House of Ministry

Introduction

If you go onto Google, one of my favorite things to do is to see what is popular to search. It kind of gives you a look into the human psyche and causes you to question if we will make it or if we are just doomed as a society. Most often I come away with…we are doomed as a society…

If you go on Google and start typing you will get to see those popular searches as Google tries to figure out what you are going to search based on what you’ve typed in so far. So this week, I started with this statement…Everyone is a…and I let Google fill in the rest. Here are the top eight searches starting with Everyone is a…

Everyone is a Genius - Albert Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Everyone is a winner

Everyone is a girl online

Everyone is a hero

Everyone is a slave to something

Everyone is a ferrari fan

Everyone is a leader

Everyone is a weenie

So, there you have it. Here’s what you won’t get. You won’t find the main point of my message today in the top searches. So here you go…

Main Point -

At Cornerstone Church, Everyone Is A Minister

That means that each and everyone of you has a ministry. You are a minister. Now, for some of you, you may not know what that ministry is and for others, you may be doing it now. Some of you may think I’m exaggerating this in order to get you to sign up to watch the nursery. And others may feel like you have disqualified yourself from any type of ministry.

Whatever you are feeling or thinking, my prayer is that you will hear me out and you will seriously consider the truths found in God’s word because they are meant to help us, not harm us, they are meant to encourage us not condemn us.

Today we are continuing our series called Foundation Stones. These are stones, building blocks that are the foundation of our church. I’ve condensed them down to four important ideas. These stones are building particular houses. The First House, we called a House of Worship. Last week we talked about a House of Prayer.

This week we see that God is building a House of Ministry. As he builds this House of Ministry, we learn that every person, each and every one of you, is a minister.

Let’s read what God says in his word, today -

1 Peter 2:4–6 ESV

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.”

This is one of several passages that highlight the name of our church - Cornerstone. Jesus is the cornerstone. That’s the view of the Bible and that’s the view of our church. Jesus is the center, he is the focus, he is the first block in the foundation of what we are building here. Every foundation stone we have been talking about is built upon this precious cornerstone. Without Jesus, there is no Cornerstone Church.

The Apostle Peter believed the same thing. In his letter, he rights that Jesus is a living stone, meaning a rock that is alive. He was rejected by men, but he is chosen and precious in the sight of God. Then he turns that analogy around on us. He says that we, the church, are God’s living stones and we are being what? We are being built into a spiritual house.

Now we’ve spent the past few weeks talking about the spiritual houses that God is building us into. We talked about Worship - God wants Cornerstone Church to be a place where we worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. Jesus is the center and the focus of that worship. He is the cornerstone. The same thing can be said about prayer. God wants the church to be a house of prayer, meaning that all of our prayers are offered up to Jesus and through Jesus. He is the focal point of our prayers and the great high priest who lives to make intercessory prayers for us.

Peter, I think would agree, so he takes that description of high priest and then makes a shocking statement. He says that we, the church, are a holy and royal priesthood! I want to focus in on that thought this morning and want to give you a little bit of background to make this make sense.

During the OT temple system, there were two types of people, there were the common Israelites, coming from various tribes, like Benjamin, Judah and so on. And then there were those who were from the tribe of Levi. The Levites, from the time of the Exodus were the priests of the nation of Israel. Now, if you are like me, you might want to know what a priest is, so here’s the definition of a priest.

A priest is one who is duly authorized to minister in sacred things, particularly to offer sacrifices at the altar, and who acts as mediator between men and God.

According to The Bible Dictionary

A priest is someone who ministers by offering sacrifices and acts as a mediator between God and man. I’m paraphrasing, but this was essentially the definition of the priests in the OT. They had two jobs, offer sacrifices and mediate between the people and God. Now, in the NT, we see Jesus takes over both of those roles as our high priest according to the Book of Hebrews. He is our ultimate sacrifice, so we do not need a physical temple with the blood sacrificial system found in the OT AND He is our mediator, so we don’t need a priest to talk to God for us, we can go to him directly ourselves, which is what we talked about last week as God has called us to be a House of Prayer For All Nations.

Peter now is taking the general idea of a priest though and reapplying it to us. He is saying, you are now all priests. First I want to tell you what he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t mean that we need to start sacrificing animals in our own backyards, again Jesus is THE sacrifice for sin, once for all time. Next, we don’t need to be a mediator for others. They can talk to God directly.

So what is Peter saying? Well, he is drawing an analogy here. He is saying we are priests, but there’s a different sacrifice now, it’s not a physical one, but a spiritual one. That spiritual sacrifice is a sacrifice of praise, I believe. Here’s where I find that out:

Hebrews 13:15 ESV

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

In other words, the blood has been shed once for all, we don’t need that type of sacrifice anymore, so we are priests with a different sacrifice. Our sacrifice is one of continual praise. Now, this draws us back to God calling us to be a House of Worship, as David said. God’s praise should forever be on our lips. That’s the sacrifice we should make.

Now you know me, I’ve got to bring this back to relationship. We call it a sacrifice, but it’s not a big of an ask is it? When you love someone, when you are in relationship with God and your love for him is overflowing, praise is a natural result. It’s not a difficult sacrifice to make, is it? He is great! And greatly to be praised!

He’s also saying that we are mediators, but not in the way you might think. We are to proclaim God’s word to people who have never heard it. We are to speak God’s word to those that are far from God, calling them to draw near to God.

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

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.

Peter here in context is saying, you have been called into this royal priesthood, you have been chosen for this assignment so that you may proclaim…his excellencies…because He called you out of darkness into his marvelous light! In other words, Peter is giving us the reason he thinks we are priests now, the purpose behind it, it’s so we can proclaim how good He is! Wow, this sounds just like testifying to me. Our ministry, what we are called to do is a simple one, but it’s specific.

Peter says that we proclaim the greatness of God, who called us out of darkness. That means we have to share our story. We have to share our journey with others. That’s the mediation. God called you out of darkness and now you are his agent, his minister, calling others out of darkness.

All of us are called to do this. This is Peter’s point. God saved us and is making us into a kingdom of priests. That’s not only Peter’s thoughts, but this is what we see in heaven as described by the Apostle John in the book of Revelation. So this is a non-negotiable. This is who you are and who you were created to be.

Now, why is this important? Why am I telling you this? Because for centuries this idea was lost! If you trace Church History into the middle ages, you see something develop that wasn’t godly, it was the distinction of clergy and laity. In the catholic church, what developed over the centuries was this idea of clergy as special people who do the ministry and laity, a different group of people who received ministry.

This idea also led into status thinking as well. The clergy were of a higher order or higher status in God’s house than the laity. This philosophy, which gets it’s origins from the OT priesthood, was eradicated by Jesus in the NT, but it found its way into the NT church over the years, until the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther, who was one of the fathers of the Reformation, is best known for “rediscovering” the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And I’m so glad that he did! What a blessing to the church to have that beautiful doctrine proclaimed in our day. A lot of you already know this about Luther though. This is what he is most known for, his stance on justification. What you might not know, is that he also “rediscovered” the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Here’s a quote from him.

“There is no true, basic difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, between religious and secular, except for the sake of office and work, but not for the sake of status. They are all of the spiritual estate, all are truly priests, bishops, and popes. But they do not all have the same work to do. . . . Further, everyone must benefit and serve every other by means of his own work or office so that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, just as all the members of the body serve one another.”

Martin Luther

What he is saying here is that between people, there are none that are greater or more spiritual than any other. If you are a pastor, you are no more spiritual than a writer or doctor or plumber, except in that the office and work of pastor should be held in honor for what it is. He explains the reason their is no distinction is because everyone must serve each other by their own talents and skills in order for the community to function. In other words, if everyone was a pastor, then who would fix our plumbing? Who would cut down our trees? Who would fix our roof? Each person is worthy of dignity and respect because each person is needed.

This is exactly right in my book, having been on both sides of this, plumber and pastor. I am no more spiritual than any of you. I have my struggles, I confess those to you pretty freely. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a walking bible. I am simply called to do this work as a full-time vocation. That’s it.

All of us though are called to do ministry. The reformer John Calvin would put it this way…

“All believers … should seek to bring others into the church, and should strive to lead the wanderers back to the road, should stretch forth a hand to the fallen and should win over the outsiders.”

- John Calvin

In other words, we are all called to be priests and ministers for God. This doctrine was lost and then it was rediscovered and I think its this doctrine that led to the explosive growth of Christianity over the past 500 years. All of a sudden, anyone could be an evangelist or preacher or teacher or minister again. Ministry had returned to its roots.

Jesus called fishermen to be apostles. He called tax collectors to write Scripture. He called lawyers and zealots to teach people the good news of the kingdom. Ministry is for everyone. And everyone has a ministry. This has been the case in our movement for 500 years.

So let’s recap before moving on. We are called by Jesus to be a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. For what reasons? Two - to Praise and to Proclaim. His Praise is to be continually on our lips and we are to proclaim his greatness through our testimony. That’s our job. We are called to the Priesthood to Praise and Proclaim. Pretty easy to remember.

Now, let me ask you. What stops us from really believing this? What is stopping Cornerstone Church from being a House of Ministry. I think there are plenty of reasons, but let’s look at just three today.

We are too timid.

We are too distracted.

We are too indifferent.

We are too timid - One of the most striking things to me in reading through Acts is that the disciples constantly prayed for boldness. They wanted to be bold. Our prayers don’t look like that. We are timid people. I think a large majority of this timidity comes from the culture we are in.

We are too distracted - I am preaching to myself here. I’m so easily distracted that I miss God and God’s opportunities. I sit down to do what he’s called me to do and three texts and two facebook messages later and 2 hours have past and I’ve not done anything. We live in a world of distraction. In order to be all that God has called us to be, we have to have focus. We have to ruthlessly eliminate distractions. I have a lot that I want to accomplish with my life and distractions are costing me precious time.

We are too indifferent - They say the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I told you last week prayer is based on relationship. I’ll tell you today that ministering is based in relationship as well. It’s out of the abundance of our love for God that we serve him. Peter says that we are to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called you, well in order to do that, you have to KNOW him! It’s not good enough to know about him. You have to KNOW him and LOVE Him.

Let’s look one more time at the point. God has called each and every one of us to be ministers of his gospel. Everyone at Cornerstone Church has a ministry. The main ministry we have is to preach and proclaim his goodness in saving us.

Closing

So to end today I want to put those notebooks to use. I’m going to put a few prompts on the screen for your to pray through and journal about. These are meant only to get your mind started. Answer one of them or all of them. Let the Lord lead you into whatever he wants during this time.

Prayer Prompts

Lord, what is one thing that you want me to do as a part of Cornerstone Church this year?

Lord, what is one thing that is keeping me from doing what you’ve already asked me to do?

Lord, what is one distraction I can eliminate this year?