Well thank you, as a former member in Mississippi Valley Presbytery, for – I don’t know, sixteen years maybe – it’s good to be back and to be among you. I’ve abandoned now the PCA, of course, so I’m doubly grateful that you have asked me to come back to speak at your Reformation Conference. I am now in a sister denomination in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and I would be remiss not to bring greetings from your brothers and sisters in the Catawba Presbytery in South Carolina of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between our denominations except that the ARP have been around for a much longer space of time.
Our text for this evening, as I was considering a Reformation text, and as your bulletin has so clearly set forth the five solas of the Reformation, I see that our text falls neatly into that forth of the four solas – solas Christus, “by Christ alone” – and I have chosen as our text from 1 Peter chapter 2, and I’m going to begin to read at verse 4. And before I read, let me pray.
Our Father in heaven, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, You caused the Scriptures to come into being, a light to our path, and no Scripture is given but by the outbreathing of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in the way of righteousness that a man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work. That men wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So help us then to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest and all for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
First Peter 2 and verse 4:
“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:
‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,’
and
‘A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.’
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Well may God add His blessing to the reading of His holy and inerrant Word.
This is Peter, the apostle Peter. He’s writing, oh, in the early 60s – 62 maybe, 63; somewhere around there. A couple of years from now, he will be crucified upside down. He doesn’t realize that as he writes this letter. He has disappeared from view after the incident with the apostle Paul where Paul withstood him to his face because he cowed in fear about the men of James who came up from Jerusalem and he stopped eating – what is bacon? – with his Gentile buddies, and all of a sudden he was only fellowshiping with his Jewish friends. And Paul withstood him in Antioch to his face. It was like one of those old Westerns where pistols are adorned and in an old city somewhere, corral doors open and these two men come out and face each other. And this was Peter and Paul. The clash of the titans. And Paul won this battle because Paul saw in what Peter did a denial of justification by faith alone in Christ alone that Peter was adding – “You need to believe in Jesus, but you also need to obey the ceremonial food laws of the Old Testament.” And that was not possible for the apostle Paul and he withstood him to his face.
And from that moment onwards, apart from the brief appearance at the Jerusalem council, Peter almost disappears for twenty years. We’re not quite sure where he went. He suddenly went into Asia Minor somewhere and ministered in what we would now call Turkey. And all of a sudden in the early 60s, he writes this beautiful, beautiful epistle. We would be deprived if our New Testament did not contain 1 Peter. It’s very, one of the most accessible letters in the New Testament. And Peter covers a range of topics, but here in chapter 2, he seems to be fascinated with stones and rocks. He has culled the Old Testament prophecies to find every prophecy that he can find that mentions a stone or a cornerstone or a precious stone or a chosen stone.
It’s not surprising, is it? Peter was the one to whom Jesus said at Caesarea Philippi, a turning point in Jesus’ ministry, He said to Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Oh, Protestants and Catholics have argued as to the interpretation of that passage, and Roman Catholics of course have made Peter out to be the first pope in the Roman sea of Rome. Well, as we shall see in this passage, he was nothing of the sort, and he wants you to know from the very get-go that if you believe in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation you belong to a royal priesthood. We’ll come to that in a minute.
But I want you to notice in verse 4 – “As you come to Him.” Well I’m reading the ESV, which is a secondary source to Caleb Cangelosi’s New American Standard Version which he was reading. And I believe, Caleb, that in the New American Standard it’s translated, “And coming to Him,” implying that this wasn’t a once and for all that you came to Him, you believed in Him, you have a conversion story, that Peter was called by the Lord Jesus Christ to be a disciple and he believed. But there’s a continual coming. We come to Him every day. Every day you keep on coming to Him and you keep on saying, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.” Interesting, isn’t it, that as he thinks about Jesus, solas Christus, and the five solas of the Reformation – by Christ alone – apart from the intervention of angels and Mary and priests and archbishops and popes, but by Christ alone, Jesus only. And he sees Him and he talks about Him, culling as he is from the Old Testament, as a cornerstone.
I was here when this building was erected. It was a fabulous time. And I remember asking the stone masons outside where the cornerstone was. There’s a cornerstone. There’s a date on it. Tell me I’m not wrong here. There’s a cornerstone in this building and there’s a date on it. It’s a foundation stone. It’s a stone upon which the rest of the building holds together; that the wall is only secure as long as that foundation stone is solid and in the right place. But He becomes the rejected stone. The Jews rejected Him. They took Him and slew Him. They crucified Him. Peter was blunt on the day of Pentecost pointing to fellow Jews in Jerusalem six weeks after the resurrection, on the day of Pentecost. “It was you, who by wicked hands, took Him and slew Him, but it was all by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” He became a stumbling stone to them. They didn’t recognize the Messiah that their Scriptures had prophesied and they stumbled over Him. But to God, you see, and by inference to you and me, He is the chosen and precious stone.
Chosen brings to mind that God chose Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, in the counsels of eternity, in a covenant, a covenant of redemption, a plan, a decree, to save sinners like you and me. And how? By sending His Son into the world that, “whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” A chosen, precious stone. Well, we can’t hear the word “precious” without thinking of Lord of the Rings – but not precious in that sordid, sultry sense, but precious in the best sense of the word. There are things that are precious to you. We’ve just moved house, my wife and I. It was all very sudden. I bought a house and then I broke my leg. I don’t recommend that order of things! And in the course of moving and downsizing – and we probably downsized fifty percent – we grabbed that switch and switched it on. It was time. But in the course of moving a piece of brass, that I frankly would have been glad to have lost, I wouldn’t have shed a tear, but it’s very precious to my wife because it belonged to her father. It’s a horse and a carriage and it’s about this size and it sits in front of the fireplace. And it would be a very common thing of folk of my parents generation in Scotland and Wales, and you have to polish the thing, which is why I don’t like it, but we couldn’t find it. We sorted everywhere. I sent text messages to interns to help us move – “Did you see this thing? My wife is looking for it and we can’t find it.” And the very last box that we opened, the very last box, it was inside. And the joy – it’s kind of cheap and nasty, but the joy it brought to my wife, I can’t even begin to explain it to you because it’s precious. It reminds her of her father. A fireman from Belfast. I’m glad it’s there sitting by the fireplace where it belongs.
But Jesus is precious to God. You see, when He made a decree to save sinners, He made it with the one who is most precious to Him. Not just anyone, but the most precious to Him, the second person of the Trinity. Chosen and precious. And Peter is encapsulating here in this opening section salvation history from eternity to the present, to Peter’s present. God has been at work and He sent His chosen and precious Son, who is a cornerstone but a stumbling stone and a rock of offense to the Jews in Peter’s time. And he comes to say three things here about what it means for believers to trust in this cornerstone, this precious stone, this chosen stone.
And in the first place, he says in verse 5 – and this is why I chose this text – that those who are in union and communion with Jesus, and this is Peter’s, this is Peter’s picture here – that Jesus is the cornerstone but you and I are stones making up a spiritual house. He has chosen you and He has put you right here. And He’s taken you and He’s put you right here. And He’s taken you and He’s put you right here. And He’s building a spiritual building – there were no physical buildings in Peter’s day. They were meeting in people’s homes and sometimes in Philippi they were meeting outside, but there were not buildings like this, these glorious buildings that we love and that facilitate our worship so much and so easily. Israel and Turkey were certainly climates that facilitated outdoor worship better than ours. And he says you are priests offering sacrifices to God. You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. And then a little further on he says, “a royal priesthood,” verse 9 – “a chosen race, a royal priesthood.” Verse 5 – “a holy priesthood.”
Now what is he talking about? So if you went back to the 1500s, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years before the dawn of the Reformation, and you were in Wittenberg or you were in Geneva or somewhere, you would go to church, and what would you see and hear? Well you wouldn’t sing. Only the choir would sing. You wouldn’t sing; only the choir would sing. And they would sing stuff in Latin that you wouldn’t understand because nobody really understood Latin. The average person in 1500 didn’t understand Latin. They had memorized the Pater Noster, The Lord’s Prayer, but that was about it. And there were priests all dressed up in their paraphernalia, and they would mutter things in Latin and there would be incense swaying. And it all kind of appealed to the senses, but it was all part of saying – you came to a confessional box, you went through the ritual of sacramental indulgence week after week after week, but there was never an assurance that you could actually come into the very presence of God. Your sins could be pardoned for a week or two, but then you would have to come back and confess your sins all over again and go through the whole ritual a second time.
But Peter is saying, Pope Peter – imagine. Imagine Pope Peter I saying in his first epistle, “You’re a royal priesthood.” He’s writing to churches in exile – in chapter 1 verse 1, at least a number of places, and he’s writing generally to Christians in what we would call today Turkey. And he’s saying about them that when you believe in Jesus Christ, when you take Jesus Christ as the chosen and precious stone and you yourselves have been built up as spiritual stones, living stones in a spiritual house, you have direct access to God. You can talk to Him in your car as you’re driving – keep your eyes open! I do a lot of praying when I’m driving – sometimes about the person in front of me! But sometimes when I’m on a long journey it’s a great time to pray with your eyes open! And you can have direct access. You can approach the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit and you don’t need intermediaries. You don’t need priests in vestments swaying things with incense. You can approach Him just as you are – in Christ alone by faith alone by grace alone.
See, there were two kinds of sacrifices. One was the sacrifice, the guilt offering – the sacrifice for sin. You would go out into the market, if you’re in Jerusalem you would go to one of the markets and there were plenty of them just outside the temple, and you remember Jesus overturned the tables because they were engaging in all kinds of monetary transactions, changing Jewish money to Roman money or Roman money to Jewish money and making a profit and so on. And you’d have to bring a lamb, an unblemished lamb, and you’d hear the bleating of these lambs and they would be taken in and slaughtered and their blood was used in a ritualistic fashion. Well I don’t see any blood on your clothes. You know the father would take this lamb and blood would be splattered all over his clothes and all over the priests’ clothes. It was, in many ways, it was stomach-churning I would think because that’s what sin demands. It demands the shedding of blood because the soul that sins shall die.
Someone must die in your stead. And you’d come, priests would be involved, and Peter is saying, Pope Peter I is saying, “You’re all priests. The priesthood of all believers.” It was such a precious doctrine to Martin Luther. The communion that we have with our heavenly Father through the Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit and it’s direct – we talk to Him. And we read His Word, that’s true and infallible and inerrant, and we trust it. This is God’s Word! You want to hear God speaking to you? Just open the Bible, at random, and He’s speaking to you! A royal priesthood. Ah, we’re part of royalty. We won’t go to the “no kings” thing – I’m talking about British royalty which you cast off! And who can blame you! And as a loyal American citizen, I don’t blame you one bit! But a royal priesthood, because there’s something of royalty here in your veins because you are in union and communion with one who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is a Prophet, Priest and King. We’ve just read in The Shorter Catechism the three offices of Christ that He holds both in His state of humiliation and in His state of exaltation that He is Prophet, Priest and King. And we worship a King that holds the whole world in the palms of His hands. You, you are a spiritual house that God is building and a holy priesthood and a royal priesthood, and He has set you apart.
And then secondly, heralds, declaring His praises. Verse 9, he says, “a people of His own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” He’s called you. This Reformation doctrine – actually it was an Augustinian doctrine – of effectual calling. Later in the 17th century it would be in the acronym TULIP. In the five points of Calvinism, it would be the letter “I” – “Irresistible Grace” – but it’s the same thing as effectual calling. God, the Holy Spirit, calling you with an effectual power that draws you out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, and effectual calling has brought that out.
When Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 in verses 1 and 2, he refers to them as “called to be holy.” That’s how most translations put it – “called to be holy.” But you could also translate it, “the holy called ones.” You know, it would be rather odd I guess – “How do you do?” “I’m a called one.” That would be kind of awkward, but that’s precisely what I think Paul is saying. “I am somebody who has received the call.” “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto Me and rest,’ and I came and I found rest. And that call was effectual.” And when you have received that call, when you are aware of that call, Peter says you want “to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you” – why? Heralds declaring His praises.
You know, that’s one of the great things that happened at the Reformation. If you went into the church in Geneva, Cathedrale Saint-Pierre in the old Geneva, today it’s the same building, same pulpit. I had the great honor and privilege of preaching there in 2009 at the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. But before Calvin came, before the city declared itself to be reformed – and it wasn’t that the city became Calvinist; nothing of the sort. They just didn’t want to have to pay taxes to the holy Roman Empire. And other cities had gotten away with it so Geneva did the same. But they needed a preacher. If this was to stick, they needed a preacher, preaching reformed doctrine and introducing reformed doctrine to the church. And what was it that Calvin did? Luther had his corrals. Where is Peipon? Luther had his corrals, but Calvin had his psalms. And he employed Clement Moreau and Theodore Beza and Louise Bourgeois to translate the Psalms into a metrical version that they could sing and put to those psalms lively tunes – Genevan jigs is what critics called them. Some of them we still sing. There are probably at least nine or ten of them in the Trinity Hymnal, for example. And it wasn’t the choir that was singing; it was the whole congregation that was singing.
I love it. I’m all about accompanied music. I’m all about orchestras and organs and all of that, I love all of that, but I love it when, in a service, maybe in the third verse, the organist quietens down and then stops and the congregation just continues, actually just picks up a notch or two and you can hear the congregation singing. And especially when that congregation believes what it is that they’re singing. I’ve been at so many funerals recently and I’m just aware that a lot of these people do not go to church. And the singing is terrible. I mean, it’s awful! I say to the family, “Look, please don’t pick three hymns because the singing is just going to be awful!” If it’s a member of the congregation that’s died, fine, have four or five hymns, but if it’s not – singing, heralds declaring, “Hark! The herald angels sing!” Singing is important.
I wish I could sing better than I can, but there are songbirds behind us, and the same at First Pres in Columbia, who just about take my breath away singing with faith and with belief and with God-given gifts to the glory of God. Calvin wrote the hymn, at least we think he wrote the hymn, “We Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art.” Henry Lyte, in 1834, wrote what I think is almost a perfect hymn. “Praise my soul the King of heaven, to His feet Thy tribute bring. Randomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who like me His praise should sing? Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the everlasting King!” He is worthy to receive my praises.
And why is He worthy to receive my praises? Because of the third thing that Peter draws attention to. We are those who are most conscious that we have received mercy. That’s how he puts it in verse 10, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” We are priests offering sacrifices to God – sacrifices of life and talent and obedience. We are heralds declaring God’s praises, but we are a people who realize that we, of all people, have received mercy because we are sinners, because we deserve to be damned, we deserve to be sent to hell. That would be the just thing for God to do. And instead, He demonstrates His love towards sinners by sending His Son into the world that “whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And, “Once we were not a people.”
I’ve met Christians who had no friends. They didn’t know who they were. They didn’t know why they were here. They were drifting from one thing to another. And then, then they became believers and they walked into church and they met the people of God. The people of God, a holy people, a people set apart. That’s who you are, Christian, and God has been merciful to you. Augustus Toplady, he was quite a wizard of a man. Friends of John and Charles Wesley, then became a staunch follower of Reformation doctrines and Calvinistic doctrines of the 17th century. And he wrote, he wrote that hymn that we love, “A debtor to mercy alone, of covenant mercies I sing.” Not a “Johnny come lately” mercy, but a mercy that demonstrates itself in eternity in the covenant of redemption and demonstrates itself in a covenant with Abraham and Moses and David and promised in the prophets of a new covenant that God would make – “Of covenant mercies I sing. No fear with Thy righteousness on my person and offering to bring. The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do. My Savior’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.” In Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, on the basis of Scripture alone, and to the glory of God alone by sins are covered. They’re covered. They can never be brought back to haunt me ever again because “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.”
Peter, he is no more pope than you or I, but he was an apostle, and he’s saying to you, “My friend, if you’re a believer this evening, as so many of you are, you are priests. You belong to a holy and royal priesthood and you have direct access to God and you can speak to Him and hear His Word of forgiveness and pardon and you want to serve Him all the days of your life until He comes or He takes you home.” And may God grant us such grace, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.