Good evening, everyone. I’d like to extend my welcome. Hughes. Welcome to you all. If I haven’t met you before, I’d love to get to know you. Welcome to those online. Thank you for being here this evening. So, as Stu said earlier this evening, we are continuing our series called entitled scattered a look through one Peter, a letter that was written by Peter to, as he says, God’s select exile scattered throughout the provinces. I think this is particularly helpful to us this evening as now more than ever, I think I many of us would consider ourselves scattered christians because we differ more from society’s view on the world ever more. And as secularism takes hold, we are continually more and more different. We will see this evening, though, that Peter’s message to those scattered 2000 years ago is as relevant to us today as it was to them. But before we dive into that, let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we are able to be together to hear and learn from you. Please open our ears, our minds, our hearts as we unpack one Peter this evening. Help us with a clear understanding and grace us with wisdom this evening. In your name we pray. Amen. So when I’m preparing and we’ve got a passage to go through, I always go and look, read some commentaries because they’re a good, helpful place to start someone’s thoughts on what the passage looks like. So I read a number of commentaries on this passage particularly, but also on one Peter in general. And I think one struck me in particular because I think it sums up really what being like, a feeling like a Christian is today. And I think it was also true back then when Peter was writing. So Edwin Blum said, their basic problem is to live for a God, for God in the midst of a society, ignorant to a true God. Because they are christians, they are misunderstood and subject to cruel treatment. Now I won’t be alone, I don’t think, in thinking, yeah, that sounds like me today, I might not be subject to the cruel treatment, it’s not physical abuse. But I do feel that the society is trying to push me to one side. It can feel really tough sometimes when all you want to do is tell people the good news about Jesus, but everything seems to be against you, it’s pushing you back. Blum goes on, and he said Peter’s pastoral purpose is to help those early believers see their temporary sufferings in the full light of the coming eternal glory. In the midst of all their discouragement, the sovereign God will keep them and enable them to have faith by to have faith, to have joy. That is great news. Peter’s purpose is to encourage us, to guide us, to remind us that it’s through Jesus we are saved, and through Jesus that we have joy. It’s through Jesus that we can face a world, however dark it may seem. And it’s this encouragement we need to remember tonight as we go through the rest of the passage. So if we dive in, it’d be really helpful. If you’ve got a Bible, keep it open. We’re starting in verse four. We’re using an iv if you’ve got one, on your phone, just to be helpful. So verse four starts a passage and it presents an image of a living stone. Now, my first thought was, how can a stone be living? A stone is never alive. It’s hard. It doesn’t really move unless you push it. It’s consistent. I guess it’s stable, but I would never describe it as living. So what’s Peter talking about? Well, it’s a living stone, rejected by humans, chosen by God. This is, of course, is a reference to Jesus, and Jesus being the stone. He was rejected by humans, sent to the cross, and he rose again to sit with his father, who loves him. He is the image of stability, something that Peter comes back to over and over again in this passage. This helps us as we go forward this evening, this image of a stable God, a God we can trust, a God that won’t crumble, a God that is always there for us. Verse five talks about us being like living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. Again, at first reading, I’m like, well, are we being asked to be a house? How can we be a house? And are we all going to become priests? That didn’t seem quite right, but actually, I couldn’t be more wrong. Peter is saying exactly that as followers of Christ, we are part of a spiritual house, a family of followers of Christ. We are the church, we are God’s house, not this beautiful building we’re sitting in. We are the church and we should be a living stone. Now, this image of a temple is really important and to the original audience would have been really shocking, because the temple was God’s place. It was somewhere they couldn’t go. They weren’t allowed to be in the holy of holies. And Peter’s suggesting to them that not only are they in this sacred place, they are this sacred place. Peter’s saying, we are all welcome to God’s temple. In fact, we are all told to become his temple. We should be stable and steadfast in our following of Christ, we are all called to be priests. It’s not just the job of Steve and Hugh and Ben to teach us, to pastor us, to admonish us, to be a link between us and Christ. It’s all our jobs. It’s all our jobs to do that for ourselves, to do that for each other. I go back to the purpose of why Peter was writing his letter in the first place. Enable them to have faith by faith, to have joy. What gives more joy than loving and learning and sharing the Lord Jesus together as one body? This is something that Peter comes back to again later on. But Peter continues his letter with words from Isaiah. And you think, well, why is he doing that? And specifically Isaiah 28, verse 16, where it says, see, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone. And the one who trusts him will never be put to shame. There are two things here that we need to address. One, why is the use of Isaiah important? And two, what is a cornerstone and why is it important to us moving forward? So, firstly, let’s address the inclusion of Isaiah 28. Isaiah was an Old Testament prophet. He’s writing 700 years before Jesus was born. He foretold Jesus’ coming and he revealed God’s judgement and our salvation. The context of what Isaiah is saying in the Old Testament is really important, and it’s really important that Peter included it, because at the time, Isaiah was addressing the nation of Judah. They’re one of the twelve tribes of Egypt. They’d just entered into a pact with Egypt. They wanted Egypt to protect them. But Isaiah is warning them that Egypt can’t be trusted. They should, in fact, trust the Lord instead for protection rather than a trust in the Egyptians. Siding with Egypt means they’re siding with a society that is self confident, full of pride, but also godless. They’re avoiding suffering by going along with the world as Egypt seeds it, they are conforming to a godless society. Why is that important to us this evening? Well, Peter is saying to us that we too should guard against conforming to a world where it might appear to be easier to follow the crowd. It might give us temporary relief to be part of a group who turns away from Jesus. But as we’ll see, this only leads to us stumbling and falling away from Jesus. It’s clear that following Jesus is hard, right? I find it hard. It does involve suffering. It will never be straightforward. It’s a spiritual battle. We go to war. We go to war to tell people about Jesus. However, we are promised hope, hope of salvation. Now, we should be challenged by these verses. I was. I am. But we should also remember that they give us this hope. And our hope is in our cornerstone. What is a cornerstone? Question two. What is a cornerstone? Well, according to a well known website, a cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of an entire structure. They are often ceremonial in nature. And in last week, on Monday, me and the kids and Janine were in London, and we went Tower bridge, and we saw this. And this is the commemorative foundation stone at Tower Bridge. You can’t read the writing, but if you could, it says that it was laid in 1886 by Edward, the prince of Wales. And it has, I’m told, an impressive 31 million bricks sat on it or around it. Now, had they got this stone and others in the wrong place, the whole bridge would not stand up. Get the position of a cornerstone wrong, and at best, you’ve got a wonky building. At worst, you’ve got a pile of rubble. Understanding this is important because over the next few verses, Peter takes this and shows us how this should be the basis of our lives over the next week, months and years. Now, of course, Peter and Isaiah are using the cornerstone, this precious steady rock, as a metaphor for Jesus. Verse seven says now, to you who believe this stone is precious, how true this is to us sitting here tonight. Those of us that believe in Christ, we would all truly say he is precious to us all as we are precious to him. It goes on. But to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected in reference to Jesus being rejected by man and sent to the cross has become the cornerstone and a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. This is a warning to all of us, whether we’re a follower of Christ or yet to know him. A warning that this rock, this stone that does not bend or break, will cause us to fall, to fall at the second coming. If we’ve turned our back on Jesus, why? Because just like the living stone at the start of our passage, God is consistent. We are told time and time again that we are saved through the gift of grace from a God that granted through our faith and our relationship with him. Because we are sinners, we have that gift of grace. We are saved. At the end of verse eight, the side says they stumble because they disobey the message, which is what they were destined for. This is where Peter outlines the clear choice we all face. We’re looking at how we react when faced with our relationship with Christ. Do we want the living stone to cause us to fall because we refuse to take on Christ’s great message? Or do we want to believe and through faith make Christ our Cornerstone, something that he truly believes we’re all destined to do. My hope is that all of us here this evening make the choice to put Christ at the centre of our lives. Peter concludes this part of the letter by reminding us again about our role as the chosen people. Chosen people and the joy this brings. He takes us back to the idea of priesthood. 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 the darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are a people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This again reminds us of our role as chosen people. We are to declare the praises of him. We are to be a royal priesthood. What does that look like? Well, we are to serve, whether that’s through corporate worship like we’re doing now, whether that’s through prayers, praying together, praying on our own, whether that’s through serving together, serving one another, whether that’s through mission. As we’ve heard, om have great opportunities to go and do mission, whether that’s short term or long term. We are to follow the command, go and tell, go and tell. We are now a people of God and we have received mercy. We should be joyful in that. We should be thankful for the gift of Jesus. We should be thankful that he’s a living stone, that he’s our cornerstone. I have a challenge for us for this week. It’s to look at what our cornerstone is in our lives. We have seen that Peter’s really clear that Jesus should be our rock. He is always constant. He doesn’t waver in his love for us. But what does our wall look like? So I’m going to build a wall with some suggestions. Harry, you can come and give me a hand. Chop me the first brick to bear with. Guys. It’s going to be hopefully a fairly big wall. So do we put our faith and our trust in our house? Is that what we want? Do we put our trust in our job? Have that there? Is it that we put our relationships in the Wall? Is it that I put myself? Am I the centre? I’m going to put me right in the middle and put me in there. What else have we got, Harry? So is it that I put money? Is that what I build my wall on. Is that part of my wall? Is it that it’s social media? I care about what is on my social media account more than anything else. Is it my education? Do I put my trust there? Or is it a car? A possession? Is that what my wall looks like? Is that what we’re building our lives on? These are all things that society would say, these are all great, right? These are all things that make us happy or things that we can build our lives on. But there are also things that if I pull myself away or I knock the money, it all falls down, it all falls apart. These things are the opposite of our cornerstone. They’re the opposite of what we should be building our lives on, because they will all crumble at some point. They will all fall away, they will all disappear, they will all break. None of them are long lasting and steadfast. We need to ensure that our rock, our cornerstone, is Jesus. And that means we need to place him at the centre of everything in our lives. I challenge us all this evening to look at how we do that. How do we practically put him at the centre of our week, at the centre of our lives? Is it simple thing making our connect group or our youth group the priority over everything else during the week? It’s the one thing I’m going to do during the week to make me closer to Jesus. Is it getting up 30 minutes earlier in the morning to pray or to spend time reading the Bible? Because that’s the only time I can fit it in. Is it committing to serving others in the church? There are loads of ministries that need more people serving. Whether it’s serving coffee, helping with the tech, serving as a driver for tiger at ten, or working with our children and young people, there are loads more I could go on. Is it making a service? Maybe this service, cornerstone, is it making that your without fail service? I’m going to do that as a priority. I’m not going to get distracted and go and do other things. All these things do not save us as actions, but they all serve to help us ensure, as a church, we help each other put Christ at our centre and ensure that we don’t stumble or fall. They help us make Christ our saviour, our cornerstone. Let’s pray. Dear Lord, please be with us as we all consider how best to put you at the centre of our lives. How we make you our living rock. Our cornerstone. Thank you that you are unwavering and steadfast, that we can truly rely on you and your love for us. Go with us all this week. Help us to keep you at the centre of whatever we’re doing and to glorify you in your name we pray. Amen. Close.