The New Testament Temple
Not From Around Here: The Complicated Life of a Sojourner • Sermon • Submitted
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Have you ever shopped at Home Depot? Lowes? Or some other home repair-improvement type store?
If you have you've inevitably seen the piles of lumber tossed aside that are broken, cracked, warped, crooked, or just plain look bad. These piles of lumber go ignored as faithful builders go for the 'perfect' building materials. After all, who in their right mind would ever use "bad" materials to build a house? You just don't do that - you don't start with a bad foundation because you know it won't last.
So it's funny that Jesus builds a very different way. He uses the crooked sticks, the broken sticks, the lame lumber, the stuff that everyone else is looking past and in many cases tosses aside. It's almost like he DELIGHTS in using materials that everyone else thinks are 'useless'. It's almost like he's loading up his proverbial cart with all the crooked, broken, and warped wood that he can and he's parading it around - inviting others to question his decision making.
"How are you going to build a house with THAT!?!"
"Are you blind? That wood is warped, you'll never pass inspection!"
"There is a huge pile of perfectly good material over there, use that."
You can almost hear Jesus' voice, "No, I'm going to build my house. And nothing is going to stop me."... "These crooked, warped, broken pieces of wood are perfect and they're are all mine." And off he goes, building the spiritual house, one broken stick at a time. One warped 2x4 at a time. One rotten floor joist at a time. And believe me, IN CHRIST we will all pass the inspection as we stand redeemed and justified in HIM alone. What a beautiful picture of the grace of God through the redemption of His son.
Last week we talked about Jesus Christ being the Living Stone that was rejected only to be the foundation upon which He built the Church. Tonight as we continue Peter’s letter to the sojourners, strangers in a strange land, we see that we as believers not only have a foundation stone, Jesus, but we are living stones used by the Master Builder to make a beautiful Spiritual Temple. In that Spiritual Temple we are not only living stones but also believer priests offering sacrifices of praise in order to introduce the whole world to the One True God. We are the New Testament Temple.
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Believers are Living Stones
Believers are Living Stones
The Christians are not naturally “living stones,” but become such as they are joined to Christ in conversion and baptism (cf.), for it is only as they come to him that this building is possible.
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Nor are they pictured as individually stones, lying apart in a field or building site, but collectively as part of God’s great temple. It is God, of course, who is building them together into this edifice of the end times; thus the verb (“are being built”) is descriptive, not imperative (“be built” or “let yourselves be built,” neither of which fits smoothly into the context).
And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
Believers Together Are Built Into The Spiritual Temple.
Believers Together Are Built Into The Spiritual Temple.
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Built on the foundation of Jesus
Empowered to life by Jesus
Built together Believers interdependent upon each other.
And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
Believers Are A Holy Priesthood.
Believers Are A Holy Priesthood.
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
But they are not only the stones that form the house, but also the priesthood that serves in it. The term for “priesthood” is found in the NT only here and in 2:9. The latter reference shows clearly that Peter sees the church in terms of Israel’s priestly function, for it alludes to Exod. 19:6. And other NT authors pick up the theme using different words (e.g., Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6—such language is used elsewhere only of Christ as a priest in Hebrews and of the Aaronic priesthood in Jerusalem, e.g., Luke 1:9; Heb. 7:5). That Christians are a holy priesthood likely refers to their consecration and separation to God (similar to Aaron in Lev. 8–11) by their conversion and baptism (as in 1:15–23) rather than to their moral qualities per se, which would be implied secondarily. 1
1 Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 87.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
The “spiritual sacrifices” themselves are surely praise and thanksgiving (Heb. 13:15–16) and practical loving service to one another (Rom. 12:1; Eph. 5:2; Phil. 4:18).
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.