Freshbrook Church Podcast | 10May26 | Living Hope | Mike Rabbitt

So verses 1 to 3 of 1 Peter chapter 2, therefore, rid yourselves of all mass 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.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Now, chapter 1 ends with the glorious power and work of God's work, God's Word.

Chapter 2 begins with the encouragement of how we should receive God's word, putting our heart in the right place, pushing away malice, deceit, envy, slander, and receiving the pure milk of God's word, like a baby who craves its mother's milk.

And Dave spoke on these verses as part of his sermon last week.

But I think I need to mention it today as well, as the thrust and most important point of verses 1 to 10 is the command to crave pure spiritual milk in verse 2.

And I think it also bears repeating.

So to desire scripture, to desire the word of God.

And that is what Peter is commanding us to do.

Here he doesn't command us to read God's word, nor to study it, nor to meditate on it, although these things clearly are all good.

No, he commands us to crave pure spiritual milk, to crave God's word.

In the midst of a world that is full of corrupting things which contaminate us, we are commanded to crave something that is pure.

And the command is to long for the word of God, to desire it.

Why?

Well, that we might know him better and come to love him more and more.

Now I remember how useless I was as a father when Liz was not there and I was left holding one of my four babies at separate times, crying very loudly, because they were apparently very hungry.

I couldn't believe they were hungry, then just had some food.

But apparently they were very hungry again, and I was powerless to stop the crying.

A baby often seems to be desperate for their mother's milk.

They don't want anything else.

You care about the colour of their blanket.

They don't.

You care about their cute clothes.

They don't.

They don't scream because they are offended by the colour of their pajamas.

They come into the world with a compulsive obsessive disorder.

And this is the metaphor Peter uses to describe how we should crave after God's word for our nourishment to grow up into our salvation.

Do we crave the word of God like a newborn baby craves for their mother's milk?

A longing that rises out of our hearts.

And we need to read the word of God so it can do its work.

If you read the Bible, you will be given life by believing in his name through the Holy Spirit.

The supernatural power of God comes to us from his word, which transfers to us through the Holy Spirit, not by a mystical experience.

And did you see that he says that you may grow up in your salvation?

Which is an interesting phrase.

Growing up into something.

And it makes me think of a school uniform I had to wear.

Maybe you had something the same.

At the start of your new senior school, do you remember when your jacket looked as though you had lost your arms?

Your mum told you that you would grow into it.

Thanks, mum.

But you did eventually grow into it.

Now the journey of a Christian life is fantastic because salvation is so vast.

We might think that when we first come to taste the goodness of God, we've reached the end.

That we know God as much as we need to.

But there is so much more of Him to know.

There are depths to God's grace that we've yet to discover.

We need to grow, fed by the Word, just as a baby is fed by milk.

And we need to know God more and more.

Now, hands up if you think you already conform to the likeness of Christ.

No, not too many takers there.

No.

So in addition, and importantly, we need to realize that we are so far short of what we should be, which is conforming to the likeness of Jesus.

We all still sin.

We need to constantly go back to the Word of God to help the Holy Spirit change us.

And our spiritual growth is fueled by reading the word of God.

And verse 3 ends with, Now that you have tasted that the Lord is good, which comes from Psalm 34, verse 8.

Psalms 34:8

So you should survey how God has been kind to you, how good God has been to you.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Yeah, which is Lamentations 3, verse 23.

Lamentations 3:23

He is good to you every single day.

Wouldn't you want to go back to him to hear from him every day?

Reading scripture elevates your gratitude to God.

God has been kind, God is kind to us constantly, consistently.

He lavishes his kindness on us, and he will spend all your life unfolding the fullness of his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

Now you have tasted that the Lord is good, go back to the treasures of his word.

Now my wife, that's Liz over there, and I, we went to the Museum of Making in Derby recently.

And one of the things we read about was the children who from the age of twelve started working in factories in fairly horrific conditions, working from six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock in the evening during the Industrial Revolution.

That doesn't happen now, fortunately, and instead, children now have the privilege of going to school and receiving an education.

I know that the children don't think that it's a privilege to go to school, but it really is.

And from verse four, Peter goes on to describe some of the privileges we have in Christ.

So verse 4, as you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him.

And as we come to him, starting at verse 4, Peter refers to the building work that God is doing.

And he switches metaphor.

He moves away from a baby receiving nourishment to something that is being built.

Peter calls God's people living stones, chosen by God and precious to him.

And God is putting together a collection of stones in a building, which he calls a spiritual house, a church, this house.

And God's chosen sanctuary, where he resides, is his people.

And you and I are stones, living stones, in God's church.

And Peter expounds the truth to which his Christian name, Peter, testifies.

Peter means a stone or a rock.

And in Matthew chapter 16, Jesus told Peter, Now you are a stone, and I want many similar stones, because I intend to build a church and to build it upon myself as the chief cornerstone.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

So he is building us, he is shaping us, he is arranging us, he is fitting us, and we each have our place in this great structure that God has built and is building.

Jesus is called a precious living stone, and we are also called living stones as we receive our life from Him.

And we are built up into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Now God laid a cornerstone for the spiritual house he wanted to build, and that cornerstone is Jesus.

And as living stones, we are connected to the cornerstone into the church.

And it's an engaging image, and a couple of applications of the image come to mind, one of which I've used already.

It means that everybody who is a believer has a particular place in the church.

You have a particular role.

If your stone or brick is missing, there's a hole.

And it's not the same, is it?

God doesn't say you are not important, somebody else can do your role.

No, your place is important and needs to be filled in.

And we illustrated this earlier, where we each wrote something down on a post-it note.

And they're all different, and it looks wonderful.

And sometimes, secondly, there is some shaping that needs to be done to get a stone in place.

Our building techniques are somewhat different compared with the ancient world, and when they often built with stones that had to be shaped to put them in place.

Do you ever feel that God is shaping you in your life?

Imagine what the stone would say when it feels like the chisel scraping against it.

It would say, Ow, don't do that to me.

You're cutting away some of my favourite parts.

But God says, No, I must do it so that you will fit in.

I heard a story, and some of you will have heard it already, and I think I remember it originally from Alan Bailey, who's in the congregation this morning.

It's about a Christian man who is discouraged by the circumstances of his life.

He'd lost his job, and generally he was in a bad place.

He went for a walk, depressed and disconsolate, and came across a building site for a new church.

He saw a stonemason working on a stone on the floor at the front of the site.

And he was shaping the stone with a chisel.

The man looked at the stone and couldn't see where it was going to go.

He asked he asked the stonemason what he was doing.

Why he was so obsessed with this one stone, repeatedly measuring it and cutting it according to the measurements.

Where is that stone going to go?

Why are you working on it so hard?

He said, I am shaping it down here so that you will fit in up, so it will fit in up there.

And he pointed to a place high on the steeple of the church.

And he saw a place that was missing a stone.

And this broke the man's heart.

He realized that God was shaping him down here so that he would fit in with the larger structure of what he was doing.

And then we come to verse five.

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.

Now that is a staggering statement.

And it's staggering because in Judaism the priests were considered to be the elite above the general population as they mediated between God and his people.

And in contrast to Judaism, in which only a selected number from a single tribe functioned as priests, all believers in Christ are priests.

And together we are a priesthood.

And the priesthood is a privilege held by every one of the people of God who are able to come to God at all times through Jesus Christ.

And the characteristic and chief ministry of a priest is to offer sacrifices to God for the forgiveness of the sins of the people.

And the sacrifices to be offered by us are no longer animal, but spiritual.

And the kind of sacrifices Peter means are the daily devotion in the life of obedience, which is written down in Romans 12, verse 1, praise and thanksgiving to God, which is Hebrews 13 and 15.

Romans 12:1

Practical ministry for the needs of people, again, Hebrews chapter 13 and 16.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

And generally serving God.

And we are assured by Peter that our spiritual sacrifices are acceptable to God because we are joined to Christ and our sacrifices are offered through Him.

And as living stones in the spiritual house, in the church, we should offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

God does the work of building in community with each other all stones joined together.

One brick is fairly meaningless, but joined with thousands of others under the plan of a master architect, that brick becomes part of something almost immeasurably glorious.

And we do the job of offering sacrifices pleasing to him.

And that's what God has for each of us to do.

And then consider what Peter goes on to say about the chief cornerstone.

So verses six to eight.

He says, For in Scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a precious, 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 cornerstone, and a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.

They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for.

So in verses four and five, Peter talks about the concept of living stones and of Jesus being the ultimate living stone and we being connected to him.

But now he starts connecting this idea with passages from the Old Testament, notably Psalm 118, which prophesies God establishing a chief cornerstone.

And this verse in Psalm 118 is quoted six times in the New Testament, which is more than any other verse from the Old Testament.

And what's the idea behind it?

It's that God has arranged a chief cornerstone that many people rejected, and that is Jesus.

Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of Psalm 118, verse 22.

Psalms 118:22

He is also the stumbling stone of Isaiah chapter 8, as is also mentioned by Peter.

Isaiah 8 · chapter mention

He is the foundation stone of Isaiah 28, and he is the supernatural stone of Daniel chapter 2, which crushed the bronze statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

And he is the rock that miraculously gave Israel water in the wilderness.

And because of this, now to you who believe, this stone is precious.

And the chief cornerstone was rejected by the disobedient.

And Peter speaks of this because he's still reflecting at this time on the fact that the Messiah came to his own Jewish people and yet they rejected him.

He says, Don't be surprised, as he was predicted in the Old Testament.

And then verse 7 says, This stone is precious.

Precious means valuable.

Do you own anything that's precious to you?

That's valuable to you?

Maybe something that was passed down to you.

My mind turns to a chap called Precious Mackenzie, who was a name some of you will are familiar with.

Anybody familiar with that name?

Yeah, a few of us.

Yeah.

He was born in South Africa, but represented England in the 1966 Commonwealth Games at weightlifting, and he won the gold medal.

And he was given the name Precious after surviving serious surgery soon after his birth.

And in stories, pirates are often tracing treasure where X on a map marks where the treasure is.

And they are chasing it because treasure is precious.

And they try to find the treasure by going to the X.

And likewise, if you go to the cross, the X, where Jesus died, you will find something precious.

Jesus is precious.

Can you put a value on having peace with God?

Can you put a value on having joy in your heart?

Jesus is responsible for both of those things because if we put our trust in him, our sins are forgiven through his death and resurrection, and we are put right with God.

Can you put a value on eternal life?

The French philosopher Voltaire said, I will pay half my fortune for just one day more.

And believers in Jesus have eternal life.

Jesus is precious to those who have faith in what he has done for them.

And there is one way to know if someone has a biblical faith in Jesus Christ.

It's not the only way, but it is a way.

It is Jesus Christ, precious to them.

And if Jesus Christ is not precious to you, you should ask God to change your heart.

You need to think that Jesus Christ is precious to you.

There's an interesting anecdote that is associated with this verse, which talks about Jesus being precious.

I'm sure you've heard of Charles Spurgeon.

He was a great preacher in Victorian England.

And when he was 16, he preached his first sermon in a little village cottage church to a handful of poor people.

And the pastor of his church had asked Charles and another young man to go out and preach at this cottage church.

But the pastor hadn't made it clear as to which one of them was to do the preaching, and both of them thought the other was going to do it.

So while they were walking there, Charles said to his friend, What are you going to preach on?

And his friend said, I'm not preaching.

You're preaching.

Which is what Burgeon did.

And the first sermon he ever preached on was the text of 1 Peter 2, verse 7.

1 Peter 2:7

As he said, he couldn't preach on any other Bible passage.

Christ was precious to my soul, and I was in the flush of my youthful love, and I could not be silent when a precious Jesus was the subject.

Now, Jesus was precious to him, and I hope he is precious to you, because in verse 7, quoting again from Psalm 118, Peter describes that those who reject the chief cornerstone, those who refuse to build on him, instead stumble over him.

Jesus Christ is either going to be the foundation for your life, or you're going to trip over him.

It's one or the other.

You can't be neutral about him.

If he's not your salvation, then he will become, as the text describes, a rock that makes you fall.

Now a chief cornerstone is the starting point of a building.

Everything else is laid out according to its connection to the chief cornerstone.

And Jesus set the course for both Jew and Gentile to be joined together into one glorious house for God.

This was a stone of stumbling for the Jews.

They didn't think that the Gentiles should be part of God's spiritual house.

But God's idea was to join them together to give them an equal place in his kingdom.

And in the book of Acts, chapter 10, when Peter was hungry, God gave him a vision in which he saw a Large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners, and it contained all kinds of four-footed animals as well as reptiles and birds.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

And Peter was told to kill and eat.

Peter eventually realized the meaning of the vision that God accepts people from every nation who fear him.

And I don't know whether you know, there is a stone outside the church here, just on the corner there, which refers to the verse in Peter which talks about Jesus being the cornerstone of the church.

Go and have a look at it.

Now, starting at verse 9, there are a number of amazing titles that are given to the people of God.

If Jesus Christ is precious to you, the titles I'm about to read belong to you.

They belong equally to Jewish believers and to Gentile believers.

And to us that isn't a big deal.

But in Peter's day, it was a big deal.

So listen to these titles given in verses 9 and 10, and consider that they are given to both Jew and Gentile in Jesus Christ.

So verses 9 and 10.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Once you are not a people, but now you are the people of God.

Once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

So I hope you saw yourself in those verses.

If Jesus Christ is precious to you, we've just read a beautiful description of who you are before God.

First of all, it says that you are a chosen people.

This was one of the things that belonged exclusively to Israel.

They were the elect, the chosen.

And now he Peter says that this is no longer the property of Israel alone, but in Jesus Christ, Gentiles can share in that inheritance.

Maybe you think that you chose to be a Christian.

In fact, the Bible tells us in this passage and elsewhere, such as in Romans chapter 8, that God chose you.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

It's good to be chosen, isn't it?

Next, a royal priesthood.

Under the Old Testament, God zealously divided the positions of royalty and priesthood.

A king could not be a priest, but in Jesus Christ they are brought together.

And the text says that you are a royal priesthood.

The believer is his own priest before God.

We do not need any other mediator except the great high priest, Jesus.

And it also means that I'm looking out on royalty this morning.

Does that make you feel good?

It's a sort of fairly humble kind of royalty, but in Jesus Christ, royalty nevertheless.

Jesus is king, and as we are part of his family, we are royalty.

And then he says in verse 9 that we are God's special possession.

You often hear of entirely ordinary artifacts belonging to famous people selling for ridiculous sums of money, just because that artifact is linked to a famous person.

And I've read of a couple of examples.

Dorothy's slippers from The Wizard of Oz sold for 28 million dollars.

A black beaver hat worn by Napoleon Bonaparte sold for 1.9 million euros in November 2023.

And ordinary things can be regarded as very precious because of who they are connected to.

And all of us are ordinary, well, I'm speaking for myself, but we are connected to a marvellous and precious Saviour.

We are special possessions, not because we are anything wonderful ourselves, but because the God who embraced us is so wonderful.

And then verse 10 once you are not a people, but now you are the people of God.

Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

We were once without these privileges.

We hadn't seen God's mercy.

But now we have obtained mercy.

What an amazing revolution this was in the minds of the Gentiles of the first century church.

You didn't used to belong, but now you do belong among God and his people.

And the Church of Jesus Christ is the true people of God, the people of a unique God-given calling.

Which means that you are amazing in Jesus Christ.

You are a royal priesthood.

You are a special people.

You once weren't, but now you are.

Why did God do this for you?

Was it so that you can stand around and say, you know, I'm pretty amazing.

Thank you, God.

Did he do it so you could walk around thinking how wonderful you are?

Did he do it so that you could look down your nose on those who aren't chosen?

But I am.

Is that why he did it?

Well, no.

In verse 9, it says that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

That's why he did it.

That you may do this.

Not so you could walk around thinking how wonderful you are, not so you could walk around looking down and knows that anybody else who has not yet entered into God's kingdom.

No.

He did it so that you could praise the one who saved you so wonderfully out of darkness into his wonderful light, and that you might declare it to others.

And you and I are duty bound to praise God because of all he has given us in Jesus Christ.

And these privileges should make us humble and praising God.

So that's it.

Well, just a few conclusions, a few takeaways, so that you don't forget.

So, first of all, Peter's command to us to crave pure spiritual milk of the Bible, so that we might grow spiritually, realizing that we are discontent with who we are.

We are nowhere near the likeness of Jesus.

And then Peter's image, which has turned into reality of a community of living stones together in the church, offering spiritual sacrifices to God, acceptable to him through Jesus, who is the cornerstone of the church.

Don't forget the preciousness of Jesus, and don't forget the privileges we carry as a chosen and special people, so that we declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Should we just pray?

Let's just reflect on what we've just heard.

Lord and Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for your words to us this morning.

It's wonderful to think that we are living stones together built into this church here in Freshbrook, and that we all have an important role to play, and that Jesus is our cornerstone.

So Lord, challenge us with the things that we read also about how we might offer an appropriate spiritual sacrifice, which is acceptable to you through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Lord, most of all, we want to thank you that we have a wonderful, precious Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and help us to declare him to the people that we meet in our lives.

And we just pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.