Holy Curiosity | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Well, I want to say welcome.

Thank you so much for being here.

And uh we've been anticipating for a while uh the building project, which is you know, things get worse before they get better.

And so our team has been uh planning for a while on how to get people from point A to point B, make offsite parking as efficient as possible.

And so want you to know we're ready and just ask you to uh participate with us uh in this this process.

Looking forward to Easter.

Uh every year it's a time that uh people are for whatever reason unusually open to coming to church, especially if they get an invite.

And uh would encourage you to reach out, friends and family, people that you know, um uh to invite them to be a part of it.

And I just never cease to be amazed the way that God will use that time to intersect his word in someone's life.

And so uh very much looking forward to see what God will do.

Uh, and I got a message I'm excited to share, so we're it's gonna be great.

All right, let's pray and then we'll get into God's word for the day.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

I thank you, Lord, for this opportunity that you've given me today to open up your word, uh, to not only study it, but to allow it to study us, to speak to us as to what you would have to say to us.

So I pray you would anoint me by your spirit to be able to communicate efficiently and clearly, and that uh, Lord, we would receive uh the education that we need, but at the same time that we wouldn't get so caught up in the data that we miss with the download of what you want to give us in terms of application as individuals and as a church community.

And so we open ourselves to be receptive to whatever you would say to us in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

Okay, uh, we are in the a series called the Psalms, and uh what we're doing is looking.

We took a few weeks to kind of look at the Psalms uh as a compilation of 150 different, uh essentially songs or poems uh that were actually designed not to be read in isolation, which is kind of how we tend to do it.

Usually we'll grab a psalm and a cup of coffee uh before we start our day.

Uh the reality is these were designed to be sung in community.

Uh they were actually liturgies, which were essentially uh instructions of worship that would be uh sung.

So often you'll see different elements within the psalms that words like salah uh or or you'll see uh different words you don't understand.

Well, it's actually kind of like sheep music giving direction to the musicians of how to play these things.

And so as we've been looking at them over the last few weeks, uh we've looked at how they uh were arranged.

In fact, you see if you look closely, five books of the Psalms.

When you go to Psalm 1.1, above that it says book one, and then you'll see five different books throughout the Psalms.

And we've been uh looking at the relationship between those books because that's really essential in understanding the Psalms themselves and not just pulling one out in kind of a shuffle style.

Um so what we have in the first couple books of the Psalms, you have uh some general direction in the first two chapters.

First chapter essentially says that no matter how crazy the world is, you can still live righteously.

Uh yeah, we turn on the headlines, yeah, we look at the world around us, and it can be wild, but uh at the end of the day, control the controllables, and you can be a person of integrity even when there's a lack of integrity around you.

Uh, you can tell the truth and be righteous and focus on God's word even when others aren't.

And so uh there's instruction on wisdom.

And then in chapter two, it talks about how crazy the world is.

So it says, why do the nations rage?

And uh it talks about even geopolitical uh unrest and how do we live within that?

The first two books of the Psalms really um uh focus heavily on God's covenant with David and essentially their concept and their hopes of the king.

So the idea that the king was going to be the one that God was gonna use to bring uh salvation, to bring saving from uh other nations, to bring uh economic boom, to bring physical health and safety and protection.

And uh you have in the middle of the Psalms in Book Three this theological crisis because they've lost their king.

Their king has been dethroned, they no longer have a king.

You have Israel, that's this tiny little nation that's being passed around among these large empires, and so they're constantly under threat.

They're almost never free, and yet they have this promise from God and they're trying to reconcile that.

In this book four and five, you now have a messianic focus, a future focus.

They start to look and say, even though uh the system of the king no longer exists, we believe that there is a coming king, that God's gonna bring a messiah uh and and and that will fulfill his covenants and his promises.

So what I want to do is I want to look at a psalm.

In fact, this is uh this is gonna be essential, Psalm 118.

Uh understanding Psalm 118 is essential for understanding Palm Sunday.

All right, so if you have your Bible, you're probably gonna put one finger in Psalm 118 and one finger in Matthew 21, and we're gonna flip back and forth.

If you don't uh have uh, you know, want to put your fingers in the two verses, uh I will have it on the screen.

Alright, so um uh what I want to do is help you understand what we're reading in Psalm 118 so that the story of Palm Sunday is really, really gonna come alive like never before.

Uh okay, so in the fifth book of the Psalms, you have Psalm 113 through 118.

Psalm 13 through 118 are what's called the Egyptian Hallel.

The Egyptian Hallel.

What is Halel?

Well, think of the word hallelujah, right?

The idea of praise.

So these six chapters from chapter 13 to chapter 18 are praise psalms that would be sung annually at the festivals to say, God, thank you for bringing us out of Egypt.

Okay, these are deliverance psalms and expressing gratitude.

Now think about this.

In 5th century, 4th century, 3rd century BC, as you're leading up to the first century when Jesus shows up, you now have hundreds of years that the people of Israel have come together and will sing these songs annually about how God delivered them in Egypt.

And of course, now they're in the hands of the Romans in the first century.

So when they're singing about the Passover and they're singing about God delivering them from Egypt, they're kind of singing about history, but they're singing about something they're hoping God will do again, which is to bring them out of bondage.

And so let's take a look at a few of these verses.

So Psalm 118, starting in verse 1, uh says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.

Let Israel say, his love endures forever.

Let the house of Aaron say, his love endures forever.

Let those who fear the Lord say, his love endures forever.

Now I'm going to stop there for a second, and I want to give you an understanding of how this would have actually, uh again, for hundreds of years, how they would have practiced this as a liturgy.

So go ahead and bring up that first picture.

I want you to take a look at this.

So this would have taken place in Jerusalem on the way to the temple, and you have kind of uh three different uh kind of segments there.

The top group is the house of Aaron, okay?

The house of Aaron are the priests.

Okay, we're standing in this picture, it is a picture of the temple.

It's not an actual picture, it's uh uh an artist's rendering, okay, of the temple.

And um, those big doors are the gates of the temple.

So you have the house of Aaron or the priests that are the group, the people standing in front of that.

Down on that landing in the middle, you have someone who represents the king, okay, or a leader.

Now, who is this person?

Well, obviously, we don't have a king in the first century.

They don't have a king, and so this would be someone representative of the king.

So when Psalm 118 was originally written, okay, this would be a king coming back from battle.

They're going to the temple because we want to thank God for victory.

So we're we want to enter the temple to go to the altar and thank God for his salvation, for saving us.

And so that person now represents as a stand-in for the king.

So this would be someone in the community who has received a salvation.

This may be someone who had a near-death experience, someone who survived a perilous journey, someone who had a disease they almost died from.

Okay, somebody who everybody knows has been saved or delivered from near death.

And then you have now the congregation who are all down there who are going to follow this person into the temple.

All right, now let's go back to Psalm 118 and let's look at verse 1, and this is how this would go down.

The guy on the landing, okay, the guy who's like the proxy for the king, who's standing in as the king, he would yell out by himself, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.

Then he would do a call in response with the people who were standing at the bottom, right?

So he would yell, Let Israel say, and then he would be quiet, and they would yell, His love endures forever.

And then he would yell up to the priests, let the house of Aaron say, and then they would yell, His love endures forever.

And then he would say, Let those who fear the Lord say, and then everybody, the priest, okay, the the king and the congregation, would yell, His love endures forever.

Verse 5, when hard pressed, I cried to the Lord, and he brought me into a spacious place.

All right, the Hebrew here, when it says I was hard pressed, is a visual picture of like the walls closing in on you.

In other words, I was in a claustrophobic space.

Okay, I was in a tight space.

I was stuck.

And anytime you've ever felt stuck, maybe you felt stuck in your finances, maybe you felt stuck in your marriage, maybe you felt stuck in your singleness.

Maybe you felt stuck in your career.

Maybe you have felt stuck in your community.

Maybe you felt stuck in your country.

Maybe you have felt stuck in your own body.

Maybe you have felt stuck in your own depression.

Anywhere that the walls have been closing in on you and you're feeling claustrophobic and stuck, they cry out to the Lord, save us.

And he said, when I was hard-pressed, I cried to the Lord, and he brought me into a spacious place.

So this is a psalm of deliverance.

Okay?

Now, originally written to talk about God delivering them from the oppression of the Egyptians, but now applied beyond just that into uh any time we're hard-pressed, and how God brings into a spacious place.

Now, when it comes to, let's go to Matthew 21.

You look at Matthew 21, you see this liturgy taking place.

Now, let's get our bearings in the first century and in Matthew 21.

Okay, you have the Israelite people who have been able to rebuild the temple.

So you have it's the second temple period, and and they have now been given permission by the Romans to go ahead and do your Passover, do your liturgies, no big deal, uh, as long as it's symbolic.

But if you are Rome, Rome is no dummy, and Rome knows that this liturgy here is about when God brought them out of a previous empire, and we are a current empire, and we know that they're hoping that God will send a deliverer someday for them.

So there was this sort of revolutionary ethos, there was a revolutionary uh feeling in the air every time that this thing took place.

So just the fact that it's happening, and again, this wasn't a one-off, right?

Is when Jesus comes in uh for the triumphal entry.

Sometimes we think it was like Jesus just happened to be going into Jerusalem and everybody just started throwing down palm branches and it sort of sprung up organically.

No.

Jesus jumped into the middle of this liturgy, the Psalm 118 liturgy.

This was already taking place, and now Jesus uh jumps in the middle of this liturgy.

Rome is on high alert because they know this happens every single year, but you're gonna see here why everybody's on edge because something different happens here.

So here we go, Matthew 21, verse 8.

Matthew 21:8

It says, a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

Now, a quick pause.

Psalm 118 is a long chapter, so I'm not reading the whole thing, but if you went and read through Psalm 18, you would see this language where they have bows and essentially branches, and they're so they're essentially fulfilling the liturgy of Psalm 118 when they're when they're doing these things.

Verse 9, the crowd that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna, son of David.

Okay, now the word Hosanna literally means save us.

Save us.

So when they yelled Hosanna originally to God in the uh Psalm 118, it was save us, most likely, from the foreign oppressor, save us from the empire, save us from death, save us from famine, save us.

So they're now yelling.

So Jesus is coming in.

Imagine you're Rome, you're watching all this go down, you're the Sanhedrin, you know that we do this every year, but this one feels a little different.

People are throwing cloaks on the road, they've cut branches from the trees, and the crowd then went ahead and they shouted, Hosanna, son of David, Jesus, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

Now, one more little piece of context.

What happened right before this, the event right before this, is Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

Okay, so Lazarus dead three days.

My man's starting to decompose.

Okay, he's he smells, he smells like, okay, a dead body.

He's been wrapped like a mummy.

He comes hopping out of the grave.

They unwrap him.

Okay, this story goes nuts.

The Sanhedrin is like, we are, this is not good.

This is really bad because we're coming up on our Psalm 118 liturgy, and now there's this guy that no one can shut up about because he's doing things no one can deny.

And so now the revolutionary spirit is gonna start to come to a fever pitch, and whenever a bunch of people gather and revolution starts to start to be the spirit of the age, okay, the zeitgeist, Rome gets real uncomfortable.

So, okay, so that you see what's happening here.

Um, the language they use, again, if if in your Bible, when you when you're reading about the Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry, if you follow the footnotes, you're gonna see Psalm 118, 25 and 26, which says, Lord save us, Lord grant us success.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

From the house of the Lord we bless you.

Alright, so if you keep going, let's go back to Matthew 21.

It says in verse 10, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, Who is this?

The crowd answered, This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.

Okay, so a few verses earlier we saw it was a huge crowd, and now we know that it's such a big crowd that the people of Jerusalem who are used to this annual liturgy, who are used to a congregation and someone in the place of the king, and the the people of Aaron, you know, the house of Aaron opening the doors and the gates.

This happens all the time.

This is no big deal.

This is now, they're like, what is going on?

We're used to a crowd, but this is a m movement.

This is a massive crowd.

And so they're like, what's going on?

Oh, it's it's Jesus the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.

So now picture this.

They enter the temple.

Again, the liturgy was we've just come from war, God's given us victory, we want to go to the altar and thank him.

So the the priests of Aaron open the door, and all these people come in.

And here's what Jesus does when he comes in on this Psalm 118 liturgy.

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there.

So you remember the Jesus flipping over the temple tables?

Right?

This is getting volatile, right?

Like now you see why the Sanhedrin they feel like they're sitting on a powder keg.

Like this is about to go, this is not good.

Okay, this is a real problem.

He overturns the table, the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, right?

So essentially they were um, there was a racket that was going on at the temple because everybody sins and falls short of the glory of God, so we have to come make sacrifices, but we're gonna sell you a dove on the way in.

We're gonna sell you a sacrifice.

And what happens if you're one of the beggars who doesn't even have money to eat, but you've sinned, and so now I'm sitting here and I'm sitting in my shame and I'm sitting in my guilt because I can't even afford to go buy your blessing.

I can't even afford to go buy my forgiveness.

And and so Jesus flips it over and he said, It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer.

Okay, and he's quoting Jeremiah 7.

But you are making it a den of robbers.

Now look at this, verse 14.

This is so good.

So good to read the Bible in context.

It says, Then the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them.

Wow.

But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple court, save us, son of David.

They were indignant.

If you keep going, it keeps going from bad to worse, and they they come and they press Jesus in Matthew 21, 23.

Look at this, I want you to remember this sequence.

So Jesus enters the entered the temple courts, and while he was teaching, the chief priests and elders of the prophets came to him.

So the chief priests, these are the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, came to him.

And they asked him this question.

Don't forget this question.

By what authority are you doing these things?

They asked.

And who gave you this authority?

And then Jesus replies and he says, Well, let me ask you a question.

If you answer me, I'll tell you what authority I'm doing these things.

John's baptism, where did it come from?

Was it from heaven or of human origin?

And they discussed it among themselves.

Oh man, we're stuck here.

If he if we say heaven, then they'll say, then he'll say, Why didn't you believe him?

And if we say of human origin, then we're afraid of the people.

And they all for they all thought John was a prophet, so what do we do?

You know, we're stuck.

So they answered with a non-answer, uh, we don't know.

And then he said, Well, then I don't know either.

Neither will I then tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

So I want you to notice beyond just exactly what's going on here, I want you to fly up a little bit and get a bigger picture.

The Sanhedrin now are like things are happening fast.

And they're scared.

And they're worried.

They're worried about, they're scared of roam.

They're worried about what they might lose.

They're worried about who may get hurt.

They're worried about destabilization.

And as things are going so fast, God is doing something right under their nose, but because it's happening so fast, they're just openly rejecting what God is doing.

And Jesus gives them something here in verse 42 that would be very hard to receive, but it was truth right under their nose.

He goes back to Psalm 118 in Matthew 21, 42, Jesus said to them, Have you ever read in the scriptures, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?

The Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Okay, so what he's doing, again, if you have your footnote game together, you'll see in verse 42, you'll see a footnote, you'll go down.

What what is he quoting?

Psalm 118, 22 and 23 says, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Okay, now let's really get our heads around what's going on here.

Psalm 118 is using an ancient Near Eastern architectural motif.

So I got another picture for you.

This will help us easily digest it.

Go ahead and bring it up.

Okay, so when they're building a building in the ancient Near East, they start with a cornerstone that you'll see in that right picture down there.

So the builders, they know exactly what they're looking for.

I'm looking for a stone that has these really precise, specific angles.

The cornerstone is the first stone that goes down because everything's going to be measured off of that stone.

So we know exactly what we want, we know exactly what we're expecting and what we will accept.

And every stone that doesn't look like that gets thrown out, tossed out.

It's useless.

This can't be the cornerstone.

And so then at the end, you have the capstone, which is the last stone that goes in that holds the entire structure together.

So if we were just like construction workers, builders, if I reject your cornerstone, okay, hey, that's not a good cornerstone, I'm rejecting the entire building.

And so in Psalm 118, the nation of Israel is the nation is called the cornerstone, and the the surrounding empires and the foreign nations are the builder.

And so the what it's saying in Psalm 118 is that this little nation, Israel, this tiny little group of people that was wasn't particularly big, wasn't particularly strong, was surrounded by these powers.

Like, what is the empire mentality?

Is the love of power and the power of fear.

So they looked at Israel like this little cornerstone, what or this little throwaway stone.

It doesn't fit.

This isn't what we're expecting.

This isn't what we want.

And he says the irony is they cast you off, but Psalm 118 celebrates that what the world cast off and saw as insignificant, God said, I'm actually going to fulfill my whole plan through this weird little rock.

This weird little rock has become my cornerstone.

Now, now this is starting to really make sense because if you take it now into Matthew 21, the Sadducees, the chief priests, the religious elite, if they're reading Psalm 18, they think they're the cornerstone.

Our nation is the cornerstone.

We are the cornerstone.

We are the centerpiece of God's plan.

And Jesus says something that was true but offensive.

And he says, actually, no.

Things have changed.

You are the builder who is rejecting God's cornerstone, which is Jesus.

So Jesus says, You're out here trying to shut me up.

You're out here trying to put me out.

You're rejecting me because I'm making you uncomfortable.

You're rejecting me because I don't look like what you accept or expect.

And you've pushed me away.

And he says, now you thought you were the cornerstone, but you've become the builder.

So he does what they do in Acts 4.

They take an old covenant text, looking through a new covenant lens, and they recast the characters.

And so now the the chief priests are in the position where, I mean, imagine how offensive this would be when you think that it's that you're on the right side of the story, and Jesus is saying, no, actually, it's not just about what you think in terms of geopolitics.

It's actually bigger than that, it's more archetypal.

It's actually that you have bought into the human version, the the way of the world, the kingdom of empire built on the love of power and the power of fear.

And he says, what you're doing is you're actually rejecting the Messiah.

You're rejecting, and they just couldn't receive it.

Now, let me let me take a moment here to just slow us down a little bit.

I I have a lot of empathy for this Sanhedrin and these chief priests because again, imagine like I've been in a position where life is getting fast and the threats are getting real, and you're in the position where you're like, I don't know.

Okay, if you're a if you're one of these chief priests, you you are so bought into these ancient texts, the idea of there being a change or a pivot is so hard to go.

I'm gonna, I'm supposed to accept this carpenter, this carpenter's son is like the Messiah.

Okay, everybody's saying he walks on water and he's bringing people back from the dead, and okay, and and and I'm supposed to choose, I'm supposed to risk my life and my belief, my all my theological framework I'm supposed to risk for for this guy here.

And and so they're they're they're really in a tough position.

When you're ever in a tough position, especially when life is going fast, and I would dare say life is going even faster now than it was then.

That you're being inundated with information, even destabilizing information, that you go, what do I do with this, especially when it keeps coming up?

And there's kind of three ways to handle it.

The first one is just to reject it and get defensive, to do what the uh Sadducees do, to do what the Sanhedrin does, which is when when something comes at me that is different than what I've accepted and what I've expected, right?

I'm gonna reject it.

I'm just I'm not even gonna entertain it, I'm not even gonna think about it, I'm not even gonna investigate it.

And so you have to be very careful with that mindset because sometimes we can confuse being steadfast with just being stubborn and blind.

And there may be something fresh and new, and that is an absolute uh pattern in the Bible.

Behold, I'm doing a new thing.

God is always doing something new, his character is unchanging, and yet he's always doing something new.

And if you're not careful, you'll fall into the same trap that these guys did, which is even though there are miracles being done in front of you, even though the truth is being laid in front of you, you reject it because it's not what you expected, it's not what you accepted.

It's a weird stone that doesn't fit into your building.

So you and I could be the same builders that reject the same cornerstone of what Jesus is trying to do right now.

So if you just get defensive, anything that's outside of your cornerstone expectations, then you're gonna miss some stuff God's doing.

The second way to handle it is you just accept everything without stress testing it, and you become gullible.

So you become like the wind just blowing to and fro.

And every time you watch a new TikTok video, you have a new theology.

And every time somebody comes to you and says, you just accept whatever the next expert, the next confident con person, the con man, con woman comes up with because they're confident and you don't know, and so you just take what they say and you just deconstruct everything you ever knew and don't question it.

Look, don't reject every new piece of information that comes, but don't just accept it without stress testing it.

Put it on the treadmill, man.

See if that thing can hold up.

Make it work a little bit, do some investigation.

You watch a 30-second video, it might take 30 hours of homework to figure out if I should believe that or not.

So you've got to be selective about what things that you go study.

But we're, you know, your beliefs, you have to you have to think about your thinking and to change your mind at times in a disciplined fashion.

But we don't just change it on a whim, and and but we don't just reject it because it's not familiar or it's not what we expected.

The third option, I think, which is the better option, which is what I would call holy curiosity.

To have a holy curiosity, to really take what you're hearing, what's being presented, to go, you know what, this this stone isn't what I expected or what I've accepted.

But I'm gonna start to do some investigation.

And you see here with the uh the Sanhedrin, they don't even really entertain the idea, maybe we ought to get on board with Jesus, maybe we ought to ask deeper questions, maybe we ought to slow ourselves down instead of letting the intimidation of Rome speed us up to their pace.

May we slow down to God's pace and start to pray and contemplate and ask questions and let the community work in security and challenging one another.

And you see what I'm saying?

Because they never did that, okay, they rejected the thing that God was doing.

I believe a holy curiosity is important.

Um, now this is what's really cool.

Last week we looked at Acts 4.

You remember when we were looking at how the community came together and they um looked at Psalm 2 when they were in a hard time?

Well, I want to go back to Acts 4 real quick because I want to show you something cool.

So you have now the same Sanhedrin that Jesus gave this cornerstone statement to.

And if you remember last week, we said in Acts 3, Peter, um, Peter heals a man.

And because he heals a man, uh they bring him in front of the Sanhedrin, and it says Peter and John in Acts 4, 7, it said they had Peter and John brought before them, the same group of people, and it says, and they begin to question them, by what power or what name did you do this?

All right, now let's let's think back what we just read.

Matthew 21.

Remember when Jesus comes in, flips the tables over, and heals people, and they're like, By what power did you do this?

Now, we have Peter do the same thing, heals a lame man, and they come back to the same question.

This is almost like redundant.

This is almost like uh a second chance, this is almost like deja vu.

We're back to the temple, same group of people, not that far later, they ask the same question, by what power did you do this?

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called an account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you, all the people, you and all the people of Israel.

It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucify, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

Verse 11, look at this.

Jesus is the stone, you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.

Salvation, Hosanna, is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which mankind, by which we must be saved.

So you have Peter giving the Sanhedrin a second chance.

He comes back to the cornerstone thing.

You didn't believe him the first time because the carpenter didn't fit your cornerstone expectations.

So you rejected him and you killed him, and he resurrected, and now the miracle has been run back.

And now you're coming to me again with the same question by what authority?

And he says, and then the answer is the same.

It's Christ the cornerstone, right?

So he gives them a second chance.

So you would think that like revival would break out among the Sanhedrin, and they would all hit their faces and repent and say, you know, we better get on board with what God is doing.

Is that verse 15 says they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and they conferred together what are we going to do with these men?

And everyone is living in Jerusalem, knows they've done a notable sign.

We can't deny it, you know.

The evidence is there, but you know, we can't accept it either because we we we we like to shut things down.

But but to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, okay, they're so blinded by their human thinking, they're so blinded by their defensiveness that they're actively calling a meeting as to how can we stop the move of God.

We must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.

And they called them in and they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, and they warned them that if you do this, we'll do the same thing to you that we did to Jesus.

Um, I end with this.

If you keep reading throughout the rest of the New Testament, Psalm 118 is gonna keep popping up, and you're gonna see it in the writings of Peter and the writings of Paul, where they describe you and me as living stones, as part of the cornerstone.

So in 1 Peter 2, 4 through 7 says, as you come to Him, Jesus, the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.

In other words, it's saying you're being you're being built into a temple.

You don't you know you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?

To a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For in the 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.

That's Isaiah 28.

Now, to you who believe, to you who believe, this is this includes you and me in the new covenant, this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Psalm 118.

And it says in 1 Peter 2 9, 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.

Maybe my favorite, my favorite one is Ephesians 2, where the Apostle Paul has the challenging task to bring Jews and Gentiles together as one group of people.

One one, instead of seeing that this cornerstone concept is national, saying that this is something that God wants to bless the whole world.

So you used to think it was us and them.

You used to think tribally.

Now I want you to think familially.

I want you to look and see beyond borders, and I want you to see that your family.

And so he says it consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on a foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.

In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

In other words, he's saying, you are God's temple together, and in him you are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

Alright, so the application, the application is clear.

Amen.

Let's we we we took a little academic journey today, but I want us to step out of the academic and I want us to think application.

I want you to think, first of all, Psalm 118.

I want you to think for those of you that are hard-pressed on every side, for those of you that feels like the walls are closing in on you, for those that feel stuck.

I want to encourage you to call out Hosanna, call out Lord, save me, turn to God, and He's the one that brings you into spacious places.

I want to encourage you today with this cornerstone concept.

Could it be possibly that something that you have been rejecting because it's not what you've accepted or not what you've expected, maybe the very odd little stone that God wants to use in your life as a cornerstone or a capstone.

That if it's connected to the work of Jesus, that instead of getting defensive or being gullible, that you would take a disciplined approach with a holy curiosity to step back and say, Lord, would you would you show me?

I want to take some time to pray and contemplate and wrestle and study and think and discuss and pray and process and persevere and believe that there are some new things that God wants to do in your life and to know the difference between what is God stirring up versus the thing that I need human stability.

Lord, help me to see the difference.

Give me eyes to see.

And we are called as the body of Christ to be those living stones, to be Christ to the world, to be bringing a unified body of Christ in this world where there's so much polarization, so much division that we are used as agents of bringing God's covenant to the world.

I think that's enough to think about for now.

I have a one more psalm to share with you, but I'm saving it for Easter.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this day, this opportunity.

I thank you for this group of brothers and sisters, Lord, these uh living stones that I get to worship with every week, these living stones that have formed uh groups of community and care and support.

These group of living stones that are bringing healing, that are receiving healing, that are having hearts healed and minds healed and bodies healed for your glory and that are being agents of that healing in other people's lives.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to live righteously even when the nations rage.

I pray, Lord, that you would help us to be spiritually in tuned when you're bringing an odd stone into our life that you want to be a cornerstone or a capstone that you want to use for your mission.

Lord, I'm an odd stone and I'm surrounded by a couple odd rocks as well.

And I pray, Lord, that uh you would take even those things that the world might reject, and that you, Lord, would use us for your glory built into your temple.

In Jesus' name.

Everybody said, Amen.