A PILGRIM'S PEOPLE

Introduction

-{1 Peter 2}

-I was skimming a scholarly journal article a few weeks back that did a study looking into when selfishness of NBA players increased on a team. What the researchers found is that when a game is very high stakes (for example, an NBA playoff game or even the national title) team cooperation decreases—selfishness increases. That sounds strange, because when it is actually the most important for teammates to be working together for a common goal, they’re actually drifting more apart and looking after their own self interests.

~They hypothesize that the reason for this may be tied to the players wanting to increase their own personal stats in order to have more lucrative contracts in the future. They say that there is a mixed-incentives social dilemma where players think that have to choose between maximizing their personal scoring tally in order to increase their market value vs. assisting teammates to achieve the collective goal to win games. We’ve all heard the phrase that there is no I in team, but that just does not pan out when it comes to important games.

-So, from my perspective, the players would rather be loners in order to promote themselves and make monetary gains for themselves, as opposed to doing what is needed for the group. They would rather look after their own self-interests as opposed to the interests of the collective. But they’re missing out on the fact that their teammates could actually help further their aspirations in the long run.

-But sports is not the only area of life where that happens—self-interest vs. group-interest. We might think of that happening in corporate America, or even in schools to an extent. But what is sad is that it happens within the church. Now, as Americans, we are ruggedly independent—I have the right to live for myself and that’s what I’m going to do. But Christ never pictured His people that way. Christ was going to build His church—His assembly; His group of people. In fact, there are many Bible verses that we like to claim for ourselves as individuals when it’s actually talking about the group.

-We’ve been studying 1 Peter, and Peter talks about Christians being pilgrim’s on a journey in a foreign land who live holy because of the new life given to them in Christ. But Peter tells us that pilgrims don’t go it alone—we are a part of a group, a collective of other pilgrims that help one another along on the journey and together advance the Kingdom of God. So, what I want us to take from this passage today is that we are encouraged in our pilgrim journey when we live in light of our connection to others who are on the same path. Yes, we need each other.

1 Peter 2:4–10 ESV

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 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. 6 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.” 7 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,” 8 and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” 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 for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 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.

-{pray}

-As always, Peter throws a lot of truth at us in various ways. This passage might appear to be a little difficult in that Peter seems to use all sorts of different metaphors and pictures. He calls us stones, priests, nations, possessions. But, all of these pictures and metaphors revolve around a common theme. Yes, they are talking about who we are as a people, a group of pilgrims. But the overall picture he uses is that of the temple.

-The temple represented God’s presence among the people, with a centralized location of worship. But now Peter is saying that we the people, the group of pilgrims, the church, are now the real temple. Yes, God is within us as individuals, but God is also very present when a group of believers are together. The temple building where the Jews worshipped was destroyed almost 2000 years ago. But it doesn’t matter because now God is present in a special way in the midst of His people wherever we may be. WE ARE THE TEMPLE. And I want to look at the different aspect of this temple motif as how it describes this people group of Christian pilgrims. He first emphasizes that...

1) Christ is our support and standard

-Peter says that Christ is a living stone that is chosen and precious in God’s sight. Jesus was demonstrated to be the chosen Messiah of God through His resurrection. He is living and He is to be believed and followed. But Jesus is not just any living stone. Peter quotes several Old Testament passages to show that Jesus is the cornerstone of the structure.

-So, the motif of the temple has Christ as the cornerstone. The cornerstone was the first stone that was laid in the ground of an building or structure in those days when building were completely built stacking stones on top of one another. It is the foundational stone upon which all the rest of building depends because not only does it hold up and support and strengthen the rest of the building, it also sets the standard for how the rest of the building will proceed. It the cornerstone of a structure would have not been level or crooked or something, the whole rest of the structure would have been weakened and crooked and would not have stood over time. A structure has to start right in order to be built right.

-But this new temple that is being built has the perfect cornerstone. Jesus founded the church—it all started with him. And then the Bible says that the apostles make up the rest of the foundation—their teachings about Christ form the groundwork upon which God’s people now stand. We see this in the interchange between Christ and His disciples in Matthew 16 where Jesus asks who people say He is and then asks the disciples who they think He is. And Peter says Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus says that this rock of truth, the confession of Christ’s identity, would be the beginning of the church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

-The apostles were then commissioned to go forth and make disciples of all nations, and all the disciples of all times are living stones that are added one upon another. Christ started the church, supports the church, and is the standard by which the rest of this new temple lines up. And then those inspired to write about Him form the rest of the foundation. And then all believers are part of the structure, built up from there. Paul uses a similar picture:

Ephesians 2:19–22 ESV

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

-Yes, the Holy Spirit indwells the individual believer, but God is also present where the people of God are gathered, and that is the church. And Jesus began it and Jesus is the foundational support. If Jesus is not the foundation of a gathering of pilgrims, then that gathering is not a church. It might be a country club. It might be book club. It might be a social club. But where Christ is not foundational and where Christ does not set the standard, then it is not a church.

-A group that claims to be a church where Christ is not the center, support, and standard reminds me of this picture. {Call for slide} Here is an outside spiral staircase to a building that is supposed to reach an entrance door on every floor. They put the doors on every floor, and then they built the staircase, but they started the staircase in the wrong place so it completely missed its function, ending up just on a brick wall. {You had one job…} It’s not what it’s supposed to be because it began wrong, and it ends wrong.

-This is true of any group, but especially those who want to say that they are a church of Christ. It begins with Christ and it is built from there. This is important because it is only when we are on the solid ground of Christ and His work and His teaching and His life that we are the temple of God and able to fulfill its functions. Without Christ being the support, we will not be able to be the encouragement for one another that we are called to be. So it starts with Christ being the cornerstone, the support and standard of the whole structure. But the next part of this temple motif is that...

2) Christians are our family and coworkers

-In v. 5 Peter says that we ourselves (those who believe in Christ) are living stones that are being built up as a spiritual house. This emphasizes that we are made part of a greater whole. And it’s ultimately pointing to the universal church—we are a part of the group that has been built ever since the beginning of the church. The local church is a microcosm of the greater whole—and each of us is part of that greater whole.

-Think of it this way. When they built the temple they first laid the cornerstone to start the whole thing, then they laid the foundational stones, and then they built the rest of the structure adding brick by brick. This is picturesque of who we are as Christian pilgrims. Christ is the cornerstone, He is the support and standard and start of the whole thing. And then the apostles laid the foundation of faith through their teachings and writings about Christ as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Peter, John, Paul, and the others made the foundational level. Then every person who has ever believed in Jesus since that time has been placed into this larger group, being built up believer by believer.

-In the lower sections you have the believers from Philippi, Thessalonica, Colosseum, Ephesus, etc. And throughout history, believers, like living stones, have continuously been added to the temple. And now, here we are at the most recent section of the temple, we are stones/bricks added to the structure, but there will continuously be more stones/bricks added to the temple until it is finished when Christ returns.

-Why is this important? It is important because we are interconnected with one another and we help support one another in the structure. We are one big family, we are coworkers in the work of the gospel. We are not merely individuals who, on kind of a side note, are part of a bigger group. The stone/bricks are interconnected and always stay that way. We cannot escape being part of this whole, so we think and act in light of that truth. Think about this, after a stone/brick has been added to the structure, it doesn’t say, “Well, this is nice and all, but I’m going to leave the structure and do my own thing, but when I feel like it or if I need something I’ll just slip back into my spot.” A stone/brick doesn’t leave the structure and leave a big hole in the wall. What good is a stone/brick that isn’t part of the structure? It’s just a rock if it isn’t connected to the building.

-But we are living stones who have been placed in the new temple, where we are interconnected with the rest of the church for mutual work and support and encouragement. We weep with those who weep and we rejoice with those who rejoice. That means that within this structure (like I mentioned a few weeks ago) there is no malice or deceit or hypocrisy or envy or slander. If you have any sort of critical spirit or envious spirit or slanderous spirit about you, then that is a heart problem on you—that is not the church or Christ.

-Knowing, therefore, that you are part of this whole, it is utterly ridiculous to think that you are independent. And it’s ridiculous to think that all you can do is care about your own stone/brick. And it’s even more ridiculous to think that this whole thing called Christianity and the church is all about you. You are one stone/brick out of millions. You aren’t the cornerstone and you aren’t the center and you are not the foundation. You are being held up by everything else—your not the one holding this whole thing together. Yes, as part of the whole you are ministered to by the others, but you are there to minister to others as well. You are part of the family, but you are a part of a greater work as well.

-In thinking of somewhat comparisons, bees in a hive are part of a whole, each bee having their part of the work, and they work together to fulfill whatever they are trying to accomplish. You don’t see bees getting all huffy and stuff when they aren’t the center of attention. They don’t leave the hive when they don’t get what they want. They work together for the purpose for which they were created. Or, I guess if you’re a Star Trek fan, you might think of the Borg collective—except we’re good and not evil.

-It’s not about the individual, but the whole. But what do the stones do? They don’t just sit there like stones. That’s as far as that metaphor goes, and so Peter changes the picture a little bit and uses other aspects of temple imagery. In v. 5 he calls us a holy priesthood that offers spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And then in v. 9 he says we are a royal priesthood so that we may proclaim His excellencies.

-This part of the temple imagery has us as the priests who offer service and worship to God. The priests were the intermediaries between God and man, but now we are told in Scripture that Jesus is our mediator/intermediary, He is our High Priest, and every one of us is a priest. That means that we do not need any other human to be our mediator between God and us—Jesus accomplishes that, and we have direct access to God. And because we have that access and we are the royal priesthood, we serve God. But that’s the key—we are to serve, not merely sit there like a brick.

-How do we serve God? We serve God by being living sacrifices, giving of our life to serve Him as He has gifted us and placed us. We serve God in service to others. But we also serve God by telling of His excellencies to the world. We serve God by telling the gospel to the world—God so loved that He gave His Son. We tell the world how good our God is such that He did not and would not leave us in our sin. This is us as living stones—we are part of a family that have a work to do together. But quickly, there is one last aspect of the picture we want to look at...

3) Critics are our mission field and burden

-Peter, quoting several Old Testament verses, tells us that those of us who believe, who are part of this new temple, will not be put to shame—all of the promises that God gives through Christ is ours and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. As v. 10 says, we who were not the people of God have been made the people of God. But, there is another group. There are those who reject the cornerstone. He says that those who reject the cornerstone stumble and are offended.

-They stumble over and are offended by the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus accomplished, and they stumble over and are offended by what Jesus stands for and what He demands. They stumble because Jesus forces them to look at themselves to see themselves for who they really are—proud sinners, rebels, immoral. They don’t want to face their biggest problem. They are offended by anyone saying that they are anything less than stellar and perfect. They want to maintain the illusion that they are strong enough and smart enough and everything enough. They are offended by anyone telling them they have a need that they themselves cannot fix.

-They stumble over and are offended by the claim that they aren’t good enough for God and cannot enter heaven by their own merits. They stumble over and are offended by the truth that there is only one way to God, and they aren’t it. They stumble over and are offended by the hard truth that there aren’t many different paths to God—they think they should be able to choose the path that they want, and create their own truths. And their offense is going to cause them to stumble right into eternal judgment.

-But we, the living stones, the royal priests, are called to go out to them and serve them and tell them the truth in love. They are our mission field, and they are our burden because our Savior is burdened for them. We proclaim to them the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into marvelous light, and is now calling them out of darkness into marvelous light as well.

-Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was dying of cancer, and he did an interview with 60 minutes. In it he talked about believing in God. He said that throughout his life, he believed on and off in God. He said [at the time that] he gave God a 50/50 shot of existing. But then he said that as he approached death, he started to believe more in God, primarily because he really wanted there to be a God. He said, “Because if there is no God, there is no afterlife. You die, and that’s it. And nothing you did matters, because at that point you’re dead. That’s all that matters. So, I want there to be a God, because I want life to go on … but sometimes I think the human body just has an on-off switch and when it’s switched off, it’s off. Which, incidentally, on-off switches have never been a part of Apple products … I don’t like the idea of things being shut off forever.”

-Here is the problem with what Jobs said, though: believing in a general God is not believing in the cornerstone. An exclusive Savior and and exclusive salvation made him stumble and be offended. And now Jobs is regretting that stumble and offense, and will for eternity. And yet, he represents our mission field and burden. Everyone who has stumbled and been offended ought to be our burden—desiring them to become a living stone in God’s heavenly temple.

Conclusion

-So, as we close, we remember that we are part of a people who have a Savior that supports us and sets the standard, and we as a group are part of a great work, but we have to get over our stubborn individualism and self-centeredness and give our spiritual sacrifices, proclaiming the excellencies of a great God who sent a great Savior. We have to get out of our own head and the mindset that everything revolves around us. And we will find, when we work with the group, that we ourselves are encouraged to continue the journey that God placed us upon.

-Christian, come and pray that God would get you out orbiting around yourself—serve Him as a living stone, a royal priest.

-But if you are not part of this new temple, you have not believed in the cornerstone but have stumbled and been offended by the cornerstone, then you need to believe today...