Living Stones (2)

Intro

My family has a camp about 2 hours from where we live. It is a place I grew up going to for as long as I can remember.

In fact it has been in my family for several generations. It was first purchased by my great grandfather.

Several years ago now, the camp was handed down from my great uncle to my dad. When my dad took it over he and my stepmom decided that it was in need of some serious TLC and renovation.

Well, like any other project of this nature, things are inevitably gone through and while some things are kept, other are thrown out.

Well, during this time my stepmom was cleaning out the kitchen and getting rid of old or duplicate utensils and silverware.

Unbeknownst to my dad, she had placed an old ladle in a throw away box. What my stepmom didn’t know was that this ladle wasn’t just any ladle.

This was our bean soup ladle. Now, that may not sound like a real exciting name. But to give you context. For 4 generations this ladle had been used every deer season starting with my grandfather, to make bean soup.

I do not have a memory of going to camp in deer season and not having bean soup every day with my lunch.

Bean soup to camp is like turkey to Thanksgiving. They just go together.

Well, you can imagine my dad’s shock when he saw the bean soup ladle in the box of things to get thrown out.

Thankfully he was able to retrieve it and attempt to explain its significance, though I am not sure my stepmom fully understood it.

But never-the-less the bean soup ladle is still at our camp and still gets taken out every deer season when my dad now makes the bean soup.

It sound silly, but it is special. This ladle has been set aside and designated for a very specific and special purpose.

Do you have things like that in your life? Whether it be due to tradition or even necessity, do you have something that has sort of been set aside and designated for something special.

Designated for a specific thing and is only used for whatever that thing is?

In the Bible, we call this consecration.

In fact we see it a lot in the OT. We see people and things consecrated or set apart for a special and holy purpose.

The priests were consecrated. They were consecrated because their lives were to be dedicated to serving God and his people in the temple.

Over the last several weeks we have been going through a series called The Altered Life where we have been looking at what Paul said to the Church in Rome in...

Romans 12:1 NLT And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.

We said that unlike the OT where sacrifices were made through the shedding of blood or the killing of an innocent animal, in the NT we are called to a different kind of sacrifice.

One that is living and set apart as holy. That we are to live and altered life where the sacrifice we give is our lives in service to God

We have talked about what it means to be a living sacrifice, what it means to be a holy sacrifice, and what it means to pour our lives out for Christ.

This morning as we bring this series to a close I want to focus on another piece of this and that is the idea that what we are sacrificing, the lives we are offering God, are to be consecrated and designated for a special purpose.

Power in the Text

Peter talks about this idea of consecration or being set apart or made holy and not just for righteousness.

We have been talking a lot about sin the last several weeks. We have established that sin must be dealt with. That being holy means being set apart for God’s kingdom and his righteousness.

How we live matters. But being set apart isn’t just referring to sin, it is also referring to purpose.

1 Peter 2:1-3 NLT So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. 2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

Again Peter starts by addressing sin. He says this new life we live as followers of Jesus is eternal, it will last forever.

Just before this in chapter 1 he says that we have been cleansed and forgiven of our sin so we must demonstrate our gratitude and sincere love to each other by the way we choose to live.

He indicates that our salvation is a lifelong process, one in which we start out as infants and then grow into maturity. But why?

1 Peter 2:4-5 NLT 4 You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.

5 And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.

Here he refers to Jesus as the living cornerstone of God’s temple.

The cornerstone of any building was historically the most important.

The total weight of an edifice rested on this particular stone. If this stone were to be removed, the whole structure would collapse.

It was also the key to keeping the walls of a structure straight.

As the cornerstone, Jesus carries on his shoulders the weight of the entire OT. Without Jesus, nothing in the OT makes sense. The entire system collapse.

In other words the law, the sacrificial system, the temple, and everything else that built upon it and around is finds its foundation in Jesus.

Then he goes on to say that as followers of Jesus, the living cornerstone, that we too are living stones used to build this spiritual temple.

He says everything Jesus did, we are building upon it. How?

By being his holy priests and offering what? Spiritual sacrifices.

Big Idea/Why it Matters

Here is the heart of it. Peter is saying that sin must be dealt with why, because you and I have been consecrated for a special purpose.

And what is that purpose? To build on what Jesus did. He made the way for salvation. Our job is to be his priests and point a lost and dying world to him.

It isn’t about us anymore. As living stones we must first die to self. In a lot of ways, what Peter is talking about here is the same thing Jesus tried to get Nicodemus to understand in...

John 3:3-7 NLT 3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 4 “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

5 Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’

This was a hard concept for Nicodemus and it is an hard concept for us today to understand.

We like to throw this term around. “I’m a born again Christian”. Great, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Simply put, it isn’t a one time experience. A person isn’t just one day born again by believing in Jesus. There are a lot of people who believe in Jesus that have no clue what it means to be born again.

Being born again in the simplest way I can think to define it is choosing to serve Jesus everyday. We become acceptable sacrifices to Jesus when we choose to serve him and follow his will for our lives every single day.

It isn’t a one time experience and boom, I’m born again. No it is a lifetime of decisions to die to self and live for Christ.

To be a living sacrifice, a living stone, a holy priest who’s life has been consecrated and set apart for a special purpose.

Paul says it this way in...

Galatians 2:20 NLT 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Application/Closing

Have you allowed your old self to be crucified? Have you laid down your past, present, and future as an offering at the alter of sacrifice?

Can you say with all honesty that it is no longer you who lives, rather it Christ himself who live in you and through you?

That is what means to be consecrated.

But here is the thing about being a living stone. No one stone can build a temple.

Rather it takes a bunch of stone being laid just right by an expert builder in order to build a temple.

God is that builder and his son Jesus is that cornerstone that the rest of us are being built upon.

But it takes all of us.

Part of living the altered life, part of becoming an acceptable sacrifice is living within a community of other believers.

This is one of the reasons Church is so important.

For those that think they don’t need Church or who think it doesn’t matter or that they will go as long as they don’t have something better to do are like people trying to build a wall with one stone.

It can’t be done.

As living stones we need each other. As God uses our lives to build his spiritual temple he will like any good stone mason, have to shape us and mold us.

This like the perfume process we talked about last week, will require hard process.

Sometimes God has to take a hammer and a chisel to us and break parts of our lives away from us because he knows they are only going to harm us.

Like the chiseling of stone, this creates friction and heat and it is uncomfortable.

But God knows exactly what he is doing. He knows exactly how shape us in order to fit us among the other living stones that make up his temple.

Are you willing to let him do his work? Are willing to be set apart, not only from sin, but for a special purpose? Are you willing to do so with a community of believers, as part of a church?

Are you willing to live the altered life. One that is offered as a living sacrifice to the one who sacrifice everything for you and for me.

It isn’t enough to simply say yes. There is enough lip service in Churches today. Demonstrate your willingness in the way you live and the choices you make. You will never regret doing so.