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BUILDING DEDICATION - BEING BUILT INTO A SPIRITUAL HOUSE1 Peter 2:4-5INTRODUCTION We are here today to celebrate God’s provision in giving us this building and to dedicate the building to his purpose, which is to increase the glory of his name in the universe. However, while we rejoice in the gift of this building I want to use this opportunity to also remind us of something we all know is true but we find easy to forget, the church is not a building. The church is us, not this building that we meet in. We forget this distinction to our own peril. This building is not holy. We are holy. God does not live in this building. He lives in us as his gathered people. God is not present in this building, as a structure, in any greater way than he is present in your house or the grocery store or the GM plant. What we are going to do this morning is to take a few minutes together to observe one of the most powerful descriptions of the church in the NT. Then we are going to hear from four other people. First, Ray Olson, the Director of Church Planting for the Forest Lakes District of the EFCA will share with us a brief history of how God used the EFC congregations of southern WI to begin this congregation. Then we will hear from two of our own members, Fran Ploegert and Joanie Mitchell, as they tell us of how God has mercifully made them into living stones in his house. Finally, Dr. Ken Moberg, the Superintendent of the Forest Lakes District of the EFCA will help us think about the global nature of God’s church and how we are connected to that broader work of God. But first I want you to look with me at 1 Peter 2:4-5 to see the glory of God’s church and so rejoice in what he is doing. We are going to answer three questions from these two verses. First, who is responsible for building the church? Second, how is the church being built? Third, what are the purposes of the church? I. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR BUILDING THE CHURCH? You already know that I’m going to say that God himself is not only responsible for building the church but is actually the one who is building it. I want you to see how that is expressed in these two verses. In v. 4 Peter identifies the building material that God is using, the “living stones”. All those who are coming to Christ as the living stone “are being built” into the church, God’s spiritual house. That verb, “are being built”, is a present tense passive verb. If you would have been here Labor Day weekend last fall and watched as a crew of our members put the roof on the building you might have described what you were observing in this way, “The shingles are being placed on the roof.” Or one rainy and cold Saturday in November you could have been here watching as “the siding was being attached to the building.” Shingles and pieces of siding do not attach themselves to the building. We all know that the way the shingles got on the roof is that people put them there. Stones, even living ones, do not add themselves to the church. God himself is building us into his spiritual house, his church. He is the architect, the general contractor and the laborer who builds his church. He is the one who finds the stones and makes them fit for his house and then makes them fit into his house. I don’t have the time to work this out from the Scriptures but God builds his universal, eternal church by building local churches. Before the world began, the greatest of all building committees, the Triune God, worked out a plan for building for himself his ‘dream house,’ a spiritual house made up of living stones. He determined the who and the how and the where and the construction schedule. Then, beginning with the creation of the universe he began the process of carrying out his plan to build himself a spiritual house. The purpose of all of creation and the end for which God is working is that day when God himself lives in all of his glory in his completed house, the church. This leads us to the second question… II. HOW IS THE CHURCH BEING BUILT? As I just said, God finds the stones, makes them fit for his house by making dead stones living stones and then he fits them into his house. Let me just show you a few ways that Peter expresses God’s hand at work in making us into living stones. In 1:1, the “living stones” are called “God’s elect” or “God’s chosen ones.” In v. 2 “we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” God determined before the world began to know us, to love us and then at a point in history he chose us. He picked us out of the crowd of dead stones strewn across the face of the world and chose us for his purposes and pleasure. In v. 3 “In his great mercy he has given us new birth”. In v. 18 we were redeemed from our empty, dead way of life by the precious blood of Christ. In v. 23 “we have been born again through the living and enduring word of God.” In all of these statements, we are the object of God’s love, mercy and activity. We become living stones, rather than dead stones freely, by the sovereign grace of God. As Paul says in Romans 4, “God gives life to the dead and calls things that are not, as though they were.” What are the characteristics of a living stone? I want you to look particularly at vv. 3-4. In 2:3, Peter says that everyone who belongs to God has “tasted that the Lord is good”. There was a point in time that every person who is now a living stone had no taste for Jesus. Jesus was not a part of his or her diet. Humans by nature “eat” all kinds of things but Jesus sits on the shelf like a jar of unfamiliar and distasteful food until someone begins to tell us that we ought to try him. Eventually, by a work of God’s gracious Holy Spirit, we give in and take a taste of him and we discover he is nutritious and delightful. We discover that this one who was completely irrelevant to our happiness and our spiritual health is now the central part of our diet. We discover that he is very good. How do you respond when you try a new food and find it to be delightful? Women, what do you do when you have dinner at someone else’s home and eat a dish you’ve never eaten before and it’s absolutely marvelous? You get the recipe and you make it at your house. You make it a part of your diet. When we discover a food that is good, we eat it again and again, not just once. That’s what v. 4 says. Look at the difference in the tenses of the verbs between vv. 3 & 4. “Tasted” is past tense and “come” is present tense. If you are a “living stone”, at a point in time you tasted the Lord and found him to be good. Now, you keep coming to him because you delight to do so. The way you know you are a Christian is not by looking back in your life and pointing to an experience you had in the past but by looking at your life now. Are you each day coming to Christ as your savior and your redeemer? Is he the central part of your diet? Is it the chief happiness of your life to know and trust and love him? The metaphor describing Christ has changed between vv. 3 & 4. In v. 3 Jesus is a food we discover is good, in v. 4 he is a living stone that we come to. As v. 6 says, he is the cornerstone, the foundation rock. We are told two things about Jesus in v. 4. First, mankind in general rejects Jesus as central to life. Most human beings when they are looking for stones to build their life with do not find Jesus to be the necessary cornerstone, the main building block of life. The word for reject that is used here means that something is examined and found to be lacking and so tossed aside. Like when you go to the lumberyard to buy wood for a project and you search through the stack of 2 x 4’s, tossing aside the ones that are crooked and keeping the ones that are straight. Most humans find Jesus to be irrelevant to life. He’s like one of the crooked 2x4’s that you toss aside. But, in contrast to natural men, God sees Jesus as the choice and precious stone in the building. Look at v. 6. God is building his church and when he begins the project and looks around for the best stone to use as the cornerstone he picks Jesus. The cornerstone in a building is the most important stone. If you start a building wrong, even a little bit, by the time you get finished, nothing fits together, the whole thing is wrong. There are two things that are true of every living stone. First, every living stone is placed by God into his house, his church. The idea that you can be a Christian and not be part of a church is one of the greatest lies Satan has persuaded millions of people in America to believe. It is a dangerous deception to believe that you can be a Christian and not be part of a local church. Second, every living stone that God puts in his house has the same opinion of Jesus that he does. If you are a living stone, Jesus isn’t just a person of passing interest to you. He is the most fascinating, most desirable, most necessary person in your life. He is your life. You feel about him the same way that God the Father feels about him. Those who are being built into a spiritual house have examined all the potential things to build life upon and have discovered that the only thing that is trustworthy is Jesus. Those whom God builds upon the cornerstone of Jesus are those who have discovered that Jesus is the cornerstone of their lives. III. WHY IS GODBUILDING A SPIRITUAL HOUSE? At the end of v. 5 Peter changes his metaphor again. He says that God is building us, these living stones, into a spiritual house “to be a holy priesthood.” Not only are we the stones that make up the walls of his house but we are also the priests who serve in his house. Immediately, we should think of the priests of the OT to understand what this illustration means. The priests in the OT were the ones set apart in Israel to take care of the temple, to offer the sacrifices and prayers to God that he required, to pray to and praise God and to teach men about God and what he requires. Peter says that all of us are priests. There is not a special class of people any longer who are different than everyone else in their access to God, their service to God, and their necessity in God’s work. We don’t all have the same functions, just like all the priests in the OT didn’t have the same jobs. However, all of us share equally in the value of our labor and contribution to the worship and service of God and man. All of us engage in the work of offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. What are the acceptable spiritual sacrifices that we offer to God through Christ? I don’t have time to show you this in the Scriptures but let me give you a simple definition and then a few examples. The spiritual sacrifices we offer to God are all those attitudes, thoughts, words and actions that we have or do by faith in Jesus. These sacrifices are not just the things we do in or for our local church. It is our whole life, all of our time, abilities, resources, words and actions lived by faith in Christ and to his glory. All of our “sacrifices” are acceptable because of Christ’s sacrifice, not because they have intrinsic value in themselves. If you are a living stone through faith in Christ, then your whole life is a living sacrifice. It includes words and songs of thanksgiving and praise. It includes acts of kindness and mercy and help given to others, especially to other Christians. It is financial gifts for the support of missionaries, pastors and the work of the church. It includes the meals we eat and the leisure time we enjoy. It includes changing diapers and mowing the lawn. It includes preaching and teaching the gospel in every way that the gospel is shared. It is words of encouragement and warning and correction and comfort to one another. It is the forgiveness and acceptance we offer to one another because we have been forgiven and accepted by God. It is being a loving husband, a respectful wife, an obedient child, a fair employer, a hard working employee. It includes the work we engage in to help the poor and preach the gospel as a church. There is no part of our life together that is not included in these spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Having a church building is a good thing, a helpful thing but not the main thing. Being built, as living stones into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” that is the main thing. Right now I’m going to ask Ray Olson to come up and share with us some of how God began the process of making us into a spiritual house. He will be followed by Fran Ploegert and Joanie Mitchell who will tell how God has made them into living stones in this spiritual house. Finally, Ken Moberg will help us consider our place in God’s global church. © Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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