July 7, 2024 | Living Stones

Transcript:

This morning as we come to First Peter chapter two, I want to ask you to think about your experience. And there's two experience specific specifically that I think we probably all have at some point. And depending on your personality and your walk with God, you might tend towards one or the other of these experiences more often. Sometimes you might come to God and think, I really am trying to do what is right and good.

But I don't think God can ever be really pleased and happy with me. You say I've tried to do some good things, but I know there's impure motives in my heart. Or I tried to show love and it didn't come across that way. And you might think, I know God can look at me. And because of Jesus, he's not sending me to hell.

But what I bring to him isn't really acceptable. It's not really pleasing. Or on the other hand. You might come to God with some things that you do. Some we could call them good works. We could call it just the attitude of your heart. And you might think, I think I did pretty well there. I think God really ought to be pleased with me.

Or we could say it a different way. The first experience you might feel like God could never really show honor to me. Think about what we're told. Servants who come before him, and he says, well done, good and faithful servant. Or like when we saw at the beginning of job, he points to job and says, have you considered my servant job?

And maybe you think I know the things that bounce around in my head and in my heart, and God could never say, well done and good and faithful servant to me. Or the second experience you say, God can never show honor to me is one the other side. You wouldn't say it, but deep down you feel like I deserve a little bit of honor.

Both of those feelings are wrong. They're built on lies. And this text is going to help us with that. Because sometimes Christianity might seem a little weird. You might come and think, am I supposed to be confident and do good things and feel like my father loves me and thinks I'm doing a good job? Or am I supposed to come and do good things but feel bad about myself because I go with they're never perfect.

So many times we get trapped between these two feelings, and in this text, Peter is going to drive us to the solution, to the truth that will help both of those feelings. Let's read the beginning in verse four of First Peter, chapter two. As you come to him, to Jesus, 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'm 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 a fence.

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 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. This is God's inspired and perfect word. Let us hear it this morning. This week we're going to focus through verse eight. I wanted to read nine and ten because we'll get to that in a couple weeks actually. But those are important to see where he's going. He's going to say, this is who you are.

But in verse four through eight he describes a really he doesn't describe a command. Sometimes people talk about the Bible like it's primarily a book of rules. Here's all the things you should do. Well, the Bible includes commands, but it's not primarily a book of rules. It's primarily a book of truth, which leads you to some rules. We know how that works.

I talked last a few weeks ago about obeying the truth. It's good for you to know gravity exists, and once you know gravity exists and you know how it works, then you understand. When someone says, don't jump off the roof, there's a reality that leads to the way you should act. That's what the Bible is. It's not a list of rules for rules sake.

It's a reality truth book that then tells you. Now here's how you ought to live in that truth. So he begins with this truth. As you come to him, he doesn't command you. We'll come back to this later. He doesn't command you. Come to him. He says, when you do come to him, here is what God is doing.

Or if we were to take the last phrase of verse five to give us a question, to frame the way we're going to think about this, how does God build his church so that he receives spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to him? That's what Peter's doing. He says, God is doing this. He's building his church so that the church gives spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.

How does he do that? Well, first we have to look at Jesus as you come to him. Look at the way he describes Jesus in verse four, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, he's going to use this image of a building. In fact, he's going to use specifically a cornerstone, which we don't use so much now because we have different construction techniques.

But the way it would work is you would say, I plan out where I'm going to build the house or the building, and you take a large stone that is exactly the shape and size you want, and you put it and you make sure you put it in the right place. To give you an example of why you would do that, some of you have laid tile before.

I'm going to bet none of you started in the middle of the room with a tile. You don't do that because you say I need a corner or a wall. Maybe. But really, you're going to start at a corner and you're going to say, this corner tells me, now, how do I go this direction? How do I go this direction?

That corner establishes everything else. And the same thing is true. If you're building a stone building, you get a cornerstone that you put and you make sure it's in the right place. You don't just throw it down anywhere and decide, okay, I guess that's where I want it. You put the cornerstone, it's in the right place. Every other stone is going to be defined in relation ship to the cornerstone.

That's the building metaphor that he's using here. So he points you to Jesus first three words that we could use three adjectives to describe this stone. Jesus is chosen, but he's rejected. He's precious, we could say, as well as part of chosen and he's living. So those three things Jesus was chosen. If you look back to chapter one and verse 20, he was for known.

Jesus was known, chosen before the foundation of the world. But he's been revealed in the last times for the sake of those who would believe in him. It's the same word that we get at the beginning, where he calls the people he's writing to elect exiles. They're chosen exiles. Jesus was chosen. He was precious. He was loved in the sight of God, but he was rejected.

Notice this is just a helpful principle to remember the sight of God, the way God views things, and in the sight of man, the way man views things are radically different when it comes to Jesus. In the sight of the father. Jesus is chosen and precious and loved in the sight of man. He was rejected and despised. We think of Isaiah 53.

He's described as one who had no no beauty that we should look on him. There was nothing special to see here from the sight of man. But in God's eyes. The father looked at him and said, I love him, and he will be the perfect lamb without blemish or spot. That's encouraging for us, because there's also a radical difference between the way God views his people and the way humans view God's people.

When you look at the world around you, and people may look at you and say, Christians are crazy, how could you believe in what they think is a fairy tale? You remember in the sight of God, things are different from the way they seem in the sight of men. That which is chosen and precious in Jesus Christ is rejected by men.

Which means as a Christian, if you feel rejected by men. You don't have to think you're rejected by God. Now, I said that carefully. I don't want to say if you feel rejected by men, you're definitely accepted by God. You can be rejected for lots of crazy reasons. But if you are rejected by men because your faith is in Jesus Christ, say, well, the way he said I should live is the way I want to live.

If you were rejected by men for that reason. You're chosen and loved by God. Just like in Jesus case, there's a radical difference between Jesus in the sight of men and Jesus in the sight of the father. Same thing is true for his people. So he's chosen. He's rejected, but he's also living. Jesus is not just like a good idea.

Here's what a loving human looks like for, especially in the 1900s, there were plenty of people who taught this that the only thing Jesus did was give us this great example of selfless love. Now, did he give us an example? Yes. But that's not the only thing Jesus did. Jesus is not a past tense ideal of goodness who lived and died.

And that's it. He's a living stone. He was raised and he is active now. So the first step how does God build his church? You have to look to Jesus, the one who is the cornerstone. Okay. Second, those who long for Jesus must come to him. That's the first phrase in verse four as you come to him. I remember the context when we looked at the first three verses of this chapter.

He said, if you have tasted the goodness of God, as he's revealed himself in His Word, like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk. Now it's possible for you to long for something, but then, because you get distracted or busy to never actually come and get it.

If you ever thought I'm kind of hungry, and then you get distracted and never go back and get food happen sometimes. So here the steps for how he's going to build his church is first, look at Jesus. He's the cornerstone. Now, those who long for Jesus, who have tasted that he is good say here's his goodness. Here's how I've seen it.

I long for that. Now I'm going to come to him. I'm going to come and I'm going to drink of him. Those people come and they partake. I was thinking of this as we took communion a minute ago. Symbolism that we we forget, but that's what we're doing. Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. We're coming to him and we're partaking of him.

We're eating and drinking the symbol of Jesus. We're saying, I want him inside me. I want the nourishment that comes from him.

Now, when it says we come to him, those who are longing for him because we've tasted his goodness, come to him.

There's a lot of ways you can come to Jesus without really coming. The way this passage describes. If you say my life's kind of hard, maybe something will help. So I'll come to Jesus so that he can just give me whatever I want. That's not the reason he gives for why people come to Jesus. The sacrifices that you would make, the spiritual sacrifices that that heart brings, are not acceptable to God because we're not coming really relying on Jesus.

We're coming, relying on ourselves, hoping Jesus will just give us what we want, those who come to him. The way this passage describes are those who say, I've tasted his goodness. I know how good he is. I want more of that. There are people who would sing, take the world, take that away, but give me Jesus.

So this the steps as you go through the passage are look to the cornerstone. Jesus, those who long for him because he's good, come to him. And then we are shaped as living stones. Verse five continues, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house. Notice he calls us the same thing. He said, Jesus is a living stone.

So you like living stones. When you come to the cornerstone, he transforms us. He gives us life so that now we are living and we're stones that are fit to be part of what he is building. In some ways, the image is maybe a little difficult for us because it's fantastic sounding. He's stretching our minds with a normal metaphor construction and then putting a supernatural activity into it.

But he says, look, the great cornerstone is it's in the right place and it's solid. Now as you come to him, it's like contact with him transforms you to also be living to have life and to be a stone that is fit, to be built on the cornerstone. So built as what he says, as a spiritual house or as a temple.

He draws your attention not to your individual identity. The Bible talks about that. It'll say things like you individually, if you come in faith, are a child of God. That's an individual focus. He will say things like you, if you come in faith in Jesus Christ, you individually are accepted. You are loved, you are free. Those can all be individual realities.

But here he points you to corporate or as a body identity. He's not saying in the picture. In the metaphor, he's not saying you as one block or the temple of God. He's saying as we come to Jesus, the cornerstone, we are shaped and built up to be as a group, a spiritual house, the same term that's used for the temple.

We are God's temple in first Corinthians. It's the picture is used that way. It's actually used both ways. He'll say you are the temple of God, and sometimes that means it's in singular in the Greek, and it means you individually. Your body is a temple of God. But there are other times when it's used to say no, we together are the temple of God.

So the picture is God lays the cornerstone. Jesus men reject him and crucify him. But God has chosen Jesus to be the foundational stone, so that the people who come to Jesus to taste of his goodness are being shaped together to be a spiritual house of worship. Now we're going to go on in the text in a minute, but I want to pause for one application here in one sentence.

Personal devotion to God increases corporate devotion to God. We live in a world where a lot of people, for various reasons, will say, I'm kind of done with organized church. In fact, I'm kind of just done with church. I'm going to go live my own spiritual life somewhere else. I love God, maybe I'll chat with my friends here and there who also love God, but I'm going to go do that separately now.

There's a lot of reasons why that happens. Sometimes it's the church has done some pretty bad stuff. Sometimes it's hypocrisy. There's a lot of reasons why our world sometimes pushes away from the corporate expression, because we are sinners. But this text and scripture throughout will not let you make the ideal spiritual life, personal spiritual life, separated from corporate spiritual life.

When you come to Jesus, if you in your house sit down and read the word because you say, God is good and I love to taste that goodness and you grow in your spiritual devotion. The point is, the goal of that is that you would increase in your spiritual devotion so that the body as a whole would also increase in spiritual devotion.

It's aimed at. We are the temple in this text. That's his focus. Personal devotion increases corporate devotion. That's partly because my spiritual life is not focused inward. It's not focused on me. It's focused on I grow in my relation with Christ so that I can be focused on others, which means we have to have more than just me.

There have to be others there to interact with.

Just as a real practical example of this, this morning, some of you know this one, I have an issue with my ear where I'm not hearing very well out of my left ear right now. It'll get better. I'm not really worried about it, but I stood over there and sang and tried to listen to people singing. And I couldn't hear you as well as I normally do.

And that's not your fault. That's my ears fault. And I thought, I just love to hear God's people sing.

Because when we come together, it's not just personal devotion. We are helping one another. Singing is one practical example of that. But when I hear conversations going on and see love between people out in the lobby or before the service or after the service, that encourages my heart. That's the temple of God, the living temple of God to get ahead of us a little, offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

So he, because the reality is so much bigger than his picture, he goes to a different picture and says, you're built up as a spiritual house, but you're not just a passive building where worship happens. You're built up to be a holy priesthood. Together we are supposed to be set apart. Holy priests. Every member of and Bible church.

But we can extend that because this isn't only to Barry and Bible Church. So every Christian, everyone who really is a follower of Jesus, is supposed to be part of a priesthood. In other words, we're not a passive group where God dwells. We're an active. We're active participants in worship.

I hope you don't come to a church service here or anywhere else, so that you can watch people on stage do worship for you. That's not why we're here. And he says we're not supposed to be just like the building. We're supposed to be like the priests. And what aspect of priesthood specifically like, why does he use priests?

Because of the end of verse five to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now, if you were reading that the first time and you say, if you especially if you didn't know some other passages which you may not that talk similarly, you say, what are spiritual sacrifices? See, in the Old Testament that meant lambs. Am I supposed to bring a lamb?

So I don't know. That doesn't work because Jesus is the perfect lamb and you could say they're spiritual sacrifices, not physical ones. So it wouldn't be a physical lamb anyway. So what is that? Well, let's look at a few other passages you can turn if you light two or you can, or I'll read them. Hebrews 13.

Verse 15 and 16.

The author of Hebrews says, through him that's Jesus didn't let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. So in the book of Hebrews that has made it clear Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice.

He fulfills all of the Old Testament sacrifices for atonement. The book of Hebrews has said that over and over and over at the end he says, now here's some things you do which can be described as sacrifices. Praise offer a sacrifice of praise. That's lips that are acknowledging his name. Here's what God has done for me. Here's what God did for me yesterday.

Here's what God did for me ten years ago. Here's what I'm trusting God to do for me tomorrow. Sacrifices of praise. And then the next verse do good. That's about as broad as you can get.

Share what you have. Generosity. These are all described as sacrifices. If we went to Romans 12, we'd have another, maybe a familiar passage to you. Many of you could probably quote it Romans 12, verses one and two. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

And then he goes on in that chapter to talk about spiritual gifts, God's giving you gifts. So the way you use those gifts in your body should be a spiritual sacrifice.

Ephesians five and verse two, he tells them to walk in love, which is a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Or Philippians four Paul says, the material gifts that they gave to him were a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. So at the very least, to use some broad categories, you could say any act of praise.

Any thing you do that is good. Any generosity of sharing. Anything you do with your body, specifically using gifts God has given you with your body.

Any act of love. And any material gift that's related to sharing, but a little bit more specific. Any of those at least Scripture refers to as these can be sacrifice. Is spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God. So if we are to broaden it out and give a principle, I'd say it's anything you do. Any situation where you use what God has given and surrender your will about that situation to God's for his glory.

It's called a sacrifice because it might not be what you would do on your own. And in the Old Testament, they were sacrifices because you take a lamb that you would normally. You say, I'm going to treat this lamb well. Maybe it becomes dinner at some point, maybe it becomes war. Whatever it is. But you go, I'm going to take care of this lamb for my purposes.

When you make a sacrifice, you say, no, this lamb is for God's purpose. Well, the same thing with your good works. If you're doing something good because you say, this is just for my purpose, it's not for God. It's not a spiritual sacrifice. You can share with someone else because you want to be seen as good. That's not really a spiritual sacrifice.

It's a spiritual sacrifice. When you take what God has given in some way and say, this is not for my purpose, I'm going to show love because it's for your purpose. God is building his church for that purpose. And notice the way he ends here to offer spiritual sacrifices in verse back in first Peter two, verse six, verse five.

Sorry to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

This passage is so radically centered on Jesus. You can come from what this text says, and do the most amazing act of love that anyone has ever seen outside of what Jesus did. And if you don't do that through Jesus Christ. And it's not an offering that's acceptable to God.

Just like in the Old Testament, to use a parallel, if you there was the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement that was meant to say, sins are forgiven for the nation. Once a year there's this sacrifice. If you say, I hate the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but I'm going to come give all of my flocks for a sacrifice on another day.

That sacrifice is not acceptable to God. And in the same way, you can do whatever good works you want. But if you don't come through Jesus Christ, it's not a sacrifice that's acceptable to God. But every one of those acts, if performed in faith in Jesus Christ, is pleasing. All right, so let's go back to my my first statement.

Here's two feelings you might have. You say, I just don't know if God is really pleased with me when I show love to somebody, can he really do that? Would he really say, well done, good and faithful servant? Absolutely yes. If it's done through Jesus Christ, you say, but but I think probably my motives aren't perfect all the time.

He didn't ask about your motives. It doesn't say to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God because of your perfectly pure motives. It says they're acceptable to God. They're pleasing to him because of Jesus Christ.

God is building his church so that the church would have confident worship, by which I mean all of those spiritual sacrifices, confident worship despite our imperfection and immaturity.

Because the sacrifices we bring are not only acceptable to God because of us, but because of Jesus.

God also wants his people to have confident hope despite opposition. That's where he continues. In verse six he quotes from Isaiah, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. What did you just think on that promise? A minute. Whoever believes in Jesus will not be put to shame.

Maybe there's things in your life that you feel shame about today. I don't mean guilt where you say, I've done the wrong thing and I know it. Like, objectively, here's what's happened. I broke the law, I know I broke the law. I'm guilty. That's a that's a separate discussion. Jesus deals with that, too. But I don't mean that.

I mean, shame where it's kind of that bad feeling where you say, I know I did something that wasn't right, and I really hate it.

And when life pushes on you, in circumstances come, you may say, is it really worth it? We won't necessarily verbalize it, though you might. Is God right? If I trust in Jesus all the way from beginning to end and put all of my boast, all of my confidence in him, is God really right? Is it worth it? And this promise points you to say, if your trust is in Jesus, you will never be put to shame.

You say, well, some people around me look at me and they say that I should be ashamed. But remember, there's a difference between the sight of God and the sight of men.

He gives this as a reason God is building his church to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable through Jesus. Because this is what God has promised. Jesus is the cornerstone that everything else is built on, and anyone who trust in him will not be put to shame. To use the building metaphor, if we have the cornerstone, he's saying, if you lay your stone in line with the cornerstone, I trust him.

Where he is is right. If you do that, your stone is not going to be in the wrong place. You will not be put to shame. And the opposite of shame is honor. We know this. We use it this way all the time. If you talk about cultures that aren't American cultures, you talk about maybe Asian cultures will say they're more of an honor based society.

The worst thing that could happen is that you would be shamed. We use shame and honor as opposites in that context, and he does here. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Verse seven. So the honor is for you who believe. So I said at the beginning one of those questions. You might feel like God could save me, but he's not.

He couldn't show honor to me. He couldn't come to me and say, well done, good and faithful servant. That's honor. I he couldn't do that. Not to me. Maybe to somebody else here, not to me. No. This text points you to say you can have honor because of belief in Jesus, and only because of belief in Jesus.

The greatest, most certain honor you could have in your life is to be a stone in the temple that worships Jesus.

Now, we don't always like that because I want honor. Because of me.

Like I said that the other experience is I come to God and I think I deserve a little bit of honor. And our hearts want to do that so many times. Like, I mean, God, I did some pretty good stuff. I deserve a little bit of honor. Both of these are wrong. You shouldn't come to God thinking he could never show honor to me.

He absolutely can. Well done, good and faithful servant, because your faith is in the cornerstone. But at the same time, it's not because you deserve that honor. It's because Jesus deserved that honor and you're built on him. So you can have confident hope, because no one who believes in Jesus will be put to shame. But weight will be rejected.

Yes. So as Jesus. But he was not put to shame, not ultimately, you can say, but will be opposed by people. Yes. So was Jesus. So if you're opposed for the same reasons Jesus was opposed, you're lined up well with the cornerstone. We might look foolish. Jesus looked foolish to many people around him.

And so as he goes through this text, Jesus is the dividing line. Everything in this text pivots around Jesus. You say, I want to have honor before God. Then believe in Jesus. You say, I want the good things that I do to be pleasing to God. Then offer up those spiritual sacrifices through Jesus as you come to him and drink of him.

Some believe they receive honor, but verse seven continues, 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 offense. In Luke 20, Jesus tells a story that you might be familiar with, of tenants who own or who don't own, who run a vineyard, and the master since his son to them.

And it's picturing God sending his son Jesus to the religious leaders of Israel. And Jesus quotes this same text to say, you, the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Israel, you have rejected the stone. The son who came. But he is actually the cornerstone. That's what Peter points him to in a letter written to say you need comfort when there's suffering and when people oppose you, he says, here's what you need to know.

When all these people oppose you. God has said, I am working through Jesus, and if you believe him, you will not be put to shame. But others don't believe. And verse eight ends with this statement they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Now, quickly, I want to raise a couple of things. There's a theological challenge in that, and I think we could all see that there's words you're like, I'm not sure what that means.

First of all, Peter doesn't give you a very long treatise on it. He gives you a quick statement for things I want to say about this one. The purpose of this text is to comfort suffering believers. So when the world around you maybe persecutes you, maybe opposes you, at least looks on you and says, why do you believe in that?

When the world around you does that, there is comfort to know your God has not fallen off his throne? Those who reject him are stumbling over the stone that is the cornerstone. No matter what they think. He's comforting believers. Number one.

Number two, the Bible never portrays faith or salvation as either God's sovereignty or human responsibility. It doesn't pit those two things against each other. And so here he's not saying they stumble and they aren't responsible for it. In fact, Luke 20 would point specifically to the opposite and say, people who stumble over Jesus, who don't trust him, they are absolutely responsible because number three, those people did exactly what they wanted to do.

They looked at the cornerstone and said, I don't want to trust in that. I want to reject that. The Jews who crucified, who screamed crucify him from the crowd. Scripture can say they stumbled over the cornerstone because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. And Scripture can also say they did exactly what they wanted to do.

They crucified the Messiah. And in doing so they did. They accomplished God's purpose.

Really, when it says disobey the word two, the idea here is not that they accidentally stumbled. Sometimes I think we get it when it says stumbling. We get the picture of like, you're staggering through the dark and there's a big rock and you trip and you accidentally stumble. That's not the picture here. And disobey the word. The meaning of the Greek for disobey throws us a little different direction.

It's they rebelled against it. They saw it and said that looks weak. That looks foolish. I'm not trusting that there's a rebellious turn away from trusting in Jesus. And the last thing on this text is to say this Jesus is the point of the text. If we get lost trying to figure out how some of these things work together and miss Jesus, we miss this whole point.

His whole point is anyone who trust in Jesus, whether it was a Pharisee living in the time of Jesus or one of us living now, if you trust in Jesus, you will never be put to shame. And anyone who does not trust in Jesus will find shame, will stumble. That's the point of the text. There was a student in bringing Christian school this past year.

I heard of this story and I thought it illustrates this point well. The student had been in the school for six years, just finished the six year they weren't a professing believer, had a lot of questions about his. Is God real? Multiple Bible teachers had sat and talked with him for a long time this past year, sat down with a Bible teacher and said, you seem really convinced about Christianity.

Why? The Bible teacher gives his reasons. Student goes away, a student comes back a little bit later and says this. You know, I'm convinced, but I don't know if I want that to be true because then Jesus can ask anything of me. And the Bible teacher responds, that's what this has always been about.

That's the point of this text. Some will come and say, I don't want Jesus to be able to ask anything of me. And so they stumble. They've rejected the cornerstone. But praise God that this text also doesn't say they stumble because they disobey the word, and they're going to keep stumbling forever. Because just like that, student in Berlin Christian School professed faith.

Shortly after that conversation and teacher, multiple teachers will say, and we saw a changed life in him.

One who would reject Jesus because they don't want to accept the cornerstone, will not find honor, will, in fact, ultimately find shame. But the way God has structured salvation is such that if that person says no, I do trust in him. Then the honor is for you who believe.

In many ways, this in this text, Peter is really thinking about one conversation he had with Jesus. Maybe it came to your mind as we were reading through the text in Matthew 16, you might remember, Jesus sits down with his disciples and he says, who do people say that I am? Peter goes, oh, some people say, John the Baptist.

Some people say Elijah. Some people say Jeremiah, some people say another prophet. And Jesus looks at Peter says, but who do you say that I am? Remember, Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus's response? Think about that in light of what Peter says here in first Peter two. Jesus. His response is, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

I think Peter is just thinking about this conversation, and he is reveling in the goodness of Jesus. When Jesus talked to him and he's saying, guys, listen, Jesus is going to build his church and you won't be put to shame because the gates of hell won't defeat you. Whether that battle seems like it's going on inside or outside, you won't be put to shame because your trust is in Jesus.

In that text in Matthew 16, people sometimes wrestle what does he mean on this rock? I will build my church. Does he mean I'm going to build it on Peter? Does he mean I'm going to build it? On the confession? I think based on what Peter says here, Jesus probably did something like this. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

Peter knew what Jesus was saying. He wasn't saying, I'm going to build the church on you. Peter. Peter doesn't come over and go, I'm the cornerstone guys. He knew what Jesus was saying. He said, You're Peter, which by the way, means like little stone. You're a little stone. And on this rock on myself, I'm going to build my church.

So this morning, as you think on this text, there's no command here. None of this text tells you do this. Here's what it does. Tell you. When you come to Jesus longing for him because you've tasted his goodness, God is doing something. It's not just you doing something. God is doing something. He is building up the body of believers so that we can confidently offer spiritual sacrifices, knowing he's pleased with them and we can have confident hope even though we're opposed.

And all of that depends on Jesus. Only. So what are you supposed to do? There's no command. What do I do? Well, first, rest in that reality. When you come and say God couldn't show honor to me. I know my motives are mixed sometimes. Come and say he couldn't show honor to me if it were just me. But my rest, my trust is in Jesus, so I can't be put to shame.

We sang earlier. I love the wording. I cannot be ashamed because my boast is in Christ. It's impossible for you to be ashamed because you're boast is in Christ. So rest in that reality. Drink in the goodness of Jesus. If you come to him for the purpose of I want to taste more of who he is, I want to know him.

God is working in you. When he says come to him here, he doesn't mean the first time, like for salvation, not only the first time, he means if you've tasted and said Jesus is good, I trust him. Come back to him over and over and over and over. We read some Psalm 7071, verse three, B to me, a refuge to which I may continually come.

When you come to taste his goodness, God is building you up individually so that the whole body will be built up to be honoring him and to be honored as his priesthood.

And when God says he made you for a purpose to offer up spiritual sacrifices, he doesn't have to state it as a command for us to understand an implied command. He made you to offer up spiritual sacrifices. So do it. But when you do it, no, he is at work to build you up in that. So all those things we listed offer up a sacrifice of praise.

Do that knowing that God is at work to build you up.

Think about if you knew for sure absolutely certain God was going to do an amazing work in North Hills at 334 this afternoon. Would you be there? I think you would. I would. Here's what you know for sure. When you come to Jesus, God has promised he is doing something. He is building you and the body up to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to him.

So offer those spiritual sacrifices. So come to Jesus. So come drink of his goodness and then go show love. So drink of his goodness, and then praise with your mouth, because you don't have to ever do that and think, well, but God couldn't honor me. He couldn't be pleased with me. Now Jesus has made it so. Those sacrifices are pleasing and acceptable.

And we never come saying, well, I deserve a little bit of honor. Because we look at it and say, Only Jesus deserves the honor. But in his grace, all those who trust in him will never be put to shame. Let's go before God in prayer. I want to invite you in your heart to respond with worship of Jesus.

To rest all of your trust in him for everything that he does to build you up, and for everything that you will do as a spiritual sacrifice to God. I'll give you just a moment to respond silently in prayer, and then we'll close.