Who Owns the Church

You may be seated. Good morning to you. Good to see you all here this morning. Happy New Year.

We are turning our attention to God's word this morning. We're going to be in 1 Peter. This is sort of a one-off Sunday, and we'll pick up another series starting in a couple weeks. But today, we're going to look at 1 Peter, some selections from chapters two and four.

So if you would find this in your bulletin or up on the wall behind me on the screen, we're going to read this aloud together. Would you join your voices with mine?

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by people but chosen and honored by God. You yourselves as living stones, a spiritual house are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and 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. Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve others as good stewards of the varied grace of God. If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God's words. If anyone serves, let it be from the strength God provides so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. — 1 Peter 2:4-5, 2:9-10, 4:10-11

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

There's an artist named John Nava who was commissioned to design a series of tapestries in 2002 for a church in Los Angeles. Here's the church, really modern looking. On the inside though, it's kind of like a cathedral. And he designed these tapestries not based on pictures or paintings of old saints, but based on the congregation. He modeled all the tapestries on people in the church, and they're gorgeous.

And I love this because I think Peter, the apostle Peter, would be like, "Who are God's saints? We are. The people of God. Who are the people who are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession?" I mean, John got it right.

Who Owns the Church?

Today we're going to start our year thinking about church. And I know that may not be a very exciting topic for us. You may feel like, "I know church." Some of you are lifelong church people, frequent flyers on this trip. And so church may be something you're not interested in, maybe even tired of or bored with. And if so, I get that.

But my job isn't to tell you anything new today. It's really to remind you of what you already know. That church is not a building you attend. It's not a service you go to. It's not a cause. It's living stones being built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood who are offering gifts to the Lord. That's the subject we're looking at this morning.

Like the tapestries, everybody matters. Everybody's a part.

And here's why we need to do this today. Because the church in America has what I call an invisible church problem.

The Invisible Church Problem

Now I want you to imagine in your head a football stadium. Picture a football stadium—maybe it's your high school, maybe it's NC State. You're picturing a football stadium, and in the football stadium, 20% of the people who are wearing pads and helmets and dressed out for the game are on the field. The other 80% of the team is up in the stands. The team is watching the game. 80% of the team is not participating in or part of the game at all in any way.

Now that's not a bad team. That's not a lazy team. But that's a team that misunderstands what it means to be a team—that you're part of the team.

The modern American church problem is that people can walk into a room like this and think the people up front are the important people, or the people who are doing the things are the important people, or are the people that matter, and miss that we're a team. That miss that you're on a team. And so for a lot of Christians, your role is invisible to you. The fact that you're wearing a jersey is invisible to you. The fact that you're part of something, supposed to be in the game, is invisible to you.

And Peter writes to a group of people who are scattered and busy and face a lot of challenges and even persecution. He says, "You're not spectators. You are living stones. You're living stones."

So what he says in verses four and five is like living stones being built up into a spiritual house. And we're going to switch metaphors there from football to rocks. But in Peter's terminology, you're living stones—not loose stones.

God is not building a pile of rocks. Some of you may think of yourselves as ugly stones. You're like, I'm gravel. Some of you think of yourselves as maybe diamonds in the rough. But God's not building a tiara and he's not building a pile. He's building here, what does Peter say, a spiritual house.

Now we don't have a whole lot of language for this, but the people he was writing to did. What's a spiritual house? What's another name for that? A temple. A temple is a spiritual house. He's building—God is building a building in which his spirit indwells the people who are part of that building.

Who are those stones? Even beautiful stones, if disconnected, are useless. A temple only exists when stones are set into the right place. Peter doesn't say, some of you are stones. He uses the plural. All y'all are stones. All y'all are living stones already, if you're a believer, if you're in Christ, already part of his temple. Already part of what he's building in this world.

And yet there's a way that we can be people who are part of the temple, part of a stone in which the spirit of God's at work and still live like a pile of rocks. Live disconnected. Live as if this doesn't matter.

So what does that tell us exactly? What Peter's words here tell us are some things that are really wrong in our culture. The phrase, "I'm going to church today"—we know that doesn't make any sense in Peter's terminology. We are the church. Or what about American Christianity that gets it wrong? "I'm a Christian. I don't really go to church." That doesn't work either. What is a stone by itself in the middle of a yard of grass? What is that supposed to be? They put words on it and they call it a tombstone. That's what a stone is by itself. Stones put together, stacked stones, placed stones being built into a spiritual temple—that's what matters.

The Jerusalem Temple

When Peter's thinking about this, he's not thinking of a temple in the abstract. You might think Greek temple, Roman temple. There's a bank near my house near Cameron Village that looks like a temple. You think Mayan temple. But they thought of the temple in Jerusalem—the temple first built by Solomon, then destroyed, rebuilt in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, expanded under Herod the Great to this mammoth facility.

In the time of Jesus, he walked around and said:

See that temple? Not one stone will be left on top of the other one.

And forty years after his death, the temple was destroyed.

You know, the temple today still remains an amazing place, but what's not obvious for a lot of people is that that's not a temple. It's just a platform. All that's left of the temple is a platform. The rest of it was destroyed by the Romans in seventy AD.

You can go today and visit the temple. You can walk up those steps where Jesus and his disciples very likely walked up into the temple. But all that's left up there is a platform. What's been built on top of that platform is the Dome of the Rock, which is a Muslim holy site. You can go visit the Dome of the Rock if you're not Jewish and not Muslim. If you're a Christian, you can go one morning a week and visit it.

But when we're sitting on those steps, the most fascinating thing about Jerusalem and about that temple is what's not in Jerusalem. There are two big things that are not in Jerusalem.

The first one is Jesus's grave. Why? Because there's no body. He's not there. You can't go visit where we put Jesus's body because his body is alive and up in heaven at the right hand of the Father.

The second thing that's not in Jerusalem is the temple. You can go and see the platform of the temple and it's cool, but it's just a platform. And that should remind us of something we've been going over this morning. Why is that so important? Because you are the temple of God. Together collectively, we are God's house that he's building with living stones.

Jews all over the world still go to that site. They go to the Western Wall—the place on the wall nearest to where the temple used to stand, and they pray there. And Jews all over the world are like, this is my one thing I want to try to do in my whole life.

I wanna be able to go there. And they're going there to worship. I mean, it's amazing to watch them line up to go just touch the wall. On Jerusalem day, every year in June, at 4AM, hundreds of thousands of Jewish young men show up at the temple and jump up and down the whole time and chant songs and worship. Now think about that. If that's how the Jewish people feel about a platform, if that's how the people who still consider this the holy place, if that's how they regard a ruin, how do we feel about being called the temple of God? Can you let that sit with you for a moment? The awe. We are living stones. If you are in Christ, if you trust in Jesus, you are living stones being built into the temple of God, his holy dwelling. Sit with that. Do we rejoice like that? Do we live with such a sense of holy awe when we walk in this room around other believers? Fellow living stones being built into the temple. It's absolutely unbelievable.

Priests in the Temple

Second, what does a temple always come with? Who serves in the temple? Priests. Right? Priests serve in the temple. This is what, in particular, Peter is most excited about communicating. Twice he talks here about the priesthood. The priests who serve in the temple. This was God's original design blueprint for all of humanity. Do you know that the words that God places on Adam and Eve in the garden are temple words? He says, I want you to work and tend this garden. It's the same words that are given to the Levitical priests who took care of the temple. They were intended, Adam and Eve, to be like priests in the garden. That was the original design blueprint for us as people, men and women. And even with the entrance of sin in the world, that may have delayed or disrupted, but it sure didn't destroy God's blueprint for you, for me, for God's people, that we would be his priests. Even the law that was given to Moses looked forward to this. Look at this passage from Exodus 19:

Moses imagines the day that all God's people, all of them, will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

In Christ, this is what came to be. I already said that when Jesus was teaching, he said, there will come a day when not one stone of this temple will be on top of the other. This is gonna be destroyed because something far greater is coming. And at his resurrection, we read that the veil of the temple that separated the holy place from the common people was torn in two. What does it symbolize? All the priests, all of us are priests of the Lord together.

Peter is not alone in making this connection. This is all over the New Testament. Read earlier from Ephesians about this. Revelation one and Revelation five:

Jesus has made us a kingdom and priests to his God and father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. — Revelation 5

You made them a kingdom and priest to our God. They will reign on the earth. — Revelation 5

Here's my point. You're priests. But do we act like that? Are we aware of that? We may even nod in agreement about, oh yeah, the Bible says something about the priesthood of all believers. That every believer now is a priest to the Lord. But do we live that way? In the Old Testament, priests existed for the sake of worship and service. Tending and keeping the temple. I challenge you to read the Old Testament and find a free-range priest. One not connected to the temple. One hanging out at home. One who's like, yeah, don't feel like doing this anymore. Priests were always connected to the temple. They were very aware of this. But not us. We live in a time and place, particularly in Raleigh, North Carolina, where it's easy for people to become spiritual consumers of religious goods and services. And it's like, yeah, this church is fine. They got some good things. They got some bad things. It's like a model of a car. You're like, I kinda like this model. Yeah, I'm kinda tired of this model.

Peter's not asking you to become something you're not already. He's saying you already are a priest. You already are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his possession. Not will be, not can become this. But it helps us therefore to remember the order. I'm guessing there's some people in this room who got Lego sets for Christmas. Couple yes. Adults too. I'm very glad to see your hands raised. You know who you are. Now, you've done enough Lego sets, many of you, or watched them being done. You know that if you skip pages, you skip steps, what happens to your Legos? Do they look like the picture at the end? Not even close. Right? You have to follow all the steps, all in the right order. And the same is true so much in the Bible. We need to make sure we get the order right and the steps right. The Bible always has this order.

This is who you are, step one. Therefore, this is what you do. It's never the opposite. It's never, "This is what you do so that you become something in Christ." It's never we do this and therefore God blesses us. It's like, no. From eternity, God has set his love on you and adores you, and therefore calls you to live like a follower of him.

So in this passage even, this is embedded right here in this language. This is who you are.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession. Why? So that you may proclaim his praises. — 1 Peter 2:9-10

This reframes all the ways we think about giving and serving as his people. James touched on this earlier when we talked about the offering. We don't take an offering to pay dues. We're not buying anything here. Serving within the church is not filling slots. We're not looking for warm bodies. These are acts of priestly worship to God.

You know, when you buy a house or a car, many of you've been down this road far enough that you know the culmination of the sale is not paperwork. Nobody wants to do the paperwork. The paperwork is tedious. You have to sign all the forms and initial all the pages. But what do you want at the end of it? What do they hand you at the end of the transaction that you're like, "Okay, now I'm an owner"? They hand you one thing. The keys. And when you have a key ring you're like, "I got this. This is mine." Isn't it an amazing feeling? If you've ever bought a car, you're like, "I own this car. This is my car. My house."

Today, at the end of this service, I'm going to hand out keys. Keys to the church. Not to the building because we know the church isn't a building, but a key that I'm going to ask you to put on your key ring. If you have a key ring on the way out, somebody at either of these entrances is going to hand you a key. And I'm going to ask you to put it on your key ring, and every time you see it, I want you to pray for your church and remember: Who owns this place? I own this place. I'm a living stone. I'm a priest. I own this church. It's God's church for his glory. Yes, he gives the keys of the kingdom to his elders. But look, you all are the owners of this congregation. Not me. All of us. And this is my call for us this morning to say: I'm in. I own this.

Your Gifts Belong to God's Mission

And here's what this means. This is the last point here from chapter four.

Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve others as good stewards of the varied grace of God. — 1 Peter 4:10

Now "varied" there means that God spreads out the gifts. Not everybody has the same one. Nobody here is the equivalent of a spiritual Swiss army knife. Swiss army knives have all these weird things—a corkscrew, a leather punch that I don't know anybody's ever actually punched leather with, a toothpick that is kind of gross. There are no spiritual Swiss army knives. Not one.

If you look around, it's all a bunch of pocket knives that have different things on them. That's what we are. Everybody has something here to share and to give. Every person. We believe as a church in the priesthood of all believers. It's one of the reasons why we ask members of our congregation to help distribute the elements. Because we want to remember: all of us, all of us, are part of this. We believe every member is a minister, but not every member can do every ministry.

It's a mistake when churches put people who aren't gifted for something in a position and then say, "Serve out of your weakness, it'll be fine." No. God has given gifts to all of us. And it's the right thing for leaders to help you discern: like, how can I serve? What are the ways that I'm uniquely wired? Not everybody can lead a community group, pastor, lead worship, be a deacon, a greeter, or be a counselor. But between us we can. Between us, all those things are covered.

First Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 tell us God has done this—like Parmesan cheese, sprinkled the gifts all through this congregation. There should never be a lack. All the gifts are needed. All the gifts need to be used. When gifts are not shared, the body suffers for it.

An essential word here in First Peter 4 is "each." Each one. Everyone. Not pastors, not extroverts, not retirees with extra time on their hands. Each one. Remember my football team analogy? It shouldn't be 20% of the people on the field, 80% of the people in the stands watching. Now everybody in the game. Everybody. When churches have people who are doing too much and other people who aren't doing anything, it leads to burnout. It actually means that other people don't have an opportunity to realize how important they are.

Can I tell you something? You're important. You're important here. We need one another. We need you.

You know, the goal of my sermon this morning isn't more volunteers. I'm not trying to manipulate anybody or guilt anybody or pressure anybody. It's more glory for God. Listen to what this says:

That God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. — 1 Peter 4:11

That's the goal. God being glorified through every one of his people.

You know, this isn't about budgets and it's not about building a building or keeping the lights on or about staffing or making sure we have enough warm bodies for our ministries. This is about all of us engaged as living stones, as priests in his temple serving with what God's given us for his glory. Jesus is the cornerstone. And to follow him in this way means we also come and lay down our lives like he did. We come and we are being built into a spiritual house that follows him in all these ways.

After the service today, we're gonna send out a survey. And it's something very simple. I pray it's meaningful to you. We're not asking, "Hey, would you help us?" We're asking, "Where is God calling you to be a priest? Where is God calling you to be a living stone who has gifts to share?"

So today after our service, you're gonna receive a survey from our diaconate and our staff. A couple of words about this: No guilt. This isn't about guilt. This isn't a loyalty test. This is all this is—a discernment tool and a means to engagement.

A church where 20% of the people, like CTK, are carrying 80% of the load is always gonna feel thin. It's gonna feel thin. But a church where every stone is being set in place and being used for God's glory, that's a place where people are healthy, where God is dwelling among us.

You know, we believe—and I wanna say this really strongly this morning—we believe that every person here this morning is not here by accident. God is calling you, calling you into a spiritual family, calling you not to be a spectator but to be actively engaged in ministry in some way or the other.

A couple things about this survey. The survey isn't perfect. You may feel like there are other ways that you'd like to engage and things are listed in there. There's this blank space. You could say, "I want to serve the church this way. I'm already doing this." Perfect. That's great.

But a word of caution. I think that for many of us, we make the perfect the enemy of the good. And so you may look at this and you may stubbornly refuse to fill out a survey because you don't like it. It's not put together the right way. Or you have this inner rebel that's like, "No, I don't want to do that." It is a trick of our enemy to make Christians make the ideal the enemy of the real.

This isn't a perfect church. Lord knows, y'all have me as a pastor. I am very aware that this is not a perfect church. There are so many areas for improvement. I bet you could give us a scorecard this morning. But we don't need a scorecard. We're living stones. We're fellow priests. We need one another.

So my question: Will you take ten minutes to fill that out?

The Church as Community

By way of conclusion, I put up this picture. I don't know if many of you know Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain was a world famous chef and TV personality and food critic, but I want to highlight today—he was an exceptional writer. He was really good with food. He was also really good with words. And he famously traveled the world eating in all these different places, going everywhere.

He came to the South. And on one of his visits to the South, to Charleston, he went to a local church. And this is what he wrote about this:

You know, no matter how wrecked, obnoxious you are, they're nice to you. I had the best time there. It is indeed marvelous—an irony free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed. Its warm glow, a beacon of hope and salvation inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the South to come inside, a place of safety and nourishment. It never closes. It's always faithful. It's always there for you.

And doesn't that sound amazing? What an amazing picture. I wish that was written about the church.

He wrote that about Waffle House.

Sorry—pastor trick. But look, if you're bored with church and you're tired of church, chances are there was something in that description that hit the inner idealist in you. And all those feelings of disappointment are really just idealism flipped upside down. Because we want the church to be exactly what Anthony Bourdain describes it as. We want it to be that kind of place, don't we?

If you're kind of tired of church and disillusioned, you're in the right place because we're handing you a key. You're invited in. Let's make this into something that Bourdain might recognize. Let's make this into the place that conforms to the very image of Jesus. It's never gonna be perfect this side of heaven. But with all engaged, we can come closer than we are now.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Would you pray with me? Father, thank you for your word. There is nothing like your word. We thank you for the way that, Lord, your word reminds us who we are in Christ. Lord, we forget that every day. And when we forget what we're for as a result, Father, would you help us to reclaim our identity as priests who are building glory and giving glory to you in all that we do?

Father, we pray for our church. We know its flaws and its failures. And we pray, Father, it would more and more become what you want it to become, conformed to the image of your Son Jesus. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.