First Peter 2:6-10 God's Corner Stone & Identity with Christ. pt 2
1 Peter 2:6-10 · Roger Henderson · Aug 2, 2026
1 Peter, No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/82262337547979

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so last week, Mike was kind enough to teach the First Peter, so I decided I want to go back up a little bit and we'll review some stuff and then get ready for the next section. So with that in mind, the first 10 verses, you can look at that. This is kind of Macaulay Constable's approach here on this section.

And it's not the only approach, but the first three verses really talk about the believer's growth. How do you grow in the Lord Jesus Christ? And we know that's God's desire that we grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. And we're going to review that just shortly.

And then we get into four and five and it talks about this building. It's this whole idea of a building that the Lord Jesus is a foundation for this building and he's building a building which is the body of Christ. And then we kind of go on a little bit more and then we see that It talks about this place Zion, which is usually Jerusalem, Israel, that kind of idea. God has placed in it a choice stone, which is the Lord Jesus.

We'll talk about that a bit. Actually, last week, Mike spent most of his time on 9 and 10. He did a great job talking about the body of Christ and some of those names for the body of Christ. It was really great. So I'm just going to center on the center two sections, 4 and 5, and 6 through 8 today. But before we get there, I really like this section, especially verse 2.

It says, Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. And this is just a beautiful section here. So God's desire is that every believer, this is His plan for every believer, they grow in grace and the knowledge of Him. So actually, you look at this, if you were to diagram it or put it in subject-verb-direct-object, you'd see that it's you as a believer are to long for or desire this pure milk of the word.

And the translation of pure milk of the word, we're going to talk about that a little bit, isn't the best. There's actually another word that is kind of hidden in there, which we'll see shortly. So you is basically plural, you all, y'all, if you were in, as Margaret would say sometimes, y'all, y'all know that? She'll be here shortly, I know. And this wasn't just, you know, we see other places where it talks about your babies and you're only feeding on milk, but this is talking about the genuineness of God's word, where to grow and where to believe in that.

And actually it uses this word long for, and it's actually a command, you were to long for, And it has the idea of an intense yearning. We have this intense yearning. I was kind of thinking about this. I hope with most people, at least myself, I had a longing once I came to faith in the Lord Jesus to know his word. It just happens automatically. It's not like you have to go out and gin up. You want to know about the one that loves you and died for you. So it just kind of fit naturally. But it is a command, interesting.

Now here's a parallel verse, for God is my witness, well actually not parallel, it's a use of that same word long for, God is my witness how I long for you with all affection of Christ Jesus. Okay, so let's just look a little bit more in detail on this pure milk of the word. Like I said, and I don't have it, this is kind of a condensed version, a better translation of that phrase, the word spiritual kind of comes in view here, and it doesn't You know, from looking at this translation, you don't see that word spiritual appearing. But a better rendering would be it's pure spiritual milk. So that's what is describing God's word. And we see two descriptions. First of all, we have this idea of milk. Milk is described by two adjectives. The first adjective is pure. So it has the idea that you might actually get contaminated milk.

We kind of think about our world today, and that can happen, right? I mean, you can hear men talk about God's word and where to check it out, and be able to be like Bereans. So this talks about where to desire the pure, unadulterated milk of the word. So we're to be good stewards of studying God's word carefully.

The second adjective is spiritual. Actually, it has this idea of logical. This is kind of cool. The phrase spiritual milk could be thought of as logical milk. So God's word makes sense. It's convicting. It convicts men of their sin. But it's logical because it's sources in God. He is truth and love. He is the source of all logic. I was listening to this guy, He's a scientist, a physicist, talking about how logical.

We couldn't do science if we didn't have a logical world that operated on logical principles. Forget about it. If it's just a random chance, Bob would try to cure somebody and every patient would be different. It would be illogical. No, we have a very logical world. Everything obeys God's laws, so we have a logical world. And he has a logical word, the pure spiritual milk.

So let's kind of go on here. Go ahead. This longing for the word, the spiritual word, is something that many of us experienced when we first got saved. I kind of wish that same thing would continue to exist. Well, you know, I find it does. This is a total rabbit trail. I don't know.

We've been looking at World War II. You can spend hours looking about it. There are so many stories about World War II. While a lot of it was decoding, one of the things was decoding the German secret codes they used to communicate. Enigma code. People spent their lives, and they did it. They broke the code. And I was kind of thinking, well, we have God's Word, and we're not like breaking the code, We're focusing.

Every word is important. Every phrase is important. Every modifier is important. Just like with that code, every single character is important. Even the punctuation, amen. So it's all important. And to me, that's what really excites me. I think, wow, I'm looking at this very word from God. And yes, I can get confused sometimes. I can be baffled, or maybe. But the more I look at it, the more I see who it is. It's our Savior.

Go ahead, Bob. Pure milk. Spoiled milk is one of the worst tasting things you can ever make. Well, you make good biscuits. That's good. Amen. I hear you. I hear you on that. Okay, that's great. But I like the fact that spiritual kind of gets hidden in there, and we could do a little bit more on that another time maybe. But anyways, it's logical. So Vine says, the nourishment may be understood to being as spiritual in nature, developing spiritual growth. So we're talking about growing spiritually. So that's kind of a real quick review of verse 2. So let's go on. So here's our verses for today. Can I pick on someone to read these? And you'll notice we have a lot about stones in this.

And coming to him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious 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. But for those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone, and 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.

So it's funny, and look at this section. You can look at that. And if you aren't too well versed in scripture, you could just say, this is an enigma code. What's he trying to tell us here? You know stone appears. He has living stone, singular, living plural stones. He has choice stones, precious stones. the stones, stones of stumbling, cornerstone. So he has just this focus on that word stone.

And it's just amazing. Once you kind of go through it, and we know this passage, hopefully most of us do, and it's just a beautiful passage. But your first look can be like, this is a code which I can't figure out. It's all these words. It's saying something, but what's it really saying? So hopefully we'll be able to tell that. OK, so let's start off. So I like to look at the... It's one sentence. 4 and 5 is one sentence. So, what does a good student in English do? What's the subject? What's the verb of the sentence? That's where you look. The subject is, actually starting in verse 5, you also, as living stones, and it's being modified by living stones, are being built up as a spiritual household. So let's just look at this.

Are being built up, the subject is believers, you also, are being built up. We talked about growing by the pure milk of the word. So God has a plan. He's building us into a group of believers. This is an ongoing ministry that the Holy Spirit is doing. He's building us up into a body of believers, if you will. And the idea is, this is something that God is doing. It's present tense. And he's accomplishing it. He's establishing his church. He's building up his church.

And there's certain characteristics of this church, which we're going to talk about here in a second. And this word shows up, this being built up, shows up in Acts. He was at work in the early church here. So the church throughout Judea, all Judea, Galia, all Judea, Thank you. I couldn't pronounce it in my life. Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up, and going on in the fear of the Lord. So he was at work there, and this was also used in other places in scripture. God is at work building up his church.

But there's two similes. Remember what a simile is? A simile is like if you had kids. If you try to encourage your kids, you'd say, boy, you're brave as a lion today. You're really being brave, right? So we're going to have two similes about this body of believers that he's going to use here. And I underline the as. And the as is kind of the highlight of the simile, as brave as a lion. So the first simile we're going to say, as a spiritual house. So we have this concept of it.

So what is a spiritual house? And I think, especially, this is from Weiss, I agree with this, the spiritual house is the whole body of Christ, right? The universal body of Christ. Not just Holly Hills, but all believers. That's God's spiritual house. And He's at work building that up. And we see there are priests, as we know from Mother Pat, there are priests in this spiritual house. And this spiritual house is to be composed of a holy priesthood, if you will. And then the next simile is, so we're a spiritual house. The next simile is as living stones, plural, because it's going to talk about the living stone singular. And here's where the decoding comes in, right? You've got to be a good decoder, right? Decode when the singular is singular and the plural is plural, okay?

This is the stones. Interesting enough, he talks about a singular stone and plural stones. And there's a connection, right? There's a connection between Stone and stones, OK? Stone is lithos. And it's the idea, it's not just this little pebble you might find on the ground. It's used sometimes that way, but it's more like a gem. Or many, many times, it's a cut stone for a building, a corner stone, something somebody's really taken time to manufacture that stone to be precisely what he wants for that corner of that building. So that's the stone here.

And it's used, as we saw in that verse, it's used both of Christ and it's used of believers. The plural is speaking of believers, the singular is speaking of Christ. And the Old Testament, if you go back to the Old Testament, you'll see they used a little bit different word, but it's the same word basically. The word rock, right? In Deuteronomy it says, The rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just, a God of faithfulness, etc. And it says, O God, my salvation, my glory rests on the rock of my strength, my refuge. So the Old Testament had this picture of a rock, and then we kind of move into the New Testament and we have a picture of a stone.

But it's basically the same idea. But what's interesting is, you think, well, that's just kind of an inanimate thing. It kind of sits there. But he adds this idea of living in there. So he changed it. It's actually an oxymoron, right? A stone is not living, right? But he says it's a living stone. Well, I've got two things that sound contradictory. But they're not.

And I think that the idea of a rock or a stone we know is that's security and faithfulness. And there's so many ideas that kind of go with that. OK, so a little bit more in stones, just kind of some additional thoughts here. In the singular, the stone is, this living stone is a person of God, the Son, became incarnate, lived for 33 years in the midst of Israel, and offered himself as Messiah. So we're told that believers have the same title as the stone. We're stones, plural. And you think about that, it kind of tells us that's who we are. We have his life, we're called the same name as he is called.

The metaphor was changed from the newborn baby to a building now. Now we're building a body of believers. And from the individual to the corporate, we've gone from individual believers longing for the pure milk of the word to the corporate idea of building up a body. But unlike a piece of rock, Jesus Christ is alive, able to impart strength to those who have trusted Him as Savior.

So that combination, that kind of oxymoron, we would call it. OK, so that's up through, that's four and five. We're going to go kind of fast here. OK, so now we get into verse six here. So let's look at, I want to look at the interlinear translation. And this is a quote.

This is a quote from Isaiah 28.16. And the interlinear says, I placed in Zion, And Zion is Jerusalem or Israel. And it has other meanings, too, but typically it's that.

A cornerstone, it has two characteristics, chosen and precious. Those are the two characteristics of this cornerstone. And the one believing on him, it's already kind of given this corner. It's called the cornerstone of him, right? Never will be ashamed. So here we are, just decoding this enigma code, if you will. So behold, a place in Zion, a cornerstone, is chosen, precious. The one believing on him will never be ashamed.

So let's kind of dig into that a little bit. So corner is the idea, just like it says, it's an angular picture. And actually, it's even a little bit more strong. It's the chief cornerstone. It's a very special. It's not just any old cornerstone. It's a chief or special cornerstone. And then to even amplify that, he uses the word chosen. It's chosen, literally chosen out. So this cornerstone is chosen out, and it's precious. The idea of held in honor. And there's a verse. Let me just go back. I had a verse of that later on.

Anyway, and then it says, And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed. And it's more the idea of not being defeated or deceived. Because when you believe on Him, He is the way, the truth, and the life. That's the truth you're believing. You weren't tricked. You weren't deceived or disappointed. And a little summary from Wiest here.

This living stone, the Lord Jesus, becomes the chief cornerstone of the temple, the church, the one who is not only its foundation, but also that holds the church together. Roger? Sure, go ahead. Do you think this has a positional implication? I do, I do.

Especially with the stone, stones plural and stones singular, it's just like that's our, that shows us our position, right? We're connected to this stone, this living stone. It calls us, we're living stones, it's a living stone, we're a living stone. But isn't it interesting, all the, not direct talk here, all the kind of, it's not going around the mulberry bush, go ahead. The cornerstone predicts the direction of the building. Exactly, exactly, right, exactly. And it's not going to, and you won't be led astray by this cornerstone. This cornerstone is, and that's another key part of this.

So there's a lot of symbolism, a lot of interesting things that kind of come out. But I felt, and I listened to some of these things about the Enigma machine and I said, well that was complicated. But, wow, I had the privilege of looking at God's Word, which is complicated, and figuring it out. But it's so much more valuable than the Enigma Code, which is passé now.

Go ahead, Bill. The Enigma Code translation project created modern digital... Amen. Amen. I saw that. There's some neat... Neat videos out there. You can blame all those guys. Yeah, actually that's very true. They built a whole machine to counter the Enigma machine, something called the bomb. It's a whole room full to decode that. That's for another day, if you're interested in that kind of stuff. Okay, let's go on here.

Okay, now verse seven. The last two verses are really interesting. Okay, this precious stone then is for you who believe, but for those, ah man, let me read it again. This precious value then is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, that's gonna tell you the rest of it.

So let's just look at the first part here. So we're gonna see, I was going to say Paul. This is Peter. Peter's going to discuss two kinds of views. So what should we think of this stone? What should we think of this cornerstone? He's going to say, some men will look at this cornerstone, and they will believe. Some will not believe, he said. He's going to talk about those two kinds of people. And they're going to draw two different conclusions.

Well, first of all, this precious value really is another name for the Lord Jesus, as best I can tell. This precious value, then, is for those who believe. Precious value is the idea of honor, respect, reverence. And it's honor rendered to the person or the thing, and this is just beautiful. He's a precious, and his words about being precious, things are precious in our sight. And here's a passage from Hebrews that uses the same word, precious, but translated differently. For he has been counted worthy of more glory, or preciousness, than Moses by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house. That kind of fits really well with our discussion here.

A believer, and this is kind of interesting, what is a believer at the core of his being, right? A believer is simply a person who takes God's viewpoint. We take God as a word, right? We say, yes, that's right. And he says that Christ is precious. And we call him precious because God has called him precious.

So, pretty cool stuff. So let's go on here. Now we're going to get down to the harder part of this verse. But for those who disbelieve. And disbelieve, or actually sometimes it's translated Thank you. You're way ahead of me there. Exactly. You're a good man. Thank you. I appreciate that. I couldn't remember. Actually, if you're into the Greek a little bit, this is one of these cool cases where you don't have to know a lot of Greek.

But pistouo, see where it says disbelieve, I have the a bolded. It says a pistouo. When you see a, it negates. So you're negating the word for faith. So you negate that word, so you have to be unbelieving, believe not. So that's what this word is about, unbelieving or believing not. So that's this one who disbelieves. So we're going to have this word show up here shortly. It's going to talk to us about unbelieving husbands.

And 1 Peter 3.1, it says, in the same way, you wise, be submissive to your husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient, or you could say disbelieving to the word, to God's word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives. So this is referring to a person that God's word has not persuaded him. You could say, he has stumbled over his word. That's going to be used in the next phrase here.

He doesn't believe his word. The contrast is between the Living Stone, what the Living Stone means to the believer, that he's the Lord Jesus Christ, And the unbeliever refuses to believe that. He refuses to believe that he is precious, that he is really who he says he is. So it's this contrast. They have the same information, but they come to two different conclusions. So let's go on with it.

So the first part of the verse was, this precious stone, then, is for those who believe, but for those who disbelieve, so he's going to describe, OK, here's what This is what, this is the mechanics, this is the details of this unbelief. It says, the stone, speaking of the Lord Jesus, which the builders rejected, this stone, by implication, this stone became the very cornerstone. So like I said, this is like the enigma codes here.

Okay, so the builder, if you look at the, you know, look at other verses, you'll see that the, who are the builders? You say, well, who are these builders? And you have to come to the conclusion, who was the Lord Jesus given to? He came as a Jewish person, right? He was given to the nation of Israel. So these builders, if you will, they're trying to build up God's kingdom by man's efforts. So they're the rulers and elders, right?

So the builders, and this comes out of Acts 4.11, there's a whole dialogue about I think Peter, he's talking during that time period, saying the stone which the builder rejected has become the chief cornerstone. So now we're going to go into the fact that this stone, which they rejected, is precious in value, and it actually is the corner of all that God will build in His church. It's a cornerstone of all His church. And then second, it goes into verse 8, And it says, OK, and here's the part where the, this is the description that Peter's going to give.

Here's where the one who disbelieves, or is disobedient, this is where he slips up, so to speak. A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. So that describes, we're going to show you here, that's going to describe the issue that the unbeliever has. OK, stumbling here is just basically the idea that he's It's obstacles in the way or in the path of where you might be going. Oops. Both stumbling and offense are connected with unbelief in the person and work of the Lord Jesus. Makes you think what Paul said about the Jewish nation and about Christ being a stumbling block.

Exactly, exactly. The Gentiles foolishness, right? Absolutely, absolutely, Bob. It does, that's good. Yeah, but both of those are in play there. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so now we're getting down to the... Okay, so now it comes back to the very last part of 8. And I can see where this...

I've been thinking to myself, I can see where Calvinists may have a problem here. It says, for they, and this is 8B, for they stumbled, speaking of the one who disbelieved, they stumbled because they were disobedient to the word and to this doom they were appointed. Okay, so maybe a little bit confusing. For they, the unbelievers, stumbled. Okay, let's see if I get here. Okay, so the question here, why did they stumble? I think the verse tells us that they stumbled because they, you could say they were disobedient to the word, but better, let's go back to the definition we had before. What does disobedient mean? It means they didn't believe it.

So it wasn't because they were predestined to be stumbled. Let's cancel that one out. That's kind of Calvinism. No. They weren't predestined to stumble. No. They didn't just stumble by accident. They stumbled for a very specific reason. This is just key. They stumbled because of God's Word.

Go ahead. So what will they say? Go ahead. Help me out here. Okay, I see. By the non-choosing, that's interesting. Exactly. No, he didn't. No, amen. But I like that. This verse actually, in our whole discussion, this verse really kind of nails it. They didn't just stumble because they were clumsy. They stumbled because they didn't believe. And it's totally connected to God's Word. God's Word is the issue. What will you do with God's Word? Will you believe it or not believe it?

If you don't believe it, you're going to stumble. There's no rocket science here, no mystery. And we see that. I see it with my family. It's God's Word that stumbles people. He sent his son into the world, and the world did not receive him. Amen. Right. So it's God's word. It's God's word that causes men to stumble. Okay, let's go on.

And once again, disobedience is the idea to refuse to be persuaded, to refuse to believe, and it's present tense. So these people aren't just doing this occasionally. This is a habit of their life, right? And unfortunately, we see unbelievers. You talk to them, and you talk to them, and, Lord, I'm not making any progress with these people. Some do. Praise the Lord. There are some that do. They do over time. But many times, they do not. It just seems like in our lifetime, they don't. They refuse to believe.

Let's go on here. And this is just a verse that uses that word. It says, But the Jews who disbelieved stirred up the minds of the Gentiles and embittered them against the brethren. And what do unbelievers do in our world today? What do they do? Are they supportive of believers?

No, they can't be, really. In a way, they cannot. Because it's illogical. What you guys believe is illogical. I'm smarter than that. I'm a scientist. Unbelievers are hateful. I was. I didn't want to go to church, but my mom forced us to go to church all the time. Praise the Lord.

It might have been that, but it might have been something else that caused me to believe when I was 19 in the Air Force. There was no other hope for me. I had no other purpose in life. So if God had not called me, I probably would have committed suicide.

Well, I think we all kind of look and we say, well, why did... I have one sister, and she's come once so far. I'm not sure she's going to be coming again. We've had a little row, a family row. She may not be coming again anyway. That's another story.

But anyway. But, you know, I'm four years older, four and a half years older than she is. And, you know, I met the Lord Jesus by reading his word, by reading the Bible. I was convicted. Well, she never did that. And, you know, all these years have passed, 40 years have passed since I became a believer, and she's just where she was 40 years ago.

And I think, I don't know. Why did I believe? Why, you know? I wasn't in any sense. And she's a nurse practitioner. She's a smart lady. I don't know. I'm a scientist. That's one of her typical arguments. I was going to get Bob to talk to her. I never got a chance. Bob's a scientist.

He can tell you about that. There's no amount of man's intelligence that can come up and choose God. We would not choose God if he didn't choose us first. Amen. I totally agree with you. I didn't want to have anything to do with God. And then these Jesus freaks came up and started talking to me, and I'm thinking, oh brother, that's enough. But aren't you so glad they did that?

I am, because I explained away every verse that my friend from the shop told me, except Romans 3.23 and Romans 6.23. I could not deal with those two verses. Interesting. And it's because of that that I turned to Christ. Wow, that's really cool. That's great. And now you're a Jesus freak. No, I'm a Jesus freak. This isn't any different, really. Being a Jesus freak.

Okay, alright. Let's go on here. Okay, the Word of God. Actually, what I have here... Okay, so looking at the context. It talks about this idea at the very last of the verse. Let me just read the verse again. For they stumbled because they were disobedient to the Word. to this doom they were appointed. And that last little phrase is where, you know, you could get into trouble, it seems like. So we're back to, well, can I be appointed to this doom? But I think if you're careful and you look at this, the verse explains itself. So the first question is, what's the doom? To this doom, so what would you say is the doom?

Exactly. You didn't believe the word. That's exactly it. Exactly. No, no, no. So God didn't come along and appoint you to be doomed. You doomed yourself. You refused to believe his word. Actually, doom is not in the... Actually, you're right. Doom is not in the... It says this, you're right. It's been added. Okay, that's good. And why were they appointed to the doom? It's the same answer. Basically, they were appointed to the doom because they disbelieved.

There's no mystery here. This verse does not introduce any mystery or hopefully not any confusion. The whole point here that Peter's making is they did not believe in God's word and they suffered the consequences. End of story. That's it. And that's the logical outcome of disbelief in God's Word. In this case, it says, do more separation from God. That's it.

You know, the ESV says they stumbled because they disobeyed the Word as they were destined to do. They were destined to disobey because they didn't even want to know it. They didn't want to know it, right. They didn't want to know it. They didn't like it.

These people were in charge. Yeah, that's true. So, I mean, this is great. Hopefully, this is helpful. When you're thinking, you know, you're going to come across verses like this, and this is where people, the critics of scripture all call it, they have a field day sometimes. Well, see, God's appointing you to do. Really? They appointed themselves. They appointed themselves. No, that's not the answer. So, that's where being good stewards of God's Word, you know, being good Bereans, Cracking the code is a good thing. But you've got to know it. You've got to read it. If you don't read it, you can't know it.

Actually here, let me just put this up here. I came across this at the very end of my studies. This is just a listing from Macaulay, which I thought was interesting. This idea of Christ being the stone or the rock. Well, it appears a lot in the scripture, and he has all these appearances. I didn't study them out really well, but you look at those, many of them you already know. We've talked about some already, but some of them, the stumbling block, which we talked about a little bit already, the type is like the, he's a type of this rock that's talked about in Exodus, but the idea of him being this rock or stone or unmovable force, But what I think Peter's added so well is he's a living stone.

He made it personal. He's a living stone, not something that can't interact with us. So I didn't have a whole lot to say about this. Actually, that's my last charge. So any more thoughts? You guys have been great. Good discussion. Go ahead. You know, there's a scripture that says, he who falls on this stone will be shattered, but he on whom the stone falls will be crushed. Yeah, I know. I started looking into that, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to address that. I'm thinking, you know, maybe those who fall on him are shattered, but they will be put back together. Yes. They're shattered on their own, suppositions, you know? Their own suppositions have been destroyed and they're looking to Christ. But those on whom He falls will be crushed and destroyed completely. Do you know where that is, Bob? No, I don't. Yeah, why? Jim, I looked at that and I said, I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle that one right off my chest. I'll leave that for another day. I thought about that a lot. Another class.

But the one I do like, maybe the one I do like, and I think Bob quoted it here too, It says, for no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So He is the foundation. There is no other foundation. He is it. And all our efforts are laid upon Him. And there can be no other foundation. And you can't mix the foundation. It can't be a little bit of this and then we'll add a little bit of something else. No, He is the cornerstone and all foundations are laid upon Him.

Any other thoughts? We have a special, yeah, you know this morning is going to be a special time. We're going to ask Miles to join us as an elder. And if you look at scripture, there actually are quite a few passages that talk about elders and how do you become an elder. So we'll talk about that a little bit today. Think about that. How do you become an elder?

I have a question. Sure, go ahead. You know, I'm thinking about all the stuff going on in the Middle East. Yeah, oh wow. And, you know, you really have the Jews and then you have, of course, everyone else. Right, I know. And, you know, you look at this and it's so interesting how the everyone else will never No, everyone else... They will never agree that the Lord is the cornerstone. No, you're right. I mean, and so this whole conflict is destined really till the end of time almost. Yeah, well we know where it's headed eventually, we know where it's going. Yeah, no, it is interesting, it is. So when you look at it from that perspective...

I'd hate to be a... ambassador to Israel. What would I say? I'd say, well... I know, I hear you. There's no way. It's Esther's thought. I know. Go ahead, Bobby. You know, since you mentioned war. Since you mentioned war. Yeah, this is not related to a great lesson. No, no, no, sure. Thank you, thank you. There's a book that Margaret and I have read years ago. Okay.

The Enigma Girls. The Enigma Girls. I think it was. It had the ten teenage girls that were Yeah, they were part of the breaking the code. Oh, the code. Okay, yeah, go ahead. The Code Girl. It's called The Code Girl. No, The Code Girl. Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, no, no. But there's a gal that I know here in Denver who, well, maybe she's passed away now, I think. But she was one of the Code Girls. Yeah. Yeah. And so to hear her story, and until they wrote this book, a lot of these, they were They were silent. They were totally silent. Well, they were told to be silent. Absolutely. They were made to be silent. And they took that to heart.

Even though I had known this gal, this lady, for years, this topic never came up until that book came out. And she was one of the people who contributed to the writing of that book. And it was just so interesting then, once she could talk about it, how that all happened. Actually, just to build on that, there's another lady, she had studied German, her whole background was, and she had studied in Germany, but then when the war started she moved back to her home country, and she was able to listen to operators, it's all Morse code, she could tell, she could identify the operator. basically by the way they did the Morse code. And actually, the order of their sentences, if you put this modifier, and she would, and it paid huge dividends because, anyway.

Okay, that's great. So there's so many stories. Well, once you find out, and I was kind of thinking about this, you know, the whole war, the whole effort There are just thousands of people that contribute things that we don't know of all the people that contribute. You hear the big names, you hear the Alan Turings, all those kind of guys, but there's just thousands of other people that all contribute.

And it kind of got me back to the fact that, okay Roger, your task is to look at God's Word, to understand God's Word. Isn't that such a more elevated position? I could be there looking at code trying to figure out this. But look, I get to look at God's word from his lips, so to speak, and try to figure out what is he saying in his word. You're a code guy. I'm a code guy. You guys are code. We're all decoders. We're code breakers. We're all code breakers.

Well, the book, the Bible will sell, no question about that. I found one verse. It's exactly what Jim said. Luke 20, 18. That's it. Everyone who falls on that stone is broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. What verse is that? Luke 20, 18. Yeah. Luke 20, 18. Yeah. The ESV says everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone it will crush him. I know.

We need a little bit more digging on that one, I think. I've got to think about that a little bit. Jesus was talking to the Pharisees here. He had given them an illustration. And they said, surely not. What then is there in this? You don't even know who your father is. He was really laying it on hard to them. No, he was. Well, isn't it interesting how the Lord presented his message?

It wasn't, you know, many times you had to be a thinker. You know, you have to think. And I think that's something that people from outside think, well you guys, you Christians don't think. You just believe. No, no, no. We have to think. You have to think and dig. That's what Christianity is about. The apostles or disciples to Jesus, Lord, you just told a story and we don't understand it.

Would you explain it to them? Yeah, right. And he would do that. He would explain it to them. To them? To them, yeah, only. You're right. And he didn't explain everything to them. I know. The upper room discourse, they didn't understand anything what he was talking about. They didn't know, not at all. Jesus doesn't explain everything very clearly. He always hides things.

I know. You know what I've kind of come to the conclusion? That's so you'll dig even deeper. The verse that Bonnie read now, I want to find out what's, you know, I want to dig in deeper. By doing that, it's only going to benefit you. Exactly. Amen. Okay. Well, let's close.

Thank you, guys. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for today, Father, for the blessings we have. Thank you that we can spend our time looking at your Word, pondering it, studying it, memorizing it, and trusting in what you say, Lord. We thank you for that. In Christ's name, Amen.