My Solid Foundation

Well, my name is René. I'm another one of the pastors here. Welcome. Whether you're here for the three thousandth time or the very first time, we're just super stoked to have you here today and we hope it's a blessing to you. And I want to start the message time with just a little bit of a quiz that, as you'll see, will tie into the message. I call this before they were famous and this is kind of audience participation. All right. See if you can guess who these people are.

This is like going back to their high school and grammar school yearbook photos. For example, who is this fine young man dressed for his high school prom? Who do you think this is? That's right. This is Steve Jobs, believe it or not, right over the hill at his high school. How about this enthusiastic young fellow? Who do you think that is? That is Ryan Seacrest. Can you believe that? That's like unbelievable, right? Wow.

Now guess who this is at seven years old, Bowen or Hare? Any guesses? That is Beyonce. Somebody said it. That's right. How about this bushy-haired college freshman? This is late night host Stephen Colbert. Has anybody gotten them all right so far? Anybody? Has anybody gotten them all wrong so far? Can I see that show of hands? All right. You got two more chances. Both of these in bowl haircuts. Who is this young man? Any guesses? That is George Clooney. It's funny how in every one of these, kind of like they're going from kind of being like, kind of well, like, you know, what do you want? Dweebs to being handsome, right?

How many of you feel like in your own life that process happened in reverse, right? You used to be pretty good, but all right. One more in an identical bowl haircut. And what I love about this young man is that he's actually wearing a uniform that says rejects. Who is this? This is Brad Pitt. Now look at all these. Nobody probably would have picked these six out of a crowd and said, you know what? These people are going to become world famous, you know, celebrities and movie stars. In fact, I bet a lot of people even labeled them rejects when they were kids. And yet, they became something special.

And this is the storyline really for the key scripture this morning. Grab your message notes that look like this. On the inside, you'll find an outline that you can follow the sermon with. The theme to our whole message really is summed up in this phrase four words from reject to chosen, right? Say that out loud with me. From rejects to chosen. And you'll see how this whole concept really became central to how Christians understood not only Jesus Christ, but their own Christian identity.

And if you've ever felt in your life like on the outside looking in, kind of like everybody else is chosen but you, you're a little bit of a reject. Maybe you feel like a misfit right now among your friends or at school or at work or even among your family. You are going to be so refreshed by what we look at today. Seven verses Jesus loved is our series leading up to Easter. Each of these seven weeks, we have been starting with the very first sermon of Jesus Christ. We've been getting closer and closer and closer to the Easter events.

Now we are in the very final week of the life of Jesus Christ. And here is the verse he quotes from the Old Testament. The Hebrew scripture is one of the seven verses we're looking at that he loved that became central to Christian identity. It's found in Matthew 21:42. Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes." That is the quote. The verse Jesus is quoting from his Bible, the Old Testament that we're gonna really do a deep dive on this morning.

Raise your hand if you're ready for some Bible study this morning. Anybody ready for that? Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at the context. Like what was the context where Jesus said this quote? Why did Jesus say this? And then we're gonna go back in time, backwards to look at the original context. What's the original verse that Jesus is quoting? And then we're gonna go forward in time to see how the early Christians loved this verse so much. They kept quoting it and re-quoting it and being central to Christian identity.

Does that make sense? I'm gonna look at three different contexts here to really understand this because this verse for the first Christians who found themselves going through times of chaos, uncertainty, persecution, this verse became key to seeing themselves as a building that God was building on a firm foundation and it will help you too in these times of chaos and uncertainty if you understand it. So let's try to understand it today.

First, the original context. When Jesus said this, who is the them that Jesus is saying this to? A few verses earlier, Matthew tells us the chief priests and the elders, these were sort of the aristocrats, the ruling elite of that time. First century Judaism, back when Jesus was ministering, it centered around the temple, right, and bringing sacrifices, doing pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem. And these were the aristocrats, the ruling elite, the super wealthy who ran the temple.

What happened was two family dynasties came together and they controlled everything and we know from history they acted at times like gangsters, at times they even murdered their opponents. We know from the Gospels these people are already conspiring to get Jesus executed and so these are the people who ask him, "But what authority do you do these things? What are you doing teaching here at the temple? Who gave you this authority?" Like, who are you? You're a nobody. We're the somebodies. You're a reject. We unchoose you. They're putting Jesus down.

Now Jesus doesn't allow himself to be provoked. He doesn't get into an argument with them, as he often does. In reply, he tells them a story. This is so brilliant. Well, that reminds me of a story. And he tells a story about a wealthy landowner in a vineyard at harvest time. He said he bought land and planted a vineyard and built a wall to pick up a pit for the juice, built a lookout tower, and then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers, renters, and he moved to a far away country to one of his other wealthy properties.

And at harvest time he sent his servants to collect a share of the crop. But the vineyard renters grabbed his three servants. They beat one, killed one, hurled rocks at another, who went scampering back with his life to the landowner, who then sent a larger group of servants, but they treated those the same. And finally he sent his son, thinking, "Surely they'll respect my own son." But when the tenant farmers saw his son coming, they said to each other, "Here comes the heir to the estate. Let's kill him and get the estate for ourselves." And so they grabbed him and dragged him out of the vineyard and murdered him.

So Jesus asks these aristocrats, "When the owner of the vineyard returns," and you know, that's the person in the story they're relating to, right? Yeah, yeah, those renters, renters are always bad. I have so much trouble with renters. He says, "Well, when the owner of the vineyard returns, what do you think he's going to do to those bad renters?" And they reply, "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end." And then he turns the table on them and kind of reveals that in that parable, they're the renters, you see?

And he says, "Well, have you never heard from Scripture?" And this is kind of a jab at them because the verse he's about to quote was from one of the most well-known chapters of the Bible in that era, Psalm 118. King David wrote it about a thousand years before Jesus. And it was famous. It was one of four chapters that were always recited annually at Passover. So saying, "Have you never read?" is like saying, "Haven't you ever heard of the preamble to the Constitution, to a politician?" You know, we the people, because everybody knew this.

And that's when he says, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." And we know that, in fact, historically, that's exactly what happened. These dynasties that had come in, as I said, there's two families, the Hasmonean and the Herodian families, and they had accumulated all this wealth and power and were in control of Jerusalem and guarded their power zealously, even allied with the Romans to oppress the people, to guard their power. And that all came to an end on one day.

On August 2nd, 70 A.D., the aristocrats of Judea vanished almost without a trace. The temple was wiped out in a day by the Roman army, and the dynasty that had ruled Judea for so long just faded away while the Jesus movement that had been oppressed ended up spreading throughout the empire from reject to chosen. That was true of Jesus, and it was true of King David who he is quoting. So that's where Jesus quotes this verse.

Now let's go back in time, rather, 1,000 years before Christ, 3,000 years ago, our time, to see what was the context for King David saying this. You're going to love this. To explain it, let me take you to one of the most famous marble quarries in the world. This is the Carrera Quarry in Italy. This is the very quarry where people like Michelangelo got the marble for their most famous sculptures.

Now, of course, the idea of a quarry is to cut even-sized standard blocks so people can use them, know what they're getting, you can charge a standard price. But, of course, from time to time you do get odd blocks, end pieces, mistakes, and you sell those for cheap, but some you can never get rid of because they're so weirdly shaped. Michelangelo famously saw one of these weird ones that had sat unused in a corner of that quarry, and he took it, and that became literally a stone that artists had rejected that became a masterpiece because from that block he carved his statue of David, which is a perfect analogy because that from reject to masterpiece, that's King David's life story, from reject to chosen.

The Bible describes how David was mocked and insulted by his own blood brothers. He was attacked by his own king, King Saul, not once but twice. He was betrayed by his own son Absalom, who starts a rebellion with some of David's inner circle, and of course he was opposed by foreign enemies, yet becomes the keystone of the dynasty, the beautiful, the most fantastic era, golden era of Israel's history. But he himself writes about that experience in Psalm 118, and here's what he says. He says, "In my distress," think of all the distress he went through, "I called to the Lord and he answered me and he set me free. The Lord is on my side. I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid." What can man do to me? The Lord is on my side. He is my helper. All the nations surrounded me. They surrounded me on every side. They swarmed around me like bees. I was pushed so hard. I was falling. But the Lord helped me, and I will not die but live, and I will proclaim what the Lord has done. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

So that's the story of David, that emotion wrapped up in that verse, and that's the verse that Jesus quotes to those aristocrats. And this verse becomes, I think we've lost this as modern Christians, this becomes key to early Christianity. In fact, along with "Love your neighbor," this is the most quoted saying of Jesus in the rest of the Bible. The early Christians just loved this, and we need to rediscover this. This became the way his followers saw Jesus and themselves. And what I want to do the rest of the time is to demonstrate that because I think this is really going to make a difference for you.

You know, this verse, this concept got those early Christians through all those times of complete social collapse and chaos. And if you've been feeling a little bit like that lately, this can help you too. I mean, you see it first recited in Acts 4. Peter quotes Jesus's verse to those same aristocrats. You see it all through the epistles like of Paul. He keeps re-quoting it in places like Ephesians 2. But what I want to focus on in the rest of our time is one single chapter, 1 Peter 2, where Peter uses that central metaphor of Christ as cornerstone, not once, not twice, not three times, but seven times. I mean, I think he's trying to draw our attention to this.

And when 1 Peter is written, this is early, probably in the reign of Nero, the early 60s A.D. So both in Judea and in the whole Roman empire, this is a time of tumult. There's violence, there's social upheaval, Christians are being oppressed. And it's to those people who felt under that kind of pressure and stress that Jesus, rather that Peter kind of is saying this. And he starts in verse 4 of chapter 2. He says, "As you come to him, the living stone rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him." You know, it's interesting to me when you think of Jesus Christ, He was rejected by humans. This was a very important thing for those early Christians to remember.

They didn't just think of Jesus as Jesus' triumphant. They focused a lot on how rejected Jesus had been, how mistreated He had been. One of my favorite portraits of Jesus is this one by Gustave d'Oré. And if you look at it carefully, you see Christ with a crown of thorns, but all around Him and the scribbles, you see the faces of people mocking Him. I just love that because it's a reminder that Jesus Christ, as perfect and pure as He was, He was mocked and cussed at and rejected and slandered and ultimately killed. He was rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to Him.

Now this much we get, right, as Christians, we're like, yeah, we understand we're coming up on Good Friday and Easter when we think about how Jesus was rejected by humans, chosen by God and resurrected. But here's what we often miss. Don't miss this. Peter says, watch this, "You also," say, "You also." "You also what?" "You also will be rejected at times." "You also will be slandered at times, but you also are chosen by God. And you also are being built right now into a spiritual house." You're being built. It's not like, yeah, God tried to do something with you, but He gave up. No, you're being built right now. God is not done with you yet. God is at work in your life right now. You also, like Christ, are being built. Say, "You also," again, "You also."

And then Peter goes on in these verses to say how in uncertainty and chaos, when I build my life on Christ the Cornerstone, I can have three benefits that are just going to change my life. And I just want to give you three words. And these three words can change the way you perceive the whole rest of the week, the whole rest of your life. Number one, I can have security when I build my hope on Christ. I can have security as we've been singing about this morning. Peter says in the next verse, "As the Scriptures say, I am placing a cornerstone," say Cornerstone, "Cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor. And anyone who trusts in Him will never be disgraced." He's quoting Isaiah 28:16, which says, "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation. And the one who relies on it will never be shaken."

How much do we need to hear this this week? If there's a single word that summarizes the emotion many people are feeling right now, the world and in our country, it's this uncertainty. There's uncertainty about the economy. There's uncertainty about local politics, national politics, international politics. There's all kinds of uncertainty just swirling around us all the time. But that's why we need to know that there's something that will never change our sure foundation.

I mentioned in Friday's video, Diva, one of the most dangerous stretches of ocean in the world is off the western coast of northern France. And that's where there's this famous lighthouse built in 1911. It's called La Jumon. And it looks like it's just floating on the ocean, doesn't it? Like it broke away from something. But actually, it's right under the water, just barely submerged. There's a rock that that lighthouse is built on. And that leads to some spectacular wave formations and a story.

On the 21st of December, 1989, the weather predicted a massive storm. And so a photographer for the Associated Press, Jean Gichaud, hired a helicopter to fly over the lighthouse and take some pictures of the waves. Well, the lighthouse operator, Theodore Malgorn, didn't know that he was coming and he heard the helicopter. And he went outside because he lived in the lighthouse. And he went outside to see what was happening. At that very moment, a giant wave rose behind him and began to loom over the lighthouse. And Malgorn suddenly realized that a wave was coming as he was looking at the helicopter. And he rushed back inside just in time to save his life. And Gichaud snapped this world-famous shot in that instant.

Now, if you're on a ship, if you're on board a ship in waves like this, you're done. But if you're in a lighthouse set on a rock, you can live securely and never be shaken. And, you know, it works. Think of all the uncertainty and all the chaos Christians have endured for the last 2,000 years, the fall of the Roman Empire, countless invasions, epidemics, depressions, recessions. And yet the Christians are still here. One of the only groups of antiquity that are still here, right? Because like that lighthouse, the storms may batter them, but they are set on a rock. Your security is Christ the Cornerstone.

You know, the worst thing Theodore Malgorn, the lighthouse keeper, could have done in that moment is turn around and say, "Look at that incredible wave. That is remarkable. Wonder how many more waves will come?" No, he had to run inside the security of what was his living room, the bottom floor of that lighthouse, right? The worst thing you can do in times of storms is to stare at the waves by endlessly looking at your newsfeed. That's not going to control the waves. You cannot control the waves. What you got to do is run inside Christ the Cornerstone, your foundation, and meditate on his love that never changes, his promises that never change, his teachings that never change. That gives you security.

And then second, it gives you identity, identity. Peter goes on to say, "To you who believe then, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense." Now, wait a minute. How could the cornerstone be precious to some people? And yet to other people, the same cornerstone is rejected and is offensive. Same exact cornerstone. Well, let me explain by taking us all to the mystery spot. Raise your hand if you've ever visited the mystery spot here in Santa Cruz. I love the mystery spot.

Now, the guides will tell you something like this. It is an unexplained gravitational anomaly possibly caused by a buried alien spacecraft. Now, that might be true, but here's what you experience as you go there. You go up twisty ramps into crooked rooms and you get disoriented and you start to see things like bowling balls rolling uphill on a wooden ramp. Great illusion. Spoiler alert, probably not aliens. Here's how this works. The room is slightly crooked, so the ramp is on a slight one-degree slope down. And so a bowling ball is going to naturally roll downhill, but inside the skewed room, the bowling ball appears to be going slowly uphill because your foundation is actually skewed.

It turns out a skewed foundation changes perception, and that is a rule for life. Say that with me. Skewed foundation changes perception. Now, take that principle and apply it to what the Bible calls the world. In Jesus' day, the foundational values of the Roman world were this, power, domination, might makes right, honor earned by my performance, and of course, I need to hate and subjugate my enemies. Christ proposed a whole new reality. Instead of power, grace. Instead of domination, service. Instead of might makes right, God gives favor. Instead of honor earned by performance, honor bestowed as a gift of God. Instead, I hate my enemies, love my enemies.

Jesus didn't just want to come and rule according to the same old way as the Roman Empire and every other empire. Jesus was proposing a whole new way of doing life. Now, this is important because if you build your life on the world's foundations, what's going to happen? Well, fundamentally, it leads to insecurity because you're always living in fear of losing your power and prestige, always worrying, "What do other people think about me?" If you build on Christ, that leads to security because I know my identity in Christ. I know God loves me unconditionally. And so to those who believe, "Man, this foundation, this cornerstone is precious," right?

But here's the thing, a skewed foundation changes perception. To the world, they're the ones who seem level, and the Jesus people seem like weirdos or worse, right? They're the ones who are skewed. And so they reject it. It's offensive. And this is why Peter says, "Yeah, they may reject you, but you got to find your level in Jesus." The truth is, you also are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Just like Jesus, you'll be rejected. Just like David, you'll be rejected. But just like them, you are chosen.

You know, one of my greatest struggles when I first started here as a pastor 31 years ago now was self-confidence. Everybody here has seen three decades older than me and 300% wiser than me. And I actually wrote a little card and put it on my dashboard based on this verse, 1 Peter 2:9. And here's what it said, "My identity in Christ Jesus, I would read this driving into work. I believe that according to God's word, I have been chosen by God. I am royalty in God's kingdom. I am holy in God's sight. I am special to God. I am called by God for his destiny and mighty purpose." Amen.

And I think there's some people here today who might need to know that that's true of you. Because when I center my life on Christ, Christ is my cornerstone. It gives me security for going through the chaos of life. It gives me a firm identity for going through the rejection of life. And then finally, it gives me stability when I pattern my life on Christ. And here's what I mean by this. In those days when they used a cornerstone, it wasn't just a symbolic thing like it is in modern construction. It was an actual part of the foundation. And it didn't just anchor one corner of the building. The cornerstone actually contained the pattern that the whole rest of the building was based on.

They laid it according to the points of the compass, and it determined the true horizontal and the true vertical levels so that the builders got all their measurements and all their patterns off the cornerstone. It was like a living blueprint of the rest of the building. One architectural historian says, "In the ancient world, cornerstones were considered seeds from which buildings would germinate and rise." So do you understand when I say Christ is my cornerstone, I am saying I am patterning the whole rest of my life after His pattern. My question is, are we doing that?

There's a pastor I really admire, Ray Orland, who says, "Our American evangelicalism seems to be reflecting our culture, turning into a swagger-driven, domineering, win-at-all-costs, sub-Christian Christianity." But here's the pattern Jesus set for us, not swagger, not domination. Peter says in that same chapter, "If you suffer for doing good and endure it," this is commendable for God. To this you recall that's part of the pattern. Christ suffered too, He suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. He committed no sin, nor spoke deceitfully. He didn't retaliate when He was insulted. He didn't threaten, revenge when He suffered. He left His case in the hands of God who judges fairly.

And a couple of verses early, He says, "Conduct yourselves with such honor among the Gentiles that though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us." Honor, good deeds, not breathing vengeance and anger. That's how we respond when we are rejected because we know we're chosen. And we have a purpose, a destiny, to serve as priests for these people, even though they may slander us. That's the pattern that our cornerstone set for us.

So Christ as cornerstone, you can understand how this became central to the identity of those first Jesus followers. And I think we need to recover it because that brings us security in the chaos of life because I'm building my hope on my foundation. It gives me identity because we also are going to be rejected and yet are chosen by God and precious to Him. And it gives me stability because I realize I don't have to fly off the handle and whenever I feel slandered or oppressed or persecuted, I can be calm like Jesus because I'm patterning my life after Him.

When I say Christ as my cornerstone, it doesn't just mean He's my Savior. It does mean that. But it also means that Jesus gives me a pattern to live by, which is this, the despised are chosen. And God is always at work, building to last. That's what I mean. That's what I mean when I say, that's what I mean when I sing. Christ is my firm foundation, the rock on which my stand, my cornerstone.

Now I know this was a lot. It was like, man, this is a deep dive into a metaphor that held a lot of special attraction for those early believers who were constantly being put down. But when we recover that, we recover all these benefits as well. So the question that I want you to be asking as you go through your week, this week, is what cornerstone am I really building on? Am I building on this cornerstone? You know, playing by these rules? Or am I truly patterning my life after Christ, the cornerstone?

When the uncertainty of life pummels you, when you start to get upset about the headlines, or when you start to get upset about the traffic, or when something else throws you into chaos, ask yourself this question. And you may have to ask yourself this question a hundred times this week. Who is my cornerstone? Who's my cornerstone? It's Christ. Say Christ is my cornerstone. Christ is my cornerstone. That means I have stability. I have security. I have identity.

You know, if your soul, when you walked in this morning, was personified and put up on the screen for us all to see, maybe it would have been wearing a uniform that says, "Rejects," or "Freaked out," or "Angry." God's got a different wardrobe for you. His wardrobe for you says, "Chosen." Because you also, though rejected, you also are chosen, are precious, are royal. And knowing that, building my life on that, makes all the difference. Let's pray together.

Lord, thank You so much for Your grace toward us. Thank You that we can build our life on Jesus Christ. God, I just pray right now that if, you know, many of us as believers perhaps have not truly been building our life on the pattern of Christ as our cornerstone. And some have yet to even start that building. God, whether for the first time or as a recommit... And I pray that people all over this room would be saying, "God, I want to receive Your grace, given through the death and resurrection of Christ. I want to see myself as You see me, chosen and precious and having a destiny and royalty. Help us to go forward seeing that chosen-ness that we have in Christ, our cornerstone, and help us to build our lives on Him as our Savior and our foundation and our pattern for living. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.