NewCity Orlando Sermons

1 Peter 2:1-2 | Vision

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Raquel West:

Please pray this prayer of illumination with me, Gracious Redeemer, as we hear your word. 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. Today's scripture comes from 1 Peter, 2, 1 through 12. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that. 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. 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. So the honor is for you who believe. 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. 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. That you may proclaim the excellencies of him, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy Beloved. 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. 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. This is God's word. Be to God.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

You may be seated. Thanks be to God.

Raquel West:

You may be seated.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Well, good morning. My name is Benjamin. 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. We do one of these in August and in January. So if you're a guest or a visitor, this is a good Sunday. 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? On August 24th, we're going to start preaching through the book of Numbers, because it's next. 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. You got it Okay. 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. So don't get nervous if you're like he hasn't even looked at the Bible yet. Listen, I don't like it either. 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. 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. One, how am I doing? And two, how will I know? How am I doing? And how will I know, like, am I a good father or mother? Am I a good employee, boss, whatever that might be? Am I a good student? And how will I know? 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. 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. Every organization needs results, culture and people. Those things are really important. Every organization. Does that include a church? Does that include New City? Does it matter for us here, as this church, to consider results. 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. I get that, me too. 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? And he said there's really only three options for how you'd answer that. The first one is that you have metrics of success, and so some churches measure success. Usually that looks like number of people attending and number of dollars being given. You've got a lot of people coming, a lot of money given. 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. 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. There's some dangers here. 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. To create a church context that actually makes you spiritual consumers of religious goods and services that I'm a provider of Dangerous. So people recognizing that danger, they end up swinging a pendulum to the other side and they say success is not what matters. What matters is faithfulness.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Just be faithful. 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. Well, somebody who usually is really beloved in those worlds, charles Spurgeon, says this about some people who are applicants to his ministry school. He says this quote Charles Spurgeon says this about some people who were applicants to his ministry school. 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. Earnest, yes, awfully earnest Mountains in labor of the most painful kind, but nothing comes of it. Earnest, yes, awfully earnest Mountains in labor of the most painful kind, but nothing comes of it all. Therefore, I have usually declined their applications. 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. If you have nothing to point to that actually shows that your faithfulness is producing anything, you should probably be asking some questions. And so, in typical Keller-esque fashion, he gives you a third way. And so the third way it's not success, it's not faithfulness, it's fruitfulness. It's fruitfulness. That's actually how a church ought to measure what matters for them. 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. This is what it means. 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. Nobody looks at a farmer and thinks, yeah, just that's a pretty lazy job. 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? Like pests, like weeds, like soil quality all those things that they can't actually control or manage. Inputs don't equal direct outputs. They recognize that there are some things outside of their control. You see, this metaphor of sowing and reaping is actually the more biblical metaphor for measuring what matters. And so, at New City, if we were to measure fruitfulness, if that was our criterion for evaluation, what would that look like? What would that actually look like for us? How would we measure what matters? 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? Well, our mission is to call form and send disciple makers. 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. Let me say it this way If we do nothing else except make disciples who make disciples, we are fruitful. Let me say it another way If we do everything else except make disciples, who make disciples, we are not fruitful. It's important. So what is a disciple? 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. This is our definition of a disciple. There are dozens out there that are biblical and robust and simple and reproducible and compelling. 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. This is what we're aimed at. This is what fruitfulness looks like. 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. 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. It's not new, but what might be a little bit new or something that you've maybe never seen? It put this way and kids. I'm inviting you it's Family Worship Sunday. I'd love for you to draw what you're about to see here and then come and show me afterwards. I'd be so happy. This is probably, maybe the newest rendition of how to put it. I'm going to step over here so I can actually see and walk through this with you. Okay so, union with Christ Cairo. Those are the Greek letters for the first two letters of Christ. 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. I love having a two-sacrament Sunday because, you see, we have two sacraments. Baptism is a sign of union with Christ. The Lord's Supper is a sign of communion with Christ.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Now, the difference here is of utmost importance. We're united to Jesus by grace, through faith. Nothing you can do. And so, since you can't do anything to get united to Jesus, you can't do anything. To get ununited, disunited, separated from Jesus, you can't do anything. 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. That's our communion with Christ as we draw on. All that is there for us in Jesus Christ. As Pastor Jason said at the beginning, there's unsearchable riches for us in Jesus. As we draw on those riches more and more and more, that's what we call communion. Now here we say communion with the Father, son and Holy Spirit happens through receiving from God and responding to God. That's how we experience this communion with Christ. But the union flows outward immediately through communion into community. This is what that means. 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. Jesus is our head, we're his body, many members, one body. Think about vine and branches. You got one vine, all these branches coming off of it. There's these metaphors to unpack this picture. Because it's so important to know if you belong to Jesus, you belong to everybody else who belongs to Jesus. So how we work out community is through knowing and loving. So if it's receiving and responding is our communion, knowing and loving is our community. And finally, that community structures and displaces outward all the goodness that we have in Jesus Christ, in co -mission. That is through work and witness. Now you'll notice the prefix co, co, co. That's the prefix just means with. There's something relational, profoundly relational about all three of these things. 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. This morning you were invited by a friend. They were like, hey, let's go get coffee. Oops, we're at this church building. I don't know how it happened for you, but we're so glad you're here. We're so glad you're here.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Some people are not yet disciples. They don't know what to do with Jesus yet. 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. 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. And there's something compelling about Christian community. In fact, jesus says in John 13 that the world will know that we are his disciples by the way we love one another. In John 17, he that the world will know that we are his disciples by the way we love one another. In John 17, he says the world will know that Jesus came from the Father. He's legit because of the way that we have unity or oneness among us.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

So this is a community apologetic. There's nothing that makes the gospel look more true than a community transformed by that gospel. And so people are drawn through our witness and work into a community where they're known and loved. And then there's an invitation to receive and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ. Through repentance and faith in Jesus, those people can experience union with Christ and they become disciples. 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. They need to know how do I know and love and be known and loved in community? What does that actually look like? 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? And they learn those things and eventually those people become disciple-makers. 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? That's it, that's it right. There there's kind of two axes. There's an x-axis, which is where we can numerically count the number of not yet disciples who become disciples of Jesus. I'm totally okay with that. You know why. They did it in Acts 2 and in Acts 4. 2,000 added to the 3,000 added to their number, 5,000 added to their number. They counted that. That mattered to the early church. It matters to us at New City.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

We would count people who go from not yet disciples to disciples. We would also count people who go from disciples to disciple makers. What does that mean? Are you taking responsibility for one person to walk with them through that process? That's a disciple maker. 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. That would be the x-axis. You could measure that numerically. I'm okay with that, I want to do that. 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. You're like my life is overwhelming. Please do not put this on me. 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. And so you're not exempt in one sense, but you're also not benched. This is what we want. We want to see people, in their suffering, learn. How do I receive this? How do I embrace the suffering with you, jesus? How do I experience what Paul calls koinonia fellowship with Jesus in his sufferings? How do I experience what Paul calls koinonia fellowship with Jesus in his sufferings? How do I experience communion, even in my lowest places? That's what deepening as a disciple looks like. But then the people around you, hopefully, that you're in community with, will know you and love you in that season. And so what do they do? 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. Maybe not always easy, but simple, okay. 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. We want fruitfulness here, and this is how we're going to define it. This is what fruitfulness will look like in this context. 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. 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. He said this is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. Oh, do tell Lewis, what do you have to say to us? It is so easy to get muddled about that. It's easy to think that the church has a lot of different objects education, building, missions, holding services, all good things right. The church exists for nothing else but to draw men and women into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. I didn't say it. Lewis did Take it up with him. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose. It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in him. I feel pretty good about that. What Lewis said there, I like it. Okay, I like it because this is not new what I'm talking about. 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. 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. I told you the intro was going to be long. Here we go. 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. 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. That first phrase there, as you come to him, is the clause in this text from which everything else flows. This is the most important thing right here as you come to him, coming to Jesus is the fountainhead from which everything else flows. Why does that matter? Well, because this is not a once-for-all statement. It's not a since you came to Jesus or when you first came to Christ. It's not that. 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. 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. And Peter was, like could be in the shadow of Jesus if he wanted, he could get awkwardly close to him physically. 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. 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. That's always the same thing as believing, trusting, confidence, faith. That's what it means to come to Jesus as you come to him, as you trust him, as he says who he is. 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. 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. This stone mason named Jesus is really good at building you up. It's what he's good at, it's what he does. This is the way in which we grow or mature as Christians as we come to Jesus and we keep coming to Jesus. Union and communion is the centerpiece of our existence as Christians, this ongoing drawing on all that is in Jesus Christ for us. And so to come to him is to receive him, it's to believe in him. Verse 6 says and the opposite of believing is to reject him. Verse 7 says but if you notice, verse 4 is actually as y'all come to him. I wish we had that. 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. 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. 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. 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. Now. I wish I had another 30 minutes just to unpack all that Peter's talking about here. We together, not individually. We together, united together in Christ, are a spiritual house verse 5,. A holy priesthood verse 5, a chosen race verse 5, a royal priesthood verse 9. A holy nation verse 9. 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. 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. From our union with Christ flows our communion with God and our community with one another and eventually, our co-mission for the world. Look with me at verse 9. He says but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. Here's the purpose clause that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. It's a great definition of witness To proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. 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. You see, it begins with union and communion and flows outward in a centrifugal motion from the inside out. That's the movement here, and so we are witnesses because we're united to Jesus. 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. That's what we call work, work and witness your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. You see, I invited you to consider that. It's your witness and your work that invites a not yet disciple to consider Jesus Christ, to consider the gospel. That's what's happening in the text here. To consider Jesus Christ, to consider the gospel. That's what's happening in the text here. They dishonor you, they think that you're a crazy person for believing in Jesus. 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. And I think what it does is that every human being builds their life on something. Everybody builds their life on something, whether you're religious or secular. 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. Something's going to be foundational in your life. 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. 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. People might look at you and say what is your life built on? What is it that sustains you in difficulty? How is it that, when everything around me seems to be shaking, you seem to have a firm foundation? What is that? 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. It's this simple. 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. I was put to shame because the thing I rested my weight on could not hold me up. Happens all the time, not necessarily physically, spiritually. 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. 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. But the good news, the good news is that God has laid a new foundation.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Look with me at verse six. 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. So the honor is for you who believe. 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. 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? What do you do with him? The text here says that you can receive him as chosen and precious verse 5. It also says that we can reject him as offensive verse 7 and 8. Why would we reject him as offensive? 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. That's offensive. That's offensive In 2019,. 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. He said your house is not attached to the ground and I, being frugal, was like that's not a problem. Is it Like it's not going to be an issue? Right, it's a big issue. 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. That's the metaphor of a cornerstone here. You see, in ancient architecture a cornerstone was just that. It was a chosen stone that had a perfect 90-degree angle that could be put in the corner of the edifice. And the reason why it was so important is because it became the plumb line, the measurement for everything else that was built. The cornerstone had to have a good 90-degree angle so that everything could be built off of it. So if your cornerstone is off a little bit, the whole structural soundness of the building is in peril. But if the cornerstone is sure and true, then the building that's built on top of it can be structurally sound. 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. And so to end where we began, but shifting the metaphor from fruitfulness to a building metaphor the Bible does that. 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. 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. He's the cornerstone. Everything we do and say and are here at new city has to be measured in christ's likeness. That's what it means for him to be the cornerstone, and so we refuse the cornerstones of success or performance or self. We rest our lives on him. 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. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus's name. Let's pray to him now. Lord Jesus, you are our cornerstone. You are a sure, steady, stable foundation upon which we want to build our lives. Jesus, you were rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. 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. We pray these things in your name, Amen.