Sep. 14, 2025

Pastor Dave's sermon begins at 19:45 min into the video. The music "To God Be The Glory", "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus", "My Hope is Built on Nothing Less" , "Take My Life and Let it Be" ,"I Give You My Heart" , and "In Christ Alone" are licensed under CCLI Copyright #2723035 and Streaming Media #22024223 licenses.

Living Stones: Built on the Cornerstone

In his message from 1 Peter 2:4-10, Pastor Dave explored a powerful passage about identity and worth as believers. He explained how Jesus serves as the cornerstone and how Christians are living stones being built into God's spiritual house.

Jesus: The Precious Cornerstone

Pastor Dave explained that Jesus is the cornerstone - not merely a decorative marker like those seen on modern buildings, but the foundational stone that determines the alignment of everything else. When builders set a cornerstone, every element of the building - vertical, horizontal, and structural - aligns with that corner. This is exactly what Jesus represents for believers and all of creation.

What really stood out was how Pastor Dave emphasized that the word "precious" appears three times in this short passage when describing Christ. As he put it, "Now, if the Bible says something once, it should get our attention, don't you feel? But I think if it says something three times in a short amount of space, I think that it's something that we should pause and think about."

He explained that Christ is precious because He's the only one - "the more rare something is, the more valuable it is." Jesus is the only cornerstone, the only foundation we can build our lives on. While the world rejects this cornerstone, God chose Him, and to those of us who believe, He should be "the most precious thing in our world."

From Nobody to Somebody

One of the most impactful parts of his message was when Pastor Dave talked about our transformation through Christ. He didn't sugarcoat it: "Before Christ, we were nobody going nowhere. It doesn't matter how important you are in this life. It doesn't matter how successful you are in this life. Without Christ, you're really a nobody."

But then came the beautiful contrast. Through Christ, "we're not just nobodies, we're a bunch of somebodies. We're children of God." Pastor Dave emphasized that we've obtained mercy - something we definitely didn't deserve. As he reminded us, "If I got what I deserved, and if you got what you deserved - anything better than hell is better than we deserve."

Living Stones in God's House

Pastor Dave explained that when we come to Christ, we don't just get saved and then sit on the sidelines. We become living stones ourselves - active, dynamic parts of God's spiritual house. This isn't just about our local church building; it's about being part of something much bigger. As he described it, "All across our nation and all across the world today are believers. The spiritual house is gathering together as living stones, lifting up praise and honor to Him."

He challenged some common attitudes in the church with a memorable illustration: "There are folks who are so right about everything that they can't find anybody that is as right as them to go worship with... They're just a brick in a field. That's not a spiritual house, is it?"

The Redwood Connection

Drawing from another pastor's recent message, he shared the powerful illustration of California's giant redwoods. These massive trees have shallow roots, but what keeps them standing through storms and adversity is that their roots are all interconnected underground, supporting each other.

This perfectly captured his point about believers: "How desperately we need to be interlocked and engaged with one another. That our faith is growing together, and the results will be that we will not be shaken by everything that's happening in our world, as our roots are in Christ, and our roots are interconnected with one another."

You Are Significant

Pastor Dave closed with a powerful reminder that we often forget: "Don't ever undervalue yourself as a believer in Jesus Christ. You're a living stone. You're a building block in His church. You're part of a spiritual house."

He reminded us that we're literally the temple of the Holy Spirit - God's Spirit rests in our lives. That's not insignificant. We have purpose, identity, and incredible worth in God's eyes.

The Promise That Anchors Us

Throughout his message, Pastor Dave kept returning to this beautiful promise from the passage: those who believe in Christ "will by no means be put to shame." While the world might not value believers, we have the assurance that when everything is revealed, we'll stand with Christ in honor and glory, not in shame.

His message challenged us to consider how this applies to our daily lives - remembering that we're not just individuals trying to get by, but precious living stones in God's grand design, connected to believers around the world and called to be agents of change in a dark world. It was a powerful reminder that in Christ, we truly matter more than we think.