1 Peter Series #4 Building God’s House

Sermon: “Building God’s House”
Impact Church London
July 25th 2021

Recap: 1 Peter 1:1 — “From Peter, an apostle of Jesus the Anointed One, to the chosen ones who have been scattered like “seed” into the nations

In the midst of a hostile culture that sometimes brought suffering, Peter encourages them to find hope in Christ’s resurrection life, in the inheritance kept for them in heaven, and to know that they and their inheritance were being kept by God’s power.

Last week: Be Wholly…: let the[holy whole] life of Christ that is already in you, express itself through you.

Billy Graham (Lifetime Guarantee)
“Are Christians a truly holy people? Or are we TRYING to become a holy people?… As an oak sapling grows, it doesn’t get “oakier.” An oak is an oak. It simply matures into what it is, a full-grown oak tree.”

There is change, growth, transformation, or to use the bible words; an ongoing process of metamorphoses into what we have already been made a partaker of. We are being transformed as and by the renewing of the mind, but we must reject the modern turn towards gnosticism.

Two faces of gnosticism that both involve the dualism of flesh and spirit, thought and act: (1.) mistreatment of body to gain special knowledge (2) Special knowledge is all that matters, so what you do wth your body doesn’t.

In Hebrew and Christian thought, belief and thought is unified with life, just as spirit and flesh is unified in the life of Christ, the incarnated God-man. “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.” You can’t claim to be something and do something else, not because you know how to keep the rules, but because such is the power of the life of Christ and his regeneration within you. (Born of incorruptible seed!)

When we were under the law, the hearing of it would promote sin. We are not under the law, we are freed from it because we died to it.

Romans7:4
“Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.”

If the imperatives of the New testament epistles are enticing you to sin I would re-examine your relationship with the law. I would not throw out the imperatives.. the law is good, holy and spiritual even. The problem was you… but you don’t have that problem anymore. You are born again and freed from this arousal that the law invokes. You have a new heart and mind that agree with the essence of these imperatives: love!

So when we look at verses like these, don’t let the law incite you to sin you are dead to it. Don’t let the bad effects of the law push you to disregard this good advice… You are not under law, you are under grace, and grace is teaching you to say no to ungodliness and yes to sober-mindedness and just living.

1 Peter2:1-3
“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”

His grace can take you from sapling to full blown, huge oak tree, the full expression of what you are.

Intro: Building God’s House
This journey into the full expression of what we are is a corporate one as well.
1 Peter 2:4-8 has a lot to say about how this happens. We are being built!

Peter had a special revelation and understanding of what this meant. It was to him that Jesus initially said “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

It is time to embrace what he knew, and for the re-building of the house of God.

Psalm 102:13,16
“You will arise and have mercy on Zion; For the time to favor her, Yes, the set time, has come. … For the Lord shall build up Zion; He shall appear in His glory.”

“Building God’s House”

1 Corinthians 3:9-17
For we are God’s fellow workers…you are God’s building… I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. 11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work…16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

How does God build and with what material?

1 Peter 2:4
“Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, 5 you also, as living stones are being built up…”

What is being built of God in our lives is LIFE-based. (Living stone, living stones) Not doctrine, not dogma, not intellectual assent, not rules, not regulations, not principles, not religion. It is LIFE.

Matthew 16:16-18
“16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

In Greek the name Peter, Petros, a masculine noun ( Πέτρος, ου, ὁ ) means; “a stone (pebble), such as a small rock found along a pathway, a single solitary rock…”

The Greek word for the “rock” on which he will build his church is not petros, but pétra (πέτρα, ας, ἡ) a feminine noun meaning – “a mass of connected rock, a solid or native rock, rising up through the earth”

Where there is life there is light, revelation. The tendency is to believe that life comes as a result of light or revelation, but that is a western enlightenment concept. Light, revelation emerges from life, not the other way around!

John 6:63
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”

If you receive the word as spirit and life you will get revelation. If you treat it as information to illumine you but not life to feed you, you will get no life. You will hear but it won’t affect anything. We hear to receive, we don’t hear so we can know.

John 1:4
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

John 8:12
“…He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

The light that brings revelation that builds our lives and the church is the light that comes from His life, encounter with his life, most often, through his people.

1 Peter 2:7-9
“…“Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious, And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame. 7 Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone,” 8 and “A stone of stumbling And a rock of offense.”

Many want to build on their gifts and talents, on religious works, systems and prescriptions. Others would build on their intellect, their knowledge and what they know. But God builds on life!

An example of how this works: the life and ministry of the apostle Paul.

Galatians 1:11
“11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”

Like Peter, God reveals God to him. He doesn’t figure it out, reason it out.

An encounter with Jesus and His life, the living Lord brought light to Paul, and in turn by receiving his light and revelation, that same revelation imparted to Paul its essence, and he became in life the same thing that he saw.
Galatians 1:15-16
“But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me…”

Herein is true discipleship: not learning principles or fleshly techniques, nor knowledge and information, but learning to live out of the life of Christ and the faith that flows within that life. “I no longer live, Christ lives in me, and therefore I live by his faith. Faith of Christ is bound up in the inner life of Christ!

Galatians 1:16
“…so that I might preach him among the Gentiles,”

Summary:
By encounter with his life, the presence and person, his life brings light and revelation to us. What we have seen becomes alive in us too, only for it to then be expressed through us. It’s to us, in us, and through us because it’s from him, through him, and to him.

We have some incredible promises.

Zechariah 4:7-9
‘… And he shall bring forth the capstone With shouts of “Grace, grace to it!” Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying: “The hands of Zerubbabel
Have laid the foundation of this temple; His hands shall also finish it…”

The hand that laid the foundation that is Christ, will also complete it, and will do so with shouts of grace grace.

Jesus is building his church and the gates of hell will not prevail.

Let’s engage God’s plan, his pattern, his order, his methods and let’s open wide our hearts to the revealing of Christ to us inwardly, to receive the abundance of grace by which the capstone will come.

“Coming to him as a living stone… you too as living stones are being built up…”

Sermon Notes – Building God’s House

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