A Firm Foundation
I wondered what scripture I should use for this and there is so much. I hit upon the apostle Peter and his first letter to the Church. They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” well, if you read Peter, you get a hundred pictures. Well that is hyperbole, but many pictures. It is almost like in every verse there is some kind of image that he is using, a picture that everybody there is familiar with and they want to see what does all this mean? He uses them again and again and again. This particular passage is just full of them. He uses so many that as we read the scripture, I want you to notice. He uses mother’s milk to symbolize God’s word and our taking it into our lives. He uses the temple which is a symbol of us, the Church. He uses the priesthood which is also a symbol of us and what we are supposed to do. He also uses the example of building a building and the most powerful of all, the most powerful, that Jesus is the rock.
Let me read the scripture to you. Please follow along: (1 Peter 2:1-10)
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— 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. For in Scripture it says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,”
and,
“A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.
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. 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.
Would you pray with me?
O God, thank you for the vision that we have. We know that it is developing, but one thing we do know is that it has as its foundation Jesus, our Savior. We pray that he might be glorified this morning by what we think and say and what we do. In his name, we pray. Amen.
Do you remember what happened to Peter? Or, maybe I should ask, do you remember what his real name is? He was born Simon, but when he became a disciple of Jesus, Jesus changed his name. In Aramaic, the name is Cephas, but in Greek, it is Petrus or Peter. In other words, Jesus changed Peter’s name to Peter and he said, “On this rock I will use this rock to build my church.” Now how interesting it is, how powerful it is, that Peter wants to make sure that he is not the foundation of the Church — that Jesus is. That is what chapter 2 is about. Peter says, “As for you, you are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.” He wants to make sure that we know that they knew that Jesus is the foundation on which our whole life is built. Then he goes and uses a great illustration. He uses the illustration of the cornerstone. He says, “Jesus is not only the rock on which we stand, he is the cornerstone.” Now back then, of course, they did not have all the things that we have, in terms of building things, but the principles are still the same. They would lay a stone. It would be totally smooth, it would be placed in the right spot, it would be totally level, and it had to be perfect, because if that stone was not perfect, none of the others would be. Every other was lined on them, every other was stacked on those. So the cornerstone was the most important stone of all.
I am a person that will try most anything, not always will succeed. But my daughter, Kathy, gave me a wonderful birthday card when I came home, and a picture is worth a thousand words. Here there is a picture of a little kitten sitting in a dog food bowl. There is the kitten sitting in the dog food bowl and it says FIDO on it, and I love the caption: They dared Mittens to do it! And Mittens never turned down a dare! Then in the inside, it said: Here’s to living life on the edge.
Well, like I said, I’ll try anything. So a couple years ago I decided I would try to tear out my bathroom and rebuild it; tore it totally out. I have never done tile before, I have never done a lot of these things before, but I did it anyway. And it turned out O.K., except, except, the corner post for the shower was off about that much. So here I have this beautiful bathroom except when I walk in and look at the wall, it goes like that. You get the idea, it goes like that. Because as I got everything back together I noticed, “O my gosh, the wall is wrong.”
Well that is what is going on here. Jesus is the cornerstone. It is set perfectly. It is perfectly smooth. That is what he is saying. Everything is built off that. So as we go and implement our Vision, we remember that, that Jesus is the foundation. He is the source of everything, no matter what society says, no matter what happens, Jesus is the cornerstone of this Church and we build on him.
In this case, we are also using the images of rocks or stones on top of that. And the first is Worship. Now, these three stones are very important. They are not only our rocks, they are ways by which we align ourselves; they are ways in which we live our Christian life. You know, in the Army, often we do different kinds of training, of course, and one of the training things we do is sometimes we go out and do “land navigation.” Sometimes that means that they will transport you out into the middle of no place and give you a compass and a map and say, “Find your way home.” Or sometimes it is just a course that you get on and it is several miles long but again the principle is the same, you have a compass and a map and you have to find your way home.
Well, I think these three rocks are very much like finding our way home. I equate the rock of Worship with the compass. You know, worship is about resetting ourselves. Again, when I first started my deployment I ran into this guy. It is amazing what people think about church these days and it is fairly negative. And I ran into this guy and he says, “Well, Chaplain, if it is just about going to church on Sundays and sitting around listening to someone talk and then giving your money and just sitting there singing songs, I don’t want anything to do with it.” Well I wanted to say, and I refrained from saying, “Well, when is the last time you went to worship?” But I refrained. Then I realized that what he said was exactly what a lot of people feel, that that is what it is all about. But worship is so much bigger than that. It is about resetting yourself. It is about confessing your sins. It isn’t about becoming pure; it is about coming and getting pure. It is like the little boy who went to church one Sunday and his friend said, “Where did you go?” And he said, “I went to wash up.” Worship is about that, taking the compass and seeing what direction you are actually going in and where you need adjustments.
Worship is also a time when we realize that it is not just about us. It isn’t about us. We are not God. You know, that is pretty obvious, but sometimes during the week we get tempted to believe that we are actually in control of something. I have told you several times that at the end of the day in Afghanistan I would go watch the sunset and part of that for me was to realize that I wasn’t in control. Somebody else was. My verse over there was from Romans, chapter 14, where Paul says, “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or we die, we belong to the Lord.” And that is a good thing. He is in charge. I belong to him, he doesn’t belong to me. He is going to take care of me whatever happens, whatever happens. That is true of us now. Coming to worship we realize that again and again and again.
You know, Smitty was telling me about the Hubbell Telescope and how they sort of fixed it again- even better are the pictures. Go online and look at the pictures. We think of space as this empty, dead, cold thing. It’s not. It’s alive! It’s alive! It is much better than a movie; you know, wonderful movies that give all these pictures of what it might be like. It is nothing compared to reality. It’s incredible. We realize that we are in a small little bitty planet, and we are just little itty bitty people, and God is such a big God, and that is a good thing. That is a good thing. God is in control. That is what worship is about.
We also have this rock of Discipleship. We have this rock of Discipleship. Well, what is this about? What is discipleship really all about? Well, again, in this passage, I would just encourage you to go back and read it again, but Peter uses all these images and the image is of the Temple. Now, again, if you know the bible, there is a history here. There is this theme going on this scripture about God’s presence with his people. If you remember, Moses was instructed to build the tabernacle and the tabernacle was the symbolic, as well as the real, presence of God in the midst of his people. That is where God was – right in the middle of the people. Then later on the temple became that. But you see, there was a problem with the tabernacle in the temple. It was just a place, a building. But God had a bigger plan, and we will talk about it in our series on John, where John says in 1:14, he says, “The Word became flesh” and the Word is literally “tabernacled” among us, that God came in the flesh. And that was what Pentecost was all about. Today is the day of Pentecost when God poured Himself out on his people so He was no longer in a place but in the temple, in the temple which was us. That is what discipleship is all about. It is about growing in that relationship with God. It is about taking the stone which the picture is that God is taking the stones, each one of us, and laying us in a course based on looking like Jesus, our Savior, lined up with him, smoothed out like him, and that is a process of growing into that temple which is where God lives. The Bible is pretty cool. It is full of all kinds of stuff like that. So discipleship is about growing in our personal relationship with God. You know, I like to say, and I know I stole it from someone, but I like to say that “the Holy Spirit is the personal presence and power of God in our lives.” And he is. And he is.
Discipleship is about growing in that. It is also about learning about God and what He wants. Again in “land nav” we have the compass by which we set where we are going, but we also have the map. The map has all kind of symbols on it. It has numbers on it that you have to do a little math with. It was things like, this is a mountain, this is a landmark. It is all kinds of things. If you don’t know how to read a map, you are not going to find your way home.
It is surprising to me how many Christians never read the Bible and think they are going to do O.K. Well, you might. You might muddle your way through, but, if you don’t know how to read the Bible, if you don’t know the map, you are not going to get there. Our vision, part of our vision, is to become a disciple making church. That is what being a discipleship means. It means being a Christ follower. It means lining ourselves up like the stones. It means learning about God and being like Jesus. It starts with our children, as well. We want to have a unified program from birth through high school; but, you know what? It is going to be for adults, as well. It is going to be for adults, as well.
You know, a lot of people do the right thing when they get a little older and they have kids. They say: we have to bring our child to church. That is a good start but it is only half right, because your child will not learn a thing here because he or she looks at you, first, and you grandparents, by the way. If you are not walking the walk and talking the talk, it is all for nothing. We just reinforce what they see at home.
Our final rock is Service. Service is about doing the course, doing the “land nav” course. If you aren’t in shape and if you are not moving, if you aren’t going somewhere, you are not going to get there. And that’s what it is about. You know, there is an old illustration that people have used many times but it is still true. If you have ever been to the Dead Sea it is called Dead because it is dead. There is no life in it. One of the reasons besides a lot of the chemicals that are in it is that water flows into it, but no water flows out. It is a stagnant pool. If you have water flowing into a pool that is not moving, it sooner or later becomes dead, or it becomes lifeless. Churches become that. There are thousands of churches in America that are lifeless because they became inward. You know it is a natural tendency for human beings to become inward, to look at ourselves, to care of us. It is natural and we have to fight it all the time, for all of us. It is true of individual lives, it is true of organizations. So we have to continue to move outward. It isn’t just about coming to church and going home, it is a whole life, and that is our intent, for all of us.
So today, I would really like for you to reflect on what God may be leading you to do. On this blue piece of paper which has the Words of Order on it, it also has a short questionnaire. If you are like me, if you are not a fan of questionnaires, I understand that. But I want you to look at it and think about it. Everyone, almost everyone, can do something, but even someone who can’t even get out of their apartment can pray. You can do something. Everyone can do something for God’s kingdom. Everyone can do something for the church.
I have a friend who likes to say with regard to church, “go to worship and do one other thing.” Of course, a lot of you are going to church and doing five other things and some are going to church, maybe, and then not doing much. I want you to do something here. Then do something out of the church, as well. See what God is leading you to do. You know, you may not know what that is today. You may look at this and say I don’t know yet. You can write that down, “I don’t know yet, but I am praying.” Please just pray about it. See what God would like you to do in one of these areas. Then tell us what you think about the Vision. We want to hear from you. We want to hear what you think. We want to hear the ideas that you have. A lot of you were involved in this, but there are a lot more. The more the merrier. We want to hear what you think as we go, because this is work in progress. This is not written in stone, so to speak. It is something we are building on. It is a process and we really want you to help us with that. If you are excited about something, write that down and tell us about it. Then when you get through today, we are going to give you a few minutes, some reflective music to write some of these things down. There is a box outside the sanctuary for you to drop it in, and then, we would ask that if you can to please stay. We have a nice meal for you over in the fellowship hall area, the Activity Center area, and on the tables there are some questions and some activities as you eat to talk with one another in your group. So we will enjoy some fellowship together and do a little bit more work – it won’t be too bad – just some things to think about. So please take this moment. As we begin to do that, let me pray. Then please work on the sheet of paper while the music is playing; then stand, and we will close out our worship.
Lord God, I thank you for this body, this temple, your temple here in this particular place. It has stood here for a long time as an organization but your church is, bottom line, your people. I thank you that they are here. They are here today seeking your will. I pray that your Spirit will fall upon us, and I mean that Lord, and whatever the consequence is that you would do it and that you would work on our hearts through your Holy Spirit, and through your Word, and through what you want us to do, each and every one. We thank you that we are built by grace into the foundation of Jesus Christ, our Savior; that he is the One who is first and foremost; and that we are his and you are involved in the mighty work of using us and building us into your church. Now, Lord, be with us as we think and pray and write some things down, and as we continue to work on this Vision. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.