against an entire army. One of the stories that goes along with them is that the king of Sparta was very proud of their walls, of their city walls, and boasted about them broadly. Our walls are impenetrable. They’re so strong. There’s no other city walls like our walls. And so one king heard of this and said, I need to come see their walls. What do we need to do different to ours? We need to have that kind of strength in our city. And so he goes to visit Sparta, and as he rises over the hill and sees the city out ahead of him, he realizes something that is very plain and obvious right away. There are no walls around the city of Sparta which led to confusion. What does this mean? So he gets closer. He comes to the king and he asks him, look, I came here to see your amazing walls. There clearly aren’t any walls. What’s the deal? And the king of Sparta points over towards his strong, battle tested warriors. And he said, those are the walls of Sparta. Our warriors, our soldiers. We don’t need physical walls when we have people like that. Warriors like that. What we’re going to see in the book of Peter today is that Peter is making a similar point about the church, and when I talk about the church, I don’t talk about concrete, brick walls. You know that. This is not a church unless living stones are here, unless alive people are here. That’s where the Holy Spirit resides, is in each of us. And if we’re not here, it’s not a church. Just because it’s a building shaped like what we think would be a church. What we’re going to see in First Peter today, he’s going to make one big point, one big point. And it’s that we are memorials of mercy, right? We are living stones. We’re memorials of mercy. We saw that in verse five as I read it. You would have seen it here. As you come to him. A living stone rejected you yourselves, like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house. It’s not about the physical structure, but it’s about God at work in the lives of everyone here. Now, the interesting way he does this and what makes this passage complex, and I don’t know what your Bible looks like on the page, but many Bibles will set out Old Testament quotes kind of in indented and taking up more space. And if you look at this section, you see there’s a lot here. There’s a whole bunch in quotes from the Old Testament. In fact, Peter alone, for the amount of verses he covers or the amount of verses he writes for the length of the letter he covers more Old Testament passages per word per section than any other book of the Bible. He loves to quote the Old Testament, but this section in particular, it’s just one after the other. In fact, I’ll I’ll put a few of these on the screen. This he quotes from. You see, he quotes from Isaiah chapter 28. He quotes from Psalm 118, from Isaiah eight, Exodus 19, Isaiah 43, quotes from Hosea in multiple places. And he’s probably hinting at Psalm 34, which he quoted last week. It’s just one after another, like a machine gun shoot of Bible verses, one boom after another after another. That’s a… that is a lot. And the reason he does this, in fact, by the way, the complexity here is it’s not just that he’s quoting a bunch of the Old Testament, but some of these same verses– put up the next list– are quoted all throughout the New Testament. Jesus quotes Psalm 118 to make a similar point. I’m the cornerstone reject rejected. He does that in each of the three synoptic Gospels. Peter quotes these verses as well and acts four. Paul quotes them in Romans nine. It’s– there’s so much happening here. There’s a lot. But his point is to say, do you know why I can say that we are monuments of mercy, that we are living stones? Do you know how I can say this? Look back at the Old Testament. Here’s all the proof that I’m going to give you. Now, we got to wade through some of what this means. And I think the way he’s going to do this in this passage is to point out two things about what it means to be a monument of mercy. Monuments of mercy. There’s two things we’re going to look at. They have an identity and an activity. Two things: identity and activity. Identity. Who we are. If you’re a monument of mercy, what does that mean? Who are you? But then second, we have an activity. What do we do with that? What does it mean to live that out? So we’re going to look at two sides of that– who we are. What’s our identity as a monument of mercy? And then secondly, what does that mean in terms of how we live and what do we do? So first identity, what does it mean to be a monument of mercy? The first one that we’ll look at that he says– and we’ve already seen these phrases in verse four and five, is that we are called to be living stones, stones that are alive. And there’s a reason why he uses that phrase in particular. Look back, though, at that phrase as you come to him in verse four, a living stone rejected by men. Now in verse four, he means Jesus is the living stone. Jesus has been rejected by men, but in God’s sight chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up. Jesus was the original living stone. Now you also, because you believe in him and know him, are also a living stone. We’re called to be living stones because he is alive. But look at what else it says. You are being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And here’s why he quotes verse six, 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 right here in verse six, he’s quoting from Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 28. That was the first on that list I put up there. And he’s quoting from Isaiah. And if you think back to that season of Isaiah post exile, the nation was continued to be led by leaders, some good, some bad. And they kind of went through this cycle of the leaders leading them astray. And then maybe pretending to want to take them back towards God, but then leading them astray again this cycle over and over again. And so God sent prophets like Isaiah to say, hey, stop following these bad leaders. Follow me. Stop going through this cycle of rebellion and quasi repentance. Follow me. Because and it wasn’t just only correction, but it was also persuasion. Because he loves you. Yeah, you’ve messed up, but he still loves you. He’s still there for you. He’s still calling you back. He still wants you to come back sometimes. I’m sure you face this sometimes when maybe you’ve made poor choices. When you’ve gone wrong direction, you feel like God wouldn’t want me. I can’t go back to him now. I’m too ashamed. I’m too embarrassed. And part of that’s good. We should feel bad about our sin. But God’s not up there going. I don’t know if I can take them back. I just don’t know. We’ll see. I’m not sure. Let me pray about it. No, he’s longing for you to come back every single time. He’s longing for you to change as well and not to continue in that pattern. But he wants us to return to him. And so in Isaiah, in this pattern that we see, he quotes this verse, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, Bear with me here, because this can be very confusing, because they already had a stone, they already had a cornerstone, they already had their foundation. If you think back to the Jewish nation, where would they have turned to to experience God’s presence that had large stones? The temple. They already had a temple, but the problem with that temple that it wasn’t alive, God’s presence had left there. And so instead it was a dead empty shell, a whitewashed tomb. It just looked pretty. But God’s presence wasn’t there. If you’ve been to Europe, you’ve maybe had a taste of this. If you’ve toured some of these grand, massive cathedrals. We were in Germany one year. We toured this church or cathedral. I don’t know which it was, but it was a thousand years old. It was built around a thousand A.D. It was just unbelievable to walk around in this thing. I mean, we tear down billion dollar stadiums after 30 years. Like, man, that’s way too old. We got to build a whole new multibillion dollar stadium. These things have been there thousands of years, and it’s overwhelming. The I mean, probably just a village at the time. All these people committed their entire lives to carving a few stones, probably, that go into this whole structure. And I remember what I heard from one gentleman who had been on a tour like this, going through these grand cathedrals, and he in the midst of one the tour guide was going on and on about how amazing it is, all the work that was put into it. And by the way, it is overwhelmingly beautiful. And this gentleman, in the midst of that tour just paused and said, let me just ask, can I ask when was the last time someone was baptized here? And the tour guy had no idea. And the tragedy of that is we become enamored with a physical structure. And it’s not about the building. As fascinated as you might be with Notre Dame in Paris, way more important is that our lives are living testimonies to what God is doing, to what the Holy Spirit is doing, where he is living and alive. By the way, people should see our lives and go, I don’t know what she has, but I want that. I saw how he used to be. Something has changed, I want that. Tell me what it is. I got to have that. God has been. Something has happened in your life. There’s no other explanation. That’s a living stone. And in Isaiah he said, we’re laying a new foundation. There is a new stone to come. And Peter’s quoting it saying, that was Jesus. They’re pointing forward to Jesus. When Isaiah was saying that he was pointing forward to Jesus, and that’s who we’re called to point others towards. So the first identity we have is we’re living stones. God’s alive in us. Second here, is we are to be priests to the world, priests to the world. We see that show up two different places in this passage. First was in verse five where he says, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. But also in verse nine, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Twice he says, you’re called to be a royal priesthood. And in fact, in that second quote in verse nine, he’s actually quoting from the book of Exodus. So flip there real quick. Exodus chapter 19, that whole list of phrasing there that occurs. You are to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. That all comes from Exodus chapter 19. Exodus is just the second book in the Bible. So it’s up near the front. And at this place in the book of Exodus, the people have left Egypt. They’ve been wandering through the Promised Land, but they’re about to enter into the Promised Land. And so God is kind of through Moses having this conversation of saying, here’s what this will mean. Here’s what I’m asking of you as we go into this land. And so in Exodus 19, here’s what he says. Look, look at verse four. And we’ll read up through verse six, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice, and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. Now back in first Peter chapter two, verse nine, when he is quoting from this section in Exodus, what does he mean by this, that the Jews and then I think looking forward to us, are meant to be a kingdom of priests, a nation of priests? I think a couple I think this points to a couple different things. One is this hints at the priesthood of all believers. If you know Jesus, you don’t have to go through anyone else to talk to him or to God. It’s not like when you start praying you get some kind of Amber alert on your phone saying, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, hold up. This. You got to go through the pastor. If you’re going to talk to me. No, no. Look, everyone here, Hebrews four talks about this. Everyone here has equal access to God. Everyone who knows Christ, you have equal access to God. You don’t have to go through anyone else. There’s not some spiritual hierarchy that’s required for you to go through to go to God. Now, of course, we have pastors and staff and people that the church has in place to help us grow. But it’s not like I have some more direct line to God than you. No. No, he makes that clear. There’s a priesthood of all believers. The other part of this, though, I think, is what he’s saying is collectively as a nation, they are his priests to the world. Meaning if you go back to his original covenant with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, he said to him, I’m going to, I’m going to bless you so that you will bless the whole world. I’m not just blessing you for your own sake to soak it up and enjoy it. Yeah, that’s true, but it’s so that you will bless the world and the church today. Our call. It’s not– we don’t come here just so that we can get good, warm feelings and go back home and live off those all week. I hope that happens. Not good warm feelings, but that you get better connected with Christ. I hope that gives you the strength to endure all week long. That’s not the only reason we come. It’s not just only about us. It’s so that we can be a light to the world. We want to shine the light through this whole community. We want to bring hope and joy and peace to our neighbors, to our family, to our friends, to the community. In that way, God calls us to be the priesthood of all believers. He calls us all to be active in spreading his name to the world. So two parts of who we’re called to be here- living stones. God’s word is living and active. He’s alive in our lives, and we’re called all to be priests to the world at one level. So that’s our identity as monuments of mercy. Now, what does it mean activity wise? How do we live in light of that? Well, the first way we live as monuments of mercy is, number one, offer spiritual sacrifices. Look at verse five again. 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. We talked about that word spiritual last week, looking at Romans chapter 12 as well, where we’re all called to be a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice. Our lives are meant to be a sacrifice, a spiritual act of worship. And if you know Christ, you you know, sacrifice. You have experienced sacrifice as an offering of service to him, not so that you get more from him, but out of the joy of all he’s done for you. And now the joy of knowing him. It’s a delight to offer a sacrifice. Just by being here you’ve shown that you delight in sacrificing. You gave up something else to be here today. It could have been more sleep. It could have been pursuing a hobby. It could have been swimming in your front yard. After all this rain, you could have done something else with your time this morning. A hundred million other things. And you said, nope, nope. I’m setting aside this time, and I’m going to worship God with a bunch of other crazy people, and we’re going to worship together, and we’re going to do all we can to pursue him and watch him work in our lives. Following Christ means sacrifice. You’ve sacrificed of your time. You’ve sacrificed of your finances. If you’re involved here, you’ve likely given to the church of your own money. And maybe being a Christian has cost you money because you can’t cut corners. You can’t do something wrong the boss has asked you to do, and that might have led to less pay, less promotions, less advances. Those are sacrifices there. There’s also sacrifices of your life. We’ve got a whole team of people here called deacons, and that part of a big part of what they do is to serve our widows. One of our deacons could be at home rebuilding a 55 Chevy, but instead they’re trimming bushes for a widow. What other social organization does that? We have a whole team of men who are out serving widows on a regular basis. Is it the atheist club that’s doing that? Or is it any– pick your favorite political party? Are they doing that? Now look, you have sacrificed and it’s an act of worship and delight. We’re called to offer those sacrifices, and it’s a great joy. There’s no better way to live because he is sacrificed on our behalf. That’s the first way. Second is to proclaim His Excellencies. This is the second activity of what it means to be a monument of mercy. I get this directly from verse nine. Go back to verse nine. 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 has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You know the front half of that verse where he lists off chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his own possession. Many commentators point out how this shows our commonality. One of the ways they say this we have a common lineage, a common mission, common culture, pursuing holiness that shapes our culture collectively, and a common destiny his possession. This shows how God has brought us together, unity through him in so many ways. But those things aren’t, again, just for our own blessing, because the word that shows up a people’s for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you. So that purpose clause being the point, is, he blessed you so that you can tell others, proclaim His Excellencies to the world. And look, this is absolutely critical. There should be a great urgency to us about proclaiming His Excellencies to the world, and it’ll look different for everybody depending on your gifts, your abilities, your spiritual maturity, your spiritual gifts. It’ll look different on what that means. But there should be this hunger to tell others about what Jesus has done in your life. To proclaim his excellencies. And part of the reason is right here in this, part of the reason is because of what Peter quotes. Because when Jesus showed up as the cornerstone, as the cornerstone rejected. The whole world has a choice. Look at what he says in verse seven and eight. 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 the ramifications of that. He’s a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Jesus is inherently offensive to the world. He is. I think back to when you first felt him nudge into your life. What was your response? Okay, for some in its immediate yes, Lord, I need you desperately. For many, it’s whoa! Back off! Get out of my life. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You believe in some dude written about an old book and a make believe God. And what are you talking about? Get away! That’s how most of us respond when we first are confronted with the gospel. Offended. Deeply offended. My reason is deeply offended. I don’t want any part of that. That’s why we need to be proclaiming His Excellencies to the world, because the natural reaction is to say, I don’t want any part of that. But that’s where true hope and joy in life is found. Now, there’s a difficult phrase here related to that after verse eight, he’s a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and we need to spend just a little bit of time unpacking that, because right after that it says they stumble because they disobey the word. I get that. That makes sense. Of course, if you disobey God’s Word, you’re going to stumble, you’re going to struggle. You’re going to have challenges in life, of course. But the next phrase is difficult. Why do they disobey the word they were destined to do so. They were destined to. That’s hard to read. You mean to tell me that some people were destined to disobey God’s word and had no choice in the matter? Is that what you’re saying? I think there’s a couple of ways to understand this. One is that notice it says, as they were destined to do, some have read this past tense and understood it to be referring possibly to the Jews who at the time of Jesus’s life stood against him, rejected him as the cornerstone, following in the train of the leaders, as we saw in Isaiah who said, no, no, no, no, we don’t want any part of him. We’ve got our own path forward. He’s no good. They were destined to that time was appointed where some would reject him so that he would be crucified. It was God’s plan. He knew it. He wasn’t surprised by it. He was in charge the whole time. Some think maybe it’s just only pointing back to that one act. However, even if and let me say this, even if this is referring to people who were alive at that time, if he’s saying there are some who are destined to disobey God’s word, and I appreciate reading Wayne Grudem on this, he made this point. This isn’t therefore, saying that they will always continue to disobey God’s Word. This isn’t saying that they will continue all the way onto death and eternity and rejection of God’s Word. Even if some were destined to disobey God’s Word and reject him, it’s not inherently a given that they will continue that way. This verse Isn’t making that point, and therefore they have no choice but to continue down that path forever. Part of the reason we know that is Peter is all about the gospel. In fact, in Second Peter he says, look, God doesn’t want any to perish. He wants all to come to repentance. Why would he say that if he felt like, well, some just have no choice? That is one of the most confusing and difficult and complex parts of Scripture. How is it that God is totally in charge? And yet we also are called to be responsible for our actions, and that is a challenging reality of Scripture. And it’s true, he is completely sovereign, and yet we also are responsible. But how does all that work? I don’t know, but I know our hope is in turn into the gospel and Jesus is the one through the Holy Spirit who works in our lives. And our call then, is to proclaim His excellencies to a world that has rejected him. I used to go to a gym in little Rock when we first moved there, and I’d get there early and it was just me and 1 or 2 other crazy guys there, and the guy who opened the gym. We were often waiting on him to show up and open it. He and I got talking one day. It turns out he’s a Christian, and we’re talking about following Christ and talking about the gospel. We’re talking about the Bible. And this was back in the day. I don’t know if you remember that song. “I Can Only Imagine,” it was a real big deal for a while. It was even playing on all the secular radio stations all the time. And we’re in the gym one day, and that comes on because it’s on the just the radio station playing there in the gym. He goes over and turns it off. I was like, what? Do you hate Christian music or something? Or he’s like, no, no, no, my boss said. And his boss hated Christianity, hated it. And my boss said, anytime that song comes on, you go turn it off. I don’t want any part of it. I don’t even want to be potentially confronted by the name of Jesus in my gym. The world says stone of stumbling, a rock of offense. I don’t want any part of it. Keep it away from me. But our call is to proclaim His Excellencies. Now this chapter ends in an interesting way. It ends with a verse of hope. And what I wondered, though, about this whole collection of Old Testament references about a stone. Peter is quoting one after another, trying to make the case everything you saw about cornerstones and stones in the Old Testament. They’re all pointing forward to something. They’re pointing forward to Christ. Why does this such a collection for Peter? Why does he spent so much time on this? One layer I appreciate it because he’s clearly doing theology, which if you want to know about anything in the Bible, go look up every reference to it. Look for commonalities, look for themes, look for ways the verses link together. It takes a lot of work. There’s no shortcuts. But that’s the way to learn what any topic in the Bible addresses. But I was talking to Julie about this. My wife Julie was sitting down one morning. I was like, I wonder why Peter has given so much attention to this right here. And she said, you know, maybe, maybe this was kind of his anthem. Maybe there was something about this idea of Jesus as the cornerstone that really resonated with him. And as I thought about that, I thought about Peter. And of course, what does Peter’s name mean? Rock. And Peter, who was called the rock by Jesus, and yet who denied him, and yet who Jesus said. In fact, Jesus said to him, stop trying to cause me to stumble. Same word stone of stumbling, rock of offense. Peter’s like, knows that he is not the rock. Who would be more motivated to study the word rock in Scripture? But the word here is different. It’s stone, and it’s a different Greek word than the word rock for Peter, even Peter understands there is a difference. And though if I am going to stand as a rock, I’m standing on some other rock stronger than me, a foundation stronger than me, that’s the only hope I have. The passage ends with verse ten, and this all sums up the idea of monuments of mercy. And here he’s quoting from Hosea. 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. We are monuments of mercy. God has worked. There was a time when you were not his people. There was a time when you wanted no part of him and he showed you mercy. And he drew you in. And what greater joy is there than to proclaim that work in your life to those around you? Let’s pray. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we thank you that we can call on your name, which is power. We know the world doesn’t want to hear your name. They can’t stand to hear your name. Thank you for showing us mercy. Thank you for working in our lives. Thank you for showing us how you were at work in Exodus, in Isaiah and Psalm 118, that you were at work in Hosea, and you were pointing forward to a day when you would show up in human flesh and die on our behalf, so that we could know your mercy. God, would you help us to walk in your power all week long, to not submit to the anxiety, the depression, the loneliness, the sorrow, the grief when it comes and it will come? But that we would say your name because your name is power, that we would immediately turn to you and we would proclaim your excellencies to this world. Give us the strength to do that. Jesus, we love you and it’s in your powerful name we pray. Amen.