Raquel West: Please pray this prayer of illumination with me, Gracious Redeemer, as we hear your word.
Raquel West: Open our eyes to your glorious kingdom and bring us life through your Holy Spirit, by the power that raised Christ from the dead, Amen.
Raquel West: Today's scripture comes from 1 Peter, 2, 1 through 12.
Raquel West: So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
Raquel West: Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that.
Raquel West: The Lord is good as you come to him.
Raquel West: A living stone, rejected by men but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Raquel West: For it stands in scripture behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
Raquel West: So the honor is for you who believe.
Raquel West: But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
Raquel West: They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do, to do.
Raquel West: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.
Raquel West: That you may proclaim the excellencies of him, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Raquel West: Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
Raquel West: Once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy Beloved.
Raquel West: I urge you, as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul, the flesh which wage war against your soul.
Raquel West: Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Raquel West: This is God's word.
Raquel West: Be to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You may be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Thanks be to God.
Raquel West: You may be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, good morning.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My name is Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm a pastor here with New City and today, because it's the first of August, the first Sunday we're kicking off a vision series.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We do one of these in August and in January.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if you're a guest or a visitor, this is a good Sunday.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And really, when we say vision series, what we really mean is we just want, twice annually, to kind of realign ourselves with the things that really matter here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so this morning we're going to be working through the first of three sermons in August on a series about what it means to define our goals, like, what are we after here as a church?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: On August 24th, we're going to start preaching through the book of Numbers, because it's next.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you've been with us for like eight years, we've just been going Genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers Guess what's next after that Deuteronomy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You got it Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So all that to be said for these weeks, really, I'm going to set up this introduction right now as the intro to this sermon and the whole series, and so I just want to tell you now half of this sermon will be the introduction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So don't get nervous if you're like he hasn't even looked at the Bible yet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, I don't like it either.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I feel most comfortable just teaching through a text of scripture, but I think it's important for me to frame out this whole series and that's what I want to do to intro this sermon.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, with that, anything that you do, whether it's your work or your parenting, or your friendships or gardening, anything that you do you're going to often ask yourself a couple questions about it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One, how am I doing?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And two, how will I know?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How am I doing?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And how will I know, like, am I a good father or mother?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Am I a good employee, boss, whatever that might be?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Am I a good student?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And how will I know?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in a lot of those contexts there's clarity on how you might know your grade, your GPA or something like that right, and so any really endeavor worth doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're going to ask those questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Peter Drucker, kind of the management guru of our generation, said it like this Every organization needs three things Direct results, the building of values and the development of people for tomorrow.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every organization needs results, culture and people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those things are really important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every organization.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Does that include a church?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Does that include New City?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Does it matter for us here, as this church, to consider results.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know how that lands, for some of you Quoted a management thinker, and I'm talking about the church, and some of y'all might get a little irked by that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I get that, me too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I can go there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But Tim Keller begins his magnum opus, called Center Church, by basically saying just what I'm saying now, which is every church has to ask and answer those same two questions how are we doing and how would we know?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he said there's really only three options for how you'd answer that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first one is that you have metrics of success, and so some churches measure success.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Usually that looks like number of people attending and number of dollars being given.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You've got a lot of people coming, a lot of money given.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're successful, you're effective, the church is doing what it's supposed to do and in that, one of the kind of shorthand is you measure bodies, budgets, buildings and baptisms.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where a lot of churches will measure what matters to them in one of those four categories.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Usually, that world that measures a church by success will borrow from business and marketing and maybe psychology in order to increase growth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's some dangers here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of the dangers is that it makes you consumers, spiritual consumers, which you know, if America had a pantheon, if we were just honest about our idolatry, I think consumerism might be Zeus, I think that might be the altar most of us worship at more often, if it's not Jesus, and so that's a real danger.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To create a church context that actually makes you spiritual consumers of religious goods and services that I'm a provider of Dangerous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So people recognizing that danger, they end up swinging a pendulum to the other side and they say success is not what matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What matters is faithfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just be faithful.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Usually that looks like you're faithful to scripture doctrinally and you're faithful in your character, and that if you're just faithful to the Bible, to're faithful to Scripture doctrinally and you're faithful in your character, and that if you're just faithful to the Bible, to theology, to your tradition, and if you're faithful in your character and how you pastor people, that's enough, that's sufficient.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, somebody who usually is really beloved in those worlds, charles Spurgeon, says this about some people who are applicants to his ministry school.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says this quote Charles Spurgeon says this about some people who were applicants to his ministry school.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says this quote Certain good men appeal to me who are distinguished by enormous passion and zeal and a conspicuous absence of brains Brothers who would talk forever and ever upon nothing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They would thump their Bible and get nothing out of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Earnest, yes, awfully earnest Mountains in labor of the most painful kind, but nothing comes of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Earnest, yes, awfully earnest Mountains in labor of the most painful kind, but nothing comes of it all.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Therefore, I have usually declined their applications.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think what Spurgeon is saying there is that you must be faithful, but if you have nothing to show for it, something might not be right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have nothing to point to that actually shows that your faithfulness is producing anything, you should probably be asking some questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, in typical Keller-esque fashion, he gives you a third way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the third way it's not success, it's not faithfulness, it's fruitfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's fruitfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's actually how a church ought to measure what matters for them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A church that is fruitful is going to take up John 15, 8, where Jesus says to his disciples you will bear much fruit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love the fruitfulness metaphor because it's a gardening metaphor, it's an agrarian metaphor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what it means.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you've ever met a farmer my family stock, all the way back to Germany, is farmers and so farmers wake up really early, they work really hard, they go to bed late.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nobody looks at a farmer and thinks, yeah, just that's a pretty lazy job.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Farmers are known for their hard work, and yet farmers also recognize there's so much outside of their control, like weather conditions Are you in a rainy season or a drought?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like pests, like weeds, like soil quality all those things that they can't actually control or manage.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Inputs don't equal direct outputs.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They recognize that there are some things outside of their control.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, this metaphor of sowing and reaping is actually the more biblical metaphor for measuring what matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, at New City, if we were to measure fruitfulness, if that was our criterion for evaluation, what would that look like?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What would that actually look like for us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How would we measure what matters?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How would we see what our direct results were?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: According to Drucker, like a good gardener, if we're faithful in our work, what would we measure as our produce, our yield, if you will?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, our mission is to call form and send disciple makers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if that's why we exist, is to do that thing, then that's probably going to be core to our metric of fruitfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me say it this way If we do nothing else except make disciples who make disciples, we are fruitful.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me say it another way If we do everything else except make disciples, who make disciples, we are not fruitful.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what is a disciple?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is a disciple?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you were here with us in January, you might recognize this definition Disciples are united to Jesus in communion with God, community with one another and co-mission for the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is our definition of a disciple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There are dozens out there that are biblical and robust and simple and reproducible and compelling.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is just the one we've landed on, and so when I put this up here in January and we walked through sermons over the course of the month of January unpacking this definition, it was because we wanted to get it really clear before you, our people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what we're aimed at.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what fruitfulness looks like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, if you've been around New City for a little while, this definition in some form or fashion has been in use for about eight years.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I went back and did a deep dive into my archives to figure it out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 2017 is, I think, the first time that this went public, and so it's been around.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not new, but what might be a little bit new or something that you've maybe never seen?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It put this way and kids.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm inviting you it's Family Worship Sunday.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'd love for you to draw what you're about to see here and then come and show me afterwards.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'd be so happy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is probably, maybe the newest rendition of how to put it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm going to step over here so I can actually see and walk through this with you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay so, union with Christ Cairo.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those are the Greek letters for the first two letters of Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's a symbol that represents Jesus throughout the history of the church.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Union with Christ is the centerpiece of our faith.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love having a two-sacrament Sunday because, you see, we have two sacraments.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Baptism is a sign of union with Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord's Supper is a sign of communion with Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, the difference here is of utmost importance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're united to Jesus by grace, through faith.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing you can do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, since you can't do anything to get united to Jesus, you can't do anything.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To get ununited, disunited, separated from Jesus, you can't do anything.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the union with Christ that we have is static, it's unchanging, but our experience is Our joyful tasting and seeing that Jesus is good, that ebbs and flows.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's our communion with Christ as we draw on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All that is there for us in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As Pastor Jason said at the beginning, there's unsearchable riches for us in Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As we draw on those riches more and more and more, that's what we call communion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now here we say communion with the Father, son and Holy Spirit happens through receiving from God and responding to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's how we experience this communion with Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the union flows outward immediately through communion into community.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what that means.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're united to Jesus, you're united to everyone else, united to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Think about the metaphors in scripture Body.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is our head, we're his body, many members, one body.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Think about vine and branches.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You got one vine, all these branches coming off of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's these metaphors to unpack this picture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because it's so important to know if you belong to Jesus, you belong to everybody else who belongs to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So how we work out community is through knowing and loving.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if it's receiving and responding is our communion, knowing and loving is our community.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And finally, that community structures and displaces outward all the goodness that we have in Jesus Christ, in co -mission.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That is through work and witness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now you'll notice the prefix co, co, co.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the prefix just means with.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's something relational, profoundly relational about all three of these things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now here's a little bit of a way to understand how this works.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're a not yet disciple, maybe some of y'all are here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This morning you were invited by a friend.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They were like, hey, let's go get coffee.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oops, we're at this church building.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know how it happened for you, but we're so glad you're here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're so glad you're here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some people are not yet disciples.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They don't know what to do with Jesus yet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those not yet disciples are most likely going to be attracted to Jesus first and foremost by the credible work and witness of a disciple of Jesus, also known as commission.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, as they're drawn in through commission, your work and your witness, they might be willing to be invited into community where they experience people who know and love and are known and loved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And there's something compelling about Christian community.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, jesus says in John 13 that the world will know that we are his disciples by the way we love one another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In John 17, he that the world will know that we are his disciples by the way we love one another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In John 17, he says the world will know that Jesus came from the Father.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's legit because of the way that we have unity or oneness among us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So this is a community apologetic.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's nothing that makes the gospel look more true than a community transformed by that gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so people are drawn through our witness and work into a community where they're known and loved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then there's an invitation to receive and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Through repentance and faith in Jesus, those people can experience union with Christ and they become disciples.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then they need somebody to walk with them, to teach them how to receive and respond to Jesus through Scripture and in prayer, through gathered worship, through the Lord's Supper, through community.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They need to know how do I know and love and be known and loved in community?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does that actually look like?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then, what does it look like for me to do everything as unto the Lord in my workplace and then to bear witness to Jesus?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And they learn those things and eventually those people become disciple-makers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the process repeats over and over and over again to where you have what some people term a disciple-making movement.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, going back to where I started, what does it look like for us to measure what matters here at New City?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's it, that's it right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There there's kind of two axes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's an x-axis, which is where we can numerically count the number of not yet disciples who become disciples of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm totally okay with that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know why.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They did it in Acts 2 and in Acts 4.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 2,000 added to the 3,000 added to their number, 5,000 added to their number.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They counted that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That mattered to the early church.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It matters to us at New City.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We would count people who go from not yet disciples to disciples.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We would also count people who go from disciples to disciple makers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does that mean?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Are you taking responsibility for one person to walk with them through that process?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's a disciple maker.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Super simple Taking responsibility for one person to say, hey, I'm going to invite you into what this looks like to walk with Jesus and to follow him and to grow.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That would be the x-axis.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You could measure that numerically.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm okay with that, I want to do that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But there's a y-axis as well, and that is this deepening of our discipleship to Jesus, which never changes or, I'm sorry, never ends for any of us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So some of you in the room I want to be tender-hearted here because I feel for you in this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're like my life is overwhelming.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Please do not put this on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what I would say If you're in a season of extraordinary trial or difficulty, there's few things more powerful, apt to draw you into a deeper communion with Jesus, than suffering.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so you're not exempt in one sense, but you're also not benched.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what we want.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want to see people, in their suffering, learn.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How do I receive this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How do I embrace the suffering with you, jesus?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How do I experience what Paul calls koinonia fellowship with Jesus in his sufferings?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How do I experience communion, even in my lowest places?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what deepening as a disciple looks like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then the people around you, hopefully, that you're in community with, will know you and love you in that season.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what do they do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're deepening as disciples of Jesus, as they're loving and serving and meeting you in that space, and I promise you, there's few things that are a greater witness to the truth of Christianity than when people do that, and so it's happening.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I want to be just really clear about how simple this actually is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe not always easy, but simple, okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So with that, I want to say that this is what I mean when I start by saying we're not after success, we're not after mere faithfulness, although that's important to us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want fruitfulness here, and this is how we're going to define it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what fruitfulness will look like in this context.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, some of you I probably lost you, either to boredom, or you just don't agree with this, or something probably lost you either to boredom or you just don't agree with this, or something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, I'm going to invite you back and I'm going to use the appeal to authority, fallacy, to try to get you to believe me here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Cs Lewis put it like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He said this is the whole of Christianity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There is nothing else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oh, do tell Lewis, what do you have to say to us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is so easy to get muddled about that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's easy to think that the church has a lot of different objects education, building, missions, holding services, all good things right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The church exists for nothing else but to draw men and women into Christ, to make them little Christs.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I didn't say it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis did Take it up with him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God became man for no other purpose.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is even doubtful, you know whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I feel pretty good about that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What Lewis said there, I like it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay, I like it because this is not new what I'm talking about.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not new for New City, it's not new for the church of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In all times and places, we want to align our evaluation of things with God's evaluation of things to the best of our ability.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's an audacity to saying that, but we want to try, we want to endeavor, and so with that, to that end, let's look at the standard which is Scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I told you the intro was going to be long.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here we go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have a Bible or a device, go ahead and get 1 Peter 2 in front of you and let's look at this text together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My three headings will be the three points of our definition of a disciple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So point one if you look with me at 1 Peter 2, verse 4, it says this as you come to him, a living stone, rejected by men but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones are being built together, built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That first phrase there, as you come to him, is the clause in this text from which everything else flows.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the most important thing right here as you come to him, coming to Jesus is the fountainhead from which everything else flows.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why does that matter?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, because this is not a once-for-all statement.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not a since you came to Jesus or when you first came to Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's actually an ongoing reality as you come to him and keep coming to him, over and over and over again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What Peter's after here is a continual communion with Christ by coming to him day by day, hour by hour, regularly, ongoingly, day by day, hour by hour, regularly, ongoingly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now Peter is painting a picture for us and he knows what he's doing here, because Peter had the luxury, I guess you could say, of actually coming to Jesus, in the sense that Jesus came to him, looked at him and said, hey, come and follow me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Peter was, like could be in the shadow of Jesus if he wanted, he could get awkwardly close to him physically.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Peter knows that when he writes to this church, including us, he knows that we can't come to Jesus in the same way Peter could come to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so if you look closely at the text, there's places where it's pretty clear what Peter means by coming to Jesus as you come to him is by drawing near to him by faith, and so we say we receive communion is receiving from God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's always the same thing as believing, trusting, confidence, faith.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it means to come to Jesus as you come to him, as you trust him, as he says who he is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're coming and keep coming over and over continually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And verse five says as you come to him, you yourselves are being built up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One commentator says it like this a God who is a Mason and a carpenter for 30 years can surely make short work of the ruins of my soul as you come to Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This stone mason named Jesus is really good at building you up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's what he's good at, it's what he does.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the way in which we grow or mature as Christians as we come to Jesus and we keep coming to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Union and communion is the centerpiece of our existence as Christians, this ongoing drawing on all that is in Jesus Christ for us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so to come to him is to receive him, it's to believe in him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 6 says and the opposite of believing is to reject him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 7 says but if you notice, verse 4 is actually as y'all come to him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I wish we had that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think we'd have a revival if the people would just translate you into you plural in the text, the way it ought to be as y'all come to him, as you all come to him, over and over and over again, because our union with Christ, our communion with Christ, directly flows into our community with one another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 5.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I wish I had another 30 minutes just to unpack all that Peter's talking about here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We together, not individually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We together, united together in Christ, are a spiritual house verse 5,.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A holy priesthood verse 5, a chosen race verse 5, a royal priesthood verse 9.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A holy nation verse 9.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A people for his own possession verse 9.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Peter's just stumbling over himself searching the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, just grabbing all the metaphors and images and illustrations to describe God's people in the Old Testament, and he's saying all that was true of Israel is true of anybody who's in the true Israel, jesus Christ, if you are united to Jesus by faith, gentile that you are, all that was true of Israel is now true of you, because Jesus is the true Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what Jesus is about here is creating a new humanity, nothing less, nothing less than a new humanity who knows and loves and deepens in our community with one another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: From our union with Christ flows our communion with God and our community with one another and eventually, our co-mission for the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 9.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's the purpose clause that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a great definition of witness To proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But notice the flow of this First God, the Father, calls us out of darkness into the marvelous light of union with Jesus Christ, and then he sends us back out to proclaim his excellencies.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, it begins with union and communion and flows outward in a centrifugal motion from the inside out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the movement here, and so we are witnesses because we're united to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's doing something in the world and we just get to join in Him, in with Him in this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But it goes on in verse 12, it says Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what we call work, work and witness your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, I invited you to consider that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's your witness and your work that invites a not yet disciple to consider Jesus Christ, to consider the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening in the text here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To consider Jesus Christ, to consider the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening in the text here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They dishonor you, they think that you're a crazy person for believing in Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But they cannot argue with your work, they cannot argue with the credibility of your witness, and so at some point, they actually find it attractive, maybe even to the point where they glorify God as a result of your good works.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so when we live a credible lifestyle before the watching world, it does something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I think what it does is that every human being builds their life on something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Everybody builds their life on something, whether you're religious or secular.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All people are kind of laying a foundation for their life, and it might be their career or their relationships, or their morality, their achievement, their freedom, even their spirituality.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Something's going to be foundational in your life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if your cornerstone is not secure, the whole building is going to have cracks throughout, and so human foundations, anything that we would lay, are going to be fragile.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Success can collapse, relationships can fail, morality can not sustain us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, in those moments, we who refuse to build our lives on our own accomplishments, but have rejected our own achievements and said we're going to build our lives on Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, the one whose life was given for my life, whose death was in my place, whose resurrection allows me to become a living stone, when we build our life on him and the foundations are destroyed elsewhere.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: People might look at you and say what is your life built on?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is it that sustains you in difficulty?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How is it that, when everything around me seems to be shaking, you seem to have a firm foundation?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in that moment we get to gently, lovingly, kindly, bear witness to the cornerstone that we have in Christ Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because when everything around you crumbles and the things, the faulty foundations that you've built your life on, actually don't hold up, the Bible has a phrase for that it's called being put to shame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's this simple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I've had this happen to me where I've sat in a chair and it broke under my weight and I fell and I looked dumb.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I was put to shame because the thing I rested my weight on could not hold me up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Happens all the time, not necessarily physically, spiritually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: People rest the weight of their existence on things that could never bear, could never bear up under it, and they're put to shame as their life crumbles.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in that moment, your credible witness, your credible work, showing a life in union and communion with Christ, invites people to consider the bad news that all of us build our lives on foundations that could never hold us up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the good news, the good news is that God has laid a new foundation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse six.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is where we'll close, for it stands in scripture behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the honor is for you who believe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It always comes down to this, this one question what do you do with Jesus Christ?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do you do with him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The text here says that you can receive him as chosen and precious verse 5.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It also says that we can reject him as offensive verse 7 and 8.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why would we reject him as offensive?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because Jesus will allow no other basis for your existence but himself, profoundly welcoming but intolerant of any other foundation but himself, for you to build your life on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's offensive.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's offensive In 2019,.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My wife and I did some renovation work on our house and our builder, who's also a friend, called me and he said hey, Ben, we got under your house and there's no footings.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He said your house is not attached to the ground and I, being frugal, was like that's not a problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is it Like it's not going to be an issue?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Right, it's a big issue.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a big problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why is because whatever you're built on is going to shape the whole building.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the metaphor of a cornerstone here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in ancient architecture a cornerstone was just that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was a chosen stone that had a perfect 90-degree angle that could be put in the corner of the edifice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why it was so important is because it became the plumb line, the measurement for everything else that was built.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The cornerstone had to have a good 90-degree angle so that everything could be built off of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if your cornerstone is off a little bit, the whole structural soundness of the building is in peril.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if the cornerstone is sure and true, then the building that's built on top of it can be structurally sound.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so for Jesus to be our cornerstone, it's not just a matter of aesthetics in a building, it's a matter of structural integrity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so to end where we began, but shifting the metaphor from fruitfulness to a building metaphor the Bible does that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So that's why I'm doing it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If we measure ourselves here at New City, we have to measure ourselves according to the cornerstone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fruitfulness can only look like measuring what matters to us can only look like are we coming to christ more and becoming like christ more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's the cornerstone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Everything we do and say and are here at new city has to be measured in christ's likeness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it means for him to be the cornerstone, and so we refuse the cornerstones of success or performance or self.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We rest our lives on him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We trust in Jesus, and all who trust in him will never be put to shame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The hymn writer put it like this my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus's name.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray to him now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord Jesus, you are our cornerstone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You are a sure, steady, stable foundation upon which we want to build our lives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, you were rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the same way, all of us who identify with you may be rejected by our neighbors, but in the sight of God are chosen and precious, because all that is true of you, Jesus, is true for all who are in you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We pray these things in your name, Amen.