Living Stones

Welcome. Good morning! To study it is an incredible book. It's one of my favorite books of the Bible. It's hard to argue with. So with that, I give you the title today. The sermon is Living Stones. Living Stones. As we wind our time down this fall, and in a few short weeks, it will be the Feast of Trumpets. As everyone knows about the Feast of Trumpets, it will be about the Seven Trumpets. As it describes in Corinthians and Thessalonians, about the Seven Trumpets. The Seven Trumpets will sound, and at that time the dead in Christ will rise, and we who are alive shall be caught up into the air. Change, or as the quickening of some reference books call it, will be changed from physical to spiritual immortality. Are you ready for the Seven Trumpets? If it comes tomorrow, are you sure you will be transfigured? Are you sure you will be changed in a moment in the twinkle of an eye? Are you sure you are ready for the Seven Trumpets? That last trumpet? If you do not wake up in the morning? Will you rise? Are you sure of that? Positive? Will you be ready for the Seven Trumpets? Are you solid in your beliefs? Are you solid as a rock in your beliefs? Do you know what you believe, and do you know that you know what you believe? Are you solid as a rock? I forget what truck company, was it Dodge or something? Somebody used to say solid as a rock.

So hopefully you are solid as a rock. But my question for you out of the scriptures, are you a living stone? Are you a living stone? I'd like you to turn to 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2. Actually starts in verse 3. Says, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, coming to him as to a...what? A living stone. A living stone. Rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. You also as living stones. Okay? He's calling us living stones. That's what we're supposed to be. Living stones are being what? Built!

Are being built, not have been built. Being built. Being built. Up! A spiritual house. A holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices. Acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That's from the New King James. I want to read from the New Living Translation just because it hits it well. Same thing. 1 Peter 2, verse 4. You are coming to Christ who is a living cornerstone of God's temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.

Do we realize that we are spiritual stones? Living stones. He also says in verse 9, because he says, But 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 life. Living stones. Do you consider yourself a living stone? I bring this over. I have this visual aid. And I have some blocks. And I have some stones. I even have a rock found out down by the ocean.

It's not like living on a farm in Tennessee where we have rocks everywhere. Hard to find rocks here. But I have blocks here that most people today use, except Post and Pier construction, use for the foundation of a house. And I've witnessed these physical stones, you could say, blocks. Bring this physical for us to relate to, because God says we're not physical stones in his temple, but we are to be spiritual.

For so many times, it takes us seeing the physical to be able to relate what God is trying to teach us about the spiritual realm. A spiritual realm that we are to be living in, in the future for eternity. We'd better get used to the spiritual realm, because that's where we will be living for eternity. In construction, you have to start most any building with a footer. With a footer or a foundation. Most men have built things, built buildings, built even construction. Carl was an inspector, building inspector.

And I imagine he was knowing his personality now. He was not a pushover. And he was a pretty tough inspector. I know, because I've had tough inspectors when I had a building business. But you need a strong foundation, something solid to build upon. And it's no different from the temple of God.

God's temple has to have a solid foundation, solid footing. That's why you have these big blocks. They go at the bottom, not at the top. Not at the top. Something solid built upon. I like to turn to Ephesians, if you will. Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2, verse 19, says, Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of what? The household of God. God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple of the Lord, in whom you also are being built together.

God is building the spiritual house today. Right here. Right now. In your lifetime. Are you prepared to be a living stone? Hmm. The main building block to a solid building is the cornerstone. And it says that Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. It's kind of the anchor stone. Anchor stone, as we used to call it, or the anchor block. You know, it's interesting as if that first cornerstone, or the first block that you lay, because typically how we did it, we dug a footer of concrete, and then we let the concrete dry.

And then we would have a block, as most people do. We usually started with a big 12-inch block, like this. And it's a lot bigger than your typical 8-inch block, but it's your corner block, as we called the cornerstone. And one of the things that's so important is the block. It's the first block that we laid. It was the very beginning. If it was not right, nothing on the house or the structure is going to be right.

It's going to be right without a whole lot of work and reworking everything. That means the very first cornerstone was laid out where we built, or the way we did it, is this stone was laid first, and it was off exact measurements of where it had to be. Because otherwise, you start with something and it's a 6 inches off, well guess what?

Everything's 6 inches off! I used to go out, and was so particular about certain things that this first block, I would actually mark off or lay off myself. Just because I knew that whoever the block layer was was just going to be like, here we go, let's just get it, it's close enough. I knew if I wanted to have a nice finished product at the end, it had to start right. It had to be perfect. It had to be level. Because if it wasn't level, you're building everything up.

That's why we have the understanding. Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. The foundation was the prophets, was the apostles. Because what? They followed in what God told them to follow. They followed the Bible. They followed God's Word. They laid it way before us. And then Christ came along and was that cornerstone. Why? He was perfect. He was level.

He was plumb. He was perfect. That's why we follow Him, not Muhammad, not Buddha. We follow Jesus Christ because He lived the perfect life for us. The key to everything starts with the chief cornerstone. I'd like you to turn to Isaiah 28. Isaiah chapter 28. Isaiah 28 and verse 16. It says, Therefore thus says the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious stone, a sure foundation.

All the way back in Isaiah, predicting this cornerstone. Let's go to 1 Peter. Back to 1 Peter, if you will. 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2 and verse 6. So therefore it is also contained in the Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, as he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. It also mentions in Psalm 118, 22 through 24, talking about the chief cornerstone.

This book, Jesus Christ, is perfect. Christ, He was perfect. And He asked us, become ye perfect. He's asking us to be like Him. Let this mind in you, which was also in Christ. Yes. Are you a living stone? Being built for God's house. Okay, I think we've no way to argue that Christ is a living, the cornerstone. I think we got that covered. Matter of fact, it's mentioned six times just in the New Testament. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke mentions about this cornerstone. It's that important to us, or should be. It can be, could be no one else but Christ, like you turn to Acts 4. Book of Acts, chapter 4. Here's why.

Acts 4. It's amazing. Here it is. Again in Acts. How many times does He have to say the same thing? Acts 4, in verse 11. This is the stone which was rejected by you builders. Who were the builders? That you used at the time. Church leaders. They rejected Christ. Christ came. He was perfect. They didn't recognize Him. They didn't want any part of it because He wasn't one of them.

Rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone. Nor is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved. That's it! It's by Jesus Christ's name. Because it's perfect. We're going to follow that pattern. Follow that work that He did. Turn back a couple pages to John 14. John 14, verse 6. Even Jesus Christ said it. Jesus Christ said it. John 14, verse 6. Jesus said to Him, What? I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Pretty plain. Pretty clear, so clear. Why we believe? What we believe. Because we're following what Jesus Christ did. Do we want to be living stones today?

Because it does cause some problems. If you've ever done construction, a lot of people have. Guess what? It's not easy work. It could be very hard, backbreaking. Some hitting. Some hitting.

Skin pinched. Sweating. Hard work.

That's why you just can't call anyone. God couldn't call anyone because He knew. Guess what? Somebody's going to be tough. You're going to have some tough times ahead of you.

1 Peter 2. Go back to that, if we will. Because we keep going back there. Because Peter wanted you, me, everyone here to get it. He wants us to get it. Winding down his life. In these writings. 1 Peter 2. We've already looked at 4, verse 5, verse 6. But then we come to 7. But then we come to 7. It says, Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious. But to those who are disobedient, the stone which a builder has rejected has become the chief cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble being disobedient to the Word. They are obedient to what? The Word. The Book. The Bible. To which they also were appointed. They were given God's Word. But they rejected the cornerstone. They wanted to do it their way. And there's only two ways, right? Face it. You believe it, or you don't believe it. You obey, or you don't obey. You have God's way or man's way. Right or wrong? Christ or the God of this world? There's only one way. One cornerstone. The leaders that Christ time rejected. That stone. What about you? Will there ever be a time when you reject this cornerstone? Has there been a time you may have already, at different times, that... I don't want to do that building project. I don't... ...with Matthew 18, which Jesus Christ said, if you're going to have a strong church, you go by Matthew 18. Somebody offends you, you go to them. They don't listen, you bring somebody else. That's the way you do it. Because that's what the Master said. Some people have rejected that. How do you know? How do you know you are a living stone? So, well, wait a minute. Well, God's working with me. I open up the book, because that's the key to everything. Reading the Bible, reading the book. And it's a living word, because I read this thing five times, and now the sixth time, it tells me something I've never understood before. And you realize that didn't come. That didn't come. From anywhere but up above. Hmm. Two points. How you know you are a living stone. One is His word, and the other is His Spirit. His word and His Spirit, they work together. The Holy Spirit stimulates you to read the Word. You read the Word, it stimulates the Spirit. How you get on fire. I want to prove my point by looking at two Scriptures. Go back to John.

Go back to John 15. Last night on earth, Jesus Christ is teaching. In John 15, verse 3, He said, you are already clean because of the Word. What? You are already clean because of the Word. What word? His word inspired Word of God. His word, which I have spoken to you. And haven't we all had that spoken word to us by Jesus Christ? I don't think there's a person that has not had it in this room. Like an epiphany. That come from that's His word. How important that word is. Verse 7, it says, if you abide in me, am I... What? My words! My words! Abide in you. You will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. Does His word abide in you?

Turn to the one page, John 16. John 16.

Verse 13. And here, Christ telling His disciples, last night on earth, guess what? It's not just my word, it'll be my spirit. That comforter I've been talking to you for the last three and a half years about. Listen up! Is that important? Verse 13, it says, if you abide in me, it shall be done for you. Verse 13, it says, however, when He, the comforter, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into most of the truth. It's not what it says. Guide you in ALL truth. ALL truth. That's how important it is. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever the Spirit hears, things to come. He will glorify me, for He will take care of what is mine and declare it to you.

Clean. It says you're clean when you have His Word. We're clean when we come under the blood of Jesus Christ. We're cleansed by Him. We're given His Holy Spirit to guide us. Sanctified. We're called sanctified. That means set apart for a holy purpose. You're not here today to get out of the rain. You're not here today to eat somebody's good food. You're here today because you're sanctified. Set apart for a special purpose. It has to do with this.

Turn over to 2 Peter. We begin to wrap this up. 2 Peter. 2 Peter 1, verse 4. Incredible! Incredible verse! I'm just glad Peter put it in here so we can finally have a smackus in the face in case we forget why we're here.

2 Peter 1, verse 4. By which you have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these you may be partakers of a divine nature. Partakers of a divine nature. See, there's animal nature. Okay? We know what animal nature is. You have a lion. You throw a lamb in with it. Guess what? If animal nature takes over, and the lion doesn't go there and stroke the lamb on how pretty you are, it eats it! That's an animal nature. That's why when we see these some of these brutal crimes, people say he was just like an animal. Then there's animal nature. Then it's human nature. Human nature is what? It's human. I want to say to yourself. Okay? And guys want to use it when they want to. Right? When it's just human nature. Right? It's just human nature for me to act that way.

And then there is the divine nature. He said, we are partakers of the divine nature, which says we don't let human nature rule us. We let his nature rule us. That is what partakers of the divine nature means. Are you being built? You feel yourself being built. Because that's what he said. He's built a house, spiritual house. Do you feel yourself being built? Molded! Shaped for use by God. Shaped for use by God. Well, maybe. Peter knew it, didn't he? Peter knew he was. Also, Paul knew, didn't he? Paul knew he was being built. How was he being built? You don't have to turn there. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 24. This is how Paul was built, ready to be used in the spiritual house that God has built. He says, from the Jews, five times I received 40 stripes, minus one. 195 lashes. Can you imagine a piece of leather used on your back, your backside, your legs? 195 times? Can you imagine what his back looked like? 195 times. Three times I was beaten with rods. Rods like canes about that big around. And I had a man that would go where he just whales on your back. Three times beaten with rods. Once I was stoned, they thought he was dead. So I drug him out to the city, they thought he was dead. He's not going to get up. He got up. God wasn't done with him yet. The stone wasn't checked yet.

It still looked pretty rough. It was still pretty big.

Think he didn't feel it. I was shipwrecked. A night and a day, I've been in the deep. In journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of countrymen, perils of gentiles, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilderness. Just been perils all the time. In weariness, in toil, in sleeplessness, often. In hunger, in thirst, in fastings, often. In calm and in nakedness.

I don't think I want to complain about my problems. Don't think I want to complain much about God shaping me, molding me. Chiseling me. Because Paul got a lot of serious chiseling, didn't he? See, you just can't set a stone in here anyway. This is a house. God is dead. You can't take a stone like this and say, okay, here's... Stefano. Here he is. Okay. Okay, now we're ready to build. All right, I'm just going to use Stefano right here. Okay, here, I'm going to get somebody else. Now that's going to be a nice house, isn't it?

It is. That's what God's doing. He's molding us. He's taking a rough stone, which all of us here and are. Yes, it's on there. Okay. Too many of us, all of us like this, too many of us, we tend to stay this way. And God has to shut us down. He wants us to fit in here. Do we want to be in that building, that spiritual house forever? Hmm. Are we ready to be fitted? You know, Paul said, what, my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith, laid up for me as a crown of righteousness. He was either days or months from dying when he wrote this. He and his head chopped off. Okay. He was ready. He knew. God had chiseled him. God had allowed him to be sanded down. Beat on. He was ready for him to fit in his house.

You know, you think about it. But when he comes to building back in my house, Tennessee, I have a bag in it that I would do, have all my tools in. And in there was a 24-ounce east wing hammer. Okay. Big hammer. I like to just fit my hand just right after all those years. Okay. And then I have a little 16-ounce wood and a hammer. That's my trim hammer. Because the big 24-ounce is framing hammer. You got this big claw, and I can just bang when you're setting framing up or you're trying to do something, and you can wear that thing out. And then you have the little hammer that you just kind of do trim work with. What's God using on us? What's God using on us? Is it about time after all these years we've been in the church that God said, I can put her as a 24-ounce east wing? Or is he still having to take that thing and break us down? Or is it at the point where he's being able to use a little trim hammer? We're pretty smooth. We're pretty smooth. We can fit in there. It's not going to take much. Not going to take much for us. Not going to take him long. Finish that out. Finish us. Do we want to be the finished product?

Or do we say, it wasn't so bad back then. Not too bad. You know, I just didn't really have a care in the world. He didn't. That was our past life. He didn't care about God. He didn't care about eternity and what our destiny was.

One last scripture, like you turn to.

One last scripture. First Kings. First Kings 6, Chapter 6. First Kings, Chapter 6 just gives it the kind of explanation, a really short version of how Solomon's temple was built. And gives these descriptions of everything. And no matter how beautiful the temple was, the Solomon built, and it was fabulous. God says he's building the spiritual house. And that spiritual house will be fabulous. What did he say? In my father's house are many mansions or offices. In my father's house, this spiritual house, there's places, there's jobs, there's responsibilities. That the stones got fit.

There's responsibility of those offices. They're special. They're special. So he says, from the foundations of the world, he knew who you were. He knew that this position was going to be here, and he knew you would have the opportunity. But you can reject it. But if you don't reject God, he's going to work with us. Continue to work with us. To fit. To make sure we fit. Molded. Smooth, chiseled, sanded, polished. For the spiritual house. First Kings 6 and verse 7. And the temple, when it was built, was built with stone, finished at the quarry. So that no hammer, or chisel, or any other iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. You get that?

You see that with us?

God's temple is not going to be here, and then he says, oh, I've got a lot of hammering to do. Well, we've got a lot of work with these people. That's going to take us a while. Christ, we need to put things off. We've got to work on this. No! Just like these stones, these huge stones, they were measured, just exact. And they were chiseled down at the quarry. And so they took them to the temple. Guess what? Just fit right in. Fit right in. Perfect. They were perfect. That's what he's doing with us. He's perfecting us. The trials you're going through, the problems, just like Paul went through, just like Peter went through. Just like all disciples did. Just like all God's people go through. Guess what? Smooth as a sap. They don't feel too smooth at the time. They feel too good being polished. But it works. What he's doing. That no hammer or chisel. They were finished at the quarry. It's amazing because they still haven't figured out how in the world they got these big stones so smooth. Now, what's interesting, at this temple, because you can actually go now at the western wall where they believe is—and they've actually dug out kind of where they believe the temple was. You know, what's interesting there, you can actually see it on the internet if you type that in. They'll show you pictures. I didn't want to bring them today. But it's so interesting because here they dug out, because they didn't lay concrete footers then. But they dug out the ground. They dug out—I have six foot deep. And then they put the foundation stones in. And you know what's amazing? No matter how long that temple's been built and torn down and built, everything else, they've never— they went down four or five foot, and they haven't removed those stones. And so here they have the original foundational stones that were in when Solomon built the place. And it's actually thought, going through history, that David was the one that dug out all the ground, but God wouldn't let him build. But he was so excited about it that he dug out all the ground. He wanted to make sure everything was perfect. And then he handed it over his son, and his son went in. Okay, and they took pictures of the stone, and they have it there, and they can show it. They just can't figure out how in the world they got that stone, because there's some foundational stones. There's some corner stones there that are actually L-shaped, that fit in the corner, and they would have had to quarry out. There's actually long stones that are almost the size of that partition there, where they are five or six feet tall, and they're 12 or 13 foot long, and they're that thick. And so they've actually measured them and found out that just one of those stones weighs 500 tons. That's a million pounds! A million pounds! Is that a cornerstone or what? That's why it's still there.

And it's believed from all their figures that they've actually got 3,000 tons of foundational stones in there. 3,000 tons are in there that they can see. Pretty solid when you build something on a million pounds. And what's interesting, that temple that took seven years to build, you guess what? They ended it right on time, just before the Feast of Trump, when the dedication happened. Took seven years and it took 150,000 men to build it. 150,000 men, seven years. Quite a place. But that's nothing compared to God's spiritual temple that he's building. Nothing.

Our place in God's kingdom is spiritual, not physical. What does it say? Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. That's why we've got to be these stones. We are these stones. We're being shaped and formed and molded now to fit in the place that he has for us. And sometimes we may say to ourselves, I don't know why I go through this trial after trial after trial. I don't know why, it just seems, well, guess what? You don't have to. He does. He knows. And you will see it one day. That's how important the stones are. Rather than what a kingdom. What a future. What a day. When that seventh trump sounds, it will be forever changed.

It starts with this. It starts with this. It really started with this. And then hopefully it's this. Then it's this. And then it's even smoother. And it's here. It all starts with you being a living stone. The seventh trumpet, the day that it sounds, it's coming. Are you ready? Will you be ready? Are you a living stone?