If you didn't know it already, let me be the first to tell you: "This is Christmas week." Well, you know I'm being facetious, don't you? You know, and you know that I know you couldn't be living in America-- and many other parts of the world and not know that Tuesday of this week is Christmas Day. What is it all about, anyway? That's our study today.
Warmest greetings to you, my friend. Welcome to our program of Bible study, In Search of the Lord's Way to become and to be a Christian. Say, we're glad you have joined our study today. We pray we will both be blessed. We're here courtesy of your friends in a nearby church of Christ, because they love you. Worship with them today, if you still have time, will you?
Common thought among believers in Christ is that Christmas was originally a celebration of the Son of God. However, let me give you this to think about. David Lyon (no relation-- to my knowledge) says, "For many centuries folk religion has existed-- often alongside official conventional religions such as Judaism and Christianity." Later in the same paragraph he says, "But in medieval Europe many ancient rituals and symbols were incorporated and made acceptable within Christianity. An obvious example" he says, "is Christmas, a 'Christian' festival superimposed on widespread celebration of the winter solstice, and involving numerous folk traditions quite unrelated to Christianity." Now that is in Erdman's Handbook to Christian Belief, page 27, if you want to check that out. Although the Bible tells us about Christ's birth, He says nothing about a date in the calendar year-- or a celebration of it. Who knows? Perhaps God knew that we humans would make a celebration of it. And He had other plans for His memorial for His Son-- namely: the Lord's Supper to commemorate not His birth, but His death for the sin of the world. It's mainly for that reason that we believe the Christmas celebration has no place in the worship of the New Testament church. All that notwithstanding, we are glad and we are thankful that Jesus came to live among us, to suffer and to die as He did, that we might be reconciled to God and live with Him forever. Oh what grace! God's Marvelous grace!
We have given our message today the title, "A Stumbling Stone and A Rock of Offense." If you think you might want a free printed copy or a CD or audio cassette tape of it, please send your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or by e-mail to searchtv@searchtv.org. If you prefer to call our toll free telephone number, and it is 1-800-321-8633. And if you would like to see the program again, hear it or even read it, you need only to visit our website searchtv.org. You still have time to get your free Bible reading calendar for 2008. By following our plan in this little booklet, you will read the Old Testament through once and then we will read the New Testament through twice. And you will read one week in the New Testament and back and forth in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so through 2008 we will have been able to read the Bible through. Ken Helterbrand is going to lead us now as we sing and then I'll be back.
I am reading today from the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2, and begin at verse 1. “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame. Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” And now let us go to God in prayer. Holy Father, we are so thankful to You for sending Jesus Christ to be our Redeemer and our Savior. In Him we put our trust for the forgiveness of our sins as we respond in obedience to His teaching today, and always. And, Father, we pray Your blessings upon our meditations today will inspire someone who is a believer, but not an obedient believer; or somebody who is not a believer to come to be an obedient believer in Your Son, Jesus Christ, for salvation. And we pray it all in His name. Amen!
I imagine about every religious program that you have seen the last two or three weeks, has been about the birth of the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem. So we'll not go into that in an elaborate way today. No now, we're not "offended" as some people say they are "offended" at the mention of the name of Christ as in "Christmas." Yes! We are thankful for (1) Jesus' earthly ministry, (2) His work of redemption and (3) his High Priestly service that He is performing at the right hand of God in Heaven right now. None of which could possibly be without His birth. We just don't believe December 25th, with the tree and the Santa Claus and all the commercialism, is the biblically appointed way of remembering Him. He established the Lord's Supper to be observed on the first day of the week, as the memorial to Himself. There are several amazing things about the Lord's Supper, but that it is a memorial that Jesus erected to Himself, is indeed one of them. That it still lives these two thousand years later in memory of Himself is wonderfully amazing! Well, there are many amazing things about Jesus. We'll not get to talk about all of them today, but let's begin right now, what do you say?
Someone who has made a study of it has said there are more than four hundred Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ. Some of them were written seven or eight or more centuries before He was born. And, some of them described details over which Jesus had absolutely no control. So, it couldn't have been that He was a false messiah, as others had been, and that He worked out a plan for His life to fulfill all those prophecies. For example, the time, the place and the manner of His birth and death. Yet He fulfilled them all-- every one of them. According to Luke 24:44 and 46 after He had been raised from the dead, He told His apostles, "These are the words which I spoke to you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning me...Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day...,” just as had been written.
The first promise of His coming was right after the first sin of man. In pronouncing judgment upon Satan, God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." That is Genesis 3:15. In Galatians 4:4 Jesus Christ is said to be-- and He's the only one said to be in the Scriptures-- "made of woman." God said Satan would bruise Jesus' heel. He certainly did so in our Lord's crucifixion. Have you ever suffered from a bruised heel? Well, I have. And if you have, you know how really painful it is. Still, Satan's blow to Jesus' heel was not fatal, because Jesus rose from the dead, and being raised, He struck the death blow to the head of Satan.
Let's turn now to the passage that we read at the beginning of our study today. In verse one there are some Divinely given exhortations to Christians to lay aside some things that hinder people from being all they can and should be. These things may seem like trifles to some people, but they grow on a person and become snares. Like a good athlete in training, God is saying in verse one that Christians are to lay "aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and all evil-speaking." And, "as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby." If you hear me regularly, you have heard me say it many times, "I believe Christ's way to live is the best way that has ever been introduced to the family of man." And it's so, because of the values He teaches and encourages. No, no now, the Lord is not a "hard taskmaster," as some we will study about in this very passage perceived Him to be-- and as some today would have you believe. He teaches us to lay aside the things that prevent us from living the good life, and begin doing the things that will help us achieve the most in this life. And, in all of it to prepare for heaven. The person who comes to Christ does so, "because he has tasted that the Lord is gracious." Not because he feels like that he is duty bound to do it, but “he has tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
Well, verses four and five say: "Coming to Him as a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones are being built up a spiritual house..." Well, the strong inference here is of the Jewish temple, the seat of their worship in Jerusalem. Its beauty or glory was beyond description. You probably remember: David prepared the material for it. And Solomon, his son, built it. Solomon said of it, "The temple which I build will be great, for great is our God, greater than all gods" (2 Chronicles 2 and 5). Well, that temple was great! It was great in its magnificent beauty. It was great in its cost. Someone has suggested that it was the most costly edifice that we built by human hands in the history of man; maybe so. Most of all, it was great in its meaning and glory to the people of God at the time. Because, you see, in the Jewish faith, it was God's dwelling place among them. The cornerstone was special-- different. It was designed just for that spot. And it was of precious stone. So different was it, in fact, that the builders (skilled as they were) rejected it as a possible part of the building. So, as the verse says, they rejected it. They turned it aside. Tradition has it that when the structure was completed, there was the space for the stone that they had rejected. And that was in the place of the cornerstone.
Well, the lesson here is that Christians are "living stones," in God's spiritual temple, which is the church. And Jesus Christ is the "chief cornerstone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and very precious." The comparison is found in several passages, both in the Old Testament prophecies and the New Testament fulfillment, just as it is here-- and in Romans chapter 9, verses 33 and 34. "Therefore," He says, "to you who believe, He (meaning Jesus) is precious,”-- and He is-- but to those who are disobedient the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone! And while Jesus Christ is all that to those who believe, well, He is "the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense" to others. (And that is a quote in this passage from Isaiah chapter 8, verse 14). The purpose of its reference in this passage is to compare the church to the magnificent Jerusalem temple. And it would also encourage Christians.
God was not saying that the believer in Christ is honored by such faith. He was contrasting the honor that was put on Christ by those who believe, as it is contrasted with the view taken by unbelievers. The truth is that while the Lord Jesus is rejected by the great masses of people, He is extremely precious to believers. Their estimate of His value is clearly seen (1) in their commitment to follow His teaching, (2) their acceptance of His moral life and (3) in their readiness to keep His commandments, when the majority of their fellows around them reject Him.
Well, from the day of His birth in Bethlehem, Jesus was a stumbling block to the Jewish leaders of His day. They lived in happy anticipation of the coming of their Messiah. But the circumstances of Jesus birth were not at all what they had expected. For seven centuries, they had read in Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." Born of a virgin? Impossible they reasoned! Then too, His birth, not of royalty, but as the supposed, as we read in Luke 3:23, the Son of a humble carpenter was a rock of offense, too. Also, being born in Nazareth of Galilee was a stone of stumbling. After all, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46). Well, they were also offended at His teaching. "When He had come to His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works?...So they were offended at Him," That is Matthew 13, verses 53-58. Oh yes, they were critical of His miracles, too. "This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons," they said. (Matthew 12:24).
Well, the apostles and other New Testament preachers found the gospel-- the good news of the death, the burial and the resurrection of Christ to be a stone of stumbling, too. First Corinthians 1:18 says, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." Yet, Paul the apostle wrote: "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and unwise. So, as much as in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1, verses 14 to 16).
Some believe and were saved; and some believe today and are saved. Others hear, but to them Jesus Christ is but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They are offended by the mention of Christ's name in the public media, on school premises or just the word "Christmas." They're "offended" by a Christmas display on the Court House Lawn. They are offended by a prayer to God in public. They were offended by His personal presence; and they were offended by His personal teaching. They were offended by His miracles. They crucified Him. Remember? They were offended by the apostles' teaching about His death, burial and resurrection. And they are offended by all that now. However, God knows all things so He knew it would be that way. Still He "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Let us pray. Holy Father, we are so thankful for the coming of Jesus and for His service here on this earth and His death on the cross, His ascension to Your right hand where he intercedes for us even now as we pray in His name. Amen!
So, what should Christians do today so as not to be offensive? Should we alter our teaching about His death on the cross for the sins of the world? Should we modernize our form of worship so as to appease those to whom Christ is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense? Perhaps Christians should relax the principles of Christ's morality in order to appease them: abortion on demand, sex outside of marriage, provide the children condoms and birth control means, and preach divorce without a cause, and support gay marriages and marriage of humans to their animal pets, and all that sort of thing. Well! It isn't a question of "what would Jesus do?" We know what Jesus did? He came to do the Father's will, and that He did without wavering, even to death-- the cruel death on the cross. He resisted evil uncompromisingly and relentlessly. He loved the people in spite of their taking offense to Him. And, that we can-- and that we will do, friend. We will teach and preach salvation as in Christ Jesus. We will not compromise one truth He taught. We love the lost enough to teach and preach the saving gospel with the greatest measure of love that we can demonstrate. We will!
If you are not a Christian, oh, I hope and pray that you will become one today-- and help us make a difference in people's lives who believe in Jesus. I know you must believe in Christ as the Son of God or else you wouldn't still be with me. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit guided preachers told believers to "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). That's what you need to do, friend. If you haven't already done so, will you do that today?
If you would like a free printed copy or CD or audio cassette tape of today's program, mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. By e-mail the address is searchtv@searchtv.org. Our toll-free telephone number is 1-800-321-8633. We are presented here by members of churches of Christ in the viewing area of this station. They would love to have you worship with them. We'd like that, too. We plan to be back next week. We hope you can too. God bless you now. We love you.
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