Union with Christ

the reading of God's Word. We are in 1 Peter 2. I'll start in verse 4. 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 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 offense 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 you may be seated so anyone following along for the past 12 weeks probably thinks it's rather aggressive for me to think I'm going to go through 6 or 7 verses but I think that the points that need to be made here can be made and one of the things that I am finding as I look at 1 Peter and as I think about preaching a text of 1 Peter you look at the text and you say, what does the text say?

And we preach what's called the indicative, which is what is indicated by the text. What does it say? What do the words mean? What is happening here? Is it a narrative? Is it a story?

Is Peter trying to teach something? And we try to relay that to you and to the extent that Peter's using the Old Testament or even just alluding to it, we may try to describe that and make sure we understand it. and then once you do that, you talk about the imperative usually. So you have your indicatives, what does the text indicate? And then you have your imperatives, what is imperative?

So everybody remembers in grammar school, an imperative statement? That's when you tell someone to do something, you give them a command. Some of you kids here, your parents, I'm sure hope that you knew that one, because you've probably gone over it in school. And so the idea is this, is the scripture indicates something, it tells us something, and then as the result, we ought to live a certain way.

And so we read a text of scripture, and most pastors, most preachers, what they end up doing is they do what's called the application. And so they explain the text, and then they tell you how to apply that text to your life. And sometimes it's a very narrow application, sometimes it's very broad. Well, what Peter does is Peter actually continuously says things to us, and then he gives us the applications.

And so as I meditate on the text that we're going to preach and teach each week, and as I pray about what to say and how to apply these texts, what keeps coming back to me is Peter tells us in the following verses how to apply it. Peter's letter is almost a consistent, like, here's a bunch of truthful things, and because this is true, do this. Oh, and here's some more truthful things, and because this is true, do this.

And you could see that pattern if you actually are going through it yourself. And I do encourage you to be reading 1 Peter on a regular basis along with me. So that you will come to know this book well. You will not remember my sermons. You will remember five or six things I said in a couple of years. You might remember one line that maybe you wrote down.

You might remember one thing that caught you off guard. That you didn't know that that was in the Bible. And I taught it and you thought, oh wow, I didn't see that before. but what you're going to remember is the effort that you put in to study 1 Peter yourself and if you're doing that while listening to me preach and teach it every Sunday it's going to be ingrained into your heart more so that's my recommendation I would recommend you just put in the effort to memorize it it's only 105 verses and most people could do that in you know 6 months pretty easily I think if you put in the effort but in 1 Peter chapter 2 we just talked about how we're born again of perishable seed, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God and so we're to put away slander, malice, deceit, hypocrisy envy and grow up into salvation and then Peter uses this illustration all of a sudden of a building he says as you come to him a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house.

And so we have this word picture that's been created where we have this idea of a house. And if you're like me, you just kind of imagine these sort of rounded stones that somebody's stacking up into some kind of edifice. And it never gets really big in my mind. But I just think of some of those really old buildings that we see in Iceland and Ireland, the really old church buildings that were made of stone that are still standing, some of them.

And I start to get this idea in my head, but I don't think that Peter is talking about a literal building. And I don't think that that is what we're supposed to think. I think we're supposed to know what a building is and how buildings are built enough that we can understand what picture Peter's trying to paint of a very real yet spiritual and mystical building that being built So look at John chapter 2 If I had to measure my sermons by how much jumping around the Bible we going to do this one going to be a 10 10 being lots of jumping around and 0 being not much.

And so get ready to turn your pages. It's this kind of stuff that encourages me. I need to buy another Bible with thicker pages because I don't want the pages to rip. But in John chapter 2, and I want you to really pay attention to John 2. I want you to pay attention to the whole thing, but in John 2 I want you to pay attention because we're actually going to go back to John 2 when we do communion.

And so keeping a little bit fresh in your mind what John is saying will be good for you for communion time. But in verse 13, John writes, The Passover of the Jews was at hand. so this is the celebration of when the Jews were led out of Egypt and God told them if they sacrificed a lamb and that lamb was pure and spotless and they put the blood of that lamb on the door of their house basically the angel of death, the messenger of God or the Lord himself who was going to strike the firstborn of all the land dead would pass over their house and the angel the lamb's blood on the lentils of the doorpost signified, it showed the faith of the people within the household. And so they're celebrating this, and it says, the Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

So he's in the center of everything, right? It says, in the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting there. So there's all these people in the temple, and there's like an inner court and an outer court, and you kind of have to take a lot of time to look at artist representations of the temple and read and reread some of the information about it historically.

But there were people who were in there, and they had basically animals for sale that you could sacrifice. So you travel from far away back in 2,000 years ago, and it was hard maybe to bring a bull with you. That would have been really difficult. And so for convenience, right or wrong, there were people there who were actually offering that you could maybe pay money to buy the animal to sacrifice.

But they're sitting there and making a whip of cords. He, Jesus, drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and he overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, he said, take these things away. do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me.

So Jesus Christ walks into the temple. This is the place where all the things were happening for the Passover. This is the center of the Jewish religious worship. And he makes a whip of cords and he drives all these people out. And so first of all, let's just reject this sissified Jesus picture that we have in the United States of the Jesus that just walks down the street.

He's 110 pounds. He's got no muscle tone whatsoever, but he's got somehow great long flowing hair and beautiful blue eyes. And let's just forget about that Jesus, okay? It's one of the reasons why the second commandment was given to us. First of all, because it's a violation for us to even try to draw a picture of God because he's invisible. And we're so creaturely and frankly just dumb compared to him, we can't do it. your baby that's a month old could draw a better picture of you than we can of God.

But listen, the second reason is that when we draw pictures of God, when we draw pictures of Jesus Christ, who's inseparable in his two natures, we just read that in the Confession, it's inseparable from Jesus' human nature and divine nature. When we try to draw pictures, even of Jesus' human nature, and justify it by saying, well, he was a real historical figure, so we can draw pictures of him, we still paint a bad picture of him. None of the pictures anybody's ever drawn of Jesus look like him.

One of the reasons we know that is none of the people who knew what he looked like drew pictures of him. If I had pictures from apostles and people who lived in the first century of Jesus that people could verify that's what he looked like, I might listen to an argument about pictures of Jesus. Even then, I don't buy it. But the fact of the matter is that you've been given pictures of Jesus that are stuck in your mind. you've seen pictures of Him hanging on a cross, you've seen pictures of Him being bloody on the cross, you've seen non-bloody pictures, you've seen Him hold out His hands and heal people, you've seen dark Jesus, you've seen light Jesus, we've seen all sorts of Jesuses.

But one picture not a lot of people make, though, and I don't want them to make the picture, but they don't make the picture of Jesus fashioning a whip of cords and sending all these evildoers out of the temple. But Jesus was a man, and he did manly things and he used his strength and he used it righteously when he was angry. But so the Jews at this point, this is an interesting question, the Jews said to him in verse 18, what sign do you show us for doing these things?

And I think that is a really funny question. Because if somebody walked in here right now and just like flipped over our tables and he said, do not make my father's house a house of trade, I'd call the guy crazy. I'd be like, dude, you're crazy. Get out of here. I'd call the police probably. And I certainly wouldn't want some guy flipping over my tables with all my money.

It's like why I'm there is to make money, right? And so the fact that they looked at Jesus and said, what sign do you show us for doing these things is indicative of the fact that they understood something was happening. They knew that there was someone who had the right to do this. and that person would be God Now they didn believe Jesus was God and they wouldn believe him when he told them But they asked for a sign And one of the reasons is that a wicked and perverse generation demands a sign And so people want God to do signs and wonders to satisfy them, rather than believe what God has told them clearly in his word.

But so they say, what sign do you show us for doing these things? And Jesus gives them basically the same answer that he gives them later when he says, I'll only give you the sign of Jonah. And he tells them, he says, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said then, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days?

And so they misinterpret Jesus' words. They take what Jesus said absolutely literally and they assume he's speaking of the physical temple that's in front of them. This is the mistake the Pharisees make on a constant basis and it's the mistake the dispensationalists make today. They take everything that the Bible says literally. They don't interpret spiritual truth spiritually like we're told to do in 1 Corinthians 2.

And they think he's talking about the building. And of course it's absurd that some guy standing there is going to tear down the whole building and then rebuild it. And that is absurd. God could do it if he wanted to but that wasn't the point the point was Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body John tells us in verse 21 and he says when he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this and believed the scripture and so what we have here is we have this idea that the temple the Jewish centerpiece of where worship of God happened the place where God actually would dwell with men the place where God could come into contact with men Not only certain men, the certain priests and high priests and things like that, but the place where God could dwell among men was the temple.

And that was the only place that anyone could encounter him. This is why the woman at the well in John chapter 4 says, you know, you Jews say we have to worship in Jerusalem, because there's only one place where God really met with men in the Old Testament. And this was because God was drawing a picture for us, so that when Jesus came and he announced, this temple all tear down, and he's pointing at his own body, and he's referring to his own body, and raise it up again in three days, is Jesus is saying, God dwells here.

Jesus is letting people know, God dwells here. It's John 1.14, right? And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So quickly about the temple, Hebrews chapter 9, we went over this chapter another time. on a Sunday here, but in Hebrews chapter 9, we see some things about the temple. Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.

So there was an earthly place of holiness in the first covenant. For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which there was a lampstand, and there was a table, and the bread of the presence. So this stuff is all described in Exodus, and you can look at it in detail. And we tried to look up some artist pictures this week of some of these things. and I don't think it's wrong to try to look at pictures of what the temple might have looked like.

And it says, and this is called the holy place. So there's a holy place. So this is different from outside of this place. So outside people could walk around, they could bring their bull and their goat and their sheep or their pigeons or turtle doves or whatever it is they were bringing and they could be there. And then this place was holy. Behind the second curtain was a section called the most holy place. having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the covenants and then above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat and of these things we cannot now speak in detail but these preparations having thus been made the priests go regularly into the first section performing their ritual duty So there were rituals that the priests performed.

If you read through the Old Testament, you'll see that there was basically a non-stop butcher shop of slaughtering animals because of the sins of men in that society. And the priests regularly went to the first section performing their duties. But into the second, only the high priest goes, and he but once a year. So once a year, the high priest, selected out of all the priests who were only priests because they were of the tribe of Aaron, goes into this Holy of Holies, it's called in some versions, and here it's the most holy place, and it says, He goes once a year, but not without taking blood, which He offers for Himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.

So basically, we're so sinful that you don't even know you're sinning half the time. Probably more than half the time. That was a hyperbole there. we are so sinful that we need to have blood sacrifice on our behalf for things we don't even realize that we're doing and back in these days people were pretty much only counting outward sins they were only thinking of the sins they could see other people commit and they knew they committed jesus christ has made it very clear that every single sin that you commit in your heart you're also responsible for.

A fleeting thought that you didn't ask to pop in your head, that pops in your head, that is wicked or sinful, that's your fault. Jesus Christ never had one of those. But in verse 8, listen, By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing. He says, which is symbolic for the present age.

So we have this explanation here of the temple And this is why shortly after the book of Hebrews is written the temple is destroyed Because people still clung to this temple on earth even though Jesus had already come, said, I'll destroy this temple, raise it up in three days, fulfills it in all of their seeing, and they still say, no, no, we need to go back to this building. This is where God is. Because when they could go in that building and they could keep some people out, it was good for them.

They could convince people that you still had to come to me to get to God. Because only the priests could get to God. But in Colossians 1.19, we see that Jesus Christ is where all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. And in Luke 1.68, just a couple verses to prove that Jesus Christ is the temple. He is where God dwells. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people.

So He's visited His people. He's the Lord. When Jesus Christ walked on earth, He was where God dwelled. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. And so we have this hope, when we interpret Scripture rightly, that when we talk about the way to get to God, and the way to get to God in the Bible, is that a priest has to go on your behalf with blood into the temple, into the holy place, and he has to present that to God for your sins.

That's how you get forgiven. That's how you're purified in the flesh back in the Old Covenant. And in the New Covenant, we're going to have something utterly similar to that, but way better. It's not because it's better in any sense of the process, because God's old process was His process, so it's good, but it's because Jesus Christ creates a better covenant.

He's the mediator of a better covenant. So back to Colossians 1, though. I want you to see something that becomes utterly important, and I think this is what Peter wants us to understand. And when Peter says, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house on top of the cornerstone who is Christ Jesus, I want you to understand something.

In Colossians 1, right before 19, where it said, For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Paul says, And he is the head of the body, the church. Jesus Christ is the head of something that's called a body. And that body is called the church. So does that mean that Jesus Christ is the head of this building here? That we're in?

Somebody shout no, please. Thank you. No. No. The whole point is that this is a spiritual thing. There's a spiritual thing called the church.

But it's real. So when I say spiritual, I don't mean unreal. But I mean different from physical. Jesus Christ has a body. And his body is the church. Have you ever heard the phrase, the body of Christ?

Yeah, the body of Christ. When we say the body of Christ, it's a reference to all of His people that He has saved, who He has brought in to His covenant, His new covenant, and He calls them His body. And just like in a body, we have a head. The head controls everything. It's the center point of decision making. It's where the brain would be.

And so in the analogy, the idea is Jesus is in charge, but we actually are part of his body. And we're not morphed into something weird like other religions teach, like kind of like Zen Buddhist type stuff where you become one with everything and you lose your identity and personality. We maintain our personhood and our personality, but we become part of this mystical union called the church, called the body of Christ. and it's so important to understand this that this is what I really wanted to make the focal point of the whole sermon.

There's too many important things to say, but I want you to understand that your union with Jesus Christ as part of His body is the most important aspect of your life if you're a Christian. You have nothing if you don't have that and if you don't understand it and you have everything if you can get that. Our union with Christ is so real and unassailable that we have access to the throne room of God without fear.

So this is what I'm trying to tell you. When you were made into a Christian by God, when He regenerated your heart, granted you faith in Jesus Christ, and one day you woke up, or sometime in the day you said, you know what, I believe that I'm a sinner against the Holy God, He's just and righteous and He can punish me, and so I'm going to trust that Jesus paid for my sins on the cross. And in that moment, you were justified in God's eyes.

You exercised your faith. You believed that Jesus died on your behalf. And you became one of God's children. And we've seen this in the Bible with this now but not yet thing. We're like, we've been adopted by God, but we're also waiting for an ultimate adoption. We've been made into God's people, but one day we'll be glorified where we cannot sin.

So there's all these things that have happened already. And then there's things that haven't happened yet. But you've been united with Christ in a more real way than you're even sitting here right now. You are inseparable from Him. Just like we can't separate His humanity from His divinity, like we read in the confession, you cannot separate any one of His people from Him.

This is huge. This is huge. It means when God looks at you, God sees His Son. it means when you're going home tonight and you're arguing with your or you're doing something that you're not supposed to do as a kid and you're a Christian. It means every single time that you sin, every single time that you have a thought you shouldn't have, every single time you entertain it longer than you should, any time you do anything that is one of the deeds of the flesh, envy, strife, murder, maliciousness, being foolish and faithless and heartless or ruthless, lying straying away from God and being unfaithful when God looks at you he sees nothing but his son you're no more secure if you could live the best life from now until the end I hope you all strive for holiness if you could become the most holy person that ever walked the earth other than Jesus from now until you die you'd be no closer to God than you are right now sitting there justified by the blood of Jesus Christ because it's not about what you do.

And so when you understand that you are in union with Jesus Christ, that should mean something to you. It should give you hope and confidence. It should make you confident that you can go stand before enemies and you can actually speak the words of truth. And if they want to attack you, let them. You're just going to go be with Jesus Christ. it also may mean that God's going to bless the words of your mouth and maybe he's going to make something really wonderful happen that is frankly waiting for people like us to stand up and speak about we're all waiting for Donald Trump I don't think anybody here is waiting for Joe Biden to do anything but we're waiting for people like Donald Trump to do something that really makes a difference we vote for people right now it's the week before the election we vote for people because we think they're going to go do something that's going to affect some good in our society.

We hope for it, at least. In some cases, we vote for the guy we don't think is going to do the worst thing. I get where we are now with lesser to evil sometimes. But look, you are the person that God tasked to go and speak for Jesus Christ to people. You're the one who's supposed to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

And you can do it because you have union with Jesus Christ. You can walk into His throne room. And I'm not saying you should do it irreverently. And I'm not saying you should be a jerk about it. But you can walk into God's throne room with boldness and you can tell Him what you want. And you can pray to Him with confidence.

And you can confidently know that when you stand before God, by faith, you're standing before God as His child. And I'll tell you what, if my child wants something, they just ask me. I want them to be respectful, but they should ask me expecting that I want to do good for them How much more does the good God want to do for His children than me Jesus said if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will my Father in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him?

When you stand before God and you start praying, and you're all like, well, God, maybe you should do this, or I'd like this. It's almost an insult to the blood of Jesus Christ. That you don't just come a little boldly. So Hebrews 4.16 tells us to do. Go boldly with confidence to the throne of grace because Jesus has paid it all on your behalf and He is the perfect high priest.

Amen. 1 Corinthians 6. It's a famous passage that we all know now, or we should because it has the list of sins that are going to send people to hell. and the list of sins is, not to get political, it's effectively the Democratic Party's platform. But the point is this, is that sometimes we look at these and we try to help people who are living in sin and we try to say, look, these people won't inherit the kingdom of heaven.

And so if you're in this list, you better watch it. And so you should review it once in a while yourself and you should repent. But in verse 19, Paul's saying, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? So your body is a temple, it says. So we're talking about temples. We're talking about buildings where God meets with men.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit whom you have from God. You're not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Now there's this phrase here that Peter tries to explain everything with. He says you're being built up as a spiritual house, and you're going to be a holy priesthood.

So you're a priest. We're going to talk about that at the end. You're going to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. 1 Peter 2. And so you're going to be a priest. So rather than go to another priest, we have one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ.

And now we function as priests. We offer sacrifices, but no longer do we offer blood sacrifices because Jesus Christ already offered a perfect one. Our sacrifices are our lives. We offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. We live as sacrificial lives to God. And it says acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Don't overlook the importance of this phrase, acceptable to God. The idea that anybody in this room can offer anything that's acceptable to God is completely foreign to Scripture apart from doing it through Jesus Christ. But that's the exciting thing about your union with Christ is you can actually do things that are acceptable to God Before you knew Jesus Christ every single thing you did was sin The nicest thing you ever did for anybody was stained by your sin It wasn't done out of faith in God.

God hated it. He was mildly pleased, I guess, that we weren't all murdering each other all the time. But it was stained with sin because it was for your own glory and not His. but once you become a Christian and you start doing things in the name of Jesus Christ the good works prepared beforehand that you should walk in them because of your faith in Christ now God is pleased with you now God can actually look upon you and see these good things and he wants to bless you and answer your prayers it says in 1 John if you don't believe me we have the things that we ask because we do what pleases him and follow his commandments John said John who chose not to draw a picture of Jesus for us it's instructive listen, it's instructive but Peter wants to explain this building and he says it stands in scripture in verse 6 I'm laying in Zion a stone a cornerstone chosen and precious and whoever believes in it will not be put to shame he's quoting Isaiah and he says the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone I think that's Psalm 118 and so this is like amazingly quoted stuff in the New Testament if you look at Romans this isn't the only place this is in Romans 9 verse 32 well in verse 30 Paul says what shall we say then that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it that is a righteousness that is by faith but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law.

And Paul says, why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. The point is this. The Israelites, who were the chosen people of God in the Old Testament, thought that their righteousness is why God chose them eventually. They took it literally. God chose us as a nation, not as a spiritual people.

And they decided that we're going to pursue our righteousness by the law. And so that's how you ended up with these pharisaical guys who followed all these laws, and they tithed their mint and their cumin, and they did all these little things. And then they neglected the weightier matters of the law, like mercy and justice and things like that. But then Paul says they've stumbled over the stumbling stone.

Behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling. And he quotes Isaiah 28 as well. And so the idea is this, is God had a plan from all eternity that the Israelites were going to fail. And they were going to stumble over the very thing that He provided to be the sacrifice for their sins. So for thousands of years the Israelites have these ritual sacrifices they going through that are constantly pointing to a coming Messiah They have the blood of bulls and goats They have the Passover to celebrate They have all these wonderful things that God delivered them out of.

He saved them out of time and time again. He delivered the whole nation because of Esther talking to King Ahasuerus over in Assyria. All these things happened to the Israelites so that one day the Messiah could come and He could actually fulfill what all these things pictured. And the Israelites stumble over Him. It's like they're so focused on where they're trying to go that you have Jesus right in front of them and they just stumble over it.

And instead of stopping and actually inspecting what they stumbled over, it's almost like they curse it and keep going. So there's your literal picture for you if you want a literal picture of stumbling. But Jesus Christ is the cornerstone that God sent. He is the main piece of the building. so if you look up cornerstone and those things you see a cornerstone is like the most important part of an edifice and it holds it all together and so Jesus Christ is the cornerstone that Peter wants us to understand that God is building his church, he's building the body of Christ and Jesus Christ is the head of the corner, he's the cornerstone Paul says that being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own righteousness They did not submit to God's righteousness about the Jews.

In Romans 11, 9 and 10, David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, and a retribution for them. So there's this stumbling block. And I think some people were surprised that God wasn't. God knew the whole time what was going to happen. He knew the Jews were going to do this. He planned it.

If you look in the book of Acts, Peter again preaching. In chapter 4. Just more proof for you about what's going on here with the stumbling block. Peter says in 4.11, This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. I think sometimes we don't consider how much the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament and I think if just showing you all these instances of this same verse being used by the different people in the New Testament should be mind-blowing to us that it's just so important this is key to understanding the Bible, who Jesus is he's the cornerstone There's salvation in no one else.

I would say in 1 Peter 2, this also is... This makes me think that...