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Sermon for the week of Trinity 14
1 Peter 2:4-10
The cry for mercy. The cry of thanksgiving for mercy received. As we discussed on Sunday, those two acts sum up the Christian life. Peter has something to say, especially about the second part, in the Second Lesson you heard this evening.
It starts with Jesus, and coming to Jesus, which is what faith is—coming to Jesus, relying on Jesus for the promised rest, forgiveness, and mercy of every kind. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. Here Peter, like the Old Testament prophets, compares Jesus, the Messiah, to a stone. He is the stone that shatters every human government and that fills the earth when He comes, as Daniel interprets King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. He is a stone in the road that men stumble over, as the Psalmist describes, the stone that men reject as useless and want nothing to do with, which Jesus experienced during His earthly ministry and which treatment remains to this day as most people either reject the Jesus of the Bible entirely, or recreate Him in a more palatable form. And He is the precious, perfect stone that God the Father has chosen, has sent, has laid down as the cornerstone of the only building in the whole world that God Himself inhabits, the building that is His house, His temple, His Holy Christian Church—the one Jesus promised to build on the rock that was Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And, just as Jesus referred to Peter as a stone, so Peter refers to all Christians as stones. You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Living stones. Your relationship to Jesus, the chosen, precious cornerstone, makes you into stones, too. Not inanimate objects, but living stones, filled with the life that flows from God, the “fountain of living waters,” as Jeremiah referred to him in tonight’s First Lesson. And yet not stones scattered around on the ground, but being built together, with all the other living stones, into God’s house, into God’s church where He dwells by His Spirit.
Not only are Christians stones. We’re also a holy priesthood, and this is where we get into the sacrifices of thanksgiving. Notice, Peter isn’t writing to ministers. He’s writing to all Christians and calls all of them a holy priesthood, which we sometimes refer to as the priesthood of all believers. The two main functions of the priesthood are approaching God with requests, and approaching God with sacrifices. In this New Testament, Christ is the only High Priest, and the only one who offered the sacrifice for sin, His own life, given into death as the sufficient payment for all the sins of mankind. But that still leaves believers, as priests, with the privilege of bringing our prayers and requests before God, and with the duty to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving—spiritual sacrifices, Peter calls them, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Not apart from Him, but through Him, as our one true Mediator and High Priest of the New Testament.
Ministers or pastors are not rightly even called “priests” in this New Testament, except insofar as we, too, are believers and part of the priesthood of all believers. All believers bring our prayers and our sacrifices of thanksgiving to God. In that respect, the minister is simply the leader and the guide. He isn’t the one “doing” the praying, or the worshiping, or the sacrificing. He’s guiding the rest of the priests in it, with the care of a shepherd who is entrusted with guiding the sheep and seeing to it that all things are done in a decent and orderly way, as God commands. We all approach God together. We all offer our petitions and our sacrifices together. It’s the other duty of the ministry that belongs to the minister alone, namely, to bring and apply the Word of God to the people, to speak and act on Christ’s behalf, calling to repentance, and forgiving sins to the penitent. So remember, it is your priestly privilege and duty to bring your sacrifices before God, here in our worship services, and in your daily lives. Your prayers, your attention, your songs, your participation here, your hearing of God’s Word and your putting it into practice, and your bearing of the cross with patience—these are your sacrifices, as members of the holy priesthood, and they are acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ.
Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, “Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious, And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.” God the Father spoke these words long ago through the prophet Isaiah. His purpose was always the sending of the Christ to Israel, that all in Israel might believe in Him and be saved from every trouble. He was “elect” or “chosen” by the Father before the foundations of the world were laid, to bring salvation to Zion, and from Zion, from Jerusalem, to the ends of the earth.
Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious… That is, you believers know Jesus to be precious to the Father, and you treasure Him as the precious Savior sent to you from the Father’s side. But to those who are disobedient, that is, who do not believe the Gospel, to those who continue in their sins, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” It was also prophesied in the Old Testament that most of Israel would reject their Messiah, would consider Him worthless, would refuse to build upon Him or be built into Him. That’s a rejection that continues in Israel and among most of mankind still today. They don’t want Jesus. They don’t want His word—or they want to pick and choose which of His words they’ll accept and which they’ll throw away. But man’s rejection of the Christ doesn’t get in God’s way. The Father made Jesus the chief cornerstone of the Church by raising Him from the dead. And now, the same Jesus who is the cornerstone of Christianity is the stumbling block for the rest of mankind. They can’t get rid of Him. If they won’t build upon Him, then they will stumble over Him. And they will perish eternally.
They stumble, Peter writes, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed. The word of God, both Old and New Testament, points all men to Jesus. But people want to believe what they want to believe. And so they stumble, and fall. All who reject God’s word have been appointed to this stumbling and falling—not predestined to it, as if God caused them to stumble, but appointed to it, in that God has appointed all unbelievers to crash and burn because of their stubborn unbelief, because they refuse to build upon Christ.
But you—you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; you, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
You, Peter says, you Gentile Christians, who had no part in the Old Testament people of Israel, are now part of God’s chosen and elect people. You who once served idols have now been appointed as royal priests. You who at one time were part of the mass of humanity hurtling headlong toward hell have now been separated from the earthly nations that are perishing and have been made a holy nation that will live forever. God’s own special people, chosen by God, chosen for a purpose: to offer the priestly sacrifice of praise. You cried out for mercy and received it. Now cry out with thanksgiving, like the one leper who was cleansed, and make it part of your daily, priestly service. Amen.
