The body of Christ by Pastor Ed Young

You are a little stone.  Jesus said that He was Petra, the big stone.  “…and on this rock (Petra) I will build my church.”  He did not say on Simon Peter but on Jesus.  “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”  So says the well-known hymn.  When we see a rock it should cause us to worship God because we are a part of the local rock, the body of Christ.  Scripture says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.  When you see the rocks, let them cause you to worship.

Again I am just whetting your appetite, just giving you a tip of the iceberg.  Let me do one more.  I have seen four births.  My wife and I have four children.

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Now before I read this next part, let me tell you something about language.  We have a very lazy language, English.  It is casual.  The Konia Greek is laser beam language.  I am talking about specific.

And here is where, quite frankly, the Catholic Church has been tripped up for hundreds and hundreds of years.  Let me explain it.  It is over a simple linguistic error.  “And I tell that you are Peter…”  The word Peter is pronounced Petros.  Petros means little stone.  So translated into our language He was telling Peter that he was a little stone…just a little stone.

Then He said, “…on this rock…” the word rock is Petra meaning huge, hunking stone like the big rocky mountain behind Jesus as He was speaking.  In other words Jesus was saying, I am the rock.

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You are remembering that Jonah was an Old Testament guy and Simon Peter was a New Testament guy.  How would Simon Peter be the son of Jonah?  He wasn’t, but here is the connection.  Jonah was the first running man.  He was the guy that God tapped on the shoulder.  God told him to preach repentance to the gentile city of Ninevah.

Finally, Jonah did it.  Well, Simon Peter years after that situation did something.  He became the guy who put down the race card.  Talk about racism.  Simon Peter and the other followers thought that Jesus and Christianity was a Jewish thing.

But Simon Peter was involved in recruiting the first gentile convert similar to what Jonah did hundreds of years before in the Old Testament.  That is why Jesus called Peter the son of Jonah.  “…for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in heaven.”

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I looked at my hands and said, “God, thank you for changing my life.”  As I looked at the Dead Sea I thought to myself that I had been dead yet He made me alive when I received Him.  That was my first act of worship.  Then I thought about the mountain being a mountain of worship representing my Christian life.  I said, “God, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to climb.

Thank you for the fact that even though I have fallen, even though I have plateaued now and then, even though I have struggled or gotten scared by doubt or questions, You have given me little markers along the way.  You have shown me that I am becoming a true worshipper.”

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I put on my shorts and my hiking boots and hit the mountain.  The first portion was an easy climb.  No problem.  Just a walk in the park.  Someone had painted little markers on the boulders along the way to indicate where to go.  It did get to be difficult however.  I found myself on all fours.  There were rockslides.  I even wondered what I had done deciding to climb that mountain.  Wouldn’t that be classic.

Young pastor dies mountain climbing near the Dead Sea.  I was all alone.  There was nothing there.  But I began to get the hang of it.  Sometimes I hit a plateau.  Sometimes I had to climb down in order to climb up.  After about 30 minutes I stopped and turned around.  Wow.  What a perspective.  The hotel looked tiny with the Dead Sea behind it.  I had an intense time of worship on that mountain in the middle of the dessert.

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He knew that we would have a tough time realizing and living out the implication that everything we do and say and touch should be an act of worship.  So here is what our great God did and this is the focus of today’s talk.  Our great God has put within our paths and around our lives many different symbols and things that push us or nudge us toward God and toward worship.  Isn’t that a cool deal?

Let me explain a little bit.  Over the last ten days I led a group of 114 people from the Fellowship Church to Israel.  We had a wonderful time of touring and walking where Jesus walked.  I got up early one morning.  We were staying in a beautiful hotel situated on the Dead Sea, which happens to be the lowest point on earth.  I needed a workout and decided to climb a nearby mountain.

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But we still owed 1.875M on 159.2 acres in Grapevine.  Grapevine Mills Mall wasn’t even a thought then.  Johnny Morris hadn’t even considered putting Outdoor World over there.  There was nothing out here.

A year later, without a sign on the property, we sold 22 acres for 1.875M dollars. Don’t ever sit there and tell me that God is not in the real estate business! You look at Fellowship Church and it’s a total and complete God thing. It really is. Of course, now we have this amazing facility. And on a good weekend we’ll have 20,000 people show up. And now we have three different satellite campuses. We have a television show that is nationally televised as well as in Europe. We have 9,000 pastors across the country and around the world who are connected with Fellowship Church. We have an opportunity to travel the world to talk about Fellowship Church. I have invitations right now to South Africa, to Australia and to London. It’s unbelievable! This has been a total and complete God thing. And I am just so thankful to play a part in God’s redemptive plan.

So I wanted to share my story with you. Now you might be saying, “Well, that’s a pretty unique story! Of course you’ll have a story. You’re the pastor!”

Well you have a story that is just as unique and just as powerful and just as life-changing as my story. All our stories are phenomenal! Don’t ever sit there and say, “Well, I don’t have a story.”

Yes you do. Have you ever asked yourself that question? Have you ever asked God that question? “Why do I live?”

Why do you live? You exist because God wanted you to. God has used every life experience, every environment, a kaleidoscopic range of environments in your life to mold you and shape you into the kind of person you are right now.

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Wow! Man! Why is everybody clapping? You didn’t get the word did you? Tonight’s suit night! Owen, come out here. Owen’s got his suit on, too! Look at Owen Geoff! Whew, Owen you look great, man! Tonight’s suit night. They didn’t get the word, man. It was supposed to be on our website. What happened? You look great, man. Suit night. Suit night, yeah. Tonight’s suit night. Tonight’s the Final Four (college basketball tournament). Thanks for being here. I’m glad I’m here.

Let me begin with asking you a question. And I’ll tell you why I ask you this question in a second: Where are you? Where are you?

My motivation for asking you that question comes from the mouth of God, because that’s the first question God ever asked anybody. In Genesis 3:9 he asked Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” Where are you?

Adam and Eve had sinned. They dropped the ball. They’d eaten the fruit from the forbidden tree. They tried to camouflage themselves from God; play a little hide and go seek from the Lord himself. They took some fig leaves and thread, sewed them together to hide in the foliage to camouflage themselves and God said, “Where are you?”

When my oldest, LeeBeth, was two she used to cover her face and close her eyes, and she thought she was hiding from me. And I would say, “Where’s LeeBeth? LeeBeth, where are you?” It was obvious that LeeBeth was right there in the middle of the den. But she couldn’t see me, and she thought I couldn’t see her. I’m the all knowing father. I could see her. She wasn’t hiding from me.

Adam and Eve were the same way. “Where are you?” God said. Adam and Eve were hiding. They were camouflaged. They were so obvious.

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A diamond has seven colors to it. Seven! I wonder why? I wonder why a diamond has seven colors? Well, if you go back and think about the covenant, go way, way back to when God made a covenant with Noah after the world wide flood. God said, “I’m never going to do the world wide flood thing again. And I’m going to put a rainbow in the sky to mark this covenant.”

Take a wild stab at how many colors are in the rainbow. Seven! I hope you’re connecting the dots now. Do you see the power here? Do you see the covenant? Do you see the blood bond of life and death?

“Well, man, I was doing all that when I got married, man? The walk of death, and I came into the chapel first, and we joined hands, and the vows, and the rings…”

Well, maybe you had a unity candle in your wedding ceremony, which is a covenant before God. Maybe you did that.

With a unity candle you usually have three candles on this candelabra—two on the outside and then one in the middle. The one in the middle is not lit. The two on either side are lit and then the bride and groom take the lit candles and light the one in the middle. And then the bride and groom blow out their own candle.

What are they saying here? They’re saying, “I surrender my stuff, my feelings, my desires, my needs and we become one.”

And that’s the beautiful thing of the covenant. The covenant is not like, “Well, I need this,” or, “I need that,” or, “Man, what about this or that?” In a covenant we’re thinking about the other party’s need. Unconditional love. Commitment on steroids.

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