Living Stones

 

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered on Pentecost Sunday, the 28th of May, 2023, at Pilgrim Reformed Church.  Our YouTube streaming channel is: 

https://www.youtube.com/@pilgrimreformedchurch1992/streams.]

Family, last week we listened as the Apostle Peter encouraged us to be holy because God is holy, and God chose us to be holy.  We also looked at a few ways we live a more holy life, be more righteous in God’s eyes.

And then Peter ended chapter 1 of his 1st letter by telling us that we have been born again.  We were not born to a life that will quickly end like this one, but to a new life that will last forever, a new life that comes from the eternal, living word of God.  Peter quotes the great prophet Isaiah, relating that we mortals are like grass that withers.  Our beauty is like the flower’s, that always fades away.  But the word of God remains forever, His promises are for all eternity, and from His eternal word comes our Good News, our Gospel message of salvation.

So continuing from last week and staying with Peter's 1st letter, we move into the 2nd chapter.  Here, the Apostle gives us a little more insight into just what God chose us to do.  Or maybe it’s why we were chosen to be holy.  I think Peter was practicing speaking in parables here.

Please listen and follow along as Peter tells us to be a living stone just like Jesus, as we continue with the 1st 10 verses of the 2nd chapter of the Apostle’s 1st letter, and I’ll be reading from the New English Translation of our Holy Bible this morning…

1 So get rid of all evil and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 And yearn like newborn infants for pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up to salvation, 3 if you have experienced the Lord’s kindness.

4 So as you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s sight, 5 you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it says in scripture, “Look, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and whoever believes in Him will never be put to shame.” 7 So you who believe see His value, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, 8 and a stumbling-stone and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 10 You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy.

--1 Peter 2:1-10 (NET)

Let us pray…  Father God, thank You for choosing us to believe in Your Son.  Thank You for choosing us to be Your children.  Thank You, Father, for choosing us to be holy, just as You are holy.  Sadly, though, Father, we don’t always feel very holy.  There are just too many times when we know we have failed You, when we have willfully disobeyed You, when we have let the world get the best of us.  Please forgive us our lapses, Father, these times of insecurity and hopelessness that weaken our faith.  Forgive us when we open the door and let Satan stick his nose into our lives.  Remind us that we are Yours, bought at a great price, adopted into Your holy family.  And Father, please protect us from Satan, who deceives us and tries to pull us away from You.  Please shield us from those who are so willing to follow his commands.  Please keep us strong in our faith, of one mind and one purpose in our love, worship, and service, and healthy and safe in the days ahead.

Speak to us now, Father, that we might hear Your voice through Your Spirit within us and better understand the message You have for us this day.  Please direct Your Spirit to show us more clearly the path of righteousness.  Help us avoid the stumbling blocks along the way.  And help us be living stones in Your glorious spiritual house.  This we pray in the precious name of Your Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.   Amen.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy is going to fall.  Scientists travel yearly to the site to measure the building's slow descent.  They report that the 179-foot tower tilts about one-twentieth of an inch a year, and was approximately 16-1/2 feet out of plumb in 2022.  Someday, the 850-year old tower will have crossed the line and leaned too far, and will collapse onto the nearby ristorante, where all those scientists now gather to discuss their findings.

Quite significantly, the word "pisa" means "marshy land," which gives some clue as to why the tower began to lean even before it was completed.  Also, its foundation is only 10 feet deep!

I’m reminded of the words to the hymn, “on Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand”.  We could insert “marshy land” for “sinking sand”.  But this little story also begs us to ask the question of ourselves:  How deep is our foundation?  How strong is our faith?  Are we truly committed to obeying Jesus, or just giving Him lip service.

There’s more to believing in Jesus than just acknowledging His existence, and even more than believing Him to be the Son of God.  The devil knows Jesus all too well.  And our Bible recounts a number of instances where Jesus encountered a demon, an evil spirit, and the demon knew Jesus to be God’s Son.  Does that mean they were saved?  No, of course not!

We have to accept Him as our Master and do what He tells us to do.  God built a mighty, unshakeable structure and set His own Son as the foundation, the cornerstone.  Let’s add ourselves as living stones, deeply rooted in Jesus, acceptable in God’s eyes.

In our scripture reading, Peter once again quotes the prophet Isaiah when God spoke through him say, “I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone”.  This is Jesus, the Christ.  He is the stone the builders – the Jews – rejected, that is now the cornerstone, a living stone.  He is a stone to trip over, a stumbling block for those who disobey the word, but salvation to those who believe.  And He is precious to God.

Do you remember from previous Sunday discussions that there were two times God spoke from heaven to tell us about Jesus?  The first was at Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, and the second was at His transfiguration on the mountainside.

And what did God say both times?  “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  “My beloved Son, My precious Son.”  God made Jesus the cornerstone in the foundation of His spiritual house, a living cornerstone, and He want us to be living stones alongside Jesus.

Now those two words – “living” and “stone” – don’t seem to go together very well.  A stone, a rock, is an inanimate object.  It isn’t alive by any standards – it doesn’t breathe or eat or drink or react in any way to the world around it.  Yet here we are told to be living stones, just as Christ is the living cornerstone.  We are to be living building blocks in God’s spiritual house, linked together in love and by God’s Holy Spirit, withstanding anything that comes against us.

But we are not intended to just stand still, to be set in place and never move again.  That’s where the “living” part comes in.  And if we are to be as living stones, then we should be willing to make of ourselves living sacrifices, as the Apostle Paul encourages us to do in the 1st two verses of the 12th chapter of his Letter to the Romans…

1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice — alive, holy, and pleasing to God — which is your reasonable service. 2 Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God — what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

--Romans 12:1-2 (NET)

This is our reasonable service, to put ourselves out there to please God by giving up of our time and efforts and resources.  A living sacrifice is one where we don’t die.  Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us, but we’re not being asked to do that, although it certainly may come to it someday.  No, we’re asked to sacrifice what may be precious to us – just as Jesus is precious to God.  And for some, time is our most precious possession.  For us mortals, time is a one way street, and once it’s gone, we can never get it back.

There are other things we can give up in our service to God, but giving up whatever is most precious to us is most pleasing to God.  For whatever we give up in this life, in service to our Lord, we will be much more than compensated for in the next.  The “things” of this world just don’t matter, not really.  Nothing of the world lasts forever.  So we need to get our mindset off the world and onto the things of heaven, doing what is good and well-pleasing and perfect in our Lord’s eyes.

Just so we don’t have to guess and surmise what might constitute sacrifices we can make, Jesus comes right out and gives us some great examples.  Listen to what our Lord told His disciples, including us, as recorded by the Apostle Matthew in the 25th chapter of his Gospel account, verses 31 through 46…

31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be assembled before Him, and He will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on His right and the goats on His left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, 36 I was naked and you gave Me clothing, I was sick and you took care of Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and invite You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick or in prison and visit You?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’

41 “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! 42 For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink. 43 I was a stranger and you did not receive Me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not give You whatever You needed?’ 45 Then He will answer them, ‘I tell you the truth, just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for Me.’ 46 And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

--Matthew 25:31-46 (NET)

Jesus and God commanded us to love one another.  And these are just a few ways to manifest our love, to give action to our love.

Feed the hungry, and give drink to the thirsty.  We alone cannot feed all the hungry of the world, but we can feed some, and we can support those groups that work hard to fight hunger.  Likewise, we can support those who dig wells in dry lands, and who teach people simple ways to purify water, so that none may thirst.  And of course, we can share the food, our daily bread, that is God’s word and the Living Water that is Jesus with everyone we meet.

Welcome the stranger, and clothe the naked.  There are none more homeless nor naked than the lost, who are not clothed in righteousness, who will never inherit an eternal home in heaven unless they repent and turn to the Lord.

Take care of the sick, and visit those in prison.  There are many kinds of sicknesses, but perhaps the most tragic and ultimately deadly of all is a sickness of spirit.  Helping heal a hurting spirit doesn’t take all that much – a quiet hug, a soft smile, a kind word, a listening ear.  And there are all kinds of prisons, one of the worst being the prison of loneliness.  Too many people out there are prisoners of Satan, stumbling around hopeless and lost.  Tell them about Jesus, who can break their chains and free them.

Family, Jesus is precious in God's sight, and so are we.  We believers are the stones that God uses to build His Son's church, with Jesus as the cornerstone.  To non-believers, Jesus is a stumbling block, a rock to trip over.  But to us, He is our hope, and our Head.

We are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation unto ourselves.  We are His.  So let us teach others all we know about Jesus, for He called us out of the darkness and into His marvelous light.  We are God’s people, saved by His mercy.  Let us be living stones, making living sacrifices in His service.  In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Let us pray…  Almighty God, thank You choosing us to be living stones in Your spiritual house.  Jesus is precious to You and You made Him the cornerstone.  Upon Him, everything else is built.  Build us into a mighty fortress, Father.  Please help us be more holy in Your eyes.  Help us serve You by giving of ourselves, of our time and resources.  Please forgive us when we watch as opportunities to serve slip by.  Forgive us those times when we hesitate to do what we should.  Forgive us our disobediences.  Please, loving Father, help us be better servants.  Help us be good representatives of You to the world.  And help us remain strong, faithful, and true to You in all things, no matter what the world throws at us or holds out before us.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment to speak to You through Your Spirit within us, promising to be more obedient to Your commands, and seeking Your help to do so… [* pause *]

Lord Jesus, You are our very foundation, the cornerstone upon which all else is built.  We have been chosen by our Father God and gathered around You.  We are the building blocks of Your church, and nothing can tear it down.  Thank You, Jesus, for giving Your all for us.  Thank You for standing at our side at the end of the age.  Please help us as we step out of our comfort zone and do as You commanded us.  Help us teach others all about You, so that more or the lost might be found and saved.  And help us be faithful and true to You, putting all our trust in You, all our hope in You.  

And Jesus, please heal the hurts that separate and divide us one from another.  Help us keep our focus on the things of heaven and the needs of others rather than on anything this life might offer.  This we pray in Your blessed name, Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior.  Amen.