Living Stones in God’s Portable Temple (1 Peter 2:4-10)

• awesome in the extreme is a visit to any of the world’s great temples
• three hundred miles up the Nile from Cairo, in the middle of the desert, stands the great Temple-Palace of Karnak, one of the most imposing structures built by human hands
• its dimensions are 1,200 feet in length by 360 feet in breadth, covering more than twice the area of St. Peter’s in Rome
• it’s hard to find words to describe its beauty, and no artist has been able to capture on canvas or film the idea of its grandeur
• the Egyptians erected it as a mighty temple to that which they worshipped
• look again at the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens
• it is without exception the most magnificent ruin in the world
• hovering as if in the air above the great city of Greece, it was commenced in 448 B.C. and completed in only 16 years
• to see it is to never forget it
• the Parthenon was a temple, and it contained a statue of the goddess Athena, made of ivory and overlaid with solid gold garments
• when we think of a temple, we think of monuments as these or of Solomon’s temple in the Old Testament
• yet, do we connect those hallowed concepts of temples with the church where we worship today, or even more accurately, with those persons sitting in the pew with you?
• in the biblical sense of the word, God’s people are his temple, and what we bring to His work are the spiritual sacrifices of a holy priesthood
• in last week’s message, we saw that God’s church is a mighty human temple
• in the Old Testament, God had a temple for his people
• in the New Testament, God has a people for his temple
• YOU ARE A STONE IN GOD’S TEMPLE
• (1 Peter 2:4) As you come to him, the living Stone–rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him–
• (1 Peter 2:5) you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
• at the cornerstone of the living temple stands Christ, the great living Stone
• that appears to be a dramatic contradiction in language – “living Stone”
• normally we speak of something as being “stone dead”
• but “living Stone” expresses something that language cannot otherwise express
• the Bible speaks of Christ as our Rock and Christ as our Life
• only here do these two words come together
• this “living Stone” oxymoron says something about Jesus Christ that is unique
• our Lord has the qualities of a massive stone: fixed foundation, a fortress, solid, steadfast, strong, massive, immovable
• yet there’s another side
• there is warmth, vitality, and life
• the Stone is living in that it is personal; it is a life-giving Stone
• it’s part of the paradox about the God/man Jesus:
• he’s the wounded healer, the dying life-giver, the tolerant dictator, a strict liberator, a meek master
• he gives us a light yoke, a peaceful sword, and he makes us winning losers
• along with this he is a “living Stone”
• Peter says as well that we are living stones
• we are not literal pieces of rock, but as we come into contact with Christ, we’re transformed from being lifeless stones to living and integral parts of God’s temple
• just as a radioactive isotope makes you radioactive, just as phosphorus glows because of the light of the sun, so contact with Christ gives life to the lifeless
• when you contact Christ, you become as he is – a living stone
• Peter presents one of the most beautiful pictures of the church’s dignity and destiny
• God is building a spiritual temple with you as the living stones of that edifice
• from a merely human perspective, the church – and individual churches – often appear to be divided, human, weak, competitive, inefficient, and even temporary
• yet Peter reminds us that we cannot see what God is doing
• God is building a living temple that spans the ages and the continents
• and he is building it with living stones
• it has always been God’s final intention not to have a temple for his people, but to have a people for his temple
• Jesus said early in his ministry:
• (John 2:19) Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
• he was speaking of his own body as the temple of God where God and humanity would meet
• even the witnesses at his trial quoted him as saying:
• (Mark 14:58) “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.'”
• Stephen declared in his trial:
• (Acts 7:48) “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men.
• when Paul preached in the shadow of the Greek Acropolis, he said:
• (Acts 17:24) “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
• listen: you are God’s temple!
• in the noblest sense, God is building a temple of living human stones, of which you are a part
• even the most awesome physical structure cannot identify the true church
• the visible church on earth is not denoted by Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance, Colonial, or modern architecture
• the true temple of God is the individual and the collective body of believers
• every believer, although part of the whole, is a microcosm of the whole
• Paul says:
• (1 Corinthians 6:19) Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
• every believer has become a spiritual edifice with a royal resident
• every individual Christian is a temple
• all Christians together form a colossal temple of the ages
• and I need to tell you: our local church is the visible scaffold around that invisible temple
• when the last and the least has come into the kingdom of God, when this Gospel of the kingdom is preached to the ends of the earth, at the shout of the archangel, this scaffold will come down, the scales will fall from our eyes, and we shall see the great work that God has done in the temple of the ages
• the deadening routine of ecclesiastical machinery can cause us to become dull, near-sighted, myopic, blind to the awesome beauty of what God is doing in the church
• if we could recover that vision, it would transform our view of life in the local church
• every Bible study class would be a quarry for living stones
• every meeting would become not just a review of money and statistics, but a planning meeting for building the temple!
• every children’s worker could say, “I have around me living stones to chip, shape, round, and smooth until each of them finds his little place forever in the wall of God’s living temple”
• every worship service would become a time of drama and suspense in which we wait to see what God is doing to add living stones to his temple
• but more than anything else, this image could revolutionize our giving to the cause of Christ
• the lowest view of giving sees it as an unwilling extraction of money to maintain a human institution
• it is scarcely better to give out of a drudge-like sense of obligation to support the ministry, the building maintenance, and the parking facilities of the church
• what if every believer saw every gift as a gift to the temple that God is building?
• what if we all realized that every contribution we make is to the living temple of God on earth?
• nothing else to which we make donations compares
• the school will someday close; the charity will end its work; the nation will not need its taxes; but the living church of the risen Christ will abide the ages and endure throughout eternity
• Peter continues with another thought
• not only are you a stone in God’s temple,
• YOU ARE A CHOSEN PRIEST IN GOD’S TEMPLE
• (1 Peter 2:5) you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
• (1 Peter 2:9) But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
• (1 Peter 2:10) Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
• Peter changes images, and picks up a new picture of our status
• he sees every believer as a priest in God’s holy temple
• in the Old Testament, priests were men selected to serve for limited times in only one place
• only men served; there was no question of a woman being a believer-priest
• these men served in rotations episodically and intermittently
• they could serve only at one place, the Jerusalem temple
• in contrast, Peter envisions a universal church in which all men and women, at all times and in all places, serve as priests
• you are a priest in the factory, at the sales office, in the hospital nursing station, at the recreational club – a priest everywhere and always
• what do you do as a believer-priest?
• the Latin word for priest is pontifex
• this comes from two words, “bridge” and “to make”
• the priest is one who builds a bridge between God and man
• in one sense, there is only one great Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ
• but in another sense, God has left us as his under-priests, bridge-builders for him on earth
• the sphere of every believer-priest has no limitations geographically or chronologically
• we are not confined to one day on Sunday or a place of worship
• we are all portable temples and mobile priests
• everywhere and anywhere we find ourselves, we are bridge-builders for God
• how this concept dignifies every life and every aspect of each life!
• there is no job so low or vocation so prestigious that it is not dignified by this high calling
• the common laborer in the ditch and the distinguished professor in the classroom may each say, “I am a priest in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ”
• every ditch dug and every lecture given equally becomes service to God
• were we to see our lives in this way, it would utterly transform our concept of giving to the work of the church
• for many, the offering time is a thing detached, separated, truncated, and denatured from all of life
• it’s part of the service that lasts only a few seconds, something we hardly think about
• yet if we could see our lives as one long, uninterrupted, continuous act of serving as God’s priest, then the offering becomes part of that majestic whole
• it is simply one more way among many that I live out my vocation as a believer-priest
• our outlook always determines our outcome
• could we see ourselves in such terms, our giving would elevate spontaneously to another dimension
• the call for offerings to the church would no longer be a foreign voice demanding our money alongside all other voices of the age
• our royal, personal priesthood would make all giving a joy, not a burden
• there’s one more image we’re going to look at
• we’re stones and priests in God’s temple, and Peter also says
• YOU BRING A SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE IN GOD’S TEMPLE
• (1 Peter 2:5) you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
• Peter tells us that the believer-priests are offering up “spiritual sacrifices”
• the concept of sacrifice is lost in the modern world
• the truth is that we all offer sacrifices to something – perhaps to materialism, prestige, standard of living, or some other modern idol
• but we bring to God spiritual sacrifices
• what sacrifice are you offering to God these days?
• are you offering the sacrifice of penitence?
• (Psalms 51:16) You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
• (Psalms 51:17) The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
• somebody has said, “To err is understandable; to admit it is unlikely”
• do you offer the sacrifice of penitence to God – admitting the simple reality that you are a sinner and need his forgiveness?
• another sacrifice we can bring God is the sacrifice of praise
• (Hebrews 13:15) Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that confess his name.
• one of the refreshing winds blowing through the church is the renewed emphasis on the vibrant praise of God
• this is a sacrifice to God
• are you offering it?
• at the same time, there is the sacrifice of possession
• the apostle Paul had not seen the Philippians for ten years when he was surprised by a serendipitous offering sent from Macedonia in Greece to his prison cell in Rome
• he called their gift:
• (Philippians 4:18) …a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.
• does anything stay with the sensual mind more than the fragrance of a pleasing aroma?
• the perfume of a beloved, the earthy fragrance of a newly mown meadow, the bracing ozone of a seaside stroll, or the pine scent of a great forest – all evoke piercing memories
• our Christian giving is compared to a fragrance that fills the room, the house, and life itself
• there is nothing forced or unpleasant about such a sacrifice
• it simply happens as the natural response to the situation
• just as today, Christian giving should never be an extortion by a desperate finance committee of a pressured pastor
• when we see ourselves as living stones in a temple, believer-priests within the temple bringing spiritual sacrifices to the temple, we will give as naturally as we breath
• what if we cannot bring a perfect gift?
• we can always bring our gift, confident that it is “acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”
• there was an old-wood carver deep in the forest who at one time had been the best at his craft
• he had taught the craft to his son, who followed him as an artisan
• but the old man’s eyes began to dim and his hands began to tremble
• he could no longer carve the perfect figures of his youth
• he would mar the figure, and imperfections blighted his work
• his fading eyes could no longer see the flaws
• late in the night, while his old father slept, the son would sneak down the stairs and pick up the figures marred by the shaking hands of the ancient artisan
• with a few apt strokes, the son would correct the flaws in the newly carved wood
• when the figures passed through the hands of the son, they were made perfect again
• even so, we may bring our gifts with the assurance that, as they pass through the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, they will all be placed before the Father in absolute perfection “through Jesus Christ”

Part of the stewardship program The Joy of Belonging, (c) Resource Services, Inc.