Access to the King

Overview

What we want to focus in on tonight is the fact this passage tells us the church is a building. You see, in verse 19 it says we’re God’s household. In verses 21 and 22 it talks about us as stones that are being built into a temple, to a house. In other words, Christians are not just a loose aggregate of individuals, but rather we are parts of a larger whole. The Bible talks about this in a number of places. In 1 Peter 2, Peter writes, ‘… come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house …’

For the Bible says, ‘I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ The teaching is that we were not designed to live for ourselves or to stand by ourselves any more than a hewn stone is supposed to stand by itself on the grass. If you just see a boulder or a rock on the grass, it looks great, but if you ever come to see a brick or a stone or a couple of stones that obviously were supposed to be a part of a building that are just sitting, spread out on the grass, it looks so forlorn, doesn’t it?

The Bible says we were designed to fit, to be part of God and of his kingdom and of one another. Now this flies completely in the face of the spirit of the age. Recently, 81 percent of all Americans affirmed this statement. (I love saying things like this. It sounds so authoritative.) Eighty-one percent of Americans affirm, ‘An individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church, any synagogue, or any religious tradition.’ What do you think? Does that sound democratic? Does that sound healthy to you?

Think what you’re saying. This kind of religion (a religion you choose independent of what any church or synagogue or any religious tradition says) eliminates the possibility of obedience or self-denial or courage, because obedience, self-denial, and courage are an individual taking his or her needs or desires and submitting them to a larger call to a whole, saying, I am just a part, and I’m submitting to the whole. That’s the only way you can obey. That’s what self-denial is. That’s what courage is.