A Precious New Year, Part 1

What I want to do this Sunday and next Sunday is just do a two-part message entitled The Precious New Year. where we just kinda begin the year by focusing on some things that based on scripture should be precious to us and to just settle on those things and then let our year be built around them both as a church and as individuals. So the title of the message today is a precious New Year Part one, and we're gonna be drawing the points of our message this week and next week from 1 and 2nd Peter.

on, on Christmas morning, just under 2 weeks ago, I, I opened.

My Bible that was on my bedside table right after I woke up, and within a few minutes, the idea for, this message and next week's message, was born. I then went downstairs. And gathered together with our family, some of whom were visiting and And after taking some time to read the Christmas story in Luke 2 and praying, By the way, I always try to do that as slowly as possible. To prolong the agony for the kids and waiting for their gifts.

but after doing some scripture reading and praying, our family began opening gifts. And as we did so, I noticed myself doing something that I do, just about every year at Christmas. As everyone is opening gifts, wrapping paper and empty boxes and unwrapped gifts start piling up around me and everyone else, which always begins, just the chaos always begins to Leave me feeling nervous about some of my gifts getting lost in the mix. So I start getting possessive and territorial and feel a compulsion to carve out a safe space amid the chaos.

In which I can protect my gifts. And this year I found a large gift bag and I made sure that I put all of my gifts as I opened them into that one bag so that none of my precious gifts would get lost or mixed up with other people's stuff and get accidentally taken by them. A couple of years ago, one of our kids got a $100 bill for Christmas and ended up losing it amid the chaos of wrapping paper and boxes and bags being thrown away, and I'm not about to let that happen. To me.

Yet it does happen to me in real life. I have to confess it often happens that I lose my grip on, on what is precious, and I allow precious things to be taken from me or lost amid the rigors of life in ways that I end up regretting. So for my sake and for yours, I think that on this first Sunday of the year, these first two Sundays of the year, that it'll be good for us to spend some time just taking stock of some treasures that should be most precious to us in 2019, so that we can hold on to those things and not lose sight of them in ways that we may find ourselves regretting by the end of the year.

Knowing what is truly precious.

To us, is also one of the greatest ways to make us more resistant to temptations that will confront us this year. You realize, I'm sure you do, that temptations are not just about, a battle in our minds about what's right and wrong, good and bad, but temptations also represent a battle over what we will deem to be precious. And unprecious. God tells us in His word that certain things are precious and Satan is always coming along and trying to get us to view those precious things as unprecious, while at the same time trying to get us to view some sinful thing as precious.

And we often fall prey to his deceptions and seek to find pleasure in some sinful. Thing. I'm guilty of this and all of us are guilty of this. In this way, John Piper says, pleasure is the whistleblower of your heart.

If something sinful gives you pleasure, it's not a pleasure problem, it's a treasure problem. Something evil is precious. To you And I would only add to that, something good has become unprecious to you, right? Turns out that Tolkien was right in his depiction of Smeegel.

In Lord of the Rings, Smegel killed to gain possession of the ring, and what did he call it? My precious, even though it immediately began to disintegrate him and turn him into a grotesque creature and destroy his life, but that's what happens to us. Almost always whenever we sin, we are in that moment embracing some forbidden thing as precious, even though it hurts us and steals from us things that in the end, we look back on. And say what I lost was truly precious.

I talked to a woman. On who committed adultery and left her husband believing that her fulfillment with this new man was the more precious thing and she divorced her husband and married this other man and several years later, she was looking back on the wreckage of her life and she said this to me. She said, my life with my first husband was not perfect by any measure, but he was a good man. I should have never left him.

She got what she wanted. And she lost what she had. And in the end she concluded that what she once had. was the more precious thing.

that she now had. Her going astray started not so much with a miscalculation about what is right and wrong, though it entailed that. But with her making a miscalculation about what was most precious, and I don't want the same thing to happen to you and to me this year. Represented in this room this morning are literally hundreds of thousands of decisions in 2019 that are gonna be made in particular moments regarding what is precious and, and what is not.

Some of us are going to choose wisely and others in this room will not choose wisely. There are some in this room that will be flourishing spiritually, this time next year, and some in this room will be lagging. This time next year. And some in this room will have cast off all restraint and plunged into living for yourself rather than for God.

100 years from now, some in this room will be in heaven. And some in this room will be in hell, and the choices we make about what is precious. will be what makes all the difference. The truth is, if we can just get this one issue right, If we can just nail down.

And decide on what is truly precious, then there's a lot of good. That flows downstream of that. So I want us to do that today and next Sunday and look at some treasures that we should deem not just good but precious this year and beyond. And we're gonna let the apostle Peter help us with this effort.

It may surprise you to know that if you read through 1st and 2nd, Peter, Peter uses the word precious 8 times. In his epistles, and we're gonna let these 8 mentions of the word precious serve as our guide over the next 2 weeks as we try to lock on to what is most precious. And this morning, we're just going to look at 3. of these treasures.

And that's how we'll frame our study this morning, three treasures that we should deem precious in 2019 as individuals and as a church. And the first treasure that Peter mentions In first Peter, that, that is precious, we're gonna word it this way, is proven faith, proven faith. And 1 Peter chapter 1, Peter begins by speaking about the riches of our salvation and then he says in verse 6, in this, meaning in this salvation, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials.

And and the reason Peter's gonna go on to say that you've been allowed by God to be distressed by various trials is so that, look at verse 7, that the proof of your faith being more precious.

Than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The word translated more precious is the Greek word polumos. And just notice that word Tim inside that word because we're gonna see that part of the Greek word a lot this week and next week. The word Timos means precious.

And the prefix Palu just means more when the preciousness of one thing is being compared to another as it is in this passage. And here Peter is saying that the proof of your faith is more precious than gold. The Greek word that is translated proof here speaks of a process of testing that, that both serves to purify. And also that proves something.

I genuine Sometimes this word is used in the New Testament to speak of, of the testing itself, the process of testing, but sometimes it's used to speak of the positive result of the testing. Which is that something is found to be genuine. And both ideas are involved here. As Peter is speaking in this way.

A couple of years ago, I was at the Stater Brothers down the street on Iowa and I handed the cashier a $20 bill. To pay for an item that I wanted to purchase. You guys remember back when we used to pay cash for Things we wanted to buy. but as soon as I handed him the $20 bill, he pulled out a marker and drew a line on the bill and then held the bill up to the light to examine the money that I had given to him.

what was he doing? He was testing. That bill to see if it was genuine. Was I offended by that?

maybe a little bit, but But not really because I wanted him to know and to find out for himself that my money was real and I didn't mind him doing whatever he needed to do to verify that my $20 bill was real. And apparently, my $20 bill passed the test and I was able to get what I had come to buy. And when the cashier handed me the item that I had come to purchase, I was tempted to mark that item with a pin. And hold it up to the light to make sure that it was.

Genuine, but I resisted the temptation. To do that. My point is that when God puts genuine faith in the heart of a person, he wants that faith to undergo testing. So that it can be shown to be genuine.

That's why we experience trials. And when those trials come, our faith is tested. And it becomes a proven faith. That Peter is speaking about here.

Faith is precious, Peter is saying, but it's not just faith that is precious, but it's proven faith. That is precious, or Spurgeon says, the proven character of faith, Peter is saying here is precious. You could translate Peter is saying, your proven faith, being more precious than gold. Meaning it's our faith that is precious and if our faith is precious, then it would go without saying.

That even the difficult circumstances that test and prove our fate to be genuine should be deemed by us to be precious as well. Notice that Peter specifically says that a tested and a proven faith is more precious than gold, and not just any gold, but gold that is tested by fire. Peter is saying, take the purest gold that you can imagine, a gold that has been put to the fire and purified and shown to be genuine, genuine faith in Christ is more precious than any quantity of even that purified gold.

And why is that?

Why is that? Well, because, as Peter says, gold. is perishable. Gold can be lost, gold can be stolen, gold can sink to the bottom of the sea and be lost forever.

It can be destroyed. And everything that gold could ever buy can be destroyed as well. We normally call certain food items perishables, right? Because they go bad after a short period of time, but Peter looks at gold, which to us is like a solid thing that's gonna last for a long time, and he says that's just a perishable.

Because it goes bad and it gets destroyed more quickly than genuine faith in Christ does. Because genuine faith in Christ is not perishable, like gold is. Once God puts true faith in the heart of a person, that faith will last forever and it will never die out, because God will never let it die out. This is why Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 5 that we are continuously being kept by the power of God through faith.

Notice that by the power of God and through faith. In other words, once God saves a person, he uses his power to nurture within the true believer a sustaining and persevering faith that will never perish, so that their faith might bring glory to Christ in the end. No true believer in Christ ever has or ever will lose. Their salvation, but they will persevere by the power of God in faith to the glory of Christ.

Look at what Peter says at the end of verse 7, are tested and our proven faith will be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ, speaking of his coming and all that follows that. Some of you have gone through mind-boggling difficulties that would have destroyed you if you did not have genuine faith in Christ. Some of you are even now enduring circumstances that would leave you with Many excuses to just abandon Christ. And a lot of people would pat you on the back and say, we, we understand.

Why you would abandon Christ given your circumstances, but instead of abandoning Jesus, you still believe in Him. You cling to him and your trials amazingly are only serving to purify your faith. Even more, and you get stronger. I can't begin to tell you how much your faith in Christ in the midst of trials encourages and inspires me.

There are many people in our church that as I watch your journey unfold, you are, you are my heroes and I love Jesus all the more because of what I see of your faith in Him that endures and only grows stronger in the midst of trials. Peter is telling you here that one day, Your tested and proven faith will fly as a banner that's going to give glory to Jesus. In the day of his revelation. And all the difficulties you endured will only serve to increase the glory that will go to him in that day.

Saints and angels in the day of Christ's revelation. will say, look at this person's faith who endured years of a broken marriage, unfairly so. Look at this person's faith in Christ who endured the tragedy of their own child's death. And they kept clinging to Christ and believing in Him.

Look at Johnny Erickson's faith in Christ. Which endured and only grew stronger and more beautiful through decades of paralysis and battles with cancer. And look at this person's faith who endured years of torture in a communist prison, and their faith not only survived, but it only grew stronger. Such people's faith is going to redound to the glory and the praise of Jesus in the day of his revelation.

You in this room, in this church who keep believing in Jesus in the face of hardship, your faith is going to be the stuff of legend in heaven. Your faith will go down in heavenly lore and result in Christ receiving all the more glory. In the day of his revelation. According to Peter here, are tried and tested faith is precious.

Will you deem your faith in Christ to be precious this year? Will you believe that even in the trials, God is up to something huge, something that will somehow enhance the glory that's going to go to Jesus in A future day, will you believe the fact that your trials will even result in a greater weight of glory for you? In heaven Will you seek to nurture and strengthen your faith in Christ on a daily basis by going to his word and reading and studying his word and through prayer and through fellowship.

With the Saints.

I hope you'll do that. And you have many opportunities to do that here at Cornerstone. Joining with us on Sunday mornings are Midweek ministries throughout the week and, and also become a part of a care group here at Cornerstone, where you can build relationships with other brothers and sisters and, and nurture their faith and they nurture your faith in the process. Our faith in Christ should be precious to us, and we should cherish it honestly more than any other material possession that we try to take care of.

But it should not simply be our subjective faith that is precious to us in 2019. It should also be the objective realities that our faith is directed toward that are precious to us also. And this leads us to the second treasure that we should embrace as precious in 2019, and that is the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ.

In 1 Peter chapter 1, Peter gives the following council that is centered on the estimation of Christ's blood is precious. Listen to what he says beginning in verse 17. If you address as Father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your feudal way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious Blood Timios blood.

As of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

In verse 17, Peter is telling us that we should conduct ourselves, behave ourselves in fear, the fear of God during our lives on earth. And in verse 18, he tells us that we should do so knowing something about our redemption and what we were redeemed by. That our behavior should be governed by a knowledge of an awareness of the fact that we have been redeemed by something extremely precious, and that is the blood of Christ. Evidently knowing of our redemption.

Through something so precious as the blood of Christ should impact our conduct from day to day. To be redeemed is to be delivered from something through the paying of a price. That's what Peter means by this. For example, if you are in prison and I pay money to get you out of prison, I've redeemed you because I've paid a price to deliver you from prison.

In our case, what Peter says we were delivered from by God was, look at the text, your feudal way of life inherited from your forefathers. A feudal way of life. The, the idea of that is an empty way of life, a life that always leaves you coming up empty no matter what you're putting your hope in. Peter says that this life of emptiness and frustration and futility is one inherited from your forefathers or your ancestors.

It's a life that can be traced all the way back to Adam and Eve in their first moment of sin. It's the lifestyle of sin passed down to us by the example. And influence of prior generations that became embedded in the next generation, and then the next, and then the next, all the way down to you and me. All families I've noticed have a basic sin problem.

But every family also has its unique. Sinful expressions and futilities that tend to get passed down from one generation to the next. I even see ways my own children have inherited such. Propensities from me.

Maybe addiction to alcohol and drunkenness runs in your family for generations. Maybe sexual sin runs in your family, maybe greed or anger runs in your family. It doesn't matter what it is. Here's the good news, if you've been saved through Christ, you've been redeemed from that futility because God paid a price.

To deliver you The precious blood of Christ, which is more powerful. than any of the generational influences that have gone into shaping you. What was the price he paid in verse 18 and 19, Peter tells us that it, it was not accomplished through perishable things like silver or gold, but with precious blood. Guys, God did not throw silver and gold.

He didn't throw money at us to get us to change because money cannot change the human heart. If you gave every person around the world a million dollars, it would not make people any less sinful. Because money Cannot deliver people from futility or from sin. This is why God didn't.

Try to use things like silver or gold to redeem us. What he used instead was blood. And not just blood, but precious blood. What makes this blood so precious is that it was the blood.

Of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. What made the blood precious was the person from whom it came, Jesus Christ. And what made his blood precious was that he was unblemished and spotless. He was perfect, having never sinned.

If he had sinned even one time in his life, his blood would not have been precious enough to deliver you and me. What made the blood of the spotless one precious was that he was God's designated lamb. Who was sent by God to redeem us from our feudal way of life inherited from our forefathers. To redeem us, From our futility and our sin, God did not throw money at us.

He just sent a person. Who was willing to lay down his life for you and me. And this was God's plan. From before the world was even created.

This is why Peter immediately says, look at verse 20. Actually, I don't think I, that's on the screen, but just in your scriptures, look at verse 20. The text says, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. The sending of Christ to die and to shed his blood on the cross for our sins was not God's plan B.

That occurred to him on the fly just maybe 200 years or 2000 years ago. It was his plan from the very beginning. Before the world was even created. during this time of year, we, all of us, I think, or most of us think about resolutions that we want to make and I think that's wonderful.

But as Christians, our own resolutions should always be fueled by a deep appreciation of how God Himself kept his resolutions. Namely the resolution he made before the world was even created. To send His own Son to shed His blood to redeem us from Our sin. God had a million opportunities to look at us in our mess and sin and say, I changed my mind.

And he didn't. He kept his promise. Keep in mind that this is Peter talking here in These verses and he speaks of Christ's blood as precious for all the reasons that we've just looked at, but he also viewed Christ's blood as precious because of the redemption that Christ's blood accomplishes for him personally. This is Peter talking personally about how he views the blood of Christ.

If you hung out with Peter, you would know the blood of Christ is precious to him personally. You would hear that in his language and see it in his emotion. Christ shed blood, provides atonement for sins. It brings forgiveness from God, it brings pardon to the conscience for past sins that have been committed and Peter himself, as was talked about in Sunday school today, had denied Christ three times on the eve of Christ's crucifixion, cursing and uttering an oath, while denying that he even knew Christ at all.

Peter knew what it was like to weep bitterly over his sins to the very point of despair. But God raised Jesus from the dead, and Peter learned. That Jesus actually died to shed his blood. On the cross in order for Peter to have atonement for those very sins and every other sin that he committed, Peter understood the gravity of all of his sins.

And thus he understood. The greatness of God's grace. And thus, the one who has forgiven much, loves much, and oh, Peter loved the Lord so much and viewed the blood of Christ is so precious because of what it did. For him and Peter was never the same.

He was a deeply forgiven man who forever thereafter saw the blood of Christ as precious. All of us who are here at Cornerstone, we are deeply forgiven people. And hopefully we understand the gravity of our sins, the greatness of God's grace, and our atonement and Christ's blood is precious to us. This atonement that Christ's blood provides.

To bring forgiveness for our sins and pardon to our conscience is actually the first step towards practical daily deliverance from sin. I hope you realize that. As William Romayne said hundreds of years ago, he says no sin can be crucified either in heart or life unless it first be pardoned in conscience. If it be not mortified in its guilt, it cannot be subdued.

In its power. Do you understand that? This is so true. This is why we tend to keep recommitting the very sins that we feel the most guilty about.

Because as long as we're bound by the guilt of those sins, We're still being held by the power of those sins. But Christ's blood is precious because it delivers us from the guilt of our sins, which is the first step toward delivering us from the hold. that those sins have over us. If you come into 2019 carrying the guilt of sins committed in 2018, Confess your sins to God.

And experience the pardon that comes through the shed blood of Jesus. And if you do that, you're gonna find The blood of Jesus and even Jesus Himself to be so precious to you. And if you keep doing that, whenever you fail, Whenever you sin, coming to Christ and confessing and receiving forgiveness through his shed blood, as John Piper says, you will fall less often. Because Christ will become increasingly precious.

To you. So I'm not just telling you this morning, decide that the blood of Christ is gonna be precious. This is a journey. And there's a particular journey that will cause his blood.

To become only increasingly precious. My prayer is that a year from today, the blood of Christ is way more precious to you. than it is even this morning. And what we're talking about doing here is something that will lead to that outcome.

Let me give you one more thing to think about. Regarding the preciousness of Christ's blood. We, we all know this is true. You can tell.

How precious something is to someone by looking at what they're willing to spend on it, right? So clearly, God must have viewed your deliverance and my deliverance as a very precious thing. Given that he was willing to invest such a precious resource as Christ's blood in order to deliver us. That should impact the way you and I look at our redemption.

If Christ gave up his life for us to be delivered from our feudal way of life, then we should consider that deliverance itself to be precious and walk in the good of it. And realize what a scandal it would be that God would invest such a precious treasure so that we can walk in freedom and we ignore that path and just do what we were doing before. That's a scandal. Be sobered by the high price that was paid for your spiritual freedom.

And walk in it. Realize how zealous God must be for your holiness and freedom if he paid such a high price for you. To have that Also, in every moment of temptation, realize that you have two doors that you can go through. You can go through the door that leads into sin.

Or you can walk through the door of deliverance or redemption that's being held open by Christ's nail scarred hands and his own blood is on the doorpost of that door. Imagine how precious what's on the other side of that door is. If the precious blood of Christ was shed so that you could go through that door and experience whatever it is. On the other side of that door.

Value the price that God paid for you to be free from lust and from pornography. Value the price that he paid for you to be free from anxiety and from anger, for you to be free from the shackles of selfishness and bitterness, for you to be free from laziness and worldliness and futility, for you to be free from The feudal way of life inherited from your ancestors. Realize how zealous God must be for your holiness and for your freedom and every other gospel blessing that belongs to you in Christ and walk in the good of all of that being humbly grateful.

And even sobered.

By the high price that was paid so that you could have these things. And do not take them for granted. The blood of Christ should be precious to us in 2019 and And it should be precious to us, partly because Christ Himself is precious. And this leads us to the third and final treasure that we should esteem as precious in 2019 and beyond, and that is Christ Himself.

Speaking of Jesus, Whose kindness Peter says we've tasted in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 3. Peter goes on to speak this way in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 4. He says, and coming to him as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men but is choice and Precious. Intima.

In the sight of God, you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, for this is contained in scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion, a choice stone, a precious Cornerstone And he who believes in him will not be disappointed. This precious value then is for you. Who believe Notice how Peter uses the word precious 3 times with reference to Christ in these 4 verses alone.

And as to this Christ, he speaks of us at the beginning of verse 4 as coming to him and the idea here is that we are continually coming to Christ and in so doing, we're behaving differently than the way that the world behaves with regard to Christ. But we are behaving consistently. With the way that God views his son. Look again at verse 4, coming to him as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men but is choice and precious in the sight of God.

The world rejects Christ, but we come to him, showing by our coming to him that we agree with God that he is indeed precious. And this is what the church is. It's a group of people who agree with God. That his son is precious.

Now observe what happens as we keep coming to Christ in verse 4, and continually coming to him as to a living stone. Basically, in verse 5, he goes on to say, you also, as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So as we keep coming to Christ, verse 4, Peter says, we are continuously being built up. Literally, we are being edified.

This is the word used throughout the New Testament that speaks of being edified. And the word edify may seem like a boring word to some of you, but it's not. The Greek, the root Greek word that is used here is oika demeo. And the very first time this word occurs in scripture is in the Greek Septuagint translation.

Of Genesis 2:22 where we're told that God took the rib from Adam's side and he oika demeoed that rib into what? Into a woman So imagine the before and after picture. Of Eve on her birthday, she started the day being a rib. And after God finished edifying that rib, We have Eve, a beautiful woman.

That's edification. And God can do the same thing with you. If you keep coming. To Christ.

You may not look like much right now. But keep coming to Christ day after day after day this year. Come to Christ on your good days, keep coming to Him on your bad days of brokenness and discouragement. Come to Him and give thanks to him after your spiritual victories and keep coming to Him for forgiveness on your days of spiritual defeat.

You will find that as you keep coming to Christ, that God slowly but surely will be transformatively edifying you into something more and more beautiful. Our transformation in Christ is a slow motion miracle wrought by God. As we keep coming to Christ. Do you believe that?

The transformative edification that Peter speaks about here is no individualistic edification either. Peter says that as his readers keep coming to Christ, look at what he says, you plural also as living stones, plural are being built up as a spiritual house singular. This means that as you and I keep coming to Christ, God is building us up, not just individually, but he builds us together into a single corporate entity called a spiritual house. This is how the Church of Jesus Christ gets built as its people keep coming to Christ.

We find ourselves becoming more and more attached to him and more and more attached to one another and a community is formed. God builds us together into a single spiritual house in which we can function in each other's lives as priests to one another and offer up sacrifices of praise that are acceptable to God through Christ. On top of that and coming to Christ and being built together in this way, we're fulfilling scripture and we're also finding out how truly precious Jesus is.

Look at verse 6.

In verse 6, Peter quotes from Isaiah 28:16. And he says, for this is contained in scripture, behold, this is God speaking, behold, I lay in Zion, a choice stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes in him will not be disappointed. This passage is God Himself talking. And he lays down this precious cornerstone, which is Jesus, and he lays down this promise for anyone who will come to him, and he says, and this is the understatement.

of human history. He who believes in him. will not be disappointed. This is the promise of God.

Nowadays we have money back guarantees. The maker of a product will say if you're not completely satisfied with this product, you can return it for a full refund. But here in this passage is God's guarantee. He who believes in Christ.

will be satisfied. He will not be disappointed. He will not be disappointed in this life, not in the life to come when he stands before God at the judgment, and God offers no refund. There's no need to offer a potential refund because none is needed.

God guarantees that if you believe in Jesus and you keep coming to him, you will be satisfied. And in the end, you will know that believing in Jesus was by far the best decision. That God ever gave you the grace to make. Notice what Peter says in verse 7, Speaking of Jesus.

He says in verse 7, this precious value then is for you. Who believe Notice the beautiful connection between verses 4 and 7. We're told in verse 4 that Jesus is choice and precious in the eyes of God, yet here in verse 7, we're told that this precious value is for you, who believe. In the gospel, God gives us Jesus, the apple of his eye, and makes him available to us who believe and says, this precious value that is in my Son is for you.

That's an amazing invitation. Isn't it? Will you take it If I went over to your house today and I installed. An ATM An ATM machine in your home with a billion dollars in it.

And I gave you a special debit card to withdraw from that machine whenever you like. Here's my question, would you use that machine? Or would you just let it sit in your home and collect dust? Here's an even better question for you.

If God made available to you, Jesus Christ, In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This Jesus who loves you so much, he was willing to die for you and shed his blood for you, who's been raised from the dead and now sits at the right hand of God with all the power of heaven and earth at his disposal and he makes himself available to you. And if God pointed to this one with all of his precious value and says to you, this precious value, is for you Would you come to him?

And seek a relationship with such a one.

And let him walk with you from day to day. Would you let his blood atone for your sins and make him your savior from day to day and experience All the nuances of precious value that flow from him and that are found in him. Or would you hear God say that and cast Jesus aside and say, I don't need that value. I don't need him, I'll do just fine without him.

If you do decide To not believe in Him, and you just set aside Jesus. Peter has some words for you. Speaking of Christ in verse 7, look at what Peter says, this precious value then is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone. You say, what does that mean?

Well, we all know that one man's trash is another man's treasure. And that's what's being described here. The Jewish leaders of Jesus' day were trying to build a religion on their own terms when Jesus showed up. They inspected him, they examined him and determined that he just wasn't a good fit for the religion that they were building.

So they threw him out as a worthless stone. But God picked up that stone. And made it the chief cornerstone of a new structure called the church. The birth of the church on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 was the worst nightmare of the Jewish leaders who had rejected Christ.

They thought they had gotten rid of him, but God took the very one that they had thrown aside. And raised him from the dead and began to build something amazing on him, provoking. The Jewish leaders to jealousy. And they realized we are so not done with Jesus.

We thought we were. But we're not done with him. And the fate of those who reject Christ is even worse than that. For those who disbelieve in Jesus, Peter goes on to describe what Christ will in the end be for them.

Look at verse 8, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word and to this doom they were also appointed. You see guys, in the end, no one can avoid Jesus. You will either find him precious and come to him and believe in him and be profited by him eternally, or you will cast him aside, thinking he's out of your life, only to one day trip over him as you stumble to your eternal doom. People who cast Jesus aside in this life are gonna run right into him on judgment day.

They've not avoided him at all. And they will stumble over him in that day, into their eternal doom. As he declares the eternal sentence of judgment upon them. I don't want any of you to stumble over Jesus to your doom.

I don't want any of you to feel the agony of being shut out. Like the Jewish leaders ended up feeling on the day of Pentecost and all the events that followed. I plead with you to believe in Jesus. While he may be found.

And embrace him as the precious treasure and savior that he is. Will you do that? What will be precious to you this year? Will genuine faith in Christ be precious?

To you. Will the blood of Christ be precious to you? Will Christ Himself be precious to you? I hope that these things will be, and if they are precious to you, I know.

I know that you will have a spiritually successful year. And that's what I want for all of you. And for me and for all of us to experience together. Let's go to God and pray and ask Him to help us.

Lord, we come to you this morning and we just We are so thankful for your word and How it guides us. And I pray that if there's any ways that my own value system. And the value system of people in this room are out of whack that Just that what we've seen so far today would just help bring us into alignment and that we would We would truly view as precious what is in reality precious. That we would be drawn away from the lesser things.

That we would take these things that are precious. Our proven faith and the blood of Christ and Christ Himself, Lord, and that We would then build the rest of our lives around these precious things rather than just living how we wanna live and hope somehow, some way we can fit some of these precious things in the corners of our lives. So much good can flow downstream of us just bringing ourselves into alignment in this way and so we just confess our need to you, Lord, and, and we ask you to do a work of recalibrating our hearts.

repositioning things in our hearts to where we truly view our faith in Christ, the blood of Christ and Christ Himself as exceedingly precious.

And we live accordingly. We speak accordingly, and anyone who watches our lives would say, yes, I know that. Those treasures are precious. To them And we thank you, Lord, that as we study this, all the ways that we may fall short.

And feel conviction over that. We thank you that part of the precious value that's found in Jesus is that there's atonement and forgiveness for all the ways we fall short. And so we just confess our sin to you and ask for your forgiveness, and we know that you are pleasured to give that forgiveness which is so precious to us. And it's that grace and that forgiveness that melts our hearts each time.

And serves as wind beneath our wings. Giving us lift. And helping us to soar and being who you want us to be. If there's anyone here today, Lord, who's never believed in Jesus, just, I pray that you've touched their hearts this morning.

And I ask that you draw them to yourself. That they would be overwhelmed by the beauty of Christ that they have seen, by the love that they see in Him. And that they would believe in Him as their Lord and Savior and experience the gift of salvation today. And come to know.

What it's like to find this precious value. In Jesus We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to the Lord. And this offering that is to come, Lord, thank you for the faithful giving of your people and the opportunity to support. Your great work here in this community and around the world.

Receive what we give in this offering, Lord, and do much with all that is given for the glory of our precious Savior. It's in his precious name that we pray, and all God's people said. men.