Living Out Your Salvation: Action Motivated by Praise (Part 1) - 1 Peter 2:7-10

6:56They are the ones like those, the stone which the builders rejected. They have rejected him, just like the generation that rejected Christ in his day, that threw him out as something worthless, something that's not going to fit in their pattern of life, their way of life, their view of God, and all that. Just throw Christ out. That's who they are, those who have rejected him like he was rejected in his day. These are the cursed ones in this passage. And it's a present, they are declaring. Him worthless. They are disbelieving in him.

7:35So they have declared him useless. They are those who have deemed Jesus to be something other than Lord. They have deemed Jesus to be something other than he is, something other than choice and precious in the sight of God. That's who the cursed are. And then, so look, that's the cursed. Now I want you to focus our attention on the curse itself. This begins in verse 7. Peter lays out three very frightful images for those who reject Christ. The first image is that he is the very cornerstone. See that in verse 7? This became the very cornerstone. We talked a lot about this last time. The cornerstone, literally here in this actual statement, literally the head corner, the chief corner. And this cornerstone in the building project served as the builder's level. It served as the builder's plumb. And it set all the lines and all the angles for the building. And it was this stone that gave the structure its orientation, its alignment, its character, its overall shape, etc.

8:50And then there's this quotation. I think Peter is drawing on Isaiah 28, 16. And in Isaiah 28, 16, the exhortation is being given. To the Jewish leaders to not trust in man for deliverance, but to be trusting in God. Let me just read to you that statement in Isaiah 28. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed. And he goes on to describe what that stone will do. I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the level. So he's going to lay a stone and he's going to build the structure and this foundation stone is going to set all the dimensions, or I mean, all the lines, all the angles, and the overall character of the building. So drawing on this, Peter is pulling that imagery here, and he's using it to communicate to these scattered people who are going through this fiery ordeal. And he says, I want you to know what God is doing. God is active in building a spiritual house out of you, living stones, who come to him. Whoever is coming to him, you are receiving the life from him, and you are becoming a living stone, or you are a living stone yourself, and he is building this structure out of you, a spiritual house, which he intends to dwell in.

10:26And so the character of this main cornerstone, Jesus. Jesus Christ will be the personality of the whole building. That's what he's saying. You who come to Christ are going to be shaped and molded and conformed into the image of Christ. And as he builds you up and he adds you to this great spiritual house that he is building, you're going to take on his personality and character. Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2. Just read to you beginning in verse 19. So you who come to Christ, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple to the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. So those who throw out the stone are building their lives upon another foundation. And the bottom line is they are not part of God's building. When you reject Christ, you reject what God is doing in the world, and you are not part of the building that He intends to dwell with eternally. So those who reject Jesus will not be part of God's building. They're on the outside. And this is their frightful curse. It's the one thing that God is doing. All heaven and earth is going to pass away. But what's going to remain are the souls of the men and women whom He has saved and redeemed and has conformed into the image of Christ. There He is going to dwell. Everything else is swept away. That's all that's going to endure in this age. And to be left out of that is tragedy indeed.

12:36You know, this housing boom, not the one we're in now, but the housing boom of a few years ago was driven in large part by the baby boomers. You know who the baby boomers, those post-World War II, 20 years graduate, you know, 79 million of them in the world today. And they drive many ways the economy. And what they were doing is they were in the peak earning years of their life. So they had their greatest resources that they had amassed. Their parents were passing on, so they were getting all this inheritance. So you know what they were doing with a lot of that money? Building their dream homes. They had saved up, they had their money, they went out and built their dream home. And that's what people. Do to a large degree when you get all your resources and you're doing well, you go out and build a nice building or whatever. Well, that really drove the housing market. They were out building their dream home. Well, think about God. What is He doing? He is building His dream home in the world, and He is using all of His power, all of His resources, and He is building something that He is going to delight in for eternity.

13:59I mean, God is building something far greater than any humanly built structure, and His people are part of it. Those unbelievers are not. What a horrible image to be outside of everything good and delightful that God is doing. Very frightful image. But then there's a second image here. Look back. A stone of stumbling, verse 8. A stone of stumbling. The stone here is lithos, a small stone, or it can refer to a chiseled stone or a block, you know, like a construction site. The masons would cut the stones and then they'd throw them out the ones they didn't want to use. They'd use the good ones, throw the bad ones aside. And if you're not careful, guess what would happen? You trip over them, right? Have you ever been on a construction site where there's a bunch of these stones laying around that the mason has been working with and is thrown out? Well, you've got to be careful, or you can trip. I think that's what it's talking about here. A stone or a block. In Leviticus 19:14, it says, You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.

15:08This kind of imagery, tripping over a stone, being rejected, is what's brought to view here. And this is what happens. The Jewish leaders of Jesus' time threw out the stone that God wanted, and they tripped over it. But the stone was put there by God. God said, I lay in Zion a choice stone. I am the one building the city of God. And there is going to be a quality and a character that I want in this structure, in this house. And that quality and character is Jesus Christ, my choice one, my precious stone.

15:52And that, for those who are believing in him, he is the source of life. He is the living stone. And those who believe in him become living stones themselves. But to the unbeliever, they trip over him, stumble, fall. A stumble leads to a fall. And this is a frightful image. Being on the outside, he's the cornerstone, stumbling, a stone of stumbling. But then there's a third frightful image here. Look at verse 8. And a rock of the stone. Of offense, a rock of offense. Now the language changes. No longer talking about a little stone, we're talking about a Petra. A huge, massive rock, even a rock outcropping, a massive stone. Even could even be like a reference to a large quarried stone, like the foundation stone under Solomon's temple. If you've ever been over to Jerusalem and know the, understand the size of the stones that Solomon built the temple upon. Petra, large, huge, massive stone.

17:13And the offense, the word fear, he is a rock, a Petra of offense. Now we understand the word offense, probably use it today not like it should be understood here. Today we kind of think of, well, I'm offended. That offends me. And I think that meaning is a little bit closer to stumbling. I turn away because Jesus has offended me. That's a little more closer to the meaning of stumbling. But the word for offense here is scandal on. It's the word we get scandal from. And it refers to the cause of a person's downfall, right? We kind of use it that way today. You know, when a political party wants to bring someone down, they need a scandal, right? And kind of bring that person down so they can rise. No more. Well, that's, in a sense, the idea here, but not with evil intent. God is, you could literally translate it, the rock of scandal. We kind of missed the meaning of it, but it refers to a person's downfall, a shattering, a devastation beyond repair. That he is this rock that is going to crush, pulverize, break beyond repair. He will be the reason for your downfall. That's the idea. A rock, a Petra, the rock of your undoing. You see this in Luke 20. There's this confrontation between the chief priests and the scribes and Jesus. And Jesus tells them a parable about the vineyard owner. And then he concludes it by saying this. Let me just read it to you.

18:54Luke 20:15. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy these vine growers and will give the vineyard to others. When they heard it, they said, May it never be. But Jesus looked at them and said, What then is this that is written? The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. And that's a description. Of judgment, being broken to pieces or shattered like dust. There has been a rather errant interpretation of this, I believe, where people say, well, there's some hope, that if you come to Christ, you're going to be broken, and that there's some hope in here, but if he falls on you, then you will be shattered to ground to powder. No, these are both descriptions of judgment. Yes, I mean, that's a true. If you're going to come to Christ, you're going to come, you're going to be broken, you're going to be humbled. That's certainly the biblical truth, but that's not what Jesus is saying here. Saying, woe to the pot.

20:11The picture is of a clay pot being thrown against the stone, it breaks in pieces, or a rock falling on the clay pot and grinding it to powder. In fact, a Jewish midrash actually catches the essence of the judgment in Jesus' words here. And I'll read it to you. It's just in one of the Jewish midrashes. It says this: If a stone falls on a pot, woe to the pot. If the pot falls on the stone, woe to the pot. Either way, woe to the pot.

20:48I think what it's saying here is: to be scandalized is to be shattered beyond remedy. And those who stumble will fall. And their fall is the result of the curse. But it's important to understand that is not the curse itself. What is the curse? Well, it's what Peter dials in here. It's the stumbling. It's the stumbling that is the curse. Look, look there. He goes on to seek about after these three images, the very cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of fence, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. It's the stumbling. It's the doom of verse 8. It's the tripping. It's the ceasing of coming to Jesus. That is the curse. That's what Peter is emphasizing here. Peter has already shown us that faith expresses itself by persistently coming to God. Right? That is what faith is. No matter who you are, no matter what's the situation, you come to Christ and you keep coming to Christ. And if you do, you are believing in him.

21:59And you will never be disappointed. The ones who are coming to him in verse 4 are the ones who are believing in him. Verse 7. So a person who stumbles over Christ is someone who ceases to come to God through Christ. They cease coming to God. They cease to progress to the only remedy of their fallen state. So that's faith. Downfall here. That's the curse to stumble, to stop coming to Christ. Because if you come to Christ, you will never be disappointed. But if you don't come to Christ, you're cursed. So stumbling is the curse. They are currently stumbling over Christ.

22:51And Peter goes on to explain why this happens. So we looked at the cursed. We looked at the curse. And now I want to look at the cause for the curse. The cause. Look at verse 8. For they stumble. That is, they are currently stumbling. For they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. And to this doom they were also appointed. So there are two perspectives on the cause for this stumbling. The first is the human perspective cause. Look at why are the people stumbling?

23:31Well, there's a cause, and it's in the human perspective. We can certainly put it all together and say somewhere along the way they took up offense about Christ. They took up offense against him. Maybe it was his exclusiveness. Oh, I don't want somebody who can claim the only way. Maybe it was his morality. No, I'm not going with him. I can't take his morality. I don't agree with it. Or maybe it's his intolerance of sham religion. Or maybe it's his total claim upon their life. I don't want somebody who is Lord over my life. I want to be Lord over my life. So maybe this whole notion that Christ comes in, waltzes on the scene, claims to be Lord, and says, yes, I have absolute jurisdiction over your life. And I deserve total obedience. Maybe, man, that's, I don't know if I want anybody with that kind of right in my life. And so they stumble over Christ. But he is all these things. But the bottom line is, Christ didn't represent the God they wanted to serve. And so they were offended by him. And he offends me. And I'm going to go my own way. The whole idea is rejecting him. I am offended, and therefore I'm going to make up a God that I want to serve. And Christ isn't taking me to the God that I want to serve. And so, stumbling. So somewhere they took up an offense against him, and certainly I think all that's true. But look at verse 8. It gives us a more specific reason.

25:09Why specifically they stumble. Verse 8, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. They are disobedient to the word. And this is a very incredible thing that Peter is saying here. Remember, going back to chapter 1. Verse 22, Peter starts talking about the seed. He begins in that section in verse 3, you were born of a seed, and he describes the seed as the enduring word of God. The seed is the enduring word of God. And he uses the word theos. He uses the word logos. And he is quoting Isaiah. Let me just read to you what Isaiah's quote.

25:59Verse 8 of chapter 40, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Now, Peter takes that verse from Isaiah, a clear reference to God's words, and then he quotes that. And let me show you what he does. In verse 24 of chapter 1, for all flesh is like grass, and all of its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls off. He's quoting Isaiah, but the word of Jesus endures forever. You see, the word of the Lord endures forever. He uses the word kirios.

26:40And he uses the word not logos, but he uses the word rhema, the message of Christ. You can circle the word Lord there in verse 25, and you could put equals Jesus. And let me show you why that's so. And this is the word. This is the message. The message of Jesus, which was Preached to you. And then he goes on in verse 3. So he says, go on and crave the word. Grow in respect to salvation. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, the who? The curios.

27:15And then look what he says in verse 4. And coming to him, the one rejected by men. Who is the him in verse 4? The Lord of verse 3. Who is the Lord? The Lord and the Kyrios of verse 25. In other words, he has gone through, and he's now coming to him, the one rejected. That was Christ, choice and precious in the sight of God. So what Peter does is he takes the scripture of Isaiah that is referencing to the word of God and he says he equates it to the word of Christ. Peter sees Jesus as God in the flesh, and it is woven throughout the New Testament. John does the same thing. God has walked among us. And Peter relates to Christ and he attributes the very words out of his mouth as the very words of God.

28:13Now, if Jesus wasn't God, that would be blasphemous. But Peter very much was aware that Jesus is God. And so their cause. And then when he comes back to the day are the cause of their Stumbling is disobedience to the logos. So he's gone from the logos of God to the message of Christ, to the message of Christ, back to the word of God, the logos. So it's a rejecting of the message of Christ. The cause of their disobedience is, or the cause of their fall is the disobedience to God's Word and specifically to the message of Christ. And what is the overarching message of Christ? He lays it right out in Mark 1:15. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Be repenting and be believing. That's the message summed up. Be turning away from your sin. No matter what it is, be turning to God and be believing in the good news that He is calling you out of the darkness and that He is good and faithful. And if you come to Him, you will never be disappointed, regardless of what you come to Him with.

29:36If you honestly come before Him and ask Him for His way, His will, His character, His angles, His lines to be fashioned in your life, you're never going to be disappointed. That's the promise we have. But see, when you set that aside, your life and theology can get really weird really quick. When you reject simple obedience to God's Word, be repenting and be believing. So the cause of their stumbling is within them. They are characteristically and continually disobedient to God's Word. Don't let this be you. But then there is the cause from the divine perspective. Look at what he says. And to this doom they were also appointed. To this, literally in the Greek, it's to this they were appointed. And the question is, to what? Is it to the disobedience to the word that they're appointed, or to the stumbling? And the answer is the whole clause. The main verb is the stumbling. To this doom, to this stumbling, because of their disobedience, they are appointed. They stumble because God has appointed, has predestined, and has decreed that all who are disobedient to the word of God will stumble and fall under the wrath of God. All who are disobedient will stumble at Christ. That's the decree. Those who are disobedient to the word, disobedient to Christ, will receive the doom, the stumbling. And it's important to note that this text is not teaching that God has appointed man's disobedience and therefore the cause of man's disobedience. God has not appointed, grammatically, that's not what's taking place here. God is not appointed. Appointed the disobedience, he has appointed the stumbling because of their disobedience. That is what God has destined.

31:40James 1, 13, 14 says this: Let no man say, When he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil. And he himself does not tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. You see, God is holy, he has no capacity to entice, to author, to cause, or predetermine your sin. That is your own doing. God is not actively destining people to disobedience and unbelief, but he does actively appoint judgment upon every unbeliever. You see, sin comes out of man's strong desire to satisfy his fleshly impulses, and that's what overrides his desire to obey God's word. Listen, sin devastates humanity. I mean, think about how many sin-created industries there are in the world today. Just think about it. I grew up in a town called Los Alamos, New Mexico. You know why that whole town existed? It was to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War. So all the industries, all the things that went together to build that town had one purpose in mind. War.

33:02Think about all of our security systems. Think about our police force. Think about our military. Think about, you just go down the line and just think about how many industries are existent today because of sin. But the good news is, man's eternal state is not going to be driven by the competing desires of sinful man. That's not going to be the chapter, the final chapter in Earth's history. In fact, you can even see the good news in that God put an angel at the garden to make sure that man did not eat from the tree of life. Just as God said it's not good for man to be alone and he made Eve, so he said it's not good for man to live eternally in a state of his sin. And so he provided a remedy and a way out and a way to transform man from his sin. No, God is not responsible for sin. So as you work through the issue of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, make sure you don't cross the line and say, God is responsible for my disobedience, because he's not. Now he allows sin and he is sovereign over sin and he has a purpose for sin. He is in control of the sinful.

34:30But he's not the author of it. And it's very clear what his emphasis here. Peter's emphasis is very clear. Do not be disobedient. He is saying God has it under control. He's going to bring it to judgment for sure. Do not be disobedient. Do not fall away from Christ. Do not fall away from following after God. Do not be disobedient to his word. You can hear just Peter's heartbeat just pulsing here. Do not stumble. Do not be disobedient to the word. That's what they are doing, and that's why they are persecuting you. But your future is far better than they are because they are stumbling over Christ and they will feel his wrath. So that's the curse, the cursed, the curse, and the cause of the curse.

35:34Remember Jesus' words at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount? Let me read them to you. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house. And yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. This house was able to withstand divine judgment. But then there's another house that is not able to stand divine judgment. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.

36:22This house isn't going to stand. Let me tell you something. Those of you who refuse to build your life upon obedience to Christ's words, build your lives upon the sand. Judgment is for sure, fall is certain. And everyone in this room has to encounter this stone. There's no way around it. God has placed a stone in your life. And you're either going to build your life upon it or you're going to trip over it. And the question is: when you encounter Christ, when Christ draws near to you through the proclamation of his word to you, are you going to be responding in faith and coming to him, or are you going to be responding in disbelief and stumbling?

37:13Will you embrace him as Lord, master, and the foundation stone of your life, or will you throw him out? That stone has been placed in your life. Think about what happens for just a moment to anybody who rejects Christ. If you're Going to go to heaven, you think you can go another way? You know what? You're going to have to be dealt with your sin. Your deeds are going to have to be dealt with on their own merit.

37:44You're going to get what your deeds deserve. So if you think you're going to inherit God's heaven, your righteousness is going to have to be pretty impressive. You're going to have to wow God, okay? It's funny. I have a son who has been told he has perfect pitch. And that may be a blessing, but it may be a curse because he finds it hard to enjoy certain kinds of music. I remember we were driving down the road and there was this song over the radio, and my son's back there laughing. And what are you laughing about? They recorded this song with an out-of-tune piano. A very popular one, you know.

38:26Well, if you think, if you think about God's moral perfection, if you're going to wow God, I mean, you're going to have to be really, really in tune, okay, to real moral perfection. I mean, God is acutely aware and hypersensitive to the standards of perfect morality, perfect justice, and perfect righteousness. Wowing God is beyond your ability. Let me tell you that. Right now. I mean, you may think you're good, but do you believe you're morally perfect? Well, the Bible says that you are not moral perfection. Perfect, that you are not righteous, that there isn't a single one, so your hope to go to heaven is you're going to have to wow God in your own righteousness, and the second thing, God's going to have to be a liar.

39:16There's no hope. You who disbelieve, you have a cursed destiny. But the very message being proclaimed here today is that if you will come to Him and put your faith in Him, you will be received by Him, you will receive the life that is in Him if you will come to Him. So the call is to come, come. And if you don't, the reason for your cursed destiny is found in you. But to those who believe, there is a blessed future.

40:03I'm going to answer a brief question. Is this egocentric on God's part? Here's God Creator, He's going to, He wants His Christ to be worshiped. Is this egocentric? On God, I've heard the question. Well, God wants to be worshiped. Is that egocentric? Well, the short answer is no. God is perfect. Of course, it's not egocentric. Yes, He's worthy. The longer answer is this: God knew that it was. Not good for man to be in a sinful state and therein exist. So he made a way for him to be not like Adam, but like the second Adam, Christ. And so he brought forth Jesus, the choice pattern for the kind of people that God wants inhabiting the earth. He brought forth Christ.

40:56And if you think about it, Jesus is the one, really the characteristic, the personality, that cornerstone that God wants and that we should want. And Jesus had compassion on the outcast. He had compassion on the leper. We should have compassion too. He used his resources. He used his power to heal and to strengthen others. We should too. That's a good pattern. He was kind. He was forgiving. We should too. That's a good pattern. He hated false religion. And he hated religious pretense and hypocrisy. So should we. Sounds like a pretty good thing, right? Pretty good pattern. He didn't come to condemn his enemies. They were already condemned. But he came to save them. Most people want to destroy their enemies. He came to save their enemies, to save them from their sin, the penalty of their sin, and their path. To self-destruction. He was good to his enemies. So should we. What a good pattern. Think of an earth inhabited by people characterized by this.

42:12Christ loved people to the point of laying down his life for them. He gave himself sacrificially to others. Wow! What a pattern! He always spoke the truth, and so should we. And he promises to never cast out those who come to him for help. So we should come to him, and we should keep coming to him, even in the midst of whatever fiery ordeal that you may be going through. Come to him and keep coming. He is the perfect man, the perfect pattern, and you will not be disappointed. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the promise. Even in the cursed destiny, we see a hope for life. That you are speaking to us, that you call us out of the darkness. And Father, I just pray by your Spirit right now that you will awaken, because we know none of us are going to come out of darkness unless you turn on the light, unless you do a work of grace in us. And Father, I pray for your drawing power, for your awakening presence, for your work of regeneration to be done right here, right now. Now, Father, and cause us to call upon you, for we are dead in our sin.

43:36Father, and I just pray now that you would move mightily upon your church and upon your people, Lord, to come to you with great faith and to keep coming to you, excited about the work that you are doing in their lives, no matter what's going on. In Christ's name, amen.